skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Professor John Stillwell writes, in the preface to his book Numbers and Geometry (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998):

"What should every aspiring mathematician know? The answer for most of the 20th century has been: calculus. . . . Mathematics today is . . . much more than calculus; and the calculus now taught is, sadly, much less than it used to be. Little by little, calculus has been deprived of the algebra, geometry, and logic it needs to sustain it, until many institutions have had to put it on high-tech life-support systems. A subject struggling to survive is hardly a good introduction to the vigor of real mathematics.

". . . . In the current situation, we need to revive not only calculus, but also algebra, geometry, and the whole idea that mathematics is a rigorous, cumulative discipline in which each mathematician stands on the shoulders of giants.

"The best way to teach real mathematics, I believe, is to start deeper down, with the elementary ideas of number and space. Everyone concedes that these are fundamental, but they have been scandalously neglected, perhaps in the naive belief that anyone learning calculus has outgrown them. In fact, arithmetic, algebra, and geometry can never be outgrown, and the most rewarding path to higher mathematics sustains their development alongside the 'advanced' branches such as calculus. Also, by maintaining ties between these disciplines, it is possible to present a more unified view of mathematics, yet at the same time to include more spice and variety."

Stillwell demonstrates what he means about the interconnectedness and depth of "elementary" topics in the rest of his book, which is a delight to read and full of thought-provoking problems.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0387982892/

See also

http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~mustopa/thurston_edu.pdf

with comments on mathematics education for breadth rather than for speed through the standard curriculum, by a Fields medalist.
Such as?

Using a vendor-supplied kernel means that there are extremely likely to be other people using most of the same stack as you, many of them on the same hardware. If there are problems, it's likely that other people have noticed the issue, even if the bug hasn't been found, so it's much more likely to get fixed.

If you compile your own kernel (and/or copy of Apache, MySQL etc etc) you're running something unique to you. If you have problems, you're on your own.

If you're paying for Red Hat Enterprise, use the Red Hat Enterprise packages unless there's a good reason not to. If something goes wrong, you can call Red Hat support and have at least a steer in the right direction. Custom-compiling everything just for the sake of it, just to have new 'shiny' stuff is crazy.
From the NYT article: "Google executives said that they hoped that the new Google Maps for Mobile with navigation capabilities would eventually be available on Apple’s iPhone and other devices. But they said it was up to the makers of those devices to decide whether to include the application."
"Does the whole household get cut off when one member illegally fileshares?"

I would imagine the entire connection gets cut-off, because it would be very difficult to allow the household to keep the connection and prevent one person from going online.
Great mix of more general advice (like the previous set of bullet points), combined with specific context around your experience. It's a nice change of pace from the "your startup has to do this" blend of articles because it acknowledges your biases with the appropriate context.

Thanks for sharing!
It Is 2009. Why Is "Groupware" Still So Hard?
It is also far less expensive to drop a few new cell towers (or lease space on competitors' towers) than to go through the gigantic, expensive process of laying new cable/fiber.
ADDENDUM: and, depending on the need-based financial aid they receive, there are plenty of people who attended name-brand universities who graduate with much less debt than $150k
We expect that we’ll start to see more and more devices with free internet connections over cell networks, where the seller does a deal with the telcos to provide low-bandwidth hook-ups

It's only a matter of time before the phone companies stop focusing on phones. I use my phone for pretty much everything except calling (unless it's VOIP). I'm hoping that once 4G/WiMax catches on, there will be lots of devices (digital cameras, camcorders, tablet PCs, cars, etc) with direct internet connectivity, and no monthly plans for each one.

BTW...Wasn't there a device in the early 2000's that just did AIM?
No. This guy is making it possible for the developers to code and design. If he started doing their work, they'd have to start doing some of his work.
It's more convenient to think about if your mind is in functional programming mode. Thought convenience is real convenience.
NASA's test of Ares 1-X a success
why is the US dropout rate at ~30% country wide, but Canada has a figure marginally above 10%.

Source for those figures? Are we sure that the school-leaving age is the same in both countries?
The original article criticizes the administration side of a web platform in political ways and suggests a multi-million dollar custom built proprietary system as an alternative. It must be a joke.
You mean yet another company trying to get me to learn yet another language they created specifically for their product? I'll pass. :P
This isn't "Google Chrome OS", it's just a confusingly-named Linux distribution with Google Chrome included.
I'm actually testing the waters with Facebook Ads right now. I only worry that people will come to the site, say "Oh, they don't have any reviews. I'll come back later." and then never come back. Any thoughts on how to use Adwords (or Facebook ads) to entice people to contribute content?
There is a great deal of risk in real-time news. If you search for a term many people are searching for, there is a big spam problem.

Twitter has done little to nothing to fight this spam problem. You could say the same for any of their spam problems - they have quite a few.

That said, I think many big names are being _extremely_ naive in calling the innovation "real time". It is open, social, and public. There is actually no real-time UX in twitter.com - the closest is "N new results" popup on a search page, requiring a click. I have no idea why election.twitter.com hasn't been incorporated into search. Actually, I have a very good idea why they take so long to do *, but I digress.

The point is that it doesn't matter. There is little to no appreciable difference between real-time and 15 seconds lagged for tweets.
This article doesn't really seem to acknowledge the fact that many executives have, and continue to be, compensated incredibly well for very incredibly poor performance. If the system that most companies have right now were working, that wouldn't be the case. Compensation is so high that people latch on to any reason they can find to justify it, otherwise they have to admit that they are giving people millions of dollars they don't need to.

The argument the argument makes that companies need to pay so much money to maintain top talent seems like an argument in favor of regulation. If compensation were capped and merely exorbitant levels, perhaps it would be easier for companies to retain their talent. But a bigger benefit would be that companies would have an easier time telling who their top talent is, because they would not have to go through the psychologically painful process of admitting that they could have found another talented person for significantly less.
"[T]he right company" is basically guaranteed my money.

I can't even imagine what 50MB must be like. The fastest connection I can get here in Georgia is 1.5MB ADSL that costs $35/month (plus phone service, no naked DSL offered) and stops working every time it rains.
"Chrome OS is a brand new free operating system built around the revolutionary Google Chrome browser."

What's that supposed to mean? I don't see how exactly an OS could use a web browser as its core.

-- oh wait; it's actually a new linux distro packaging chrome+picasa as standard. Oh, and they even packaged OpenOffice, GIMP and Flash. Awesome.
Is it just me, or it's not exactly revolutionar?
There is no rule saying that a child cannot be in grade five maths and grade two reading at the same time.

Exactly. First dividing children into groups with age as the main consideration plays havoc with many aspects of school administration. Schools don't have to be organized with age-segregated grades, and probably shouldn't be.

http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html
Please don't. It's dangerously distracting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/technology/01distracted.ht...
In my situation, I used "greedy" and "lining pockets" because Time Warner Cable reported record profits from broadband internet service in 2008, and then proceeded to announce the introduction of bandwidth caps that would force many users to pay more every month to get less from their service. In effect, TWC was abusing their city-granted monopoly position to squeeze citizens rather than use their record profits to further invest in their infrastructure.
Doesn't seem real to me...
I clicked so frantically when I saw the title and the domain. Then I noticed it was Google sites and I got weary, then I noticed the page was pretty poorly built and I realized it wasn't official. :(
Brilliant launch, on track through to separation.

Loss of telemetry signal after separation, apparently successful splash-downs of upper and lower stages.

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=907961

It's pretty brave to stream these things live - it makes it tough to put positive spin on anything going wrong.
Looks fishy. Google can't host an ISO themselves?
You have a point. I'm fairly jaded when it comes to anything that's "free". Any thoughts about Ipod alternatives? Maybe $25 Itunes gift cars or something of that nature?
Lots of churn brings people in and out, and the potential for high salaries act as a beacon that draws many talented people to the industry who would otherwise have done something more fulfilling. They're much more about recruiting and marketing than rewarding performance.

See also Freakonomics about drug dealers and McDonalds for a more detailed explanation.
Well, that's better than my "10Mbps" connection that only delivers about 2Mbps at any given time...
Yeah, I agree. All these fancy things in google maps is usually just available for a few cities. eg. street view, high-res satellite images, detailed roads etc... It's understandable.. but I always feel left out
Silicon Valley: Abandoned
Good webpage, I like that it isn't shy about getting right into simple examples of source code. More language websites should be outlined like this.
That is in impressive feat! In theory that would get you from LA to Las Vegas but I wouldn't want to be stranded in the desert with no charge!
I don't understand how one can share one's attention between driving and a screen without increasing the risk to get into an accident.
There isn't a shred of documentation, and the only want to talk to someone about it is via a contact form.
...or, you could pay qualified Amazon Mechanical Turkers $0.20 apiece to fill out the surveys?
I'm not trying to say you're wrong, but I get the impression that the reason Apple doesn't have something like that is that they think it will ultimately be worse for the user experience. Frequently they seem to eschew flexibility and customizability in order to simplify the interface. You could say they go too far (though I'd personally disagree in most cases), but I don't think that they simply overlooked features such as that.

This map, though, looks like it could be part of the iPhone default apps.
Did you try it yourself? I am asking because I was thinking about that for myself, and I could do that, but then, if you work 10 hours + 0.5 hour (lunch) + 2 hours travel, then for those 4 days, you are off for the whole day, basically. For example, when you leave home at 8am, you will return at 8:30pm. In that case I would come home when my kid is already going to sleep. I am not sure if that's better comparing to 5d-8h.
Mission page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/flightt...

Congrats all around on a beautiful launch!
"Forced"?
see also: http://mochikit.com/doc/html/MochiKit/Base.html
Can you be _that_ specific when requesting service through Amazon Mechanical Turk? For instance, I need college students (or recent graduates) in Michigan who have taken courses at this set of Universities in the past 3 years?
Powermeter: Google's household energy monitor arrives in UK
I think this is directed mostly at the people who will never take another math class after they leave high school. Speaking from a canadian perspective, I had Grade 11 Math, Grade 12 Math, and Calculus classes. about half of the work in grade 12 was directly preparatory for the calc class. Students persuing a trade/vocational school or no post secondary education would only have taken 11 and 12 math. if the half of the math class that was 'wasted' calc prep was replaced with 'probability in the real world' type material, you'd still be in the basic precalc stats area, but possibly giving something more useful to the kind of people that are not well represented at a site like this.
Does anyone know if this needs a persistent network connection? I.e. you can't download the maps in advance?
From an above comment: "But they said it was up to the makers of those devices to decide whether to include the application."

I wonder what percentage of app store revenue is the navigation apps? They're not insignificant. They'd be losing a chunk of change approving this.

I suppose they'll lose more chunks of change in "street cred" or something if they don't have it and the Droid does.
I recently (in the last week) signed up for the most basic Linode package for a pet project. Many of the posts on the forums note Linode's stellar track record, which is a bit reassuring, but doesn't really offset the lack of communication Linode has had with this.
If it's too capital-intensive to compete, then I'm having real difficulties with your argument that "this... is where it should have ended." Having grown up out the boonies, I have to say that I really appreciated my access to electricity and telephones.
This may not be a bad idea. I wouldn't say it's a clout thing, but I can work any schedule I'd like as long as I get things done.

We're a pretty happy office already, and some people here are already using a 9 day out of 10 work schedule. I'll think some on this. Thank you!
That's right. Except you're trying to get the ball over the fences (a home run).

Does a batter actually change his behavior if he intends to try for a home run as opposed to a base hit? It looks to me as if they're just trying to get the best hit they can. If so, the analogy isn't very good.
Which is great and all, but the fact that you only need to develop for (effectively) one piece of hardware is still a huge competitive advantage for the iPhone vs. anything else. (Except the Pre, but the Pre has other problems.)
Does text-to-speech work in a reasonable fashion on the Kindle?
Locale is my killer app. I literally bought my G1 because I knew that it had this app, and it was the first thing I found and downloaded when I got home that night.

http://www.twofortyfouram.com/
Speaking as a Brit Manager who pays his engineers more than himself and is perfectly happy about this, I call Bollocks.
They get a nice cut when someone buys a $50+ navigation app on the iPhone. I don't see Apple making this or any other navigation app a native application and ruining the market that already exists.
Yeah, unfortunately bicycling is not an option. I did that for a little while at a job that I had once that was 10 miles away. It was OK, but it was only really feasible 6 months out of the year - the rest of the year it was hot enough that I was sweaty and gross when I got to the office.
There has been a change. Google used to license map data from a 3rd party for web display, now Google is increasingly making their maps from original sources. I just checked and the turn-by-turn prohibition is still in their terms of use, but one could imagine that when the data is all Google generated and owned they could lift that restriction.
Sorry, didn't have much of a window for submissions as I had cleared through blog reader earlier in the day and have been traveling. They were articles I did feel however that would be of interest to the site.
2. Doing all the business related tasks.
3. Doing all the customer service.
4. Handling all incoming e-mail.
5. Doing all of the social networking stuff (facebook, twitter).
8. Tracking all of our expenses, etc., into Excel and getting everything ready for accountant (see 7).
13. Handling payroll. I do that.
14. Dealing with the bank accounts. I deal directly with the small business rep at our bank.
16. Handling all incoming advertising requests, setting up their campaigns, etc.
17. Dealing directly with all our merchants (credit cards + PayPal). Dealing with the very few chargebacks we receive.
18. Paying all of our bills (server expenses, software licenses, domains, advertising, etc.) and monitoring our cash flow.
20. Anything that requires a phone call. Incoming or outgoing.

Frankly, this sounds like work for an administrative assistant more than an equal equity partner.

1. Writing the copy for the website. Mainly keeping the support documents up-to-date.
6. Doing all of our marketing. Handling Google AdWords, banner advertising, text advertising, etc.
7. Dealing exclusively with our accountant
9. Handling all legal work with our lawyer.
11. We all come up with ideas for product development.
10. Doing all of our networking. I'm the guy that goes to all of our relevant events.
12. Blogging. I do all the blogging.
15. Market research. I find out as much as I can about our competitors, what they do, etc. I also learn about our market as a whole.
19. Pitching. I handle all of that.

There is no reason a technical founder wouldn't be able to do these things and continue to work on the product.
How do you put a Database in the Cloud?
It's not for the 'new shiny' at all, it's got to do with optimizing your kernel to match your hardware and getting rid of loadable module support in favor of a kernel that has on board exactly that which is needed to operate your system.

A 'stock' kernel has a whole pile of things in it that might be the next remote exploit, by removing such stuff you marginally increase security.

Other things you might need:

- kernel support for booting from raid filesystems without trickery
- processor family optimizations
- maximum number of cores (stock = 8, we run 16 on quite a few machines)

As for compiling, I do that anyway, it's a small job compared to the number of times that you need to do it. And you're just as much 'on your own' to solve problems, the chances of having them are less though (because the system you are running is considerably leaner).

Second your redhat enterprise solution, that's not what I'm using though on most of our machines (either centos or debian), but that's a good solution too.
Someone once tried to explain to me why a browser-based IDE was a good idea, but he never managed to convince me. Could anyone here help me understand some reasons why we would want it, besides quick tests and demos?
Ultimately, if they had a real keyboard and a better network, it would be better for this users' experience.

I agree on the keeping it simple part though. No need to make everything customizable when you have people that can make things more beautiful than you can. Sure, you can customize your version of van Gogh's Irises, but why bother? :-)
That's a good question, I don't have one (yet) they haven't released the DX with 3G here in NL yet.

That's what I'm waiting for to hop on the bandwagon, it seems like wasted money to buy the small one first then to upgrade.
10 UX blogs you should be reading
Leonard Kleinrock: Mr. Internet
While there a lot of talented people, there are few extremely talented people. It is these extremely talented people who make the huge salaries. I am at a top 5 business school now and you can definitely see the future millionaires.

Generally, there are a lot of people who go into finance and will make $65-70k and never get into the extreme. But there are people who are going to make $200k+ out of undergrad and likely earn millions someday. They are worth it, many already manage their own money in excess of half a mil.

In a class of 300 top students, I think there are 2-3 of these people.
It may do elsewhere but it doesn't at Wimbledon.
What Comes After the Real Time Web?
There's an added benefit in terms of time for me. Most of my commute time is due to traffic. Without traffic the commute is 25 or 30 minutes each way. If I were to switch over to a longer schedule like this, my commute would probably drop from 2 hours a day to 1.25 or 1 hour a day due to missing rush hour.
Given the way that the Google Voice app for the iPhone worked out, I'm going to guess that iPhone owners won't be seeing a Google Maps for Mobile with navigation capabilities.
No, not really. You seem to be assuming that a greater understanding of probability would lead to decision-making that takes only probabilities into account and not, say, one's morality.

But that's a ridiculous thing to assume.
This is the right starting point for any serious discussion of the "engineer shortage." Instead of expounding on how wonderful the unfilled engineering jobs are, we need to know how they stack up against other professions.

If someone is capable of getting into a (top or even middle tier) MS or PhD program in engineering, it means they are 1) capable of working extremely hard in an academic environment with highly rigorous subject matter, and 2) able to score high on standardized tests. This is the same skill set required for law or med school.

So how are the grads of the top engineering MS/PhD programs doing compared to law or medicine? Unless it's competitive, we can end the analysis right there (and a recent RAND study concluded that this lack of competitiveness with other options was, in fact, driving the low interest level of Americans in engineering).

By the way, I actually do think there are some good reasons to pursue an engineering or science path. Your opportunity to contribute to the general welfare is immense in engineering. You may be intensely satisfied with the work, or craftsmanship involved. You may find yourself at home in the immensely logical world, and there are actually many opportunities to work with people and improve their lives, in spite of the "loner" image engineers often have.

But this is the discussion we need to have, one based on an honest assessment of the rewards of engineering relative to other paths available to people with high levels of talent and academic ability.
Google didn't previously own the map data (Tele Atlas did and they're owned by GPS device company, TomTom) so it wasn't theirs to license. They only recently started using their own maps earlier this month for the US.

Also, Apple recently acquired PlaceBase so they now have access to their own map data.
The Google Voice app made a bunch of people I know say "I have to have an Android phone."
> What makes these individuals so special to warrant such huge salaries?

Competition for executive positions is a classic winner-take-all market.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/It%27s+a+winner-take-all+marke...
The vast majority of stock trading is institutional.

Do you really believe that Morgan Stanley or Citigroup suffer from a lack of understanding of statistics?
People have been saying that exact thing for years. Didn't seem to have much impact..