Empire shaped the world. There is an abyss at the heart of dishonest history textbooks | Moni Mohsin
Nearly 90,000 Indian soldiers laid down their lives for Britain in the second world war, yet the scale of that sacrifice – and the troubled history of the imperial project – is barely recognised
Hasnain says:
This is a must read. Honestly surprised the British curriculum doesn't discuss colonization
Posted on 2016-10-31T21:14:50+0000
Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
The Common Core should finally improve math education. The problem is that no one has taught the teachers how to teach it.
Hasnain says:
Really interesting article, touching upon math, education, and lots of random tidbits.
"The unschooled may have been more capable of complex math than people who were specifically taught it, but in the context of school, they were stymied by math they already knew. Studies of children in Brazil, who helped support their families by roaming the streets selling roasted peanuts and coconuts, showed that the children routinely solved complex problems in their heads to calculate a bill or make change. When cognitive scientists presented the children with the very same problem, however, this time with pen and paper, they stumbled. A 12-year-old boy who accurately computed the price of four coconuts at 35 cruzeiros each was later given the problem on paper. Incorrectly using the multiplication method he was taught in school, he came up with the wrong answer. Similarly, when Scribner gave her dairy workers tests using the language of math class, their scores averaged around 64 percent. The cognitive-science research suggested a startling cause of Americans’ innumeracy: school."
Posted on 2016-10-28T17:16:41+0000
Dear Microsoft, let’s open source Age of Empires II
tl;dr: game is broken but still popular, my suggestion for fixing it and making more money in the process is to open source
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-10-28T05:14:31+0000
Apple's new MacBook Pro has no escape key
So it turns out that images of Apple's new MacBook Pro, set to be unveiled on Thursday, are actually hiding inside the latest macOS Sierra update. They confirm that Jony Ive and Apple's designers...
Terrorists storm police training college in Quetta: 20 dead, 65 injured
IG Frontier Corps says the terrorists were communicating with their handlers in Afghanistan.
Review: ‘Black Mirror’ Finds Terror, and Soul, in the Machine
Netflix’s expanded version of this sci-fi anthology explores digital cultures that are chillingly close to our own.
ops-class.org | Learn Operating Systems Online
Hack the kernel! Learn operating systems online. Watch videos, complete assignments, and compete with other students.
Why you should never use Upwork, ever.
Note. I never wanted wanted to write something like this, or expose the people involved. However, I feel that’s it necessary for something…
blue Blog | The Best Way to Not Get Tenure
At the extremes, there are two ways to approach tenure. You can conform to the norms established for junior faculty. Or you can be yourself. I’m happy that I set my own course, and proud of the way that I divided by time between research, teaching, and service. Unfortunately, my approach did…
Hasnain says:
Shots fired, clearly. A harsh read on the tenure process
Posted on 2016-10-23T04:03:58+0000
The Professor Who Was Right About Index Funds All Along
“Believe me, there are plenty of smart people behind the robots.”
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-10-23T00:01:56+0000
Hacker-Proof Code Confirmed | Quanta Magazine
Computer scientists can prove certain programs to be error-free with the same certainty that mathematicians prove theorems.
Hasnain says:
This is pretty cool. Program verification and static analysis for the win
Posted on 2016-10-22T05:44:43+0000
Nonsense paper written by iOS autocomplete accepted for conference
New Zealand professor asked to present his work at US event on nuclear physics despite it containing gibberish all through the copy
Pakistan just ruled schizophrenia is 'not a mental disorder'. Now a man with schizophrenia can be executed
Pakistan’s highest court has ruled that schizophrenia does not qualify as a “mental disorder” under the country's legal definition, paving the way for a mentally ill man’s execution. The United Nations warned it would be against international law to hang Imdad Ali, who was sentenced to death over th...
Samsung made YouTube remove video of GTA mod that turns Note 7 into a bomb
Samsung apparently doesn't see much humor in a Grand Theft Auto V mod that turns the recalled, hazardous Galaxy Note 7 into an in-game weapon. In fact, the company is trying to erase it from the...
Mercurial 4.0 Sprint Notes
Posted 10/17/16 12:52 PM
Peter Thiel, YC, and hard decisions – Project Include
Diversity and inclusion are hard, especially in tech. Doing them right means agreeing on values, setting standards, calling out bad…
This is what work-life balance looks like at a company with 100% retention of moms
When it comes to benefits and child care, Patagonia thinks about what humans need, not how to fix a problem.
Hasnain says:
This is amazing, and what the norm should be like, really
Posted on 2016-10-18T04:24:33+0000
I Won $104 Million for Blowing the Whistle on My Company—But Somehow I Was the Only One Who Went to…
The story of Bradley A. Birkenfeld, the first in our series of Unusual Millionaires
Hasnain says:
"A few months later, I went to the Justice Department. I thought they’d be thankful, but instead, they were hostile. Think of it this way: You have some civil-servant hack who’s uninterested in someone coming in and handing them an investigation they should’ve been able to crack themselves decades ago. All I asked for in return was a subpoena or immunity. They said no. And in an ironic, almost hilarious twist, they charged me with conspiracy to commit bank fraud for not giving up one of my clients. Meanwhile, all of my bosses got non-prosecution agreements."
This is pretty crazy
Posted on 2016-10-18T01:58:03+0000
My Asian Pussycat Parents
I was raised by a mom and dad who did not want me to worry about getting C’s as long as I was happy in college and beyond.
Hasnain says:
"This academic edge, however, comes at a hefty cost. Asian-American students have higher rates of suicidal ideation than white college students, and these pernicious thoughts translate into behavior. At Cornell University, there were 21 on-campus suicides from 1999 to 2006, 13 of which were Asian students. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where 16 percent of students are Asian, Asians accounted for 42 percent of student suicides in the last 15 years."
Posted on 2016-10-18T01:48:22+0000
The Ivy League Doesn’t Need Taxpayers’ Help
James Piereson and Naomi Schaefer Riley writes that colleges that hoard cash—endowments of $2 million per student—should be encouraged to spend it.
Programming Game AI By Example (Wordware Game Developers Library)
Programming Game AI by Example provides a comprehensive and practical introduction to the “bread and butter” AI techniques used by the game development industry, leading the reader through the process of designing, programming, and implementing intelligent agents for action games us...
Be Kind
One Friday afternoon, early in my career, I was wrapping up some new features for the back-end of a client’s Rails app. Simple stuff. Confident in my work, I deployed the changes, closed my laptop, and drove out of town for a weekend of camping with friends. I had just arrived when my phone rang. It...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-10-16T17:27:11+0000
Taking PHP Seriously
by Keith Adams, Slack Engineering
Simple, visceral, fun: why the ancient sport of kabaddi is enjoying a resurgence
India is hosting the first Kabaddi World Cup for nine years, and a once quaint pastime – a mix of red rover, wrestling and tag – is getting a makeover
Hasnain says:
I had no idea Kabaddi had a world cup and that apparently 200M people watch it.
The list of competing countries is also surprising:
"Teams from 12 countries – India, Iran, Bangladesh, Thailand, the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, England, Poland, Kenya, and Argentina – are competing in the first edition of the Kabaddi World Cup in nine years, and the first since its revolution into a modern sporting enterprise."
Posted on 2016-10-13T15:23:10+0000
Barack Obama: America will take the giant leap to Mars
"We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space," writes the President, "sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth."
Hasnain says:
"Editor's note: Barack Obama is President of the United States."
... I'll take "pointless editor's notes" for $100, Alex.
Posted on 2016-10-11T16:40:19+0000
Samsung to Permanently Discontinue Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone
Samsung said it would permanently discontinue production and sales of its embattled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. Potential losses to Samsung could wipe out the mobile division’s operating profits for the fourth quarter, according to one estimate.
Hasnain says:
Would love to see the incident report / postmortem on this
Posted on 2016-10-11T16:37:03+0000
Trump: Warren Buffett avoids taxes like me. Buffett: Nope, and here's my taxes to prove it.
What a burn.
Hasnain says:
"As a final knife-twist, Buffett notes that he is currently being audited — but releasing information from his return anyway, since that is totally allowed, despite Trump's protests to the contrary."
Posted on 2016-10-11T04:58:04+0000
An open source font system for everyone
Posted by Xiangye Xiao and Bob Jung, Internationalization A big challenge in sharing digital information around the world is “tofu”—the bl...
How To Save The Princess In 8 Programming Languages
Programming sucks. This fairytale comic shows the different ways in which programming languages could fail you in the fantasy kingdom.
Istanbul airport motorcycle bomb leaves 'at least ten people' injured
‘AT least ten’ people have been injured after a bomb exploded near Istanbul airport. Emergency services rushed to the scene after the explosion rocked the area close to the transport hu…
Why Are Politicians So Obsessed With Manufacturing?
They should instead focus on the jobs Americans actually have: service work.
Hasnain says:
"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 64,000 steelworkers in America last year, and 820,000 home health aides — more than double the population of Pittsburgh. Next year, there will be fewer steelworkers and still more home health aides, as baby boomers fade into old age. Soon, we will be living in the United States of Home Health Aides, yet the candidates keep talking about steelworkers. Many home health aides live close to the poverty line: Average annual wages were just $22,870 last year. If both parties are willing to meddle with the marketplace in order to help one sector, why not do the same for jobs that currently exist?"
Posted on 2016-10-05T22:45:45+0000
Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend
I can’t think of a single large software company that doesn’t regularly draw internet comments of the form “What do all the employees do? I could build their product myself.” Benjamin Pollack and Jeff Atwood called out people who do that with Stack Overflow. But Stack Overflow is relatively obviousl...
Hasnain says:
Love the discussion on this too.
Bonus points for when you interview a candidate and they're surprised how big the company is
Posted on 2016-10-05T03:48:41+0000
That time Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars
Big companies have a way of accidentally stepping on little companies sometimes. But every once in awhile, they leave us better off.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2016-10-04T18:33:11+0000
Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
Is the head of Y Combinator fixing the world, or trying to take over Silicon Valley?
U.S. paid P.R. firm $540 million to make fake al-Qaida videos in Iraq propaganda program
Report: Pentagon paid company founded by Maggie Thatcher's P.R. guru half a billion for secret war propaganda
xkcd: Work
xkcd.com
Hasnain says:
This is pretty much what engineering is. Software is very similar.
Posted on 2016-10-03T18:06:25+0000
Ranking the Most Beloved TV Shows That Got Canceled
What do the TV shows Firefly, Twin Peaks, and Freaks and Geeks all have in common?
Hasnain says:
Interesting data. Definitely want to see more flashforward
Posted on 2016-10-03T03:19:38+0000
Governor’s Director of Emergency Services Reminds Californians to be Prepared for Earthquakes - Cal OES Newsroom
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Following a swarm of recent small magnitude earthquakes that began on Monday near the Salton Sea in Southern California, the Director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services reminded local emergency managers and the public to be prepared for the potential of similar or la...