'Extinct' Formosan clouded leopard spotted in Taiwan - <AUTHOR> https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3644433 <comment><USER2> This makes me incredibly happy for some reason.

I lived in Taiwan for a year after I graduated college and I found their jungles to be difficult to navigate because of the mountainous terrain. It doesn't surprise me that they have been hiding out successfully for >10 years!

What a beautiful animal with cool patterns.

<comment><USER3> This makes me happy too. Anytime anyone or anything we thought was dead is found alive, that's a cause for celebration.

<comment><USER4> Small pox! Yeaahhh!!

<comment><USER5> Beware! You entered the "cutesy animals, let's save the planet, everyone's cool man" territory with nuance, humour and wider perspective. People don't forgive that easily.

If you want to be fun at parties, you can also try this: _" What do you mean, 'YOLO, do what your heart tells you, no matter what they say'? Does that also apply to rapists and murderers?"_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > the Alangyi Village set up a team of rangers to patrol traditional areas.

> confirmed that rangers from the village had spotted the Formosan clouded > leopard in person, but he was not at the liberty of disclosing the exact > time and location of the sightings.

> Alangyi Village elders also asked the Forestry Bureau to stop logging and > other disruptive activities.

This was managed extremely well by the village.

<comment><USER7> Right, better than the previous time when the locals burned captured specimens for fear of retribution for having captured them 20 or so years ago.

For sure, this time protocol was followed as should be expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Forest Galante travels the world and searches for animals that people think are extinct, but not in the cryptozoology sense. He was recently on the jre podcast, its a great listen. He Also hosts the show Extinct Or Alive on Animal Planet. The 7th episode was about this exact animal.

jre: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT0ZIq- yWEM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT0ZIq-yWEM)

[https://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/extinct-or- alive/](https://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/extinct-or-alive/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great news. The fact that it's been about thirty years since the last official sighting (according to Wikipedia), suggests that there is still a breeding population and not just one or two geriatric survivors.

Now one can only hope that the local population won't think of them as a valuable trophy prize or maybe of medicinal value, to be shot on sight.

<comment><USER10> I don't think Taiwan is like China in that regard. I'm more inclined to think taiwan would do everything it can to protect them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are going to do a scientific study to try and confirm their return from extinction. The last such study lasted thirteen years and yielded zero sightings.

</comment><comment><USER12> Summary: Eyewitness accounts only, no photos, no verification in any way.

Unfortunately, most likely the "eyewitnesses" are mistaken, as in nearly all cases like these.

</comment><comment><USER13> I always have one question about such discoveries. Is it that the some mating pairs of the species somehow escaped being seen and were thought to be extinct or is it some magic of nature that the species got reborn somehow!! May be there is an XKCD line about this already :)

<comment><USER14> No magic involved.

Hide-and-seek is easy if there's only a couple of animals and an entire ecosystem to hide in.</comment></comment>


DaVinci - Microsoft Surface Physics Illustrator [video] - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/3635423 <comment><USER2> nothing new -- these and better 2d physics engines (even open-source) have been around for years (box2d, chipmunk, etc)

<comment><USER3> Agreed, check out <http://www.crayonphysics.com/> for a novel approach to integrating this type of interface into the market ("Get 'em when they's young")</comment></comment>


Three Big Things: Important forces shaping the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/three-big-things-the-most-important-forces-shaping-the-world/ <comment><USER2> About 'information access', I think the new barrier to socioeconomic mobility is going to be misinformation and regulation.

Those who have power will do anything to keep that power; with abundant and free information, fake news and misinformation will be used to control the masses.

Probably the world will be in such a state that:

1\. Most of the rules in society will not make sense but you will accept them anyway simply because everyone else accepts them and there will be a lot of myths and misinformation to justify the rules.

2\. Not believing the myths and not following the rules will get you imprisoned or killed (as has typically been the case throughout human history).

I think 'government regulation' is increasingly taking the place of religious doctrine when it comes to protecting the interests of the rich and powerful. There are a lot of arbitrary laws which were introduced under some vague pretext whose real purpose is to create a moat to protect corporate interests.

</comment><comment><USER3> Demography is rightly placed first. Youth is short and life is long, therefore the political and economic implications of an ageing population are huge. In Australia for example, the biggest ticket item for government spending is 'assistance to the aged', $70 billion out of a total budget of $500 billion. This is distinct from the money spent on health, which is also heavily skewed towards the elderly. I am not making a value judgement on government spending, but the numbers suggest we will be locked in a cycle where spending on the elderly will continue to be a dominant factor in government spending for the next 30 years.

What will be interesting to see is how the governments keep finding the money.

<comment><USER4> Wealth, assets and money always are transferring hands. 30 years from now all wealth of bill gates could have been distributed to trusts, funds and next generations. i.e. We are continuously adding assets to what we already have, at global scale. ( And debt to the environment. ) I wonder what would be tipping or balance point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it's time to shoot from the hip (or rather extrapolate), let's rebut a little bit.

i) _Human_ working population is shrinking, but robots are rising. Remember this person doesn't exist [https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/](https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/) (but they look much like the real thing). See Boston Dynamics's Atlas, Spot etc. So, yeah, don't worry about demographics. Robots & robot assistants will multiply like rabbits (or rather like Windows 10 SW). This will overcompensate for the drop in working population.

2) Inequality is real. It's extremely dangerous and getting worse (tax cuts anyone?). But that doesn't mean it will reverse itself anytime soon. Most of humanity lived in bare subsistence levels vs the rich during majority of human history. If anything, equality is an aberration from the norm.

3) Access to information is awesome. This means governments & powers that be are hard at work stopping it :) Censure, regulation, control will be the norm going forward. Wild-west attitude towards information dissemination will reverse course.

<comment><USER6> (i) it's a very interesting point that you put forth. Yes, robots will compensate for the _working population_ ; However, I think the OP wants to direct the attention towards the economic impact of a changing demographic. Robots won't earn and [ borrow and ] spend. Consumption, Consumerism and the access to Capital is the reason world GDP has multiplied manifold in the last century and why it continues to grow. A shift in demographic has a massive impact on that.

<comment><USER7> > Consumption, Consumerism and the access to Capital is the reason world GDP > has multiplied

I'm sure improvements in technology and production played _some_ part...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suspect 20% drop in China's working age population might not actually hurt as much as the author tries to imply. The sheer size of the population and the amount of population within cities and outside cities should play a role here. A 20% drop could actually have the opposite pressure, create some efficiency and dramatically push up the quality of life and create a better functioning economy, and overall economy could actually go up and/or become much more stable.

</comment><comment><USER9> "They eventually have enough, and coalesce as a group to become powerful enough to force change, typically with taxes, minimum wages, and labor unions."

Typically? You wish!

Look at what happened in many states of Latin America. They have huge inequality problem. And they are not closer to solving it than they were half a century ago.

What IMHO usually happens is the rise of authoritarian populism. Until the inequality is addressed, it might then oscillate between fascism (like Pinochet) and populist-socialism (like Chavez).

P.S. I like the blog post overall, except it completely ignores the ecological crisis and global warming.

</comment><comment><USER10> Demographics are a huge deal, and combines in very concerning ways with:

1) Humanities general inability to foresee the future.

2) The surprising resistance of political bodies to trying new things when the current method 'seems to be working'.

I've come around to the idea that China's 1 Child Policy was a a very responsible idea. It was probably executed with the characteristic horrors of an authoritarian government - but the idea that population is just going to sort itself out is imprudent.

There are 3 futures. One where population naturally levels off and finds a sustainable level, one where growth turns out to be truly exponential in defiance of physical limits and one where a lot of people discover they can't be supported by what is on offer and die of starvation or violence.

The good news is that is 2 happy endings to 1 bad one. But humanity has a very long history of need-resource-access-driven violence and evolutionary factors will push us back there if it isn't politically resisted at a grand scale.

<comment><USER11> Your second scenario is what is often promoted despite being hard to believe at this stage. Your third scenario is very likely IMO. Your first scenario sounds like the world runs on magic beans and somehow things will just work themselves out without any intervention or disaster (your third scenario) ...

<comment><USER12> I find opinions like these to be somewhat disconcerting. I don't know terribly much about demographics, but people who study demographics and economic development seem to fairly consistently agree that global population /will/ level off. At the core, the reasoning is simple -- as women become better educated and countries develop economically, birth rates drop, with no exceptions that I am aware of. The United Nations projects that the global population will level off at 12 billion around 2100.

<comment><USER13> When I was a kid, there were about 3.5 billion people on earth. I've watched that double. Growth of 3.5 billion people. You shug off another 4 to 5 billion like it's no big deal. Maybe you're just happy to hear a prediction if leveling off, and the number is meaningless. Let me tell you, 3 to 4 billion is a LOT of people. I remember when it was ALL the people, and what it looks like to have that many more. Dont kids yourself, it's a LOT of people. The notion that the entire world will modernize and have a reduced birthrate is also an assumption. I hope we can handle it.

<comment><USER14> Yes but the scenarios 2 to 3 mentioned in the comment above are purely speculative. They in fact go contrary to the weight of more recent demographic historical evidence so far and insofar as there's a major scientific consensus of any kind on population growth, it's weighted heavily in favor of the idea that population will stabilize by or before 2100. Even the 12 billion figure is exceptionally high. The majority I've seen indicate 11 billion or less, many 10 billion and the lower professional estimates argue we might see a world population of only 9 billion or so by 2100, if I recall correctly. All this takes aside new energy, crop and general technological prospects for good human development. Currently, more people than ever are indeed living better than ever despite the population having doubled since the mid 1970s or so and the current biggest problems facing populations in need almost entirely consist of politically caused shortages, not literal absolute resource shortages.

<comment><USER14> One other thing to keep in mind as well: much of our current population explosion isn't even due to massive birth rates. It's the result of much lower infant mortality. If we were to still have the infant mortality rates we had in the beginnings of the 20th century with current global birth rates, i'd even speculate that population would already be declining. Since said birth rates continue to decline, the trend looks good globally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to information."

The biggest, most important force shaping the world today is the invisible hand of evolution.

<comment><USER16> That... seems like a non-sequitur here. What to elaborate?

<comment><USER17> I don't see what is there to elaborate. Humanity is evolving, and OP thinks it is an important force shaping the world today.

<comment><USER16> This is obviously true, but irrelevant at the timescale that the article considers, ie, about a century beginning in 1945. Have we evolved significantly since WW2? Is the internet going to exert selection pressure on humanity? Maybe, but we won't notice in 3 generations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Encryption Has Foiled Wiretaps for First Time Ever, Feds Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/encryption-foiled-wiretaps/ <comment><USER2> Interesting that this is appearing only now, even though it happened in 2012.

Reminds me of the recent "news" that terrorists changed their tactics after the leaks, "according to _government officials_ ". Greenwald talked about this recently:

[http://youtu.be/Uulv4ve6RJ8?t=47m5s](http://youtu.be/Uulv4ve6RJ8?t=47m5s)

<comment><USER3> What's with the laughtracks? I'm confused.

<comment><USER4> It's not a laugh track, it's an actual audience. He's speaking at the Socialism 2013 conference. He originally planned to be there but was unable to make it due to all the stuff that's gone down these last few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like I've said in other posts, spy on people and they start to react. In this case they start using encryption more and more. No, such people are not 100% secure, but if there is a secure option, they take it. This increases encrypted traffic and of course government paranoia. More of us are hiding stuff, there for more of us must be guilty, so government needs to spy more.

Mean while, real criminals will simply avoid electronic communications.

<comment><USER6> Or like POWs in WW2 devise language that will have hidden meaning.

<comment><USER7> You mean... a CODE?? Now there's a new idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I may be a bit too paranoid, but this seems like a decoy similar to the iMessage decoy earlier this year.

This is a quote from the government so surely there will be multiple -- perhaps even conflicting -- interpretations and definitions of the terms encryption, foiled, and wiretaps.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't seem too paranoid to me at all. Even a couple years ago, if you had said the NSA was spying on everyone, people would have branded you as a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Now we're supposed to believe the things that our government tells us after years and years of lying about hundreds of things at a time? No thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like more misinformation. Another excuse to exceed their mandate. I don't trust anything they have to say anymore.

<comment><USER11> How is this misinformation? It's 100% true that end-to-end encryption is unbreakable.

<comment><USER12> Huh? End-to-end just means it's not decrypted in transit by design. All the other usual technical things can still go wrong (trust model failures, exploitable programming bugs, crypto protocol breaks, crypto algorithm breaks, ui trickery etc). Not to mention social engineering, phishing, backdoors and such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that they specifically mention Apple. If I recall, a few months ago, before this whole NSA thing broke, there was a story on how iMessage's encrypted-by-default communications were being a PITA for investigators used to just being able to pull SMS logs. I wonder if that's what this is talking about?

</comment><comment><USER14> Note the important caveat about _court-approved wiretaps_ :

      For the first time, encryption is thwarting government surveillance efforts through court-approved wiretaps, U.S. officials said today.

So it doesn't stop the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER15> Of course, that's what they'd say if they _had_ broken it. If they hadn't, then saying this would be counterproductive.

Alternate 1: Since they're keeping encrypted stuff forever, they're somehow OK with not getting access to stuff until moore's law has had a while longer to run / more exploits have been found?

Alternate 2: They want the metadata, and if people didn't trust encryption they wouldn't even get that?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is _exactly_ what they would say if they actually had found a way to break encryption.

Sad to see wired.com becoming another mouthpiece for the government like other mainstream media.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe they can break most forms of crypto head on, but they can certainly exploit a lot of flaws (either errors in the implementation or flaws in either the infrastructure it runs on or physical/human factors).

It's an open question whether strong crypto used inappropriately makes people do things they wouldn't otherwise. If you know all comms are monitored, and don't ever say anything incriminating on the phone, you're better off than someone who has an unbreakable encrypted phone but is talking to an informant with a recorder on the other end.

<comment><USER17> It was broken before it hits the shelf.

"They do not use(release) code, they can't crack"

<comment><USER18> Are you alleging the NSA is violating its mandate by deliberately leaving top secret information vulnerable?

<comment><USER19> Not only that, but he's also alleging that NSA developed AES.

<comment><USER18> Read in a literal sense, that is true, but the NSA has sufficient influence to exercise an effective veto over mass-market crypto just by saying they don't believe it's secure (whether that is true or not). If the NSA said "don't use AES", most people wouldn't use AES. They also could have easily spooked everyone off Rijndael during the AES selection process.

For that reason, I don't generally find it useful to argue the point of exactly where Rijndael actually came from.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Numeric JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://numericjs.com/ <comment><USER2> This branch adds slicing and broadcasting as in numpy: [https://github.com/orangeduck/numeric](https://github.com/orangeduck/numeric)

There are a few known bugs in mainline numericjs (including one in the eigen decomposition when there are repeated eigenvalues). The author of numericjs is active in the Google group, but hasn't had time to work on it in the last few years. Hence the third-party, not integrated orangeduck branch.

This project, when I started using it 5 or 6 years ago, was the one that made me realize just how fast JavaScript has become. This project also demonstrates how desperately JavaScript needs operator overloading. When I used numericjs for a homework assignment recently, I considered writing a sweetjs macro for my students but didn't get around to it. I would be grateful if someone else did!

<comment><USER3> To add another datapoint, I remember using numericjs a few months ago and the parts I used were pretty buggy (iirc singular value decomposition for nonsquare matrices didn't work). It is also oddly missing common stuff like cross product which I thought I would find in a matrix/vector library.

Its implementation of "dot" is kind of nice though. Without worry about the type, it does multiplying a scalar to a matrix, a matrix with a matrix, a matrix with a vector, and a vector with a vector, etc all correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google cache: [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCIQIDAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3ArcwPwtghB88J%3Anumericjs.com%2F%2B%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ei=JS4jVfCFIc2pogSBmoDABA&usg=AFQjCNFBfDtsr6PxeIQJ3OA4kPsFdS2IGg&sig2=yXPgzI5ppqynCL_q04xn6Q&bvm=bv.89947451,d.cGU)

</comment><comment><USER5> This code is very old. It also helps to explain why there are so many libraries checked in directly to the repo instead of being installed by NPM, etc.

EDIT: I guess it is also explained by the apparent fact that it was written by a math professor before he was a professor.

</comment><comment><USER6> Github repo while the site is getting a Hug of Death: [https://github.com/sloisel/numeric](https://github.com/sloisel/numeric)

</comment><comment><USER7> Great, and with the "workshop" ([http://numericjs.com/workshop.php](http://numericjs.com/workshop.php)) it's like an JS based IPython or Mathematica.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting library. I remember having a need for a symbolic algebra library in JS some time back. While JS is not the main go to language for math it is nice to have more development there.

</comment><comment><USER9> I couldn't help but notice this slightly, uh, controversial part of the codebase:

[https://github.com/sloisel/numeric/blob/656fa1254be540f42871...](https://github.com/sloisel/numeric/blob/656fa1254be540f428710738ca9c1539625777f1/workshop.php#L153-L154)

<comment><USER10> One can always hope they aren't using it's more recent social definition.

 _delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment_

<comment><USER9> That seems a little overly charitable, given the context...

It appears to be checking whether the browser is Internet Explorer, and creating a Web Worker polyfill if it is - which, naming conventions aside, really isn't such a good strategy.

There's also a lot of `var foo` in that file; I don't know if it says much about the quality of code in the rest of the project (maybe this is just a file slapped together in a hurry), but it doesn't particularly inspire confidence.

In fact, on closer investigation, there's a lot of `var foo` in this file too: [https://github.com/sloisel/numeric/blob/master/src/numeric.j...](https://github.com/sloisel/numeric/blob/master/src/numeric.js)</comment></comment></comment>


The toxic reality of social media discourse - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-toxic-reality-of-social-media-discourse-fbdee283594c <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all! I'm Kieran, the writer of this post and creator of the app Change My Mind.

Change My Mind is the fully anonymous, no incentive platform for healthy, open and honest 1-on-1 discussions.

I truly believe that a platform founded on the goals of creating a space for healthy discourse will allow us to narrow the divide in the world one chat at a time.

If you have comments or questions about the article or app, I'd love to hear any feedback.

[https://apps.apple.com/app/id1524167633](https://apps.apple.com/app/id1524167633)

</comment><comment> aaron-santos A refutation of social media isn't a justification for its opposite. Changing systems always involves trade offs. What are we trading by advocating for anonymous 1-on-1 discussions?

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, I'm specifically calling out the toxicity of debating on social media platforms, not social media as a whole. The idea being here that if there was a better platform to hear the other side of an opinion, people may think to go there instead of social media.</comment></comment>


HAL is a lean hypermedia type for your RESTful APIs - <AUTHOR> http://stateless.co/hal_specification.html

<comment><USER2> Reading this leaves me troubled. Why not the XLink vocabulary, for instance? I can understand something like this appearing for JSON if only so that people have an intrametalinguistic transition path for their JSON APIs, but letting so much existing work on interoperable XML representations fall by the wayside could be unfortunate.

Did you actually register the media types?

"Any and all elements are legal in a HAL representation provided they do not conflict with HAL's reserved elements." If I'm reading this right: please, please, no. Not in XML. Allocate a namespace URI and use it. Let's not start down the path of everyone having to watch out for everyone else's element names again.

The idea of identifying multiple packed related resources (which could otherwise be top-level resources) in the same document is interesting. I don't immediately recall specific prior specifications there, but I'd definitely want to go through the W3C site with a fine-toothed comb to check. E.g., Atom feeds already can embed XML fragments of almost any other type (though most commonly XHTML) as entry content; there may be some evolution of that available.

<comment><USER3> YAML specifies standard way of including multiple documents in a single stream/file. With XML (assuming XSD-compatible parser), you can always extend the NS and have several documents in a single container (thus single stream/file), but I don't see how that would be preferable to just using MIME/Multipart.

<comment><USER2> MIME multipart is pretty good in and of itself, and in particular can represent a larger space of content types well. I'm trying to imagine how this interacts with things like URI fragment identifiers, though. MIME has Content- ID, but that's defined to be a msg-id, which doesn't help much. xml:id might be more effective in a sense, but then you run into the internal collision problem again.

Implementationally, hooking up an extra MIME layer is a lot more cumbersome than it should be. This is theoretically a transient characteristic, but I have the creeping feeling that that will destroy any attempts to use MIME for this purpose regardless.

<comment><USER3> Well, yes, if the content is inter-connected this is more tricky.

Xml:id assumes unique identifiers within scope, and with multiple documents that would require a global scope, something that is not standardized and problematic (it'd require either using UUIDs as IDs or keeping track of uniqueness in some other way).

I think a better solution would be to use XLink. Assuming each document has its own canonical link, this is then straightforward:

1\. Make sure each XML document within MIME/Multipart container includes <link rel="canonical" href="uri:…"/>

2\. Each document in a MIME/Multipart container should refer to other documents using xlink, i.e. unique URL with a part identifying specific fragment using XPath (which can then use xml:id in a local scope).

Now, depending on the client following scenarios are possible:

1\. Naïve: Client will perform redundant requests, but will cache documents in containers, resulting in several HTTP(304) responses.

2\. Smart: Client will notice that referred documents are contained in a multipart MIME message and will use local versions.

As a bonus, this approach is not dependant on MIME in any way — it will work just as well with, for example, a ZIP archive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No mention of IANA's link relations[1], OpenSearch[2] and Atom[3] which seems to cover almost anything and beyond what 'HAL' specifies.

For JSON, JSONSchema specifies standard way of including hyperlinks in a document, but of course no one, that uses JSON in the first place, even cares.

[1] [http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link- relation...](http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link- relations.xml)

[2] <http://www.opensearch.org/Home>

[3] RFC 4287, RFC 5023, RFC 4685, RFC 4946, RFC 5005

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it definitely should be making reference to the IANA registry (will likely do this by referencing Web Linking RFC5988).

The point here was not to necessarily invent new capabilities, but to take a unique position in its design and bring together the most consistently useful assets of existing types whilst filtering out the noise.

It's much healthier for the web than just returning plain JSON/XML or a custom media type.

<comment><USER3> It's preferable to return correctly annotated (with elements from aforementioned namespaces) XML, rather than 'plain XML.' My point was, that this vocabulary already exists and there's no reason to invent new (incompatible) one. If you think you can provide some improvement to any of that, you should definitely contribute to that standards.

It's great that you care about what you output at all. Most developers don't, some even try to embrace their ignorance. I think that there's certainly a lack of user-friendly resources, that introduce developers to the best practices regarding data formats and public APIs. For example, a website, that would catalogue and provide examples of usage of certain conventions, would be, undeniably, a godsend.

I hope we can all make the Web a better place, and just adopting already defined standards would be a tremendous achievement!

<comment><AUTHOR> HAL already incorporates standards for the URI template spec and the CURIE syntax. It's also going to be rejigged to incorporate terminology direct from the Web Linking RFC.

The above being the case, it doesn't seem as if HAL is re-inventing anything significant from a standards perspective, and avoids inheriting baggage associated with pulling in elements from other namespace. Perhaps not a completely 'pure' approach, but the primary objective is simplicty - and I think doing things this way is a good balance.

If this is something you feel strongly about, please join the google group and raise it there so we can discuss merits and trade-offs in more depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah man. Where was this when I was making my latest REST service!?

Ah well. I'll have to remember it for the next one.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah.. sorry about that ;)

Sketched it out about a year ago, the design has changed a tiny bit since then but it's basically the same <http://bit.ly/acgCyY>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a nicely done comparable: <http://json-ld.org/> Compatible with RDF while keeping it simple.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not a single mention of RDF throughout. Am I missing something, or is this wheel reinvention?

<comment><AUTHOR> The intention with hal was to keep things as simple as possible. RDF (and its related media types) don't do a very good job of this, in my opinion. I think the real-world usage is a good indicator of whether RDF is appropriate for most people's use cases. There's probably some node.js analogy to be made here, too :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this legal? - <AUTHOR>

Hi There. I've crafted the last weeks a mobile app (android/iphone) that allow people to know the schedules of trains for the national train company. The company don't have any web service, so how i've done that?
They actually offer on their website a for to query their system but it is not optimized for the mobile and it is so slow. So i've build a proxy on my server that query and cache the schedules it also expose the datas as a REST web service.
The app is already on the app store and android market, but i'm wondering if i'm not violating a law here.
So is this legal in USA?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> It is very unlikely that a large national train company wouldn't have TOS for the info on its website. Have a closer look. It may be in a non-obvious place.

If its TOS is something like Amtrak's, the company may still not have a successful suit against you. Amtrak's TOS require the user to recognize that Amtrak's proprietary right in the data on its website is valid and enforceable probably because the law does not recognize that right by default. I think it is written that way to allow Amtrak's attorneys to make some creative arguments in court if it would need to sue. But to win they would probably need to convince a judge to change the law. Having said that, the company could still sue if it really doesn't want you to provide the app in the hope that you settle before the case reaches trial.

Do consult a lawyer just to get a sense of the likely risk of lawsuit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Checked everywhere on the website and no TOS anywhere, the only mention regarding Intelectual property is:

"2009 © All right reserved" ;-)

Anyway, i'll consult a lawyer and pay 200$ maybe before launching any ad campaign.

You've been all so helpfull.

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion(I'm not a lawyer) it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. So market the app. Then, if the train company tries to harass you, take the app down and open source it. That way, you'll make money between the time you launch, and the time the train co notices you, and you'll have a great reference for your next project. And if they choose not to do anything, even better! Just make sure you back down when their C&D comes. No need spending all your profits on attorney's fees.

</comment><comment><USER4> Legal yes. It may be against their terms of service or some lame restriction because your showing them to be less competent.

<comment><USER5> Agree with phlux here, its the 'terms of service' that, if they care, they will come after you with. That being said, did you approach them with an offer to sell them the app?

In the Bay Area we have a variety of 'CalTrain' apps which vary in quality and utility, they all rely on the same data. None (in my opinon) capture the elegant simplicity of the original PalmOS application.

In terms of infrastructure improvement, a generalized mash-up of all public transit combined with location based sensing and destination intent would seem to be the end goal. Maybe with an overflow timeout that links to Uber :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried to sell them the app before actually starting to build it without success. I've tried to sell it for month now, but as it is a HUGE company with only old school and out dated tech... i haven't got much luck.

The reason why i'm asking for it legality is because i'm planning to launch a marketing campaign to attract more users (actually have 2769k on iPhone/Android without any marketing): i'm trying to provoke them with the campaign to make them buy the app and rebrand it.

Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment></comment>


Starving the arts: How the White House budget threatens creativity - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/340696-starving-the-arts-how-president-trump-threatens <comment><USER2> C'mon, the budget cut doesn't "threaten creativity"...it only removes some of the public funding of it. Artists are still going to create their works of art, the market for their work will be more free, instead of being propped up by artificial and publicly-funded demand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Artists have depended on public support for generations (if not longer) and that support does not artificially prop up its value. In some cases artists and their work can languish for decades until publicly supported exhibitions choose to highlight them. Only then does "the market" value their work, and only sometimes does it do it properly.

And that's not to mention the value art plays in civic life and its contribution to society: markets can frequently fail to properly support artists when society needs them the most (during political strife or civil unrest.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Real-time uptime monitor of Let's Encrypt - <AUTHOR> https://keychest.net/letsencrypt <comment><AUTHOR> We have now improved the speed of loading and extraction of downtimes.

No - there wasn't bug in our code on Thu morning and the wall didn't deserve the words. It was an actual downtime that we detected 11 minutes before Let's Encrypt.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify - it doesn't monitor your certs. It actually measures the performance of the Let's Encrypt CA.

We purchased 400 domain names to get round rate limits so we can request 80,000 certs / week and measure the uptime and latency.

<comment><USER2> I'm wonderhing how much sense it makes to penetrate a service that's for free with 80k certificate requests just to check whether it's up... I mean, isn't there an official status page for Let's Encrypt?</comment></comment>


How electric superchargers went from fantasy to feasibility - <AUTHOR> http://www.roadandtrack.com/voices/why-electric-superchargers-make-sense-now <comment><USER2> There have been tests using a Valeo electric supercharger to augment the existing traditional exhaust-driven turbocharger on a Ford Focus. The firm Ricardo was able to increase gas mileage from 39 to 59mpg in European test cycles.

It doesn't really result in an increase in real-world performance, since it doesn't help the top end of the power curve, but gives a big jump to stop-and- go performance.

[http://blog.caranddriver.com/blowing-your-way-to-savings- how...](http://blog.caranddriver.com/blowing-your-way-to-savings-how-electric- superchargers-boost-mpg/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For the confused: this article is about electrically-driven pre-compressors ("turbochargers") rather than the Tesla electric battery fast-charge EV station and service.

<comment><USER4> The canonical use of the term "supercharger" in the automotive context is to describe a compressor that is driven directly from a reciprocating engine's drive output. They date back to the very late 1800s and early 1900s in various applications on internal combustion engines, and made it in to production automobile engines in the 20s.

A turbocharger, by contrast, uses waste exhaust energy to drive a compressor. A turbocharger is actually considered a type of supercharger. The full name -- although rarely used -- is actually turbosupercharger.

Not to detract from your clarification, but I think it's important that any interested readers understand that Tesla hijacked the term to describe their electric charging stations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mercedes F1 uses a similar concept they separated the hot and cold parts of the turbo and connected them with a long shaft. The vehicle is a hybrid and uses the battery to spin up the turbine at low speeds when there is less exhaust.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7MOlYhLZDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7MOlYhLZDY)

<comment><USER4> This is very different than the systems used in an F1 car. Mercedes' innovation of splitting the hod/cold parts of the turbo was ingenious, but it really has nothing to do with Volvo's system.

In an F1 car, the system is far more advanced. The MGU-H is a combination motor/generator that is attached to the primary shaft of the single turbocharger used in the F1 engine system. This is the most direct way to use electric power to assist in turbocharging, but my understanding is that the MGU-H involves some pretty exotic construction in order to withstand the environment in which it operates. Basically, they're far to expensive to use in a road car.

Volvo's system is _entirely_ different. Volvo uses two normal turbochargers that are attached to the engine's exhaust, just like you'd normally expect. Based on the descriptions I've read, and details aren't exactly bountiful, the Volvo system actually uses the electric supercharger to force air in to the _turbine_ side of the turbochargers, not the compressor as I originally expected.

This is in stark contrast to the F1 system where the electric motor/generator is an integral part of the actual turbocharger. I'm pretty puzzled by Volvo's system. I would have expected them to use the electric supercharger to generate intake pressure directly, which would require the e-supercharger to be plumbed in to the compressor circuit of the turbochargers.

The problem with this setup would be that it would create back pressure on the compressors attached to the turbochargers, which isn't optimal. It's not the end of the world, but it's counter productive, so Volvo's approach is pretty inventive. I wonder how efficient it will be though. They're literally going to use an e-supercharger to drive the turbochargers through the exhaust circuit. Pretty nutty, but I like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or you save yourself the effort for all these widgets, use a proper battery and purebred electric motors and get the fastest sedan in the world pretty much effortlessly.

If theres one thing electric propulsion doesn't need then its all the nonsense we put on top of combustion engines to smooth out their power curve.

<comment><USER7> There's two camps when it comes to automotive performance - those who care only about performance as a means to an end, and those who care about the journey to performance.

For example, dual clutch automatics have been better than manual transmissions for quite awhile now in terms of shift speeds, but those of us who still enjoy the journey prefer manual shifting for the pure pleasure of being directly connected to the car.

The same holds for internal combustion engines and that quality that several thousands of explosions per second bring to the table. The almost-silent whine of an electric motor may have an amazing torque curve but it will never invoke the primal feeling of a revving V8.

<comment><USER8> I'll take torque and actual performance over sound effects any day.

Also, real "journeyists", wouldn't settle for less than a v12 ;)

<comment><USER7> It's sound, it's smell, it's feel. It's more of an experience than some number on a dial.

V12s sound good too.

<comment><USER9> Meh, it all sounds like self-indulgent crap. I mean, I've always considered things like the Harley Davidson nothing less than butt jewelry, and direct A->B performance along an energy scale is pretty much all that matters to me. Electric can be boring as hell for all I care; in fact, all transportation 'culture' should be eschewed, so we can finally just transpose our civilizations away from the wasteful hedonism that is your modern auto- industrial society.

Now, if you want to argue that it is an Art form, then yes, I'm all there. I'd sure love to know what a 3D-printed Sportster rode, like ..

<comment><USER10> You make a good point in a society where you can dictate to everyone what they buy.

<comment><USER11> OP sounds like the primary market for a hybrid Lada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh, this article was about superchargers, not superchargers.</comment>


Generating Synthetic Data for Healthcare - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/gretel-ai/deep-dive-on-generating-synthetic-data-for-healthcare-41acb4078707 <comment><AUTHOR> Sharing data safely is one of the biggest challenges in the healthcare industry today. For hospitals and health organizations, being able to compare and contrast new patient data with other medical organizations in their area and across the world can help doctors quickly diagnose patients and provide the best treatment possible.</comment>


How to write better, more cross-browser flexbox code - <AUTHOR> http://philipwalton.com/articles/normalizing-cross-browser-flexbox-bugs/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've also created a Github repository called Flexbugs: a community curated list of cross-browser flexbox issues and their known workarounds. [https://github.com/philipwalton/flexbugs](https://github.com/philipwalton/flexbugs)

The goals is if you're building a website using flexbox, and something isn't working as you'd expect, you can find the solution there.</comment>