skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They won't have a choice, actually. Emerging economies like China will eat this up to solve their traffic congestion problems in big cities, and are totalitarian enough to mandate it. Once it becomes a huge economic advantage, the other economies will have to follow just to keep up. Governments are lazy, they will want to push more traffic into their road systems at less cost because you hate traffic and taxes!

Hybrid solutions are also possible: there will be certain roads (controlled access interstates) where driverless is mandatory while certain streets where driver intervention is required. You still get most of the traffic optimization benefits if the driverless roads are congestion bottlenecks. However, the real benefit doesn't come until we have driverless cities, where people don't need to own cars and a roaming fleet of autonomous vehicles serve as pervasive taxis. You could even get rid of parking lots!

The system can easily trace what cars are bad actors and adapt accordingly (shut down traffic in a region with a bad actor until police arrive).
You may trust yourself, but as I ride around on my motorcycle, I don't trust you at all. Give me self-driving cars anyway.
> First, there are people who simply will not trust the driverless cars. I was talking to a friend yesterday who said that he wouldn't ride in a driverless car, and he wouldn't want to drive on the same road as one.

This will change over time (and quite fast). Ever heard of red flag laws?[0]

> In the United Kingdom, the Locomotive Acts (also known as Red Flag Laws) was a policy requiring self-propelled vehicles to be led by a pedestrian waving a red flag or carrying a lantern to warn bystanders of the vehicle's approach.

> The most infamous of the Red Flag Laws was enacted in Pennsylvania circa 1896, when legislators unanimously passed a bill through both houses of the state legislature, which would require all motorists piloting their "horseless carriages", upon chance encounters with cattle or livestock to (1) immediately stop the vehicle, (2) "immediately and as rapidly as possible... disassemble the automobile," and (3) "conceal the various components out of sight, behind nearby bushes" until equestrian or livestock is sufficiently pacified.

At least with driverless cars, we're getting support from the government (in NV and CA, so far).

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws
Agreed. I keep these tabs open at all times: Mixpanel, Intercom, GA, Google Webmaster Tools. All great services and totally free for startup level usage.

Make sure that you setup dev/stage/prod keys/accounts for each too so that everything is kept separate and can be tested individually.
Certainly a cool demo — but has anyone already seen a use of 3D in CSS/WebGL for a productive purpose? I'd be really interested in that; showing the atoms/molecules in 3D, as it is the suggested in one of the comments in the link @mmahemoff posted, for example, seems like a great idea.
A tool for testing a website in real time on multiple devices – Jolly app
Recently I discovered a tool which can be very useful for web development and testing: it's called Jolly and it's an app for Mac OSX.
Normally the prototyping and front-end web-development process looks like that: you code, save your project, reload your browser, check how the website looks on different screens either by using a bookmarklet or by setting up a local server and opening the website on other devices. Then you code again, save, reload, save, reload and so on. This can get cumbersome with multiple browsers and multiple devices. What if you need to test your design on an iPad, an iPhone, an Android phone, an Android tablet, a Windows phone and so on? This is especially important for cross-browser testing and testing responsive designs simultaneously on multiple devices.
Jolly solves this problem by delivering the changes simultaneosly and accross multiple devices. Define the project folder for Jolly to observe, open the generated link on all the browsers and devices (in the same wireless network) and see your changes flow automatically while you code.. Jolly performs its work independently. You are free to choose whatever development or design tool you like. Jolly will reload your project as soon as it detects a change in the project folder you specified.
It's even possible to "wiretrap" your prefered server technology.
Here is the video showing what Jolly does: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Onqtpqvd7w
Jolly is available in the Mac App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jolly/id567804958?ls=1&mt=12
It really depends on your business. Are you a b2b? b2c? media outlet? etc...

The question is, do you need Web Analytics to analyze your traffic (sources, exits, uniques, etc...), Customer Analytics to analyze your user base (unique customer identification, customer retention...), Mobile Analytics, Server Monitoring, Email Marketing Analytics etc...

Google Analytics can be the best free solution out there for general web analytics, it really covers everything you need to know about your "visitors" and it works really well with media outlets, blogs or websites where visitors don't identify themselves.

Woopra Customer Analytics (http://www.woopra.com) can be a great solution for you if your visitors identify themselves on your website. Woopra creates a profile for every single visitor on your website and aggregates visits across multiple devices (multiple cookies) under one profile when customers identify themselves. Which reduces the noise dramatically when you're doing reports on unique customers. Most people access your service across multiple devices (home, work, iPad, iPhone etc...) and you don't want to count every visitor multiple times in your reports.

Woopra also allows you to leverage your customer data for sales, marketing and support purposes as it builds a complete behavioral profile in real-time as they engage with your website.

My personal favorite Woopra feature is the ability to get push notifications whenever any visitor or identified customer fits in a certain category and/or commits one or more specific actions.

The other question you need to ask yourself is "Who's going to be using the product?". Products & Services are designed differently for Developers / Product Management, Marketers, Sales, Support...

To summarize: Web Analytics is a very generic term now and you're going to have to decide what fits better with your business:

A/B Testing:
- Optimizely (Commercial)

Customer Analytics (SaaS):
- Woopra (Commercial & Free)
- KISSMetrics (Commercial)

Mobile Analytics:
- MixPanel (Commercial & Free)
- Flurry (Free)

News & Media Website Analytics:
- Google Analytics (Free)
- Chartbeat (Commercial)
- Clicky (Free & Commercial)

Email Marketing Analytics:
- Marketo (Commercial)
- HubSpot (Commercial)

Server Monitoring:
- WebMon (Commercial - recently launched)
- NewRelic (Commercial)

(Disclosure: I'm founder & CEO of Woopra)
He is a hill-climbing optimizer - great at incrementally homing in on local optima. But he doesn't seem to be able to get the whole of MS to change direction the way Bill did, in a way that crosses the chasm to a hopefully larger optimum elsewhere. Instead, he seems to take gambles that don't really pay off. A lot of people in tech believe it's because he's not deeply technical and as a result isn't able to connect the dots at a larger strategic level.

He is amazing at communicating to business people however - a boss at a company I used to work for once came back from a partner briefing almost like an evangelical convert. That boss came from sales, and I think that's really Ballmer's forte.
You are missing the obvious: the cars could just as easily go electric and the severe reduction of moving components will already increase their service life dramatically (sans battery replacements depending on how battery technology evolves).
Umm actually india already has, look up chandrayaan..
[PHP] Facebook Like Comment - Saher Team
I agree. To me the story here is that Comcast is a huge company that takes way too long to process simple changes. But in reality, who the fuck cares if the cert for that page expired? It's not like their collecting your bank records.
She Went for Broke, and Found a Job
1. Optimized traffic flow that driverless gives you would be able to pack more vehicles on the road.

2. If we are treating all cars are like a fleet of autonomous taxis, it doesn't seem really crazy that you could also optimize carpooling where the car picks up other passengers to optimize the trip with respect to where you and they are going.
I don't want to start an argument, especially since i myself ride a motorcycle.

But even i witnessed my fair share of motorcyclists, who just played daredevil on the street.

The way many behave on roads is not acceptable and this goes for drivers of cars and drivers of motorcycles.

Counter question: Would you trust a self driving motorcycle?

So why should i - as a in my opinion perfectly good driver - trust a self driving car at all times?
Because the cost of the bus service has almost nothing to do with the cost of the bus driver.
It seems to me, bearing in mind my numerous career changes, that honest self-assessment is in order so that you can identify: 1) other (complementary or divergent) strengths you have and 2) what intrinsic drives of yours could be harnessed in a next career.

At times (for me) it has even been helpful to get professional career-counseling to discover careers (or even avocations) whose shape and impact have changed in preceding decade since I last looked at it. There are useful psychological batteries for assessing the fit between fit/vocation that take such assessment far beyond navel-gazing/tea-leaf-reading.

Another approach would be to involve yourself with an organization (vocation or volunteer) with a project that appeals to your vision for a better world - and discover what roles beyond traditional mathematician you find you can make a contribution to. Hope that's some help.
Jews are over-represented in high status professions in every western county. They comprise ~0.2% of the world's population and have won 38% of Nobel prizes.

That is not just a "statistical fluke".

It is reasonable to believe that Asians will continue to outperform whites for an indefinite period of time, until some sort of demographic upset.
Unsurprisingly, site full of left coast people think driverless cars will be a revolution. Guy sitting in Manhattan doesn't get what all the fuss is about.
This sheds some light on this comment about the pawns: '(Move "forward" indicated in white.)' The 2006 picture has white lines and this new one doesn't.
Dude if somebody wants to create a man in the middle attack to see my Comcast contract, that's cool. Hell, just email me and I'll send you a copy. I think context matters. I don't think most people would ignore a cert warning if they were about to do something they deemed private.
It's not as simple as that. People fly now as well. If everything's about energy efficiency, people wouldn't leave their house. If by flying you can commute from a much cheaper place than it's worth it. Also, you have to factor in the road construction/maintenance costs which flying doesn't have. Especially in the third world where roads aren't built yet. Also, the flying can be in the form of airships which are energy efficient.
Hacker Tools Source
They have to perform ritual sacrifices in order to ensure page views.
I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails (2007)
Seems like some sort of coordination effort I'd have to guess. Perhaps for a region where Google traffic might normally be blocked, it's an alternative way to get a message in?
Well the future is hypothetical by definition, isn't it? MS has two choices now - invest in R&D and try to secure new markets or make maximum profits for it's shareholders from exiting markets. MS may not "need" to cut spending but every billion they spend on projects like Kim, Bing, Surface is a billion that could've been dividend or share's buy in.
A Modern Concert Simulator
The presumed model is that the manufacturer will buy fleet insurance since it will now mainly be design flaws causing accidents rather than needing to prepare premiums based on each individual driver.

And yes, that will probably be a smaller market although you can still sell add-ons, etc.
US universities need to re-think the 'publish or perish' dogma. It produces a lot of uninteresting papers and a lot of discontinued academic careers. The benefit of this system (presumably separating the wheat from the chaff) is questionable.
I find this all a bit sad - just like the Cold War, ever step taken by each player looks completely rational from their perspective, but will we still end up in a position that is utter lunacy.
> MS is not a startup, that can go by with a promising product. It needs massive amounts of sales and with the current strategy Surface is not going to get them.

Out of curiosity, why do you assume the Surface needs to sell in huge volumes? If every single Surface is sold at a profit, and the Surface division is even slightly profitable for Microsoft, I don't see why it matters if they sell 10,000 or 10,000,000 of them.

To me it seems like the genius part of what Microsoft is doing is that Windows RT and/or the Surface don't actually need to succeed in terms of market share. They just need be taken seriously for long enough to drive down prices of Intel's x86 chips, so that Windows tablets have a shot against ARM tablets long-term. As far as I can tell, that seems to be working already. (Intel Atom Z2760)

They also have a massive Enterprise business, most of which will probably upgrade to Windows 8 eventually, buying them quite a bit of time to watch this unfold. Not to mention Xbox, etc. And of course, on top of all that, there is still the chance that Windows RT will somehow be a hit.... which would be even better for Microsoft, because it would end their Intel pricing problems for good.

To me, this seems like a decent plan for a software company that until now has only been losing relevance and market share. It’s a better plan than bleeding out cash selling super cheap hardware to gain market share (Amazon’s Kindle Fire), waiting too long to give up the dying cash cow as the market changes (RIM), focusing only on extremely high quality products while your company dies around you (Nokia), or killing off the consumer version of Office for no apparent reason (which is presumably profitable as-is).
We use Gitlab - a nice web UI on top of gitolite. In our world, its the perfect on-premise Git solution.
Well I really wasn't expecting this much feedback for this little library. I threw it up for kicks and went out for a movie, when I came back I was surprised to see all the interest. It's just a simple parser I wrote for my projects, so it doesn't get too crazy with exact definitions of "tld" and support for IPv4/IPv6 addresses as mentioned in the comments. Might be better to create a secondary more heavyweight version for things like that.

Anyway, I've fixed/updated a bunch of things from the comments, if anyone finds any other bugs or missing features probably best to leave me an issue on the github project page here: https://github.com/websanova/js-url/issues.

The project has also been un-jquery-ified and renamed to js-url (thanks to Jay Adkisson : https://github.com/jayferd)

Thanks
Steve Jobs Yacht makes its debut
There's a difference between being serious about a product and being serious enough to do what it takes to make the product succeed. Apple has set a high bar of tight hardware/software integration, where the software is hand-tuned to take advantage of everything limited mobile hardware has to offer. The market expects nothing less. The Apple model works because management is willing to control both sides, and the Android model works because everything is relatively open so the software devs can play directly with the hardware.

> there was a limited number of things we could do

No one is blaming you or your team. I'd blame the lowest person in the company who had the ability to install beta versions of Office on beta versions of Surface.
The Presentations of the HN Kansai 3 event (last friday) in Video
The people at www.foldable.me use css animations for their cool editor 3D editor.

That's certainly in production but I don't know if counts as a "productive purpose".
> but geez, temporarily accept the cert,

That might be acceptable advice on HN, but it's lousy advice for the general public.
http://www.onemorething.nl/2012/10/jacht-steve-jobs-te-water... extra photos , dutch text
I found the style checker to be pretty good and helpful.

Because for some problems they give a hint, e.g. "this is solvable with a one-liner", the student could figure out himself whether he is on the right track or not.

Line-length could also be checked by implementing something similar to a style checker. It could also check if some methods that are supposed to be used (e.g. min/max) are being used.

I guess the author is correct in that automatic grading is not perfect and it's never going to be as good as talking with someone more experienced... but it can go pretty far.
Having corrected programming assignments as a teacher assistant myself, I have to say that it can be a really tough job and an automatic grading system may give you more help. When I corrected an assignment, and there were a lot of issues with it, I would point out the most important ones. But an exhaustive list is really tough because there is time pressure. Also, I think it could be too demotivating for the student if he gets a list of 30+ issues from the corrector, I'd rather have him acknowledge the 3 most important ones.
Impressive in so many ways!
Video of Steve Jobs Yacht
Third presentation is from Top10 HN blogger Sacha Greif, about "Side Projects"!
Aren't we living in a virtual world? You should define virtual and real. Perhaps, the answer is in front of you!
C'mon let's keep real. This is like saying: as long as you don't drive a Bentley there is no difference between an Audi and a Kia.
I don't get how this article an on the one hand condemn rotations and on the other hand condemn keeping people in he or positions too long.
Google play seller support in India
Google play seller support in India
It's an argument and a bias. I clearly stated the context of my relationship with manufacturers for a reason. There is plenty of evidence that shows the negative effects of gray markets on manufacturers. The long-term macroeconomic effects that these types of issues have on manufacturers can be devastating.

> In principle everyone is against policies that are damaging to one's life, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily bad.

No doubt. But regulations exist in society for a reason...
Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous marketplace
William Faulkner v. Woody Allen
I disagree. I build very large scale systems. I think that large scale systems should be constructed out of small components which are loosely coupled distributed components with strong contracts between them. These components are ideal for encapsulating in small standalone go components.
I was thinking that might be what he meant, but then he says this:

>While a three-stage rocket is simple and is limited on how much of a weight threshold it can lift, the more advanced two-stage can be expanded for larger weights.

The first part of that is, I'm pretty sure, the opposite of true. The second part is sort of true, but the "expansion" in question would be... adding a third stage. I think he heard the Geoffrey Forden quote and misunderstood the point, which is admittedly subtle.

I think what Forden meant was: "If they need three stages to do just this, then they'll never be able to use this to launch a human, because a four-stage rocket is completely beyond them. But if they can do this with only two stages, they could get a human to space with three stages."
This is a short term attitude that is incompatible with building a system that grows mor ppwerful or a decade. That may be OK or maybe not, depending on your horizon and sunset plans.
If it's all in CSS, how come the graphics looks smudgy like this? http://i.imgur.com/iuoUr.png
"...my 1988 Amiga 500+"
Vidarh, you just brought tears to my eyes!
I might give that a try sometime (I'm sure it's around somewhere) just to see if I can get something back. I vaguely remember a little of what I wrote, but it would be intriguing to reread what I was writing all those years back. Thanks for the idea.
It seems to me that conflict of this type arises when people are forced to make difficult choices between similar options with real but minor differences which have a large switching cost. Hence Nikon vs. Canon and Android vs. iOS. And of course religion.

The conflict doesn't arise when switching cost is low or the differences are too minor (e.g. Sony TV vs. Panasonic TV, Verizon vs. AT&T, Unitarianism vs. Baha'i fail to generate rancor on both counts).

The conflict would appear to arise from people struggling with cognitive dissonance. In other words, if an iOS or Android user were supremely confident of the superiority and perfection of their chosen platform there would be no dissonance and and no outward invective.

Just as Freud (correctly, for once) observed that the most passionately homophobic individuals were often in denial of their own urges, the most fervent boosters of a platform are probably plagued with doubts about it.
CAPSULE - Game Audio Demo
Please note that this article was written in 2007.
I think the medium term future is of smartphones first, then tablets, then laptops, and least of all desktops. In many cases, you can just hook a laptop to a monitor instead of having a desktop and gain the portability of a laptop. My personal experience is that for non technical people, a tablet is the current ideal computing device. Its just much easier to use and very portable. The phone is the ideal communications device since you can carry it everywhere and you are used to using it to take and receive calls and text. Now you can use it for email, Facebook, twitter, etc...

With Moore's law and ever improving apps, tablets should gradually eat into laptop and desktop share.

My 5 year old has been using an ipad and iphone for several years. He still does not use a laptop. Touch is an easier interface than mouse and keyboard. My wife's desktop computer sits idle for months while the ipad gets used a lot.
Thanks jparker, and you're totally right - we are still missing 6. -> Present :-) We will get round to it - it should be easier once we have connected Infobright as a storage option alongside Hive...
I would like to add this link also, Linapple[1], an Apple][ emulator for Linux, which is pretty good too. More fun on your Linux box, from the good old days. :)

[1] http://linapple.sourceforge.net/
The question is incomplete ("contributing something positive or at least not actively doing harm").

Please define "good".

To me, good is where you find something interesting and worth doing.

Financial speculation makes the market more liquid and reduce the spread. You say you find that interesting. I would then call that "good".

If it matches your definition of good, you may want to engage in that.

If it does not match your definition of good, look at international finance, then international macroeconomics - you will see many people are actively looking to find ways to mitigate the effects of speculation.

Also, there are some interesting side problems where your mathematical skills could be applied (should monetary policy be used in a discretionary way?) for similar problems (if you define a stable economy as a "good" thing)
EJDB - Embedded JSON Database engine
The main goal of this project to create the fast MongoDB-like database engine library which can be embed into C/C++ applications under terms of LGPL license.
Thanks exodust. :)