skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because smart bulbs are the cheapest and best option for making the following possible:

* Wake timers. I can wake up with light shining in my face even with the curtains drawn, which makes it easier for my body to sense that it's time to wake up and harder for it to fall back to sleep. Bonus points if it's green or blue on a grey day, which the more expensive bulbs allow you to choose.

* Security and timing. Lights can be programmed to turn on and off at semi-random times to simulate the appearance of someone being home, and normal wall timers only control lamps, not ceiling fixtures. Those timers are also a terrible programming experience compared to a good smartphone app, and they flat out disable the light when off (smart lights on a timer can be overridden by cycling the fixture's power, which cheap wall timers don't detect).

* On-the-fly color shifting. Certain colors of light help me focus when I'm up late at night wrangling code; others help sleep. A dim red light at night means you can easily find your way to the bathroom around possible obstacles without fully waking yourself up.

* Dimmers. In apartments and other living arrangements where you can't do electrical work, and that don't already have dimmers, this is the only way to have lights with variable brightness.

The only thing that smart lights don't do is come in 100W-equivalent models- at least, not Hue bulbs, which make the colors and maximum light output dimmer than might be desired.

That said, the GE thing is clearly a "feature" that some engineer was either forced to implement (or worse, thought it was a good idea) because they didn't want to shell out the 5 cents per unit for the reset button. Which is a valid point, but the fact you have to do that in the first place betrays larger and more fundamental problems with their product.
It may have been less annoying if the sequence was decreasing the amount of focus time between switching (4 seconds then 3, etc.) with a fast blinking sequence to confirm the user is still on tracks.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Bodyguard on His Former Boss’s Lifestyle, Cruelty, Suicide
Show HN: sqltop – Find the most resource consuming SQL Server queries
Also digital cinema is pretty much all JPEG2000 (every frame is individually compressed).
The most likely threat model for someone being able to access your camera feed is that they compromise your Nest/Google account. In which case they just turn the light right back off.
> birtherism

Well this one for a start is racism.
As with everything IoT related, to collect data on the user, to create brand lock-in, and/or to be able to charge more for a "smart" version of a product.
> How about the difference in long-term cost of ownership, serviceability, and overall reliability?

Long-term owner of a 2004 Mercedes W211 E320 CDI in Europe, with 420k kilometers on the clock.

The inline 6-cylinder engine and the 5-speed auto transmission still work buttery smooth and the car pulls like a train without ever smoking. No interventions have ever been done to the engine and trans, apart from changing consumables on-time. The car still has a very solid feel to it, without any interior rattles and squeaks, with very few wear-and-tear signs on the interior. The original paint is still gleaming. The thickness of the paint and the metal is easily noticeable. A Honda of the same age and miles would probably still run, but will feel sub-par in most of these respects.

The car has a lot of electronic systems controlled by dedicated electronic units, the most notable of which is the brake-by-wire SBC system. It had been causing problems in early production, but the issue was fixed and that unit was replaced under warranty on almost all cars. It was a big reputation hit for Mercedes, though. That system was very innovative in the sense that it provides a common architecture for implementing traction control, ABS, brake-hold, etc.

So far, none of these systems have failed on my car, apart from the need to replace a few failed sensors for which I got warnings on the dashboard and were diagnosed easily while in the repair shop.
Mandatory quote:

>If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know

- Louis Armstrong
This has been exactly my experience. I don't particularly like Dart, but as an SDK Flutter is clearly ahead of RN. RN just keeps feeling too fragile. And the tooling is simply not there whereas Flutter has excellent tooling considering how new it is.
We have one in our home. We switched bedroom door to open the other way than it used to be. Now when the door is open, the light switch is behind the door. It was easier to buy one smart light bulb + Bluetooth light switch, rather than rewiring the old switch to a new location, patch the hole from the old location etc. :)
Related to the way they classify between first party and third party (based on domain names, with its subdomain being the same party), the Public Suffix list [1] is a resource of great value. It allows to know when subdomains actually refers to different parties (e.g., xxx.github.io is neither the same party as yyy.github.io nor as github.io).

[1] https://publicsuffix.org/
ugh, why did they have to change the speed of the circle for the two second period? it would have been better to just show the two second part as 1/4th of the 8 second period.
Huawei employees helped African governments spy on opponents
If Apple had done this light bulb you’d have to buy a $70 “resetter” device, that would do the on/off cycling for you.

If Facebook had made the light bulb, you’d have to unfriend the lightbulb for it to reset.

If Google had made the lightbulb, well the reset function would be discontinued.

If Microsoft had made the lightbulb, you’d need to call your active directory admin to perform the reset.
At the current level of economic and technological development we could all be working fifteen hours a week and still have a great life [0]. Instead we keep ourselves busy designing "smart light bulb reset process", producing instructional videos about that process, watching instructional videos, and being frustrated when it eventually doesn't work.

[0] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
Overview of IT Certifications in 2019
Here the reset procedure for Awox color light bulbs:

1. If possible, put your bulb in white (hot or cold no matter ...). The reset procedure works better when
the bulb is white rather than color.

2. In the steps below, the power is turned off. It is not ON / OFF done using the remote control or the
application, but electrical ON / OFF.

3. Your light bulb is off. This is the beginning of the procedure.

4. Turn it on briefly (one second) and turn it off

5. Allow 6 seconds

6. Turn it on a second time briefly (one second) and turn off

7. Allow 6 seconds

8. Turn it on a third time briefly (one second) and turn off

9. Allow 6 seconds

10. Turn it on for a fourth time (12 seconds) and turn off

11. Allow 6 seconds

12. Turn on the fifth time (12 seconds) and turn off

13. Allow 6 seconds

14. Turn it on. The bulb will then reset and flash green. Then it will return to its initial red state.

I never managed to get the bulb to flash green, however somehow I managed to reset the bulb anyway.
The Reg nails this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/huawei_uganda_repor...
My engineering team uses Simulink for their development, and would heartily argue that it is code that they are developing. For me , it is semantics as to whether it is code or not, but it still need plenty of knowledge and expertise to properly use it.
Ask HN: Why is internet privacy so important?
I see that WebKit has a new tracking prevention policy, which made me think why it's so important for everyone to be protected from big ad companies who rely on 3rd party cookies for example.
Why the huge hassle? I could get better targeted products for example, which is a good thing, but I have a feeling that this whole area is causing problems in a bigger picture, but can't identify what those are.
We have been using it to watch our non-verbal young autistic son in bed. I know a tiny light in a pitch black room keeps him awake for many hours of the night and he doesn’t do being awake quietly so it also keeps us awake. We also can’t just remove the camera, it’s not like he is able to tell us that he has wet his bed. Having been given zero days notice of this change means I’m going to have to take time off work today to go home to find an effective way to put some tape over the light.

I have been holding back on deciding which home automation ecosystem I want to buy into. I was leaning towards Google and Nest was our first step into that direction. However I’m now increasingly of the opinion that I should just continue to build it out with devices where I have control over the firmware.
"I also wonder what people have moved to right now,"

macOS on various intel Apple systems, SmartOS on intel PC bucket, 19" rack mountable servers.

There really isn't much of anything else out there affordable / mainstream like the Amiga was in Europe.
The law doesn't have to require something to make it not a good idea.

My point was, I'm not deaf, but I'm fairly sure that on average deaf people are much better adapted to life with limited hearing than you or I would be when wearing ear buds. It doesn't logically follow that because a deaf person is allowed to drive we should be able to artificially reduce our hearing ability while driving.
It's not about about technical problem that's idiotic, any HN reader could solve this way better. Imagine the bureaucracy and processes at GE that let this product to production. How many eyes looked at it and thought it's a good idea? It even went through a firmware refresh :) This will be an iconic product of the IoT era, not it a good way of course.
Our company got a sub contract via a recruiter. They actively tried to divide and conquer employees out of the company so they would have more leverage by withholding payment.
"Birtherism" isn't even a thing. Obama met the citizenship constraints for the Presidency regardless of birthplace.
I'd assume they had a salary boundary that excluded experienced individuals who expected more money.
Justice isn't a soppy feel-good, everybody hug now thing. As the quote says, it's about the method of escaping the cycles of history. Of course descendants can't be blamed for the past, and that's not what anybody is saying. It might not be fair but the only way we can build a more peaceful future is by taking responsibility for the past. I can understand how that sounds similar to taking the blame, but it's fundamentally different.

Eg; I sure as hell didn't write the buggy code that brought down the production site. I can shout all I want that I don't owe anything to the clients, or I can just take responsibility for the fix and we all move on with our lives.
Java vs. Kotlin – Performance
Auditing of TV and newspaper ads is done largely on the receiving side, not the sending side - companies monitor what's actually shown in the stations broadcast and papers sent to real people, they pay people to install monitoring devices to see what they watch, and they contact people to find out what they're reading. The internet equivalent isn't really possible on iOS without doing some kind of Facebook-esque end-run around Apple's walled garden and paying people to install non-Apple-approved monitoring apps - and even that would probably only work for really massive, broad advertising campaigns.
Pretty sure this is the discussion on the topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20369960

There are a few extra comments here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20641380

Also submitted, the same story from other sources:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20637599

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20646738

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20649396

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20650216

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20653761

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20654067
Somewhere there is retribution awaiting our species for this. Think of it, maybe this reset procedure is part of it.
> The vast majority of his businesses have no customers, and no regular income.

Where do you get this? Is this just more BS with no evidence, like the money laundering accusation?

I haven't seen a complete list, but even Wikipedia has a list with a lot of businesses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trump_Organization

> they're intended to protect an asset from the bankruptcy of his real businesses

Even if you were right about Trump's businesses, corporations don't work like that. The stock can be taken in bankruptcy so they don't protect assets inside the corp from bankruptcy of the holder. They only protect assets outside the corp from bankruptcy of the corp.
Actually, I don't think we should consider React Native more mature. It's been around for longer sure, but it's significantly more fragile, keeps releasing with regressions, has poor tooling around it except for as far as React is concerned etc.

I don't know what you are trying to build on mobile but I'd definitely learn Flutter instead of RN, which I have. Others here have said you should just go full native instead, and they're probably right.
>If Facebook had made the light bulb, you’d have to unfriend the lightbulb for it to reset.

The funny thing is, I can see IoT enabled devices using social media accounts as an interface. You would be required to follow your appliances on Facebook or Twitter or whatever and your refrigerator would PM you when you were low on juice or something.
This looks to have been posted on Danny Cohen’s own YouTube channel; there’re several other of his videos on it too
Innovative ways to explain code is a great idea and I love the project.

However, I don't love the name.

These are explanations - not stories (unless we consider stories as being 100% exposition). There's no beat, scene, or chapter structure that pushes meaningful values back and forth in the face of conflict ("make it work" isn't a meaningful value - since it's the obvious goal of every character here), no progression or character building, no subtext or sub-agendas, no sense of agency or suspense where the code might pursue something counter to its purpose...

Feel like it's a bit of hijacking of "story" in order to make headlines, since "code explainer" isn't as sexy.
I know its not quite as “smart” but we have had timers for lighting circuits for at least 50 years ...
I had a chat with Japanese lifestyle management consultant for the rich recently. In the 90's Bill Gates had networked house and automatically adjusting lights and it was the peak of luxury. Today networking and automating the house is so affordable that it's not signalling luxury lifestyle.

Apparently doing simple mundane tasks gracefully and carefully without feeling irritated is quickly becoming a way to signal to other rich people. Self regulation, education and taste has always been part of the upper class lifestyle. It's something that money can't buy. Tastefully understated lifestyle and restricting gadget usage is how the rich signal to their peers.
Make an AR Drawing App – Part 2
Depends on the content and the amount of clients a mcu could handle at a time. For and arduino using a simple http server (no https) I think you can have up to 5 active connections before it crashes.
Kasper-Spy: Kaspersky Anti-Virus Puts Users at Risk
The public suffix list is a gross hack. The public-ness of a particular domain level ought to be returned as part of the DNS response instead of being looked up out-of-band.
to my knowledge, the lab managed to find the source of those plastic particles (around 15.0000/l). It is not what ones would expect, eg. from packages but plastic from tires, building material and paints and varnishes.
Perhaps I'm missing something but why would I want any of that? It all seems annoying and useless.
I had one of those remote control light things back in 2007 - it was great until somebody out on the street would bleep their car alarm and all my lights would turn off. It was this experience that resolved me to not waste my time with smart technologies unless they we’re at least as convenient as their dumb counterparts.
My biggest gripe with Freenode is that a lot of popular channels are silent. Hundreds of users, but all lurking with very little conversation going on.

For me, the best channel was always #csharp. Every time I logged in, there was always a group of people talking. Any time I had a question, I could ask it and a handful of people would either give you the answer or would talk you through the problem and help you come up with an answer. That kind of guidance is often lacking from modern programming forums/q&a sites.
> As in tipping service?

The same. For whatever reason false etymologies based on acronyms abound, with "tip" and "posh" being among the better-known. There's also "for unlawful carnal knowledge" for fuck, "gentlemen only ladies forbidden" for golf, "constable on patrol" for cop, etc. I've even heard people claim rap derives from "rhythm and poetry". But basically they're all bunk, apart from words of quite recent coinage.

(I might add that tons of false etymologies without acronyms float around as well - "mind your Ps and Qs" being related to pints and quarts, stuff like that. Morris used to blame tour guides as being the worst culprits of keeping such things alive.)
I think there is a little bit of bias here. Companies that are prioritize look and feel over cost probably are going native. And companies that prioritize cost over look feel are free are going xamarin.
You can use the various colors for atmosphere, but it's useful when it's late at night and you either need to focus on something (so you shift to white/blue), or you want to slow down and get ready for bed (shift to red- F.lux helps but why not the whole room?).

Most wall timers can only turn lamps on and off on schedule, but they make a mess of the light's functionality if the light is not in the state you want it outside of that schedule, and they can't control ceiling fixtures. Smart lights make both tasks easy.

Old apartments don't have dimmer switches, so if you want less light you're out of luck. Smart lights are dimmable on any circuit (though less effective if dimmers already exist on said circuit).

They're worth less if your home already has custom lighting options installed, uses bulbs that don't have a smart option available, or are badly designed like this GE product (though others aren't that much better). Otherwise, the cost per light upgraded with a good smart light bulb beats the cost of that same light + a timer + bulbs that emit other colors and the non-financial costs of how inconvenient those things are.

I'm not saying it isn't a luxury product, because it very much is, but if you have any of those goals/constraints there's nothing else on the market that can do that.
I absolutely don't trust capitalism not to use actual humans with brains and pretend it's clone bodies because body-snatching the poor is cheaper. Or to create clones that can feel but cover it up.

I also absolutely don't trust that technology to exist around people like Epstein.

Sorry, there are genuinely things humanity isn't ethical enough for and this is probably one of them.
I appreciate what Internet Freedom Foundation is doing. But they are not responsible for law and order in Kashmir.
Additionally, these(for GM crop) pesticides/herbicides are sprayed in such quantities they violate chemical limits in foods.
https://www.salon.com/2019/07/14/corporations-can-legally-pu...
Uganda is adding compulsory Chinese lessons to its high school curriculum (2018)
Fun example/illustration of the Principle Of Least Action in another realm: when it snows, consider the tracks people leave in the snow as opposed to the paths that lie beneath: they almost always represent trajectories of least action.
It has an app, right? So why not allow factory resetting from there?
If this thing is "smart", wouldn't a software reset like via a voice command be easier?
How do you sensibly tell a user "we are listening to this conversation"?
> Because when things go wrong they really go wrong.

My impression is that the main reason is poor education and scaremongering, rather than actual causalities. When comparing nuclear with other energy sources, nuclear is still quite safe in deaths/TWh, see for example [1].

[1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...
Satellites usually need to point their solar panels and high-gain antennas properly in order to stay powered to be able to communicate with ground stations, although this particular satellite seems to have been unable to use its high-gain antenna anyway and relied on an omnidirectional one anyway. Another issue would be thermal management as it is possible that not all parts of the satellite were designed to deal with direct sunlight. I would be more worried about all the sensors, though. The days of secondary electron conduction tubes [1] might be long over, but many instruments still prefer not to be pointed directly at the sun.

Speaking of those other sensors, spinning the satellite would mean pointing all of them away from where they are supposed to be looking – not necessarily a net win.

Finally, trying to spin the satellite at anything approaching 360 RPM might end up dramatically shortening the mission [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_12#EVAs

[2] https://youtu.be/AqeJzItldSQ?t=90

EDIT: In case you do not feel like watching the video, [2] shows a Little Joe II rocket (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Joe_II) breaking up due to an excessive roll rate (around 56 RPM) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-003).
Show HN: SmartForms – Form back end as a service
Hi guys, my name is Giancarllo and I'm launching a pretty simple service: form backend that notifies you on Email, Telegram or Slack.

http://smartforms.dev

It's not intended to make tons of money, I made it for my use and I've been using it on some clients websites. It has a pretty generous free-tier and the paid tiers have really fair pricing.

This is my first time launching a product, so any feedback is really appreciated! Thanks, guys.
There's a lot of valid points from native advocates though. Like differences in touch features, various sensor APIs, Firebase etc. These may not be serious considerations in simple apps but they make major difference to both the end user as well as the codebase/developer in larger scale / more serious apps.

That said, myself I still write Flutter too, having jumped ship from React Native.
CutiePi – All-in-one Raspberry Pi tablet
Where do you live that your can afford a 15-hour week without worrying about rent, food,..etc?
I cant help but feel that there is a mismatch here between how electrical circuits and electronic circuits are wired. With electronics you have separate signalling and power but with electrical they are combined i.e. the “on” signal turning on the light switch is combined with power deliver of the electicity that powers the light bulb. Arguably for this to ever work properly your lights must always be “on” and their luminesnce mediated by a separate signaling channel. Then reseting is merely a matter of turning it “off” then “on”. Though perhaps a technical help desk would still be required...
Unfortunately the US now mostly has hostages rather than allies. There's always the threat of economic retaliation if the allies don't support US initiatives, no matter how outrageous ("let's start another war, Europe/Middle East/Africa can deal with the humanitarian consequences!"). And as the Snowden leaks have shown, the US is ready to try to cripple the infrastructure of their allies in case this is ever needed (the particular leak was about utilities and power).

This is not excusing China's attitude, and it's by no means (much) better. You wouldn't call someone who keeps slapping you over the face a friend just because they could have punched you.
This is the official position of India. Amit Shah said this in the Parliament. Now Kashmir can only be solved through Shimla Agreement which calls for solving this issue billaterally.
Pretty close: https://senar.ru/works/rachmaninoff-etude-tableau-op39-no6

That is an actual original performance recorded in 1925.