skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that a lot of comments here are missing a crucial point: in the next few years unmanned vehicles are going to play a major role in most of the transportation landscape, whereas this is for people or objects.

Amazon here is trying to play the same role that Google has been playing for a long time with their self driving cars. They are setting a standard and pushing for regulations and laws.

It is not that difficult to think that the future of unmanned vehicles won't be as naive as people may think. There will probably be a combination of different sets of vehicles that would go around for large distances and/or sizes, and different vehicles covering smaller distances and/or sizes. They can be used in series to optimize the traveling salesman problem in terms of what's powering these vehicles.

It's not that different from thinking of an ant-like distribution system.

And not that different from the Google approach of crawling the web, then crawling the actual world with google street view cars, eventually moving into self driving cars. Except you'll also get lots of metadata with it, that can be used and sold.

Amazon is now part of the game, moving the attention to drones and self flying objects.
...good question. Since it suggests waiting 4 hours for the sandwich to press flat, maybe you could eat one of the steaks in the meantime as a snack? Just an idea.
When I tried to emails jobs.engineers@adroll.com it didn't go through, specifically I got a reply from mailer-daemon@googlemail.com saying:
We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (jobs.engineers) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group. A few more details on why you weren't able to post:

* You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
* The owner of the group may have removed this group.
* You may need to join the group before receiving permission to post.
* This group may not be open to posting.

If you have questions related to this or any other Google Group, visit the Help Center at http://support.google.com/a/adroll.com/bin/topic.py?topic=25....

Thanks,

adroll.com admins
What is causing you to create URLs without trailing slashes? 99% of all web frameworks allow for optional trailing slash. Go to any website. A url with or without a trailing slash typically works, it either redirects to no trailing slash or just renders the same page.
That's a very good point!

I might counter-argue that at some point there's no doubt and being permanently removed from the pool of people who are alive might be OK.

What I mean is that if someone is attempting to murder me and I manage to kill them first that it was a justifiable homicide and that I shouldn't be punished in any way. That's in the law and it even makes sense to a great many people even if they're not lawyers, and even if they don't know the finer points of the law. In that situation there is no doubt, or perhaps no reasonable doubt and the law does effectively judge people to be competent to make precisely that decision.

Part of what makes this so difficult is that she actually wielded vast power due to her position. In many ways she was far, far more powerful than a judge or a prosecutor. A judge can't just unilaterally accuse someone of a worse crime just because, nor can a prosecutor reasonably trump charges up too much without getting called out for bad behavior. But it seems that this lady did precisely that, totally perverting justice.

If an accountant cooks the books it might be professional misconduct (and criminal!) and people might lose their jobs and all of that is terrible. But that accountant can't somehow make all the employees of the company go to jail by doing something wrong.

The power that this lady had and the extent to which she abused it is simply breathtaking.
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Sometimes I don't get how articles move to hn front page...
Ask HN: Any resources to joining a youth programming charity?
I'm trying to find an organization that focuses on:

- Teaching kids to program

- Finding kids resources to program

- Getting kids exposed to IT

So far I've found Code.org and CoderDojo.org. I'm not necessarily looking to be involved in some large organization, but more help local youths get exposed to programming. I'd really love for the devs at our smallish company to get involved too.

I don't really have time to establish a system on my own, so any resources to help out would be amazing.
"This drone will auto-destruct and explode in 10 seconds. 10,9,8..."
Brick and mortars ought to pivot into the showroom business, à la Sony or Apple stores. That is practically what many have become (cough Best buy cough); the least they can do is charge manufacturers/distributors for display space.
I think that people blame the ads for the performance and experience issues and that's what causes them to search for ad blockers rather than the getting rid of ads for the sake of getting rid of ads. I might of course be wrong.
I loved BeOS and the C++ application framework... except for the linking model.

You had to provide re-linked executables for every new version of BeOS that came out. It was exceedingly lame to go to an application download page and have to select the version of the application that corresponded to the version of BeOS you installed.

Then when you upgraded your OS, you had to upgrade ALL of your applications. Sure, there were some framework upgrades that didn't necessitate a re-linked application, but as a user you never really knew which those were so had to do a full upgrade of everything to be sure.
I don't think that rain, snow, or modest winds should be problematic for any properly equipped drone.
Isn't that pretty much the same thing? Satoshi didn't mention Wei Dai until Adam pointed him out to him.
That's not the infrastructure they want to replace: it's the couriers who deliver the ultra-high priority packages.
Sam sees the flaw in his own argument - when he mentions gold and the possibility of its use a store of value. But he doesn't understand the full significance of his own comment. Moldbug has by far the most compelling (imo) theory on the origin of money and why bitcoin (and gold) float far above their use value. These two posts cover it very well:

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-mone...

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/04/bitcoin...

I highly recommend them to anyone trying to understand the economics of bitcoin
http://www.amazon.com/primeair

When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option?

A: We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time.

Sorry, but not a chance. I'm intimately familiar with the flight controller, motor and batter technology behind multi-rotors, and I can state unequivocally that this is just not ready for 'prime'-time (so-to-speak :)

There are multiple issues still to be addressed, not least of which is battery energy density & power-to-weight ratio.

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

Battery technology will improve, safety issues will be addressed, regulations will change. But 2015? Jeff, I admire your optimism!
IMHO China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Abu-Dhabi, etc. can't be happy with US printing trillions of USD every year. They need a stable currency to keep their enourmous savings in, but the Fed monetary policy is eroding those savings. Bitcoins would be a perfect alternative. If governments start buying them, the total value can easily go > 1T.

Plus are you implying that hackers, like Bill Gates, Larry Page and Satoshi, can't possibly be (or deserve to be) ultra-rich?
> problems that a human on a bike wouldn't have

Seriously, why the need for flight? Why not unicycle delivery drones?
H1B is just too limited and you need a lot of luck and good timing to get it. So I would choose another way (besides trying to win the Greencard lottery, which you can try once a year):

1. Apply for Google in Zurich (or for that matter any other big company near Zurich with a big office in the US)

2. After a year transfer to the US. You get a L1 visa without a problem. There's no limit for this type of visa like e.g. the H1B has and if you're married your wife or husband is also allowed to work.

3. If you'd like to stay for longer start the greencard process as soon as you arrive in the US with the help of your company. If you're a Swiss citizen this should take between 1-1.5 years.

With a master from ETH I would expect 100k+ plus equity. If it's a later stage startup or a bigger company the base salary will be higher plus an extra bonus (stock will be on top of that). Everything else would be a weak offer and you should probably reject.

I wouldn't care about housing before you have a job here. There's no usable public transport here (Caltrain works, but only if your home and work are close enough to one of the stations and it's also not very reliable. So not comparable to Zurich at all). If you use your car to get to work you should expect lots of traffic, so I would always prefer to be close to work. With your background you should earn enough to find something.

You will earn more and have less taxes in Zurich and your living standard will be higher in Switzerland. But here in Silicon Valley you will learn more and the weather is more enjoyable than in Zurich.
Drones currently being used to bring medicine to inaccessible areas in Africa
If the most significant difference between a bus/train and a self driving car is the ability to deliver you to your doorstep, I will take the bus/train. Think of the benefits - you don't need to buy and maintain the self-driving car, and hence all the other things like insurance, parking etc. The city doesn't have to build more and more roads. Get a bit of exercise walking to your door. Really, I think these self-driving cars are just the auto manufacturers trying to extend the lifetime of their products.
Say you could navigate the package from the warehouse to a persons property, how would you deliver the package while eliminating the risk of injury? My thought would be to have the drone phone home so that a real human could perform/oversee this last stage of delivery. In cities you could see if delivering to a rooftop is feasible to avoid having to negotiate sidewalks/people.

A lot of obstacles in the way here but I would love to see
this succeed. I envision a world where a table sized gas powered version of this could carry more packages futher.
Seriously. There are reasons US prisoners keep going back in and part of it is the focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation. Haven't the US a whole amendment dedicated to not using beatings or shankings as a punishment? I wish more people would reflect on why that was considered a good idea back in the day.
I'm trying to escape PHP, but terminal velocity is hard to achieve since now I have Laravel to work with. I'm looking to venture off either into JVM space or Go.
I think that would be the most amazing thing ever. Skies filled with drone battles between various online retailers and pirates trying to steal the cargoes. Imagine Black Friday.

This is a future I look forward to.
> Maintaining that capacity will deeply cut into the profit of their business model.

What profit?
I did not know that. I suppose Sam Knows ;)?
If you lookup the history you will learn that, for example, a I-highways in the USA were build for military first, in order to quickly move people and military around the states. Its only later on has been opened to the public.

I say the FAA will keep the air to police, fire departments, cia, fbi, etc, before they open it up to private solutions. Most likely 10 years from now.
The author isn't wanting to write invalid headers. He's wanting to write perfectly valid headers that the framework he's using didn't allow him to write.

When the framework treats a a valid http header as invalid the framework is probably using the wrong abstraction for http headers.
Roof-mounted miniature helipad mailboxes, painted with QR codes. Really, why don't houses already have package receptacles for UPS and FedEx?
It's just another option to add to the mix. Not everyone chooses next-day delivery, not everyone will choose 30-min delivery; the classic delivery infrastructure will likely remain in place. The service will just periodically be disabled: "due to severe weather in your area, PrimeAir is currently not available. Please check back later, or choose standard delivery."
One in ten Americans, and likely a much larger portion of Amazon's customer base, and probably an even larger fraction of their revenues, is in California. So even if this only worked here, it could still be a wise investment.
This reminds me of Torteria Barriga Llena[1] in Seattle. Large amounts of assorted meats compressed between bread. And spicy!

[1] http://www.labarrigallena.com/ENGmenu.html
Amazon Unveils Delivery Drones on 60 Minutes
Or send multiple at once, keep the one that fits.
I agree, in context. If she's purposely stolen years and years from others' lives, she needs to be held accountable for each and every instance. And the idea that this happened in a laboratory doesn't make it any milder...this is, in my opinion, far worse than most violent crimes.

I think the time served should be very long, given that most of our violent crimes have very long terms.

That said, I think we need to revisit very long terms. I don't know the answers, but I think that taking decades for seconds of rage, etc, can be extremely harsh.

I hope we can amend this system, or eliminate the need for it, someday. To me, I'm equally or even more scared of prosecutors that have the power to destroy my life as I am of thugs on the street that have that power.

It's far scarier in cases like this, where they only risk a slap on the wrist balanced against absolutely destroying lives.

I literally cannot imagine losing years in prison, when you have so few already.
Ok, so what's the cost of delivering a one pound payload one mile by drone?
I thought this would come but in the form of how military drones are flown today - with a pilot sitting back at Amazon HQ.
>We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015

Well, it is carefully crafted to say the rules will be in place, not the technology. The FAA could say Amazon needs to do X first where X is any one of the challenges you mentioned.

I'm glad they put that in, though, because otherwise the threads are always full of "The FAA will never allow this" comments. The wording gives me a reassuring feeling that Amazon knows how much hard work it will take to accomplish.
totally stunning.
Markerting stunt
This article offers the best, most detailed explanation for why there are so many homeless in the streets of SF and why that's not going to change anytime soon: http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/arise-tender...
Could you summarize the most valuable points discussed beyond what a typical layperson already knows about the idea of flow?
Akihabara's original mom-and-pop electronics store is closing after 64 years
Yay! Buy $8 DVD using stolen credit card, get free drone.
How to hopefully get accepted a conference.
That implies that they can get the manufacturers to pay them. BTW, explicit manufacturer showcasing is pretty uncommon today. You have the manufacturers' stores (Apple, Microsoft) and you have some limited showcasing in large retailers like B&H for photo. But it's pretty uncommon.
I agree. His theory sounds like a reach, and rises to the height of absurdity; who could buy such a story?

...I'll stop now.
How I Think Windows Phone Will Win The Mobile OS Wars
*get free jail time
I've flown gas and electric helicopters and airplanes as a hobby over the years. These small aircraft are very susceptible to bad weather. They're already going to be carrying a significant load with an attached package.

They won't be able to handle a great deal of weather adversity.
I was SURE this would be about some new Android operating system.

Times must be pretty hard for the HN community, given the level of interest in this post.

Or is this a manifestation of engineers' need to optimise, maximum calories for minimum cost? Reading the article and comments, it seems unreasonably palatable...

A memory from my childhood: Toast with butter and sugar sprinkled on top. For dessert...
Like everything else in a civilized country--laws and insurance. Does UPS have a problem with drivers being ambushed or held hostage?
Cars aren't that noisy, and drones are going to be high up in any case.
This should be pretty awesome for returns, too. Ideally, I could actually trade my old item for the new with a drone.
Sounds like the wiki needs an update, then.
Seiki is still HDMI/1.x and doesn't support 60FPS. Nor will it help gaming at it's limit refresh rate. The good is that they're putting pressure on the big brands. If it was HDMI/2.0, I'd be all over it.
But she didn't think she was being evil. She somehow persuaded herself that what she was doing was okay.

And Hitler, Stalin and Mao didn't?

Clue time: Nobody thinks they're the bad guy.
Yeah, there are countless things that used to be hot among teens that have gone by the wayside, so I think the rumors of Facebook's demise are greatly exaggerated. AOL Instant Messenger, LiveJournal, Xanga... These were all great ways to communicate as a teen that were adult-free, yet there was very little staying power and/or a lack of massive general-population growth for any of them.

And many of these services aren't exactly "competing" with FB any more than SMS is, or AIM was in 2004 when Facebook started (a lot of the discussion about group chat services sounds remarkably like teens (re)discovering a mobile form of AIM circa 2000). Acquisition attempts still make sense if FB sees them as complimentary products with their own potential for massive growth instead of purely defensive moves. Maybe one of the newcomers will have more luck in that space than AOL did.

On the other hand, it's hard to elucidate what exactly will give Facebook more staying power than past attempts. Possibly simply being the first to have such a large, cross-demographic user base? I know adults of all ages who use it to keep in touch with other adults, and I also know teens who use it to keep in touch with other teens. And of course there's also some cross talk between those bases. There aren't a lot of other products attempting to do exactly the same thing, and of those that have, even Google hasn't been able to unseat FB. The core use of FB seems to be a little different for everyone, but it also seems to be comparatively competitor-free.
"food not bums"? i think you mean "food not bombs"
2nd follow-up (can't edit my first). Wow, the DeLong piece is really epic. Graeber's caught in multiple errors (or faleshoods, or lies), gets epicly trolled by DeLong (a bit harsh, but ... on balance, called for), retaliates with taunting, name calling, and legal threats, anything but an "um, sorry, yeah, you were right", and ...

As I said before: Graeber's premise is interesting, but he's definitely tainted goods from here on out, and I'll have to verify any of his claims/statements before using them elsewhere.

Pity.
True. I suspect that most places with a fair number of people, even in semi-rural or rural areas, in the US have a walmart within 30 minutes.

Since this service would defeat the purpose of Wal-Mart, I can't see Wal-Mart supporing it, unless there were a merger with Amazon.

But the fact that there are so many Wal-Marts suggests that it might be possible to build sufficient infrastructure that mostly covers the continental US, for example.
I'm just saying, if you look at off the rack dress shirts they'll be $30-$60, similarly with most of the other items. Sure, it might be better quality, and it'll certainly fit better, but I can't afford $1600 for ten shirts. $400 sounds a lot better, and I'm not jumping up to run and get that deal either.
> Resolution isn't the only consideration when buying a new monitor.

Sure it is! Reading on a monitor is pure torture ever since I bought a Retina MBP. If this is anywhere close to being affordable (realistically: no) I'd buy it for that reason alone.
Are there any startups working on anti-piracy technology for drones? Imagine criminals targeting high value deliveries and knocking these guys out of the air with their own drones.
Yeah sure, you're right. The CEO is probably an alien. There is no way a Bulgarian company could see the majority of it's customers are from Russia and adapt by offering convenient payment methods. Never mind that Russia is the biggest country in Europe and it's heavily policing outgoing bank transfers.
Ah, only 100mbit and 802.11B/G.

I'm not familiar with anything past simple networking - is it possible to prevent your whole network being slowed to 100mbit while still using this device?
So is Europe currently.

Link is 404'ing now.
Challenges for Amazon Prime Air
Welcome to the future. This is incredible, although it looks like a page Google would put up for April Fools.
Well, you know, Bezos is a pretty smart guy. So maybe he knows something about this technology that the rest of us don't.

Maybe he has an upper hand over the current state-of-the-art.
Most explanations for Adblock are made in terms of HTTP Requests, so most people are concerned with performance. They may not know all the full story, as the typical web dev likely would, but your characterization is not offbase nor unjustified.

In any event, MrPleb's dismissive response is unwarranted.
It's still a question of capacity. Any drone deliveries that need to be made will take away from other delivery capacity. Given that standard vehicle delivery will be much more time consuming and much less parallelized than the drone delivery, drone outages will place a thrashing level of load on standard delivery unless a great deal of unutilized standard delivery capacity is kept idle most of the time.

That costs money.

[edit: typo fixed]
Life-long Boston area resident here. On my only visit to SF, what I observed was that the homeless people I saw were much more aggressive than their Boston counterparts. They were very much in the face of the people they were interacting with. Also, I saw a lot more of them. Weather? Generosity? I don't know.
Show HN: I made this as a project for a human-computer interaction class.
Expect deliveries by driverless cars before deliveries by drones
Given the shadow thrown on Graeber's credibility, I'd say you'll have to treat him similarly to Wikipedia: not a credible primary source. I also found his origin-of-money passages fascinating, but would have to trace those to their sources before I'd believe them.
This reminds me of my dad teaching me how to make a "poor man's burger" when you don't have any beef. Basically you just toast the bun and then throw on all the condiments.

It's surprising how close it tastes without any actual burger.

Now I'm thinking instead of toasting the bun, I should leave it cold and put toast inside as the "beef".