skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The website makes clear that the listen-and-answer /behavior/ isn't activated unless triggered. That's absolutely not evidence in either direction for what happens in the non-triggered case.

For example the idea that there's a debug mode that dumps the whole audio stream for troubleshooting isn't exactly tinfoil-hat paranoia.
Introducing international voice calls from Hangouts in India
Open Source needs to be used first. Do you want to rely on websites implementing something like spell-checking? In your native language? I don't. I want common problems to be solved in the browser and I want to have some reasonable control over my browsing experience and some consistency - something SPAs actively undermine.

How are SPAs different from Flash? Sure, you have some remnants of standard HTML there, but with canvas, local storage and JS compilers, those two technologies look remarkably similar both in terms of advantages and problems. You get a blob of non-semantic, imperative code that does non-standard things.

The funny thing is, many of the stated advantages of SPAs can be easily implemented in document-based web apps. A lot of the repetitive info could easily be removed with proper caching, and it would be even more efficient with cacheable client-side includes. Not only it would be roughly as efficient, it would require much less work to implement.
Interesting how in the video the family has the Echo placed in about 3 or 4 different rooms (kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom). Are they expecting people to buy multiple units or move it around the house?
> Nothing will be transmitted to the cloud unless it is the word "Alexa"

You can't be certain that there's no way to activate it remotely without you knowing. Seven mikes in your lounge is an attractive nuisance.
The AngularJS guys have since modified their plans a bit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dZdq2L8EkzimgvU93ypLF9GJ...

TL;DR: they're dedicating team members to continue working on 1.X while they build 2.0. They're also planning out a migration strategy for anyone on 1.X when 2.0 launches
The path to more reliable voice recognition is through data and companies race to gather the most of it. The companies that do win this race are the ones, who can serve as interfaces to tomorrows services.
Name your factory "createFoo", problem solved. :)
>Echo's brain is in the cloud, running on Amazon Web Services so it continually learns and adds more functionality over time.
One of my favorite parts from that wall:

(THERE IS ONLY LISP)
and
GROW VAT MEAT!

/\_/\
____/ o o \
/~____ =ø= /
(______)__m_m)
I DEMAND
VEGAN FOOD!

rich hickey is frowning upon your shenanigans!
“Oh no I accidentally published private data to the public registry”
With YouTube integrated into Google single sign-in and Google+, there really may not be much choice.
In this context it is irrelevant since my comparison was purely one of power output against displacement.

The Turbo allows a given displacement to output more power for a given displacement, indeed volvo have 2 litre putting out 450hp (uses staged turbo's one of which is electrically driven), I wasnt comparing the nearest ICE equivalent to the rotary.
This just feels like something that would have been on display at Radio Shack, circa 1993.

Then, at $199, I might have bitten. Today, doesn't seem interesting, considering I can use a smart phone for any of this.
Am I the only one surprised by the fact that "the people" have to secure right to start a business for the common good in a democracy? I may be misinformed but in India I can not ever imagine having to need to do this.

p.s. I am not trying to show anyone in a bad light, just wondering if things like this are possible in a democracy.
I think you're gonna have to create your own communications infrastructure if you want to work against the people who control the current one.

Look at the cartels. They had to create their own cell networks and radio systems for communications.
At least the backlash and market demand made the Kinect optional.
I don't live there, but I've been several times. As I understand it, Boulder county owns all of the land around Boulder and won't sell it, so the city can't expand. I think there's also a lot of restriction on how high buildings can be. The result is a small-town feel, but with a college atmosphere. There are a lot of engineering firms in and around Boulder, and plenty of beer. Add to that a culture of outdoorsy-ness, and it's one of the most lovely places I've had the pleasure to visit.
"you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening"

That means that it is ALWAYS listening. It needs to listen for that trigger word at all times.
It seems like it is a bad time for finding enterprise-grade js frameworks. Ember has its disclaimer, Angular is impossible to recommend for new projects since 2.0 isn't out yet and will be entirely different than 1.x, react/flux is still releasing breaking changes, and I'm not sure what else would be considered a very strong candidate.
Of the communities listed in the article, Boulder is by far the largest (with a population just over 100,000.) The rest of the counties and small towns combine for a population of under 25,000.

These projects are going to have a very different profile in terms of cost and difficulty compared to the same project in a major metro area.

[Sources: wikipedia. Plus, my great grandparents homesteaded in Wray in the 1890s, and relatives in the area still host family reunions.]
Wake-up word is the way to go for many reasons.
This "internet-of-things" trend coincides
unfortunately with the "dragnet surveillance"
trend. With every new product launch from a
"cloud company," I increasingly feel as if I'm
reading the tombstone of modern society. The
selling point behind these devices is
convenience, but at the cost of security. I
don't think I need to explain to HN why an
always-on, internet connected voice recording
device is something to keep out of your house. [1]

Consumers are frighteningly amenable to reducing
their security in favor of convenience. Often
they are oblivious to the tradeoff altogether.
Evidence of this trend has increased since 9/11,
as increasingly paranoid legislation made its
way through congress at the behest of corporate
stakeholders. It should hardly be surprising that
now, with the NSA privileged enough to be openly
flaunting its surveillance, those same corporate
stakeholders are investing in companies that sell
listening devices to millions of Americans. I am
making a paranoid argument, but it's not ungrounded,
and certainly not surprising, because paranoia breeds
paranoia. Pass paranoid legislation, face a paranoid
populace. The American people are rightfully skeptical
of their government.

Perhaps it sounds absurd to segment the world into
the "populace" and "government," but did it sound
absurd when you read those terms in high school
history books? Over spans of centuries, politics is
viewed in the same terms: the people, and the
government. Maybe you and I do not think of ourselves
in the context of centuries. But what about Barack Obama? Vladimir Putin? It seems logical to assume they see themselves in the context of world leaders past. Modern leaders occupy unprecedented seats of power over the largest populace ever. If they are internally comparing themselves
to each other and their predecessors, then we have a problem. We cannot trust the world leaders, because they
do not view themselves on the same level as us. Faced with an increasingly empowered and growing populace, they could
react any way. We'll see.

(Yes, I'm trying to get on a list at the NSA. It's an
experiment I'm doing. Hopefully I hit enough keywords
today.)

[1] Yes, transmission is triggered on-chip, but who verifies
every chip fabrication is performed using the same imprints?
You think governments don't have factory floor managers in
their pockets?
Well two of the three mentioned (XBox One & Amazon Echo) are wall powered devices so I am not sure of the point you are making?
wow, thanks for the post! I'm the creator and would love to answer any questions. It will be on app stores soon, and I may expand it to other cities if it takes off, since it's based on GTFS data feeds that are available in many cities
Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products
They don't want Google to be able to buy it. They want Google to be forced to buy it.

If you took ice cream for free that doesn't give anyone the right to force you to buy it.
The impression I've always had was that money laundering, as long as they dont mind losing a big chuck of their cash by doing it, is pretty easy - and therefore if they saw the value in getting it into a legal banking system (to lobby through a non-illegal front) it wouldn't be impossible, just more expensive than lobbying with legal money. But the extent of my knowledge on money laundering comes 30% from an old friend who used to work for a bank detecting it and 70% from breaking bad, so could easily be wrong!
"it only hears you when you use the [wait chord?] we chose"

edit: "wake word" I guess.
This Is What Your 3D-Printed Moon Home Will Look Like
> Just because you were born with pink feet doesn't make you any more or less special than me.

No one said that. Feeling insecure?
Definitely. I would say that an 'app-store'-like way for users to add extra capabilities to the device provided by third parties is going to be crucial to the success of this (or similar) devices.

Hopefully they'll go a step further and develop a whole toolkit to help developers write software with natural language interfaces.
But this data capture could be done through different means. That doesn't require capturing private conversations.
Yes, that's a main concern of mine, but I really liked the idea of a train hitch (like how the app connects people)
Unless the chip design, the firmware, the OS, the software is 100% open source, there is no way to confirm "Nothing will be transmitted to the cloud". It could be an update check, or it could be the transmission of a new voice fingerprint.

Same shit with cellphones, I have to admit.
That's what I thought at first too, but the data makes it clear that it isn't just based on votes weighted by subscriber count either.
The production of this video reminds me a lot of the one for Microsoft Songsmith. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E
Yea but I think that was more because of the added cost and not the privacy implications.
> The selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an always-on, internet connected voice recording device is something to keep out of your house.

Do you have any computers in your house? A TV made in the last few years? A smartphone?
Hi again!

What do you think about the current list view layout? Is it more comfortable to browse?

Thanks.
Foobar's the only realistic alternative because it's the only one, that I know of, that supports the full gamut of plugins written to play video game/ancient computer audio files. Mostly because guys like Neill Corlett wrote all those plugins ~15-10 years ago when your only choices were Winamp or Foobar.

http://www.zophar.net/music.html

Audacious comes close, but isn't quite there. PSF2 support is mostly non-functional, for instance.
While welcoming this, it's amazing this kind of thing is news. That so many communities failed to acknowledge the inevitable rise of SMP systems still amazes me. This blind spot basically killed OCaml, which has fantastic single thread performance, and it remains a serious problem for things like Python.

The same thing is now happening with the rise of GPGPUs.
I'm pretty sure that's a tongue-in-cheek reference to the pro-surveillance argument that 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear'.
They've already busted a few other markets. Currently Hydra, Cloud 9, and SR2 all show seizure notices when visited.

The largest two markets, Agora and Evolution, are surprisingly both going strong right now.

dnstats.net keeps track of markets uptime. You can use the website to watch for other markets that may fall.
I cried on my first day as a Digital Nomad
Well, I found that I would use search/URL fields as a "temporary scratchpad" for passwords, when I had to copy-paste something else, and didn't want to lose the password in my clipboard. The history means I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Thanks for Ditto!
Amazon can now hear everything you say and target ads to your conversations. I'm surprised Google didn't release this.
amazing iPhone 6 stand for free, you have it, you just don't know about it
> It indicates that the project is worth a closer look rather than waiting or dismissing it outright.
reply

I'm curious, could you explain why? Google is an incredibly large company with many developers who never even touch their data systems so to me saying ex-Googler really doesn't mean anything beyond that they're probably a senior developer considering how rigorous (and honestly some old hat) their interview process is. But that doesn't change my viewpoint of the project at all.
Sorry if anything was unclear -- while OS-based virtualization is very core to SDC, there's nothing specific to Docker at the moment. That said, that's definitely trying to make SDC a good fit for production Docker deployments -- and if you want a sneak peek as to some of the technological underpinnings, see our work on LX branded zones in SmartOS.[1] Expect a lot more there in the coming weeks and months; all of our work there has been (and will be!) done in the open.

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-04-24
r/all right now has 4/25 threads from the funny subreddit

no cat pictures, 2 gifs of dogs being cute

I check r/all because it's the breadth focused zeitgeist of the internet. Whether the comments are right or wrong doesn't matter. Once you can fix a point on popular sentiment you can interpret how it will ripple through more "prestigious" forums.
JRebel 6 Released
None of the voice controlled devices I've ever used have been a pleasant experience (Google, Siri, various others). I don't think the tech is there yet personally.

They might have it down for certain english accents but even as a native speaker, their success rate is probably about 25% for me.

On a related note, iPhone's dictation just took a huge step backwards with the new iOS release.
Performance isn't really a big concern unless you're creating several hundreds of thousands of new objects per second. And I would question why you need to do that in the first place...
This is going to have better microphones and a better speaker, suitable for listening to music in a medium sized room it seems. Also your phone can't hear you from across the room.
I remember telling my 10th grade US History teacher about Winamp. He installed it on his classroom computer - he and I were a bit embarrassed when it played "Really whips the llama's ass" for a few students to hear. Good memories!
This, a million time this. Actually reading stories like these, I wonder how big the market will be in 2020 for fully off-grid home solutions. If we proceed at the current rate with the IoT, cloud based storage of huge personal data sets, I feel that the future is brim.

I bet that market will be huge, eventually.
Privacy concerns not alleviated by the video, which showed the Echo in every room that the family was in.
Smart Calendar App Timeful Gets New Habits and Notifications
> you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening

Incorrect. The device is always listening, waiting for you to say "Alexa" so that it can start acting upon your commands.

I'd take Amazon's claim that no data is transmitted or stored without the wake word "Alexa" purely at face value. There have been enough examples of devices and corporations collecting/sending data they weren't meant to in the past few years for us to deny any new closed-source device the benefit of doubt.

So no, this isn't "pathetic baseless fear mongering".
Coming Together to Fight Ebola
I am an Indian who speaks with slight accent(not real thick, but admittedly there is some) and I am yet to use a voice recognition service that works for me.

Frankly I despair at future of Voice recognition based services which target a very narrow demography. You would hope things would improve with time, but nope. Does anyone else who isn't a native English speaker has seen this problem?
Wow, thats really interesting. I had not heard that before.

Just looked it up...
http://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/
This is in the same vein as the question "why would I want a web browser on my phone? Why wouldn't I just use the web browser on my desktop computer?"

As to why you'd want a device that is listening - and does something when its triggered - is that you can arbitrarily activate it with your voice. For example, if your hands are full, or dirty, because maybe you're cooking or changing the oil in your car, or cataloging the stuff you have stored in your garage.

It doesn't take too much imagination to see why Amazon would invest in creating such a product.
This is not true. It is the DMCA which requires disclosing name, address, and telephone number in order to fight a takedown notice.

If the work was not infringing and the notice was either
in error or malicious, the client can then file what is
known as a counter-notice. That notice must contain the
following elements:
...
4. The subscriber's name, address, and telephone number,
and a statement that the subscriber consents to the
jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial
district in which the address is located, or if the
subscriber's address is outside of the United States, for
any judicial district in which the service provider may be
found, and that the subscriber will accept service of
process from the person who provided notification.

http://brainz.org/dmca-takedown-101/
wasn't the point of my last comment.
If people have questions, several of us Joyent engineers are watching this thread, so fire away. We're also hanging out in #smartos and #manta on freenode.
But why not use "Echo" as the wakeup word, or name the product "Alexa", then?

I'm not considering the iPhone/Siri example the same. Siri came much later after iPhone and is not the primary mode of iPhone operation.
I lived there for several years, and yes lots of people also live there. The view from Google Maps should make it clear that it is definitely not a suburb of Denver.

Once you get there you realize that the two towns are worlds apart. It has a decent tech-scene and extremely beautiful outdoor environment. Good food and beer can also be had very easily.
These are Solaris containers / zones, which as you pointed out can host a full KVM Linux (which can in turn host docker containers).

Someday docker may be extended to support Solaris natively, the same way Microsoft has committed to adding support for Windows.
The link in the submission no longer exists. Perhaps the blog author changed the link title after the HN surge? New link seems to be: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2014/11/where-were-going-with...

Can a please moderator change the link, or mark this as a dead submission?
"like its predecessor, was initially run by a pseudonymous figure known as the Dread Pirate Roberts"

"“It has been over 24 hours since we last heard from our captain,” Benthall is accused of writing under his Defcon handle on December 22nd of last year. “As his second in command, I have very clear instructions as to what to do in this worst case scenario…I cannot elaborate on specifics, but the marketplace is safe in my hands until the Captain returns or his successor appears.” "

An so DPR legend continues.
That statement nonspecifically threatens anyone who "hides behind a keyboard". Also, this threat comes without any determination that the law has been broken; there has been no conviction.

I have no problem with assurance that the law will be faithfully executed. This isn't that. This is inflicting fear to suppress people you disagree with. If only we had a buzzword for that.
Lovely piece of work.
I'm guessing it will initially be more of a speaker with some voice command capabilities before it is regarded as a full-blown Siri. There's definitely some value in not having to fiddle around with a phone to listen to music/radio. And then the mind wanders.
I meant Flow: this talk (http://youtu.be/M8x0bc81smU?t=12m41s) from @scale has the best information about Flow so far.

So far, it sounds like a linter similar to JSHint as long as the codebase is in ES6, with two ways to use it:

- with regular javascript, it is already able to deduce some constraints from the code itself

- with additional type annotations (which is part of ES6, so you don't end up with code that only Flow could use), it can test even more things.
"I wonder if kids get that same feeling of novelty we got back then?"

My question exactly. My son recently saved up his lawnmowing money and bought himself a couple-year old HTC phone. We put cyanogenmod on it and he's figuring out which games will run on it and how to extend the battery life and I think, maybe, he's having a similar sort of experience. I don't know though, it doesn't seem the same as sharing floppy disks, playing Trade Wars on the local BBS, and installing your first Soundblaster.
How can it "hear" the wake-word if it's not already continually working?
That's horrible advice. Tax decisions should never drive business decisions until the amount of tax actually becomes a material financial statement item. If you let tax effects drive your business decisions as a startup, you end up with a structure more complicated than the most efficient option, and most of the future tax "savings" disappear to lost opportunities or maintenance of your "optimized" structure.

(not to mention the negative effects of CA's business income tax, higher payroll taxes, office rents, living expenses for employees, etc. on your valuation).

Nevada hasn't turned out so well for the many startups who have moved there. Check out re/code's entire series of the Downtown Vegas experiment. It turns out that money isn't everything, or even the most important thing. If your business couldn't succeed in California, moving to Nevada won't make a difference.

Mark Zuckerberg alone has paid a multi-billion dollar penalty for the mere privilege of living in California.

Zuckerberg chose to pay a lot of taxes for the privilege of living in California, the state which made it possible for him to earn many billions of dollars. Without Silicon Valley, nobody would remember or care about Zuckerberg today. (Even Zappos, Nevada's only success story to date, found its initial success in California.) Zuckerberg did the right thing: he paid it forward so that California could continue to be the place where people go to make it big.
People have already stopped caring at large.
> Surely you agree that languages designed with one purpose in mind (a la Go and networking/server development) can reasonably do better at that purpose than an explicitly general-purpose language?

I don't think that's a given. Just because a language is more special-purpose, doesn't mean that a more general purpose language can do the same things as seamlessly as in the other language (maybe they would have to define an embedded DSL, but that might be simple). Maybe the special-purpose language decided to commit to certain things in its domain - like certain concurrency features - and make it "first class", since that was its intended domain. But then maybe that concurrency feature wasn't that useful and a more general purpose language - which had to keep its options open since it was general purpose - could express other alternative features more easily.
Since the bigger markets (Evo and Agora) aren't down (as of yet) I think it's probably not a general vulnerability that works for every site. If it did I would assume they would go after the biggest markets too, not the smaller ones who were already mostly dead.
I'd love this if it had a testing framework to go with it. The primary reason we went with Angular was because it was so much easier to test than the spaghetti of jQuery modules and the mess that are events.