skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is what causes my love-hate relationship with Siri: when it works, it's a fantastic experience and gets little details like this spot-on; when it doesn't, it's off by a mile. More frustratingly, it doesn't seem to improve much between major iOS releases despite being mostly a thin client to Apple's services.

To be fair, I generally prefer obvious failure rather than quietly doing the wrong thing (which is what probably would have happened here), but even really simple stuff like "take me home" only seems to work as expected half the time.

(I'm ignoring situations where the voice recognition fails outright, since that's a totally different problem - this just relates to handling of correctly-interpreted commands)

Like many others, I wonder what Apple's QA and user feedback processes look like with Siri. Unlike Maps, there's no way (AFAIK) to report a crappy Siri response, so while I'm sure they have stats on low-confidence speech-to-text results, I'm not sure what they do to determine "you heard me right, but you did the wrong thing" or "doing X instead of Y would have been a lot more useful". As such I assume most of it is internal QA process, and Apple's secrecy around new features (fortunately Siri no longer qualifies as such) definitely hurts QA that requires a lot of real-world usage.
The email I received from Google in 2007 when they wanted to buy Zlio
>Almost every company that puts the time into making a distinctive shape for their devices gets one: Microsoft has one for the Xbox, George Lucas got one for Yoda etc. Design patents are extremely narrow - you have to do your level best to copy them exactly in order to be found in infringement.

I'd say a rounded rectangle isn't narrow at all.

Consider one of the examples given, the XBOX. The XBOX design patent found here [1] contains far more in the way of specific, distinguishing features than the rounded rectangle [2] Apple is claiming.

Microsoft would have to be awarded a design patent for a "roughly square electronic housing" to equal the absurdity.

1: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...

2: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
In iOS the alarms are sorted chronologically, so if you have more than one alarm set up, it's pretty easy to notice if you accidentally did PM because your alarm ends up at the bottom of the list instead of the top.

Not that I'm saying this is better than what you're describing. I'm just saying this in case any iOS users didn't realize that and it's helpful.
Interesting... I'm still trying to figure out how a smaller page I like (~2000 likes) and interact with - which I know has very little spam reports has almost completed stopped showing up in my News Feed, yet every time I log in I'm told to Like Mitt Romney.
Also here: http://betabeat.com/2012/11/airbnb-sandy-housing-crisis-disp...
Kudos to AirBNB! They are creating amazing goodwill out of their expert handling of the post Sandy mess, and great opportunity to collaborate with venture friendly Bloomberg!
I'd also like to know how you think prohibition is helping these people.
Airbnb connect those in need with people who are able to provide free housing
I had a miscommunication with an old boss once. He had sent me an email asking me to do a few tasks. He had written "do x or y and z" His intent in the email was for me to do either task x or task y, and regardless then do z. However the way he had written it I had parsed it as

if(x){
taskX();
else {
taskY();
taskZ();
}

He was pretty angry when I had only done task x.
Thanks for the post, it's very inspirational.

Could you explain this part, specifically what do you mean by "bucket".

"To accomplish this I tracked predicted price moves in 50 buckets that depended on the range that the indicator value fell in. This produced unique predictions for each bucket that I was then able to graph in Excel. As you can see the expected price change increases as the indicator value increases."
Don't do what you love
Are we sure the auto bailout hasn't gone the wrong way? The problem with bailouts are two-fold:

1. They protect jobs, but often at a much higher cost than is justified. Admittedly, I don't know the numbers here, but I recall something about the ban on foreign tires protecting US jobs at a cost of $900,000 per job saved.

2. They introduce moral hazard. See our repeated pattern of bank bailouts for examples. If the auto bailout did cause this problem, we won't know about it until much later.

A defining feature of capitalism is competition, which means economic winners and losers. If we protect companies from the need to restructure, even for a noble purpose, we may cause more problems down the road. The auto industry wouldn't have ceased to exist if two companies had gone through bankruptcy. Other automakers and manufacturers would have bought those assets and run them more efficiently. And those other companies are exactly the type you want to be doing this, since they didn't need a bailout in the first place, right?
My girlfriend insists that, as soon as the clock ticks over to 12:00AM, "tomorrow" means a full 24 hours later. I still insist "tomorrow" doesn't change up until you sleep (or stay up all night).
There is no requirement that the authors aren't credited. To quote another comment in this thread by someone from Scripted

Yup. Which is why many of our clients give byline to our writers!

I agree that if the author isn't credited the setup is a bit dubious.
One of my favorite features! Before I had an Android phone I can't tell you how many times I bone-headedly picked PM instead of AM. Even with this feature I catch myself getting it backwards sometimes, but I get to correct it right then instead of when it's too late.
How Nate Silver predicted all of the 50 states
The iMX233 variety is a considerably slower chip than the BCM2835 and I don't believe it has anywhere near the video capability. These were the same chip line as the 2nd gen 3.5" Chumbys (may have slight variances.) It is still a cool chip but it's not the same setup.

The A13 variety is more powerful, but less widely available and the chip hasn't been used as much.
Yes, I love this little detail. The posted Siri example could use the same thing - since I don't always know the date, it would be nice to see it as a relative time (i.e. Did you mean: 8.5 hours from now, or 1 day 8.5 hours?).
I honestly don't recall. I am not a synesthete, and in fact I'm not a musician. That's why I make apps that make it easy for people to feel like they are a musician... :-)

This web app references various historical tone-to-color mappings. Check out the settings menu: http://mudcu.be/piano/
Yes. Make the water salty to increase the effect.

To save on batteries you can drop the end of a low voltage DC transformer in the water.
I believe if you don't say 'tomorrow' it will work correctly. It is pretty annoying.

I'd test it myself but I sold my Galaxy Nexus on Craigslist, waiting for the Nexus 4 to be released.
Considering it is Siri, it is not a good QA team. Probably a programmer who set an alarm shortly after midnight one time and had an unexpected result.
This is very good feedback. We're actually working on some Machine-Learning technology that takes all of Wikipedia's content, builds a topic model, and applies it to the 10k pieces of content that we've written over the past couple months. It will allow us to rank writers by their expertise in very granular fields (so for instance we'll be able to tell you who our best "outdoor recreational equipment" writer is). We'll provide a deeper explanation of this technology in a (hopefully less controversial) blog post in the next couple of weeks.
If I could downvote you I would, but since I can't I will leave a meta-comment.

Why is it important for you call out that they are in the set of three different minorities ?

The entire tone of your post isn't constructive.
Could you please put contact info in your HN profile? I'd like to email or IM you.
Show HN: ModelKit, Model Framework for Objective-C (iOS/Cocoa)
Hey HN, wanted to share an open source project I'm working on: https://github.com/jawngee/modelkit

It's a model/entity framework that allows you to write your model layer quickly and easily, managing persistence (local and network) for you as well as querying facilities. It also can be tied into a BaaS like Parse (comes with a working implementation based on their REST api). You could think of it as CoreData-lite or Github's Mantle on steroids.

It started out as Parse API wrapper because I was running into issues with their iOS SDK (I love Parse btw and rave about it to anyone that will listen - their iOS SDK not so much). It's nearly finished and I'm incorporating it into a commercial product so I'd thought I'd share with fellow iOS HN'ers. Enjoy!
This thing is indeed a lifesaver, not just because of time of day but because alarms could be previously set to only go off on certain days. So when I'm told the alarm won't go off for 80 hours or something, I can correct it immediately.

As a bonus, it gives a good estimate on how much sleep I'm going to get.
6 Months, 10000 clicks: in and around bay area
Marketing phrases that have lost their meaning.
Zero Advertising
I agree that whatever divides the candidates doesn't correlate to any easy demographic measure. All I was saying is that "the entire country is purple" does not, IMO, show less division than "some states are red and other states are blue". It shows more division, because instead of the country being split into large, fairly homogeneous regions, the political split is present everywhere. It would be easier for us to all get along if "red staters" and "blue staters"--yes, I know that's a shallow metaphor but this is a small input box, work with me here :)--could just live in separate states and not bother each other. The fact that people with deeply held but opposite political convictions are cheek by jowl all across the country is part of what makes it so difficult to resolve disagreements.
Link: https://github.com/jawngee/modelkit
Does poor coding ever sink a startup?
I was curious if there are any stories of a startup failing due to poorly built software.
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
The curious thing about this "solution" is that it's pretty fundamentally broken. If you're authenticating to any important site by typing a username/password into a computer you don't "trust", you're doing it wrong.

The subset of computers in between "people I don't trust also use this computer" and "this computer could easily have had a key logger Or root kit installed" must be vanishingly small.

If you don't own it (or trust the person who owns it enough to satisfy your personal security requirements), then any username/password you type into it should be considered "possibly compromised" no matter what measures the website has taken to protect you. Two factor auth helps, but still have the problem that 2/3rds of your auth credentials could be compromised (the attacker could end up knowing your gmail username & password, leaving only the six digit auth-code to brute force, which I _hope_ google have sensible protection in place for). Single use passwords also help, but both tfa and single use passwords don't protect against an attacker who 0wns the machine seeing and recording everything that happens in your current session - including I suspect for a sufficiently skilled attacker (or perhaps even a script kiddie with an off the shelf tool), complete access to the post SSL decrypted data inside a trojaned browser (if I can modify the browser, none of the httponly or secureonly flags for your session cookies are safe, sure, JavaScript can't extract them, but the browser code can… And it could be exporting them in real time to the bad guy, or piggybacking proxied instructions to empty your bank account via Western Union while you check your credit card balance)
Even those of us that plan on taking advantage of the bill are worried about that. Although, based on a mixed bag of people on Facebook, the reaction is mature... but then again the people opposed have probably dropped dead from having found out that some gays might be able to get married somewhere.
Google Now doesn't do specific dates yet.
It's a cool piece of engineering, but feels feature bloated to me. I am genuinely confused with the interface.

My only feedback would be to make it simpler by removing or hiding some of the advanced functionality. Shoving options in my face is just so overwhelming. Like, what am I even looking at here? http://i.imgur.com/baoGV.png

The canvas isn't really in focus. For some reason a textarea is highlighted in red, I have all these options on the right... so many numbers. I can edit position (isn't part of the beauty of bootstrap a locked grid system?), anyway, you get the idea.
Single Pipe Steam Radiator[1] – what a quaint solution. I see how they got there, cheaper to build and can, in optimal conditions, be made to work within certain limitations.

I think I might try a no-moving-parts solution and attach an electric heating element to my bleed valve. By heating it just before the steam cycle starts you could prevent steam from entering your radiator, then after a suitable interval, stop heating it, let the air out, and begin your personal, abbreviated cycle.

You might also have success with partial air entrapment in the radiator by heating a little early and keeping the bleed valve closed for the rest of the heat cycle, thereby reducing the available power from the radiator but spread over the entire heating cycle.

In any event, you will want to let the air bleed open after each heat cycle to let your water go.

Oh, and incidentally if you don't have thermistors laying about: http://www.maximintegrated.com/datasheet/index.mvp/id/2815 there is Arduino code. One pin, two wires, one resistor, a bunch of probes, all calibrated and 0.5°C accuracy from -55°C to 125°C. A couple bucks each, you mostly save that in ancillary component costs.

EOM

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydronics#Single-pipe_steam
Congrats Ben and Matt, this looks sick.
Richard Stallman Visited Our School
It also displays the time of the next alarm on the lock screen. This is a really nice sanity check: A quick glance at the screen when going to bed ensures that it will wake me up at the right time the next morning.
Moderating Political Opinions
What do people think of services like https://www.loginprompt.com/? (provides logins as a service for your startup)

Isn't this sort of security something we wish we didn't have to learn? And for people who don't take the time maybe it's best to let a third-party handle it.
If you're aware that Siri is "mostly a thin client to Apple's services", why would you expect it to update with iOS releases? If it's a thin client, it can be updated (or not updated) at anytime on the server side.
Actually, this isn't the best possible design. As others here have already pointed out, a better design would be presenting the options as:

4 hours from now

28 hours from now

This one doesn't require me to know the current date and also works as a sanity check to make sure I'm not confusing AM and PM.
Comparing Heroku Redis Hosting Options
Now that there are 5 Redis Heroku add-ons to choose from I created a comparison with charts.
This is very cute. So simple it's almost a waste of effort (if a phrasebook already exists), but yet it's much better than a phrasebook!

I can imagine this working quite well in Japan, where people are not afraid of technology, but struggle to communicate in foreign languages. I'm not so sure how well this can be accepted in, say, Romania (just an example, I've never been there).

...and shouldn't you swap the first example on the homepage from "Do I have to be hospitalized?" to something slightly more cheerful?
My only complaint with this is that I often have no idea what day it is. I'd love it if it added the day of the week as well. "It's after midnight, did you mean today, Tuesday, or yesterday, Monday the Xth day."

I too have seen this a handful of times and thought, "Wow, that's really clever Siri!" only to realize a few seconds later that Oct 21st vs Oct 20th does not help me and I am still screwed. Then I cancel out and go look at the calendar day and then re-sirify it.

Then again I am not that smart.
Show HN: An IOS app anniversary gift, like a buddha machine, but better.
Thanks for the post, it's very inspirational.

Could you explain this part, specifically what do you mean by "bucket"?

"To accomplish this I tracked predicted price moves in 50 buckets that depended on the range that the indicator value fell in. This produced unique predictions for each bucket that I was then able to graph in Excel. As you can see the expected price change increases as the indicator value increases."
Interesting, I didn't realize that since I only ever have one alarm at a time.
The book mentioned by Oliver Sacks on hallucinations looks interesting.

I have to say that one of my favourite neuroscience books has to be, "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" by the aforementioned Dr. Oliver Sacks.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Mistook-His-Wife/dp/03305236...

It's really a great read for anyone interested in neuroscience, psychology or just weird and wonderful stories in general.
I remember when I've seen something, and I've written tools to perform quick searches and create the text. I then confirm by hand, and copy-paste that text. It takes seconds if the search shows what I think I remember, and about a minute if I need to work harder.

More, when I do the searches I often stumble across other items by accident, and I've made several happy discoveries in that manner, so I don't think of the time as wasted. In this particular case the search for "Urine" in the title turned up some other interesting articles in addition to the earlier one for this story, one which already had discussion, which people may have missed without the cross-reference.
We can have a better more granular "firewall". Instead of direct popular vote, simply quantize it into congressional districts instead of just the state level.

Who wins the district wins that EV. Who wins the state wins an additional 2 EVs (ie, aligned with senate numbers). Total would equal (currently) 538 EVs.

Some states already do something similar (see Nebraska, Maine).

Of course, this brings up the perennial problem of gerrymandering... which could be resolved by mandating perimeter to area ratios that keep things from looking too crazy.
Twitter’s record-breaking night killed the Fail Whale, no thanks to Ruby
Taming Advanced Stemming in Search
Kid building nuclear fusion reactors to keynote Berlin's EHSM conference
The USFG gets jurisdiction from the commerce clause.
Interesting! I was thinking of attaching a small geared DC motor to the main steam valve on the radiator, but controlling via the auto-bleed is a really cool idea. I've been a little worried about damaging the bleed valve, but it's an elegant solution.

EDIT - could you elaborate on how heating the bleed valve is a good way of controlling it? Isn't it moisture based?
--Andrew (Terg.is)
I think the majority of people would react poorly to that.

"Why are you asking me about number of hours, Siri?! I just said tomorrow, damnit!".
Not all villages in developing countries are dirt-poor and desperate for the slightest technology. Cheap cell phones are used quite a bit in many rural areas in Africa, for example: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/13/world/africa/mobile-phones-cha.... For example, farmers can use them to look up weather forecasts and price information for their crops.
Forget the electoral college: What if each click was a vote?
Thanks for the feedback mrchess. It's true that there are many options that appear all at once. Do you think having a tour that highlighted specific next actions would address some of your concerns?
Sure they are. Anywhere in the developing world that has power to run a cell tower clearly doesn't need to be extracting power from urine.
I think you're expecting too much from users. They need to know what does "brute force"ing a password mean, what's a stock Thinkpad, and why it does matter.
So you're saying there will be no costs in enforcing safe usage of pot? What are the societal costs of (to use alcohol analogy) driving while stoned? What about rehab?

The public, through the government, effectively pays for this, and taxing the activity can alleviate or mitigate those costs.
The map is really interesting, but its hard to read with those two colours. I'd like to see it with just white-blue or white-red.
Yes, it did work: http://ompldr.org/vZzZtaA
This isn't about Democrats vs Republicans, because about 40% of Americans don't identify with either party.

Exactly. I've heard some studies that point to a majority of young voters (18-24?) self describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. IMHO, neither of the 2 parties fit that bill right now so many people vote along with their particular social issue. A gay friend mentioned to me how hard voting was because she is fiscally conservative, but no way could she vote GOP (not that they are the picture of fiscal responsibility either at this point).

Another friend of mine described his feeling about the election as, "I hated to see Obama win, but I'm equally afraid of the crazy republican right wing. I want a party that is fiscally conservative that also believes in evolution."

It seems that with the vote always being near 50/50 that one of the parties could figure out that sweet spot and satisfy more than 50% of the populace. That would mean taking chances and really challenging the status quo, so it will likely never happen. After last night though, the GOP is at a crossroads and now is probably the best time if there ever was one to really make some changes. Very unlikely though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNStNUizxhE
A more interesting question, perhaps: what data were they mining?
WINT Has Obama Done So Far? Response to WTFHODSF
Yeah, this is my read on it as well. I don't have a lot of experience with steam heating systems, but I noticed that I had some issues with water dribbling out of the auto-bleed valve when the main steam valve was half closed. For all I know, my observations could also be caused by maintenance issues with the radiator... --Andrew (Terg.is)
Building GUI Applications in PowerShell
>1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.

"Hour" is not a unit of energy.
And a savvy attacker can use a very similar grease monkey plugin to record/export everything that gets submitted via those fields too…
8-bit Awesomeness - A Video Interview with Pure Bang Games
Not all posts need to be constructive to contribute to the discussion.
They said it doesn't improve between releases. As opposed from from release to release.
Just FYI, don't be fooled into thinking LEDs are cool. High output power LEDs have huge heat sinks...
I don't think you're missing anything. Dude needs a measurement, and he's on his way to getting it done.

The Wheatstone bridge is timeless. In a precision measurement context we use it and related bridges all the time.
Been browsing - a lot of crap though looking for some cooler HN startups