skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> arbitrarily pick a class of data that's "at least as extreme" as what was actually seen

You are absolutely correct, in my haste to explain one misinterpretation of p-values, I stumbled into another gross oversimplification. The correct way of saying it must always involve some language about the deviation or extremity of the data being at least as great as observed.

It goes to show that proper reporting of p-value statistics takes a lawyerly craft with language; while writing the post I had to consider what the mathematical interpretation of "is a fluke" should be. I think the definition I chose is what most people will interpret it as. However, the word fluke just means "unlikely chance occurrence" on its own, so saying "there is a 1% chance the result is an unlikely chance occurrence" is uninformative if taken literally. It has to imply one of two things:

1. You are referring to the null hypothesis as the unlikely occurrence, i.e. "There is a 1% chance the null hypothesis is true [therefore making this data surprising]."

2. You are temporarily assuming it is true to make such a statement, i.e. "There is a 1% chance of seeing data at least this surprising [if the null hypothesis were true]."

Someone that does know what a p-value is might be generous and think you meant the latter, which is a correct statement. However, I think that most people hear it the first way.

The fact that p-value reporting (when properly done) involves thinking through double negatives and conditions that are easily ignored probably indicates that it's time for other measures of significance to become better accepted.
Strangest line of python is introductory Haskell. The use of 's' and 'st' and 'state' is the most bizarre part. Why not 'sta' to maintain arithmetic progression? Or s t u since brevity is the goal?
I'm much happier working where my incentives to make great stuff are aligned with that of the end user. Trying to do a end-run around ludicrous middleman requests never turns out well.
>35-40 million current owners of iPad are just a fraction of world population who want to own a Tablet.

And yet those iPad owners are probably 90% of the population who have actually bought a tablet. What people want (or say they want) and what people will actually buy are often very different.
Amazon may launch a smart phone in 2012
If you happen to be in a market that has iBooks.

I think it's a little strange to have to download an application called iBooks so that you can save documents (that you need to email yourself). Apple tries to be very intuitive, but document management on iOS is a mess. There is much room for improvement. I've had multiple people ask how to get documents on their iPad, which stands out because most everything else is so simple (especially after iOS 5 not needing as much of an iTunes lifeline).

On Kindle you go to Docs and it says "Nothing here, email something to XXX@kindle.com". You try that and boom it shows up. If you want to load some documents on your iOS device there's no obvious way without getting extra apps (which itself isn't obvious). iOS 4 addressed this somewhat to allow management through iTunes, but even after plugging it in it takes knowing to go to your device in iTunes, selecting Apps, scrolling down, clicking on an App under "File Sharing", clicking the "Add" button and choosing your file (then sync and hope it works, it doesn't let you know what file types are allowed so it's a crapshoot).

It's a side effect of iOS not having a shared repository of files. I'm surprised that iCloud didn't attempt to fix this, but it only keeps application specific documents in sync. Dropbox is still king, but because they're not integrated into the OS it feels like a hack. Maybe it's coming, but right now the iCloud folder on your Mac is hidden: http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/use-mobile-documents-fol...
Does this SOPA law include shutting down .org .com .net etc domains worldwide, based on accusations of breaking the US software patents?

I understand it is intended to achieve the worldwide shutdowns for copyright issues, using the fact that these domains are administered by US companies.
Why do you prefer Google to Facebook?
This is a silly movement. Flash isn't going anywhere, and there's no reason for it to. "HTML5" isn't finalized, well supported, and is (in my experience) almost always slower than the equivalent Flash code. Flash is supposedly bringing fullscreen support and right-click functionality too, one of my biggest gripes with the technology.

I support open source, I want HTML5 to replace Flash, but we're not nearly there yet. Wait for the technology to mature.
Kindle Fire UX Decisions Lead To Free Downloads
That sounds like a nice consistent and less interruptive alternative to a bootable USB stick (not aware of any non-invasive virtualization products).

Considering that you might already carry around an android device, it would be nice to integrate that. Some phones alrady have HDMI ports and would go nicely with "dumb terminal" software like that. In an ideal world, I'd like to use the phone screen as a touch pad and let it project a keyboard (with a tablet, you could use that as both keyboard and mouse, of course).
bingo.

In my mind, a program is something that accepts input, does some processing on that input, and produces output. To me, the "programming" should revolve around the processing, rather than around the internal representation of the input, intermediate data, or output.
Iwas Watching Histroy | Scienceray
My only issue with doing the full-on module pattern is that, coming from a Python/Ruby background, I've stopped caring about the notion of private vs protected vs public, especially when considering testing. In other languages (like Java) I can add a dash of reflection magic in my unit-tests to get to hidden components, but that seems to be impossible using Javascript's module pattern. Take this snippet for example:

var Module = (function() {
var baz;

function foo(x) {
baz = x;
}

return {
bar: function() {
foo(42);
}
};
})();

There are several variations of the pattern, but that's the basic gist of it. Once it becomes non-trivial, how do I test foo? How do I verify baz's state? Furthermore, if I wanted to extend this with one of Javascript's sub-class implementations, how would my new slightly-different "bar" be able to use "foo"?

Besides my general opinion of private variables and methods being unnecessary, unless someone has a good fix for those two problems, I'll never consider using the module pattern in any code that I write.
> are capable of more generalized forms of efficient problem solving

I still don't understand what you are trying to say. The entire point of the article is that "people who are capable of the more generalized form of efficient problem solving are more valuable". He's not saying that you never have to sit down and get your hands dirty and write something from scratch, or that the most efficient people never do that.

You are agreeing with what he wrote and acting like he said the opposite.
If something like that would be common enough, I bet we'd get something like phone booths again, providing better in- and output (large screen, camera) plus privacy.
PoE explicitly only works over Cat5+ cable (although I think there's a low-power version for Cat3). HDMI obviously doesn't have the same physical-layer properties as Cat5, even if you're passing the same Ethernet frames on top.
Bash stuff <3
An Introduction to Stock & Options for the Tech Entrepreneur or Startup Employee
Different TLDs have different values. I'm more likely to trust a site with a .edu TLD than .tk or .info. Google also uses TLDs in their search rankings.

I'm not saying .xxx will have value, just that not all TLDs are made equally.
Does this affect performance in any way? 1k+ lines is quite a lot.
It seems irrational to be afraid of ucla.xxx but not uclaxxx.com - do they think google is going to somehow give a boost to the former?
Causes Lower Back Pain: The Information You Need
Because the US created it, along with the internet. Luckily it's no longer maintained by the Department of Defense.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920
I've had a great experience using http://brunch.io to organise Backbone applications. Separates everything out as this article suggests and adds a nice entry point to get started from. It's not as lightweight as organising things on your own, as it introduces CoffeeScript and Stylus into the mix. If you're happy with these technologies though it works quite well.
I have. It's pretty close to what you'd want, although I wouldn't mind paying for this as a service.
Just what the iPad has been lacking!!!
> Say you have a photon in a superposition of state A and state B - think position.

Why are you assuming the particle has got to have a "position"?

The fact that a quantum particle can interfere with itself would be experimental evidence that it doesn't in fact have a definite position.
So many times now when reading reviews of new Android releases and the accompanying phones I read "THIS finally is the Android phone that's really usable/better than $then_current_iphone".

And now I hear it again: "Galaxy Nexus is the real first Android phone that's really usable. It's even better than the iPhone 4S".

Honestly though, by now I lost the trust in these reviews and the phones. I have my doubts that my Nexus S will become a better phone once/if it gets ICS. I have my doubts that I'll actually prefer ICS to iOS. I tried so many times, but I never managed to stick with Android.

Also what where they thinking when calling the phone "Galaxy Nexus"?

There's a Nexus One, a Nexus S, a Galaxy S, a Galaxy S2 and now the Galaxy Nexus- all released within the last two years. When I was talking to coworkers over lunch, we quickly drifted into utter confusion when trying to compare phone features.
I'm not sure if you misread the parent comment, but he pretty much spelled it out: the 10,000+ employees who work for the contractor ARE his constituents and thus have a vested interest in the business' interests...
can you make a line to show where we are on the x-axis currently?
You mean Facebook over Google? I don't prefer it, but that's where most of the average Internet users are.
It may be that MS-DOS/Windows has been "open enough" to capture and hold overwhelming market share. MS-DOS became the default PC OS in the 1980s due to Microsoft's cheap, non-exclusive licencing model, and Windows started out as a GUI layer on top of DOS.

In addition, third party developers have always enjoyed free, open access to the same set of system APIs as Microsoft itself, so it has been an easy platform to develop for. That, in turn, has strengthened the positive network externality that keeps Windows dominant.
How soon will Android phones have this capability? For many people, all their data is already on their phones anyways and they're always carrying their phones, so this is just an additional widget to carry. The PC part of this widget just seems like software, and some Android phones already have an HDMI port...
It's worse than a ghost town actually, it is not even haunted!
I wonder when Walmart will jump on the smartphone and tablet bandwagon.
irrelevant and implemented should be cleaned up, f.ex the top one http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2430542
You can't force people to make the right choices through legislation. There will always be loopholes and technicalities, and a law system that attempted to do so would be so restrictive of individual freedoms as to be entirely impractical.

If a society stops being composed primarily of good people that make the right choices for the right reasons, that society will crumble, and no amount of legislation will save it.
Android 4.0 would be especially good for this, since it looks better on bigger screens, so once you hook the phone to the bigger screen, it could just show you the same OS, except in "tablet mode" (like the the apps).
This plugin[0] apparently plays an ascii version 'bad apple' music video. Inside vim.

Go figure.

[0] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3477
That would be a good thing for HN, albeit to the detriment of the app in question and its early adopters. But even if there was less ability to "game"/"hack" the system, a public service like this is necessary to ensure that situation remains.
CommonJS / AMD anyone ?

There are plenty of libraries doing this already.
Shouldn't this be named "Unoccupy Flash" or just "Uninstall Flash"? It seems silly to use "Occupy" in this context.
You're cherry-picking an example. Linux in general is a counter-counter example. In addition to running a large proportion of webservers (actually the open-source Apache server hosts over 50% of all websites), Linux also runs on the majority of smartphones sold.
Having burnt several times more money and time (person years) in engineering and marketing, G+ can't smile about being bigger than Instagram!
I find semicolon and comma to be very useful so I am surprised when I see people remap them or use them as leader.
This assumes errors by implementors are uncorrelated, which is almost certainly false. As programmers we often all make similar mistakes, particularly in exacting numerical code.
CapHub - multiple applications deployment with single Capistrano
Neither Windows nor OS X are (currently) locked down.
I use this ruby script: https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick
An inflection point is the point where a function changes sign. This can be both a positive or a negative indication.

This article carries a positive tone, so what they probably mean is that ICS to Android is the point where people start saying more positive than negative stuff about Android.
Is this something I can do after-the-fact? I'm pretty noob at HN's interface.
Looks like I'm in the wrong business.

How does that come about? Patent shenanigans?
In any way? Of course.

But my laptop has 8 gigabytes of RAM, a solid state hard drive, and four processor cores.

I can run Minecraft at the highest settings while accidentally leaving a Linux VM running in the background. Loading a 1.5k vimrc file is barely a blip on the processor graph.
Art and Music in Chandler, AZ
Because if you don't have an application to view it with outside email, what are you going to view it with outside email?

iOS is moving away from the user-facing file system. Normal users don't get it; they associate content with tools to process it with, not as content just sitting there wholly independent. If there isn't something to view the content with, the notion of storing content to not view is nonsensical.
ICS's core apps can be as slick and beautiful as they want, but app developers need to keep up, and I'm not convinced they will.

I have a Windows Phone, largely as an experiment at seeing if I like it or not. The UI is amazing on the core apps. The People, Music and Email apps are second to none. But almost every third party app I download gets something wrong (often most things wrong), and it's very jarring when you're expecting things to match a very defined UI flow.

The fact that Android already has a ton of existing apps might make this even worse. Ditching the menu button and swapping it for an action bar is a great idea, but how long until all the app makers change their apps over? I think this is less of a problem on the iPhone because Apple vets their apps so heavily (and rejects ones that do not obey UI guidelines), but neither Google nor Microsoft seem to do that.
I used this service to speak to my Congresswoman for the first time in my life. Kudos to the Tumblr team for enabling a lot of generally-not-political people like me who to make our voices heard when needed.
I got bitten by this same exact thing using Bucketwise a few months ago, but without the race condition: https://github.com/jamis/bucketwise/pull/27
He means to say, why are you using things like "u" instead of "you" and "ur" instead of "your".
But now a lot of people are aware of what they are trying to do with bills like this one, so there might be a lot of people speaking out against the next one, too.

I once read a comment regarding the content industry's push for more draconian laws regarding piracy, and that guy said, they will keep doing this until the camel's back breaks, and then all their chances to pull this off will be completely eliminated, and they might even be worse off in the end (banning of online copyright, etc).
Lean for Designers: Iterate quickly.
It's kind of amazing that the company that is finally standing up against insane, stupid patents is ... a bookstore. But perhaps it's because B&N doesn't have any mobile patents of its own to defend?
HTML5 Resources Revisited
Should startups give up or stay put?
How Occupy Wall Street and Flash are related is beyond me. Seems to me this group is over-zealous in their crusade to eliminate Flash, their near-religious devotion clouding their judgement.
I'm sure I've seen this in vim, but I can't find it now. Isn't there a statusline config item that shows any pending command prefix chars you've typed?
From Crazy Idea to Customer in a Weekend
Ask HN: Which Mac Book should I get
So I'm looking to replace both my vintage laptop and my aging desktop with a Mac Book. But I can't decide between the 13" Air or the 13" Pro.

My main use will be web development, I was leaning towards the Air as I'm planning to do some extended travelling next year.

The problem I can foresee with the Air is that I also write and record music, and my current laptop is a dual core 1.6Ghz with 1Gb ram, and it will often struggle when recording. At 1.7Ghz dual core the Air is not much faster.

So to cut a long, rambling question short: Does anyone have experience using music software (specifically Cubase) on a Mac Book Air? Will the fact that it's an i5 and has 4GB make it cope much better than my old Centrino with 1GB?

Thanks in advance.
The Way Forward for Europe
It got 10/10 on a couple of sub-scores (performance and hardware) which seems to have confused them. Low points were the camera and battery that both got 7/10.
1.9 MB compressed...
Is it at all possible for there to be 5 distinct and unexpected results caused by a single, well-written line of code? You're right that these aren't subtle bugs affecting a large piece of software, but why would you expect that given the title?
If the Prey Project owns the copyright for their code they can have the code released as GPL on github and an "All Rights Reserved" compiled binary in the iOS app store.

I doubt this is what they do and accepting outside contributions would be problematic, but if they retain they copyright they can do whatever they want.

Also, the GPL doesn't say you have to allow redistribution of the compiled application, just the code IIRC.
SOPA Impact Infographic
RAVN's Beta Invitation Game is Awesome, Channels "Duck Hunt".
This pattern uses an immediately invoked function expression (IIFE) to scope dependencies and shorten variable names.

Be smart about your code, you can expose anything you want and attach anything to the module object for testing.
No intent to minimize the significance of logic. There is to little of it in our world, often in spite of abundant facts.
On my Nexus S I couldn't scroll at all in either direction, and the right side of the graph was cut off.

Slightly relevant data point of approximated anecdotal evidence: I submitted a "Show HN" for my Android app at about 2 PM on a weekday and got 1 or 2 upvotes within about an hour, so I deleted it and resubmitted it later at about 9 PM (exact same title and everything - I felt bad about resubmitting it but I was really disappointed, sorry if this was a faux pas) and it hit the front page within 5 minutes and hit #1 in about half an hour and then stayed there for 12+ hours. Pretty astounding difference...
From the linked article:

> What's interesting to me, as a clear layman observer, is why Microsoft didn't know that it would be so easy to find so much evidence of prior art against these five asserted patents.

Obvious answer, based on experience of large organisations: Legal and engineering are in different silos and don't talk to each other, except through senior management with limited bandwidth and legal/engineering understanding.
I am working on a follow up post, where you will see how complicated these systems get. Its not trivial nor foundational for anyone looking on how to structure a project.

Edit: There is a pull request that would make using at least jQuery/Backbone/Underscore easier to use together, but it has n't been pulled yet. Writing posts on stuff that just works, is better than trying to convince developers to hand write wrappers for every lib they want to include.
Jonathan Samson's SHAREBOOK
An inflection point is where the curvature (second derivative) changes sign. For example, it is where a function changes from concave to convex. It can apply both ways.
This is what I do as well. To make thinks simpler, I use this script to automatically create the symlinks (if they are not already existant). If you put it in your `.zshrc`, you can run the command `dropbox-update-dotfiles` to make or update the symlinks. Not that this makes use of `zsh` extensions, so it requires adaptation to use with bash.

dropbox-update-dotfiles () {
src="$HOME/Dropbox/dotfiles"
dst="$HOME"

if [[ ! -d "$src" ]]; then
print "Directory $src not found."
fi

for f in "$src"/*~*(.swp|~|.pyc)(D); do
if [[ -h "$dst/${f:t}" ]]; then
# exists as symlink
elif [[ -e "$dst/${f:t}" ]]; then
print "WARNING: ${f:t} exists, but is not a symlink."
else
ln -sv "$f" "$dst"
fi
done
}
A start-up with a potential way to avoid sickness
Life Breathed Into Dead Project
Do you love your Homescreen? Check out MyColorscreen [Open Registration]
Download YouTube videos using the terminal
Google Music has a lot of catching up to do: iTunes by the numbers
I think it's actually where the second derivative (concavity) of a function changes sign; but you're right in that it can be a positive as much as a negative indication.
Amazon Blocking Spotify and Google Music on Kindle Fire
Trouble brewing for Google Wallet
There's a HUGE difference between an eReader and a tablet. People who don't regularly read don't understand this. Many people think the iPad is a good eReader. But that's like saying a Koenigsegg is a good commuting car.

Think about what makes a good eReader:

* Very light
* As small as possible (while retaining page size)
* Long-lasting battery
* Good reading screen

With this in mind:

* iPad as an eReader = fail
* Kindle Fire as an eReader = fail
* Most tablets as eReaders = fail
* Standard Kindle as an eReader = excellent

Personally, I can't justify a tablet, but I can absolutely justify an eReader for actual reading. As soon as I saw the announcements for the new Kindles, I saw that the $79 version was the smallest and knew it was the best of the bunch. The Touch is somewhat interesting, but every gram matters when you hold the device for 2, 3 or even 4 hours straight.
No it's where the second derivative changes sign. You can think of the first derivative as the motion, and the second derivative as the "force" that's driving the motion - the force is changing direction.
The Perils of Extrapolation
Rank companies by code quality (ruby)
Google Music great interactive tour
That was exactly the point they were trying to make.
No, it wasn’t “touch” that Jobs saw in that first demo
Non-education users can only get up to 10GB free with referrals. I accomplished that by putting a link on my website's download page.