skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Take some people and 'partition' them, that is, for
some positive integer n, have n boxes and put each
person in some one of the n boxes. Each box is a
'partition'. Have no empty boxes.

Okay, pick a measure. Might pick accuracy with a
bow and arrow, skill at adding a column of numbers,
ability to memorize a passage of music, distance on
a broad jump -- you get it, essentially anything.

Now apply the measure to each of the people, and for
each partition get an average for the measures of
the people in that partition.

Now rank the partitions on the averages. Typically
will have no ties -- assume no ties. So, there is
no ambiguity in the ranking.

Note: Likely picking a different measure will
result in a different ranking.

Now pick one more box, A, and move some people from
the partitions into box A from some of the other
boxes, and get the score of the people in box A.

So, here we have an experiment with any people with
any partitions with any measure and have said
nothing, zip, zilch, zero, about ethnicity, race,
income, parent's education, school systems, teachers
unions, school budgets, etc.

Claim: Essentially always, the score of box A will
be significantly lower than the score of the best
partition and significantly higher than the score of
the worst partition. That is, the score of box A
will be, in the word of the OP, 'middling'.

So, just this little thought experiment is enough to
explain the fact that the US is not either the best
or the worst in the world on the PISA tests.

But, if in each partition the people are
homogeneous, then typically the result will be the
same except the difference between partition at the
top of the ranking and the bottom of the ranking
will be larger. Net, both the top and the bottom of
the rankings will have homogeneous populations, and
the diverse partition A will be middling.

For more, if want to compare the school, home life,
etc. of Finland what those aspects of the US, then
compare PISA scores of students in Finland, native
to Finland, with the PISA scores of US students of
recent, native Finnish descent.

Of course, there was

"McKinsey's report, The Economic Impact of the
Achievement Gap in America's Schools"

of 2009. The URLs of the PDFs are no longer live.

There in the "supporting materials" on page 24 is a
bar graph of

"PISA Science Literacy Scale for 15-year-old
students, 2006"

with

Finland 563
Hong Kong 542
Canada 534
Japan 531
Australia 527
US whites 523
...
US average 489
...
Greece 473
Israel 454
US Latinos 439

Now, how can Israel be so low?

Exercise for the reader!
They should have left off the "small", and it would have made more sense.
One solution to this problem that I found is to be a freelancer instead of an employee. It also tends to work well in terms of "Hey, the surf is good, I won't be working today. Kthxbai"

Somehow, as if by magic, as soon as you become a freelancer people stop caring about butt-in-seat time and start caring about results. Same goes for IP, I have never had a client complain about opensourcing something I made on their buck.
>But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.

Where were you working? That's definitely not how US ip-law operates.
Does the company have any jurisdiction over what appears to be Nick's own project? This really sounds ridiculous.
I made a backup of it for personal use. https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js

Documentation (basic, no CSS): http://danielsamuels.github.com/chart-js/
And not only that, they could benefit from it immensely - by adding a 'sponsored by' link on the project pages.
So the real question remains:

Who is going to hire this guy away from his current employer?
Fight News: Saul Canelo Alvarez wants Floyd Mayweather Jr. when Stars Align
A normal employer with a normal-world mindset. This is their competitive advantage and they're keeping it for themselves - even though they didn't (in his reading) buy the original code he wrote.

Sad, but a fact of life if you deal with businesses.
Prior to addressing your comment I'd like to make it clear that any jokes or insults with the intention to harm are not acceptable.

To address your comment - these things are not often as clear cut as you'd make out. The real world just isn't like that. Where this particular situation gets murky is that one of the men in question has replied to the charge against him, giving his side of the story:

I had decided forking someone's repo is a new form of flattery
(the highest form being implementation) and we were excited
about one of the presenters projects; a friend said "I would
fork that guys repo" The sexual context was applied by Adria,
and not us.

Whether you agree with his comments or not, he should have the opportunity to present his side of the story before being 'sentenced'. In this case that hasn't happened and so he's out of a job for what may have been an innocent comment taken in the wrong way by OP.

It's for these reasons that vigilantism is never a solution to these issues. It's possible that in this case a deeper divide will created between those who see the comment as trivial and those who do not. The outcome will be that the former group pays less attention to more serious issues because of what they see as "crying wolf" by some parties and the latter group becomes more emphatic on trivial issues which "never get resolved". This helps neither group and does nothing to reduce these problems in the future, a net negative for all involved.
Love to know how numbers of users affected is measured. One of the arguments is that with a large enough number of users (millions) an option can cause significant numbers of people grief if they misuse it.

Same argument can be said for removing a feature 2% of the population of users rely on. 2% of 450 million users is 9 million users. Not what I'd call a tiny number of users.
I downloaded javascripts
Could you federate some of the feed fetches to your users? Get the UI to check for updates to some subset of that user's feeds and then ping the newsblur server to tell it when there's been an update.
An open note to Nick's Employers -

1) If you are a technology company, this is Harakiri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku). You are alienating every developer who is worth her salt. If you have a recruiting arm, and they are trying to recruit, god be with them. Ofcourse, you think people will never come to know, but this has the potential to be a good story and press will pick it up. I will not be surprised if Techcrunch or Wired Enterprise picks this up first.

2) Strategically, this is so uncool. You could have leveraged this open sourcing in several ways. Made the codebase part of your official Github ( ever heard of Bootstrap?) and drummed up participation. If THIS was the product, you could leverage the free PR to accelerate user-acquisition. Nick had some amazing documentation, and he even got SUCH a cool domain for you guys.

3) Eventually, you will lose Nick, who seems quite competent, who will move on to do better things under the umbrella of better employers.

Pretty lame, on several counts.
Is this even legal ? In Switzerland, I don't think an employer can claim ownership of a piece of work that was produced on the employee spare time (and on his own computer and so on).
I had no idea that the manufacturing variation among chips is large enough to create performance tiers. Pass/fail I get, but this sounds like more extreme. Like, the difference between C and fail may be such that some non-negligible percentage of chips that test into the C bin should really be in the fail bin.
Odds are that it was a Disney-like situation: anything that you create while employed by Disney automatically becomes property of Disney.
I tried it, too. It works great. Check the add-ons available, one appears to be an English word prediction pack.
Dasher is really cool - it's easily the most radical take on keyboards I've seen.

Sometimes I just turn it on full speed and swipe at a random angle to the right and let it fly through the infinite dictionary, watching a deterministic gibberish story unfold.
I'd like to know about your business - if only because I'm interested in working in this field. Can you share any info about your employer?
So You’re Extinct? Scientists Have Gleam in Eye
and dinosaurs will die
2% of 450 million users is 9 million users.
That's not 'hardline dickery'.

The company didn't get a lawyer involved and force him to take it down, they expressed concern - the author apparently agrees that it's related or similar to work he did while an employee, or there would have been a bit more argument than "oh, ok".

What you're proposing would of course be fine - the company isn't claiming 'ownership' of that code, just suggesting that it might be infringing. But I don't get the impression that they're using that charting library, just similar code written by the same author. They wouldn't be hurt by that at all.
> I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired,

The initial tiredness is known as keto-fever or induction flu:

http://lowcarb4u.blogspot.de/2010/02/induction-flu.html

Goes away after a few days.
> Does anyone want to apply to YC with a novel idea: make computers for people who make money using computers?

I'm not saying it can't be done, but we're probably the worst customers. On the one side you've got people who's machines are supplied by IT and can't be too extravagant, on the other you've got people buying for themselves and wanting to spend as little as possible.

What initially came to mind when you said this was "The Homer" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPuYGPcvD4
Get some advice on how to handle this. I know plenty of lawyers who'd gladly spend a few minutes listening to your story and giving you some "unofficial" advice (by that I mean that unless you actually pay them, they won't write a letter or represent you - you're stuck implementing that advice yourself.)

I'd wager this was a threat from an immediate manager. Go over his head. Explain you did this as coursework. Have someone explain the company's view of these "similarities" - Just because their app sorts entries in a table on an iPad doesn't mean publishing that sort.js you built in class is an IP problem. See if they'd be willing to generate some goodwill amongst the OSS community by allowing you to put chart.js back online.

DO NOT SIMPLY ROLL OVER.

And if you get stonewalled, these are probably not the kind of people you want to work with. Start looking for a new job. Don't fear for this one. Programmers, developers, software engineers (pick your flavor) are in high demand.
>you usually have noticeably different colored urine. That's no coincidence.

Personally the only substance I've noticed cause substantial colour changes is high doses of riboflavin (the infamous neon yellow...).

Several of the vitamin B's are often found in energy drinks and various pre-workout mixes in very high doses as well (e.g. it's not uncommon for pre-workout mixes to trigger niacin-flushes as well as riboflavin-neon color). The motivation seems to be that the potential benefits might be good enough and the risks low enough that it's better to dose high and maximize what is available to the body, even if most ends up being excreted.

Not many other supplements tends to be dosed at such high multiples of RDA's as some of the B-vitamins often does.
> If he was a full-time employee in the US, a contract wouldn't be necessary for this to be an issue.

Right, but you can still address this when you're negotiating the terms of your employment.

> Certainly most companies will not grant you a blanket right to open source all of your work for them

agreed, but many companies will be ok with open sourcing individual components, especially if it's done so under their name.

My point is this is another tool for you to use at negotiation time when they've reached a limit on price / other benefits.
The Case Against Competition
I'm not sure we can be all that certain about the author's failings (apart from some failures as a writer). Certainly in her other story about inappropriate behaviour, she acts very reasonably. However, we can't really tell from how she writes the story whether the guy she complained about was just joking around with his friend, or directing sexual comments towards her in a harassing manner.

The problem with sexual harassment isn't that it attacks expectations of chastity, and to be honest, that's quite a condescending attitude to take. Sexual harassment is unpleasant because it makes people feel uncomfortable and frightened. If you think jokes can't be frightening then that is a failure on your part.

Sexual harassment isn't uncomfortable and scary because unwanted sexual attention offends one's virtue. Overt sexual advances are unprofessional, they put people in awkward social positions, and embarrass them in front of their peers. Unwanted sexual attention in a professional environment can be very disrespectful - it's an unwelcome diversion away from the desired professional interactions, and sends a clear message that you're not being taken seriously at all. It's potentially career damaging stuff, so it makes sense that it makes people uncomfortable.

Sexual harassment becomes deeply uncomfortable when it persists. When someone receives a sexual comment and responds coldly or uncomfortably, with obvious embarrassment or disinterest, they expect the sexual content to stop. If the sexual comments persist, that is creepy. It's not necessarily that the comments themselves are deeply offensive, it's the fact that someone is persisting in an action that is intrusive and unpleasant to you. In a professional environment, it is expected that everyone behave politely and with consideration. If someone presses the point and tries to engage with you in a sexual manner beyond the bounds of normal politeness, then you begin to think they are motivated by some strong feelings, and that is scary. Worse still, once you become scared, if they persist further, that means they don't even care about frightening you.

It is genuinely quite scary when someone has some strong feelings towards you that drive them to ignore social convention and your discomfort and fear. Worse still, complaints about sexual harassment often get dismissed as simple misunderstandings and not taken seriously. The fact is, misunderstandings are scary if someone is misunderstanding your fear and discomfort as an invitation to bed.
Does 10x take 10% of whatever the client makes?
Your feedback want constructive, it was vague and lacked any specific details mozilla could use to improve.
Could you please go into more detail with what your Sustagen regime was like? Number of drinks per day? Taste? Cost? Preparation?

No problems if you can't - but I'd love to hear it from someone that's been through it before (under cancer no less! hope you got better).

The website you shared says that it's merely a nutritional supplement - I'd just like to know what a full regime of meal replacement would be like over say a day (do you have breakfast? or do you just drink whenever you are hungry?).

Pretty much what was your daily eating schedule like during those liquid only stretches.
"War is what happens when language fails". Iraq, 10 years on, why wars are wrong
10 years ago, at 9:34 P.M, 19 March EST, the surprise military invasion of Iraq began. War was not formally declared until the 20th. My site - through the use of provocative pictures and amazing quotes, looks at what the most inspiring people think of war, and why it is such a waste.

http://getinspired365.com/20130319

Please note: some pictures may cause distress.
No worries, I added CloudFlare so the folks who were DDoS'ing my site will have to find a new hobby.
Clickable - http://getinspired365.com/20130319
I'm a macbook user and absolutely hate my thinkpad. However, I realize the people who love the thinkpad are all about function over form. Making the thinkpad more mac like (or consumer like or whatever) is just going to alienate the people already buying these.
I think he was after information concerning the heart and running as join degradation from running is, afaik, common knowledge. I was under the impression running improved heart strength.

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/heart-attack-risks-are-great...

Such articles state that endurance running (as opposed to sprints) , or any edurancy activity, increase heart attack chance.

No exercise is purported as the greatest heart risk, so perhaps high intensity low endurance is best for heart health? I'd imagine it wouldn't build stamina.
...my fault, should of A-OK'ed everything before putting it online. Didn't expect anywhere near that sort of reaction though. (from the author's twitter feed)

Sounds kinda fierce to me. I suspect if he'd refused, lawyers wouldn't be far behind. Perhaps I'm just jaded. I've seen some pretty egregious overstepping by companies in my time.

I'm still calling it a dick move. A great deal of what makes him valuable to them, he likely learned at home doing this sort of thing. He may even be driving the product's direction somewhat with his personal exploration.
Its worth remembering that the conflict might not be to the company's activities, but rather, to activities performed for a client. Some clients may be substantially upset if they feel that they have paid for development, to have that development later released as open-source. Of course there would be no reason to assume Chart.js reuses client's code, and the developer not have even worked on any projects with the company yet, but the challenges of convincing a client might not be worth the stress.
Since you didn't say who A, B and C were I have to assume,

A - person to the left
B - person to the right
C - Adria

Yes, you have missed the distinction and the twitter "analogy" is false.

Adria[C] (I've no idea who any of these people are) turned and spoke to the person to the far left [A] behind her - and it "involved forking the repo to continue development".

Then, the "guy next to him" [B] .... um, the 3rd Person [B], began making forking jokes.

So how does [B] have an active relationship to [C]? (Speculation: [B] thinks there is a relationship because they are sitting next to [A]?)

Now we have to introduce [D] -- the traveller inbound to the USA. The "socks in pants" sexual innuendo is between party [D] and [C]. Party [D] tweets about the TSA, party [C] responds.

Where is [B] or other letter if twitter is supposed to be analogous? Being an observer or a passive listener doesn't count!
I just added the original documentation to the master repo, you may want to grab that too.
A new way to do code reviews
The Ultimate Pitch Template
Coke Zero?
Works for me, but I'm fine with the taste of aspartame
If he's working in the US, then debatably yes. Though 'jurisdiction' isn't the right word.

Work performed by an employee during the course of operations is considered 'work for hire', and is the intellectual property of the employer. If he then goes on to replicate a large quantity of that work 'on his own time', he is most likely infringing on that work that he previously did (unless he's very careful about it. Since he didn't seem aware that it was a potential issue, he probably was not).

Now, it's not obvious that the employer would have won such a suit, but it's not a frivolous and un-winnable case either. It's generally best to talk to your employer about this sort of thing before releasing it - if they had been real jerks, they could have sued him for infringement despite his taking it back down when they asked.
This is the absolute worst 'feature' on a thinkpad. When browsing those buttons are forward/back. Other that I'm not sure why they can't get a decent trackpad. Even though synaptics makes both the thinkpad and macbook trackpads, the mac is far better. It must come down to software/drivers.
They have already lost Nick. It's just matter of time now.
Hey guys,
We are developing a tool for the developers, which will simplify the process of code reviews, but also make it more social. We would appreciate your feedback.
Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it
"An apology to open source"
"At midnight on the 18th March 2013 I posted Chart.js online. On the morning of the 19th March, I've had to take it down due to IP concerns with my current employer."

It has been taken down. Looks like the project ran into some trouble.
Funnily enough, the Internet was never broken by turning off JavaScript.
Please provide sources for these claims (and prove me wrong!). I'm quite sure none of them are actual law as compared to company policies. The ATM limit is surely because of personal security reasons (but it can be raised if you notice the bank), and the SMS payments being removed because the communications providers dont want to be scrutinised by the government under "financial service providers law".
From the OP

'Sadly though, due to concerns from my employer regarding intellectual property and similarities in projects I've worked on, I've been asked to take down the site.'

We have no way of assessing the validity of these concerns from what has been said. If the company feels the open source project contains work they have funded, and don't want to release, then it is their right to ask him to withdraw it.

Also, unless Nick is primarily driven by open source participation there's nothing to say they will eventually lose him.
For what it worth, a statement opening with "it seems" can hardly be definitive in any sense. The post I replied to made a statement that the jokes weren't directed at her - yet somehow we don't see nearly as much hair-splitting from my critics on that part.

> It's your definitive conclusion of ill-intent, from incomplete evidence, that people may object to.

Intent is always in doubt and I wouldn't ascribe any to the dude's mind process at the time. For all I know it could really be just a joke in poor taste, or a part of his cumbersome mating dance. All I pointed out is the case is not nearly as clear cut as the parent poster presents it, stupid me not realizing we have some sort of r/mensrights party here.
"What you're proposing would of course be fine"

Not if the company are claiming ownership (even in the vaguest of ways) of the code and think there is some value in it - in that case "destroying" it could be a remarkably bad thing to do.

[NB I have been involved in litigation over ownership of code and although we were 100% in the right it was an appallingly stressful experence - mostly because logic seemed to go completely out the window once things turned nasty].
Realtime Bandwidth Grapher
Draw realtime bandwidth usage graph for specific network interfaces with HTML5 technology
My thought is aligning with the policy what nevinera mentioned. The company should have the right to say whether to open src certain project or not programmed by the staff during the work time.

But the code written by the same staff during the off-hour should belonged to the same staff.

I am running a startup in Hong Kong, and I am thinking of adopting this kind of policy.
Since I've read that "innocent" book, I'd like to give another perspective. Many entrepreneurs are not willing to get into the consumer goods business because of the giant competitors like P&G, Unilever and Coca Cola. That's why innocent's founders emphasised starting "small" in their book. They started the business in a kitchen and eventually won the battle (sort of) by creativity. That's why stories like innocent and Method are so inspiring.
"Scars that I'd had for years are barely visible now."

Anyone have any idea whatthe root (ingredient) of this subjective observation may be?
Bubble gum could help here.