skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree on a lot of the points. I think a key here is that I don't really think anybody knows what to teach people when they do teach them, and your beginning example shows it extremely clearly. You, having almost zero knowledge of OSX, managed to get things going for someone else who's been using it far longer then you have. It's not that you knew specifically how to fix the problem, it's that you knew the basic idea of what was wrong, an idea of things to look for, and enough critical thinking to figure your way through it. Most people miss that point.

While a wifi problem may be harder to fix then others, in most cases a problem can be solved just by knowing the right info to type into Google and then be able to do a bit of thinking over the results and which seem reasonable to try. Not only that, but a bit of knowledge of some basic symbols (Like, Ex. The various Wifi Symbols, or USB Symbol) and some basic UI knowledge (Like, Ex. Knowing what a bar or panel usually look like, and what a normal OS UI look's like. Text-Boxes, Scroll-bars, Check-boxes Vs. Radio-Buttons, Menus, etc....) go a long way.

I in no way expect everyone to become experts (I wouldn't really expect people to become good enough to reinstall the OS, for example. At that point, you'd want to show someone who knows what they're doing before going further). But, taking some time to teach some basics of more generic concepts, how to go about troubleshooting instead of just learning how to fix some basic problems, and some basics of where to look for various things goes a very long way.
In our highly sophisticated information society, not knowing how to interpret/represent/manipulate/generate information is a problem, especially for the higher educated. If you're not able to use general information processing tools, you've to depend and wait on others to process the information for you. Sprinkle in some automation and you're out of a job.
Please don't remove it. I hate to say it but... Haters gonna hate.
I'd love to hear about a hardware team's experience in the YC program. Senic, how's it going?
British Airways' profit on the Concorde was an accounting trick. They took a 100% writeoff of all Concorde capital investments in 1979, and another 100% writeoff in 1983. Write-offs are not charged against operating expenses, but show up as "Other expenses." This made the airplanes essentially "free." They still had maintenance expenses, but the capital cost was zero.

And that's just the money that British Airways spent on it. The British and French governments also subsidized the project. Thus, looking purely at British Airways' accounting profit is ignoring the actual costs of the Concorde project.

Most jetliners are more efficient than an SUV. It's not hard, because SUVs are so incredibly inefficient. The proper comparison is to other jetliners. The Boeing 747 gets about 100 passenger-miles per gallon. That's 5x as efficient as the Concorde, at 20 passenger-miles per gallon.

When the Concorde was retired in 2003, Jet-A cost $1 per gallon. Today, aviation kerosene costs $3.50 per gallon.
Unless that's enough to fully fund the police it's easy enough to divert funds based on that extra income.
Tweet much as you can for the next two months
Did you read the blog? He's a teacher first, and defacto admin second due to everyone else's laziness and ignorance. That takes a lot of patience.
Its not about having instant knowledge in your head, its about critical thinking and being able to find a solution yourself. I think a good programmer armed with the right tools, a Chiltons manual, and an internet connection could fix any problem in a car.

And the story is not about an average person, its about a person who teaches computer classes. The equivalent would be someone teaching classes about cars but not being able to answer what a transmission is.
Nothing to Prove - Geek Girls & The Doubleclicks
I've seen remote execution backdoors like this in a compromised Joomla site before (at least w/r/t the code snippet that actually does the execution), so I would not be in the least surprised if someone was clever enough to use the copyright file as a place to sneak it in.

I saw one attacker drop the same backdoor php file in a dozen different locations, in hopes that the site owner would just remove the one in particular that was showing up in their logs and none of the others.
Yes, I do, because I host my own email on my own hardware.
Not to mention the fact that aleph isn't anything. The alephs are indexed by ordinals, the smallest being aleph_0.

Because of this mistake, I shall dismiss all arguments made in the blog post.
Before everyone gets out their pitchforks and dictionaries, lets look at what he's attempting to say.

I think he's arguing that there needs to be a basic level of competence that we are teaching the next generation about computers. Not just how to browse the internet, but to do basic problem solving one something they own.

I believe this is true of anything you own. If my car dies, I can fairly easily determine the severity of the issue and if it's simple, fix it myself. If my shirt gets torn I know how to put a patch on it or sew it myself.

I don't think he wants everyone to be computer technicians (although that seemed to be the tone of his article). I'm assuming he was telling an exaggerated story from an exasperated perspective. Hey may have even been speaking in hyperbole to make a point.

My brother, who I love very much, is dependant on everyone around him. He can't cook, clean, or navigate in the car. I do not exaggerate, I've recieved at least 4 or 5 calls from him (before GPS were packaged into phones) that he needed directions from X, Y cross streets to insert address here. He expected me to give him directions.

The sad thing is I did. I love my baby brother. I'm proud of him in many ways, but he has never HAD to do anything because we all fix it for him.

I recently just stopped helping him in these situations, and you know what? He now knows how to stop the car and get directions, or better yet take a GPS/Map with him.

This isn't a new issue, it's been around for a long time. Teach a man to fish, vs. give a man a fish. <joking>I'm sure that quote was taken from someone else, but I don't have the citation. </joking>
They are all provided by users, so I take what I can get:) I'm happy to make updates if you provide a better translation!
Perhaps I can't read, but it seems the article is really lacking with a source for where this was found.
Google Glass likely to be priced at US$299
Car and Driver, Cheaper Than Rental Car, in Ecuador
The analysis is good, the conclusion is questionable.

Of course a system administrator thinks knowing about computers is the most important thing.

A medical doctor thinks kids should know about medicine to stay healthy. A lawyer thinks kids should know about the law and know how society works. An athlete thinks his kids should play team sports and learn grit and be tough.

Like with everything in life, you should know a little about everything, but you can't possibly know everything that is important.

EDIT:

My conclusions is that computers are still too hard and the future belongs to systems that have less failure modes.
Like I said - it's an indicator, not a requirement.
I can understand your confusion on "what koding is", that is probably partially my fault. I'm the author of the docs/videos (a koding user, not staff), who is obviously a bit passionate about the platform.

I know i had no trouble "Getting" Koding, but that is because remote development is something i've been using/toying with for three or four years now. Originally it was heavy SSH, and focusing on trying to create VIM IDEs and improve a terminal oriented workflow so that it can all work through SSH, but eventually i learned about some of these Online Dev Environments. I used Cloud9 for about a year, before switching to Koding about a year ago. The point being, i've wanted this remote-environment concept for such a long time, it sort of comes naturally to me.

I imagine if you're very used to working locally, you have a hard time seeing the advantages of using a remote platform. I can understand, it's a very new tech, and it's not the next coming of Christ or anything. I got a bit overzealous with the "unlimited possibilities" line lol, but i have made an issue on the matter and plan on rewording that.

With all that said, i do strongly disagree that "Apparently the Koding team doesn't know either.". You're taking a beta product, with an obviously large list of features that aren't implemented, and saying that the devs don't know what the product is good for. It obviously has a roadmap, both with visible and non-visible features planned, so i think the devs have a good idea where they are headed with it.

It's not perfect of course, but online development is quite new. After being a user of many of these platforms, i chose Koding, so obviously i feel it's "the best". I am obviously biased because i have picked this platform as my platform of choice, but with the warning i hope you won't hold this against me.

Anyway, you can read my other posts which talk about how my docs project, and especially my "2 minute Koding" video, are not pitches to use Koding. They are for Koding users mostly, people who have already decided on the platform. These are things i, as a user, wanted to give to the community and hopefully foster an environment that i want to feel. Communities are what you make of them, and i am trying my part.

I respect your opinion nonetheless, and i'm sure the devs are taking what you say to heart. I hope i can improve the Overview as well, based on the feedback. :)
I think what he was trying to say is that when you've learned critical thinking as a skill you can apply it to anywhere. So, if he was on fitness news instead of saying "I'm not getting buff." He'd say, "Well, here's the work out plan based on X, Y, and Z, and I've been eating 4000 calories a day based on A, B, and C, and I've looked up this that and the other thing but I'm not having any luck still. Does anyone have any ideas or see where I've gone wrong?".

I would agree with the original poster that a lot of people simply do not have great critical thinking skills. And it's certainly a skill. It's something which can be extracted and used in any area of life. Of course some people can develop a skill set and be able to critically think about something in particular with out being able to apply that knowledge to other areas of life, but if you can develop that skill set for all areas of life you'll be far better off.
It's amusing to me that several of the top level comments here only reference the author's initial story about helping another teacher, completely ignoring the latter three quarters of the article. It's almost as if you guys didn't bother reading past the first page to his actual point.
We do need to keep checking every few months to be sure. I never felt the need to do that 10 years ago.
I thought it was clever and resonated with the tone of your article, but you could tone it down a little bit.
A door handle is much simpler concept. Car manufacturers do have to say "wait, what if they don't know what a transmission is?"
Elon Musk says Hyperloop won’t run in a vacuum, hints at what’s next
Where I work, it is all Macs (100 people or so), iPhones and iPads - everything is Apple. 100 person company is tiny (by Microsoft standards), but consider 100 companies with 100 people each - suddenly it is not small anymore. Add to it some mid sized companies, and departments from big companies that slowly replace windows with Mac/Linux, it looks pretty bad.

Microsoft's death won't be sudden like Myspace's. It will be slow and will spread over decades. Unless wake up. Purely from a engineering view, they are still a formidable player, and they invest in R&D more than anyone else. If they want, they can still make things happen.
Well, ultimately, you did. But really, there were funds made available through the Department of Homeland Security for local police departments to purchase military surplus armored vehicles (and weapons, helmets, etc.), as part of the post-9/11 anti-terrorism push.

IMO, the money would have been better spent on training instead of hardware. The NYPD budgets 150 rounds a year per officer for firearms proficiency testing & training. The NYPD is also known for violating the civil rights of the people they interact with -- if only they knew more about the law...
If they could "end privacy" like that and not have a revolt at their hands, why are they lying about it?
Harp.js, Introduction and How-to
Given that not taking part is not an option given current laws, hard to place the whole weight of the blame on them. They might have put a better fight, but the result - until the voters in general take notice - would be the same.
Ask HN: can I visit your Berlin office?
Hello HN,

I happen to be in Berlin on holiday on Aug 10-11-12 and I'd love to visit any startup office or IT workplace here.

Also, I'd like to have a coffee with anyone willing to speak in English to a young programmer!

My thing is InfoSec, but I'm interested in anything to get to know Berlin community and env. I am at the beginning of my gap year and I am eager to meet cool people and see places of my field, so I hope HN can help as always.

Bonus: PGP key signing if you care!

Thanks
Optimism is good, but at this point, you're driving past believing in the intrinsic awesome of human beings into the territory of magical thinking.

"Amount of knowledge" isn't a useful metric, as anyone in pedagogy can tell you. It's not even about "healthiness", which is meaningless, or disability, which is less meaningless. Brains are not hard disks. They aren't knowledge storage machines. That's just one of its minor functions.
But then the terrorists would know too!
Brilliant quote.
It is for them. Mayer doesnt want Tumblr to go down the drain and for that to work she needs Karp on board. 80M to keep the original visionary on board seems justifiable given the 1.1B total transaction price.
I think the author was trying to point out, people don't want to learn anymore. Whey they encounter a problem, they throw their hands up, and complain until it is fixed. After someone fixes it, they walk away without even asking what caused it and how it was solved.
Being able to change a tire is a great skill to have because it may be very beneficial for safety. The rest are blatantly obvious things that nobody has to learn nor devote time to doing while they could be doing something else. Well, except maybe for adding windshield fluid… but they do that for me when they change my oil. :)
Review exchange for websites
http://dblf27q6vp5m8.cloudfront.net/Lavabit_Joey006.pdf
It's different from having a repo on your phone because you don't have to install git to use it.

It's different from your own remote server because you don't need to set one up.
I can't define what it means to be "Einstein". I can only say that "capacity for knowledge" in a "healthy" human brain is well beyond what it could ever be exposed to in a lifetime. Note that when I say "capacity", I thinking in terms of a computer harddrive(which is questionable). No "healthy" human being can fill up their brain within a lifetime.

This discussion is pretty difficult in that there are things we can't define. I don't even know if we're all talking about the same thing when we say "knowledge" and we can't define "healthy", and the term "capacity" for the human brain is assuming we all believe the human brain really does have a limit. I can only assume there is some kind of limit in the same way I assume if I traveled in a straight line forever I'd eventually reach the end of the universe. It's just imcomprehendably large and nothing we do in a lifetime, currently 100 years or so, will reach that limit.
Laser distance meters have been available to contractors for years. The major difference Senic adds, over Ryobi, Bosch & Fluke, is bluetooth & cloud syncing.

I have always wondered how these devices actually calculate distances. I have experimented with Arduino & Parallax, and I've seen how the resolution of an ultrasonic distance sensor is directly affected by the processor speed -- the processor is merely counting the fractions of a second between sending the ping pulse, and receiving its echo. But a 1 MHz processor can only just count milliseconds. A 16 MHz processor can count only slightly faster. At the room-temperature speed of sound, this gives you a resolution of about 1/29th of an inch, or 1/74th of a centimeter.

In theory, the same should be possible with light -- send a light pulse then count the fractions of a second for it to return. Thinking back to Grace Hopper's Nanosecond [1], a 1mhz processor would have a resolution of hundreds of feet. So these must be using a very small, simple, multi-GHz processor to get a resolution of about 2/15 of an inch.

Unless these devices do their measurement in a completely different way...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8
The Problems With Reinventing CAD Software
Love the idea for the professional.

Is there any way to measure less precisely using the iPhone's camera? Something about using the gyroscope to get a depth measurement?
> the NRA is resolutely single issue,

I never heard a single speech by Wayne LaPierre which would lead me to conclude that the NRA is interested in limiting itself to a single issue.

> I just don't see it as being a significant enough direct threat for the NRA to adopt it as a major issue like McCain-Feingold.

But you seem to understand that.
The problem isn't that these people can't use computers. It's that they can't THINK.

I find it's more specific than and not as serious as that. I got my first computer in 1982, first modem in 1985 (hence my username). I find that people who proudly state how not-technical they are actually purposely turn their brain off around computers. It's not that they can't think. They can and often do around non-technical things. But they automatically assume they're unable to fix anything computer-related so they don't even try. My wife is a perfect example of that. If I hear, "Printer is not working" again I think I'm going to throw it out the window. The latest time, she unplugged the printer USB cable to plug in her iPhone and then called me to fix the printer. If this was a "can't think" problem, she would belong in a group home. Instead it's a "won't think about technical things" problem.

I was one of those kids, and I would be so excited for them that I would bury them in whatever help they needed.

I was one of those kids too. Only my computer teacher was in his first year of teaching computers, having been drafted from the math program because "computers use math". He was completely just learning about computers. He would ask me, "Is that right, 300bps?" after almost everything he taught the class. He ended up just having me do special projects doing things like creating math games on the Apple ][e.
This guy sounds like he has a chip on his shoulder. As you pointed out:

>The first rule of any educator is to never, under any circumstances, make someone feel inept. And it was so easily avoidable here.

There are many sentences in this article indicating that this is not an isolated, unique reaction from the poster.

This paragraph especially irked me:

> I’ve messed up, as I’m sure many of you have. When we purchased an XBox it was Techno-Dad to the rescue. I happily played about with the mess of cables and then created profiles for everyone. When my son’s MacBook was infected with the FlashBack virus Techno-Dad to the rescue. I looked up some on-line guides and then hammered away in the terminal until I had eradicated that bad-boy. When we purchased a ‘Family Raspberry Pi’ Techno-Dad to the rescue. I hooked it all up, flashed an OS to the SD-card and then sat back proudly, wondering why nobody other than me wanted to use the blasted thing. All through their lives, I’ve done it for them. Set-up new hardware, installed new software and acted as in-house technician whenever things went wrong. As a result, I have a family of digital illiterates.

Well, maybe it shouldn't have been "techno dad to the rescue", but rather "dad spending a moment with his kids showing them how to setup a raspberry pi/their xbox/etc.". And if the kids aren't even interested in setting up their own XBox, well then that's their prerogative. Give a man a fish, etc.

Addendum: when I was a pre-teen/teen, I spent all my free time learning about computers, reading programming books, etc. There was another kid just like me whom I hung out with, but it was just the two of us in our entire school. Nowadays, when I teach I meet kids who know python/html/php, fiddle with minecraft mods, jailbreak their android tablet so they can run a GBA emulator, etc. all the time. So I couldn't disagree more with OP's title. Having heavily worked with educators/as an educator has led me to believe that when someone complains that "kids can't X", it's more often than not their own shortcomings than the "kids'".
Via a web browser on a different computer.
I did, except for the very last paragraph since I thought I got the essence of the article already. I see it now.
BlackBerry Reportedly Considering Going Private To Refocus With Less Scrutiny
In my opinion there's no fix for lack of curiosity.
>I also think you should be aware that the contractor resources the offensive side has don't entirely overlap the defensive stuff; there are better contractors available for the offensive stuff.

This is an interesting comment because I would have thought that defense and offense would be fairly symmetrical. Is the asymmetry due to lack of interest in defense? Is it because it's easier to break things then to keep them from breaking? E.g. it's much easier to teach someone to shoot well than it is to teach someone to heal a bullet wound.
Skeuomorphism to the rescue!
I believe the panel unfolds from the back of the laptop, becoming 3x the size. 30-60W might not power a desktop replacement, but it's something like 10x what a 2013 mba 11" draws. (38WH battery, 11+hour battery life in optimal conditions)
The difference I see here is I don't think there's some sort of prevailing idea that young people all know how to fix their cars, like there is that they know how to use a computer.
I've considered this too, but I haven't seen any signs of deception in Snowden's words or actions. As a counter-example, consider Obama's 2008 campaign. Many people were deceived by his speeches on civil liberties, myself included. But even then there were legitimate misgivings with his Senate voting record. I have had no such misgivings about Snowden. His words and actions ring true.
Agreed. Apple's involvement with BluRay in particular was pretty hilarious.
You don't need a full processor for time of flight just a few transistors which can cheaply operate at ~10GHz. Speed of light / 10ghz = 3cm, but your talking round trip timings so ~1.5 cm is possible.

Multiple frequency phase-shift or Interferometry allows you to do even better.
Theoretical definitions for crypto wannabes
Generally I disagree with over-militarization of the police force, but a few points:

1) I spend a lot of time listening to emergency band scanners. Considering the low violent crime rate in Sunnyvale, I'm pretty shocked how often the Santa Clara Sherrifs Dept are called to stand-offs and hostage-type situations. If it is resolved without fatalities, perhaps it doesn't make it into violent crime statistics, but I'm not that appalled that Sunnyvale PD feels the need to own one.

2) KTVU reports that he he came out with a firearm and ran towards them.

3) KTVU reports that they responded with a couple of squad cars, but the man disregarded orders to come out with his hands up. As a murder had been reported, calling SWAT is reasonable, IMO.

Again, I agree that police forces in general are over-militarized, but we need to represent the facts accurately.

edit: Why the down-votes? He has an alternate explanation that I've acknowledged, and that he didn't provide initially.