skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
She makes a good point about algebra students not understanding prerequisites. I worked for two years at a high school where students were having trouble with algebra. Almost invariably this was due to (a) an abysmal grasp of arithmetic; many students couldn't divide or even subtract reliably, leading to insurmountable frustation, and (b) the hand-wavy means by which algebra, and especially its archaic conventions (such as order of operations and elision of the times symbol) were taught.

I once solved these problems for a small group of these children to whom I taught algebra from first principles: all grammar was explicit (no elision of parentheses or operators) and we used no numerals. The reduction rules then were able to fit down one side of a whiteboard, and after five one-hour sessions, self-professed math phobes were solving nontrivial equations.
Hold on there hot shot, they're likely saying the required scanning resolution of submittals. While not incredibly clear, 300dpi is the general high-resolution setting on most scanners and they're just indicating as such.
I agree that that's probably not YouTube's main goal. They rolled out the real-names policy at the same time for video uploads, which I think is probably really what they want to tie to real names.
Arguably, a community has a problem, when meta-discussion of the site keeps cropping up.

At this point, criticizing Hacker News is low-hanging fruit - and as a result gets a lot of karma.
I would destroy it if I could.

If they want to. If they want we me to scan old books, they bloody better pay me.
I think they just want something to complain about and aren't actually on mac os. I've already seen a number of examples which are simply fairy tales. (Such as claiming they're being prompted when opening ordinary jpg files.)

That said, even the author notes that this is designed to be forked. It's not a script to run on one's own machine blindly, the idea being to exclude what is not to your taste/while demonstrating features which can't be changed inside the gui. (It's also very helpful if setting up multiple accounts.)
Yes, exactly. It's not about comments, or civility, of fine dining. It's about selling real people behind real names to real advertisers because real money is at stake.
I kind of feel like "hacker" used to be a title that you had to earn from other hackers, and could apply to people of any skillset; and now it's mostly synonymous with "programmer".

With the size of the internet these days, it was probably inevitable that the word would get diluted, but... I feel like we no longer have a suitable word to describe people who build things like "self-balancing unicycle" or "linux hosted on an x86 emulator in javascript" or "homemade airplane" or "UNIX". And that makes me a little sad.
Your are confusing Math versus Applied Math. We take what we want to use in the study of engineering, physics, economics, finance and political science - pure Math develops those tools and they're highly useful.

Is Math of a college level necessary for everyone? Certainly not. Should algebra be necessary for everyone - I think so (I think the same way about calculus).

Nothing is necessary to perform your day-to-day duties - not even arithmetic - people have been getting by and been leading fruitful lives for thousands of years without that sort of stuff. So when people talk about learning Math as a life-skill they're dead wrong.

But if you want to anything more that just get by - if you want to ask questions and support your arguments, analyze problems and come up with answers you can trust you gotta, oughta, shoulda learn Math.
Very confusing picture
I found this confusing picture, while I was searching online for funny pictures. How many planks do you see on this picture?
You get a different result if you click the buttons versus performing a google search.
I don't think she is talking about Math majors. She is talking about some requirements that other majors have to complete as part of finishing up their degree. Having said that, I know people in say computer science who struggled through Calculus not really caring for the subject. I can't imagine how things were for people in less technical disciplines. While Calculus is certainly important for CS majors (well probably about as much as say randomized algorithms), I can't help but ask why these classes are not replaced by a class in first order logic, especially if the end goal is to train people to think mathematically.
Xcode 4 Cocoa-Python Templates
I've been to the Seychelles, my brother lives there now. I'm an iOS dev but don't touch Android, however if anyone else was thinking of applying, the place is even more beautiful than the pictures you'll see, do it.
Ask twenty regular users who have been forced to fill that crap out.

Nobody reads the about page. Put it on the front page (or the embedded widget, if that is what the user sees) in clear large letters that are easy to see or accept that we consider you scum.
Urdu Recipes
Large collection of Indian and Pakistani cooking recipes in Urdu.
And along with it is an apparently fake paypal blog: http://www.thepaypalblog.co/2012/07/statement-on-nytimes.htm.... Via @csoghoian.
So...why shouldnt we phase out Poetry too?Is there a definitive study showing that training in poetry makes for more competent assembly line workers and lower unemployment levels?
"Please call us between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM to talk to an account creation specialist."
I agree that formal logic is probably a more relevant math-y course than calculus for the average CS student. But how to design these requirements is a longstanding problem, partly due to disagreements over what should be in a "technical core", and partly due to staffing and issues of uniformity.

Calculus is probably more relevant than symbolic logic for many kinds of engineering, for example, so the course is already being offered. It's also seen by (most) mathematicians as a more central subject, so it's what goes in the core if the mathematics department is given responsibility for designing the core. Additional complications arise over what to do with things like statistics (in some places it's in the math department, while in others it's a separate department).
Someone needs a history of internet mail. It was never designed to operate in real time or be fast, whereas people expect logins to be fairly quick.

Also, using an email backchannel and one time keys moves the security from an encrypted connection (assuming SSL) to an unencrypted SMTP connection anyone can view...

Back in the good old days of UUCP you might wait a day or two to get mail from across the globe...
Depression makes people, ok made me entirely too passive to hear anything. Do rocks have mental blocks against seeing that they are rocks? It took an actual physical intervention involving my parents, friends and one of my professors to reach me. I wish there was something easier to tell you.
"School mathematics" is something almost completely different from mathematics. (For an elaboration on this idea, see http://duckduckgo.com/?q=lockharts+lament).

Meanwhile, being good at (actual) math is rapidly become a prerequisite for having a bright economic future. School math is worth increasingly little (computers do it better than you). Whereas true math is deeply creative, and computers suck at it.

This separation is also why so many programmers say "programming doesn't take math". It doesn't take school math. It rests deeply on true mathematical reasoning.
Having actually had conversations with her about the matter, I can tell you that the fundamental problem is she just doesn't get what 99.5% means.

A numerate person looks at things like this as a math problem. An innumerate person doesn't.
The article they refer to wasn't upvoted because the HN community thinks it's a good insightful article, it's because they (we) agree with it, and obviously because we care about it.

Upvoting because you agree and downvoting because you don't is still the biggest problem with ranking posts and comments . If it can be fixed, the fix would have to somehow remove the emotional aspect of voting.

That said, I don't fully agree that the article didn't deserve to be on the front page of Hacker News. For me, and possibly other startup workers HN is a source of inspiration.

Any article related to problems, solutions and technology themes in general might serve as inspiration to a great startup idea. Wether it's the millionth article about bitcoin, or a post about Timmy stuck in a well.
Is this problem unique to mathematics? Consider natural sciences, history, geography.

It's easy to make up real-world examples of when each could be an advantage, but it's hard to say anything is necessary. It is what you make it.
It's easy to recognize that the author's arguments could apply just as well to any academic subject: literature, history, you name it. ("We should just teach 'citizen reading', where students learn to read recipes and furniture assembly instructions.")

But the real surprise to me is his ignorance of actual college math curricula. He says, "Why not mathematics in art and music — even poetry — along with its role in assorted sciences? The aim would be to treat mathematics as a liberal art". I don't know about his college, but the math requirement where I teach can be met with courses such as "Math in Art and Nature" or "Liberal Arts Mathematics". It's not as if his suggestions there are novel! But here's the kicker: for both of those classes, proficiency in algebra is a prerequisite. It turns out that you can't really describe those topics that he likes without actually using some math.

On the other hand, I have come around to agree that statistics is more broadly useful than calculus. Here's a TED talk by one of my old math professors making that case: http://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_s_formula_for_chang...
This is how Staticloud[1] works. You put in your email address and receive a log in link. You never have to register; registration and login are the same process.

[1] http://staticloud.com/
Having read through this whole discussion a couple of times now, I find myself wondering why either NBC or the Olympics can't do the "smart" thing - sell me access directly. Sure if they want to do a partner offer for "free" they can do so. But why not let me buy a $30 pass for the games? I think there are a lot of us who don't want a cable package who wouldn't mind paying for the content we do want.
You know what would actually improve comments? A browser extension that posted Markov chain generated trolling, recognized such comments from other instances, and then removed the auto-generated comments and their replies. Most "trolling" is just unintrospective but earnest people arguing at other morons. Trap them in a honeypot.
Here's an idea, if you allow me to choose From a list of users, then I'll continuously "spam" other users' inboxes with login link messages.

We could suggest that Facebook implement something like this. Seeing a login control containing 950MM names would be rather comical.
I think that the fact that the survey was conducted by a government organization and that the targets of the survey were families who had decided not to participate in government-run education, for one reason or another, makes a certain selection bias seem likely.

I'd expect a measure of homeschooling families to want nothing to do with the federal department of education.
So far I have only seen C++ from Google, never C. Are you referring to anything specific from them?
Calculus is certainly not important for CS majors. Compared to, say, linear algebra.

I always recommend http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers... on math for programmers.
Compounding inflation over 30 years is much greater than the cost saving measures implemented by the consumer goods companies (supply chain optimization, improvement of packaging techniques etc.).
Nest is using both C (for embedded Linux on the thermostat) and Python (some of the API services) they are also hiring for lots of positions, some are listed at nest.com/careers
Generally speaking, I don't mind the Apple fanboyism in the articles because it's relatively well-balanced in the comments. (And because at this point I recognize the Marco/Daring Fireball/etc group of domains well enough to avoid them)

The one complaint that I definitely have about the HN quo is how it feels like conversations are trying to be transposed onto the medium; someone posts a PHP/Apple/Olympics rant and then half the top links are swallowed by thinly veiled 'responses'. It seems like the wrong approach, splitting multiple conversations on the some topic.
+1 on explicit grammar. In my recollection, that was the biggest source of frustration in studying math subjects: decoding the actual meaning of a math text fragment and separating random elisions from errors.
Imma grab some popcorn
I highly recommend this app for things like that:

http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

It does that, and many more useful things too. I have command on mac, and from a different app, control on my ubuntu machines mapped to caps lock. So wherever I am, I can use the same key combo...
http://www.flickr.com/groups/landscapes_and_seashores_of_the... gives a half-decent idea of what it looks like. But yeah, it's much more impressive in person.
Please, somebody figure out how to get us over the hump to the bright future day when we all have asymmetric keys embedded in hardware and we can leave passwords behind.
I think you're actually the one misunderstanding here. The "72 DPI" that's output to EXIF doesn't actually mean anything since the actual resolution is dependent on the display medium. The camera produces a fixed number of pixels and your LCD screen/computer monitor/printer creates an image of a certain DPI (72 for most monitors and between 300 and 1200 for most printers).
How high are you setting the bar on "numerate person"?

People make terrible choices all the time despite knowing and understanding all sorts of things (math, health risks, harm they may cause themselves or others) because they have emotions and because weakness of will is a real phenomenon. You seem to be completely discounting all other considerations except "understanding the numbers".

I edited this about twenty times. I suspect we have radically different views of human psychology and how knowledge affects choice. Might be interesting to discuss over a beer, but here only a distraction from the larger issue in the article. Apologies.
Ahha, actually I did. A friend pointed it out minutes after I posted the petition and I corrected it.
We still have "inventor" and "tinkerer"
Would be cool if they would be discussing this discussion of their discussion, which we could then discuss. And so on - black hole warning?
We've also gone thousands of years without having everything we said recorded for all time for anyone to hear whenever they want.
The article is not really talking about mathematics. It is talking about numeracy, which is on par with literacy in importance in my opinion.
Why do we need a label to describe someone who builds a self-balancing unicycle?

Labels like 'hacker' do nothing to further anything, and generally aren't impressive to anyone who doesn't assign the label to themselves. Build cool shit and that's impressive.
How about a page showing all the currently logged in sessions. Then you can log out ones that shouldn't have access.
What a marvelous stupid idea.

Math and Applied Math is more than numbers and math for the sake of math. It is a way to bring your level of abstract thinking higher - much the same way learning languages does.

Math is so much more than algebra and calculus. It will teach you pattern recognition and deduction - two highly sought after skills in engineering - but can be applied to any profession.

If anything I believe we should bump up the level of math that high school children learn.
When I came across Hacker News (recently) I was a bit confused why it appeared to be about startups and not about actual (security) hacking. Then I discovered "hacker" had in essence become a general term for "coder" in the startup community. This usage still doesn't sit well with me, for the reason you point out: it's not about doing something really cool and unexpected any more. When I see people advertising for "Ruby hackers", etc. I just feel like it's almost a parody (except it's not, people are calling themselves that mostly in seriousness). Oh well, I guess language left me behind.
> The "72 DPI" that's output to EXIF doesn't actually mean anything since the actual resolution is dependent on the display medium.

Well hello, that's exactly what I tried to explain to said family member. In particular, he noticed that the EXIF said 240dpi and assumed that the DSLR is no good, because "it's not 300dpi".
I agree that algebra in and of itself is not particularly useful. However, an in-depth understanding of statistics is vital to basic scientific literacy and most certainly "leads to more credible political opinions or social analysis. I've often wondered why high schools don't place a bigger emphasis on statistics, but I'm not sure if you can teach basic statistics without algebra (or calculus).
I had to read this article twice to make sure I was understanding it right. I honestly see zero benefit in this approach. It does not speed up the login process at all. The only thing it accomplishes is not requiring the user to remember a password. Additionally, it puts way too much power in the hands of random email servers. What if my email system at the office goes down for a few hours. Am I locked out of all websites too?

I do agree with his point that memorizing passwords can get cumbersome, especially with different sets of rules for different logins. However, the majority of people store their passwords in their everyday browser or just stay logged in indefinitely.

The real solution to "doing away with passwords" lies in recognition technology on devices. What if my keyboard could recognize my identity and pass that along to authorized sites as login credentials? What if my iPhone could do the same? I'll defer the argument of privacy in visiting sites where you don't want your identity revealed for another time.
Where in the world do you get the idea, that Apples Walled garden has anything to do with quality?

Its about one thing: extorting content producers, by limiting access to consumers. And they will eventually get into legal trouble. Its textbook anti-competitive, and if they ever get big enough to be a "monopoly" every aspect of their policy would need to change.
Now if someone has my phone which is receiving my e-mails

At work we have a policy that smart phones are locked by a PIN. No PIN, no email.

This is not ideal: no mechanism to enforce 'good' PINs, force a user to change them on a regular basis.
Shameless plug:

I would like you to check out the calculator I built:

http://herocalc.com

It's pure Javascript, has a full parser/tree-builder to process equations, allows you to define functions and variables, and is very fast.

It also installs a search handler so you can do calculations from your search bar.
Who exactly would the BBC have to pay for "global streaming rights" to content they already own?
If there is anywhere where some poetry class is a requirement for graduation for all majors, that requirement probably should be phased out.
London 2012 fencing
title : Photos London 2012 fencing - link : http://www.psdmate.com/2012/07/29/photos-london-2012-fencing/
title : Photos London 2012 fencing - link : http://www.psdmate.com/2012/07/29/photos-london-2012-fencing/
title : Photos London 2012 fencing - link : http://www.psdmate.com/2012/07/29/photos-london-2012-fencing/
Telling that students struggling with a subject is considered evidence of a problem with the subject. Couldn't be the teachers or the curriculum or the students.
The logic behind this system isn't terrible. But as others have pointed out, it still relies solely on a third party. And while it's true that exposing the entire user list would not give an attacker much in the way gaining access, it's still a leak of trackable information. I think a more secure solution would be to model an authentication standard after public/private key encryption. If all browsers would endorse it, the interface would be remarkably simple.

Present the end-user with a certificate management dialog when they open a browser for the first time. That would allow them to either browse for an existing certificate or create a new one. After one is created they're given a copy which could be used in any other browser at a later time. From that point on, each time a Web server requires authentication it could be handled behind the scenes. No log on page, no passwords, no user names; only aliases and a push button start. Signing up would become a one click affair, as well. Press the button, and the browser sends the public key to the Web server. A site gets hacked? Big deal, there are no vulnerable hashes -- only public keys. You would never be required to remember anything more than backing up your certificate. Worried about recovery? Do what you would do with SSH. Pop the cert on a thumb drive and hide it. Hell, even create a feature in that management dialog to do it for you.

This of course would require a large standards body and the involvement of every major browser company. But in the end, it would be easier.
Don't pigeonhole yourself by languages you want to use. Interestingness of work is not correlated with language very much.
Yes it is and we need to train teachers to teach it better.
and you still need a password to access your email account. let's assume you are at a friends place and want to login somewhere...you have to grab your phone to get your secure webmail password, login on gmail/etc. click the link. a real timesaver...
They drove a very obvious looking "detector van" around near our university halls for a few days, and a few days later every person that had a TV and no license got a letter, got scared, and paid up.

Of course, everyone that had no TV and no license also got a letter... and so did everyone that already had a TV license!
7 in 7
This whole discussion is silly and unrelated to the topic.
I gotta say, the stuff you can get hellbanned for here is petty beyond belief. Last time I got hellbanned for saying "heh." in response to a comment bashing Noam Chomsky in the most knee-jerk and ironic way; I was genuinely left speechless. Sure, "heh" is not a valid response, I didn't expect anything but downvotes -- but hellbanning, for that? Really? And don't even get me started on the whole "pg is the father I never had" stuff, it's nauseating. Sometimes this site feels more like a cult than anything.

Well, if this comment even shows up, I guess that's it for this account, too. Oh well. To each their own.
I'm not sure that you would be able to get it as fast in Python but if you have not checked out the bisect module, I highly recommend it.
It's funny how in grade school the multiplication symbol is omitted, only to be (more confusingly replaced) by a period later on when the expressions get complicated.

I suspect it's the lack of arithmetic skill more than the conventions that are the heart of the problem. I think kids should be required to learn to do mental arithmetic before they're allowed to use calculators, but this may be impractical.