skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"The thing is that people working on xp cost money, they cost time. Both of those could be spent doing something that makes Microsoft money or at least advances a product that is not 3 OS releases back."

True, but those people are needed to continue to support XP Embedded. So some of the work is being done...

Note: I'm not hankering after running XP, but I am realistic about the effect of the $200 per screen annual tax on mega-corp computers. That isn't going to win friends and influence decision makers lets just say.
> I've been consistently amazed that my Mac has updated from version to version perfectly, even 32-to-64. Windows has been a disaster every time.

Don't forget the whole PowerPC -> Intel thing too.

I started on Mac OS X 10.2 on a G3 iBook, made my way up to a PowerBook, then an Intel MacBook Pro follwed by another Intel MacBook Pro. There were a handful of programs that didn't get updated to support Intel along the way, but the only one that I actually miss is Quicken. I wish Apple hadn't dropped Rosetta, but I suspect that they needed to in order to force software makers to move forward. Intuit didn't, and a few other companies opted to force a paid upgrade to get a version that works on Intel.

By and large, my programs and data have survived being migrated through four computers, seven major OS versions, a major architecture change, and the move from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS. That's pretty cool.

I'm still looking for a Quicken-like program that works for me, but I have a feeling I'll end up either making my own or using Excel.
Not necessarily.

But it would definitely make patching and improving the thing easier.
"Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang [pdf]
Amtrak's running on a lot of very old track, which limits the top speed the trains can go on most routes. They don't have the power to upgrade the tracks because they don't own them, and the freight companies who do own the track don't have much incentive to upgrade it.
See also: Lagrangians, the Principle of Least Action, Greg Egan's "Infinite Assassins", and _Qualia the Purple_
How do you generate revenue from this free service?
I took Amtrak from Sacramento to Salt Lake City once, and by the end of the trip I certainly felt like I should be establishing residency. I guess this is one way to turn lemons into lemonade.
Education RCTs Since 2002: How Many Found Positive Effects?
It's the ratio between the costs and the benefits that matters, not how long people have had the option of moving away from Windows XP.
Excellent! Thank you - I'll take a peek to see if I can find a working fix.
Rather than a free program for a limited number of people, I would be much more interested if they offered a similar program for all sorts of people at an affordable rate.
Excerpts: https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/eYiX4nam...
They would get fixed quicker too...
Is it true that Americans are driving less and less? Is there data to back that up? Just curious.
If anyone from The Guardian web team is reading, the link to beatbullying.org at the bottom doesn't work because of a malformed anchor.
I'm sure I saw a documentary a few years back where an aeroplane engine manufacturer had a control centre. The sole purpose of this place was to track minute engine attributes in real time, and alert their clients of future maintenance. Is that just on the latest planes?
True. You can't argue about the lack of GPS trackers, though. Every shipping container has one nowadays.
Mark Karpeles' blog hacked
Why I still like obstruction freedom
The Old "WIZARD OF OZ" Trick
A little googling has dug this up: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Tutorial_for_C_Pr...

I'm sure that you also know C, since you know C++. Let me know how it goes.
People with aspergers tend to have poorly developed normal social skills thus having less friends who can support them , thus making them easier targets.
The company could bolster its position by revealing the percentage of PCs running XP that access Windows Update, a telemetric mark it has declined to disclose, to show how prevalent XP really is, rather than make the media and customers rely on estimates from the likes of Net Applications.

Why is this metric secret? Do Ms want to conceal this from competitors, blackhats, consumers, or some other party?
Hey! I was always interested in building robots, but I always thought that (1) I just don't have the time to bootstrap, and (2) I'm only a software developer and don't know enough hardware. You're living my dreams! Congrats!
That's all fine, but the points he makes remain very valid, GPS tracking and weather info being the most valid. No-one knows why the plane went down, but arguing that technology advances can't make planes safer isn't true by the looks of the article. The fact that the security aspects of computer systems to help pilots is hard does not mean it can't be attempted successfully, the points made about drones ring true on this.
I don't give a damn if you have 1 or 1 billion computers. I don't care what your applications require and how much you paid for them. This is not my problem or Microsofts problem any more. Did you think this was going to last forever, because if you did and you don't have a contract saying so, well good luck.

All this really sounds like is a regurgitated argument along the lines of "Regulations are so expensive, we shouldn't have to follow them" or "Minimum wage is to expensive, get rid of worker protections!"

Keeping your systems up to date is the cost of doing business. If you can't afford the cost of doing business please feel free to leave the market to others that can.
Interpol: Database not checked pre-Malaysia flight
read the fine print. It is not a good deal.
From my friend Cate:

I would NOT advise applying, as it means essentially signing away the rights to the work you send them as a sample just by APPLYING:

"6. Grant of Rights: In submitting an Application, Applicant hereby grants Sponsor the absolute, worldwide, and irrevocable right to use, modify, publish, publicly display, distribute, and copy Applicant’s Application, in whole or in part, for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising and marketing, and to sublicense such rights to any third parties."

"Applicant grants Sponsor the absolute, worldwide, and irrevocable right to use, modify, publish, publicly display, distribute, and copy the name, image, and/or likeness of Applicant and the names of any such persons identified in the Application for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising and marketing. For the avoidance of doubt, one’s Application will NOT be kept confidential"

"Upon Sponsor's request and without compensation, Applicant agrees to sign any additional documentation that Sponsor may require so as to effect, perfect or record the preceding grant of rights"
Now, I just glanced at the thing, and the very first thing that annoys me is this: Why would you require an account for submissions? Or rather, why would you need to have any kind of user accounts mechanism at this site?

The second problem is that the combination of TLDR and legal. One should at least bother to skim through the license of a program they'll use. BSD/MIT are about 20 lines, and GPL3 is about 700 lines:

% find /usr/share/licenses/common/ -name '*.txt' | xargs wc -l
470 /usr/share/licenses/common/MPL/license.txt
193 /usr/share/licenses/common/PSF/license.txt
151 /usr/share/licenses/common/PerlArtistic/license.txt
165 /usr/share/licenses/common/LGPL3/license.txt
88 /usr/share/licenses/common/EPL/license.txt
377 /usr/share/licenses/common/CDDL/license.txt
76 /usr/share/licenses/common/W3C/license.txt
68 /usr/share/licenses/common/PHP/license.txt
201 /usr/share/licenses/common/Artistic2.0/license.txt
661 /usr/share/licenses/common/AGPL3/license.txt
339 /usr/share/licenses/common/GPL2/license.txt
55 /usr/share/licenses/common/RUBY/license.txt
63 /usr/share/licenses/common/CCPL/cc-by-sa-3.0.txt
61 /usr/share/licenses/common/CCPL/cc-by-nc-3.0.txt
12 /usr/share/licenses/common/CCPL/cc-readme.txt
58 /usr/share/licenses/common/CCPL/cc-by-nc-nd-3.0.txt
60 /usr/share/licenses/common/CCPL/cc-by-3.0.txt
63 /usr/share/licenses/common/CCPL/cc-by-nc-sa-3.0.txt
57 /usr/share/licenses/common/CCPL/cc-by-nd-3.0.txt
502 /usr/share/licenses/common/LGPL2.1/license.txt
202 /usr/share/licenses/common/Apache/license.txt
217 /usr/share/licenses/common/CPL/license.txt
397 /usr/share/licenses/common/FDL1.2/license.txt
416 /usr/share/licenses/common/LPPL/license.txt
674 /usr/share/licenses/common/GPL3/license.txt
54 /usr/share/licenses/common/ZPL/license.txt
451 /usr/share/licenses/common/FDL1.3/license.txt
6131 total

One need not be a lawyer to understand what this website offers with merely reading one of these. Also, there are Wikipedia articles for most the licenses, and OSI website is quite informative.

This website is unnecessary.
actually, HF radios with digital, encrypted & authenticated communication work
GPS works, too
internet safe for business fliers but not the pilot? please. it doesnt mean the whole plane relies on internet.

those 3 should probably be added to current planes, regardless.

i'm not sure why you think there is a single system with a "CPU" in a plane either. there's multiple independent systems - some electronic, some analog.

all this not much to do with visualization or python, in fact... and software glitches in planes do happen, by the way.
ok, now i have a much better understanding what you meant.

as i said above, in another reply just now, i'm aiming at
a "sweet-spot" that _might_ be as nonexistent as you say,
i.e., an "average" user who'll edit a few lines of .html.

ideally, s/he should have a good understanding of all the
implications and ramifications of those edited lines, too.

all of which should take no more than 3 minutes, total,
because that's all the average person will devote to it.

meaning it will boil down to calling a javascript file,
plus jquery (or some other package), and _nothing_more._

if it's that simple, this kind of "supercharging" will be
used by enough people that it could attain critical mass.

otherwise, not.

and i'm quite sure that, if you actually do the exercise,
you'll find that none of the solutions mentioned can be
installed in such a straightforward and trouble-free way.

surely not in 3 minutes.

nor with any comprehension of all possible ramifications.

it might be that they haven't been packaged up that way;
or it might be that they are complex enough that it won't
be _possible_ to "package them up" to be that simple; but
-- either way -- they are not now the answer i'm seeking.

i hope this clears up my position. thanks for the dialog.

-bowerbird
If it were Pat Robertson (evangelical Christian leader) introducting the show, would you say the same thing? What if it were Hitler? It would not matter if either of those figures appeared to perfectly espoused science for a few minutes; it does not erase who they are.

The same is true for Obama. This is a man who is adamantly and explicitly opposed to the founding principles of America, including legislative and constitutional restraint on his power (see his "selective enforcement" of Obamacare, for example). This is a man who is creating a two-tiered healthcare system: one for the very rich and one for everyone else. This is a man who blocked the Keystone pipeline. (Can someone be pro-science but against the industrial development and improvement of the country? Answer: No.) And I could go on and on.

He is extremely politicized, literally 1/2 of the country hates living under his rule, and he has no business being allowed anywhere near science.
OP asked for businesses that provide a majority of your income. With a site that has an alexa ranking of over 3 million, there is no way this is your primary source of income.
Yup, I think they're rewriting some parts of the code since it was put together at a hackathon. It's a really interesting idea but I feel like they would really need to crank up the power of the mining client to match the current network rates in order to get near ad revenue (or implement some kind of altcoin mining pool algorithm).
Wow I didn't know that! I was always doing something like this

mi = dict((v,k) for k,v in m.iteritems())
I don't believe so. All websites are scanned regularly.

There's no way to make a website completely hack-proof, so the guarantee means that any security related issues (hacking, malware, etc.) will be fixed at no cost to the customer.

In doing customer development I was surprised to learn how many small businesses had experience with hacking or had security as a primary concern. Website cleanup typically costs a couple hundred dollars on the low-end, so the guarantee provides peace of mind. It's a bit expensive on our end, but it's just an incentive to do an even better job.

Would you call that selling snake-oil? If so, let me know (my contact info is in my profile). I'm not a security expert, but I do hire them and believe the security guarantee is accurate. Please contact me if you disagree or I can improve it, I take this pretty seriously. Thanks for bringing it up, that's why I love posting here.
Whether this work is done now or not, if the restaurant stays in business it must be done eventually. ISTM that embedded-MS-that-is-never-upgraded is only one possible model for this sort of system. Have your clients expressed an interest in acquiring something more maintainable?
A Scratch-Based Elementary School Computer Club Curriculum
Not really, no, at least if you concentrate on Central/Western Europe, where most of the high-speed railways are located:

US: http://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/71789-050-459169a...

EU: http://education.randmcnally.com/images/edpub/Europe_Populat... (note the very different colour schemes).

Bad tracks and diesel locomotives are more likely to be the culprit here.
Yik Yak Chat App is Causing Problems Across School Campuses
Also, a train going between Chicago and New York is traveling through Indiana, over CSX-owned tracks, and they are notoriously terrible about prioritizing freight over passenger rail. Expect to spend an extra 1-3 hours stopped waiting for a freight train!
Most humans have a hard time to cope in an unusual situation without training even if the situation is just a bit off from the normal. Just think of the new snow in a place which only have snow once a year. Cars in ditches all over the place. So yep. It will be a mess.
From the GitHub Page [0]:

---

Real use cases so far

On the server: LiteScript itself

LiteScript is written in LiteScript, every new version must be able to compile itself to be ready for release. LiteScript is a real-use case of a heavy, server run, text processing, class based program written in LiteScript.

---

I'm must be missing something here, but this kinda blows my mind a little bit. Somewhere in the compilation process there must be somethign which isn't LiteScript?

Anyway, this does look cool. Good job.

[0]: https://github.com/luciotato/LiteScript#real-use-cases-so-fa...
Well, you would be surprised what happens in the world of embedded systems and process control.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_...
So having internet would somehow magically solve all the problems. Also it doesn't seem to be written out clearly, but there seems to be the implied assumption that Air France Flight 447 had no GPS tracker. Which is false. It did have, and automatically reported it's position at certain intervals.
Reading GPS is cheap and easy. Sending information back is not.

Those shipping container trackers use GSM to call home. They're cell phones. What happens when that container is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?
I meant, it's the only feasible way to do it if you're a single founder with zero funding.
This seems like a vanishingly small set of people. You're introducing the 49th[1] most popular language to people that program in a 50+ language. If you are trying to get more converts to Haskell, I would go after a larger set of programmers. If it is just for fun, cool.

[1] http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
Interesting ideas. Just a quick note about the layout of the blog text: font and line spacing are too small and the text column is too wide. The combination makes it a little hard to read. Plus points on not having grey text on grey background though.
I feel that using the term "wine" is misleading considering it is not made from fermented grapes. Not to mention that wine is one of those things that has a touchy-feely side and this system has none of the romance that many would argue helps define a good wine.

You can also take powders, process them and make yourself some nice cubic zirconia that looks a lot like diamond, but that doesn't change the fact that a diamond is a diamond and that shit you just made is not a diamond.
"China has rushed ahead in high-speed rail development, at the cost of human life[2] and corruption,[3] but the United States has no need to follow this example."

I'm not sure how well the US is doing on those 2 counts.

34,080 people died in the US as a result of motor vehicle accidents in 2012. This is a high number (compared to recent wars (a bit more on that later), terrorism or rail deaths).[1]

On the corruption side, it's more subtle and kleptocratic and oligarchic tinged with some regulatory capture. There is no road pricing or carbon pricing in the US so taxpayers subsidize drivers. The cost of gas/petrol is not allowed to rise and has led to a skewed foreign policy and "strategic" wars that are paid for by taxes. There are also instances such as the GM/Los Angeles transit story which have a certain ring of truth and corruption to them. [2]

In short the US policy around automobiles has a high cost in lives and corruption too, possibly far greater than anything in China.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
The same backend technology. Most of my customers are small businesses or marketing departments in larger businesses.
I hear the frustration and "just move on" attitude among the crowd here. But I'm in a position of supporting over 100k PCs, about 20% of which are on XP.

I place blame squarely on Microsoft here. This a problem of their making, and they are dumping customers out in the cold at a time where it is really dumb for them to do so.

First, consider the train wreck that has been Microsoft's strategy over the last decade. Many of my customers were well funded and eager to keep modern equipment out in the field. Problem is, the internet happened, and Microsoft decided at one point to stop developing IE and party like it was 1989 with client/server apps. So when Vista came around, we couldn't upgrade because IE6 wouldn't run in a supported configuration. Microsoft's bungling of 64-bit support even breaks older printers!

Then the financial crisis came around, followed by the iPad revolution. That dried up budgets (my PC replacement budget dropped 85%) and drove early adopter users to tablets.

Microsoft followed up with lots of fail: IE version weirdness, divergence from the old polices re: app compatibility, etc. We have a couple of small legacy apps written for windows 3.1.1 that work great on Windows 7, but MANY applications written for XP don't work due to a myriad of reasons. It's a real problem, and my employer has invested 3 years and millions of dollars to resolve.

And guess what? We are for the first time at a crossroads where we have choices re:end user computing. And in many cases, we're choosing non-Microsoft platforms, since we need to rewrite apps anyway. I can deliver and run an iPad for mobile users for 1/3-1/2 the cost of a laptop -- and the users LOVE them. We'll be buying thousands of iPads and galaxy tabs!

So I hope Microsoft saves a lot of money by cutting off XP. They will certainly see a lot less revenue from us in the future.
> if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out!

I was bullied a lot when I was younger. I was small to begin with, but I skipped a grade and consequently hit puberty about 18 months behind all of the other kids. Growing up in a rural area, I endured a lot of abuse and violence on a daily basis, and like the typical story goes, teachers saw most of it and did nothing.

The physical abuse stopped at the end of eighth grade. We had a year-end party and all of the jocks were bullying me as usual. This other kid, who was the only one about my size, decided that he would join in the hazing this day. I guess he had his own reasons for wanting to fit in. TL;DR I snapped and beat the piss out of him. Surprisingly, I wasn't disciplined or punished for this at all, which would probably never be the case in "zero-tolerance" Canada today. The teacher was very nice to me (I was crying and shaking for what felt like an hour afterwards) and drove me home herself. I think maybe she felt bad that she hadn't intervened earlier.

I moved away after the next year, but the few friends that I had back then (the other outcasts and nerds) told me much later that things got better for them in the following years. I guess most kids get over bullying once they get a little older. These episodes left scars on me that will probably never completely heal, but I feel now that as a 34-year-old man I've long since moved past it. I'm relatively well-adjusted and socially-aware now (this took years of work in my late teens and twenties, you don't get a chance to develop critical interpersonal skills when you're a group hazing target), and I haven't let myself be permanently handicapped by the bullying that happened to me. So: things can get better.

As for how I did it, honestly the biggest thing is "fake it till you make it". Pretend to be the confident person that you would like to be, even if it feels forced or fake, or like a role that you're playing instead of your loathsome putrid self. People do respond to charm and confidence -- if you play the role well then things become less difficult over time, and you realize that the only thing that was holding you back was fear before. Over time you can really change the way that you feel about yourself, and you won't need to pretend anymore. It's possible! Amy Cuddy gave a well-regarded TED talk on this topic (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...), it's worth viewing.

The other thing I did that I feel really helped me was to increase my level of physical exercise. When you're bullied all you want to do is withdraw into yourself behind a protective shell. Lots of bullied people end up living in the mind for this reason, I know I did (and boy am I glad for it in retrospect --- those Commodore 64 programmers' manuals didn't read themselves!). Not a great strategy going into adulthood however. You inhabit a physical body moving through space and getting better at doing that has knock-on effects that improve lots of other parts of your life, besides just looking better: stamina, mood, posture, body language, etc.

Sorry for the mega-post.
On an individual basis, it doesn't make sense for a single user to upgrade until the point that the old computer needs totally replaced. The cost of upgrading is higher then the value of the computer.

In business the cost of the applications and data is many hundreds if not thousands of times more expensive then the computer systems.

A recent example of my own is a vet clinic with a older digital x-ray machine. I asked what it would take to upgrade the machine to Windows 7. Around $50,000 was there answer. They had to replace all the hardware and software. There was no 'upgrade' path.
>But suppose that you are the manager of an organisation with just over 1 million PCs running XP, and those PCs are used to access hundreds of applications that are only guaranteed/certified to work with XP.

Then you've had years to figure out a solution to this. It's not like there haven't been 3 OS releases since then (Vista came out 7 years ago). Microsoft has offered extended (paid) support for their end of life products in the past, so this is nothing new.