skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's a really good point. Though I do think the article is specifically about math, it generalizes to the point you're making.

I thought the article did a particularly good job explaining how the "new math" is very dependent on high quality teaching rather than adhering to a new curriculum.

Unfortunately, I think this is where the US has fallen down where it comes to math (and, as you've pointed out, other subjects). We seem to think we need to find the magic approach that will work.

My kids are in school, and they are doing common core math. In many ways I do think it's much better than the old way (put the big number in the house, put the little number outside the house... except if you're dividing the little number by the big number...). There are a lot of good ways to add fractions, or do long division. It's not only math, but math is actually an unusually good subject to teach this kind of creative problem solving.

Here's what I see as the problem: we observe a teacher approaching a problem a different way. When students are asked to subtract 4 3/4 from 6 2/5, you could do the ol' algorithmic cross multiply trick. It's long, and boring, but it does work. Or, you could write the numbers down on a number line, notice that there are distances between the numbers that amount to integers, and small additional bits of remaining distances that amount to fractions. Add those up and you've got your solution.

That's just one of many possible approaches. My guess is that a talented teacher might do this, or something else.

Here's what I feel common core does: it notices one particular creative approach and concludes, "oh, the way to teach this is Step 1: create a number line, step 2: mark off the whole numbers, Step 3:..."

Essentially, they're looking to reduce the creative approach to another mechanical set of steps. This may be an overstatement and overuse of this phrase, but it's sort of a "cargo cult" of math instruction. The point never was the number line, it was that a teacher was talented enough to see a better approach for this problem, and that, after repeated examples and exercises, the students develop this ability as well.

I do think this article gets at this - that the point isn't the particular "creative" approach, it's the creative approach itself.

Unfortunately, this will never work without talented teachers. They need to be drawn from the top tier of math grads, they need to be very good at teaching and connecting with students, they need to be fluid and creative in their approach, and they need excellent training and experience.

Almost nothing about the US educational system, outside a few very selective and rare programs, would draw this sort of person into teaching (I hope it's obvious I'm not talking about research universities).

The irony is, once you have these teachers, I suspect don't really need to formalize this approach! "Common Core Math", if done well, is probably what talented, creative math teachers would naturally do on their own. You can't get it from a set of mechanical steps, and if you're doing what you should (drawing in top teachers), you don't need the mechanical steps anyway.
I find it interesting that he was on This Week in Startups only a few weeks ago calling every company he found unconvincing "losers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zy_07g2IrM

Maybe they're all losers and you're a winner, but perhaps being an elite hax0r isn't all that's needed to go to market...

If you can't reply to a regulator letter, how are you going to deal with supply chain or cash flow issues? Bad reviews in the press or on Amazon? People who want refunds? Not to mention the literal horror of a car crash. To borrow a term injected into this election season, you gotta have Stamina.
Apple may prove me wrong with the ergonomics of the TouchBar, but I've yet to find a virtual button that I've liked as much as a physical button.
Yeah I'm not saying it's a good thing, but considering how Apple keeps trying to make the keyboard thinner and thinner this seems like the logical conclusion.
In Xcode 8 you can't. They briefly had it as a feature but it has never worked properly and is not supported.
EDIT: It was also using Wi-Fi, not Bluetooth.
Why is everyone so upset about this? It is a dynamic part of the keyboard. I would be shocked if there was no option to set it "classic mode" for certain applications (or even universally if you wanted), which would have the ESC key and the function keys. Why the opposition? Having a dynamic part of a keyboard is pretty innovative, what are some of the possibilities, I am not 100% sure but I am sure that developers will find neat and useful (and probably unexpected by us and by apple) things to use it for.
I thought the same thing. The only place I've ever seen "developers" use Mac products is when they must for technical reasons (e.g. targeting Mac OS specifically), or in the Valley where it's trendy.

It's not even that suitable for the fashionable toy webapp development that seems to reign here in the Bay. I've seen the homebrew or ports hoops the 'webdev' crew at the company I work for have to jump through just to get a basic development environment running. It's silly. I fire up my linux-guest VM or else use my company-provided MacBook as little more than a terminal to remotely access our development servers to write my code (which isn't web or mobile application code).

Outside of the Bay, webdev shops, or targeting Apple OSes specifically, if I seriously suggested using Apple products for development I'd expect to be laughed out of the room. And rightfully so, in my opinion.

They're fine computers for the consumer market, better than linux or any other alternative for that purpose (in my opinion) but as development platforms they're...wanting.
Before: you were carrying a cable (type A - lightning)

GP: you have to carry a cable (type A - lightning) and a dongle (type A - type C) rage rage eleventyone

If you have a brain: you carry a cable (type C - lightning)
I mean, they apparently have a clause trying to entirely deny liability. That's not really a reasonable spot.
I'm wondering this too. I'm using a 2010 version with a new battery and SSD installed, and besides that everything is working fine. I would like a Retina on that but I don't see the huge problem
I'll give you the same answer I'll give Apple: don't tell me how to be productive. I have already found vim key bindings to improve my development experience by almost an order of magnitude. You're not taking that away from me.
In the US, rules are not so strict. In 2007-08, 71.6 percent of secondary math teachers had been math majors. An additional 16.2 percent were certified in math but did not do a math major. 12.2 percent of secondary math teachers had neither a major nor a certification in math [1]. The number of uncertified non-math-major math teachers is much higher in lower grades, as you point out.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=58
Yes, thank you, I was starting to think I'm not actually a real developer, since I can't even remember the last time I even used a function key...
Ubuntu for Windows works really well (on insider preview) and since then I have no desire to even look at mac...
I don't need a new one, but my wife does as her one is the Macbook Pro from 2009 and is now extremely slow, and the battery lasts about 20 minutes. So I was going to buy a new one for me, and give her my current one.

As you say, the 2014 is a great model - I'm using it right now, and it's plenty sufficient for everything I do.
>>unrest and the rise of populist demagogues who will be much better (worse) candidates than Trump.

you do realize that it's the "democrats" who are promising free stuff to the masses by "taking moar moneys from the evuhl 1%". Doesn't get much more divisive and populist then that.

So now on the "republican" side there is also some level of exploiting of the archetypal beliefs that can be considered "populism", such as the ubiquitous "wall on the border" but that carries very little targeted appeal to the unemployed or poor segment of the populace per se.
15 Hours with the 13” MacBook Pro, and How Apple’s T1 Bridges ARM and Intel
CSS Best Practices – 14 Steps to Become a CSS Ninja Pt2
I own a ZBook 15 first generation, Ubuntu 16.04. The trackpad is large and works well. It has 3 physical buttons (actually two pairs of them, on the top for the mouse stick and on the bottom for the trackpad). I'm using it as a mouse (single finger) or to scroll (two fingers). It's probably multi touch up to 10 fingers but I can't remember.

I understand that OSX has gestures and maybe Windows too. Maybe there is some package that brings gestures to Ubuntu as well (apt-cache search gesture|grep gesture returns some) but the keyboard is good enough. Alt left to go back (it works in Nautilus too), etc. Sometimes I'd like pinch to zoom in Gimp like on the phone and tablet and some day I'll try those gesture packages, but I'm in no hurry.

On the other side, I find the push to click trackpads I see on Macs and some PCs very difficult to operate, especially when I don't want to move the mouse pointer when clicking (graphic programs) and especially the trackpads that actually move. That's why I bought a laptop with physical buttons and disabled push to click (it had that too).

TL;DR the Mac trackpad is almost a reason not to buy a Mac for me.
"Don't buy cables/adapters from Apple" has been the general rule for decades. Grab stuff like this from Monoprice and it'll probably run you $20.
>The Surface was innovative the pen worked great

Thank Wacom, not Microsoft. They invented and perfected the tech for that years ago.

>the formfactor was pretty amazing for the power in it

Thank Apple for pushing the envelope on the form factor and Intel for creating the hardware. There isn't anything there that hasn't been done before.

>the OS was pretty good,

I disagree, it is ad supported and spies on users.

>he Surface Book was also pretty innovative even tho it wasn't the first detachable screen they really worked on the mechanics, electronics and software to make it as good as it can get, the Surface Studio is also not the first but it looks to be near perfection for content creators of nearly all types and every content creator I know was pretty excited about it.

That doesn't sound at all innovative. To be honest that sounds like regurgitated marking speak.

>The sad part is that for some reason I have a strong suspicion that if there was an Apple logo on the back of the Surface Studio instead of 4 squares some types of people would be drooling all over it even if 99% of what it offers would be utterly useless to them.

I don't buy either so it doesn't influence me. Innovation looks like what Tesla is doing. Make something great then drive the price down as low as it can go. Microsoft and Apple products seem to cost more and more year on year. Teslas keep getting cheaper.
I wouldn't really blame Apple for not coming up with faster CPU. Things have changed and the times when you got the double speed every few years are over. And I don't know if it is actually a bad thing. This means your hardware does not get old so fast and there's less reasons to update every two years.

The article also claims that you can get comparable hardware from any other vendor for for $1.5k. I wish this was true. Unfortunately it is not at all easy to find good alternatives for Macbook Pro. Even if you don't put limit on the budget. Especially when you limit the search for quad core CPUs, there's not that much choice (HP ZBook, Dell XPS, Lenovo T460P or P50). And then you are still stuck with Windows or can you get one of those with Linux pre-installed and supported?
When Soylent was first announced but wasn't available yet, it struck me as something I'd like so I tried Slimfast (and Ensure).

Had to drink a lot to get enough energy and it was way too sugary and sweet – it gave me the sick feeling I get when I have only donuts or something for breakfast. The sugar free version tasted too much of aspartame.

I'd be happy to try something else with the same sweetness balance of Soylent if you have a suggestion.
I really like the XPS 15 and use it as my dev machine. I would consider the 141ppi screen. It is excellent value and works well with all existing apps.
You were responding to me, and I never said anything about six month upgrade cycles. My point in this thread has only been that the price point is nothing new, and lots of companies and individuals can afford it/justify it with no problems.

There's nothing ridiculous going on here.
Inspired by brutalism, I made my website: www.momcilo.xyz
That's a very outdated view. I'm an exporter, selling products manufactured in the UK, and this is nothing but bad news. Leaving the single market will massively increase the pain of exporting to Europe. Also, like most exporters, I sell products that include lots of parts imported from outside the UK. The cost of these inputs has gone up by 20%, and cannot be replaced by alternatives in the UK. It's outdated to think that devaluing the currency automatically makes exports cheaper.

The UK's biggest goods export sector is cars, mostly to the EU. They would be subject to tariffs that far exceed their profit margin. However that pales into insignificance in comparison to trade in services. Financial services are one of the UK's biggest exports, and the biggest contributor to corporation tax receipts. The industry is heavily reliant on access to the EU markets, particularly "passporting" rules. It looks likely they will lose this access, which would be disastrous for the industry, and will cost this country billions.

As for the pound being over-valued: right now it is, aside from a few months in 1985, at its lowest level against the dollar in history.
author clearly doesn't care to understand about hardware.
There are soldiers that have specifically opted to use Soylent over their MREs. I haven't heard any negative feedback from the ones that did.
Agreed, I remapped it in vim 1 year into learning it because my pinky was starting to hurt.
Fn keys are heavily used in Intellij and Eclipse. Basically, that OLED strip is a "no go" for me. I'm trying to decide between buying Dell XPS 13 right away or waiting for XPS 15 refresh. Any other suggestions are welcomed.
Let's Encrypt, and pretty much any other CA, will issue me a TLS cert based on what they find in DNS. So how's that for circular reasoning :)

But seriously, wouldn't it be better if DNS wasn't so insecure? Or do you think that DNS being insecure provides a net good?
Something seems fishy to me. Cruise which GM bought for $1B a few months back was working on similar tech. Having only raised $3M he could have EASILY sold his tech/team to Chrysler or Ford or Hyundai, or any other car company for $100M and made his investors super happy and himself very rich.

So why "quit" when the feds ask you to deal with regulations that involve passenger safety. Its not like he had to spend $20M on clinical trials.
>This would make a lot more sense if Apple had switched the iPhone to USB-C as well

yes. it would have. And this is the actual problem there. Lightning is just another way of controlling their walled-garden around iOS and I really hate it for that reason.

But that's beside the point of the port choice of the new Macs: The phones always have a lightning port, so the cable connecting to them will always have a lighting plug on one end.

What they could have done is ship the iPhone with an USB-C to Lightning cable instead of a USB-A to Lightning cable, but then people would have been even more pissed as USB-C isn't that wide-spread yet and in-fact until yesterday was only supported by one single machine made by Apple.
yeah you are talking about the concept of bitcoin, I am talking about the concept of putting bitcoin in an antiquated vending machine for buying train tickets (has any one of those EVER impressed you?), one which has a 500 franc daily limit for buying bitcoin (5000 franc yearly limit), and using it to gauge people's interest in bitcoin on a national level

this is an "OOPS" almost as big as when your company spends two hours thinking of a hashtag that nobody will ever use.
I'm a big Vim user and I honestly wouldn't mind too much if I were to just remap the Esc key to capslock.
I had to install a third party program to get that to work, do they let you do that now?
I was configuring a server while walking through the airport the other day (long story and I won't bore you with details) on my ipad. There is no control key on the ipad keyboard meaning that I could not save any files from the ssh terminal. It was not the greatest experience and I can definitely see these kinds of things happening on laptop now due to apples "courage". They seem to be gung-ho on breaking things that work perfectly in the name of "progress".
Right, that's my issue. People keep claiming something is slow, but when I ask for an actual example they almost never come up with one, so I can't profile and fix it... ;)
It appears Hotz will now deploy his system in China, where the regulations on such devices are surely more lax. Looks like a good move for extended testing without pesky government scrutiny.
> That might remove the dongle but is it any better?

Er… yes?

> I now need either two cables, one to hook my phone up to my laptop and one to hook it up to my computer

Except you carry one cable with you and the other one stays hooked to an eventual desktop computer, rather than having to carry around a cable and a dongle.
> I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on my Mac.

ESC usage just off the top of my head: cancelling any dropdown (e.g. IDE autocomplete, browser autocomplete, Spotlight, quick file search in Atom/Sublime), cancelling any OK/cancel dialog (e.g. save as), the ESC + '.' sequence in Bash to get the last word of the last command.

I could map ESC to the caps lock key I suppose.
Ever took a look at the HP Z Book?

I might grab one if apple doesn't bring something out next year that has proper builtin hardware. A Z book can take 64Gb Ecc ram and has a xeon inside I think and it's very modular. Sadly not very compact tho.
If you can run Linux not sure what's the ultimate benefit of OSX (from a pure development standpoint).
I guess you can have virtual function keys as well as buttons for specific terminals. It depends how locked down the SDK is - knowing Apple it'll probably become more extensible as time goes on. I imagine that when IDEs can integrate with it, you'll be able to get some pretty nice features.

You can also show stuff like CI status, notifications for IMs, etc.
This is why I only listen to music in PCM 24-bit WAV's instead of compressed audio. The difference is huge due to the missing frequencies in MP3 and similar formats.
> multi-monitors much better than any other OS out there right now.

No it doesn't. OSX in fact has a completely innane behaviour when a MBPr is connected to an external monitor. Meaning you have to mirror or put it in clamshell mode. You can't extend the monitor ontot he laptop screen. Works perfectly well in Linux for me.
I was just watching Westworld (1973), first meeting, I quote:

"In some cases they've been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work."

Timely.
I really dislike the tone of this kind of blog posts, as if one is only allowed to be called developer when using UNIX, vi and Emacs.

I don't want a portable PDP-11, rather a Xerox PARC workstation, a BeOS, Amiga, Atari, Acorn, Oberon System 3...
Interesting, I had one SP3 do that but it was under recall. Wasn't aware it was an issue with the older ones too.
I remap my CTRL to CAPS LOCK because it's more convenient.

Have come across a lot of Vim power users that do the same with ESC. Or buy the model without the Touch Bar.

Can we stop with the drama now? It's becoming pathetic.

Apologies for the bluntness.

P.S.: more RAM and CPU? Get a desktop or buy another laptop. Since when was Apple the fastest, more bang for your money? This was clearly not a specs bump iteration.
I do. And judging from the list of articles that explain on how to do it for various platforms I suppose a lot of people do. The carabiner-elements is a whole (popular) program to do just that (by default, it has more options as well)
It’s not. You’re pretty much stuck on a static OS unless you want to spend hours dealing with various problems each update.
The feel of a real button is great, but you can imagine the possibilities of what you can do with that space when you look at your MacBook keyboard right now and notice you likely never use a thing but the escape key, brightness and volume.

I haven't used it yet, so I can't judge it too much, but I imagine Escape actually works well since it's the top corner of the keyboard and easy to feel, if escape were anywhere else it would really suck.
The problem is that as soon as you need a VM (and doing any web development typically needs one to test IE/edge with), you're pushing your RAM limits.
The new MacBook Pro uses version 2 of the butterfly keyboard. Not the same one as 12" MacBook. Verdict is still out how much is the improvement.
The Vi editor was originally written on a terminal which had the Escape key positioned where the Tab key is on modern keyboards.

So yes, rebinding Escape is the right answer if you heavily use it. The normal positioning for Escape is very inconvenient for touch typing.

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key
ESC is 0x1B, traditionally the CTRL key reset the two highest bit of the ASCII code, [ is 0x5B, if you reset the two highest bits of 0x5B you get 0x1B which is why ESC and CTRL-[ are the same thing.

CTRL-C is completely different.
> I think the new rMBP 15" is a less good machine than the 2013-2015 model.

Could you elaborate on that? I'm debating getting a 2015 refurb, but is there a reason I should get an even older one?
>> As a casual observer I think it is obvious that we are at the end of a good long run.

The economy has been incredibly weak for a long time.

- Economic growth has been close to zero for several years, and never above 3% in the last decade.

- The real unemployment numbers are closer to 9.7% percent when you factor in people who stopped looking for work. By comparison, Clinton's averaged around 5.1% and Bush's was around 5.3%.

- Our GDP to Debt ratio is 78% and climbing. It's at 104$ if you include external debt.

- The Budget Deficit Widened to 3.2% so far in 2016 and will continue to rise as more Baby Boomer retire and start taking social security payments.

The good news is that the dollar is getting stronger, and the housing market is finally coming out its recession which will help a vast number of industries that have been hit hard since the 08' collapse.

It hasn't been a very good run, but at this point I think it could break either way depending on how some of the above issues are addressed by a new president - regardless of which party gets in.
This news isn't about the MBP anyway. Existing models have increased in price by 20% since last week.
> They're always early on removing this stuff, but they've never been wrong. Literally never.

"Technology X will be obsolete at some point in the future" is almost tautologically true. They could remove the screens and the keyboards from their laptops today, and that might be a good idea in 50 years time when we're all using direct-brain interfaces, but I would still describe that as being wrong today.
Are you thinking of cooperative scheduling? If so, Presto did pioneer this.
I do! I'm both a heavy vim user and have my ESC remapped to capslock. And otherwise ESC=>^] anyway so you can always do that (however it's a bit awkward so I'd rather use capslock).

Another thing I really do think deserves to be mentioned is which developer do really spend extended amount of time on the laptop keyboard when not traveling? Both at home and work I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and keep the laptop docked with 3 external displays, with these new 5k-monitors two will probably be enough.