How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11 - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2016/04/17/how-us-covered-up-saudi-role-in-911/ <comment><USER2> The fluff movie "A Hologram for the King (2016)" seemed like propaganda on its face but I didn't expect it to be reactionary, timed to combat these public allegations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess this is ad hominem, but FWIW the author has also written what strikes me as an islamophobic book:

> Paul Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow and author of > "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington."

</comment><comment><USER4> This has been a 'conspiracy theory' for awhile, why is it suddenly mainstream? There have been so many articles out in the last couple of days.

<comment><USER5> It's called Major Consensus Narrative.</comment></comment>


Brainbow - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainbow <comment><USER2> Naive question: Surely we've run lab experiments by now to figure out the "data sheet" for an individual neuron?

If we know how individual neurons work and we can figure out at least roughly the connection topology, why can't we simulate a whole brain?

<comment><USER3> >why can't we simulate a whole brain?

Of what size? A worm, a fly? Doable. A mouse? Possibly in the next couple years. A human? No ETA but definitely happening in our timeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently heard about a lab using Brainbow in primates to image the activity from a lot of neurons simultaneously at single neuron resolution, using a color camera. The amount of neurons we can map anatomically and record from continues to increase!</comment>


Show HN: Five second finance, a way to get quick financial news everyday - <AUTHOR> https://www.instagram.com/mrhektorsg/ <comment><AUTHOR> We post every morning around noon, Singapore time. The news is mostly focussed on local / South East Asia finance, with some global financial tech thrown in for good measure. Would love any feedback! Note: Most posts are carousels, so please swipe / click on the arrows to go through it</comment>


Microsoft loves Linux – a little too much? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@probonopd/microsoft-loves-linux-a-little-too-much-cff91023e4b8 <comment><USER2> Looks like Microsoft is always going to be Microsoft. People that think they have turned a new leaf and are all different and hip thanks to Satya are kidding themselves.

<comment><USER3> The only thing that changed is they got more effective PR. Or maybe there are just more gullible idiots on the net now, who are more susceptible to corporate propaganda that the average netizen was years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are SO MANY Linux distributions that overlapping a name is hardly a big deal (and the registration is not that big a deal either...as the article points out itself, despite the registration, there is a Linux distro also named Maui).

The Microsoft employee's response was pretty bad, but in a company with hundreds of thousands of devs, one inappropriate response by a developer hardly says anything.

Edit: He's not even an employee. He's a Microsoft MVP. That's like complaining that Red Hat is evil based on what a random programmer with a RH certification says.

</comment><comment><USER5> Embrace, extend, extinguish. Forever Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER6> By default you can't trust any for profit corporation. They will always do what is profitable over anything and everything else, as they are required to.</comment>


The Complete List of Tools for Content Creation and Blogging in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://alphaefficiency.com/tools-for-seo-content-creation-blogging-productivity/ <comment><USER2> Kareem thank you for sharing this post. I hope you and folks over at Hacker News will enjoy it!</comment>


Ask HN: What mobile app did you make and how much are you making from it? - <AUTHOR>

Please use this structure
App Name:
App Price:
Days In Appstore:
Daily/Monthly Revenue:
Any other comments: <comment><USER2> you wanna start? :)</comment>


Why TeX and LaTeX are the defacto standard for writing math equations - <AUTHOR> http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/49208/213

<comment><USER2> As a rider to the stackexchange discussion: TeX/LaTeX did indeed have competition in the early days from, for example, troff. However, the eqn filter for troff was designed to generate troff macros; some knowledge of troff is required to use it effectively, and (speaking as someone who worked in a UNIX techpubs team for a few years in his mis-spent youth) troff is not a terribly elegant or user-friendly language to say the least.

<comment><USER3> I was curious how troff/eqn and TeX syntaxes compared, and didn't find any nice side-by-side examples, so here's a quick translation of one from the troff manual (<http://www.troff.org/prog.html#eqn>):

        .EQ
        G(z) ~=~ e sup { ln ~ G(z) }
             ~=~ exp left ( sum from k>=1 { S sub k z sup k } over k right )
             ~=~ prod from k>=1 e sup { S sub k z sup k /k }
        .EN

In TeX mathematical notation:

        $$G(z) = e^{\ln G(z)}
               = \exp \left( \sum_{k \geq 1} \frac{S_k z^k}{k} \right)
               = \prod_{k \geq 1} e^{S_k z^k / k}$$

The TeX is a bit more terse, especially in using ^ and _ for super/subscript instead of sup/sub. That can make a big readability difference in things like simple polynomials; a^2 + b^2 = c^2 is just that in TeX, but a lot more wordy in eqn. The troff/eqn looks a bit less like line noise, though, especially in things like "from" in the summation, and >= for \geq.

Though really I'd guess that TeX's math notation caught on as the de-facto standard for "ASCII math" because TeX as a whole caught on, rather than because of its ASCII-math representation being better.

<comment><USER4> > The troff/eqn looks a bit less like line noise

Not necessarily a feature. The eqn syntax does contain more letters and less symbols, but that gives it very low contrast, making it hard to scan the equation and "see" the math symbols through the formatting. When writing a large equation, it helps to have a large contrast between words/symbols and formatting commands. The TeX punctuation helps with grouping and delineation.

<comment><USER5> Furthermore, the LaTeX syntax makes it easier for the computer to parse the document and distinguish actual text from equation symbols.

<comment><USER6> It depends on the meaning of 'easier', I think. In both cases, 'the computer' _can_ do it, meaning the program `troff` or the program `(la)tex`, and I'm not sure it's reasonable to call one or the other of those programs 'easier' for the computer; but perhaps you are thinking more of something like syntax highlighting?

In that case, I would argue that it's not easy at all with (La)TeX. The obvious difficulty is people mucking about with cat- and char- codes; but, even if that's not happening, you've got things to worry about like old-style `$ $` and `$$ $$` delimiters. I've never seen a highlighter handle `$\text{$math$}$`, or even `\\(\text{\\(math\\)}\\)`, correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LaTeX is easy to read. I want to write a little story from my life as an example.

While I was working at one firm I got own department. I wrote LaTeX class for them to support corporate style. After 1-2 weeks they noticed it was the same if not better than MS Word for documentation.

</comment><comment><USER8> The same reason a lot of file/language standards become popular. They suck less than everything else when they were created and then large amounts of material became tied up in their continued existence ( i.e. academic papers ).

<comment><USER9> Existing papers do not really force new papers to be typeset in LaTex, since end products are just PDFs.

I don't know of any alternative solution that is as easy to use and produces a high quality document.

<comment><USER10> Some disciplines wound up having lots of handy LaTeX macros written to handle things that are common to the kinds of papers that get written, as well as there formerly being the requirement that papers be submitted as LaTeX documents. More the first reason, I think, tended to encourage LaTeX usage for a while. Once you got used to it, LaTeX really made it faster to get what you want without having to fiddle too much with the formatting.

I know I spent a lot of time with qtree, gb4e, and pstricks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A big factor was/is the prestige of Knuth.

</comment><comment><USER12> A Markdown extension that turned latex formulas to MathML would be nice...

<comment><USER13> This is one best directions with the available technology. We're trying to do this at Hoot with what we call "Smart Chat." We've taken the markdown editor and adapted backticks (`) to wrap a simplified subset of Latex, so that the language is more accessible to a wider audience by providing immediate rendering and feedback. In our case the uses are much more simple than the troff example above (<https://apps.facebook.com/hootapp/?sid=5Yyt797Jg>), but are still very applicable. I think our most common use is by highschoolers and college students for calculus, where ideas such as integrals and summations are easily described in plain english:

`integral cos(x)*e^(2x) dx` or `sum (x^n) / (n!)`

edit: added simpler examples

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> troff is for me far harder to read by eye ... TeX and LaTeX are far easier to read and more versatile. Its just a personal thing, I'm sure, but I found taking to TeX an instantly productive thing to do.

Modern TeX/LaTeX packages for distros these days are _huge_ though, in comparison to the stuff that came on a single floppy when I first learned to use it.</comment>


Internet firms warn over police push for web history access - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/30/internet-service-providers-warn-police-web-history-access-civl-liberties-privacy <comment><USER2> So, how long before use of Tor is made illegal? Surely, anyone who has something to hide will be using it already.

Meanwhile I fail to see how this proposed action will deter or prevent the planning and execution of any outrage. People are free to meet, make plans, separate and subsequently act, possibly on cue from internet messages which have no meaning except for the participants in the conspiracy.</comment>


InboxQ (YC W10): Snagging Customer Leads from Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/tomtaulli/2011/04/08/inboxq-snagging-customer-leads-from-twitter/

<comment><USER2> I love the concept of InboxQ, but after a few weeks I disabled it because there were too many spammers asking the same question every day on the terms I was searching for. There needs to be some way to block certain users, and also to block certain strings of text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Alex. That is definitely something we are aware of and are adding a "mute" button so you can block the type of users that you are talking about. We are also building a quality filter specifically to address that type of behavior (ie so those folks just don't show up in the first place).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> InboxQ's core functionality is very nice, and I've been using it lately to help promote one of my products.

I haven't been able to figure out why it is delivered as a browser extension, though. It doesn't seem to add any value, and in fact makes it more difficult to use than if it were just a standard web app. For example, if I have InboxQ popped open in Chrome and then I switch to another application to do some research or copy a link, then when I switch back to Chrome, InboxQ is closed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words and feedback!

>>I haven't been able to figure out why it is delivered as a browser extension, though

This came largely from alpha user feedback. Those folks told us that they wanted access to the question stream, but didn't want another login to manage to access Twitter data. So, we started with the extension which made it easy to be notified when there were new questions.

We are working on a web app as well as integration into some of the major Twitter clients and social media dashboards. Eventually we'll get to mobile (another highly requested platform). That way folks will have lots of options as to how they access our tools.

<comment><USER4> I think this is a great example of why you should look to your customers for inspiration but not necessarily specific direction.

Although your users might not want 'another login to manage twitter data' they also probably wouldn't want every startup in this space to go the same route and create a browser extension _you can have unlimited logins, you can't run unlimited browser extensions_.

I would put the web app on top priority as for now I'm put off installing yet another browser plugin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool- definitely happy to let you know when the web app launches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> InboxQ has a really smart team, and I know they're hiring too :) I'm not affiliated with InboxQ.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is cool and I will def try it out, I've been doing this manually for a while.

</comment><comment><USER7> Installed but cannot see the toolbar in Firefox (3.6.16) [http://getsatisfaction.com/inboxq/topics/firefox_add_on_inst...](http://getsatisfaction.com/inboxq/topics/firefox_add_on_installed_but_not_visible_on_toobar)

Great concept!

<comment><AUTHOR> When that happens it is usually a conflict with another extension. If you email me with the other extension you may be running we can do our best help out (email@example.com).</comment></comment>


Now Apps Can Track You Even After You Uninstall Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-22/now-apps-can-track-you-even-after-you-uninstall-them?srnd=premium <comment><USER2> People asked themselves how the GDPR could come into effect... well, here is the answer. Pure, unrefined capitalistic greed led the companies to milk the people more and more, up to a point where governments with a robust mandate "protect our people" were forced to intervene.

The ad industry, especially "adtech" only has themselves to blame for having their business model "disrupted" by regulation.</comment>


China Is Planning a Massive Sea Lab 10,000 Feet Underwater - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-07/china-pushes-plan-for-oceanic-space-station-in-south-china-sea <comment><USER2> i watched seaquest as a kid. lots of us were disspointed it never happened.

so when i got older , i researched the history of sealab(s) and , after having gone scuba diving, did a bunch of research on human biological response to partial pressure of gasses, as well as high pressure and low pressure.

knowing what i know now , the clickbait title might be misleading if you think china is proposing HOUSING HUMAN BEINGS underneath 10,000 feet of water. there is no fucking way in hell that is going to happen.

you can barely get a manned MOBILE submarine to depths below a couple thousand feet. and the static bathyscapes ( deep diving manned diving structures) that do exist have pretty much demonstrated you can do little to nothing under the current design constraints of a deep ocean high pressure bathyscape.

any sophisticated machinery or equipment you build on or outside of the bathyscape, allowing interaction between the environemtn inside of the structure with the surface of, or the environment outside of , the structure, are severely limited by the crushingly high pressures.

i'm not saying there is no future where this technology could exist, i'm saying the timeline is at least as distant as that for human beings colonizing mars. and honestly, as nuts as it sounds, i think the technological innovation required to place a small colony at 3000 meters below the ocean surface is far less advanced now, than is the technology that is in development for putting men on mars.

living and functioning on the ocean floor is FAR DIFFERENT than sending james cameron to the bottom of the marianas trench for an hour and coming right back up. and if the only point of going down there is to be isolated in a black box that does not interact with its environment , than what is the point of going down there to begin with. it would be like going to mars, getting there, while asleep, and returning back to earth before waking up.

10,000 feet. nuh-uh.

i just want to clafiry i am talking about building an underwater housing structure that allows human beings to send robots in and out of it and interact with the environment through rov's that can be controlled from inside the bathyscape by human operators.</comment>


LizardFS – Reliable and Scalable Distributed File System - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lizardfs/lizardfs <comment><USER2> This is a fork of [http://www.moosefs.org/](http://www.moosefs.org/)

<comment><USER3> I don't see what lizard does that moose doesn't.

Is this just a re-branding of moose in hopes to sell consulting for it?

It seems that's the goal: [https://lizardfs.com/](https://lizardfs.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is interesting, especially the native windows client, but it's based on the same tired architecture as HDFS, and has all the same limitations.

1) Single Master for Metadata

One of the biggest weaknesses in this model is that you can only scale the master so far. For metadata responses to be snappy, everything in your working set has to fit in RAM. That imposes hard limits on your number of files; 100M is achievable, 1B can even be done, but more than that and you're in for hurt.

2) Chunkserver to chunkserver replication

As the moosefs write diagram shows, you're waiting for chunkservers to walk a linear tree, and you get the slowest performance of each one. Which, as it turns out, is on average pretty bad. If you have a 99th percentile latency of 10x your average, you lose 20% of your speed with three replicas. Not to mention the fact that your 'single point of failure' is actually any of the three of those chunkservers, with a long retry stall if one of them errors. LizardFS supports a xor mode, so it may be avoiding this by having clients talk to more than one chunkserver directly. Combined with proper queueing and retry logic, this reduces the effect of the long tail significantly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Last time I investigated about a year ago... I saw some MAJOR as in "DO NOT USE, UNSAFE, WARNING, DANGER WILL ROBINSON", issues in this project... Silent data loss/corruption type stuff, and I did not see sufficient activity on a project of this complexity to make me feel at all comfortable using it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've used tahoe lafs before, but not many other distributed file systems.

There doesn't seem to be much information provided in this link, and their website doesn't help much either. Does LizardFS do full end to end encryption too? That's one of the more important things to me.

<comment><USER7> The MooseFS reference will help you out:

[http://www.moosefs.org/](http://www.moosefs.org/)

You might also find this list useful:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems#Distribut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems#Distributed_fault- tolerant_file_systems)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, no reasoning for a fork? What was the itch? Just to use GPLv3 instead of GPLv2, can GPL be "switched" just like that?

<comment><USER9> Looking at the MooseFS source files, I don't think they can. The license header of the files says:

       /* ...
        * MooseFS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
        * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
        * the Free Software Foundation, version 2 (only).
        * ...
        */

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I´ve used MooseFS which LizardFS is based upon and its very stable in production!

</comment><comment><USER11> Does LizardFS support atomic rename?</comment>


My adventures in digital history - <AUTHOR> http://moreorlessbunk.net/digital-humanities/my-adventures-in-digital-history/ <comment><USER3> Thanks for posting this. I started teaching my first history lecture course this January and very quickly came up against what the author mentions - <USER2> only students but also teachers have a lot of trouble sustaining attention for more than 30-40 minutes of straight-ahead lecturing. It's a medium that I do think works well if the person doing it is a natural public speaker (I was watching James Baldwin's speech at Cambridge University the other day and was riveted the entire time [1]) but unfortunately there's virtually no training in public speaking provided by a typical PhD.

If anything PhDs are rewarded for learning how to speak in a way that doesn't work at all in a classroom - hyper-attuned to nuance but allergic to making the kind of memorable declarative statements that students seem to want for their notes. I noticed from grading midterms that my students fixated on phrases like "the Catholic Church is the ghost of the Roman Empire" or "Cogito ergo sum" but had trouble with things we spent a lot more time on, like the difference between natural philosophy and science.

I haven't taught a digital history-focused class yet but have been experimenting with interspersing my lectures with class periods where the students research an historical topic in groups and then present their findings to the class. One unexpected benefit I've noticed from doing this is that the act of physically getting up and moving around the classroom, then standing up to present seems to do wonders for maintaining their attention span and focus. Likewise with the knowledge that each student is going to have to say something at some point rather than just passively receive information.

[1] [https://youtu.be/oFeoS41xe7w?t=14m4s](https://youtu.be/oFeoS41xe7w?t=14m4s)</comment>


Being a good guy boss left me £1.2m in debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50157515 <comment><USER2> This article is about a group pension plan and a legally mandated way of calculating liabilities that isn't working in a particular case. It's a simple law change. It's not some crazy bureaucratic maze or malevolent government - it's actually a private pension administrator, and it is based on a strict way of calculating future liabilities for group plans being applied to individual members when they leave the group in a fairly dumb way.

The law in question came around for a good reason:

 _Section 75 came about as a result of a sweeping review of pension regulation in the wake of the Robert Maxwell scandal in the 1990s.

Following the media tycoon's death it emerged he had plundered millions from the Mirror Group pension scheme.

The Pensions Act 1995 introduced a series of reforms including a "minimum funding requirement" for pension funds. It also introduced something called "Section 75 pension debt", which meant if an employer "departed" a scheme, they could still be pursued for any shortfall._

It is just a poor match with this type of shared pension scheme (not British, so forgive problems matching this to other types of defined benefits plans I'm more familiar with). This seems to be a clear case to revise this Section 75 for these types of group plans/schemes.

There is no actual fiscal problem here, just a legal one. The biggest obstacle to amending the existing law, based on the article, is an inability to enact legislation because of distraction by Brexit.

<comment><USER3> > Section 75 came about as a result of a sweeping review of pension regulation > in the wake of the Robert Maxwell scandal in the 1990s.

> It's not some crazy bureaucratic maze or malevolent government

hmm

Policy designed for big firms, and in reaction to a few bad billionaire's or hundred millionaire's actions, which then destroys or squeezing out the small companies is one of the most common complaints against regulations like this. It's how you end up with only mega-corps and no competition or upward mobility for the middle class, and everyone wondering why there's a wealth gap when your only option is to work at bigco.

This stuff _always_ starts out with good intentions like "punishing the rich". And then some nobody middle-class plumber in Scotland is the one being forced to sell his house while Maxwell's family trust is still worth millions.

Meanwhile law changes are never a 'simple fix', these sorts of things stick around for decades.

Edit: note Robert Maxwell was the billionaire(?) father of Ghislaine Maxwell who was Epstein's second-in-command in the sex ring

<comment><USER2> Yes, financial regulation is hard. People are always trying to game it. Unfortunately there are really good reasons to avoid ex post facto laws. So you have the cat and mouse game where people find a loophole, exploit it, and it gets fixed. It gives the appearance of people "getting away with it". Overall the system works, and - almost by definition - you just hear about the exceptions. The solution isn't to give up.

<comment><USER4> The solution is to not offer pensions.

<comment><USER5> I always feel like I'm missing something fundamental when I read these debates. unless the only alternative is "no retirement plan", why would you ever want a pension? wouldn't you be much better off having your employer dump the funds in your 401k?

<comment><USER2> Maybe. Pensions, like social security, are better understood as longevity insurance.

Pensions are complicated by lump sum payouts, survivor benefits for spouses, and a bunch of other things. But you collect them for life. If you live a short time, the 401k might be a better outcome and the beneficiaries of your will can inherit the wealth (or your spouse, if you outlive them, vs reduce survivor benefits). If you live a long time, it's overwhelmingly likely you have not saved up enough for it, and short of letting the elderly eat cat food and die on the street, the costs of that outcome are socialized to the rest of us.

<comment><USER6> A defined-benefit pension is a bet that your employer will remain both solvent and completely honest for the rest of your life. This is an enormous risk compared to just having your own personal retirement account.

If you as an individual still want proper longevity insurance and the predictability of a defined-benefit-plan without this risk, just use the personal retirement savings to buy an annuity.

<comment><USER2> No it isn't. PBGC, and it's various analogs. Yes, you get a haircut, but pensions are generally insured for that. 401 plans are administered by companies and are funds of funds, at any rate, and you're still just reliant on 1) a different set of companies 2) market values to line up with your liquidity needs.

Also, how are you just ignoring have to rely on the honesty/fiscal stability of the company backing your hypothetical annuity in the space of two paragraphs?

Pensions are disappearing anyway so I feel like we're arguing the nutritional value of eating yangtze river dolphins, but that is because 401 plans are cheaper for employers and there is a lucrative fee structure in administering them, not because of an intrinsic flaw of pensions.

<comment><USER7> There is no lucrative fee structure if the employer goes with a Vanguard and prob Schwann/Fidelity 401k. In fact, it's far cheaper than the investment fees charged by pension fund managers and has greater performance. Absolutely no reason to pay all those actuaries and investors when an index funds with zero expenses do a better job over decades long timeframes.

And PBGC is woefully underfunded. It's already needing a bailout with just a few failing multi employer funds. It's mostly for show I presume, since this isn't even the first time it's getting bailed out.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-25/house- pas...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-25/house-passes- pension-bailout-as-democrats-eye-industrial-states)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have luckily never been caught in one of these kakfa-esque bureaucratic traps before, but I don't know how people hold it together when they do get caught in it. It seems like there isn't any thought being put into possible edge cases for policy and here seems to be little recourse for people to get out of it. Everything about governments just feels like this wall of indifference, from interactions at the DMV to policy being created. Just thinking about it makes me a little crazy. It is so inhuman.

<comment><USER9> It's not specific to governments, any sufficiently large organisation behaves like this. Think of the people who've had Google accounts vanished without explanation. Or the RBS small business scandal: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/12/confidentia...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/12/confidential- report-into-rbs-small-business-scandal-to-be-published)

At least with governments you get a representative.

<comment><USER10> > At least with governments you get a representative.

At least with corporations you get a choice, short of emigrating. Google is one of the most dominant corporations in the world, yet there are multiple alternatives to most of their services.

<comment><USER11> There is often only choice in the market because government regulators prevent absolute monopolies from happening.

<comment><USER12> Disagree, the most monopolistic sectors in the economy (education, telecommunications, health care) are also the most highly regulated.

Some states don't even have charter schools, can you believe that?? They only have _one choice_ for schooling from grade K-12

<comment><USER13> >Some states don't even have charter schools, can you believe that?? They only have one choice for schooling from grade K-12

This is complete BS. Private schools have _always_ existed, and still do. On top of that, homeschooling is legal.

<comment><USER14> And how many people can pay for schooling their children twice, once for the the public school they aren't using, and then again for a private school? Or, afford to not work and homeschool their children?

<comment><USER13> Who cares? That's irrelevant. You stated, quite clearly, that there is only "one choice". You're wrong about that, as I pointed out: there's multiple choices. I never said any of them were free.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry, what did I say? You may have confused me with someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The whole pension situation is going to blow up completely. As a GenX, I fully expect to have to work well into my 70's and then finally get a state pension (if I get one at all) completely inadequate to support me.

Boomers are the major political force, and so pensions are good now. But as soon as enough of them die off, GenY/Millenials will be the dominant demographic and all the remaining pension funds will get ransacked for benefits to the young.

A bit like Student Loans all over again (Boomers got their education for free, GenX had to pay, Millenials got shafted), except it'll just be GenX getting the finger this time.

<comment><USER16> >Boomers got their education for free

I've never heard this before. Got a link that explains it? All I've heard from the few boomers I've talked to is that they generally worked during school and had some loans as well.

<comment><USER17> They didn't get their education for free but compared to what people pay now it might as well be free. When boomers say they worked to pay for their education, they mean they took summer jobs washing dishes or waiting tables.

Try to do that today and you'd be washing dishes for the rest of your life and never pay off the student loans.

<comment><USER2> It's compounded by some people not adjusting for inflation. Education was still expensive back then, just not as expensive as it is now. It was also far less universal.

edit: "people" -> "some people"

edit 2:

Trying to reduce a complex situation quickly (so forgive oversimplification): for decades college education was a bargain, the lifetime value of a college degree (average increase in wages) was much higher than the cost of the degree. Ignoring the ethics and rationales for this, price rose to meet demand. At the same time, automation has reduced the number of jobs and the value of a college degree. It is an awful situation.

What I was trying to get across, using real numbers, is that Harvard tuition in 1960 was apparently $1500. Inflation figures would tell you that is 8x higher ($12k, affordable but still not cheap) in today's dollars. Actual tuition is $46k. But an average house was $12k in 1960 and so you'd expect $100k today on the same inflation rate. But it's $300k.

What you also have is an illustration of the stratification of society (lower/upper middle class gap) where "luxuries" like college, a house, or a car are tracking higher income growth and lower income growth is stagnating because of international and technological trade trends. This is well beyond the scope of this submission, so I'll cut myself off here except to say reducing this to "boomers" isn't helpful.

<comment><USER18> You're right that it was less common to go to University but the rise in tuition has outpaced wages by an insane margin.

Edit: Apparently Wikipedia has an image that demonstrates this really nicely: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition_in_the_United_States#/media/File:InflationTuitionMedicalGeneral1978to2008.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _Plumbing Pensions scheme, one of the few schemes in the UK to be multi- > employer, meaning it could be accessed by different, unconnected, employers > and their employees... because it was a "last man standing scheme", those > still in it had to pick up the liabilities of those who had already left - > even though they had no connection with those businesses._

> _The Pensions Act 1995 introduced a series of reforms including a "minimum > funding requirement" for pension funds. It also introduced something called > "Section 75 pension debt", which meant if an employer "departed" a scheme, > they could still be pursued for any shortfall... Since 2005 far more > stringent rules have been in force - and, by this new yardstick, Plumbing > Pensions was deemed to be under-funded._

So pension systems were set up with an element of shared liability. That's a bit of a risk for employers, but also insurance for pensioners if their individual small employers failed. The worst case was that the scheme as a whole collapsed if many members dropped out.

Then the government applied a minimum funding requirement to payment structures which had been running for years without planning for that value. Then, it converted shared risk from an insurance model to a legal obligation, which could apply to individuals if their businesses were small enough. _Then,_ it raised the minimum on plans which had been running for 40+ years, and couldn't possibly be backfilled.

It's hard to overstate just how badly Menzies was treated by these regulations. His pension enrollment was not only moral but financially responsible - it only became a problem when the terms he'd agreed to were repeatedly, retroactively altered. Nor should he be blamed for being slow to react to the changes - the last-man-standing scheme meant _someone_ was getting stuck with that bill. Large, incorporated companies, by contrast, could be bankrupted but would at least face no personal debts.

Meanwhile, what about the Mirror Group, which motivated of these changes? Well, Robert Maxwell died before seeing any liability for his theft. His sons and other company directors were acquitted of all charges. And the government bailed out 50% of the uncovered pensions.

It's one small case of the usual dynamic, I suppose: some large businesses and multimillionaires behaved badly, so they faced no significant consequences , but a bunch of unrelated people who'd behaved just fine had their lives upended by a clumsy response.

</comment><comment><USER20> The moral of the story is that governments and businesses should just abolish all pension, superannuation, 401K plans, etc... and let people manage their own retirement.

Big centralized retirement funds are scams and they always will be. Wherever there is a giant pile of other people's money managed by a bunch of bureaucrats, some suits will come along and find a way to profit from that pile of money in the most wasteful way possible.

Now all these retirement funds invest straight into low-yielding corporate stocks; so the money essentially ends up going into the pockets of corporate executives. And the worst part is that the government makes this compulsory.

I know superannuation is a scam but I'm forced to pay it anyway and I can't take the money out until I'm 65... I wouldn't be surprised if by that time, the retirement fund stock bubble will probably have popped and my retirement account will be worth $0... And all the fund managers and corporate executives will be rich.

<comment><USER21> Another lesson is to only take any obligations on your business if you're running an LLC.

The plumber boss in question ran unincorporated, so his business's debts are his _personal_ debt. Were he running an LLC, the debt would be on the company only.

<comment><USER22> I had the same thought. Can anyone in the UK confirm this would have provided sufficient protection there?

<comment><USER23> The other cases discussed are plumbing firms which were limited companies. The fact they complain that its a problem because they can't sell on the business or pass it to their children tells you that the liability is with the business, not the individual.

That's actually a pretty good situation to be in. Plumbing strikes me as a very easy business to walk away from - just take your contact list with you and you'll be back in business in no time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is exactly why everyone needs to know about jury nullification, at least in the US where it is allowed, so that if and when such cases come in a court the juries can help make common sense judgements rather than the ones mandated by narrow interpretation of the applicable laws.

<comment><USER25> That's just interpreted as "not guilty". I still don't understand why it is so hard for people to understand this.

The jury are just asked "are they guilty?" and if they don't give an answer it is, by simple virtue, _not_ a guilty verdict. Voila, verdict of "not guilty."

UK law has precedence for defendants who did do the deed being given a not guilty verdict by the jury already. We even gave it the name "perverse verdict." The wiki page on jury nullification has details.

<comment><USER26> Juries are given specific instructions which includes something to the effect of "it is your duty to determine if the defendent violated the law, regardless of if you agree with the law". The possibility of jury nullification is not included in those instructions.

Before being selected for a jury, jururs are asked (under penalty of perjury) if they can apply the law regardless of there personal feelings about it. Anyone who seriously considers nullification would be lying if they said yes, and would likely be excluded for saying no.

At least in the US, all jury nullification is, is the fact that the jury's decision making is above review. It is not so much that jury nullification is legal, it is that any ban on nullification is unenforcable. The courts therefore do whatever they can to avoid nullification.

<comment><USER25> > Juries are given specific instructions which includes something to the > effect of "it is your duty to determine if the defendent violated the law, > regardless of if you agree with the law". The possibility of jury > nullification is not included in those instructions.

No, they aren't[1].

And from my own experience of serving on a large fraud case, the Judge even went into detail about "You are to return a guilty verdict if you think they are guilty of the crime charged, paying special note that you must believe beyond reasonable doubt, that their actions constitute a crime." Later in the case this became apparent when the evidence from the defence suggested one of the defendants was under coercion. i.e. they did commit the act of fraud, but not criminally so.

> Before being selected for a jury, jururs are asked (under penalty of > perjury) if they can apply the law regardless of there personal feelings > about it. Anyone who seriously considers nullification would be lying if > they said yes, and would likely be excluded for saying no.

No, they aren't[1]. In fact the opposite. We were asked to use our "worldly experience" to help us reach a verdict.

[1] Full instructions (to judges) about Jury management in the UK is here: [https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/crown- co...](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/crown-court- compendium-part-i-jury-and-trial-management-and-summing-up.pdf).

<comment><USER24> > No, they aren't[1].

Courts may be different, but as part of jury selection you are told that you have to take an oath that even if you disagree you have to follow the law.

I'm fact hinting that you know about jury nullification seems to be a great way to get out of jury duty.

> No, they aren't[1]. In fact the opposite. We were asked to use our "worldly > experience" to help us reach a verdict.

Well, in my case the judge was very clear to use ONLY the evidence provided in the court and to NOT use any external info or knowledge.

<comment><USER27> I was instructed to use my common sense and experience to interpret the evidence provided in court, and told not to seek out external references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a UK think-tank, produced an amusing (by pensions standards) video explaining the recent shifts in pension schemes, especially for government workers like teachers and nurses, and how some groups benefit while many lose.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=wXz85VuFMcU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wXz85VuFMcU)

Unfortunately pensions are an intrinsically boring topic. I recently met a professor of economics who lamented the £23bn deficit in the UK University pension scheme but admitted he was unable to get even his fellow affected economics academics to care.

</comment><comment><USER29> For the guy who said his family business is worthless. Why not create a new business in sons name and sell all assets to the new company including the name. Put the first in bankrupcy?

<comment><USER30> If that helps out at all, it's a fraudulent transfer that would get reversed by the bankruptcy court. The business's creditors are entitled to up to 100% of the value of the assets that the business owns, you can't just sell them off before declaring bankruptcy.

<comment><USER31> That applies to hard assets, like a truck, inventory of hardware, power tools, etc. The real value in a business such as this is in the local brand recognition (usually applied to the name of the proprietor), a reputation for honesty and good service, and a list of customers with their contact information. So in that sense, a father probably could reasonably transfer or transition ownership to his son, it would just have to be done in a multi- step, gradual manner.

<comment><USER30> Probably the easiest way of going about it is just to operate "Plumber Bob's Plumbing" and "Plumber Bob Jr's Plumbing" as separate entities for a bit, and start referring business to the son's firm.

<comment><USER31> Exactly. Very hard to argue in court that this constitutes a fraudulent conveyance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In addition to their many other practical problems, defined-benefit pension schemes are profoundly racist and sexist. This is because different demographic groups have wildly different life expectancies, and these differences aren't taken into account when calculating benefits.

Let's look at Social Security. Consider Alice, an Asian-American woman, and Bob, and African-American man. They are exactly identical in every way that is visible to the SSA: they begin working at the same time, they make the same payments on the same dates, and they retire at the same age. Suppose further they both retire at the standard age of 67, and they both have made enough in- payments that they will get the maximum amount of $2,900/month or $34,800/yr.

When she retires at age 67, Alice has a long life to look forward to. Asian- American life expectancy is 87 years, and women get a life bonus on top of that, bringing her expectancy to just under 90 years. So on average she'll receive about 23 years of payments, for a total of $786K.

Bob's situation is quite different. The African-American life expectancy is 75.4 years, and men get a life penalty, bringing Bob's expectancy to about 73 years. So in expectation he'll receive just about 6 years of payments before passing away, for a total payout of $205K.

So these two people make the exact same contributions over the same period of time, but one of them gets almost 4x more of a benefit, on account of her race and gender. The system is literally forcing one group of people to subsidize the retirements of another group that lives longer than them (and, as a separate point, makes much more money).

<comment><USER33> You're citing life expectancy at birth, which can be very different than life expectancy at 67.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This reminds me of how congress mandated an absurd pension calculation for the post office as a way of trying to kill it.

<comment><USER35> Being required to contribute the present discounted value of the benefit, as private corporations do, is not absurd; the absence of that preparation is what's absurd, and has led to numerous pensioners getting stiffed when it turns out that megacorps are not perpetual fonts of wealth.

<comment><USER34> I agree, though the US postal service in particular is subject to specific IMHO abusive constraints: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-04/congre...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-04/congress- not-amazon-messed-up-the-u-s-postal-service) and [https://www.rstreet.org/2019/05/30/usps-pensions-vs-the- worl...](https://www.rstreet.org/2019/05/30/usps-pensions-vs-the-world-more- rules-worse-funding/)

In this case the evolution of the rules was not properly handled and the risk assigned _post facto_ to a population (these tiny businesses) not set up to handle the new rules.

With regards to the megacorps: they have often treated the future obligation and the current obligation as uncoupled on their balance sheets which is great in the short term and disastrous in the long. A bit of " _apres moi le deluge_ ". Not just the megacorps; the US state of Illinois made the same terrible decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> At my last promotion panel interview that actually came up as a point of concern. That I'm too much of a good guy.

well uhm yeah I'll try to be more of an asshole?

I get what they meant but still seemed a little surreal.

</comment><comment><USER37> The central problem with this is the presumption of guilt, contained in this Section 75.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't quite get why this article sides with the boss. He promised his workers a certain amount of money through a pension, and now he's having trouble living up to that promise. I wouldn't say it's "being a good guy boss" that is the problem here, it's making financial promises that he wasn't able to keep.

The article also acts like changing to a different accounting system in order to get a different result would be the perfect solution. Well, that's how you get underfunded pensions in the first place.

I think the error was in making these pension promises in the first place. It is far better to make promises that you understand how to keep, like the defined contribution of a 401k, than to make promises to your employees that are implicitly assuming a certain rate of investment return for decades.

<comment><USER39> It sounds like you haven't read the article at all.

He has been paying into a scheme for many decades, even though there was no requirement for him to do so. Then as a result of literal theft from a pension scheme, a law was introduced that established a minimum funding requirement on pension schemes, even ones which have been running like this one - for 40 years and completely solvent, meaning that the fund is able to pay out the promised money. No promises were ever broken here. But because the law made an unrealistic minimum funding requirement(probably based on the number of years * some amount) this scheme is now suddenly magically underfunded and he is personally liable to pull £1.2M out of his ass. This doesn't make any sense. He has never lied to anyone, never done something that he shouldn't have, all the promises that he made can and will be kept - but the law fucked him over for literally no reason. It's like walking along on a street, happy and healthy, and being hit by a stray bullet - it can mess up your entire life at no fault of your own.

<comment><USER40> > He has been paying into a scheme for many decades, even though there was no > requirement for him to do so.

Yes, that's true, and to his credit. However, the people whom he hired during that time negotiated their salary and chose their place of employment knowing about the pension scheme, so the whole thing is not quite the act of pure, disinterested benevolence the article makes it out to be.

<comment><USER41> The hinge point of the story isn't the setting up, administering, payments regarding, or any of the normal expected activity involved.

It is entirely about the arbitrary boundary change in 2005 that created legal debt out of thin air.

And incidentally about the soggy rotten mess that British politics seems to be at the moment, blocking any reasonable effort to adjust the law to a more reasonable funding requirement.

Benevolence or 'selling feature' is irrelevant to the legal blundering.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your Guide to the Crowdsourced Workforce - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/crowdsourced_workforce_guide.php <comment><USER2> Quick question on the legality of this: Say you hold a contest (cash or prize). Who owns the entries that are used? Who owns the entries that aren't used? Can you stipulate that you will only take entries under certain licensing? (CC or MIT or some-such)?

It seems like a very grey area.

<comment><USER3> Generally, whenever I have held a design contest in the past I have made sure to specify in the terms (as a contest holder) that I would only claim rights to the winning design. I would make sure to have the winning designer sign a copyright release.

I'd also ask that because designs used my trademark or IP that if designers included a losing entry in their portfolio they should label it as "designed on spec" to avoid looking as if they had a working relationship with my company. If they wanted to sell the design as a pre-made logo, template, etc. I asked that they altered it slightly to make it more generic if it included my company name (i.e., from "Joe's Diner" to "Moe's Diner" or something).

Every contest site might have a different way of dealing with this sort of thing, though. I'd check their TOS.</comment></comment>


Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like – POLITICO Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-215547 <comment><USER2> It is fairly obvious these extreme weather events are getting stronger as predicted by the climate modelling.

Here is the history of the biggest Cyclones (i.e. Hurricanes) for the Australia region:

 _1918 – Cyclone Innisfail (Category 5)

_ 1970 – Cyclone Ada (Category 4)

 _1971 – Cyclone Althea (Category 4)

_ 1972 – Cyclone Emily (Category 4)

 _1974 – Cyclone Tracy (Category 4)

_ 1975 – Cyclone Joan (Category 5)

 _1978 – Cyclone Alby (Category 4)

_ 1986 – Cyclone Winifred (Category 3)

 _1989 – Cyclone Orson (Category 4)

_ 1995 – Cyclone Bobby (Category 4)

 _1997 – Cyclone Justin (Category 2)

_ 2005 – Cyclone Igrid (Category 4/5)

 _2006 – Cyclone Larry (Category 4)

_ 2006 – Cyclone Monica (Category 5)

 _2007 - Cyclone George (Category 5)

_ 2011 – Cyclone Yasi (Category 5)

 _2014 – Cyclone Ita (Category 5)

_ 2015 – Cyclone Marcia (Category 5)

There appears to be a fairly obvious trend happening there.

<comment><USER3> No such pattern in the Atlantic: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes)

<comment><USER2> So I'm assuming that means the place to be is the somewhere near the Atlantic?

Given what seems to be is happening in the _Gulf of Mexico_ and what happened in the _Northern Pacific_ (i.e. Japan and the Philippines) less than a year, that suggest those are places you need to stay clear of.

That does raises a good question. Which part of the world is the safest?

<comment><USER3> I mean, you can't go wrong being in somewhere like the Virgin Islands...just saying...even if you have to deal with the occasional hurricane!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to filter HN to hide articles behind paywalls? - <AUTHOR> Recently a large percentage of articles linked to by HN is hidden behind paywalls. The experience is that you click, get a preview, and get slammed with a popup asking for a subscription. The number of such articles has been growing recently, to the point where browsing HN becomes unpleasant.
I realize that it is HN policy to allow such postings. I do not agree with it, as I think HN as a link site should be limited to the open web. But if that policy is here to stay, is there a way to automatically filter out articles that are not open-web? A browser plugin? Perhaps HN should introduce a consistent tagging scheme?
I am not against paying for media. I already pay for a subscription to The Economist. But I will not additionally buy subscriptions to the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker and countless others. And while I respect the need for these media to make money, I do think that if they are to profit from free and open link aggregation sites like HN, it should be in a manner that is compatible with the open Web. As an example, make some articles viewable without a subscription.
I think a solution will need to be worked out, because HN is losing out: a link site with a bunch of links that point to nothing is not very interesting. But as an interim solution, perhaps there are ways for individual HN users to filter out paywalled articles from known paywall sites? <comment><USER2> Remember to turn off third-party cookies and javascript for all news sites - why they need either of those is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER3> HN's policy is to allow paywalled articles if and only if there is a standard workaround for the paywall, such as opening an incognito window. In other words, articles that everyone can read, at the cost of the annoyance of jumping through an extra hoop or two.

I'd be curious what articles you're seeing that _don 't_ have such a workaround and yet are remaining on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use some CSS to alert me to paywalls, but I don't filter them out entirely. Sometimes you can find an alternate version of the article using HN's web link. A lot of sites with paywalls offer _x_ number of free articles before the wall shows up, too, so it varies...

Also, content filter add-ons like uBlock Origin often get around paywalls. YMMV

I posted this CSS last time paywalls were discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19944781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19944781)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hopefully this might help you: you can use outline.com to read the paywalled articles. I've only found like one website for which it doesn't work.

<comment><USER4> Do you remember which site? I've found it doesn't work for Wall Street Journal, or for New Scientist.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know of English teachers to teach writing remotely? - <AUTHOR> Those forced to stay home due to covid-19 will include many teachers. Does anyone know of any English teacher willing to remotely teach my middle-schooler writing? Is there any site on which one can find qualified teachers interested in freelancing? <comment><USER2> I'm with Quill.org, a free online tool that helps middle school students improve their writing skills. You can sign up and assign a diagnostic to your kids to assess their skills and assign recommended practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Peter. After perusing the site, I was excited to try it out. However, after registering:

      "To use Quill, a teacher must create a class for you."

Would you know any freelancing teachers who're using quill.org? Being outside the US, we aren't affiliated with any schools there.</comment></comment>


How to craft a great pitch without spending much time on it - <AUTHOR> http://hardba.co/howtopitch <comment><USER2> _> In the minds of many of those who didn't know me that night I became "The guy who wanted to invest $1000 in the stock market when he was 18", which is an easier label to remember than "The guy who wants to democratize the financial system"_

I think your self-diagnoses is not quite right. The wrong conclusion is to think "$1000 at 18" is more memorable because it's a biographical detail. The bigger issue is that _" democratize the financial system"_ was too abstract and vague.[1] A clear and concise description of your _product_ is still better than a founder's biography. You just happen to pick a nebulous product description and that distorted the weighting towards your personal story.

To me, the landing page of [http://hardbacon.ca](http://hardbacon.ca) was more effective than your live pitch to describe the product. (The youtube video didn't show your slides so maybe the live audience received your messaging better.)

From that page, I would substitute "democratize financial system" with something like:

\- "We're like LendingTree for small investors. Instead of presenting a list of banks offering loans, we present a list of brokers including human brokers and automatic robot brokers."

\- "We're like Expedia/Orbitz/Hipmunk for choosing an investment broker. We let non-professional investors compare brokers and advisers."

[1] "democratize the financial system" is so generalized that it could apply to PayPal, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Square, Stripe, Kickstarter, Bitcoin, etc.

<comment><USER3> I also feel like people only remember what they want to remember. For instance if I'm at a bar and an attractive person tells me their name I am much more likely to remember it then the bartender who I also had a casual conversation with, however vain that might sound. I've heard a few dozen pitches and I still remember many who gave them by what their company is doing rather then who they are... YMMV as always.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Serious question, although a bit off-topic: why is the number of Facebook/Instagram/... followers even relevant? What is the average conversion on channels like these, and aren't there more efficient channels to focus on in the beginning? F.e. go to a student event and hand out flyers there, chat with people etc?

<comment><USER5> Agree. If you have a conversation ratio for a channel then optimizing how you acquire followers makes sense. Otherwise go ask people to pay you money and hear what they have to say

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't tell what the site is about from clicking on it. Additionally, it appears the author is giving advice, but didn't win the competition? Winning isn't necessarily a requirement, but it would have helped validate the article as the title, "How to Craft a Great Pitch" seems to imply a way we know the advice is solid.

Finally, Instagram likes? SNAPCHAT likes? What?

</comment><comment><USER7> This post comes across (IMO) as a thinly-veiled attempt to get us to learn about this guy's startup. The advice (sound natural, be memorable) is not unique, and the strategy seems bizarre (why Excel?) and apparently didn't win him the competition.

Of course, an alternate explanation for his loss could be that his problem statement ("I was 18 and couldn't invest $1k in the stock market") isn't a problem anymore. Hell, I had an Ameritrade account decades ago and invested roughly this much money.

</comment><comment><USER8> If correct, the comment from jasode is much clearer at explaining the point of the site than the landing page. I got it that they were comparing brokers, but its not clear that this is the point of the site.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great topic. I have had this problem may times over.</comment>


YouTube Limiting Ability to Promote Crowdfunding Pages - <AUTHOR> https://gamerant.com/youtube-limit-crowdfunding-promotion/ <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently if you have less than 10000 in total views you can't monetise at all making the restrictions on sites such as Patreon even more troublesome for small channels. [https://twitter.com/InnuendoStudios/status/91342618558922752...](https://twitter.com/InnuendoStudios/status/913426185589227522)</comment>


Google vows to fight antipiracy bill even if passed - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20063963-261.html <comment><USER2> "Google seems to think it's above America's laws."

... No, it seems to think that particular law is unjust, and as responsible citizens, they are duty-bound to fight it.

<comment><USER3> Things are not that clear.

Do you know what the revenue sources are for a lot of the pirate movie websites?

Google AdSense.

And for software...

From what I've seen, Google often displays crack sites on the first search page for software. 1st place result for author, 2nd,3rd,4th,5th,6th,7th result for crack sites.

In my own testing, I've found that at least 30% of buyers search for crack 1st, and when they can't find it, then they buy.

Google does this for two reasons:

1\. There is significant revenue involved here. 2\. There is significant relevancy involved here. As people gladly want to use pirated stuff to get out of paying, and want to see these results.

Google is not fighting for you. They are fighting for themselves.

<comment><USER4> Google's revenue from pirated movies and software is virtually non-existent. Their real interest is Youtube, considering half it's content probably infringes copyright somewhere.

<comment><USER3> This is not true at all and I would love to see you back it up with a credible source.

This has been covered over and over again...

A significant portion of those sites would not exist without AdSense revenue to cover costs and make a profit.

<comment><USER4> If the revenue from pirate sites disappeared Google wouldn't even blink. The pain in the ass is regulatory compliance. Hollywood wants IP enforced on Google's dime/technology, and Google doesn't want to be their bitch.

<comment><USER3> Just an example...

When I used Google AdWords, 30% of the clicks came from Google "content partners" which where nothing more than link farms. I'd say that was a significant source of revenue for Google... So much so that Google even put up its own parked domain service to further its profits.

If Google was "good", they would have either got rid of this 8 years ago, or never got into it in the first place.

Don't underestimate the amount of revenue Google generates from fraud.

<comment><USER5> Justify with evidence please. Don't go spouting slanderous statements and have nothing to back them up with. If it's as obvious as you seem to be claiming then you shouldn't have any trouble backing up your point.

Google's policy isn't to be "good", it's to "do no evil" and they are very, very different things. This legislation is dangerous like a bomb. If you integrate a system that can drop an IP address from _global_ DNS servers at will, then things are very dire.

Wikileaks got taken down enough as it was, but no one would have heard a peep if the DNS was dropped in seconds of being noticed.

Next step would be to force search providers to recognize 'infringing text' and have the DNS immediately taken down to stop the Streisand Effect.

Hello Egypt, Syria, heck the Middle Eastern Despots, you'll all have promising new positions in the US government very, very soon!

<comment><USER6> > Justify with evidence please.

Just one example, do a search and you'll find many more:

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_40/b4003001....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_40/b4003001.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Today I got to talk to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, one of the very few legislators who is fighting this. Here are my notes: [http://33bits.org/2011/05/19/fighting-protect-ip- congresswom...](http://33bits.org/2011/05/19/fighting-protect-ip- congresswoman-lofgren/) There were some surprises for me. Here is the summary:

 _Appeals to free speech and chilling effects are at best temporary measures in the fight against Protect IP and domain seizures. Even if we win this time it will keep coming back in modified form; the only way defeat it for good is to convince Washington that artists are in fact thriving, that piracy is not the real problem, and that takedown efforts are not in the interest of society. We in the tech world know this, but we are doing a poor job of making ourselves heard in Washington, and this needs to change._

<comment><USER8> Even that's not enough. He's assuming most people in Congress and the Obama administration give a damn about the effects of piracy on artistic expression, or indeed what is in the best interests of society. They don't. It's sad to see someone so naive in that position.

<comment><USER9> don't confuse naivety with pr: she's talking on record there.

barring a few nutjobs, i've the idea most politicians are significantly less naive than they let show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ugh.. This article barely mentions the critics of IP. They get mentioned at the very end of the article as "those who believe in the free flow of information, and critics of Protect IP." Meanwhile, the article throws around unsourced 'billions of dollars and thousands of jobs' claims about just how _awful_ it is that intellectual property is violated.

I don't know what motive Google has for fighting it, but I'm glad they are nonetheless

<comment><USER11> The motive for fighting it is that by crossing the line from "robotic indexer of the web" to "provider of curated search data", Google assumes substantial responsibility for the content of websites outside their control. This is a nightmarish slippery slope situation for them.

In my mind, making a person who provides a hyperlink responsible for the content of that link is just insanely wrongheaded and bespeaks a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the web.

<comment><USER12> "This is a nightmarish slippery slope situation for them."

Stronger: This is an existential crisis for them. For as rich as they appear to be and for all the resources they seem to have, the task of curating the web is still an order of magnitude or two larger at least, and for certain strict interpretations of the law, this would simply crush them. And there is no chance that any politician will look at Google and see this, because all the numbers are above the "1, 2, ..., many" threshold for most humans, and the idea that the task is too large for Google will be poo-pooed by politicians if you simply make that engineering argument.

<comment><USER13> That's way overstated. The "curation" that is required here is, "Here is a list of domains that appear in court orders. Don't send ads to them with adsense, don't accept ads linking to these domains, drop them from search rankings." My reading of the law as written doesn't require more drastic action, such as scrubbing out links to them from blogs.

That is, it isn't Google's responsibility to figure out who is infringing. It is Google's responsibility to take a list given to them by US courts and follow a set of directions.

Not a pleasant task, to be sure. But it wouldn't break Google's bank account to do it.

<comment><USER14> And you see nothing inherently wrong with that task? (Otherwise, you'd label it as more than an "unpleasant task".)

"Memory Hole" comes to mind.

<comment><USER13> I do see something wrong with the task. We are being poor stewards of DNS. Given past abuses of the legal system by the RIAA, I am sure they will abuse us further.

I'm also quite uncomfortable with how this will work in practice. The bill has a number of assurances to protect non-US companies from having it be unfairly applied to them. I do not trust those assurances. When a US lawyer sends a subpoena to the DNS provider and the website, and the website (not being in the USA) doesn't show up, the DNS provider still will. I doubt that they will put up a vigorous defense. Based on the fact that two sides showed up and the facts presented were overwhelming, the judge will have little choice about taking action under the bill. (Even though the real facts about the website may be overwhelming in the website's favor, the judge has to judge on the facts presented in court.)

Furthermore I hate the precedent.

But when someone opposes it with ridiculous hyperbole, it is too easy for supporters of the bill to point out how ridiculous the argument is. So the fact that the bill is bad won't stop me from pointing out that the argument is even worse.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for the effort you've put into your reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They said this crap about warrantless wiretapping. It won't be used against pirate sites it will be used against sites that express a POV contrary to the administration. Wikileaks is not a 'pirate' site.

When the government asks for something you should not consider how they want to use it, you should consider how they want to abuse the power. The case they trot out is specious and could usually be dealt with via much better ways via existing law.

If these file sharing sites are conducting criminal activities then they should be taken to court and tried according to the laws of the country in which the site operates.

As far as being above America's laws, I think Google's position is clearly within a plain reading of the constitution.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Copyright owners have said the legislation has a series of legal checks and balances built in and would be geared only toward pirate sites."

Any information on what these 'checks and balances' would be?

<comment><USER17> You can read the full text of the bill here: [http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/docs/Bill-PROTECT-IP- Ac...](http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/docs/Bill-PROTECT-IP-Act-2011.pdf)

Checks and balances are in section 3 (f), which describes how to file a motion to "modify, suspend or vacate" an order if the site removes the offending content or the order turns out to be in error.

<comment><USER18> It's not a proper balance unless it has provisions to dissuade those who misuse the process. "Lol our bad" and putting it back up, with no compensation for that downtime or penalty for false accusations doesn't actually do anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Probably a PR stunt, but I'm still happy they're going to fight it.

<comment><USER20> Google does not need that kind of PR.

<comment><USER16> For hackerdom at least, it's good PR. Consider Sony's case, they might have shut out a large number of talented people by the way they handled the PS3 hacking affair.

<comment><USER21> The difference is that Sony's pr was negative. And while an absence of a statement on the legislation might disappoint some people, I doubt it would actively shut out a lot of talented hackers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My take on this:

      http://popalg.org/schmidt-response

<comment><USER21> While I agree that this legislation will be ineffective in fighting piracy, I don't think Google is concerned about the effects of piracy. This would seriously threaten any site that deals with legally questionable material. Instead of dealing with a DMCA notice, now they are threatening with the loss of their site. And it's not like you have to try to infringe when dealing with user submitted content. In the Google vs Viacom lawsuits, the Viacom legal team brought up videos submitted by Viacom Marketing employees as evidence of infringement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> hint MPAA if people do not have money to pay for it is not lost job in the millions...it just millions you will never see..ever</comment>


AgensGraph: A Graph Database on Top of Postgresql with Cypher Support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bitnine-oss/agensgraph <comment><AUTHOR> AgensGraph is a graph database built on top of PostgreSQL. The ability of PostgreSQL to handle with graph drive the AgensGraph's Team to develop a special index type to manage edges between nodes.

They also implemented the most part of the Cypher language and it is possible to write PL/Pgsql function with Cypher's query inside.

AgensGraph is Apache 2.0 licence.</comment>


Ask HN: good math books - <AUTHOR> Dear HN, I need some insight from you.
While I have very solid foundation when it comes to algorithms, unfortunately my math  skills are kind of rusty and lacking. I have big holes in my math education, partly because of bad luck with teachers in high-school/college. And the math I learned, I'm starting to forget because of lack of practice.
My domains of interest are data-mining, NLP and AI. These are domains where knowledge of mathematics is required to understand the underlying phenomenons. I mean, I got to some level of knowledge, but it is based on experimentation, empiric conclusions and cargo-culting.
Going to a local college for lectures is not an option.
I want some recommendations on good math books on: calculus, discrete math, probabilities, statistics
I'd also like to start from a comfortable level, so I prefer books that at least start with an introduction of the prerequisites. <comment><USER2> Hi - I was in a similar situation a year ago (starting a Master's in ML, feeling crappy at math). What worked for me was:

\- Studying is doing problems. Reading is not studying. When studying, read the minimum amount necessary to complete the problem. Do all problems CLOSED- book: no notes or reading while doing problems.

\- A problem is not understood until you can do it on a blank piece of paper two days after reading the relevant material (so do problems several times to check).

\- Study machine learning problems that _use_ the math. The examples in math text books are pretty useless to you - do ML problems directly. When you don't get it, look the math up quickly in a reference book (A.E.M. by Kreyszig works), as much as needed to complete the problem, and move on.

\- Implement regularly. Once you've done the problems concerning an algorithm or technique, implement it. Make sure your implementation is correct, and spend some effort making it quick. Read source code for other people's implementations.

This method is effective (for me) because I _like_ programming and machine learning, I _don't like_ math textbooks or the problems within, and I can't remember what I haven't solved.

Book recommendation: David MacKay's (free) book: Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms (<http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/>)

\- Enjoyable: not terse or uptight, engaging reading.

\- Problem-focused: the text is really explanations between interesting problems. The problems are spread throughout the text rather than bunched at the end - this is a huge advantage.

\- Deep and unifying: You don't get this perspective often. Helps you think about AI/ML from a strong theoretical perspective. Will give you lots of "Aha!" moments.

\- Math: Plenty of math, but not unnecessarily difficult. The practice you'll get doing these problems will serve you in other situations.

<comment><USER3> i second the David MacKay recommendation. its a real pleasure to read. for me personally, his coverage of the fundamentals of information theory was amazing. the proofs are easy to follow and explained well so you can match the intuition to formula.

i'd also like to recommend Boyd & Vanderberghe's book on Convex Optimization (available here <http://www.stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/>). This is maybe a little less fun but very deep and still well written and 'illustrated'.

My background is in ML and I came to realize over time that a lot of ML is just statistics and optimization theory rehashed by computer scientist.

<comment><USER4> Control theory may also be helpful - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_control> lists some books, a few of them available online.

Many moons ago, I went to a presentation with a classmate whose advisor taught control theory. It was a seminar about neural networks, the new CS hotness back then. Her jaw dropped when she saw the equations the CS guy was presenting - it was the simplest control stuff she knew.

On the other hand, another former classmate with the same engineering background (control theory, etc.), has been doing well at CS in machine learning ....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My recommendations: Hardy, A Course of Pure Mathematics. Knuth, Graham and Patashnik, Concrete Mathematics. Hoffman and Kunze, Linear Algebra (there are several free online books on Linear Algebra and Vector Spaces, Strang, Axler, Lang Halmos and Shilov are also recommended). Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications.

If you're not studying for exams and you have plenty of time on your hands, try the following algorithm: 1\. Dive into some random chapter in the book and attempt the first exercise in that chapter. 2\. Understand the problem by referring back and learning everything that might potentially have relevance to the exercise. 3\. Attempt to solve exercise. 4\. If unsuccessful, go to step 2. 5\. If there are more exercises in the chapter, pick the next exercise and go to step 2. 6\. If there are still unsolved exercises in the book, go to step 1.

Initially, this can cause excruciating pain and frustration. But every exercise is a little research problem and soon -- if you are the curious type who cannot rest until you have got to the bottom of a problem -- you'll find you've mastered the subject faster than you would have learnt its elements, had you taken a formal classroom course. The most important benefit of this method is that it will train you in some modes of thinking that are crucial in research. Think of it as callisthenics for problem solving type of research!

</comment><comment><USER6> A few suggestions (if only we all had more time):

Do ProjectEuler.net, as it provides a great mesh between algorithm design and mathematics; it might be within your expertise already, however. Look in to getting a good discrete math book or two. My circumstances led me to not use my discrete math book very much for class, so I won't give you a recommendation that I do not have.

Go through Scholarpedia. They are doing cool work over there.

Get some text(s) on statistical inference, especially Bayesian learning. If you have access to a good library system (say, state-wide library loan), you ought to have no problem getting most textbooks.

Seeing as how you're into NLP and AI, look at concurrency and what, say, Google is doing with MapReduce and PageRank (they publish reasonably- understandable papers). In general, push yourself to read peer-reviewed journal articles on the topics of your interest.

Peruse some of the organizations that do research into the philosophical and human issues surrounding AI and technology. For example, there's Less Wrong at lesswrong.com. They can come off as quite hubristic, but if you drill through the latent groupthink and individual over-assertiveness, you'll find a gigantic wealth of information on both what rationality is, and how to apply it to your life.

Additionally, check out (I've mentioned these before, so I'll quote myself verbatim):

"Problems On Algorithms" (Parberry, Gasarch): A slim volume containing ~700 exercises on proving various properties of algorithms. And it teaches you most of what is needed. Download it from: <http://www.eng.unt.edu/ian/books/free/>

"Elements of the Theory of Computation" (Papadimitriou): Classic text. Sure you've heard of Turing machines before, but what do you know about mu- recursive functions? It's very beautiful and if you have a person with whom to read the book and do the exercises, you will gain immensely. It will help unify, in your mind, many of the myriad articles you've probably read on Wikipedia about formal languages and complexity theory.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could read Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra books, there are also video lectures available...

Gelman's Bayesian Data Analysis is a good statistical intro with a Bayesian bend,

maybe Freedman's Statistical models,

read some general machine learning intro book, such as Alpaydin or Bishop for a more probabilistic view.

For NLP especially, you'll need some information theory. Maybe start with MacKay's Information Theory, Inference, etc. (it is freely available online), very entertaining and accessible book and you can follow the pointers there for more details.

For general data mining and machine learning you need some basics of optimization, pick up any standard book on convex optimization to get an idea of the basic problems and methods.

that's it at a first try :)

<comment><USER2> Don't forget Hastie & Tibshirani's Elements of Statistical Learning! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've seen a few people recommend The Princeton Companion to Mathematics(PCM) <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350>

I own this book and while I do agree it's a great book for getting a 10000 foot view about topics in mathematics it's not really a book one read to learn the math that the poster is asking for.

I agree with another post here that said studying is doing problems and being able to do them again a week later without having to consult the text again.

PCM isnt a good book for learning calculus, discrete math, probability or statistics( what the posters wants to learn) simply because it isn't designed to teach them. There are no problems/solutions in the book to try.

If you really want one book then I'd recommend Concrete Mathamatics [http://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Mathematics-Foundation- Comput...](http://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Mathematics-Foundation-Computer- Science/dp/0201558025/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245423997&sr=1-1) by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik. It has relevant topics and problem sets that you can work through to see if you truly did learn anything when reading it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, if you're looking for an introduction to the basics of mathematics (which I would recommend for anyone looking to delve deeper into any specific area), you can't really beat 'How to Prove It' by Velleman. It covers the fundamental concepts of mathematical analysis and proof-writing (and, perhaps more importantly, _reading_ proofs) and will help give you a great grounding for further reading, especially in the areas of discrete mathematics, set theory, and probability. I can't recommend it enough as an enjoyable introduction to the field.

Also, for a good probability textbook, I would point you to 'Probability and Random Processes' by Grimmett and Stirzaker. It may be a bit hard-going at first (which is why I recommend How to Prove It to get you used to rigorous maths), but it is a very thorough text that also happens to concentrate on many areas of interest to the average programmer (Markov chains and the like). Together with the companion book of exercises, it should be fantastic for self-teaching, too.

In calculus, you have so many options that I can only really suggest you go out and find one that you like. I used 'Early Transcendentals' by Stewart in my first year Calculus lectures and it's served as a good reference ever since, particularly for basic vector / multi-dimensional calculus. But, like I say, just look around.

<comment><USER6> I second "How To Prove It".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.thatquiz.org/> for practice problems.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathomatic> an open source math solver, will also output answers to programming code, can solve polynomials, do calculus, trig...etc. You can use it to check your answers.

<http://www.math.com/> the website has a lot of topics.

You don't neccessarily 'need' a textbook. You can probably find the information you seek all online. If you have any questions you can ask yahoo answers.

<http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/links.aspx> <http://etc.usf.edu/math/index.htm> an overwhelming list of math sites. SOS math has worked well at helping me in the past.

</comment><comment><USER11> Knuth's "Concrete Mathematics" is a lot of fun.

Also, there are a lot of good courses at OCW over at MIT. [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm#Math...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm#Mathematics)

<comment><USER12> Second the Concrete Mathematics recommendation.

It's a challenging book, but approachable. It did wonders for my understanding of maths, and for my skill as a programmer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm trying to do a similar thing. I've purchased "The Princeton Companion to Mathematics" (<http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350.html>).

I've not read a huge amount so far, but what I've read so far has been well- written and understandable.

</comment><comment><USER14> I rate Enderton's _A Mathematical Introduction to Logic_.

<http://www.math.ucla.edu/~hbe/amil/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> The Princeton Companion to Mathematics.

<comment><USER16> I'll third this recommendation. Fantastic text.

[http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics- Timoth...](http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timothy- Gowers/dp/0691118809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245423077&sr=8-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Check Out "Mathematical Tools for Physics" by James Nearing (available as a free download at <http://www.physics.miami.edu/~nearing/mathmethods/>). It covers a lot of great results and is one of the most easy to follow comprehensive summaries of an undergraduate math education that I've come across.

<comment><USER18> Note also the links at the bottom of that page, to other books and sites listing freely available books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I personally liked "A Logical Approach to Discrete Math" by Gries and Schneider which can be had for a good price on Amazon. As for statustics, I liked "Statistics: A Gentle Introduction" by Coolidge and "Principles of Statistics" by Bullmer which can be had for a great price even new.

Although only slightly related to your chosen topics, "Linear Algebra Done Right" by Axler is awesome.

-m

</comment><comment><USER20> You may also be interested in knowing the American Math Society has a big collection of free textbooks downloadable as PDF.

<http://www.ams.org/online_bks/online_subject.html>

</comment><comment><USER21> I just happened to find this book browsing through my campus library a few days ago:

Basic Training in Mathematics

A Fitness Program for Science Students

Shankar, R.

<http://www.springer.com/physics/book/978-0-306-45036-5>

Meant as a review/primer for undergraduates in the physical sciences and engineering. Mainly covers topics in calculus and linear algebra. Does a fairly good job of covering the connections between ideas and some of the intuition behind ideas, while keeping things pretty concise. That is my review after finishing the first chapter, which is as far as I've got.

The "Basic Training" perspective peeks through in comments like:

"Trigonometric functions, identities and derivatives, radian measures for angles. These will not be listed here since you must have already learned them by heart as a child."

So don't expect to be overly molly-coddled by this book.

I'm reading it for many of the same reasons you describe. Taking a machine learning course in the Fall, want to brush up on the underlying mathematics involved. Statistics, calculus and linear algebra are pervasive in most of the ML books I have looked at. I note that you did not list linear algebra, but that is the area where I have been spending the most time, mainly because I never took a course in it, where the other topics I have at least some background I can review.

</comment><comment><USER22> Everyone has given really great recommendations. I second caffeine's PROCESS. The way I learned most mathematics is from working through problems on a white board I bought. From there I got a great grasp of probability theory and linear algebra, which gave me the legs to study statistical learning.

While I have nothing to add on the math front, on the intuition / implementation front you should definitely check out Chris Manning's (currently) free textbook on Information Retrieval. He delves into the history, technical details, and state of the art of IR. Let's hope he opens up his NLP book as well (great CS prof at Stanford).

If humanly possible, I'd recommend making a friend who can help you solve confusion or quandary about certain problems. This is probably less likely for most people, but if you DO know someone with domain knowledge, I'd buy them dinner and pick their brain. I've fully traversed the learning curve from both wrestling with problems and talking to people much smarter than me.

[http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~hinrich/information-retrieval-...](http://www- csli.stanford.edu/~hinrich/information-retrieval-book.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> (Given that you are also interested in NLP) "Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing" is a good bet.

</comment><comment><USER24> _I want some recommendations on good math books on: calculus, discrete math, probabilities, statistics_

Calculus Made Easy by Silvanius P. Thompson (Feynman taught himself calc with this book)

Concrete Mathematics by Knuth, Graham, Patashnik

Fundamentals of Applied Probability Theory by Alvin Drake

You probably want to learn Linear Algebra - get Gilbert Strang's book.

The Schuam's outlines in each topic are good for review. I like the ancient ones, usually there are dozens of them for next to nothing at any good used bookstore.

</comment><comment><USER25> I really like the book: Elementary Classical Analysis by Jerrold E. Marsden for Multivariate Calculus.

[http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Classical-Analysis- Jerrold-...](http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Classical-Analysis-Jerrold- Marsden/dp/0716721058)

</comment><comment><USER26> This may be below your level, but one of the most interesting and unique math books I've seen:

<http://www.math.sjsu.edu/~swann/mcsqrd.html>

</comment><comment><USER27> I read this textbook (Statistics Through Applications) for fun last summer: [http://bcs.whfreeman.com/sta/default.asp?s=&n=&i=...](http://bcs.whfreeman.com/sta/default.asp?s=&n=&i=&v=&o=&ns=0&uid=0&rau=0) Unlike most textbooks, it is actually well written. It would not take long to finish if you skip most of the exercises and I think it provides a good introduction to and explanation of basic ideas involved in statistics.

</comment><comment><USER28> All the Mathematics You Missed:

[http://www.amazon.com/All-Mathematics-You-Missed- Graduate/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/All-Mathematics-You-Missed- Graduate/dp/0521797071)

</comment><comment><USER29> W. W. Sawyer

Mathematician's Delight Prelude to Mathematics

What is Calculus About? This is best intro to calculus I ever saw. When I taught introductory calculus, I recommended it to all my students.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think there are some interesting lectures here [http://www.datawrangling.com/hidden-video-courses-in-math- sc...](http://www.datawrangling.com/hidden-video-courses-in-math-science-and- engineering) and I occasionally find something insightful here <http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/> but I'm in a similar position as you, unfortunately...

</comment><comment><USER31> You could start with Mathematics: A very short introduction by Timothy Gowers. It's a quick read, and the way Gowers writes about important Mathematical topics is interesting and, for the most part, easy to understand. [http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Short-Introduction- Timothy...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Short-Introduction-Timothy- Gowers/dp/0192853619/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Calculus by Tom Apostol

<comment><USER33> Apostol's text is less a Calculus text and more an introduction to real analysis. I would not recommend it to someone seeking a refresher on practical methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sorry, meant this one ... [http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics- Engineeri...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering- Comprehensive/dp/0521679710/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245421606&sr=1-4)

</comment><comment><USER35> A really good book for analysis:

[http://www.amazon.com/Analysis-History-Undergraduate- Texts-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Analysis-History-Undergraduate-Texts- Mathematics/dp/0387770313/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245527842&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER36> "Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability" by Hartley Rogers is excellent.

</comment><comment><USER37> Calculus the Easy Way. It's old but good.</comment>