skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I read a novel published about 20 years ago (1999), that "predicted" how VR would take over the world. It starts with the VR headsets of today that you wear over your face with poor graphics and that don't seem very realistic. Then came better ones with eye tracking which replaced keyboards and mouse with eye tracking. Then electrodes which would directly interface with our brains to replace our sense of hearing and vision. Then wireless electrodes so you dont have to wear a helmet but are in VR/AR the moment you step into a room with a computer. Then slowly a Matrix like world where people are plugged into VR from their birth and have no idea there is a physical world or something beyond VR. Pretty interesting.
He means VR offers a lot of potential value, of which the current technical limitations detract from.
I doubt many programmers already using Jython, Beanshell, Apache Groovy, Xtend, Rhino, or Nashorn will change to the Java 9 JShell. I switched from Groovy to Clojure for scripty stuff a few years ago, mainly for the macros. A well-placed macro can avoid a lot of clutter in repetitive testing -- a far better solution than some heavy-weight testing framework.
It's been 35 years since the first VR headset. 22 years since the Nintendo Virtual Boy. We're not in the early days at all.
I run a VR/AR-focused VC firm (Presence Capital). We've done 30+ investments in this space, so you can say that we believe in the long-term potential of VR. Even given that, we're bearish on how quickly there will be a profitable/sustainable VR consumer business and have advised most of our portfolio companies targeting consumers to keep burn low.

That being said, this article and most of the comments here are taking a singular worldview: consumer-focused VR for a western market. VR is a tool, not an industry. Context on use is required to assess traction.

VR for B2B or enterprises can make money today and doesn't require mass-consumer adoption. If you make someone 10x more effective at their job (tools for sales people: OssoVR) or onboard employees faster (training: STRIVR), you can overcome the cost and rough edges on the hardware and have an ROI to justify the cost of the system.

Walmart, for example, recently announced they are using VR to power their training centers.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/walmart-is-bringing-vr-ins...

We're actively investing in VR for training companies and I recently did an overview of what separates out the best companies in this space: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/08/24/ti...

In Asia (and increasingly in the west), VR-arcades are going to be how most consumers first experience high-end PC VR. Culturally, people there are already used to going to internet cafe's to use computers by the hour and seek out 3rd spaces. VR-by-the-hour rooms fit this mold. Additionally, the short length of most VR experiences makes it easy to have a 15-20 minute session and not be disappointed by the lack of content. IMAX is starting to open multiple VR centers and the word within the industry is that the VR Zones opened by Namco in Tokyo are currently profitable.

More info on this here: https://medium.com/@amitt/vr-will-be-huge-in-china-41de0c758....

(disclosure: we're investors in STRIVR and OssoVR)
He's insinuating that Shervin Pishevar (who is officially at war with Benchmark) convinced the board to make this choice.

Could be, but weird insinuating this just based on ethnicity.
How about clickable links?
Like that the site is very hard to use mobile.
That's pretty typical for a new CEO. 2-3%. In fact, that's a bit low.
I wonder what we'll see when the newer Microsoft sponsored vR headsets start to hit the shelves. I think Acer will be one of the first ones.

They're not as advanced as a Oculus/Vive, but they can function without needing to setup an entire room.
OT, but I would LOVE to see GoT in IMAX, especially the current season.
The next generation of SteamVR Tracking 2.0 (it seems that 'Lighthouse' is no longer the preferred name) is bringing the long-promised support for tracking setups using more than two base stations, making large-area tracking a reality. (The first headset we see using it may be an LG HMD, around the end of this year.) https://uploadvr.com/steamvr-tracking-2/ https://steamcommunity.com/games/steamvrtracking/announcemen... The problem is that it seems most users aren't able (and willing) to find even enough free space for even the maximum tracked volume of the current Lighthouse system for their VR setups. (And the new base stations aren't compatible with the existing HTC Vives ...) So large-area VR seems set to arrive soon, but to only a minority of even PC VR setups for the immediately foreseeable.
Why do you think you should get the same kind of wine locally as consumers in the UK? There are so many factors here that could affect the quality and selection.
Really have to complain about 'Out of Ammo' on that one. It had a really great gimmick. It's a tower defense where you can become your towers + units and shoot the enemy with superhero speed and accuracy. That part was really fun.

It was also one of the worst tower defense games I've ever played. Enemies coming from all sides, rngs that made certain levels unbeatable if you got unlucky with the tower drops, and wide open areas that meant you couldn't really create bottlenecks.

For all the potential it had, they really needed someone better at game design.

-----

My biggest issue though is that we haven't seen any long form VR games. Everything decent is more or less like an arcade. One room where you do everything, and you run out of unique stuff to do pretty quickly.
Zeroing memory, compiler optimizations and memset_s
This one is also fantastic:
https://soundcloud.com/jakarta-records/jakarta-radio-009-som...
I wrote in pen, and completely blotted out stuff I didn't want.

No visibility (hopefully) for what I wanted to erase, but still better than using a pencil and eraser.
I think a lot of people (consumers and developers) are still stuck in the idea of games requiring a large space of movement. Some games on the Vive like Out of Ammo, Fantastic Contraption, and Xortex (the arcade game in The Lab) are good examples of new gameplay styles that really benefit from the Vive's roomscale VR and aren't hampered by its limitations.
FWIW, I still use qmail. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is setting up a new mail server -- then again, I generally wouldn't recommend that people set up mail servers -- but I've copied my setup from one system to another over the years and it's still working just fine.
Energy Harvesting in Wearables
I don't think that's the right way of looking at this.

It's hard to deny that Linus would not lose influence by having a modicum of self control and not saying someone should have been aborted because of a bad patch. Sure, maybe DJB won't become uber-famous by being nicer, but at the very least he wouldn't generate these sorts of conversations every time he writes something.

There's so many documented cases of people saying they don't want to work with Torvalds or Kalanick. In exchange for what? Being able to be some massive edgelord?

If even a single good core Linux developer would otherwise be contributing, Torvald's abrassiveness would be a net negative I think.
The keyword here is hypocracy. It's of course tabu to say ones own opinion were better. Value judgement is already entailed by voicing opinion, so saying it is redundant at least, but in the extreme, opinion is suppressed by the hypocritical "mainline" opposed to criticism.
"Moscow’s aim is widely viewed as exploiting divides and sowing distrust of democratic institutions"

Coincidentally, that's the purpose of the Trump/Russia narrative. Also, the article holds great contempt for breitbart.com, which is notably not Kremlin-controlled. Having one foot in Europe, it's very obvious that the Trump/Russia narrative is meant strictly for domestic US consumption. Consider the German reaction to recent US sanctions against Russia. The narrative presented by liberal, European media is the exact opposite of the one offered, here. I'm not sure what to make of it beyond the obvious conclusion that media ought to get out of the business of imposing viewpoints.
Nice work! A few questions: can you speak to why one would choose BuckleScript over js_of_ocaml? Also, does BuckleScript support all of OCaml? Could you compile core_kernel using BuckleScript?
Always not a fan of VR. The biggest issue here: Why do I need them. The media and some evangelists are selling VR like it is THE new interface for everything and anything, but they cannot really even convince people with their own demo out of the scope of some basic gaming and prototyping.

The whole headset too big and uncomfortable point is true, but it comes next at failing to sell the technology to the mess with a legit reason. Yes it is cooler and more immersive, but does this advantage outweigh that much that I should ditch my smartphone and embrace the hype? I am afraid this would come to AI as well, while the media is fear-mongering over human being taken over by terminators-like robots, people out there might just not feel there is a need of democratization of AI at all.
Yes, literally when I type in VS, there's a noticeable delay before the letters appear on the screen. I think it's working hard to figure out code completion. Maybe this is just a problem in the Mac version. Anyway, it's very frustrating, as computers are generally thought to be pretty fast these days!
> Millions of Americans donned a wacky-looking headset to get a glimpse of a different reality this week. No, not a virtual reality headset — these people were looking up at the sky through protective goggles to witness a total eclipse of the sun which cut a shadowy swathe across middle America.

Oh my.

I'm sure you know the old saying: when you read a news report about something you happen to be an expert in, you'll likely find that they got it very wrong. And then you'll wonder what else they get wrong.

I'm an eclipse veteran, and I certainly hope millions of people did not wear protective goggles to witness the total eclipse. Because they wouldn't have seen a thing.

You need eye protection for any partial eclipse, including the partial phases before and after totality. But not during totality. The solar corona is only about as bright as a full moon, and "eclipse glasses" would block it out completely.

Water under the bridge now, at least until the next total eclipse! But when a writer leads off a news piece with something so far from the mark, why should I believe anything they write?

Maybe I'm being overly judgmental. After all, the eclipse comment was supposed to be just a clever lead-in for the article. But it was so wrong I just didn't have the patience to read the rest of the piece.
I've received my copy of the CD a couple of days ago. Great music and the back story is incredible! According to the the liner notes this is the blog that inspired the whole project: http://tix-iyo-tiraab.blogspot.com

It's a small blog full of awesome Somali music from the 1970s and 1980s.
Valve are the ones who have dropped the ball. They had all the cards lined up. Killer IP that would make people buy hardware if used correctly (HL3, Portal 3). Probably the best tech currently available (Vive). The biggest PC gaming storefront (Steam). Their own OS. Each and every one of these components, with the exception of Steam, was neglected. They had the future of PC gaming right there ready to grab... and did essentially nothing with it. It may not be too late but I think Valve needs an organisational restructuring if they want to pick up their pieces. If they don't it's very likely that they loose most of their revenue in the next 10 years, because even Steam needs killer exclusive content, i.e. content that cannot be licensed on another online platform, which soon will only be Valve games.
If only it had a good documentation like that of Arch Linux, i would have given it a try. It seems promising, marriage of simplicity of BSD systems, and configurability and availability of vast number of packages of Linux.
After injuring the muscles in my back and shoulders, the only thing I've wanted VR for wasn't even the VR itself, but just an HMD for computing while laying down. It's hard to imagine how difficult it is just to sit or stand at a desk till you injure the muscles that keep everything upright.

The next step ideally would be a keyboard that comes with special gloves, or a pair of finger tip RFIDs or blutooths, one for each hand, that can be detected by some sensor on the keyboard, which can be used to calculate finger position in relation to the keyboard and display a virtual version of that on the bottom of the screen. These couple of peripherals shouldn't be too expensive to implement and bring to market I imagine.

Touch typing is great and all, and I don't really look at the keyboard while typing directly, but for some odd reason, just seeing my hands barely in the bottom of my vision box makes all the difference in my ability to type accurately. I turn the lights off and I can't type for shit. Maybe it has to do with re-orienting my hands to the keyboard. As I type this I notice every once in a while after pausing that I briefly look down at the keyboard and then back up.

Anyways, that was a small tangent, but VR should really focus on certain accessibility aspects going forward.
I wonder if you could set up a large VR room in someone's yard. My yard is much bigger than any room in my house, and I have friends who have more than an acre to spare. That could really open up a lot of possibilities in terms of game design.

Granted, people who live in cities won't have that option, so the market is still somewhat limited.
This cynicism in this thread is disappointing. Of course, the things that this watch shows can easily be achieved by the most rudimentary computer but imagine the patience and skill needed to mechanically move sunrise and sunsets. Doing complex calculations all through gears and fitting it in a tiny wristwatch.

It can be regarded as a pinnacle of human engineering. I am sure it's possible to draw parallels with equally complex software but thinking of the effort involved in making this, there would hardly be any equivalent.
Similar experience here. I was an early adopter, 2012 rift backer and a major proponent of the technology. I jumped on the VR band wagon hard, and now, am shocked by my own disinterest in the space. Simply put - no game has really kept my interest. Most feel unpolished, and very limited. What you gain in VR immersion, you lose in gameplay. Either the immersion needs to be PERFECT, or the gameplay needs to be much, much better.

As I see it, there are some technical (even physiological?) hurdles, that they need to overcome.

1) "Teleport to move" is horrible, and sucks the feeling of immersion right out of the VR experience. Sadly, true "walking" with horizontal movement without accompanying angular momentum causes nausea in most people - hence teleporting as a solution. This as I understand it is a physiological system that is at odds with the VR world and while not everyone experiences it most do.

2) The resolution. It's hard to feel immersed in the world when it's so blurry. This is especially true for VR. VRs selling point IS immersion which IMO is an all-or-nothing experience. A blurry view detracts from feeling immersed in the world.
I spent 5 years building a company in this space in the 90's, and eventually gave up. I know people still in the space, true believers of a sort I could not emulate (having people working for you focuses the mind on actually making money pretty well, at least for me). I stayed out of this cycle because honestly it doesn't look to me like anything significant has changed. Yes, the technology is better, but fundamentally the problem is not the technology, it's the applications and the fact that a significant portion of consumers only spend time in front of a powerful computer at work (and many don't even do that anymore).

One more generation of hardware might get us there, if we can somehow keep Moore's law going.
Move on fellas
Show HN: My first native iOS app – CoffeeAM, an easy tool to boost creativity
Maybe they take a view of a certain area. If it's filled it's a 1 if it's empty it's a zero?
Hi, HN!
Really excited to share my little project here. Being an product manager and a software developer, it was often hard for me to stay creative and productive during the 'ideation' stage. Hence, I decided to make this app.
CoffeeAM provides various coffee shops ambient sounds to boost your creativity and productivity. According to a research from University of Chicago("A moderate level of ambient noise is conducive to creative cognition"), the chatter and clatter noise will get your creative juices to start flowing. So, you can use this little app to boost up your creativity anytime and anywhere!
Really excited to hear feedback from you all :)
Merchant model is where the OTA (online travel agency) is the merchant of record. Your credit card is debited by the OTA when you book. Behind the scenes, OTA buys N room nights from the hotel chain for some discounted price, and sells the room nights via their site.

Agency is where OTA acts as an agent between customer and lodging supplier. The OTA takes a fee and/or percent cut of the booking. Usually the customer pays the hotel directly upon checkin, and the hotel in turn pays the OTA.

Booking.com uses the Agency model and they dominate Europe. Expedia is strong in North America and struggles to get a foothold in other regions.

Expedia now uses the agency model and merchant model. Europeans understandably do not prefer to pay for the hotel stay at the time of booking.

There are more nuances, but that is basically how it works.
Also, if you're a serious gamer, that screen 18" away is likely to have a lot more pixels than 1080x1200.
Genuinely curious (after looking up the price tag) - do you think the accuracy justifies the cost?
If I’ve ever seen a clickbait title, then this is it.

I’ve been coding for 25years. Trust me, learning coding after 40 is not going to give you financial freedom or chance to build your own business it SaaS it whatever. The best it can do is give you a 10-6 job, since programmers have usually more flexible hours.

All these stories from indie hackers are like stories from people who won the lottery. Yes, there are people who made it, but for each one of them there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands who failed miserably.

Or maybe it’s just sour grapes from my side. But that’s how I see it.
Run out of money?

1. The desperate, excuse me "Side Hussler" provides the late model four door Uber approved vechicle.

2. Pays insurance and gas, and maintenance, and goes into debt when the tranny goes.

Uber provides an app, and marketing. I imagine their legal bills are staggering, along with political donations, and payola. And yes--I imagine they have a big office staff.

I have a feeling Kalanick is the one who spent too much money on fanciful futuristic projects.

I don't understand why they haven't made huge profits by now.

I know they aren't making their drivers wealthy, or in many cases out of bankruptcy.
Proposed CA ballot measure could decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms
I'm really liking the HN discussion, but this article has the smell of PR submarines. No investigation or new info, just waxing poetic whether the suit is back or dead.

Is there any party that would benefit if people believed they should wait five years for VR?

EDIT: In case it's not clear, I'm talking about [1]

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I use Void on my router:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/building-a-thin-itx-router/

It works really well. Runit is an interesting init system. I wish it was a little better documented.

I hope we start seeing hosted providers offering Void base images. I'm a little weary of the current state of Linux distros where everything new seems to be either Debian or RHEL based.
It still places the content in geographical locations, requiring you to physically travel. It's a form of augmented reality.
Currently on top of front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15113613
But those experiences are just self induced near death experiences. It's an illusion of meaning
So your recipe for "success" in life is to ignore the inspirational power of stories from those who beat the odds? What's that good for?
The article is long-winded, and a bit patronizing(1), but it seems to generally be saying that "VR is going to drop off in popularity in the near future, and may never become popular again".

I don't think this will be the case.

A few decades ago, you could experience VR of a similar nature as you can today ... if you happened to have an in with a nearby university research lab, with a setup space with carefully calibrated sensors, hundreds of thousands of dollars of computers, projectors, and other equipment.

Now-a-days, you can experience that VR with about $2,000 worth of computer + headset, and about as much setup difficulty as a home theater system. This is _massively_ more accessible than it was.

It's certainly not perfect. $2,000 is still a lot of money, and 550 grams is a lot of weight to put on your face.

But, even if it's not a smashing consumer success at the moment, the number of developers, artists, and other creatives who have access to the tools of VR development, and the size of the potential audience, are several orders of magnitude larger than they were just a decade ago.

And, really, if the biggest complaints about VR headsets are that they're too heavy, too expensive, and they look dorky, then I'd say VR's already won, one way or another. Technology has had this weird habit of getting smaller and cheaper.

The hype may cool off, but I don't think there's going to be much slowing of developer behavior or consumer behavior in the near future, and new headset models coming out will just slowly ramp up enthusiasm.

(1) but seriously, this author is really really concerned about how un-cool the headset makes you look, as if people staring intently at a movie screen, or play, or classical music concert are that much more photogenic.
Unfortunately Lighthouse doesn't work at outdoor daytime light levels, it seems. There are also other practical considerations like safety and so on. That said, an outdoor setup would presumably work at night or twilight, and could indeed be great under the right circumstances. There would be another problem with using outdoor space to create large play areas, though: finding very stable mounting points for all the sensors, especially ones that would have to be directly overhead of the play area rather than just off to one side or corner.
-Other luxury watch companies also made forays into quartz back in the day - say, Rolex Oysterquartz for a prime example. I believe Vacheron Constantin also made one at some point.

Modern mechanical watches can do significantly better than COSC, by the way - I have owned an Omega Planet Ocean (c.2500C) for a decade now, for the first seven or eight years it ran consistently 0.7 seconds/day fast - so I just adjusted it back a minute or two every time I unscrewed the crown to correct the date.

Now it is due for a service soon - but still within a couple of seconds a day.
I suspect the loose management style of Valve has this effect. Great ideas, no one to drive them home. Something that works great for keeping your employees happy, but works only as long as you have a dominating market position.
I've been reading through this (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15317-f00/handouts/logic....), and have found it way more useful and fun. I expect it's much closer to what the HN crowd would be interested in.
Will AI kill us all after taking our jobs?
Sounds like a psychologist of the armchair variety to me.
I try to use Nix and NixOS as much as I can.
Yep, we have it in Australia (the biggest brand name is 'Zymil'). It tastes pretty close to normal milk, but is slightly sweeter.