skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Being someone that considers himself literate in the mattress industry, as my wife runs a humble mattress storage and distribution firm I totally agree that the prices I could see visiting on the US are way over the top. If I lived there, well, making/selling mattresses must be a profitable business from the retail pricing I could see. Mind you I was on Silicon Valley which I imagine must be very pricy.

The website is really beautiful. Well done. It almost makes you feel I have to buy this!!! I think that's the key point.

Because apart from that... well... there's a rule in business that is you get what you pay for. Even if mattress retailers are making a fortune on margins, well you guys also have margins too. And a retail price of $299..to..$499-king tells me that your mattresses are very low end.

So the website is beautiful but very misleading. Like the infographic about the cost of making a mattress. It probably should title it "Here is how a cheap mattress is marked up". Because there is mattresses and mattresses. Tons of variations, fabrics and qualities. And well.. you're not even selling mattresses or at least we don't call that a mattress here ( Spain ) but a mat instead. It is just too thin. Less than half the thickness of a regular mattress. Then of course, the fact that is made of foam only makes it worse as with that thickness it will unavoidable deform with usage. Who tells otherwise is lying or just very new to the business plainly because all foam mattresses deform to some degree.

Then there is the foam density, that I can't see anywhere in the specs. And as you can guess when you import materials the bigger the density the more expensive the foam sheets are. But hey, people today demand cheap prices. But anyways, mattresses these days tend to have lesser foam densities as people want cheaper prices. But of course that comes with the cost of deformability and that's why mattresses these days don't last that much as they used to in the past.

One thing that tells how good your marketing efforts are is that the mattress is foldable. Someone not used to mattress would think: AWESOME. Some used would think, oh no another crappy sofa-bed mat. I'd never recommend anyone to buy a foldable bed unless for an apartment with very low space and of course... for a sofa-bed!

So my summary would be: really well done making attractive a low-end product. The marketing is excellent and you definitely found a market out there. The website is beautiful but well.... you sell what you sell, tons of half-truths on it.
Firefox currently disables the 300ms delay only if zooming is disabled (either with user-scalable=no or by setting identical min-zoom and max-zoom).

We are discussing whether to follow Chromium's lead and also disable double-tap on pages with width=device-width:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=941995

(I am a mobile Firefox developer.)
The watchdog library is great for this. It comes with an API and a command line tool:
https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog

Compatibility:

Linux 2.6 (inotify)
Mac OS X (FSEvents, kqueue)
FreeBSD/BSD (kqueue)
Windows (ReadDirectoryChangesW with I/O completion ports; ReadDirectoryChangesW worker threads)
OS-independent (polling the disk for directory snapshots and comparing them periodically; slow and not recommended)
Interesting. I do visualize in my head how kinetic energy depletes as it goes higher and potential energy increases. It is like a bubble that shrinks. I see motion vectors and how they change.

I do similar sorts of things... it is excellent that you have trained yourself to think that way. But for time critical tasks such as catching a fly ball, that doesn't work so well. We have lots of different processes we use for different situations.
The top comment has an interesting suggestion for why this is done:

[…] this is how people in local governments make money in Russia:

Step 1: have a $100,000 of tax money budget for fixing the pavement on street XYZ
Step 2: pay your nephew's 'construction company' $10,000 for the 'work' they did
Step 3: pocket $90,000 of tax money
Step 4: oh noes!! the road cracked AGAIN! not AGAIN!! oh well, guess gotta go fix it
Step 5: goto Step 1	Today 1:36am
> Wouldn't it be better to work on a standardized way to embed images in email

We have that already, it's part of MIME. The external images are used only for tracking, potential bandwidth savings, and incompetence.
I thought I'd seen a similar post on HN before so I searched and found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1701914 (Ask HN: review my mattress startup, 1182 days ago) with almost no discussion, but they are still around. (I recall a post with more discussuon about a mattress startup based in DC but I can't find that post. Maybe it was the same folks.) Anyway, this has apparently been tried before, so while the idea may not be completely novel, congrats on the execution so far.

Personally when my wife and I needed a new mattress about ten years ago, I knew that mattress shopping was a miserable experience, but I had recently stayed in a Weston on business, found the mattress quite comfortable, and learned that they sold their bed. So after my trip I put my wife up for a night at a Weston, she agreed about the bed, and that's what we ended up with. I think it's much more common now for the hotel chains to offer their beds for sale, but I beleive the Weston was one of the first chains to do so.

I'm quite sure this was a great way to overpay for a mattress, but even if it was $1000 (which I think it was for the king), amortized over the decade of use a mattress is good for doesn't seem too bad.
"fmt" hmm is he going to tell me what "fmt" stands for (bc I'm not gonna look it up right now)? ... Nope, ok then, "foment", I'm going with "foment".
It's not just java - any good OO platform has those problems. If you don't have that problem, it's worse: that tends to mean you failed to abstract away critical concepts like factories, and that you will have a hard time elsewhere, for example in testing (this is what you often see in C#, for instance) or with global state (a common issue in ruby code).

There is of course an alternative: use a function rather than a factory; but that's kind of the point of this discussion :-).

(Before we start a flame war: This isn't a criticsm of ruby or C# specifically, it's just something I've seen a lot in those code bases. Both languages allow writing factories or using lambdas.)
They work fine for me. There's two types of images, embedded images and external images. Embedded ones always got shown, and it's the external ones that are the issue.
At one point I almost went crazy researching mattresses. I like to know what I am buying, but the industry is non-transparent. The same product can have different names depending on where it is sold.

BTW, another product like this is range hoods.

I'm impressed that you tried to break into this business. I thought the existing companies would have it tied up because of their distribution channels. I did look at latex mattresses at the time, but they were an expensive niche. About the only viable alternative to the traditional mattress industry were the foam mattresses being produced overseas.
Nah, I understand all of what you've written, I just find it sophomoric and pretty poorly thought out. I'll be glad to engage you in discussion once YOU mentally mature past the age of fourteen.
Ah, correction noted, thanks.
Employee retention, How to run a post-mortem with humans and more | SLW
Well, I'm not suggesting they do my idea instead of what they've done. I'm suggesting they do it in addition to what they've done.

I hate the delay between tapping the screen and the "click" being recognised. It drives me up the wall. I'd far rather switch off "Double-tap to zoom" for all pages (not just those with the relevant meta-tag) and use pinch-to-zoom instead.

There are obviously very good reasons to not disable "Double-tap to zoom" entirely or by default (primarily accessibility, but also the fact that people have gotten used to it) but where's the downside in making it a Setting so that people like me can choose to disable it? Okay, maybe the upside is quite small but there's zero downside and (given that they've already implemented the ability to switch "Double-tap to zoom" off if the webpage has the relevant meta-tag) it would be relatively easy to implement.

Making stuff like this user-configurable is a Good Thing. It's like when Apple changed the behaviour of the iPad's side switch in iOS 4.2 to switch it from rotation lock to audio mute and Steve Jobs said there wouldn't be a configuration option to let users change the switch back to rotation-lock [1]. A lot of people (including me) were disappointed. Fortunately, he changed his mind and iOS 4.3 made the function of the side-switch user-configurable in the Settings.

[1]: http://9to5mac.com/2010/10/23/jobs-there-wont-be-a-mute-swit...
There is almost zero app breakage potential. Because the implementation shouldn't be refusing permissions, it should simply be mocking them. Ask for a location? Mock it to an arbitrary location. Asking for contacts? Return an empty list, or a list with joe.smith@example.org. Etc.
True.

But most of these folks didn't have DBA's or even OPS engineers before they became customers.

Mostly they are teams of developers, they have developed the application and have (I think correctly) worried about the customer experience, code base, IP, performance, etc.

They do want the database driver API (in this case MongoDB) to just work beyond the interface. Backups, scaling, filesystems, etc they want to be part of the service, and just handled.

This is true for new business and it's true for businesses that are developing new apps or new projects or even projects that can't scale out on other infrastructure.

Full disclosure: I wrote the article in question ;-).
This is so awesome! I'm excited to see manufacturing and technology coming together. Do you guys manufacture in the USA? I'm of the opinion that this type of manufacturing is what can bring jobs back to America. Good luck, I'm going to show your listing to my wife, see if we can buy.
this library should actually be called "phpify"
That renamed-same-mattress-from-store-to-store BS was actually my favorite part of purchasing my bed, but this product is awesome and next time I need a bed it will more than likely be this one.
My favorite pithy insight on this subject is from McConnel's code complete (mangled, most likely):

"Code is usually read more times than it is written."
Bostrom's simulation "argument" is really embarrassingly stupid. "The real world might be a simulation" is not only not probably true; it's false by definition, because the real world is definitionally not a simulation.
Based on his previous two papers which detail a way of determining the value of various research projects, I'm inclined to say yes, he's serious. Either that or I'm unable to hear the whoosh.
Haha! This article is doing a number on my impostor syndrome.
I really wouldn't have guessed. When I think e-commerce, I think Amazon, eBay, NewEgg.... Do you happen to have any numbers on it? Finding e-commerce numbers is already pretty hard, and finding numbers for an aggregator like Google Shopping seems just about impossible.
Play video games to help military secure its software
> That said, spotting an expert outside of one’s field is a task one can become better at. And that’s important, given just how much information, good and bad, is not available to people. For example, is the expert associated with a university (a good sign) or some 'think tank' (a bad sign)?" Again, though, this takes experience and expertise. Groups like think tanks try to give themselves the trappings of expertise in a move specifically designed to fool us into trusting their statements.

This bothered me. I recall someone's response to a politician's rhetorical question as to why there were conservative think tanks but no liberal ones: "You already have them. They're called universities!"

The heuristic that tells you statements from someone affiliated to a university are more credible, and statements from someone affiliated to a think tank are less credible, will inevitably inform you that the US left is correct and the US right is wrong. It seems too crude to be useful in any area where think tanks operate.
Production of Saab 9-3 Aero Sedan has started in Trollhättan
Wow that's awesome news! I had no idea :)
I have good eyesight. I don't need glasses. I still like to zoom in on text by double-tapping and pinching to zoom. What if I'm on a bus and it's easier to read larger text?

You can add 'with an under-developed theory of mind' to the end of that list.
wow surprized that people do not say node.js :) i use express for a REST API
I'm doing a voice-guide tour app. And it will kick ass.
Do you have a citation for that? ;)
Lol ! ok, HN really is something wonderful :) Well, the first step to me is in the download page : explain a bit more what those "client" downloads are and when and why they are required.

PS : don't know if you're still involved with SAP Hana, but that technology would really benefit from having its completely independent ecosystem, far from anything related to SAP and its bloated developer network & forum website.
I don't see why Ubuntu would want to go head to head with Valve. Seems like a losing proposition...
Shame this thread is dominated by that single sentence on nonfiction.

Some books I enjoyed this year:

* The Player of Games - http://amzn.com/0316005401

* A Guide to Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - http://amzn.com/B0040JHNQG

* The Emperors Handbook - http://amzn.com/0743233832

* The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future - http://amzn.com/0393088693

* Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work - http://amzn.com/B009JU6UPG

* Chaos: Making a New Science - http://amzn.com/0143113453

* Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing - http://amzn.com/0262019388
Firefox for Android is my primary browser on my Nexus 5 now that the AOSP browser has been removed. On my Nexus 4, I rooted the phone to get back to the AOSP browser, but when KitKat came out, it broke root. I haven't gotten around to re-rooting either phone.

And no, the "view in desktop mode" toggle in Firefox for Android almost never works. I've considered rage-reporting bugs for all the URLs it fails on, but it's an idle fantasy right now. It clearly isn't a priority for Mozilla.
Sure - here's a list of what's good to know for MySQL. Other DBs are going to have different needs, though the indexing data is good to know regardless.

Start with the book High Performance MySQL. [1]

Follow up with the whitepaper "Causes of Downtime". [2]

Then find a copy of the IMDB dataset, put that in a database, and write an app against it. Make that app perform well, then simulate load against the app (pretend it hit the top of Reddit and Hacker News simultaneously), and keep it performing well.

After that, it's a matter of practical practice.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-MySQL-Optimization-Re...

[2] http://www.percona.com/redir/files/white-papers/causes-of-do...
US military reveals laser can down drones, mortar rounds
I agree - I regard Fallout 2 as one of the best RPGs ever (Ultima 7 was a landmark in terms of sandbox/simulation RPGs, but lacked the strong gameplay mechanics of Fallout 1 and 2). I never played Baldur's Gate 2 (for whatever reason, I am slightly turned off by DnD's mechanics). I also never played Planescape Torment, but I'm sure it is good as well.

Fallout 1/2 are some of the primary inspirations in the game I am currently making.
Have you thought about some kind of drop shipping business? Find a vendor, make a store on Shopify/Volusion/BigCommerce, whatever. A lot of items can have 50%+ margins while still staying within range of competitors.
I'm reading this sentiment a lot on this thread. But it seems these guys are surely not the first to go against this trend and achieve success. Another example is Indochino (suits for men). Apple sold Macs strictly through their site way before they launched their stores.

The line of trying it in real life is getting spread pretty thin and soon will diminish against the power of social media and online customer reviews. Why would I need to try it myself when I can read tons of reviews online of people who bought the product? Surely a review will actually be more helpful than trying it myself since it could delineate facts that I may not of considered.
>Patents are a legal construct designed by and for corporations for their benefit. To argue that they are somehow not capitalist is somewhat disingenuous isn't it?

Some people distinguish between free market capitalism and crony capitalism. Others don't.
Some of the people who make the distinction do not consider crony capitalism to be capitalism. That is why you will see people who say things like patents are not capitalist or Too big to fail is anti-capitalist.
Maybe, but not necessarily.

Let's imagine a hypothetical piece of research that every single person wants, and wants enough to willingly contribute their share (per capita, or wealth/income adjusted, whatever) if that is required in order to have the research done. However, if they value the money they would be contributing more than the marginal change in the research for lack of their funding, they might rationally choose still not to contribute unless coerced to do their part.
Amazon Is Working On A Costco-Killer
Out of curiosity, any reason why the vim script isn't minified if it is so huge?
The question is more like "We usually think we know X, but it looks like it's impossible to know X; what's going on?" That is, the real question is, what is it about our understanding of "knowledge" that leads to this apparent contradiction?
Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB
Amazon said to launch Pantry to take on Costco, Sam's
My main point was that bad code exists in all paradigms. If there were a perfect language or paradigm, everybody would be using it and there would be no such debate. Immutability is not necessarily good or bad, same for mutability. We should all do a better job at explaining to beginning programmers how to use all paradigms appropriately, and how to choose among them. And of course, to use vi.
Anybody interested in these games should snatch them up - Interplay is losing distribution rights to them at the end of December. Who knows how long it will be before they return.

Once "purchased" you will still be able to download them from your games library, even after they are removed from GOG's catalog.
+1 for Flask
This is taken from their website - I dont know what they intended, but it sure looks like a possibility.

In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level.
Well, I'll admit that I haven't used Oracle in 4 years, but back then, the automatic-sharding thing (goldengate IIRC?) just plain didn't work.

I guess I'm just biased towards solving scalability problems at the application level. It seems like an uphill battle to take a declarative/descriptive language like SQL and tune it to execute a query the way you want it executed -- it seems a lot more straightforward to just write code that does what you tell it to.
I get that, but was thrown by your reference to "native" behavior - if you want to be able to double tap a clickable element, you'll need to wait long enough to discriminate the two behaviors.

On the other hand - the desktop solution would be fine too; just don't solve the problem (i.e. you can't double-tap clickable content).

I think I'd rather have fast responsive taps rather than double-tapping even on links; regardless of the zoomability settings.
Ctrl-[ seems to work for me
The Second-Most Shared Website in the World is Run by One Guy
Flask + postgres
Knowing how to write good queries and indexes is admittedly 80% of having a good performing database. However, as with any other 80/20 split, the remaining 20% is the hard part, and you'll end up paying a specialist to take care of it for you.

Or your dataset and query volume will not grow to the point where you actually need a performant database, but that's a business problem, not a DB solution.
Right, if you're not good at something, you're probably also not good at assessing how good you are.
I don't know. I recently bought a fairly expensive Stearns & Foster mattress and lying it for a few minutes in the store didnt tell me much. You basically end up trusting that it won't get saggy after a couple years because it's more expensive and thats basically of what you pay for. These are so cheap it's almost worth the risk. It's sort of like Warby Parker.
The public may fund it, but too much of the results get copyrighted by Elsevier and patented by other parties.

Though it is lamentable that publicly funded research papers are often encumbered by a fee for access, the general knowledge contained within is still free for the public benefit.

Furthermore, the content within most papers is not patented or even patentable.

His fundamental assessment is still true: publicly funded science is currently a socialist enterprise.
So is the concept of someone remotely turning your cellphone into a microphone fact or fiction? Is their any proof in either direction?
Because it is not based on Ubuntu and nobody knows for sure what the base distro is - earlier they had claimed Ubuntu 12.04 but that was refuted by an Engadget team recently [1]

As promised, the OS is built on Linux (not based on Ubuntu, we're told, but entirely custom), though you'd never know it as the only interactive layer is all Steam

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands...
Scribing meetings: No more boring minutes?
Bamiga Sector One was the group. The game was either Virus or Mah Jong. From about 1991. It's a beautiful, 4-voice counterpoint tune with somewhat unusual synth patches (sampled Kawaii-ish).

I would be totally fine if the tune is out there somewhere, but I scan youtube every few months/years and it hasn't tu
I'm a big fan of the double tap to zoom. The browser figures out the zoom level you want with surprising accuracy and if it is wrong, or you want something specific you can always fall back to pinch zoom.

I'm sure I'll adjust but I do wish this was an opt in/out thing.
"After birth, a program has a 40% chance of doing what is done in the code, 40% of "not in the mood" (i.e. nothing occurs), and 40% of randomly reorganising the execution order of the functions found in main(). Math(s) don't real."

I'm sold.
Wasn't there an article the other day on how majority of home indoor/decor photos are actually 3d renderings. All to save cost.
> To argue that they are somehow not capitalist is somewhat disingenuous isn't it?

There is even a term for this: "laissez faire capitalism".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire

> Isn't the basis of capitalism itself wholly dependent on the governmental construct called currency?

No, we've used gold for hundreds of years without any government intervention. Fiat money is relatively recent invention.

More recent example: bitcoin, which works as currency without any governments.

> It's hard to imagine anything approximating the modern idea of trade without those functions.

Yes, but these services can be provided through free market. They'll become more cheap and available. Take for example government-run courts: they are slow, inefficient and expensive(which is the reason why patent trolling is viable: in many cases it is cheaper to hand some money to at troll instead of trying to resolve a conflict using government system).

True, such ideas may seem radical to you(No government, won't there be violence and chaos?!). If you want to know how such system will work, take a look at Murray Rothbard's awesome book "For a new liberty: libertarian manifesto" mises.org/rothbard/foranewlb.pdf . There is a chapter "The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the Courts", which you'll enjoy.
We choose to work with suppliers who don't cut corners on quality, and a large part of that is sourcing/manufacturing in the USA.