skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your analysis is simplistic. When you break up TIMSS by ethnic groups, the US performs comparably to other counties across the board (Asians, Europeans, etc). [1] There's something to be said about the differences between attempting to educate a racially diverse population versus a largely homogenous one.

I've done more analysis on a similar test called PISA, but I think it's worth bringing up in the context of this debate. In standardized testing there are often significant underlying factors that have nothing to do with the schools themselves. From the executive summary of PISA: "[In the United States], after accounting for socio-economic
background, the performance difference between students from single-parent families and those from other types of
families stands at 23 score points.... Parents’ engagement with their children’s reading life has a positive impact on their children’s reading performance." Consider that the divorce rate in the US is one of the highest in the world, 5 times that of China. This problem along with any others is one that needs to be considered in the context of education.

Also, PISA was not done on China, but rather on two specific cities: Shanghai and Hong Kong (similarly, TIMSS was done in Hong Kong). Along with Beijing, these are the most advantaged areas in China in terms of both money and education. The US administers PISA to a wide range of schools across the country. I imagine we would see much different results if PISA only tested Boston and some other advantaged city. The PISA study itself even notes that scores were much higher in urban schools. Other countries are either testing exclusively urban schools or urban schools at a higher rate than the US.

There are serious, serious problems with education in the US. But it's important to look at these studies with a critical eye and avoid the temptation to go off on a rant on how the US is bad at math. Data doesn't lie, but analysis is often wrong and/or exaggerated. In sum, problems with education in the US are deeply rooted in racial, social, and geographic issues. Better management practices and policy reform, while good, doesn't change the fact that the US isn't Singapore.

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001_suptables.pdf
The pay isn't close to making a competitive talent pool happen either. Chicken, egg...
I think that's the point, though -- this was emphatically not sexism of the "requests for sex acts" variety.

This is why I found this interesting -- these are mistakes that can happen in perfectly competent teams, and men on the team may be unaware that they're doing things that would be annoying to a targeted male co-worker, but will make a female co-worker feel like she's trapped in a sexist environment (and may irritate her enough that she leaves the company).

Even more enlightened folks tend to have some layer of X-ism built in to their thinking; it's hard to avoid. It takes a lot of training to avoid expressing it in subtle ways, and to see others expressing it.

Seriously, I had my (white, upper-middle class) uncle tell me racial discrimination didn't exist anymore in many parts of the US anymore, based on what he saw around him.

Unfortunately, if you're in the less-favored group, you don't have that luxury of blindness, and (especially after a few really blatant cases) you'll tend to see it everywhere.
What makes this any better than SASS or LESS?
I am wondering this as well as I am work on developing online elearning tools and taking part in the AI course.

I wish I could remember the source, but I recall reading that they are using something custom built at Stanford.
Not that close, since with the fastest vehicles we've ever built, it would take something like a million years to reach even the closest star. If we can figure out how to survive in the harsh environment of space for millennia, it seems like we're pretty much past the need for colonization.
While using legislation might be an overkill, I think that games would use mentioning Conventions. Not even to enforce certain decisions on player, but as a background (e.g. NPCs restraining themselves from torturing enemy soldiers). People pick up a lot of knowledge and awareness from computer games; even mentioning the Red Cross message would help players better understand the reality of real-world combat.
excuse me, yes, I intended to write UN-inhabitable. Its a fear I think is well founded considering global poisoning of air and water, CO2 emissions, uncontrolled population growth and threats to global food production capabilities, and alarming rate of rogue nations with nuclear missiles. Give that another 200 years to take us to the brink. Humans are great at exploration (continents or space), but lousy at stopping or changing their own behavior.
Galaxy Nexus + data plan + VoIP support = free calls
Techno is the Word: input word output techno loop
I would not say thingie but the rest of it is pretty much a conversation with me, about something I am extremely interested in. Speech impediment is a good description for it. It's has to be related to turrets or something, because it is ingrained and habitual, but yet in monologing (generally learned speech) I don't have the issue.
I agree. As much as I disagree with Ayn Rand on some things, she certainly disliked uselessness as much as I do. I can't help but wonder if certain aspects of her future's government in Atlas Shrugged is the natural end stage of a government.
Of course it's my fault :-) Failing silently is never acceptable under any circumstances.

That said, a silent failure is pretty weird. It can happen if you have Javascript disabled (are you running noscript?), but there's a check for that on the demo page. I just added an explicit check on the DSSID page, so please try it again.
Design is a game changer.

We design the world around us in everything we do. We design friendships, companies, culture, products and vision. Everyone is a designer.

I think it is the golden age of design awareness. Design is the look, but also the feel and texture of the product and company.

Look out your window or walk down the street. We live in a designed world. Even if you are walking in the woods, miles away from civilization the fact that the area has been untouched is an aspect of design. Someone designed policy or designed a national park to save this area.

What this "Golden Age of Design in Startups" means is that we have to embrace this cultural awareness of design and bring it into our company's everyday life. Design intentionally is really what it comes down to.
Because they are hellaciously expensive

You know, I have a checking account that I don't keep a lot of money in (because I rarely write checks nowadays) but have had so long that I don't really want to close it. I was surprised to notice last week that the bank is charging me $12/month in account fees unless I keep a minimum of $1000 in it at all times (effectively, an interest-free loan to the bank). For $144 a year, I think they can afford an RSA token or something better than the existing nonsense.

I know, the bank makes money from fees and that's the price I pay for access to a large ATM network..yet I distinctly remember a time when they made money from lending, while still managing to have a risk management policy grumble grumble
Yeah, there are quite a few notable startups and a strong community that is growing very quickly. Just had Startup Weekend in Orange County with another planned for March and one in LA in January.

Some solid Tech Meetups:
- OC: http://www.meetup.com/OC-Tech-Startup/
- LA: http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Lean-Startup-Circle/
- SD: http://www.meetup.com/SanDiego-Tech-Founders/

I'm down in Orange County so I'm more involved in the community here with startups such as Mavenlink, Catchfree, and Drumbi. If you're going through LA, I strongly suggest stopping by Coloft.

If you have more questions or anything, let me know.
A deep understanding allows one to deal with problems that they have not only been explicitly taught, but those they have also never encountered.

I don't think your example regarding libraries really applies well here. I think a more appropriate example would be knowing how to do a few things with a library without a real ( or any ) understanding of the language its based upon.

I'm no mathematician, nor am I a (professional) programmer for that matter, yet I've seen real benefits going back and really learning some of those topics that were kinda passed over in high school ( so what exactly is sine doing to my numbers? Taylor series? Fourier series? Optimization functions?). Besides, math teaches you to think, memorization doesn't.
SeedEdition Giving Away $100 Million
Sounds like you didn't read my post or the README. Check it out. This is intended to work with things like SASS & LESS. There's a lot more to CSS than buzzwords :)
All these comments are fun conjecture, but no one commenting (or on this planet) will be able to reasonably assume anything regarding life or sentience on other planets based on our utter lack of data. There may be life that exists outside of 'habitable' zones. There may be several different types of 'intelligence' that may or may not match our own. No one here can definitively claim that anything is or should be with so many possibilities.

Our only frame of reference is this planet, and while diverse, doesn't represent steadfast laws that all life in the universe follow (convergence, carbon-based, etc.). These questions will only be answered when we send probes, people, or find some other way of observing these planets directly.
IBM Rethinking Mobile Email
I am justifying anything. I am telling it how it. People in the US think of freedom of speech as a fundamental right which it should be. This is not the case with most other countries. It's the same as people in other countries thinking that universal healthcare should be a fundamental right, many people in the US don't agree.

I personally am in favor of both being fundamental rights.
Live Music Deregulation Under Threat
Free Credit Score
Google Search Makes Graphing Math Functions Easy and Free
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I've done this with a twist -- I prepare the breakfast myself. I've never had someone tell me that my French toast isn't the best they've ever had.
I love this; I've needed this on nearly every project I've ever worked on for various reasons. Either someone doesn't remember what a class looks like or doesn't apply it properly or the designer named things ambiguously on accident. You end up with some styles applied properly and others ignorantly thrown around because no one really understands how the CSS is laid out besides the designer.

Adding it to a project will put some more work on designers, but it's nothing they probably shouldn't be doing already.
If you want features, be sure to check out https://github.com/rsms/cocui

I made this thing to add a quick UI to some shell scripts. This is not intended to be a serious project for desktop app development. Just a utility for nerds.
Apple's helpful guidelines for competitors to avoid patent infringement
We have quite the conundrum in this country: not enough qualified workers for high tech jobs, and a strong resistance to teaching kids the skills to do those jobs. I think it's going to take a major cultural shift for us to move past this and have parents demanding their kids learn more math and science. There seems to be an incipient movement in this direction but man is there a lot of inertia!
Elections in Russia denies the basic laws of math
Thanks for posting this. I'm not too knowledgable about the burn rate of others, but I know that we've kept ours very low. Much of this was motivated by the fact that we have a serious hardware play, and lots of our seed capital is allocated towards that.

Regardless, when the problems are interesting and hard enough, we find that our clamp on spending is a really great recruiting filter. The people that join the team are truly passionate about our product and technology. It's painful at times, but spoiled grapes don't taste very good either.
How can a planet 600 light years away be habitable for humans?

Please forgive my total field ignorance and educate me.
I absolutely despise security questions.

I have a few bank accounts for my company (checking/investments/etc.) which each require different logins. That's fine.

However, the security questions for a business account are inextricably tied to an individual. Favorite animal? High school mascot? Where were you born?

These are all questions that are pretty easy to crack for an individual account, so they provide next to no added security. Furthermore, for a business account, they're just an added layer of frustration. When I took over the accounts, I had no idea how the previous president answered the questions, since they're all personal to him, not our company. Furthermore, when someone else at our company needs to access our accounts, they need to know the answer to my security questions... which are the same ones I have to use on my personal bank accounts!

In the end, it's so much of a pain to remember the answer to these questions that when I'm randomly asked to verify, I'm just as likely to call customer support and ask them to reset them. So what does this mean? I call customer support and give them

1. My name
2. My company's name
3. Our username
4. Our bank account name
5. Our tax ID number or the last 4 digits of the social-security number on the account.

...most of which would be pretty simple for a would-be attacker to obtain. And let's face it, corporate accounts at banks are much more likely to be the targets of individualized attacks, rather than random attacks over an array of accounts.

tl;dr: For business accounts, security questions actually decrease security.
An introduction to pathfinding with A* in python | joi.degn.de
Playlist.com | My xVi0l3nTx Playlist Popout Player
Has he gone thru the videos available from Stanford University on iTunes? I'm going through them now with my 15-year old son. They are a bit advanced (for both of us at times), but they are free and they might be a place to start. I've also heard that the books by HeadFirst and Big Nerd Ranch are good, but I have not looked at these myself, yet.
Great, great story.

"Never underestimate people and their capabilities it may come back to haunt you." Well, the guy trying to look like the smartest guy in the room, probably isn't. To your point, if the "dumbest guy in the room" seems comfortable looking like the dumbest guy in the room -- _that_ is the one to keep an eye on.
This is the fragment of official night TV translation
with data of two states of Russian Federation

Votes above 100% is votes overstated by ruling party "United Russia"

Sverdlovsk Oblast results:
39.61%+30.59%+18.64%+17.67%+3.83%+2.75%+2.27% = 115.36% total

Voronezh Oblast results:
62.32%+31.11%+17.22%+11.72%+4.55%+1.38%+0.66% = 128.96% total

Also, Rostov Oblast results screenshot:
http://demotivation.me/images/20111204/jbka8d89jovg.jpg
10 points to Griffindor for the Knylefile.
What’s Coming in Ext JS 4.1
Only the first of those four articles deals with women in IT jobs. It is behind a paywall but I found a freely available copy here: http://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/leavescience_all.pdf . It's a nice article. I don't think it supports laying the blame on sexism, though.

The paper focuses on something called the "exit rate", that is, how many people with a certain education are working at a job unrelated to their education. The average exit rate over all professions and both genders is 21%. Female engineers have a pretty low exit rate of 12.9% - that is, 12.9% of women who studied engineering now work in other areas. Male engineers, on the other hand, have an extremely low exit rate of 9.8%.

The author then tries to explain the difference between "pretty low" for women and "extremely low" for men. She observes that the differentials in exit rate, across all fields including engineering, can be mostly predicted by the gender makeup of the field. Quote from the paper's conclusion:

> The results would appear to point to problems for women speci c to the engineering
profession. However, I show that the excess exits of women trained as engineers, as well
as their excess exits for pay and promotion reasons, are no larger than would be expected
given the share of men in the field: the higher the male share, the greater the excess female
exits from the fi eld, both in total and for pay and promotion reasons.

Then the author hypothesizes that improving mentoring and reducing "possible discrimination" might help reduce the gap, without giving any specific arguments.

It seems to me that the really important figure in the paper is 9.8%, not 12.9%-9.8%. That is, more males are behaving abnormally by staying programmers despite possible problems with pay and promotion, while the behavior of female engineers is closer to the average rational human being. What do you think?

Also, I'd be really interested in seeing what you think are the best papers proving that the lack of women of IT is due to sexism. Taking apart random vaguely related papers is fun, but I don't have infinite time.
In case people think kalid is making it up, the first one is the 'commuting paradox': http://ftp.iza.org/dp1278.pdf (or http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_08/b3921127.... )
Waterfall: from the article.
"Waterfall is how COBOL developers created banking software in the 80s. We're not really sure how it works."

No, but work it did and more importantly still is in spite of attempts to better/reinvent it. And goes waaay back to about 1960, far less the '80s.

"We're pretty sure it's how the Antikythera mechanism was developed."

... and this is bad, how?
I'm in the advertising industry where I frequently find myself surrounded by this kind of jargon (the word "media" is a tell that you're about to get an avalanche of bullshit).

I've found one trick for turning these conversations about abstract business models into something meaningful; ask "Who writes a check to whom, and for what?" If you get a quick answer, then you have a chance that there's common sense lurking around somewhere; if not, flee.
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Profiling Rails startup with DTrace
Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ - Saçlarını Yol Getir
If schools in Singapore don't perform that trick (or if the trick doesn't exist), then Singapore schools are no better than US schools.

Since Singaporean schools have a student body that is roughly 100% Asian, we have no data on whether or not they perform that trick.
Manicdee said IT is self-absorbed and sexist therefore there are not a lot of women in it.

Bermanoid said there are not a lot of men in nursing therefore nursing is sexist.

'X therefore Y' does not equal 'Y therefore X' your premise is invalid.

I believe, based on many years experience of this industry that it is self-absorbed and sexist. I agree with manicdee.
The Red Cross should focus on real-world laws being enforced in the real world.

Also, video games are "art" (regardless of how artistic they may appear, or you personally feel toward them). Art is protected speech in many countries. I know, for instance, that Nazi symbols are banned in Germany, except in art. The spirit of such exemptions makes sense; we don't want to pretend negative ideas don't exist by banning them.

My point is torture happens in the real world. War crimes are real. Maybe the Red Cross needs to focus on trying to stop these real world events, instead of attempting to stop their depiction in media.
Students are sad losers unless they practice programming before and even instead of college.

Programming is addictive, learned long before you decide to specialize in it, and you make up problems for yourself creating unique software products from day one.

With math, you only reiterate the same thing over and over.

That's why, having choice, I choose to work as a programmed early and do as little as possible without being kicked off at my higher education facility.

Oh no, wait - I did as little as possible even before I began working. I just amn't good at that learning thing perhaps.
* Special Weapons and Tactics.

I think it's important to still learn what any internal acronyms and jargon mean, otherwise you can get into a "telephone game" situation where two people have acquired different and conflicting definitions for the same term.
Duplication is probably the easiest mistake to make with CSS, and using authoring languages like LESS and SASS won't necessarily help. Duplication not only causes bloat, but it can lead to specificity wars and poorly performing selectors. Worse yet, it becomes more difficult to trust the code already in place, and easier to write your own styles to perform tasks that some other code already handles.

This is the death spiral of CSS, and it's refreshing to see someone take on this problem directly (aside from teaching a methodology for writing CSS).

Automated documentation for CSS is a fantastic idea, and this looks well executed.
The takeaway for me is this: Android and iOS' creators made different tradeoffs in their UI programming. The iOS creators, overall, correctly predicted that a fast, smooth, responsive UI was something that users would care about enough that it was okay to pay a performance cost in other areas in order to make the UI as responsive as it is on iOS devices. Android's creators made a different tradeoff, and the UI on Android devices showed clearly - and continues to show - the problems with that tradeoff.
Here you go http://cl.ly/0c1D0g06133B0V3n1u1z
I disagree. I think Sibal is one of the smarter and honest guy in the government. I do think people take him seriously. He is the person behind the $35 tablet, he is moving the country from an absolute points based system of grading to relative grade based system and is opening up more IITs. He has risen among the ranks in the government to Human Resources and Education Minister. You might not agree with what he does but I don't think you can take him trivially.
Thank you for the compliment and tip. Yeah I had been aware of Notepad++ but didn't know if it was completely free (and of course, now that I took the time to check out the page, it obviously is) and I was impressed that someone got SciTE running on their corporate old laptop, so I decided to go with the lowest denominator. Will definitely checkout Notepad++. Anything with code coloring and Regexp is about all that's needed.
It's a direct response to the failure of browsers to include API hooks into what has become basic and essential device functionality - camera access, for example.
While this is definitely well made and cool, we've stopped supporting IE6 at our startup... and so should you! (Except if you're targeting the enterprise market, of course.)

Edit: I've now also noticed that the site is a joke. Silly me getting all riled up about IE6 again.
The state does a lot of other things too, like setting the ratio of a GP's pay to a specialist's pay to something much higher than in other countries, and letting pharmaceutical companies charge whatever they want in the US market but banning the re-importation of drugs from companies where they're sold far more cheaply.
considered harmful considered harmful http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html
The guy sounds like a genius, it's pretty straightforward Sun Tzu, or anyone of a number of tacticians who have discovered the same thing, when your hand is weak present it as strong, when your hand is strong present it as weak.
This is not an alternative to Cygwin, and shouldn't be called such.

Cygwin isn't a collection of binaries; that's a distribution. But the idea is to emulate UNIX, including fork(), etc., allowing you to easily recompile for Windows.
Thanks a lot! SysInternals, NirSoft tools and anything that I can find for Windows is very very much appreciated. (At home I'm sticking to OSX and Ubuntu, but at work the situation is rather different - I'm often finding myself arguing with myself - at home I prefer gnome/gtk, at work I better stick to Windows.Forms, hehehe).
Either disable javascript on that page, or open up firebug and re-enable the textbox.