skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Student surveys could certainly contribute to the evaluation of teachers, but I doubt its a viable replacement for academic tests. We must also note that they are being compared to current test-based methods. They claim to get "good agreement" but without a real publication its hard to tell what that means. Does it mean that in most cases the students are honest? (i.e. that the disagreement is caused by dishonesty) Does it mean that in most cases students appreciate teachers that make them learn? (i.e. that the disagreement is caused by students who like their teachers even though the students themselves are not learning) Or is the disagreement inherent in the fact that one measure is better than the other at gauging teacher performance?
I'm not certain he had another metric in mind, but it seemed plausible that he may be suggesting that test score performance did not actually increase after No Child Left Behind, or that an increased emphasis on test scores in the last decade had not had a positive measurable impact, even on an imperfect measure like test scores. I don't know what the actual data say but it seems like that was the avenue he was going down.
Thanks! I think it's a great resource and have actually included some of it in the course.
I left a lot of options blank that were in fact encouraged, and which professors would help us with if asked, but were not really part of the curriculum. For example, we were strongly encouraged to use version control for our group projects, especially in third and fourth year courses (like operating systems and theory of computation) and obviously estimating timelines is a necessity for any project (computer science or otherwise). Code testing is a big one I wish we would have learned or been encouraged to learn, since I'm still horrible at that, but I hear that same sentiment from nearly every programmer I've ever met, so I suspect a handful of college lectures wouldn't have helped much.
This makes me incredibly excited for Apple. I would rather that Siri and Maps hadn't belly-flopped the way they did, but iOS is getting really long in the tooth, and Apple have made some seriously weird design decisions with the platform.
The table of results is hard to read. More contrast between the results bars and the background would help.
I'm suspecting the site is getting a bit of a bandwidth issue, but there are emulators to emulate the old archimedes, Atari and IIRC the amiga.

Various people have been testing old style games on the Pi so you guys might lose a bit of free time :-)
Could the simultaneity of the purge of skeuomorphists with the release of Windows Phone 8 (and Windows 8 +1 day) be purely coincidental?
The real reason we wrongly worship workaholics
We do have another metric: The teachers', who spend 5 days a week with the kids, knowledge. They have a dataset infinitely deeper and more multi-dimensional than a standardized test can give. Of course, it doesn't lend itself well to making graphs, but that's the nature of complex data.
Typo for "Perf" - or maybe you are making a joke I didn't get.
Alas, the iPad Mini is definitely inferior to the full size, as well. It's more like an iPod Touch 5 Maxi.
Apple's semiconductor plans have always been something that's been interesting to watch develop over the last few years. I was wondering what they were going to throw Mansfield on ever since they appointed his replacement and just designated him as basically someone who was going to work on a special project.

Sounds like a thrust towards driving Apple deeper into the bottom of the hardware stack to me. Apple currently is very good at setting up good solid deep relationships with hardware suppliers and designing lots of stuff to make things work together. But they've been pushing further and further down the stack ever since the PASemi acquisition. I wonder when they're going to start building fabs.

It seems like if you've got >$30B sitting around, devoting a VP to making a new team and are worried about your competitors controlling your supply chains for memories and other core technologies...

I guess we're going to find out. If I'm right, the earliest indicators will probably be hiring the types of people you'd need to spin up serious fabs.
> Could you be specific? In particular, how do I measure whether a citizen is prepared for a productive life or not?

I like that you ignored the latter half.

You don't measure the citizen. You measure the rate at which the country is liberalizing. That is, the rate at which its core philosophical attitude is becoming more individualist, egalitarian, meliorist, and universalist. The purpose of public education is to shift us from the medieval era into the modern era. (And to be clear, being conservative is the opposite of being radical; it does not contradict being liberal. Many things that belong on the political Right are legitimately liberal but not Left.)

How many people are concerned with individual rights? How many people demonstrate equal moral worth and status to all individuals? How many people have a positive outlook on the future? How many people recognize universal qualities in all human beings? The rate at which these indicators are moving is positive, but that rate should be increasing in a country with a strong educational system; you'd ask the questions differently in a different era.
I think about physical security the same way I think about virtual security. The way to find holes in your system is to put yourself in the attackers shoes. I get why people are upset about this, but I also see how it's valuable training for our own counterterrorism agents.
When did you last use Linux? These days, the correct kernel module for supported hardware is loaded automatically as soon as you plug it in.
If they aren't staying skeuomorphic, then Metro might give you a preview.
But at-will employment is actually a separate issue from unionization. At-will employment goes against what most countries and cultures regard as a cornerstone of capitalism itself: clarity and enforcement of contracts.

At-will employment: anyone can terminate the employment relationship at any time, unilaterally, for any reason or no reason. The party in the stronger bargaining position can unilaterally demand changes at threat of leaving/firing, more or less whenever they want.

No at-will, no union: employment is governed by a contract negotiated and bound at the start of the job. There are set terms, and agreed amounts of leeway. Either party who decides to unilaterally cheat the other can be taken to court and legally held responsible to the other party.

Seriously, why should Americans consider it normal to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement when beginning work for a new company but completely out-of-the-blue to have the employer be legally responsible for granting so simple a "privilege" as a 40 hour work-week without threatening to fire you?

(Which, by the way, doesn't mean things like long work-weeks don't exist in "contract employment" countries. My friend I mentioned has a standard week of 45 hours. That length is set by his contract, which he agreed to. What they can't do is sign him to a 45-hour week and then start regularly demanding 55 hours each week. This pleasant standardization of his hours allows my friend to attend language-immersion classes after work to get his Hebrew up to par -- an absolute must for integrating fully into the Israeli economy as a competent worker.)
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/32/7675.html
Key quote.

Since I’ve been out of the Silicon-Valley-centred tech industry, I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society. Companies like Google and Facebook — in common with most public companies — have interests that are frequently in conflict with the wellbeing of — I was going to say their customers or their users, but I’ll say “people” in general, since it’s wider than that. People who use their systems directly, people who don’t — we’re all affected by it, and although some of the outcomes are positive a disturbingly high number of them are negative: the erosion of privacy, of consumer rights, of the public domain and fair use, of meaningful connections between people and a sense of true community, of beauty and care taken in craftsmanship, of our very physical wellbeing. No amount of employee benefits or underfunded Google.org projects can counteract that.
Everybody here talks about Ive being opposed to skeuomorphism , does anybody have any examples of what the UI would look like under the leadership of his design principles? I can't even imagine it.
Everyone's mentioning Maps/Siri, but my most recent disappointment with an Apple product is the UI, performance and structure of Game Center for iOS.

I've never been inclined to use it before the recent release of Letterpress which necessitates its use and it a steaming pile of you-know-what.

It's so jarring going from the lovely minimalism of the Letterpress game into parts of Game Center to manage match/friend requests.

It's the sort of experience that's had me worried about Apple, and this is (tentatively) good news, as I gather he was heading up the part of Apple responsible for such products.
This Lego Drum Machine Turns Bricks Into Beats
WFM. (In all browsers I can test on OSX.)

Hopefully you're not experiencing a MitM attack! :)
Scott Forstall is already rich thanks to Apple, but he lost a lot of money by being fired. 75,000 RSUs vesting in 2013, 100,000 RSUs to vest in 2014, and 75,000 in 2016. That's a lot of dough ($151M at today's share price).
As a side question, is it common practice for Google to hire people using employment contracts with fixed terms? Is there an underclass of employees who join as a result of an acquisition, but who have expiration dates?
Yes, and depending on local terrain even just a 5-minute walk may offer a 15M rise in elevation. Or, simply being on top of a 3-4 story structure, with something sure to float, makes you far more likely to survive (even if the structure is swept away) than being on the ground/ground-floor.
It's not just a yes/no on derivation, the amount of information present in the derivative data matters. If you hashed every 32 bits individually then you would be infringing, but one hash for the whole thing is fine.
His functions are being taken over by people who make good things happen at the company.
I graduated with a CS degree ten years ago and I could only check the following:

Designing data structures
Analyzing algorithmic complexity (Big O)

Version control was glossed over in my class with little importance given to it.
The thing about Forstall's achievements is he did them all under the shadow of Steve Jobs.

Is it that he had to take a more active role now, and not just be a Jobs man?

Is it that Jobs could bring talented people together and keep them there and Tim Cook is failing to do that?

I'm almost certain it's neither of those, but they serve to illustrate the point: when people think of iOS, Scott Forstall is not even close to the first person they think of giving credit to.
I think the best approach is to integrate tasks like version control across many subjects.

For instance, many programming exercises in various subjects taught at my university give the students a basic framework with missing functions, or a test harness, or some other piece of code that needs to be finished. These could have been shared via a version control system, and delivery could be made that way as well (using pull requests, branches, or some other feature).

That way, students would be encouraged to use version control while working on the exercises.

The way it actually is done here, though, is basically "learn version control yourself and justify your choice of version control system in your report" when doing group projects.
Here are the major changes announced:

1. Jony Ive's role is expanded from Industrial Design to Industrial Design AND Human Interface. In other words, Ive is the new Design chief for hardware and software. This is huge.

2. Scott Forstall is out (after an interim advising role to Tim Cook). iOS goes to Craig Federighi who already oversees Mac OS. So, now iOS and Mac OS are overseen by the same person.

3. Eddy Cue's role is expanded (he previously was in charge of iTunes, App Store, iBookStore, iCloud). He now also oversees Siri and Maps.

4. Bob Mansfield will lead a new group called Technologies (wireless and semiconductor).

5. John Browett of retail is out.

Overall, I view this move as extremely positive.

Tim Cook just elevated his most reliable and capable SVPs to assume more leadership role.

John Ive, Eddy Cue, Mansfield and Federighi have all proven to be pretty spectacular. Ive with industrial design, Cue with iTunes/AppStore/iCloud, Mansfield with hardware and Federighi with Mac OS.

Further, Tim Cook gets rid of his problem SVPs - namely Browett who didn't match the culture of Apple... and Scott Forstall (who advanced iOS in huge ways) but reportedly had problems with getting along with other SVPs and also who disappointed users with iOS6/Maps (and also in my opinion poorly designed and implemented Apple apps... appstore reviews for Apple apps have gone significantly down the last year or two).

Cook will probably give Forstall a good severance package with an agreement that Forstall doesn't go to a mobile OS competitor.

I'm actually more optimistic on Apple with this bold management shakeup. Tim Cook is showing the moves of a bold leader... and it's exactly what Apple needs.
Ask HN: Anyone selling ebooks or other digital goods on the side?
I'm working on a new project (www.bngal.com) and looking for feedback from people who are selling digital goods (ebooks, themes, icon/graphic sets, screencasts).

This is one of the first verticals I'd like to target (if there's a need).

What do you use to take payment & fulfill your orders? What would get you to switch? Is getting exposure from a marketplace more important than a low transaction rate?

TIA
Proof be damned, I can't help but try and think of ways to comb it flat... :)
AMD to produce 64-bit ARM server processors
Skeuomorphism has been interpreted two ways - as decorative elements (leather stitching), and in functionality that attempts to emulate a real world object (page flipping in an e-book).

The former is just a matter of aesthetic preference. Where skeuomorphism gets dangerous is in the latter case.

A perfect example is the horrible address book in OS X. It looks like a book, and therefore the user expects it to function like a book. Yet, it doesn't. It's this area of interaction design that has run afoul at Apple.
Do you really think that they would radically redesign the next version of iOS?
OK, but 3x3 MIMO is 450Mbps. (And we're talking about the mini anyway.)
Ask HN: Learning MongoDB as your first DB?
10gen along with EdX is organizing this online DBA classes for MongoDB. I am planning to enroll in this class. My question is can you learn MongoDB (DBA Part) without the prior knowledge of SQL or as a matter of fact without knowing any other Database? As such on the site of 10gen they have not mentioned any particular prerequiste to this course - https://education.10gen.com/courses/10gen/M102/2012_Fall/about
Dumb question: was the non-compete signed when he began employment or when he was let go?
I agree version control does not need it's own course, but certainly a course that forces you to use version control is a good idea.

I'm currently trying to convince my organization to use version control, and because nobody has ever used it before, they just see it as a pain and more overhead that it's worth. To be perfectly honest, I felt exactly the same way before I was forced to use it for a 2nd year programming course.

Of course, since then, I refuse to not use it, even for my side projects where I'm the only contributor.
75,000 options vesting in 2013 and 100,000 vesting in 2014 probably explain the year as adviser - i.e. fiscal year 2013 ends October 1, 2013 so one year from today is probably adequate for those options to vest and may have been an equitable way to resolve severance negotiations.
Great question!

Reminds me of Jesse Storimer http://jstorimer.com/ who originally published 'Working With Unix Processes' independently which subsequently got picked up by The Pragmatic Programmers: http://pragprog.com/book/jsunix/working-with-unix-processes

Currently working on some books myself.
That's what your parent said.
I think one of the worst examples of UI design by Apple is the iCloud website. It's just so slow and clunky. I can't believe more people aren't complaining about it.
PLEASE stop posting this to HN.
Not exactly. Dixons branches were re-branded as Currys.digital and there are plenty of those.
How To Create A Theme Options Page For WordPress
Skeuomorphing physical objects designed by Rams is still skeuomorphing.
Mozilla's UX posts continue to impress by being thorough and open-minded.
I've been developing a similar system for accelerating my Japanese study, and I haven't been able to release it yet either. It has nothing to do with the quality of the code, it's that right now it's designed specifically for myself. It practically hardcodes my username and other details like that. Maybe other programmers could use it, but preparing such a package for general consumption takes lots more time and energy.
They present a valid certificate for blog.mozilla.org from GeoTrust to me.
The good thing about superficial skeuomorphism is, it's really easy to take out.
Advanced Micro Devices to Build Server Chips With ARM Technology
Oh wow. Given that my university (Technion) has strong ties to Intel and Marvell, and substantial ties to the local branches of Microsoft and Google too, it sounds like life should someday be good. That'll be nice :-).

Actually, I was at a presentation today for new grad-students, and one of the older grad-student mentors helping to present mentioned that the coursework phase of grad-school is a good time to get a bit of industrial experience in the summers. Once I actually have real grad-level PL experience under my belt I'd quite like to go and see what it's all about.
DOE flips switch on Titan, world’s newest fastest supercomputer
I agree that probably neither or those explanations is fully true, but I do believe that Jobs had the ability to harness conflicting personalities towards greater goals.

I do disagree with your last point, though —— I've watched every keynote for the past 6-7 years and Forstall has rocked the iOS presentations. Perhaps I'm biased, but I very deeply associate him with the greatness of iOS, particularly Apple's ability to steadily pick off the "low-hanging fruit" features (e.g. 3rd party apps in 2.0, copy-and-paste, PC-free) with regularity and elegance.
> Code testing is a big one I wish we would have learned ....so I suspect a handful of college lectures wouldn't have helped much.

I took a "Software Testing Theory" class in the 2nd year of Software Engineering, then every course after that we were using jUnit (or whatever) for unit testing, and writing Software Test Plans and executing them on everything we did.

It was great.
Man what luck for Apple that Braun didn't take out a design patent on this.
Does anyone but me here listen incessantly to podcasts?

The latest Podcasts App from iTunes is a skeuomorphic mess. It has a superfluous animation of a reel-to-reel player of course. But it utterly fails at its most basic task: playing a goddamn podcast. But don't take my word for it, it has a 1.5 star rating on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podcasts/id525463029

Not to mention crashes... Apple used to make jokes about the Windows blue screen of death. Well, that's my new day-to-day experience with iOS apps. I'm constantly restarting crashed apps over and over.

Honestly, this is good news if Forstall really is the driving force behind the deteriorating user experience of many apps.
Forstall Out; Ive Up
Apple Security is probably outside your house as I write this.
Basically any state where the majority of people there see "right to work" and that's all the info they need to believe it means something good.
>> Anyone who A) likes Apple and B) has ever been in a Dixon's store in the UK will be overjoyed with the other departure, Browett (head of retail) who is leaving immediately (compared to Forstall's year long "transition" departure). Dixon's is everything that Apple should never be; terrible customer service, clueless minimum wage staff, horrible retail experience, and generally used only by people who desperately need something immediately or are too naive to find another store.

I agree, the one thing that irks me though, is that I remember reading the guy was able to convert a sizable part of his Apple stock options only a few weeks ago. That's a quick & cool few million $$$ he made in one year at Apple without any apparent positive contribution :-/
Some companies go public on the stock market and don't even raise 200m of cash. To raise 200m in VC capital alone is an enormous task. As for PR, people love public figures and leaders. They want to associate with the individual strife to the top! It makes for an incredible story about your product/service and this is what you want to do. You want to strike an emotion with your users!
Metro is defined by flat background colors, square corners and no shading. You can have a non-skeumorphic interface without any of those features, and given Apple's history of interface design, it would surprise me if they adopted any of them. Apple loves rounded rectangles, gradient backgrounds and shading to indicate depth, though shine and real-like textures may be on the way out.
"A Slower Speed of Light" Game Trailer - MIT Game Lab
Well hold on a damn minute. True community? The internet didn't erode that, bad city planning and work-centered, geographically unrooted lifestyles did that. Craftsmanship? Commodification and mass manufacturing did that. Physical well-being? Cheap, shitty food and sedentary lifestyles centered around sedentary jobs did that.
Talk to any teacher or administrator who gives a shit about their students and were teaching before 2001. I come from a family of teachers and school administration and they all point to NCLB as a huge turning point downward in education. Even the ones who favor more standardized testing as a way of finding teachers who aren't up to snuff say the test score has to be one input to the equation, not the only thing. Making the test score all-important skews teaching the same way making one metric in business all-important skews the business toward that metric.
Corinth if famous for its leather! /Archer
They can get Lactase pills...
Why isn't everyone a Bayesian? [1986]
This is a myth perpetrated by people who believe that since the kids are on holiday, so are the teachers.
Next version, probably not unless there is the perception of a burning platform.

But over the long haul, I don't see how Apple can stick with an increasingly dated and arbitrary visual paradigm. How many people have actually been around real to real tape decks or owned a leather desk calendar? And as digital devices like smartphones become more ubiquitous, fewer and fewer people will.
Google Nexus 4 vs. Samsung Galaxy S3: Spec showdown
Building Windows 8 for ARM
I'm glad they're working on something, because my bookmarks are a good example of horribly broken.

(Ideally I'd have something that looked like the grid-home layout that most browsers have now, but for all my bookmarks. Then it'd have the ability to create / destroy folders, and drag and drop functionality to move bookmarks around.)
Firefox is improving at an amazing pace for both users and developers. It seems like the rapid release schedule has sparked a flame.
Fascinating article. A truly unique voice and perspective, although after reading all the comments and reviews, maybe their is a groundswell here!? Nonetheless, thanks for opening one brain, and keep on keepin' on!