skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>You didn't address the weight and the power requirements for it.

Likely nominal. Considering the drone probably has a camera already for routine (non-piloted operations) weight wouldn't be significant. Power wouldn't be huge as wireless service wouldn't be required until the drone is ready to land. Besides, this isn't a long-flight drone.

>The range of the drones is already horrible.

The range of the drones is likely driven by business, not technology. I'm sure if Amazon is serious about this program they've selected a 10 mile radius from their processing centers as a way to control costs & give the drone high operating time margins. If they do it, and it works, I wouldn't be surprised to see larger runs in the future.

>The costs of controlling drones over the wireless networks would be pretty high too.

I can't speak to that directly, but don't forget Amazon already subsidizes wireless costs with Whispernet on the Kindle, so I wouldn't be surprised if they've got some good agreements with wireless networks already. Of course the data needs for video is much greater than for sending an ebook, but this is a lower-volume proposition, both in actual wireless use time & customer count.
Amazon Stock is doing pretty pretty pretty good after this "drone news".
According to Dookhan's lawyer, she says that she did it because she wanted to get a 8 hour pay-check, that there was "too much red tape" but very loose protocol.

But - she's not a rogue chemist! Oh no.

When chemists do lab tests, are they blind to the criminal circumstances themselves?

http://www.wbur.org/2013/11/29/dookhan-lawyer

What I find really awful, is that in many cases, jobs were lost, families destroyed, and sentences were stiffer because of false results by this chemist.
BTC value is directly related to its velocity and the value of the goods and services that are transacted in BTC. I held the purchasing power of USD constant, simply to derive a value of BTC in 2013 dollars. If USD experiences a large shift in PP (unlikely), that would affect BTC/USD. But either way that's not an inherent source of value to BTC.

This is my last comment, as I cannot possibly respond to an endless string of unfounded criticisms.
I'm generally in favour of the 'learn to code' meme, but I think we've gotten too hung up on text based procedural coding languages and are not seeing the big picture here.

I would prefer to define programming as "composing a set instructions which can repeated automatically". By that definition there are many people who create valuable 'programs' such as spreadsheets, MS Word themes, CRM workflows, Photoshop scripts, AutoCAD scripts, manufacturing plans, automated UI tests or clever ways of using Mechanical Turk and oDesk. These people don't call themselves programmers but they've grasped the fundamental thing that makes programming a more powerful way of working. It's a way of thinking, not a particular syntax, and I think the economy will increasingly depend on those people who can amplify their effectiveness by thinking in that way.

I hope to teach my kids some basic python and HTML but mostly I hope to teach them that just pushing buttons and doing what you're told for 40 hours a week will not be very fulfilling career. Even if you're technically a doctor or a lawyer, you could get stuck being basically a robot. Whereas being someone who designs repeatable systems is much more rewarding.
Especially in when we have people around complaining about their "IT/Tech" job in India and wanting to apply for bank jobs or do grocery business . Teach basic communication first ( may be how to write a complete sentence ) then code.
Very well done with both the content and the quality of the visuals. It strikes me how brief this explanation of RPN is, but still with clarity.
I'd suggest for people that are interested in, in fact, trade stocks, to learn about technical analysis.
You have way more control over your gains and losses. If you are well disciplined you can "beat the market" quite often.
Except that it might be considered a federal crime? If I shot down a manned airplane, wouldn't the consequences be severe?
> People (rightly) assume that the stuff that most of the people want to keep private from their peers (conflicts with their spouse, sexual orientation and kinks, financial status, health issues) isn't of interesting to the NSA data analyzer.

Are you so sure about this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_...
Crowdfunding start-up Seedrs raises c.$3.5m through its own website
So what you are saying, is there is a hierarchy of hierarchies. Westerners suppress non-westerners. Within western society, whites suppress non-whites. And within white westerners, the upper-class suppresses lower classes. And within the white- upper-class western society, males suppress females... One can continue.

Perhaps there is a tradition of suppression, starting at the bottom and reaching the top. I mean, women are suppressed within all classes, all societies, all races. (Generally speaking of course). Perhaps any kind of repression breeds further repression?

My point is. There is no need to stop focusing on systematic suppression on one group, just because other groups are also being suppressed.

EDIT: Before anybody comments on this, I know this presented hierarchy doesn't exist. I mean, I could as well have started with, "males suppress females, and within male society western males suppress..." (so there is more like a heap of hierarchies). I just used this as an example to make a point.
Thought about that too, thats why i think the approach should be finding a way to transfer the human consciousness onto machines, or find a way to backup your mind. That has a whole different set of other ethical implications of course.
There are some people that only see downsides, that compulsively expect failures. We call them nay-sayers. You want a handful of them in your organization, especially in tech, since they keep your head out of the clouds. But too often they tend to be averse to innovation and derail progress. James Ball, the author of the article, seems to be one of those people.

On October 9, 1903, two months before the Wright brothers flew for the first time, the New York times declared "The ridiculous fiasco which attended the attempt at aerial navigation in the Langley flying machine was not unexpected… it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years" [1]

I imagine someone like James Ball wrote that article, too.

[1] http://www.skygod.com/quotes/times1903.pdf

edit: rmc indicated I wrote date as 2013, fixed to 1903
There's that too. Although I'd like to have the time to port Oberon to MIPS, maybe the PIC32 since the more powerful, modern MIPS chips are out of budget. Haven't done the analysis, but I think it would be a good match.
The quality of graphs is pretty bad.

http://i.imgur.com/sRyxzN5.png

Compare it to WolframAlpha

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=d%2Fdx%28sin%28x*x%29+%...
Where do you get the idea that the EMH assumes perfect information?

EMH assumes that the market perfectly translates all information about stocks into prices. In a strong form, that requires perfect information, you can dilute that to almost perfect but just claiming the market is anywhere close rational or efficient is a huge leap given our history of stock markets and bubbles. That claim has been shown to be false in just about every boom bust cycle so far, but to take one specific example - mortgage cdos in the last decade - what about that market was efficient?

I take it you've already made your billions by trading your EMH-disproving strategy?

Disagreeing with the efficient market hypothesis implies nothing about trading or investing competence.
is that font downloadable somewhere?
Related, the Shunting-yard algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunting-yard_algorithm) is a clever algorithm for converting infix expressions into Reverse Polish or Polish Notation, that only takes linear time.
Consider giving TypeScript a try then. It offers optional, structural static typing, that while not nearly as powerful (or sound) as Scala's, is still better than not having it.

And the fact that its completely optional means that its easy to get it out of the way when its not possible to express some constructs with it.
Multi-paradigm incoherence? There is a huge difference between throwing multiple features/paradigms into one language (as C++ does) and integrating them so that they are orthogonal and don't get into your way (as Scala does). The integration part is the hardest thing and Scala designers did the great job there, assuming the constraints that were given.

Scala does have some rough edges but they are not the kind of C++ ones, and even the complexity of the most powerful features (implicits) is very controllable.

Seriously - which features would you like to remove from Scala? I'm really curious because I don't find any redundant ones. All are pretty complementary and very useful.
And they should also get some known-innocent control samples. (Of course, properly blinded.)
Actually, it says that someone was let out because she was a secondary chemist. So in other words, if she even came close to working on a case, then it's suspect.

Not to mention, she falsified lab results to the degree that she didn't even do any testing at all on many samples. That's pretty much close to zero time to file the report.

When it comes to intent - she deliberately tainted some samples! Gotta ask yourself why.
>> at which point control is handed to a pilot for the landing & package drop

Good, how?

Do you think 4G can allow you to do that? With enough latency?

Flying military drones is a very complicated matter.

Today civilian drones are flown with visual contact and at close range.

So, no.
I agree completely, and there is also a profit motive. PhD candidates typically make paltry pay, but have often racked up a good amount of debt that was delayed during their PhD work. In order to get a job that can actually make those years of study and work economically viable, they have to have first authorship on huge papers. At least that's the case in biology right now.
No one wants to live "forever" (and that's probably physically impossible)-- at least, not in this world-- but people definitely don't like getting sick.

The day-to-day decision won't be "live forever" vs. "die of old age". It will be "get sick" vs. "not get sick" and no one will take the former.
How SQL injection was discovered 15 years ago
What drone has a 20 mile range with payload, has a camera and a remote control system over wireless networks?
I would disagree with it being impossible, especially in the drone delivery business. Definitely hard but not impossible.
The drone leave a known location to go to another location using a direct path. It is a point A to point B algorithm. Amazon could build or use a database of information regarding obstacles and traffic, to program and test well ahead of time destination between A (the warehouse) to B (i.e. every doorstep in a 30 minutes radius) and back to A.
GPS is often accurate within 1 meter which should be enough for door delivery (http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/histogra...).
I agree that humans will be involved in monitoring the drones 24/7.
Disagree. I'm a non native english speaker and picked up english after coding.
If and for aren't hard keywords to memorize, really.
As long as you don't interact with complex libraries or docs you'll be just fine.
I just named my variables and functions in german back then.
Sure, these programms were trivial. Or what you'd expect from someone coding basic for the first time. But that's were i found my passion for code. Without any english skills.

So please allow me to call bullshit.
> He is using an uptick in publicity about Amazon to voice his opposition to Amazon's business practices.

Does this refute his claim that Amazon are using an uptick in publicity to hide opposition to Amazon's business practices?
It also gives them control of the conversation of drones, which, let's just say, hasn't exactly been in your favour, if you're a drone.
People would still die from alot of different reasons, lives on average would just be longer.
I've never researched the exact technology behind military drones but my understanding is they are capable of everything you mentioned being not yet possible.

I just can't wrap my head around how these are possible in areas like Manhattan where they would be most useful. Not to mention 4 or 5 years is probably about the understatement of the century as to when it will be permitted by the FAA.
Building Android first
Interesting read.

You can make this run infix notation by adding a simple front end. Reasonable quality description here: http://scriptasylum.com/tutorials/infix_postfix/algorithms/i...

Although that bit is built into my brain now after using RPN/RPL calculators for the last 20 years. I wouldn't swap RPN/RPL for anything.
As someone who builds these for a hobby, the biggest problem is battery life and range.

The battery life life of the craft is determined by the weight/battery capacity ratio. Since is hardly any aerodynamics, the multicopter is constantly fighting the force of gravity by delivering an equal force using its motors and props.

An optimistic range estimate for current batteries would be about 10 mi, but the craft would also have to return, so make that 5mi.

Now imagine what happens when you attach a payload to it.

Regulations may change, and flight controlers keep getting better, but batteries would need significant improvement for this to become viable.
It would be nice to spend trillions of dollars on eliminating death instead of spending it on pointless wars and other retarded stuff.

I don't understand how anyone would want to die. I believe when you die that's it. You cease to exist and rot in the ground until you decompose into nothing. How could you want that rather than to run around for a few thousand years at some prime age without pain or disease?
I also doubt that a headline publication in that journal would do much for a future career in the field.
Well put.

What threw me off in particular about the article though was the tone. It's fine to be skeptical but you don't need to be a sarcastic prat about it.
The amount of idea-bashing coming out against this Amazon drone concept is astonishing. Aren't we supposed to the be champions of the future? Do you think for a second that your nail-in-the-coffin counterpoint hasn't already been brought up around the meeting table? Can't we focus on how instead of why not?
In actual practice, total number of requests may have as much or more impact on observed load time than total bytesize. Depending on speed and latency of the network. Requests can be expensive.
Slave owner wasn't sent to do part time in a coal mine, BECAUSE he was slave owner. You can't equate some people having hard life with all people having because they had some role in society. And yes some people managed to eschew their role, but they are exceptions.

Don't get me wrong. There is a lot to hate in patriarchy, it's a very bad system, but it has some advantages for women. As well as disadvantages for men. However paltry they are.
That is treat a human being like she does not have emotions. That is treat a human being like something that is an object.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/objectification
The recent Torchwood miniseries Miracle Day spent a good 6 episodes talking over this very point. It's worth watching, if only for some good speculative fiction about how humanity would really respond if we suddenly were immortal.

In short, we have a lot more pressing problems to address with the basic human condition before we make ourselves immortal... Removing things like homelessness and poverty would be more beneficial first steps (and ironically would go a long ways to increasing the average lifespan of our population).
And UK's mensa is kind-of a joke, if I remember right. The German mensa is somewhat more worth joining.
Exactly. And it's something you can train by doing and studying IQ tests.
Here's how I would do it:

I'd sell/give away clip-on baskets with a fat QR-code or similar imprinted on the inside bottom (or with embedded iBeacon-like-tech or even infrared lights similar to the Wii) to all customers who want to use this service and ask them to attach it to a window-sill, preferably upstairs or to the the back of the house. This would allow the copter to make a secure drop. As the copters are weight-limited anyway the baskets could also be.

It's also worth noting that as this service is for urgent items (why else would you pay extra for a 30 min service) why would you need to worry about the recipient being out? With GPS built-into mobile phones, 4G internet, bluetooth and iBeacon-like tech you could inform the recipient just before delivery or even better and it directly to them (or a special basket placed on the ground).
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498992

86 points by luu 58 days ago | flag | 41 comments
It would be nice to see Oberon ported to MIPS. maybe the PIC32 would be a good target.
Next step would be genetic engineering to make sure that "shots at life" are more successful. And of course all the people with low chance of success (e.g. < 80 IQ) should be put out of misery ASAP.
I think this assumes that technology improvement for all these things stops immediately upon stopping aging. At some point, we should be able to back up and restore brain state, which might raise the average anticipated[1] lifespan considerably, even if accident rates didn't change.

[1] wording this to avoid arguments about identity, if I can.
Thanks, World (ask.io update)
The idea is that the accidental death rate will also go down.

I'm not fully a believer. I think mind uploading is ridiculous and that death of the whole brain will always mean what it does now. However, I also think that-- especially if indefinite healthy lifespans become feasible-- accidental death rates will go way down over the centuries. Those numbers aren't constant.

I could see, 10000 years from now, people storing their neural tissue in extremely safe repositories and interacting with bodies remotely.
It's more fuzzy, but there definitely is a context in which sexualizing each other is OK. And vice versa.
Sheep Marketplace’s Users Have Been Fleeced For 39,918 BTC
Sheep Marketplace closes after theft of £3m in bitcoins
What makes you say it would be physically impossible? I don't know a lot about it, so I can't judge.
Are Apple's App Store Rankings for Sale?
Come on, this is a complete straw man. The article is not saying it's physically impossible, because clearly it isn't, it's saying there are legal and logistical problems to consider.

Plus, following your argument you could swat away any criticism of any outlandish claim by saying that people once thought the world was flat. Hardly constructive. Not that there are any claims of this magnitude by Amazon or in this article.
I work in an environment like this now, and it's fine, because we have a review culture. I don't think that technology can every impose a cultural shift by itself.
If you can't call super nor use variables then this takes quite a lot of power from traits. IMHO being able to stack many traits one on another is a nice pattern.
This. It's a baseline, not the pinnacle. But if you can't even make the baseline properly, are you really fit to have the degree?
Its not just Amazon, Google is also working on a Drone Delivery System
As always, talk to your Doctor (or psychatrist).

Some general hints for almost all mood and mind problems: are you getting the right amount of sleep? Are you exercising? How about your diet? (Are you getting laid enough?)

Getting those things right doesn't help directly, but they make it so much easier to cope with whatever life throws at you.

Also, forget about intelligence, and start creating.
>Giving a randomness to the whole sorting of the articles could have a "noisy" effect on users who update the home page often.

Yes, but not much. Provided the amount of noise is small enough, the order of articles on the front page may change a bit, but the articles themselves won't change much. I don't know much about the typical distribution of scores of articles on the front page at any given moment, but I suspect even the order of most of the page probably won't be affected.

Think about it this way: pushing an article that's already high up on the home page up or down a little in ranking won't push it off the front page. It's only the bottom of the page (and the top of page 2) that would even be materially affected.
The laws of stock markets do not apply to Bitcoin because is not a stock. It looks like money, a store of value, a free public ledger, a decentralized trustless information synchronization network ... it's all of these and probably much more than what we might think of.
> On October 9, 2013, two months before the Wright brothers flew for the first time

Presume you meant 1903 there.... (A reverse Y2K bug!)
I say we should go as far as it's possible: multi-body eventually consistent minds distributed across galaxies.
Maybe they could do something like the Spirit and Opportunity rover's balloon mechanism to make it safer in case of accident. It would still be heavy, but it wouldn't be hard and it would have much greater air resistance so it would fall slower. Or maybe they could have helium canisters that inflate a balloon big enough to offset a portion of their weight. It'll probably be difficult but it seems like there are a lot of possibilities to explore.
If people never die then we will never be able to see phrases like "retarded stuff" finally disappear.
How is he threatening them? He was telling repeat offenders that the police are going to be keeping a close eye on them. That's their job, isn't it? Or would you rather he tell them that the police will be away on holiday all next week, "but please call our support centre if you plan on committing any crime and we'll get our duty officer to log a ticket"?
Stop building your email list. Now.
Checkout http://reddit.com/r/fitness
Cloud Backup and Recovery Company Intronis is Growing and "Hiring Like Mad"
Indeed, thank you! Just fixed it.
Bitcoin dips $1000
There's something that I don't think gets discussed enough when this topic is risen. One reason why death is good is that the ideas of old people die with them. Often, it's the only way to scourge ourselves of bad ideas. Imagine a country of people still stuck in an 1850s mindset.
The DA resigned when it became known he regularly communicated with the chemist.
I think that was pretty bad advice. If someone wants to start doing embedded you tell them to go get a CompSci degree (i.e. studying algorithms and logic).

And disrespecting Arduino like that does not seem good either. Doing Arduino will actually teach you about both microcontrollers and electronics and there's a lot of nice modules available. Of course it is not like writing your own OS but it's a start, and you can always use the hardware and ignore the Arduino software.

The best way to get started in embedded is to begin on a project where you actually build something that you want to build. That will help you with requirements on the platform you choose, be it Arduino, Raspberry Pi, FPGA or whatever.
Forgive me for being pedantic...but the "German" degree system (Bachelors, Masters, Ph.D.) inherits its tradition from the guild system. In this sense, a doctoral dissertation is the modern-day equivalent of a "masterpiece", the item you produce to prove to your peers that your are deserving of the title "Master". So you are wrong in that doctoral studies should be regarded as journeyman training, not an apprenticeship, but you are right in that a dissertation is only the start of ones career as a master.

That said, I think it's an unfortunate course of modern research that the prestige of a doctorate has eroded over time...
I really feel like amazon's service should be called dropbox too.
Catering for the Extremes