skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Figuring out keystroke-input modification for a newly disabled family member
A young family member just came out of a 2 month-long coma after being blindsided by a geriatric driver. She has significant brain damage, which has introduced a huge "shake" into the movements of the one arm/hand she can control. She's not expected to get better in that regard.

She keeps trying to use keyboards & tablets, but due to her limited motor control, she cannot effectively type, which seriously frustrates her. Basically, she hits the key she wants too many times, along with a "constellation" of the keys around the target.

I'm wondering if there is a programmatic solution to this that would allow her to type.

My conceptualization of the problem is that the program would need to buffer all of the keystrokes coming in, and "screen" them by assuming for a character to actually be accepted as input, it must be his a certain number of times (i.e. and adjustable threshold). Basically, imagine that if, while brain-damaged, you want to type "hi", you're going to hit the constellation of keys around the "h" key N times, but fewer than the number of times you successfully land on the "h" itself. Repeat with "i". The output looks something like "ughhjyhyhhhhh" and "uiuioiiioi".

I feel like you could try and measure a user's individual keystrike accuracy through a few trials of typing something like our above "hi", which would then adjust thresholds appropriately, allowing other programs to ignore the mistakenly pressed keys. You could give the user a sort of customized "landing pad" where they need to hit their choice key somewhere between, say, 4-7 times before it actually registers, which would screen out all of the others key that get accidentally pressed in the attempt.

Once a character gets accepted as intentionally struck, clear buffer and continue.

This leads to my questions:

1) Is this possible?

2) How difficult would it be to implement on a laptop or tablet (no OS preference).

3) Does this seem like the best way to go about solving this problem (user cannot accurately strike keys), or am I overcomplicating it?

Thank you.

Additional disclosures: I'm a weak programmer (basic python, basic java), and have never written anything that didn't stand by itself (i.e. no OS interfaces, hooking, etc). I'm way out of my depth -- I just want to help give her back some quality of life. Also, she can't speak right now, so voice recognition is out.
The Tacocopter post is something that appeals to a lot of hackers. It's a wicked cool and potentially super dangerous idea. It intrigues people on HN. Hence it is discussed to the death.

Your post is titled 'feedback please', and yet you have not really mentioned what you want feedback on. Is it your business idea? Is it your YC application? Neither of these are mentioned here. Even if they were, the most that HN users could give you would be something along the lines of 'I'm sure YC is not averse to funding non-tech people.'
I didn't associated the post with software patents at all - it's quite a good analogy. The point was that copying someone's work is relatively easy if you have a solid starting point (screenshots of a design, description of the algoritm, etc.), and it's unfair to say the design/development/invention process is trivial if it's easy to clone.

Implementation is usually the easy part. It's figuring out what needs to be implemented that takes the real skill. It's like the plumber that charges you $200 to turn a screw 1/4 turn. Of course you could have turned the screw yourself, but would you have known which one to turn and by how much (and do so without spending six hours researching different models of garbage disposal)?
Ben Goldacre has a good blog post about "When Ethics Committees Kill"

(http://www.badscience.net/2011/03/when-ethics-committees-kil...)
I missed the original thread, so I'm not sure what went on in the original thread.

Was the reason their thread got deleted is because they weren't allowed to call themselves "Codecademy for learning PHP"?

It seems like it's pretty common for people to say "Heroku for this", "Airbnb for that". Are those "X for Y" not allowed on HN?
whats the one thing you don't like about your favorite language

That's easy. So many hacker types dismiss you as some sort of weirdo for favoring anything that came from Microsoft.
If I'm not mistaken, NaCl's integration with Chrome is actually implemented using Pepper.

EDIT: I found something on this. "NaCl was integrated into Chrome 5 as an in-process Pepper plugin. The NaCl modules that it runs can utilize the Pepper API for browser interaction." (http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/getting-started/getting...)
Niche? http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2012/03/PCGA-2010.jpg
I'll definitly take a closer look if you release more interesting pricing tiers for us.
Your product look awesome, and well documented.
Too bad there's not a simple way to test iOS apps on Windows (not your fault, of course ^^)
It is worth the observation that we can only really upvote the languages that we have used -- others simply aren't eligible for the 'favorite' moniker; even if we've seen a little code written in them, we haven't really felt them.

So, like, JS was my second language. Ruby and Clojure have as yet proven impenetrable for me to learn, but I'm working on that. I have shell scripted and done plenty of PHP, Python, Matlab, and Java, and I learned Scheme when using SICP but I feel like I never have anything available when I'm writing in it -- I hear Haskell is much better at this. I have seen some Smalltalk and it looked very pretty, some C and I was able to trace through it but I felt nervous as hell. That's the extent of my education.

My point is, out of this, the only stuff that I know well enough to choose my favorite is PHP, Python, Java, and JS. This poll cannot give a meaningful result for the question of "what languages are good?" without also asking everyone who responds: which languages have you written more than a hundred lines of code in? which have you read more than a hundred lines of code in? Then we could ask, "given those that have used X, how much has it been loved?" and get a measure of lovability.
No, I think you hit the nail head on. I almost often do quick little things in Perl out of laziness (even though Ruby would be so much prettier), but I also like Pascal/Delphi for static typing and relative speed. C is about as close to assembler as I'd care to come.

But this "Java" thing keeps paying the bills for most of the last decade. I guess it doesn't do everything wrong. (as much as I'd like closures & function pointers, tuples or even working destructors sometimes, I get by with Java)
you were lucky to be able to go back. Me @ Chrome could not go back - it automatically was jumping "back" from HN to that website.
Wonder if smartphones open up some new doors here? Assuming doctor and patient both have a smartphone medical notes for a patient are shared but only available for doctors within the physical vicinity of the patient i.e. the patient's phone acts as the gateway to that data.
My choice would be Go.
You can try http://pdfmyurl.com/ . I've used it in the past and it works okay, there are occasional formatting issues, but makes something acceptable.
http://checklisthub.com/ was actually the reason my partner and I stopped working on a keyboard friendly todo list. I figured it was basically everything I wanted, and it was already built. Great work, and thanks for open sourcing it now.
Where to Start in Computer Science?
Where do I start as a person with an interest in computer science? Obviously this is a vague question, so let me clarify.

There are a few things that I have little interest in, like OS, Game Development, and AI. However, Software development, Database design/management, Server administration, Data communication... and that's just what is coming off the top of my head. I've been floundering and flailing around aimlessly in the world of computer science for a few months now, with some prior experience in very minor things like HTML, JScript, PHP (very little) and other web design related things. I am a 24 year old business student with only a semester to go before graduation and have come to the conclusion that if I could do it all over again, I would definitely be doing something computer science related instead.

I have access to resources like Lynda.com for free through my university, and know about MIT OpenCourseWare, but I sort of feel like a kid in a candy store being overwhelmed with everything when trying navigate through all the possibilities. It's simply overwhelming.

In your experience and knowledge in the field, what was the best way you found to progress step by step from one subject to the next in a productive manner? What are the things that you know that you consider abso-freakin-lutely vital to your arsenal of knowledge and skills?

I don't know really where to start exactly. I feel like I have the basic ideas of the abstraction of programming understood, but now that I'm here I don't know where to go next and what would be the most useful. The area is simply far too complex and diverse and I am simply far too beginner to try to decipher it all.

Please help. Thanks.
Congratulations, you've created something far better than what Asana and their huge team took 3+ years to build.
If you think how men treat other men in the US workplace is at all comparable to how men treat women in Saudi, then you are fucking insane. Men poking fun of other men is NOT a human rights issue.

Cheeky insults, (which "my goldfish codes better than you" OBVIOUSLY is) are not attempts to "undermine your male colleague's confidence in their ability". If you think that is not the case, then you are obviously completely out of touch with male to male interaction in the US.
Outsourcing your startup is like riding an elephant in a polo match
Do you want to grab a coffee?
While Obama and Congress are talking about how to make regulation more business friendly, why don't they focus on day-1 problems like this, instead of IPO problems? I've never heard of a good company unable to IPO just due to paperwork/regulation, but I've heard of many company not be able to get anywhere due to silly regulatory cruft. See the TacoCopter yesterday... FAA would never let it happen. Or your medical data startup. You can fix the problem- if they will let you.
agentzh is a great mentor. He has helped me number of times, often looking at my configurations and getting into my systems and tweaking things around to make them work. He even installed the powerful openresty on one of my machines to demonstrate how it can solve my problems and did some benchmarks for me. Respect to agentzh!! cant wait to see it evolve from here
Agreed, same here. Go gets my love these days!
R is a delightful environment hobbled by a hideous language.
It depends what I'm trying to do.

The question is like asking a carpenter what their favorite tool is.

It'd be more enlightening to (somehow) ask what kinds of problems people apply each language to.
Maybe it's not a business case. But respecting your customers is at least a possible business strategy.
Nothing odd about it, IMHO. One of the things I think tech-oriented people consistently ignore is the role of emotion and the subconscious in decision making, even in what are nominally objective disciplines. Our conclusions may be based on reason, but then where do our hypotheses and inspirations come from?
I love Ruby, but ultimately Python is my favorite.

Ruby is consistent and cool, but I can do everything I want with Python and I can make it FAST as hell.

Over the past week I've been moving some things into Cython and it has literally sped 200 times faster than Python which is 10 times faster than Ruby, and with a lot less memory overhead. Speed _does_ matter when the two languages are nearly the same in terms of development speed. Furthermore Python has more libraries and less wtf moments when looking at peoples code.
I am interesting in knowing at what time exactly would people think they have experienced enough language exposure to decide on the favorite one. Like, my favorite now is C, because thats the one I know best, and I cant say that this wont change, since I am learning Ruby and it rocks.
I feel likewise (except for the Perl part. I have the most fun working with PLT-Racket tools).

I believe this happens because language design involves a lot of trade-offs, so every language incorporates these trade-offs.

When one is comfortable in many kinds of languages, one is in a special position to see the trade-offs in the design of the language one is currently programming it.

The way I see it is slightly different then the way you describe. Say I'm programming in Prolog, for instance.
In the beginning, I'll be like "Wow, such expressiveness". But inevitably I'll do something that is outside the scope of Prolog and it will be as slow as hell. That's when I think to myself: "if I could just fix this little part... I miss C". So when I'm back programming in C I'll think "now my code is fast", but then inevitably: "if I could just find a way to do this without so much repetition".

In the end, it comes down as a "right tool for the job" thing. One possible ideal would be do the things Prolog is good at in Prolog, the things C is good at in C (and also throw in some Python, Erlang, Lisp, etc). Except most of the time this is infeasible. Working with FFIs suck. Sometimes there are no FFIs, sometimes there are many incompatible ones, and the dream of calling any language from any language is just further and further apart. And don't get me started on the pain that it is to have multiple runtimes with slightly different semantics...

Even if it were possible, a developer would have to learn all these little languages enough to be working on them comfortably, and we all know this is not going to happen. So hardly anybody does this, as hiring someone for a polyglot project is a complete nightmare.
I see a lot of votes for python, but a disproportionately small representation of python fans in the comments.

If you asked me a year ago, I'dve said python. But lately, I've been using Clojure for personal projects, and it's making python seem just... boring. (I get the same feeling when I write in Ruby too)

The "one right way" paradigm is a great one, and the language is solid. The built-ins are top-notch, and while not exactly a functional language, it's certainly expressive enough. In my mind, it's probably the ideal general-purpose language. But lately, I feel like I use it for everything because it's "good enough" for everything -- without being "great" at anything.

Point? I don't think I had one, sorry. I just thought I'd share that notion to see if it resonated.
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It's slightly depressing when a poll about favorite languages has 30+ options and your choice isn't there :-(

+1 Groovy!
Such a technology would enable neat stuff, like renting a server for someone to run a single program for some period of time and have the results sent back. Nobody does this for unrestricted programs today, for many reasons, a very important one being the fact that it would be very hard to do this in a secure way.

Well, almost nobody. NearlyFreeSpeech[1] lets you compile and run unrestricted C and C++ programs on their servers, or any other binary, if you compile it somewhere else. I've done some tests with a Go based webservice.

They do have a very restricted time limit until they're killed, but that's because their servers are designed for web applications, not data crunching.

[1]: http://example.nfshost.com/versions.php
HOWTO: Port a C/C++ Library to JavaScript (xml.js)
What makes me really happy is when I'm working on something new. Particularly science. Some sort of new kind of science.
VB lets you call native Win32 APIs, so I am not sure where the impossible part comes in. It's difficult and cumbersome, but not impossible.
Its really a mix of erlang and python at this point. I love erlang for its error handling and concurrency performance. I love python for its easy to read factor, libraries, and simplicity.
Thanks so much for letting us know! Fixed now. Hope you enjoy building with Trigger.io - let us know how you get on :)
EU approves attacks on pirate bases
I also feel like "Funcs" are a work around. What I like the most about C# is the fact that it keeps evolving and incorporating new paradigms (closures, lambdas, LINQ, etc)
By law many federal agencies have to give research grants to small businesses. My mom runs a physics research company and that's how they stay in business.

You check out SBIR grants - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Business_Innovation_Resea...
FeeFighters Acquired By Groupon
Can you add Go please?
Sorry about that. We've identified a bug with how we handle the history state. Thanks for pointing out.
Exactly; that's what they don't do; they use a file-handle-based IO instead of peppar (which has file opening libraries and event loops of its own)
If you're paying her, she's going to report the crime promptly. If the police are slow to respond, you have her go to the press. Getting sufficient play in the press so DSK is smeared is really the end goal.

Planting banking scheme, fraud, etc. document would be another angle. Not quite as likely to grab international attention as a hotel rape, though. Sex scandals are news gold.

Whether the maid had a long-term or short-term relationship with her handler, who knows.
Wow, crazy. I hope you find some benefit from the source code.

I don't plan on expending much effort to market this. My primary desire is to get contributions. My next desire after that is to finally be able to get this installed behind the firewall at the company where I work. It'll be cool if the public site gets really popular, but honestly I don't know how to go about making that happen. It would be personally gratifying to see web dev checklists created by other folks which I can clone and use myself :)
3rd largest US exchange reverses, withdraws IPO after technical errors
It's a fairly circumstantial question. If I had to pick one language for the rest of my life and could be asked to build all manner of applications, I'd pick Java. Otherwise it's ruby all the way - it's fun to work with, but has limits.
Thanks - this just gives me a top level page for my site though - it doesn't follow all the links and make a book.
im very interested in trying the images out on mine, also there is a work-in-progress kernel on github: https://github.com/hillbeast/Kyorakernel.git
I only have the highest respect for all my customers. Using an email capture tactic is not disrespect.
One neuron cannot do much of anything by itself.
The programming language described by standard ECMA-334 is, like most any other ECMA standard, non-proprietary, open for anyone to use, and not particularly tied to any one platform.

There is of course a particular implementation of that language which is proprietary, closed source, and tied to a particular platform. However, this is not a particularly unique feature of the language. The same is also true of ECMA-262, ISO-1539, ISO-9899, ISO-10279, and many others.

For its part, Mono is supported by the same people that design the Mono branch of the language/APIs. This is a quite robust fork of the platform, which includes a great many useful APIs which are specific to that version, and forms the foundation of popular tools such as the Unity game development framework.
Maze Game - Game Seru Buat Santai on Downloads App
Func<T> is just the type signature they use for lambdas. The syntax allows fully inline functions now:

() => {
DoSomething();
}

No return value needed (compiles down to an Action<T> I think)
The topic of regulation that others have mentioned here makes me think of the airline industry also as, from what I can tell, medical regulations are almost as strict as those, I worked with a guy who used to do programming for devices on airliners and he said it was basically insane how much regulation there was, they were still not approved to use multi-core processors, etc so it was like programming for computers running technology of 10 years ago. I think people tend to think that healthcare would / should be much easier to use new technology for as its not quite the same as the aviation industry. However, it seems this isn't the case in legal terms and the industry may need a regulatory reform before innovation can really take place. In the case of an airliner, it really is life or death, however with healthcare, I think they can put in place enough backup systems (writing on paper, etc), even make the system do print-outs at set intervals, so if it goes down, there is a paper record right there, or something like that, so these issues can be overcome
That is easy -- non nullable objects. What I mean by that is that you can already specify that some numbers may be nullable. I would love to be able to specify that some objects cannot be null and have the type-checker verify it.

Even better I would have an option type so that you never need to use null, ever.
I think you're probably on the right track with that one.

How about a further prediction:

Once there are teacher superstars and they are considered a normal part of our culture the pressure to pander or appeal to the masses will result in the most famous being pretty crappy educators. It will be like politics and acting, superstar attributes are more important than teacher/leader/actor attributes.

Unless we get a really good way of measuring student performance somehow. If we can get that good enough then it becomes like sports, the superstars are actually among the best at what they are supposed to be doing. This is the optimistic prediction.

The first one is the realistic one.
Python syntax and semantics
Perl becuase it does what I want.

Haskell because it makes me do what I ought to do.
C#, the language, is not windows centric. The framework released by microsoft might be, but the language itself is decoupled from windows.
Ever used distcc? (or even mosix?)

Imagine that everyone in the office could be running your tests, compiles and such easily and transparently.

There are lots of grids to do this now; but this seems like a new lighter-weight and faster solution that, as it'll run well on Windows too (in that Chrome proves it does), is going to be great.

Here's hoping :)
Every now and then, someone comes up with ideas to "improve" PHP. Some of those ideas are actually quite good. The only problem is that PHP is about as obsessed with backwards compatibility as Windows is. Good luck getting the devs to accept a feature that will break scripts written in PHP 3. (Yes, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but libraries like phpass actually do claim to work in PHP 3, 4, and 5 without modification.)
The parent comment specifically mentioned more people using .NET. I don't have a problem with C# as a language.
Other: LPC
Angry Birds Refuse to Launch on Windows Phones
I wonder if this is why pen-based tablets like the Newton were so popular in medicine.
Fuck Pyhton!