skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When multiple companies compete for market share and consumer interest, prices typically drop.
The idea is supposed to be that if you accidentally told your basement smoke alarm that it was in the bedroom, you'd wake up hearing "Fire in the BEDROOM" and then you'd look around and see there's no fire in the bedroom and push the hush button and go back to sleep and meanwhile your basement is on fire.

So networked smoke alarms require you to visit the one that's detecting the fire and disable it locally.

Now, why they would ever make the regulations such that you can't temporarily silence the alarm, even when you're in direct physical contact with it, is beyond me.
Do they not have an internal power supply to smooth out voltage spikes?
Agreed. Sibling comment is talking about devoting "hours" to closing tabs, I'm not even sure if it's a joke.

I've presently got 2 tabs open: HN and this comment form.

Even when neck deep into documentation or github issues I don't think I've ever gone above 20 tabs, it definitely doesn't seem like it could be productive.
You might want to check out a thread on thermostat safety I started over on the Spark Community awhile back: https://community.spark.io/t/spark-powered-thermostats-burni... .

It was a fascinating discussion all around with some interesting lessons:

1) No one seems to consider a thermostat as a device which requires safety controls.

2) The built-in safety controls on a consumer HVAC unit tend to be insufficient & kick in well after temperatures in a home can get dangerously hot, if they kick in at all.

3) Because of the custom nature of every HVAC install, with more air going to certain rooms than others, it's not possible to draw any conclusion about the nature of whether a situation with a rogue thermostat can become deadly.

4) It appears a large majority of digital thermostats are built to a "toy grade" standard.

This is likely a topic space that doesn't get enough attention and I hope I opened a few eyes over at Spark. The fact is, such incidents don't happen often so they simply don't get the attention. This is unfortunate, because with the state of modern safety systems and designs an out of control thermostat is something that should never happen.
Remembering David Carr
Underwriters Labs make you pay to see that.

I can show you the table of contents, though:
http://ulstandardsinfonet.ul.com/tocs/tocs.asp?doc=s&fn=0217...
That's very cool to hear. I'm glad it has worked so well for you!
A bit late in seeing this -- but no, I only operate one base station (Netgear AC1900).
My router runs the 5G band via a separate SSID -- you must explicitly choose to connect to it. That's a standard approach for Netgear routers.
I have an early 2011 17" Macbook Pro (8,3). My wife has an early 2009 13" Macbook Pro.
But... every smoke detector I've bought in the last decade has had silence button. So how it is against any regulation?

According to a quick google, all smoke detectors in Maryland are required to have a hush function by 2018. So... pretty sure that isn't prohibited by regulation there. FEMA says the best smoke detectors have a temporary silence button. I guess maybe there are some states that prohibit it? Seems awfully foolish though: temporary hush buttons save lives.
Ask HN: Figuring out logistics for a personalized gift box
I take care of logistic at www.spoil.co at YCW15 company and wanted the input of HN on our biggest hurdle at the moment.

We run a personalize gift box service. This means that all our boxes need at least 3 different items in them that are all personalized to the description we have of the recipient.

Experienced purchasing professional select items we currently hold as inventory and purchase any missing items to make each gift unique if needed.

Now that system is very time consuming but also highly risky since we hold various types of inventory and would constantly need more in curated to an even more specific level if we didn't want to buy at full price.

Would HN have any item on how to grow our network of suppliers without having to hold on to some inventory and manage complexe shipping logistics?

Our skills is in software and we feel like we aren't investing our time at the right place to be efficient and with high growth in sale the problem gets bigger and bigger each day...

Thanks for your tips,
Charles
I used to own a house equipped with a heat pump, and in heating mode the cheap-o thermostat would display "e heat". Maybe it's just common to use the same control circuit for that, that might otherwise be used for some sort of actual emergency heating device?

It just said "heat" when the furnace was on.
Axis: The Game
Wow, that's a lot of alarms! I've got a 3000 sqft. house and it's only got 3. I guess you can never be too safe.
Such a simple, but smart way to have a control group, helping to separate correlation from causation. Thanks for sharing.
Reforming the current system would be difficult, no doubt. And perhaps it's unworkable. Big pharma also owns academia. Much of the peer-reviewed literature for many drugs has been ghostwritten by industry-funded consultants. Sometimes the authors don't even read their manuscripts, and in some cases haven't been informed of them. Some journals have been addressing this, but it's pervasive.

In any case, the current system isn't working. Incentives for fraud far outweigh those for improving public health. And there is virtually no accountability.
The Google Maps ground truth projects gave them quite a lot of vehicle experience too (at least tangentially)...
More than being more organized, it's really changed the way I browse. Throughout the day I'll build buckets of things to read/deal with and keeping them in groups makes it incredibly simple (and less stressful) to run through.
He developed nothing of the kind. The "Stutter edit" effect has been used in electronic music even before Autechre and the rest, in the eighties electronic bands.

If this guy created anything, it's the plugin with the same name that automates the process (and even that is debetable for 2011 -- similar plugin tools existed way before).

In essense: don't trust anything your read on the internet. This Wikipedia page is an example of the worst BS on Wikipedia, it should be taken down.
Hasn't Tesla shown that it's possible?

Again, we are talking about a company that took in 75 billion last quarter. If a scrappy upstart can get into the industry, I don't doubt Apple could.

Also, this is probably an automated Uber service so you can focus on your Apple devices, not the driving experience.
Kara Swisher interviews Barack Obama
Pepper Flash is maintained by Google themselves, not by Adobe, as far as I can tell.
Apparently Nest can't, so why not try?
Is government ready for agile?
Contrast with "An implementation of the K5 interpreter."

Or maybe others see them as one in the same?

Of course from a performance and aesthetic perspective there is a world of difference between node.js and the tiny q/k interpreter from kx systems.

On the other hand, the author's "Forth interpeter" in PostScript (Four.PS) is, at least from a reading standpoint, a thing of beauty. IMHO.

Rightly or wrongly, I think of the PostScript interpreter as Forth-like, so I might be tempted to call Four.PS an implementation of the "Forth language", i.e., a small part of it.
> (Yes, I know the smoke detection was a malfunction, but occasional malfunctions like that are a fact of life. My ire is directed at regulators forbidding users from silencing their own smoke detectors without physically incapacitating them -- what were they thinking!?)

Well for most it just involves pulling the power cord or yanking the battery.
> people die when they incapacitate their smoke detectors because of false alarms that can't be silenced any other way.

Not sure nest would win if it was easier to disable. Have you ever had a smoke alarm that goes off every couple hours? You can't sleep. Doesn't matter if you can turn it off with a wave.

And let's say you reach the point where you instinctively wave so it doesn't bother your sleep, now what happens when there's a fire?

False alarms are the problem. From the video and reports, it appears the Nest Protect has real problems with this.
It's not more power than that received by the shade, which is reaching the Earth already. Sure, albedo, blah blah blah.

But there are quite a few interesting things we could do with a lot of power right there, in space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld#Forward.27s_Light-Sa...
The current California fire code requires them all over the goddamn place.
I was on the BeOS team for many years.
While we did many interesting things, and especially kernel and driver layers were more modern than the alternatives, Palm threw away those pieces. If I were to build (or fund) a new OS today, I'd drive the state if the art forward.

Especially the GUI layer is too reliant on '80s style implementation inheritance, rather than fast, strict protocols and minimal abstraction costs.
Pulled the battery from my kitchen fire alarm after it went off three nights in a row while making dinner. Nothing was smoking or even boiling, much less actually burning. It's an electric stove to boot.
Apple hardware is generally beautiful and feels extremely well built, but usually makes a few key compromises of function for the sake of form, with the result that some of their gear is prone to failure after a surprisingly short period of time. Take pretty much every Apple cable ever made for example. They lack stress relief and, hence, tend to fall apart where they are stressed. Some of this can be blamed on Steve Jobs. Reportedly, it was Jobs who hated the look of stress relieved cables so much that he prevented Apple from adopting sensible cable designs. Hopefully Cook is less dogmatic in pursuing form over function.

Even so, I'd be wary of a buying a new car from a first-time auto manufacturer, especially one with Apple's track record of compromised function. I'd be afraid that Apple, in trying to set their car apart from the competition, would build a car that is either unsafe or doomed to early failure. I'm sure people will line up to buy the iCar just like every other iProduct, but it may well prove sensible not to be amongst the first!
I'm not saying you should be able to permanently mute them; just for, say, 15 minutes per button press.

Also, cheapskate landlords would just take the battery out.
So this guy pretty much publicly admitted he knew his companies useless smoke alarm was going off at his home, but couldn't be bothered going home to sort it out? Poor neighbours indeed.
Anti-Aging Pills in the News
I'd stay away from css to create images personally. it's just too hackish. seems like wikipedia implements some sort of svg to png conversion on the fly. that is preferable for me. css isn't even good at what it's intended for. I certainly don't see it solving more problems.
You have a point -- I don't know for sure, but my extremely high electricity bills (even during two relatively mild months) are my reason for believing that the Nest was activating the emergency heat.

EDIT: corrected that whole last sentence. It made no sense.
it's exactly what svg is suited for. I cringe anytime I see css graphics. ONe guy did an entire 3D scene using CSS and I was both awestruck and sickened when I saw the explanation of how it was done. what a pain in the ass with little reward IMO. But if somebody wants to do something, whatevs go for it. hack away.
Am I the only one who doesn't see what's so innovative about Spritz? About ten years ago or so, when people didn't create startups for every little side-project they had, there were speed reading java applets that did just about the exact same thing as Spritz.
Go nyet, a more aggressive go vet
There were copyright issues with that. Don't blame Google for following the laws.
If you're looking for an alternative you should check out www.vexbook.com - the calibre of people is higher. It's over Skype or Facetime so it works with any smartphone.
Technical terms are not ambiguous
When your troubleshooting procedures remind your customers of their (erroneous but widely practiced) methods of making NES cartridges work, you might have a problem.
I think the degradation with age as in part bio/physiological might also be in part a matter of adjustment to circumstance. That is to say the really hard problems in mathematics (or physics) one generally doesn't get to work on full-time (since it's very likely that one will work on them for years without producing any results); the most likely path in academia is therefore to do mediocre -to fairly good research that produces results and publications.

When one compromises in to doing work that's less difficult than one can be doing because it's what's necessary career wise, it's not surprising that one's mental alacrity declines.

There are certainly exceptional people that can do one kind of thing for work (or tenure), and at the same time publish significant work in a parallel field - but I think it's rare.
e-heat is the manual override to use the resistance heater in the heat pump (it also disables the heat pump part of the heat pump). It shouldn't normally be triggered.

I don't know anything about nest, maybe it displays that in other situations.
Looks like you are right; googling it definitely suggests that. Thanks for the correction.
What do you mean? Lots of people don't have profile pictures.
But do you seriously think there is a better search engine to configure it to?
If anyone wants to read either of Lutz Prechelt's papers, see the original C/C++/Java [1] and the Perl/Python/.. followup [2]. I wish the program sources were available, if only to see if any of the Perl submissions are as readable as Norvig's lisp [3].

[1] http://www.ebhakt.info/dl/Comparejavaandc_D9F7/compare_java_...

[2] http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf

[3] http://www.norvig.com/java-lisp.html
Nagle Angle and Naggle ?
In case anyone isn't aware, Brad Fitzpatrick isn't just a google employee he also invented and created memcached.
I just find it incredibly creepy that LinkedIn seems to know that I am connected to certain people - I cannot imagine they worked out that I do in fact know that person - not by any obvious means.
Curmudgeon's Guide to REST
if meme, kill it with fire, wasn't more appropriate I don't when it would.

I do not use the nest protect but have had the joys of interlinked fire alarms where one suffered a bad battery but all of them decided to complain about it.

this was a wonderful video, wonder if its hit reddit yet. Silliness abounds there and its not the exposure you want your product to have. Reminds me of the story earlier today about smart homes
Yes. Incapacitated smoke alarms are a contributing factor in fire deaths. Hence smoke alarms are deliberately difficult to incapacitate.

Be aware that battery powered smoke detectors are a retrofit, and do not meet building code requirements. They are better than nothing, but failure due to disconnected or missing batteries is already in the realm of worse than the worst thing that can legally be built today.
What I don't understand is "dumb" smoke detectors, whether on mains or 9v battery, have been reliable forever. Yet a device that should be not much more than putting a little compute power/wireless connectivity/etc in the same enclosure as a sensor setup with decades of proven reliability somehow fails on the sensor's reliability.

Is there a patent in this space or something that forced them to reinvent the sensor or should this be a poster child for NIH syndrome?
> It seems developing new language and bringing it to reasonable level is not trivial effort.

That is correct :)
I don't defend it. Why would I? I have taken on no obligation here.
Apple has ~200 billion in cash. Tesla's market cap is 25 billion. It definitely could be.
Pretty sure I didn't see a single correct usage of the word in that article, actually. :/

shib·bo·leth

SHibəliTH,-ˌleTH

noun

a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important.

"the party began to break with the shibboleths of the left"
Executive Order – Promoting Private Sector Cybersecurity Information Sharing
> Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists".

And I don't owe anybody belief in weak arguments.

> Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence.

Thomas Aquinas also offered "proofs" of God's existence that few people outside the Catholic faith take very seriously. For example you can read what Bertrand Russell wrote about him. Other arguments that purport to have "proved" things about religion (and this argument only barely escapes being religious in nature) rarely stand up to rational scrutiny, IMO.
It's pretty damning evidence if two of the biggest math breakthroughs needed to occur outside of our best universities.

Arxiv is turning into a great tool to spread academic ideas, and is in some ways replacing the role of traditional journals. However, how do we replace the funding side of the equation? In both of these breakthrough cases, it seems the researchers found a loophole or used their personal savings.
> Where did you get "smoke and fire detector" from "rolling my own automation"?

Most likely from the fact that you made that comment in a thread about a smoke detector...
Show HN: Our first Indiegogo campaign, an eInk smart display
Looks great but the first thing we see when we load the page is a couple lines of instruction and an icon which is not obvious/ just looks like a square and it's confusing.

If you want more people to use it, take the section that has the picture of ALL the icons, and move it to the top of the landing page. Just put some text like "LittleBox something about these icons people will like" in big letters.

I almost left the page. I am glad I scrolled down because I really like them, and I can use the flags in one of my projects.
I've felt this same sentiment recently, but regarding the Chrome browser for Android. It used to be perfectly fast, but over time (with updates) it just seemed to get slower and slower on my Galaxy S4, to the point where now it sometimes can take fifteen seconds to register a scroll event on a site like Reddit. Heavier sites are practically unusable. Even as I type this, I see my characters suddenly appearing in groups of twenty or so at a time, where several months ago it was not a problem. And I never even have more than three tabs open normally.
stop the presses!
And Go's net/http package.
Tap and hold in iPhone camera app locks the focus, you can then move the phone to manually focus.
I now believe that conclusion to be false, after talking to more people.
Did your nest ever properly call for cooling?
Need a hacker for general ethical hacks? specialized hacks, hack into email accounts(gmail, yahoo, aol etc.), gain access to various social networks (such as facebook, twitter, instagram, badoo etc.), specialized and experienced hacking into educational institutions, change of grades, clearing of criminal records, clear credit card debts, drop money into credit cards, smartphone hack, paypal hack, hack into banks accounts in various countries etc. contact us at hacksville147@gmail.com
Apparently Rekonq has a Windows version, at least according to a Google search and resultant blog post and winkde repo. http://lpapp.blogspot.com/2012/09/randa-rekonq-installer-for...

Generally Rekonq is considered the better maintained KDE browser nowadays.
They can take it. Or they can build better products.

I don't put on kid gloves when a product is this bad.

I'm nicer when it's a beta or unreleased. But I paid $500 for these, for a final product. This is unacceptable.
Luxury consumer product? Is that way of saying, you must be smart if you bought our product? It does seem to have some pretentiousness built into the marketing.

I prefer KISS when it comes to my life and smoke alarms are not something I am going to fool with. With regards to their thermostats, I rarely am in the rooms my house has thermostats but programmables were cheap and easy to setup.
He wants competition because he's positioning himself/Tesla to be a major supplier and as a platform for EVs to use.
And the power supply issue is well solved, too -- see just about any modern phone charger. I just...don't understand.
Biological availability is a key issue. Having the right molecule is pointless if it's not absorbed as efficiently. Conversely, more-efficient absorption could be dangerous. It's an especially critical issue for extended-release forms.
I think it went 'mainstream' around 2007, with Hinton's TechTalk at Google http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M And even being pretty far from the ML/AI community at the time, I remember playing with Bengio's GPU based Theano Deep Learning Tutorial at around 2008/09. What had happened right now is just that it had finally started beating SVMs consistently and is fast enough to be used for practical purposes.
Can they atleast open source this technology? I can use it for my business.
> It chokes on all 1 word phrases, spending many seconds attempting to find webpages for that word instead of searching. Chrome instantly searches.

If I've understood what you're saying, I believe this was fixed in Firefox 33: https://msujaws.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/faster-and-snappier...

As for the general complaint about Firefox's address bar: I find it to be vastly superior to Chrome's at finding sites I've visited before. I can type in fragments of URLs and/or page titles (even partial words) and get matches immediately in a way that Chrome (and Safari) can't compete with.

For years I wondered why the other browsers were so much worse at this. Then somebody pointed out to me that, for the case of Chrome, Google would much prefer you find a page via Google search than via your browser history...
has anyone found where this regulation is? I have searched a few states and cannot find this restriction. I have found mounting and wiring restrictions but none on silencing.
I'm skeptical. Self-driving systems are extremely software heavy, and Apple is not a software house. It just doesn't make sense.
>drives better, gets better mileage, has lower maintenance, costs tens of thousands of dollars less, and looks good on the outside

Except these are improved with improved software now...for example battery technology isn't anything without good software, same with maintenance (software is the reason why the F-35 is orders of magnitude cheaper to maintain over the lifecycle)

>We like to sort of claim Tesla as our own, but it's not a computer company

Except it is...

At its heart, Tesla is a software developer dressed in a carmaker's robes. The Silicon Valley company has focused on developing its software to be the primary component behind its fleet's sophisticated safety and battery systems, not to mention its infotainment console[1]

Tesla is closer to being a technology company than a traditional automobile maker.[2]

[1]http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/11/is-tesla-mo...
[2]https://www.ihs.com/articles/features/tesla-motors.html
No. The unit saw that it was not reaching its setpoint, so it kept trying to reach the setpoint. But there is apparently no feedback from this.

Instead of A/C, the unit activated heating. So the temperature kept rising even further beyond the setpoint. So, more heat.

Positive feedback -- exactly what I didn't want.
You're conflating "incapacitate" with "temporarily silence".

They're two separate concepts. We should make it really easy to temporarily silence a smoke alarm (for, say, 15m or 4h), so that people almost never have to fall back on incapacitation.

And mandating wired ones does not address the problem. People still incapacitate them, by unplugging them. More generally, people will always find a way to silence a smoke alarm, and the regulators' goal should be to ensure that they do it in a temporary way.