skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll agree quite readily to the notion that there are bad teachers, but before we jump on the "Let's fire 'em!" train, there are some things to consider:

1) A teacher whose students consistently perform below grade level, but who jump 2 or 3 grade levels under her teaching (in the course of a year) is probably not a bad teacher. I know several teachers, particularly those who work with students for whom English is not a native language or who work with students with communiications barriers, where this is the case.

(My father is on the board of trustees of a school for the deaf and blind; this school consistently is one of the worst performing schools in the state, but at least part of that is because the vast majority of its students enter the school between 3 and 8 years behind grade level. I know the English teacher there, and she's responsible for some phenomenal gains, but even then it's rare that students will be reading and writing at grade level).

2) While we have a discussion of what bad teaching is, we also need to discuss what good teaching entails. "Sufficient progress on standardized tests" does not describe the teacher, but rather the students, and even then only on a single day. I'm willing to buy that there's some correlation between those tests and overall achievement, but would suggest that 3 hours is probably an insufficient amount of time to fully demonstrate one's learning over the previous 9 months.

Let's have a vibrant discussion of the how's and why's of teaching excellently, both in terms of what it looks like in action and what it accomplishes.

3) Finally, let's take a good look at what useful, worthwhile learning entails, and what it looks like. It may be that the system of bells and periods is more destructive than it is productive (I suspect this to be true, given my knowledge of my own workflow, as well as how I had to drastically alter my workflow when I taught), and it may be that we spend too much time on low-level skills (like rote memorization solely for the purpose of taking a test) and not enough time on internalization and contextualization of meaningful knowledge and skills (how many students have you known who could only solve a math problem when they knew ahead of time, by way of reading the chapter heading, what that problem would entail, but would not be able to solve that problem if they saw it mixed in with other types of problems?)

It's easy to say "Oh, let's fire the bottom 10% of teachers and replace them with excellent teachers", but such a statement falls flat on its face pretty quickly (for one, do we have a hidden reserve of these "excellent teachers", and if so, can we convince them to leave their more lucrative jobs elsewhere?).

It's much more difficult, but also much more worthwhile, to say "Let's figure out what excellent teaching and learning look like, in all their dimensions, and then let's see if we can figure out how to make it happen more often."

As far as education reform discussion topics go, I'd rather have the latter than the former.
Certainly not on this short of notice, but perhaps with more.
That, though, would be simply stated as seven years in the field—not "seven years of X, five years of Y, eleven years of Z."
I was apparently the first person on the phone with Princeton police (calling from Canada), while my friend posted the original thread you speak of. It seems he had already begun to hang himself by this time. I somehow wish I could have called a minute or two earlier. And further, wish he had been able to talk to someone about this before it ended the way it did. RIP my friend.
Foxconn now second-largest emplower in world
It'd have to completely lose its ability to edit and save root-owned config files and such in order to adhere to App Store guidelines. I use that all of the time.
With regards to the SEO bits: total agreement.

With regards to the indictment of for-profit education: I half agree. The government giving buckets of free money gets lower class, lower income people who are unprepared for higher education into non-selective institutions, including for-profit institutions. That isn't a bug, it is a feature. They have sucky graduation rates -- in some cases, extremely sucky graduation rates. Free money also inflates the costs of "good" educations -- e.g. kids who get $100k of loans to go to UofI (or Harvard) and then get a degree in photography or religious studies aren't great off, either.

That said, it is a net gain for students if they're convinced to get a low-prestige degree like e.g. an Associates in Radiology rather than going for a Bachelors in English from UoP. (Or, ahem, a Bachelors in English from Harvard.)
I think the problem (which has probably been discussed ad nauseam) lies within Yahoo itself. Just look at what happened with Delicious. They fired the entire staff and now they seem to think they'll have a great chance at selling the service to someone without any of the original talent who worked on it.

Flickr could be so much more, but with Instagram on the rise, I think it's going to make things difficult for Yahoo. Not saying Flickr will go away, but as soon as the Instagram devs add a web portion that allows you to view all photos in your account, it's going to definitely put a dent in Flickr over time.
Representing Non-Unicode Text on the JVM
Well what would make you more productive vs. another programmer in solving an identical problem with both of you having all the same programming tools available?

1. Familiarity with the library set / language

2. Familiarity with the problem space

3. Familiarity and speed with tools/programming environment

4. Research speed (and research tools/materials)

5. Mental Program structural planning speed

6. Previous Experience with the specific problem

7. Knowledge with time saving programming structures

8. Skill with mathematics and algorithms

9. Computer Hardware & Internet Connections

10. Ability to choose the best tools for the job

11. Learning speed

12. Motivation, energy, ability to concentrate for long periods of time

And that's listing mostly external factors that are somewhat obvious, not some less obvious speed of mental thinking or something similar.

You can define developer productivity as speed to complete an identical project compared to another and the quality/maintainability/readability of the software they produce to match the project requirements.
> Things like blogs, twitter, etc are signals and they're useful for people that need to make decisions based on limited information.

And thus we need to expend resources on signaling, instead of on actually pursuing/growing within the field. Personally, I'd rather not hire the developers with the most beautiful tail-feathers.
From what I've read, LTE will certainly be faster than HSPA+. I think what he is saying is that HSPA+ is "fast enough" for most smartphone activities (such as web browsing), so the speed boost provided by LTE will only be noticed in more data-intensive applications, such as video streaming.
I would guess the general Google approach to this problem is to try to improve algorithms.

I wonder if a change towards "human input" might improve things more.

For example, what if the Chrome browser had a big feedback button so that if users wanted to help improve the Google search results they could rate the usefulness of the link they just followed?
Umm. I completely disagree. I was part of a 2 man team that started up 4 years ago, (a game) and I made the forums and built that community up to nearly 1,000,000 users.

Sure, you might get angry, or you mightn't like what people say - but it's the Internet. If people are saying bad things, you're doing something wrong. More times than not, we got people saying "Thanks", and this was worth more than 100+ people complaining.

It also helps build the community. A developer comes swooping down on a thread talking about "how cool would it be to have water in game?!" and goes, "Well, you seem to know what you're talking about... how about I make you moderator and you can sort out anything there is to do with water in game". Works wonders. The users love the fact that you interact with them. I.e. you're not too busy to stoop down to them.
We need better ways to grade teachers than going by student performance in tests.
> The physical form factor isn't what's new, the implementation, software, use cases, and the whole experience is what's new

Actually. I want to explain why I was so vicious before. What made Wieser's ideas about computing so fantastic wasn't physical form factors. It was about a new age of computing where the way that people use computers would be significantly different to what we had then. It's taken more than 20 years for that to /start/ happening. The iPhone/iPad is the start of a Wieserian world because it bought the idea to people, not because they invented it.

The iPad really is an extension of the pad idea from Ubiquitous Computing. End of story. There's no counter argument. It's irrelevant who you've shown your ipad to, or how novel you think it is. You're wrong. End of story.

In fact, the iPhone and iPad are two great examples of what Wieser talked about so often in his work. The only core difference is that Wieser, the optimist he was, believed that devices should be like note pads in the office and not owned by a distinct person. Computers should transend the need for us to serve them, but instead they should serve us. Pads would be used like note pads are today, but with the power of computing facilitating our contextual needs.

But just because it's new to you, and your group of friends is irrelevant. The idea is old. Even from an implementation point of view.

The one thing that Apple can be congratulated for is bringing that idea into a marketable position. That's no small feat there, they deserve recognition. However, they didn't invent the idea. Just a marketable implementation.

He also thought that there should be more computers, everywhere, that pads/tabs/boards interlink with.
Yes, that's true. Assuming 2009's valuation of 25 billion, that would mean a P:E ration of 125:1.
You're comparing their 2010 year-end valuation with their 2009 year-end net income...

In December 2009, Facebook repurchased shares at $25 for an implied valuation of $11 billion. That's a 55 P/E.
> Consider the case of car insurance.

A car is a luxury. Health is a right. Keep your examples apples to apples, thanks.
It was strange that the article didn't talk about how one of the reasons there is so much more topspin and power in today's game is because the strings are less energetic now than they were before, meaning that players can swing a lot harder without worrying about sending the ball long.

I normally play with a racquet strung with a synthetic poly string (less stiff than Luxilon, but still pretty stiff and slippery), which allows me to absolutely whale on the ball, and in the process, generate a lot of topspin (as the racquet velocity at impact is pretty high).

A few weeks ago, while playing with a much family member, I used one of her racquets, which is strung with a much bouncier string; it was amazing how much I had to pull back on my shots to keep them from going long. Didn't hit with anywhere near as much spin or power then.

The slipperiness of the string certainly seems to have an effect on the flight of the ball, but so would the liveliness of the string. It would be interesting to see if those variables can be isolated.
I think I see where you're going, but I disagree. To me, link #2 is superior even if I just want pie voyeurism. (mainly, it has instructional pictures) I would click on #2 every time.

However, if #2 is buried on the 3rd page of results like it sometimes is, then I would not....

There is however, a definite gradation of google spam. ehow is somewhere near the top... domain squatters somewhere near the bottom...
Viagra Can Treat Hypertension In Babies
Actually, given the differential in the unemployment rate between high school only and college graduates, I expect to see the fraction of people attending college to increase. Furthermore, given the job market for new graduates, I expect to see an increase in the numbers of students seeking masters degrees, hoping to wait out the downturn. It would be interesting to calculate the ROI on that. Imagine that you have student 1 hired in good economic times, vs student 2 hired in a tough labor market--the base salary could be significantly different--and if both have similar abilities and receive similar raises, I'd be curious what the lifetime impact on earnings would be--compared to say, the cost of a masters degree (even, discounting whether the masters degree has any value in terms of increasing the earnings potential of the candidate).
Not having money will generally screw your chances with women and is very well documented. Instability I don't know about. I can't imagine it'd help.

Gates was funded by a wealthy attorney father. Apple got revenue fairly quickly and was huge soon after launch.

Amazon I don't know about but the site was a market darling even during the years they hemorrhaged money. That funding would provide a more stable environment than some basement shop without Ivy league credentials struggling to attract VC.

This is a different environment than any startup I or many others could attempt. That kind of financial backing or quick success helps tremendously. I could never start Pandora and struggle for years given the cost of my insulin.

If I quit my job and started a business I would sacrifice stable earnings and existing assets for the chance of ruin and success. It's different with wealthy parents or with investor confidence. There's a safety net. Not many people jump without one - for good reason.

It shouldn't be romanticized. It should be realistically assessed. If you're deluding yourself about that there's too high a chance your personal worries and rose-colored glasses will doom your business.

You may be able to succeed and many do. But if you can't admit the possibility of failure and realistically assess risk or evaluate opportunity costs you have no place running a business. I used to make money reselling computers on ebay. I made good cash. But the shit I never considered ate away at my profits the most.

The difference on Wall Street or working as an accountant is that you generally know where the next paycheck is coming. That's something most people can't handle or survive losing. Even the insurance is a safety net that a family with children needs desperately.

I was diabetic at a young age. How would my mom have coped if my dad had sacrificed insurance and steady income for the chance of riches when I got sick? Think she'd stick around?
I suspect that the inability to bring down power isn't just "laziness" on Intel's part. Decreasing power consumption is (more or less) equivalent to increasing performance per watt - an area where Nvidia and ARM designs may simply be better.
I just use the browser, instead of the !bang feature in Duck Duck Go.

Chrome / Firefox have the option of adding a search shortcut.

For instance I type "py package-name" for searching inside Python's index, or "am product" for searching in Amazon, or "w something" for searching Wikipedia, or "t some words" for doing a google translate, or "hn something" for searching Hacker News.

Chrome even does these shortcuts automatically, so you can just "amazon.com android" and it will do a search on amazon; although in Firefox it is easier to add your own.
I find just going for a brisk walk in the morning and potentially running while listening to some audio I find positive very helpful. Either stuff like Tony Robbins, technical podcasts, or something to remind me of all I have to be grateful for.

I think a lot of it is the routine or your habits... for example, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I perform better at my work when I take at least 30 minutes in the morning to walk and listen to something positive. More bonus points for taking even 5-10 minutes to meditate. Yet historically my stick-to-it-iv-ness for those activities always seem to go away when presented with the days urgencies or more mindless 'busymaking' like random surfing.
I only read e-books and audiobooks. So don't ask me.

(Actually, sometimes I am forced to read dead trees because there is no alternative.)
Someone going through the same thing and then witnessing the end result of it on this man isn't exactly positive reinforcement
Hey moultano, I was just thinking about this problem: how can I tell that a site is spammy? Overwhelmingly, they look really really similar. For example, if you search for "diy solar homes" you'll see a wonderful example of some really spammy sites - they popup book offers on load, they have this kind of template where they have big garish fonts and a whole lot of information laid out carelessly on the page.

Then there's the "what you need, when you need it" category, and then there's the "put your google search in the title even though the page has no relevant results" category (mostly software download sites - ie. try searching for "application to use nokia e72 with itunes" you get this site filebuzz in the top two spots that has a whole lot of ads and a bunch of crappy non-related downloads).

So if you add a "uniqueness" index - ie. find ways to "semantically tag" not just the textual content, but the layout and font choices etc. of particular sites, that will catch the blatant affiliate spam bullshit (diy solar homes, what you need when you need it etc.) and then just figure out a way to prevent those "file buzz" type sites from sticking my search term in the title tags (I actually have no idea how this is done) you'll eliminate like 95% of the spam.
The average of both Google and Apple = (0.033 + 0.045)/2 = 0.039

Assuming a profit of 500M over a revenue of 2B , the valuation should be = 0.5/0.039 = 12.82B

The valuation of Facebook is 3.9x over this, which does not look so bad !
The Gollum Effect
Building connections with open source information - NNDB network visualizer
You support the British National Party? :)
A tiny minority of wealthy people are rich because they lied, cheated or stole their way there. When you get to the uber-rich from free societies it gets even slimmer still.

Take a drive through a wealthy suburb. Look at all the families in expensive houses. Do you really think they lied, cheated and stole their way to those houses? And I don't mean some Marxist 'all property is theft' view, I mean actually took something without permission or told a lie in order to get someone to hand over money. And that's just one small area within one country. When you add up all the wealthy people in free societies you'll find a lot of hardworking/lucky/smart people and very few .

How about some of the successful YC exits that have made the founders wealthy. Were they lying, cheating or stealing?

I don't pretend there aren't people who haven't cheated their way to riches, just that they are a tiny, tiny minority of the people who have a lot of wealth. Sure, if you're going to look at the courts system, that's what you'll find. But that's like inspecting a garbage dump and announcing the world is covered in litter.

But if you look around and all you see liars, cheats and theives, then you've got a very skewed view of reality.

If this is your worldview :
'I believe that a very large percentage of those who are extremely rich partook or do partake of significant "stealing and lying" to get there or stay there.'
Then there is nothing more you and I can discuss because we look at the world in very different ways. And I loudly wonder what you're doing on this site.
Software engineer is a term that can help with visa applications. Programming feels a lot like engineering, architecture and shop work combined. A guy with a machine shop and an idea can create a machine that becomes a very useful mass market product even if he didn't do any mathematics other than measurement and arithmetic. What an engineer does with lots of math can create a similarly identical product. Some problems you need an engineer's sophistication with mathematics and physics to create (like a bridge), and similarly in programming, some problems in graphics and what not require sophistication in mathematics and physics to even create it or to advance the field.
All I can say is that I am angry. Not sad, but angry! Angry at what? The world? The fact that this can happen? The person that molest him? The incomprehensible miserable feeling that I cannot hope to understand?

I don't know. I just can't comprehend it.
One thing that has always seemed to rub me wrong in space exploration is the giant need to stay in touch with Earth. Supposedly the space shuttles are crewed by the great explorers of our time, but it always seems that everything is governed by people on the ground and not in the air.
I've been using Quora for quite a while now. The quality and quickness of the responses, along with the personal discussions between scholarly people, make the site what it is. In a way it reminds me of Hacker News, as the site is in a whole different league than other Q&A sites in its quality.
and I bet you want it at a decent price too.

there's no profit in selling to smart people. Much easier to sell to the suckers.
> Except in areas where there's essentially a monopoly, and the high cost of entry into the market is likely to keep it this way, where ISPs are free to abuse their market position for fun and profit.

Which areas do you have in mind? "The FCC’s own data shows that as of June 2008, 98 percent of zip codes have at least 2 broadband providers, and 88% of zip codes have at least 4 broadband providers."

And given the trend of increased access identified in that FCC report, what leads you to suppose things are likely to stay a certain way?

>> who’s regulating the FCC?
> The executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Except the judicial branch, which the FCC decided to ignore after it started ruling the FCC does not have the authority to regulate the net. And except the executive branch, which already supports regulation of the net. It's a damn good thing we have three.
Very interesting tool. Can just imagine when more open data sources gets linked in here, and you could do Maltego-esque queries for visualization.
WarFlow
Job Skills Tech Employers Are Hiring for Now
If it makes you feel better, our first experiment along those lines was in 2001: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~cutts/toolbarbeta.html

Back then (and with "Remove result" and SearchWiki) it had issues because we were trying to get people to recognize spam, and people weren't that good at recognizing spam techniques like hidden text. The more recent complaints we've had are more like "here's content I don't like." So maybe it's time that we tried something similar again.
> I paid Mechanical Turk workers for their two cents (quite literally)

Well there's your problem. Mechanical Turk is notoriously unreliable.
The numbers/graphs were very definitely not taken from the OOH. They're from the same underlying data source as the OOH, the BLS national salary study, and they're both calculated differently and substantially broader in scope than the numbers presented on the OOH. It should not be surprising that the OOH and this site have the same number for e.g. median salary of accountants, since they both use the BLS data set and presumably have the same understanding of the word "median", but the point of the site is to get a generalizable numbers for the degrees, where the OOH hsa 100% focus on the job categories and generates no statistics whatsoever for degrees.

There may well be rewriting of OOH facts on some of the pages. I likewise haven't read the several hundred pages in detail (I wrote the CMS but wasn't in charge of the freelancers who filled it out).
Pity it's Flash based. Would be great in Canvas.
I think this data is a lot more accurate and actionable than "All degrees are equally valuable, honey", which is the advice I'm most concerned with competing with.
lol. Does this mean my Surface projects are relevant again?

https://github.com/indexzero/surface-raw-input
How to increase happiness and self-esteem: be compassionate