skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why does this thing even have to land?

Can't it drop each package with a mini parachute from about roof-top level with good accuracy? Or even 10ft, just above the height of most kids, dogs, cars and adults.
Like the aircraft carrier and aircraft, you could have a delivery vehicle that acted as a quadracopter platform to take the item from van to house over shorter distances.
I wonder if I can get this in Australia. I know about the Catleap monitors but I'd like to think that Monoprice does some QA
It would be great if it would drop packages on my balcony. Then I don't have to be home but it's safe and I don't have to pick it up from the leasing office when they open.
Why would they announce it now. . . let's see a day before Cyber Monday and my guess is that 1) they are sincerely doing this, but 2) they are aware up the inevitable PR uptick the day before the busiest online shopping event of the year. Nice move to garner a lot a free attention that will result in greater overall (non-drone-delivered) sales.
the sbt point is really outdated; sbt 0.13 only ever requires you to use "foo := bar" (assign bar to foo), though one might choose to use convenience operators such as "foo += bar" (append bar to foo). sbt's syntax has been cleaned up nicely and now it has very clean syntax.
This is a startup opportunity. Amazon's competitors will want a drone delivery service even if they can't build the drones or service themselves.
Apparently tacocopter is closer to satire than a prank. It's a vision of how drones could be used in the future once regulation gets figured out.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120327/04431918256/why-yo...
Forensics is not a game. Hire a forensics firm if you need to following the above advice will leave with you with inadmissible evidence. Playing around with evidence is never a good idea.
Noise would be an issue with gas powered drones.
Make sure your 0.5-1 yrs also includes marketing time which is probably 2-10x the coding time.
That is not how the police work nor think about cases, though. One of the many reasons I dislike them.
My parents still buy EVERYTHING in brick and mortars. I work in a retail store, selling computers and accessories. People tell me it's dead, I can guarantee you it's not. Maybe when our parents generations are gone, but not until then.
Hey guys. I'm a simple man with a knack for trading. I have a situation here that's probably similar to some of you and I'm hoping any of you can shed some light. Got into bitcoin trading last 3 weeks ago on localbitcoins and I've made some gains due to recent spike in btc price. I've probably made purchases around $1,400 at most. Some of my deals were done with buyers who are also outside the country and converted to USD. Would that constitute my activities as illegal? I just recently read about the FINCEN regulation and I've now decided to stop trading bitcoins. Am I still obligated to register at FINCEN as an MSB even if I'm planning to discontinue after 3-4 weeks of trading? Would I be fine if I just honestly report my gains in my income tax? Or should I fear anyone coming knocking at my door? Please advise. Thanks so much and I would really appreciate it if you can shed some information.
Before quitting your job and writing a single line of code I would recommend you do this:

1. Validate your idea: It's great that YOU believe in your idea, but will others? Test it out, put up a landing page with your concept, see if people sign up to your mailing list. Talk to potential customers, are they willing to pay for your product? Can you get a paying customer before building the product?
Some interesting links:
http://thedannorris.com/is-startup-validation-bullshit/
http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-142-d...

2. Network with people who are successful: http://www.microconf.com/, tell them your idea and listen to their advice. Learn from all available resources such as: http://startupsfortherestofus.com/.

3. Learn about marketing, SEO and what it really takes to get the word out on your product. This is not trivial and successful founders on HN make it look easy, it's not. If you build it, they WILL NOT COME. Try to build a simple landing page that describes your product and start a blog. Don't start coding until you are able to get a steady stream of visitors to your site who are interested in your product.
Start here:
http://moz.com/learn/seo
http://moz.com/blog/the-noob-guide-to-online-marketing-with-...

Don't quit your job until you are absolutely sure you can make this work.

Good luck!
I'm imagining the code to plan the route of the autonomous truck as it accounts for travel time/range in and out for each delivery.

The truck never stops, optimizing its route for all the drones it has in the air.

Writing that code would be a pretty cool job.
There's some stuff about 64 bit over at http://xomb.org
Slick - Modern Database Query and Access Library for Scala
It seems like they only want to put pressure on the FAA. 3/4 FAQs mention the FAA.
Amazon Prime Air.
I assume the delivery must be made available on private property to avoid the case of stealing when the drone drops the package.

As for the shooting, well it is illegal and would be punished. The copter would very probably be equipped with a video camera with a feed streaming back home which would help recognize the attacker. Then after a few publicized examples, most people would cease such activities.
Try the Shooter Sandwich... you'll need a loaf of hard crusted Italian bread, 3 ribeye steaks 1 lb mushrooms, an onion, some bacon, and cheese.

http://imgur.com/a/ahZOF
To add more perspectives, here is a post I did on new networks my peers and I love (born in '92).

https://medium.com/experiences-of-a-student-hacker/8956121ff...
>What this really looks like is an unintentional leak of Amazon's next April 1st gag

… by CBS News? Don't think so.
Dustin Curtis' "response to the critcism" in that second link consists of:

1. Quoting a well-articulated email from yet another reader who felt deceived by the trickery; and,

2. (After a preface stating how he finds it amusing that so many people are bothered about this button) The following high-level technical overview of what happens behind the scenes when someone's kudos are volunteered willy-nilly:

Here’s what it actually does: when you hover over the button, a CSS transform animation is activated which fills
the circle. After 1 second (the length of the animation), it fires a request to the server which increments an
otherwise meaningless number by exactly one.

This is the full extent of his response. As far as I could figure out, this "response to criticism" addresses the following introductory paragraph of his interlocutor's email:

I was curious about the Kudos button you mention in your http://dcurt.is/web-standards article. I hovered over it
with my mouse pointer, and then it said “don’t move”. I didn’t move. Then it said “sent”. Apparently someone
invented a button that does not need to be pressed in order to be triggered.

And totally ignores the sentiment communicated by the more weighty second paragraph which concludes with:

I very humbly request that you kindly decrement the Kudos statistic by one unit in order to compensate for the
one that I definitely did not intend to send until it was forcefully withdrawn from me by a deceitful human
interface.

Did Dustin Curtis really miss the subtle (svbtle?) sarcasm of that first paragraph, or am I just imagining things?
Maritimes.

It snowed today and there was about six inches of slush on the roads, no plows out. Sure they salted the snot out of the roads but the slush was crazy.
Sounds nice, but I assume balcony drop off theft would rise as a result
They better start selling tacos as well, or I'm going to be disappointed.
A fair question, I suppose, but before judging too harshly it's worth remembering that many people do not want to be helped.
Except that Amazon will likely offer Drones As A Service, too. They have a pretty solid track record of offering their own technologies widely, even to competitors.
My personal theory is that Amazon hates being reliant on UPS and FedEx. I can't see Bezos being thrilled that so much of his empire relies on the Teamsters. Note that UPS's labor agreement with the Teamsters expires in the next few years. That poses a big risk to Amazon's infrastructure if there's labor unrest during the negotiation.

I've long suspected they were working towards a point where they could handle the last mile in house—this development doesn't surprise me at all.
I wonder how they'll stop this from being abused. From shooting them down with pellet guns to capturing them as they land.
"Amazon Fulfillment Center Alpha Bravo Six Six Ten, you are cleared hot pickle -- repeat, cleared hot pickle. Good hunting."
Explaining Big-O notation.
Volocopter - 18 Propellers
I take it that it's a defacto requirement that you always need to carry ID in the US?
She'll get off on a "tampering with evidence" loophole. Sick sick woman.
Fedora stops supplying you with any updates after ~1.5 years, RHEL (and theoretically CentOS) will support you for 10 years. Not only this but the software gets through extremely vigorous QA, certifications etc, unlike Fedora (and many other distros).

Fedora is the development workhorse from which RHEL versions are spawned and hardened.

In short, want to run a mission critical application for many years? Go RHEL (or CentOS if you do not care about support and extra bits or cannot afford it). Want more bleeding edge stuff and faster paced development and updates? Go Fedora.
Getting Started with the Homebrew Package Manager
The manual override for a horse is a bullet in the brain. Why do you think cowboys carried six shooters?
Amazon Ballistics. Coming in 2017.
yep, especially being automatically shot by competitors' hunter war-drones.

But hey, this is evolution. Birds have the same problems. It'll be alright :)
I expect that, if the service is moderately successful, buildings will quickly adapt somehow (roof landing pads, "drone flaps" etc).

I guess some of the answers related to actual Amazon policy will be clarified whenever the service actually starts (i.e. 2015 at the least).
This is nice. Would like to see more information added to the docs with a description of what each pattern is.
Karmic justice? Extralegal justice that I dislike personally. That's like being okay with rape in prisons, cause "they get what they deserve"...
I completely agree with this posting. REST seems to be an api antipattern but it has gained a lot of traction because its easy to write.

As a response to SOAP, REST seems like a relief. But dialing back abstraction to the level of CRUD seems like a completely bad idea.

Getting home for dinner does seem like a benefit to the typist.
as long as there's free delivery/cheap delivery I would agree. However if the delivery charges are half the price of the item. No thanks, will go my ways finding the same deal in local dealers.
Edit: I forgot about pickups, I guess that counts as online. Maybe true, then
Above the 2nd floor, it would be quite hard to pull off.
That looks pretty amazing, I'm rather tempted to try it.
Loved the tomato firmware. Bought a Netgear R6300 with the hopes that it would be supported. Looks like it will never happen. Regret that decision.
South Korea (shrug).
From what I heard, China & Japan aren't much different.
100x back in a few years? So the market cap will be >1T, and Satoshi will be the richest man (?) on earth? Don't think so. Maybe 10x, and the chance of this is probably not great enough to balance against a crash.

Good call divesting some of your BTC in favor of physical assets.
Until a few years ago, Oberon-2 was the programming language of choice in the first year of CS at my university (except for a small course on C++). They use Python and more C++ now.
Will there be pirate drones that fly around looting the Amazon drones?
Air cannon + http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Kyk... ??? (bounce landing) :)
var win = window.open(some_url_on_the_same_domain);

or

var parent = window.parent;

Now, you can access global variables on either parent or win.
Jeff Bezos’ big 60 Minutes reveal: Delivery drones and private cloud
Driverless cars. 3D printers. Unmanned drone deliveries. This is gearing up to be the future I've always imagined. I couldn't be more excited and nervous.
The Amazon USPS Sunday shipping has started too. I ordered something Friday and it showed up at 10am today (Today is Sunday, for those of you reading in the future).
I don't know where you heard 2016, he said 4-5 years, and that's being optimistic. From the transcript:

Jeff Bezos: And, you know, I don’t want anybody to think this is just around the corner. This is years of additional work from this point. But this is…

Charlie Rose: But will ‘years’ mean five, 10?

Jeff Bezos: I think, I, I am, I’m an optimist Charlie. I know it can’t be before 2015, because that’s the earliest we could get the rules from the FAA. My guess is that’s, that’s probably a little optimistic. But could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.
I know they said it about the milkman, about the Ice delivery guy, about the postman, the morse code telegram specialist, the travel agent and soon, the bank clerk, and anything else brick and mortar. And I know I'm old fashioned and sound like I'm against innovation and progress. (I'm not)
But sadly all I can think of is the unemployed delivery people this is going to replace
A recent trip to the Westfield Mall showed that's just about happened already. Almost every store there was selling clothing or some other product people would want to try before they buy. I you have to wonder with online delivery becoming the norm if those kinds of retail shops will become more marketing showrooms than drivers of actual sales for brands.
They are going to the same place all of MySpace's users went: to the next fad. Teens are a fickle bunch; each crop wants to feel like they are different, avant-garde, trend-setting.
Another travesty of monoculture.
Amazon’s big surprise: Flying drones will deliver packages to customer doorsteps
Um, $165 isn't bad for a cashmere sweater (though to be honest I don't know anything about the quality of the stuff on this site). I took note because I don't know of a custom shirt place in Boulder, and I miss the 3 or 4 that were near my place in Houston. I hear professional women really appreciate having nice custom shirts as well.
For the first couple frames I thought this was ridiculous, a la Epic Meal Time[1]. The surprise ending has me thinking "brilliant" now...

[1] http://www.youtube.com/user/EpicMealTime
been running various Tomato flavors w/VPN for many years, first on WRT54GL, now Asus RT-N16. currently run Toastman builds [1] but Shibby [2] is good too.

[1] http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir...

[2] http://tomato.groov.pl/download/K26RT-N/
A possible solution for the location issues: why not have it deliver to a predetermined booth-like location? Think: Redbox.

Of course, this would be much more valuable if it was set up as a open-source-ish thing (where, for instance, an HOA could set up a "Amazon AirPad" for free). But this would greatly reduce some of the problems otherwise inherent in a delivery system like this, such as (but not limited to):
Apartments (or duplexes, for that matter), pet/child liabilities, cars, slightly-off coordinates that result in your neighbor or your pool being the drop-off spot, highly dense neighborhoods, highly wooded areas, no-doorstep apartments, etc.
I can imagine these will become a nuisance.
Wouldn't it be something if the drones could wait around for a few mins to allow you to inspect the items for return? :-)
Wouldn't it make sense for a drone to bring you a size to try on? If it's right - you keep it ... if not, you send it back via the drone in exchange for a different size?
what happened to the third steak?
BBC - Amazon: The Truth Behind the Click
It would be really cool if they sent a companion drone for high value items, or maybe even a fleet. You know, for pictures, not artillery or anything..
I never saw that '99 special on Bezos. I was surprised to see how cheerful he was at the time. He always seems so stern and serious these days - a man to be feared and respected rather than mocked for being playful.
Apart from the Scifi-ness of having drones work well in the best of conditions, the back-up infrastructure required to support bad conditions would seem to make the whole venture unrealistic.

Let's say that a little drone could reliably carry a package to doorsteps 10 miles away. Let's assume that it can navigate past trees and power lines and kite strings and so forth.

So Amazon builds up these service centers with hundreds of drones delivering packages in a metro area to meet their delivery time commitments.

Then you get a few weeks of bad weather: regular daily thunderstorms, snow storms, a great deal of gusty weather, etc.

Do the delivery time commitments have caveats for consistently bad weather? Unless you live in California, you have to deal with days and days of rain or other foul weather that will eliminate a drone's ability to fly safely, much less be able to deliver a small package without damaging the contents.

When that happens, Amazon will need to maintain a fleet of trucks with drivers to take over. Maintaining that capacity will deeply cut into the profit of their business model.
What prevents a company from offering a time-limited preview of an ebook?
I'm pretty sure you missed the "impossible to detain" line in his post, or misunderstood it. There is not necessarily a way to commit a mentally ill person in CA if they're not a threat to themselves or others.
T is covariant (positive) if A ≤: B ⇒ T<A> ≤: T<B>. T is contravariant (negative) if A ≤: B ⇒ T<B> ≤: T<A> (i.e., the other way around). Pretty simple stuff.
I personally had no problem importing the famed video of Obama beating a tax payer to death with a quadcopter, though your mileage may vary.
"I suspect most people use AdBlock not because of ads but because of the degraded performance"

Oh come on. Practically speaking, "most people" don't care about the "degradation" of a site due to Javascript. Most people wouldn't even know what that meant.
She was in a "care home" and checked herself out against doctor's orders. I wasn't in a position to have her live with me, and had been dealing with her illness for about 30 years and was, quite frankly, so frustrated and burnt out that I had given up.

I had no resources to work with, what the hell was I to do?

Edit: I shared my story for 2 reasons. The first was to point out that these "bums" are somebody's family member -- it's easy to forget that. The other was the bit about rethinking what to do with them. I think the "monastery" approach is the most humane and cost effective.
Definitely. Time to start writing it now in time for the hardware to catch up!
Hacker news is a good tool to use to test your site's scalability. Lol
I wonder if this will impact their relationship with couriers.

I guess it's mostly been smooth sailing until now (as Amazon grew, so did they), but this is an actual threat to their business model. Amazon would still need a large amount of classic logistics, but couriers would lose the final mile.

Courier drivers might want to consider a career change very soon.
TWERKING Fail REMIX
The only way I could imagine this working in even moderately densely populated areas is with some sort of landing pad. Maybe it's as simple as laying out a ~3' square cardboard pad with a QR code or some other fiducials, or maybe as complex as an active beacon or GPS enabled pad.

Avoiding powerlines seems like a fairly tough problem as well. Are drone-sized object sensors (ultrasonic? LIDAR?) accurate enough to see thin power lines?
It's probably been patented already.
I imagine much of the time the best optimization would end up being a single drone.
I'm pretty certain they are serious. Internally, I don't know if they really think this is going to become something right away, but I think AMZ knows that there's possibility in this field and I think they hope that this move spurs some research and progress in this area by other companies and kickstarts the needed legal structure from the government agencies in question.

If this develops more promise they will be well positioned to take advantage of it.
It depends on what you mean by a "good" job. Can you get a job @ Google/FB/Twitter/etc. Probably not. But to be honest, as an entry lvl engineer without an Ivy League degree you'll have trouble getting an interview.

If you just want a job where you can build cool things and make 80k+ just out of school. That's definitely possible. There are a lot more companies out there that just want to get shit done and shipped versus ones that wan't to nitpick over 100ms of performance.

As you advance your career, you can spend time learning to do obscure data structure manipulation in C. So you can go for that job @ Google. Who knows, maybe you will discover being an engineer gets boring by working for a smaller company where you get to interface with clients, stakeholders, etc.
> I have an infant

No.
A College Kid Made Over $24,000 Yesterday Just By Waving This Sign On ESPN
I think Bezos is wondering how society will respond. It is up to us. Some will welcome this as an improvement in delivery efficiency and service. Some will say it will make our cities crowded and noisy not only on the streets with cars and trucks, but in the sky too.

I like my blue silent sky. I recall scenes of sci-fi worlds like the 5th Element. I suggest we tax externalities. If you order by sky, you'll create visual and noise pollution to many people, and you should pay a tax for this, to be shared by the community as a whole.

My take is that Bezos wants to see how society will respond to this. A high tax would kill his ROI, and he won't invest much in R&D. If we say "Nice! We want this" he will double down.
Robert Putnam concluded that the less a society has in common in terms of background, culture, heritage and values, the more alienated it becomes:

http://boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_d...

Soon we're going to be a society where no one trusts anyone else, and thus it will be better to ignore the CP flowing around instead of getting involved. Reminds me of the mentality they have in third world countries about the local gangster warlords. Hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing.
Sorry, I was agreeing with you, I've seen pretty much that exact question asked when people talk about autonomous vehicles delivering packages and here we have a huge logistics company playing with the answer.
> Not a new idea.

Who cares? Why do people always feel compelled to make this kind of comment?
Well they have to say private cloud, but seriously would you host your stuff on a service that hosts the CIA? Its a government hackers wet dream.

I feel bad for amazon on this one. They wont see it coming.