skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Beta period as positive investment signal?
What are your thoughts on
a "beta period" immediately
prior to launch of a product?

Things to consider:

- when to open the beta?

- who to open it to?

- how to promote it?

- how to limit unwanted press?

- should you publish roadmap?

- pressure from early-adopters for
certain features?

- minimum documentation before opening?

- who will handle support requests?

- should you launch a community with the beta?

- should you promote the beta before opening it?

- ....

I'm curious to read a discussion on this.
They might actually do that: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/google-inc./id281956209
This was a general vote, not a city hall edict.
Some kind of honeypot?
Let me give you a clue. Are you in the gravitational field of the Sun? How does it compare with the gravitational field of the Earth? Is it stronger or weaker? Do you feel it? What's the trajectory of the earth in the curved space-time around the sun?

When you'd say "go climb some stairs" what you feel are the stairs. And you should also feel like a bit of an idiot, in my humble opinion.
This is very cool. It reminds me of what Famo.us does, as a wrapper for CSS3-transforms that abstracts away the painful math parts.
Why It's a Great Time to Raise a Seed Round
Noob question for people:

How do I do CSRF token for separate Ember/Angular app?

Since Rails can't write the CSRF directly on the front end page, how does CSRF work in that case?
On Building A Library
> Is there any differentiation between the two on API stability?

Compare http://angularjs.blogspot.co.il/2014/10/ng-europe-angular-13...

> Our goal with Angular 2 is to make the best possible set of tools for building web apps not constrained by maintaining backwards compatibility with existing APIs

vs https://github.com/emberjs/rfcs/pull/15

> This is not a big-bang rewrite; we will continue development on the master branch, and roll out changes incrementally on the 1.x release train. The 2.0.0 release will simply remove features that have been deprecated between now and then. Our goal is that you can move your Ember app to 2.0 incrementally, one sprint at a time.
not to a lot of people, no.

it isn't good to say in polite company, but sometimes it slips out because it's kind of hard to disguise an entire racial worldview (i.e., only white people are real americans)

i'm an american and my race is asian, i hear little subtle things like this all the time, everywhere. it's gone down in the past 10 years but it's still there.
I wish this would happen in Minneapolis. When ISP's get in bed with politicians creating laws that subsequently shut out all competitions, the ones that suffer the most are the consumers. Comcast has been the bane of my existence: slow speeds, high price, terrible customer service. The CEO has the audacity to say that people don't like COmcast customer service? Right, because I enjoy paying $90/month for 50mbps. Allowing municipals/counties/districts built their own will benefit the consumer overall, it might even improve neighborhoods to foster businesses to open up (or local offices, what have you).
It doesn't work very well on Linux :(
I wish the project had more internal nit bits. Like algorithms, controller info, and so on. A bit disappointed but have my upvote regardless.
Cloud9 and Hydra are now displaying seizure notices as well.
Was this done with asm.js?
Yup; as long as it takes only a few weeks to set up something like this but a year to take it down, I don't think this idea is going away. The business model obviously works, and there is definitely a market.
Enchanted Labs - (San Francisco, CA) - Ex-Facebook co-founders.

Enchanted Labs is a funded, early stage, travel startup co-founded by two ex-Facebookers. We’re working on an innovative trip technology and looking for a backend/fullstack engineer to join our small team on the ground level.

-----
SEEKING: Back End/Fullstack Engineer

Looking for someone who knows NLP, machine learning, or hardcore algorithms. We have a practical application that you would find pretty interesting.

-----JOB DETAILS AT: http://jobs.enchantedlabs.com

Or feel free to shoot me a line at julia@EnchantedLabs.com.
Another large codebase in C that deals with security. How thoroughly has it been audited and tested for bugs? Should we soon expect a new "Heartbleed"? Why or why not?
That so, Youtube's policies would be vastly different in a world with a different DMCA.
I'm a sole indie with 3 high-ranking apps. My story on how I did it
It appears he just meant to say "democratic".
My first reaction to this, and especially to the "hn" wall, was: this is very cool, we can all collaboratively write some weird/interesting/funny stuff and overall it's going to be artful and inspiring in some way.

Of course, that's not how it turned out.

I've been looking at the "hn" wall there periodically for a while now, and it's interesting because you can see what becomes of people when they're acting anonymously - even when they come from a relatively tightly selected non-anonymous group.

The vast majority of edits are what I would characterize as destructive, because they have one or more of these properties:

- deleting or defacing stuff other people wrote
- leaving boastful remarks on the size of their penis
- posting hate speech, including misogynistic and racist comments
- posting ASCII pornography
- filling the page with kilobytes of garbage

What's surprising to me is we're not exactly a group of random 10 year olds, yet that's what we revert to when we think we're not accountable. Here's a piece of (relatively?) intact dialogue from that wall summing it up:

"<- and somehow we wonder why there are so few women in programming "
"No, that is due to innate sex differences. Read up."
"Yeah right, it can't possibly have anything to do with crap like this"
"It's both, but mostly innate. It's the same with race.
Look up race and IQ studies. (OMG! Did I just say that?!?!)"
"The more relevant question is would you say it with your HN
username attached to that comment?"
"Of course not. The Matriarchy would eat me alive. "

While this is all very depressing, I've also seen users who balance all of this out. There are (or have been at some point) a lot of entertaining posts and short exchanges on that wall, but to me the most amazing thing is there seem to be people who actually clean up the mess and try to preserve the good content. Of course they don't stand a chance, but it's good to know they exist.
Introducing Amazon Echo
I'm really very skeptical when it comes to the US. Why? It's very difficult for them to transport money since they're mostly shut out of the international banking system. Even when they get some access, it doesn't last long (see HSBC).

Another reason is I feel that most bribes in the US are more subtle: they're in the form of political campaign funding, non-profit funding, a future board member, and so on... You need access to the banking system to do that stuff easily.
GitLab now ships with a CI server
Nice job. I guess the practical takeaway is, if you don't want to look at funny pictures and animal GIFs, start on page 2.
Oh get off your high horse! I'm speculating. You condemned the design in an earlier post, right? There are all sorts of possible geometries, and many have been tried; some are found wanting. Elsewhere I speculated about using such an engine for constant-speed operation e.g. a generator. It might be a win there, where the ICE responsiveness is not a priority.

Its great to hear from an expert, though one that's clearly invested in the current popular technology to the exclusion of admitting any benefit to this one. I thought you'd be right on board with speculating about where this went wrong. Sorry to have misjudged.
Amazing work!
I would never have imagined someone will take CSS 3D rensering this far.

Regarding scalability, my previous experiences with similar rendering techniques is that this will definitely not scale on current GPU architecture.

The problem here is that with each polygon, your GPU api performs a draw call, an expensive operation you don't want to abuse. Also, updating matrix and other uniforms with each polygon is expansive. In a certain sense, your browser has to upload your entire geometry to GPU every single frame.

I can see this approach being useful for simple scenes with relatively flat objects. For an actual 3D geometry, I would never think using this in production.
Reddit loves 4chan memes.
I've been down this road a bit. There are many ip video cameras made in Asia that are locally controllable. The Dericam H502W is particularly hackable, but the content is not encrypted unless you add that at the internet router via stunnel or a VPN. But if you do that you have an encrypted 720p video feed that records on motion in the dark that you can fully control for less than $100 per camera.

You can choose to use the other camera features like email, ftp or http photo alerts just realize that all that data will be "in the clear" as they travel past your router unless you encrypt them.

NOTE: Simply using an SMTPS to Gmail SMTP server is not protecting your content. That's just wrapping your content up in a pretty box for direct delivery to Google.
Looks similar to the Ubi: http://www.theubi.com/
I'm a little frustrated at the moment -- The future is arriving with voice controlled devices, yet I don't trust any of these companies with my words.
The part about her MMO account read like it was lifted directly from the pages of William Gibson's 80s cyberpunk novels. Your whole post kind of has that feel, as does the original article. Incredible that we are there.
I won't link to them directly, but his accounts on most social networks are not deactivated, are publicly viewable and all mention bitcoin in the bio. In the wake of DPR 1.0 I find this a bit hubristic.
token-bearer authentication scheme = 2 birds, 1 stone
Although you've certainly made it clear that fiverr isn't going to be a good choice for an actual logo, it might be good for logo research. You got a handful of interesting colors, fonts, and concepts from three designers for $15. Not bad.
> With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it's playing music.

I read: "Our cloud servers can hear you, no matter what."

It's a killer idea. It's too bad privacy concerns might lead it to an early grave.
Smell is an interesting sense that way. I was just back in my college engineering building at an industry event, and it has such a distinctive smell. I'd never be able to describe it, but it calls up so many memories.

Sadly not something that I can put in a box and hang on to. They've talked about replacing the building for years, and once it's gone that smell will be lost forever.
Without seeing what engines they are comparing it to, I can't say for sure. My guess would they are comparing at similar RPMs, or have some other restriction. I'm sure it weighs a lot less than a traditional 3L engine, but I would guess it generates a lot less power at redline.
Always on. Connected to the cloud. In a recent talk Bruce Schneier called our times the golden age of surveillance.
Wow. What an amazing vector for snooping.
Well hang on - doesn't my iPhone already do all this? And presumably so does the Android equivalent? I appreciate this will have much better microphone technology but it still seems a little redundant.
"Are you super triple double-dog sure you don't want to use Google with your real name from G+? Your choices are:

- I'm sure, but please ask me every single time I log in going forward
- no, please use my real name"
I hope it has a reasonable API. I want to program it to automatically laugh at my terrible jokes.
Opt-in to 1984 for only $199! ($99 if you belong to Amazon Prime)
So the product is named "Echo" but you ask it questions by calling it "Alexa"? That's just odd.
How to turn your “work crushes” into informal mentors
It's great to see Amazon using its huge profits to fund this kind of bleeding edge technology. (Maybe someday engineers will figure out how to squeeze this functionality into handheld devices.)
Maybe I misunderstood but Youtube asked for its identity if he wanted the channel back online because of the false DMCA notices.
And it is Youtube, most people will trust the website to do not disclose their identity like that. They may be wrong, but it is not that stupid if you are not fully informed of the risks.
Overflow bug makes Mahatma Gandhi so evil in Civilization
It will end up in your package manager eventually.
“From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’” -- Edgar Mitchell

Maybe we should be sending politicians into space.
Anyone who knows more about tor than me care to explain how DNS works on onion sites?

I assumed that it would be distributed in some sort of way that prevented this sort of thing from happening? Or does transferring ownership require the owner's credentials to be compromized?
HTC One M8 vs. Samsung Galaxy S5. Which one is really worth your money?
This sounds like the creepiest tech product you could put in your home: an internet-connected microphone that can "hear you from across the room". Love the slick design, but I'll pass.
Absolute first thought was along similar lines. If it did all the processing locally and just fetched results I might be interested. But this? Not so much.
Strange choice for a wake-up word, given that it's a person's name.
If you want money, you'll need to explain to me:

1) How kibitzO is different to Quora

2) How moozeekaa will be better or more than just aggregated youtube tutorials

3) What on earth kingdomlove actually is.

I'm not trying to put you off, but I think you need much more focused plans for each of these.
Russian actor and Putin critic found dead in Moscow
The machines running Proxygen do the TLS termination.
Didn't Amazon preview a product like this a few months ago, except that it was portable?
>If you're using gps to track running and such, you aren't running 24 hours a day

I run and cycle. I and many people I know do cycle ~ 12 hours in a day, while training. Right now the choice among road bikers I know, is the Garmin 810 which lasts that long with continuous use.
Show HN: Predict JavaScript variable names and types with CRFs (paper+poll)
This could be the natural next step for one click shopping. Obviously it'll be more difficult without textual or visual capabilities, but things like "Add gelato to my shopping cart"(as apposed to shopping list) would be huge for Amazon fresh shoppers and other products that aren't too ambiguous.

Another application: "Alexa, order a Dominoes pizza with extra anchovies. "
I don't know much about html/js or css, but I've spent decade in a video game shop (generalist).

My first impression is that there is no z-buffer (or anything like it). With this you'll end up with some objects popping in-front of others ("fighting" who to be drawn). Nothing bad with it, but subdivision helps in there. That's how the Playstation 1 used to work and many other PC chips at the time.

I haven't even dared to look at the source, because as I've said I don't know much about it (and heard of DOM, but that's about it).

But then - HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE! That's fuckin incredible!

Thanks!
Host meteor apps using containers
A guy I know is adding try support via a package: https://github.com/lunixbochs/og
This could be really sweet if they have a solid API/SDK.
Please have an open API, I can think of a ton of things I would love to use this for.
Amazon LEXical Analysis, perhaps?
Very cool. Although, maybe another possible explanation is that people get "tired" at reading a whole page and skip to the next page, resulting in a top of the page bias.

Also, love the use of R. R is beautiful.
I had to read that line several times to make sure I was not missing some thing.
"Let’s be clear—this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison."
Some of the most civil (and then again, some of the least civil) political discussions I've ever seen on the internet happen on places like Facebook, where people are friends, and where almost everyone uses his/her real name. I think those two factors are very important: 1) real identities, 2) some form of reciprocal relationship among all parties to the conversation.

If you look at a political debate from a game-theoretical standpoint, a debate among friends is a multi-stage game. You don't want to go nuclear right off the bat, because when the dust clears, you'll still want to be friends with your opponent. There's a continuity to the relationship. There will be a second, third, fourth,...,500th "round" to the "game."

I'm not sure if this situation is any more likely to yield productive discussions. But on average, it yields more civil, less abrasive discussions. On the downside, it can often result in echo-chamber conversations that never really get interesting.

Conversely, the worst and least civil debates I've seen have occurred on long-standing message boards or communities, wherein the members are anonymous, but they're known for their handles. These members have "known" each other for years in some cases, but they don't really know each other, and they have few qualms about unleashing the flames. Especially when they feel their reputations or credibility within the community are at stake. These users have created identities for themselves, and paradoxically, they'll often defend those proxy identities more ferociously than they'll defend their real identities.

Tl;dr: when people assume group or tribal identities, you get worse flame wars and less substance. When people assume individual identities, you get fewer flame wars, and possibly more substance.
My guess would be that they can switch the name of either if needed in the future (to rebrand or whatnot). This isn't that dissimilar from the iPhone's Siri, or Window's Cortana.
Amazon (in)famously has lots of revenue, but weak profits.
If this was for home automation, it would be a lot more useful.

Also I forgot to add, isn't it a little creepy that something is listening to your speech 24/7 without you consciously activating it? Like Kinect, it's probably pretty limited right now but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the trend.

In Amazon's defense, if you don't enable listening 24/7 then the customer loses convenience... so are you willing to trade more of your privacy for convenience?
I'm glad to see this. Internet service is a necessary utility like electricity, water, sewer, roads, and police and fire protection. Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service. So it makes sense for it to be built out by the municipalities themselves. In fact, the federal government should be helping this along. Once we have fiber to everyone's house, ISPs who want to offer something beyond the raw connectivity the city provides can do so, and make use of that last-mile infrastructure on a resident-initiated opt-in basis.
TPB was hosted by PRQ which in turn was hosted by port80. But the two companies had a quite incestuous relationship with each other. The owners of the two companies were friends or at least good acquaintances with each other.
Aha, meta-meta; goad the terrorists into coming out to some staked-out location where they are ambushed.
What would bother me about this is that picture is far too small and blurry to identify a criminal. Is that the best this product can do? If so, are there any competing products that do better?
I believe you get to pick the name you want to call it (called the wake word), per the video.
This is Qualcomm’s world and we’re all just living in it
As a Brazilian, I don't like the tone of this article at all. This is not about criminalization of harmless behavior, it's about criminalization of a major fire hazard in a country with lots of trees to be burned and little infrastructure to deal with it.
Really cool! If it can help, I was searching "gluten free" and the very first result contains colors very very similar, almost indistinguishable: #E51C20 vs #EF1A21, and #F4F2EC vs #FFF
Can I change the wake word? Alexa was the name of a girl I once dated, and would prefer not to call out her name.
This will have different impact in different economies of the world. And eventually the bigger demographies will give MS a chance to make some space.

Let us see what sticky features MS brings. So that in the longer run a user gets caught in smooth integration of Mobile and Notebook version of Office.

But there are fewer hopes now. Too late.
Yep, exactly my thoughts. With Siri and Google voice, why do I need to buy another piece of hardware. Amazon could have integrated all of this in kindle or amazon phone if they really wanted to.
I'd like to see this kind of analysis done on /r/all, since it seems to more closely operate like the author anticipated. The default front page is meant to weight the subreddit like they discovered, but IIRC /r/all is strictly based on score and time, as if everything was submitted under the same subreddit.
I just don't see the point when we already have devices like this in our pockets.
Or just unsubscribe from /r/funny and /r/gifs. The default front page is total nonsense, you have to find reddit for yourself.
The unexpected costs of third-party login
In the video, the actors say they chose the wake-word themselves. So presumably you can use anything you like.
That's way too perfect there's no way it's a coincidence.
It’s Behind You Robot Creates Feeling of Ghostly Presence
I hear the early beta testers kept getting sex tips... It was even worse when their partner was named Alexa.
Nah, there's several other active, established markets already - SR2 wasn't even one of the top three.
Yes. Seeing how big Amazon has come with its web services, cloud storage etc and now with technology like this, I wonder why we haven't read about Amazon in any of the Snowden leaks. Or have I missed something?
opensourcing sdc is great, but opening up manta for everyone is huge! Thanks!
I'd still be interested, if and only if, the "wake word" processing is done locally and it THEN sends the recording that occurred after the wake word up to the cloud. If it is the case that even the wake word processing is done in the cloud, non-starter for all the reasons you state.
In which the purpose of the press release (and bust) is revealed: to threaten the public and make an example.

The usual stuff you expect out of an upstanding agent of democracy.
Because they are good at convincing their parents to buy stuff?
What people do at Hacker School
It's likely the easiest applicable trademark Amazon had available, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet .
Good news is: visas which don't require labor certification do not appear in the data. I'm on an O-1 and I'm not in it.
Why are you saying things you don't want the cloud to know about anyway?
Awesome.

Is this sort of thing usually done with RC planes? I've been watching a few RC plane videos lately - there seem to be a lot of pilots out there who could benefit from electronics to help land their planes - especially those who've spent a ton of money on really nice setups like this guy: [1]

[1] http://youtu.be/nQJ3TzSZkpo
Being far from an industry expert, it seems to me that Amazon just at least wants to try to get some smart device of their own into your proximity.
Not an accountant, but I believe Amazon's "weak" profits are due to they reinvesting their profits back into the business, rather than accumulating cash.
That was an incredibly painful video to watch, what's wrong with just demonstrating the product's features in home environments? Why do we need these ads that make it seem like this "is a real conversation happening in a family home".
Nice, but the added "convenience" isn't worth the notion that everything in my house is being recorded and stored somewhere.
Well, the crime-committing public anyway.
You must not have kids.
Readability issue: On my iPhone 6 in landscape I can't read the first couple words of every line because of the stupid little popup menu bar anchored to the left. Put some padding on the text.