skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You could go with a good-sized pile of Raspberry Pi's with camera boards. $35+$25 for the Pi and camera board, plus the cost of sd cards and networking gear, probably still keeps you a bit under $100 per camera. Plus it's fully programmable, and easily sync'ed over the network.
Based on the video at the bottom of the page, I'm not really impressed with the video quality. Sure, it might be "1080p" but it still looks pretty fuzzy
"Your idea that it was due to his pre-existing politics could be tested if others wanted to repeat the experiment,"

Your phrasing suggests that you misunderstood my point, but does not prove it. My point is not that he started with extreme politics (or politics that might be viewed as extreme by most people since of course $MY_VIEWS are always perfectly sensible and obviously correct, it's everybody else who is extreme), my point is that he started with politics at all.

"The expected outcome of liking everything the algorithm suggests indiscriminately should be more moderation, not more extremism."

Uh, no, that makes no sense. You're engaging in an operation that is deliberately blurring Facebook's impression of you. Open your favorite image editor. Cover an image with pure white. Put a blob of black in the middle. Start using the "blur" tool. It doesn't shrink. And that's not perfect, either... the center of the blob will remain the darkest, but in this system, Facebook keeps presenting you with more "extreme" views, and you keep telling it you like it. Of course it pulls you away from the "center"... you keep telling it to. And this is where the raw volume point comes in... the extremes are louder, so if you blur like that you'll see a lot more of it.
That occurred to me while writing the comment, but I assume there are other factors which could be worth monitoring and improving, for example network topologies or even cooling methods.
I think the fact that it's tiny, cute, and inexpensive will help them carve a niche out from under GoPro. I can imagine something like this being used in places where you wouldn't really want a "hard core" action cam.
SDHC vs SDXC I believe. SDHC only goes up to 32GB.
Amazon SQS Processing with Windows Service
Reveal Codes was my favourite WordPerfect feature. (I'm not a lawyer though.) It wasn't so much that it revealed how things are represented, because the coding was simplistic enough that there wasn't any real underlying representation as such separate from the document formatting - it simply told you where regions of one style began an ended. Like looking at an HTML document in View Source mode. You could have half the display dedicated to Reveal Codes, as I recall, and edit in either mode as you went along (a bit like Dreamweaver). Made it super-easy to keep things in line.

Word, by contrast, makes it very unclear where one format begins and the next ends, meaning it's all too easy to make a mess. (Back when I still used Word, though maybe they've fixed it by now, it was very common for the space after the last character in a page before a manual page break to have the format of the following page, for example! Caused havoc when trying to style the last sentence...)
The law caps federal salaries at $155,500. Congress could change it, but given that they seem to have trouble passing a budget, that doesn't seem likely very soon. :)

That said, I think there are enough people that a) find $155k enough to meet their needs and b) believe in the mission that we'll be able to make a big impact.

(One thing that's important to remember—"the government" doesn't really act like a unified, coordinated entity. Different branches and agencies have different incentives and behave in different ways. It's often better to think of the government as a marketplace rather than an organization.)
The WaPo article may be better in terms of the depth of coverage but the writing is awful. Really awful. Misspellings, bad grammar, clumsy phrasing. I suppose the Post thinks that's okay because it's just a blog post and not a "real" news article. Or something. To the point, this new USDS sounds interesting and as a DC area resident, I should probably look into it. I will definitely watch the Youtube video linked to above.
Catchup Postmortem – after one weekend
Glad you liked it. So there are a million different opinions on this for sure. I particularly like Dan Norris's take on this to start solving a problem that people are already spending some money to solve now. Not necessarily that they are already spending money on a similar product, but that they are in some way spending money towards solving the same problem. Great interview with him here: http://productpeople.tv/2014/07/10/ep59-dan-norris/

Another tactic: most software can be done on a small scale by a human being behind the scenes. Before you build out some incredible software product, try to sell the service to a few folks beforehand. You can mimic the software product by literally giving them a form to input some data and you then you manually do the work that your code would be doing. Obviously doesn't scale but it's a great way to find out "if someone will pay."
Webcams.
Product Pickup – How and how not to attract users
I wonder what the release numbers are for 2nd tier markets like Kindle and Windows phone? Sometimes a smaller pond makes a fish look bigger.
> This is a great idea and it should happen, but a Khronos committee is not the right place to do it

I'm afraid that Khronos is the only entity that can possibly do something like this. However, as you suggest it might be possible that the basis of a new API is one of the new proprietary APIs like Mantle or Metal.

You seem to have some kind of dislike for Khronos but I don't think there is any better entity out there. The problem with Khronos is that it's understaffed and underfunded and for many of the people doing the hard work it's their secondary job.
I just checked, it's 400 USD, raw data is another 300 USD.
agree with that. this just seems more user friendly to get started with. much more of a fun impulse buy than a GoPro IMO.

I thought the video quality was extremely high, compared with a lot of the other stuff I see on YouTube.

also worth noting that there are a ton of retail outlets in the USA which is an added benefit to their distribution strategy.
If you can, spend a year or two working in different industries. There are enough companies that take students direct from uni and hire them out.

Learn, learn, learn. Keep your eyes and ears open. There are loads of chances, especially in less sexy industries.

This is the advice I'd love to have given a 10 year-younger version of myself..
The usefulness of encryption almost always depends on who holds the keys. Yes, it has to be decrypted at some point, but when it's only the user then it's much less of a problem.

I see what you're saying though -- it's not an easy problem to solve. Maybe some combination of legislation, technology, and user awareness is the solution, but I fail to come up with any scenarios where sole government regulation has ever helped.
Thank you for the opinion. The price is the main reason I don't see myself buying one in the near future.

I rationalized the price because I figured it is very hard to build a nicely running prototype board with the (specialized) amplifier chip, and that there was at least a 100 or 200$ pure "convenience" charge in it.
Not sure this has the utility that its creators envision. You're effectively putting the "CPU" on a REST interface and shuffling data across a very long bus to have it operated upon.

What kinds of algorithms is this even good for? Cryptographic algorithms are right out. The image on the page says "Dijkstra's shortest path planning algorithm" - I don't think that's a candidate. Results for pure functions can just be cached ...

The only possible beneficial (and profitable?) use I can imagine is to gather statistics on algorithm performance with real-world data provided by developers from around the 'tubes.
Sensical Summarization for Time Series
Feel free to send me a resume, and I'll make sure Mikey and co get it: brandon.ballinger@gmail.com.
There are computer vision libraries that automatically extract tables from PDFs. For example, http://ieg.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/projects/pdf2table/.

You may want to give that a try if you haven't looked at it before.
Typo in the WaPo article - site reliabilty manager.

Perhaps off-topic but are (Google) SREs the Ops-equivalent of Data Scientists in terms of expectation of cross-domain skills? Mikey Dickerson's LinkedIn profile [0] shows he's a champ in S/W Engg + Distributed Systems + Sys-Admin + what-not. I know calling each of them a "domain" is a bit of a stretch but I couldn't come up with a better term.

[0] www.linkedin.com/in/mikeydickerson
paired with Microsofts hyperlapse (I think its called) yes that would be great!
Feel free to send me a resume, and I'll make sure Mikey and friends get it: brandon.ballinger@gmail.com (I worked on healthcare.gov with Mikey, Todd, Ryan, and the other people starting this effort.)
Lol, i love this...
It's also less flexible, and you can't use it as easily for EMG and ECG, which is a major plus in terms of medical prototyping, biofeedback, etc.
> but is it really necessary to shout it from the rooftops?

Pot calling the kettle black? And I'm not so sure commenting on HN is the rooftops.

What you identify as greed and selfishness, I identify as prudence. Not knowing what tomorrow will bring and acting like it would not only improve my life, but those around me as well. I can make life for family and friends better by preparing for the worst.

> Some people work for the government to make the world a better place...

Some believe they are making the world a better place even at Facebook, but "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Group-think that occurs in any large organization is dangerous, and that's why we shouldn't assign hard problems and our security to groups susceptible to group-think. Look out for yourself or your group, because ultimately everyone else is.
The houses I've seen them building in Mountain View don't qualify as "McMansions" by any stretch of the imagination. Unless you define a 3-4 story attached home (that is, it's really a fancy duplex for a single family) selling for $1.5m+ a "McMansion".

It's certainly not a high-rise, but neither the permanent residents of Mountain View nor the city want high-rise buildings.

Quite frankly, I don't think there's sufficient traffic infrastructure in most of Mountain View (certainly in the heart of it) for a high-density apartment building...
It's a special case of a deeper problem with mobile:

It's a feudal platform with a closed app store model and a "nerfed" OS. It was built this way because it's a lazy, thoughtless way to solve the installability, security, and app isolation problems with desktop OSes. A deeper, more well thought out alternative that did not ultimately neuter the computer and disempower the user would have been much more difficult.
Even the best lose their talent with too much time in government. It's been shown too many times to count. Fixer? Doubt it.
> It’s wide angle lens...

You'd think they'd have someone proofread a product announcement.
Right, which is more than you can reasonably expect most people to do. Discovery in most app platforms is pretty broken.
Factorli of Downtown Vegas closes up shop
It is hard to predict, but many analysts claimed they have the edge and fool people making bad investments.
My wife works as a pediatric nurse; the doctor she worked for until recently treated predominately Hispanic, Medicaid-insured children. She sees first hand what gets covered and what doesn't. For illegal immigrants and their children, the options are very limited (though many do choose to self-pay at doctors' offices).

My point wasn't what isn't available. My point was that, regardless of ability to pay or any other factor, everybody in America has access to the American health care system for acute treatment (something Ebola would certainly be classified as).

Whether you can make it to a doctor's office or are stuck at the ER for your kid's cold depends on a lot of other factors, but, even then, your kid will get seen for that cold.

I don't know where you got "hysteria" from...
This seems well done. And although it probably sounds pedestrian to most of us, this seems like an awfully big step coming from the U.S. government. Now the question is whether or not any agencies will actually follow any of this sage advice.

As a snarky aside, it would be nice if the Obama administration would themselves follow rule #13, and "default to open".
Valuations and Deal Terms of Venture Backed Company Financings
uh? gopro really only has the brand nowadays.

When gopro started it was jus the cheapest digital camera that nobody would cry if it was smashed by the skateboard... it wasn't really ground breaking in any other aspect. yeah it had interchangeable lens. but everyone i know that used them had one camera for each lens (since they cost ~1 to 2x the price of a good lens anyway)

nowadays there are tons of cheap digital cameras that fit the bill. most in a more convenient cylindrical body. and sometimes 1/5 the price of a gopro! win-win right? except everyone still goes for the gopro because of brand.

so no, this is not "finally stepping into gopro market". the market already have plenty of alternative and they are mostly doing fine. specially in the dashboard cam niche that gopro doesn't market so heavily.

this is just a product some, what... 20yrs later or something. sd card up to 32gb! wth... what is this? 2010? now they are going to say this is not readily available nationwide and that when it is, there will be a wait list?
I hope that someone is either Facebook/Occulus or Google.
I think Tsung should have been the co-founder, not the employee. But perhaps it was impossible since the author was bankrolling their mobile experience.
The Dress You Need to Pack For Your Next Trip
New Science Hopes to Unlock Hidden Potential of Big Data
I would like to fly the flag for the UK Government Digital Service (and I doubt the name is a big coincidence).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service

I am truly amazed that in the heart of the UK Cabinet Offi e sits 25 flagship projects each one dedicated to building mostly Open software with Agile practises, of defining and requiring sane and intelligent management if government projects, who are trying to break down decades of huge supplier Lockhold and seemingly succeeding.

The quality of the work is impressive, the philosophy behind it strong and the pragmatism is solid.

For example one of the core team was asked to write up the first service design manual (oh go read these !). He put in "we prefer Open Source Software over proprietary". After a couple of high level meetings the minister said "OK". Now "prefer" is not a strong word ... But I recently pitched my wares at the Home Office for a tiny deal, about a month after hearing our hero tell this story. And the civil servants did not say "prefer" - all that the UK gov has heard is "we must go open source".

It is a deep cultural change that has me more excited about our governments future than anything for years.

If the US model can do half as well, China might need to take a back seat for a decade or two.
No, gender equality is if both sides can choose to pursue a career. Just flipping that around and defaulting to "male partner cannot work because he has to raise some kids" is inequal as well. In any case, that already assumes it's a male-female couple.
lol....and I was about to go buy Colgate toothpaste because the tv ads show that it's the only way to fight cavaties and germs efficiently.
> That's exactly what should change.

Why? For people who don't want to deal with the Xbox One/Playstation 4 monocultures, there's PC gaming. It already exists. The people who choose consoles over PC gaming choose it because it's more convenient. And that convenience derives in large part from the monoculture (or duoculture, I guess). Low-overhead bare metal programming is what enables the relatively long life of most consoles compared to PC gaming, because developers have time to learn how to get the absolute best performance out of a particular hardware configuration. It costs less money up-front in hardware costs, and it's a lot less work to figure out if a game will work on your system or not (almost no work, actually).
I'd argue that if one _does_ have neighbors it's in your best interests to at least be on a first-name basis with them.
I believe the point being made here is that it is easy to not be in it for the money when you have already made enough money and have achieved enough security and stability. And I personally don't think there's anything wrong with that. It just riles up people when you start pontificating about "show up and try" without context.
#dockpics - a collection Mac OS dock screenshots
Only for fungible labor.

Many skilled positions have scarcity, and employers are willing to pay more for an immigrant if their skillset is a better fit and/or can fill the position immediately.
Agreed - just wrote pretty much the same thing.

I find it professionally embarrassing that my government does better work than 95% of the private sector. It should also be a minimum standard for the work any client should expect. Fucking scary :-)
I assume the researchers were smart enough to think of that. Don't judge a study based on a one sentence description from a journalist.
I think there are some projects that let you go the opposite direction, writing your doc-comments with markdown directly, and then having them smoothly become generated HTML.
How bright is the glow?
Though if they could run it to New Zealand, it would certainly help to have competition with the SCC here...
25 Years in The Abyss
and your parents/education for not teaching you money management skills.
Attacking critical infrastructure with chainsaws and rifles
As someone responsible for search on a yellow pages company, I can confirm that most YP websites have little to no protection against this. Company information is usually public anyway. We just make it very easy for you to get it :)
At the moment it's comparable to glow-in-the-dark paint, imagine those stars many people had on their ceiling as kids. we are working on improving the luminosity however, we are improving it about 10-25% per week using a process known as directed evolution.
[Note: I'm not the guy you're asking and this isn't meant to be any kind of advice -- dental or otherwise]

My dentist told me that Colgate Total was better at killing plaque-creating bacteria due to its use of Triclosan.

I just found a FAQ from Colgate about the use of Triclosan in Colgate Total [1] -- here's a short excerpt:

Colgate Total® toothpaste is uniquely formulated with 0.3% of the antibacterial ingredient triclosan to fight harmful plaque germs, which are the cause of most common dental problems. Colgate Total® is clinically proven to work better than other toothpastes to reduce these germs that can cause the gum disease gingivitis.

[1] http://www.colgatetotal.com/triclosan-faq
From one solo-bootstrapper to another, great read and well done!
"Lesson learned: always test higher prices. I didn’t bother with the setup required to run simultaneous A/B tests. I just raised prices and watched what happened."

Not enough startups do this on a regular basis. They're too worried about losing clients. If you don't reinforce your value proposition on a regular basis by adding features, you will lose customer regardless.

With several of my side projects, I would add a new feature, then raise prices for new customers. At the same time, clients who renewed (I used a subscription based model) would get a discount. It was like magic. More people wanted in earlier, instead of waiting for a more mature, more expensive product. They gladly paid a lower monthly fee up front, in order to avoid the increase in price later on.
Here is the speculative discussion from one week ago based on the summary of the talk before it was given at BlackHat today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8112942
A VR-powered game that blends genres to tell a story
Intel's 14nm Technology in Detail
Monitor CoreOS at scale with Datadog
Hi, looks interesting. How well organized were the city/county records? Did you have to do a lot of parsing and extractions from documents? Or, was the data well organized in databases or csv files?
The competent software engineer would understand that spending a week implementing a buggy, ill-optimized version of the algorithm would cost more than the purchase price could ever be (unless it's a ridiculously high price like $100K). The fact that it would be "fun" is probably a hard sell towards the client.
You don't need a tax. Just get rid of the massive subsidy that HFCS gets.

edit: I had meant the indirect subsidy through corn subsidies. I agree that there shouldn't be much of a distinction between HFCS and sugar (fructose) from other sources.
Mobile games suck primarily for three interdependent reasons:

1. There are very low barriers to entry to coding a mobile game.

2. Game mechanics on mobile are limited due to the small screen and lack of hardware buttons.

3. Customers have become conditioned to expect prices that are too low to sustain the market.

The three items above have led to an end state where large publishers who can afford the marketing spend hire armies of low-skilled developers to develop hundreds of games in hopes that one or two of them are wildly popular. If the game isn't popular, you can just swap out the pixel art for new assets and release the game as a new product.

Free-to-play is the new hotness in gaming, but a successful F2P game is basically a marketing platform in disguise. It's not something a game developer should try to build without experienced marketing/product people driving the overall strategy. But given #3 above, F2P is the only realistic way to grow revenue per user.

In other words, #1 can be deceptive to people who think development == coding. Programming mobile games is easy, but building a mobile game development company has significant barriers to entry that most US-based developers simply can't overcome. A software developer in the US is easily $100,000 per year -- a guy living in India with the same skillset makes closer to $20,000 per year. Hence why most successful mobile development companies are NOT coming out of the US or western Europe, but rather out of Eastern Europe, South America or South Asia.
I say make it a documentary, but make it as layman as possible so that the rest of America can understand just how fucked up it was.

Use it as an opportunity to shame the government into action.
Polaroid is pretty much a hollow shell used to market white label products these days. Anyone know if they actually developed this camera, of if they're just the front for another company?
The typical SRE is a PhD in physics who realized they enjoyed hacking on the departmental cluster more than they enjoyed writing papers. Well, OK, that's a stretch but:

To a one, SREs are the smartest group of people I've met, with a ton of practical knowledge about distributed systems, a strong quantitative bent, and a desire to fix problems on live systems. If you want to call that the Ops equivalent of data scientists, fine, but I prefer think of them of scientists who study the failure of distributed systems in a live environment.