skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Both you and the article are confusing the issue. The value to be gained from a good mathematical education is problem solving skills. These skills are neither the focus of high school mathematical education nor what is being accessed by standardized tests.

Whether one uses specific knowledge directly in their profession is irrelevant. The knowledge is required to teach the concepts and skills. There is also more to life than one's profession.
Yeah, the rules don't scale as well as I would have liked. I started with scaled rules based on the original rules:
Loneliness: sqrt(1)^3 = 1
Breed: sqrt(3)^3 = 5.196152423 = 5
Overcrowd: sqrt(4)^3 = 8

That didn't work out so well, so with a little trial and error, I came to the final:
Loneliness: 2 (having 1 caused checkerboard walls everywhere)
Breed: 3-5
Overcrowd: 8

In due course, I plan to build in some form of "editor" because currently it just randomly places squares. I think that if you can specifically place some squares, it might produce some more interesting patterns.
زفاف
I believe that sentence was in reference to his school board elections. Later in the article he says "I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities."
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Yes. Part 2 could cover CNAMEs.
I'm constantly amazed at the cluelessness shown by officials. Sometimes I wonder if they're doing it just to troll us...
Steve Jobs’s Realization About Biology and Technology
How does it compare to the completions provided by rope?
The problem is too much focus on 'simple math', and not enough on numeracy.
Or he's in a profession that doesn't use much math at all, and has just forgotten it because his brain deemed it not important--even if he understood the principles behind geometry. There are formulas and theorems that those tests ask about specifically.

I think the more damaging thing about this article was his (and the author's) insistence that the math is not required for the majority of professions, and therefore, should not be required in high school. Basic education is liberal arts education, and, setting aside barista jokes, liberal arts education is about understanding a wide breadth of subjects. It is not, nor has it ever been, vocational training. Moreover, this type of math is absolutely imperative to some of our most needed (and oldest) professions, like engineering and construction, and some of the newer ones, like software engineering.

That aside, I agree with your point, and what you highlight is a problem with standardized test per se. People will always optimize for the variables by which they are measured. The trick is to align those incentives with the desired outcome of education.

As a postscript, the word you're looking for is "rote," not "wrote"--the former means learning by repetition, while the latter is the past tense of write. Since we're talking about education, this paragraph seemed appropriate.
These streams already exist. One of the major issues I see wit this is it assumes a child at 15 years old is capable of making this choice and understands all the implications. I think back to grades 9 thru 13 (Canadian), thank God it's not so long ago, but I realize decisions I made then were primarily based on emotion, testosterone and some social influence. Could I really have imagined life 15 years later? Absolutely not.
Really timely article. Thanks.

December is a good time to re-evaluate these sorts of things, and to book time for the ones requiring more effort (learning vim?) since many people have a lull at work at this time of year.

My own contribution to the OP is to encourage everyone to also create a "Pass" list of topics you had on your list but have chosen not to pursue (example in the OP was Shopify templates).

I find I need a list like that to stop my mind from revisiting those "I should learn" topics that I actually don't want to learn.
Yes Androidland Is Real
The chance that complex technology that has never been tested - works - is very close to zero.

That complex technology is freezing human bodies in attempt to preserve it for the future.

Even if in the future recovering technologies work - non-working first step (freezing) which is done today - will kill overall process.

http://aidevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/12/cryonics.html
He would have gotten his point across better if it wasn't presented as an expletive-filled "yeah? fuck you!" rant, which seems like the cool thing to do, these days.

Never mind the fact that this subject ("Use different passwords!") has been beaten into the ground at this point and if people haven't clued in by now, they likely won't until they're compromised.
How do you reconcile that position with the original article?
Unfortunately I do not think that the author of the article nor the board member who is its subject wants to replace current mathematical education with something more useful. They likely just want to dumb it down so that more students pass.
Why Do So Many Gifted Kids Think They Don't like Math?
Your point is well taken, but I can't help feeling that the original post and this entire discussion are ultimately worthless without specifics and examples regarding the test what the original author was complaining about.

Yes, we should confirm our biases with studies, but at an even more basic level, we don't even know what we're arguing about here.
Putting kids through years of proofs would not improve the situation. They would still call it dumb. They would still hate it. They'd probably hate it even more, because it's harder.

Moreover it's necessary to teach kids the basics before you teach them advanced concepts. Despite what the article might have you think, we do teach musical notation first. Kids learn that as they are first learning to play. Composition is reserved for the university.

Also, the inefficiency of math education in schools does not mean that what they teach is worthless. Certainly they could do better. And maybe making teenagers do hundreds of proofs would be better. But at the end of they day, the student who took calculus in high school is better prepared for college (and a scientific career) than a student who did not.
Watch Mobile: Innovation in cell phone
One of my ex-colleagues (in his 40s, and is exceptionally good in programming) continues to learn new stuff every day - often I'd find him learning some obscure programming language or algorithm, which he'd never ever use in his "day job" or "profession". I asked him why he does that, knowing well that he'd never use that knowledge - his answer was "you don't need to directly use everything you learn. the more you learn, the better you entire thinking faculty develops, and you'll solve your existing problems better/quicker".

Just because basic calculus (or other math) isn't used in our everyday life, doesn't mean it is wasteful to learn it. So yeah, I'm tired of that line too.
http://www.cymascope.com/soundsfun.html

Take a look at the second video. It seems that they're using something like the resonance plate here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf0t4qIVWF4

(Wikipedia suggests they're named Chladni plates? I've seen them before in a physics class, but I don't know if that's really their proper name or not. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni )

Edit: I didn't notice it before, but they actually demonstrate the same sort of device further down on the page, also calling it a 'Chladni plate'
There is a (mildly) compelling reason for every bank to have a stupid password rule...

Patrick, I think you're giving banks much more credit than they deserve. They are slow-moving monoliths that only respond to security issues when their profits noticeably drop.

Edit: And that's probably a smart tactic, as they aren't getting sidetracked from their primary mission of generating revenue.
How to write Koans for any Clojure library
1Password is apparently unusable without a required master password (as it should be), so failing to also protect the site list with it was a serious and lazy mistake. If you have nothing to hide, that only means you aren't doing anything controversial, which I regard as a personal failing.
The key is trust. Your company, should it be successful, would be "attacked" by the United States government. The attack would come in the form of a couple of well-dressed men in suits carrying badges but no guns, who would make an appointment, show up on time, and proceed to lay out the benefits to you of a cooperative agreement with the United States of America. They would perhaps be armed with one or more laws which would further encourage you, and those same laws would also prevent you from disclosing (even if you wished it, which you might not) that you've made that deal.

I would be interested in a service allowing me to change all my passwords at once. That's valuable. But not if it just makes my security worse. Trust in the company would be a major major factor. Ideally the company would be run by some known cypherpunk or other person who is morally opposed to making that deal with the government, and physically located in Switzerland or some other country where instant compliance with the United States government is less likely.

Your company and employees should also be bonded for some ludicrous amount of money, for damages resulting from any breach of your security, including intentional ones...

If your hypothetical company was incorporated in Delaware, headquartered in California, and run by some random guys who hope to win the startup lottery and sell out to McAfee or Symantec or whoever, then I can't imagine ever using your service at any price - I would perceive it as adding negative value (adding insecurity without adding security), so it would be something you'd have to pay me to use.
I don't think most US dev firms (and programmers that work for them - and independantly for that matter) don't realize the reality of the situation. I have contacted firms to build my project for 6 months in an attempt to find a firm to build my very specific project. I received quotes anywhere from $15k-$75k one at $250k (that firm said it charges that amount for any project they havent attempted in the past). Most were in the $30k range (because I specified that was my budget). I specified a budget simply because I discovered that the firms were giving bids a little higher than my budget.

So, when I budgeted $25k they would come in at $28k, etc. What did I learn from the process? None of them had a clue as to what I wanted despite my having 20 page build sheets, exact specifications of how it would work, etc. And the amazing thing is that this project is a version of what has been around for 10 plus years. Decided to finally use a firm in the bay area that outsources and that isnt going smoothly either.

As another example, look at the portfolio of the guy who blogged about outsourcing in the original post. Does he appear to have skills. Not from his portfolio. But he thinks he does.
Don
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If I hadn't had a family member willing to give up their upgrade for me, I would be locked into a phone running 1.6 until May 2012, one which has no custom ROMs.
2 Nuevos Negocios Para Ti
Taste of home soup
If you receive a sufficient number of up-votes, yes. I would recommend using simple language, and avoid digressing too deeply in to networking concepts. Keep in mind that HN is full of hackers, but it's also full of product people, sales people, and new-comers.

This is a good high-level write up for people who might know a little about how DNS works because they've configured a domain, but don't know a lot of detail about the different record types. I can see how a lot of people would find it interesting.
[How To] Get Started with VMware vCloud Connector 1.5 - Part 1
Men are over-represented in the management of nursing in relation to their proportion of the workforce.

I am not sure what you want me to say.
I would imagine there would be plenty more helpdesk calls regarding setting up the OTP or wondering why it hasn't arrived.
Copying files willy nilly without any etiquette around packaging doesn't seem like a good standard to me.
That's interesting. From what I understood of the article, to portray an existing object, they emit a constant sound, and the shape of the object modifies the sound which makes a unique sound (which is then transformed into an image by the receiving dolphin).

Therefore, to imagine an object they have to:

1) have the ability to create unique shape-sounds with their vocal clicks and

2a) had to have either seen/heard the shape before, OR

2b) have the ability to imagine what an imaginary object would sound like.

If research shows the way of conveying imaginary objects is 2a, that would mean dolphins are physically unable to convey abstract ideas (note: this wouldn't completely rule out abstraction, just the communication of it). If it's 2b, and they can communicate abstract concepts... that would be a monumentally profound discovery.
It's probably a J.D.,Psy.D.,Pharma.D. or some other "professional doctorate" abombination.

I blame the US for this hideous dilution of the title, and qualification of Doctor. While being a young curmudgeon I will also condemn the practice of M.D.s being called Doctor.
Personally I can't tell how thankful I am about Khan Academy because there are really mathematical concepts that I simply couldn't digest back when I was in high school mostly because I either got lost in 1-2 chapters (back then) and instead of understanding the concepts I ended up drowning in them.

You know what is even funnier? That after learning the logic behind programming I was able to perceive mathematical concepts under a whole different view and had so many fulfilling "oh that!" moments so far!
Well, like you said, the fare has to make up for the time the driver is idle, so that problem goes away. Licensing is done to ensure passenger safety, and sometimes to restrict supply. The computer is not going to drive drunk or kidnap you, and excess unproductive machinery can just drive itself to a city where there is more demand.

And the dead miles problem is not a big factor in places like Manhattan where utilization of taxis is high. If this system were pervasive, you could simply maintain a car or two per block.

The biggest issue would be dealing with the peak demand. Fortunately, heavy rail is complementary here, and it's only marginally less convenient when you have quick on-demand service to and from the train station. Demand-based taxi pricing would sort things out.
Here's a blog post by Eugene Kaspersky: http://eugene.kaspersky.ru/2011/12/05/polnaya-sopa/ (in Russian). Points:

* He doesn't like the fact that SOPA doesn't defend the interests of non-US based authors, while at the same time deals with non-US infringers. That is, you can infringe the rights of non-Americans everywhere but American's interests must be obeyed everywhere.

* BSA didn't even talk with their members before stating their position.

* SOPA opens a way for lawyers to sue the hell out of every website.

* He doesn't defend pirates, but he would become one if the only way to acquire music and movies were to buy CD/DVD.

He quotes someone: "There's a movie in the torrents. If I download it, I'm a criminal, if not -- I'm an idiot." Laws like SOPA divide the world into criminals and idiots.

He then goes on to say that the old way of distributing things ("the age of vinyl records") is dying and defending businesses that try to keep their current business models ("dinosaurs with nut-sized brains") with SOPA-like laws is akin to taxing email in favor of postal services, pricing Skype calls at the level of long-distance phone calls, etc.

He's position is:

1. Kill SOPA.

2. Retire dinosaurs.

3. Distribute content using new ways:

- Low quality -- for free.

- Medium quality -- cheap and fast.

- High (professional) quality -- expensive.

Finally, he says that his antivirus is not a product, it's a service that provides antiviral base updates, and he doesn't care how a user acquires his software.
Easy to criticize, hard to create
NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star
Show HN: Love To Pixel, a pixel editor written in JS
Launch of the first public Silk site: The Next Web Index — Silk Blog
s/will perform/are obligated to perform/

In most cases, EMS in the field is operating under a fairly tightly defined set of protocols. Those protocols define what is or isn't a valid "Advanced Directive"
You don't even need to address common problems or have any remotely interesting commentary whatsoever!
Note that you've gone from "It is not clear to me that it is sexist," to "She is wrong about the explanation."

That something isn't clear to you only means it isn't clear to you. She is in possession of an enormous volume of information about the situation. You aren't. The reasonable conclusion isn't "sexism is a redundant explanation"; it's "perhaps she has not revealed the information the led her to her conclusion".

Now ask yourself: why did you so quickly leap to the particular erroneous conclusion that sexism was not the problem? There are a lot of erroneous conclusions to come to. Or you could have come to none at all.
Tell HN: Domain Names for Startups; wrangled.com tacked.com and others
Below is a list of domains that are available for startups.

I don't have any affiliation with these names whatsoever.

It is a list passed around (today 12/5/11) in the domain business. If you are interested you can either post a reply and I will get you the contact info or you can check the whois (which may or may not have accurate contact info).

All of these names are available for $1000 apparently. Some of them seem good for startups but I honestly would like HN opinions (for use in a future idea I have along the same lines).

Wrangled.Com

Tacked.com

Zesto.com

Yoids.com

Whiney.com

Histogram.com

Abuser.com

RightAhead.com

SingleBoy.com

PerfectMove.com

Franchisement.com

Buaz.com

NLoops.com

SocializeCloud.com

ServerCash.com

CloudDomains.com

Zuxx.com

IHZA.com

SocLive.com

Brauts.com

Midpriced.com

Bluj.com

Xeam.com

Cyah.com

Matoca.com

iFilmy.com
You are disagreeing with the premise - that the skills being measured are not necessary. I nominally agree with you.

But I'm asking people who agree with the premise whether they also agree with the logical conclusion - if the tested skills are unnecessary for most/all, why not stop teaching them, fire teachers and reduce spending on education commensurately?
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This is sort of silly.

I'm sure if the man actually prepared for the test, he would have done much better. Hell, I've taken standardized tests, gotten very good scores, but if I had to take them RIGHT NOW without any preparation, I'd probably fail them.
I built this application to make health insurance plan comparison easier. It allows you to experiment with different possible health scenarios and estimates your annual health care cost under different plans.

It helped me identify a plan that was much more cost-effective than others.
The new version 3.2.1 of JS Auto Form Validator was released
I think it's a great idea, actually. No matter how secure your online identity is, I could see a useful service where you can control/limit access from a centralized location. I'm not certain I could justify that price for just this lone feature (particularly for someone who is already meticulous about their identity management).

I'm actually working on a privacy-centric solution in a similar vein (though I didn't quite have this feature in mind) and have a few ideas on how something like this might be monetized. I intend to pursue these ideas myself, but happy to discuss some of them with you over email, if you're interested.

If you are, <my initials> (at) nobulb.com should do the trick. :)
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That is the first time I've ever seen what you look like.
The man's multiple degrees are meaningless without knowing where they're from. We live in a world where literally anyone can enroll in the University of Phoenix. In fact, I've heard many people in the education field do so because union contracts guarantee them raises, regardless of where a degree is from.

That one man rose to power in government and obtained degrees, despite poor math and reading skills, doesn't surprise me much less outrage me.
Actually, my guy was employed at a big IT shop (Microsoft, not an outsourcing shop). He quit since he felt he was stagnating.
Success, education, intelligence, and credentials are all available independently of each other. If they were binary, you could find all 16 combinations in spades. (Probably not uniformly distributed, but I'm sure I could come up with anecdotes for SeIc or SEiC or any other combination if I needed an editorial written.)

With particular relevance to this article, "I am successful and well-credentialed, ergo, if a test suggests that I am not educated or intelligent, that test must be faulty" is not by itself very persuasive to me.
Which is quite meaningless. Organizations of that size will have at least a few data analysts, data mining specialists either in-house or on contract, and tons of tools created to help C-level management understand the complex data the organization generates. My cursory understanding of this man's profession is to make friends, maintain relationships, and occasionally "understand" the pretty charts that the data analysts produce for him. It's no wonder he doesn't need much in the way of intellectual horsepower to execute his responsibilities.
Mobile Morning Coffee (12/05/11)
Haa. Sonia Gandhi is not technically part of the government. But of course she is more powerful than the government.
It is funny how much people who don't contribute to the world think they get to tell other people what to do.
Now to setup buoys around Japanese fishing grounds that echo "Danger!"
Ask HN: who is hiring for Clojure?
Anyone?
The article doesn't even say what state the gentleman comes from, and the tests still vary state-to-state. That's changing, with PARCC[1], but that's not really relevant to this article.

[1]http://parcconline.org/about-parcc

Virgina releases their tests every year (most states don't; it's expensive), and since this is the WaPo, it could be a VA test. Here's a link to their 2010 exam: http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/released_tests/2010/...

edit: It's unlikely he's from VA, though, because VA doesn't do a standardized 10th grade math test. They give End-of-Course tests instead; statewide finals, essentially.
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Trust will play a major role over here. But a service of this sort would a great thing.

Very much required in times like these.