skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I got a Pi and a case and connected it via a USB-to-MIDI cable to my electronic piano, and now I can play and record performances to midi files on the Pi. Really cool. It basically gave my piano a technology update so I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars for one of those newer keyboards with a USB port.

My next mini-project is to build a web app that can run these midi tools and list the performances in a nice UI, so that I can control the piano with a tablet or phone on the wifi network (using something other than an SSH terminal).

I am thinking of getting a couple of other Pi's for webcam use. I had one hooked up to a cam but it kept dying for some reason. Maybe because of the cheap wifi dongle.

It's an amazing little gadget and the sky's the limit on what you can do with it.
Help a fellow entrepreneur on a Seattle/San Fran trip
Hi there.
I'm on a US-trip, starting from Miami/Orlando for 6 days, then to Seattle (Startup Weekend condo) for 4 days and finally to San Fran, for 9 days.
I came with my two associates (from yoozon.com) to improve our network, meet other entrepreneurs and anyone passionate about startups and get to know how the startup scenario work in the US.
Florida was the only place during our trip to "get crazy and do tourist things". After that, it's all business.
Anyone here would like to get a coffee in Seattle (Monday, 18th) or in San Fran (19th-28th)?
Also, we're very interested in a talk with someone from Dropbox. If you work there or know anyone that would be willing to meet us, please let me know.

Thanks!

ps.: I arrived from Brazil on the 9th and will leave on the 28th
But they have to do things to make them seem competitive with FB, because FB and G have a huge common denominator: NASDAQ.
HP had some problems at the time. They shipped an AMD powered PC that would reboot due to low power every time you tried to burn a CD. They also would reuse hard drives off units that were returned. My brother had some words with the HP rep due to what was on a machine he was setting up for a customer.

HP servers seem ok, but their PCs were junk. Such a shame given the heritage.
You can also use "sudo service nginx reload" instead of restarting. Helps if it's in use and you don't want to drop any active users.
The only way the unemployment rate (the true unemployment rate, U6 [http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm]) is going to drop is if more people continue to permanently exit the workforce [http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000]. There just is not enough consumer demand, even with prodding by the Fed with QE to increase employment.
wow, no shout-out to modelm.org or clickykeyboards.org.
Make HN a better place, use this page.
Ask HN: Do you know of any startups working on wildlife/habitat conservation?
Trying to find out anything and everything about startups that have or still work on wildlife/habitat conservation. Please share any that you know of.

Thank you for your time :)
Google's Broken Promises & Who's Running The Search Engine?
Yes - I can't justify my instinct here.
I believe there have only ever been 7 players >2800 ELO and Caruana is one of them. But of those Kasparov is retired and Anand, Topalov and probably Kramnik have probably peaked. That leaves Carlsen - out on his own - and Aronian and Caruana.
Aronian has probably peaked (he is 31)which leaves Caruana. The next 2-3 years should tell us what he is capable of.
Okay. Here is more: http://www.wolframscience.com/appearances

It was 2002. I was a sophomore. The buzz was big. Everybody came. Packed the room. I can see him now, speaking. A male student assisting him. Patterns. Leaves. I wanted to make my way to him to say I got it, but the crowd was too thick. And everyone was so disappointed. They didn't understand. Columbia isn't receptive to extremely creative minds. They rep that they are, but in reality, we get treated badly here. That is why so many creative people leave Columbia. Anyway, he came here, explained his ideas, or at least elucidated them beyond theory, showed us models. And asked if students were interested in researching with him to please let him know. It was big and bold. Quiet. Subtle. And cinematic all at the same time. Very detailed.
To that end, rainbow-delimiters for emacs is somewhat useful.
Maybe it's just me, but I find the number of ways to get python libraries to be very confusing. Do you use an egg? distutils? pip? easy_install?

I just skimmed the first few google results for "install python module windows" and none seemed particularly helpful. The page you point to says "The files are unofficial (meaning: informal, unrecognized, personal, unsupported) and made available for testing and evaluation purposes." Anaconda looks appealing, but wants my email address (and automatically checks the bother me box), ugh.
A smartphone app that predicts future to-do list tasks
A nice app I just discovered this morning. Worth to take a look at.
Seattle makes it harder for companies not to hire felons[1]. Not just for government job, for any job.

http://crosscut.com/2013/06/11/seattle-city-hall/114930/city...
No. Why on earth would they do this?
> Lately it seems I go to HN look at the front page and decide "I don't want to read any of these". Where do other HN readers go

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
The most important thing to remember with assertions vis-a-vis optimising compilers removing assertion calls: you should never have assertions that cause side effects.

Bad:

assert InitialiseStuff() != False, 'Initialise failed'

If the optimising compiler is set to eliminiate assertions the InitialiseStuff function won't get called! This will (subtly, or not so subtly) break your program!
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=914975
I've recently had to readjust the way type to be more wrist-friendly since I've been seeing the beginning (intermediate? God I hope not...) stages of repetitive stress injury. And that's on my relatively ergonomic macbook air, which from what I've read is designed from the start to prevent that sort of thing. I cringe to think of the kind of damage I'd do to my wrists from developing on one of these things for any period of time.
Caution -- I used one of these and I think it led to bad habits which eventually caused a bit of RSI.

Before the model M I typed very lightly on the keyboard, but once I started using the M I began to press a bit harder in response to the positive clicking sound. Neither my speed or accuracy changed as a result of using the M.

Next thing I knew, I'd pound the keys on any keyboard, regardless of whether it had positive clicking.

This led to increased strain on my fingers and wrists and eventually I had to re-teach myself how to type lightly.

Now I type just as I used to before the M. I caution anyone considering getting one to be aware of the overall amount of physical pounding his/her fingers and hands are engaged in, and to realize that it can create additional tendon fatigue and bad ergonomic habits.
I dunno, ask Tesla about cars and flames, to hear Elon Musk describe gas-powered vehicles it's a wonder they don't spontaneously combust more often. :)

Hastings is a wonderful teaching case though, but more along the lines of being the example of you don't recklessly speed down city streets while intoxicated.
I have a problem with the total inability to find anything with US layout and clicky switches at a decent price in Europe. And the shipping + VAT and customs from US doubles the price.
Model M's are horrid. They are like playing a broken piano.

I use one of these keyboards on my desktop: http://www.thinkpads.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/lenovo_t...

It's the same as my laptop.

Big thanks to Lenovo for making this piece of awesomeness.

Edit: to the downvoters. I was a model M fan for years until it nearly fucked my hands up. CTS surgery was required. Now I prefer lighter touch positive action keyboards like Lenovo / Sun ones.
We're also talking about mechanical keyboards again.
That actually happened to me. It took me a few months (once I started getting fairly bad RSI symptoms) to unlearn the pounding that my model M had led me to start doing.
Das Keyboard is indeed great. I have the quiet version one, which is not really quiet, but makes far less noise than their main model.
I fear you're about to get a lot of comments about mixing PHP and HTML in the same file. And I don't think the OP was talking about that kind of 'scope'.
Yes, but there won't be any new old Kinects, and the New Kinect requires entirely new reverse engineering and USB3, so it's not a drop-in replacement. My system uses Kinects, but we can't rely on them being available in the long run.
So – did you email him?
tried Das Keyboard cherry mx blue switch, wayyy tooo loud to use in work place. Switched to kinesis freestyle2. The experience is amazing.... I didn't know non-mechanical keyboard would be such a pleasure to type on.
In the UK unless the job is incredibly sensitive (prison officer, position of care etc) or requires a security clearance background checks just don't happen.

They ask on your application and if you lie they can fire you for it but since they don't check it's kind of a don't ask/don't tell.

I also (think) you can have many crimes expunged after a period of time and those then only show up on enhanced checks.
USD is a bubble too because everyone speculates that tomorrow trust in USG does not drop. Which is much more fragile speculation taking into account recent events. When other countries start massively dumping their USD savings one of two things will happen:

1. Either USD goes straight home, raises the prices and destroys remnants of the US economy.

2. Or govt erects an iron curtain of capital controls to keep the influx of USD at bay which destroys remnants of the US economy.

The war is not an option because it only works when you fight with one country while the others are maintaining the value of USD that you print to fund that war. When there's no one to give you stuff voluntarily for USD, the state goes bankrupt way too quick. And the first guys to notice the raising prices are heavy industries and military complex. US would have to transform to something like Hitler's Germany to force people to build and fight. But more likely is the scenario of Weimar's Republic which hopefully transitions to Bitcoin before complex economic connections between all producers are completely broken down.
Time for a 'Warrant Canary' MetaTag?
When I was just young lad I worked part-time at one of those mom and pop computer fixit shops. Every once in a while the owner would buy a palette of Model M keyboards. I'd get stuck with the job of refurbishing them for sale or inclusion with new systems. I'd spend a couple weeks taking off all the keys, scrubbing the keyboards down with a dishwashing tools and soap and then toss 6 or 7 into the kitchen dishwasher for a cycle. After a week of drying they were good to go for $10-15.

We never had a keyboard that didn't work after this "refurbishment". Absolutely built like tanks.

So it's weird to see keyboards like the Model M going for $100+. And I agree that they're nice typers. But then again I'm using the same $10 Logitech I bought at Ross (of all places) when I realized I needed a USB keyboard for something 10 years ago. I toss it in the dish washer a couple times a year to clean the cruft out, but other then some faded keys it works "fine".

The only expensive keyboard I've bought was one of those Bluetooth Mac chiclet keyboards and only because I was using my rMBP as a second monitor and needed something a bit closer to type on. It's okay, but I wish sometimes I had bought the $15 bluetooth keyboards I see at Ross every so often.
I think HackerNews (and similar sites) would greatly benefit from having submissions grouped by a moderator. Don't display all submissions about NSA or Steve Jobs as separate lines. Display them as a thread, with some general information like "6 submissions, tags: Steve Jobs is still dead, average karma: 703"

from itertools import groupby

better_hn = sorted(hn, key=topic)
better_hn = [topic, len(list(submissions))
for topic, submissions in groupby(better_hn)]

for line in better_hn:
print(line)
This is really useful. I've been coding python projects for a few years now and was never quite sure how/when to use them. You'd run into assert when unit testing, but not that much elsewhere. This makes it clearer, I like this quote : Don't use assert for checking anything that you expect might fail in the ordinary use of your program. Assertions are for extraordinary failure conditions.
3.5 BN yr 'horribly smelly' Aussie fossil is "oldest complete example of life"
Perhaps they have $130 million but they're lonely.

They have nothing in common with most people their age, who must make decisions with monetary constraints, and can't fly off to Goa at the drop of hat. So they surround themselves with young folk to stay human and connected.

They probably also know they got lucky - they won the start-up lottery. They may have a deep desire to validate themselves, to prove they deserved their fortune, so they surround themselves with young entrepreneurs full of great ideas, as part of a new-found mission.
If has a wrong shape, proper keyboard should be choped in the middle :-). I used to have wrist pains, 4000 solved it. I bought six of those just in case.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Natural_keyboard
> My point about slackware is that it suggests that you are probably a power user who doesn't even notice when he has to solve OS problems that would turn away most other users.

That was around 2008, again, it's completely irrellevent to my point about SuSE and Mandrake. Plus you're also invalidating your point about sysadmins and developers recommending Ubuntu if "power users" (which are less competent that devs and sysadmins) are considered too technical to have issues with less user friendly distros.

> What WAS it good for? Software development and anything command-line or terminal-based. Anything else? LaTeX perhaps. Gimp. Web browsing. Some Math and Scientific applications. In other words not much.

Regardless of whatever assumptions you want to make about my usage, that's still more than the average user does with their PC. So I don't really get the point you're trying to make.

> I used: SuSE, Red Hat (soon to be Fedora), Debian, and Knoppix. At least. Also several non-linux Unixes (Solaris, AIX, System V) but only for work.

So you didn't try Mandrake yet here you are lecturing me about what Mandrake was like. Nice one.

> No, I never used your favorite, Mandrake.

It's not my favourite - not by a long way. It just the happens to be an example that counters your ridiculous statement that other distros couldn't get user friendliness right before Canonical came along.

> But still, a single competitor being superior but sadly overlooked doesn't really change the overall point I was making that Ubuntu stood out from the pack in real ways it did not simply "shout the loudest".

Well actually it does change that point, because you're claim was that Ubuntu was the first - which I'm claiming it was not. Thus it's absolutely fundamental to your point.

The real question you should be asking is what differentiated Ubuntu from the other user friendly distros that preceded it? Timing and the ecosystem is definitely part of the answer; but an answer that Canonical deserves no credit for. So what did Canonical do differently to the other distros? The answer is simple: they had more money to throw at their baby.

> I agree that it was primarily maturity of the linux ecosystem that allowed Ubuntu to flourish. By 2008 most linux desktop OS's were converging on KDE or GNOME and shared many similarities. But Ubuntu still had polish that many others lacked.

I'm glad you've now said "many" because previously you were claiming Ubuntu was better than all of the others - any that's the point I'm disputing. Ubuntu wasn't the first nor only distro to get the desktop experience nailed. It was just the one with the deepest pockets to shout the loudest. And the fact that you haven't heard of, let alone tried, Mandrake proves my point. But you are right that Ubuntu was better than most - it just wasn't the only distro out there getting things right.
Yes, but it emits x86 assembly, and can emit code that runs without a runtime.
I think this analogy is just terrible. A book != code. Well, certainly a novel, in which you're not re-reading the same sentence several times over, flipping 100 pages forward, then 90 pages back, etc. I can actually think of certain ways in which a non-fiction book could be usefully 'syntax highlighted'.
Twenty-years of typing on model Ms here - no RSI. Then again, I've been playing the piano for 35 years, so maybe a well-ingrained slightly-rounded wrist position and controlled striking of the keys has benefited me with both the piano and typing. :)

But I agree - one doesn't actually need to type any harder on a model M, in fact - like the piano - speed and stamina increases if you use less force.
as someone with no degree and a criminal record for something similar (probably worse in fact - being found in possession with some 250g (9oz) of cannabis - which here at the time counted as supply due to quantity) i can tell you first hand that it shouldn't be a serious problem for you.

i would add though that in most of the civilised world this is not an issue. the US law regarding drugs is almost universally viewed from the outside as being massively unjust.

(again i find myself saying 'except for the US' when discussing the 'civilised' world - this is tiresome)

the truth is that people are quite aware of right and wrong for the most part - but many areas of the law are not - your employer might make their own decision in this regard, even if they are a big company - unless they can afford to reject the best they need to consider drop outs and criminals. a quick look at the 'elite' of todays tech world shows a bunch of drop outs and criminals...

i know that here in the UK i was open every time i applied for a job about my conviction - even though it is spent it still comes up and becomes known. it never caused me a problem, and its an interesting conversation at worst... this included some pretty large companies, Virgin Media, Codemasters and J Sainsbury to name a few. it wouldn't surprise me if their official policy on such things is to not care - and I can imagine Google, MS, Amazon etc. will have similar properties - the fact that Bill Gates has a record is quite a popular piece of trivia for example, it would be hypocritical for MS to have employment strategy that would rule out hiring the next Gates... surely?
The application which makes most sense to me would be gesture controls for some kind of Apple TV device. Choosing menus in the living room, swiping between channels etc might do away with a conventional remote, perhaps.
Pretty serious conviction here - served six years in prison.

Had significant experience before incarceration, which helped me get a telecommute job within a month of release. Crappy pay (1/2 - 1/3 of industry standard). Kept getting additional gigs, all telecommute. Worked my way up to industry standard in short order. 4 1/2 years later I have all the work I can handle, and am limited by my own desire to work.

A few times background check concerns have popped up. I was 100% up front. I haven't seen it get in the way as a result - and my situation is far more serious than a drug conviction.

However, I have to be smart. I see a lot of juicy gigs that require clearance, or in other ways would be a concern. Just look the other way.

I can understand wanting the "high profile" employers, but I think the lower profile, the better. As has been mentioned, some companies simply cannot hire you. (In the same way that some apartment complexes can't offer leases to felons, as their particular liability insurance dictates)

tl;dr I have a serious felony and prison experience - I've built up a good development career working from home and laying low.
This is my favourite keyboard, particularly in the poorly-named 'ninja' version where the keys are printed on the front instead of the top which avoids the print rubbing off.

http://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/uk-filco-ninja-majestouch...
I actually sometimes associate words with sound and color - it makes me wonder why we are still limiting ourselves only visual feedback.

I vaguely remember somebody posting a lisp-y emacs-y setup of a synth coding environment of sorts that looked like heaven to me. (You'd quickly iterate on code with transforms that would shift the sound playing at all times and the colors would POP at you) It also makes me wonder how blind coders handle things. Does a pleasant yet distinct background noise when hovering over say, curly braces or parens, does that make sense to anybody else? I'm developing an itch here but I don't want to go it alone as it were.

Edit: also come to think of it, why isn't this stuff empirically tested? The right font faces and sizes for optimal readability, tabs vs spaces, camelCase vs snake_case, colors and which ones, all the classics. Where is the science?
Author here. Probably a matter of preference, to be honest. has_scope never really made much sense to me.

If we're checking boxes, two features that Filterer has and has_scope doesn't are:

- results ordering

- pagination (although most folks will already be using kaminari or will_paginate)
Avoid the paralysis of long negotiations
Or use the RSS feed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
It needs to have a more intuitive user interface.
wow. That's a significant gotcha.

I guess there's no reasonable way of changing the language to prevent that from happening, say, only allowing asserts on variables? (I mean obviously because it would break python, but also because it would be an inconsistant implementation.)
> Very many people (especially in the UK) do not drink alcohol in moderation. Liver disease and cirrhosis is seen more commonly in young people than it used to be.

The British problem is more of a social problem of really, really overdoing it on the weekend - Everything2 has a lovely writeup on the "vertical drinking establishment". If you substitute benzos for alcohol you may have less vomiting in the streets, but just as much fighting at chuck-out time.

There seem to be more cases of liver diseases in Britain than in other European nations. Since binge-drinking does not affect the liver quite as much as drinking smaller amounts more often, it seem that these are due to alcoholism. If you substitute benzodiazepines for alcohol, this wouldn't be much of an improvement, instead of a whiny, angry alcoholic whose life revolves around his stash you'd have a whiny angry benzo addict whose life still revolves around their stash. Their liver would be in better shape, though.

(Full disclosure: I have alcoholic family members and am deeply suspicious of quick cures)
I'm happy to have a coffee with you and/or eventually a lunch with https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=julien421
> this comment is also scary from the C family of languages background:

> "When using assert properly, this is a feature, but when assert is > used inappropriately, it leads to code that is completely broken when running with the -O flag."

That's more or less how all compiled languages work - it's not a bug, nor is it scary. Developers want things their users don't, like assertion calls, debug symbols and additional type/bounds checking and whathave you; things that, while helpful to a developer, would only slow down the program by requiring greater amounts of CPU and ram to run. That's why these things are compiled out of "release" builds.

Yes, this can introduce very rare and subtle bugs, and not just from people making assertion calls with side effects -- but also from additional belt-and-braces checks placed by the compiler in the dev build.
> Dylan and Fortress, which are the other major non-research multiple dispatch languages

What about R with S4 classes?