skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Someone just registered damnyousiri.com: http://twitter.com/cjno/status/121293035739955201
This is a minor evolution on the voice capacity I have already been using on my Android for quite some time. Because all of this relies on technology in the cloud Google should have no problem leapfrogging this with weather, booking of flights, news, calendar etc. Also, any future "inter-agent" stuff will be totally broken on Apple, all of their stuff like iChat is a totally walled garden.

For a small subset of people who are all on Apple with their friends all on Apple in some regions of the USA it will work great though.

EDIT: For the down-voters I would just say I actually had a macbook for a few years. iChat is technologically impressive but has near zero value when you can't connect with people. Apple promised to make it widely inter-operative and failed to do so when I was using it. They almost had to be forced to give back contributions to Webkit and open it up fully. They run a closed ship more or less in everything they do, the Apple way or the highway. This voice feature is a thin UI on top of cloud services and interoperability, both of which areas where Google is light-years ahead of Apple (not to mention they have their own social network). Android is already crushing them in sales and Apple virtually doesn't exist outside the West + Japan, tens of millions of upper middle class Indians and Chinese will be using Android eventually. Apple doesn't stand a chance in the long run, which is why they are already resorting to patent suits against superior tablets like the galaxy. It's not a BMW vs a budget car, because 1s and 0s are free the budget car has the luxury seats and trimmings at no extra cost. They are toast.
Get your name included as a character in my Sci-Fi Book
Can Answers to Evolution Be Found in Slime?
I think it depends on the carrier as well. Sometimes on my Droid 1 on Verizon it can take a good 10 seconds to get a get a response or 10 seconds to make the initial connection to the server to allow me to start talking.
I'm actually more excited about the iPod Nano as a workout device.

Indeed, and that the iPod Touch also gets iMessage. Which is nice for messaging with family members that do not have an iPhone.
Yes, and now instead of making a killing, debit card purchase fees are merely very profitable. I don't see how limiting these fees required BoA to institute a new monthly charge, nor do I assume that they wouldn't have added it anyway.
Currently in Nepal but only for a few months then back to the US
Show HN: pastebin service with cURL and math support and live editing.
I agree. I think it is a pretty cool feature, but far from a killer one. And the specs of device are pretty close from 1 year old Android devices like Atrix. I was hoping for much more.
Just curious, but what have you seen working well?

At a previous gig we used heartbeat with haproxy, and it worked pretty well. We would drop connections on cutover, but it was considered 'acceptable' for our purposes at the time. I wanted to try whackamole with haproxy, but we never got around to it.
>Hmm, everything seems pretty expected till now

Except its called iPhone 4S and not iPhone 5!
Is Siri specific to iPhone 4S, or will it be a part of iOS 5? It sounded like it is only a part of iPhone 4S, but it seems like it's all software. Perhaps the iPhone 4 isn't powerful enough to do the voice recognition seamlessly?
So be it, new deals will be struck and new forms of sponsorship will emerge.
Very true, I really don't and I'm pretty burned out on trying to convince a lot of the very talented songwriters and artists I know and sometimes play with that they can't passively wait on some label system to put them on a treadmill to success.

What we need is YC for artists?
Well, I guess this didn't happen.
So, I'm not a node.js guy, and nothing against it, but being a server-side guy in general, I'll paraphrase a quote that Zed Shaw paraphrased from Chinese Kung Fu novels:

"So the intermediate guy is doing all of these backflips and spinning roundhouse kicks and all that, it's very impressive, you couldn't imagine being in that good control of your body. He decides he's pretty good and spars with a master. The master barely even moves and puts the guy on his ass."

I think infatuation with event-driven i/o is one of those intermediate programmer things. We all took an advanced systems course in college, saw the literature from single-CPU days about how it makes so much sense, and more importantly saw how damn clever it was. There are situations where it makes a lot of sense (static file server), and then there are situations where you say "Wait, so you want me to run 8 instances of this thing in order to utilize my 8-core server?".
Important Parts of Today's Apple Announcements
FYI, Jason Davies has been doing great work with Mike Bostock on the d3 visualization library, which is used in this example: http://mbostock.github.com/d3/
I know that I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but making it a 4S exclusive is one of the more blatant bits of planned obsolescence I've seen. I was running Siri just fine on an 2nd generation iPod touch over two years ago, and looking at the demo, it doesn't seem to be much different, just able to hook into Apple internal APIs.
Seems like today's event was Tim Cook's first small thing. No iPhone 5
Semantic Snakeoil
IPhone 4S: A5 chip, 8MP camera, and Siri voice recognition
Let's put an end to inline styles once and for all
Apple’s ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ keynote (my very quick notes)
I got a better name. Are You Sirious?
areyousirious.com I thought about registering it but didn't. Feel free to if someone here wants it. If it becomes big you're welcome, remember me :)
I'd imagine they down-sample the audio like crazy. They certainly don't need CD quality sound for it.
No iPhone 5..Bummer!
Why I Dumped My iPhone—And I'm Not Going Back
Premier League games can be shown on foreign decoders
I'm sure the jail breakers will solve this problem.
It was up for a second...

*Update:
There it's back. This is the first iphone that made me go "meh".
I find that a key component in any estimation is finding the number of hours I think it will take, then multiplying that number by a factor of 1.5 or 2, depending on how I read the client. It is very important that you get a feel for the client before you move forward, if they seem like they will be a pain in the neck, move on. It is much better to turn down work and find better than create a poor relationship.
I was in that position. I professionally used .NET since its inception up until about 4 months ago. I switched to a JavaScript job at a company that doesn't use any MS tech at all. Not wanting to get stuck shoehorned as an MS-only developer was a major motivation for me making the switch.
Apple shares drop nearly 3% after introduction of new iPhone 4S
WHAT?? You mean Google copied Apple already? What next, notifications?

[Ha-ha, just some good-natured ribbing, folks, please go easy with the downvotes.]
I've been trying to debunk the overly negative views on threads in the Node community. Here is my presentation on fibers and my common-node project (includes benchmarks): http://www.slideshare.net/olegp/server-side-javascript-going...
I'm all for people coming in when they want to and can come in or are most productive, that doesn't mean the leader shouldn't be the first one in the office. The post is also about lack of a regular schedule, which goes back to consistency. Leaders have to be consistent
I suck at formal education (or does _it_ suck?)
Windows 8 - Keyboard shortcuts, Tips and Tricks
I think the general attitude is quite opposite. We're giving up Flash because browser-based gaming actually seems a viable thing. And therefore community feels the need to take control of the platform away from singular corporation (Adobe) to somewhat neutral committee (WHATWG).
As somebody who got into Ruby shortly before Rails (because I'd heard it was a "modern Smalltalk") and was writing JavaScript back when DHTML was the new shiny thing, that's my perspective too. The evolution of Node.js reminds me a lot of Rails. It lent an air of legitimacy to a language that a lot of people used to look at sideways if at all, and it's rather overhyped by an influx of people who were plagued by the problems it solves, but it is fundamentally pretty good even when you drill past the hype.
Apple.com down on iPhone 4S laucnh
Http://apple.com Is Down
Google+ APIs: Now With Search and More
Once Apple can put the tech that would justify a jump from 4 to 5 and retain their (50% of ASP!) margin, they will.

Idly, I wonder if they're getting a sufficient cut from the carriers to make the 3GS at no cost profitable, or if rather this is what they mean to do with their cash hoard: chase market share AND increase profitability.

DISCLAIMER: I used to work for Apple. I have no specific knowledge about the phone.
Ask HN: How do HTML-Coldfusion templates work?
How are HTML/CSS templates applied to Coldfusion websites?
I didn't watch the keynote, was it that terrible?
i quit javascript years ago and haven't missed it one bit.
it's not an obstacle to work around it anymore. it's easy.

there's no place for js outside of the www/browser.
and to think the inet begins and ends with the www is short-sighted.

js is made for doing silly browser tricks. enough already.
the inet is much bigger and more valuable than the www and all its fragile gimmicks.
Buffalo Bills 83 Reed Throwback NFL Football Jersey
Yeah. I remember the Wolfram Alpha video demo - it looked amazing and natural, but when you got to use the real thing 95% of your queries didn't work at all.
"my wife" is Almost Certainly* explicitly flagged in his address book, either as an alias or through a "relationship" field. he didn't show you that part. (the same is likely true of the geofence, though a location-aware algorithm could probably do a better job inferring where your work is than who your wife is.)

* a term of art meaning "certainly"
I am way ahead of you. Just need to make a few hundred million, and no doubt, you will get your YC for music. ;)
The camera was one of the most impressive aspects of the device. For people who are into photography, that's a big step forward.
the worst death is a slow and gnawing one, which a fatal flaw will lead to
> Wow. "Guys, this is awesome! Our new phone is just as fast as an Android phone that came out a year ago!" (The Atrix, about to be supplanted by the Atrix 2).

He was pretty clearly using them as examples of "4G" phones when it comes to data transfer speeds and nothing more.
Apple.com is down. Permission denied.
Yes, not yielding control from a function in any evented framework will block the main event loop.

In programming languages that support coroutines, yielding a sleep every few loops will release the event loop. In languages without coroutines like javascript you will need to write your algorithm in CPS to release the event loop.
Anyone else disappointed with the announcement? Looks like a pretty standard upgrade.
When I did multi-threaded Ruby stuff (shudders) I wrote a simple lock block using either an object or a symbol as the lock identifier. The resulting code looked like:

lock(some_obj) do
// synchronized code here
end

Using a mechanism like that you can add synchronization to Ruby without any new syntax.
No hardware changes for the iPod touch?

Surprising, I thought that they'd take the opportunity to unify the iPod touch and iPhone launch cycles. Especially given the iPod nano update that was announced here.

Perhaps it's a sign that Apple are moving iOS devices generally to an 18 month cycle?
What's his critique of queues?
Whether or not this is good or bad depends on how experienced you are -- On a platform I have been using for years, in which I have expertise... this would be a tragedy.

But, as an example, I just picked up rails 2 weeks ago, and have written a fairly complex app with it. I google quite a bit, not as a crutch to thinking, but to gain insights from people who know the platform better than I. Each new component I need for my app instigates some research to see how other people have done it. I do not copy and paste the results... I analyze and critique them for my own purposes. The next time I need a similar function, I think for myself. Over time, I become an expert and no longer need Google to get a project done.
On a tangent: I miss Steve! These guys may be good but from the photos here most seem to be reading from a prompter screen and they just don't seem to have the look-into-your-eyes "believe me, this is the greatest thing ever" stare that Steve Jobs could do. Also, the black turtleneck may be untouchable, but rumpled blue shirt? Doesn't that shout blue collar corporate manager?
Ask HN: Logic flow for CDN, Web App and Processing servers
I'm building a website that allows user to upload and watch videos. Don't get down in the dumps - we haven't lost another man to another Youtube clone - the content is extremely narrow. And awesome.

There are three servers :

> CDN
> Web App
> Video Processor

The Web App server transfer user uploads to the CDN. The Video Processor server downloads uploaded videos from the CDN and processes them - spitting out multiple video types, thumbnails, and some meta data.

From here, the Video Processor server must do two things : (1) Upload the new data to the CDN (solved), and (2) Push references to the CDN data in the Web App's database (problem).

PROBLEM : How should the Video Processor server get data about CDN files (video urls, titles, etc) to the Web App?

SOLUTION A : Save the processed video data in a txt file, upload to Web App server when finished, and set the Web App server to import the txt files into a database on regular intervals.

How good is Solution A? Do you have better?
One of the live blogs I was following (don't remember which, sorry) confirmed that Siri would be iPhone 4S only.
An experiment like that proves nothing if it's being undertaken by somebody who starts out with the agenda of proving how damn hard it is to survive on minimum wage. It's far too easy to make deliberately stupid decisions, like the $40 belt mentioned elsewhere as a feature of Nickel and Dimed.

What I want to see is the opposite -- someone who goes to live on minimum wage for a month in order to prove it's not all that bad, and we can see what happens to them. They have the incentive to try hard to make it all work. I know this has been done at least once.

I could do this experiment... if I thought it was likely to sell me some books. First thing I'd do, though, would be to move the hell away from the San Francisco Bay Area. I don't know where exactly, but aiming for a combination of low unemployment and low housing costs I think I'll choose Iowa. Cedar Rapids sounds nice (never been there, it just has a good name). Now, minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and let's assume I only work 40 hours a week -- that's $1284 a month. I assume I'm not paying significant taxes. Looks like I can rent a decent place for $500 a month. Fifty bucks a week for groceries. Yeah, I can do this.
Cheers for this, I didn't know the mathematical basis for it, but our eldest child brought this "puzzle" home for year 7 homework a while ago. We spent the weekend experimenting with loads of bits of paper on the floor coming to the conclusion that once you land on a base 2 number, you have a path directly back to 1.

He learned binary in a weekend and we had a fun few days hacking math :)
Time to buy it then!
Crazytalk LeBron James is begging for money:)
There is probably a number at which you or I would write back office apps, though. People don't do I-banking out of love, and there is a lot of headroom between well-paid devs and them.

I kinda like my job right now but for a million bucks I'd kinda like your Sharepoint installation, too.
Museo: the new Comic Sans
The only IP failover I trust is carp (http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/carp.html) on OpenBSD/FreeBSD. Once set up properly with syncing, you lose no state on a failover (all connection and NAT state is gossiped between cluster nodes sharing an IP address).

The only downside is most services aren't well tested under OpenBSD/FreeBSD these days so you may end up hitting a few edge cases in software designed and tested only under Linux.
Apple is doing more than just the voice search. It is parsing what the user is saying and bringing back exact result or completing that actions. Just like Siri did when you wanted to book a hotel or restaurant.
Okay, so, sometimes I do this. Not with IRC specifically, but in person or over IM with other humans. Sometimes I want to talk to a someone, and I feel like an active listener will be much better at explaining the whole picture and answering my follow-up questions. Or I want to start a discussion around the issue.

Hopefully you don't do this, but I think that linking people to http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/ is anti-social and is bad for any community.
And I can't even imagine what Siri and Wolfram Alpha will cook up together.
To me it felt like Apple were clinging to straws by touting Siri as a "feature" of iPhone 4S. What was more interesting to me are the thoughts that came to my head. My first thought was of Clippy. My second one was of the McCain/Palin campaign insisting that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives Palin international politics experience. My third thought was that Apple must be smarter than this, or are they?
Sounds like it's an evolution over Android's voice stuff, and better integrated. But the tech isn't what stops me from using Android's voice commands, generally. It's that I'm not often enough in a situation to use it without feeling embarrassed (not going to do it at work or out and about, if I'm at home, I'm usually in front of the computer), and I usually forget about the function. Same goes with location reminders. I have an Android app that does them, but I never remember to actually set the reminders, because I don't have frequent enough opportunity to use it.

The car is probably the only place I use voice commands frequently, but I don't drive that much.

And really, aren't the bluetooth headsets a big enough scourge? Do we really need a bunch of people walking around talking to their phones without even having someone on the other end?
Except when a competitive response to your offering threatens the incumbents revenue stream. That's the one case an incumbent will be slow to invest in competing technology.
This is one of the most precise diagnosis / analysis of current affairs I've seen in a long time.
the standard is 8kHz-16kHz, 8-bit PCM. higher frequencies are of limited utility in recognizing human speech.
If you’re disappointed by the iPhone 4S, you’re nuts
Wow. Now I might get a lot of naysayers here, but how long do you think before the keyboard becomes a niche product much like how the pen and pencil are becoming? Natural Language is a field that is going to explode.
yes, true, but the real fun is in making design decisions with respect to how threads work etc to ensure true concurrency and easy concurrency. Good concurrency frameworks, etc. TBH we can do that now with the GIL by giving ruby code to a c-library that handles multi-threaded calls. But end-of-the-day lets change the game, no act catch-up to java.
All this bluster can be reduced to this: If you want to take advantage of Node.js's non-blocking nature, your code can't block either. Break long-running loops up with callbacks.

This characteristic doesn't mean Node is a shark-jumping cancer. Maybe some people just hate JavaScript.
1. IO and CPU load spiked so much that the system was basically unresponsive over SSH. We think it was due another Xen VM swapping out of control.

2. Was 10 seconds with a 10 second timeout (way to low to run `xm list` in a loaded situation). It's now 90 seconds with a 90 second timeout.
sirisly?.com (: srsly?)
They really needed an iPhone 5 here. Every non-tech I know was waiting for it, now they're just confused. Would have been nice to make a big bang to break in the new guy.

For Siri, how many of us will actually use it day to day in the office or commute?

Personally, I was hoping for a new ipad 3 with retina. Would have been a nice gift for the kids pre-christmas. As it is, I'll be sticking with my iPhone 4 and ipad 1.
This is wild; it's dropping as I watch it. -4% and falling.
IPhone 4S Available for Pre-Order on October 7th, Shipping on the 14th
Damn.. someone beat me to it while checking out.
The man is butthurt about trolls trolling trolls trolling a man who's butthurt about bad software.

All I have to say: the cycle continues.
I don't have the evidence at hand, but my recollection from watching the market in relation to Apple's previous announcements is that a dip is nothing new.

Wall Streeters get so caught up in the rumor machine that when Apple doesn't release an iPhone 75x with built-in blender and ESP capabilities, they panic a little bit. My recollection is also that the stock rebounds rather quickly, then jumps again next quarter when analysts realize how many of the things have been sold.

Probably a good time to buy (market uncertainties notwithstanding).
I won't be surprised if Steve Jobs will become CEO tomorrow :) Its almost -3.60% now.
No one of consequence.

I'm a member of the community. I don't see how you'd be annoyed by a member of the community asking you a question in response to the plethora of questions you've already asked of the community.

No need to be haughty.
The iPhone 4S—It’s What’s On The Inside That Counts
They shouldn't have to. If there are no technical reasons why this can't work it should.
IPhone 4S World Phone Revealed
The video at the bottom of that article is amazing. There's several rap covers about biology on their channel, obviously made originally for the purposes of their own revision.

This one, about natural selection, is particularly superb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hUNBhRiKCI

The original track (From 93 Till Infinity by Souls Of Mischief), so you can see how good a version it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mt3vZHDiM8
compared to previous events, this one was rather boring and did not live up to hype.

it fell much shorter than expectation. no new hardware (externally), no larger screen, no NFC but some cool iOS features.

Apple should have called this event "lets talk iOS" than iPhone!
Crazy. I thought the keynote was great, if a little slow paced.
Meet the new iPhone 4S
"I don't use it, so nobody will use it."

Slippery slope, man. Easy to forget there are a billion others you haven't met yet.
Do we really need a bunch of people walking around talking to their phones without even having someone on the other end?

Actually, walking down the street is the speech-to-text situation for me. Sending a quick text or Gtalk reply with voice is a hell of a lot easier and safer than trying to pound one out when I'm in the crosswalk.
I wrote a post last night (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3069745) analyzing Tom Gruber, Siri's Co-Founder, CTO, and VP of Design, original Siri keynote in 2008.

The post got pretty popular on HN and I had 5 key questions/predictions, feel free to read all the details (and lots of quotes I transcribed straight from Gruber's video) but now I'll summarize my thoughts quickly below:

1. Very few languages for Siri (where's Spanish?)

2. No API announced for developers to add tasks to Siri

3. It's still named...Siri? What happened to Assistant? I guess it is quicker to say in practice...

4. Siri's in BETA? Is this the first time Apple's released a major iPhone feature with a beta sticker?

5. No payments integration with Siri mentioned. Can it buy stuff for me? as Gruber talked about in 2008?

6. No Facebook partnership for social knowledge on Siri, or even iPad app.