skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
See also this recently published book for more on the problem of publishing in academic journals that nobody reads: Planned Obsolescence:
Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

A free version is online: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsol...

Here are some quotes from an interview w/the author from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/09/30/planned_obsole...

"Here are two ideas Fitzpatrick proposes to kill for good: Peer review is necessary to maintaining the credibility of scholarly research and the institutions that support it; and publishing activity in peer-reviewed journals is the best gauge of a junior professor’s contribution to knowledge in her field."

"Little in graduate school or on the tenure track inculcates helpfulness,” she writes, “and in fact much militates against it."

"But to the extent that individual academics continue in their lust for “power and prestige” by vying for exclusive spots in elite journals, they should not be surprised to find themselves as irrelevant and moribund — indeed, zombie-like — as print monographs have already become, warns Fitzpatrick."

“If we enjoy the privileges that obtain from upholding a closed system of discourse sufficiently that we’re unwilling to subject it to critical scrutiny, we may also need to accept the fact that the mainstream of public intellectual life will continue, in the main, to ignore our work,” she says. “Public funds will, in that case, be put to uses that seem more immediately pressing than our support.”
Software patents protect whoever has the largest war chest of litigation funding.
Bill Gates lives in all our SharePoint installations
AdMob Saw 8 Billion Tablet Ad Requests In November, Up 700 Percent
Duopoly.

Incredibly interesting list of existing duopolies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly#Examples_in_business
This is an eminently solvable problem. There are excellent open source IDEs and toolchains available that can be repackaged in any way, shape, or form.

Double click an installer, and boom - everything's set up.

Barrier to entry is a moot point.
That's a good point. Originally tl;dr was written by other people who were summarizing an overly long post. Now people preemptively tl;dr their own overly long posts.

Write more concisely and make a point instead of tl;dr'ing yourself.
They're also read by people who may not have time to read the article in depth but still want to be at least a little familiar with the substance....
Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts."

John Jay (first Chief Justice): "The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."

Justice Byron White: "Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority."

Thought these quotes should be in here ...
Mixpanel adds retention analytics
Node Roundup: 0.6.6, asyncblock, Introduction to Node Modules, Review19
Let's start a war on information because war is peace and information is the cause for thoughtcrime.

Orwell's timing was wrong but close enough in my book.
Yeah, you should keep off the soapbox until after the case has run its course. If you think that using jury nullification is a possibility for you, keep your mouth shut and just do it otherwise you'll be excused.
I tried defending it on Hacker News and received a dozen downvotes. Don't be surprised if everyone in an echo chamber agrees.
I've not used MS Word for about 6 years but prior to that I always found that OOo (or sometimes KOffice or Abiword) was as good at opening MS Word documents as Word itself.

Even docs specifically created in the format of the target version didn't seem to do very well.

Presumably MS have solved this now and the current versions will produce pixel perfect renderings of all the past versions that LibreOffice can do (and a few more)?

How are MS now at supporting ODT format and importing PDFs?
SwipeView: simple solution to endless seamlessly loopable carousels for mobile
http://turbo.paulstamatiou.com/uploads/2011/08/picplum_step1...

Slightly OT but I find something very confusing about the styles of the 3 tabs in that screenshot.

Each tab seems sort of different when really you should just have an on style and an off style.
I uploaded pictures from a class trip on Facebook back in 2009 and had no captions or names that suggested that the pictures were taken in California. My camera at the time was not capable of GPS. Facebook still managed to get the location right.

Scary stuff.
There's nothing wrong with someone buying a WoW character and then selling it at a profit later.

Bitcoin is the same principle, more or less. It's an unreal, digital commodity that might or might not have value, depending on the perceiver. That bitcoins even exist are proof to me of the human ability to create and recreate stores and transfers of value, no matter how ridiculous those stores may seem to some:

http://www.wondermondo.com/Countries/Au/MicronesiaFS/Yap/Rai...
When you drive, your goals and the goals of everyone else on the road are roughly aligned insofar as you all want to travel from one place to another place quickly and safely. There are pretty rough consequences for those whose goals aren't similarly aligned. So yes, you could be killed by someone else driving drunk, but it's relatively unlikely.

Google's goals and mine aren't aligned at all, except instrumentally. So Google cares about my privacy up to and until it costs them less to not care than to care.

I'm fully in the Google camp, but let's be honest about the fact that we've made a deal with some supernatural being. We just hope it turns out not to be the devil.
Agreed, but this is a major building-block in that it allows evildoers to make multiple trips through security to deliver small amounts of items without detection.
Clearly, the Fourth Circuit at the time saw it that way. But that does not address the question of how was it viewed by the Framers who gaurunteed one (at least on the Federal level) in Article III. It also does not address the question (perhaps more relevant today) of what ought it to be and how ought it be treated?

It is possible, indeed likely given the history, that the Framer's saw providing nullifcation as part of the purpose of enshrining a jury trial in the Constitution.

Whether they saw it that way or not, the relevant question is, how ought we treat it? Should we treat it as an unfortunate side effect that we can't completely get rid of but should do everything we can to minimize? Or something to be embraced as essential? Or perhaps in between those two extremes, as something genuinely useful, but only "in extremis" when all better options have failed?
Installing the required tools to use a programming language is a very different kind of challenge than learning the ins and outs of a programming language with lots of gotchas.

When you work as a software engineer, you're expected to be able to install and operate just about any programming environment out there, so you might as well get used to it. Installing any of the big popular programming environments is pretty trivial, Eclipse, Visual studio, Racket scheme, Ubuntu and even the Haskell platform all come with a graphical installer and a comprehensive manual. Learning a new skill is not needed.

Now learning JavaScript wtf's is something entirely different. Stumbling upon one of these issues mentioned in the article while trying to learn to code is very difficult and disheartening.
Google's Mac Operations releasing custom built administration tools
I don't like to play contrarian when the room is full of them ;), but I was just reading some slides from a conference about understanding various costs in javascript and how to optimize, and it was put forth that contextualizing with call() and apply() are quite costly, more costly than one or two "upward" context traversals in search of e.g. the "self" variable you created to point to the top context (var self = this). And arguments look-ups can be costly as well. I can't find the damn slides or website now tho, sry.
What type of Serial Entrepreneur are you?
Advances and Challenges in Log Analysis
If you want to communicate your meaning to people who do not have time to read your entire text, the solution is to put a clear, short summary first within said text, in proper English.

A cryptically brief, ungrammatical special section is hugely suboptimal, and a labeled intro section is wholly unnecessary in a 10 page essay like this. Simply write. If you have not clearly communicated the essence of your article in the first few paragraphs, rewrite until you have.
Sparks.js a library to help create 3D particles in Javascript
Yeah, the lack of traits/mixins were the biggest problem with php's object model.
Winter Solstice
"Nullification is almost never appropriate for a marijuana case. Even though I think marijuana should be legal, and I know all about nullification, I would never use it there at this time, simply because the system has NOT broken down in this area. Want to stop people from getting convicted of marijuana crimes? Then elect legislators who will decriminalize marijuana."

I'd point to this portion of the article: "Nullification has been credited with helping to end alcohol prohibition and laws that criminalized gay sex. Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case. "

In this context it's part of the awareness and reform process. Again, from the article: "In October, the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, asked at a Senate hearing about the role of juries in checking governmental power, seemed open to the notion that jurors 'can ignore the law' if the law 'is producing a terrible result.' "

This is a peaceful and legal way of stating "This law is bunk, we won't help you enforce it."
In a talk I went to, the Pandora founder expounded on how they wanted to get into every country but they have to negotiate with the rights holders in each separate country. It isn't a matter of negotiating with the major multinationals on worldwide distribution.
nice job on the live updates. Can you link email so @tags directed at users send them an update (maybe one per day)?
Ask HN: medical pricing geo-location startup
For US HN readers, going to the doctor is always filled with uncertainty, i.e. how much it's going to cost. Most health care places do not list their prices and there is no way to find out until after the fact.

What does HN think about implementing geo-location app/start up to provide pricing information on the procedures (by users) and attach them to the places?
I've had the pleasure of speaking to a couple of prosecutors and am in law school right now. They definitely try to get plea bargains, but it is more a matter of effeciency.

In any place with a remotely high population density, a prosecutor normally has more cases lined up than they can really do justice for and many more that they are deliberately choosing not to go forward with at all, not because they don't have plenty of evidence, but because they are focusing on the more significant cases. Getting a plea bargain is simply much faster for the prosecutor and much cheaper for the government than a full trial.
Lone Wolf (Can Yıldızlı), The winner of the 2011 DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge
Can Yıldızlı is the Grand Champion of Digital Forensics Challenge 2011.
Your theory that the current state of a user's account and their past usage patterns should determine which mailers and communications the user receives essentially refers to the techniques outlined in Seth Godin's book "Permission Marketing". Check out Seth's book - I would imagine your readers and users could also use a summary or refresher of the principles behind "Permission Marketing" - it's powerful stuff!
I'm not sure how many investors is a lot, but 17 sounds like a lot for a seed round. In my experience (two rounds, two different start-ups) the seed stage was around 3-4 investors. What's a "normal" amount? I understand the number of investors is limited at some point and might even make acquisitions difficult down the road.
Slow Internet Survival Guide - Get the Most out of a Slow Connection
Check out this Slow Internet Survival Guide:
http://www.myfixlog.com/fix.php?fid=76
It shows how to take advantage of services such as dropbox and logmein.com to get the most out of a slow internet connection.
A week?
VC Tom Kinnear's advice on landing investors for your startup
Like I said, I did feel at a bit of a disadvantage. I double majored in English Literature and Math at the undergrad level, which is not something you would typically do in Europe or Asia. Even if you stick to a single major, the US system typically requires a lot of general education coursework (history, art, etc). I studied plenty of math, but European and Asian students typically focus much more intensely on their major subject at the undergraduate level. I had met the prerequisites for some of my grad courses, but it was still new material for me. For many of my fellow students, it was review.

As the percentage of US students continues to dwindle in US based graduate programs, I think that these courses will be increasingly taught assuming a European or Asian style undergraduate experience (ie., earlier specialization) - after all, that's becoming the typical background in these programs. I don't think that the US students necessarily lack the talent or core prerequisites, but they will be more likely to be seeing "graduate level" material for the first time, whereas it may be review for the international students.

To give an example, suppose there's a graduate course in advanced stochastic processes, and prerequisites are calculus based statics and an undergraduate course in introductory stochastic processes. The American took the prerequisites, and also took a lot of coursework outside his major (as required by his university). An international student took far less coursework outside the major and instead used the time to take what in the US would be graduate level courses in stochastic processes. The international student, in this case, would be at a substantial advantage.

The American, though, will probably choose some other path than a PhD in a STEM field - I personally that the RAND study has pretty much identified why that's the case (better pay and prospects in other fields). I think your insight into the difference between US and international students around markets is a good one - if your failure rate is higher, you'd be more inclined to avoid that program, so they are responding differently. That said, I think that the difficulty of gaining admission to professional schools in the US is a also a major factor (medical and law schools make it far more difficult for international students to gain admission than PhD programs in STEM fields, and if we go the "staple a green card to any STEM degree" but don't take comparable actions in other fields, we should understand that this will probably exacerbate the trend away from STEM and toward other fields among people who can choose their profession in the US).

Oh lastly, to answer your question - yes, the dropout rate from STEM undergraduate majors in the US is high (new york times did an article on this recently), and my undergraduate program was no different. But those Americans who make it through often go to professional schools or into finance (though the trend toward finance has reversed somewhat recently), again (I believe) for the reasons specified in the RAND study.
Hold those caps: The average web page is now almost 1MB
Dijkstra could be an asshat sometimes. BASIC is great because it teaches you that a computer can be made to do neat things by following a series of tiny instructions. It gives you that without you having to understand lexical scope, which is, I think, pretty hard to grasp for new users.

Sure, every user will outgrow it, but that's fine. Tricycles are a shitty way to drive to work, but that doesn't mean you should just put your toddler behind the wheel of your car and let him go.
On a purely humorous note, did anyone else watching the video hear Chad say that LS scales to "bazillions" or "zillions" of transactions?

edit : downvoted, really? I thought it was a funny slip
Yeah, JavaScript will break their impressionable young minds. But you know what? Programming in general will break their minds. Programming is fucked up from any perspective. If they learn a good language first, they will go crazy trying to figure out why nobody is using it. Might as well teach them a language that lets them get stuff done in the real world, while preparing them for the ugliness ahead. They can learn the good language later.
Photoshop Tutorials To Design A Website
Before I even read the article, I was pretty sure that with a title like that there is going to be lots of debate from the CS people. They do raise some good points, but here's my 2 cents.

Besides a little bit of VB in highschool, JavaScript was my first language. I mainly learned through two books: "The Good Parts" which was a nice overview, and "Object-Oriented JavaScript" a really underrated book that covered every little piece of the language, even those weird parts like block scoping and falsy types.

Having never learned anything about classes or inheritance, prototypal inheritance was kinda hard to grasp, but I eventually found it pretty amazing. I think a loosely typed language is much better to learn on too. That way you can learn the big pieces of the language then later get into the little things like typing. That's just my experience, but I'm really glad JS was my first language.
Sure let's speculate they have a function that returns a guessed gps coordinate at time t. Again there are dumb implementations for this. Can take a time decaying and time-of-day/day-of-week weighted mode of your recognized locations. I imagine it'd be fairly accurate.
..and they know you know. Yay for democracy!
If all they have is the document and the ODF specification, they are out of luck. They'll need the OpenOffice or LibreOffice source code, as that is the real specification.
In the US the tying of funding to results is accomplished by market forces (which also favour, say, campus facilities) whereas in Britain it's administered directly by the government (which also favours "research", that is, publication count).

But since both place a substantial weight on "graduation rate", the same effect is seen vis-à-vis teaching quality.
Anything that takes over a decade to successfully execute isn't quite "amnesty" by my definition. "Amnesty" is like "Hey, you're good to go!".

Amnesty International isn't campaigning for prisoners to be released "about 10 years from now".
I like the author on a personal level. This was a great post that's really deep despite its brevity and simplicity. I remember he posted something on HN a few months ago about Gumroad - something about the problems involved in launching or something if I reme,bet right. I'm impressed that this young guy is doing do much. We can all learn from people like this. I'm just a few years older and I envy him. He seems like an old soul and I'm so impressed with how much he's accomplished. I know it's off topic but I was so impressed I had to say this.
Better, since it is clear how to pass a function as an argument.
What the Digital Piracy Debate Looked Like in 1985
This is an excellent summary. Some minor points:

Spain not only didn't have a public debt problem, it was running a surplus on a debt of 60%. And Spain understood the risk of the asset bubble and tried to stop bad property lending by reforming its banks - no help at all, since German banks stepped in to provide inadequately covered loans to finance the bubble... Now PIIGS countries must not default so that foolish non-PIIGS banks don't have their balance sheets destroyed.

The simple morality tale that many try to weave does not survive a closer look at events.

While I agree with your characterisation of the problem, devaluation is no panacea since (i) it tends to cause inflation, (ii) it only works as advertised if there is adequate global demand, and (iii) the devaluation is equivalent to a default from the point of view of creditors. I lean towards some sort of Eurobond supported by an intra-Eurozone investment programme to support trade imbalances.

Finally PIIGS is an awful acronym, who came up with it? PIGIS would be much better, and could be pronounced "piggies".
As a toy example showing that knowing even just basic ideas and techniques from this area can be useful, play around with designing a purely functional algorithm for the Stable Marriage Problem. Please report back if you come up with something efficient :)
Of course, we would have to agree on the target audience to make sense of what useful means.
I answered that I would be willing to vote guilty if the law and the facts supported such a verdict.

This is absolutely true, and I am free to nullify (without having lied) if I find the law doesn't support such a verdict.

I'm wondering though what happened to the guy in NY (came to the comments here hoping someone had tracked that down). He was arraigned in Feb of this year.
> Why would you care so much when it's happening to you, but you readily block other countries without batting an eyelid?

Who is doing the caring and who is doing the blocking? When you understand that the two are not the same group, you will understand why this is not hypocrisy.
We've actually had retention since we launched nearly three years ago, but this release gives it a lot more love.

The new stuff:

1. You can calculate birth cohort retention based on anything (signup date, date of first payment, app install date, etc). Basically, the grouping of your users is configurable.

2. You can filter and segment retention based on the properties you send. This lets you look at how things like A/B test version, Ad version, or user type impact retention rates.

3. The visualization is prettier!

We're really excited about how flexible Retention is now. We'd hacked in a little flexibility before, but this is dramatically better.
In your previous comment you essentially said: "I just don't believe the US government wants to shut down Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, and all of the other major sites". Aside from avoiding the main issue, that's hardly a "defence". It's just a statement of disbelief.
I have not read Geoff Thompson book but from what was present in the article...

He is obviously not referring to professional mixed martial artists (UFC, Strikeforce, Pride, etc) when using the term "school-trained martial artist." I assume he means someone who visits a gym on a casual basis, but holds down a regular full time job. To try to even qualify such an argument without getting into any kind of specifics (weights of parties involved, one-on-one fight, legal ramifications) is ridiculous. If he is referring to professional mma artists he is off his rocker. These guys would annihilate "street fighters" and do so on a regular basis. These is a NSFW story about a mediocre pro fighter named "War Machine" (yes I know) and a street fight where he laid out something like 9 guys.

I would give the the book the time of day but I will never give money to anyone who is a self proclaimed "victor in over 200 street fights" because I myself have won over 400.