skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This comment is a weird mix of truth and untruth. Yes, there's a lot of toxic chemicals involved in solar panel production, as there is in IC production and a whole load of other production processes. http://www.solarindustrymag.com/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazard...

Liquid solar panels are simply not a production-ready technology. There are no commercial liquid solar cell farms. Installed solar panels are solid. They're not particularly prone to corrosion and 'leaking', and are >99% silicon with trace amounts of boron and phosphorous. CdTe is actually nastier.

Solar farms are hurting the ecosystem when they break and leak out

[citation needed]
Great post. Next month (Dec 7-13) is Hour of Code Week. Kids everywhere can practice coding.

https://hourofcode.com/
Even though there are more Android devices the iOS App Store has higher revenue.

"[App Annie]’s annual report claims that the App Store generated more than 70% more revenues than Google Play in 2014"

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/28/android-io...
They're testing it:

https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/
Standford is using these in a commercial manner, and is also a commercial organisation.

"If you use content for general research, even if not for any specific purpose, and you or your organisation generates income, that counts as commercial use. So does using content for pro-bono work (from the Latin pro bono publico, meaning 'for the public good', or working for free), if it also enhances your reputation or leads to income-generating work in any way whatsoever."

Why was Stanford given permission where as no permission has been given to all French citizens?
Yes, well if things continue as they are hopefully this will become a reality by necessity.
The downvoting here has been ridiculous for a while now... I think posts with lots of upvotes and downvotes should be marked as interesting rather than bad.

Or are we aiming for blandness here?
Solar as well as wind. Clearly there's no shortage of electricity at night if it's being given away.
When and where was torture used to generate theories about WMD in Iraq?

afaik it was based on the well established fact that Saddam Hussein had once possessed and used WMDs, cynicism about his stated destruction of them and circumstantial evidence that certain facilities might have still contained them.
Customers Seal the Fate of Startups
Is it possible to use coffee machines and stay safe from hackers?
NO2 is pretty nasty. I don't know about NOx
Right! My take on it is that Gorbachev did not have the stomach for a rerun of Czechoslovakia 1968. And what a lucky thing that was!
residential aluminum smelters

This is not something you can sensibly do in a residential area. (There are a few people doing Al casting with induction furnaces, but that's not the same as electrolysis of bauxite)
Interesting. This article is now on page 3 of HN, apparently flagged to death.
Ask HN: Can you imagine using VR for things such as gaming?
Recently I've been seeing more and more about Virtual Reality in the press, and buzz on social media.

I can see applications in industry, such as controlling robots to do dangerous work etc. But can you see yourself using Virtual Reality sets for things such as gaming and entertainment - replacing current tech such as TV's and games consoles?

I imagine it could be quite cool, but I've heard a lot of arguments to the effect of 'you'd never know what else was going on in the room at the time'.

I ask hacker news because I think it would be an interesting debate, but I also think the demographic of the community is likely to be people who will be in the early uptakers of new tech...
Ask HN: A BuiltWith-like service that isn't based on code analysis?
Would you be interested in a data service similar to BuiltWith, but that gets the insights from other places? E.g. which products/technologies a company is using.
This thread dropped from number 3 to number 97 in 3 minutes right after I made the Google comment.

Censorship at its finest.
Im also behind McAfee Web Gateway and have access to OpenStreetMap, its up to whoever maintains it in your corp to unblock
FrankenSim, our delightfully grotesque web-toy
A comment on that page:

Publishers cannot blame advertisers 100% for this situation.

As an advertiser, I tried several times to offer, less intrusive ads in exchange for lower CPM. Publishers never, not even once, would be willing to reduce their price by even a penny in exchange for friendlier ads.

I think without any irony.
Show HN: Egg Timer, easy-to-use egg timer with push notifications
This would be a good solution assuming you only needed to write once to your archive. Since this is literally etched in glass, there's no way to edit any data. Also, instructions on what to do with a box of glass someone finds 100 years from now would be helpful. :P
There’s a filter based on the total number of votes and the ratio of comments to votes, which I think this just tripped. It’s designed to reduce the occurrence of front-page ‘flame wars’.
Looks like the same game (Korona) that I used to play when growing up in Finland. Fascinating to read history of it.
So why isn't oil like this normally? Are the downsides to doing this?
The Chris Roberts + Kickstarter combo has worried me from day one... But he can still raise more money since a majority of backers still seem to believe in him, quite aggressively so, too. Even if this ends up being a great game, I'm sure many will be sorely disappointed (and the higher the stakes are raised, the more will be) when they learn it is still just a computer game. A piece of software in an artificially constrained sandbox, necessary shortcuts taken during game design, etc., something with a period of excitement, peak, and lifetime.
Some of my friends report how eating certain mushrooms made the super creative. I have asked what they created? Nothing. The reason why they think they we're creative is because they felt creative.

This article made similar thing for me with respect to learning. I feel like I learned something. But I really don't remember what.
IoT Considerations Part 2 – Hardware Issues and Embedded Environment
No it isn't.
I know of folks that have gone to prison for illegally passing non-streetlegal cars with modifications for california's mandatory smog testing. I'm not a legal expert, but does this sort of thing allow them to get a new trial since - intent aside - there seem to be problems with the system?
Hi xyzing, thank you for your attention.
It gets any random stream from worldwide without language restriction now. But as you mentioned, language restriction seems like a good idea.
I found an interesting here in Scotland not far from Edinburgh - there are some really nice beaches and a large estate with golf courses and high end housing immediately inland from the beaches. Between the beaches and the houses there is a very large green metal fence which stops all access from the properties to the beaches.

My initial reaction was how unreasonable it was for the developers to build such a fence to keep people out of their development. Then I noticed that there are no gaps in the fence and, on doing some research, found out that the fence is there to keep the house owners off of the beach!

I'd be a bit annoyed if I spent £1M on a house overlooking a lovely beach only to find that I'd have to walk/drive 8km or so to the other side of the fence...
I have no idea. By your phrasing, it sounds like you might? I'd be interested in being enlightened as to the state of adherence to radiation safety standards by cell phones.
Zesty is hiring Ember.js and Rails developers
I don't want to pay google. I want to pay the publisher directly. All this will do is give google even more power over publishers which is the last thing we need.
There was a civil war all over the place. The "ukrainian" part is well documented by Bulgakov, for example.

Not going to argue.
Yes, if said engines put out enough pollution to statistically kill people and the designers foresaw it.
Speaking of culture, this comment reminds me of how other communities see HN. We seem to be unaware of our own culture while outsiders can see it quite well.

- "Ad hominem"

- Causation/correlation

- Complaining about ads

- Complaining about font color and size

- Complaining

- "This." (We pinched the laziest one-liner Reddit has to offer)

- Anything regarding logical fallacies
Having used my phone to control my TV, I vastly prefer the small aluminium remote Apple shipped with the Apple TV. The new remote for the latest Apple TV is quite good too (though it's hard to tell which way around it should be by feel alone).

Unlike you, I want a limited remote control based UI pattern for the TV. Complexity, location of my phone, and battery life are not things I'd like to worry about when I'm at home and want to navigate the TV. Nor do I want to be staring at a little screen to setup which content to play next.

From an interaction perspective, what I disliked in a smartphone-as-remote was the following:

* Not able to navigate by feel alone, in the dark

* Had to unlock phone to use it. Can't just pick it up and press a button without looking at the little screen

* Screen lights up and creates a distraction

* Battery life is measured in one or two days (and often, at night when you want to watch TV, is at its low point)

* Not good when you watch with a group of friends and like to navigate through shows, actors, directors on the big screen

* It just didn't feel good. I realise this is a vague point, but I didn't realise how much I valued the tactile sensation of a nice remote until its battery died and I was stuck with my phone for a while.
Yes, it shortens engine life.
It probably depends on the types of ads (and each person's personal preferences). For me, I'm like you in that I'd much prefer to see ads of musicals/plays and other local goings-on in my own hometown or as tourist somewhere instead of ads for toothpaste, cars, apps, etc.
How does SQL lack product tables? The product of the column spec (foo int, bar bool) with the column spec (baz text, quux date) is the column spec (foo int, bar bool, baz text, quux date).
Yeah. Diesel can be made to burn clean though, and diesel-engined cars are more efficient (~20-40%). We Americans have the need for speed and diesel engines are slow-accelerating, which keeps sales low.
The distinction is, that a waiter can make or break the entire experience in the restaurant. Amazing food can be spoiled by rude waiters, or poor food can be improved by ones that are very nice.

In contrast, my experience with the delivery driver is limited to the 10 second it takes for them to hand me my food. Literally every single takeaway takes payment online, so for years now my food was already paid for before it was even delivered. So all the driver has to do is give me my food. He doesn't even have to say anything, there's no conversation to be had, "delivery experience" to experience. So why tip?
The point I am making is that we don't know if the phones we buy meet those standards or if just like in the VW case the tests are being manipulated.
relevant: http://www.reaxxion.com/10195/why-star-citizen-is-likely-goi...

(previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840425 )
OpenStack and Beyond Podcast Episode 5 – Konichiwa from the OpenStack Tokyo Summit
Thy have, it's called e-car
TV's need to be easily upgradeable the BBC's iplayer stopped working in my newish Sony a while back as it couldn't handle the new iplayer.

I use my Xbox to access other on demand services (C5 and C4) as the native sony support is so poor.
Ad Blockers and the Next Chapter of the Internet
I actually made this because we needed such a simple web page cycler for our office kitchen display. Out of curiosity, what kind of extensions do you use?
Hack This Capture the Flag 2015
Cool, although vastly out of budget for me.

>is ideal for setting up a custered (and libre!) super computing environment.

I'm assuming they mean "clustered", as opposed to the dessert topping or the General.
Ask HN: Best books you've read in 2015
What were the best books you read this year?
This company does not do well in film production, “smart” TVs, video streaming, mobile phones, bicycles. But now it wants to make electric cars. It's really ridiculous.
Not click-baity but seriously lacking in information. The work relates to the relationship of orthography to pronunciation in English. From the title I was expecting some syntactical or grammatical result. At the very least the title should read, "Mathematicians prove the triviality of English pronunciation" but even then that misses the mark, doesn't it?

Not only that, but I think the conclusions are frankly incorrect. I would not say that because LAM=LAMB (when spoken) that B=1. I would say that LA=LA and M=MB. B is not silent elsewhere, only in combination with M so it is false to discount the B (setting it to 1) without contextualising that B as being alongside an M when this happens, if you see what I mean. This to me seems so obvious that I fear I am missing something huge here because I can't think how otherwise they can assert what they are asserting.

Don't like to be harsh or snarky on HN but in this instance...?
> Why do we find ourselves reading emails during vacation or sick days, even when we don't have to?

Because we fear to get sacked?
Moore’s Law in Big Pharma – Or why pharmaceuticals suck (TEDxBerlin talk)
But how do you define it then? A 1.0L 3-cylinder engine that emits 90g of CO2/1km that goes into 1 million cars is still more harmful statistically than a 7.0L V12 which emits 600g of CO2/km engine but only goes into 300 limited-edition ferraris. So maybe all engine engineers are "morally responsible" for air pollution, no matter what engines they build, or whether they lie or not?
Performing merges and handling conflicts seems like a harder problem than for text.
I use AdBlock, Ghostery, Disconnect and Privacy Badger.
If you're not using any, I would recommend starting with AdBlock or Disconnect.
Meditations on Moloch
So was it the rogue employee, or the conspiracy of the evil management to find a scapegoat for the cheating they decided to do? I always read about these 2 explanations. Both quite entertaining, and a little to much Hollywood-like to be completely true.

Management by objective is the true problem here.

Step 1: Management, moved by market, shareholder and/or own ambition, sets unrealistic goals - probably even unknown to it.

Step 2: Employee, perhaps several levels of goal setting below, realises it can't be done, and cheats to save his career.

I suspect this kind of systemic evil is involved in a lot of corporate misbehaviour. Todays organisations are not ruled by command, but by goals.
And since the means to achieve that goal are not written anywhere, the management can't be accused of unlawfulness. And the employee who is bound by such goals finds himself in an awkward dilemma.
I currently use Ghostery, but I'll check these other ones, thanks!
It sank pretty much without trace the last two times people submitted it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9211628, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8108619). Let's see if it does better this time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10532551.
They'd have to bulldoze private property and driveways to widen the roads in that area of the hills. Just try driving up to that area in GTAV :)
Though I'm a Prometheus author, I need to defend InfluxDB here :) Since 0.9.0, they support tags (vs. fields), which store indexed dimensions similarly to how Prometheus does it. So this argument doesn't count anymore. Still, there are many other differences in scope and functionality between the two systems.
It's also done by the FAA, via the DER program. But at least in this case, from all that I've seen, the DERs are deadly serious about safety and doing the right thing.

https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/designees_...
Kibana is more logging, but Promethues covers the StatsD and Graphite requirements out of the box. Graphfana is one visualisation option to go with that (http://www.robustperception.io/setting-up-grafana-for-promet...).
I am also using Ghostery and found it really good. I was curious to know if the web experience it provided could be even improved. Thanks for the tips!
I can understand that somebody being exposed to this idea for the first time would be dubious. If you'd rather hear it from some of the world's top creators, check out presspauseplay.com.
War is a barbarism at industrial scale, which humanity, unfortunately, haven't managed to eradicate. There are however certain undertakings to reduce human suffering: bans of certain particularly inhumane or indiscriminating weapons, prohibitions of deliberate targeting of civilians, and yes, elimination of torture.

If you make an effort to reduce suffering it comes as a complete package: people quick to torture are the same people who would use Sarin on civilians. There is simply no middle ground. The concept of innocence doesn't come into play anyway. Wars are mass murders stemming from greater social and political processes; a conscript soldier guarding a fuel depot is not any more "guilty" apriori than his civilian relative.

There is more or less intellectual consensus that wars cause suffering, and attempts are made to reduce the misery. Propagating torture is not serving a good cause here. You essentially argue that a "lesser" crime is acceptable in context of a "greater" crime going on anyway. If one's going to kill the victim might rape her anyway.
Chinese clones attack STM32 microcontrollers
To VW mgmt re setting unrealistic goals with huge consequences to employee careers/progression/etc: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Balsillie fears TPP will cost Canada billions
Try out Prometheus, you can get it up and running a few minutes. It supports all the functions Graphite does, bar sin() and the Holt Winters functions which we plan on adding.
Meanwhile, shifting context back to the bigger picture:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/climate-pl...

http://climateactiontracker.org/

How's your country doing with regard to its greenhouse gas emission pledges? Consider hassling your political representatives in the lead up to the Paris talks. Hassle your friends to participate in political action.
Seems to be clashing names with another notable project called Sideshow, javascript library for interactive tours: https://github.com/fortesinformatica/Sideshow
Spot on. And horribly widespread in many industries.
It's often used as a way for a person to shut someone up when they don't have an argument. Seriously, karma should really be called groupthink points.
> I'm sure there's a bit more elegant way to find the missing thousand component, but for me it would be just quicker to do a bit of brute-forcing:

The calculation the author wants is

LastThreeDigits(secret*23) = 642

that is equivalent to

secret * 23 == 642 (mod 1000)

that is equivalent to

secret * 23 + dummy * 1000 = 642

The standard method is to solve this first for 1 instead of 642

other_secret * 23 + other_dummy * 1000 = 1

and this can be solved with the Extended Euclidean Algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Euclidean_algorithm

(But in this case, and with a computer, it's easier the brute force solution.)
Acum pantofii de dama pentru toamna sunt la moda, din piele sau nu
Yes, I know. The international imperialism and four seasons is the cause of all the misfortune, and fascist from Baltic states and Georgia. This is what stops a common Russian to live in prosperity. Did I cover all the bases?

I could give you my understanding about the root cause of Russian misfortune, but if you happen to be Russian (as it seems to be the case), you would probably not appreciate it. You would probably think that I try to insult you while it is just not true. Just some bits of history hurt. I know it from my own experience.

But I think that there is a deep historical reason why your named countries are doing in much sense better that Russia despite the lack of natural resources or endless fields of fertile soil.
A good notice for pirate fishing
Metaprogramming in D from a beginner's perspective
>> That is a problem because the “non-contacted” tribal members have low immunity to infections such as the flu and can die after exposure to outsiders.

"Washington Post journalists were given rare permission by the tribe to visit the Awá reserve."

That's part of the problem.
If you prefer running an open-source solution yourself, Prometheus (http://prometheus.io/) addresses exactly those points and works especially well in a dynamic cloud / microservices / container scheduler world.

It has a dimensional data model, a powerful query language to go with it, and covers aspects from instrumentation to storing data, all the way to alerting and dashboarding. The latest version of Grafana has native Prometheus support now too. Many tools (like Kubernetes or etcd) already export Prometheus metrics natively, so you can monitor them with Prometheus right out of the box. Support for many kinds of service discovery (Kubernetes, Marathon, EC2, Consul, ...) make it work very well to monitor dynamically scheduled services as well. Disclaimer: Prometheus author.
In my case, I had them mount the rescue/recovery environment, and booted into that. I think I had to mount the HD image, and configure networking, but I was able to create an archive from the available data, and transfer it out.

I had never encountered a problem like this with any other VPS providers. To this date, my favorite is https://www.nu42.com/2015/06/linode-kvm-upgrade.html where, over the years, my VPS went through several free upgrades performance upgrades without any hitches.

So, assuming you can still stop the droplet, do so. Contact DO, ask them to mount the rescue recovery environment. See what you can see at that point. Good luck.
I'm surprised the scheme is so weak.

Wherever money is involved, even the small amounts for carparking[1], you're going to have people attacking the system to get free stuff.

And car park machines[2] have extensive audit trails.

[1] an individual stay is quite cheap. Over a year it's a lot of cash.

[2] At least, the Almex Control Systems machines did. As did the TIMTronic and System B and System C and Delta bus ticket machines.
Chickens are easily hypnotized :)
It's very likely someone with access to ST R&D office lifted the entire IP here... I know for a fact re-implementing a MCU as complex as a STM32 would be an insane amount of work -- especially to make it IP compatible...

So if I were ST I'd have a closer look at which student were left in alone in the server room, and when!
It's not just VW that set internal, unrealistic goals - it was the politicians setting said unrealistic goals as laws.

A 2-ton SUV will always gulp more fuel than a 800kg Smart, but it is NOT the job of the carmakers to get people to buy fuel efficient vehicles (as politicians intended to do by imposing "fleet CO2 limits"), it is the job of the politicians.

So instead of e.g. taxing cars with much CO2 emissions, which would be hated by the population because they want to drive SUVs, the politicians went to the carmakers instead and now everyone wonders how this could happen.
I had a new director starting a few years ago when my kids were 1 & 3. Literally the first email I sent to him was at 11 PM the evening before his first day, so I started with, "Don't pay any attention to the time of this email. I'm sending it now because the kids are asleep and I'm still awake; I have no expectations that you'll be online answering emails all hours of the day."
Not anymore they don't. Georgia and Armenia were the richest as parts of USSR, but then they became independent and suddently needed to support themselves - they're pretty poor countries now.

Independent Ukraine failed to catch up with its 1990 GDP/person, as far as I know. I of course understand that direct comparsions between socialist and free-market countries are flawed.

Now, Baltic states fared better, but they got onto EU, making it not a fair comparsion.

You are trying to sell me the futility of argument on HN? Why bother writing anything then?