skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The UK used to have that kind of system (from about 1990 to 2001). Since that time a more complicated system has operated known as NETA[0].

In the current system, generators and consumers (domestic supplier companies are "consumers") trade freely with each other but have to submit notifications to the system operator of the trades that they have done. You trade electricity in half-hours but 1 hour before each half-hour in question you must submit your final notification of your traded position. This profile is what the operator expects you to product/consume over that half hour.

You may also participate in the balancing mechanism[1]. This is where you also submit bids/offers to produce/consume more/less during that half hour. The National Grid will accept bids/offers in order to balance what it sees at the difference between your traded position and forecast demand. If you get your traded position wrong, the grid will have to balance things up by accepting bids/offers and the cost of doing so will fall to you (plus a bit more to teach you a lesson).

The Balancing Mechanism works on a minute to minute type level, to handle second by second fluctuations there is also a service known as Frequency Response which the more flexible generators may provide to the grid. This is a mostly automated system in which their generation equipment continually adjusts to compensate for the changes in frequency.

In the film we saw, at least one Hyro plant was ready to come on. We're not told whether it had sold its power on the open market or had had a bid accepted on the Balancing Mechanism. However, when the French inter-connector trips the Grid brought on another hydro plant. This would probably have been via the Balancing Mechanism. The operators of the inter-connector would have had to pay for failing to meet their traded position.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Electricity_Trading_Arrange...
[1] http://www.bmreports.com/bwx_reporting.htm
But the human brain is very good at talking about specifics. Questions like "can you walk me through what you do everyday" or "are there any repetitive tasks that you do day-to-day" will lead you down a much more interesting path. You’ll find problems that your software actually can solve.

Great advice. I like to take this even deeper:

- What is the next thing you do?
- Who do you call / talk to / pass this to?
- Show me that form with real data on it.
- What's the worst thing that happens?
- How often does that happen? (hourly, daily, etc.)

And my 3 favorite questions (which are often very revealing):

- What % of time does that happen?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how good is that?
- What is the #1 thing needed to take that to a 10?

Also, I try to ask these questions to > 1 person. The discussion of 2 or more people coming up with the answer is often more educational than the answers themselves.

I have at least 10 years of real work in my pipeline thanks to these techniques. I never worry about "make something people want".

Great post, Dan and Jason. Thank you!
Compressed timeline of analogue updates of Fiscal Cliff coverage
It's played in America as well, on Nick or Nick Jr I'm pretty sure.
I love the Tesco QR code shopping video!

So easy and delivery is (hopefully) at your door when you arrive home :)
I'm also sick of Bootstrap startups with the same colored-buttons ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/no-optou...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ca6c8bd4-142b-11e1-b07b-00144feabd...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/despite-eu-ban-uk-makes-radiatio...
Are these tools open source?
I was just making a joke relative to the title that was something like "This guy has a better sale page than you" while the site was rendered 403 by the HN effect.

I see the title has been changed and the page is available.
Great idea!
When the next video/music is unavailable (deleted or unavailable for my country) the queue stops foverer and I need to start over :(
> just as an aside, he's invoking some pretty ancient philosophical discussions and doing it well.

Thanks! I'm not sure I invoked it well enough for people that don't read these things, though: that's what I get for dashing off a blog post. I'm still learning how to properly communicate the things I've been doing for the past few years with people, and I've had mixed success.

> the trick here is to be careful that we not confuse process philosophy (Whitehead, Bergson, Hartshorne)

So: I think that part of our difference is that I'm coming from process philosophy from the 'other direction' if you will: Deleuze and de Landa, who come later than Whitehead/Bergson. I still have yet to actually read those two, so there might be a bit of that going on.

> the trick here is to be careful that we not confuse process philosophy (Whitehead, Bergson, Hartshorne) for pure nominalism, or the pure separation of identity/name/essence from its object.

Right. I certainly don't want to confuse the two, and maybe I have a bit here.

> It's not that process philosophers reject essences out of hand, but that they attempt to find more descriptive language that accounts for the constant motion and change of substances.

See above about Deleuze vs. Whitehead. Regardless, point well taken.

> All this to say, I wonder if the notion of a 'role' is truly descriptive here

I am not perfectly happy with 'role' to be honest, but was trying to find a good analogy for those who haven't read my influences. Also, probably because (process vs essences) as (DCI vs OOP) is weighing heavy on my brain at the moment. Not that I like DCI...

> "_why" in this scheme becomes almost a pure abstraction devoid of the context of having been invented and inhabited by Subject.

I think this is a good critique, and I think that's where I was getting at with my bit at the end about "I don't think anyone should literally take up the mask." I may be making this too ideal; obviously, I prefer to stay material. Idealism is just too easy though!

> It'll be fun to see how/if Subject plays this out.

Agreed.

Anyway, thanks for this: I'm gonna give this some thought for when I write out a longer, more rigorous iteration. Feel free to email me if you ever want to talk about this intersection; it's pretty much what I do these days.
Thank you very much for updating this after Appcelerator dropped it.

I have written quite a few tools using this system (HTML5/JS, with a little help from a couple of python modules) and I was furious when I updated the Titanium build tools to find out that desktop mode had been dropped and I could no longer build cross-platform installers!

I have been editing the HTML code inside my .app folders on OS X while waiting for this to come out - I'll install it ASAP and see what I can get working again :)
TEK
TEK
I totally get what the author is talking about. However, to provide another perspective on the other side, I have successfully used linkedin more than once (3 times) to secure a new opportunity (both fulltime and contract) in the past. 2 of them were passive i.e. I was not really looking that hard but was open to it if it was the right fit for me.

Linkedin is just another tool like many others. You have to know how to use it to your advantage or usefulness. Yes there are countless and pointless groups/recruiters who just spam (I get a lot of them as well) but if you create a highly targeted profile, chances are that you also will get invites from good recruiters or professionals in general. The percentage is more like 95% crap, 5% good. I am happy with the 5% part.
FYI, I am working on a revamp of jQAPI, a alternative browser for the documentation. Should be released pretty soon.

http://pre.jqapi.com/
https://github.com/jqapi/jqapi
Regarding the Recent Cyberattack on CFR.org
I think it's a very nice idea! I even didn't know that PayPal have 3rd party authorization.

I'm working in legal and you should change your logo at least!
No thanks - sticky back plastic is far more versatile.

Annotations with diagrams finely written with pencil or smudged around with a lopping great big finger?

Not possible with certain DRM encumbered digital copies.

It was more of a point that the iPad wouldn't survive GCSE/A level chemistry or a machine shop for instruction whereas a book would even with minor acid or fire damage.

We had to buy our textbooks. I bet that they aren't that generous all of a sudden.

Clunting someone with an A level mathematics textbook end on stopped a mugging. If it was an iPad, you'd be the one being mugged (I grew up in a shitty bit of London)
4 borderline-creepy ideas for Facebook Custom Audiences
Best Twitter Conversations of 2012
Whilst I remain on LinkedIn, I have yet to get any value from it. Furthermore the new endorsements feature is utterly useless. I consider myself a back-end AND front-end developer but for some reason I am heavily endorsed in CSS, making it look as if I am not as skilled in back-end work.
Is the site down for everybody now?
So you parse your credit card statements (or equivalent) for the coffee & travel costs? I thought the travel was by distance (not cost) at first, which is what I was curious about because it would require a more active role in logging on your part.

Is this purely for kicks, or are you trying to use it to drive behavioral changes (e.g. spend less on coffee)? I ask because I always think about doing this, but I get a stuck on the "why".
> On the other hand, if I cut out 18 months and kept iterating, I'm sure I'd do better, financially, than I'm doing at my day job.

This is exactly it. At his last job, my (now) boss started a project on the side. Eventually he had to quit, not because he was making lots of money, but because he didn't have enough time to support the side project. It was bringing in money at this point, but not enough to match his previous salary. He kept at it though, and eventually the revenue grew. Twelve months later, there are 15 of us and money in the bank :)
> "We lost ourselves in incremental improvements and wars of efficiencies"

If blogs existed when the steam engine was created, I'm sure someone would be posting an article about how the state of the Steam Engine has stagnated and we are simply optimizing.

Arguably, this always happens, because low hanging fruit is so easy to grab. It's easy to have big, grand visions when you are discovering ground-breaking science every single month.

I'm from a biology background, so pharmaceuticals are a great example. Penicillin was huge and thought to solve everything. The second round of penicillin derivatives were equally magical. Then we started to see resistant strains of bacteria and had to start tweaking the magic formula, fighting for small improvements in efficiency.

The same happened to all major drug categories. We are in an era where most major small molecules have already been discovered, tweaked and optimized. We will continue to tweak until the next big thing comes along, and then it will start all over again.
In the UK, I believe that the electricity companies have to provide a certain percentage of renewable, but electricity paid for by people who want "100% renewable" counts towards that target so people are paying the electricity company to do what it was mandated to do anyway. It's not like the electrons coming into your house are in any way connected with a specific type of provision anyway.
>Buffet prices are low because not everyone eats 14 dishes.

Buffet prices are low because bits are extraordinarily cheap. Come back the day AT&T posts an annual net loss and we can talk about raising prices.

>Maybe someone can look at whether telcos have an extraordinary profit margin or not but I don't think so.

http://ycharts.com/companies/T/profit_margin

The average looks to be in excess of 10%. That's pretty extraordinary. Certainly well in excess of the market average.
The Seven Biggest Collapses in Mobile Handset or Smartphone History
Any reason behind the move to Starbucks as the end of the year?
Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the Bicholim conflict article? I can't find it in Wikipedia and need to write an article on the conflict for class.
The script I used for extracting sms/iMessages is here https://gist.github.com/4437883

Some of the other scripts just download data from foursquare's API, and post processing transaction download from Mint. Hopefully I'll have time to clean and post those scripts.
Creating a Performance Culture
and that was awesome!
Exactly, this feels like a bandaid on a gaping wound. If we are going to spend our energies, it should be for education/legal change....or getting at the hearts/minds of the Indian people. The international Justice mission is a great team of lawyers who fight for such change.

http://www.ijm.org/
AFAIK Air doesn't support Python, Ruby and PHP scripts inline in the local applications?

(Granted the language mixing code (called Kroll) is quite slow if you have large shared objects, but I've found with careful interface design you can mitigate the downsides and get a fast, stable interface, in my case mixing python modules like gzip and javascript.)
Wow, something happening in Providence! I can't help but notice the site doesn't list an actual location, does anyone know where this is taking place?
I have never seen this before... I think I was just converted.
It's not really clear where Europe ends. Some people argue geographical Europe ends at the Ural Mountains. I guess currently Europe ends politically at the western border of Russia, rendering Austria a Central European country by your vague definition.

The old divisions make a lot of sense because they are still reality. Both in an economical and a cultural sense. Looking at Google Maps makes me consider Cuba to be kind of North America. :P
Agree. Innovation comes in S curves.

That's what a lot of people criticize about Kasparow's concept.
How to Translate RSS Feeds with Google Scripts
<sarcasm>Well, if you've never heard of it then it cannot exist and that invalidates his example, right?
</sarcasm>

I'm not saying the example is correct, I'm pointing out that "I've never heard of it" / "Works on my computer" are dangerous attitudes to have.
Tumult Hype 1.6's New Features - now with CSS Filter Effects
Cambridge-Based Sookbox Connects Media and Devices
coffee data is more driven from foursquare checkins, and only partially credit card transactions.

The motivation for me is a way to learn about my year (not directly to change my actions), and part a fun exercise to get better at data processing, javascript, and UI Interaction/charting. I like the hard deadline that a personal annual report creates naturally (ie: it's no good if i release it in june).
I like it with Outlook 2013 -- there's a built-in plugin that basically looks up people that you communicate with on Linkedin. I find it handy as I meet with alot of people, and I get a picture and brief bio, and I get you see who they've "linked to" recently.

Before that, I found it to be completely useless -- sort of like a grown-up version of baseball cards... you collect people for unknown reasons.
Beautiful. I would pay for a product that I could just turn on in the background and get reports like this daily.
Beta spring is hosting so probably 95 Chestnut, Third Floor, Providence, RI 02903.
> About all it's useful for is knowing when some people are dissatisfied with their current job and looking for new employment...

Also, it's useful for knowing who just lost their job because that's about the only time I see anyone update their page.
The D.E.N.N.I.S. System in Python
Just on HN, right now it's close to the #1 position; likely this site is getting hit with massive traffic as we speak, from diverse sources. Wait until that dies down before passing judgment.
Every redesign on the web boils down to having less information on the viewport, requiring more scrolling, thanks to bigger font and wasted "Comfortable" spaces. It drives me crazy.

At least Google offers you a "Condensed" layout.
Eeek, is it not clear that it's at Betaspring? We'll get the site updated right now to fix that.

If you're local, we've also got JavaScript and Functional Programming user groups being spun up as well hosted at local startups.
One possible option is to move aboard a sailing boat. You will be able to move from place to place and work at the same time. Most marinas have Wifi and if you stay close to the coast you should be able to get internet over your mobile. There are many families that do this, just search for liveaboard.
A Prudent Question: Startup Style
lies, damned lies, and statistics. Unfortunately i didn't have time data for my other trips to Starbucks so that dataset is partial (I mostly visit Starbucks on the weekend/holidays).

The transition from Carte Blanche to Burbon Coffee in the middle of the year is when @bitly's office moved, and my coffee habit followed.
If you just skip it doesn't continue normally?

Optimally the site should find a video that works for you. I'll be fixing this soon.
For those interested in learning about the subject, here's a good place to start (in order):

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
http://books.google.com/books?id=B0eB8mvov6wC&printsec=f...

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_3997.pdf

and, for fun...

Jacques Derrida, Differànce
http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/diff.html
>Your argument seems to be that "it is better as it doesn't allow me to buy OS-specific apps so I can't get tied in"?

No, that's pretty much it. The problem with Windows is that when the typical user goes to install a piece of software, there is nothing there to make them think "this will cause me great consternation if I ever want to switch operating systems" -- so they don't think that, and they install it, and soon they're thoroughly locked in before they even realize it.

Or to extract out the general principle: It would be best for user freedom if all operating systems used standardized cross-platform APIs and all applications ran on all operating systems.
It shouldn't be hard to imagine for a lot of people who lived before the mid 80's.

The Bell monopoly required you to not only use their handsets, you usually had to lease the phone from them.
It's cultural for the last few generations. From a historical perspective it is rather inaccurate.

Let me just scratch the surface of the history of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It is much more complex, but I hope this simplification will be enough for getting a feel for it.

Czech lands, which are east of Germany and Austria were a part of the same Holy Roman Empire for roughly 900 years until the beginning of the 19th century and then part of Austria-Hungary until the First WW. The influence is clear in trade, culture, education.

Slovakia is a bit different story. During the same 900 year period it was part of the Hungarian Kingdom, which was again a Central European entity.
Both countries sort of met in Austria-Hungary in the 19th century.
Post WWI they formed Czechoslovakia, from 1918 to 1938. It was democratic country with strong ties to the West.

The most intensive period of Eastern European/Russian influence was from the end of WWII to the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The time where the term Iron Curtain comes from.

This and the "slavic connection" with Russia are probably the sources of confusion. The languages are similar.
In the period of "romantic nationalism" of the 19th century, part of the so-called intellectual elite was intrigued by the idea of Pan-Slavism and wanted close ties with the Russian Empire. This was always more of a romantic idea that comes back every now and then. When the real decisions have been made (formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Velvet Revolution in 1989, joining the NATO and later the EU in 2004), they were always in a "westward" direction, in terms of both economy and diplomacy.
The code-examples look awful in Chrome on Windows... :-[
Sea level rises may be greater than predicted
Los Alamos removes Chinese tech over security fears
MongoDB Text Search Explained
> Would you be OK with letting a company to scan and retain a copy of every letter you sent and receive in exchange for being able to not use stamps?

Assuming there were some terms and conditions on who could access those letters, sure! In fact, if the additional benefit was they would weed out all the junk mail I get to only provide me things I'd be interested in, that's even better.

Of course, this also makes the assumption that their are still other means of communication (like phone). If the only means of communicating with me are through this service, then no.

> Do you think your correspondents would be OK with it if they knew you had such arrangement?

My correspondents? Yes. Yes I do. In fact, I believe most of them would want a service like that for themselves.

For things people wanted to send privately, they could pay to have it sent to me, like they can now.

So yes, I don't see a problem.
Using Kera.io for the UI walkthrough of a complex web application
Nice article, but I just wanted to throw out that if being able to call a class method on a null object in C++ is desirable, you can actually check for that condition instead of just crashing.

if(!this) return false; // Or whatever

Of course it's open for debate as to whether this is something to encourage, but it can help from having to use a Null Object pattern in some situations.
Sweet. It said Betaspring on the EventBrite page, but I didn't see an address anywhere. Not that I'm above wandering around downcity following people with laptop bags ;)
That is either sarcasm which needs to be marked, or you are in trouble. "[B]y clicking just one button [you can] complete a huge form for every job offer" is the definition of how to produce spam.

All "how to write an effective job application" articles emphasize writing cover letters/emails that show you've read and understood the job requirements and demonstrate how you can fill the position, including a resume with applicable information.
Contact at skyriser at gmail dot com if interested.

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vasy.ca

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FPGAs are becoming increasingly popular
I care so little about LinkedIn that I don't know why I'd bother quitting.
This would be a problem if GMail was the only means by which to contact people. It's not. You have a choice to use email.

The truth is, when you contact someone, you don't know what is happening to that information. Gmail, if anything, makes it more clear than most other means of communication.
Nop, I tried to skip, but nothing happens!

Also, I searched for Gentle Giant's music and there was a video with an oldman showing a sculpture!

Anyway, great website! :)
"Not necessary with digital copies."

Unless some student loses access to their books because they violated some third-party library's policy about reading their books. I see all sorts of conditions on using electronic books at my university's library -- conditions that are enforced by a service provider, not the university.

Sometimes, RMS can be prophetic:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's the first time I ever read or hear that somebody got something useful out of LinkedIn.