skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What are you talking about? This delivery method is completely absurd. I mean, who's "bright idea" was it put an entire neighborhood's packages together in a brown truck, then have it travel down roads at 60 miles per hour, often times striking other cars and killing people? And I don't know about you, but I was taught to never put all your eggs in one basket. I mean, there is literally nothing good that can come about from this.
Not 100%, but this may help: http://datamaps.github.io/
Sure, but if I could turn the societal dial a few clicks toward critical thinking vs day dreaming, I'd do it.

The unquestionable success of the Scientific Method has shown that careful analysis and requirement of experimental proof far outstrip bumbling about with our own natural human level of random thoughts that we label "creativity".
It's hard to take your comment with impartiality when 90% of your comments mention Go.
Law students (most) take a class called Criminal Procedure that heavily covers 4th, 5th, and (to a smaller extent) 6th amendment jurisprudence. I took it in 2011 when drones were really heavy in the news cycle. Our final exam was solely on drones and how their adoption would effect/be effected by 4th amendment considerations.

So with all that said, I really really hate the idea of drones. They get places humans cannot. They're expected in places *humans cannot be. These places are protected right now. Just putting drones in operation (especially in the hands of the public) means every single bit of the public up to the point of actually suctioning cup on your window is possibly fair game. Of course, I hope that reasonable regulations are at play but I am pessimistic about it. I think people will want their taco drones and their 30 min Amazon delivery MORE than they want to hear how it might impact their privacy.

So it's not safety, it's not "oh no, they're like the military now". It's purely the loss of private airspace that still remains and the potential to abuse it audio/visual wise.
Amazon already has a fleet of trucks, plus the ability to use UPS and USPS. In conditions where the drones can't operate they'll just fall back to conventional delivery options.
Not only do I hope this succeeds, but -- assuming this would be available for third parties -- it would actually advance my wife's business plan immensely. To use an overstated phrase, it would be a real game-changer.
I'm with you, in favor of strongly typed headers. Working with strings can be very error-prone; you might not catch typo bugs until your system is in production and handling some rare case for which failure is expensive.

It seems to me that, in the worst case, the downside of your current scheme is an extra field dereference, as in `request.headers.extensions.get("crazyNewField")` instead of `request.headers.get("crazyNewField")`. I think that cost is easily outweighed by the benefits.
Actually, these comments are not as discredited as one might think in hindsight. iPod sales weren't spectacular until the 4th generation of the iPod classic and until iPod Mini was introduced 3 years later. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Ipod_sale...

I think it's valuable to point out the problems with the current technology and regulations like scoot did, even though we all realize that in a few years things could change.
Isn't Rust moving away from M:N threading and going to the "normal" model of each concurrent thing running in its own thread? (I forget the correct term for that, 1:N threading or something like that?) I'm not sure if they're there yet, but I remember reading they were planning on doing that.

EDIT: Gack, ignore this. Missed that another reply hit the 1:1 threading point. (only read the bit where they were talking about the @-pointer going away)
I'm also "intimately familiar" with multi rotors, and I don't think any of these issues you've identified are valid, with the exception of regulations (which Amazon admits won't happen).

> Battery recharge time - out for 15 mins flight? Recharge for 2 hours.

So? Swap out batteries. The whole drone doesn't have to be grounded for 2 hours.

> Flight time / payload - pick one. (20 mins with no payload is a stretch. Add bigger batteries? Too much weight. Add bigger motors and props for more lift? now you need bigger batteries...

That's wrong. There are many off the shelf platforms which can easily handle 5+ lb payloads for 20+ minute flights. Here's one: http://www.freeflysystems.com/products/cinestarHL.php

> No good in 'weather' of pretty much any kind.

That's wrong, too. Multirotor flight speeds are 30+ knots. Modest wind is not a big deal.

> Unstable with a failed motor / prop. Will fall out of the sky under numerous failure scenarios.

Most robust multirotor platforms have 8 or more motors/props, and can trivially handle the failure of one or two. It's true that there are "numerous failure scenarios" which will result in a UAV falling out of the sky, but the same is true of passenger airliners: this will happen if the wings fall off. To suggest that a UAV can't be made as reliable as a typical manned helicopter is short-sighted.

> The blades are lethal - can be shielded, but will add weight and reduce efficiency.

This is only true in the absence of failsafe mechanisms: e.g. a device that brakes the motor when below a certain altitude. Also, as you mentioned, they can be shielded.

> GPS is unreliable at best, and is easily interfered with.

No, GPS is perfectly reliable "at best", and utterly nonfunctional at worst. Fortunately, there are lots of alternatives for GPS.

> Current regulations in countries that have them typically require line-of-sight operation; away from people and property (which rules out landing outside someone's front door); no over-flight of persons; restrictions around distances from the operator when taking off and landing. (And remember the battery / weight issue? Go over a certain weight [~8KG], and the regulations get even more onerous.)

This is 100% valid. Regulations are a concern.
Do you get to keep the box? :-) That is a pretty bold vision for product delivery. On the one hand we have "software eating the world" (everything is a download) and on the other "hardware is cool again" (drone delivery). I sometimes think though that this may become this generation's "jet pack."
I think it can work with minor interruption to everyday life if the drone are confined to the paths of major highways. It will reduce their noise pollution (and be marginally safer in a crash).

The bigger impact would be on smaller retailers, that don't have this service. This service is an absolute killer, making it faster to order a toothpaste from Amazon compared to picking it up at a shop outside your house.
Not much different from the kid shooting the FedEx guy.
Asking for help with a quantitive measure, ie. a lab test, indicates bribery (perhaps non-monetary.)
I really loved watching that old segment. Little things like Bob Simon saying "...gigabytes, whatever that is" really takes you back to that time before the ubiquity of computing.

The other interesting thing was the discussion about selling user data and how unconcerned everyone was at that point about it.
How does skepticism equal rooting for failure?
Close the externalities and the market will figure it out.
Official TLS 1.2 support? Oh yes please.
Increases in JSON speed? Oh hell yes.

I'm loving how Go, as a package in the standard lib, now supports better TLS than most servers.
Well, be careful with those closures. Scala's compiler won't (yet) throw an error if you close over a variable from the outer scope while operating on a Future.

The Scala team does have a plan to fix this though. Of course, if you aren't operating asynchronously or you're only closing over immutable values it doesn't matter anyways.
If anyone is interested in a travel router - small as a pack of cards, can be powered by USB, 3g dongle compatible - I recommend the tp-link mr3020/3040.

Do take care that it needs some configuring, because it has only one Ethernet port used as wan & LAN [1]

I had a slightly related question on how to set up a wireless-only setup for a startup. Hope someone has an answer to that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800737

[1] http://www.lambdacurry.com/2013/05/configuring-the-tplink-mr...
What if I give you chance to bet on the success of this technology, what terms would be acceptable for you?
Pretty neat concept.
But if the goal is to deliver within 30 minutes, I wonder why does amazon need a drone? Domino's certainly dint need a drone to deliver pizza's.
Given the cost of research and manufacturing of the drone, I bet this would be just a fancy R&D project. Plus dont forget the lack of accuracy the drone would have, there has to be a manual interception thus questioning the original concept itself. Musk is upto hyperloop, Bezos is upto drones; I think the former one is far more realistic and needed.
I wouldn't have believed it if I wouldn't have heard about the same sort of thing in China.

The hacking arms race is about to go airborne. I wonder what the penalty would be if I send up my drone to intercept one of their drones and shoot it down?

I wonder if the have bigger drones for delivery of things like a billiards table? I would order one for a friend just to scare the out of him.

It's great to see a huge company continuing to propel us into the future rather than planning that in 5 years it could sit on it's laurels with a monopoly.
We all poo, too...
I hope it works too - it seems so cool.

But I am not sure this is the big problem in this space.

Current delivery time = 1 day for last mile + >1 day for warehouse -> local area

This method reduces the last mile delivery time down to 30 mins but it is not clear how the second part would be optimized down. At least, without losing the value proposition of Amazon - giant centralized warehouses instead of local retail outlets.
Be Specific
This is not a good idea.

http://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote-contr...
How to treat depression and anxiety
Why do you believe it would be any different from robbing the same people who make the deliveries today?
Sorry, what jxf wrote. Highly compressed video suffers from extremely obvious and distracting artifacts, about the only thing you can say nice about it is that the frame rate is high and it doesn't pause in the middle. So the neologism conveys the point where the video is unwatchable due to visual artifacts but still considered "video" by the provider.
I use CentOS over Fedora because it's very stable and has a great support. Most distros that I've used crushed on me, fairly frequently compared to CentOS. CentOS and RHEL just seems very polished to me. I do run it as desktop on one of my machines but it's more of a server distro. I like Gnome2 too and I can't stand Fedora's Gnome3, it just gets in the way. One major draw back is software updates, they are a bit behind. But for the server I think its excellent. I'd compare Ubuntu to Fedora and CentOS/RHEL to Debian. Come to think of it, you can have extra repos on CentOS, like rpmforge and rpmfusion for newer software. I personally like CentOS.
I have no particular love for Bezos - last I heard, Amazon sucks as a workplace - but this seems unlikely. There are better ways to drive PR than reveal one of your company's secret projects to the public.
Vancouver (Canada) has a similar problem to SF. I think it's the climate, since compared to the rest of Canada it is quite mild. I think the causes here are different though, and mostly drug related, but someone with more knowledge can correct me.
I'm glad you don't. :).
My main concern is environmental impact. I'd be interested in an analysis of the effects of producing these drones + environmental cost of powering them + environmental cost of producing those yellow boxes vs. cost of delivery truck
Fast consumer good delivery is pretty far from what I consider the best science fiction can offer.
>> Resolution isn't the only consideration when buying a new monitor.

> Sure it is!

So you'd be fine with a 3840x2160 monitor that has a 5Hz refresh rate? Or one with a 500ms lag time? Or one that only displayed in grayscale, or in 8-bit color?

Resolution is perhaps the most important consideration, but by no means the only one.
Ring Buffer - Variable-Length, Low-Latency, Lock-Free, Disruptor-Style
Just for fun, plot BTC news relevancy from Google against the BTC value.

The two line up basically perfectly. Conclusion? BTC in the news means some portion of people hear about the great new BTC and how much it's going up in value, and some of them buy in.
My main concern is environmental impact. I'd be interested in an analysis of the effects of producing these drones + environmental cost of powering them + environmental cost of producing those yellow boxes vs. cost of delivery truck.

Edit: Sincerely curious as to why this got voted down. Is environmental impact not a possible issue with this system?
I remember this article coming out, coincidentally, when I had just started university; thankfully I haven't been that desperate yet!
I can easily imagine cities mandating autonomous vehicles having to pay (automatically I guess) some kind of 'congestion' fee after driving a certain number of miles without a passenger or without covering any real distance.
But the bigger picture here is to expand what you order from Amazon. The eventual goal would be more along the lines of small singleton items you'd run to a convenience/drug/grocery store for.

Even after you account for a minimum price to make it worthwhile, that's many, many more deliveries than UPS/FedEx does.
A lot of companies were talking about using drones for this kind of work. It's Amazon who is taking the risk to actually execute it publicly. Even if they fail, others will learn from it. Kudos to them for giving it a shot!
On bubble ripples and avoidable struggles(2008)
Will it deliver across the world? xD
The term for "a method to transfer wealth" is "currency". (And in fact, "currency" is used metaphorically to indicate methods of transferring anything at all.)
I could deliver to the nth floor with a giant slingshot, angry birds style.
Or they're just hungry?
>>On the one hand we have "software eating the world" (everything is a download) and on the other "hardware is cool again" (drone delivery).

The hardware in this case must be driven by incredibly complex software, both on the drone and in the central HQ that controls the fleet. Without that software, these things would be no different than regular RC quadcopters.
You want to have a toll road and a parallel non-toll frontage road? Won't all the traffic end up on the frontage road to avoid the toll?

Also, "frontage bridge" is probably not cost effective.
Thanks for the link. I figured it still happened some but not to the extent that you're referring to.

I think mostly what I meant is that it's theoretically (I think) illegal worldwide. There are plenty of places where it still happens through corruption or lax law enforcement.

I am a bit disappointed that the website linked to rolls child labor in with slavery and such because it weakens the number. I don't LIKE child labor but there are still places so poor that the only alternative to children working is starvation. And they don't break the 27 million number down. So it's hard to tell if the child labor portion is 1% or 80% of the full 27 million.

Again just to be clear I'm not in favor of child labor across the board. But if the alternative to a child working is starvation then I see no reason to make a law to stop him or her from working. Getting charities together to give the families food so that the kids can stop working? Great! But just passing a law and supposing/hoping that it will solve the problem? I don't know that it's the right thing to do.

I guess part of the problem is that I have no idea how many kids are working to eat and stay alive by their parents conscious choice vs how many are effectively slave laborers being exploited.
That sounds so nasty I almost downvoted you. :P
Or old.
Well bud. Congrats on demonstrating to the world that your "analysis" was fucking retarded.
The ire towards "drones" is quite puzzling to me, most technology came from an initial military backing and soon this will be our daily lives.

Right now you can not legally fly a "drone" commercially, all flight by multirotor UAS over US soil is classified as hobby, educational, or government right now. That is where 2015 comes in, the FAA is suppose to make a ruling dictating commercial flight regulations and processes. (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-02/under-newly...)

Currently two vehicles have been certified for flight but they are in a ~20k price range. The estimates on this vehicle are very reasonable for technological advances in the next two years. The opensource community has already created the software technology and a multirotor device of this size could conceivably run for 30min especially with advances is battery and motor/prop technologies.

Perhaps Amazon wants to attempt to shift America's focus on drones, and how they can have positive effects on our lives. Sounds like a good plan especially if they are able to provide emergency supplies to remote locations, or just get us use to them assisting in daily activities.

Wonder what it costs to charge ~15000mah battery vs the driving cost.
I think this is great news. It's innovation and will cause a even bigger revolution in the retail business. Obviously, there's a lot to be considered before actually putting it out there, but I believe this will be very successful.
This is perhaps the single most potent piece of evidence that HN's glory days are all in the past. Oh well, it was a good run.
I agree with some of the conclusions, namely that many people use Ad Block to avoid the slowness that downloading and executing oodles of JavaScript can create.

The methodology here suffers from an apparent lack of insight into what a 'library' is. Note that tech savvy companies such as Facebook and Twitter are low on the list with only a few 'libraries', while media sites have many listed. All this proves is possibly that Facebook and Twitter have less external JavaScript, and are savvy enough to combine files to reduce HTTP requests.

Listing the total KB of JavaScript executed could help clarify the matter. But then, it would also give advantage to those who minify vs those who don't. Fair enough as download time is part if the issue - though the article does not mention that file size plays a role as well as number if http requests.
To accurately portray who is using the most JavaScript, you'd have to count opcodes, and combine that with http request count and total download size.
Hey, this is one of the best comments I've ever read on HN. You should consider adapting this and some of your other comments into independent blog posts.
The I-94 form asks such questions as "have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies", "have you... procured or attempted to procure a visa or entry into the U.S. by fraud or misrepresentation?", and "are you seeking entry to engage in criminal activities?"

http://www.immihelp.com/visas/i-94w.html
Redditor tracks 96,000 Bitcoin stolen from Sleep Market Place through a tumbler
This is not a toy helicopter.

This is a delivery vehicle equipped with the best collision detection technology Amazon can find, approved by some of the best profit-motivated, liability-averse lawyers in the world.
Well, it was that way at one point...

[Previous post made from my phone.]
Are they elected?
Before his death, father of ADHD admitted it was a fictitious disease
Close the externalities and the prices of food, energy, and building materials will adjust accordingly. I have absolutely nothing against rural people or lifestyles but if you choose to commute two hours a day so you can live in the country, you should pay the true price of your lifestyle to society.
The definition of velocity is not at issue, the relationship between "price" and transaction volume is. If tomorrow the US gov decreed that every $1 of USD will immediately be exchanged for $2 of USDX you wouldn't expect, in theory, for the USDX transaction volume, denominated in USD, to change.

Put another way, I fail to see how the BTC/USD exchange rate is related to BTC transaction volume except for tangential reasons like sentiment.
I think if CentOS were selling support contracts, that would be pretty bad. RedHat makes their money on support contracts. By using CentOS, you're more likely to switch to RedHat when you need to pay for a bunch of support.

It feels a little bit more moral to load CentOS on a bunch of systems, than to load Red Hat on them and only pay for one support contract. As an analogy, Microsoft probably prefers people to pirate Windows than to switch to Linux/Chromebook.
It's not a food "hack", it's a bloody sandwich :)
I don't think other folk are giving you enough credit here. It's much to easy to think we would never do something without critical thought.

This reminds me a lot of espionage. No one sets out to betray their country, but by gradually making more and more compromises you go from being Uncle Sam to Aldrich Ames.
http://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/ups-involved-in-3...
If we are getting deeply and uncomfortably honest, some people simply don't like their parents, and dont want anything to do with them. Not all parents are particularly great to their kids, to greater or lesser extents.

In no way am I suggesting this is the case with the example bravely given.
Nice post! Thanks for sharing! (",)
If any of those places were unhappy they would stop buying US treasuries. But they keep buying them.

There isn't a "can't be happy" feeling to a market - just what people actually do. At the scales and volumes involved, it is literally impossible for any of those countries to divest themselves of treasuries suddenly (for one thing, bonds don't work that way).

Moreover, governments only invest in real things. The productive output of the US is a real thing because all those places buy tons of US goods and services. Bitcoins are not real things. Perhaps moreover, why would any one of those places invest in a currency at a scale which would simply let them purchase the computing power to take it over permanently?
+1 for Disconnect over Ghostery
I dunno. Maybe.

But then I look around and see more need for creativity now than ever. Technology is changing faster than ever and that's impacting society in ways previously only speculated about. To me that means there's a lot of opportunity out there waiting to be captured by people crazy enough to do a little dreaming.

Ideas are delicate things.
Creativity and critical thinking aren't opposite ends of the same scale, in many ways they are orthogonal.

Similarly, critical thinking and blind pessimism aren't the same thing, though many people mistake them to be.
I liked it. But was able to get almost all off them correct even though I have never been on github, just matched the words in the code with the options. Is there a difficulty level I can set ?
That must have been an extremely painful situation. Sincere thanks for sharing your story and some real-world perspective that's sometimes lacking in policy discussions here.
That isn't going to work in my cubicle, or any kind of coding situation, really.
To every person who thinks this won't work out...

...neither will your amazing photo sharing website.
The victim in your link, if you look at the picture, was flying a single-rotor helicopter with what looks to be a 4+ foot wingspan.

The prototype in the Amazon video is an 8-rotor helicopter with little 4 to 6 inch wingspans. Anything that goes to production will have to pass FAA approval, so they will probably end up with some sort of hoop guard at the least.

Negativity for the sake of negativity?
4chan user sets himself on fire in live streamed suicide attempt
This would be a valid concern if it still would be 1999.
FYI the T220 (3840×2400!) already had 41hz back in 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors