skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the best emails I've received in a while was from the UVA alumni association letting me know that I would retain library access, including access to JSTOR, because there is no way I could afford to outright purchase everything I want to read.
These may sound like stories of concern to academics alone. But the problem is this: much of the time that goes into writing these books is made possible through taxpayers’ money. And who buys these books? Well, university libraries – and they, too, are paid for by taxpayers. Meanwhile, the books are not available for taxpayers to read – unless they have a university library card.

In the US, taxpayers are said to be spending $139bn a year on research, and in the UK, £4.7bn. Too much of that money is disappearing into big pockets.

What is this garbage? Why not let an interesting article about a specific problem (academic publishing scams) stand on its own? Why pour on sensationalized, over-simplified, misleading "context?"

According to to study where those numbers came from, the $139bn the federal government spends on "research" is a part of a larger pool of "funding for research" that includes non-government sources, which is like $450bn. Universities (not just the libraries) are getting about $60bn from the big pool.

In other words: the study, at least the results referenced by The Guardian article, does not say ANYTHING about the flow of money from taxpayer wallets to university libraries. Based on the evidence presented, the fraction of university library funding from taxpayer dollars could be anywhere from 0% to 100%. This is blatant dishonesty from The Guardian.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf14307

Oh and one more thing: The "good" part of the article is written by an anonymous source with no verifiable facts (no publisher names, no book names). I have no real reason to dispute its authenticity, the idea certainly seems plausible, but I can not verify any of the claims being made without basically starting my own study from scratch.
There are several linked from the readme.
Good to see the link to the Mind Body approach — I tried all the variations on swapping out gadgets but eventually traced it back to excess caffeine causing me to work at a much higher level of stress. As an RSI sufferer I needed to relax and realize that I'm not going to get all my goals done today, but that that's ok. It's more of a mind problem than a body problem (I know lots of computer users who spend countless hours in ergonomically catastrophic positions).
Meet C1, Nokia's First Android Smartphone Coming in 2016
That isn't a very efficient way to do it. Try doing a binary search. Start with a word that starts with 'M', then if it's before, try one that starts with 'F' or 'G', if it's after, try one that starts with 'S' or 'T'. You eliminate roughly half the possible words with each guess that way, and you'll get to your answer much more quickly than guessing in alphabetical order.

You could improve this method by finding out where the exact midpoint is in the list of words by alphabetical order, as I'm not certain it's actually halfway through the alphabet.

And I'd bet that some people here on HN could come up with even cleverer ways to cut down on guesses.
Kinda feels like it's a little short for a SDK too

It sure is, also a bit sad that it takes such detours to be able to write software for such devices. Years ago when the first PSP came out things were different. I bought the PSP just because I saw there was a rather complete SDK available for it (also made available by hacking around and reverse engineering IIRC, but at least it was more than enough to write actual applications): it included access to buttons, sockets/wifi, raw framebuffer access etc. Which led to the availability of fun things like a working VNC client which was super impressive to me back then (remember that's like 5 years before the first iPad). I had only like one game which I never really played but instead I spent hours writing mini games and setting up communication between the PSP and a PC, using it as remote control and whatnot.
I believe what most Europeans would think is that the main problem for Blacks in the US is poverty, and that poverty is related to racism, some of it historical.
Mm, I'm not speaking against it by any stretch, just to be clear. To be honest, I like the approach more - there's a lot to be said for more pervasive trust in commerce between vendor and customer; it feels nicer to me.

Naturally there are related problems that one has to solve, but the major one (unintentionally extending credit to someone you shouldn't have) is, I think, a lot less of an issue than commerce at large instinctively thinks.
Funny how all these articles make me think that lambda/closures are a very very nice syntax to create linguistic friendly structure. Automatically embedding of lexical scope avoid unnecessary names, assignments and side effects. Similarly to this talk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3717715 where the author demonstrates how often we write classes with a bit of state, a constructor, and a single method [1].. which is a what a function does for us.

Some programming classes takes some time to describe this habit of unnecessary wrapping[2]. From

```
if bool_var then true else false
```

, to theses functions-written-as-classes, or even, depending on the language you use, function that wraps other functions disguised as operators

```
map(function add(x, y) { return x + y }, list)
// aka `map + list` in deeply functional languages
```

[1] Java had many single method interfaces that can now be replaced by lambdas

[2] see Dan Grossman proglang on Coursera (taken from his original classes at UoWashington)
I agree with dvanduzer that they may be reasonably assumed terms for a specialized blog, but I came here looking for the definition of ACL, so thank you!
Lessig will run for president of the U.S
It's weird, because HN is usually the first place to downvote people into oblivion for complaining about how outrageous it is that B2B App X costs $15 per month when the majority of software aimed at consumers now sells for 99 cents or is given away for free.

B2B App X generally doesn't have the unique content or extremely niche audience of the hardback, heavily revised version of one's Phd thesis either.
what kind of photos?
I did not. I was more familiar with OpenBSD to begin with, and like its slant toward security. Although we do use FreeBSD for a few other servers used as NAS controllers. HAST + ZFS + CARP is great.
In several style guides I have seen, both in academia and journalism you always Introduce An Acronynm (IAA) before using it.

You don't get to pick your audience on the internet and IAA strikes me as a sensible thing to do.
So for the HN crowd they might be famous for being a successful company using Erlang.

All I really know is that they are all over the place if you go online shopping here in Sweden, they probably handles payments for a majority of online shops here, or a very large chunk of it at least.
When I first started having pains in my wrist, I learned Dvorak and am very grateful I did so. Unfortunately, I still deal with repetitive stress from keyboard use and would love an alternative to the standard keyboard.

I've looked at the Datahand, but I move around a lot with my laptop, and the Datahand isn't exactly a mobile-friendly solution.

At this point, I want some type of ubiquitous input device, so that I can 'touch type' on any surface and and with my hands and arms at natural angles. In addition, I'd like to be able to naturally interact with my environment as an input device. Google's Soli is the closest that I've seen to what I'm envisioning - http://www.androidcentral.com/google-ataps-soli-opens-world-... / https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Google%E2%80%99s+Soli
Curated sites built with React
I just visited the site and it said "$1,001,964 donated of $1M goal", so I guess it's on.

Previous discussions:

Lawrence Lessig wants to run for president in an unconventional way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10041651

Lessig: Why Washington is corrupt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5507814
It's not by the authors and it adds nothing (wouldn't say it's worth watching), but he provides a great set of links in the description!
I personally think, Europe and the US have a problem with their underclass. This fuels racism, because claims like "more blacks are criminals than whites" are indeed true, but not because they are black, but because they are in the lower class. With stagnating economies it is much harder to rise out of it and with technological advancements it becomes harder and harder for them to stay employed.

I would call it racism, because the term expanded to be about more than just color of skin. I do not think about it in a redneck-raises-confederate-flag-and-points-shotgun-at-black-sense either but more in the way key points of society like education are structured.
What's the procedure to "deliver" the magnet? Surgery? Sedation?
> This article could easily be expanded to include software developers as well as academics

companies like Apress

Your 1-paragraph HN comment has more verifiable (relevant) facts than the entire article linked. The article doesn't need to be expanded, a different one needs to be written by someone willing to be more specific.
What is the neurological explanation for the excessive desire to find the 'optimal' algorithm, language, database ... to solve a problem rather than just solve the problem. Do we just answer 'dopamine' to any question involving behaviour motivation or could seratonin be at play? Anxiety about work product solution not being as good as it could is perhaps different than 'yay it works without an error!'
Let the cow eat it, like it would the other things the magnet is supposed to protect against.
That's great until a cow eats your drone. Then you'll need a _really_ big magnet.

This probably isn't economically feasible yet, but I'm sure we'll see something like this in the next decade or two. And for that matter, such a drone could be cutting the grass or doing other similar jobs.
Note that Kafka only guarantees message ordering per-partition
Imagine a world without mocks
There are a couple of solutions taking the standard bolus and turning it into a connected pH sensor to monitor cattle health:

https://connect.innovateuk.org/documents/3285671/6079410/Sma...

http://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/Presentation/ConnectedDev...

http://www.wellcow.co.uk

http://www.ecow.co.uk
There are plenty of other groups in the lower class with much better outcomes, but any discussion of cultural issues is strictly verboten.
TU Delft – Thorium in MSR Symposium
Yes, that is correct. But it's not to say that it's not what the professor would like. In the age of the internet (as is mentioned in the article) it seems pointless that in order for a specialist in my field to read my "magnum opus" you must fly out to some obscure state University and hope that (a) the University will allow them to check out the book being that they're not a member of that University, and (b) they think it's important enough to do so.

Perhaps it was missed, but the article was written by a professor. The point isn't that all humans in the world would be able to comprehend (or even care) about the contents of the book. The point is that they should have access to it, and the professor (who supposedly cares deeply about what he/she studies / writes about) should want all humans in the world to have easy access to it). Something that is easy to achieve, but apparently not happening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Imagine where academics could be if, for example, people like Ramanujan had access early in their career to all of the most important ideas in their field of interest.

The more obscure an idea or field of study, the harder it's going to be to get it into the right hands.
I think they're solutions looking for a problem.

Tips in the service industry are functionally a means of bolstering income for people who are, by and large, distinctly low-paid workers; developers, even on the low end of the scale, tend not be. I think it's also fair to say that most (most - I realise it's not all) active contributors to open-source projects have day-jobs that provide adequate-or-better income. So what would motivate a common-or-garden developer to court for tips in the first place? And how would a "tip-sized" tip even be noticeable to someone on a developer's salary?

[edit to add: perhaps the issue is the metaphor? A "tip" is roughly what I described above - but it's not actually any different from a "gift", a "donation", or myriad other terms (except, yes, in legal terms of course).]
Discussion: Hanno says TLS interception is harmful
I agree, the original article doesn't hold up well under scrutiny. Anonymous source and no verifiable, relevant facts-- even facts that should be easy to obtain.
Thanks for your answer. I imagine you must control this, no? Too many magnets would probably be harmful. Also, they may be fairly larger than what cows usually eats. Do you know for a fact it's done like this?
Do Americans actually believe it's not?

Do people understand systemic injustice, and what coming from being a nation of slaves merely 150 years ago, and having legal injustice until merely 40 years ago and implicit injustice until today can do to a people?
I can tell you exactly why I might fall into this stereotyped category.

1) The wheel is closed-source, and I do not trust the vendor with that component. Linkages to that upstream code/license might not be acceptable/cannot not be justified given the cost/headache of dealing with the transaction.

2) The wheel is open-source and the code is crap or the license incompatible.

3) The wheel is open source and I worry that the direction of the project is not compatible with my needs. It might be awesome for the moment, but given that the project can potentially deviate in a direction that won't work for the needed solution, linking my code to that upstream project doesn't make sense. If the project does end up going in a different direction, I must break my stride, drop what I'm working on, and go back to retrofit that particular solution.
Yes, what you say is all correct. You can also say that TCP and HTTP are not good for how the web works nowadays. But until now optimizing the bad solution to our current needs seemed to have beaten replacing it with something else. Remember SPDY? I think even Google doesn't use it as often any more. Remember how Facebook wrote a PHP compiler? I think just a few months back they found that optimizing the interpreter can gain them just as much as optimizing a compiler.

In the same vein people will try different things and then come back to CSS and optimize the heck out of it. For example, if the global nature of CSS is a problem, maybe they simply add namespaces in CSS4 (I don't know CSS well enough to even make up a good example, sorry. But I hope it's still clear what I mean).

No matter how bad it is for what it's used, people will continue to use it and the smart, creative people who try to change it will end up optimizing it instead of replacing it.
> If they were such a hidrance people could always still buy the keyboard models they abandonded en masse starting 2007.

You mean the ones I keep on seeing on trains and planes?
Being a huge black success in NBA doesn't mean anything with regards to racism in society.

Racists still enjoy sports. For them blacks athletes are like circus acts or monkeys performing for them -- they even have their favorites.
If you find good ergo computer equipment, buy two extra copies.
Wow -- apparently The Guardian actually has a recurring section called "Academics Anonymous"??? That seems like an interesting story in its own right.

Well done pointing this out. This supposed academic, is doing palpable damage to his/her own industry.

This is the kind of article we can expect to be quoted by the right-wing crazies who want to shut down all universities.
"we are made to buy extremely expensive books"

One of the thing about young people is they rarely have a sense of history. The relevant question is, how does that compare to, say, a Gen X student? We have plenty of archival evidence for that. One such is this newspaper article from 1988, titled "Students pay a high price for college textbooks" at https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19881110&id=... . It starts off "The price of textbooks will make you cry."

The end of the first column continues "For the last 50 to 60 years students said exactly the same thing about book prices." Yes, Baby Boomers made the same complaint you just did.

The larger context is that starting in the 1980s cultural views shifted so that college should be seen as prerequisite job training, and not as a way to expand the mind, understand the world, and better oneself. Thus, colleges could justify price hikes by saying it would lead to a better jobs in the future, which could pay off the increased debt. Where Boomers could work for the summer to pay off a year of school, modern students must pay back loans for the next decade.

But that has relatively little to do with the price of textbooks. Even if the textbooks were free, it would only mean the colleges would hike the prices elsewhere to maximize profit extraction.
True singletons with Dagger 2
No one on the golf cart wants them to be self driving :) I think that's half the fun!
Protecting your hands as a programmer
Personally, I never had any problems with that. I was admittedly careful to buy supported hardware. 2D acceleration just worked as far as I could tell. Nobody I knew ever had a problem with it at all.

I started using 3D acceleration when Compiz/Beryl was released (2006) with an NVidia card. I was playing World of Warcraft under wine at that time too. The only problem I had was when I updated the kernel I had to remember to recompile the drivers under Debian. I switched to Ubuntu for that reason (because then I didn't have to do anything).

Eventually I retired that and went with an Intel board. It worked 100% but was dog slow at the time (pre-2010 Intel drivers were quite good at 2D acceleration but abysmal for speed at 3D). Compiz worked perfectly, the only problem was a pretty big hit in frame rate for WoW.

I replaced that with a Radeon Card which worked perfectly under Catalyst. I started hearing rumours that the free software drivers were getting good performance numbers and switched to that. 2D was amazing (dramatically better than Catalyst) and 3D was slightly slower, but comparable.

Finally replaced that with a few laptops running Intel hardware again. By this time (2012) the 3D performance had dramatically improved and I'm quite happy with it. Obviously not a gamer set up, but more than adequate for casual gaming.

Before 2006, I think you were pretty much stuck with Nvidia and proprietary drivers if you wanted 3D. Again, I never heard anyone who had real problems other than recompiling the drivers if you were on a distro that didn't do it for you.

I actually worked with Gavriel State at Corel before he started up TransGaming. I thought he was completely nuts to do it because at the time there was almost nothing that ran under Wine properly. That was 2001. Honestly, if you were trying to get 3D working on Linux, you were mostly doing it just to say you did it.

I'm not going to deny that some people had problems with video cards. I often had to jump through hoops to get random hardware at work to give me nice displays. But if you were careful to buy supported hardware, there were very few problems.

To be fair, I did a lot of Windows development in the late 90s and early 2000s and I had at least as many problems with video drivers under Windows. The difference was that on Linux I would have trouble with new hardware, while with Windows I would have trouble with old hardware. The other big difference is that with Linux, you could almost always get something to work so that you could hack on it. With Windows, getting to a point where you could download updated drivers could be unbelievably painful.
Maybe I can type faster with this stuff, but what about editing? I surely can't use vim as smooth as I can now using this keyboard.
This "bad too" in your comment, implying that the article intends to say "equally bad", is even more weak.
> I've been contacted on Facebook by these scam publishers

Which publishers? If they are scams they should be exposed.

The linked article included no verifiable details.
Monster Pumps
Now do the math for the drones required to sweep the land for 200 cows, say, once a month.

A spare wheel probably costs as much as a magnet.

And don't forget that the metal being ingested isn't just sitting on the surface of the grass. In many cases, it's probably buried in the first 2 or 3 cm of topsoil and being turned up as the cattle uproot the grass. Is your drone going to handle this? Is it really handling all this at a price of sub-$20 per head over 10 years? I'd have to see it to believe it.
I feel like this is one of those examples of attempting to prevent a low-risk concern and instead increasing overall risk. Is the risk savings of avoiding a car with modern steering and accelerator worth the added risk of lacking other safety features of more recent advances in designing safe automobiles?
The entire western world was pretty racist before (and during) the war, the war (or its aftermath actually) changed that. The article (naively?) applies newer sensibilities to a previous era.

My favorite anecdote: who refused to shake Jesse Owens' hand after his achievements in the 1936 Berlin Olympics? No, it wasn't Hitler [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens#Berlin_Olympics
Redux-routing: library-agnostic routing for Redux
> Yes - genetic modification is not doing anything that couldn't happen by normal mutation/selection

Transgenic GM crops have genes inserted into them from viruses and bacteria.
Free Android Game – Kubic Is a Simple Platform Game. Addictive and Challenging
Interesting to hear, I might give it a shot too now.
To those of you who doesn't know Klarna, it's pretty big in Sweden (and also used in the other Scandinavian countries).

When you order a product online, you will not pay by credit card. Instead, you will receive an invoice with the product - so you don't pay until you have it. Furthermore, they'll give you 30 day credit, and can even split the payment over several months (3, 6, 12, 24 or 36) for an extra fee.

It's pretty easy to pay by installments. You get the invoice with the full amount to pay. If you then pay a lower amount (e.g. full_amount/12 to pay over 12 months), you will automatically be transferred to the split plan, and get a new invoice every month for 10 months.

I think it's very used in Sweden, where they've had an habit of paying via invoice instead of credit/debit card for years.

Klarna tried a few years ago to enter the market here in Denmark, but I don't think it has been a huge success. People in Denmark are more used to just pay with credit card, and I think that's the same problem Klarna will face in the US.
Perhaps because HN readers think they can write equivalent B2B software in a weekend and monetize the result through ads, in-app purchases, and gamification, while they don't think they can write a book or good documentation that others would pay for?
Yeah, I mean the statistical noise you see on trains and planes.
I don't think we disagree very much about the likely level of subject-specific due diligence these publishers will do

Which publishers? If this is a real problem, there might be real solutions but those won't be found if we are busy debating narratives without digging down into the details.
My parents are vets (in Norway). The magnets I remember them using about 30 years ago were about 10cm long rods with a elongated plastic cage around them -- to offset the sharp ands of nails etc to protect the tissue.