skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Humans are so cute. The reason you haven't met us yet is simply that you're not ready. How do you expect.to love your galactic neighbour if you can't even love YOUR OWN PLANET.

Please stop killing each other and make Earth great again (sorry). We can help you build the next one.

Signed,
Your friendly neighbourhood aliens
Licenses still apply post-expiry, in the US, Australia and a few other places.

It didn't use to be this way, but around the 80s the big precedents for this.

Most of the time, if you were a licensee before the expiry, then you continue to be so post-expiry. If however, you were not, then you have no existing contractual obligation, and can use it.

However it is something you need to consult a lawyer on, before making any decisions, because this area of law is more complicated than most, and is growing in complexity.
Their new bottle has rounded corners. Apple might try to sue them for that.
The money and math behind newsletter headlines
You could take inspiration from a system like Dafny or F-* and write your contracts with the assistance of a type system and compiler that generated proofs that your contracts satisfied some postcondition given a precondition. People have already written moderately complicated applications like operating systems in these languages, so there's some evidence they could be applied to contracts on the blockchain.
As I said before: math courses are objective, so they make a reasonable "canary in the coal mine" for a failed education.

Maybe you don't need math. But if you can't pass the course, there may be other serious problems.

It's easy enough to keep pushing kids/adults forward by redefining success in other subjects. Extra credit, dubious essay standards, grade inflation, etc. We need math to keep the system honest.
You're starting to go down the same route PG did, by engaging with trolls on HN too much.
I feel like this is pretty frightening. I thought algebra was basically a high school requirement?

Not only do I think everyone should be able to understand basic algebra, they should understand basic statistics and probabilities (which is pretty hard to understand without algebra).

These days, not only do people not understand math, but we use numbers and statistics to lie to people and mislead their decision making. Now we seem to just be making it easier to mislead them.
Uhm, they do make significant (>$40MM) amounts of money from cash+RSU compensation. [1-5] That's literally what you can find with a cursory search; no digging. Furthermore, the tax writeoff carries through 5 years since it was a stock donation.

And sure, use 54.4% instead of 55%. Don't miss the forest for the trees though.

[1]: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/28/google-ceo-sundar-pichais-com...

[2]: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/14/technology/twitter-omid-kord...

[3]: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/googles-sundar-pichai-is-li...

[4]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000130817913...

[5]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817916...
I wonder if those goals of increasing the amount of general knowledge someone knows is in alignment with the goals of attending community it's college?

I'd imagine for a lot of students in community college they care more about getting a job than they do about learning for learnings sake.
>The author is saying that a lot of people that don't need algebra end up failing it, so if we remove it from their curricula we'll raise graduation rates. That's the end goal

This is what's wrong with our education system. Who cares if anyone is actually learning anything, get those useless metrics up!
Community college isn't quite that cut and dried. There are quite a few 2-year Associate's degrees that are not "academic".

One of the community colleges near me has quite a good nursing program. How much "algebra" will they need vs. procedures for medication dosage calculation? "Algebra" has a lot of dead ends for practical use.

A great example is "How do you divide by a fraction?"--a fairly routine algebraic manipulation. Yet, I can't even think of when I have had a real world situation where I had to "divide by a fraction". Multiply by a fraction? Sure. Divide by a whole number? Sure. Calculate a percentage? Sure. Divide by a fraction? Ummmmm.

I would argue that algebra is both too advanced in many places AND too sketchy in others. Geometry is something that people need and don't get because it is after algebra that they fail. The worst part is that a lot of people have better geometric intuition than mathematical and would do better to have geometry first.

Should they have a math course? Yes. Should it be the pedagogical algebra? Not as obvious.
After a certain point, I homeschooled my kids. My oldest likes suffers dyscalculia. He really had a hard time with math in public school. My only goal in math was to get him over his math phobia and teach him "math is your friend." That was it. Any actual math learned was just a bonus.

One day, I explained to him that in algebra, X was basically the exact same thing as the empty space in math problems and it made it easier to move it around. Instead of 2+2=_ you could put the "space" anywhere and it was more readable.

He had a fit. He realized had been doing algebra in his head for years to, for example, infer how much damage a particular attack did in a video game. And here books made it sound hard and alien and didn't explain it worth shit.

Maybe colleges need to up their game. Because Algebra really isn't that hard, but a lot of math is just terribly explained and, then, instead of blaming the materials or the professor, we act like the students are just dumb. Which sucks so very much.
Try cleaning up after some music festivals for counter-counterexamples.
Haute cuisine is indeed often like that, but the Michelin guide is different. They've frequently removed stars from chefs for resting on their laurels.

Some day I'll get a reservation to Alinea... sigh
>Give me a motivated adult who understands basic arithmetic, and I can help him or her master algebra in six to eight weeks. We can go from zero to FOIL, and quadratic to partial fraction decomposition in that amount of time. The key is to listen and to instill a level of confidence as early as possible in this process. Many adults consider math to be "hard" -- not from the perspective of it actually being hard, which it is -- but from the perspective of "this is too hard for me to do, because I'm not a math person." Break this mental block, and anyone can do algebra.

I used to believe this until I actually tried. Maybe they lied about how much studying they really did, but I've seen people putting in many hours a week and still unable to grasp the basics of algebra. I think many of us have never really been exposed to the thinking power of people at the bottom 10-20% (IQs below 80-87) , they weren't in our classes in high school. And now these people are going to college.
They could be worse without the training. Remember most people have 12+ years of learning how to write, a few college classes are only going to do so much.
Our society is one built upon the idea of specialization. And when the specialists fail, they are asked to correct course. Your attitude is unwarranted.
> People should have known better than to use parity with this bug in it.

Says it all, I think, whether sarcastic or not.
This is common:

Plug into SPSS/etc -> p-value calculated -> result = ifelse(p<0.05, success/trueTheory, failure/falseTheory)
Is it cheaper to buy 1 case of water for $2.50 or 3 cases of water for $9.00 ?

If you get a $1,000 loan at 1% interest each month, how much will you owe in 1 year?

You can buy a phone for $500 or pay Verizon $16.70 / month for 36 months. Which is cheaper?
How could you pass up an opportunity to use npm, browersify and webpack?
Yelling fire in a crowded theater after lighting a match is not lying. The problem is not lying, it is recklessness. The only problem with lying is that it is also sometimes reckless.
> Truck driving? Retail? Cashiers? Secretaries?

None of those are skills (except maybe truck driving). And none of them require a CC degree. Those are all things you do with a GED or less.

I'm thinking of the sorts of things people go to CC for. Dental Hygiene, Paramedics, EMTs, Morgue work, Respiratory therapists et al, various medical diagnostic technicians, vet techs, nursing, CNC, Engineering technicians, etc. Visit your local CC website and look through their programs of study.

> Managers

Depends. Engineering? Construction? Absolutely.

Again, we're not talk about groups and rings. We're talking about stuff like knowing the difference between x and x^2.

> sales reps ... customer service

Outside of cities there are a lot fewer sales jobs... and a lot of them require BA/BS just because they can.

> school teachers

STEM teachers need a LOT more than just CC algebra. At least Calculus. The algebra taught in CC's was once taught in high school, but is now often taught in middle school. Middle school science curricula have kept pace. So, yes, any STEM teacher -- even at the elementary level these days -- needs to know basic algebra.

> janitors, waiters, cooks

Not skills and/or don't require CC, and so irrelevant to this conversation.

> freight laborers, stock clerks, maids, receptionists, construction laborers, child care workers, grounds maintenance?

Again, not skills, and for the most part don't require CC.
If you enjoy this, I also highly recommend "Filming Othello", a similar video essay. Will be available hopefully in higher quality on the upcoming Criterion release of Welles' Othello, or right now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvqeQt8aLnU
This is what happens when you overfund a company. Artisanal blog posts about the two-year journey to a flat-sided bottle of nerd purée.
I see your point, but I'm going to call a bit of bullshit on it. What you are saying makes sense if the team then moves on to perform similar tasks again and can use this institutional knowledge to their advantage. But here it seems that the team was actually at least in part comprised of outside consultants. So they did spend two years of Soylent's time and money to design and Odwalla bottle. Sure it makes for a cool story, but it seems more like they could have saved themselves about 18-20 months by looking harder for different packaging options instead of inventing new ones, not to mention the money that went into this. No really, they didn't mention how much this cost.

Your comparison can actually be used as a counterpoint to your argument: maybe they should have hired someone who didn't need to look at so many reference designs to figure out sqround.
> If a layperson decides to trust that contract without reading the code, does it matter whether the language used to implement the contract was Turing-complete or not?

Um, yes? Literally the point of weaker languages in this context is that they can be statically provable.
> Who cares if anyone is actually learning anything, get those useless metrics up!

Employers seem to disagree with you about the usefulness of that metric.

When being able to get a job depends more on what piece of paper you have than what knowledge you have, that is no longer a useless metric.
> " First of all, we've seen in the data from many of the pilots across the country that are using alternative math pathways — that are just as rigorous as an algebra course — we've seen much greater success for students because many of these students can relate to these different kinds of math depending on which program of study they're in. They can see how it works in their daily life and how it's going to work in their career. "

I remember using this argument a lot when I was a smart-aleck kid, that what should I care about Algebra, because when the heck am I going to use it. It feels like total bunk looking back at it now. I just hadn't seen or appreciated math as something worthwhile in its own right, regardless of application. I maintained that view until I got into more advanced math classes in college. For example the being shown the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality in Linear Algebra for the first time, that was just a total 'Ah-ha!' moment of joy. I really doubt I'd have that impression of that moment if the professor had been trying to demonstrate the immediate, concrete utility of that proof at the same time.

I'm not really sure how one can reliably relay onto others the fun in math for its own sake, but it's there. It feels like a cop out to say a particular type of math needs to serve a purpose 'in the real world' instead of just being worthwhile intrinsically, as a fundamental part of reasoning.
Are you arguing that startups shouldn't ensure they're solving an important problem?

Creating a reality show out of Justin's life probably wasn't an important problem to solve, but drawing some conclusion based on the successful Justin.TV -> Twitch pivot would be selection bias.
Top Books on Go Programmig
QApereo is absolutely correct. Partying for a week or two at a music festival is completely different than living in/around a house of semi-functioning hardcore drug users for months on end. Primarily because the music festival ends before the fun and crazy atmosphere devolves into a dull blanket of paranoid self loathing.
I have always disliked the assumption that aliens are somehow supposed to be highly more intelligent and peaceful beings. They could be cannibal sloths for all we know.
Actually, that picture makes you believe that so many people sit on top of trains. There are crazy people all over the place. The ones in India do crazy stuff like sitting on top of a train. I have never seen that but there is a possibility that it may happen occasionally but not at the scale shown in that picture. I think India didn't even have a law that restricts people from sitting on top of trains and now they introduced one.
Depends whether the redesign was actually necessary. Websites and software UIs are often redesigned simply because the powers that be are bored with the existing design (through familiarity). The users either don't use the site enough to notice, or are annoyed with the new design because they have to re-learn how to use the software. If it is effective, an EV certificate may have a more positive impact than a redesign which just serves to provide a change of scenery for the developers/management.
I think we're both throwing a bit at the wall to see what sticks. :)

It's sobering to see all of the job types listed out like that though, isn't it? Our combined lists represent most peoples' options. Kind of strange to think about.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree that morgue keepers or dental hygienicists benefit from even a little bit of algebra, though.
There was a time when a good Liberal Arts education included Calculus because it was considered one of the great achievements of Western Civilization.

The article says, "Their thinking has led to initiatives like Community College Pathways, which strays away from abstract algebra to engage students in real-world math applications."

My interpretation of this is that the article authors are math illiterate enough not to know that "abstract algebra" is thing.

How sad to think that some people think that community college intermediate algebra is so abstract that people can't get it.
> If you get a $1,000 loan at 1% interest each month, how much will you owe in 1 year?

Pe = nRT is actually the first thing taught in calc 1.
I'm a Vulcan doing the field portion of my degree in Human Studies. Ironically, I tell this to humans regularly, but they seem to think I am joking.

We've met already. Y'all just don't seem to know it.
A lot more people die from heroin than die from cocaine. In fact most cocaine overdoses stem from mixing with heroin.
I had been recently looking at Siacoin, but still a lot of work is needed before it can displace something like AWS. Took nearly a day with lots of stalls just to sync the blockchain. Also I am not sure about how price competitive it will ultimately be. Amazon has huge buying power which I am sure means they pay less per TB then consumers. Also other economies of scale. I bet the cost of labour to bring online each 1TB on S3 is very low.
A bunch of people who are good at math will defend this. For good reasons, but most likely also just because they love mathematics.

But I do kind of question if it's really a good use of everyone's time to learn algebra. For computer science and engineering I can sort of see why you'd want that, but I'll be honest: even in computer science I think most people don't need it. Even when I'm doing algebraic work, it's rarely stuff I learned in a math class. Trig and calculus come more in handy, but unfortunately my day job of writing backend servers does not fundamentally benefit from this. I think many of us could say this.

That's not to say there aren't other benefits of studying mathematics, but if it's really not working then I can see why people are just calling to make it optional. No point in making people suffer through apparently ineffective education.
Mz - sadly, having relatives that suffered from cancer does not give you any insight into the biochemistry and immunology behind it. If you oppose the "Frankenstein element," perhaps you should justify why, or provide some sort of technical analogy or suggestion. Opposing something you don't understand as it emotionally strikes you as too complex or unpleasant isn't a particularly good way to learn things and advance.

Generally, it is better to remain silent and be though a fool than speak out (on a forum where nothing can be deleted) and remove all doubt.
> Is it cheaper to buy 1 case of water for $2.50 or 3 cases of water for $9.00

Slightly off topic as I don't think this is college level algebra, in supermarkets in Europe they are required by law to put the "€/liter" price in small on the side, so you can compare easily. In the US it doesn't seem mandatory, or at least the unit is not mandatory because sometimes they use fl oz, sometimes gallons, or for pieces of meat sometimes oz, sometimes lbs, so when you want to compare the prices of 2 similar items, what would just take you 0.5 sec in Europe takes you much longer in the US since you need to add unit conversion in the mix. For example here your "cases" could be of different sizes, that 1 case of water could be 2L ,while those 3 cases could be a gallon each...
I acknowledged they aren't directly comparable. To the point that I would actually leverage the question the other direction for most things. Making sure arithmetic is incredibly well defined seems a more important point than what most extension points for frameworks focus on. (Which, I think, is what you are saying. So that I think we are in agreement. :) )
I'm not sure "barbaric" is the right word. It's ugly and unpleasant, but it works and it's the best hope we have for many people. "Barbaric" to me would be bleeding a patient to balance their humors; chemotherapy is more along the lines of amputating a septic limb.
I was testing on a Shared Hosting once and got stuck in a loop, crashing the entire server and everyone on it. I had to get the host to reset it because it just wasn't going to ever end. They weren't mad and didn't penalize me or anything, just told me to be careful.
This is the memorial for Steve the drowned security robot. The future is weird
> I don't know why people expect advanced medicine to be cheap

Nobody said cheap. People (me included) actually expect immunotherapy to be expensive. A course of Perjeta/Herceptin can go to $188k (per [1]). But many are already outraged by this number. A course of Rituxan can be about $14k to the patient, and you could say it's dirt cheap compared to Herceptin, but it appears the cost to the manufacturer is $300 ([2]).

As for superconductors, antimatter, and all other sci-fi sounding things, the cost of an PET scan is about $7k, and of an MRI scan is less than half that, so that can't explain the million we're talking about here.

I think we simply became insensitive to hearing big numbers in the context of healthcare. The birth of my second son cost my insurance about $130k (they covered 90%, but I still had to fork out about $15k), and he didn't have any surgery, or anything major. So yes, I can understand $1MM for cancer treatment, but allow me to be mindblown all the same. I don't think $130k was reasonable for a delivery, and I don't think $1MM is reasonable for immunotherapy (which again, does not involve surgery).

[1] http://www.fiercepharma.com/regulatory/fda-approves-roche-s-...
[2] http://consumersunion.org/outrageous-health-costs/cancer-dru...
Might be where I’ve lived (North Dakota & Minnesota), but we do go nuts over the flu. The number of places that start advertising flu shoots and never mind all the reminders. Plus, the fun when they miss a strain in their formula.
There we go right here. In theory people say engineers need to write cleary,accurately, whatever adverb is used to describe it in order to get a job etc.

I wonder how many engineers get hired for their writing ability?

In fact I bet a college educated engineer or at least one who went to college writes well enough as to not interfere with their work.
I don't need algebra for 2 of those. I need the ability to do fast mental arithmetic. And a shop math class would be far more useful for that.

As for compound interest, you need WAY more than algebra ...
Sure sure.

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/07/im-not-docto...

Equally sadly, a brand spanking new account (created minutes ago and this its first comment) with a doctor-y title gives you even less credibility than I have and looks like trolling. Just an FYI.
Because the parent post is ridiculously pretentious, and funny.
> our greatest minds

Self-driving cars actually would have a benefit for society in terms of higher durability for vehicle and optimal road selection leading to lower carbon emissions, lower traffic accidents, and less use of natural resources.

I am more annoyed by all the time and effort going into Google's and Facebook's ad-tech optimizations.
> Is Soylent trying to create a following like Apple fans?

Everyone is trying to create a following like Apple.

Key ingredients:

1. Simple name

2. Simple design with no instructions or "bells and whistles descriptions"

3. Act as if design is 75% of your value proposition

If it isn't obvious, this doesn't always work.
I just made it throw a few hundred dice in one roll, and chrome promptly packed it's bags on me
Very fair counter point. I would think that the trade school elements of CC would down the road require some knowledge of algebra though right? Be it nursing, plumbing or carpentry
Just a minor nit... Apple doesn't really belong on that list. But you're right in general. Cloud storage is a big race to the bottom, and add-ons are going to be what's monetized. I can't see Filecoin or Siacoin having any advantages here.

I don't know how big the Filecoin network is, but it's very telling that they're not sharing this information. I expect that the amount of data stored is not large. Siacoin makes this available but total contracts are currently a bit under 200TB.

For those of you keeping track at home, that's a single medium-size storage appliance.
To me, Elon is playing catch-up and thrown his hat in the Yudkowsky club although Bostrom and other more credentialled people were probably his vector into it. They were talking about this stuff 10-20 years ago. I haven't yet seen anything where Elon moves the ball forward conceptually, although he's a doer so he's not messing around with writing futurism documents and nitpicking details of rationality that almost no one is actually capable of implementing.

On the other hand, Brooks doesn't show any indication he knows what Musk is talking about and throws out a bad summary of his position. I got nothing from this article except a slightly lower respect for Brooks.

The real minds to watch IMO is the Hinton + Deep Mind crew, and I think Yudkowsky and the fearmongers are largely correct, or at least correct enough to be taken seriously. I don't think people following the meme 'real AI researchers know that AI is limited and fragile' are on the right track. So that's my bias.