skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
By 4th grade, I wasn't excelling in school, despite demonstrating considerable ability and intelligence when not in an academic setting. I was selected to join the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) and suddenly school became more interesting. I moved to another part of the country and was enrolled in that area's GATE type of programming. By the time I went to Junior high, I was taking honors classes and this was when I started to shine academically. Unfortunately when I started the 9th grade, I spent one quarter as a high school freshman before I moved again and was put back in a middle school. Completing my 9th grade, they opened a 9-12 grade high school and with most of my peers became sophomores where I had to prove myself all over again, but I applied myself and graduated 6th out of a class of 600.

I believe the inconsistent curriculum between different school districts, and wildly different styles of teaching made this experience more difficult than it should have been. In hind sight, had I not been moved around so often, I would have probably skipped a grade or two.

It is also a product of the schools that I went to that you went to 4 years of high school. I know people who completed all of their high school credits by the time they were juniors and who got out of high school early. Had I known this was even possible, I could have easily met all my credits and left early as well.

I now think that the education system is inherently flawed. There is no reason to think that all students should progress through school at the same rate, but for me I was presented no alternatives. Grade levels do not adequately identify any student's potential any more than they identify what subjects or material they should be instructed. My reading comprehension has always been strong, while my spelling ability is only adequate at best. Without ubiquitous spell checkers of today, some might have considered me illiterate; hardly a fair assessment of my reading level yet early on in my education those concepts were seen as expressly linked.

I personally think one room school houses have value we no longer acknowledge. Allowing older students to impart their knowledge to younger students is a form of interactive learning that would enforce ideas for those older students. Allowing students to learn at their own pace, and not at the pace of their grade level would allow students who grasp certain subjects to drive through those quickly and receive additional instruction for those areas they may not be as advanced. I believe that while some who knew me in high school would say I excelled in school, the truth is somewhat misleading. I was kept back from excelling in certain subjects by majority curriculum requirements.

I don't know that I have the solution, but I think the current system is only capable of producing average students.
Heads up: this is how you do a poll -- https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
Researchers work to build robots’ awareness of their own limitations
One of my favorite uses of extension methods is to have semi-intelligent type coercers/converters.

For example:

public static string AsString(this object me, string defaultValue = null)
public static int AsInt(this object me, int defaultValue = default(int))
public static float AsFloat(this object me, float defaultValue = default(float))
public static double AsDouble(this object me, double defaultValue = default(double))
public static Uri AsUri(this object me, Uri defaultValue = null)
public static bool AsBool(this object me, bool defaultValue = default(bool))

It's handy because you can do null checking in the extension method. Additionally, you can add some extra logic for converting specific runtime types. For example, calling .AsBool() on a string can check if the contents of the string is "1" or "true".
The rich folk seemed more willing to learn it, try it, and logic out the problem. The middle class folk ... usually weren't present and were more prone to complaining.

Or, the middle class folks didn't have time to hang around, while rich folk don't always work 9-5.
The Gold Coast in Chicago is a particularly good example.

It's Chicago's most prime real estate, preferred by celebrities and high powered executives. Yet it's cheap enough that most people here could live there in a studio or 1br on a code monkey salary and have plenty to spend left over. This is because Chicago allows supply to meet demand, and has the Manhattan-like neighborhood of the Gold Coast in a city without nearly as much as housing demand as the real Manhattan. (Also, the Gold Coast is way nicer for reasons the parent post talks about.)
Pyglet provides native windowing and a full OpenGL wrapper.
Personally, the tension that I have in dealing with contractors is not wanting to be taken advantage of. Much in the same way that mechanics and used car salesmen are 'notorious' for taking advantage of people.
“My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.”
Apologies not needed. That raises a question though.

I was implying that Apple and Microsoft don't do as well building web services. I wouldn't argue that Azure can't scale but the overall approach seems to be a little bit "unfinished".

Let me explain, the only true cloud computing environment that really solves 90% of any companies needs is AWS. Somehow Amazon understands what the developer community needs. I'm really perplexed by Google not getting this right.

Apple doesn't and I don't believe Microsoft does either.

I don't think this is about technical chops. It's something else that I can't put my finger on.

Similar to how I don't understand how Amazon crushed Best Buy so quickly.
They should be able to unless malicious intent is involved or their servers get overloaded but eventually everyone should be able to get their bitcoins out as long as security is in place.

Even if everyone withdrew their Bitcoins from Mt. Gox into private wallets, it shouldn't cause Mt. Gox to go bankrupt as they are not a bank but an exchange and take a commission cut on each transaction.

The only way that this would be a problem is if someone sets up an exchange but then gives people "fake" bitcoins to people that leave their bitcoins with the exchange. They would have real bitcoins around of course if people withdraw them but it would turn into a juggling act and eventually fail if too many people withdraw their bitcoins.

I don't want to say it's farfetched but it's probably better to store your bitcoins yourself in your own wallets rather than leaving a significant amount in the control of someone else.
"What would help, in my mind, is for kids to be able to learn each subject at their own, separate pace--one "micro-skill" at a time, advancing to the next only when all the micro-skills relied upon as a base for the next micro-skill have been mastered (100%ed). [Think of it sort of like an unlockable "tech tree" of education.]"

This is exactly what the Khan Academy is doing. I believe there's at least one school (not sure if public or private) where they're experimenting with that model. See:

http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...

IIRC, the students in the class take most of the lessons via computer/tablet and move forward once they've answered a certain number of quiz problems correctly. The teacher can monitor the progress of each student, and if one is having difficulty than he/she can get some individual help from the teacher or another student.
The true problem is obviousness. Any machine is reducible to an algorithm is reducible to an integer. They are all the same. It's ridiculous to say that algorithms are "discovered" and not "made by man".

There needs to be a better procedure for throwing out all the stupid obvious or trivial patents - but allow ones that have required the blood, sweat and tears of their inventor to create.
FundersClub (YC S12) Is First SEC-Recognized Online Venture Capital Firm
If someone were to make something like this a step-by-step tutorial/template appropriate for a classroom setting it would be huge. Imagine a class at High School where you start off learning the basics of Python for the first few weeks and the rest of the semester is spent writing the chunks of code into a template that has lots of notes for guidance.

I'd image something like :

def setDefaultBlockColor(color):
# recall that this is a function that takes in a variable called 'color' as its argument, write the code that will set the current game files configuration file to either 'red', 'blue' or 'green' (p.s. DONT FORGET TO INDENT YOUR CODE!)

Just writing this function and seeing it work once you load up the game is enough to hook almost anyone that has the potential to enjoy programming but just doesn't know it yet.
>JS was never meant to be a general-purpose language.

The original designers and implementers of the Internet, the Web and HTML probably never envisioned the myriad of ways those technologies would be used (abused?). So what?

>Using the right tool for the right job is a fundamental aspect of software engineering.

So tell me, what is the right tool to build a cross-platform application that runs on every system, without requiring native install (and with every other benefit of a typical 'web-app')?

>If you use C for writing web-apps ...

WHY?!? How can you even say that in light of the Unreal demo that Mozilla showcased, where you have a high-performance game running on a standard browser. Given that, you still see zero potential? I don't know if browser gaming will take off, but that's irrelevant. If the browser can run a high performance game, it tells me devs can make use of that processing power to build any sort of web application that traditionally would have needed to be native. You don't see the potential in being able to build a web-based Photoshop or AutoCad?

>The irony here is that JavaScript isn't even a very good language, anyway.

You're right, it isn't, so what? HTTP isn't the best protocol, and neither is TCP, but try replacing them with any 'superior' protocol. JavaScript, like HTTP, and TCP is ubiquitous, that's its strength.

>no serious developer (barring maybe a couple of indies) would seriously consider Java/Flash as a serious platform.

I consider both serious platforms for gaming and otherwise, even with the knowledge that they will be replaced by HTML/JS on the client.
What I'm saying is that once something becomes gentrified (higher real estate prices, condo conversions, changes in demographics etc.) it gets a lot harder to just tear down buildings. Both from a economic, political and practical perspective.

I do agree with the sentiment in you second paragraph though.
The thing I love about Chicago is its design reflects a deeply midwestern sensibility. Illinois is plain, flat land. Chicago isn't an island (MFH), or on a peninsula (SF), or sandwiched between two rivers (PHL). They could've sprawled, but instead they built this compact downtown, because it was orderly.

The town my wife grew up in in rural Iowa has less than 2,000 people. Yet, it's got this perfect 10x8 little street grid. Why? The town founders didn't want the layout to be disorderly in case the town ever became a huge city.
My Desktop Setup - Updated
Grouping children by ability is fantastic for the majority of students. The reality is trouble kids distract the entire class, as well as stealing teaching time that could be used on everyone else. It's imprudent to remain politically correct at the detriment of the majority of learners.

Grouping by _occupation_ however is foolish, we don't know what the economy will look like tomorrow, let alone what jobs will be ready when the kids leave school. Also capability isn't restricted by occupation, there are plenty of brilliant individuals who choose trades over intellectual pursuits.

In many ways NCLB hampers the performance of public schools which in turn tarnishes their reputation. By focusing on conformity instead of individual ability it's difficult to actually group children effectively.
I'm using Django for a project and it's working great so far. The admin module is incredibly powerful!
I have encountered the first situation you mentioned a few times. Thanks for the pointer, I should have mentioned it.
John Doe called a friend.

Like · Comment · Share · 2 minutes ago near a Gopher
Hands-on with 'Comodo Internet Security Complete 2013'
It was built with an old version of pyglet trying to run on 64bit python. Update.
Pretty much everything sfrechtling said, but I'd also add "visualization". I don't just think about the things I'm afraid of and want to move away from, I visualize the things I want to move towards.

So, visualizing myself tooling around in a shiny new Maserati with a 6' tall redheaded supermodel with a Scottish accent...

I also take special glee in proving people wrong who doubt me, so I visualize the opportunity to go visit $JOE_BIGSHOT who could have helped us, but didn't because he didn't believe in us... after he's crashed out of being a $BIGSHOT and is now selling cars at the local "buy here, pay here" car lot.

Music is big for me as well. Stuff like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQcOQsCFnw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZb3Xya7jQ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FADpsMCe9Cw

Stuff like that. :-)
Actually, I should clarify a little: The more recent In re Bilski establishes that a rote process (like finding the length of the hypotenuse in your example) is not patentable. It requires a machine or a tangible transformation. That is, a machine that does this calculation.
MySQL on Python 3 is a bit of a mess at the moment just in general. SQLite and PostgreSQL are both in good shape, though.
I've followed the "skip college" movement and find it intriguing. If I were that age and it were me...but she's not me. And my wife certainly finds that route ahem rather less intriguing than I do! So it's the conventional route for us.
That's because of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry and the cure is more information.

Before undertaking any major project study it intensively, and you'll feel much better about it.

If you can't do the study yourself then find a trusted, disinterested, 3rd party to do it for you. (Of course that entails some study itself...)
Similar, but not the same. California / Cascadia / Mormonland form different entities on his map, but are all lumped under San Francisco Federal Reserve District.
Is it me or are there an extremely large number of front-page stories from The Atlantic today?

There are three on the frontpage right now, with 2 more in the next three pages (all of which frontpaged at least for a moment).
Can we please stop all the pseudo-psychology male / female / testosterone / hymen stuff on HN and concentrate on friggin' hacker news and startup news?

(also what's up with all the theatlantic.com upvotes on non-HN worthy stories, do we have sock muppets in the house?)
I didn't RTFA, but the headline made me think about my experience in 7th/8th grade when I moved to a new city. In previous years my grades in math were pretty bleak. When I transferred, they made a mistake and put me in honors Algebra. I just sort of went with it and it was a nightmare. I had essentially skipped a year of some essential math that wasn't being covered and we were, of course, expected to know. The experience was horrifying and I essentially BS'd my way through the class for the first half of the year. However, at some point things started clicking and by the end of the year I was good to go. I continued with honors math in high school, including pre-calc and calculus and then took every math class known to man to get my mechanical engineering degree. I now wonder what would have happened if they decided I had "low ability" based on my previous performance.
Not in my experience. I usually worked alone and I never had anyone just hand me their keys. I used to work on weekends as well.

It is a smart play, IMO, to not let random people walk into your house with no one there to protect the fortress, if you get my drift.
If a form of currency has intrinsic value as opposed to being fiat currency, it will fail. Bitcoin has intrinsic value.
How much of the difference is due to the random number generator calls? They aren't free or equal cost across platforms by any stretch. I really have a hard time trusting these numbers with how casually calls to RNGs are bandied about...
I used to be one of the engineers on shelfari. The team was kept mostly the same 4-5 guys from before acquisition and we worked on incremental stuff - integrating with Amazon sign-on, better meta data, lot's of minor UI things like better threads, series info etc etc.
> (Of course, for GC'd languages, we will need aggregate types.)

Maybe, maybe not. I've had parts of a precise, copying, compacting (commercial grade) garbage collector running under emscripten.

It "crashes" still, but seems viable.
They do have high quality company buses between SF and Mountain View. I've been on them before. So even if you commute, at least you won't have to drive and can do something useful like reading or programming.

Personally I'd prefer to live and work in Mountain View. I've lived happily in East Palo Alto before without a car. Just had to take a bus to the Caltrain a couple times a week or so for an event, but ate and grocery shopped within walking distance most of the time. Very cost efficient.
Or that the rich folk might have gotten that way through being "more willing to learn it, try it, and logic out the problem."
Virginia Tech: Autonomous Robotic Jellyfish
Unless I'm just terribly mistaken, good luck getting pyglet to run on OS X right now. However, I really hope I am wrong, because that means I was just being a fool last week and will soon be using pyglet.
And wear it to PyCon...

(sorry, couldn't resist)
I took AP classes in college, and I work in the software industry, but I still know how to work with my hands and I'm very happy to have that knowledge. It's not that hard, if you feel bad about not knowing anything, go learn, go take a class or two, go read a book or two, go ask a friend, or use the internet, there are a million excellent resources out there. Pick a simple project and do it, then do another project. Stocking a basic toolbox is extraordinarily inexpensive, there's really no reason not to have one.

I think the reason so many people aren't as handy as they used to be has to do more with culture than with anything else, here's an excellent TED talk from Mike Rowe (from Dirty Jobs) on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc
RuneScape 3 will be written in HTML5 and WebGL
+1 BCPL! Like the first language after it was B. Then C. So shouldn't C++ be P? :)
Looks like the asm.js Jedi mind trick didn't work on someone :)
You probably knew this, but you can write and distribute Chrome extensions without having to upload them to the chrome app^Wweb store.

Second, I've tried to work twice with Doing-It-Right (i.e., fine-grain) permission systems. Once with apparmor and earlier with SE Linux. With AppArmor, I wanted to set up rules to prevent Skype from reading any except a couple of directories. The sheer number of permissions I had to configure was exhausting and I gave up. Maybe I missed something simple, but that's why I'm not clamoring for the current simple, but coarse-grain permission system to be abandoned.
I remember the times when I had time and readed this things until I digested them...
For a new code base, you might be right. As code bases grow, so does cruft - and the older the code gets, the more it requires moving things around just so before you can add new items.
I can do no more than guess, but I think you are right about the San Francisco district. It is a large district and the notes have to be physically carted back and forth to some distribution center, so it looks like they created three locations to do this - one in San Francisco, one in Seattle, and one in Salt Lake City.

I'd also wager that the relatively small discrepancies in the borders are due to the federal reserve being practical and slightly shifting the borders to be cost effective in transportation costs, to deal with one district having an excess of supply and a neighbor having an excess of demand, and so on. When I look at a lot of faint borders near each other on this map, it tells me that this is border movement caused by these kind of federal reserve actions.

The one thing that is blatantly obvious is that the author clearly did not find natural borders of economic activity as he or she claimed.
I've seen this played out so many times, it is quite sickening. I generally found that union folk can't pound themselves out of a paper bag.

At the risk of sounding inflammatory, many home owners want everything cheap as humanly possible, so they find people willing to do it for below minimum wage (immigrants) and buy the cheapest, warped material they can find at Home Depot. Sometimes spending a little extra money for expertise is worth the sacrifice. You are, after all, paying for a service that affects the most important piece of property you own, and you may have to live with a regret for 30 or more years.

Now days, you can get references, see photos of prior work, and of course someone with high quality tools (not Craftsman) and a truck is likely to be a better choice. Someone that is willing to say "no" to you is also a good sign.
but by 18 or so the majority of the population will have arrived at a similar skill level in most subjects[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

This is not true and suggests that the author has limited experience dealing with the general population. The college going population is not the general one, and even within that population there are huge differences in ability. This is like saying that UC Berkeley and Cal State San Jose are not meaningfully different in their student intake.
Science based? Is that like evidence based? In which case, it's more of a marketing term...
What's with the unnecessary hostility?
where your question will also be locked...

oh- and in the interim, it will receive attention from but 1% of the qualified posters SO has.
This is simply chance.
It has been in the works for a while.
As you correctly surmised, things like this take a while.

(I am directly involved in this :P)
Until I went to college I didn't realize not everyone learned wood and metalworking in school.

Industrial Arts, it was called. We learned to make jewelry, forge with iron, etc. Then in high school I did woodworking instead, and made furniture, which most of us sold as a side job.

I just thought that was totally normal. I'm still not sure why it isn't.
Music for Axiom of Choice
"Sorry, you need 200 karma to create a poll." :)
One is "behavior so far"
The other is a legally binding promise
I think we should go further and eliminate age-based grades. For every subject, kids should be grouped with students that are his/her equal. That may mean one student is with kids two years older in English and two years younger in Math. Kids shouldn't be able to move forward until they've mastered the material at their level.

It is asinine that a high school student is not able to read or perform basic arithmetic. But, hey, they get to play with their friends every year for 12 years.

(This is said as a father of four very diverse kids, including one who suffers from a mental illness, two who are in gifted/honors programs, and one who never really aligned with the education machine and failed to thrive as a result.)
I wonder if the FDIC can cover US deposits with leverage of 371:1… :P
These seemingly "big" games written in a handful of lines of code always make me feel very, very stupid. I know if I made this, I could easily imagine writing 50,000 lines.

How do people do this? How do their minds work?
I would love to see Dropwizard in this benchmarks!
As a graduating student destined for San Francisco this summer this map is a godsend! Great help in narrowing down areas to look for good housing. Finding a place in SF seems brutal.

Thanks!
Comment #7 in that thread says it all:

“So you trusted a small tax haven island with your money. The plan failed. Your next step: trusting even smaller tax haven island with your money. Pure logic.”