skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your point is well taken, but "creative, effortful practice" also requires a foundation of creative and critical thinking. Like physics, critical thinking is a skill that should be learned and practiced, preferably from a young age and alongside your other training.

One of the deficiencies in the Chinese educational system is that critical thinking simply isn't taught. The SOLE focus is consumption and rote regurgitation of material. I'm currently attending a top university in Beijing, and one thing I find strange is the incurious nature of many of the Chinese students. They've simply never been taught how to question things or contextualize knowledge.

Sure, there are a few highly creative thinkers, but they've had to be entirely autodidactic.
The company is not what is being called a scheme. What the company was being employed by the city of Paris to execute is being called a scheme:

Championed by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, the bikes were part of an attempt to "green" the capital. [...]

The original contract gave the advertising company a 10-year licence to exploit 1,600 city-wide billboards in return for running the scheme [...]

The scheme was modelled on one in Lyon [...]

It is also being copied overseas with London, San Francisco and Singapore all intending to set up similar schemes.
My high school measured performance through "Exhibitions" and "Gateways" (the difference was that an Exhibition was usually the culmination of a 2ish month long project, while a Gateway was the culmination of a 2 year Division, roughly equivalent to 2 grades in a conventional school).

The requirements for a Gateway were:

1.) A substantial portfolio - we usually needed 2-3 pieces of work that met the standards for advancement into the next Division, in each skill area (there were like 6 core skill areas).

2.) An oral presentation of one of those pieces of work in front of a panel of judges, similar to a thesis defense.

The panel would have 4-5 people and would usually consist of one's teachers in the subject area (all classes were team-taught, so we had 2 teachers), a teacher who was not one of ours, a classmate, and an outside community member.

The oldest graduates of my high school are only 4 years out of college now, so it's hard to judge how successful this is. But consider that the first two graduating classes were 32 and 48 students, respectively. Of those, I'm at Google. One engineering-ish friend is at Intuit. Two classmates are at Harvard Law, one of whom spent a couple years at Bain beforehand. There're a bunch that have gone into teaching, and several that have started blue-collar businesses (the school was in central Massachusetts, which has much less of a knowledge economy than the immediate Boston area).
That feature should be part of any internet discussion software, but 99% of the time, it isn't. We're still in the stonge-age of discussion.
My dad has a PhD and he pretty much pressured me as others have described.

I'd say it's not about education as much as about wisdom.
Good point. It should also be pointed out how difficult it was to sustain productive and fair policies in the dynastic system. All it took is one bad ruler to ruin centuries of progress.

This is why the integrity and structure of the system is more important than individual rulers. The best form of government may be a benevolent king, and even if that's somehow sustained for 5 generations, all it takes is one malevolent one to ruin everything.
Even if China's universities had developed first-class physics departments 30 years ago, you wouldn't see the effect in Nobel prizes yet.

I guess you're referring to Daniel C. Tsui, Yáng Zhènníng, and Lǐ Zhèngdào. Yáng and Lǐ won their Nobel in 1957. Lǐ got his Ph.D. in the late 1940s; Yáng got his in 1942. China in the 1930s and 1940s was not only a desperately poor undeveloped country; it was also being invaded by Japan. Nobody will argue with you if you say studying physics in China in the 1930s and 1940s was a bad bet.

The physics Nobelists in 2006, 2007, and 2008 got their Ph.D.s in 1974 (Mather), 1970 (Smoot), 1970 (Fert), 1969 (Grünberg), 1972 (Kobayashi), 1967 (Masukawa), and 1952 (Nambu, D.Sc. rather than Ph.D.). So really what we learn from China's lack of physics Nobel prizes in recent years is that China's physics schools were terrible in the 1950s and 1960s. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were happening there in the 1960s, and the problems with Chinese educational outcomes included things like "widespread illiteracy" and "professors sent to prison camps because students thought they were unpatriotic", not problems like "too much time spent on rote learning".

I agree that the Physics Olympiad is not the same as doing physics research; but people who can't do well in things like the Physics Olympiad (as it's been described here) lack the foundation to do physics research.

In computer science, there have recently been some very substantial results out of Chinese universities; Wang Xiaoyun et al.'s breaks of MD5 and SHA-0 and attack on SHA-1 in 2004 and 2005 come to mind. She got her Ph.D. at Shandong in 1993. So I am optimistic that in the coming years there will be many significant results from Chinese universities.
and one thing I find strange is the incurious nature of
many of the ... students. They've simply never been taught how to question things or contextualize knowledge.

Sure, there are a few highly creative thinkers, but they've had to be entirely autodidactic.

This sounds like every student body I've ever encountered anywhere in the world. Do you think the problem is worse in Beijing (what university?) than at Berkeley or Stanford?
It might not be earth shattering

Capitalism is earth shattering -- new and improved pizza boxes are one (appreciated) cog in the machine.

Imagine explaining this to a bewildered medieval peasant:

"What manner of device is this?"

"Oh, its a pizza box."

"Pizza?"

"Hot bread with cheese on it delivered directly to your door by servants."

"So you are a noble?!"

"No, I work at a bookstore. You look surprised."

"A STORE IN WHICH YOU CAN BUY BOOKS?! But they're priceless! And you have enough people who can read them!"

"Everybody reads these days. So yeah, this pizza box is special -- it folds neatly to fit in the trash."

"Trash?"

"Sigh This bin over here. For disposal of refuse!"

"My goodness there is a lot of it!"

"That's because I can afford food every day."

"But isn't it heavy when you have to carry it to the midden heap?"

"Midden heap? Oh, you mean landfill. People do that for me."

"Again with the servants!"
Actually, the small and unthreatening alien went to Python. However, you're right about Lisp being different, and avoiding notice. However, that might be changing.

A-list blogger Robert Scoble took notice of Scheme-based http://ourdoings.com/ and has been using it:

http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer?service=feed&serviceid=...

And it got a glowing review by Mike Fruchter:

http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/our-doings-you-upload-...

Notice that the first words used to describe it, "simple and unique" also describe the language it's written in. Programming language affects programmer thinking.
Escape from City 17 on a $500 budget
obama: '"Even as he is sober about these challenges, I have never seen him happier," Mr. Axelrod said. "The chance to be under the same roof with his kids, essentially to live over the store, to be able to see them whenever he wants, to wake up with them, have breakfast and dinner with them — that has made him a very happy man."'

so true. i became much more productive with more freedom on how to divide my day and with whom.
Thank you for responding nostrademons.

I'll answer your second point as concisely as possible. First, I don't intend to demean creativity; in fact, I intend - at the moment, of course - to pursue a career in the philosophy of science. And philosophy, I hope we all agree, holds creativity and originality at its epicenter.

I merely state, as you do, that mastering the basic skills of physics is a "necessary condition" to becoming a great physicist. I, however, put a reasonable threshold of 10,000 hours on this mastery.

I intend to defend the position that these 10,000 of practice should be worked through as quickly as possible and as early as possible; alike how the Chinese high school system works. I think this is a reasonable position to take.

Note: I don't intend to comment on the positives/negatives Chinese education past this high school, i.e., university.
My dad's a Chem E. PH.D and has masters in CS and material science. He used to push me pretty hard about school...until his health deteriorated and he realized there are more important things in life.

Still, I appreciate the fact that he pushed me because now I'm a good student. Haha. Not to mention, I've found something I absolutely love (CS).
Education is a laudable value, but cruelty in service of a laudable value is still cruelty and still reprehensible. Also, grades are not a great way to measure learning.

I wish more of the rural poor in the US would tell their kids things like, "You should also learn from your cousin, talk to him more--then you will develop your mind." There are a minority who do, a large majority who don't care. I wish the stress I remember from US high schools had been from wanting to do better academically instead of fear of physical brutality from the other students.

If this guy's family is typical, China is going to do really well academically in the next few decades unless their government screws everything up again. And it's going to have to deal with a lot of traumatized young graduates.
I agree that there should be sufficient drill, but it sounds like the Chinese have taken it too far, and are eating up time that might be more profitably spent learning more advanced theories.

I could spend a year practicing simple dynamics problems using F=ma and force diagrams if my goal is to do well in the Physics Olympiad. But if I want to be a physicist, most of that time would be better spent going on to Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics once I've got the basics solid.
Can anybody who knows anything about patent law tell us how hard it would be for competitors to design around this patent?
Yes! I see those now and then. They look really cool, haven't ever used one though. :)
Using your logic, should we also restrict websites that track campaign donations, just becuase the campaigners find it painful to their process?

I think you are misrepresenting the logic. The difference here is the difference between a common sense argument & an argument that contains clearly distinguishable definitions. The latter is the kind needed (usually) for legal matters. But a lot of the time we are just trying to find a legally acceptable definition for the common sense argument. 'Illegal if it's mostly for illegal stuff,' is not the kind of law courts would be comfortable with. But I would argue that the issue is with defining an abstract principle. Sometimes these issues are resolved with linguistically.

The Pirate Bay's Raison D'Etre is pretty much to do with illegal content. The existence of some legal reasons is a fringe issue. (You might dispute this. In that case, the argument is over this point.) Imagine your unlocked bike list. Or how about a children home alone list. Defining this in an airtight manner that would satisfy the common sense is almost impossible. Specifically defining 'mostly' (as in mostly illegal content) would create a situation where there is a threshold to be met. This shelter could be used as a shield against prosecution. Defining it in terms (eg intent) would create different problems.

But these are problems always present in legislation. That doesn't mean you give up on laws. I think that most proponents of Pirate Bay (regardless how clever the arguments) are in the medical marijuana camp. They aren't themselves convinced that Pirate Bay should be there because of possible legal uses. They are themselves convinced by believing that content should be free or that IP laws should be changed or that Government shouldn't take on itself the role of policing this realm.
It's a big challenge when the micropayments are denominated in USD. The problem has gone so long without being cracked that I will be really surprised if someone manages to successfully implement it. Maybe in 30 years we get a reputational economy.
Yes, I think Twitturly is interesting as well, although it has not yet made it into my list of things to check every day. It is the kind of site that might make sense to acquire.

That being said, Twitter had an opportunity to buy Twitturly recently -- the author was trying to sell the site. As I understand it none of the offers met his reserve price. So does that mean Twitter wasn't interested (or wasn't aware), that they are interested but are waiting to see if it takes off, or that the didn't have the cash at the time?
"Epigrams in Programming" by Alan J. Perlis (ACM SIGPLAN Sep-82)
ok, here's one simple case:
http://www.glazaros.com/

div backgrounds are jpg's.

same for http://www.digitaldevotion.de/ and others.

ok, so it turns out very few are hella complicated. i'm really interested in figuring out http://www.mirasim.com/ if anyone has some tips.

[edit: nope. mirasim is also background jpg's in divs using css. ok. that was easy. pick a static layout and stick with it!]
Exactly.

Driving a friend around town is perfectly legal.

Driving a friend around town who just robbed a bank is not.

Saying "I have a bomb" in a school play is perfectly legal.

Saying "I have a bomb" to a bank teller is not.
(1) A productive society is one with experts.

Not according to Henry Ford: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt

If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. [...]

None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert--because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant
of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible. [...]

As I have said, we do not hire experts--neither do we hire men on past experiences or for any position other than the lowest. [...]

It is particularly easy for any man who never knows it all to go forward to a higher position with us. [...]

There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street. [...]

there is the pressing to take away the necessity for skill in any job done by any one. The old-time tool hardener was an expert. He had to judge the heating temperatures. It was a hit-or-miss operation. The wonder is that he hit so often. The heat treatment in the hardening of steel is highly important--providing one knows exactly the right heat
to apply. That cannot be known by rule-of-thumb. It has to be measured. We introduced a system by which the man at the furnace has nothing at all to do with the heat. He does not see the pyrometer--the instrument which registers the temperature. Coloured electric lights give him his signals. [...]

The length of time required to become proficient in the various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one to six years. The last jobs require great skill--as in tool making and die sinking.
For the most part they're images created in a program like Adobe Illustrator, then converted to gif or jpg and placed on the site via CSS. In some of them, the images are used as cels in Flash. The web technology aspect is (for the most part) not especially complicated; the point is to draw attention to the use of illustration as a design element.

One exception to the above is http://www.volll.com, which has some nifty JavaScript animations.

Edit: sorry, cross-posted with you.
Blogspam advertising something that's already been posted on HN? I don't think this is necessary.
Mirasim is just a background image in CSS. You can see the image alone here:
http://www.mirasim.com/images/page_top.jpg
The Firefox Web Developer plugin is useful for taking sites apart like this ...
I wasn't trying to claim all urban areas were equal, just that the economic development that has happened has happened primarily in the cities.

I'm still interested in your answers to my questions.
The law handles ambiguity all the time. See Judge Learned Hand's negligence rule for example. He famously stated that a defendant is negligent (say, a shop owner whose customer slipped on some ice on his steps) if the cost of taking precautions is less than the product of the magnitude of the likely damage and the probability that such damage will occur. In our example of the shop owner, spreading salt on one's steps is very cheap and the expected magnitude of damages is a bit larger, so a shop owner must keep his steps free from ice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence

This is an ambiguous standard, but it gives the judge a guideline to make his ruling.

Similarly in criminal cases, intent must be present for criminal act to have occurred. This is another fuzzy rule, but probably a good one.

Law is never hard and fast. Don't believe me? Ask a lawyer.
Same here, I don't check it daily. Rather, I do cross references with things I read on Reddit/Hackernews. It's interesting to see who the first people to tweet about something that becomes popular are.

The downside about Twitturly is that nearly every tweet is the same: the title of the URL. There's less and less relevant information about URLs each time to I check it.

It's a neat idea, but I don't think people are too hot for social media stuff anymore, in terms of acquiring. There are hundreds of ways to get quality URLs, and as far as I know, nobody has really proven it's profitable to provide those URLs. Albeit, sites have been acquired (Reddit, Delicious) around the principle, but I think those days are gone.

I would love to be corrected though...

Where did you hear about the author putting it up for sale?
In the short run, supply is inelastic; the supply curve is vertical.
Yeah, feeling embarrassed for not knowing something is often an effective motivation. The things I'm currently embarrassed about not knowing enough about include history, Haskell, and digital signal processing.
The OP was talking about teaching to tests, which generally means 12th grade proficiencies. No Child Left Behind has made that common practice.

The proficiencies are more than anything designed to test the quality of a given school's education and measure their progress. School districts' federal (and often state) funding and various other things are determined by their results on those tests.

My statement was that there isn't really a better metric. Does that explain it better?
was a quick document i put together for the purposes of this article, probably lots of inaccurate things in it :) lol

Thanks for pointing it out though and thanks for commenting
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< I have to wonder why that, culturally, seems to be linked to Asians?

I can't speak for other Asian countries, but I know China. From what you wrote, your experience and the experience of Zhang Rui (the high school student) couldn't be more different. I've recently had the wonderful and depressing experience of teaching in rural Chinese high schools, and it was an eye-opening experience. The pressure and stress on those kids is simply astounding.

Unfortunately for Zhang Rui, there is probably no more important single event in his life than taking the University Entrance Examination (高考, or GaoKao). There are really only two life paths before him, depending on his score.

If Zhang Rui gets a decently high score, then he can attend a large university in a city like Beijing or Shanghai. He will receive an urban residence permit, and a small stipend that he can use to live as a student. He'll receive a degree without much difficulty, and he should be able to get a good job. He can become a professional, he can go into government, he can become a writer, he's got a lot of options.

If Zhang Rui gets a low score, then he has few or no options. He lives in a remarkably poor region, even by Chinese standards, and his father is probably a peasant farmer (or something close). He's probably also got a rural registration, so he'll never be legally allowed to leave his village. He can either follow in his father's impoverished footsteps or become an undocumented migrant worker, sweating in a factory or hand-mixing concrete on a construction site.

Those are the choices. Zhang Rui might be able to skip university and still lead a full and interesting life, but the odds are hugely against it. He'll have to fight the system until the day he dies.

This is the harsh reality that Zhang Rui is facing, and it helps to put everything into context. His father and teachers know all these things, and so it's likely they've boiled it down to a cold binary decision: either little Zhang gets into university and brings the family out of poverty, or he's another worthless peasant stuck in Anhui. The only thing that matters is the score on the GaoKao. It's horrible, but not uncommon.

I sincerely hope that Zhang Rui overcomes the system without losing his soul (or his life). He sounds creative, strong, and insightful. China could use more voices like his.
Kudos for posting this. I just did a Search YC search to see if this link had been posted to HN before, saw that it didn't turn up in that search, and then submitted, only to see that you posted just a while before I did. (The slightly different form of the URL you submitted kept the HN software from detecting my duplicate submission.) I've just deleted my submission to invite other readers to comment on this thread. Good catch.
Are some people in China really not legally allowed to leave their villages?
So if the title of the story for the URL were more descriptive, you'd find the site stickier? Do you think this is the kind of thing that could be sent to Mechanical Turk?

For how I heard about putting it up for sale, I follow the author's twitter stream, @jstrellner. He announced that Twitturly was for sale on 17 September 2008:
http://twitter.com/jstrellner/status/925586511

Later he states that the offers didn't make the reserve price and he isn't selling:
http://twitter.com/jstrellner/status/933884602
http://twitter.com/jstrellner/status/934021436
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system#Household_registra...

They can leave but can't legally hold a job without the right work permit.
This all depends on a unified payment system or network for micro-transactions. I can envision a majority accepted standard, such as paypal is for regular transactions, then a user can deposit, say, $5.00 and apply it to his favorite sites via a subscription to their content.

This payment gateway could be an interesting start-up. Like the paypal button, a site could have a subscribe button on their site which automatically adds the content to the users subscription list/ completes the sale.

Then you could have a browser plug-in or stand alone app that aggregates and categorizes the content for the subscriber. This may result in a traffic decrease, but when ad-support doesn't matter, neither does hits. It would then be quantified by total subscribers.

Stop me if its been done already...