skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The robot I work with (http://wiki.ros.org/Robots/AMIGO) uses a proprietary stand-alone package from Philips which works really well.
Somehow, our license expired and now we use Festival, which works, but I really miss its old voice. Especially for Dutch text-to-speech it works quite well.

But for the life of me I can't find a link of where you could buy it.

Doing TTS correctly, with intonation etc. is really hard. Its not really my field, but I can imagine that getting intonation right is near impossible with just unannotated text.
Wasting time/Startup
Forget China, look at Canada.

Virtually identical certification requirements, virtually identical cars (sans MP/H vs KM/H and F vs C), but high-end Audi like S6 used to cost 100% more than in the US. They enforced this by forbidding US dealerships to sell to Canadians, by voiding the warranty and forcing to go through expensive re-certification.

There's nothing to understand. In theory, there's free trade, but "it's not here in particular".
I could be wrong, but rcklmbr and I probably hit burnout at the same time at the same company. Some of the lies I told myself/was told:

Lie 1. The technology doesn't matter. All languages sucks and are turing complete anyways. Who cares if it's in perl or enterprise java? Does my happiness really depend on writing python?

Lie 2. The technology does matter. If I'm working on a Social-Mobile-Location startup using python with free reign over technology I'll be in developer bliss right? Wait, maybe if it's all go and protocol buffers I'll be giddy with joy. Frankly the difference between new and old technology is usually the choosing between decades old tech and decades old tech. (Oh, you're using epoll/select/kqueue? The 1980's called, they want their tech back) (Javascript? The 1990's called, it's for you) Heaven forbid you go talk to startup folks with your 90's programming language called Java.

Lie 3. (From PHB) "while long term overtime doesn't scale, it's a great tool to boost productivity in the short term during crunch time, after all a startup is defined as a way to cram 10 years of life experience into one"

So here's what I believe to be the truth, for me, so far.

1. Burn out takes longer than you'd ever imagine to recover from. After a certain point you just don't care if the fire alarm is going off and the building's burning down because it's always burning down. Once you leave that situation/job, it's hard to shake that mentality.

2. New technologies, platforms, and protocols are fun. Learning is fun. I don't mind writing my own libraries because it helps scratch that itch of always wanting to know how things work just one level deeper.

3. People matter exponentially more than anything else. It's not just working with smart people. I've worked with lots of smart people with the emotional IQ of a poorly trained Rottweiler. The best engineers I've ever worked with are usually people who've made the decision that engineering is not the most important thing in their life. They've also discovered Lie #2 and so are a little bit less dogmatic. "Oh you want to send binary encoded messages over UDP to collect statistics, I remember when we did that with ASN1. Here's a nickel kid, go get yourself a real protocol".
I'm reminded of a story[1] I heard on NPR the other day. Researchers have drawn correlations between writing style and the eventual onset of Alzheimer's. Apparently nuns who had a habit of writing verbose, idea-dense sentences were less likely to develop Alzheimer's later on.

[1]: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1272118...
Professional writer here.

Writing well takes years of practice. If you already write well, you won't need this program. You'll know the rules and the right times to break them.

But if you can't put in the time and effort to become a great writer, just using this program can improve your writing a lot.
Lowering the Gates
> He burnt the cakes!

Maybe he was gluten intolerant.
Want An App Name Like Flappy Bird?
Oh that's a good thing[1], I guess :-).

[1] http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/have+a+leg+up+on
I'm using this tool to review the English versions of my resumés. It's been a very interesting experience so far.
This is quite the fun tool. I know web apps are all the rage but really would love to see this implemented as an MS Word plugin - I'd be far more likely to use it on an ongoing basis if it were integrated directly into my editor of choice.
If you just want a small httpd there's also gatling and fnord.

[0] http://www.fefe.de/gatling/
[1] http://www.fefe.de/fnord/
> The whole PKI setup needs to be rebooted as well, and I really can't believe anyone that understands how that works considers it to be a good idea.

I still never met a PKI alternative that was a good idea. Of course, I didn't look at all candidates, but one'd expect that if something was ready to replace it, everybody would be talking about it.
Sure, so how often should content be recycled through HN?
No -- almost. Try again!
Why Android is Good for the Enterprise
How important is it to high-tech companies that a state be welcoming to gays?
Yes, the problem with coke isn't that it's got a lot of sugar in it. The problem with coke is that people drink litres of it each day.
one for make ee cummings, now please
I figured as much. I've been using Festival myself, which seems OK. But there appear to be a million voices and I have no idea which ones are supposed to be the best.
Personal Best: 6
Yeah, at this point I've heard so much about water on Mars that the next unmanned probe should float.
I work at Cucumbertown: http://www.cucumbertown.com/ and we’ve managed to raise from venture funds. We are not just recipes though. It’s more about the cooks: http://jane.cucumbertown.com/. There are a lot interesting models outside of ad & affiliate sales.
Forget the NSA. How EVERYONE is spying on you and what you can do about it.
Ask HN: what's your ideal presidential platform?
What would be the ideal items on a presidential platform? Legalize hemp? no NSA? Switching ed policy over to the sudsvalley model?

There seem to be lots of low hanging fruit that could be implemented, what do you see?
"And they're right- a boy who enjoys t-shirts and sports is at a tremendous social advantage over one prefers dresses and ballet"

Perhaps in some very conservative societies.

Where I live I'm confident that a boy who enthusiastically engages in things which actually interest him is at a social advantage over boys who halfheartedly pretend to enjoy in whatever his parents think is normal.

Ballet, for sure. Maybe not dresses so much, at least not if he is doing the wearing, but having an interest in the clothes of his female peers certainly isn't any kind of social problem.
For those of you who are as ignorant of this as me: BASE is an acronym (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASE_jumping). I don't really understand what exit refers to in this context, anyone care to enlighten? It's surprisingly hard to google info on this, must be a really fringe thing.
I think your point is that there are times when breaking the rules is a good thing. No one would argue with that. The problem is that most people have NO IDEA what the rules are for good writing. On top of that, it's easy to slip into overuse without realizing it. I'm a good writer and yet, one thing I'm terrible at is far too many adverbs. They aren't useful when overused. This app helps me see when I have relied too heavily on them.

Hemingway occasionally wrote long sentences and they proved more power because of their scarcity. The passive voice is occasionally important in good writing but bad writers use it too much. Most of the time they don't even realize it.

An app like this isn't about enforcing a standard rigidly, it's about showing an author the places in text that break general rules. It's making an author aware of the issue, not saying "Don't ever do this". In fact, the "rules" are defined as "Try to do X or fewer". The rules don't have to be followed but if you can't even recognize the rules, you have no idea when you should break them for effect.

From your example, somewhere along the way, someone taught you that long functions are GENERALLY bad (just like adverbs). That doesn't mean they are always bad (just like adverbs). This app doesn't provide an automatic condemnation of breaking the rules. It allows you to know what the rules are and how well you are following them.
Genuine question : are JAR files sent as email attachments still the state-of-the-art in PC hijacking?
Let's say that I am very sceptical about any proprietary bloatware pushed by big money and developed by outsourcers on a payroll. I also do not believe in the myth that these corporations employ more talent that is behind some selected open source projects and startups. In Russia where traditionally IT is heavily dominated by Windows and now Java and SAP, I have seen enough, and it is what biased my POV.)
Rackspace Cloud Intelligence, Performance Servers Give Glassdoor Network Boost
This is built on so many bad assumptions. At best the "rules" it's trying to enforce are training-wheel rules, the sorts of rules given to novice writers to help them avoid flabby, purple writing.

But the assumption that short sentences are better than long sentences, or that simple sentences are better than complex sentences is just wrong. There are all kinds of reasons why you might use one type of sentence over the other or vary them for effect. You might be concerned about rhythm, or you might be attempting to establish a certain tone, distance, closeness, formality, or lack of.

We have this weird cultural obsession with the clarity, brevity, and simpleness of writing. Jacques Barzun even wrote a writing manual called Simple and Direct, as if these are the only virtues to be found in writing.

But I think you want as many tools as possible to achieve the effects you want. There is a huge rich tradition here, that we've largely lost, a tradition that teaches about hypotactic and paratactic sentences, that teaches about periodic and loose sentences, that teaches how to make left and right branching sentences, that teaches subordination, that teaches rhetorical devices, and that advocates (at times) longer, more complex sentences for richer and denser writing.

Thankfully there are a number of books out (some of them) recently that seem to be fighting back against the austerity view of writing.

They include, if you're interested:
- Brooks Landon, Building Great Sentences
- Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence
- Virginia Tufte, Artful Sentences, Syntax as Style
- Richard Lanham, Analyzing Prose

I'd just add, there is nothing wrong with being simple and clear. There is nothing wrong with cutting out needless or weak adverbs. But there is something wrong with worshiping the austerity style as, at all times, the best and the only way to go. There are lots and lots of reasons and occasions to deviate from it, but the style orthodoxy these days is the one assumed by that (admittedly cool) website.
4 Questions to Ask Before Ending Your Web Apps’ Older Browser Support
To chime in with a "me too": I ported an app from Python/SQLite to JS/IndexedDB, and I also noticed about an order of magnitude decrease in performance. I think it's mainly because you have so much less control over how/when you read/write from the hard drive.
Both of those premises are wrong. Privatizing policy and enforcement means there wouldn't be any reason to try to work on policing non-edible/non-profitable fish. It's a half-measure the would ensure no further progress.

Secondly, blessing "fish as fast as possible" as being within the rules, makes it an acceptable practice. It's the same way the clean water act protects polluters as long as they are within the acceptable limits. It doesn't matter if the acceptable limits still cause damage -- they are protected.

Finally, I'm not sure how private industry could enforce their policies in their section of the sea. Property right enforcement is one activity that even most libertarians believe the gov't needs to carry out. Some people state that is the only thing gov't should provide.
Show HN: Twinsprite – API to link physical toys and video games
We (http://www.twinsprite.com) are working on an internet of things startup, that provides unique identity and cloud storage for physical objects, focused on linking toys and video games.

We allow developers to create a model of a game character and store on it custom values, like the acquired objects, or skill improvements during a game play. And then retrieve the last model values via a unique id stored in a QR of NFC linked to the physical toy representing this character, in a different game or device.

Now we are running under private alpha, we are looking for people interested in start using the API.

You can request an invite in http://developers.twinsprite.com/ or contact me pablo@twinsprite.com

Any Feedback is welcome.

Thanks!
I find on average that it does, especially with less skilled writers.
I'm not sure if you intend to directly reply to TFA. Mr. Watts does dedicate a sentence to that fact (Ctrl-F "It has some value for industry [...]" - the weakness of his assertion can probably be excused based on his profession and thesis) but the point he was trying to make was that losing the gold is not something that should gum up the rest of the economy.
Because we found out the cause of rickets, and there was an initiative to prevent it. I believe milk was probably chosen because calcium aids in vitamin D absorption and most Americans see milk as a dietary staple.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/6/1710S.full

Most circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D originates from exposure to sunlight; nevertheless, many factors can impair this process, necessitating periodic reliance on dietary sources to maintain adequate serum concentrations. The US and Canadian populations are largely dependent on fortified foods and dietary supplements to meet these needs, because foods naturally rich in vitamin D are limited. Fluid milk and breakfast cereals are the predominant vehicles for vitamin D in the United States, whereas Canada fortifies fluid milk and margarine. Reports of a high prevalence of hypovitaminosis D and its association with increased risks of chronic diseases have raised concerns regarding the adequacy of current intake levels and the safest and most effective way to increase vitamin D intake in the general population and in vulnerable groups. The usual daily intakes of vitamin D from food alone and from food and supplements combined, as estimated from the US third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994, show median values above the adequate intake of 5 μg/d for children 6-11 y of age; however, median intakes are generally below the adequate intake for female subjects > 12 y of age and men > 50 y. In Canada, there are no national survey data for estimation of intake. Cross-sectional studies suggest that current US/Canadian fortification practices are not effective in preventing hypovitaminosis D, particularly among vulnerable populations during the winter, whereas supplement use shows more promise. Recent prospective intervention studies with higher vitamin D concentrations provided evidence of safety and efficacy for fortification of specific foods and use of supplements.

We also found out about folic acid and how important it is for women to have enough right before she becomes pregnant and in the first couple days/weeks of the developing embryo. This would be before she knows she is pregnant. An adequate supply of folic acid prevents protect against a number of congenital malformations, including neural tube defects which are severe abnormalities of the central nervous system like spina bifida and anencephaly. They result in malformations of the spine, skull, and brain.

So we decided to fortify our grain products in an attempt to prevent this. The fortification is mandatory since 1998.

http://189.28.128.100/nutricao/docs/ferro/impact_folic_acid_...

Conclusions:
A 19% reduction in NTD birth prevalence occurred following folic acid
fortification of the US food supply. However, factors other than fortification may have
contributed to this decline.
I don't want to jump on to you too hard since I literally have my own custom PHP framework open in the other monitor, and sooner or later I might have to pay the price for having it posted here, but I think one of the problems with this is it's small, but not small enough to be micro - and it doesn't have one of the primary advantages of a framework (especially microframeworks) which is easy extensibility.

Most of the problems people have listed could be solved easily with the ability to import packages and manage autoloading through composer and psr-4. If you're going to create your own templating system, you're going to have to put forth a pretty decent argument against using Twig, for instance, which has autoescaping, inheritance, functional extensions and a sandbox. I think probably you've done what a lot of people do and tried to reinvent too much - as a result, the framework is not modular enough to meet various other users' needs. It does work, I don't doubt, but other things work better, and this is an issue facing anyone building a PHP framework.

Some documentation letting us know why you built this, how to use it, what it's strengths and weaknesses are compared to other frameworks, etc. would certainly be useful, as would a more standard open source license (MIT.)

If you believe in it, keep working in it though.
A professional investor would be more angry with you if you took $1mm, promised you were going to make a high-risk higher-reward investment, but then secretly invested it in something safe, returning him 150% of the original amount in ~5 years, instead of taking a 1% chance at $10k.

This is why you take investment from professional investors on open and honest terms, not from people like "friends and family" who feel pressured to do so and may not be in a good position to accept the risk.
I really don't have any expertise on these things but it sounds to me like there are some funky facts missing from this article.

"Once in China, the cars, which typically retail for $55,000 to $75,000 in the United States, can be resold for as much as three times those prices."

That doesn't add up, not without some more explaining. Maybe there are import quotas that these guys are using up & limiting the manufacturers ability to import into China. The auto industries tend to have the most thorough history of trade "regulation" and there are complicated vestiges of old import/export policies, WTO penalties & such. It can be hairy.

I get that this is the NYTimes blog, but this is where a journalist (or blogger, why not?) should be contacting neutral knowledgeable people. An economist and/or lawyer familiar with the auto industry trade stuff. Where's the meat?!
I suspect they are using https://languagetool.org/ as a back-end, at least for some parts of the grading.
LanguageTool has chrome addon and a public API.
That's a valid point, probably more brainstorming in the best approach to render the first landing on a repo as it is what effectively is at stake; instead of landing on a blank page the choice was made to display it all, letting you transform the kanban to a dashboard that best fits your need, later visits would re-use your pre-saved board.
That's what I noticed. It seemed to mark your writing higher the lower the reading grade level it was targeted at.

I didn't realize that writing at a 5th grade level was the pinnacle of writing.

What is with it's fear of adverbs?
First off, there is a never-ending tension between security and convenience. gnupg has been around forever, but any effort to get your non-computer-programming friends to use it will come up against a pretty terminal useability wall. Setting autocomplete to off on a forms login will get complaints from almost everybody. (And then MS in IE11 now ignores that setting in the password field. Bah.)

Similarly, when building applications, the goal is to make an operation more convenient or possible than it was before. And speed of deployment is an imperative as well.

The main challenge in most of today's applications is that they are highly complex and they involve browsers. Browsers are extraordinarily complex programs working to a set of conflicting, evolving standards. For illustration, I suggest reading The Tangled Web by Zalewski. (But read it early in the day--reading late at night might lead to nervous or disturbed sleep.) Or his blog post "Postcards from the post-XSS world": http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/postxss/. Did you notice that both Chrome and IE had recently-identified remote-code execution vulnerabilities that affected all known versions?

Beyond that, applications and frameworks these days are very complex and are under that feature/security tension. There are some nice-to-have features that themselves increase the attack surface. Complex programs are hard to get right. Remember the quote from Tony Hoare: "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."

And what you say is true about developers not having enough knowledge to write secure code. Without consulting Tangled Web, how many of us knew that the format of a fully-qualified absolute URL is of the following form:

scheme://login.password@address:port/path/to/resource?query_string#fragment

Did you know that the login.password@address:port section ended with a semicolon is accepted by some browsers? And that the query_string format is not specified at all?

And the advice about always using prepared statements in SQL queries breaks down if user input is needed to influence column names or table names or even database names. One of the factors pushing SQLi to #1 is that it has massive risk. One tiny error off in one tiny corner of a little-used feature of the application can lead to exfiltration of the entire database.

When Structured Programming was first talked about, a few of us real-time programmers began to think that it would be a nice idea to prove programs correct. This proved to be way to expensive. So we resigned ourselves to writing programs that we thought might be proveable.

The care/knowledge factor you mention is important at all levels of an organization. So if the founder or CEO or CTO or marketing is not buying into a security mindset, it can be tough.

(Disclaimer: I help software companies with this sort of technical/cultural problem.)
Cool way to advertise that you're hiring
I always look at the source code of my favorite sites.
love this. contact me if you're interested in adding this to a markdown app. :)

michael [at] mherman [dot] org
Maintenance/warranty and resale are the main things which dissuade me from doing this (although I'd probably do it for a Model S; probably not for a BMW).
Until people aren't interested in it any more.
Simple separator made with pure CSS
This is completely normal business for IBM. I saw it too many times during my tenure there and it was obviously well overdue for the India branches.

There are regular cuts across the board, and there is actually very little attention paid to the internal ratings of the employees or keeping well-functioning groups together. Everyone left behind is expected to take up the slack, and additional hires are only made when things break badly enough for upper level management to be aware of it.
Both are clearly happening.

It's not a secret that the US spys help US corporations, and it would be incredibly naive to think that the european equivalent didn't happen. But the US spying apparatus is much bigger than what any european country has, givin it an upper hand.

Also, european countries mess more with its market. From highter taxes to strict rulebooks categorizing products and amounts to be produced, the EU goes over all possibilities for creating a big government. The US interferes much less, and has an upper hand because of it.
I always look at the source code of my favorite sites.
So many magic files flying around ;)