robdoherty2

I think it depends to a great extent on your particular learning style.

Based on my own experience, I would recommend a few things:

1) Get a conversation partner, ideally someone local you can meet with at least once per week for an hour or so.

2) Immerse yourself in the culture as much as you can. Watch movies in the target language (TL); when you feel ready keep a journal in the TL, even with simple sentences; go to restaurants that serve cuisine from the places where the TL is spoken.

3) Keep a notebook (electronic or paper) in which you write down unfamiliar/new words as you come across them. Look them up and learn their meanings when you are able.

4) In terms of pronunciation, figure out which sounds are similar and different between your native language and the TL. Practice your 'speaking' muscles to try to produce the phonemes of the TL.

5) Don't worry about making mistakes.

The main thing is to constantly push yourself to express yourself in the new language.

Thanks for posting this. I attended the conference and was wondering when I'd be able to get to see the rest of the presentations that I missed.

Anyone else from HN attend this event? What did you think?

This is the response I got from one of the reps I contacted. I also posted it to HN a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3253611

""" Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns. I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet.

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.

Sincerely, Kirsten E. Gillibrand United States Senator """

Total cookie cutter stuff. I don't think it's an issue of educating senators on the "issues." The ones who are pushing this bill forward simply want to turn the internet into cable tv.

Ah-- thanks for posting that. It is interesting to read the past comment threads.

All the same I'm glad the article was reposted as I am relatively new to the site.

Did the author read out of my college diary to write this piece? It sure felt like he did...

I read the piece and also identified with the interviewee, but felt bad for not instantly cancelling my fb account.

I like to think of HN as a positive alternative to typical social sharing sites like fb or twitter.

I wasn't aware of the notion mentioned in the interview of social sites sharing photographic data with police in other countries-- that is enough reason to get out of the social networks for me.

That said, it is safe to say that social networks are absolutely entrenched in society. As individuals we can choose to not participate, but this is effectively the same as choosing to live in a mountain outside of society.

Try Project Euler (projecteuler.net). It is a site of increasingly difficult math puzzle challenges, most of which require some programming to solve.

I have learned a lot of really great math by solving some of these problems (I haven't solved more than the beginner level so far).

I also had to do quite a bit of outside reading to solve some of them, while others can be solved in a just a few minutes.

I am wondering this as well as I am work on developing online elearning tools and taking part in the AI course.

I wish I could remember the source, but I recall reading that they are using something custom built at Stanford.

This is a question that's been on my mind lately as well. What are people's opinions of LISP, or variations thereof?

One approach I use is to say that although the 'idea' is good/interesting/brilliant I am not passionate enough about the project to be able to give it my all.

On a related note, I think of the worthiness of ideas based on whether they are interesting enough to get me to work on them in my spare time even if it were for free.

nice!

Great introductory video to cassandra.

I agree. Find a hard problem you'd enjoy solving, and figure out what skills it takes to solve it.

I'd use the $1k for books and/or new gear.

I've read the book, although it would be more accurate to say that I skimmed it since it was a bit over my head when I got it a year or so ago.

I am going through it again now that I've brushed up a bit on some of the math, and in anticipation of the upcoming Stanford course on NLP (http://www.nlp-class.org/), which is being taught by one of the authors.

I think that the material is still fairly relevant, especially in that it is a 'foundation' of Statistical NLP, and especially for someone relatively new to the material (like me). That said, if you take a look at the link to the course, the professors recommend a few different texts:

"The best textbook for the class is Jurafsky and Martin, Speech and Language Processing 2nd Edition (http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~martin/slp.html), complemented by chapters from Manning, Schütze and Raghavan 2008 (http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/); other useful, good books include Manning and Schütze 1999, and Bird, Klein and Loper 2009."

I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on this as well.

Interesting question.

As I've been reading the developments of the SOPA legislation, the very thought occurred to me of what would happen if it passes, and whether I would consider leaving in the near or long term.

The problem is that once it gets to the point where it makes sense for intelligent people to think about leaving, it will become very difficult to do so. The trick is to leave before it gets really bad-- but how to know when that is.

And then there is the question of where can we go?

Canada is the first thought, but it's not easy to emigrate there from what I understand. And Europe? Without an EU passport forget, about it unless you have very exceptional skills.

I lived in Japan for some years and would also consider there or another East Asian country, but even for those who know Japanese, for example, it is not easy to secure employment except in very specific industries.

I'm curious to hear what others have to say about this question.

This one is supposed to be good: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, by Martin Fowler http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Enterprise-Application-Archit...

I am trying to do the same thing as you, and I recently ordered this text based on a recommendation from a mentor.

Good idea! I'd be interested in such a blog for the very reasons you mention. And I'd be sure to learn a lot in the process.

Wow-- thanks for the update Senator. I'll be sure to sign up for your newsletter so I can receive regular updates full of empty boilerplate.

I do. redhotpawn.com

DaVinci? I suppose you mean modern examples though.

Try seatgeek.com