skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this is also the best way to understand the results of editing wars and the like.

A requirement for consensus is incompatible with individual rights, since people have the right to disagree. For low-interest topics, Wikipedia eventually succeeds anyway because less-motivated contributors become bored or exhausted and stop arguing. For high-interest topics, the search for consensus becomes more and more explicitly political - political as in "determining the governing rules of a body of disparate people", rather than political as in "are Republicans better than Democrats", although the two kinds of 'political' are both present in many edit wars.

Take the cool-off rules, for examples - locking an article for a period of time, or forbidding certain people from editing it. This is central to Wikipedia's functioning in highly controversial areas, but "nobody can edit this article today" is a policy, not a datapoint. Politics produces policy - a set of actions that can be acted upon by people who do NOT necessarily agree about the underlying facts.

Nasty edit-wars borrow from the tools of dictatorship and oppression - censorship, propaganda, exclusion from the body politic. It's not a coincidence; as mentioned above, consensus is incompatible with individual rights. You need to limit which individuals are allowed to participate, or negotiate the ways that their participation will be accepted. In a sufficiently small or like-minded group, consensus can work again.

A data server has a failure state where some of the data is lost. Wikipedia's failure state, on the other hand, resembles the internal rupture of a political party in a post-Soviet state. Like communist countries, Wikipedia articles demand consensus from their citizens in order to operate.

Of course, unlike Eastern Bloc revolutions, Wikipedia contributors typically do not get lined up against a wall and shot. =) That's also one of the reasons we tend to put Wikipedia edit wars in either the "tech company struggles with its architecture" bucket or the "people on the Internet are angry, news at 7" bucket, rather than the "fractured political unit experiences internal strife due to irreconcilable demands on limited resources" bucket where they actually belong.
There is a place for anonymous and public social networks. There are dozens of online forums and websites for gay teenagers, for example. People at risk just treat the internet the same way they treat the analog. Talk to people you can trust, in places that are private (and anonymous).
Since we are on the topic of names, Bringhurst notes:

"An increasing number of persons and institutions, from e.e. cummings to WordPerfect, now come to the typographer in search of special treatment. In earlier days, it was kings and deities whose agents demanded that their names be written in a larger size or set in a specially ornate typeface; now it is business firms and mass-market products demanding an extra helping of capitals, or a proprietary face, and poets pleading, by contrast, to be left entirely in the vernacular lower case. But type is visible speech, in which gods and men, saints and sinners, poets and business executives are treated fundamentally alike. Typographers, in keeping with the virtue of their trade, honor the stewardship of texts and implicitly oppose private ownership of words."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bringhurst
I know Hiten personally, and I know that Kissmetrics operates in a most ethical fashion.

I would trust them over most any analytics company any day.

It's a shame that this meritless lawsuit even exists.
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Don't you think such language features are, actually, helpful for newcomers to programming and computer science?
IMO, let them learn the very basics of the basics with a lil-bit of abstraction and simplicity, and then dig even deeper!
Yeah, I drafted the post a few weeks ago and was going to write a few more before I started the blog but figured I shouldn't wait.
The internet is a big place. There's room for all kinds of social networks. You don't have to join every one of them.
Couldn't get your way to work, it blew off the rest of the string. Managed to get it to work by calling .to_s on each variable. Wondering if I did something wrong. I have your same setup and I'm a complete Ruby Noob.
It may be an indication for salt water, but there are other explanations. For example, also sand can have something similar to fluid dynamics. You need to take the low gravity and thin atmosphere into account and do real calculations or simulations to gain further insights.
You nailed it. While promises are made, accounts get suspended (we read about the Firefox founder here, I don't quite dare to mention myself in that company..).

IF there'll be changes to the policy (and i hope that's the case), why would you alienate people today by suspending them for offenses (..) that might be okay tomorrow?
Thanks for doing the math. This is just ludicrous.
I don't know much about domain registrations but is there no way to get a hold of a list of taken domains? (maybe there are lists just for some registrars where search/spam-bots can get a hold of it?)
What I meant was the agreement for the members of the consortium. The licensing agreement is public as it was investigated by the DOJ.
Haha, glad to be of service. I get excited about stuff I like.
A lot of these policies really strike me as White Supremacism 2.0. To quote Wikipedia:

"White supremacy, as with racial supremacism in general, is rooted in ethnocentrism and a desire for hegemony."

In other words, white supremacism isn't about white people per se. Rather, it's about promoting one culture as the dominant one while trying to suppress all other cultures. That's exactly what these policies are doing.
www.voyurl.com/welovehn for private beta access
H.R.1981, the end of online privacy as we know it.
> I loath the whole experience

Because it doesn't really work. But what if it did?
Devil's advocate win. I think your right, nobody is going
to fund a 15 year for a lot reasons. I'll just have to find a reason that beats all the odds against me. :)

Fully though, I understand, but I'm still going to try my best. Hey, the worst that happens is they say no.
You seem to be making a common mistake. The policy doesn't have to be bullet proof to work -- it just has to establish cultural norms. If the vast majority of people act like they're real people, then it has accomplished it's goals.
Whoa, I'm in Cincinnati. Are you still in the area? What are your thoughts on UC nixing the ComSci program?
32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder
What is hacktivism?
Why do I get the bad feeling that Apple is working hard to kill off the Mac? And ironically if it were anybody but Steve Jobs leading the company I wouldn't have that fear.
Strange that Facebook didn't think of that, either, no? But I think Google should allow it anyway, because it would be a strategic advantage over Facebook. The more "privacy" related benefits Google+ has over Facebook, the better.
It's not supposed to be something you learn from, but something you reference.

Really? That's the exact opposite of how I think of it. An encyclopedia is something you learn an initial shallow understanding from. A field specific reference text is something you reference. eg. My linear algebra text book.

For sure re usefulness, which is why moultano's work is greatly appreciated.
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He looks more like Drew Carey at that resolution.
Hardly surprising. The last 50 edits to a Wiki I've made were to private Wikias. Why? Because I actually contributed something, and the paragraph I wrote about bugs in a Fallout: New Vegas location is still there in it's entirety, but with additions and conformations from users of other platforms.

That's how Wikipedia was supposed to work. Now every time I try to do something, I know it will be deleted over non-notability. It's not even a question anymore, it's just a matter of time.

Since we can break up articles into sub-topics very easily, there is absolutely no reason for this behaviour other than a love of power-tripping and some vague Wikipeida guidelines to fall back on. The editors are already in this thread, defending themselves. Nothing new, just the same "We don't want pages about your unknown indie band". Talk about baby & the bathwater.
Desktop machines still do not ship with ECC, other than a few high end ones that use server hardware.
As an added corollary: be careful about promotion, because it may succeed. And if your content isn't fully baked, and if you haven't perfected your craft, then you'll be exposed to the world as such. There goes your first impression, and more than likely, there goes your one shot.
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people might avoid bullying, but they can also avoid accountability for bullying

This argument is nonsensical unless there is an actual, consequential penalty for violating the "real names" policy. (Which would, of course, be even more of a monumental disaster.)

Suppose you are a troll or a sockpuppet or a spammer and you want to screw around on a Google website. Well, the fact that you're not allowed to call yourself "LadyAda" or "Lady Gaga" or, for that matter, "mechanical_fish" is no problem. You can just call yourself "John Smith". Or "Steven P. Jobs" or "George W. Bush", for that matter. It's not hard to fake a real name. And there's no meaningful penalty for doing so, even if you get caught. Most likely Google will just delete your account. No big loss for a troll. New accounts are just a click away.

Now, if you are LadyAda or Lady Gaga or mechanical_fish, Google's policy is a problem, because you've spent a certain amount of time building up your pseudonym. It has a history and you're identified with it and you've bought the domain names and given the press interviews and written years worth of blogs and opened some businesses and built up a ten-million-strong international fan club who comes to all your concerts. Gaga doesn't want to sign up as "John Smith" or anything else, because it will literally cost her money not to sign up with her chosen name, "Lady Gaga".
Vancouver (where I live right now) has several needle exchanges, as well as, safe injection sites.

I was reading yesterday that coastal health is releasing a free crack pipe + cleaner kit.

Granted we are likely a bit more progressive then the rest of the country.
to be clear, my line 10 looks like this:

puts "There are #{cars} cars available."

But, yeah, complete Ruby noob here as well so I don't really know what's wrong.
raganwald is usually pretty good about it [edit: meaning, of course, that I usually enjoy his posts], but this one was so close to the edge because of all the controversy last year that I thought I may have missed something.
Why doesn't the Fed just lend this money to ordinary people and businesses directly at 0% interest?

If we are going to have such a system whereby the Fed must print money, which means that the money in the system looses value, then why must the ordinary people or businesses be charged twice by first the lowering in value of the money and second the paying of a higher interest rate, often much higher, to the end bank which lends it?

This system currently concentrates wealth and thus power to the banks. Why, when we probably do not even need them at all and can simply have a massive national bank.
No doubt, it wasn't intended as a negative. But for the independent student, stating what may seem obvious can be critically necessary. Compared to both O'Reilly titles and plenty of assigned course readings, that wasn't entirely clear to me until I had a few problem sets done. For example, Norvig's review makes it sound like it can be read lightly. Maybe only if your name is Norvig. I don't know.
You seem to have misunderstood the whole thing (if you have even read any of it), they haven't retracted anything nor changed their position.

There is no sense in buying patents jointly with Microsoft because then they couldn't use the patents to block Microsoft from extorting handset makers which defeats the whole purpose. It's not about buying patents for the sake of having patents.

If any of the reporters had bothered to ask an IP lawyer all this would have been made clear to them, but they unthinkingly quote Tweets and print comments from Florian Muller instead.

And are you actually suggesting that producing IP is more efficient and quicker than buying it?! I very much urge you to think on that.
Whatever you buy, get a matte display.
Right, sorry. `s/plagiarism/copyright infringement/g`. I've been reading a bit too much about education lately, and I guess it snuck in.

I knew SICP was CC-licensed, so I guess it was relatively clear that I'd be in the clear here. I have a sort of end game in mind where I build myself up enough to work through TAOCP as well (ha!), and it's certainly not CC-licensed. I rather enjoy the idea of doing something like this in public, for moral support and random acts of guidance, so it'll become important for me to know where the line is.

And yes, I'm quite familiar with Khan. I had a couple complaints about the site early on and ended up falling out of the work because of it (the main issue specifically was that I was working through the exercise section, and I had to do a geometry section for which there seemed not to be a relevant video, so I got stuck on a given node in the progress graph). The end game for that plan was to get at least through introductory calculus, since it almost feels like my geek card is illegitimate without it. I definitely need to take another run at it.
Yeah, Gabor Mate is doing some awesome things with OnSite. There's actually a really good interview with him here:

http://www.wpr.org/book/100307a.cfm
BTCrack: A Bluetooth Pass Phrase Bruteforcer ~ Insecure Stuff
very little conceptual difference. In practice however, Berkelium is really really immature. The API is much weaker, things like Flash may or may not work. The install is not as clean. I guess that's the difference between a small cost to a corporation vs free.

I realize that hobbyists would prefer free, but that's ok, since Berkelium is open enough that they can fix it.
Here's some [probably faulty] code to test a given domain name for bit-flip variants that are unregistered.

https://gist.github.com/1126162
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In some cases, paying an attorney $100 to draft a letter on law firm stationery, and mail it certified US Mail, will prod the client to pay you. I did this once.
That's the default answer. While true, technically, it ignores that there are no viable alternatives right now.

Facebook is worse in every way regarding privacy (although they don't actually enforce their real name policy as far as I can tell/from the experiences in my peer group).

Other networks don't exist (see below). Twitter is a different beast. Don't start with LinkedIn or something or recommend niche products.

A social network, in my world, is a place where you can reach out to a lot of (like-minded/known/interesting) people. The point for me is that you need to have the critical mass so that the network works and is interesting in the first place (I won't find my friends on identi.ca..). But this should allow a lurking mode. A careful approach, picking friends by contacting them out of band ("I'm Foobar on G+") should be a fine use case.

I think the major reason to complain about G+ now is, apart from issues with the name verification process itself, that the offended community is just disappointed. It could be a good alternative to FB for quite some people, especially for those that didn't join FB in the first place. And Google failed to deliver.

Is it their decision? Sure. Is it a right to be a G+ user? Certainly not. Are there people that are unhappy about this situation and interested to voice that opinion: Yep.
To assuage folks who don't understand technology and will assume they are guilty until they "make big changes".
/tintin ascribes benevolent self-disinterested intentions to Google’s legal team, and innovation in mobile to the biggest copycat in the space
Publishing can help you develop a voice, though. I'm currently reading an interesting history of the 90s riot grrl movement (Sara Marcus's Girls to the Front), and from what I can tell, publishing zines was a big part of what helped them develop a community, find friends/bandmates, hone philosophies and possible lyrical ideas, etc. In fact a few of the bands existed only in concept until they got put on the spot by someone who liked their zine enough to book them to play a gig! (Then they had to finish learning to play instruments and write some songs.)

In part I think that's because some kinds of publishing, like zines and social media, are somewhat in between pure publishing and conversation; they're not just a polished finished product, but also a way to discuss ideas and meet people.
If they'd just waited a little longer it could have been H.R. 1984.
I really like what you did with your images :)
I wish I lived in SF :/
Can we change the title to "HTC announces details of..."? They haven't actually announced the tool.

Also, what happens to older models? Are we SOL?
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I do worry that Jobs' vision for Macs is far removed from what I want in a personal computer.
Would have been a whole lot more fitting.
Maybe I'm being naively optimistic, but if we take Google to be both unafraid to take risks and long-term in its thinking, we can interpret all of its actions as spending as little as possible on patents while getting opponents to spend as much as possible and simultaneously undermining software patents at large.

Seems to me like Google is taking advantage of a growing anti-patent sentiment in the tech community that's beginning to spill over into the mainstream and capitalizing on the idea that the innovation-stifling patent regime is contributing to a stagnating economy.

Exhibit A: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-02/google-hires-federa...

Exhibit B: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/08/in...

Exhibit C: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/w... http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/04/138934689/the-tues...
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MIT develops new method to cure broad range of viruses
Looks like I have two months to brush up on my probability and linear algebra. Could anyone who's read AIMA or taken the Stanford course suggest which topics I should (de)emphasize?
مسلسل الحسن والحسين الحلقة الرابعة
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Apart from newly formed countries like USA, it can be a bit hard to define exactly when a country was formed. China can arguably be claimed to be many thousand years old, even if their current constitution only dates back to 1949.
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Whether the item works is the least of your problems when it comes to military jets. Trust me, if it's UK-mil it's a bureaucratic nightmare (expensive) to develop software that can be proven to be of high-integrity. To reduce costs you use stuff that has been proven safe before (we still use 8051s and wire-wrap).

Put simply, if the pilot makes decisions on how to fly (in flight or on later analysis) based on an electronic piece of equipment, it'll have cost shitloads. This fact is why I want to get out of mil-aero in the UK; developing embedded soft/elec is mostly about jumping through hoops.
>I recommend that you use SICP to learn Scheme, as it will make more sense when you actually know how to use it.

I used it my entire graduate career, under an advisor who is part of the inner circle of PLT/Racket. I'm quite familiar with it.

> P.S. If you're thinking of those problems in terms of iteration and mutation, you're probably doing it wrong :). Think more functionally.

I primarily program in Mercury and Coq (languages which are both purely functional). I can promise you I have no problem "thinking functionally". The solution presented in SICP is not structurally recursive (while the "naïve" solution is) but rather relies on an accumulator, tail calls, and a measure to terminate recursion... this is much closer in spirit to an iterative algorithm than a recursive one.
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Heck, if jedberg trusts them then I'm convinced. (no sarcasm)
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There is no sense in buying patents jointly with Microsoft because then couldn't they use the patent to block

Of course not. But you take those patents off the table. It's 7,000 fewer patents you have to deal with. Even under reasonable terms, if MS gets enough patents, they could raise licensing fees such that doing WP over Android is a no-brainer. Now the Android licensing fees are just a nuisance.

Also are you actually suggesting that producing IP is more efficient and quicker than buying it?!

Yes (well cheaper -- not quicker). At least buying targeted patents. These large portfolios are going for about $500k-$750k per patent. I wouldn't be surprised if Google paid $1M each for the 1,000 IBM patents they bought.

The big advantage they get w/ buying is the patents are available now. But this is why this is a firing offense. Everyone else in the industry has been building up their IP warchest for some time. Apple telegraphed it years ago that they'd fight with patents in the mobile space. Google seems to be surprised.
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The Nortel patent purse had over 6,000 patents, but InterDigital has over 8,800. If the winning bid on Nortel was $4.5 billion, InterDigital should be well north of $5 billion.

Not quite sure where this logic comes from. Surely they're only valuable if they're relevant and strategically useful?
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I understand technology, and I'm pretty skeezed out by their use of Etags...

Also, if they truly think they're innocent, why wouldn't they just educate their userbase? Seems odd to make such drastic architectural changes just because of a perceptual problem.
Sure enough! -- maybe that's what everyone should start calling it anyway :)
>10 puts "There are " + cars + " cars available."

Yes, this will throw an error in Ruby because of line 1:

>1 cars = 100

Ruby does not allow the mixing of integers and strings. So, as mentioned, you can invoke the .to_s method. Or you can interpolate the variables as you have done so with #{cars} inside double quotes.
Not to mention that a poorly designed GUI can also be frustrating. I couldn't get this working on my ipad when I tried:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2809451
Nothing was discoverable.
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I second this. I haven't been too big of a fan of his latest work, but I bought my first John Mayer album physically from John Mayer. To say he doesn't understand independents isn't true.
Ask HN: Faxing without a fax machine?
I've been freelancing for about 10 months, and occasionally the need arises to sign or fill out various documents emailed to me. I don't have a land line since I only use my cell phone. So having a fax machine isn't viable. Driving to someplace like Kinko's is a pain and expensive. Paying for a fax service doesn't really make sense since I don't fax that often.

Does anyone know of any good solutions (or apps) that can help with this?