samirmenon

You could take that one step further. CS has, in it's modern incarnation, only been around for ~90 years. CS, as it is taught at the undergraduate level, has changed dramatically in recent years, and will continue into the future.

Math, on the other hand, has been around for thousands of years, is relatively stable, and unlikely to become obsolete in the way a scrum certification, or even a machine learning algorithm, will.

Of course, 'CS fundamentals' usually end up at a very close intersection with math. I'm just suggesting that mathematics has an even deeper level of the 'stability' you referenced.

I thought of this problem from a different perspective. A lot of disadvantaged people, and middle class people in developing nations, already have 'dumbphones'. How could we allow people to do more with basic phones?

I built a little service that does translation over text. If you text "<language> <text to translate>" to (917) 832-1965 it'll reply with the text in the language you requested. You can read more about it here:

http://smstranslate.divshot.io/

According to the WHO, malaria kills almost 500,000 children under 5 each year globally, though the vast majority (~90%) of these deaths are in Africa. [1]

In the US, 3,000-49,000 people die each year from the flu.[2]

Clearly, the scales are not comparable.

[1] http://www.who.int/malaria/media/world_malaria_report_2013/e...

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm#deaths

This seems like a wonderful language for game development. I wonder if there will be some kind of graphics support, or if I can use the C API (when it is finished).

This is a great walkthrough of Raft:

http://thesecretlivesofdata.com/raft/

Login to https://www.icloud.com/ and use "Find My iPhone" to track your MacBook and iPad. If the thieves are stupid enough, they'll turn the devices on at some point, giving you a good idea of where they are.

Do this as soon as possible, and check back constantly. Good luck!

This just feels like an advertisement for Brewster.

"We also think these breakouts aren’t necessarily a good way to judge accelerators."

Is Y Combinator a bit arrogant to say that the success of its startups is a bad a metric for evaluating their success? If it is a bad metric, what's a good metric?

The New York Times actually broke the story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensore...

The article never actually specifies whether the "mostly black and Latino" women who digitize the books are treated as independent contractors. It implies it, by launching into a section on Mechanical Turk, Uber, TaskRabbit, etc, but never actually discusses the book digitizers.

What topic were you googling?

Also, its interesting that this account was created so recently... maybe this is Google itself.

"Straight people don't go around declaring their sexuality, nor ever feel the need to"

Straight people don't declare their sexuality because everyone is assumed to be straight until proven otherwise.

I actually just wrote an add-on for Google Sheets (It allows you to run neural networks in a spreadsheet). While I resented being forced to use Google's Apps Script Editor, I was impressed with the quality of the documentation and reference materials. They've done a pretty good job.

YikYak is sweeping our high school. It's mostly used to make fun of school administrators and bully other students. It seems much more popular with kids than Secret.

http://www.yikyakapp.com/

"Conventional beliefs only ever come to appear arbitrary and wrong in retrospect; whenever one collapses, we call the old belief a bubble."

I couldn't help but feel that, in 10 years, Silicon Valley's current bubble (which Peter Thiel buys into) will seem this way.

According to the Department of Transportation Commissioner, “the chances of a person being killed is cut in half when you reduce the speed limit of the moving vehicle from 30 to 25.”

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/08/09/gov-cuomo-signs-bill-...

Don't all people have an equal right to education?

I love this! My favorite part was 'discovering' my own 'cords'. So far, my ear prefers AEF, AWF, ECG, AEG, and AFY.

Also, you can make a key stay down by holding down Control (Command on a Mac)

"The team behind a social network being used by Islamic State (IS) militants has admitted it cannot prevent the spread of extremist material."

"admitted"? What's with the tone of this article? What crime are they "admitting" to?

In my experience, BBC should be better than this.

Right now, it appears to be through referral on Twitter. I wonder how they define "woman"... can a transgender or genderqueer person join?

I'm not sure I understand how Women.com "verfies" that you are a woman. It seems a bit presumptuous to ask someone to "verify" their gender.

Absolutely. I hope that every year of my life, I look back, and laugh at the things I 'knew' 10 years ago. Is it the same for you?

The oft-repeated idea of an "underdeveloped" teenage brain is a bit old. Scientific American did a piece on it in 2007. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-te...)

I'm actually quite hurt by this comment.

Firstly, I have worked for the past three years as a software developer. I've had to deliver things to a manager, figure out exactly what a client wants, and work collaboratively. I think that I've at least had a taste of the "real world".

Secondly, the idea that I lack some kind of mental capability to "understand or imagine what is possible outside of the school" is deeply flawed, and frankly unfounded. In fact, the condescension that arises from this statement is exactly the kind of attitude towards children that discourages them from taking risks and exploring independently.

I hope the next time you talk to or meet a 16 year old, you don't assume that they lack any ability to understand the "real world".

Public school, but fairly wealthy.

What's your point?

Do the kids in the article have access to the internet? Do they use it?

Is the elementary educational system truly "damaging" to young minds?

I think of my elementary education (which, mind you, was only 6 years ago) as perhaps boring or tedious in some areas (like math, for me), while also exciting and rewarding in others (science, learning to make friends, deal with gossip, etc). I certainly don't think I have a very 'damaged' method of thought now because of my elementary education.

I think that, on the whole, it was not at all damaging; in fact, it was important to my development as a child.

Absolutely nothing in the article implies that this father is attempting to expose his children to books or other resources (the internet, perhaps?) about math, science, or history.

Perhaps I am clouded by my own positive experiences with school, but I disagree on two levels.

Firstly, your use of the phrase 'in the west' implies that outside of the 'west' there is some different, better elementary education system. This has not been my experience in India, where capacity for rote memorization is regarded as equivalent to intelligence from an early age. What countries fit your boundaries of 'the west'?

Secondly, school serves as a valuable social and educational center to most children. Even though elementary education is imperfect, it does not mean that a viable solution is to simply do away with it. In fact, I think the social interaction with other children of similar age is extremely important to developing social skills and friendships.

This actually seems astoundingly misguided and dangerous.

One of the unique, defining qualities of humanity is an ability to build on the knowledge and experiences of generations before us. Why throw all of the knowledge of the past 5,000 years of human civilization out?

When will they learn math, or science, or history? How can you become a lawyer, doctor, or engineer without learning these subjects? Can they really be postponed until college?

This seems like one of those things that should've existed from the very start.