skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The good thing for a project like this in India is that labor is relatively cheap. Hiring semi-skilled technicians / drivers to drive the street view camera van will probably not cost much. Back of the envelope calculation:

~3M Km of roads (urban and rural)

- Assuming avg speed of 30KM/hr, that is 100,000 man hours of work just to record the data.

- Double the estimate to accomodate 2 person teams (driver and technician). 200,000 man hours.

- 50 Rs/hour on average would probably be decent pay for a driver/technician that's semiskilled. (Rs 12000/month with an 8 hour workday). 50 Rs > $1. So, let's say $1 per hour.

- Total cost for recording ALL urban and rural roads excluding state and national highways: $200,000

That's probably around the annual salary of one Sr. engineer at Google in Mountain View.

They could afford to do it multiple times a year.

This doesn't consider the cost of processing this data but Google being Google, I am sure they have automated tools that convert these recordings into Street view quite cheaply. Computing power is their cheapest resource.

Improving the estimate:

- There's also the cost of equipment. It would take 1000 teams 12 working days (~100 hours) each to record data. If you have a little more than a month you only need 333 teams, and so on. Also I bet they are only doing cities first, so they could probably do with 100 teams at a time. Let's say the equipment is USD $2K per team. That's $200,000 in equipment. I am guessing they can do it for much cheaper since they are likely reusing equipment across countries.

- There's the cost of renting the auto-rickshaws. Looks like the 'retail' rate for an auto-rickshaw trip is about Rs 12 per KM (all inclusive) for short trips. Since we are paying the driver separately, 12 per KM may be excessive for the rickshaw + gas, but let's use it anyway. That's Another Rs 12,00,000 = ~$24,000

Updated total cost: $424,000

Imagine if you were a startup in India circa 2007 when street view launched in the U.S. If you had the technical chops to build tools for street view, it would have been a no-brainer to invest this kind of money and get the data. Google, Microsoft or Yahoo would have happily paid 10x to acquire the startup.
No, this doesn't have anything to do with the language it's written in.
I print research papers and other interesting writing fairly regularly at work, and read when I'm in the john or when I'm compiling. An awesome side benefit is that I've started handing papers to the folks I work with who like to socialize more than actually work. When I want to get something done and they don't, I mention something like "Hey, didn't you once say you studied distributed systems in school? Here's a paper for a peer-to-peer name service - would you mind giving it a read and telling me if it's really as awesome as I think it is?"

It seems to work, because now when these same folks come by they are talking about papers I handed them instead of how their cat needs its claws filed or some other trivia.
Outside of basic windowing functions, Qt is pretty awful. I don't even use their widgets unless I am creating a form UI or a normal widgety app. I basically use Qt as a gigantic wrapper around native GUI event loops.

I only use QThread if I need to do QImage stuff in a thread (I think this is strictly not necessary, but safer imo).

Conversion between QString and my::string are there but I have not found them to be very problematic. I guess it depends on how often you are doing these conversions.

In short: Qt sucks, but like democracy, it's the best of the worst.
It won't die because it's true, at least in some cases.

The LuaJIT 2.0 interpreter, written in x86-64 assembly language, is 2-5x the speed of the plain Lua interpreter, written in C. Note that this is with the JIT disabled -- it is an apples-to-apples comparison of interpreter-vs-interpreter: http://luajit.org/performance_x86.html

I recently wrote a protobuf-decoding assembly code generator that is 2-3x the speed of C++ generated code: http://blog.reverberate.org/2011/04/25/upb-status-and-prelim...

What is your evidence in support of the idea that assembly cannot be faster?
do you have a vim colorscheme?
I could make sense for a computing cluster, look at the demo of the BareMetal node, not even a local disk is present.
Machine.js, a library for making behaviour trees
About Linkrot: Proportion of Working Links on Pinboard.in, 1997-2011
there was little guaranty that most state run businesses would survive any way.

Why? Oh, because their immune system, that keeps parasites down (the State in question) was murdered. That's right, murdered.

The alternative would have been for those companies to become abandoned

Why?

As long as the natural resources to run the farms continue to be available (and why should they not?) and Russians still want to drink milk and eat cheese (they do), the farms would keep going happily ever after.

made them profitable businesses

It is possible to get high-quality milk and cheese into peoples' stomachs without American notions of "profit" being in the mix at all.

Is the sewer system in the town where you live profitable?
I am currently trying to find my first project post graduation to do. I am having a very hard time getting started in the freelance. So I would say getting the "first one" is a pretty large problem, at least for me.
The real Metagame: (Louis Kauffman. Popularized by Raymond Smullyan)
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:yWUkoenw47oJ:w...
Korg and Gorillaz partner for iPad app
any performance metrics?
we can speculate about effectiveness of such a solution but it should be fairly easy to validate by running some common computational tasks this OS was designed to excel at, vs other popular OSs..
Does everybody in the world who uses Bitcoins also keep a copy of the global transaction record? Isn't that going to become colossal very quickly?
I wonder how many Wikipedia edits this week are going to be to undo loops.
XKCD

Webcomic
Comics
Graphic
Visual_perception
Visible_light
Electromagnetic_radiation
Energy
Physics
Natural_science
Science
Knowledge
Fact
Information
Sequence
Mathematics
Quantity
Property_(philosophy)
Modern_philosophy
Philosophy

19 steps to philosophy
Sounds actually useful and not like a time sink designed to force feed ads to users.
How to execute native shell commands from JAVA
Currently I have the freedom as a user to opt out of all cookies. But when & if this law even comes into play I wont be able to opt out of the endless pop-ups asking me to enable cookies.

I'm all for protecting user privacy, yet its not a problem. Most users understand how to use 'private browsing'. Yet a lot will be puzzled why a website wants cookies?

This will massively cripple the EU online industries. I'm shocked at the lackluster response from the industry it self.

Additionally the law is both overly specific and vague. It seems to pick out certain technical functions yet state a vague and broad solution.

Plus the laws fails to stop any really bad forms of tracking.
Hmmm, yes, damn do we specialise in that untended-to social minority of scumbags.

I must try that next time I am over. Perhaps they are better at mental arithmetic because they are always adding the tax back on?
That has nothing to do with producing a good design, fast - which is the #1 qualification I'm looking for in a designer at a startup.
"It is as if the Industry is courting self-destruction." And how.
Thanks for the feedback. You're right, when reloading the page, it currently does not remember the previous state so you would have to click on the individual widgets to expand them again.

Linked items can lead to other pages, you just need to click the link item and enter a page name or url in the link input. I probably need to make this more obvious somehow.

As for the addition of items on enter, it just seems to have been missed somehow, it really should be available from a usability point of view.

Thanks again for your feedback
Charles Stross's commentary, though it doesn't really add all that much: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/05/cruel-an...
Issuing bonds is not getting free money. It's taking out a loan that you are promising to back with interest over a stated duration of time.

Central Banks don't seed capital. They lend it.
Some nice sensationalism and FUD there by Sophos. Great product marketing, guys.
Perhaps someone ought to start a service that verifies that your online gold was ethically obtained.

Then again, people buying gold in online games probably don't care very much.
The Metagame Paradox
Modern compilers are generally considered smart enough to do a better job at optimizing your code than you. Maybe if you're really, really smart you can do a better job than the compiler. But I suspect most people who say this are not, in fact, smarter than the compiler (but are simply suffering from self-serving bias). And by saying it, they're fooling a bunch more people into thinking that modern compilers are stupid, leading them into incorrect decisions like actually writing applications in assembly "for performance reasons".

So while yes, there are probably a small number of cases where it's still worthwhile to write stuff in assembly, it's not worthwhile to talk about it as though it's a good thing (I would guess you should only do it when it becomes a necessity, and complain about it a lot, rather than presenting it as a feature)
Honestly, that so many people are on Facebook does little for me. (I mean, do users mind being the first to sign up for a new service? Don't many (an increasing number?) dig that?) But everyone I once knew from highschool wanted to add me on Facebook... And then we continued to not stay in touch with each other. It's not about social networks, but people instead go for the metagame of "friend accumulation" so they can pretend that they're Ashton Kutcher or something. Weird.

And actually, I closed my Facebook a while back. Well, I put up an image saying I was no longer responding there, but friends can contact me through other means listed in my profile. Close enough.

What do I want in a social network? Functionality that isn't about something trying to become the medium. That's what MySpace was and Facebook is, services trying to supplant the rest of the Internet. Messages, posts, walls, galleries, info, etc.? I have email, a blog, Twitter, IM, Flickr, a calendar, and a phone number for calling/texting people I talk to most often. I'm easily contactable for friends, as they are to me.

So all the problems that Facebook "solves"? Not really problems for me. And increasingly as more people use computers every day (yes, there are many who still don't,) those things won't be problems for everyone else either. These networks exist to help shoehorn those who aren't digitally literate (or those willing to sacrifice ability for ease) into the present. I honestly do think the need for this, will eventually start shrinking until it hits a base where people who are just uninterested in the Internet will be the only ones using them. Ironic, eh?

You want me to sign up for another social network? Offer some unique functionality I didn't realize I was missing, or build your network around something niche that I can't say "no" to. (Actually this reminds me of the "What would you do if you owned MySpace?" post from about a month ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499250 )
ICO is literally a mile from house. Might pop round with some cookies.... a present for crippling UK industry.

Its not like where running behind already. Lets just nail that coffin fully shut.
C++0x in Qt
actually there were two devs, one graphics and one game concept guy. it was great because Wylie and Dmitri had skills that dovetailed nicely. Chris and I mostly just provided the lulz.
who locked San Francisco out of its main computer network for 12 days

Childs claimed he never intended any harm, but did not trust his superiors with the passwords. He eventually gave the passwords to then-Mayor Gavin Newsom in a jail cell visit

This doesn't really pass the smell test as just some silly misunderstanding. Twelve days to hand over the information?
IIRC, what they call auto (or auto rikshaw) is the motorized rikshaw. Both are tri-cycle.
You seem to be issuing a wholesale approval of the Soviet economic system as just and moral. Are you actually serious? There's a very big difference between the Washington Monument and a dairy farm. A dairy farm is supposed to be an economic, well-administered business. You may wax poetic with Marx all you want, but history has shown conclusively that state ownership is terribly wasteful and inefficient.

Yes, there were lots of difficulties implementing privatization in Eastern Europe, and it's hard to find a perfectly fair system for it. That doesn't make it a theft. If you want an analogy think of a bankruptcy - except the whole economic system was bankrupt in those cases. Without a switch to private property all those economies would be much, much further down the economic drain right now; when instead, some of them have recovered quite nicely.
Scala code is more verbose than Haskell or Scheme but its still pretty terse for many things, so you tend to get much more done with much less code (especially if you compare it to Java).
I think it was not so much that the community was ignored, but that the law was passed under unusual circumstances: usually the lobbyists inform the legislators, who defer to industry on the specifics. Here the lobbyists mostly hated the legislation, but legislators were more responsive to privacy activists because of widespread public concern. So the law is a triumph of democracy over technocracy.

And I think that's reflected in the legislation. The principles are OK, but the detail does not match up with practice. Hence the law is some way from being something workable.

It is well worth reading the ICO report: http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electron...
Question, does this affect websites hosted in america (the continents) who might have UK based visitors?
Maybe using Rouge? http://engineering.foursquare.com/2011/01/21/rogue-a-type-sa...

Persistence IMHO doesn't have to be a very important feature in a framework, since a good one should be able to be pluggable. I use Django, but in some projects I don't use their ORM (or any ORM).
Social Media and Architecture
The first version (Windows 1.0) featured a tiling window manager, partly because of litigation by Apple claiming ownership of the overlapping window desktop metaphor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#History
I didn't actually use the en dash in an appropriate context, such as "1 – 7".

I don't use em dashes profusely. However, I'm reminded of bumping into arbitrary rules that mandated rewriting something into a more awkward form in order to comply with the rules.

There is a certain subset of instructors who confuse students with rules more than they aid them in learning to communicate clearly.

As for the style guides. Well, I don't know how things are these days, but there was also a not insignificant portion of pedagogy devoted to blind adherence to one or another. All the more confusing when a young student is not really working in a context that allows the student to see where, how, and why the rules make sense. Cart before the horse, I guess I might say.
Am I the only one that misses the infamous turbo button from the old 386 computers?

The amusing irony was that it was mostly used to slow the computer down so you could run those programs that were written with a lower clock speed in mind.

One of these days, I am going to shove a modern computer into one of those retro 386 cases and wire up the turbo button just for fun...

Edit: And for anyone that would like a clicky keyboard, they are not extinct: http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/

I am using one of the Unicomp Customizers right now and it really is a pleasant experience. My clicky keyboard is worth every penny that it cost me.
I'm from the US. It's not that I found the definition incomprehensible. It just didn't sound like something anyone would actually say.

The problem with using the term "spoken word" to describe what you are offering is that it already has a separate meaning. Spoken word is a particular type of performance art. See Wikipedia. Honestly, the best thing may be to just list the type of content you are offering: "... who enjoy hand-picked audio documentaries, interviews, discussions, stories and more." I'm not sure there is a good term for the collection of those things.
Rate my sideproject that by-pass paywalls to gather content
I've been working on this sideproject for a few weeks now and I believe , it's fine for a public release.
The basic idea is that: you can use this tool to have RSS feeds generated from any website (No flash sites), and fetch full content from any feeds, no matter if the original feeds only offers excerts or is behind a paywall. I plan to introduce premium features for monetization. The tool will come in handy when you come across sites that only have partial feeds, and also when all that you want is to generate one page feed with all main content found on any site that interests you, but whose layout is unpractical. Here's a sample of the hackernews Feed url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedsapi/BwPx

Any feedback is much appreciated. Thanks!
Before somebody complains: "Why is this not for Chrome too, its from Youtube..."
Chrome has a different philosophy, it has a focus on speed and isn't adding JS features before Apple did it.
This hasn't been clarified yet. Some people think it may effect all EU traffic.

Seems like we might having a tracking paradox.
No, you didn't create software, but you effectively distributed a trojan.
> It is highly doubtful that fair compensation for the privatization of public property is possible even in principle.

What? The state-owned dairy farms had a cost, covered by the citizens, presumably in the form of taxation. And they had a product: dairy.

After privatization, tax revenue ceases to be collected for the dairy farm. People instead pay for the same products directly.

Of course the criminal and the corrupt can interfere with this, and continue to impose the tax burden or some such, but exactly what compensation is incalculable here? The farm had a value to the citizens in proportion to how much value it generated for how much cost. And it still does.
In response to step 3, "decide what solution to obtain consent will be best in your circumstances", there's a discussion on ux.stackexchange related to potential methods for obtaining consent: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/7318/what-ux-solutions...
Better would be to automatically refresh.
as idiotic and frustrating as this is, I find it amusing to note this includes direct.gov.uk,

edit: the ICO's website now has a horrific warning at the top of it, which it didn't yesterday.

edit2, ICO's website has google analytics & an asp.net session ID yet their warning states "One of the cookies we use is essential for parts of the site to operate and has already been set." this would lead me to think that a cookie for a session key "essential" therefore admissible? ...
russian army is not formidable military organizations and hasn't been since 1970s, may be earlier. the only thing formidable is the level of corruption. There was an article few days ago that they feed dog food to their conscripts. The only thing that keeps them being taken seriously is the nuclear threat, which they parade (literally) every single opportunity they get
found another loop, on my first try nonetheless:

Genghis_Khan -> Mongolian_language -> Mongolia -> Mongolian_language
Does the plain Lua interpreter also JIT? PyPy is written in Python and it's a lot faster than CPython in many cases, thanks in large part to the JIT.
You should make the Turbo button "magic" (if you can figure out how to, that is).

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
Can anyone find a path that doesn't end with:

...
Mathematics
Quantity
Property_(philosophy)
Modern_philosophy
Philosophy
Why not? The Corruption Perception Index[1] is the most famous attempt to do so. In their 0-10 scale--higher numbers being less corrupt--Russia is ranked at 2.1, India at 3.3, and China at 3.5.

[1]: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/...
1 in 5 APIs Say “Bye XML” - JSON gaining ground
LaTeX On Web
Be friendly when you deliver the cookies: the ICO is trying to do its best with vague legislation - they don't get to decide how the courts will interpret the legislation.
Right? especially where you can no longer really trust ip based geolocation now that we've run out of ipv4 address, and they're allowing single address trading. What you could once reasonable guess was a us address based on the ip block, may now actually be owned by a uk organization.
history has shown conclusively that state ownership is terribly wasteful and inefficient.

If history is teaching us anything here, it is that ownership by an absentee-lord (whether elected by Communist bureaucrats or stockholders, it matters little) is wasteful and inefficient.

And let's not forget that efficiency is a false god. An economy that leaves the masses starving or mired in lawlessness might still be "efficient" from some theoretical standpoint (efficient in feeding those who are fed, in protecting the lives of those who are in the designated protected class, etc.)

The USA is dying the death of the USSR:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtxqwqr_20dc52sm

And it will be remembered in the same way, as a brutal dinosaur of an empire, run by sociopaths, riddled by economic delusions worthy of the wackiest religious cult.

Without a switch to private property all those economies would be much, much further down the economic drain

On what evidence, on whose word, should we believe this?

some of them have recovered quite nicely

Financiers, mafiosi, and their lackeys riding yachts is not a "recovery."
languages like C/C++, VB, and Java.

That's kind of funny if you think about it. Are people really writing OS's in VB these days?
Tool of the Day: Cure your attachment disorder with Attachments.me
Need troops people. Anyone against this new cookie law please join this page. Need to spread the word.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/This-EU-cookie-takes-the-biscu...
There is an easy way to increase your detection of redirects and parked pages: make two requests, one to the real URL and one to a URL which is intentionally broken. (example.com/i-am-a-link and example.com/fklsdfasdifo for example) Run a heuristic for difference on the resulting content. This won't catch all of them, particularly if you use a really naive heuristic that can't deal with e.g. ads changing, but it's a heck of a lot quicker than comparing manually.
On that chart, Greeks points to to other pages. How can Greeks have two first links?
>If I tell my machine to do something, I want it to carry my orders.

I downloaded this 'Free Screensaver Pack' and I want to run it! Who does this virus scanner think it is? Quit telling me that its a bad idea and just goddamn do what I want you to.

If bad software exists I don't want my computer to warn me that it might be a bad idea to run it, I'd rather apple just creates a walled garden so I can don't even have the option to command my computer to do something bad.
Yes, I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to auto-refresh changes without there being a brief blank window while the page is refreshing. Having a page repeatedly go blank when refreshing might be distractive or even irritating to the user.
The summary is still much shorter than the article. It's 13% the size.
Eric Ries is Just Getting Started