skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've thought about that too - you can create biodegradable passive-RFID tags to put on to packaging, and then have the trash bins read them as they are thrown out.

Problem is the biodegradable RFID tags don't exist. A dutch company was researching them a few years ago but that ship sailed when the iPhone 5 came out without NFC.

Google's project tango could be used with a standard library of objects, but that's still too early to tell if it's possible. Not to mention you'd be tied to Google's services and their whims.
Maybe 9 out of 10 calls to customer service are hassle free for me. In addition to which company, the type of issue you are trying to resolve also matters greatly, for example calls concerning payments/billing and cancellation are much more likely to be contentious.

One kind of customer service problem is low-level abuse, for which a particular rep is likely mostly responsible, usually passive-aggressive behavior like putting calls on hold then disconnecting, endless call-transferring, etc. rather than outright lies or verbal abuse.

The other kind which is more subtle involves higher-level systemic dysfunction and neglect: using call centers or neutered in-house support following very strict scripts / with limited means to resolve all but the most basic issues, active support issues / tickets needing attention yet ignored and unresolved for months at a time, per-call wait times of half an hour or longer, fully-automated systems not even giving the option to speak to a live representative.

Occasionally some of the more outrageous instances of problems of the first kind are deemed newsworthy and given media attention, especially when caught on tape.

Problems of the second kind rarely get any sort of media attention at all, no matter how severe. Companies will suffer customer-service-specific reputation damage for systemic problems (Google for example), but never make headlines for it.

Large companies can also be quite savvy when it comes to pr and the media. Higher tier customers, top-plan-holders often have their support issues promoted internally and expedited to an amazing extent, creating plenty of good publicity to drown out any perceptible, notable criticism.
He goes into detail about the topic in the chapter "Los Alamos from Below" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! The rest of the book is a fantastic read as well. He talks about many interesting experiments he did (even ones involving ants), pranks he's done with safes, how to pick up women, etc.
Component.io down
What happens then? Are they just there to take down your opinion?
I'd like a global option and also some simple per site UI.

This is how the click to play in Firefox works, it's nice. One thing I haven't figured out how to do is trust embeds from a site (for example, Youtube and Vimeo both have well behaved embeds, so I'd like to whitelist them, but not many of the third party sites I see them on).
I'd say it's giving you a job rather than ruining your life.

If it was perfect, people probably would not need plugins for it.
So what? I don't know about you, but I started programming for fun. Where's the fun if you never experiment or try new things?

You can't discourage people from experimenting with new languages, frameworks, design patterns, etcetera, just because some people might use it and fail.
Realistically no. Government in America is crafted to serve business.

EDIT Not sure why the downvotes. Historically it's been true. Most wars we have been involved with have been to serve an industry or spend much of the budget on defense (after WWII anyhow). Citizens United was created to treat companies as people. Obamacare, while started with good intentions, ultimately created a gift for insurance companies. Lobbyist run much of Washington and local governments, and are rarely funded by your average citizen.

Cases like net neutrality may be denied/shutdown today, but it's a topic that will show up year after year, under a different name, with different verbiage by the end goal will be the same. I don't see this working out for the average American citizen. Take it for what it is but money talks, especially in politics.
First time I'm understanding Assembly easily, very good this source code.
it's lights out! http://kbarr.net/static/lo/
Yay! :-)
Unfortunately unless you have either money or the ability to use violence with impunity they are not going to care.

Not that I would advocate using violence, since it is likely to get you (or me) in trouble.
Curiosity Finds Iron Meteorite on Mars
Ask HN: Are good jobs a myth?
Does anyone actually have a job they don't hate? And how did you get it?

I am about to start the last year of my degree in Computer Engineering. A lot of the career advice I see on HN seems to be about avoiding getting scammed by some MBA type working for a destined to fail startup. Which seems like good advice. But my experience in internships with large, generously compensating corporations has largely been one of soul crushing bureaucracy and mind numbing boredom. Is there a sane middle ground? With comfortable living quality and interesting work?

Who has a "good" job, and how did you get it? @patio11 talks about most good jobs not being advertised. But that's kind of a chicken/egg situation for new grads without networks. Especially those of us from cities with less dynamic hiring situations.

School seems like a clear system. I get a syllabus, I know how I'm being scored and get constant feedback. My internship hunt was a total black box. Cast resumes out into the void, and hope you at least get a rejection letter.

I don't want to sound like some entitled millennial, but I've worked hard in school. I've maintained a good GPA at a tough engineering school. Sometimes I juggled full time classes and part time internships. Comparing against the only metric I have (my peers), I'm a good candidate.

I managed to scrounge up a single offer. I accepted this internship by default, and I absolutely hate it. I'm terrified the same thing will happen when it's time for full time career hunting.

This is the first time in my short life I've been more scared than excited for the future. I could use some words of wisdom.
looks cool, can't wait to try this out!
Awesome! I love this app!
How Hamburger Menus Can Increase Your Conversion Rate
It's very sad Mozilla does not even mention their own codec, Daala, and only compares to HEVC etc. I suspect it's severely lacks funding.
OK, I must admit I hadn't fully appreciated the customisability before. App Shortcuts look pretty good, and I can, effectively, get the exact behaviour I want out of Mail. However, the method of assigning a shortcut must be one of the worst pieces of usability I've ever experienced from Apple. From [1]:

"Type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field.
You must type the command exactly as it appears in the Application menu, including ellipses and any other punctuation. An ellipsis is a special character that looks like three periods. To type an ellipsis, press Option-semicolon, or use the Character Viewer. It may be difficult to know whether the command is written in the menu with a real ellipsis or with three periods, so if one does not work, try the other."

[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13916
What does aviation have to do with this?
Each of those books has a paragraph explaining the recommendation.
Flapping doesn't seem to work.

EDIT it seems to work now. The first minute or so it was like my key-repeat was stuck on.
Wikipedia:Unsolicited Redesigns
I buy it, because why should the Minds care to lie? They have absolute control if they want it, no use for humans (comparative advance non-withstanding) and yet they keep them around.
It was actually very much inspired by WPF and it's relatively innovative MVVM pattern.
The FCC is kind enough to list the number of comments publicly, which is valuable in itself. Most letter-writing campaigns and petitions go unacknowledged, but it's a lot harder for the FCC to dismiss comments that they themselves solicit and publish.
Velocity VFF $1K Finalists Announced
In terms of planning your day: start with the sales task first thing, 2-3 hours focused on selling and developing leads. Think of it as investment time.

Here's a good read on why people buy > http://www.gitomer.com/Jeffrey-Gitomer-Little-Red-Book-of-Se...
>'Simply put, there are huge policy questions and tech issues that the public needs to be educated about and need to be discussed - and very few journalists are doing it.'

I think part of the problem is summed up right in that sentence.

Writing at a level that makes sense for the general public - those who would benefit most from that education will see the piece deemed 'uninformed garbage' or worse by those in the know.

It might be a great article for the layman and reasonable introduction for an unfamiliar technical person, but it's going to be dismissed for being less than authoritative, stomped for every detail glossed over and kicked for each missed nuance.

You'd think a bunch of angry techies would be so localized as not to matter. I think it's quite the opposite - everybody has a friend or relative who acts as the arbiter of tech for the circle.

The result is a cousin to what I'd call the "What computer should I buy?" Effect. When a non-technical person asks that question of their friend in tech all they really want is a laptop that works and fits in their bag.

Instead, they're all too often going to get flooded details, a list of trade-offs and so many admonishments about their preferences that they quickly learn to simply stop asking.

Mainstream tech articles play out the same way. When someone speaking with authority drops a "Stop reading at..." over some trifle or a legion of angry geeks invade the comments to decry an imperfect analogy the layman is going to see that as an outright dismissal of the entire subject or assassination of the article quality and the journalist is probably going to wonder why they bother.
"premium bandwidth for government agencies"

Nothing, I picked a random different agency that started with "federal".
IMHO, that doesn't address the real problem, of patents that shouldn't have been granted (because anyone faced with the same problem does the same thing without being helped by the patent description).

In fact, it makes that problem worse, because the assessed or hypothetical market value of the obvious, or "too old" invention is much higher. For example, what happens if someone is (by foolishness) granted a patent on fire or the wheel? They'd pay a higher tax, but be entitled to a much bigger "extortion" from the economy. So it would "turbocharge" the incentive to slip undeserved patents through.

IMHO, the real problem goes away when patents only go to legitimate "oh my word I wouldn't have thought of that in a thousand years" innovations, at which point it would be much harder to say, "why should anyone have to pay to use that?"
Looks huge; but there's no scale. So many pictures from Mars lack context like that.
I'm somewhat of a newbie in regards to developing on mobile devices. Got any documentation how this is done from the phone?
Dutch startup visa proposal needs your response
The list author says:
"I had a CISSP book here as a joke, but then realized that someone who clicked "buy whole list" would end up accidentally owning a CISSP book. Far better that they accidentally end up owning David Foster Wallace's most accessible book. The state fair essay in particular, worth the price of admission."
Google announcing new 'Project Zero' Security team
This isn't enough. We can't just keep shouting at them and hoping that they'll do as we say-- the FCC does not work for us, it works for the cable companies firstly and the USG secondly. We have to escalate the situation substantially and threaten their funding/power/political structure by bribing the correct people or else we won't get anywhere.

EDIT: Of course I've left the FCC a comment, made a phone call, and talked to my political representatives (in addition to bitching at the president) about this issue anyway. I don't expect that my word is worth anything without a bribe, though.
I did like the main character's name: William (Gibson) Vernor (Vinge) (Neal) Stephenson.
How about the fact that net neutrality has never actually been a thing on the Internet? Paid interconnect agreements to ISPs are as old as the Internet itself. To force companies to roll that back at this point would cause catastrophic damage to the Internet as a whole.

Because these agreements are so common place, the best the FCC can really do is put a regulatory structure in place to ensure they're consistently (and legally) applied.

They could add provisions saying something like "the amount of data carried over paid direct interconnects with content owners cannot exceed the amount of data carried through traditional peering arrangements" that would take care of many people's concerns about a "slow lane".

But saying "net neutrality or nothing" requires adopting an idealized, revisionist history of the Internet. The Internet has always been run by large ISPs; it's just that they're large consumer ISPs now so the commercial guys like Level3 are crying about it. Paid data carriage is a fact about the business of the Internet, and if you remove it, capacity will disappear with it until someone figures out another way to make money transmitting data (which will likely involve the consumer paying more).
I agree, multi-layer gluing and pre-made ground planes would probably work. The big issue is how to connect the layers, I don't see how to do vias either.

Maybe there will be a symbiosis of this and 3d printer, where the single pcb layers will be printed, using conductive material and non-conductive filler.

But however this is going to turn out, we are witnessing the birth of home electronics manufacturing. This will be significant, at least as much as the availability of high-quality consumer paper printers in the 80s/90s.
> I can guarantee that if you spend $1000 on new PC today, you'll be able to run all games at console quality for at least next 3-4 years, almost all in the next five years

Or I could spend $400 on a console and play every single available game at "console quality" for the life of the console, which is a good deal longer than 5 years. That, coupled with the fact that console games in general look pretty good, is the reason PC gaming is in something of a decline.
A lot are using Zimbra now days. My company made the switch a few years back.

Lower TCO, has all the same features of Exchange (plus some collaboration features Exchange lacks), plus it's open source so you can hack on it or make your own custom modules if you desire.
I actually find the search plenty fast, and I'm always very happy with the incredibly low memory requirements for Outlook...

Win 7 & 8, Outlook 2007 & 2010, respectively. FWIW.
I actually really enjoyed my job at Google. Stayed there for 5+ years. I got it through really knowing Javascript well right when it was becoming hot in 2008, really knowing my CS algorithms and being able to think on my feet, and through having a friend that could refer me. Mostly the Javascript and algorithms though, I think.

If I were to give some advice, it would probably be to focus on the craft rather than on the job. Work to become the best engineer you can, and treat each job as an opportunity to gain more experience doing that. The jobs will come naturally, once you've gotten the first couple to take a chance on you.
Ask HN: Getting Game Art Done
I'm building a video game (2d/mobile) and am finding out how labor-intensive art asset creation can be. I know I'm not efficient yet and am making rookie mistakes, but even so, I'm looking for alternatives. Does anyone have recommendations for companies, studios or individuals that will make game art on a contract or per-sprite basis? Also, I'm using a mixture of Adobe Flash and Photoshop to build my spritesheets right now. If there's a better tool set for this work, I'm all ears.
How to talk to a developer (part 1)
Programming is not math
Of course, you can "securely encrypt" things, and it doesn't matter if this is a phone number. But you're probably referring to the fact that the phone number is used as an identifier and is thus hashed and not encrypted. Nevertheless, it makes sense to call it "encryption" when describing the app to non-tech people and give the technical terms (i.e. hashing) in brackets etc.
You're right. It isn't enough. But neither is silence.

It's certainly worth my 95 seconds to participate in this democracy in some fashion. Wouldn't you be outraged that the FCC didn't listen to you when you spoke, rather than being outraged that they didn't listen to you when you were silent?
Absolutely hilarious.

What would actually be useful is something that does the same for food, although I have no idea how that'd work (perhaps a probe of some kind). It's trivial to calculate nutritional information for beverages as a human, but for those of us who track such things, I have yet to see a really good system for solid foods that doesn't rely on human guessing about portion sizes and matching to existing known entities from a database of foods.
Realm is not an ORM, but rather an integral part of your language. One key difference is that it does not have to copy all values in the objects back and fourth as you read them and save them, as most ORM's does. So that gives a huge performance improvement.

There are some benchmarks in our intro blogpost[0]. So I can recommend reading that for a bit more background information. We will have more blog posts coming out soon about the technical details.

[0] http://realm.io/news/introducing-realm/
Until an official statement yours is wrong in the same way like the title.
i use this all the time and love it. this is definitely the future, once you start using it (and services like it) you cannot go back.

same day delivery has the same magic feeling that amazon once had with prime. it just feels too good to be true.
That is true, and it's one of the reasons I like consoles. There is just no thinking required, which is really nice.

On the other hand, I think the rate at which PCs obsolesce compared to consoles is often exaggerated. For example, I played Bioshock Infinite at max settings on my circa-2010 MacBook Pro, which was 3 years old when the game came out and was never exactly a gaming machine. And people with fairly mediocre PC setups are able to play Watch Dogs with better graphics than I get on my Xbox One.
Is there a reason that Flapple is spelled "Flapplle" in the title screen?
I'm not sure which martial art is about turning the force of your opponent's moves against them, but this seems like a prime example. Rest assured, Lessig is acutely aware that what he's doing comes down to a hack. That shouldn't be a tough sell here.
"...the Justice Department finally concluded that the case was “without merit” and dropped it"
Where I really want side tabs is on my Android Nexus 7 tablet.

On it in Chrome I normally browse the web in portrait mode and I can see the titles of about three tabs, but only a few words of each. With a slide out side panel on the left (activated by dragging left to right from off the screen onto the screen) I would be able to see the titles for 15 or so tabs, with larger press areas and close buttons.

I realize for every tab switch this would require a swipe and a click, but as it is now the tab is often not one of the three visible and so I already have to swipe multiple times across the tab bar to see the tab before clicking it.
Clicking in symetric patterns reminds me of Game of Life. Not sure if it's a good strategy though.
jpegmini works by compressing an image as much as possible while keeping the distortion calculated by there particular metric below a threshold. To compare against mozjpeg you'd need to compress a bunch of images with JPEGMini and then compress those images with mozjpeg so that they were the same size. You could then compare the quality of the resulting images.

The test set of images is here:
https://github.com/bdaehlie/web_image_formats/tree/master/im...

If you're interested, https://github.com/dwbuiten/smallfry is program similar to JPEGMini that uses mozjpeg as its backend.
Watch Test Pilots Push the New Boeing Jet to Terrifying Limits
Mediacru.sh should give you a "view as html 5" option. It did for me when I uploaded a gif a few minutes ago.
Wow, I've watched the introduction video and it looks really great.

Do you recommend reading the book first, or watching the lectures?
I think it is a play on the IIE model of the Apple.
Usually in this case the Marketing folks are no dummies and will spring for an outside hire rather than take the rejects from the IT/Engineering Department. They are often forced to do this because IT cannot grow fast enough to support the business side, and the business stakeholder cannot get an IT "resource" allocated to their project. So they just go hire their own.

But, if the company is actually big enough that Marketing and Engineering have serious problems communicating with each other, perhaps it's time to reorganize into product divisions, so that all the people whose cooperation is needed to perform the daily work to support a given product, are under the same reporting structure, and so that the product team that needs another developer can just hire another developer, rather than having to plead with the IT department to allocate them one.
Just a note that we're working on this problem here at Beacon (W14): http://beaconreader.com. Would welcome your feedback!
I'm really tired of this defeatist attitude. It's especially common on HN for some reason.

Think of it this way: "they" want you to be cynical about the usefulness of democratic action. A necessary precondition for oligarchic takeover of democracy is that the people decide not to make use of the tools they have available to retain control.

A formally democratic society where nobody but the rich bothers to advocate for their own needs is the ideal form of oppression.
The page is very slow to load - http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140715_RP_S9V/ in film strip mode shows 29 second load time, which is consistent with how it feels in real usage.

Why are they using so much JS? Checking the source I don't think there is any HTML content - even providing just the basic header/main/footer/product title, price and one image would make this feel way quicker to load.
http://people.mozilla.org/~josh/lossy_compressed_image_study...

mozjpeg does Trellis quantization, there is no detailed explanation about jpegmini, a guess is it optimizes the DCT similarly to how it is described in this paper:

http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/publications/sid93/sid93.pdf
Report: Microsoft Preparing To Lay Off Thousands
Squink is on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/botfactory/squink-the-p...
The interweaving of complex shifting regulations with the economics of $B plants that take decades to build and involve tremendous amounts of radiation and energy is not some random coincidence, nor is the absence of Buffets and Icahns lining up to make a killing on the erstwhile Future of Clean Energy (as opposed to wind and solar). If thorium can't solve the political economy problems, then thorium is dead. A small loud group of techies yelling "don't you get it?!" and upvoting thorium posts on HN is just part of the ??? between underpants and the profit we will never see.
umm... massively better performance?
So do you see some IOT tech that could spread without needing a router in every home ?