skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My 85 year old relative can't hit the virtual keys very well on his android phone but he presses the speech button and asks for what he wants. I've seen him do it and it works pretty well although sometimes he needs to repeat himself. I have worked with the android recognizer api and it is very easy to implement in 3rd party apps.
Do you seriously think the issue is that "MS never thought of integrating the tech with other products" and not that there's a huge difference (and inevitable time lag) between having the abstract idea of "integration" and working out concrete, compelling use cases, a concrete design, a concrete business model, and implementing a concrete product plan?
i have a feeling that we've seen a variety of the iterations apple has been working on behind the scenes. apple doesn't like to comment on rumors as it might show their hand. i do think that there is an ipad with double linear resolution and an iphone with a body design/home button/larger screen similar to the rumored iphone 5. i think the disappointment comes from the fact that apples lead times are much, much longer than the year long release cycles. apple's secretiveness helps manage expectations by not promising things that don't ship, but does little to manage the raging speculation that makes a 4S seem downright boring.
I agree it's a big "IF". IF Siri works as advertised, then it really could be revolutionary. I remember being pumped up by Google's demo of voice recognition, only to try it out and find it novel and cool but not dependable and accurate enough to use in all my real-life situations. And it's difficult to correct errors, or clarify requests in a conversation manner like Siri.

Another reason to hope is that Siri had 19 people when Apple acquired it and most of them are still at Apple. I would imagine that Apple scaled their team significantly. Who knows? Maybe 100 engineers working on it, since it's a cornerstone of the next generation of mobile devices (and probably coming to desktop in the near future too). But Google doesn't seem to have the same priority on natural language processing as Apple does cause more than 50% of Apple's revenue comes from the iPhone. How many engineers at Google are working on voice recognition and natural language processing? Maybe somebody here will know. Maybe max 10 engineers?

Apple also will be forced to scale Siri across multiple languages very quickly, especially if it works well. Currently they have English, French and German. But tons of people will want it, so that motivates Apple to innovate even more.

I guess we'll see very soon how good Siri on the iPhone 4s really is.
I wonder how many conditionals you can string together. "Remind me to call my wife before I leave work" is great, but "remind me to call my wife before I leave work at the end of the day, unless she calls me first" would be awesome.
Everybody pays taxes that are invested in products and services for all to share, not one person.
Looks like Ipsos and Mobile Marketing Association were involved in gathering the data.

Methodology:

http://www.ourmobileplanet.com/omp/omp_about
Email in profile. I can't promise to be able to provide anything other than moral support, though.
My hunch is that they had to cartoon up the expenses a bit because a more realisitic version would have had cheaper prices but probably x10 the number of economic transactions, which would have bogged the game down. Same with the amount of bad luck situations. As an example, the player did have really bad luck - but no starting credit card debt, or rolling payday loan debt, or student loan debt from incomplete schooling...
That thread pool isn't actually that simple. How many threads do you use? If you throw 1,000 threads at the problem with a 2MB stack each, that's 2GB of DRAM you've thrown away (instead of 20MB * ncores per Node process) -- DRAM that could be caching filesystem data, for example, which could have a huge impact on overall performance.

With Node, the DRAM and CPU used scales with the number of cores and actual workload. With a thread pool, the DRAM used scales at least with the number of concurrent requests you want to be able to handle, which is often much larger than you can handle simultaneously (because many of them will be blocked much of the time).

Assuming you're not willing to reserve all that memory up front, the algorithm for managing the pool size also has to be able to scale quickly up and down (with low latency, that is) without thrashing.
> The iOS and Mango device respond very similarly to
> basic things like swipes, pinches, etc... Android
> is a lot more jittery, even on the SGII HW.

Before I ditched my iPhone 3G for an Atrix, the device was barely usable. It didn't just stutter, it would hang for upwards of a minute when opening certain apps (maps, I'm looking at you), and it's not like the device was defective as I've used others and had an identical experience.

Now, maybe the 4G offers a smoother experience than Android (no GC + hardware acceleration?), I don't know, but the 3G experience was sure as hell nothing to write home about. I can say, however, that my Atrix is noticeably more responsive after switching from Motorola's firmware to Cynanogen Mod, but -- again -- I don't know how it compares to a 4G.
> implement an algorithm that finds the value of the element in the middle of a linked list

I'm struggling to think of the last time I had to use a linked list for anything. I'd be tempted to give the troll answer: put the elements into a List<T> already, divide list.Count by 2....

Sure if it's doubly linked then you can walk it from both ends and meet in the middle, then think about how to handle the case where there are an even number of elements, but do you really want a serious answer about linked lists in .Net?
They actually have a pretty good HA setup.

One thing to remember is that a HA cluster is for handling node failure (power loss, faulty hardware, faulty software, etc). It is not for handling capacity related failure. If the servers are overloaded with too many requests, they will fail regardless of the HA setup. Capacity monitoring and capacity planning are still needed to maintain uptime.
That's not bad if it's unlocked outside of the USA, like the Droid 2 World phone.
I am in Canada and while Interac is indeed widely accepted, people are using it noticeably less and less in favor of reward credit cards, which are - practically speaking - delayed-payment debit cards with really good benefits.

Interac's latest slogan is "Paying with Interac just feels right." When you are down to a feeling as a card benefit, you know there's a problem. Credit cards effectively won, and merchants are paying :)
One interesting point I hadn't seen before is the following recommendation:

Have someone in YC vouch for you

Is this common? How's it transmitted to YC, through the application or do they specifically write PG and crew to let them know about it?

We are in a position where we can get a recommendation from two alumni but we felt it was not a correct thing to do when we submitted our app. Anyone else has experience with this?
Maybe I shouldn't speak for kenjackson, but I don't think 3D was actually the feature he was hoping for, just an example of the kind of industry-changing innovation of which Apple is capable but was completely absent today.

And I say this not because I think you missed his point, but in a probably futile attempt to head off discussion about how 3D is stupid.
any "3D" where the images are on one plane and the brain thinks that it is seeing depth—that is, several planes—will ultimately fail. so my prediction is that the iphone will never get 3D until it becomes, the eyePhone.
i meant it only somewhat sarcastically, as i did exactly that myself.

in the "dotcom boom" i had moved from SF across the bay to go to school, and got recruited to a startup with an original product that took roughly 65% of US market share (and still has a majority). moved back to SF and 10 years later, after having left that company and having started a successful consulting business, nice home, car, stuff, vacations, freedom, etc... i decided i was tired of working in that industry and decided to go back to school to broaden my theoretical computer science knowledge. my friends thought i was crazy giving up the income and freedom that i had... i think it's one of the best decisions i've made, and it's given me lots of options. to me, the most important capital investment is developing what's between my ears. school is not the only way to accomplish that kind of growth, but a rigorous CS program turned out to be the best way for me.

TL;DR if you drop out of school to do something with computers, get bored of what you're doing and don't find yourself easily moving into something else, going back to school might give you more options.
Like Namecheap on Facebook and get a $1.99 domain
I found the article linked in the blog to be just as interesting:
why i got a job at mcdonald's
http://www.heiferman.com/mcd/
Toast. I'm kind of shocked that the tenor of your remarks is to instantly pit Apple against Google and that the HN community has decided that it is the most insightful. Apple continues to achieve a level of quality in their products that most of us aspire to as entrepreneurs, and the tech world is better for it. The impulse to belittle them in light of an impressive achievement baffles me.

Android and Siri. Android does well, yes, but Google's financial success has not yet been shown to be correlated with Android shipments (look at the stock performance over the last two years for evidence). In some interesting instances competitors (Baidu and Amazon) have gutted Android to be used against them. Every query that is performed on Siri is routed to services that are NOT search, which is where Google makes its money. Why Google would invest money in implementing mobile services that route computing away from the web is beyond me. It isn't in their interest. Joe Hewitt made this observation before too. So while yes, Google might be technically capable of adding voice assistant, it isn't clear how that leads to increased profits for them. Feature parity is the wrong way to think about the Apple Google relationship.
Many elevators have functional close buttons, just as many street crossing buttons work too.
both of these are generalizations that I don't believe in
The Tesla S is 50k. I'm talking about the Tesla Roadster.

I assumed he was too because of the 0-60 time, but I see I was wrong.

So my point is invalidated. Oops.
Agreed. I'll never clap for anyone leaving/quitting/jumping to do a startup. However, I will clap like hell when they're still making a go of it 2 years later. Sprinting out of the gate is easy, but running the whole marathon is pretty damn hard.
Back when my earnings were in a similar ballpark to this game I lived in a very inexpensive apartment, I had no pets, I had a pre-paid mobile phone that cost maybe $8 a month on average, I had dialup internet, I did not have cable or a TV set, I did not own a car, and I owned very little furniture (bordering on none). That's how you keep costs down, you live within your means until your means improve.
This is an old spamming technique. See this ServerFault answer: http://serverfault.com/questions/122228/how-do-i-do-an-exact...
At least in Ohio, where I live, one must be under 19 years old to be eligible for high school sports.
Try it now, servers are shutdown.

Site was up at start of 4S intro, down by the time I'd clicked download, redirected to apple.com as soon as I refreshed!
Why not wait one year and actually get a degree?

It's okay to take risks but no reason to overdo it.
Thanks for the advice! kapilkale do you remember how many hours (roughly) you put in to your application?
..and lots of people will be disappointed if they keep the chassis design on the iPhone 3D :)

I think it's funny how everyone expects a new design every year, just because that's how the cell phone world has always been. Looking at the iPod, Apple only had a few designs that they gradually improved and made smaller.
My fault...I was grumpy, thanks for apologizing although you totally didn't need to. I love the debate here but grow tired of the old browser war subject.
Beer on you in two years then!
I just want to translate YC into music. Interview people and make sure they're all insanely talented, super dedicated, and not assholes. Make sure they can afford rent and food for a few months. Put them in a room together and let them find their best co-founders (or bring co-founders with them), and finance the creation of a low-cost demo product. 3 months later, put each group on stage in front of the world's best independent label heads, and help them get fair deals from good people. One day, Radiohead will come along and say they love what we're doing so much that they want to give every band $150k with no cap and no discount. You almost don't need to do anything differently. ;)
Only when the space is limited and enumerable, like on legacy GPS devices that keep a complete routing database. Android voice actions are much more powerful, allowing you to search for any phrase, get directions to a given place, send arbitrary text messages etc. The possibilities are effectively infinite.
I wasn't really trying to convince you, just making an observation. Entrepreneurs are almost by definition hard-headed.

But if I were an investor I would seriously question your decision making ability based on the fact that you dropped out of Princeton your senior year with about 8 months to go.

If you want to take a somewhat data driven approach, I'd also ask how many successful startups STARTED after dropping out. I can't think of any off the top of my head. (Hint: Microsoft and Facebook don't fit this criterion).
OK. Looks like the original comment that you replied to was vague on details. I'm guessing when you dig down into them, there was no actual deal.
I don't consider myself much better than average. However, it seems that a lot of time was wasted in school going over simple concepts multiple times just so the whole class could get it. That made it seem like a waste of time.

Sadly, the trend has continued into University here (Pakistan).
This doesn't really answer the question. In what way is it viable if it's currently a tiny fraction of the speed of what's easily attainable with a plugin, and shows little chance of improvement over the next five years?
Lucky. In Canada we have 3-year operator contracts. We're always behind in new phone releases.

Apple is very good at making you feel like you are using an obsolete piece of equipment.

On the other hand, they release iOS5 around the time the 3-year contracts for the 3G expire, so it's a good bit of planning (or coincidence) on their part.
That's the Kindle development thing. It seems to be a black hole. Perhaps because it's based on some kind of bastardized J2ME tech, from what I understand, whereas the Fire is just Android, so you probably won't need that much special stuff to develop for it.
"Things always look prettier in optical than in radio."

This is just an opinion expressed in an unusual way, right?
Think of how long it would take ideally, then double it, then add a week to clean up before the next project.

It's uncanny how well it works for me.
For the most part, the open and close door buttons are there for use by firefighters.

If you're a fire fighter using an elevator you don't want the doors to automatically open or close when you get to a questionable floor.

When the fire key is turned the doors are manually controlled and only respond to those buttons.

Otherwise, the Open door button is for people wanting to feel good and the Close door button might as well be controlled by Schrodinger cat.
==
which typically involve getting more money into the hands of poor people
==

An there we go. I absolutely agree if we discuss about helping the poor and having a good public welfare. But there is no connection that I know between giving money to the poor and economic growth.
Your job choices here were waiter, warehouse worker, and office temp.

Who gets a telephone interview for any of those things?

At least I know that no warehouse job I ever worked required a telephone interview.
No, heroku doesn't work that way, heroku lets you spin up processes and those processes can be threaded. I use JRuby and get one process that can use all cores.
I think it still comes across as rude or offputting.
Nitobi and Phonegap's new home at Adobe
Yes, I'm no Steve Jobs. I have no idea if 3D is a dead fad or the next big thing (even in Android land it appears to have died pretty quickly) -- it just made for a convenient example narrative. Although I must admit I think taking out an Evo 3D, looking at it, and then tossing it away would be get a fair bit of applause. :-)
The original proposal of the WWW, HTMLized (1989)
Nobody's saying it isn't a protection racket, just that it makes more sense for individual business owners to pay the extortion than to tangle with the mob, even if the net result is everyone having to pay extortion to a powerful mafia.
Do look at what iOS provides for accessibility. http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/physical.html There are already a lot of built in features (which Siri no doubt augments greatly) for people with disabilities.
Yes, I agree, there is an important distinction between those two things. However, schools still aren't providing each student an opportunity to reach what their potential allows. From my personal experience as a student, I learn new things in many of the classes that I take, yet the information is taught at such a slow pace that it become mind numbingly boring. By forcing smart students to be in classes with their less intelligent peers, schools are imposing a ceiling on what level these students can reach. Even after being a year ahead in nearly all of my subjects, I still feel like I could be so much further than where I am today if I had had better, faster-moving instruction in elementary and middle school.
Well I think in LTE the number of resource elements assigned to a UE will vary depending on the other phones connected to the eNodeB. So in theory it's not a problem anyways, because everyone will have an iPhone ;)
Video: Intro to Ruboto - Ruby on Android
Ask HN: What's wrong with this design?
Please trash the new design for sendwrite.com. Here's a link that shows the current and old designs side-by-side. (http://colevscode.posterous.com/new-sendwrite-registration-process) I'm curious to know if the web registration process is easier and more intuitive than the former email-only registration process. Also I'd like any general design advice, suggestions or feedback. Thanks!
Someone mentioned Enthought. Kitware and Galois are two other prominent examples. Kiware operates on collaborative development and grant subcontracts, and proprietary product dev. Enthought seems to do high-end consulting enabled by rapid development in Python. I've only worked with their (impressively) high-quality libs. It's not hard to imagine they have ~one order or magnitude competitive advantage over companies doing similar work in C++ (reminding me of PGs essay about choosing lisp for viaweb) The performance crunch for their Python apps is really in the underlying C or C++ libraries -- which are open-sourced so they don't have to maintain it all themselves.

One thing to note about KW and ET is that they build libraries and invest in leveraging tools to improve productivity (KW: CMake, CDash, etc. ET: Traits, Chaco, etc.)

One approach to try to emulate KW/ET: get an SBIR or build a small team around grant subcontracts. For this you need connections, recognizable core technical prowess (VTK, NumPy), and fantastic recruiting instincts. And it scales very slowly (KW: 13+ years to 100 employees). Another way is niche/boutique consulting, but this generally relies on high-end skills -- which it sounds like you have, but I think the problem here is that $YOU don't scale, so growth potential is more limited. It's also harder to scale boutique dev. because it will very likely be covered by NDAs in many industries, so you are essentially stuck as a contractor. I'm not sure how viable consulting for a large med device company (GE, Phillips, Siemens) would be long-term, because anything you can do, they can throw money at and repli

Personally, I'd love to see something that fills the gap between Excel and MATLAB (depending on your field, you may be shocked to learn that people do Real Science in Excel every day; I still find it shocking).. The market is potentially "big enough", but the business problem is that technical competence seems to be binary and the 0s have excel already and are afraid of change while the 1s have MATLAB or SciPy. To bridge the gap you need software that "just works" in a simple way, a la Dropbox. This isn't necessarily a "hard" or interesting scientific problem, it's much more about design and engineering. For examples of some steps in the right direction, have a look at KNIME, RapidMiner, Orange, and VisTrails,
People like Mr. Flores are a hazard. Seriously, they have no problem defining piracy as wrong, but make no mention of what would actually be required in terms of surveillance and policing for that moral convention to be reliably maintained.

Beyond his insensitivity to reality, Mr. Flores appears to have no understanding that copyrights are not rights at all. There's noting inalienable about them. To the contrary, they are - very explicitly - privileges. They are given to very limited numbers of people for (theoretically) limited times. For a sovereign society to continue giving out these privileges, it's going to expect something in return. If that includes an obscenely invasive and overbearing police apparatus that has the power and freedom to monitor every bit of data every person exchanges it's an easy deal to reject.

In spite of all his rage (or perhaps because of it) Mr. Flores has never stopped to consider that the crime of theft pertains chiefly to physical property and tangible goods. This has been true for thousands of years, meaning that there is now a very well established body of law relating to misappropriation of physical goods - one that extends, in various forms, worldwide. And there is no popular pressure to change this convention. Nor is there any sense that the policing required to maintain this convention constitutes a serious threat to human rights. Indeed, the creation of property rights, and their attachment to tangible goods seems to be a fundamental feature of societies that advance human rights, and a culture of autonomy.

Extending the concept of property rights and theft to intangible goods is a different matter entirely. A relatively recent idea, it was an experiment that worked reasonably well as long as intangible goods remained wedded to some physical wrapper which could be safely governed by uncontroversial property laws. Now that the wrappers have become obsolete, the ability to allow the safe and ethical extension of property rights into the sphere of the intangible has collapsed. Only reckless, short-sighted, or truly sinister players (the Maximalists) continue to press in this direction.

Smarter - and yes, more ethical - people properly dismiss copyright as an appropriate mechanism for governing the conduct of private individuals. That means they don't get involved in business that can only work if the Maximalists get their way. While copyright certainly retains substantial value as a tool for regulating the conduct of incorporated entities (which are, themselves, intangible entities), it is 100% incompatible with a culture of individual autonomy in the present day.

The world probably doesn't need (yet another) shitty app. What it does need are people who can imagine and build businesses that limit reliance on copyright to engagements with incorporated entities, while treating individual humans with healthy respect for their political freedom, privacy, and autonomy. Indeed, entrepreneurs should focus on products and services that INCREASE these qualities, not misguided attempts to undermine them for the sake of a fast buck with no concern given to the consequences.