skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not entirely sure I believe this myself, but I'm sure one can easily find studies describing the increased healthcare costs of the entire US population due to fossil fuel burning.

But I think it shouldn't be looked at in that light. The US government claims we, as a first world country, have the responsibility to protect those less fortunate than us. While that line is normally used to justify wars in far off countries (that just happen to be oil-rich), things like this are what I think of. Besides, it's not so much the pollution the US generates that scares me. It's places like China (or the next country that suddenly finds itself in a rampant industrial age) that scare me. Global pollution does not respect political boundaries.

So yeah, this will be more expensive at first. But the research needs to be done before it will get better. Somebody has to take lead so it can be ready by the time more 3rd world countries get "uplifted".
This is worth a read: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

Personally, when I play a game like Scribblenauts, where I can solve a problem in a variety of ways, I can't help but wish that there were adventure games that allowed for the same amount of lateral thinking.
Sure, if you have 100% self-driving vehicles with good vehicle-to-vehicle communications, you can even do intersections like this:

http://vimeo.com/37751380

However, there's one further requirement for removing traffic lights and lanes and such: no pedestrians (try to imagine crossing the street in the above simulation). If you believe that cities should be designed for human beings, then this is a real problem.

So let's say you want to remove the traffic lights and create a high-speed continuous-flow system comprised of lightweight energy-efficient micro-cars. How could you make this compatible with human habitation? By removing the roads entirely, and running the vehicles on cheap segregated infrastructure, either below or above ground.

Sound fanciful? This technology already exists, and is much more mature than self-driving cars. It's called "Personal Rapid Transit" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit), and has been prototyped successfully for decades. The first commercial system began operating in 2010, and there are now three PRT networks in public operation (The Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, Terminal 5 at London Heathrow Airport, and a national park in Suncheon South Korea).

When it comes to self-driving cars, freeways / motorways will be relatively easy to automate, because they are already pedestrian-free continuous-flow environments. I expect to see vehicles available which can do that by the end of this decade, or possibly early next decade. Mixed-mode surface streets will be far more difficult, however, and while they are likely to become automated in the longer term, I suspect that this will only happen at very low speeds -- possibly as low as 10 km/hr, which is the speed at which humans and vehicles can interoperate in a truly safe manner.
Create an algorithm to distinguish dogs from cats
Open Source Appliances
Some people like to earn money, but avoid paying for developer tools.
Maybe use (2003) in the title. I just started reading the text, and went all like erm, wait, what? CVS? BitKeeper? :]
So if you're using Django or Flask and need Javascript and HTML/CSS you still need the professional version?

Also is the professional version any of the paid licenses on this page http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/buy/index.jsp?

It's just that the term "Professional Version" is used to differentiate it from the "Community Edition" on all the informational pages and then the terms are not used anywhere on the Buy page.
I don't know if that pun was intentional, but if it was it's absolutely fantastic.

So as to remain on topic: I agree with you but the other side of the coin is that Java the language can't seem to live down Java EE and its culture. It's trying, though. I give particular kudos to the Clojure and Scala communities for helping to rebrand the JVM as something awesome independent of Java. That helped me, at least, to realize that I shouldn't conflate the two in my head.

The only stumbling block I have to get around in my head now when I think JVM is "JVM == long startup times", which is still kinda true but nowhere near as bad as it was.
Aeromobil: Roadable aircraft
This article makes it sound like an either-or, but JRuby is a mature alternative that allows you to pair Ruby's excellent web tools ecosystem (Rails foremost within it) with the ability to shunt off expensive tasks to Java or another JVM language.
In anticipation of their launch for GeographyGenius. Social map annotation, which state is the dopest, etc.
Why every Entrepreneur should be watching the America's Cup today.
Ah, for minus you should probably use &minus; (U+2212), which will typically display at the same width as numerical figures.

Next question: should you use the same character for unary minus and binary minus? That is, to represent negative numbers and subtraction? ;)
April was quite a long time back...
I just signed up for this to save my photos which would not fit within my dropbox. Not 2 days later my computer died and needed to be re-installed. Phew.

(Not plugging or anything, dropbox would have done the exact same thing if I had the space for it)

For the application itself, pretty much identical to dropbox I believe. I haven't really used it since I uploaded.
This article reads like a piece from a content farm. I flagged it and going forward the urge to flag everything from Medium will be hard to resist.
Connecting startups with student coders
That was the first thing I noticed. Lowercase i and j stand out due to the dot being too high. When the dot is taller than uppercase letters something is wrong.
Doesn't seem to address my two biggest requirements (1) non-US jurisdiction and (2) zero-knowledge at-rest encryption. For me, those would be the biggest selling points for a new Dropbox-like service.

Whilst they do mention they have various levels of strong encryption, they also mention (in the privacy policy under "Collection and Storage and Use of Private Data Files") data deduplication, which indicates they still have visibility and could be served with an NSL or FISA order.
Fun stuff, especially if you're a U.S. geography nerd (states with the largest coastlines, states that border the most states, all that good but mostly arbitrary stuff)

Pedantic, I'm sure, but from the title before I clicked on it I was trying to think of the state whose shape might independently be considered the most concave (though that may be much harder to define). This version of concavity depends largely on the shapes of the states around it (e.g. if Nevada split into 6 horizontal states, suddenly California would be the winner).
Can't wait for self driving cars. And the Hyperloop. And teleporters.
You're quite welcome. It was a fun project to work on.
> The increase in difficulty isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the more difficult it gets to mine the blocks, the more people are willing to pay cash for bitcoins

That's the problem with his logic. Bitcoin's exchange rate has remained pretty much constant while the difficulty rate has increased 10x in the last 6 months.
the comments on that page are not related to this attempt specifically.

who made the attempt?
I actually wrote the initial release of Nightcode with Vim. I definitely don't expect many seasoned Vim/Emacs users to switch any time soon. I intended Nightcode to be a great "ready-made" way of getting started with Clojure, because it has everything you need built in. That's not to say advanced users can't find it useful, though. I now work on Nightcode using Nightcode itself, as a way of dog-fooding my own software.
As a user of AdWords, I have a couple campaigns that Google itself indicates have a click fraud rate of 10-12%. This is the percentage that Google acknowledges and knows about. I wonder how much it doesn't know about or worse knows but doesn't acknowledge.
Natively Compiled Tables in SQL Server 2014
You are right. Done.
But google doesn't anonymize the data.
Kindling, Social Innovation App, Offers Free Accounts to all Startups
No worries. I dig the username, btw. :)
And it's not cheap, $35..
Am I doing Open Source wrong?
TL;DR: A lot of people contact me saying they'd like to help out with my Open Source project, but don't actually <i>do</i> anything. Can I fix this?
When employers get an applicant who claims they worked on an Open Source project, does the employer actually verify this activity?

I have a small, niche Open Source project. Unnamed to protect the guilty :) It doesn't have a lot of followers but there is international interest.

My dilemma is I have received requests to become a "member" and "help out" since the beginning. But when I email back, saying "great! here are some bugs or areas you might help out with!", 99% of the time I get no further response. <p>For Open Source, my understanding has always been to work on a project, you must:

1. Dig in yourself,
2. Find something to fix or create,
3. Create a patch or set of files,
4. Submit it to the project moderators for approval,
5. Be invited to "join" based on your success in steps 1-4.

Have the "rules" changed? I explain to the requestors that I won't give "member" access right away: they have to write some code or make some other contribution, submit it for approval, and I'll consider letting them join. After that ... nothing.

Can I fix this? Am I doing this wrong? Is this exactly what I can expect?

I see other Open Source projects explicitly spell out the above join process. Do other projects have a better application/contribution ratio?

Related question: I've seen here on Hacker News that employers suggest candidates include pointers to Open Source projects they've done. Do employers actually _look_ at whether the candidate has actually _done_ anything?

I look at the profile of the people who contact me and most of the time they've done nothing even if
they are a member of an Open Source project.
Is there a good place to showroom these things? I'm very close to getting an iPad (we'll see what the new one looks like), since my 1st gen Kindle Fire is dying and I've already ordered the new Paperwhite (my dad has one, and it really seems like they have perfected that device for its limited purpose). This model looks pretty intriguing though.
In case you ever see my reply: I was thinking that the F-16 is much larger and more powerful than a typical UAV, so it's built to carry more ordinance. But, I know next to nothing about the different military jet versions. I've since read in other comments that the F-16 was primarily a fighter-intercepter and not a fighter-bomber, so I guess it carries guns and air-to-air missiles rather than heavy bombs.
Remote Controls without AAAs
Wouldn't sublime have that scroller on the side with the preview of the entire file?

Or do real 1337 people turn that off? Can you even turn that off? Yeah, I've used Sublime twice I think.
> I'm assuming that users going into the sponsored results (Ad) area has something to do with them not getting what they are looking for in the organic results area.

I was thinking about this some more -

There is a further assumption in the above... That the users who click ads can distinguish between organic and sponsored results (or even if they care to).

Then, I remembered some time ago another study was done were it showed that the majority of ad clickers were the same 10% of the user base (give or take a few %). Or at least the same type of person (uninformed, bored, delusional, etc).

This of course would mean that changes to relevant search results will have no impact on the majority of Ad clicks. They'll click anyways.

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/12/03/who_cli...
http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2009/10/comS...
Looking at the price of a tablet of camera, amazing processor, good storage, HD display I wonder how pricey is the e-ink technology, some Kindle Readers are more expensive than their tablet brothers.
A Study of Whois Privacy and Proxy Service Abuse
>The military industrial complex is a problem and all, but I don't think it has much to do with Creative Writing majors struggling to find jobs.

It absolutely does. I have a friend who is a writer. He lives in NYC. When the economy collapsed, so did his audience. He is successful enough to keep working and is lucky enough to have a following in Europe. However, when the people start losing their money, suddenly going for a night out at the theatre is less important than paying rent. All the 'creative arts' people who had jobs could no longer support themselves. This is obvious to anyone who has actually researched what we're talking about.

>Or to take rayiner's example of lawyers, you can't pin that on a failure to invest in infrastructure, or sending to much money to Iraq, or farm subsidies... or anything else that "Occupiers" like to complain about.

Again, you are very wrong. Two of my best friends are lawyers, and they got out of law school just as the shit hit the fan. When our overall economy tanks, thanks to things like "failure to invest in infrastructure, or sending to much money to Iraq, or farm subsidies" and all those real things that contribute to the massive wealth distribution that is going on right now, jobs are effected. Law offices are not getting as much business, they aren't hiring as many interns (internships are usually essential to getting jobs at top firms), they're paying interns less and not hiring as many on. Again, this is basic stuff and it's sad that you have to write it off. Your "Occupiers" comment is telling.
Google Voice: How Not to design a mobile app
Flywheel's service and support have been tops. I particularly like being able to hand over the hosting to my clients and they don't feel overwhelmed by "technical" stuff due to Flywheel's design, organization, and not-only-written-for-geeks approach.

The feature improvements since the beta stage have been going well, and given the future growth plans, I think Flywheel is a sure contender for Best WordPress Hosting.

Questions or concerns? Just reach out to them. Actual humans at Flywheel respond quickly.
Understanding Git - Part 1
My problem with self driving cars is not actually with self driving cars. I trust that our technology can reliably enable a vehicle to drive me around without my intervention. That's fine.

There are two things I do not trust: I do not trust that our technology can successfully and intelligently respond in the event of an traffic or roadway anomaly, the kind that usually causes car crashes i.e. damaged roads, debris falling off of cars, erratic drivers, etc. Although I do trust safety features, which are pretty nice lately, I would rather have not have a wreck.

Finally, I do not trust other drivers and I do not know how they will react/interact with a self driving car. It only takes one time for an idiot to flip out on the highway and cause a wreck.

When I feel that the self driving can adequately handle anomalies, wrecks, and suicidally bad drivers, then I will have no qualms with the self driving car. Till then, I'm not willing to bet my life that it works well enough.
While there may be more cars doing return journeys I suspect there will not be the same level of traffic jams as the cars return.

1. Most outward trips would be chained: drop 1, drop 2, drop 3, return to base; rather than: drop 1, return to base, drop 2, return to base, drop 3, return to base. As would most return journeys.

2. The roads would be clearer in cities due to fewer parked cars. In some cases there would be an extra lane now available.

3. Cars could still have multiple bases, especially if they are shared. Car parks could be re-utilised as a stop-off points where empty cars could 'swap out' and remove themselves from the system briefly.

4. Chains could be linked: do the early run, do the late run. Do the Smiths; do the Joneses.

5. Empty cars with no urgent pick-up could wait for the roads to clear before embarking on a return journey.

6. Would anyone care if a car returns to base slowly if there wasn't an urgent passenger waiting?

Cars could be more efficiently used and that would certainly imply that the fewer number of cars in existence would be being used for more trips throughout the day.

I admit that it will be hard to remove the rush-hour problem entirely without a significant amount of car-sharing. However with a fully self-driving system cars could do clever passenger shares (and/or mid-route swaps). Passengers would be free to only car-share within their sex / family / workplace / social networks etc.
NYC Taxis Will Be Driverless Google Cabs
So are you really saying that apple contributed nothing at all to the modern smartphone?
> Scala is the JVM's C++

Thats what I've been thinking (and posting) since some time now, nice to see I'm not the only one. I know some Startups regretted choosing Scala.
Why don't you create a truecrypt file, and store it in copy.com? For me, copy.com solves my storage needs as they grow for a decent price, then truecrypt would privatize my files leaving them 100% in my control.
> someone coded a program/tool to, in a programmatic way, access the website and retrieve the data

Doesn't, for example, Firefox, perfectly fit this description? Yes, I do manually enter the base URL to access, but if that's the distinctive feature...

> As opposed to a human being in a non-programmatic way, opening his browser and accessing the website.

... then manually typing in ./scrape.py www.att.com is non-programmatic, too. :)

Or, maybe, I'm not getting the correct meaning of "automated" due to bad English comprehension and false analogies from other languages. But I always thought every request on the Internet is automated and done by some kind of hardware+software combo, so forbidding "programmatic" access is complete nonsense (access control and rate-limiting are the proper solutions).

(And, if that matters, author of scrape.py does not need to conform to AT&T's TOS if s/he don't actually use the script by themself.)
Probably would have been more helpful to link to the blog post explaining the project - http://nathangrigg.net/2013/09/reproducing-vim-help-as-a-ful.... It would be great if the top comments at least had a look at the PDF, and maybe read that blog post - the file is full of hyperlinks (that was the whole point), has a beautiful index viewable in the sidebar of Skim, and he made it because he wanted to read on his iPad, and be able to annotate...

Very cool. Would love something similar for Emacs... Maybe it exists, haven't really looked
I think it was David Eddings whose advice to aspiring authors [heavily and badly summarized] as 'write a million words and then burn them, you can now get started'.
Maybe it's just me, but emacs is a huge pain to get set up on windows. I've been happy using lighttable for clojure hackery lately.

This looks cool too, especially the android/java integration.
Unfortunate article name since the content is more interesting than it suggests!
Nice proof of concept.
7 service requests that make IT support folks cry
Great to hear!

I'd be an active Google Drive user, however the app kept crashing on my macbook, so I had to give up. I even spent a few days troubleshooting it with Google support to no avail.

So long as the copy.com program doesn't crash on me, this will be my online storage of choice for the foreseeable future.
Dangit, don't tease me with the words "Lucasfilm" and "game" in the same headline - it makes me miss LucasArts.
Samsung counters iPhone 5S with a golden Galaxy S4
What kind of hardware are you targeting in the proof?
How often are people at those second-rate hospitals using computers with XP to browse the sort of web site you'd make with this, though?
I've looked and looked for ages about how to turn that preview off... I don't think so.
Why does the link to the project on GitHub open in a new browser tab?

I know the developer has given a very good explanation about this, and there are still others complaining...

Curious to know whether it was just the link to the Github project which irked you (and others) or links to other external sites such as W3C/Bugzilla/CanIUse/etc are considered "valid" to open in new tabs?
Simple Misunderstandings That Had Huge Consequences Slideshow
"Is it on Amazon Prime? Doesn't matter, can't use Amazon Prime.

Is it on Amazon Instant Video for rent or purchase? Doesn't matter, can't use it."

Incorrect. I'm watching Amazon Prime right now on Linux.

It's one of the reasons I use Amazon more than Netflix, even though I have both, and Netflix has a better selection.
Oh, nice sharing, I hope I try your JS script right know !
Grasswire sorts fact from fiction on social networks
If you get caught and don't accept the reasonable plea bargain though, you may spend a decade or two in jail. You should factor that in your risk assessment somewhere.
Pakistan earthquake creates island off coast
Not only that, but the client is only available for a proprietary OS... so much for open :(
Drag the link and drop it into the URL bar of your browser.
When we can get computers to tell the difference between animals accurately we can make a real life pokedex app. I can't wait.

EDIT: If anyone one thinks we can start working on this now, I'm game.
Why would the airport allow vehicles access to the runway? Why is this Apple's fault?
Speaking as former Nuclear Sub technician, there isn't much maintenance on the turbines (think transmission in a car -- it's not too often that you have to open it up) but the turbine, high precision machined stainless steel piping and equipment is very expensive. Our steam ran at 1000 psi plus, which we were told was high enough to cut a man in half if a small leak was sending out a stream.
This would be great in etherpad lite!
The environmental ethics of this activity are horrible. Buy hardware that consumes lots of power and will soon be useless, and run it 24/7. I guess many of mans enterprises are just as unfriendly to the Earth but this one makes it particularly vivid.
For me its a benefit, why would you want your language/core api changing all the time? Thats how you end up with certain unnamed languages that have fallen out of favor. Java the language tries very hard to not be redundant in its feature set, so the path to usage is clear.

I think Java suffers from too many search results (yes thats a thing). I suppose if you want to learn Java today you simply google it, and find tons of people trying to solve the N+1 hibernate problem on stackoverflow, or some other common annoying enterprisey issue, and so you start reading up on JCPs and EE apis. If that is your introduction, I can understand why people end up going "what is this shit?". The reality of course is that there are many subcultures within the Java community and that many of them are anti cruft api as well which is how innovation comes to the Java world.
For startups with small, disciplined teams, Scala is manageable, sure. But once things go "enterprise" and much of your ongoing development gets outsourced, and it will, all bets are off. Maintainability is THE great equalizer.
Don't build that feature.
Agree. It just should have happened a LONG time ago, these issues have bene present for a very long time and even since the beginning, the hack was to use <tables> for layouts
The buzziest AngelList startups going public with pitches
This isn't SurfaceReviews.com
> write their multiplayer Myst-universe puzzles in text format

It looks more like a text based MUD based on the Myst universe.
Dev-Screenshots for your Wordpress Site
"online" is the key word there.

When I say, is it available online for purchase, I mean can I watch it online. I haven't ordered a DVD or CD in a decade or more.
I would imagine without strong leadership you could end up with code looking completely different between programmers.