skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Our schools are not failing students because they are too hard. They fail because few schools expect anything from their students and shy away from challenging their minds.

I think this is close to the mark, albeit vague. Challenging their minds in what way? Such a statement could be misinterpreted as, "We need more rigorous test standards!" or some other specific solution that does not necessarily meet the goal.

From personal experience, for classes other than upper-level math at my college, people would constantly ask questions like, "Is this going to be on the test?"

And I was always annoyed by that. It seemed indicative of the meaninglessness of our education, and I can see why math classes are so difficult for people who learn this pattern rather than the subjects. I don't know how different it is at Ivy League or other schools perceived as high in quality, but when the majority of testing is multiple-choice, true-false, or fill-in-the-blank, it becomes easy to look at everything you learn as a task of rote memorization. It's like that saying: when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The difference with math that makes it so "hard" is you often can't rely on rote memorization. You have to actually learn the material (or understand algorithms and memorize steps to finding solutions with different initial conditions). People get discouraged (probably early on) by the fact that the skills they use for academic success elsewhere do not always work with math, and I think they associate those negative emotions with "math is hard."

I don't know the solution, but I think people need to at least realize that rote memorization is not indicative of learning. It's an uncomfortable realization because so many of our metrics for academic success rely on the assumption that memorization equals learning or understanding.

Of course, that's unlikely. The status quo is always easier. Why do we expect so little from adults?
Yep, bad choice of English from my end, not my native language I wish I could "edit" that and change the wording, but you got that right the first and 3rd time (Edit 2 is correct) :)
9GAG (YC S12) Raises $2.8M
West Bank’s Emerging Silicon Valley Evades Issues of Borders
I hope this is the first in a long line of reducing redundancy across Google's messaging platforms. Google+ posts, Google Talk, Google Hangouts, Google+ Messenger, Google Voice. Ahh! I wonder if iMessage's simplicity is motivating it?

I love the power of Google Voice but it doesn't get much love and iMessage is damn simple and pretty.
Once he's in the interview? Of course nobody does that, it's too confrontational. He might not have gotten hired because of it but there's no way to know.
But if you want people to perform at the very top level for computer science stuff, then you both want a top intellect and a degree. (However you, as a company don't realistically have the option of top people.)

Then again, there are people (occasionally) like Steve Blank and Ed Fredkin.
I actually sort of followed this advice. When I started college, I was working towards a CS degree. I already knew as much programming as I wanted to learn and quickly got bored with it. Some friends recommended I switch majors to something I didn't know and actually still had an interest in learning. So I switched to networking. Now I'm employed in information security and I keep my coding only on projects I want to work on.

It's actually sound advice (and like all advice, you should think it through fully), if you know something already why pay $80k to get a piece of paper to prove it? Many people are employed in jobs they know but didn't major in.
And now if they could combine Google Voice and Google Talk into a combined product....
Well, most IT offices have generators there..
Sure, it's licensed under MIT :)
This entire post seems to be predicated on an invalid premise: Math is hard and liberal arts is easy. There are certainly some liberal arts majors that are easy blowoff majors. But there are also plenty of very challenging liberal arts majors.

Rather than make this a simplistic question of "Should we challenge our kids or not?", we should be asking the question "What should we challenge our kids with?". And it's not clear to me that every liberal arts major needs a good algebra foundation. So why not replace it with something equally challenging that will be more useful to the students?
I'm going to be nitpicky for a second and just say that it's Oswalt and not Oswald.

I'm a huge fan of Oswalt's comedy, but I've grown to truly admire him for the fact that he continually seeks out brilliance, supports it, and loves it. He's been known to commission custom art work based on sketches or drawings fans send him, set aside a significant chunk of his time to help place the spotlight on brilliant comedians, and approach absolutely EVERYTHING he does with passion and care.

A true artist and an inspiration.
Will we ever see an ad from apple as epic as the original macintosh 1984 ad?
A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.
Translating VC-Speak with Just 2 Rules
Please guys. This is not Reddit.
Want to learn about that beer in your hand? Send an SMS to learn more.
The article is good but I don't think it delves into the "middle ground" which is so common for startups. A very small percentage of companies elicit huge interest (i.e., fast action, term sheet quickly, etc.) A surprisingly small set of companies that meet with VCs elicit signals that are clear nos (e.g., not responding to emails and so on). These are usually ones where the idea is so dumb or the pitch is so bad, the VC questions the entrepreneur's capabilities. I'd say the vast majority of meetings turn into this netherland where the VC isn't sold on the idea but also isn't sold on NOT funding the idea. S/he either doesn't know the space well enough, isn't sure his/her partners would agree, doesn't have enough clout in the firm yet (see previous point), doesn't know the entrepreneur well enough to feel conviction, etc. So s/he doesn't say yes. But s/he doesn't say no yet either because s/he wants the optionality in case (a) another VC firm who is well respected or know the space decides to go after it (which creates the super-annoying lemming effect), (b) another partner and his/her firm gets "conviction" on the company independently, (c) s/he hears other good things about the entrepreneur, etc. I think for most entrepreneurs, this is the most annoying category to be in.
Doesn't every salesman lie?
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Reduce your monthly payemnt by one third through debt management plan. It is a sutiable solutions for people with unsecured debits.
Is anyone else totally uninterested in Windows RT? I'm much more interested to see how Win 8 and existing Windows applications run. That is, to have a tablet-cum-laptop with a full touch UI plus keyboard and trackpad.
Read the link. The fracking revolution has led to a substitution of gas for coal in the US. Meanwhile, pressure from green activists in Europe has led to obstacles to fracking and nuclear power and an increasing reliance on coal imports. Renewables still suck as an energy source.

The biggest piece of good news for the environment in
Years is being driven by a "brown" industry in cowboy America, who woul have predicted it?
Analysing the 9m $ funding unique hadoop architecture
hi everyone - myself and another dev built this at a Twilio hackathon over the weekend. would love to get some feedback/suggestions.
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/699940-Uplay-PC-Patch-2...

Apparently they've patched this now, according to their twitter.
Prioritising Features: Who’ll Use It & How Often?
...not quite. The hangout backend will now power all video calls, but to do more than a 1-on-1 chat, you will still need a G+ profile.

Interesting as the old backend was p2p, but it sounds like hangouts are a more standard client/server. Maybe Google needed more voice data to mine. Actually better yet, facial expression data to mine. After all, Glass could live and die by its ability to correctly identify faces.
It's not technically impressive and odd they would be getting it wrong. They know where your hits are coming from and the WiFi/GPS information on mobile. If a Maps app can it get right 100% of the time why can't Google ?
MediaNovak Launches MarcLaBrie.com
The $1,000 price-point is for pc tablet, which sounds more useful for the enterprise market. The ARM tablet, which is more in-line to what you describe, is supposedly going to be $500-600.
There is a "top gravity" attracting widgets towards the top end of the grid. It's the only supported auto-layout feature currently.

We'd like to allow different strategies in the feature, we just started by the one we needed.
I guess a more general question might be: I marketing on Facebook proving to be worthwhile?

We are just finishing a new iOS app. It will be the first one in our catalog with a "Like us on Facebook" feature. I am skeptical about the value of this feature. Not sure it'll convert at all. Asked a bunch of people who use FB on a daily basis and most told me that they pay zero attention to ads or "likes". Not sure.
I see the joke you're making, but if you want to actually apply that humorous scenario to reality, what you have is a week of lost work, probably without any adjustment to the actual delivery date.

So, quality of software is gonna plummet in two weeks.
Could you quantify that? I don't believe the subsidy per megawatt for fossil fuels is anything like what it is for renewables.
A letter from our non-existant startup.
New Yorker writer caught in "self-plagiarism" resigns after fake quotes found
Impure: A Visual Programming Language for Making Fancy Infographics
Depends. Are you talking about the SONY-branded "Sony-style" prototype produced at Apple in response to Sony's redesigned Walkman? (Which, so we're clear, did not look like any Sony phone on the market at the time?)
GenPhrase - Easy to memorize random passphrase generator for PHP applications
Back when I was in this industry, generally speaking you would have a graylist of your own IPs that would be ignored by the ad metric system.

Ad networks tend to be very serious about anything measurable - it's easy to lie and once you've lied about one thing, no matter how small, what else have you lied about and to what magnitude?
I am surprised that there has been no proof released by the page owners. It feels a lot like a linkbait / FB viral campaign.
Vim: reorder tabs
I think in the type of scenario you mention (i.e. lots of foot dragging without a clear answer), 9 times out of 10 the entrepreneur should just quit following up with the VC and move on.

The logic is simple - if the original VC is waiting for a new VC to get excited about it, it would not matter if the original VC is still in the mix or not (as the entrepreneur now has someone else interested). If no one else gets excited, spending time on the original VC is a waste of time, since she won't tip unless someone else does.
I use something similar to allow users to manage the order in which images show up on their listings. (we provide a service for people to buy/sell cranes)
>...without ANY facts...

What about the farking article? Where they proved that 80% of their clicks were from bots. Then several others confirm they ahve the same experience?

What about those facts?

I also speculated on what FB is doing. Them giving user data to the NSA/CIA - that is a supposed fact, sure, but I am not the only person who believes this.

Am I extremely distrustful of Facebook? Of course! Maybe you have not followed their track record or the character of their founder.
Anyone stupid enough to lie in writing deserves what they get.
Engineers Unveil First Casimir Chip That Exploits The Vacuum Energy
everyone knows emacs users are crazy.
My preference however is to use Shift-Left, Shift-Right to move the tabs:

map <silent> <S-left> :call MoveCurrentTab(-1)<Esc>
map <silent> <S-right> :call MoveCurrentTab(1)<Esc>
NetBalancer: Control Your Internet Connection Speed while Downloading a File
The point is that a lot of this could get automated and plenty of hackers would've been willing to help out.

Edit: Fuck it, I'll make something to help normal people do this.
That bothered me a bit too, being an Emacs user. And what exactly is a "corporate type", and why aren't they wanted either? I'm assuming that the entity behind this job ad is a corporation of some sort.
Nope:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/30/3201162/apple-refutes-clai...
One approach I've seen and thought was interesting is the course schedule offered at the Illinois Math and Science Academy.

Their pre-calculus courses have been somewhat radically reorganized into a curriculum called "mathematical investigations" which orders the topics according to more of a practical progression. So, for example, bits of linear algebra are pulled all the way up into precalc because they're useful in geometry, and will also work better with the science curriculum. Perhaps physics teachers inheriting students who already understand vectors, for example.

Then the calculus curriculum is split into two tracks, one more basic, and a more intensive one for students who anticipate going into fields that require more calculus.
I give you a hamburger.
Rails developers wanted (Boston|remote)
Boston area would be nice but we'll allow remote for the right candidates.

Experience in Rails would be awesome but we are accepting positions at all skill levels. You'll be working on some simple Rails projects for Raizlabs (http://raizlabs.com) a lot of them geenfields and in spill over time be hacking with me on the AppBlade product (https://appblade.com)

Salary, options, and benefits. We may be a startup but we are bootstrapped, profitable, and pay well :) Hit me up via email #=> james.daniels@appblade.com

Smoke me a kipper skipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
The $2 Million Mobile Game
Do you have any data to back up your claim that there is no difference between STEM and liberal arts skills from a source other than your two nephews? This is a huge area of research in education with a long history of detailed study - your anecdote doesn't carry much weight, and your assertions don't align our current understanding. Although the idea of "multiple intelligences" no longer has the influence it used to, there are still very clear distinctions between, for example, quantitative and analogical reasoning, and inductive and deductive logic, and some people grasp certain kinds of concepts more quickly than others. This is reality. One of your points seems to be that kids shouldn't be taught in a way that only focuses on their strengths, and I fully agree with that, but it's important to understand that there are real distinctions among cognitive skills.

> The sooner we stop complaining and start doing...

Start doing what? Just in the US, there are over 7 million teachers heavily involved in "doing" education as best they can, and tens of thousands of researchers and policymakers that are trying to structure education effectively. I agree that the author of the posted article is also not making an informed contribution to the field, but it's important to recognize that there are many people who are making real contributions, and many others who are too eager to change things based on their own intuitive (and frequently incorrect) impressions of how to teach.
It seems to me like funding should be "double blind" by having all participants on both sides of an issue that want research performed to funnel the money into a general purpose fund. Scientists should not know where the money is coming from, and industry shouldn't be allowed to pick and choose which scientists do the research so there is equal chance of funding people with opposing viewpoints of what industry wants people to here.

AFAICT most corruption can be mitigated by clean interfaces that reduce if not eliminate conflicts of interest.
Facebook, Google, and Twitter certainly hire/make offers to hire individuals without degree. I know folks that are greatly respected at all three that fit that bill: Wayne Rosing is a famous example. These companies also can't afford to make hiring mistakes and have an extremely high bar.

That said, a Computer Science education certainly improves your chance of getting past the hiring bar. To most it means an exposure to topics they learn about had they spent the four years doing web development: what Bryan called "how computers work" (operating systems, CPU architecture, concurrency), algorithms and data structures beyond arrays and hash tables, and advanced topics (distributed systems, machine learning).

On the other hand, if you've spent those four years contributing to FreeBSD, doing game development (and here I mean doing AI and graphics yourself), or working on another technically challenging project such as a web browser or a compiler, it would be a different story.

I have an MS in CSE but from not from a nationally recognized top-tier school. I think I've done reasonably okay as far as professional success goes, but if I had to do it all over again, I'd have transfered to UC Berkeley (or another top CS school) when I had the chance, even if it meant delaying entering the work force by 1-2 years.
Totally agree. However, I wanted to put my thoughts on this down... Surely we need more info and time to see what the actual truth is - but I just do not believe that FB is in any way some altruistic innocent/neutral entity.
Maybe, but probably not. 1984 Apple != 2012 Apple.
Smartphones New Weapon in Battle for Swing States
I've been seeing this in many sites including Gmail and Facebook so it's probably not your bug.
Announcing August as Red Hat Month at Zenoss
We don't actually spend all that much money on public education relative to GDP. Many people consider it reasonable to spend more money on their child's collage degree than the full cost the cost of a K-12 at a public school which depending on the state can be as low as 80k.

We also still spend a lot of money on the students who least need it. Due to the influence of property values on education spending often the most affluent areas spend the most per student. We also spend a lot on 'special needs' students who have a limited capability to be educated. But, what matters most is how well the average student is educated and we don't spend a lot of money on that.
There is more to objectivity than where the funding comes from.

The discussion of whether cell phone radios cause brain cancer is instructive. There are many people who do not fully understand the physics involved, but tend to be suspicious of technology and industry, who continue to bang the drum about the dangers of cell phone use. I've had conversations with a friend who holds a Ph.D. in toxicology in which no amount of data I could reference could shake her conviction that cell phones cause brain cancer. That is not because of where she draws a paycheck. It is simply a belief she has developed.

You see the same thing in any discussion of large-scale energy technology. We've all seen the discussions of nuclear energy here on Hacker News, for instance.

Is fracking dangerous? It seems almost certain it could be--any type of engineering on such a large scale has that potential. But there are almost always safer ways to engineer things. And a balanced accounting should attempt to include the benefit that natural gas as an energy source can create for our society. For example, it burns a lot cleaner than coal. This is the aspect of energy development that is most often hand-waved away, in favor of assertions that we should be 100% renewables. Of course solar, wind, and hydro all create their own safety and environmental concerns too.
If you are sufficiently 'large' enough that it will fit in your pant's pocket of course.

If you aren't then the existing combination of phone/tablet or phone/MBA still seems optimal.
Why I may leave Facebook permanently in coming years?
مسلسل بنات العيلة الحلقة 12 
مسلسل بنات العيلة الحلقة 12

بنات ,العيلة ,الحلقة, 12

http://tube.sbayaa.com/1331
But what about the Nicaraguan Contras, the Tibet Autonomous region, or the Chechnyan rebels. How could he have missed these?

ucee054 was making an example of how the argument of the original post is having substantial flaws. Not everything remotely related to politics is intended as some ideological political statement.
And yet the 9/11 attackers were not exactly poor.
There's a big difference between trading and investing. All laypeople should be investing in the market, but you are talking about trading taken to an extreme. A computer trader may get in and grab 1000 shares, then resell it right away for 10 cents more. He can do that 100,000 times a day and make a good living. But an average investor buys 1000 shares and holds them for 5 years. He's losing maybe a few dollars over his lifetime to these guys.

These high speed investors aren't drastically modifying the value of the market. If they were they would be creating arbitrage situations that would be closed right away.
Why would Google want to mine private video streams when they already have a whole library of static content in the form of YouTube? Besides just the privacy concerns, it would be easier to work with content that's sitting on a disk somewhere, rather than trying to operate on data in-flight.
That sucks, I guess for iChat or Messages to support file transfers with Gmail they'd have to have a specific Account Type for GChat which implements Jingle extensions, instead of just going through Jabber.
Right, the goal could've been to create a framework for splitting apart documents, recaptcha-like, and sending it out to mTurk or other transcription services. OBviously, there are tons of datasets to build this against, but this one might have sparked extra interst.
Top Reddit Startups
'The Hobbit' As A Trilogy? Hollywood Has Jumped The Shark
You act as if "everyone else" sees results from FB ads. They don't. This is a well known problem. They have a high rate of adoption from new sign-ons, and also a high level of departure. While the first number is greater than the second number, they are ok. Either they will manage to improve value and keep more of the advertisers, or one day the Ponzi scheme implodes.
Having the code behind the chaos monkey is not nearly as valuable as having the guts to run it in the first place.
Check if it's even being fetched for a start. Assuming it's not inline.
It's pretty subtle :) The closest way to do it is like this:

Why is this bad? Well, for example if you have an Image...

Just put the word "well," between the question and the explanation. I doubt they put that in a textbook though :)
I'm beginning to feel that Apple wasn't a company, it was a man. His employees were just extensions of his brain; they would make what he wanted, and if he didn't know what he wanted they would make every variety they could come up with until they hit it right.

Without Steve, Apple still has all the raw talent they've had for years, there's still so much creativity sitting in that office. But without a lens to distill it, without a final authoritative sign-off, they don't seem to know anymore what is good enough and what is Apple.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they will find it again, but I'm not willing to bet on it. Apple is on track to become just another PC vendor, just another consumer products vendor. There's not much magic coming from Cupertino lately.
While I agree with the author's point about these ads - they don't feel like Apple to me, and they definitely are not great ads - his closing saying that this is no longer Steve Jobs's Apple is hyperbolic. On the one hand - of course it isn't. We have seen far more important changes coming out of their choices around product and dividend sharing than one marketing campaign. On the other hand, there hasn't been a large Apple marketing push for a while and this campaign has probably been in the works for most of that while. On the other other hand...
Live in permanent beta (Conscise advice from Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha)