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coolnewtoyon Ask HN: How do you test your web applications?

Thanks for posting this. I will definitely add this to my ever-expanding lit review for my thesis on SQL Injection Attacks/Web App Development Frameworks

coolnewtoyon The hidden dangers of working in IT

"The Ninjas are deadly and silent

They're also unspeakably violent

They speak Japanese, they do whatever they please

And sometimes they vacation in Ireland"

-Bare Naked Ladies

http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-ninjas-lyrics-barenaked-ladie...

coolnewtoyon The New Digital Underclass

On "eugenics" - what if the most significant factor in differences in intelligence is social rather than genetic? What if intensive parenting practices like near-constant eye contact and talking to infants and toddlers, long hours of reading to preschoolers, and a steady stream of enriching extra-curricular activites for schoolage kids accounts for larger intelligence gains over the generations than could be explained by genetic variations alone?

coolnewtoyon How Bad Hiring Practices Can Slow Down a Company

scenarios like this make me want to be a fifth-grade math teacher. maybe I could do a better job than this person's did.

coolnewtoyon The Lesson of Anthem Blue Cross

I suspect those plans don't exist because the premiums would have to be so high to make it profitable that it would make more sense financially for most self-employed couples to have one spouse get a job with a group plan that has to cover you even if you decide to have kids.

coolnewtoyon The Lesson of Anthem Blue Cross

actually I think a profit-based insurance model is the problem. you cannot take care of shareholders and patients at the same time.

but since you have a profit-based model, excluding planned (or unplanned for that matter) pregnancies from coverage is the same problem as excluding pre-existing conditions. insurance companies cherry-pick the risk pool to increase profits - they only want to give insurance to people unlikely to need it.

for private insurance to provide any social value, you need a large risk pool that includes healthy and high-risk patients, and the insurance companies must be required to actually cover people who need medical care.

the healthy can't be allowed to opt out, and the insurance companies can't be allowed to decline coverage to anyone in the group.

coolnewtoyon The Lesson of Anthem Blue Cross

it's impossible to buy non-group health insurance for a planned pregnancy. and there's enough scary stuff that COULD happen that you wouldn't want to be pregnant without. Old people have medicare. It's young people who have any medical needs at all who are screwed by the current system.

coolnewtoyon Stuff

Safari books online or Books 24 x 7. I may never buy a paper copy of a technical book again.

coolnewtoyon Stuff

deify is the word. but we get what you mean.

coolnewtoyon America's Jobless Future?

There's an arugment in favor of elite brand-name degrees, presumeably over state universities, or vocational degrees:

"The research of Till Von Wachter, the economist at Columbia University, suggests that not all people graduating into a recession see their life chances dimmed: those with degrees from elite universities catch up fairly quickly to where they otherwise would have been if they’d graduated in better times; it’s the masses beneath them that are left behind. Princeton’s 2009 graduating class found more jobs in financial services than in any other industry. According to Princeton’s career-services director, Beverly Hamilton-Chandler, campus visits and hiring by the big investment banks have been down, but that decline has been partly offset by an uptick in recruiting by hedge funds and boutique financial firms."

coolnewtoyon For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw

If I were 16 now I'd spend the extra time on Open Courseware and go to college only when I had done enough exploring on my own to really take advantage of the profs' expertise.

coolnewtoyon The Problem with Meritocracy

a garbageman, especially if he works for the city, will have a better chance at all that than an artist of most varieties with an ivy league PhD

coolnewtoyon Damning verdict on doctor who linked vaccine and autism

I think it will be more closely tied to progress made in identifying preventable root causes of autism and the diagnosis rates start coming down.

I actually doubt the illnesses of other people's children will register as loudly as the autistic symptoms of antivax advocates' own children.

coolnewtoyon Why Poor Countries Are Poor

It would be safer to be an Afghan woman under the communists than the Taliban or current US occupation.

coolnewtoyon What makes a great teacher?

Teaching under unions is a middle-class, family friendly occupation.

Teaching under Teach for America is a 2-year volunteer gig with unsustainably long hours.

If the unions were to disappear tomorrow I just don't think you'd be able to generate enough enthusiastic effective young people at that burn rate to fill out the entire system.

In many suburban schools, it's actually pretty easy for a group of involved parents to pressure the district to not renew the next year's contract of a new teacher they don't like, as long as it's done before the teacher is tenured (~three years in my state). Maybe this is one reason schools without a critical mass of involved parents suffer under the current system.

coolnewtoyon Fewer high school students taking computer science classes

I don't understand why they can't just point you at the MIT and Stanford lectures and let you work at your own pace. If you have to have a grade, you could present your work at some regular interval.

coolnewtoyon Silo but deadly: Messy IT systems are a neglected aspect of the financial crisis

One of the obstacles is security. Programmers don't have the rights to even see their software in production environments. Designers and testers have access only to small (often not representative) subsets of data, and it's different subsets than the users see. Moving data from one system to another isn't easy when you don't have anyone who has enough access to look at the data in both systems.

coolnewtoyon Ask HN: If you didn't have to worry about healthcare, would you start a company?

until one of your recent college grads gets knocked up or gets his girlfriend knocked up.

coolnewtoyon HN Help: I'm lost

maybe, maybe not. I understand the viewpoint, but it's not how I'm experiencing parenthood. Looking at pictures of my kids when they were babies and toddlers and preschoolers - they look so unformed. It's like watching a sculpture come to life out of a block of marble, watching them slowly become more themselves.

coolnewtoyon HN Help: I'm lost

This online certification program looks pretty painless if you are going that route. getting another bachelor's degree is the biggest hurdle for 2nd-career teachers.

Every once in a while I think about it...

http://www.wgu.edu/education/teacher_certification

Basic Tuition for Most Programs is Just $2,890 Per Six-Month Term WGU charges tuition at a flat rate every six months, so you pay for the time, not the credit hours. Compare that with what other reputable, regionally accredited online universities charge, and you’ll discover WGU tuition is typically half the cost.

coolnewtoyon The false god of coffee

http://www.amazing-green-tea.com/theanine-and-caffeine.html

Many people reach for a cup of coffee when they need to concentrate. People with flagging focus might, however, get more bang for their buck with a cup of tea.

A 2007 study conducted by Doctor Foxe found that theanine and caffeine synergise to boost the activity of brain neurons.

coolnewtoyon Are Humans Still Evolving?

women on the pill still menstruate

coolnewtoyon [dead]

This would make it easier to find for me, since I tend to ignore logos at the bottom of webpages.

EDIT: On second thought, maybe at the top would be better:

coolnewtoyon A CS Research Topic Generator or How To pick A Worthy Topic In 10 Seconds

It's the literature review and six drafts of the paper only to find your advisor thinks your topic is no good. That kills.

coolnewtoyon Ask HN - What's your best startup idea?

Software to help take an ebay business to the next level: - seamlessly manage both prospects and customers, - dead-simple accounting - some wizard-based basic analytics to figure out which products/customers represent your best shot of making profit.

coolnewtoyon A guide to preventing SQL injection

Could you elaborate on "Design and implement a "house style" for query builders and "modular" SQL statements"? How would you go about doing that, and what would it look like?

coolnewtoyon Why There Are No Girls In San Francisco

Hunter's point and the Filmore district are also heavily African-American.

But when I was there during the 97-99 boom there was a noticeable lack of African Americans in tech and web companies.

coolnewtoyon Venture capital in America: The brightest and the rest

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?st...

coolnewtoyon Poll: I would have preferred to compress my K-12 education into this many years.

The biggest waste of time were the honors/AP classes I took to "look good on my college application." At no other time in my life have I worked so hard to learn so little of actual value.