skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I remember hearing things like this before the indoor smoking ban a few years ago. People said it was part of what bars and clubs were for.

In particular, New York City establishments said people who came in from the suburbs and brought money in would stop coming in.

The ban was successful. A year or two later Hoboken passed a ban because people were increasingly going into the city for the cleaner indoor air they couldn't get in Hoboken.

As a New Yorker of over two decades, I'd love to see such a ban here, perhaps with some areas, like Times Square, zoned to allow it. As with smoking, I expect a large majority would support it once implemented.
Yes, I'm merely pointing out that Finland is not all that equal, and in many ways is less equal than the US. It's just hard to see this effect, due to Finland's homogeneity.

I've never made the claim that immigrants cause non-immigrants to perform badly, nor have I heard anyone else make this claim. What is the proposed mechanism? Bad study habits of non-immigrants rub off on native children or something? (I've heard of some yuppies in NYC trying to do the opposite, and make their kids socialize with Asian kids, but I've never seen data on this.)
"pulled us out of iraq"? sorry but you are just making shit up.
It was questionable when Henry Kissinger won it.
Wonder If this is explained away by huge gap in socioeconomic status of average black home schoolers, compared to the average black public school family; while status differences for white homeschool compared to white public school fama wouldn't be that pronounced.
It doesn't matter. You don't dismantle the Bill of Rights just because you have to delay the military salaries for one month, until Congress rewrites the bill.

The problem with Obama is that Congress knows he's, for lack of a better word, a coward. So they know that they can push his hand how much they want, because he won't do anything dramatic to react and fight back. That's why Obama has kept losing all his negotiations or he always "compromised" for the other side's sake.

So bottomline, he should've taken a stand and vetoed it, and let that be a lesson for Congress for next time. But he didn't do that. And if you're going to say "but Congress would've passed it anyway with 2/3 of the vote" - well then, even more of a reason to veto it and show his supporters that at least tried to stop it, but Congress was solely at fault for passing it. Since he didn't, Obama doesn't get to have any excuses in this case.
How I Learned to Love Functional Programming
"There's a lot of money to be made in freemium"

I haven't heard this before. In fact, I've read about just the opposite (http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-...)

Do you have any links? (Not talking free here, like Facebook, but freemium.)
Contacts: Command line access to your OS X AddressBook
Projected usage. It can be done, but you have to be an expert basically.
We were actually surprised at the lack of results relative to more traditional media and PR coverage. Getting celebrity tweets helps to get a few users, but it won't get you close to 100k in a few months if you don't do the other things right.
Indeed. I took my iPad in because it kept losing its wifi connection. The "genius" looked at all that apps along the bottom and declared that they were using so much memory that the OS was forgetting the wifi password.
It's extremely likely, given the criticality of the legislation to the military, that his veto would have been overridden by Congress. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to pick your fights.

Then again, I'm extremely angry at him about this, too, so... Yeah, whatever. Heh. Though really I'm angry about the overall civil liberties history of the administration. This is just the proverbial straw.
I am so glad that we voted for a President because now we can vote his ass out.
I think the crux of your argument is that there's a danger in isolating any part of one culture and trying to compare it to another. I completely agree. A culture is a highly complex set of interactions and taking one piece of it and trying to isolate it in a lab, as it were, is pretty difficult.

I think you're being unfair to "academics" though by accusing them "europhilia" (in fact, the author of this article is a Finnish journalist living in the US). I think Europe is an attractive place to look for comparisons because there are so many countries there that it's easy to find a lot of contrast. And the cultures there do have more in common with ours than those in other parts of the world.

But it's not like these sorts of comparison are made exclusively with Europe. In fact, it seems as if there have been a deluge of comparisons made in recent years between Asian (and especially Chinese) education and that in the US; with the conclusion being that US students aren't challenged or judged harshly enough and therefore are far behind their Chinese counterparts in STEM.

If anything this article seems to be written as a response to those people making comparisons with China: demonstrating a system that seems to be excelling with less rather than more standardization.
Love the idea, but the name is going to limit your market reach (if this is actually the final name).
IOS Closes Out The Year With 52% Mobile Web Market Share
It's worth noting that indefinite detention is legal now, regardless of what Obama says his administration will do.
Code is on github: https://github.com/dhess/contacts/
"I, too, disregarded Stallman as way too extreme... Only a short while ago I would've declared this as pure paranoia - but with all that's been going on recently, it's no longer paranoia."

I considered him extreme until I thought more about it, then came to agree with him on most major points...

... that was in 1993.

Glad to see others here.
I agree that there's probably some credibility to arguments that English students underperform because of difficulties in learning to read an unusually inconsistent written language.

That said, Finns themselves tend to learn speak and read English rather well as a second language by the time they leave school; a practical necessity for international business or travel but not very easy considering the lack of cognates shared between the languages. And despite its consistent orthography Finnish has enough other sources of complexity to be rated as a fiendishly difficult language to pick up as a second language.

On the subject of phonics, it sounds like UK primary education is due to head in the opposite direction to US with compulsory phonics instruction for youngsters, including the hugely controversial recommendation for standardised tests on the ability to pronounce made-up words. I doubt we'll be overtaking Finland any time soon though.
This is the second post you've made ascribing views to me that I never expressed. Please go reread whatever posts you believe I wrote about a "superior race theory", I believe you'll discover that I didn't write them.
If my encrypted disk becomes corrupted and then corrupts my unencrypted backup, what's the difference?
Nintendo ds r4 cards
Nintendo DS r4 card is very best for the gaming lovers who love to play R4DS very much on their Nintendo DS & lite console and also getting lots of fun and truly gaming experience.
Wait  It's not just Stuxnet or DuQu , Kaspersky reveals 5 more cousins
Yes, as a long term strategy, that's definitely needed. And I also think we should write something like the Bill of Rights for the Internet.

But, for now, with so little time left, I think it's much more important to send the message that any politician who supports SOPA can kiss goodbye to their political career. The same goes for companies supporting it - massive short term and long term boycotts.
Good article but I disagree that supporting "Android (not Google) even though you like IOS" is a valid strategy for openness. android is all about monitoring and datamining the user. Sad to see the good old openmoko project die.
Richard Stallman also thinks necrophilia (http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html) and "voluntary pedophilia" (http://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05) should be legal, including possession of child pornography. Maybe not the best spokesperson to get behind.
> we should be there for 100 more years

You make several good points, but I'd like to remind you that pulling out of Iraq now is very risky. If Iraq becomes a theocracy (either through a civil war or - gasp - free elections), the US will probably be compelled to invade it again. By now, it seems that the cycle of invasion-rebuild-pullout is more profitable to the political-military-industrial complex than a single continuous invasion.

It's a war that should never have been started. Saddam Hussein was not a complete idiot and I am quite sure a negotiated transition over, say, 20 years, to a democratic society would have been possible.
Simple and useful
I did a three-year postdoc in math at Stanford. I was blown away by just how good the senior faculty were in their research areas, and how successful they were in motivating, challenging, inspiring, and guiding (in short: educating) students.
My brother and I were in a Best Buy in MN last month, and I was trying to buy the first season of the Muppets TV show as a gift for my nephew. I asked an attendant if they had any and where they were. This resulted in her going over to a terminal and talking to another attendant. I didn't follow, but my brother was close enough to hear the conversation. The inventory said they had 8 copies in the store. She went and looked on a couple of shelves then returned to the computer. It sounded like it was not just simple loss, but some might be in back. She came back over to me and told me the computer said they were all out.
heh - I can't say I realised ed was still under active development - but the joke man page made me chuckle.
In Sec. 1021 (the one about indefinite detention power), it clearly states:

(e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be
construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to
the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident
aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are
captured or arrested in the United States.

So, how does this give the president the supposed power to detain US citizens? (The oft quoted 'slippery' line about not requiring detention Americans is from the NEXT section, which is specifically about requiring detentions in some cases.
You're going to have a fairly hard time getting asylum unless you can show political persecution of yourself (unfortunately simple overall tyranny does not count).
Appification: Will Apps Save or Spoil Digital Media Consumption?
While two years ago, they were nothing but novelty, apps have now gotten out of hand, media consumption wise.
Got a good pointer to setting a firmware password?
A little late to the party. I blame the hangover I had yesterday :)

Social Tables (http://www.socialtables.com), a funded, DC-based startup is looking for a Senior Developer/VP of Engineering (employee #1, wahoo!).

If you immediately thought that this startup makes databases social, you're the kind of person we're looking for and you'll fit right in. Please read on :)

Social Tables is the seating plan platform for events. You know how weddings, galas and other large events have assigned seating? Well, the biggest PITA in planning these events is figuring out how to seat guests (it can take weeks). Our cloud-based software solves that problem.

Since launching in May 2011, we've seated 43k guests at 450 different events. We're expanding rapidly through big strategic partnerships and aggressive customer acquisition.

In this role, your responsibilities will be to lead product development of our next version. We prefer Rails but if PHP is your weapon of choice, that's cool. You should also be proficient in JavaScript since things will be a little heavier on the client-side going forward.

You must be a motivated self-starter who is energized by teamwork and loves to learn new things.

Traction aside, right now is the perfect time to join Social Tables and we would love to tell you why. In addition to competitive compensation, you will get serious equity (we agree with Naval in his recent post on this issue - http://startupboy.com/2011/12/13/why-you-cant-hire/).

If this sounds interesting to you, email me: dan [at] socialtables dot [com!]

Thanks for reading and applying!
> What was the last thing you bought that was directly attributable to seeing a street advertisement at a location?

You've never bought some food from a street vendor? Or gone in a coffee shop and bought a bagel? Or made a photocopy after seeing a shop on the street?
How I Cold Called Derek Sivers and Got a Paid Work-Vacation (Woodegg)
> the guy who actually said and then did get bin Laden

I'm fairly sure that Obama himself didn't "get" bin Laden. The army worked to get information on his whereabouts, and the opportunity presented itself to the President. I'm fairly certain that, aside from discussions about tactical moves, all Obama did to "get" him was give the army the go-ahead for the operation.

> the guy who pushed for and signed a law that is as close to healthcare reform as anyone has gotten since Medicare was enacted almost 50 years ago

Which was itself mostly a sleazy compromise like DADT, barely worth celebrating.

---

Perhaps I was too hard on Obama. But his administration has been a failure on the whole, especially compared to the FDR-like, sweeping political moves promised during his election.
MAME Arcade Game Emulator Now Available For Google Chrome
Is pairing efficient when the two developers use different editors (or even different keybindings)?
I feel my IQ drop by 30 points when I can't use my customized Emacs and I dont know if the benefits of pairing are enough to counter this.
I think this is generally a good idea, but in the iPad/Kindle era, not sure how much of a problem battery life is going to be.
"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer#Departure_from_the_m...
Building products from improvised user behaviors
Google Maps to Charge for API Usage
I use red, not ed. You can't be too careful.
For one thing, that zooming capability means the makers of a single digital map are forced to design dozens of differently scaled versions.

How so? Aren't digital maps just a database of items that are rendered in real time?
This, however, is not "impact-less": when running truly memory-intensive games, they will experience performance degradation while the OS performs cleanup and shutdown of the various applications "hibernating".

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is mostly due to how memory warnings are staged.

I think the sequence is: OS sends a level 1 memory warning to any running applications. Then it starts killing backgrounded apps. If it kills 'em all and memory is still tight, running apps get level 2'ed. Then it starts killing running apps.

So a well behaved game that's running close to the capabilities of the device is likely to do a bunch of stuff that will impact its performance when it gets that level 1 warning. It's going to purge caches and otherwise free a bunch of memory, and you'll see stutter. Furthermore if Mail.app and friends are running, they are probably also going to get warned and eat some time cutting memory use.

Again, I don't know the exact cost, but I think killing suspended processes is pretty cheap and it is really the memory warnings that cause a stutter.
> The only lesson the US can really draw from this is that if we reduced the number of immigrants we have, our average scores would go up. So what? Raising averages due to composition changes is pointless.

Nowadays, Finland has much of the same rate of immigration than US. Historically it has not been so. But today, around 20000 people move into Finland every year. Whereas the US gets a bit more than one million new inhabitants. Finland has 1/60th of the population of US. The performance is still better, though there is the same ratio of first-generation immigrants.

And I'd guess a lot less people relocating around the world know Finnish than the dominant teaching language in the US...
Using the Dropbox API from Haskell
You don't think there are any genetic differences between people?

The mind is plastic, but there's a strong genetic component too...and this all has been debated soooo much...

I find it natural - not hard at all - to think in the abstract for extended periods. Most people don't.

Also I agree with you that it's a slippery slope. But only if you choose the wrong ski lift: The ski lift of assholeness. (How's this analogy going?) The truth is, there are plenty of facts out there that you could use to become an asshole with. Like the fact that your little brother is physically weaker than you. But that doesn't mean that you should beat him up. And it doesn't change the truth.
WSJ - 10 Tech Wishes for 2012
One of the links from that page led me to this mini-documentary which was quite interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Nmnv0Ospg
Ironically, blue color trades have known that since their inception. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc all mix book work with hands on training. Why shouldn't all academics follow that proven method (after all, MD's do - can you imagine going to a doctor that only leaned from a book?).
Why People Say the World Will End In 2012
As a citizen of a country very strongly allied with the US, but not an American citizen myself, that statement scares me.
I can't make out if you mean noteworthy or note worthy?
GGN: Iran Acting Like Cornered Prey, Syrian Protesters Now Rebels
Very cool, I did not know that somebody had already gone and made a programming language like this. In watching the first ~10 minutes of the demo video [1] my thoughts were "Yes, this is a perfect example of where a table could be better than if/else," then when the warning indicators popped up at 5:50 "hmm, boolean algebra is still hard," and then at 7:30 with the demo of fibonacci/recursion "exploded expression trees that must be manipulated by mouse... let's go shopping."

But still, a lot of interesting thinking went into something like this, and it makes you wonder if it would be appropriate to "embed" a similar interface into an IDE for manipulating complex switch case/elseif chains.

[1] http://subtextual.org/subtext2.html
You quote in Russia have nothing to do with 'restricting access' to the Internet. I don't care about gov's propaganda, because I am free. I don't own a TV, I don't read newspapers, so they can't reach me.
Average tickets that I see from Columbus to NYC, Boston or SF are between $310 and $375
That is like an organizational intranet interface, not a backdoor. A backdoor would have to give access to an undesired third party by the end user.
Meh. Those of us who run ed-nightly have already enjoyed those features since New Year's Eve. <3 Gentoo.
Suggestion: don't use the iPhone for screenshots. I say this because I saw its chrome on the homepage and my immediate thought was that I'd have to get everyone in my carpool to own an iPhone and download an app (which isn't damn simple).

Perhaps show it running on a simple device, i.e. a stylized or even cartoony phone instead.
I actually found studying ed (while reading _The Unix Programming Environment_ by Kernighan and Pike) to be really helpful in understanding sed and vim in more depth.
Two questions:

1. What has this to do with education?
2. Doesn't America benefits from European / (or Asian, etc) innovations?
Downvoted?

The movie shows before and after images and interviews people there, directly answering the question of the post I responded to.

After seeing the movie I even looked online to see if anyone posted those specific scenes (of São Paulo) online. I didn't find any, but if anyone else found them, please let me know.
Hi
high frequency transistors
By that argument, everything is bound to fail because there are a thousand variables in a society and a school system.

And yet another sidetrack not based on facts to add to my list:

* No, Finland's schools are not more disciplinarian than elsewhere. The reason Finnish pupils are not enjoying school is because they lack motivation: watching TV and hanging out with friends etc. is more fun than studying and everybody gets a good education for free anyway.

And no, the rest of Europe definitely doesn't match Finland in equality (income equality, gender equality, whatever you mean), let alone their schools doing that.
This article is just a complete non sequitur. The Stallman angle has nothing to do with any of the problems it cites. Free software wouldn't prevent Obama from signing an indefinite detention bill, it won't stop the government from forcing ISPs and DNS roots to do harmful things — the benefits of free software are completely different things.
"It's extremely likely, given the criticality of the legislation to the military, that his veto would have been overridden by Congress. "

Maybe. Or they could drop the problematic bit and redo it. Either way, the paychecks would go out.
Iberian Peninsula Seen from NASA’s Earth Observatory
If you think the public sector is bad in the USA, it's nothing like the EU. Y'know the way all EU workers have employment benefits that put USA workers to shame? Well EU public sector workers have employment benefits that put private sector EU workers to shame.
Hard to say. I'm a very friendly person and I really like getting to know my coworkers. Some environments are better than others I guess. While I wasn't a "coworker" with them, I made a ton of good friends at the betahouse coworking loft in Cambridge.
This looks super useful, but I would be afraid to rely on it in a production environment because it adds another external dependency.

Not sure if you are thinking of open sourcing this, but if you did it would be great. I could see this packaged as a gem, so people could easily add this to their own stack. And if the gem also implemented some kind of caching scheme, so images would only be generated once, it would be even awesomer.
*São Paulo
Because the president says so. Seems to be the justification for a lot of things.
> In terms of pure education, most US universities are far below many others elsewhere.

Is there any empirical evidence supporting this assertion?

If you look at Business School rankings, for example, US Universities are 5 of the top 10. Source: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ran...

Quacquarelli Symonds University Rankings also have US Universities rated quite high
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-uni...

7 of the top 10 for CS are US: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-uni...

6 of the top 10 for Medicine:
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-uni...

6 of the top 10 for Philosophy:
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-uni...
Thanks scott_w.
How many startups here use pairing? Anecdotal evidence tells me its mostly used by consultancies (Pivotal Labs and Hashrocket are others that come to mind).
Firebug May Die Soon
thanks for the mention. I'm hoping to improve http://jobstractor.com in the new year so any feedback from HNers would be welcome.
To that end, also give consideration to a screenshot of a (or, similarly, a stylized/cartoony) browser on Google Voice or a similar service. Don't even have to have a phone to easily carpool, then.
What's wrong with that word?
Don't forget that the Amiga demo was probably (optimized) machine code while this demo is in JavaScript. That should add a factor 1000 to 10000 to your estimate. Which sounds correcter, as so much more has happened other than increase of processor frequency.
Given a sufficiently large monitor, it's fine. I (Emacs user) routinely pair with a Vim-using coworker; we just put Emacs on one half of the screen and Vim on the other.

The only thing you need after that is for both editors to automatically refresh when a file changes on disk. With Emacs, you can get that with "(global-auto-revert-mode 1)" in your init.el. You can make Vim auto-refresh too, though I'm not sure how.