skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Since in NYC taxis are a substantial portion of road traffic, I once had the idea that NYC should have a special navigation platform (maybe based on Google Maps?) that the taxis are mandated (or, more likely, highly encouraged) to follow, which would essentially load balance the traffic.

The city could include data about road closures, police & fire incidents, etc.

This might even be used to reduce traffic along bus routes, thereby increasing efficiency for them as well.

If someone works in the T&LC and wants to implement this feel free. ;)

EDIT: Note this works particularly well in Manhattan where the grid system means there are generally many routes of equal length between any two points.
Please don't be too clever for your own good - let me Cmd-Click on the links to open in a new tab.

I don't want to be taken away from your page, I want to continue reading more about YOUR product before I go to view your "partner" sites. Same goes for your API, Twitter, etc.
The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle
I worked for a few years at an agency that adhered very closely to these principles, and you know what? When things started to rapidly change around 2013 everyone was consumed and overwhelmed, and when it came time to necessarily onboard them on new technologies such as build systems, css preprocessors and the like, the skepticism was so profound, and caused such a problem for those of us looking to make everyones life easier, that the process took way longer than it should have taken with loops and hoops that I hope to never have to repeat.

After that experience, I fully equate the BFED with someone not ready to handle the incredible momentum of the industry and, for better or for worse, would never consider hiring them. There are too many good ideas being born right now to risk falling into rigid patterns of thinking.
"This is the technology industry, we don't have time for new technology!"
There will be significant damage from water all around inland Puget Sound, though I agree not on the scale of the full-blown tsunami on the coast. Everything is going to shift 30 to 100 feet west over the course of a couple minutes - the water in Puget Sound is going to slosh around like crazy.
If Flash was implemented in JavaScript, which sounds slightly crazy but not entirely impractical, it probably wouldn't have nearly as many vulnerabilities.

When's the last time a JavaScript exploit was found? I know the Pwn2Own contests manage to bust out of the sandbox now and then, but this seems exceedingly rare compared to the near monthly super critical Flash updates.
Parkinson's is a movement disorder, not dementia-related (you're probably thinking of Alzheimer's).
You don't seem to be asking that question at all. You seem to be including disparate outcome in the set of "unfair" things, by fiat, and from there looking for the logical closure of that concept under machine learning.

That closure is "Harrison Bergeron"... but one man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens.
I understand you train of thought and it makes sense. If you remove the human element and you are dealing with facts, how can this be described as "racist." On the other hand, would you be comfortable just feeding an algorithm (say one for scoring university applicants) with "race" and allowing it to find (if it is statistically relevant) the races most likely to succeed and fail?

I agree that this stuff is hard to nail down in a logically consistent way. But, this stuff has a history. Group discrimination has had horrible results in the past. This is our sloppy duct tape fix. Algorithm based selection is now challenging the assumptions.

If an admissions officer offers places only to handsome, white men from upper class backgrounds, we see that as unfair because these things have no direct impact on their value as students. He's an ass. For the sake of argument, imagine an algorithm arrives at the same conclusion as the ass. Our moral instinct is confused. Societal impact is similar.

There certainly is something dehumanizing about selection algorithms making decisions. I hate buying insurance or being assessed for loans. It feels bad.

Basically, I don't think you can reductio ad absurdum this argument away. There are inconsistencies in our moral sentiments.
The big huge thing GPG installs tend to gloss over is publishing your damn key. It doesn't help that the online keystores tend to be poorly supported by mail clients (why is it such a challenge to auto-lookup emails?), but the alternative of mailing your key around so other people can use it is a joke.

If you want the masses using encrypted email the key distribution needs to be as seamless as possible. Right now it is the opposite of that. Key management in GPG is a straight up nightmare of dozens of keystores and downloading text files and arcane commandlines. Public key distribution is the elephant in the room with encrypted email. Well, that and the fact that so many people use webmail now and all major webmail providers have completely given up on encryption. I've even seen arguments that since Javascript can never be fully trusted that webmail will never support encryption. Those arguments feel a bit like the "if it can't be perfect it is useless" argument you see a lot in crypto circles that keeps people using entirely unsafe technologies instead of safer partial solutions.
Slightly offtopic: how's your experience with Apple Pay so far?
Crazy paving: Rotterdam to consider trialling plastic roads
I think it's unnecessary to use such defeatist language. Nothing has been stolen here. Happy Birthday entered the public commons known as 'culture' and therefore belongs to nobody. One group here is trying to usurp this song from the public and extract rent for nothing. If anything, they are the ones "stealing" something from society.
I don't think so. I think it's more akin to the CEO of Toyota having an idea how the car factory works and I bet you money he has a pretty good idea.
Yes. They sold their search bar to a company that arguably doesn't respect their manifesto:

> (4) Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.

Google, Pocket, etc. are arguably not compatible with this manifesto, because their business model is precisely to sell user data.

So Mozilla says it respects and defend your privacy but makes deals with companies that won't. I'll let you pick a name for that kind of behaviour.
Another example showing the power of trigger in weechat
Yes, removing Unsafe would make things like PowerMock and Robolectric impossible to (re)implement. So what? Those libraries never should have been possible, and we can live without them.

Languages need to be selective about what features they support, and Java was never intended to support things like mocking static methods, or creating instances without invoking any constructors.
Carmakers Won't Provide Data to Apple, Google
Could you provide a link to the article? I'm not saying you're wrong (I'm not a Java guy) but that sounds convoluted.
230 Growth Hacking Resources, on One Page
> I remember an epic diff comment thread which only ended after the author defended her solution with a mathematical proof of correctness.

Can you share anything more about this anecdote? I feel like there's a really interesting story there.
Designing the New Thanx App
Instead of using public repos and pinning the version you want from them, you can run your own repo and import the versions you want. Running your own mirror is a good idea anyway, and there are tools like http://www.aptly.info/ which simplify the process of locking packages in environments.
People have their profiles, and then they die. It's inevitable.
I watched a company almost go under(shrank to almost no employees) after exactly what you described. The BFEDs(including the CTO) refused to update their skills and the company tools/stack and the company was beaten out by competitors.
The viaduct's collapse in the next big earthquake and the ~80 lives it'll take is the _reason_ we're building something as a replacement! Granted, Bertha is a huge fuckup.

A MBA in my python night class said that one approach to the viaduct problem would be to: fund a "victims of the viaduct" fund, today, with a couple million. And then pass a law that the compensation for families of the victims is limited to what's in the fund. It is appealing in a weird evil way.
It is very important to the open web. People expect more from Firefox because they state what they stand for. See here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/. Integrating a proprietary service into Firefox is contrary to this.
> The plastic roads are lighter, reducing the load on the ground, and hollow, making it easier to install cables and utility pipelines below the surface.

> ...

> Mars said the idea had huge potential for future development, such as heated roads or ultra-quiet surfaces.

Make roads hackable, sounds like a good idea.

But

> “It’s still an idea on paper at the moment; the next stage is to build it and test it in a laboratory to make sure it’s safe in wet and slippery conditions and so on. We’re looking for partners who want to collaborate on a pilot – as well as manufacturers in the plastics industry, we’re thinking of the recycling sector, universities and other knowledge institutions.
If you are doing things right you won't feel as sharp when you are further in your career. In high school and college many feel like they understand everything and that things are so easy, but that is really because they haven't started to see the bigger picture.

The more you learn the more you will feel that you don't understand everything and never will. Focus on learning whatever is most relevant to you and your career and don't get bogged down by impostor syndrome.
Would an Encryption Ban Kill the UK's Bitcoin Businesses?
But isn't irreparable madness something you'd want in anyone making such a TV series?
Be extremely careful when washing your Macbook screen.

http://www.staingate.org/

This recently happened to someone I know, after attempting to clean the display. It is not covered under warranty, and there is no fix.
> then they die. It's inevitable.

Pessimist!
If Flash was implemented in JavaScript, which sounds slightly crazy but not entirely impractical

Not so crazy, http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ -and Gnash before- does it (to a certain extent) now.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/
With syntax inspired by Python

?

If anything, the syntax is inspired by C, with Pascal-order type declarations (variable first, type thereafter).
Comcast's 2Gbps Internet costs $300 per month with huge install fees
Most mail clients suck in one very fundamental way: Importing someone's published public key is a manual process, and usually a fairly obscure one.

Mail clients should automatically query keyservers for all of the addresses on the TO: line and automatically import the keys they find. Instead they assume you're going to pass keys around on USB sticks or some such nonsense and import them into GPG by hand using some arcane syntax. It's ridiculous.
This:

http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html

Which implies that your question is of the wrong type and that understanding why is a good start.

Good luck.
Ski Resort App
Looking for ways to increase downloads of a boutique app for ski resort towns, any advice would be great!
On the booze: Alcohol's effects on memory are indeed severe, but mostly at high doses and with chronic consumption. Also, this is very individual and varys from person to person, as most things in bio do[0]. Additionally, OP mentioned that they want to stay sharp, and alcohol does have a positive effect on creativity in low doses, something we all know in coding[1]. In the end, OP should trust themself and drink as deemed appropriate (check with a Doc of course).

Sleep though, yeah, try to get more of that. Exercise too. Oh, also eat right. Hmm,... maybe should lawyer up and quit FB too, or so I am told... :P

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_alcohol_on_memory

[1]https://xkcd.com/323/
Incredibly accurate and anonymous seem to be at tension here. A discussion on your signal processing would be illuminating.
That meter is suspiciously familiar, be careful where you sing that!

In all seriousness, I wonder how far removed from the original you'd have to go to be recognizable as "that birthday song" and still avoid a copyright claim? Obviously your words are different, but the subject is the same, the meter is the same, and if you stayed in the same key, all you've really done is some word play.

Maybe draw out your "day", "X's", "day", and "all" for each line into a half or dotted half note, and reverse last two notes of each line so they ascend instead of descend. That way most of the meter is preserved and it still feels familiar, but hopefully no longer infringes.
Medical certification is something that we're not pursuing at the moment. For now, we intend to raise alerts to the user, in case we detect something suspicious, referring them to their medical doctor.
We do not claim to detect cardiac pathologies that are rare, and need several ECG derivations to be correctly diagnosed.

What we do offer is the possibility of more frequent ECG monitoring, beyond the 10 second ECG exam that most people do only once or twice per year.
For example, driving is a stressful environment, where a major cardiac event is more likely to occur. In a car with our technology, we would be able to detect when that event happens, thus preventing a crash by automatically stopping the car, and calling emergency services.

Regarding signal variability due to medication and other pathologies, that's something we have to account for, with robust feature extraction methods that are invariant to these changes, or adapt to them.
So, your medium is free content as often as you want it?
What's in it for them?
or weaponize the camera so that it can protect itself... :)
iTunes to a large extent is a wrapped WebView
If a camera films you while you are on someone else's property, then I'd argue it isn't an invasion of privacy since there was no expectation of privacy to begin with.

Also, it would be nice if you would identify yourself as an employee of Density when you post comments.
As a self interested consumer, I guess I want whatever gives me the best price.

But, I do think this can get really tricky, socially. In some places mandatory insurance can be very high. Say a group (lets go with minority men 18-25, sounds plausible) are essentially banned from driving by unaffordable prices 5-10X the average premium. This is not unrealistic. They are disadvantaged in society because of their race and age. Even if you call it fair because it's a optimal, or rational or whatnot, we have the societal impact of disadvantaging people from birth. I think it's immoral.
The uncle from Napoleon Dynamite is super excited for this.
That would create a lot more jobs for copyright attorneys whose job it would be to create byzantine licensing schemes and aggressively bully people to stop valuable copyrights from being deemed to have become a cultural property.
Meetings Are Legalized Robbery
Not the OP, but as someone with an Apple Watch, my experience with Apple Pay can be summed up easily: I still pay with my credit card. It's just easier. Each time I've tried to pay with Apple Pay, I feel the fool. It's much easier just to hand the person a piece of plastic and then get it back. With Apple Pay, it's stupid, sitting there with my hand waiting to pass it over the device. Oh wait, no, too soon. Gotta pay attention. With a card, I can pay and not thing about what I have to do. Just hand it over.

Apple did the impossible: made payments more difficult than even cash.
I worked at Walmart when I was in college because they paid the highest wage in town. No joke, every other offer I received was minimum wage.

It's not glorious, and it would definitely suck as a a career, but at the time it was the best unskilled work available. If Walmart employees had better alternatives they would take them.
> What amuses me is that it's generally agreed to be an un-interesting song!

How do you mean? It's not a Bach fugue, but I wouldn't really call it uninteresting. It's a more complex melody than the vast majority of songs you'll hear on the radio.
The Disadvantages of Single Page Applications (2014)
My thoughts as well. I figure smoking will kill a large proportion well before they hit the age range in which Parkinson's sets in
I don't see the need to be so one-sided. You can be "boring" in some ways and still use new technologies when it's appropriate.
I'm going to go ahead and disagree. If you are a huge demon/darksouls fan, bloodborne falls short.

I feel like it's not possible to express yourself as fully as you can with the class/character system in DS2 in bloodborne.

It's certainly not terrible and it's a nice holdover until DS3... but it lacks. (I do really like the parry and revenge systems though)
When I played with Markov chains, I used Lovecraft and some scientific papers. It mixed frighteningly well.

Example: Field of research were allowed to deadlock, but I still intend to accept the situation might be available for a unification algorithm.
Hmm, in the spirit of thinking of worst-case scenarios, most of the engineering talent for Amazon and Microsoft is in Seattle and Redmond, respectively. There's even a sizable percentage of Google cloud platform in Fremont and Kirkland.

Even if most of the employees live, it's likely basic infrastructure will be a disaster for quite a while. Maybe Google would be able to offload ops work to Mountain View, but it seems likely Amazon.com, AWS and Azure would go down, possibly for months. I wonder what the effect would be on the global economy.
The history of "Happy Birthday to You" is what first made me absolutely furious about US copyright law.

The enabling clause reads as follows: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

The melody was written in 1892. The altered lyrics were first (verifiably) published in 1912. And it looks very suspiciously like someone pulled a fast one in the 1930s to steal the copyrights.

What is clear to me is that it is very difficult to reconcile "limited Times" with a span of 103 years, the rights are not currently vested in the [deceased] authors, nor were they fairly paid for exclusive license of those rights, and progress of the useful arts is not being promoted here.

And that is just one case, which has been heavily researched. I can only imagine the godawful clusterfuck that must exist for those works whose pedigrees are less clear.
> "With Density on a doorframe, we’ll tell you."

The landing page advertises this as an entry-level system for doorframes. It doesn't seem that this is made for costco-level swarms of people entering a large space at one time. That said, I also have my doubts on accuracy but the error margin is probably acceptable enough to most.
Yes. It's not quite so distracting in the print edition, where they tend to be off to the side and don't look like part of the article.
I've had multiple people try to take my beach chairs, so this isn't surprising at all.
Killing it might be hard as long as companies like Cisco base their products on it. We tried a dozen of teleconferencing programs and none was able to beat Cisco Webex Java applet. Ugly? Maybe. Slow to start up? Indeed. But just works on anything (Windows/Max/Linux/Android etc.) and doesn't spin up the fans in my laptop to 100% like Google Hangout does.
How many cards do people have? I've got an amex and a visa. What more would I need?
The Airbnb Impact
Blockchain and apps distributed on a post-cloud Internet
Does anyone here have a competing "magic card", like Stratos/Plastc/Swype? I don't, but I'm curious if they all have these reader incompatibility issues or if some are engineered better than this one.

Edit: added names of other competing cards
Ask HN: Help with Perfectionism
There's no excuse for not delivering my projects. I have the time, and I have the expertise and the capability. When I start a new project though, I have a huge issue with making sure everything is perfect and obviously never get very far.

I know what the problem is, but I can't push past it. I've tried setting deadlines but then I just watch them pass and get into depressed-like states.

I've tried starting with extremely small projects, I was going to do a simple Electron app but I spent the first 8 hours on the icon (no joke, it was a dozen icons and I'm still not satisfied enough to move on).

To give you some background, I worked at a government contractor for a long time, and really judged/hated the code mess I had to deal with, I think that may be causing it.

I'm looking to listen to any books or talks on the subject that discusses the problem more. Has anyone received psychiatric help for this type of issue? I feel it's reached that level of severity.

Or, do I just need to always have someone manage that aspect of my life? I definitely produced a bunch of stuff when I had someone above me, but I always hated my time there because I thought I could do things better. Should I learn to accept that unhappiness?
tl;dr - the point of a weapon in this situation is to project and multiply force, not to kill. Firearms are the best means of doing so.

> You think you need a gun in order to kill a would-be assailant. The OP says he used a knife to scare them off. I know which I prefer.

I guess the point I'm trying to make and I should have phrased this more clearly, is that the primary purpose of having a weapon in this situation (either as a criminal or in the case of home defence) isn't to kill someone - it's to project force. Guns and knives are both force multipliers, it's just that a gun is much more efficient and therefore a much better force multiplier. The point isn't to kill someone, it's to coerce them with the threat of force to do what you want them to.

OP was making that threat when he scared off his home intruder(s) by holding out a knife and 'leaving them an exit' - in essence he was saying "leave my home or I will use potentially lethal force on you." The situation doesn't fundamentally change if OP is armed with a knife or a firearm; it's just the strength of that threat is greatly increased.

Another way to look at this - if OP and his assailant are rough equals in terms of ability to do harm to each other, it doesn't matter if OP has a knife or a gun, as long as he has one or the other. Anything that amplifies his ability to enforce his threat of force should be enough to tip the balance of power is his favour (assuming a rational adversary). Guns only become necessary or useful when there's a disparity between the assailant and the now hypothetical OP. There's a moderately well known case in America where a Texas woman's home was being attacked by two men (it turned out they wanted to steal her husband's prescription painkillers). Her ability to coerce these men without a weapon was extremely limited. However, she had a firearm, and was able to stop the attack through the threat, and use, of force.

> I think the American style of "bringing a gun to a knife fight" just escalates everything.

I mean, you're right. The problem is that a) things have escalated, and b) de-escalating it would mean deep systemic changes to the American Constitution and the perceived balance of power between the State and the Citizen. The reasoning behind the 2nd Amendment is two fold - first it's to provide for common defense in the form of a State militia, which is largely a moot point in this country. The second, and this is a bit controversial, is to provide citizens with a means of resisting the Federal government in the event of tyranny. One would think this would be a moot point as well, in a country that spends an obscene amount of money on its armed forces, but it has moral significance - saying that at the last, the citizen is responsible for the protection of their own liberty, and preserving the means of that protection. </rant>