skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, I was just having this conversation 4 days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8545144

There's always a guy on HN who wants to warn everyone like we're all a bunch of idiots.

It's ok to be paranoid but we should file it under an FAQ.

Our time is probably better spent discussing the value of the product itself. Hopefully, we get to that today.
There are many more ways to concurrency and parallelism than threads.
While most of the posts are, and probably should be, concerned with the privacy implications of this device if/when it reaches peoples' homes, I also wonder the plain-old "will this flop?" Adding voice recognition to things isn't a new idea, and the threshold for when it's "good enough" for the general populace for any use case is pretty poorly understood and/or quantified. Is this a use case people would be interested in transitioning to? Is this much better than just having a really good smartphone with voice recognition that's connected to speakers in the house? Will this get some success this holiday season? (If it won't come out of "invite-only" mode until after the holidays, will it see some success afterwards?)

Hard to say for me, but I feel like I can understand why Amazon wanted to try this out. In the worst case, it'll go the way of the fire phone and facebook phone and we'll forget in a year that this existed. At best, it finds its way to millions of homes and Amazon will have some epic access to peoples' lives.
This could be amazing for blind people and those who have difficulty with physical inputs.

That reminds me of a story I heard about the Kindle. Apparently it’s earliest success was with the vision-impaired. Before mass-market e-books, readers were limited to the few books that were available in large-print editions; thanks to the Kindle, nearly everything can be read in large type.

My grandfather, whom I believe never used a computer a day in his life, would have been an early adopter of both the Kindle and the Echo.
Cool stuff!

Apologies in advance for mentioning my own work, what you've done is hugely useful to the world beyond just your Russian transliteration. Just want to mention that the Minuum [YC W14] keyboard has a disambiguating transliteration keyboard available amongst its Russian layout settings, curious to know what you think (though be forewarned that our Russian language model being in need of some additional vocabulary). I'm not aware of other keyboards that combine transliteration with autocorrect the way that Minuum does.
The following quote from the author:
"Our brains behave like monkeys and it can be proven that most of our lives are about "what am I going to have for lunch?"..."

has this been proved ? would be very interested to know who proved this and how they went about doing it.
Why U.S. Ebola patients seem to be recovering faster
One of my favorite things to see after a workshop or hear someone tell me after they've read the book is that now they understand what's missing in their product. Finally, they know what to do next!
At my last company, we constantly struggled with the question "what should we build? What features matter?" With Hooked, I wanted to make a guide book to help product makers prioritize based on the psychological principles of what drives user engagement.
I think this actually supports the point.
People don't know what they want. People often find great use for things that don't seem useful at first, and vice-versa.
Congrats to them! I've been in an industry that employs contractors for 2 years now, and this is an awesome product for them!
What locale are you? Here in the US, I find it improved since iOS7. The "google now" style of on-the-fly response really does help with dictation.
I'd be interested in a similar analysis of HN, as I'm interested in the editorial intent thus revealed.

HN no longer functions entirely off of the "reddit algorithm." I know that it's now curated to some extent.

"Merit" just seems like a big value judgement over such a noisy channel.

I think the takeaway from such investigations -- and all of human history -- is that the system will be gamed. To survive, systems must be robust in the face of corruption and manipulation.
or "Jarvis"
No, Siri only takes commands when you activate it.

There's an "always listening" feature, but this is off by default and only works when you are plugged into external power.
> People carry around a GPS tracking device with a mic and camera built-in. They use it to post their entire lives on social networks. And they're worried about privacy.

i think people who are worried about privacy are not the people who are broadcasting their entire lives on social networks
But will those use cases be frequent enough to make someone want this? Probably not. Don't be surprised when this turns out to be the next Fire Phone.
Yes, it's possible the technology respects your privacy.

But it's not open source. Therefore it's technically possible that Echo waits until you make a request, and then bursts a transcript of everything ELSE you've said, as well. Or maybe the device only does that if Amazon receives a valid Search Warrant, and they flag your device to enter "transcript mode." Or even "live, continuous broadcast."

People have a right to be concerned about their privacy. They have a right to ask questions. They have a right to boycott a product unless they feel satisfied their concerns are addressed. They have a right to worry that their government (maybe not even the US) could force Amazon to violate their privacy.

You calling them "pathetic" is not remotely constructive. You don't share their concerns, is all.
That's basically Serge from Caprica! [1] It would be cool to actually have one of those. We just need them to be hosted on our own servers...

[1] http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Serge
It is a difficult problem. Governments have a number of built in advantages over private companies trying to deliver the same services. I say this while being, in general, a supporter of the ability for municipalities to provide broadband if they choose to do so.

There are a number of complex opposing factors in allowing them to do so though. For example, Boulder has required companies leasing space on the public right of way to install, at the company's expense, fiber to be owned by the city. (http://www.branfiber.net/Conduit%20Lease%20Agreement%20betwe...) Basically, Boulder can force competitors for it's own broadband service to subsidize their own competitor. These are non-trivial problems to overcome.
Experiments in Excellence: The Results of Neon Roots’ GamingPTO
>> Conspiracy to traffic?

Just in case you didn't know:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_%28criminal%29

Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law requires only that the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act.

Clearly, there was an agreement set forth. The owner of SR2.0 took money in exchange for people selling their goods and services on his site. If the site had some kind of terms of the agreement, which sellers had to ok, then he's screwed.

>> Wire fraud?

http://definitions.uslegal.com/w/wire-fraud/

The essential element to be proved is that the person knowingly and willfully devised or intended to devise a scheme to defraud; and that the use of the interstate wire communications facilities was closely related to the scheme because the person either wired something or caused it to be wired in interstate commerce in an attempt to execute or carry out the scheme.

This means he knew what he was doing was illegal and the use of the internet to essentially launder his money is what they're going after. Not the sale of the narcotics, but the transfer of money for ill gotten gains, which defrauded the US Government of tax revenue.
I've learned a ton from Nir's writing and talks.

Fun fact: before we published the book Nir had the genius idea of crowdsourcing feedback from his readers. Hundreds of people read a rough draft in Google Doc version, correct (the inevitable) typos and annotating suggestions for improvement. It was a great way to get early feedback before finalizing the book and allow its most dedicated readers to be a part of it. Everyone that helped is listed in the back of the book.
Hopefully it'll let you program your word trigger keyword -- 'Alexa' is one syllable too many IMO. Also, somebody out there is bound to have a crazy ex-girlfriend by the same name :]
> You people completely ignore the mode of operation and start making idiotic claims about "well NSA!"

You say that like the thing people are concerned about isn't possible.
Oh thanks, that's a nice thing to hear.

I kept reading without participating for a while but eventually stopped. After a glance at the redesign I don't guess I'll be going back, though I'm sure there's some retro edition for people who prefer the denser version.
Jay Z buys Armand de Brignac champagne brand
By entry-point, do you mean a server that you would typically own/rent, or some other server in the tor network that you would not normally control?
"Cheap" is a very subjective term around here :D

Land east of Boulder a ways (30 minutes+) can be affordable. Land < 30 minutes from Boulder in the North and East directions can get _very_ expensive. Lots of land west of Boulder in the mountains that can be built on too, but it's also expensive and can be pretty rough regarding roads, fires, floods (as we learned last year), etc....

6 acres of land IN Boulder with one house, water rights, and agricultural zoning has been for sale for a few years for $5m. One of the last parcels like it in the city. Will probably sell soon though for redevelopment.

EDIT: Regarding "cheap" being a subjective term. The neighborhood I rent in is < 10 minutes by bike to downtown and has mostly 1/8th acre single-family-home lots. Recently rebuilt houses with more 2000+ sq. ft. on these lots sell for ~$1m+. There is a lot of money being spent to live in the area.
Finally. I'm glad Google's giving Java the boot. I had a feeling they were heading that direction after the lawsuit and the subsequent change to AOT compilation in Android 5.0.
I'm kind of disappointed that they're not using neodymium magnets on the drivers for this, but I guess, given that it doesn't have an internal battery, the heavier / less-efficient drivers don't really hurt it.
eerily reminescent of the 'high frequency generator receiver' -- especially since amazon is calling this the echo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cv0KsTTfY

welcome to the totalitarian future, where people voluntarily put hot microphones into their homes to add gelato to their shopping lists.
old but gold :)

"Given most startups fail, conventional wisdom sounds like a pretty bad path to follow."

"Look at any B2B product that's been built... ever. It's almost always been birthed out of the need to get rid of a painful process."

" how can you know if your product solves a major pain?

The most efficient way I’ve found is talking to real, live humans. Not blogging. Not tweeting. Not shooting a mass email out to a list asking what problem they want solved.

Have a real conversation, on the phone, to other people in the industry you’re in and figuring out what they hate about running their business."

"Money is the only validation at this stage."
It's mainly for OpenGL games or other places where you would use the NDK. Wonder if it's possible to turn into a more general purpose tool for app element with enough outside help?
The Genius of Wearing the Same Outfit Every Day
Will you open source the code? I'm learning socket io and it would be nice to look at.
No shit Sherlock. It's no secret that the front page is heavily weighted. It's also subject to personalization, so basically no two redditors have the same front page.

The default front page is just the landing page for newcomers to get a first impression and a starting point for personalization.

An analysis of and comparison with /r/all would have been way more interesting.
Not everyone is like that. I personally have a build of Android with most of Google stripped out and the rest semi-disabled and it should have a minimum amount of tracking. I also don't install social networking apps, or at least deny them access to my personal data on Android.

Yes, people carry smartphones, use social networks. However that doesn't automatically disallow them from worrying about privacy, as they simply don't have an option. And no, sometimes not using a smartphone or a social network is not an option for a lot of people.

What they should do is advocate for privacy and try to change the situation.
You'll hopefully notice I deliberately said "it's too bad", "privacy concerns", and "might," all of which are key to the meaning of that sentence. My first comment was mostly in jest.

That said, it's ignorant to blindly trust or blindly distrust anything. I believe the rational concern is not what it does now, or what Amazon intends it to do, but what it could be updated or hacked to do. Hence the "can hear," not "will hear" present even in my joking.

I'm making a deliberate choice to ignore your insulting language and look for the reasoning behind it, but you could stand to make it a little easier to do so. Let's be gently rational. Something about flies, honey, and vinegar.
that (referenced) analysis is out of date
Its not baseless when stuff like this happens:

http://mediabuzz.monster.com/benefits/articles/1288-google-s...

1) Its quite possible for a firmware glitch to "accidentally" leave it on.

2) Given I interact with Amazon's APIs enough to know they have "intermittent" issues that are quite hilarious, I fully expect #1 to happen at some point.
Mystery over monster cosmic cloud
I think it's about putting it out there and seeing how people behave around it (when it's on the desk, kitchen etc). The idea isn't novel, you had virtual assistants do such "tasks" 5-8 years ago (and Timothy Ferris would write a best seller about it), but Amazon's made a laudable effort to build a humanoid to test it further. You have to remember Jeff Bezos has kept Mechanical Turk going for a reason, I wouldn't be surprised if Echo and MTurk combine into something very powerful.

Or maybe I'm wrong and this is just so Amazon can feel special, relevant (next to Google and Apple) and keep its share prices high to motivate human resources so they can continue selling and shipping warehouse inventory.
how does it provide the opengl driver?
I don't have as big of a trust problem as I do a problem with announcing my computing intentions to the whole world all the time.

If everyone was talking to their computers all the time the world would be terribly noisy.
Yes. All decisions should be separated into subject focused groups. Then individuals must qualify themselves for voting into those groups by participating in discussions, doing research and having articles they've written or submitted upvoted by other people who have already graduated to decision makers within that group.

So any representative wouldn't have a single "score" that represents how many followers they have but a number of individual scores as they pertain to the focus that individual has chosen for themselves.
Sorry for that. We are using an iPhone 5 for testing, and it seems that the larger iPhone 6 viewport is leading to some unexpected edge cases. We'll roll out a fix now and I will use this as an excuse to get a new phone :)
I don't care about my location information, I don't use social networks.

I care about the content of my private communications w/ other people. Including in-person conversations.
Someone else said this:

"Yes, it's possible the technology respects your privacy."

If you can suggest that Amazon Echo is potentially listening and transmitting the data to Amazon even when you don't explicitly say anything, the same can be said of Apple and Siri.
I like as describe Reddit and HN to be voter nominated, not voter selected. Votes nominate stories, but then the algorithm decides which ones to pick from that pile.
Can you, as a consumer control the baseband on your cellphone?
"Conspiracy has been defined in the United States as an agreement of two or more people to commit a crime, or to accomplish a legal end through illegal actions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)#United_St...

Thus it's conspiracy if you are party to an agreement which involves you receiving a bitcoin commission (legal end) as a result of the trafficking of drugs (illegal action.)

If they're charging wire fraud, I think that may be part two of the complaint, "Conspiracy to Commit and Aid and Abet Computer Hacking." Probably people were using the site to sell hacking services or hacking tools which could be used to defraud people.

https://pdf.yt/d/RpyX9_xmapTkhmkb
Thank you for creating this site! I am a Computer (Software) Engineering student and love to develop web applications in my free time. I am always looking to further my skillset and it seems this will prove really useful in understanding the choice of infrastructure/tools/languages by large companies.

Can anyone recommend any resources to better understand the interaction between the aforementioned choices (e.g. why would one company prefer a certain combination of language and infrastructure over a different combination)?
Knitr is better for me for creating PDFs and Word Documents (sadly needed) and I think knitr with RMarkdown and pandocc is amazing and best in class with code chunks.

I like IPython NOT for the reproduction but I like interacting with my script with cells. If I was working with a team I would prefer IPython's approach.
Do you support GOTOs?

#ifdefs?

aligment #pragmas?

#includes?

extern?

If you don't--which is integral to how C works--you've created a cool C-like language, but not C.

C is quite nearly just a high-level assembler with syntax sugar.
What do you think a good portion of HFT algos do? Of course people are exploiting the order flow that comes as a result of generic "signals".

But my point is that technical ANALYSIS is the utilization of TOOLS. People apply tools in different ways. Especially with fibonacci, there is certainly not one way to trade using fibonacci retracements, extensions, time, harmonics, etc.. I know traders who use it completely differently than I do. What matters is how it's applied to a chart and how trading decisions are made based on how the trader interprets what they're seeing.

It sounds like you guys are describing things like MA crosses to be useless. How they're normally applied by new traders is "the red crossed the green, so I sold", then they get mad when they lose money on the trade (and blame technical analysis). Yet, a moving average is a tool which can be tweaked in numerous ways - how you tweak/apply/interpret/trade using that tool is an entirely other question. Nobody in the right mind should be trading using only one tool, or by applying an "out of the box" charting tool then just blindly making decisions based on that.

Liken this to a software context: "Sensitive data can get stolen, so software is BAD". Yet, it's really just how it's written, up/downsides that are inherent of the language it's written in, but mainly HOW it was designed and how businesses utilized or tweaked it. You can't generalize the entire software industry because of security holes.

If you reduce technical analysis to generic "super awesome signal, works every time!" marketing ploys, you'll miss one of the best edges you could possibly have in trading/investing.

Note: This disagreement is a perfect example of why volume exists on each side of the market.
It's possible that the device will transcribe and record the text of everything, and then only send it upstream in batches along with the consumer-useful chatter. Over a TLS link, that would look quite innocuous.
Hey, you're that guy!
Author here. Looking for a new host for llama.mp3 (https://github.com/captbaritone/winamp2-js/issues/11) anyone want to help save my server?
I don't understand why we don't have more open source solutions for things like this. It's glorified voice search. Most of these Q-A systems are hand built to answer types of questions, with feedback loops for usage and ways to improve the system. I'm growing a little tired of these cloud-centric solutions that ultimately have their own company's interests at heart for ad-retargeting.
Worst case, it's a music streaming speaker that doesn't require you to stream via bluetooth. I wonder how the audio stacks up against something like the Bose SoundLink.
You don't need to use cause(). For the LibError example, I think you'd instead want to pattern match against the actual variants defined in the enum, one of which is IoError(io::IoError), at which point you could match the IoError's kind against FileNotFound. This way you're depending on the published contract of the libraries in question, rather than the fact that you'll be given an error whose eventual cause is some file somewhere not being found, which is more of an implementation detail.
I presume you played with SonarQube? If not take a look, was very Java focused but is branching out, supports over 30 languages using an array of standard tools to do static code analysis.

Pretty much SonarQube is the only tool I have found and it's somewhat annoying as a few plugins are commercial and very expensive. As you say, a plugin architecture would be great.

I personally feel that in a few years time Code Analysis/Technical Debt tools will become standard as CI servers have.

And for the doubters, of course no tool is going to tell you very precisely the true Technical Debt of a project but knowing how the code base is changing over time in terms of code count/complexity/todo count, etc I think is something every development team (+ management) should be pay attention to.
Quote from http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/gardai-sei...

An international day of action to disrupt global activity on the Darknet and remove certain websites and forums is to conclude within the next 24 hours under the FBI/Europol operation codenamed "Onymous".
By who, where?
Specifically which laws did the FBI break in this investigation?
I know for a fact that the wake word processing is done locally on the device. You could even check its network traffic to see that this is the case.

I'm not sure what protections you would have against a secret court order making the device always listen (via an OTA update) for select individuals, but you can at least check that they don't have such monitoring enabled for most devices.
So, taking a sub-standard product[1], slathering it with a ton of hype and celebrity endorsements, then selling it off to an even more practiced entity in a similar method of business is now heralded as genius?

I've got a better idea for Dre & Iovine: Finish Detox. Then you can talk about...whatever else...

I do think this quote is rather telling though:

Says Iovine: “We want kids who can work at Beats or at Apple.”

Yeah, that's the kind of herd mentality I'd expect from a record industry professional. I'm serious. What's popular in music is dictated by the tastes of 14 year old girls. If you think Iovine is worth following, just keep this context in mind. You might get rich, but then again, is that your end goal?

[1] As a Monster product, a wide swath of musicians and professionals rightly dogged on their gimmicky marketing and high price versus their in-the-field performance. While there are many great headphones on the market (Sennheiser is my personal favorite), nobody will rate Beats anywhere near the top 5. Just because Skrillex likes them doesn't mean they're actually good.
> if and only if, the "wake word" processing is done locally

That's what it's doing.
Was just reading about McFly https://github.com/kenwheeler/mcfly yesterday morning. There's another library like this too, I think. Hopefully the authors can all come together behind one of these things.
I wonder how much attention has been given to the needs of tech-savvy people with aging tech-challenged parents?