skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> We asked adults who say the public education system is going in the wrong direction why that might be. About half or more say the following are major reasons:

> Schools not spending enough time on core academic subjects, like reading, math, science and social studies (69%)
> Teachers bringing their personal political and social views into the classroom (54%)
> Schools not having the funding and resources they need (52%)

As someone who has lots of friends in conservative circles, these sentiments ring true. (I am surprised "health decisions / vaccine mandates" aren't in the list.)

A lot of my wife's friends are choosing to homeschool, and #2 on that list is their primary reason. They acknowledge its likely a minority of teachers engaging in that behavior, but their feeling is "it only takes one" to ruin the entire school experience for their kid, and create a ton of problems for them to deal with at home.

(Disclaimer: we homeschool for reason #1 and because my wife was homeschooled and it's a comfortable way for her to run our schedule and home.)
I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but you won't find much sympathy for this viewpoint on this forum :)
Implementing the logic for this sort of card game is quite tricky. Your natural inclination as a software dev will be to make some sort of effect enum, tag cards with their effects, and then have a generic "do this card" function that will look up handlers for each effect and execute them (or the object-oriented equivalent). This runs into issues with edge cases where actually you need particular effects to be aware of one another and change behavior accordingly, breaking you cleanly separated architecture. You start piling on and shoving in special handling logic with no clear home. The nature of these games invites spaghetti.
I'm more surprised that half say it's going in the right direction.
You can set up raspberry pi to act as bridge or even setup email printing/etc.
Not sure that "being able to hit undo" and "no harm done!" is what makes blowing things up enjoyable, but to each his own.
Quantum Computers Can Now Run Powerful AI That Works Like the Brain
yep, I had fun watching the Ben Eater videos where he builds a retrocomputer out of them. I even bought some of the chips to build a simple 4-bit counter with up/down buttons. It was a real revelation to understand that concept, and I ended up looking at an Apple I motherboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#/media/File:CopsonAppl...) and noticed the regular array of 74xx chips connected by some elegantly laid-out wires.
Deciphering medieval shorthand – can a digital tool solve the 'Tironian Notes'?
Large discussion yesterday [0] (687 points, 162 comments)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40117599
Peruse r/teachers subreddit to get some of the vibe of teaching.

Here’s the second highest post of all time https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/s/FQCaxMsQrC

The major issues as I have observed are:

Can’t expel disruptive kids. Schools pass students regardless if they learn the material, and now a significant portion of high school students in America can barely read. Teachers are mostly doing daycare instead of teaching. Phones everywhere which distracts kids.

And most importantly: advanced kids are no longer removed from gen pop and put into their own smart kid bubble. Identifying gifted kids and giving them more difficult material is the single most important thing we need to do as a society for K12 education.
You trying to make this about me? I'm just the messenger. Restaurant margins don't support increased wages without passthrough to customers. People already bitch about the overhead associated with tipping waitstaff, one can easily extrapolate how they'd react to the changes in restaurant prices associated with labor costs tripling. If that makes you sad take it up with your neighbors.
I can't help but think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves about the aftermath of the splitting of the moon.
+1 for DK.
> Wouldn't a new book be a better example for effect? The student copies from a new book and returns it, saving a lot of money?

Books can't simply be returned (unless still shrink-wrapped), it's a sell-back process, and the spread is much narrower for a used book. For example: $200 new, $120 used, $80 sell-back. The author uses the word "return" to mean visiting the store, not to mean perfectly reversing the original transaction.
Chicago Public Schools spends $30,000 per student per year on some of the worst outcomes in all of education. It's clearly not sufficient to just "fund" education.
do you like rule 110 better than conways game?
On a related note, here's a throwback for old-timers: https://adagide.martincarlisle.com/
Teachers are often wrong about the best ways to teach. See the popularity of "whole language" learning over Phonics for a good example in teaching fads being detrimental to literacy across the board.
Living in a city is like being in a trance. The experience reminds me of Insomnia.
Isn't that a question of incentives, though?

Modern people residing on Earth don't generally have to be self sufficient for months. Even in isolated places like the South Pole during winter, windows of opportunity for transport to civilization open here and now.

On the other hand, the Sentinelese are self sufficient. Yeah, on a primitive level, but they manage it, because they simply have to. None of us here on HN would be able to live like the Sentinelese.

If someone really dumps a hundred people on a distant planet, they have to prepare the mission to be self-sufficient for at least a year or two.
> Chinese culture has resulted in substantially more prosperity being created than the US has managed over the last 50 years and it is obvious they are doing something better

Perhaps, although even with three times as many people the GDP of China is still less than that of the US. We should also ask in both cases "prosperity for whom" and "at what cost" (and to whom as that cost fallen). The median American is still wildly better off than the median Chinese resident, as can be seen from the migration flows.

Not to mention that Taiwan is not, despite all the polite fictions, China, and TSMC is anyway a unique project. You might as well ask "can we clone Morris Chang?"
The way I see it, you aren't really locked into any decisions when you're 16. If you fit pipes or whatever for 2 years and decide it isn't for you there is plenty of time to change paths.
> At a certain size, cities seem to tip from "there's always somewhere quality to eat" to "there are more people than places."

Nope. There's always somewhere quality to eat. It's just as true in NYC as it is everywhere else.

The reservations described in the article are just there to provide a certain Fine Dining Experience. If you don't want that, go to different restaurants. They are not in short supply.
China's small towns thrive as more opt out of demanding megacity life
Taking regular screenshots of my website
>massive red line and a huge escalation that pretty much nobody wants.

This is what Russia would like you to believe (and to repeat on their behalf). Much of Russian propaganda is aimed at instilling fear in target populations. The goal is to demoralize their adversaries' civilians in order to undermine support, hence political and military will for opposing them.

Russia has been dictating the terms and rattling the saber with nuclear threats, etc. from the start. Initially, Putin wanted people to believe he was so irrational that he'd use nukes at any provocation. But, the fact that he threatened instead of simply using them was the clearest sign that he's rational and doesn't want this war to escalate. The worst possible thing for Russia is for the West to fully commit.

In short, if using nukes was advantageous to Russia, they'd have already used them. On the conventional front, they need to feel some actual risk. Otherwise, they commit to an ongoing war of attrition where theirs is the bigger population/force and it's Ukrainian cities that are being leveled. Time is on Russia's side.

So, it's already a war. The West either wins it or loses it, and you don't win on your enemy's terms. Aiming for a stalemate and "negotiated peace" (which Russia won't honor in any case) is extraordinarily costly, especially when the war is being fought exclusively on your (or your ally's) territory. i.e., it's a loss.

The West needs to realize it's in a war and go on the offensive, politically and militarily. Redeploy Russia's frozen assets to support Ukraine's reconstruction, defense, and war-fighting capability. Provide more offensive weapons to go after military targets inside of Russia. Re-establish air-superiority and consider establishing NATO no-fly zones around civilian population centers. In addition to changing the military situation, strong moves like these will signal that the West is resolved to a degree that will dramatically raise the risks for Russia, ultimately prompting a recalculation.
It doesn't add up. 12/7 ≈ 1.7 > 1.2

Also, counting weekends would be dishonest without pointing it out. A full-time job is eight hours per day, not 5.7.
I also read the article and felt that the tone was weird. Much of what's described is unsurprising in a for-profit business. The fact that these big companies are willing to publish so many unprofitable books seems like a good thing to me. And if you don't want to work with big publishing there are many avenues.

I'm not sure what the author wants from the big publishers. Should they stop publishing hits, spend more money marketing books that won't sell, and then declare bankruptcy?

I do appreciate the opportunity to learn more about what a bad deal traditional publishing can be for authors. Seems like valuable information for anyone who wants to start writing professionally.
FWIW, the poll is among adults, not adults with children. I'm willing to bet most respondents don't have kids currently in public K-12 schools or don't have experience with this.
you say "The problem is the economic impact on artists" like it's a bad thing that artists are concerned about their livelihood being taken by greedy corporations
Meta and Open
The implied reason is that it shortens the list of available IDs substantially.
I don't think it is cost cutting I think it is preparing for the future where things are automated and they don't need human intervention. Example Tesla does a great of auto cancelling the turn signa if the setting is enabledl. Auto wipers, not so much.
That is an orthogonal discussion.

I need masonry layouts a lot and tend to be on the "we don't need another display class" side in this debate. But that's unrelated to my "rant".
I buy used books all the time, sometimes several per month. And I pre-ordered a new book for which I am pretty excited. "Speaking"in universals (the irony of this statement is not lost on me) is unwise.
Compound from thistle promotes functional nerve regeneration
> followed by `const`

Const can only ever possibly have a performance impact when used directly on variables. const pointers / references are purely for the benefit of the programmer - the compiler can assume nothing because the variable could be modified elsewhere or through another pointer/reference and const_cast is legal anyway unless the original variable was const.
Half will always say it is going the wrong direction based on who is in the White House at the time.
Also the head of the teacher’s union sends her own kids to a private Catholic high school.

When the people who run the system won’t even send their own kids there, you know it’s terrible.
You're not going to like this: that degree cost me nothing financially - I didn't pay any fees and I got a full grant which was more than enough to live on and have a nice flat in central Edinburgh.

Edit: Turns out this was a pretty good investment by the taxpayers of the UK...
> the combination of the two still seems worth investigating

This.

Back in the late 1980's and early 90's the debate-du-jour was between deliberative and reactive control systems for robots. I got my Ph.D. for simply saying that the entire debate was based on the false premise that it had to be one or the other, that each approach had its strengths and weaknesses, and that if you just put the two together the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts. (Well, it was a little more than that. I had to actually show that it worked, which was more work that simply advancing the hypothesis, but in retrospect it seems kinda obvious, doesn't it?)

If I were still in the game today, combining generative-AI and old-school symbolic reasoning (which has also advanced a lot in 30 years) would be the first thing I would focus my attention (!) on.
In my middle school we had to take a rotating vocational program, where each quarter your class was shifted into a new room and teacher to learn something new. I learned to sew in that program (but alas, since there were six areas and four quarters, I didn't get to do them all and didn't get to try cooking, which would have been fun).

Some sort of program to allow the early people to intern through myiple different trades would be interesting. They'd be like interns, and get to see a little about each of some different vications (so e selected, some semi-random) for a month each, then get to choose what they like, or qualify for or have aptitude in.
A mix of people who are known and good readers and some on Reddit /r/hfy
The article is meh. Election year. Partisan politics. Repeats the same set of points 3 times. It can be safely skipped.

But I will note that we quite deliberately sent our kids to a well-regarded public school system in our state and it went from pretty nice to nearly a warzone in the last 10 years. When our daughter started Kindergarten there, the school had a big emphasis on positivity, accommodating kids with special needs, and a strong anti-bullying policy.

Since then, all of the classrooms have devolved from learning to daycare. From the outside, I see these as the main causes: 1) Incompetent management and leadership from the superintendent all the way down to the teachers. 2) Removal of separate classrooms and teachers equipment to handle students with special needs. Now all of the students with behavioral and emotional problems are placed in regular classrooms and whole days go by without any actual learning happening due to disruptions caused by the special needs kids. 4) Bullying, verbal abuse, and physical abuse is fully tolerated with no reprecussions at all. Teachers and staff have no power to punish or remove bullies from the school.

My son has been particularly impacted by this. He's a bright and friendly kid, but gullible, and you'd frankly be shocked how abusive and manipulative 8 to 10 years old with shitty parents can be.

We are actively moving our son from that school and into a STEM-centric school farther away, in the hopes that the educational and emotional damage he has suffered there won't leave too big a scar going forward.
I have a new family member that's a teacher and she says she basically talks to a brick wall while every kid in class messes around on their phones. She's not allowed to do anything about it.
I think this is great for letting "the small guys" in on investing in something they back and support. I'm all for it and will likely apply.
Meanwhile, I would never dream of ordering groceries outside of specialty items through Amazon. They are prohibitively expensive on most food items that have any sort of weight compared to Walmart and Instacart. Granted, I don't have a Whole Foods nearby.
You can start with an apprenticeship and continue towards a BSc and beyond as you mature an realize you'll benefit from further education. There are plenty of bridges from the vocational school track, all the way to proper universities.

I greatly enjoyed high school in Switzerland because it is selective and 70% of my middle school classmates didn't make it.
Why is there so much focus on public education and aversion to private options like charter schools? I feel like this has turned into an ideological battle of left versus right in the US. Consumer choice and competition benefit society in virtually all other areas, so why not here? Personally I think the one size fits all nature of public schooling, how they are funded, how curriculum are determined by state agencies, and how teachers politics (individually and through unions) influences education have all contributed to a decay in quality of education despite lots of funding. At least where I am, funding per student has gone up dramatically over the last 10 years but parents universally say schooling is worse than ever.

It’s also interesting seeing the gaps on certain questions:

> Teachers bringing their personal views into the classroom (76% vs. 23%)

If you are on the political side that is benefiting from teachers bringing their personal political views into the classroom, then you would not view it as a problem since it benefits your ideology. If you are on the other political side, then you would see it as a problem since it is a use of institutions to spread your political opponents influence.
Perhaps by counting non-class days such as weekends, vacation and exam days? A semester at my school was 62 instruction days, so 3 * (62 / (365/3)) is about 1.5.
I'm a little confused - is this just a wrapper around https://alire.ada.dev/ ? That tool itself isn't very hard to install.
I did a bit of homework before posting this, and there were just enough Hacker News hits on "AMA" (from Sam Altman, Peter Roberts, etc.) that it didn't look like there would be any harm in trying this experiment.

I could certainly try an "Ask HN" at some point, but haven't been able to think exactly what question I would ask. "How many people know what a reverse caber tosser is?" is one that I'm curious about, but I suspect I'd get mostly just crickets. Really I wanted other people to ask questions... and I'm having lots of fun with the results so far!
Thank you, glad you got to enjoy our little warp visual effect!
Please don't project. I am not in that camp and I suspect many others are not.
The article says it depends on your party affiliation. democrats tend to think funding is the biggest issue. republicans are caught up in reactive culture war nonsense. basically all of American politics at the moment...
Naperville's school district (USD 203) 45 min west of Chicago spends ~$20k/year per student on substantially better outcomes. Why? Because, broadly speaking, you can't fix student parents and home life in the classroom (Naperville median household income is $135,772).

https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/illinois/districts/nape...

Related: This is a teenager - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774 - April 2024 (811 comments)

https://pudding.cool/2024/03/teenagers/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKv1Mixv0Hk
ah, the life of an extrovert... it must be nice
And the question I have for conservatives is, then why doesn't that apply to cops?

Public sector job, unaccountable to the individual, has authority over people we care about, etc.

I have heard more conservatives complain about librarians (again, same deal, except they dont shoot anyone) than cops.
> This is part of the coming war on general computation.

Coming? I'd say it's already full on. Apple's malicious compliance with the DMA is one part of it, for instance. Of course others try to imitate.
Bing Copilot (ChatGPT-4) Flunks Math [pdf]
So the west want to abandon Ukrainian same as czech eas abandoned on the eve of WW2.
No doubt west countries didn't learn anything
Was it fixed up by intelligent life form
Often times those powerful actors are the authors and creators. There is very little that the traditional publishers can do to stop someone if they want to open source a book, or give libraries infinite copies.

I'm a big fan of alternatives, but have come to realize there often valid reasons why they aren't used.
I'd be curious to see but no idea how you intend to get enough people to develop for your platform
electronic invoicing is hard to do offline
I should be easy to find from the profile here on HN.
Does financialization know no bounds? What's next, bots booking up doctor's appointments and reselling the slots? Many restaurants in NYC have started to add a charge for no-shows—I wonder if it were more widespread would it help to dampen the market a bit.
It's real and I wish it wasn't. :/ Two things I've personally heard discussed.

1. Teaching "evolution" instead of "creationism"

2. "Oppressing" white students with "diversity".

I've personally experienced the second in the 1990s. A few teachers and professors are really into social justice and take it way too far. No matter how much I agree with them, I can not support berating and shaming white students in front of an entire class as if they were personally responsible for actions that occurred over century before their ancestors even reached the US. (My ancestors did not come from imperialist nations that murdered entire native tribes, thank you very much.)

For people who are already primed to think the worst of the entire education system, my experience is all the proof they need that the entire system is out to destroy them.
Definitely a both and. We have seen an infantilization of the academy that I believe is in no small part due to the increased economic necessity of a college degree. I think quality education should be available to all who want it. Forcing people to jump through arbitrary and largely irrelevant hoops just to get a middle class job though is definitely hurting a significant segment of our society who are capable but not academically inclined. Catering to these students also deprives resources from the stronger and more motivated students.

By the time I went to college, the institution was already clearly in decline, but it does seem that things have gotten markedly worse in the last 10-15 years, which is quite dispiriting.
Just as this detergent washes whiter than white!
I don't understand this point of view: types are part of the code? Perhaps one could eliminate 90% of the need to write them down with aggressive use of Hindley-Milner, but in many places they're a deliberate choice.
My experience with it has mostly been on Flickr, and I hated it for this exact reason, even though that was mostly pictures not text. Sure, it's very pretty if you just want to look at the site and not engage with it in any detailed way, like professional designers seem to intend for us, but I always wanted to look at a page of pictures and scan my attention over them systemically, finding those that interested me, being distracted by them briefly, then returning to the scan and knowing where I'd left off.

Trying to do this with the "masonry" was horrible. What direction do you go in? Horizontally? Then how do you track which elements belong in which row, where you've already been? They're all interleaved. Vertically? Have fun scrolling down and down and down forever as the page loads more and more content dynamically. No, neither of those is how you're meant to engage, you're supposed to simply sit quietly and look at the big wall of pretty pictures.

Giving designers a non-javascripty way to do it is nice, I guess, but I really hope the effect is that the bad layouts we already have are at least better executed technologically, rather than that the better technology encourages designers to use bad layouts more often.
Well-known == highly visited == native implementation will have large accumulated impact on end users (their performance, energy consumption, improved usability ...).
We apologize, we didn't intend it to sound that way. When logging into our web app, it's expected to experience a short delay because, unlike with Gmail, the web browser also needs to decrypt the data encrypted with zero-access encryption. So, the delay 1-2 seconds is expected. If more encryption keys are active on your account, it will take longer. This is unavoidable on an encrypted service.
Depending on the browser, browser version, OS, OS version, and the device itself, the duration of this delay can vary further.
How is this not called "Byron"?