skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We're told to come up with strategies to increase the passing rate.

This may be a valid request, but it's impossible to know without more information. If we take your total pool of students we can probably break them down into 4 groups

1) Intelligent and motivated
2) Intelligent and unmotivated
3) Not intelligent and motivated
4) Not intelligent and not motivated

Nearly all students in 1) should be passing while nearly all students in 4) should be failing. It's the students in groups 2) and 3) where the teacher can really make a difference. This is where teaching styles, more/less work, etc... come into play.

If a large percentage of students from groups 2) and 3) are failing then there may be some teaching issues that need to be addressed. Group 4) simply needs to not be let in the class in the first place.
This is a really simple algorithm that's been around forever in the demoscene. You can do fun things like make an arbitrary shape be the source of the flames. Here's a nice article from (the long missed) flipcode on how the effect works:
http://www.flipcode.com/archives/The_Art_of_Demomaking-Issue...
I had the same problem with js2-mode. For a while I just accepted the indentation rules and it started to make sense, and it also helped that I tweaked the code and settings to fix the real annoyances. I was pretty happy with it but I stopped doing a lot of javascript.

Not sure what the status of js2-mode is right now.
If you wouldn't expect anything that high, and they got something that high, and you weren't startled, that would be wrong.

The startlement is an indication that your predictions were bad and you should update them.
You could try i2p ( http://www.i2p2.de/ ). You can host anonymous websites inside i2p, which gives you anonymity and therefore, free speech.
Why Your Resume Won’t Get You Your Dream Job
That depends on your definition of "satisfactory" - F# uses strong type inference on literals and there is no ambiguity. Of course this means that distinguishing between types requires metadata, for example 42uy is an unsigned byte, 42L is an int64, 42I is a bigint and 42N is a BigRational. I think this is satisfactory, although you might disagree.
And kill the discussion? That's awesome.

The point is valid even if it is flawed, you and the others that downvoted should be upvoting it, then providing your counter argument.
It seems to me that Netflix management is a little more forward-thinking than that. Hastings, et al. know that streaming is going to be their primary market and if they're having to pay off every possible intermediary in the future, their margins are going to disappear completely.

While certainly not an ideal situation, I could easily see Netflix going after Comcast with highly-visible notices to their Comcast customers rather than pay them off and set a very, very bad precedent.
Should probably be easy enough to use Swig on it.
We can treat minified Javascript as an IL and ignore it, if only we had some data format for source pointers and a few bits of additional debugger support. Someone could implement this in Chromium and Firefox and it might become a defacto standard.
Book of Scratch: Learn to Program the Fun Way
Heck, I'd like to see Facebook credits be more flexible than they are now. In particular, I'd like to be able to use FB credits to pay people for work... I've got a suspicion that this would undercut mechanical Turk.

I guess the main reason they won't let webmasters pay out FB credits is that the first app people would build with it would be a gambling app... Too bad.
Not necessarily. Do you think most programs for a programming classes are written during the exams? What if a student passed every programming exam with an A, but never wrote a complete program and turned it in during the class?
Tower OS X git client now generally available
> No one has discriminated against anyone.

Then why are you spending so much effort arguing that it's acceptable to do so?
I agree that putting it on the advanced pane would be as good as not having it.

But I disagree that it's good software. Especially in the case of Windows Live, this is Microsoft forcing proprietary extensions in in lieu of actually developing tools for the open web. And in the case of Apple, I think the assumption that people want third-party tools adding hyperlinks to web pages is faulty. Mozilla puts out a solid product, and I haven't heard a lot of people complaining that it needs more tacked-on features.

What it comes down to is that software packages that modify other software packages are bad software. Packages should be self-contained.
You're doing that whole "charge by cost" thing that everyone here seems to frown upon, preferring instead to recommend "charge by value".

In what world can you extract more cash from 65536 octets representing a video than 65536 octets representing an email? A world where end users value them differently.
These problems solve themselves in the long term, not instantly and automatically.

Keep in mind the old joke about the economist who wouldn't pick up a $10 on the sidewalk because, "If a $10 were sitting on the sidewalk, someone would have already picked it up!"
From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se... :

The Amazon Kindle e-book reader (whose name suggests it's intended to burn people's books) has an Orwellian back door that Amazon used in 2009 to remotely delete Kindle copies of Orwell's books 1984 and Animal Farm which the users had purchased from Amazon.

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-copyright.html :

We still have the same old freedoms in using paper books and other analog media. But if e-books replace printed books, those freedoms will not transfer. Imagine: no more used book stores; no more lending a book to your friend; no more borrowing one from the public library—no more “leaks” that might give someone a chance to read without paying. No more purchasing a book anonymously with cash—you can only buy an e-book with a credit card. That is the world the publishers want to impose on us. If you buy the Amazon Kindle (we call it the Swindle) or the Sony Reader (we call it the Shreader for what it threatens to do to books), you pay to establish that world.
My favorite quote:

It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
Mixpanel Made Me a Customer For Life
Languages aren't a problem that needs fixing.

Keeping Multicore machines busy is a problem that needs fixing and it's also an example of a problem amenable to a solution in the form of a new language.

http://gigaom.com/2008/06/19/multicores-not-so-secret-proble...
Do we need Wikileaks?
This is not dissing the work Wikileaks is doing. But fundamentally, is there a need for it? Why wouldn't whistleblowers just publish the information themselves? An organization like Wikileaks (or FEE) could post advice or procedures on how to release sensitive data securely.

The danger here is relying too much on just one organization, which may decide to filter, distort or refrain from publishing altogether.
Great philosophy on game design. RPGs generally suffer from terrible game design, and they get away with it because of their audience. Big sprawling RPG video games strive to be as complicated as their paper counterparts, and that's exactly what players are looking for; at least the traditional RPG market.

They're the Perl of video games.

I picked up Oblivion (a few years late) and am kind of turned off by what seems to be a complete lack of attention to the player's experience. All of the work went into the world and game system. The environment, items, spells, NPCs, AI, towns etc. are all the focal point of the game and NOT the gameplay or the interactions that are part of playing the game. Swinging a sword feels like no action at all. Swinging a sword and hitting an enemy is completely anticlimactic, as there is no feedback other than perhaps some audio and the enemy health bar decreasing. Most RPGs suffer from this lack of visceral or juicy feedback.

As for the situation on the App Store; when "perusing various games on the App Store ... 'unimpressed' is a severe understatement" is my sentiment as well. But the tricky thing is that the successful games/apps are not always the best. It doesn't necessarily require taste, principles, or even a huge effort to get a smash hit.
Hopefully it won't crash when I try to run it on Qt 4.7 anymore :D
I'd argue that there is more upside in the long run. If you stop taking the investor's money it's either because your company has become profitable, or because you have been able to do a round of funding at a higher valuation. Either of these means that the investor has started to get a return on their money, which is way better than sinking their entire investment into a company that fails. Your investor can even do a partial exit at the next round, reimbursing themselves for 100% of their original investment, and still have shares left over. Shouldn't the investor incentivize the entrepreneur to do this?
It's pretty easy to change internet providers when you suddenly lose netflix. They should have called Comcast's bluff.
To be completely fair, the original ad that was referenced really was looking exclusively for males.

But does this mean that we should avoid all references to a past in which people were less enlightened? Must we pretend that the world was never that way, or pretend that everything that happened in that world was evil because of it?

Those who jump on the slightest whisper that men and women, or people of different races, or cultures, or whatever, might be different in some ways are deluding themselves. That's not to say that we can put a value on any of these differences, nor that these differences are any more than statistical tendencies and not applicable to individuals.
Made with GAE: Limitation === creation
I don't see any reason they couldn't do the same from the air. You can tell foliage with LIDAR, and I'd imagine you could get a pretty good approximation of trunk location pretty easily by looking at the foliage height.
That's a good point, I should do something on that line of thought some day. Something which speaks of the values of acquaintance over companionship (with reasonable context of course)
Ask a question, get a meaninglessly literal answer...
He's referring to NetFlix being a customer of Level3, not the end user being a customer of Comcast. NetFlix uses enough bandwidth that they'd have direct deals with Tier 1 providers like Level3.
BUT ... it's evidence that she may have other ideas that I may not agree with -- especially if she's my boss.

The cluelessness there is simply a lack of understanding that modern society is not the same as older society. You could, of course, take offence at what she said. But that is disingenuous.

However; if she treats you differently, directs it at you, makes it a bad thing - that is a problem to address. Sadly; by addressing every perceived offence it trivializes the issue and persists the problem.

Treating someone differently because they have attitude incompatible with current society (with the caveat, of course, that it is someone from the older generation) is problematic.

It is not right to consider things such as this as cluelessness. Because the cluenessness is in the people taking offence at very little. Actually; I can understand those taking personal offence. And indeed support a reasoned plea for more sensitivity.

But I can't agree with those pointing out possible or perceived offence. Sure, if there is intent to be sexist or imply female developers are not welcome, I am with you. But as there is not, this is simply creating a problem that does not exist. The cluelessness is in believing there is a problem here; there is only a problem if one is created.

I'm sure such things are done in good faith; but it is casing more problem and masking genuine offence.

There is never anything wrong in a word. Only in the intent.
One of the junior class valedictorians (there were at least 3 girls, all very liberal arts focused

I wasn't aware that a student could even focus on liberal arts in HS. When I was in HS there was some class choice at the high end, but every student had to take some sort of math, english, and social studies every year.
Comcast isn't being overt about it, but it's easy enough to explain that Comcast is making things more expensive for Netflix. It doesn't take much for consumers to understand the conflict of interest between those two entities.

Of course, you can frame this as either the correct operation of the free market, or as an example of why net neutrality is critical to the free market.
Thanks for the fast reply! :) Now when I look at the font I realize that they're done in Keynote.

Sadly there's no similar application for GNU/Linux yet...
NASA to Hold News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery
Whoa, that is neat! Thanks for sharing this with me.
In fact, Hugh was the one who got me inspired to start drawing and pushing these random scribbles online. Needless to say, some of his sentiment probably bled through =p
We have four folks in 3 states (Ohio, Texas, Colorado) and use Campfire all day, plus the very occasional phone conference when we need some high-bandwidth discussion.
While I agree with this sentiment to an extent, I hate when people bring it up like this. There's a lot of good reasons for schools to have rigid rules other than the cynical idea that schools are purely there to teach kids to conform so that they'll make good, obedient workers.

For one, parents expect that schools are, at least to some extent, keeping their kids safe and out of trouble during school hours. It may not always work out that way, but when the rule is that they have to be in class, at least the school isn't endorsing them leaving, so there's a lot less liability.

Also, there's a lot of gray area that arises if you start making exceptions. How old is old enough for high achievers to skip school? Obviously, you're not going to let a first grader skip school, but when does it start becoming ok? And how high achieving do they have to be? If a kid has a B+ in one class, is he still allowed to skip school? And when do you tell a straight-A student whose grades start to slip that he has to start coming to class again? If he gets one B on one test, that's probably just a fluke, but where do you draw the line and tell him he's not doing well enough?

Plus the lower-achieving kids would complain of unfairness. And it's a lot harder to enforce rules against truancy when some people are allowed to leave. People would see kids leaving school, but might assume that they're just approved truants.

It also raises the incentive to cheat. A student could cheat on every assignment and test to keep up his A averages so that he can keep skipping school, and then he'd really be learning absolutely nothing. That's an extreme case, and he'd probably get caught eventually, but when you reward high marks on tests, people will go to great lengths to do better, but they might not be the lengths you want.
They win in the long-term if no one calls their bluff (or only minor players call their bluff).
Nah, no more than buying the original iPod helped usher in a dystopian future where the music industry controlled us all. Just the opposite happened; once the industry shifted to digital, the anti-DRM pressure rose to the point where DRM could be done away with. It's already happening with ebooks; look at the torrent networks.
Read the press release carefully:

"“On November 19, 2010, Comcast informed Level 3 that, for the first time, it will demand a recurring fee from Level 3 to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content."

...and other content.

I'd like to know the entire story here. Is Comcast demanding that Level3 Pay a fee to deliver online movies, or is Comcast demanding peering fees. One of those is content neutral, the other is not.

Note - as I read it, Comcast is demanding peering fees from Level 3. Big Whoop.

I'm fine with Comcast demanding money from inbound-feeds to transit their network, and shutting them off if they don't pay it. That's why any sane content provider multi-homes . Think about the position Netflix put L3 in by announcing an "exclusive" CDN deal with L3. Comcasts negotiating position with L3 got a whole lot better.

This is not unusual on the internet - think about how often cogent gets de-peered because it's unwilling to pay peering fees. I've had a ton of colleagues get blackholed because they made the mistake of single-homing through cogent. Ironically, L3 depeered from Cogent a few years ago... So, what's good for the goose...

For a taste of how this type of negotiating constantly is going on in the background, see: http://www.renesys.com/tech/presentations/pdf/nanog43-peerin...

Net-Net: Always Multi-home through at least a couple Tier 1 providers, so when one of them gets depeered, your customers can still communicate with you. Be wary of exclusive transit deals.

Anybody with some actual insight care to comment on what's really going on here?
I get that, but Netflix and Level3 not only just signed a major agreement, they have similar interests.

Level3 should have attempted to sign Netflix up for this fight and point the issue squarely at the consumer.. A big "You can't get Netflix because you are on Comcast" or "It now costs you $20 a movie because you are on Comcast" frames the battle back into Level3's favor.

All they did by backing down was show Comcast that they will back down when challenged again. You beat a bully by fighting him.
It's not clear that encryption would make any difference in this case, because presumably Comcast can easily measure the traffic going through their direct links to Level 3.
Friendly Greetings - A Child and a Dog
Very cute photos.
A lot of readme's have a 'support' section where users are told how to gain support (bug tracking url, mailing list, etc). How is it 'wrong' to tell users there that the product is no longer supported? It's important information.

I can see the problem with not being able to disable the bug tracker while still allowing the bug tracking content to remain available, though.
Wait, I can kill Ewoks by clicking on those Facebook Connect buttons?
Subsidizing is such a loaded word. Your comment is an example of the pie fallacy. Yes, your colleagues may get a bigger paycheck because you're a top engineer. But that doesn't necessarily imply that the additional money they get is "taken" from you.

And obviously, doing a startup is no guarantee that your returns will be better.
Likely scenario: they found ancient life forms in lake Vostok, deep below the Antarctic ice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
Please explain further.

I think that only makes sense if the output of the evaluation is the end state and not the learning of the student. Ideally teaching and evaluating (not grading) is baked into one action. A teacher works closely with a student, assists them in their studies, judges the amount they've learned (evaluates) and where they're struggling, and helps them with their weak points. Done. The standardized tests are then given (if they must), and the teacher is allowed to look over the results to judge from an external evaluation how well the student did and learn from it.

Is this different from what you're saying?
* Frankel, not Franklin -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Frankel
> Sounds like standard-grade FUD to me.

It's not FUD: it's just sane business strategy. If and when Apple sees GNUStep as a competitive threat (i.e. if a product based on it robs some market share), they'll attack it with whatever weapons they find most effective at the time. As it is now, it's not threatening them and Apple may even benefit from it, so, they'll leave GNUStep alone for the time being.

At least that's what I would do in their shoes.

As for why Sony halted its project, my bet would be the implicit patent grant in LGPLv2.1. That may feel uncomfortable for someone who needs to cross-license IP.
While peering disputes have happened throughout Internet history, it is unusual to see an eyeball ISP trying to charge a tier 1. Usually the money flows the opposite direction.
This is a good example of how projects turn out that are outsourced and get billed by a lines-of-code metric.

(just as an example ... I'm aware that this is not the case here)
Ask HN: How do you organize your TV viewing?
Over the holiday I found myself in front of the TV more than usual watching games and whatnot with the family. Several times we all ended up engrossed in something that was at least moderately interesting on History Channel, Science TV, etc. So I'm thinking I'm doing a really bad job of consuming a medium that still does some things very well.

For that matter, what do you watch, and maybe just as importantly, how?
I get the feeling this guy would be fine with things like the Yahoo or Ask toolbars

There goes a non-sequitur.
That's all well and good, but the fact is "Honors" and "AP" classes are not well-defined as more difficult than the other classes.

Also, it still penalizes students taking larger course loads. I had a friend who was robbed of Valedictorian basically because their A in Choir was pulling down their GPA, while they was taking all of the same courses as the Valedictorian in addition to choir, and outperforming the Valedictorian.

So you need to somehow penalize students who take weaker course loads, possibly by multiplying GPA by number of graded credits.
Because if the majority can't universally dismiss someone else taking offense as "having no sense of humor", then they run the risk of admitting that they might have said something wrong, or that they could have said it in a better way.

Dangit, answering rhetorical questions again...

Personally, the funny part to me is people arguing that the "integrity" of a quote that's already been hacked up must be "maintained".
In Sweden, Google has aquired Marratech and Global IP Solutions. Both are all about hardcore codec innovation, not business model discovery. Google was licensing tech from GIPS long before they aquired it. If big companies are where heavy tech is developed, aquisitions like those would never happen.

NB. Another Google aquisition from Sweden was Trendalyzer, Hans Rosling's visualization technology famous from his TED talk, making Sweden the country with most Google aquisitions in Europe, Middle-East and Africa.
Ask HN: Not Ready.  Now what?
To make a very long story as short as I can, we were targeting November 'launch an app' month to get Plum out the door, but it looks like if we really really push for that, we'll be pushing out some crap.

What we have is great. Awe-inspiring. The tech behind Plum is amazing. But, it's still another few days off, at least, and we're boostrapping it on nights and weekends.

What would you do, if you were about to potentially miss a deadline? Ship anyway? Ship in a very limited beta? Just let the deadline slip quietly and release as soon as we're comfortable? Something else?
Wisdom of the Crowds: When do we need Independence?
Wow. I have to re-enter Australia in a month. How do you suggest avoiding this? Turning it off and putting it in my checked luggage (with a password) should work shouldn't it?
The ISP can still tell where the data is coming from/to and how much of it there is. Encryption is not a solution to the threats against net neutrality.
I don't have cable, so that helps. I watch:

* Human Target

* House

* BritComs on PBS.

Other videos I can watch online.
We've no beef against games. Or social networks. It's the dancing pigs that we are morally superior to.
Thank you, it's not uncommon for me to get depressed thinking about how we, humans, are really fucked up and how the world could be a much better place, yet feeling helpless realizing how little i can do to change the system.