skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a fun visualization, but as you mentioned it's inaccurate precisely when you need it most (when there's a delay). Actually, some JR stations in Osaka already have an indicator that shows when incoming trains are stopped at the previous station or whether they are in between stations.
Programming Language: Objective CorporateSpeak++
Donut math: How donut.c works
Just to be a smartass: I guess it will last for a significant timespan, but not actually "forever" unless Hitachi also finds out how to reverse entropy or how to leave this universe. If they don't a lot of stuff might get their data, like proton-decay, the upcoming black hole era or the fact that everything is liquid on very large timescales.
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Futu...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe
In the context of standards that could or should be changed to reform things, the traditional 'person of ordinary skill' standard need not be held as a constant.

For example, 'obviousness' could be more expansively construed as being from the perspective the kinds of people "skilled enough they are professionally tasked with inventing new approaches".

The relative preponderance of teams finding a particular solution, versus trying and failing, does seem relevant. (If 2-out-of-2-teams succeed, maybe they are geniuses, but the 100% success rate cannot disprove the hypothesis that the solution is obvious. If only 2-out-of-30 succeed, maybe there's rewardable inventiveness there.)

Still, when there are 2 or more cases of independent invention, that should be economically/legally relevant. This is especially true if one of the inventors didn't pursue a patent. While not be proof of traditional 'obviousness', it is evidence that the invention was "evident enough to be discovered as needed without patent incentives"... which sounds to me like the economically-ideal standard.

(And wouldn't that be a nice counterbalance to the 'patent everything defensively' scramble? That is: by inventing and using something without patenting it, not only would you have an absolute immunity from infringement, but also establish a presumption that specific practice was never deserving of patent protection in the first place.)
Is it real time data ?
It's for small values of "forever".
At the risk of making a lot of enemies: Drupal sucks in many ways (as you rightfully assert), but so does rails and most other frameworks. Frameworks are usually designed by people with an itch to scratch, not by people with a lot of training in how to set up something like a framework in a solid and consistent way.

So right now you'll feel that the grass is greener on the other side, in another 5 years or so you'll know the limitations of rails and you'll realize that the new boss is just the same as the old boss.

The way we do web development in general sucks. We stitch together a jumble of technologies (some scripting language or compile language for the backend, javascript, html, css, SQL and whatever else you want to throw into the mix) in order to produce a user experience that tries to hide all that under a friendly front.

The limitations of this non-consistent development environment are all too visible in the end results and result in a ton of ways to shoot yourself in the foot performance wise or in ways that result in security problems.

The whole concept of 'a framework' needs to be re-visited, it's ugly. But for now it gets the job done.

Good luck on your switch to rails!

(another former drupal fan, now using Yii after a consult by another HN member, a bit closer to rails, much cleaner than drupal, still PHP (that's not a blessing, but also not as much of a curse as it is made out to be)).
In addition to all the wonderful resources already suggested above, you should check out the MOOCs on Mathematical Thinking (https://class.coursera.org/maththink-2012-001/class/index) and Algorithms (https://class.coursera.org/algs4partI-2012-001/class/index) on Coursera.
The thing is Windows 8 is radically changing a lot of stuff and that won't sit well with most businesses in the PC world. Maybe Windows 8 won't give Valve or Notch a death blow by removing the "desktop mode", but I think it's pretty obvious that Microsoft wants the future of Windows to be "Metro-only", and these guys can see that.

So it's not Windows 8 per se that they are mad about. It's the whole direction Windows is taking. If they and others can get Windows 8 to fail, and get Microsoft to revert back to the old style Windows, then they win. If not, and Windows 8 is successful, they lose, because you can bet Windows 9 will be even more locked into Metro and with fewer options or less access for the desktop mode.
You can follow the movement with the hashtag #geonpi alongside the handle @DefensePigeons.
There is no evidence that segregated cycle facilities improve cyclist safety. The majority of serious bicycle accidents are right-of-way disputes, occurring at junctions. It is just as likely that segregated facilities could increase the number of accidents, by making the movements of cyclists less predictable to motorists when they merge onto general roads. It is known that sidewalk cyclists are significantly more vulnerable than cyclists who use the roadway, possibly because their movements are more difficult for motorists to predict.

The evidence for the efficacy of cycle helmets is extremely poor. There are a great many people with strong opinions on helmets, but we simply do not have the evidence and it is likely that they are a relatively unimportant factor. While we know that helmets moderately reduce head injuries, we do not have good evidence that they improve rider safety overall. We do have some evidence of risk compensation, with both drivers and riders taking more risks when helmets are used, based on the belief that the helmet provides safety. Head injuries are an important class of injury, particularly in the most severe incidents, but they represent only a minority of the serious injuries suffered by cyclists.

The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. Most Americans believe that the numbers of cyclists will increase when action is taken to improve safety, but in fact the inverse is true. An increase in the number of cyclists invariably leads to a decrease in the number of accidents per km. That is the key message and everything else is just noise. Meaningful improvements in cycle safety are wholly reliant on increasing the number of cyclists and normalising cycling. Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.
Yeah, it's not like it's impossible with Ruby, but especially compared to a system like Erlang - to my way of thinking - it can start to look a bit clunky when you try and get lots of pieces talking to one another if, say, most of the rest of the application is in Rails. Or at least that's my impression, maybe I'm wrong?
To put the 43% approval rating in even more context - Julia Gillard's (PM of Australia) rating hit 28% last year -- http://www.essentialmedia.com.au/tag/approval-of-julia-gilla...

43% does not seem all that low.
Timed out, no Google cache (yet). Anyone got a summary?
No, they don't want "Metro-only" . This is bullshit. Stop spreading it.
At the risk of also making a lot of enemies, I agree with you :)
Don't you find that in some way, you _do_ "look down" on those who don't at least try flying recreationally?

I know many of the sub-cultures I'm involved in do exactly that. Motorcycle riders. Musicians. DJs. Burners. HackerSpace members. Artists. All of those circles of friends of mine have some level of scorn/pity for people not participating in their specific thing.

You _shouldn't_ take drugs if it doesn't interest you to do so. Anyone who tries to pressure you into going so should be avoided. Just the same as you'd consider someone trying to pressure people into flying, as opposed to offering an opportunity and backing off if there's no interest shown - would be being a jerk.
Regarding the soundbite in the article on the 60% tax rate: I find it extremely misleading, bordering on bad faith.

1. The baseline is not the money made selling, but the capital _gain_, that is income, not revenue.

2. Keeping those 15% social charges into account negates the fact that those will accrue your retirement, invalidity, unemployment, what-have-you fund

3. France has a 35 hour workweek. Companies who ask their employees to work longer than that without compensating them in extra days of holiday are breaking the law. So much for the quoted 70 hour workweek.

4. The 10 years of uncertainty are not so uncertain in a country with such a strong welfare state: in case of failure you would have several months of unemployment checks which have a very high cap (as demonstrated by a recent scandal with soccer players).
Oh, thank you a lot! Should have sent emails before, but I always forget...
How about a disc that is made of glass, has a capacity of a DVD and can be read by standard dvd players and can be bought today, for a mere of €160? THIS is amazing. http://www.syylex.com/index.php/home_english.html
It is somewhat low for a government that should still be in its honeymoon period. They were only let into office this May.
Here's the Mailchimp-version of the article, if the site is down.

http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=a2b057f584a796c058282094...
Thank you.
No, you are not lacking sleep.
This is why I fail as a programmer. :)
America has no single government and is a huge mixture of cultures, from Canadians to Argentinians. I hate the fact that the USA has no proper demonym in English.
Looks like it's just a few quotes ripped from other sites like this one:

http://www.wordpower.ws/quotations/richard-branson-quotes.ht...
Interesting that PHP is still doing so well.

I think that's because of wide variety of CMS applications build with PHP that are so common. Also it's cheaper to hire a PHP programmer than .NET, Java or Ruby one.
I think most engineers just don't understand how filing for a patent works. They only think in terms of "the company's lawyers are helping protect my work". That's all they know and all they care about. I don't think they are aware that the patents filed sound very silly and probably unrecognizable even to them, when it comes to describing their invention.
Anti-Downloading Law Hits Japan, Up To 2 Years in Prison
I'm not saying JS is a pure functional language.

It's a fact that you can create functional abstractions in JavaScript. Just like you can in Python and Ruby.
Time to take Scala more seriously. WIth Java Stalwarts jumping onto Scala bandwagon, it looks like it will supplant Java in the near future.
Code for Europe opens Call for Fellows
re the original AP report, people aren't replacing LPs and CDs because the media are wearing out, they're replacing them because newer media have higher storage densities, are more physically convenient and in some cases because they allow higher fidelity recording.

Yes this medium will last longer than LPs, CDs etc, but it will do nothing at all to remedy the actual reasons these older media are being superseded.

Edit: I'm reminded of the old Domesday Book BBC project that recorded everything on laser discs and played the data on BBC microcomputers. The discs are still fine, but it got to the point where there were no machines left physically capable of playing them. There was a project to fix that but I don't know how it went.
I wonder what would be the density of such storage
What would bother you more? A sponsored tweet or spam in your e-mailbox? Why don't they just use their own channel to send me spam?
Maybe the medium will last longer, but isn't "If you have a computer with the right software and an optical microscope hooked up to it" a big part of the data decay problem on floppy disks etc.? Even if the data is there, it's useless without the right software/hardware to read it.
مشاهدة مباراة الهلال والاهلى بث مباشر
It as a serious question. I spent a few minutes looking into Go and could find little reason for it. So wondered what the use case was.
Shorter .uk Internet domain proposed by Nominet
That's what I get for quick googling instead of reading the court docs. It doesn't really help that most of the sites reporting the suit use "design patent" and "utility patent" interchangeably. :(
I not so sure that mixing business and politics is such a good idea and I'm having somewhat of a hard time concluding what it is exactly that they want. Times when things get thrown up in the air is generally a good for my "kind" of entrepreneur, because even the established players have to work to stay relevant.
I made a copy of the article on Framapad in case it happens again:
https://framapad.org/yiHBXpdYN6
... which is on the board.
Unicode license
I did a somewhat similar mobile app for Maemo using the open data we have of Helsinki trams: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/buscatcher-never_miss_another_tram...

Some relevant public transportation data sources for Helsinki: http://www.hri.fi/en/data/hsl-reittiopas-api/
Oh, I can't wait to see how lobbyists and lawyers allow to dismantle the patent system ;-) I'd like to give some constructive critic, however. So, I propose the opposite approach. Let's make the whole system even more complex and expensive for patent holders.

Maybe every patent application should be provided with a formal proof of how much specific innovation has cost. Declared cost would be verified and accepted by patent office. Consequently, the upper bound of possible damages awarded during a litigation should be set to that amount of money.

Such approach should repel patent trolls twofold. First, since costs of innovation in the software industry tend to revolve around 0, litigations would not be profitable. Second, more troublesome patent application process would decrease the number of issued patents and, statistically, increase their quality, making patents less accessible and useful for patent trolls.
Show HN: Android HN reader with collapsible comments
Does Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Exist in Agile?
Phew - some "straw men" there don't you think?

It is the entrepreneurs who do the 70 hour weeks (no 35 hour limits for the boss/owner).

Start a company with €100 and grow it to be worth €500,000 on exit - that is an almost total capital gain (if you get to put something in a pension fund at the same time then you would be very lucky).

And all the while paying the very high social charges that accrue in France
I don't see why it should be that hard. There are already those machines that make the material. You just need to make one that can take a virtual model from the PC and "build it".
Can they rewrite stuff on glass? Or is it a one way write?
@Successful candidates: Please share some idea, how to draft successful applications?
there is a solution for French entrepreneurs (particularly in the context of software and services) - move across the channel to the UK and run your business from there. Easy to pop home for the weekends and there is already a very large French working community.
Know your feedback loop – why and how to optimize it
If you always write perfect code, know how to predict the future and don’t care how your money is spent, you don’t need to read this. The rest of you need to know this stuff.
This thread is full of "evidence I've seen" without sources, on both sides of the argument.
Old idea. Here's a 2009 Coding Horror post about doing the same thing with paper: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/the-paper-data-stor...
This. I did an ee degree. When I hit industry I quickly realised that I knew nothing. The company expected otherwise.
French entrepreneurs are upset because they can't get as rich in an exit as they would like, so they protest? And you want the rest of the country to support you in this? Okaaaaay.... This is the sort of greedy childishness that we could do without in the tech business world. If you're in it for hacking cool shit, you're not going to spend this much time thinking about your exit. This is similar to people protesting the tax rate on lottery winnings -- absurd.

Go back to work, stop whining.
Regarding your points 3 and 4, he is talking about founders, not regular employees.
That's a rather one sided view of the problem. Just because patents presently allow the pharmaceutical industry to fund R&D costs (estimates of which might be inflated[1]) does not mean they are the only way. If the cost of patents outweigh this one benefit, we should get rid of them.

First, not all research is done by the pharmaceutical industry. In the US, they account for about 36% of research spending[2], behind the government (38%, federal plus state plus local). Note that total funding by the industry (not limited to pharma but including biotech and medical devices) represented 58% in 2007 but the role of patents in those industries is a different debate. The remaining 4% are from foundations and charities.

Next, considering that pharmaceutical companies spend far more on marketing than research and development (typically 25% vs 15% of revenues respectively)[3] and considering that a large part of their revenues comes from public healthcare anyway, one can wonder how hard it would be to replace their R&D spendings with public funds, and get the money back thanks to cheaper drugs,since generics are typically 20% of the brand price.

(BTW I wonder what part of these 15% of revenues spent on R&D is for important research and what part is spent on looking for the next Botox)

Also patents could be replaced with public funding in ways that minimize the impact on the industry, for example by granting prizes for the discovery of important drugs.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4591766

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3118092/

[3] http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...
U.S. Geological Survey: Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED)
10 Physics Effects Your Should have Heard Of
When one ton of metal hits you naked at 50kph (the legal speed limit in traffic areas of cities here in France) the acceleration alone can tear or damage your aorta with impressive odds (IIRC about 50% chance). A helmet is an extremely marginal protection.

On a pure energy analysis, I'd rather have cyclists navigate with pedestrians than with cars. The latter result in a basically non-elastic collision transmitting most of the kinetic energy (1T@30~50kph) to the human body (75kg@5~20kph) while the former is much, much more even.

I don't know the state of streets in the U.S but his is especially true in old european cities, where streets are often narrow and there's simply not enough room for both cyclists and cars on the road, especially when cycling is thought of after the fact.
Here's a web service for Helsinki tram GPS data: http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/

For some reason it's ridiculously hard to find as it's not linked to from the pages you usually use to find transportation.
OpenPhoto (https://openphoto.me/) supports BrowserID.
Just adblock it. I know it says "ad" in the name, but there's no reason not to block any page element that takes away from your experience.
Apple and Microsoft face parliamentary inquiry in Australia over high prices
You can also take inspiration from this twitter bot https://twitter.com/Horse_ebooks It is very zen sometimes.
Acrobat XI PDFs to become “completely editable,” incl. images
The Times Crossword uses it: http://crossword.thetimes.co.uk/
I was wondering what I'd use this for (either as an end-user or as a developer), when I found that people actually use their google-account for two-factor authentication for their SSH accounts.

You know what? I don't trust Google enough to allow them to lock me out of my own systems, and I'm surprised other obviously technologically inclined people do.
It says "60% Capital Gains tax - the real innovation killer" in a big bold font. We're talking about startups in France here. You can be in 3 other (more tax-friendly) country's in a few hours drive.
Also founders are not employees. You can easily work 70 hours (and still fail, that's why people looking to sell their company will hate the 60% capital gains tax).
And again: As founders are not employees they do not receive the same benefits when they fail / get sick / whatnot.
If only i was going :(
I didn't even hear about this event!
I hope someone has an extra ticket
Basho UK Launch Party Announcement - Open Invitation
I have quite a few mixed thoughts after reading the article, but one thing I agree with is the Lightning connector. Actually, I really like the idea of the new connector and look forward to its widespread adoption. The ability to plug it in correctly the first time and not worry about bending pins or getting it sideways is a huge win over the Micro-USB connector used everywhere else. I appreciate the ubiquity of the small USB port but every time I plug one in I do it gently and sometimes have to make 3 tries to get it orientated correctly.

The Micro-USB connector has big problems and I look forward to a new standard. Remember, Apple was the main driver behind USB with the original iMac's and it's missing floppy drive. I think they can do it again.
I've made a simple example hotp/totp implementation (https://github.com/bjornua/totp.py/blob/master/totp.py) in Python 3 for anyone interested.
That's a very weak counterargument. Why would Microsoft prefer to carry on developing both interfaces when the majority of users will clearly prefer Metro?
the transition between the images is soooo nice!
Obama to Issue Disastrous "Cybersecurity" Executive Order
I now live in Amsterdam but also used a bike when I lived in the US and the difference is night and day. Sure, the inner part of Amsterdam doesn't have as many bike lanes, mainly because it was designed 500 years ago, but there are always biking lanes around on roads with higher speeds.

Even so, I agree that the main difference is that every car takes bikers into account. In the US either people simply don't check their mirrors for bikes or even if they do you can't count on them to give you the right of way. And I've had to swerve into traffic several times when a parked car opened the door and nearly hit me, people are simply not trained to look in their mirror before opening their door.
Tin Foil Hats Actually Make it Easier for the Government to Track Your Thoughts
I opened an issue for that
Reading your post I see an awful lot in common with the startup philosophy that so many on HN admire so much.
They increase your chances of having an accident.

Seriously: The more vulnerable you look, the wider a berth car drivers will give you. If you ride erratically down a road, swerving a bit as if drunk, cars will go yards out of their way to pass you.

If you ride confidently in a straight line, they woosh past with inches to spare. That's just human nature: The more likely something is to cause a problem, the further away from it you stay.

By the same token, drivers will give helmetless cyclists a wider berth than those with helmets - they rate higher as a potential hazard.

Citation: http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-09/uob-wah091106....
Greedy childiness? We sweat our asses off trying to build a business and overnight we're being told that in the rare case we do get an exit, it'll be taxed at 60% as opposed to 30%. How is that either greed or childiness? Do you even know what the live of a founder with little funding and no personal income can be like?

And of course we love what we do, but bills don't pay themselves. And maybe one day I want to have a family and a better income to support it, as opposed to not paying myself for over a year now (goodbye savings from 5 years of working before that), year during which I did pay my team btw.

We're not whining. We're fighting this.