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Yes, it's fed the score as the reward value used. If I'm not wrong, they didn't normalise it across games for the initial paper but normalised it to some range for some of the following research experiments.

It actually goes beyond just making you more frustrated. Venting, or catharsis, makes you feel better in the short term, creating a positive feedback loop in which you seek it out and engage in it more often, making you more aggressive and worsening the situation. (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/08/11/catharsis/)

Education in Asia, especially the main cities in the developed nations (Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul etc. ) is pretty much exactly the same. There's many purposes to an education, manifest and overt ones. For example, keeping youths neatly congregated and managed in singular locations, socialisation into specific social archetypes of value etc. We may say that an education is about Finding Your Passion and Being An Educated Person or to Engage Civil Society. But that's pretty much just what we're saying. Tax dollars are the votes at hand, and capitalist society really doesn't value An Education over a populace well-educated to obtain economically-productive jobs that produce tangible wealth.

We want to reverse this trend (overly competitive schooling systems) as much as we want to value philosophers and humanities scholars and artists. Enough to say it, but not quite enough to pour copious amounts of money into it. As students we're told to shoot for the sky. Study harder. Get straighter As. That's best for (capitalist) society. Every human resource neatly and fully expended. Maybe things will change when the data illustrates how people who like their jobs or areas of study are more productive. But that's a big if. The status quo seems easier.

There's a cross platform solution built in Java, Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader (SAGU). [simpleglacieruploader.brianmcmichael.com] If on Linux there's a nice CLI option too. [https://github.com/MoriTanosuke/glacieruploader]

They're not half as sleek though.

It can actually be more X-inefficient (e.g spending indiscriminately) , because it has profits in the long run and won't go broke. I suspect the author was looking for the idea of cost, economies of scale lower average cost, hence increasing a firm's profits, not making workers more productive as he asserts.

It's very easy. Brute-forceable factorization problem. I would be interested in seeing if there were more elegant solutions though, I'm sure there's some optimizations, although the numbers multiplied are prime.

As in Plato's five regimes, democracy is only very slightly better than tyranny/anarchy. Authoritarian single party state can also be rephrased into functioning semi-aristocracy. All governments have advantages and flaws, it's better to compare them not on a theoretical demonized basis but on the output and tangible effects. For example, economically Singapore succeeds fantastically, but culturally it's missing something.

Thanks for speaking some sense. I suspect the author got the notion of Singaporean pride wrong. We're far more prideful when we feel attacked or maligned by foreigners, despite the day to day lamentations. You've stated arguments I agree with, but I do honestly feel that you're overgeneralizing to a large extent. I think it helps if we consider again what you mentioned about size. Singapore has a relatively small population. It's true, we don't produce that many groundbreaking innovations, but we need to consider the mathematical probabilities of having them in a relatively smaller population as well. My guess is that the detriment is at least an n^2 term, with less sharing of ideas, interaction and encouragement to pursue risk. As a student, I increasingly see people pursuing the entrepreneurship and more risky careers, rather than "selling out". After reading so many American articles and opinions and blogs, I don't think the idea of pursuing low risk paths is specifically amplified in Singapore. Everyone wants to do amazing things, but no one dares to. It just so happens that it's more common in other countries because of larger populations, and the environment that successful by chance entrepreneurs (I say this not to deride them but as a point of argument) have fostered. I don't have statistics to back this up, but hey we had Creative and Sembcorp/KeppelCorp. Our successes are just a lot less sexy. There's a lot of fallacious stereotyping as a result. Pragmatism doesn't imply a lack of innovation, creativity or success. On the contrary, it finds the most efficient way through to it. Our research institutions ASTAR focus on the commercialization of technology. That means we miss the sights and sounds and new discoveries along the way, we don't have Nobel Prizes, but can one really say that one type of practical innovation is better than the other?

Although props to you on the culture analogy. Nothing interesting ever happens in Singapore. For that, I think we must be at least slightly thankful. It's interesting to watch a government's politicking, gridlock and shutdown, but if and only if it's in another country

Two small icons next to the field, one for autogeneration (a refresh maybe?) and one for password visibility (an eye like IE uses perhaps, a concept common to other software as well.) Keep the generation code in js client side , and send the plaintext to the server via SSL as always. Normal operation of user creation. The plaintext has to be sent at least once over SSL to get hashed on the server side. Hashing on the client side is generally worse because then you'd be more susceptible to MITM attacks. (Actually, either way you'd be more susceptible. Just rely on strong SSL.)

Definitely agree. As a problem, this is pretty easy. Ask anyone that does competitive algorithmic programming. The linear solution is obvious, I wouldn't say that it requires a eureka moment, even though I didn't bother thinking of the one pass because the difference would be minimal at best (for most inputs.) OP should share what his internship was about, I'd disagree if it had more to do with understanding practical implementation and development than efficency and algorithms. Both are valid skillsets equally useful to twitter.

EDIT:apologies to whoever had to kill the extra posts, my mobile hn client is on the fritz.

If anyone's curious (like I was), a histogram has a continuous variable for it's x-axis, the bars on a histogram correspond to bins of the continuous variable. E.g. 1-10, 11-20, 21-30. In a bar graph, the x-axis is usually a discontinuous variable, typically types, with no specifically meaningful sort order, e.g. in this case, countries. Also, by convention, histograms have no spaces between bars to represent the continuity while bar graphs do to represent the discontinuity. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think you added an extra N.

However, to argue the converse is just as difficult. Can we really reject the hypothesis that genetics has an effect on a person's mental ability? On student success?

In China, researchers are looking at mapping the genomes of 'geniuses' to look for potential genes that impact intelligence. (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/genetics-of-iq/)

While, you argue from a point of pathos, that is that pursuing such genetics-based arguments of ability is dangerous and leads to dangerous situations, it is important to consider that with increasing knowledge of genetics, it is possible that we will find certain genes with impacts on knowledge and ability. I mean, even now, we know at least of genetic bases to diseases that negatively impact intelligence. Who is to say the converse won't happen? In a question of science and ethics, I would argue that it is better that we pursue, to a) not end up in lopsided world power (imagine if only China were to successfully pursue genetic bases for improving education) and b) look at potential ways of improving education across the board. If we do know a genetic bases, that may allow us to better target education. Ability is clearly myriad and manifold, and likely impossible to fully be determined by genetics. There will still be better objective measures than genetics.

To shove aside genetics effects on student success just on potential ethical ramifications might not be a very good idea.

In decimal, when you reach numbers after 9, there's no longer a single symbol you can use to represent the next number. Hence, you represent it as 10, which is one 10 and zero 1s. 11 is one 10 and one 1. This decimal, or base 10 system hence uses only 10 symbols, (0-9). In base 36, you can use additional other symbols, up to 36 different symbols. In this case they are 0-Z, changing to the letters of the alphabet A-Z as the remaining 26 unique symbols needed. Hence A is 11, B is 12 ... Z is 35. 36 (base 10) is then represented as 10 (base 36), one 36 and zero ones. 36^2 = 1296 (base 10) would be represented as 100 (base 36).

If you're in chrome, open up dev tools, then hit resources, find the local storage on the left bar and click on the url. You'll see a gamestate key and the value. Copy the value, that's the entire game state. You can then create that same key on whatever other browser with that value.

Copy paste the game state from localstorage.

I'm not sure (primarily because I can't see the images) but that sounds like a basic flood fill question doesn't it? Does everyone in Vietnam do competitive algorithmic programming? (That sounds like what you're describing.) That's really interesting, because where I'm from that's typically taken only on interest, and there aren't that many interested.

Whoops. Never saw that. My bad. I just got linked to it and thought it was pretty interesting.

Moonwalking with Einstein. Not particularly new but a pretty entertaining book on the Art of Memory. Not particularly useful (the book kind of says so itself) but insightful and methods of loci is still a marginally useful skill to have.

A lot of the time I read interesting stuff that's perhaps tangentially relevant, but not directly relevant to what I'm doing at the moment. And then I get stuck with this annoying problem of not really remembering what was there when I actually do need that article/advice/news/knowledge. Your tip on searching past links is useful. Thanks :)

I think that the many people who struggle learning to touch-type would disagree heavily with you regarding how intuitive a keyboard is. I'm pretty certain we could come up with a more natural method of input, however that could have the potential to diminish the important characteristic you raised regarding explicit and specific input.

I'd like to see the 'impossible image' that was created with LivePicture and impossible for Photoshop...

I think it helps significantly to qualify what kind of app we're talking about (because then the demographics wanting each will vary) and revenue models. Game apps in general seem to do significantly better on the Apple store. At the very least, there's significantly more games in the Apple App Store than the Play Store. That likely has to do with the demographics that hold Android vs iOS phones. It also doesn't account for the alternative revenue model that most Android games take, that is the ad-driven model. If you're in it for the revenue, Android's ad-driven allowances (as much as I dislike them) may be a valid approach. For most other types of apps (productivity, education etc it's a toss up in my opinion, and will likely come down again to pricing model.

Might also help to consider where you're developing for. Different countries each have VASTLY different usage numbers for the different platforms. Big statistics that cover the whole globe aren't altogether that useful.

As a last point, I highly doubt that Android fragmentation is going to be the major reason why development is going to cost 20% more. That just seems wrong and arbitrary, especially with all the measures Google has taken to patch it (a la ICS). I could just as well say that the Apple app submission process is a hellish procedure that will cause massive delays and increased cost. It's really hard to say which is more costly to develop for due to all the variables.

Last throw in, just on an intuition, I'd develop for Android first, simply due to the significant reach in my country, greater experience with it and the type of app I'm considering. All in all, with so many variables, it's really hard to explicitly say.

Great idea. This is the kind of idea that falls into the 'why on earth did I not think of that first' area. Just some comments though. Your call to action is really camouflaged amongst the features. I'd suggest that you relocate your call to action as a huge button where your 'Already have an account?' section is. It could also do with more useful screenshots of the app itself. The app itself confuses me slightly. Your usage of a separate modal kind of threw me off. (I was thinking, is it a downloadable app? A webapp? An extension?) I'm not sure if everyone would agree, but I personally don't need the extra huge window for easy access to websites I commonly use. That never made sense to me. If I commonly use a website, I'll probably already know its URL or name at least. Your app's major value add for me is the ability to search for bookmarks where I KNOW I BOOKMARKED IT but can't seem to find it in the mass of them. Anyway, good job shipping! :) One question though, does the chrome extension automatically sync bookmarks after the first import?

You've got a useful product, it's just that I have no clue that it is one. I'd suggest you throw away the video for a list of features, or something that'll highlight how quick and easy it is to use your product. Check out good landing pages of other startups. (They're a dime a dozen, think Shopify, Stripe etc.) Six Revisions has a good article on the basics you'll need for a landing page. (http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/designing-landing-p...) If you're not much of a designer yourself, you could consider paying a little bit over at 99Designs and getting a landing page out.

Thread (https://www.thread.com/) is a startup aimed exactly at trying to solve this problem. It matches you to professional stylists for free. (I'm not particularly certain what it's monetization strategy is, I suspect it has something to do with a cut of your online clothes purchases or advertising or something.)

Perhaps. But I was thinking of kiasu in the sense of going to a good university, instead of striking it out at an intership or picking a stable job over doing what you really care about. I was trying not to emphasize the success points but maybe I gave one too many examples. I was trying to explain that what the education system gives is a very pointless, bland experience that leads to decency but no real significant learning or satisfaction. Pointlessness. I think that if we did do what we cared about, then we'd be beyond that spectrum you mentioned, because you'd be passionate about and enjoying what you did, instead of aiming to be a defined "winner".

I think this really reflects on how bad a writer I am. I wasn't trying so hard to compare myself to others, but rather to show that in my opinion, I'm not doing anything but the standard stuff, that's pointless in my opinion, while other people are doing things they care about and are interested in. It would lead to decency, but not satisfaction, contribution, or change of any sort. Might have missed the point a little while writing the piece.