skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yep, I've lost a lot of trust in Amazon over the past year. I used to go and buy things there by default, now I think twice and often go to a brick and mortar on my way home from work instead. There is a huge opening here for someone (probably either Wal-Mart or Target in the US) to take back the market with a "you know it won't be total junk" sales pitch.
I remember when the Shuttle program was scrapped that the consensus was that reusable vehicles didn't offer the economy they promised, so what has changed since then?
Archaeologists find secret chamber inside Nero's palace in Rome
Could you please tell me how do you find out what the borrow rates are for short shares and how many are being shorted?
The dollar value of debt is meaningless without accounting for interest rates. When interest rates rise, the dollar value of debt can be reduced by trading low interest debt for high interest debt.
Sure. In exchange for solving your entire counterfeit problem in one fell swoop, you give Amazon a bit of info. For anyone with significant issues with counterfeits, this is vastly cheaper and more effective than having to test order unauthorized sellers to see if the goods are authentic.
They're hoping you'll buy a self-driving car and then let them pay you a minimal fee to use it when you're not.

The problem is that self-driving cars will change car ownership needs, and that there could be entirely different companies in the space when it does finally come around.
> tasked with optimizing the cloth simulation code in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It had been fine tuned extensively with PowerPC intrinsics for the Xbox 360 but its performance was lacking on XboxOne (x64).

Sounds to me like they were recycling some old cloth simulation code from previous games and it needed to be optimized for Xbox one for the release of the new game.
Google broke Nest. Now it's trying to fix it
I remember once years ago coming into Heathrow on a flight and when the flight circled over central London there was a distinct brown layer of cloud - it looked disgusting!
They were able to push out a fix so fast because they repurposed the "sure, do some studies on my usage" to enable arbitrary changes to the browser that are under the control of the marketing team. And a lot of people were "opted in", thinking they had opted out.

That is 100% not reassuring. Remember Looking Glass?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956325

Well, the marketing team has the power to tweak how ads are handled, silently, with no update action from the user.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
In addition to the 25% levied on the $200 billion in Chinese imports, today:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-latest...

President Donald Trump says his administration is beginning the process to impose 25% tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese imports, covering everything China sells the United States.

This will definitely have an effect on Amazon FBA sellers eventually, as foreign factories continue to move out of China until...they're all gone. Then the Chinese factories will try to flood Amazon with goods...until Trump focuses on Amazon, after he tariffs all of Chinese's goods.
Vancouver home prices have soared since 2000. Detached homes cost $400,000 then, and $1,800,000 now.

So yes, in that context, a 5% increase is indeed tiny. The popular conception is that "substantially all" of the rise in price has been due to foreign speculation.

https://d3exkutavo4sli.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/201...
The title and conclusions of the article are not backed by the data presented in the article.

According to the data presented by the article, Chinese sellers have ~40% market share.

It is possible (and likely) that these sellers represent a long tail of small operations, and therefore << 40% of the top sellers are based in China.
What all goes into a spec for $500?

I've been chatting with a few other freelancers who's spec process gets all the way to wireframes and is something like 40 hours * their hourly rate.

$500 seems like a perfect middle ground.
to counter point this post and your assumption that I am not smart - I use of home automation and smart devices extensively. I use Alexa, smarthings, z-wave switches, and various things.

1) "Alexa, turn on kitchen". Turns on the various light switches that are collectively the kitchen.
2) all things turn off at 11PM during the weekdays. Make sure that the various lights that were on get turned off.
3) When turning on the basement light switch it automatically turns on the lights in the utility room where the laundry is.
4) When turning on the basement playroom light switch, in turns on "all the lights in that room", because that's the common use case.
5) outside lights come on and turn off automatically
6) Christmas tree lights outside come on and off on a regular basis.
7) Inside christmas lights come on and off
8) Front door opens automatically and locks automatically based on kids schedule.
9) Custom key codes for the front door for contractors
10) "Alexa, announce dinner". Announces dinner everywhere in the house. really useful.
11) Nest goes to eco mode when no-one is in the house.
12) Lights turn on automatically in the kitchen when you get home.

etc etc etc. It all works and doesn't require much work. The mobile based alerts are the weakest link in the system as they don't always work.
A good rule of thumb I use is: if it uses electricity or goes in someone’s body, don’t buy it from Amazon.
Check out this article on Malta doing a pay-for-EU citizenship scheme:

"Critics charge that the program undermines the concept of European citizenship, potentially poses security risks and provides a possible backdoor for Russians seeking to escape sanctions against their own country."

From personal observation: Benefits are tangible and immediate to the city and its politicians from increased taxes and whatever bribes are paid, downsides are intangible and long-term to the city residents who get priced out of their homes, lose business because these "residents" don't actually live in the city, and have to live with sometimes-unpleasant citizenship tourists that are often involved in fraud of one sort or another.

https://www.politico.eu/article/malta-cash-for-passports-pro...
People used to say that about IE6, before Firefox and Chrome came along.
> there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news

Magical in the sense that hell is magical?
I am looking forward to day of having real Linux phone. I use Termux now, but it is still not quite there e.g. espeak package doesn't work for me. On the other hand, did you know that Syncthing works on Termux?
This is the exact kind of comment that would make it to the top because it just empowered everyone that DOESN'T have one such system. It's filled with finger pointing. Most of the replies basically point out yeah, I hate IoT lights, but this use case is good... It's not genuine to dismiss the entire enchilada because YOU don't have it. In 5 years when all the crap is worked out and you eventually buy a system with extra security at your door or backyard, or a something to that effect I'd like you to come back and admit it.
I wonder if you can lawyer it. Fly to South America, write in the e-mail "I write to you from Rio de Janeiro, and I'm available to work from 9 to 6 US east coast time".

Technically... it's all honest.
Free photo hosting app uses people’s photos to train facial recognition AI
The New York Times launches its Parenting vertical, toward a subscription
> - Ordered a brand product and gotten an obvious fake from China. Not good.

> - Ordered a brand product, got something that had obviously been opened and used before.

> - Searched for something, found only hundreds of mostly identical Chinese generic products. Ordered one, was complete and utter garbage.

> - Searched for something, found hundreds of mostly identical Chinese generics. Ordered one, and it was actually pretty decent! Sadly, this happens less often.

Well, that's a daily life experience in China. Globalisation works both ways...

You have to cultivate your intuition. I have no idea how one gets it, but it helps.

I'm shopping on Aliexpress since it opening in 2010, I see that for me Aliexpress is an "easy shopping experience," but for people from my college class shopping there unending frustration. Somehow, they got an almost natural talent getting into trouble with scam deals.
They still work, there is also Works with Assistant (instead of works with Nest). Though the new API isn't as low level, so if you're doing DIY smart home some functionality isn't there.

I actually welcome some of these (one google account, instead of separate nest+google accounts) changes, as it will make things easier to setup for my parents, etc.
Consulting or con-$ulting: How Hertz and Accenture flushed $32M+ down the drain
> Haha, yes. In China, ironically, Walmart became a kind of an upscale establishment.

It's interesting to see how brands are positioned differently in different markets. IIRC, Stella Artois is the PBR of the UK, but without the hipster cool, while it's relatively premium in the US.
It's not unrealistic to roll that out as a profitable service.

It is unrealistic to expect that to be a moat-profitable income source for Uber, when you can rent that same SDC to Lyft -- or Tesla, for that matter [1] -- who will offer competitive terms.

[1] If they offer it for their own cars, they could probably extend the platform to allow outside cars, perhaps with different branding.
Think lovebugs are bad now? They once caused a public safety crisis in Florida
> If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates

Granted, I guess it didn’t get “significant attention”, but I guess that also means it can’t be too interesting since this is the first one with more than 2 comments, which is only because I’m replying to you.
On the other side of point 3, as a person whose role is building analyses and products (often on spec or as part of a pilot project), a clear process for the pilot or spec-work, as well as a clearly defined set of deliverables (the product(s), a report, and a methodology workflow, a demo, whatever), is just as (if not more) important for your success as it is going to increase the likely hood of you getting the contract.

The more structured my pilots have been, the higher the success rate has been in terms of turning them into contracts. This also is a time where you can set and measure client expectations (so that sales/ account managers), don't get out of control with their promises.
> Periodically configuring/updating smart home devices, getting to the bottom of issues if something doesn't work as expected

Software development in a nutshell. It's how I have spent most of my life.
I've had a one-person technical consultancy for about a decade (with a year off in the middle, for a university research appointment, and an early stint helping out another niche expert firm). I'm looking forward to moving back to an employment/startup role, in which I can spend most of my time building good technical systems, rather than spending half my time on small business administration overhead for what's essentially only an individual contributor role (sales, compliances, accounting, learning enough about IRA/401(k) to create a plan, etc.).

Like in any line of work, there are way too many little bits of acquired wisdom to rattle off-the-cuff in an HN comment, so just a couple that first come to mind...

I've ended up always billing hourly, tracked in 15-minute increments. The hourly rate sounds high, but when I looked at the value I provided to a client over a year, and compared to a TCO of an employee who could've provided comparable value, it seemed that the client got a really good deal. Maybe too good; when it's remote work, I err on the side of avoiding slippery slopes about hours (e.g., clock doesn't start until I'm fully awake and exercised and typing on the computer on the problem; don't bill anything for a morning walk when I spent most of the time thinking about the problem). On-site, I'd bill all time, except for things like lunch and other significant breaks (e.g., non-work-related watercooler conversation beyond exchanging pleasantries).

One thing that comes to mind at the moment is that, if you initially find a client due to expertise in some niche (e.g., you're known in a language or open source community for a particular piece of stack that client uses), that might turn out to be only a small part of the expertise that you apply. For my favorite client, I was immediately applying other background I didn't expect, and I ended up becoming the go-to person on many topics, including things I learned on-demand. (I already believed in hiring people who could quickly pick up whatever flavor-of-the-month bit of stack was needed at any time, but this experience reinforced my opinion that this could also apply to more limited consulting arrangements. With consulting, you probably need an expertise in something foot in the door, though.)

Most things I think to mention here only apply to a minority of consultants, or are widely applicable to many kind of development roles.

Regarding multi-person consultancies... I'm glad that I didn't start hiring additional consultants or forming a partnership, because I'd foresee spending even more time on business administration, plus have the stress of other people's livelihoods dependent on my relatively neophyte business skills. I'm much more confident in my engineering skills. (Of course there are a few organizational/leadership things I'd like to try, as I think many of us would based on our experience in the engineering trenches, but am willing to give that up if someone else will make all the money and bureaucratic stuff just happen, so that I can focus on engineering things.) But if you want to move to the business side, that can work.
My understanding is that the original commits will eventually be cleaned up during garbage collection if there is nothing else pointing to them. Is that correct?
Does anyone know if Marzipan applications can be distributed outside of the Apple store?
And maintain includes very regular things like cleaning etc. I can't imagine this is things they want to do so it will probably stay a network Tesla style, but with lower (hopefully) costs.
A heads up: your home icon links to localhost:3000
The comment is in reference to how much it can explain the growth in house prices. Vancouver has seen >60% growth in the past five years. So, 5% is tiny in explaining the growth.

https://www.rebgv.org/market-watch/MLS-HPI-home-price-compar...
Are Avocados and Almonds Vegan?
There’s some truth in this, but my overwhelming sense is that previous poster is correct too. Enterprise software vendors almost never sell to their actual end users. While this is true, no one should be surprised that the UX on most enterprise software products is truly awful.

Also, <mild sarcasm warning> if you ship high quality working enterprise software on day one that actually delivers everything your customer needs, how will you bill them for a large “services” team engagement? It’s not unusual for this service money to make up a substantial portion of a mid to large enterprise software company’s revenues. All too often they are building features or fixing bugs that should have been in the original product as sold.

I’ve often sadly joked at my own work that if we shipped working software we’d probably make less money...
Sleep is your superpower [video]
I don't know what the end game for these companies is. Most average people would never use uber or lyft for transportation on even a semi regular basis if those companies didn't heavily subsidize the rides.
Unless the airport run is significantly more expensive that normal (possible), this implies that Grab is only for the wealthy portion of the population (including presumably tourists). Lyft and Uber have positioned themselves as a more mainstream service, and that makes the similar economics fly out the window.
Who are you to judge that? Sure make suggestions but in the end we are all adults and are responsible for our actions.
I'm not sure I'd call it equivalent to Tutankhamun's crypt given the vast difference in age, and in the number of artifacts found and their condition, organic and non-organic, but it is a great historical find, none-the-less.
Git does have two levels of the API explicitly, one for tools (“plumbing”) and one for every day use (“porcelain”).

I don’t think the argument is that the difficulty is a virtue, nobody is trying to be snobby, so try to avoid jumping to that conclusion.

Git just has some inherent complexity. Git does have a steep learning curve that is the root of a UX problem. But it’s not clear what better abstractions there are or how to simplify git. Lots of people have tried to make a higher level porcelain, and the issue isn’t going away. You are welcome to suggest & create a git wrapper that makes it simpler and less dangerous.

Perforce is easier to learn, so you might try using that instead. I use both and I’m becoming more and more frustrated with Perforce because git is so much more flexible and safer and easier to use once you learn how to use git.
> The smart lock requires you to have a charged, working smartphone ....One of the claimants is 93 and lacks the manual dexterity to do that.

Forget manual dexterity, I'm 42 and I can't reliably assume my cellphone is charged, PARTICULARLY if I'm just getting home (the time it is most likely to be dead.

Comments below point out there is a bypass code, so my comment isn't so much about the in/justice as it is my inability to keep a charge.
I don't think iPods are a good example. To my knowledge, if you still own an iPod it still works. They didn't release an update that bricks them all, they just stopped making new ones, which is a totally normal thing for a company to do.
> The idea that git is good because it is difficult to use

Git is good because it is extremely elegantly designed. There are blobs, trees, commits, and refs. When you understand them, you understand pretty much everything about git.

And yes, the interface is a mess.
> Amazon has vastly more information about how their business was performing than anybody outside of the company.

You can literally say the exact same thing about VCs that treat anything short of market dominance with exponential growth as failure.

It's not a question or more/less information. People with the same extensive information can make vastly different decisions based on having different values and priorities. The person with the most information doesn't necessarily make the best decisions.
According to the evolution theory, eventually our DNA will evolve to adapt to its external environment so does this mean given enough daily exposure over many generations, at some time in a distant future our immune system will no longer consider those particles as foreign and thus will not fight to eliminate it? There would be no dementia by then if it was indeed caused by inflammation triggered by the immune system. I know this sounds pretty stupid but human bodies are weird machines still not fully understood by today science. If some people within the same race could be allergic to certain types of food that are completely safe to others without any proper explanations (eggs, peanuts, etc...) then anything is possible. I'm sure there are people out there who live to 90 without getting dementia even in heaviest polluted cities.
There's also a website if you don't like PDFs: http://calculusmadeeasy.org/
Of course, they might be totally off base and completely wrong and the company might go to $10 or $0. But when compared to the media who live and die by the dramatic story that garners the most interest and the markets which are amplified by many factors I personally prefer the opinion of those who at least spent time modeling it out. I also personally think transportation is a necessity and Lyft has levers it can pull which can make a big impact in their bottom line.
woosh, loading jQuery to access an element is not needed. document.getElementById would suffice.
I also like smart thermostats. Similar to a remote autostart for my truck in the winter snows, which warms up the engine and the cabin, being able to turn on the AC before I get home from work (or heater) from my phone is a perk.
A stupid-simple $20 coffee machine with no interface but an on/off switch will produce something most daily coffee drinkers find acceptable, given grounds a notch or two above the absolute cheapest around, and it takes at most 1 minute of hands-on time if your stuff's arranged with any sense at all. My pour-overs from whole beans take like 3 min hands-on, maybe, and that's about as fiddly as it gets. Maybe add one minute with a manual grinder just for maximum fiddliness. WTF are people doing that not having to make coffee frees up any useful amount of time?
I believe they have also cited an advantage of using OCaml being the quality of applicants they were able to pool for hiring by virtue of mainly using a functional language and being able to draw from the enthusiastic and skilled community around it. It's weird, right? In some ways, this actually has nothing to do with OCaml itself or its merits, or even the functional paradigm. I hadn't heard your example before but that's also quite interesting. I wonder how much weight these kind of side-effects account for their success, and how much is actually due to the merits of the technology itself?
I think it's more about managing expectations. I for one have not had a scenario where I haven't been able to turn on/off the lights because of a service outage... because I'm not dumb and I don't buy smart bulbs. I replace switches that can work independently from their smart features.

I'm at the point where living without smart lights is very inconvenient. I was at my parents the other day carrying a heavy can of garbage through their completely black basement. Instead of just being able to tell my voice assistant to turn on the basement lights, I had to fumble around to find the right switch that actually lights the room.

As far as being on topic with Nest... I've never "gone cold". The device works fine without their service and I would say works better than most other thermostats when it comes to actually performing the task of a thermostat.
And in the (imho unlikely) scenario that fully autonomous taxis are a viable mass market opportunity in the foreseeable future, both companies would find that rivals who actually do make the cars and have networks of maintenance centres are in a much better competitive position. Making the pricing and matching app isn't the difficult part, and Uber's existing driver base ceases to have value
Do you cut the wood to boil your coffee, light the fire, or is that line about boiling coffee just a convenient knob you turned. When you put the water on to boil do you go to the well [that you dug yourself] and let a bucket down on a rope [that you made yourself]; or do you open the tap? Is your coffee grinder a rock, or a more convenient gadget?
HN is pointing the way to the future...

...and all of the failed futures as well.
This has always been the problem with KDE and the reason I can not switch.

KDE UI never gets Typography, spacing/padding, or alignment correct.

It's a shame because they are so close on most other criteria.
Trump plans to withdraw the US from the UPU unless they fix that [1].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-made-the-right...
It is right that the previous commits are still there in the repo, but from the point of git they are garbage now and going to be removed. The point are the commits reachable now from the branch.
Very exciting project. Not a very good name, as it conflates with the existing term, "Edge Computing", making one wonder if they're somehow related.
Ah, yes! thank you!