skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Range is helped A LOT by good lift to drag. In fact, range is proportional to lift to drag. A quadcopter cannot get very good range, but add wings, and you all of a sudden can go places.

300km is probably optimistic for this prototype. Wings are pretty short. But with extremely good lift to drag ratio (as seen in gliders, the best of which can get over 70 lift to drag), you could definitely get even 1000km range even with existing battery tech.

Range = (ratio of battery mass used for horizontal flight to total mass) * (lift to drag ratio) * (efficiency of propulsion system) * (specific energy of batteries)/(acceleration due to gravity)

So, if cruise-batteries are 0.5 of the total mass, lift to drag is 50, propulsion system is 0.75 efficient (75%), battery specific energy is 1MJ/kg (or 10^6 m^2/s^2 in alternate units, about 300Wh/kg, as good as very best lab-scale lithium ion batteries... lithium-sulfur is better), and gravity is 10m/s^2 (rounded), you have a range of:

0.5 * 50 * .75 * 1(MJ/kg)/(10m/s^2) = 0.5 * 50 * .75 * 10^6(m^2/s^2)/(10m/s^2) = 1875km.

Of course, 50% useful cruise battery weight is probably optimistic (although not too different from long distance airliners whose take-off mass can be roughly half fuel) and a lot of weight will be needed for the vertical take off and landing motors plus the payload, but it does show you what's possible even with existing battery tech.

I tend to think the prototype they showed probably won't get 300km range. Probably need longer wings for that. But their eventual goal is achievable. By the way, for long range, they're not likely using LiPo but lithium ion, perhaps those ubiquitous 18650 cells that Panasonic makes (of Tesla fame). And greater range is possible, especially as lithium-sulfur batteries start becoming more widely available (to speak nothing of lithium air).

As far as losing power to an engine, well, there are lots of engines. Also, electric motors and batteries are very simple and can be built to have extremely high reliability. The batteries and propulsion system can be built to be totally distributed, in which case there's really no feasible scenario where power is lost (unless control is lost, in which case you'd be screwed in a conventional airplane or helicopter, too). Additionally, a ballistic parachute can be and is used.

I don't think this flight is a breakthrough. A decent team could do the same thing they just did, and lots of people (including at NASA Langley) have been working on the same goal. Teaming a bunch of electric motors capable of tilting is a thing that several groups are pursuing, lots of people have done at smaller scale already, and it's only a matter of time before it's done at a large scale as well.
The idea that he personally used $593M, much less $4.9B worth of government services in 2016 is pretty silly.

He is far from being the sole owner of those companies.
>Its not like there is some new killer feature in the new google maps that makes it not work on Firefox, I have used it from Firefox in the past week and it worked fine. Even if there were some killer feature, they are free to release it in such a way that it only works with their software.

http://i.imgur.com/FDM5DQ9.png

k

You're doing 180s with such grace, it it impressive. On one hand, Google isn't forced to release their software for firefox. On the other hand, they're paragons of the open web and are all about standards

>when they start breaking other's people things

They are! They actually are! These bugs I listed aren't "bad engineering". They're "When UserAgent is detected send shitty version". In what world is that not deliberately breaking people's things? Users access Inbox on Firefox, see that their friends on chrome that sent him the link can actually access it, they're not going to blame Google, they're going to say that Firefox is a piece of crap and dump it.

> maliciously manipulating standards.

chrome.* javascript APIs

Bluetooth API

FileSystem API

-webkit CSS prefixes

not manipulating standards, just implementing half assed things on their side of things and leaving the blame on other browser manufacturers when they don't implement them.

>They didn't force it on anyone else.

"Company with 50% of desktop browser share and 80% of mobile browser share only unilaterally did something non standard and screwed everyone over. But that's not forcing everyone's hand I swear, they're only the biggest players on the market."

k

You know, when pcwalton keeps proving you wrong over and over again, you might want to rethink your opinions. It's not as if he knew what he's talking about or anything, right? :>
Yes, you're absolutely right that functions don't cover all use cases of factories. I was mostly thinking about the "why are there factories everywhere" complaint, which is mostly about factories that just produce one object.

> If we can just hold a tuple of classes, and ask each one to make an instance, then that kind of makes AbstractFactory go away.

That seems like just one particular way to solve things. I guess I don't see what the fuss is about, if we are talking about metaclasses in particular, because we could also solve this problem with generics, and the factory solution doesn't seem that bad to begin with.

> Thus all constructors effectively have the same type signature.

Or turned around, the type system is not expressive enough to assign different types to different constructors, and is incapable of distinguishing them. This matches with my general experience, that metaclasses are useful on the dynamic typing side (Python, Lisp, Smalltalk, JavaScript) but annoying on the static typing side (C++, Haskell, C#).

But of course that makes sense. In a system without static types, the only way to pass a class to a function is through its parameters, so you have to pass the class by value. In systems with static typing, you have the additional option of passing a class through a type parameter, which has the advantage of giving you access to compile-time type checking. Furthermore, there are real theoretical problems with constructing type systems which allow you to use metaclasses involving whether the type checker is sound and whether it will terminate.
Weight and altitude are the problem with the chute. This thing would result in a fatal accident at low altitude with power loss (total, they say it can operate with some systems lost) that are too low for a chute to deploy before you hit the ground. A similar problem exists with many ejection systems for military aircraft (pilot will escape the aircraft if it's on the ground, but not reach sufficient altitude for the chute to help when they return to the ground). Helicopters can auto-rotate, allowing for degraded performance during the descent but still controllable and survivable.
"Trust the natural recursion"
"Someone was wrong on the Internet, it was me."
I wasn't aware that it was even possible to file a tax return without a valid SSN...then again, I've never manually filled out a 1040 either.

How would an illegal immigrant without a valid SSN file a tax return?

EDIT: Disregard...from the parent's link article: Many of these people use Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs.
That would have to be a pretty long cable, high voltage (to keep it light) and you'd have to stay connected roughly until you reach cruising speed for maximum effect.

Recovering the cable would also be fun (assuming it stays on the ground to save weight).

Maybe they can partner with uBeam for wireless energy transmission and screw two sets of investors in one go.
Impossible?
It's really not that surprising, because word embeddings like word2vec are linear projections from one-hot vectors (i.e., of dimension equal to dictionary size) to dense lower-dimensional vectors, typically of dimension 300 (because in practice 300 works really well).

Note also that word embedding models are typically trained to optimize a loss function whose terms include the dot product of embeddings based on the respective words' location in relation to each other in sliding context windows, such that words that are more similar end up with embeddings that have greater cosine similarity, and vice versa.

What's incredible (to me) is how well these embeddings work in practice :-)
Bullcrap. The tech is good enough (but not that much better beyond that level). >90% of the success comes from the content creation/licensing strategy/execution and marketing. I.e. non-tech.

At this point it's a bit like arguing that Disney's great success in Bluray sales comes from their encoding/Bluray mastering expertise.
The craziest thing is how hard they work to cover it up and not fix it vs how blindingly easy it always seems that fixing it would be.

It's like circumnavigating the globe backwards in order to avoid using a crosswalk.
?? All Debt is a "future obligation". That's what debt means.
Read many comments, decided to make a reply on the main one so its easier to address them all. Many people suggest that it was a bad switch and that Scheme should have been kept because it helped them understand FP.

I think it would be doing a disservice to other students if they didn't switch. The rationale given was a great one actually. OOO is there for a reason. I do not like the idea that FP is the answer for everything.

I understand many students used Python, C++, etc. This was the case for me as well. I did not go to any lectures for the Introductory course. I spent my time wisely studying for other Engineering classes (in reality: I actually didn't do shit and did other activities). You should do the same too.

What I am trying to say is, just because you already know OOO because you took the initiative before University (which I think - and I am biased - is a good thing to do), does not mean everyone else has. University is about teaching a body of students, all of education revolves around the mean of this body of students. It is a sad fact, but no professor or department or University will give you the unique attention you deserve; this is why I would not suggest University for that purpose. I only did University to get a piece of paper. I learned most programming stuff on my own time, before going in.

Teaching OOO, an easier of the two (FP/OOO), is a good thing. And teaching it in Python.. is a great thing. Kudos to MIT

I think instead, it is a better idea to keep Python/OOO as first year and in second year start teaching FP in whatever language. Or perhaps teach them both in first year. I think we just need to realize that when we go to University/School, we will have to walk at the pace of the "mean" even if that requires having to run (to catch up) or crawl (to slow down). Sad reality.

Edit: I just noticed that if I press the post button twice, it makes two posts. I deleted the dupe.
A better question is why do other most of the other media firms (including all of the valley tech shops) believe reprinting press releases is journalism?
Active Lifestyle Brand Bringing Like Minded Individuals Together
What incentive, besides good-boy points and experience/publicity/etc (for more funding), do researchers have to do this?
Online Photoshop Alternative for free
I hope they had fun and enjoyed themselves.
Not saying the service owner is a bad guy but this is in the category of online tools that always makes me nervous, along with:

- password strength checkers

- JSON, YAML, EDN, whatever prettiers

- checksum generators

- Base64 (en|de)coders

- etc.
I spent a day fighting to get systemd to properly handle bind mounts on boot. It doesn't reliably mount them and there are tons of blog and forum posts complaining about it. It also surprised us that it doesn't obey the "bg" flag for NFS. You have to use "nofail" instead.

I have been informed today that a new MySQL cluster built at work on CentOS 7.3 doesn't reliably start MySQL on boot.

We have none of these problems with our FreeBSD servers. systemd eats away at my time every week and I loathe it. It might not be a nuisance for endusers but it's a nightmare for sysadmins.
> So... if you pull out the internal combustion engine and replace it in a straightforward way with an electric motor that drives the same shaft, are you really changing the nature of the device?

Just like "turbojet" derives from it being a turbine-powered jet, I think the new electric version should be called a "magnejet". Or just "jet" for short.
Charles Simonyi rejoins Microsoft as it buys his startup
Yea, came here to post about it. Was a riveting read with some great interviews. It being Ted Koppel, he got access to some really high placed people. [1]

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/books/review/lights-out-b...
"consider stationing employees who need to concentrate outside the city"

This reminds me of the Bell Lab's old Holmdel research complex. A ton of early microwave research was done there in the 50s when it was basically just a farm. It wasn't till later that they built the facility that now stands there.
$39K for 1967 Cessna 172 seems affordable

http://www.aircraftdealer.com/aircraft-for-sale-detail/Cessn...
The idea isn't that he personally cost the government that much money in service fees. It's that, without those services, he could never have made his money in the first place.
Juice wars: Juicero has sued another juicer maker for patent infringement
Depends. Recently I spent a day measuring every permutation of calculation-related optimizations I could think of for a critical inner code path. Then I noticed I'd lazily used one virtual call for convenience, which had been there since the prototype stage. The three minutes spent removing it was by far the biggest win that day.
Nobody is talking about changing one's ability to file their own taxes. But even modest proposals like having the IRS fill in all information it already knows are shot down by politicians, many conservatives. Coincidentally, many of them receive substantial campaign donations from tax prep industry.
Good luck falling from 100 m or so while deploying your chute. That's the problem zone, high enough and a chute would work, closer to the ground and there just isn't time enough for the chute to slow you down. Even a crash into water from that altitude and you'd likely be dead.
Voice purchasing is a major PITA. I've tried one or two times to order something through Echo and never really felt comfortable with it. It takes a long time to read the whole product name and description, it repeats elements (e.g. "Colgate SuperFresh Sparkling White-Blue Toothpaste Now Without Microbeads Per FDA Mandate is available for 5.55, would you like to buy it?" / "No" / "Crest MediumFresh Shiny Blue-White Toothpaste...") and to "compare", you have to remember multiple long strings like that, and know the difference between MediumFresh and SuperFresh without looking, etc. It's not a pleasant or desirable experience. You don't just say "Get me some Colgate for no more than $3" and be done with it.

The Echo is also much worse at voice recognition than people make it out to be here on HN, and it responds to a very limited set of questions/tasks. Android's voice recognition (and presumably Google Home) is much better and it will provide useful answers to a lot of questions/tasks automatically.

Despite Amazon's fancy overtures, the Echo seems to be mostly valued for its properties as a Bluetooth speaker. That's definitely the main value I get out of it. Streaming audio by a voice command is a nice convenience over tapping buttons on my phone to hook up the Bluetooth, but the core value is still in being a speaker.
Remarkable Image Shows a Martian Crater with NASA's Garbage Still Inside
Thanks for the feedback. Few people have asked me to open source this and they were keen to add some features like the one you mention i.e being able to save the lists, editing categories. I will clean up the code and release it soon.
Totally agree, not sure why they've killed your karma.

Between taking a pay cheque and whistle blowing, the large majority of people will always not rock the boat and take the money.
They were perfectly happy to use the vulnerabilities exploited by Stingray after all.
You're missing the point that in all those other threads someone asks this tired question, and then other people give multiple answers linking to all the programmes to get women into mining or construction or men into teaching or nursing - the question has been asked and answered, and the only reason it keeps being asked is because people keep asking the same question without bothering to do any searches at all for answers.

> notice how you immediately presume that men are choosing not to go into nursing because of a lack of interest

I haven't said that. Please don't put words in my mouth.

Since you've done this it's obvious you're not interested in a good faith discussion.

These threads follow a predictable pattern.

Every single time people say "What about women in contruction?" or "what about men in teaching?", and every single time they do it in the same "AHA!" way.

But, if they'd bothered to plug it into any fucking search engine they'd have seen that considerable effort is spent in these other trades to change the gender balance.
New Call of Duty: WWII Confirmed
The Appalachian Trail isn't wilderness. I recall reading somewhere that by some definition related to road building (if memory serves) there is no true wilderness in the lower 48. Alaska is it for the US, at least by that particular definition. Sorry, no citation.

Of course, Canada is handily next door.
Yeah that was my impression too.
Japan/SKorea would like to spend less $ on weapons. BUT US has a history of abandoning an ally when convenient (like Taiwan).

So even if US guarantees nuclear umbrella for SKorea and Japan, you never know what will happen. And you don't want to take chances with N Korea there.
I bet your parents noticed.. ;-)
The desktop app + browser plugin still seem to work fine. I've run into a few things that don't quite work well, like pages that have a combination of click-to-paginate and auto-scroll-paginate, but in general, it's good.
That question has nothing to do with shorting stocks and everything to do with vulnerability disclosure: http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/win-usa-04/bh-win-04-g...
Ditto, for this case I youtube-dl prior and watch on mobile VLC
Any multilingual person that consumes foreign media targeted at the local market knows that official subtitles are hit-and-miss, sometimes writing down something that sounds the same, but it's not (where/were) and in some cases even reversing the meaning of the sentence. Fansubs, on the other hand, if they are for popular media they have outstanding work poured into them, and when it is for niche media they might be slightly lower quality, but in those cases official subtitles are not available at all in the first place.
No, I'll look into it.
NYU grad student goes undercover in Chinese iPhone factory and it ain't pretty
Winamp was AWESOME!
A whole Cessna weighs maximum 1100 Kg or so on take-off. With the batteries unshielded and a bare minimum for motors, structure, avionics and parachute there wouldn't be any margin for a passenger.
Not to mention they still have/invent multiple ways to do the same. The old Tuple<>, anonymous types and new ValueTuples are pretty much different attempts/iterations to achieve a similar goal. I wonder if/how they will unify them or phase some of them out.

Btw, i kinda like java's Anonymous Classes. Do we know any reason for C# not to adopt this as well?
Punycode Exploit: a billion Chrome and Firefox users and undetectable phishing
Hard to know, looking at the 600 page NASA PDF, but Google says 400 million. But that's for a object that had to be transported to mars first. I bet transporting a dishwasher to mars intact to sit and not work is a similar amount of money.

Guess I just need to start an appliance company and fail to become enlightened as to why my desire of quality and serviceability are unattainable ideals.

Incidentally, your comment on price is a weak argument, because the product doesn't even exist. Even the luxury appliances have tremendously low longevity now. So luxury at this point basically means it looks really good while it works and you can afford to buy another when it doesn't.
Secretly teach advanced programming to beginners
Any time someone complains about software startup times, I'm reminded of Blender, which starts in a fraction of a second on my old 1st-generation i5 with a cold cache. That should be the baseline: If a program is less complex than Blender, there is no excuse for taking more than 1 second to launch.
I added this feature yesterda i.e after adding new custom item its checked and in the shopping list. I talked with another user (off HN) about this yesterday, maybe it was you.
Don't know if you are familiar with HN user Patrick "patio11" Mackenzie. His site: http://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/
Anyone up for the "make Netflix in a weekend challenge"?
you have the added weight of a combustion engine and it's fuel as well

Note I said drop pod.

The whole appeal of electric motors is that they are basically solid state.

I think beamed power has a lot of potential for electric jets. It's sort of magic. You get to ditch the heavy fuel tanks/batteries, and you still get the benefits of low maintenance costs for electric motors.
that dryer costing $180 at Home Depot has free shipping, by the way... http://www.homedepot.com/p/Magic-Chef-Compact-1-5-cu-ft-Elec... .... and by the way, you are paying for shipping even if you by at the store (it is just included)
Just because evidence was not lawfully obtained (ie. call recorded without other the other party's consent where that is requirement of state statute), doesn't necessarily mean that evidence can't be used to protect yourself against a more wide-ranging claim. The various precedents against the use of tainted evidence are mostly used in favor of a defendant and against the state.

A $50 misdemeanor fine for unlawfully recording a phone conversation, may well be a small price to pay - if the content of that recording can successfully protect you from a potentially bankrupting civil case.

And you always have the option of not disclosing the recording if that is your lawyer's recommended advice.
First Choose a framework you enjoy working in.

I always recommend Rails or Laravel since I enjoy those.

Then build a basic web app to scratch an itch you have.

ToDo/Planner, Private Social Network for your close friends or family, Budgeting Tool, Tracking something you collect (Albums, Legos, etc), geo location is interesting, QR Codes maybe a scavenger hunt app for you and your friends (setup QR codes around town with clues).

Whatever you choose, use it, extend it, update it over time, keep a list of features and improvements you want to do. When you feel like coding pick one and implement it.

If you lose interest in your app. Start a new one.

If you want learn React, Angular or Vue on top of a Rails/Laravel app.

Buy a domain, use Git, Deploy your app to Digital Ocean to build up your skills/knowledge.

If you're interested checkout the StartUpsForTheRestOfUs podcast if you have an interest in starting your own thing eventually.

Good Luck, have fun keeping your coding skills sharp.
Ad-Blocking Just Might Save the Ad Industry
Again, I never mentioned income tax. Secondly Merriam-Webster defines a highway as "a public way" (e.g. not private).
Note to self: The right thing to do, if you find a serious vulnerability, apparently, is consult an attorney. Geez, what a world.
This recent USA Today article claims our grid is attacked every three to four days:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/03/24/power-grid-ph...

As mentioned in another comment, Ted Koppel's book "Lights Out" is a really fascinating read on the threat.
Why are radio buttons circles?
Flying Cars Probably Won't Happen