skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very possible. Have you seen the list of famous Freemasons? Some crazy influential people there!
Of course it is subjective, it is is me that does not care about children's mathematics. I make no claim for the wider world. That's why I said "My only problem" and not "the problem".

Its not entirely arbitrary though. I care about research mathematics as to do well at it(or to do it at all) requires very strong mathematical abilities. To do well in classroom mathematics is as much, and probably more, to do with being a good student.

So it seems to me that by looking at children's mathematics rather than research mathematics your results are going to be confounded by the issue that your measuring mathematics ability via a proxy(schoolroom mathematics) rather than the real thing(research mathematics). Your results might still be correct, but I find it hard to know if that is the case.

I suppose, if your just interested in day to day average numeracy skills then looking at children is fine, except even then I would prefer the study was performed on adults rather than regularly drilled students. That way you will find out who is more capable of retaining numeracy skills and who has the higher natural levels of numeracy, rather than just finding out which students revise the hardest and listen to the teacher most attentively.
Why is it even worth discussing? Or even worth discovering? Why do we always break ourselves down (by age, gender, education, whatever) into groups and bump them into each other?
Disqus amongst yourselves | My Philly Network
Well, you could in theory live forever if you transitioned your consciousness into a computer. It will soon be possible to simulate a human brain in a computer (see the Blue Brain project http://bluebrain.epfl.ch). Philosophical issues aside, you can effectively live forever this way as long as human civilization is able to continue getting resources and energy to power the computers.
The Economist is the one that originally published the research, 2 months ago. Here's their take, with graphs & numbers:

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...
Actually if it weren't for the actions of Fannie/Freddie, the mortgage crisis would have needed to be dealt with sooner. By F/F taking on all the toxic loans that the mortgage banks wanted to dump, they allowed the problems to increase in size and scope thus prolonging the bubble much longer. All this quasi-government intervention does is to distort the true market. I want transparency in government and I want it in business. When you allow these mortgage banks to fail on their own (no safety nets), you clear the system of inefficient players and allow the market to adjust.

I'm all for free enterprise. You take risks, you make some smart moves, and you profit. You take another risk, you make some mistakes, you lose, and you can start over (and learn). You don't keep doing it like these banks did (I don't even know if you can call them mistakes, more like reckless disregard). Like degenerate gamblers who got their line-of-credit extended, they double-downed and lost.

Think about it, the average US citizen's safety net is quite small. Get sick, get dropped by insurance, lose your job and you're basically on your own. We're told to buck up, stop whining, take responsibility, and work harder. Fine, but don't tell me these companies need our sympathy and help. They profited handsomely during the run-up by making risky loans and lobbying for tougher bankruptcy laws.

There's no easy answer. Bail them out, the dollar plummets and the economy goes to shit. No bailout, the financial market freezes up and the economy goes to shit. I'm leaning towards no more bailouts. At least then we might be able to address the root cause, which I think was reckless risk taking and financial engineering, with the perpetuated belief that the US government (tax payers) would be the ultimate safety net.

Here's a good link regarding what the mortgage market might look like in the near future:
http://www.bubbleinfo.com/journal/2008/7/12/mortgage-credit-...
It'd be interesting to see how these disparities change (or not) with age and through into university study. I've always heard that girls mature faster, which may mean that differences in ability by sex that appear in childhood are different in adulthood.

Completely aside from that, it does show how broad societal trends can affect maths learning for females.
Exactly. Why is it important whether boys or girls or Chinese or gay people are better at maths? Why are scarce research funds going into this?

Questions I would be more interesting in: how can elementary maths be made more interesting? And how can we save children who aren't interested in maths from having it forced upon them?
I think YC has the answer to the third question. Don't take VC money - or at least delay it as long as possible. The more money and the further you get away from founding, the less your contribution is really worth, unless your role expands with the company - and that's often difficult once the VC's management team arrives.

I don't know if he's for real, but he seems persistent and intelligent, typical traits for a founder. Zuckerberg doesn't really seem all that smart.
There is a clock built into the game. Just perform every action on a multiple of 5s and it is very easy to remember when to move.
the timing in level 28 is just obnoxious.
I would prefer more puzzles and less timing.
Yahoo Rejects Proposal  From Microsoft and Icahn
Oil, natural resources in general, driving construction like you said. Saskatchewan (to the east of Alberta) has some oil, but also has the world's largest supply of potash, the price of which has tripled over the last few years. And British Columbia to the west has the 2010 Winter Olympics driving construction.
I had this idea a while back. But I think it would be fun in the context of a massively parallel action or arcade game. Imagine an assault on Normandy. Continue till you get killed, then jump back in time into someone else. If you manage to take out the guy you got you last time, that character is available to play to continue from that point on.

It could also work with a zombie invasion, and as an MMO.
Why you should never be a startup girlfriend
For all of you ladies who may or may not be flirting with the idea of dating a startup programmer, you should know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.
The girl effect
Why do we always break ourselves down

Identity politics. Follow the money. If you can get a person in authority to declare, "We are all equal, given 'fair' conditions," then you have an opportunity to make the following argument:

1. Men and women are equal, when society treats women fairly.
2. Men and women make different incomes.
3. Therefore, society is not treating women fairly.
4. Corrective action is needed.

This is a standard move in identity politics, and you will see it whenever two groups are different. Different people = different outcomes. But the vast bulk of people, including scientists, have been trained from birth to say, "All men [sic] are created equal".

Once you decide that society isn't treating a group fairly, it is time to correct that. How? Affirmative action, set-asides, diversity training, repairations, etc.

What's in store:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODU5OTVjNjhhOTY4ZDk2MWY...
I don't know why this is on HN either but I'm a sucker for anything NY. It's the most usable and creative city on the planet and big part of it is the perfect grid system of its streets and subways. Wayfinding and transportation is a snap and there's an art gallery, museum, school, park or something else inspiring on practically every corner. Heck, even the libraries are awesome - the main branch of the ny public library is so beautiful that they film movies and host weddings in it, and its backyard is Bryant Park, which has its own website and been carpeted with free wifi since before it was cool.

The effect of combining a quick and easy to use public transporation system with an amazing amount of technical and artistic talent is that it lowers the activitation energy of participation to almost zero. You don't have a good excuse to not check out some cool new gallery, exhibit or user group meeting, or simply hang out with a friend on short notice, because the cost in time and energy is as close to zero as you can get. Well, as close as you can get without a Jetsons- or Minority Report-style personal rapid transport system like the SkyTran:

http://unimodal.com/
What the hell was that?

Please don't make me watch videos which contain only text. I can read text faster than a video can play it to me. In this case, the text was pointless anyway.
Why you should never be a girlfriend: relationships usually end painfully
WikiChess: Bring it on Deep Blue.
A plan to build the world's greatest chess machine.
As I recall from some marketing class or other - to use a concrete word like Apple, it can't be indicative of the product's function. So the use of the name Apple for a computer company doesn't in any way restrict other companies from entering that market. But naming something after the offline function that it implements - that does affect other companies trying to enter that market.

I.e. if instead of Apple they'd chosen PC Computers - it likely would not have been a valid trademark. And if you were an apple producer and tried to call yourself Apple Inc., sorry that's no good either.

IANAL, obviously.
I feel like disqus tonite | My Philly Network
Breaking things into groups allows for contrast, and to discover patterns. Instead of a program which might allow a small proportion of students to better at maths (with better teaching perhaps), this could lead to an improvement in the mathematical ability of 50% of the population. That has huge economic and societal implications.

The worst thing about breaking things into groups is members of groups other than the target seem to be simply blind to the importance of it.
After rebooting my HTC 5 times today uploading pictures to Facebook, I'd like nothing more than to own said phone.
Tell me about it RHEL is a pain in the butt. I much prefer Suse (SLE) from a usability standpoint. I think the reason BSD isn't more popular though for example with Oracle is because there is no company that sells BSD as a business platform and is as well known as RH. Sure it's a major part of OSX but not many people use OSX as a server.
I have found for my kind of business (www.Muziboo.com in music space) that widgets that users put on their blogs drives good traffic back to the website. In some ways widgets is like WOM .. if your friend puts one, you get a feeling that he/she would have done some research abt the site
Then you have an opportunity to make the following argument:
1. Men and women are equal, when society treats women fairly.
2. Men and women make different incomes.
3. Therefore, society is not treating women fairly.

But the thing is - you can't. Our approach to statistical drug studies is more careful and mathematically sound than studies about our own identities.

There isn't enough evidence in #1 and #2 to jump to #3, and normally outside of sensitive politics absurd like that simply goes ignored, kinda like child speak.

Lemme offer you similarly absurd statement:

Men and women are equal, yet men don't live as long as women do. Therefore, men's quality of life is lower and they are discriminated against.
Course, it's a really handsome actor, doing zillow, getting all kinds of girls, in New York, and (apparently) couldn't hack a square foot of rain forest. It's not the monomaniacal SV we all know and love, but hell, it's a little bit of exposure.

My prediction is that, with all the fortunes coming out of SV, this industry will become more glamorous, the way hedge funds became glamorous in the last ten years (had you heard about them before 2001?). This glamor will attract more gold diggers (partially bad) and more sleazebags (just plain bad) that try to cash in off other people's work.
Home Pest Control
As homes and developments move closer and closer to their natural habitats animal pests may come to your property and home hunting for food.So pest prevention can be truly beneficial and can save money, headaches and a lot of time.
It doesn't work. It's enormously difficult to construct a solid study with one properly isolated variable that's the subject in question. Even much, much, much easier tasks as exploring effects of smoking have been done over and over again, only to be declared invalid by yet another variable not accounted for. Statistics is hard to get right, this is why there are so many jokes about it. And trying to come up with a "proof" of anything by separating everybody into just two groups is idiotic.

Yes, it makes one feel good about oneself, and can score you some votes if you're a politician, but it's a waste of time - it doesn't prove anything and only reminds blacks and women that they're "in a group", i.e. must be different by some criteria. This is what I call "recursive racism/sexism".

It is not OK to say "first black president is a great achievement of America". The real achievement would have happened if nobody even noticed the color of his skin, you never heard of CNN anchormen talking about Bush's eye color, haven't you?
New Microsoft Offer, Quickly Rejected
Sure, variance is another question (and one not addressed either way by linked article), but there were some folks in the other thread arguing that maybe men are evolutionarily predisposed to be better at math than women. If that were true, you would expect to see differences in the mean and not just the variance.
Buried for innaccurate title. She concludes that she actually enjoys being a startup girlfriend.

Oh wait this isn't digg. Up arrowed.
Ah. Don't make me break out the Tennyson.

"'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

Sorry, I had to!
So I thought I would update this post.

I am now living in the bay area and here are some hard numbers

our 3brdm is $3350 a month, and it fits 4 people snug but comfortably. So that is about $1200 a bedroom.

Internet is included, but you might expect to pay a bit more than $50 a month.

food well, eating at Mel's Dinner will run you $12 for a meal, and about $2.50 for a drink, and another $2 for tip, or about $17 for a dinner meal. Milk is between $4-$8 a gallon, and ground beef is $3 a pound. Cereal is about the same cost, and Starbuck's Coffee, is the same price in SF as it is in MKE or Chicago. Bagels at Noah's will run you about $2.50 for a bagel with cream cheese, and lunch will run about $8 a person without getting a drink.

You will be using a laundry mat, and it will cost you $2 a load to wash, and $1-$2 to dry them, so $3-4 in total at the brainwash laundry mat.

Beer is about $5-$6 in most of SF, but last night I was in the mission drinking micro brews for $3-4 a beer. On another occasion in north beach I paid $11 for a beer in a plastic cup.

The AMC theater on VanNess is $10.50 a person and matinées are $8.50 a person.

The bus will take you anywhere for $1.50 a trip, with a transfer that is good for ~2 hours+ depending on how the driver tears the transfer ticket. The BART is about $5 to Berkley, or SFO and a bit more if you want to go to Freemont or to Palo Alto, etc.. CalTrain is a bit more expensive and runs about $10 for a trip between Sunnyvale and like SF. Taking a cab between the Mission and say "the Richmond" will run about $10-20, and where I live its about $10.

Oh, parking is a bitch. Expect to pay $200-$400 a month more for rent or a separate parking space.

Living in SF you will also save money for heating and cooling costs, because the weather is so temperate.

There are at least 5-10 tech events a week, so you will have to choose wisely which ones you are going to go to and during the week its not pleasant getting between Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and Mountain View and SF proper.

Living in the Mission is probably the cheapest and has the best transportation options for a tech entrepreneur, but pacific/laurel heights and the richmond have their advantages too. potrero hill is a great area but pricier than others.

if you are going to try to save on rent by being a bit farther out in the city, make sure you are near a bus line that runs regularly, at night many of the buses really reduce their schedule, but for example lines like the 38 will run fairly late with 7 min intervals, and then 20 min in the late night.
Booyay! It was like National Turn CSS and Javascript Off For A Day, and we were failing miserably at it.

Actually, I think he meant to say that they were not failing. If it's national turn off CSS day, and CSS is off, that doesn't sound like failure ;)
I guess now that I am in the bay area, Networking is a whole different beast. Everyone is doing something, so its more about something in detail and with an agenda, than it is about just finding people in general.
I Can't Believe It... | My Philly Network
35 people found it interesting enough, and it's somewhat science based, and the submission guidelines don't preclude it. Why would it not be on HN?

It reminds me of the guy who mapped out the exact best spots for each day of the year to take pictures of the sun setting underneath the Golden Gate bridge, and he was a hacker, and was interested in that. Wish I could find that page...
Only one-way interaction between different selves? And you call this time travel.
"most usable and creative city." I think you need to travel more. "usable and creative" is fine, but "most" I object to. I love New York, but I also love Barcelona, Montreal, London and San Francisco. The best cities are a bit like beautiful women - uniquely great each in their own way.
It's official. This site has completely jumped the shark. Even if it is a weekend, which is the opposite of prime time for a site like this, the fact that this link appears in the top ten, it means Hacker News is OVER.

Easily one of the stupidest things I've ever read. I've seen better logic on the back of cereal boxes. I seriously, sincerely believe that my dog Kaia who recently passed away (RIP) was smarter than the person who wrote this post.
"'tis better to have loved and lost 5 times, than never to have loved at all."

Is this version true too?
The conversation is usually about the higher end. Higher variance would also lead to a greater number of math underachievers. I'm pretty sure the numbers play this out, but I think lower bounds on achievement tend to be heavily skewed by 'nurture'. Also, this assumes a symmetric curve. This highlights the gross over simplifications even a more advanced model suffers from. We're modeling brains here, after all, with one or two numbers.

But you are technically incorrect. You can see more of a certain group in the high end if there is higher variance with equal mean.
Reddit Adds Image Thumbnails to Submissions
If Google wants to see widespread adoption of Android as a platform, I don't see why they would build their own branded phone and thereby compete directly against all of the potential users of their platform.

Then again, if the source of the delays has something to do with getting handset makers up to speed, I can see them pushing out a branded phone just so it's out there earlier. Another year, another price cut, and a move away from being AT&T exclusive and Apple could start running away with the market before Google gets ou the door.
"They haven't even made the WYSIWYG editor that's used in Gmail as Opensource."

There is a WYSIWYG editor included as part of Google Web Toolkit, which is released as open source. I don't know if it is the exact same one as in Gmail but it does the job.

I would also say that my distaste for MS products doesn't really have anything to do with them being closed source. It has to do with the fact that Microsoft documentation is super crappy and it makes their stuff a pain to work with. Where as the GNU/Linux man pages are very well written and easy to get the information you need.
I don't know why all airports don't offer something like 15 minutes of Wifi for watching an ad.

Nothing drives me more nuts than being offering Wifi for $10 a day and only needing to check my email for a minute or two.
Faster IO for Ruby with Postgres
Ah yes, "the zone".

Whenever I start living with / working with / dating someone I always make sure to warn them about "the zone". I've been known to completely tune out everything around me to the point that it takes someone waving their hands in front of my face to get my attention.

I try to tell people it's nothing personal, and I'm not consciously ignoring them, but I don't know if they believe me. The worst is when I realize 5 minutes later that someone was trying to get my attention and gave up.
Ask HN: How to monetize an algorithm?
How to monetize an algorithm? Some suggest licensing it to different companies. But will I have to show them the math behind the algo? Is it possible to monetize it in a way in which the math is not revealed?

(--edited later after feeback in comments--): I have two algos. One algo is an addon for search engines. The data generate by the algo improves usability of the search engine. Its not a ranking system. Just a taxonomy addon on top of othe ranking system that groups terms as required. Example: searching for 'gates', would generate the topics related to gates. Results will be precise as:

'gates' as in bill gates and microsoft

'gates' as in house

The other algo is just still a crappy 'basic stuff' stage. This algo analyse notes in the input sound and classifies it as music and noise. And this I still have a lot to complete.
Everything is better in 5's!

Serial entrepreneur, serial lover?
"~Own a Mac or be willing to admit that you should."

Who codes on a Mac?
Clearly some people would always choose to die, but I think the question was really "would most/all people choose to die?"
Most people frown on serial marriages for some reason. :)
Everything you said here is true but I'm not sure what it has to do with what I said.

You are focusing on the highest end of the curve, presumably because that's where things like advancements in math (and the status it brings) lie.

I'm saying that even if you leave aside the entire discussion about a possible gender gap at the ends of the spectrum, there were other people who were suggesting that the gender gap in mathematical ability might be just like the gender gap in physical strength. This study seems to indicate that this isn't the case, therefore it's a valuable part of the discussion.
Liquidweb review
Liquidweb reviews and liquidweb user reviews that you must read before signup liquidweb.com hosting. Liquid web reviews from forums, blogs, and user submitted. This blog is also about liquidweb coupons, liquidweb discounts, liquidweb rebates, and liquidweb Promotion.
There did used to be a company called BSDI that sold BSD/386, I wonder whatever happened to them. Way back in the day, Oracle had a project called Raw Iron in which they planned to sell boxes as dedicated Oracle appliances, they used FreeBSD for that, so somewhere within the company they do acknowledge that it's the best of the free Unixes (for their app).

My cow-orkers and I all run OSX, FreeBSD, Debian/Ubuntu on our own kit... No-one I know uses Red Hat by choice. I'd love to deploy XServes at work, but again, it's a mindshare problem... Dells running Red Hat, yuck.
Paul, that distinction you use: I'm interested in startups: companies that at least try to grow huge. Whereas the "small ISVs" he writes about are just ordinary small businesses that happen to write software is more a justification of your own prejudices than reality. For every Google, there's a Microsoft, or an Adobe.

Software as a Service, and plain old ISV application software can both scale immensely. I do not need to hire extra bodies if I'm selling 1 million copies a day of my app than if I'm selling 10 copies. The only thing stopping an ISV from growing is the popularity of the software, just as the only thing stopping a Service from growing is popularity of their webapp. In neither case there is no roadblock to growth caused by a lack of resources.

ISV != small. It never has, and it probably never will.