skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Burger automation is the fantasy of automating all the way to the bottom of the skill pile.

Automatic dishwashers, laundry machines, vacuums, automatic car washes are all widely known examples of replacing low-skill labor with machines. There's also the enormous amount of low-skill labor that's been removed in agriculture and the building trade (think: digging ditches by hand, which they still do in 3rd world countries).

Even food preparation labor has been dramatically reduced already at home thanks to the microwave and the logistic possibility of shipping and storing frozen foods (not to mention the proliferation of restaurants).

Low-skill activities are almost always the easiest things to automate (that's why we call them "low skill"). Things that require fuzzy human judgement, like managing people, are hard—if not impossible—to automate.
Toronto does get to -20c in the winter it just isn't that common unless you include the windchill factor then it isn't that unusual to be in the -15 to -25 range (and very occasionally into the -30 to -35 range).
I believe Wendys still grills fresh.
Arguing against technological progress, for the sake of preserving jobs, is really nothing more than the broken window fallacy[0] in disguise. Imagine if Henry Ford decided to stop making cars for the sake of the people working in the horse carriage industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
They'll get infested with stainless steel rats in no time.
In that case, Seattle's $15/hr minimum wage may help spur innovation in this space.
If I could just take out my iphone and lazily records a skateboard ride down manhattan, and then get this result, that would be incredibly compelling.

For a slightly more practical use this could be a tool to give people previews of hiking trails, tours, or routes they're about to take.
You haven't yet provided an actual example. Maybe you could start with just one.
Throw a couple engineers solely at optimizing perf and I'm sure it could be brought down.
Not exactly something I suggest you add, but rather pull from the Facebook API.
So do Chrome and Firefox, via ANGLE.
Ask HN: How does Hacker News pay for its operating costs?
Site stability, server costs etc.
If your point of view is against sex work and "unfeminine" attitudes towards sex (wtf does that even mean anyway), it seems to me that you are being misogynist and quite possibly oppressive.

No, that's just sex-negative feminism. It's pretty common. In fact, the two major opponents to pornography have always been the conservative right and the feminist left. Opinion on BDSM is usually a litmus test for sex-positivity or sex-negativity.

As a whole, GFW appears to be sex-positive, with a few caveats as to how it understands objectification.
Y Combinator pays for it all.
New NSA-Funded Code Rolls All Programming Languages Into One
thanks man :)
No. I simply refuse to adopt his/your standard of proof.
If that makes you think you've won the argument then
so be it.
Arguing that technology always creates more jobs than it replaces is as fallacious as arguing that technological progress should be blocked in order to protect jobs.
Yup and I said with technology it doesn't really matter since computers aren't limited to our visual spectrum(they can use thermal imaging when needed for example) so they won't have the same difficulty seeing in those conditions as we do.

This is further compounded by the fact that even if humans can see the patterns they rarely act on them perfectly and often do the exact opposite of what they should do.
As my mother says: "I don't care which one of you is responsible, I want you both to stop fighting and clean up this mess you made, now".
I sadly don't think that's true any more. Not that I want to promote piracy or am sad about the decline. But I fear that the upcoming generation of DRM will be good enough not to annoy the users. And that was really the issue with most DRM in the past. E.g., music is more commonly shared and copied to different devices. DRM there really had an impact. Flash/Silverlight are horrible plugins and they impact the viewing pleasure. But now that Restriction is integrated on top of the regular HTML5 stack in the top three proprietary browsers it will be as flawless as watching a HTML5 video for most users. Sure they can't save the video. But most users don't know how to do that even if the video doesn't have DRM. And as long as the business model of the content hosts is decent enough they won't feel bothered by the DRM. And unlike music where sharing and copying to different devices is what users expected long before MP3s, for videos the renting model is widely accepted and common since before computer video.

And that's one of the big issues with the EME proposal. It will ensure that DRM remains on video for a long time. It will make it impossible to view legal content in a complete free software stack. It will make the web depend on proprietary binary blobs from the three companies which are already controlling the majority web browser, operating system, and mobile device market share. Which means it will be hard to impossible to innovate in those areas if it's against the interests of those companies. This will have really damaging consequences.
>I can also imagine a day where all your currently disposable plastic goods (cups, utensils, clips, etc) would be printed on demand and disposed in a hopper that would recycle them as raw material for the next round.

Is this the killer app for home 3D printing? Printing plastic spoons? The same spoons you can buy mass-produced in packs of fifty for eighty cents or something?
Well, you will still need employees on the premise to refill the machine, serve drinks and collect the cash. In a local BurgerKing, there are three employees: one shift lead, a cashier and a cook.

So the labor costs will not lower significantly, but the quality will increase.
I think if we ever start a second YC location, this will be the reason -- to help founders who are unable to get past the US immigration system.

It's unfortunate that our government is becoming increasingly dysfunctional at every level -- federal, state, and local governments are all failing to do their jobs. I'm glad that Canada is introducing some competitive pressure.
I had the same confusion, from their website it's not clear whether the demographic is likely to be novices looking to learn or whether it is for established freelancers etc wanting to work from Costa Rica for a while.

Their website says that they encourage people to work mainly on open-source or fun projects but that would seem to rule out anyone with a family, a full time job or who wasn't already reasonably wealthy.

It wouldn't surprise me if their demographics skewed weird for that reason alone. The age breakdown might be interesting, is this mainly retirees? Gap year students? People taking sabbaticals?
I don't think it makes sense to talk about average staffing costs per burger. Instead, you should just look at total cost of staffing without robots vs total cost of staffing + total cost of robotics with robotics.
The machine still has an equivalent annual cost to compare to the workers salaries. Some things that you now have to pay for with machine labor compared to human labor below:

1. Up front payments: Parents and schools subsidized the manufacturing cost of human workers. With machine labor that cost is passed on to the buyer.

2. Energy: Employees feed themselves via their salary, or is often the case with subsidized food stamps. With machine labor the cost of energy falls entirely with the owner.

3. Replacement: If employees die or are otherwise unable to work do to catastrophic events, they can be replaced immediately with little on-boarding cost. If machines fail catastrophically the investment is lost(or needs to be backed up with insurance). Also, on-boarding the new machine requires specialized higher wage human labor.

4. Repair and modernization: As machines age they incure greater upkeep costs. They also become obsolete by newer machines. As employees age and become less capable of performing their duties, they can be let go, free of charge, for poor performance and replaced with a younger worker.

Much like was discovered with slavery and indentured servitude, ownership of labor and free labor can be fairly close in cost if you know how to really exploit workers effectively. Harvesting in agriculture is an interesting place to look at how competitive exploited human labor can be compared to machine automation.
Not a recommendation for the best laptop, but perhaps a useful tool to see which tools Ubuntu themselves recommend:

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/
AGPS requires GPRS data.
US manufacturing is propped up by military manufacturing: http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/cschart1.png
Compare the average number of servants per household in 1900 to the average number today--decimated by domestic automation.

Many crops are harvested by machines, replacing some of the absolute lowest skilled jobs.

And how many tellers have been replaced by ATMs, factory works by industrial robots, or secretaries by computers?
> If drivers spend much time loading and unloading, and not getting paid, the amount paid per mile required to attract drivers will rise.

Actually, logic would indicate that it has already happened. Every industry pays people the least amount that it can reliably obtain labor and/or reliably profit from their employment. Trucking is no different.
That's why I like Five Guys, Waffle House, and a slew of local diners. You can see the cooking happening. Having been a former line cook myself, I know what a good kitchen looks like.
An Algorithm Identified West Africa’s Ebola Outbreak Before It Was Announced
The article pointed out estimated R&D costs are $25B, and they're having to sell them for not much over manufacturing cost (so no, they aren't making a net profit, though almost certainly an operational profit). While that's an estimate, I doubt R&D expenditures are really that closely held; they can probably be estimated pretty well both from financial reports and from leakage from all the EU government entanglements of Airbus.
They implemented WebGL in IE, so sitting this out would just leave them having to implement a standard without input into the process.

Also, for old monopolist Microsoft, standards were a bane because they meant smaller players could interoperate with its software, and even sometimes influence its future via standards committees. For new underdog-in-certain-markets Microsoft, standards are a blessing because it means they can interoperate with larger players' software, and even sometimes influence its future via standards committees. I'm not sure how much that's taken hold culturally within MS, though. (And, of course, there are many places they're still not the underdog.)
The Oculus Rift Is an Applied Neuroscience Powerhouse
That's the goal :) glad you like it! If there are any features you need please feel free to make a Github issue requesting them - I've got lots of free time to work on this right now.
Cool technology, applications?
It sure sounds good. Is it actually good?
I wonder if you could apply it to higher-quality (i.e. already pretty stable) input to approach a steadycam though?
I don't think one data point is enough to say that self-checkout lanes are a failure and waste of money.
Well, yes, they are selling their body for a short period of time, and the type of "service" they are selling is not irrelevant. If you want to play semantics then fine; they're _renting_ their body. It all amounts to the same thing and doesn't change my point. They are objectifying themselves, so I think we can cut the PC nonsense.
Certainly Vancouver's winters are milder than anywhere east of the Rockies, but the flipside is that you have to put up with rain, rain and more rain. After living in Vancouver for five years I moved to southern California where the weather was fantastic. I'm now in Melbourne, Australia, which is considered by Aussies to have cold winters but as a Canadian I just laugh whenever I hear that.

Apart from the weather I'd say that a more legitimate reason not to move to Vancouver is the insane cost of housing, the most expensive in North America. For this reason alone I would never consider moving my family back to Vancouver.
I like your DataTables review, as someone who has worked extensively with DataTables it is indeed very apt. However, the complexity exposed by DataTables is, at least partly IMHO, justified by the reality of how complex it is to do tables, especially in web app mode where "tables" are often dynamic entries that look nothing like tables whatsoever. In this latter scenario DataTables actually really do shine, at least once one has spent enough time to settle on a dev-routine that works.
Realtors who pay Zillow are dumb
> it's about the ideas you're espousing.

And you've espoused none. You may disagree with said axioms but you haven't pointed out what those are or why you disagree with them.

"You're wrong" isn't an argument. "You're wrong because what you're saying sounds like libertarianism" isn't an argument either.
>crazy API churn

Can you go into this a bit? I just upgraded a MVC2 site to MVC5 and didn't have to change much.

I know the DI bits changed from MVC2-3 but all the existing extensibility methods worked.
This is a repeat of the same story that happened the last time H-1B limit didn't meet the demand for visas. US tech companies, most notably Microsoft, opened "offices" in Vancouver. What happens next is that those employees will work for 1 year in Canada, and then will become eligible for L-1 intra-company transfer back to the US, side-stepping the H-1B quagmire.
> Designed for 1024x768 resolution and Netscape Navigator 4

Wow, we come so far in so many ways, but screen resolution is not one of them.
Just 10 airlines besides Emirates have taken delivery of 380s. Only 5 of those have taken delivery of 10 or more. The largest 380 customer after Emirates, Singapore, has orders for 70 350s and is a launch customer of the 787 with 30 orders, but just 5 orders for the 380.

It's true that the market for the 380 is larger outside of the Americas. It would have to be, because the 380 has zero Americas customers.
The cashier is going (burger king demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNUu9r1S4E)
The cook is going, according to this article.
Serving drinks is trivial for a machine.

I guess refilling and cleaning will remain for some time.
Time Warner And Comcast Just Happen To Boost Customer Speeds Near Google Fiber
Toronto absolutely gets that cold in the winter and in the dead of winter it often gets colder than that (Jan, Feb). The spring and summer are quite sunny and pleasant though.
Source: Torontonian.
I'd say cooking requires human judgement. Mainly in the "nope, that's going to kill someone" category.
Yeah, I meet the overworked and overscheduled parts (and couldn't afford to spend a month hacking on open source in the tropics), but I'm not overweight and certainly don't have a neckbeard. I get that "neckbeard" is more of a cultural term than a literal one, but it seems like even that interpretation has taken on a more pejorative bent lately.
Plus any US airline which purchased the A380 would get negative PR from it. While most US airline companies operate airbus aircrafts, the A380 was really marked within the US as "Us. Vs. them" type aircraft (not least of it as it was a flagship) where it was American manufacturing under attack (Boeing 747) by a foreign competitor. So the first US airline company who buys one is going to get attacked by every single "I only buy American" type, of which there seem to be plenty of in the US (e.g. "it is anti-American to buy abroad!" "Don't you support American jobs?!" and so on).

I would also like to add that the A380 isn't really even competing for inter-US routes as it is too expensive to get up to altitude and you'd never fill THAT many seats on those routes. It is better as a longer range international aircraft (e.g. routes across the pacific or atlantic, europe to asia, etc). The only internal routes it might do well on are for example New York City to Las Vegas, California to DC, basically high volume and long range.

I won't comment too much on the article specifically as it is quite obviously bias and had an agenda before pen hit page. I'm sure most Americans enjoyed it however.
> It's beneficial for business owners for there to be a general belief in a labor shortage but it is not beneficial for people to believe they are stingy.

It's even better for the business owner for citizens to believe that their government plays a key role in "providing" jobs; it's what allows businesses to lobby government to change the rules to "help job creators" instead of just paying more.

Government or market, it's our choice. Lately, we're more and more choosing government to solve market "problems" that exist only because we are willing to let the government act on those problems. If we didn't, the market wouldn't have said problem.
A shop that opens across the street from another shop doesn't "force" the other shop to lose money. Your definition of force is contradictory, as it leaves no room for anything that is not pre facto considered force.
I'm finding it increasingly ever necessary to consider dual citizen-ship as an option for the medium-future as a US(south bay) citizen.

I'm trying to work as hard as I can and start my own start up and open a second location.

They are lost.
Just a note, this doesn't use the technology from the paper.
$1 seems cheap.
I think that the title is clear enough, and the abstract is very legible. Do you have any better suggestions? Perhaps you can write a comment with more details, highlighting why this is important.

(Note: I'm against the literal application of this guideline.)
There's a WWDC session where Apple designers use Keynote to prototype iOS apps. It's actually impressive--you can fake the animations and interactions to be really close to the real thing.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#223
If you add it to that directory it won't show any warnings. Still, not so good for the average person because it requires root and might not persist between updates.
I just meant that they may have inadvertently re-introduced gender into the discussion.

"Neckbeard" is definitely a pejorative term, but that's not in itself a huge problem.
As someone in the Sisyphean green card system (processing taking forever for the initial application, 6-7 years to go after that for the actual green card, best case); I am really glad that Canada is offering better alternatives. I bet if they emphasize this angle (quicker permanent residency for non-contract employees), they will get a decent amount of talent that otherwise is stuck grinding away in Silicon Valley for the same employer.

To anyone of Indian nationality seeking a job in North America, and interested in permanent residency – strongly consider the Canada alternative, for education as well as jobs. Unless the weather means a lot to you, ask your company if they have a Canada office where you can work when you start out. Things will be way easier.
What's an example of "timing of message losses" that would make consensus impossible? I didn't think say Paxos depended on any such assumptions.

I suppose you can mathematically construct some kind of non-total message loss such that Paxos would never make progress. But that kind of message loss won't persist forever in a real system... it would basically be message loss with knowledge of the algorithm?
StartSSL offers free certs.
I think a higher frame rate would help a lot. It's a higher sampling rate basically.
Nice results, but missing forest for the trees.

One of the by-products of this algorithm is fully textured 3d model representing filmed environment. Offering that as pure data dump, or even a manual process allowing user to control camera would be as valuable as fully automatic one-off timelapse no one ever watches (except maybe your granny).

What sounds better - a video tour of a house, or a 3D model of a house you can traverse however you like?

I wonder if 3 letter agencies have better structure from motion implementations a la "Enemy of the State" (Isnt it sad that this film turned out to be a documentary?). I suspect something like a 3d reconstruction of Boston Marathon (FBI did collect all video footage of the event) would be very helpful to the investigation.
Okay, this makes a burger, and let's assume it can handle all the variations a normal place would want.

I don't just order burgers. Fries, drinks, ice cream, chicken, salads, wraps, and many more, are the typical items on a fast food menu. Perhaps in really busy stores there is a person dedicated to burgers and nothing else, but would this really reduce the amount of labor you would need? I suspect not (I have no data to back that up).

Sooner or later all of this will be automated - this machine, by itself, isn't going to make much of a dent in my opinion.
If you look at a $30,000 robot for flipping burgers, and imagine it replaces one person working for a cost to the company of $8 per hour around the clock, you'd pay for it within a year.

Assume that it's not perfect, and you have about 2 weeks of downtime a year, plus 2 additional days of down time a week, just for service, small issues, etc.

So you'd have to buy a few to make it work, so their downtime didn't too significantly overlap, but that's $8/hr40hrs/wk50wk/yr*3shifts = $48000 per year.

So if it essentially does the work of 3 people (120 hours per week), then you can come out ahead on replacing one station with a robot (assuming you have 3-4, so downtime doesn't totally kill production).

Edit: I was thinking of something like this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_(robot)
> Harvesting in agriculture is an interesting place to look at how competitive exploited human labor can be compared to machine automation.

Any business were machines having taking over, yet, is an example of that.
The reality of labor replacement is that low skill workers are likely to be the very last group to be replaced. The reason for that is how low they are paid and how expensive physical manufacturing and upkeep of machines are.

Middle management and entry to mid level white collar work are by far the most susceptible. Also, lower end knowledge jobs. Current trends show low skilled workers getting cheaper and raw materials getting more expensive so at least for the near term, low skill worker replacement appears highly unlikely.

Much like the late 90's mid and low level computer programers etc will likely be eliminated, or reduced to a low skill job, long before low skill workers are replaced by machines.
That browser vendors will bundle their own solutions doesn't really close down the market and I don't understand how it would necessarily hurt cross platform adoption?
There are varying implementations.

Stop and Shop supermarkets have Symbol guns running Windows CE, and an iOS/Android app. You scan as you shop. When you get to a register you scan the "End Order" barcode on the register, then scan your Stop & Shop card. That's it. Pay.

They even recently revved their software to speed up the process and reduce processing delays. I can check out an entire cart in about 40 seconds, and everything is already bagged the way I want it.
ServerSentEvents are great to subscribe to a single topic. It's simple to use and handle re-connections automatically, even providing the last seen event ID. If you want to subscribe to multiple topics and change subscriptions dynamically then multiplexing over WebSocket might be a better fit.
Organic synthesis: The robo-chemist