skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a troll story.

He talks a lot about a strong currency, about a trade surplus, and some other numbers that, if GDP is meaningless, then these numbers are meaningless squared. Impressive trade numbers could be a sign that Japan is undervaluing consuming its own goods, as people lately have been saying about Germany. Or these numbers could be a sign of a number of other things. They don't really tell us much, by themselves; they need to be interpreted in some context. He tells us the true fact that Japan's growth has been stagnant for a long time, but the author claims despite this Japan has some growth in real prosperity, an increase in living standards... then never tells us how. It's a bunch of talk and bluster with some useless numbers thrown in that never answer the crucial question of, if Japan really is doing better, how real standards of living have increased for the Japanese.

Furthermore, the concluding lines about a $5000 offer for invitees to "debate" him smells trollish, as well as his shameless plug of his blog.
Wow, I wasn't aware of this. I'm still a student but it seems that about 1 out of every 2 journal articles is by an Elsevier owned journal. I'll have to keep note of that for the future.
Hmm, good solution for the times when you can't find subtitles that match. Often VLC's subtitle sync works though (lets you adjust in hundreds of ms each way).
That was a function of the bureaucracy and legal requirements around the projects, not Ada the language.

If you legally have to have a meeting with 10 people to review and physically sign off on every line of code, your project will probably take a while.

Plus the compilers sucked in the 80's.
Keep in mind that a less verbose expression is not necessarily
It's been a while since I last used third-party subtitles for a movie but as I recall, it rarely happens that all captions are off by a constant offset. Usually the desynchronization itself stems from a movie version having longer gaps between scenes, for instance. In that case, this won't be much helpful but otherwise, good job.
That is the real issue here. People aren't exposed to these ideas and we keep reinventing them, poorly. Worse, people don't listen to the older more experienced people until after they've already blown themselves up (often more than once).

I'm not sure how to make someone who isn't interested in learning history, learn history. Is this just a result of that our industry is entirely composed of youth?
The Two Cultures of Mathematics
I have been using this for a project at work - simply as a remote keyboard & mouse for multiple PCs/Macs in the same room. Could you add arrow keys to the keyboard?
Isn't it weird that this article is trying to squash the myth of the "lost decade"--the 1990's--by Japan's affluence since 2000? Big screen TVs, advanced cellphones, high-speed internet, etc etc.
Thank you :) Yes, there is an option in KMPlayer too (for subtitle fps conversion and time shifting) but sometimes trial and error just doesn't seem to work for me. So, I wrote this script instead (it was good fun).

As of now I've tried many different movies and deliberately downloaded the wrong FPS and time shifted it using the subtitle tool but so far it is working as it should be :)
That's a framerate issue, e.g. 23.976 frame/s vs. 25 frame/s.
Easily correctable, not sure if this service can handle that though.
Most things in the senate require a vote of 60 votes to accomplish, however, this usually doesn't happen and Harry Reid (or whoever is standing in for him on a given day) just asks for unanimous consent. If no one objects, then they proceed as if everyone voted for it. What Ron Wyden did was object to bringing the bill to the floor. Thus, it will require him to give consent or a vote of 60 Senators to bring the bill to the floor (which they wouldn't try to do unless they were sure it would work).

Most of the time, there are only a few people actually in the senate chamber. The person standing in for Reid, one Republican Senator, the person giving some sort of speech/statement into the record and for cspan, and whoever is next to do the same. Within each party, any Senator can (publicly or secretly) ask their representative in the chamber to object on their behalf. Ron Wyden did so publicly, in the past people have gotten riled up about "secret holds" where the leadership of the objecting side doesn't expose who objected. If Harry Reid really wanted to push for the bill, he could call a vote, which would put everyone on the record voting in favor or opposition on bringing it to the floor, but Senators hate being officially on one side or the other of a bill, so they usually wait until they can convince whoever has a hold to drop it (usually through giving them some sort of favor, etc).
Google's Stanislaw Lem doodle open sourced
Patent examiner salaries are 52-79k? In Washington, D.C., the most highly paid metro area in the USA?

No wonder they can't manage to hire engineers who know any of the many technologies that have been around for decades and still get repeatedly patented every week. That's as bad as the continuing prohibition on admitting computer engineers and software engineers to the patent bar while software becomes an ever larger fraction of the case load.
could you add some screenshots to explain the process?

I'll test it on my next subtitle issue :)
He misses some key statistics... The Japanese government is wallowing in debt. Much of the current standard of living is based on borrowed dollars. Their debt to GDP ratio is worse than any of the European countries in crisis and much worse than the US. This is despite having outsourced most of their military to the US.

I find Japan endlessly facinating, and cringe when I see one dimensional reporting in any direction. There is much more subtlty involved.
The Big Nerd Ranch books are great resources and kept up to date. Kindle formats of these books are good too.
Oh. "entry-level" is objective, not subjective. Meant 3-series vs 5/7-series and A4 vs A6/A8.
Chrome Engineer: Firefox Is A Partner, Not A Competitor
(Asking some random questions into the aether in the hope that someone knowledgeable might answer ;P.) So, how does one register "official congressional support" for something? (As in: how did companies get on this list in the first place? Is that just a list of entities who have contributed money to the committee somehow?) Is there a way to register congressional "dissupport"? (Why is there no equivalent list of "dissupporters" for this bill? Is it common practice to only list supporters?)
Follow up: I got an email from the support team. They said they plan to add captions or subtitles after the holidays.

I'm hopeful. Just passing along to those who depend on captions.
Yes, I am hoping to add a 30 second video to explain the whole process. Basically you upload a srt file in the first screen and then match any 3 subtitle text to the correct time (as determined from watching the video).

Based on that information the script calculates the discrepancy in the frame rate or time shift by comparing it with the original file and then fixes that for you (also gives you two different versions if more than one solution fits)
I don't live in Japan. I would be happy to be proved wrong.

So for me the article presents a non-falsifiable claim: Japan is doing better than ever. However, his claims could be checked by someone in a Japanese manufacturing company.

In the meantime, I don't see why it is surprising that Japan is doing well. As a nation they have positioned themselves well. The major challenge they face -- lack of natural resources -- has not materially affected their growth in the last 20 years. Instead, they are continuing to focus on the entire manufacturing vertical. Not just steel mills and consumer brands (ok, I'm making the U.S. seem dumber than they are).
I use Name.com as well. Excellent interface, support staff, and easy-to-use website.
What happened in Rwanda was all the more monstrous because of how much evidence the world community ignored. What evidence is there here?
Because you can't pull an image off of someone's computer and upload it to your server with a proxy.

Without cross domain limitations on canvas, you could do that.

I wrote a bit about those rules a while back:

http://simonsarris.com/blog/480-understanding-the-html5-canv...
I have used dvds with foreign subtitles to learn languages. One thing I don't like is that the spoken translation is usually different than the subtitled one. I think it would be a nice learning aide if the two translations could be made to match. Or to at least have the option to put in alternate subtitled translations.
Yes, that too, but that's not what I had in mind. I recall having to adjust the timing after a major block of footage, not permamently as would be the case with a mismatched framerate. Again, it might be a rare problem.
I'm a fan of gandi.net
I didn't say it's brand new. Actually this is basically a hello world aplication for node.js

I liked the output and wanted to know what people would think about it.

BTW, I didn't copy anything, I watched the video and saw ryan doing TCP chat example and I thought I can do it for web and that would be great to learn node.js and socket.io
"Christmas Vacation" is a classic.
Yes, it can automatically handle all frame-rate issues with time-shifting. What it can't handle is if there is an irregular break in between (say extra subtitles in between, extended versions, etc).
> Their debt to GDP ratio is worse than any of the European countries in crisis and much worse than the US. This is despite having outsourced most of their military to the US.

I read somewhere that most of that debt is owed to local companies though (like Japanese banks, mutual funds etc.), not foreigners, so that should provide them with a small safety cushion.

One thing that I'm curious about and too lazy to search for right now is to know what happened to the proposed privatization of the Japan Post? Some say that it's the largest holder of personal savings worldwide, it would be really interesting to see how that turns out.
GPL enforcement is a lot of work with expensive lawyers and made harder when you are not the copyright holder.

hint: this is why the FSF require copyright assignment for their project. But they have barely any on the Linux kernel, the principal matter in the Android source code.
Besides the superficial ("parentheses!"), I've heard two major complaints about Lisp. One is that it's just too powerful. The other is that macros don't really let you do anything you can't do with lambdas in other languages, just with (much) easier quoting.

I don't think you can have it both ways. (I'm not saying that any one person is making both of these points, but person B's anti-Lisp argument is arguing against person A's anti-Lisp point.) If you can't use Lisp in a team because somebody might write a macro that you don't understand, how can you deal with Python or Ruby or C# code that inevitably tries to fake it by taking as parameters functions-that-returns-other-functions?

(The other common alternative I see these days is to make your DSLs in XML. That means they're more verbose, you can't step through them in your debugger, and so on -- plus you still have the problem that allowing arbitrary DSLs is too powerful! I suppose there's also a third alternative: don't even try to use higher-level abstraction, and build giant apps out of low-level spaghetti code.)

I've seen perfectly readable code in Lisp, even making extensive use of macros. (There are conventions, and good programmers do follow them.) I've also seen perfectly undecipherable code in every language I've ever seen. When I've watched individuals write code in multiple languages, those that write bad Lisp tend to write bad anything. Nothing that I've seen leads me to believe that there is any significant set of programmers who can only write bad Lisp code, but can write great code in lower-level languages. We can give them Lisp, though, and they will at least write less of it!
This is awesome. Is anyone doing it already?
Actually, there's a very good explanation for how net exports can increase substantially even though official GDP measures decrease; it represents less than 5% of the japanese economy.

Japan's GDP is about $4T right now. Net exports have increased to 200B. Which is, by the author's estimation "a lot". Japan has had an export policy for the past 30 years. The fact that it's managed to create 4 GDP points worth of net exports in the past 20 years is not exactly a ringing endorsement.

What's happened in Japan is that net exports have become a somewhat larger component of a not-rising-very-quickly GDP. Part of that is because exports have increased. But mostly it's because imports have increased more slowly than exports [remember, we're talking net here].

Here are some contextual data points for you:

Incomes in Japan have decreased in nominal [yen] terms.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNCOMPQDSNAQ?ci...

Domestic Consumption has basically not moved since 1995:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNPFCEADSMEI?ci...

Manufacturing has basically not changed since 1990
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNOTPT?cid=3228...

Exports didn't do much for the first "lost decade", but then exploded in the 2000s , then crashed nighmarishly, then picked up again in the last 2 years.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNEXPORTQDSNAQ?...

The government has run deficits up from 50% of GDP in 1990 to 220% (!) today, which some might say is questionably sustainable
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GGGDTAJPA188N?ci...

Fewer people work:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNLFPRNA?cid=32...

And finally, the way that you know things aren't "quite right" is that the currency has been deflating since 1995.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNGDPDEFQISMEI?...

That, among other things, is what led to the stronger yen, which is actually something that constrains japan's net exports, not helps it.

On a more general note, you can't go to tokyo and say "ooh, look at all the shops, the economy must be doing great" any more than you can go to 5th avenue in new york and say, "wow, tiffany's is full of people, the US economy is gangbusters!" Making that argument is just really, really stupid.
Can we all just slow our collective roll a bit here?

1) This won't work, w/r/t Comcast.

2) This won't stop SOPA even if it could work. Comcast doesn't get to choose whether or not it passes.

3) SOPA isn't the end of the world. If indeed it passes, it will just accelerate the actual technical fix to the problem, which is excessive US government centralized control over the Internet. I actually support SOPA because its passage would cause the long-term solution to come about a lot faster than it would otherwise.

It's good to say "fuck you" to big media companies, indeed. But stop using SOPA as an excuse.
Genomics as a Service - share data, apps, workflows.
DIY genome analysis -- invite-only beta for open genomics platform, where people can collaborate, share data, apps & workflows, and replicate earlier analyses.
French penal code.
40 Jolly Christmas Based Illustrations
This is all fairly basic patterns. More interesting patterns are using collections inside a model, using sparse arrays or transparent loading (for infinite scroll), creating a "loading" event and handling loading, optimizing number of render calls, complicated routes, and using a vent to pass events and information between views. Those are the 'tougher' challenges I deal with on my backbone apps.
The devil is in the details of how it's measured.

An unemployment rate of below 5% isn't very achievable outside of extremes like slave labour; in a healthy economy, there will be people moving from job to job as they find a good fit; this turnover should show up as unemployment. If it doesn't, it either means huge numbers of people are "trapped" inside corporations, or the unemployment statistics are not very comparable. 5% in most Western economies is considered a very tight market with potential problems of overheating and wage inflation. I'd put my money on a different accounting method.
He's saying that the standard methods of calculating economic statistics don't capture consumer surplus very well.

I've made similar arguments in the past claiming that US growth is also understated. According to official statistics, for example, US real wages have stagnated since the 70's. Yet would anyone be willing to trade in their 2010 basket of consumer goods for a 1970's basket of consumer goods? If real wages truly did not go up, then most people should be indifferent.
I live in Japan.

Fingleton is misguided. There is no real increase in living standards since the bubble was popped. Goods are getting cheaper, and Japanese people are increasingly consuming cheaper goods. If you only visit the major cities, you won't see the urban decay. If you travel outside of the urban cities, you'll see the decay in full bloom (a la Spike Japan blog.)

http://spikejapan.wordpress.com/
The US office is a subsidiary. I don't know the legal requirements, but I believe that in the worst case scenario both US law and French law would apply. It is my understanding that the registrar is still the French company, therefor subject to French law.

IANAL.
Not to be confrontational, but where do you see that there is a "prohibition on admitting computer engineers and software engineers" to the patent bar? I have a CS degree, and work with plenty of others with software experience or computer engineering/software degrees, all of whom are admitted to the patent bar.
This was making me feel like there was something wrong with my eyes. It took me about a minute to figure out it was the site and not me; I didn't figure it out until I spotted the article numbers.

The contrast in the bar is really low, so I can't wait until it's not Christmas any longer.
We should go after Lamar Smith. How do I donate to an opponent or action committee that will run embarrassing ads questioning his intelligence?
Maybe somebody with TV talent should do a kickstarter?
I think Task XP is what you want. This review seems to say that it is a good replacement for Epic Win.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.philipk.taskxp&...
FYI, the author is the person behind gpl-violations.org. They already had lots of success in Europe/Germany (in and out of courts).
I think it will detract from the discussion to get into whether or not copyright should be protected. I think it's safe to say, and I hope you'll concede that, we're a long way away from abolishing copyright. We're in a battle right now about whether Internet free speech is more important than copyright, so suffice it to say that there's going to be even less support for the idea that copyright isn't important at all.

With that in mind, let's assume we're looking at a decade or more before copyright would be abolished. During that time, companies will have a strong argument for why a law should be enforced. My point is that those people are going to keep proposing legislation that protects their interests. We can either keep risking one of those overreaching bills passing and threatening things that are actually important to us, or we can work together to address piracy, something that we'd be foolish to defend over our other freedoms.

I'd like to see leaders in technology speak out against piracy and for the rights of content creators in the same breath as they say this is not the legislation we need. You're going to get more support from media if you acknowledge that there is a serious problem and offer to help address it than if all they ever see from the tech community are comments in forums about how information should be free and we should just abolish copyright. If that's what they're hearing, they're just going to keep pushing for the legislation they want and ignore the opinions of others.
While the article doesn't offer a lot of hard facts, I think it touches on a larger point that bears repeating: GDP is a completely arbitrary number that does not merit the sort of reverence it gets in the media and political process.

Here's a good example: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=does%20the%20...

The paper, among other things, describes how the GDP of the oil-producing nations is dramatically overstated, because most of their oil revenue should really be counted as conversion of capital rather than accessions to wealth.

Not directly relevant to Japan, but part of the overall debate of getting past the use of GDP as a touchstone metric.
That's the the impression I get as well from looking over the ToS for Hover as well.
Do you blog about your knowledge in this area? I'd be interested in reading more of what you have to say.
OMG, Wikipedia talk pages are freaking impossible to read!

Surely there are some serious Wikipedians floating around here. Hasn't anyone thought about adding a little bit of threaded conversation support to mediawiki so these back and forth discussions aren't such a mess?
JavaScript (ECMAScript) Harmony in Chrome
And at the bottom:

Xerox.

I find this to be ironic.
Perhaps this question is beyond your area of knowledge, but has the much talked about aging of Japan proved to be a significant detriment its economy? Could you see it being one in the future?
Merry Christmas - Feliz Navidad
Harald owns the copyright for significant part of netfilter/iptables. So if they distribute this part of the kernel, he won't have much trouble.
International Trading Blocs
I think a bigger threat is that while every techie is sperging (rightfully) over SOPA/Protect, everyone is ignoring the NDAA sliding quietly through Congress.

I appreciate all the SOPA coverage and am glad to see people getting upset about it, but there are a lot of other issues that are just as scary which people are just glossing over.
Donald Knuth on how he became good at math
This is especially hypocritical from GoDaddy considering their advertising practices.
Also consider retraining the greedy legacy MBAs involved if at all possible.
I'd be really interested in reading about these areas as well. It's been cool seeing the emergent knowledge share around Backbone patterns and practices.
Isn't anyone else tired of hearing about anonymous? They manage to hack a website and then make it out to be some big deal as if they're some elite hacker organization.

I'm curious as to how many sites they are unsuccessful in compromising before they finally manage to find one with a vulnerability.
I use subtitles most of the time. It helps a lot with strange accents and noisy movies. I can watch most things without subs, but I have to turn up the volume and it can get annoying.

I've used some desktop apps that do the same thing your website does. It was really hit or miss and a lot of work. These days if I can't find matching subs, I either wait or watch without.

Instead of searching a dozen websites manually, I highly recommend SubtitleSeeker. It indexes all major subtitle sites and it lets you drill down by language, release, episode, etc.

http://www.subtitleseeker.com/
10KLOC per team is admirable, but one of the long-term projects I'm most excited about is Alan Kay's "Inventing Fundamental New Computing Technologies" project. They're trying to get under 20KLOC for an entire operating system + all "common" applications!

http://vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm

It's really exciting, and they've already made some great progress towards that goal. I recommend reading their first year progress report as it has a lot of the most exciting stuff about this (they just finished year 5):

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007008_steps.pdf
Has HN traffic taken it down?

Doesn't seem to load for me.