skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Aerial navigation: Maybe the failure mode was missing the floor on balloon size? If unobtainium balloons that size existed, then yes, Model T blimp. Outboard fishing blimp. Wind/weather becomes an airplane-sized issue. Perhaps they over-extrapolated from shrinking sizes (lighter construction, hotter air and hydrogen) to 'becomes boat-like'?

City Improvements up to date: Hmm. Cities had a lot more open space. And to build a building, you put in a rail line to the site. Now moving even a small woodframe, requires taking down poles and avoiding bridges[1]. IC and steelframe made construction cheaper. But, http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm . And current manufactured and modular homes. So it works for small buildings. The pictured block-size construction seems implausible for stress scaling. Economics didn't work for new large buildings? And no room to slide away old large buildings?

Shopping made easy: Maintenance nightmare, especially outside. Boston subway escalators were biting a person every few days, before brushes were added a few years ago. Consolidation of small shops into department stores and then malls (which did/do have escalators, but no/few walkways even now). But small shops continued until 1950's in midtown Manhattan. With lots of elevated trains, thinking "and soon there will be something like it at ground level" doesn't seem implausible. But rail is a tech sweet spot. Why doesn't NYC 5th avenue now have an airport-like walkway? Lack of crowd backpressure from corners? So maybe the failure mode was to greatly underestimate cost, plus safety?

[1] picture of a house being trucked: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/historic-kirkland-h... Another http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2709261/Moving-house...
I laughed on "Apple's Cook" in the link title
That's how the game is played, yes. If Fitbit has been on the receiving end of of patent problems, it's no surprise that they're very interested in patents.
That makes way more sense. Thanks for correcting.

PS: I momentarily thought maybe Apple had 'pulled a Siri' on the Watch. When the iPhone 4S came out, Apple deleted Siri from the App Store so only new (4S and later) devices had it. Pretty sure it increased upgrade rate.
Not sure if we count as a "best" but just wanted to also add https://nugget.one for your consideration.
Agreed.

The point being these distinctions lead to the conclusion that this identifier isn't 'generally' useful, and even under optimal conditions it's utility is questionable. For example extra precision for an approximate value is not application dependent at all. The low order bits of the time component have no actionable meaning, though they imply sort order. That's the kind of subtile error in reasoning that is really easy to make here. I think there are too many land mines hidden here to make this useful.
Funny, the description of message-passing dispatch is the same as Perl's & Python method resolution, including the caching of recently-resolved methods for fast direct dispatch…
Salto means "I jump", or just "jump" in Spanish.
Engineering is a discipline of taking a problem you cannot solve, breaking it into component problems that you figure out how to solve.
Magic 8-Ball says "No".
I can't edit my comment anymore, but I should have been clear. My family is relatively tech-savy: My father is a photographer and a power user in a handful of Adobe apps. He manages backup disk arrays and can debug most common computer problems.

The real issue is that malware (adware?) is so damn convincing that he honestly believes it will make his 2 year old computer cleaner/better/faster/longer battery life. Once these apps are installed, they set themselves up in /Library/LaunchDaemons, /Library/LaunchAgents, browser addons, default search engines and several other places and they are absolutely a pain to get rid of over the phone.

So no, the solution for them is not, switch to Chromebooks. Ideally Apple would update their existing malware rules to include these "legitimate" but extremely shady apps.
VISA in partnership to empower Africa's FinTech startups
List of Best 144Hz 27 Inch Gaming Monitor
Always worthwhile to revisit the fundamentals before beginning to write.
Bullshit from the audiophile gossip forums / strawman to justify irrational no true purist audiophile religious dogma. MP3's can be encoded crappily as that article gleefully compares apples and oranges, or over-encoded resulting in huge file sizes given an original source encoding. Nyquist bandwidth is an incontrovertible fact of physics: depending on the audio stream rate of frequency changes, humans simply can't distinguish rapid changes following each other. Proper lossy encoding is a balance of file size vs. psychoacoustic artifacts. It's also likely compounded by an "expensive wine" / "sunk costs" placebo effect where people experience less pleasure due to perceived "cheapness" of not spending millions of dollars on scratchy, finnicky gear and not having to contend with dust.

A blind test of an original playback from a record compared to a 320 kHz MP3 encoding human-indistinguishable from a raw PCM 48 kHz 16 bit recording of said analog playback is such that a $10 million bounty for anyone able to distinguish the two that would be safe from ever being collected.

Physics wins, in-group zealotry fails. Can't wait for the Thunderf00t debunks vinyl Patreon video.
I can't romanticize about bell labs simply because the rest of the company had shady business practices? Huh?
His arguments are not tight, but the talk is cathartic for those of us who see "AI weenies" for what they are.
I see this essentially as Cook protecting shareholder value against really poor analysis because the quarterly reports don't break down watch sales figures into its own category. How does the gift card Black Friday deal cut into revenue, is the question I have.
I installed TeamViewer for them and set it up to allow remote access from my account, with a safe password. I can access their computer without their involvement. It doesn't get any easier than that.
I love the nod to biomimicry in the video - inspiration from animal strategies and adaptations is an unfair advantage in robotics design.
Every time a Kubernetes distribution ships a new patch a fairy dies
My karma's too low for flagging but yeah, this is clearly a political topic that doesn't belong here this week.
Tech Trends 2017
Every government action is absolutely political, by definition. The problem is that HN regulars apparently think "politics" just means "stuff people argue about".
MSSQL does have a similar identifier, though - NEWSEQUENTIALID.
What is a “functional WoT”? The main trouble here: it's a really hard conceptually, if you delegate that hardness to 3rd party you will completely lose WoT essence.
I installed Ubuntu on my Dads laptop, and believe me, he had no troubles understanding and using it. Also never heard any complains from him about virus or system slowing down. Sooo good for me. :D
Available desktop environments for Linux are nowhere near ready for wide consumer use, and hardware support is abysmal compared to macOS and Windows.

Linux is best for servers.
I read this piece for the first time about four years ago. I've been revisiting it at intervals ever since. As it happens, I had been assigned to a Javascript project at that time after a decade of working with Java. I had been initially dismissive of the "toy language" of Javascript but I also felt that as I learned it, I grew inexplicably fond of it. The Graham essay helped me put the puzzle pieces in their right places and realize that Java was really a pretty clunky language and that Javascript was, in fact, superior. Never went full LISP though -- I had tried Scheme in the past and failed to wrap my head around it -- but it definitely made me respect the ideas behind the language.
For anyone that doesn't know Yann LeCun, he's the head of AI over at Facebook, but surprisingly he's positively and consistently straightforward concerning the current hype driving AI and its technologies. He deserves respect because of this alone.
That's true, but if you don't document it you'll likely have no trouble getting away with it.
Big data infographic
I found it interesting. I like reading about things that provide some kind of tangible connection between history and the present day.

I understand that you didn't find it interesting, but I don't understand how you couldn't.
Hey it's my robot! I can field some questions if people are curious about anything in particular.
Show HN: Slugex – Deploy your websites in a jiffy, from your terminal
I had my mom install Chrome Remote Desktop. Pretty easy to set up with some guidance over the phone, but probably easier if they already have a google account.
Anecdote, sure, but a data point none the less: my mother who is very untechnical and has zero patience for software errors loves using her computer again after I got Linux onto it. According to her, everything just works, and it runs faster to boot! This is someone who's spent decades in DOS, then Windows, then OS X.
Ok, didn't see my employer there :)
Once upon a time, for a time, I had no computer at all. WYSE-50 amber CRT terminal (public library discard), hooked up to a 14.4kbps modem and a land line for contract work.
The fact that you think there is any such thing as "mere" politics is exactly the problem.

...i'm sure i'm going to have negative karma by the end of this week, but oh well.
The piece does cite sell-through, specifically. Is it a meaningful event w/r/t wearables? What are interesting use cases for this watch or others?
Flash Exploit Found in Seven Exploit Kits
Honestly I think one of the easiest ways is to search https://www.precisionnutrition.com/fitness-pros-directory. You need to pass their nutrition course, which is very good on nutrition. It also costs quite a pretty penny, so if they're willing to spend that on training themselves and have passed it, there is probably a pretty good bet that they're good.
Yeah, [citation definitely needed]
I would say yes, if you start spending that amount of money on a trainer, you're generally going to do what they say. If they were truly unwilling they wouldn't start paying a bunch of money for the top level service of a PT.
As someone learning to play guitar this is the hardest part for me. The scales are boring and I want to jump to the fun stuff or learning a song. But then learning that song is a similar process. I have coworkers who are skilled guitarists and it is frustrating to watch them because I know they've put in the hours of doing scales.

It is hard to stay motivated when the "wrong audience" is yourself.
No I can't. It's just an attitude that I often see from management.
One small point I realized reading your comment here is that you mentioned emissions. The original article is about "renewable" energy, not "carbon footprint neutral" energy. If you had a wood fired power plant, it would be 'renewable' energy, but it would not be 'carbon neutral'. I think it is important to distinguish between the two and both are important.
This idea is actually in the article:

> Fumigation: Another theory posits that the fires were used for sanitary reasons to smoke or fumigate a building, in order to get rid of pests, disease, insects, and/or witches. However, the evidence does not support this viewpoint. All of the structures within these settlements were completely burned and destroyed. Because the damage from the fire was almost total for the entire settlement, it would be illogical if fumigation was the only intent.
I'm honestly surprised about how much interest there has been in a landing controller. I always thought it was a bit less interesting than getting the robot bouncing around doing new things.

I could see how being able to stop gracefully could be useful in some scenarios, but there are some other jumping tasks in the queue before I work on that.
Linux hardware support is really good. Probably better than Windows and certainly better than macOS (which only has to support a very limited range of hardware).
"With stateful applications being the next natural step in this evolution..."

So ephemeral applications are not hip?
You take your casual observation and start talking like it's fact. Your anecdotal evidence of decline is wrong.
Training Speech Recognition Systems Using Images
Just a heads-up, commenting on down voting is generally considered bad form (and called out specifically in the guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). It's not unusual to be down-voted just for making such comments. As I understand it, get enough negative karma and you're effectively banned.
They don't have a $33mm Kickstarter obligation to take care of. Their most recent project raised $12.8mm for the Pebble 2, Time 2 and Core. According to this rumor, they intend to refund people who pledged money for the Time 2 and Core.

Doing some quick math, it looks like they plan to refund $9,650,775 (plus any amount people pledged above the minimum threshold for a given pledge tier). Of course they're returning the full value on money they received after Kickstarter's 10% cut. They would have only received about $8,700,000.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2FB1P_Mn8
About eight years ago I reinstalled my mother's laptop with Ubuntu (was WinXP). It was a mess before and I typically spent most of my time at my mom's actually with her laptop, trying to get it to decent speed and uninstalling miscellaneous crapware.

Since I installed Ubuntu on it I actually spend my time with her, not her computer. And she's happy about that, obviously, but also that her computer just works and she doesn't have to call me to get support all the time.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.

Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux. -Stallman
Internet of Elephants
Really annoys me that Apple made the versioning so confusing for the watch. As a WatchOS developer, it's really important to know there's three distinct versions, but I argue even a consumer should probably know (especially if buying used).
Would increased adoption rates drive app dev in significant new areas? Or does a bigger base primarily mean iterations on the same type fitness apps?
Ask HN: Best resources for database schema design?
I'd like to learn about general best practices for designing databases. What are your favorite resources?
Shame no one told NASA what a useless language Forth is.

http://web.archive.org/web/20101024223709/http://forth.gsfc....
The Future of Computer Science [pdf]
Anyone have a good alternative to the Pebble Core that runs some kind of open OS (Linux/Android) with 3G built in a very similar form factor? Will take suggestions from AliExpress even... Wish I would have just gotten my Pebble Core instead :/
>We would only elect depressed people to positions of power, favoring their superior acumen.

Or you could elect intelligent non-depressed people. Being depressed is not a qualifier for being intelligent.
What a terrible analysis. It's as if this blogger is oblivious to the world outside of Apple in which he lives in. And his prediction that the Apple Watch is their next big thing is ridiculous given the years of public disregard for these devices. The Apple Watch will always be a mediocre product with lackluster sales. Accept it for what it is and stop trying to make it into something it'll never be.
My first thought was disease or outbreak prevention.
Maybe. Maybe not. You are still committing a crime. These days everything leaves evidence. And when more than one person is involved there are an infinite number of opportunities for a leak. As detectives say, you only have to mess up once, and that's why I will catch you.
Consider too the publication this research appeared in. Science Robotics is concerned with the scientific underpinnings of robotics, which in this case was the new ideas about how robots can jump.

I could slap an off the shelf stereo SLAM system on the robot, but that's just solving an integration problem instead of doing the science.
90% of my family support requests are caused by updating software.
>It feels like cracks are forming at Apple's edges. The company is straining to push out hardware updates. Supply issues are getting worse. Apple is reportedly moving away from selling beloved products like stand-alone displays and wireless routers. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Amazon, and Snap are gaining buzz with new niche hardware while Apple appears to be hanging back and resting on its laurels.

So, business as usual? As I've been hearing the exact same things, only with more fanfare ("iPod Killer", "iPhone killer", "Macbook Air killer" etc.) for 15 years now...
> Not sure about input; gesturing to yourself is going to look even crazier than talking to yourself.

In the early seventies I used to carry my Philips portable cassette player and headphones everywhere, people thought I was crazy until Akio Morita had the same idea and got Sony to create the Walkman. Now people wear headphones in the street and hardly anyone thinks about it at all.

My point is that what you think is crazy now might well be normal in ten years time, or perhaps even tomorrow.
No, because there’s a limit on the amount of JavaScript code that low-end devices can process before the user experiences significant delays, and that limit is pretty low. Most of us westerners don’t own these low-end devices, so it’s not easy to test.
Primary niche is the companies which are based on open-source products
Amazon Unveils Amazon Go, a Cashier-Free Convenience Store
VPs That Can’t Hire
That Ryanair example is outrageous, and not at all surprising
> Now imagine a train or a plane packed full of people using Theremin-esque humming devices.

Great opportunity for a jam session!
That is exactly why we study sleep.

We examine the circles not to learn about the data from which those circles are derived, but rather to learn about which structs and other properties are defined in the system. We might find circle struts, square structs, triangle structs, but never spheres, boxes, or pyramids. Or maybe some people (schizophrenics) have the metaphorical three dimensional structs and others do not.
I think that's the key - let's not forget what's at state with this story: laying off people. What's the price of extending the tech debt of this core code without 'proper' unit tests, hardcoded values, and employee-IDs in code? Is that greater than laying people off?

It is easy to forget what the real world looks like when staring at a screen all day. We take out tech debt like a mortgage - sometimes that debt doesn't make sense and we end up having to foreclose on it, other times we're able to pay it off slowly over time and it all works out.

Where the analogy to debt falls down is that sometimes you luck out and don't have to repay tech debt. Maybe your legacy manufacturing system gets replaced with something modern and all of that horrible code magically vanishes - maybe your single threaded software from the 90s is finally outdated and you need something modern and would have had to rewrite it anyhow.
Got me. That being said there's been quite a lot of funding happening in Paris lately, and there are a few French companies (some of them startups) which are starting to match Criteo's compensations.
Likewise moved my Mum to Ubuntu about 10 years ago and it dramatically improved our relationship. Hasn't all been easy e.g. photo management has been a moving target but largely it's "just worked" during that time.
Yeah, i wasn't saying that i expect to get downvoted for that specific comment, but i take your point that that's how it came across.

That's what i understand too, about karma. shrug The HN community has made abundantly clear, over and over, that people like me aren't actually welcome here.
Any name will always mean something bad in some language.
> Some kind of machine learning (NN) would probably work well.

This isn't exactly a constructive criticism, but that is essentially the most useless comment you could possibly make here. "This very general class of algorithms that I've heard about a lot would probably work here.". That is true! It's sort of like saying "Some kind of processor (Intel) would probably work well". It's completely incidental to the problem at hand, and most likely not worth saying.

It's also just a bad suggestion, because you almost certainly don't need to resort to the "high-interest credit card of technical debt" for what is a control and kinematics problem. Even if there's not a nice closed-form solution, there are 100 other approaches that are more appropriate for this sort of thing than just jumping straight to a neural network. I'm not going to go into an explanation of control theory, but "use a neural network" is not the universal answer to every problem in engineering and computer science. /rant
Then the learned behavior should be to remember the reason the estimates were wrong last time, and to include those this time.

And no, I do not think it is that easy. The point is that refusing to speak simply robs the process of valuable input.
I think the point parent was making was that Google (as a whole, not just data centers) is leading the industry to 100% renewable energy. Something Apple - which is making great advances - is yet to achieve.
You could strap a ESP236 to a bluetooth or NRF module- those things have a lot of processing power, wifi, etc, and add a little battery. They've got good power consumption, are cheap as hell, and should work.
Eh, I'm not too fazed by it, @adrienne, it's a fair point even if it's an unpopular one.
12 consejos de como elegir vivendas no contaminadas – ROOSTERGNN
>The Apple Watch will always be a mediocre product with lackluster sales. Accept it for what it is and stop trying to make it into something it'll never be.

Lackluster compared to what? Because in its field, watches in general, it's the #2 best selling watch. And in its niche, smartwatches, it's outselling the competition (Samsung, etc) by an order of magnitude or so.

It also became a multi-billion dollar business just as it came out -- and it's only in it's 2nd release (it took more time for the iPod to sell the same amount of units). And of course, compared to the profits coming in, there's probably not even a comparison, as Apple is unique in having high profit margins whereas many else are selling commodity hardware on thinner margins.

The main issue is people having unrealistic expectatations of what the sales of the Apple Watch should be. Obviously everybody has a smartphone (whether Apple or not), but very few will have a watch (whether Apple Watch or anything else). Heck, most people don't even wear an ordinary watch anymore.

So, given that, and given that Apple never said "the Apple Watch will surpass iPhone / iPad etc in sales", they just released it as another product they do, it's incredibly successful. In fact it just sold more units this quarter than it did last year, so it keeps improving too.