skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Viewabill : Transparent Consultancy Billiing
Nope: http://i.imgur.com/Heg3g8e.png
Sometimes I wonder how these ads are even signed off on. The spot is a nifty, creative accomplishment for the team that put it together, but as an advert, or product launch message, it's not so good. Basically Facebook paid for another portfolio piece for the members of their ad team.
Everywhere, in the near future. Graphene PVs promise to be ultra-efficient, and could double up as very high capacity supercapacitors.
I don't think you should conflate motivational recession (which is healthy and normal; almost everyone gets that once every few months) with "burnout". They're two different things.

Motivation fluctuates and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with picking up a new video game. In fact, I think there's something healing about narrative that is especially relevant to creative people. We need to get into a novel or TV serial or '90s JRPG every now and then.

Burnout is something else entirely that I hope you don't experience. It's severe and it sucks. There's a state at which you get too depressed to work and it can last for months. You get sick a lot, feel weak, can't focus or get anything done. It doesn't sound like you've been there, and I hope you never get there. Burnout usually isn't caused by long working hours or even by project failures alone; it usually involves long hours and negative conditions (especially subordination).
Wow, this is both terrifying and fascinating. The FAQ mentioned viewing these is a legal grey area. Anybody know about the legality of this in the United States?
Yes extend is unnecessary in this case. The key was saving a reference to self.
But transmission losses will be lower when generation is closer to the point of use, and storage costs may be too (eg, hot water tank or "accumulated" AC in a well-insulated house, vs. expensive batteries).
That works beautifully! Thank you.
I think this is closely related to why 'naming things' is hard.

I find this especially problematic in exploratory and experiment-driven programming because naming things often gets in the way until code has stabilized somewhat.

For this reason, I've found working in Max/MSP extremely pleasant because you don't need to name things unless it makes sense to. Yes a lot of Max code you see online is a mess of lines, but I found the key is that if you do, in fact, split related things into their own named components, then I hit the sweet spot between not being required to name things that don't have natural names (or at least deferring doing so until I'm done experimenting and trying things) and still maintaining good software practices, maintainability and abstraction.
CommaFeed - Simple, bloat-free, opensource RSS reader
Google Reader inspired self-hosted RSS reader, based on JAX-RS, Wicket and AngularJS.
https://github.com/Athou/commafeed
The guidelines are actually pretty clear and the Canadian Patent Office mostly follows those. You will generally not be able to get a patent for a piece of software per se, although it is not very hard to attach it to a physical process to make it patentable subject matter. Any experienced patent prosecutor/attorney will be able to draft something that is acceptable to the patent office.

The Amazon 1-Click patent, for example, was held to be valid because the software and algorithms were attached to a physical system (of collecting and storing customer information along with an automated process of inventory gathering to shipping).

Most patent lawyers here in Canada are of the opinion that software _can_ be patentable, and that the trend is towards patentability. The main difference between US and Canada is not their respective Patent Acts (which are fairly similar), but the attitude of both the Patent Office and the courts in dealing with these things. It seems that the USPTO very easily accepts software patents, while Canadian patent examiners seem to be a little more strict on the requirements set out regarding software. Indeed, the Amazon 1-Click case arose in Canada because the patent office _rejected_ Amazon's patent, rather than the other way around as it seems more common in US.
Why not keep using Thunderbird? It's not like the client or the numerous extensions are suddenly going to stop working.

That said, if you are on Linux, Geary (http://www.yorba.org/projects/geary/) is great open source email client, that's built ground up for conversation style mail.
That used to be coal. Now it's natural gas. The gap has grown large enough in some places that coal plants get converted to run on natural gas.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_plant_conversion_p...
Labor economics are anything but simple.
This just reminds me of the start to a terrible movie. I feel like I am going to see something bad happen.
Happy doesn't even rate on the American graph.

A lot of American parents I meet go on and on about how smart and fantastic their children are. They even have bumper stickers announcing that their offspring are honor students at some school. I never hear about how they are well adjusted and happy.
Very interested in this space; for a screenless device it seems to me that 'act as hotspot' and 'usb to pc' are the only real sensible options, although they are not exactly ideal.
A slice of London so exclusive even the owners are visitors
I can imagine it having an impact on a graphics app where a `Point` class might be instantiated thousands of times, or even if the Backbone.Model constructor were hundreds of lines long to attach all the public methods. It would be weird to me to have to spend a few seconds of thought on a per-object basis to think how I should structure the code based on how often I think it will be instantiated.

But yes, I also have not been bitten by this. Its just something I've read about how the v8 engine works (and makes sense intuitively). I agree you shouldn't base coding style decisions soley on hearing one way is faster, but I think its a minor point and worth noting.

Edit: a link! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2991904
I'm not sure why, but I saw the graph differently. The last 2000 years are not chopped off, as you correctly point out.
Excuse my ignorance (I am a layperson and simply interested in this subject), but are you suggesting that the utility themselves would rollout distributed solar to their customers, and thus the utilities engineers are skeptical of the technology and how it would be rolled out?

It seems to me that the whole point is that consumers will begin the rollout themselves, generating and storing power on their own and the only visible effect to the utility would be a dramatic decrease in power use by that customer.

While having a grid where you could sell your unused energy is a great idea, I didn't see that as the focus of this article. I thought this article was simply about the distributed generation and storage.

In the context of distributed generation and storage on an individual level -- why do utility engineers matter? They don't get a say in the rollout, they don't manage it, and they certainly don't get to prevent it. All they can do is maintain their infrastructure in the face of a change they cannot stop.
http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fxato.net%2Fhack...
Google Now-like app, Sherpa, uses predictive intelligence
I'm an electrical engineer and I've done these calculations for my own home.

The roof area of a 1200 sq ft ranch home is much larger than the surface area of solar panels needed to power the home. (in other words, your map would show pretty much all of north America). But covering all of a roof with solar panels is very expensive.

The biggest problem is that the "typical suburban home" is ridiculously inefficient.

In terms of bang for your buck, investing in efficiency improvements is a much better choice for the average home owner. Don't even consider solar panels until you've reduced energy needs first.

After efficiency upgrades, modern solar panels make a lot of sense financially speaking.
I came here to say exactly that. They make a point of using the same colors in each chart (mostly), giving the illusion of some correspondence, but the colors mean something different for each chart. For example, "Difficult" and "Agreeable" are the same color in the first two charts.
Besides more thoughtful residence design and geothermal techniques, there are even obvious retrofits like automatically opening and shutting windows/blinds at dusk/dawn. In many places, that alone should be enough.
> There is this idea that conformity is valued highly in East Asian cultures, and I have never been there and consequenly can't tell if this is true.

Conformity is highly valued in all human cultures. It's what makes a culture a culture, what stabilizes and maintains it. The difference is more that Americans like to delude themselves with self-aggrandizing rhetoric, but don't have the experience and training to actually put it into practice.
Meteor vs. Sails.js (interview)
http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/04/Sails-0.8.9-Released
Flatland: The best minimal theme for Sublime Text
But if what you say is true, the ad shows that working for Facebook sucks too. I don't think that was played very well.
http://cryptogasm.com/webcams/webcam.php?id=181

A large sharktank in sweden
> If we let someone in from a poor country, we're increasing the income of someone who might be below the 50th percentile into the 99th percentile. It's awfully hard to make a case that we should be enriching the richest people in the world at the cost of the poorest.

It's not hard to make that case at all. Indians and Chinese prospective immigrants are not part of the American body politic. The American government has no duty to benefit them at the expense of Americans, and indeed I'd argue that it's morally wrong for the American government, instituted to protect American interests and American prosperity, to make that trade off regardless of the relative wealth of the people involved.
I don't understand. This might be the current problem for utilities, where laws demand that solar power can be inserted into the grid (often as a priority or for a guaranteed price) by what would normally be just consumer households.

This article is talking about using your solar power system to actually fulfill your complete power needs, without any grid.
play.spotify.com has been around for a while.
When there are 50 open pull requests it's clear that people are contributing but getting nowhere. The anon poster may in fact own several of those..
I've had a solar installer make a report... it would take a little more than half of my roof (the house is a ~1000 sq ft one-story building).
It almost feels as though they were trying to beat SNL to the punch on making fun of the new product.

I think one of the reasons the Home product rubs me the wrong way is similar to the reason I resent junk-food companies for knowing exactly who their target consumer is, and building a product suited perfectly to taking advantage of the weaknesses of those consumers to move more of their product. Just like the way a nearby television broadcasting commercials starts loud and with a flash, designed to pull your eye in.

This product takes advantage of the brain's weakness for bright, shiny moving things, instant reward of an image flashing with a sound effect when you complete the desired action ("liking" something). Users won't be able to put it down. It feels cheap.
SVN merge operations in eclipse
It's not working at Facebook that sucks: it's obviously cool because... It's Facebook!

What sucks is listening to the boss. "lol"

I think the target audience is very young. Facebook strategy is probably very long term, playing on the fact that young people grew up with Facebook.
Does it have a strong enough back-end? Newsblur is an open-source "clone" of Reader, too, but last I checked (around the Reader migration) it barely worked.
Steer clear of Facebook’s Home for Android
Unix Concepts Talk
Google's authentication-less on-the-fly image resizing service
One summer in college, I sub-rented an apartment from a friend who was away for the summer. It was the first time in my life I had lived alone. I was working grounds crew at a dorm (relatively strenuous/active job). I'd get home around 4pm, have a snack, maybe watch some TV or listen to some tunes, then I'd just crash. I'd usually wake up after dark (being summer, between 8 and 10pm), eat dinner, then be up until 1 or 2am. Then I'd go to bed, then get up at 6am to be at work at 7am.

It was a great routine. Ever since career and family became part of my life, I've rarely ever had such peaceful moments in my life.
Thanks. I tried to enable Java just to look at this applet, only to realize I don't even have it installed on this computer.
Meteor v. Sails.js (interview with infoQ)
Two of Musks companies have partnered to build just that very system described in this article:

http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx

Of course its marketed as backup power right now, but once battery costs come down this will be very viable.
The MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/m2/Documents/m2-att1.pdf.

$ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} [0-9P]' pat_mpeg2.txt | wc -l
1033
$ grep -i Expired pat_mpeg2.txt | wc -l
579
$ grep -i Expires pat_mpeg2.txt | wc -l
50

The MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/M4V/Documents/m4v-att1.p...

$ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg4v.txt | wc -l
1297
$ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg4v.txt | wc -l
178
$ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg4v.txt | wc -l
22

The MPEG-2 Systems Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/m2s/Documents/m2s-att1.p...

$ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg2s.txt | wc -l
240
$ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg2s.txt | wc -l
1
$ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg2s.txt | wc -l
48

The MPEG-4 Systems Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/M4S/Documents/m4s-att1.p...

$ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg4s.txt | wc -l
68
$ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg4s.txt | wc -l
0
$ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg4s.txt | wc -l
14

The AVC (h.264 - MPEG_LA) Patent Portfolio License as of February 1, 2013.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.p...

$ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg_h264.txt | wc -l
2958
$ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg_h264.txt | wc -l
4
$ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg_h264.txt | wc -l
109

Though these are the patent pools available for licensing from MPEG_LA,
I haven't deduped the lists, and I'm sure there are some duplicates. I'm
mostly looking for rough numbers. I'm not trying to pick on MPEG_LA,
but they just happened to be first on the list.
You are screwed. This is way way too little time to get your visa situation in order. Consult an immigration professional immediately to have any hope of success.
I think the article is talking about customers who buy their own solar installations. The thing is, no system is available (afaik) that is 24/7 solar power (batteries add a massive cost to user solar installations) so the only way for you to have power at all times is to sell the surplus generated solar back to the utility (which is where the engineering problems come in) during peak solar hours and using the gird off peak.
Have a Coke and a smile?
Glad someone else saw this. The conclusions of the article don't seem to follow from the data.
It doesn't seem that his friends lives suck, though, since he seems quite content living vicariously through them.
Dog training? http://cryptogasm.com/webcams/webcam.php?id=24142
>What kind of patents can you get while fixing bugs in some C code written by somebody else? //

Ones related to bug fixing? Ones concerning optimisation of code to enable lower memory use or lower power consumption or more compressed data formats or ...?

Some companies, the big players in electronics and computing for example, use patents not only to enforce the limited monopolies but also as bargaining chips enabling them to buy in to patent pools and such - like you can use these 500 patents if we can use your 500. I'm sure with some such deals some "packing" is needed to bolster the numbers and let you play above your station.
I too absolutely recommend Without Hot Air; if you're interested enough to read this far into the comments, you'll enjoy the book.

It's a refreshing physicist's take in a field normally consumed with politics and hand waving.
One thing always bothers me with single page application is SEO implications. Is there a real way to use SPA without killing your SEO?
Dialect Map of American English
China's internet: A giant cage
It's because River Song refused to kill the Doctor....
An ye shall know us by our hobbies
I acknowledge this is slightly off topic, but the culture of attacking industries seems somewhat problematic for similar reasons. Passing unfriendly restrictions and higher and higher taxes on oil companies, doesn't really help solve the problem. Sure they're oil companies now, but they're not really oil companies. They're energy companies, are the biggest investors in better solutions, and have the most to lose if they don't invest in the future so why hinder them so much?
Solar doesn't have to be expensive up-front thanks to companies that lease solar systems like SolarCity (who's chairman is Elon Musk, ran by his cousins).
>You’d think if people had more than they need, they would be generous about it, and would see, reflecting on themselves, that others might want to have more as well.

This doesn't really make sense to me. People who value relationships or are compassionate generally, in my anecdotal experience, value money less. So of course they'll have less. Th people who rich are the ones who value spending their time getting money over helping others (empathy, essentially). At least, that's how I feel about money, and I assume other people who are rich/desire to be rich feel the same way. More precisely, it's not that people who get rich lose their ability to empathize -- people who never developed the ability to empathize have an easier time getting rich.
One word economics! It can provide real answers to the questions poised by the author. The author treats this subject like a black science creating hypothetical scenarios. What a joke.
The webplayer seems to take more memory in total and offer a still significantly worse UI than the desktop counterpart.

I'm not impressed yet, and I know that better web experiences can be delivered.

However, now that I see this webplayer and recognize a few similarities with the desktop player, I can see why many of the horrifically terrible changes to the native player happened recently.

They were getting rid of native rendering and replacing it with rendering a webpage. No wonder people were so pissed and no wonder so much functionality was dropped.

EDIT: Okay, I'm going to say this. Webapps: USE MY RIGHT CLICK. You are NOT A WEBPAGE, so don't use a webpage right click!

Right click a song in native app: Play, Queue, Add To->Lists, Radio, Copy 3 Kinds of Links, Share, Delete from Playlist.

Right click on a song in web app: Back, Forward, Reload (breaks playback lol...), Save, Print, View Page Source, Reload Frame...

I love my right click menus and not having them in a webapp is very frustrating. Oh wait, this is supposed to also work for touch so I will never get a real alt-menu again, will I?
Well there are two answers here.

First, coming from a less developed country doesn't mean you'll be less skilled. On the contrary, it's a strong incentive. Being raised and schooled in a developed country is only a luxury, it won't make you a better engineer.

Secondly, those engineers will "depress" wages for several reasons. First, it's supply and demand. They have much stronger wishes to work in a developed country compared to native engineers. Secondly, companies might also hire native engineers because of various reasons, like language barriers, relationships between personel, the culture of the company, etc.

If it depress wages, it might be because there might be a lack skill and innovation somewhere. Lower wages isn't always a bad thing actually.
Well the tech for batteries is getting cheaper and better.

Check out this Hak5 rig of van with PV and batteries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWmCpt2KXOs

From this, it is not hard to imagine if one scaled this setup one could be off the grid now.
Delicious Pantone Pairings artwork
Maybe this explains a strange situation. Europe is bigger than the US, is well educated, free and prosperous. You would think that more technological innovation would come from Europe, or at least it would be on par, but that is far from the case. There have been several articles on this lately but none seem to have an answer.
Now, that's the SketchUp, isn't it? ;)
I'm frustrated by courses that provide a small set of tech projects to work on which have no real purpose or audience, leading to disposable effort. I'm frustrated by fantastic teachers educating students in topics that the teacher has very little interest in.

I'd love to see more schools embrace informal interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities to build projects that aren't disposable but have a real purpose. I've been working with my local startup community to integrate further with my university to provide practical projects for courses, mentorship for those who need it, integration with the local industry, and speakers to inspire them. I think it will provide students with more engagement in the learning process, and teachers with the opportunity to discuss the issues that they're very much interested in.

Learning by doing, but having a purpose for doing. Maybe there would be investor interest when they're finished, but regardless the goal would be to build something that people are actually going to use. Using and teaching the latest technologies, and relating it to the curriculum which is often based on fundamental concepts.
This article isn't talking about protecting them, simply the problems that they are now facing and will likely face in the future.

"There's absolutely nothing to stop the existing utility companies being the companies that lead the charge with solar power."

Did you read the article? Energy infrastructure is amortized over THIRTY years. That means that they have huge liabilities until that equipment is payed off and chances are they have to upgrade it shortly after. Even pumping the solar companies full of government and investment dollars doesn't compare to all of the private equity that has gone into funding the existing infrastructure.