skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I did laugh, but the poor performance is predictable. A single session of siri will produce nonsensical answers when asking a set of unrelated questions. The comparison is designed to favour google voice search and to produce giggles. Below is just a short explanation for why siri goes so horribly wrong, and how a reverse comparison can be set up to favour siri over google voice search.

First up, don't get me wrong, for this accent google voice search should be a far superior voice recognition system.

The 'problem' is that Siri is tailored to produce a particular kind of result, its goal is to be a personal assistant. It skews the voice recognition to more probable commands to enhance the accuracy of the 'personal assistant'.

Siri builds a query using an arrangement of data that surrounds the user. Their location, address book, contacts and successive questions. It tweaks the voice-recognition results to more closely match its functionality, this leads to better accuracy when using it like a personal assistant, and poorer accuracy when trying to use it for dictation. (iOS does come bundled with dictation software that doesn't have Siri's personal assistant tailoring, that would be a better way of comparing the voice recognition technologies.) However iOS doesn't have a comparable voice-for-search service out of the box.

Google's voice recognition is designed to run google searches, for some data it produces siri like results (e.g. game scores). That's because Google search provides a set of summary results for basic searches, e.g. definitions, weather and the like, these have been piped to create the appearance that of Siri-like functionality. However, one could set up a 'reverse' video, with Siri converting successive searches for "italian", "take away" and "meat balls" into a meaningful search for an italian restaurant in the area that offers a meatball dish and takeaway. Google voice search isn't going to produce a similar clarity of results.

In the end it comes down to the user, I don't feel that successive specific searches are ideal in a voice-setting. At the moment google voice search is a product that produces searches very well, but is that useful to users who could just as easily type in the request? The OS-shortcuts make sense and are very siri-like (e.g.asking it to set a timer) Google's system will garner strength by taking on more siri-like functionality, which is a voice-scenario that is more useful to real world users.
I think that is point was dead on. We don't need this crap. However, maybe he just doesn't listen to his advice. :) But, the advice is stll good.
I agree, he is well within reason to get a lawyer and sue the pants off of McDonald's in civil court if his case is accurate as he describes it.

He's not asking for that though. What he basically wants is a public apology and for McDonald's to FIX his glasses. This is laughable.

Notice how all aspects of this story point to how awesome his glasses are: "they help with a medical condition", "having them fixed is more important than money", "they saved photos of a crime, even after they were broken"...
This doesn't work. If an object hashes to places abc, and each of a, b, and c were already incremented independantly by previous insertions, you would get a false positive.
Ask HN: Hacker News hacked?
I just received this email from info@ycombinator.com:

New Hacker News pw: D1T8SJ5P

That's it--no explanation and a suspicious shortening of 'password' to 'pw'. I immediately smelled 'scam', but I tried it out and it worked (subsequently changing my password). What gives? Anyone else receive this?
Do you have a link to the I didn't win the contest article?
Show HN: Mystery Gift Machine
Seeking feedback on the site and votes in TechCocktail's "Boston's Hottest Showcase Startup" Poll http://j.mp/NlZiqQ

We launched a totally new site this morning and are near 1st in voting against all odds (we have 30 Twitter followers @MrEGiftMachine versus 3,000+ for our competition).

Can HN push us over the finish line?
It's hard to ever say one use-case/situation is wrong, another is right. The ends justify the means... etc. yaddy yadder ya...

I also wasn't looking to single you out.. I know it was a high voting comment since it was at the top of the thread, so clearly did resemble a large portion of the HN's sentiments...

But, all the same, I just want to make the point, HN-community should try and step up in this situation, right?..

For the comment (below) asking for the link to the article I was referring to when I said "HN is not your Mommy"... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220156
He is one of the most major researchers of this kind of device that does have direct and obvious applications for all sorts of forms of visual disability, and he is also one of the major long term voluntary scientific test subjects for it. Of course he carries a doctors note for the device, given a major part of the intention is intended as long term-medical research.

As for the demand for money to pay for the cost of replacement, it is hardly a fantasy given that this is probably their liability and they clearly can afford it.
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Your attention sucks: Take the Airplane Challenge
Name some really good software for designing interfaces.
You might try a Zen center, then. They have plenty of ritual, and are very serious about what they do.
EDIT: deleted b/c I didn't make my point clearly.
What is an example of software made to design interfaces?
Straightforward Dates In JavaScript
Congrats Sahil!
it's a ruse to get some HN airtime so that you'll learn (and maybe even remember) the name of the guy who wrote it...just like 2/3rds of the rest of what gets posted on here...don't hate the player. we're the suckers up-voting it so he can get some tech scene name-recognition.
> Microsoft is known for their embrace, extend, extinguish strategy.

They were back in the latter 1990s, when the desktop was the new platform and they owned it. Now, handhelds are the new growth platform and MSFT has not gained much of a foothold there; exact marketshare numbers don't matter as much as perception of dominance, and MSFT doesn't have that. They allowed Apple and Google to get too big, instead of being first and achieving lock-in via network effects.

Think back to IBM: They owned the IBM PC platform and forced everyone else to copy them or choose a different platform entirely. Then Compaq beat them to the punch with releasing an 80386-based PC, then the Microchannel bus failed to catch on, and pretty soon IBM was irrelevant to the PC world. (And that isn't even taking into account what MSFT did relative to all this.)

So, if MSFT makes an I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-WebGL, they'll have to deal with the fact Apple and Google know about Embrace-Extend-Extinguish and that MSFT doesn't dominate handhelds. So their proprietary extension will be limited to their devices, which will mean all of the iOS and Android users would be locked out, which means developers would have to choose between targeting a majority of users or MSFT, which means MSFT would have screwed itself sideways with a rake.

I doubt MSFT will screw itself sideways with a rake. However, I also don't see how MSFT can continue its growth without a new platform to dominate.
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This explanation is so uncharitable it crosses over into implausible. It's not "the easy part" to get random McDonald's employees to behave as extremely as this.
Seeking feedback on the site and votes in TechCocktail's "Boston's Hottest Showcase Startup" Poll http://j.mp/NlZiqQ

We launched a new site this morning and are near 1st in voting against all odds (we have 30 Twitter followers @MrEGiftMachine versus 3,000+ for our competition).

Can HN push us over the finish line?
I guess no compete not enforceable in California!
I thought Yahoo! was a dying brand, why would anyone want to leave Google of all places for them at this point?
I recently combined a GeekDesk frame with an Ikea countertop with great success. http://jsndev.net/104/geekdesk-and-ikea-standing-desk/
Are you enacting Poe's law? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law

I seriously cannot tell, and you didn't wink at the end?

Since McDonald's are easily franchise-able, I suppose they could legitimately be used as a Mafia Front... But really, Poe's Law? wink ;)
I've looked into how McDonalds franchises work before and have learned about money laundering from Breaking Bad: how would using a franchise make sense? McDonalds (and most other franchise businesses) run very tight ships with stock (and marketing): if a business sells 100 burgers McDonalds is going to know, it seems that if suspicions were ever aroused with this McDonalds all the IRS (or whatever the french tax authority is called) would need to do is talk to McDonalds and compare what the franchise reports to McDonalds vs. what their accounts show?
Wow, that's dreadful. Having security guards rip electrodes off someone's skull making them bleed is no way to treat somebody.
Can't wait for the Anonymous to hack and publish McDonalds' mail systems.

As a side benefit, we might learn what kind of turd they're feeding to people.
The guy's a Microsoft MVP. It was more a Microsoft oriented article in my opinion.
I'm trying really hard to understand why these glasses cannot be removed from his body. They are glorified video goggles...not an EEG connected to his brain. There is no good reason that they need to be bolted to his head. Hell, even gluing them on is excessive.

Until someone can provide a good reason why this would be chronically implanted into him, I think this all smells like hype to me.

And why no pictures of the guy trying to grab his goggles off his face? Surely there would be a snapshot somewhere of that?
The startupsphere has a problem only Liz Lemon can fix
Let me know if there's anything you think should be improved. Or any other feedback.
MongoDB doesn't have a global write lock.

It has a per collection lock and is moving towards per row locking.
whoa, this thing is actually integrated into his brain? Does anyone have any more details on that part of the system?
Please insert a newline somewhere in there so your alignment doesn't throw off all the code to the right-most 1/4 of the screen...
You are completely misreading him, as far as I can tell.

He says:

I'm not seeking to be awarded money. I just want my Glass fixed, and it would also be nice if McDonald's would see fit to support vision research.

Which means in any sane interpretation to be that he wants McDonalds to pay for whatever it costs to repair or replace his property, but he is not seeking punitive damages for the assault, he just wants his glasses fixed. And he thinks it would be nice if McDonalds made a gesture of donating something to vision research, to show they are actually sorry.
Thanks for taking one for the team..
If you developed a solution to your own medical problem, why wouldn't you get a prescription for it? The prescription gives you the right to use it.

It's a bare website (not a blog post) with nothing but a story and some contact information. If you know of a way to make this not "smell of one of the oldest ways..." do let us know.

Obviously we need to keep that in mind, but you're talking about the difference between one man's photographically documented account of an event and a theoretical response form a multi-national fast food chain's Public Relations team.

He is coming to the internet because he can't get his case handled in the way he wants to.

Obviously they aren't qualified to fix his glasses and that was a cheeky way of saying he wants them to pay for it.

All in all, he is a respectable human, who has compelling evidence of assault, who has not gotten the justice he thinks he deserves. Would you like him to give up?
The issue is that in translation, something is always lost. There are a few phrases[1] in the poem that are darned hard to translate adequately although knowing Old English well enough to read the poem is not a guarantee by itself of getting more out of it than in Modern English.

In general, if you can, reading a work in the language it was composed in is better than reading it in translation. It is generally hard to disagree with that.

The fact is that translation into contemporary English from Old English and Old Norse is deceptively difficult.

[1] wyrd bið ful aræd is probably the best example. It's usually translated as "Fate is wholely inexorable" which is not a good translation. "The turn of events is fully complete" is better, as would be "My fate has now been decreed" depending on how you want to look at wyrd (fate, but literally "that which has turned" and often personified as a woman) and araed (decreed, established, spoken).

Edit Changed the above OE to proper characters, and adding this:

While I am bragging, as you put it, about my understanding of languages I will point out that the structure there of wyrd becoming established through the spoken word is also found in parallel Old Norse traditions, where we have the description of the Norns in Voluspa ending with:

þær lög lögðu,

þær líf kuru

alda börnum,

örlög seggja.

This is again difficult to translate because of the variety of things lög could mean. "They laid laws" or They laid layers" or "They allotted lots" are all viable translations. My overall translation would be:

They allotted lots,

They chose lives

for the sons of men,

They uttered fate.
The video in question:

http://vimeo.com/45733369
Here's to the Misfits?

Here's to the people who fit in. Here's to the people who try really hard but never quite get there. Here's to the people who don't fit in but always wanted to. Here's to the people who do the dirty jobs cos they they pay the bills and no-one else wants to. Here's to the underdog. Here's to the loser. Here's to the person who actually finishes their degree. Here's to the 50 year old who's still innovating. Here's to the 25 year old who isn't.

Different people are different. Let's celebrate all of them not just the chosen few from the subgroup we've marked out as "special" this year.
Agreed. This should be handled by lawyers and law enforcement. Not by panhandling to the internet about how awesome your technology is.

For the record, I totally love his research. When Google Glass debuted I said aloud "Wow! It's Steve Mann's EyeTap!".
Without further information I find this very hard to believe.

Laundering money through a fast food restaurant with a supply chain outside your control is a terrible idea. Franchises are required to purchase food centrally.

Q How much cash are you banking this week?

A 1,000,000 EUR

Q So you have sold 500,000 Big Macs.

A Yes

Q Can I see your invoices for 500,000 buns please?

The profit margin is not high enough for it to be worth ordering extra stock and throwing it out. The business would effectively be paying about 70% tax. That's not digestable, even to launder cash.

More plausible reasons: Running a McDonalds franchise and significantly and systematically under-reporting revenue using unauthorised suppliers. But to involve low-level staff would seem unlikely.

This isn't exactly covert surveillance. Some bored member of staff just didn't like the look of this American weirdo with a video camera for an eye, a piece of paper that he waves around and an attitude that he is entitled to buffer everything he sees anywhere in the world and then publicly blame an entire multinational for a minor, local incident. (Not my perception, but I think it likely that it was theirs.)
It's a 10-year contract that expires in 2019: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2052024/Its-Official-Mi...
they will not move a finger. unless you say perpetrator 1 proceeded to kick a cat.
Impressive, will definitely use it on my next website
Indeed. If someone truly wants in somewhere they will get in.
and have learned about money laundering from Breaking Bad...

...
Yahoo's deal with Bing was reported to expire in 2019: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2052024/Its-Official-Mi...
It took me like 30 seconds, maybe 40, to open the box. Seriously. The two sealing strips peeled off pretty easily. The inner box was a little difficult to slide out but it wasn't "stuck". Maybe the packaging has changed since that video was made. By the way, my Nexus blows my wife's iPad 2 away. Sweet!
unless they sell it all in soda. it's the highest profit margin you can find at such places.

but yeah, i don't think this is the best explanation. But now i can't stop picturing Ronald macdonald sitting at some backroom like vitor corleone.
It's not an ordinary McDonald's; it's the McDonald's in Paris next to the Arc de Triomphe. Given its location next to one of Paris's largest tourist attractions, it probably serves a much larger number of customers per day than most other McDonald's locations, and it's a potential target for anti-American sentiment. These could both be reasons for enhanced security, although I'm not sure why they'd mind cameras. (OTOH, I'm also not sure why they'd mind cameras if it were a mafia front, since presumably all of the illegal things happen behind closed doors.)
This is what came to my mind as well. I can't decide whether or not the comment is supposed to be serious.

On one hand, I can't think of many above-board reasons that a restaurant employee would tackle you for having a tiny camera, or rip up medical documentation. On the other hand, the jump straight to a mafia seems a leap too far. Yet if we are going to speculate, I don't see a criminal explanation as significantly more plausible than others.

To demonstrate one of my own: Perhaps they'd recently had a bad rating/inspection from the French/Parisian health department (replace with proper name), and were really worried about some undercover story by local news stations. A bit extreme to use physical intimidation, but perhaps the manager is on the verge of losing the place?
While I agree, that doesn't really effect their point.
But why would the Mafia care if you took photos? Money laundering would happen behind the scenes, in the accountants office.

Definitely agree that something is shady though. Not sure what, but this reminds me of a recent article on 'The Big Mac' index, which is used as an alternative measure of inflation. Perhaps McDonald's is under orders by the French government to prevent people from taking photos of their menus (and consequently their burger prices) to hide serious inflation problems. ;)

On a side note, if you are going to be in Paris on vacation, the food capital of the world, why the hell are you eating at McD's?
Cups and soda would be far, far more capital efficient.
Call me stupid but I can imagine that losing data is a problem for a database company.

That said MongoDB has a simple flag which allows you to choose how to handle writes. The app can 'wait' for writes to be applied to one node, all nodes, some number of nodes etc.
I'm in Israel, got phone from http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005XYU45E/ref=oh_details_o...

It is a "yakjudv" firmware which doesn't get updates.

Apparently Google is advertising their Nexus line as auto-update (http://www.google.com/nexus/#/galaxy/features) but then does all of the "yakju" 3rd party firmware fragmentation which invalidates their own promise.

I doubt I'll buy a Google phone again.
Our passions are not governed by age. Why not techno at 60 or opera at 15?
I don't really approach people but I overhear conversations.
As you become a better programmer, these refinements and rearrangements occur in your head. So when you begin writing code, you already know how you want the code to look.

When I write paragraphs (say, for a blog post), the process goes a little like this:

1. Write first sentence
2. change half the words in first sentence
3. Write second sentence
4. change more words in the first sentence
5. Rearrange the second sentence to make to flow better.
6. Write third sentence
7. Trash second sentence all together
etc

The reason why I write this way is because I suck at writing.

When I write code, its much different. I usually just drop my cursor into the document, and let my fingers bang out the code I want. I'm a much better programmer than I am a writer.

When I code, I use TextMate. When I write blog posts, I would probably be more efficient using vim.
> The computerized eyeglass processes imagery using Augmediated Reality, in order to help the wearer see better, and when the computer is damaged, e.g. by falling and hitting the ground (or by a physical assault), buffered pictures for processing remain in its memory, and are not overwritten with new ones by the then non-functioning computer vision system.

The computer broke and accidentally took these handy photos of his perpetrators? Yeah I don't believe that for a second.
I'm betting that it was always recording video and in order to release these images publicly or in a courtroom, he needs a story about how it "malfunctioned" when he was roughed up.

Side tangent, that's exactly what's creepy about this glass technology. There's no physical indication that a picture/video is being recorded, like someone reaching into their bag, pulling out a camera, and pressing a button. Will someone be recording me as I'm talking to them? I'll never know.
Actually I was hoping that was one of those Hitler spoof videos.
reso wrote:

> have the company pay for any damages to my property.

You wrote:

> I agree

You also wrote:

> he basically wants [...] McDonald's to FIX his glasses. This is laughable.

You have contradicted yourself, unless you can explain how "paying for damages" to the glasses does not entail "fixing the glasses".
The site has more in-depth articles linked from the first little sidebar. Excel: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-... Outlook: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-... Word: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-...
I cannot for the life of me find a source which puts John Cleese and John le Carré in the same school.
> For people who want to have real friendships as adults, maybe what we need is some kind of structure in our lives that more closely resembles what people have earlier in life.

If you're willing to dedicate time to a weekly (not monthly, that's not going to work) meetup, that should do it. Otherwise, you're probably stuck with your neighbors and cow-orkers as your only source of new friends....
What is wrong about taking pics at mcdonalds, Im confused..
The point is that churches attract people who think they are doing good, and each church attracts local people. So you have a group of people who like being good to other people, are local, and some subset of that also enjoys activities centered on the church. (The rest just show up for services and then go home.)

This is a group of local people with a common cause, and that makes a good place to meet friends. If you're already religious, then you can easily go to church, join the activities there, and make friends.
This is reasonably true. But there is also some likelihood that the hospitality and guest-right system was not only very old (since it is found across many other Indo-European branches as well) and part of this. Isn't there an episode in one of Homer's poems or something (I don't have my library with me in Indonesia :-( ) where two people are fighting on the battlefield and discover that one of their ancestors gave hospitality to the ancestor of the other and so they have to quit fighting?