skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love Google's Self Driving Cars. But do you think auto industry will allow self driving cars without any problems? For simple concept like Uber, we are already seeing so many hurdles. For any radical innovation to happen lots of naysayers and incumbents will try to kick innovators at every opportunity. Unfortunately, auto industry will use some sort of machination to lobby for evil regulations.

EDIT: To downvoters, I'm in favor of self driving cars but I'm worried about auto industry spoiling the party.
No Goldman wasn't.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/22/us-facebook-foreca...

> In the run-up to Facebook's $16 billion IPO, Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the deal, ......
Also, some of the companies that were holding that bubble inflated were pre-IPO, like Facebook...

I think that FB is the real indicator of where we are with respect to market valuation/sanity.
turns out Su actually got the Seattle office a (waterless) hot tub http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleys...
Agreed, in fact I have never seen anyone using one of these smartphone gamepads and quite frankly I can see why: it's another thing you have to carry with you and besides not all games are/will be compatible.
The US just passed pi*10^8 people
Did you get what song it played? I cracked up hard.
Also these cars would be mostly electric, which have fewer moving parts
Satire is well and good, but i can't grok #9. Interviews in a hot tub? So... even for the women? Or is it used preferentially for high pressure engineers only (whom of course are all men)?

It may be just me, but I can't see the HR department in any state being okay with that. And if it's not for interviews... what's it for?
Boot times is one thing.

Upstart and systemd provide tons and tons of other features though. Restarting of crashed processes, dependencies, etc.. They also generally have much more simple config files instead of start up scripts. I don't know how many crappy startup scripts I've seen over the years, when in practice: set these environment variables, execute this program as this user with these arguments is 95+% of what's needed.

Much much much more straight forward to have some specially formatted comments (?!hahaha, that's the UNIX spirit!) to determine the boot priority and then source some files to read some arbitrary variables and construct the command line that you're interested in running with complete abstraction.
He did said he would take them to court if they didn't pay the invoice. It was clearly an idle threat, though.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the idea of a car. It is what powers the car (currently gasoline) that is the problem. But the self-driving technology is applicable to electric cars, cars that run on fuel cells, what ever other modern and sustainable methods for powering a car exist.
Too late

http://jalopnik.com/5934213/autonomous-google-cars-will-kill...
"Here's what is going to happen in the next 5-10 years."

In my experience the auto industry is slow to change and our federal and state governments even slower. There could be a prototype from one or more car manufacturers within 5-10 years, but it will then have to be thoroughly tested in pilot studies. I will not be able to buy a Google self-driving car from any dealership within 30 miles of my location within 5-10 years.

"The car insurance industry will cease to exist. These cars aren't going to crash."

I think there was a boat in the Atlantic they said that about...

While I'm all for Google's Self-driving car technology, I'll only trust it after my old driving ed teacher takes it out and starts telling it where to go, then have the DMV guy make it do a 3-point turn. Then it can drive with one its parents in the car for a year, Eric or Larry. After that I'll give it 5 years or so to have its first few accidents, hopefully avoid a DUI- driving under the influence (of bad information)- and then I'll let it drive me somewhere.

On a more serious note, is it capable of pulling off the road or speeding up beyond the speed limit if a car came careening up behind it? What would it do if you fell asleep while it was driving and it did a hit and run when a drunk runs in front of it? Will PETA protest Google when the cars don't swerve to miss the cats?
While I enjoyed that video, it came to me as a bit of surprise that this style of programming is being "rediscovered."

Anyone remember Morphic, Squeak, Lisp, etc? Emacs?

Lively Kernel is pretty darn cool too.

I'm not saying it's bad, I think it's cool that this style of programming is making a come back (and about bloody time I suppose).

The only thing I'm not certain of with this course is actually calling it, "Computer Science." Perhaps that's because I tend to agree with those who question whether it is indeed a science at all. However after watching a few videos and trying some of the exercises it seems to me to be a great way to learn how to program.
Exactly.

Also I would say that not all comments are created equal. You comment your API's first, then implement/explain them with code, then describe why with more comments ;-)
Everybody wins? No, the Earth loses, and then we lose. It's happening faster than you think.
Dishonored PC system requirements revealed
If cars are self-driving, there'll be less of them. And they can better utilise existing road space (faster reaction times means they can tail-gate with comparative safety.)
it only works on linux.

fuck you.
The key things are:

1) The code should speak for itself, and

2) You comment when you have something to say outside of what the code says.

Chances are, ironically, if you stop using comments as a crutch, you will use them more often because they will start to be a useful tool.
Sorry but I will always want to drive myself. I have a great car that I love and because of the way the world has changed since it was made (20 years or so) I don't think they'll ever make anything quite like this again. I intend to keep it forever.

Plus driving is way too fun. Driving != commuting... go find yourself a nice deserted mountain road, roll down the windows, and feel the breeze.
And @confluence is implying that the real goal may not be sustainability, but profit. See Sparrow, Instagram, and all the other sellouts.
You still to this day can't buy a 17" 1080p monitor. LCDs are still behind my 15-year-old CRT.
20 Alternative Android apps download sites - Gizchina.com
I'd pretty much assumed that it was tongue in cheek from the title. I'm completely baffled as to how anyone can read more than a few lines without realising it's not serious.

Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?!
I suspect after the technology becomes wide-spread, new laws will be made to minimise people buying (human-driven) vehicles. Cars will probably require some expensive licence to drive, older cars will not be allowed on the road unless an exemption is made etc. Sort of how Singapore does it.
The Real Story of Developing for Nintendo's Download Platforms
Cue classic Dijkstra quote: "The teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery."
Doesn't even have to be a major metro area. Start small. Someplace without snow (Google cars still have problems with snow). Puerto Rico. The Bahamas. Hawaii. These are all small places where you can shake out the major issues before expanding.

Also, other places to start would be Nevada (as Google is doing), Texas, and other large states where there is a benefit to having something automated do the driving for 3-6 hours across large stretches of highway.

You're never going to have a major metro just ban human-driven cars overnight; you win by attrition, small bites very quickly.
Shell scripts are awful for boot. They have no expression of a dependency graph and truly pathetic notions of state. Hell, starting a process in the background takes ACTUAL THOUGHT in a shell script. How insane is that? systemd may not be as thoroughly tested but at least it's designed thoughtfully and will eventually be more reliable. For now, let it be relegated to arch and let them test it. What are you even doing with arch on a server anyway?
How I created a culture for my startup accidentally (on purpose)
> We don't need more cars on the road, and we don't need more roads either. It's not sustainable.

If anything, autonomous cars is a great way to go to reducing the number. The car can drop you off at office and come back home by itself, so your significant other could use it in the meanwhile without really having to buy two cars.
I agree, and he's slyly discouraging serious debate of his points since Facebook is so "cool". Software actually does need to be discussed. Leadership is critical in any structure of any size. The thought that every brogrammer is making decisions makes me think that he's either overstating this fact (every programmer in the world makes some decisions everyday), or that Facebook is chaotic. The rate of source code commits is fairly meaningless: with 1 shitty rushed commit, you might have to check in another 4 to fix it up. So, with 5 commits in, are you 5x more productive? Hackathons are a great way of interfering with life outside the office. There are other (possibly better) ways to give people a chance to crank out good work on side projects. Like a sabbatical where you spend a few weeks working on something you think is important. The hot tub thing makes me think Facebook is a testosterone-heavy environment.

Maybe I'm just uncool and took his flame-bait. Facebook does sound like a great place to work. But these kinds of puff pieces have a naivete that makes Facebook look like a frat house with a dark side that is not actually discussed.
Self driving cars have the ability to increase the number of passenger miles driven.

The auto industry profitability depends on passenger miles - less miles, less cars + parts, less revenue.

Google isn't going to get into the car assembly business. One or more of the innovative car firms will just licence the self drive technology into an existing platform as a first step.

Car makers themselves have been experimenting with this stuff for decades. If you google around you'll find BMWs doing high speed laps of race circuits with no drivers.

A modern S-Class Benz can literally drive itself already - it has brake assist, lane assist, steering assist, parking assist and radar guided cruise control. It knows where it is going and how long it will take to get there. The driver really is only a small part of the driving equation in a car like this.
Read the part about higher insurance rates for people who want to risk driving themselves.
Good point - better to start small. Vacation islands would be perfect as most people don't really want to drive on vacation anyway, and you don't have to worry about getting a shady taxi driver.
4 of the best levels in gaming
Thanks - I didn't know if it was intentional. If I go to the site, the only link I have is to provide access to twitter. It does give it the feel of "somewhere I'm probably not supposed to be," which is why I was wondering if that was the intent.
Intel HT [1] originally was like that (if your code runs in 1.0s single-threaded, ideally it will run in ~0.77s multi-threaded).

The main problem with hyperthreading is that each CPU generation has been so different and software's only decision is in binding to unique cores and hoping the performance is better. AMD's Bulldozer hasn't helped either.

On the other hand, most of Intel's big markets all tend to use pretty inefficient code (very low IPC), and that's where HT makes a lot of sense. ARM cores are typically running a pretty tight ship. So it makes me laugh when I see Atom includes HT.

Intel, clearly, would dispute my claims.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading
Um, I think it's supposed to be "more thoroughly". Just saying.
wow, those moz guys were really humane. chapeau!
Look, I'm an environmentalist (I fund projects that help pay for inholdings in state parks so they transition to what we'd consider the public domain), but I'm a realist as well. People need mobility. Its not going away, ever. Self driving cars + electric vehicles + intelligent energy management between a large electric grid and all those vehicles is the holy grail. It's going to happen much sooner than you think.
Pinterest Goes Big On Mobile: Rolls Out First-Ever iPad and Android Apps
As long as your choices don't have any externalities, more power to you. People romanticize the days of riding horseback, too, but they don't romanticize the fact that a hundred years ago, every city street was covered in horse shit.

I imagine we'll still have recreational tracks and courses for driving, but "the joy of driving" doesn't justify the megadeaths caused by automobile accidents.
Interesting thoughts, but you're ignoring the demographic that enjoys driving for driving.

Driving a car is a fun experience for a lot of people, when you're not just commuting and putzing along to work.
They say they only use it for high calibre candidates, who presumably already have the job our could otherwise just tell then to stop being silly
Bill Gates foundation holds toilet reinvention fair
The Unbearable Torture Of Linking
He had me until the second point's header. Overall it was a fantastic read if just for the moment of realization. Still it would have benefited with more subtly or fewer items. Some point's like #4 had great potential but needed less sarcasm.
Too much code being committed? Too many decisions being made by engineers? Building a great product?

Wow, talk about navel gazing. I get the satire point, but...

This internally arrogant, externally ignorant attitude is why the stock is where it is. These ideals are not necessarily good for a mature business that needs to pay back the kind people that gave it money in the first place.

Enjoy your free lunch, as there are none.
"I’m sure that a post bashing HN will be very well received on HN."

Actually, she's right. HN is nothing if not constantly self-introspective, and in the wild fast-paced world of startups, there's no such thing as bad publicity. I'm almost certain that HN as a whole will appreciate the attention.

That said, the way the article brings up HN seems to be a red herring. The barrier of entry to HN is far lower than that of App.net.
Groupon tumult turns up the pressure on Mason
Exactly my thoughts. It would actually have been a worthwhile piece to read if it wasn't satire...

As it is, it's just another geek trying to get attention.
Software design patterns for Machine Learning R&D
Why would Google license the tech when they could buy Tesla (TSLA market cap is $3 BB; CHEAP for the value they deliver) and turn out Google cars themselves? They then control the entire ecosystem, similar to Android, versus having to cede control to car companies who drag ass on innovation.
"It is only the second time since 2009 that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores."

Sure. Patrolling where potential or actual adversaries don't want attack submarines patrolling is what attack submarines do. The ocean is big and the Russians have many decades experience evading US anti-submarine technology.

The article appears to have some sort of political agenda. Florida sits between the Gulf of Mexico and Georgia's coast and the primary mission of antisubmarine aircraft is to protect capital ships, e.g. Aircraft carrier battle groups, placing air assets over a ballistic missile submarine would tend to reveal its location.
I don't follow... are the economies of scale that allow insurance companies to operate in the current market graduated such that if they only had to insure a fraction of the current driving population, they couldn't do it at the same cost per person?

Granted they will fight the shrinking of that market tooth and nail (and probably lobby to mandate insurance for all cars regardless of who or what is driving them), but it's not as though their cost structure stays the same once most of the population stops having accidents.
When it comes to Walking Dead games, suspense is better than action
He addressed this point: you'll be able to drive yourself but it'll cost you much more than giving the control to the car (due to cost of the insurance) and much more than today (insurance spreads risks and in order to work, needs a lot of buyers, in this case drivers; if most people switch from current "person driver", expensive insurance to much cheaper "auto-driver" insurance, the "person driver" insurance will become more expensive because there will be no benefits of scale).

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you will do, but what majority of people will do and his article is about those big-picture changes. Cars replaced horses as mode of transportation, with many consequences to society. Very rich people can still ride horses as a hobby, but that doesn't nullify the magnitude of changes brought by replacing horses by cars.
I've only been able to sympathize with what you're saying a very few times. Probably because I've always driven cars that I only view as utilitarian.

The interesting part to me is that the pervasiveness of this general sentiment in America is the reason I think self-driving cars will win out in the near-to-medium term over other options that are probably more efficient and cost effective. America is married to the car, and that's what makes the self-driving car the most likely to succeed new form of transport in my opinion.
Note that a better way of saying things is that systemd deals with state changes a lot better. Booting is one big state change, but when you have a laptop you go through a heck of a lot of other state changes (suspend, hibernate, resume), docking, connectivity changes (eg wifi coming and going), storage added and removed etc. You may let other people use your system (more state changes).

systemd can also ensure that only services you use actually use get started. For example printing is done as a server on Linux (cups) so systemd can ensure it doesn't start until you need it. This reduces power consumption.

Because of the way systemd manages services it can also do a better job of isolating them and dealing with unexpected issues. For example if the print server crashes, or someone attacks it while in Starbucks you'll be better off. (Its chrooting is easier to use, as well as the way things are put into control groups.)

All the things you list require developer time and attention. If systemd lets developers spend less time on startup scripts, then they will have more time to devote to the things on your list. (If you've ever had to write startup scripts you'll know how long it takes to develop and debug them.)
The other day I was driving 2 of my kids (6 and 7) to one of their Summer rec programs. I told them that they would be driven by robotic/self-driving cars someday soon. The questions never stopped after that:

"How will the car know where to take us?"

"How will the car know to stop at stop signs?"

"What if there's a cat in the road?"

"Will the car take us to get frozen yogurt?"
I understand it's tongue-in-cheek, but #2 is actually worrisome:

> There’s even a “no meeting Wednesday” meme in the company, which you might as well call a “failure to communicate” death wish. Software needs to be talked about and debated, not simply written. It’s lunacy to be writing and shipping code at a blistering pace, instead of letting things bake a bit in committees representing broad swaths of all semi-affected parties.

There are a lot of companies where failure of communication is a very real thing, and where semi-affected (or totally affected) parties are completely ignored. In my experience, ideas for code do need to be talked about and debated, not simply written. Facebook has had a lot of very public privacy/other failures that could probably have been avoided if there was more communication going on.

If you're just writing code at a blistering pace, without a lot of communication, there's a good chance you're not writing the right code.
How will this technology work in say, New Zealand? There's a lot of backroads, gravel roads and roads that don't appear in Google Maps.

I guess it would be interesting to see a Google Car, flying around on some back gravel road in New Zealand at 100km/hr without crashing. :) (Google rally driving anyone?)
Speaking of dumb and short-sighted, how do you fail to see that robotic drivers can make vastly more efficient use of existing infrastructure than humans? How do you not see that reducing traffic jams lowers the amount of gasoline burnt idling, and carbon emitted to no effect? How do you not see that the same technology can be the basis for a very different transportation system? Can you not imagine a world where few people own cars (which are parked most of the the time) and, instead, rely on fleets of robotic taxis simply pick people up and drop them off where and when they're called? If crashes were a thing of the past, do you see how dramatically engineering would change? How much smaller and lighter cars could become? How much less fuel they'd use?

I mean, I'm all for envisioning better ways of living. I'm even more in favor of the guys who are not only envisioning it, they're actually building the means.

What are you building?
I would assume that any robocar would keep a record of its visual interface, like the airline blackbox. It would probably become much easier to judge who is at fault.
I disagree.

When cars started to take over from horse and cart, it still took 20+ years for them to become commonplace. It takes time for reliability to go up, and cost to come down. It takes time for the laws to catch up.

What seems like a blink in time to us now (1880s-1900) was 20 years for the people living it at the time. Cars were, at first, a freak sighting - then gradually, little by little, they caught on, and millions of horses were, ahem, retired.

A big step change isn't needed at all. Just gradual introduction and refinement until they are a compelling proposition.

As for the legal issue - the first generation of cars will require a human driver behind the wheel. They'll remain repsonsible for the foreseeable future. Likely the answer to long-term compensation for injured victims will be a shared insurance scheme - you pay the registration on your self-drive vehicle, and a portion of that goes into an insurance fund. If there is an accident and property/people are adversely affected, they get paid out from that fund according to a pre-determined formula ($x,000 for a limb on a 25 year old, $y,000,000 for a 45 paraplegic, etc). This isn't greatly different from schemes in place around the world today, where pinning fault on someone comes second to making sure those injured in traffic accidents are compensated + rehabilitated properly.
That's a really pathetic version of a "holy grail". Real progress would mean people living in compact communities where most trips are undertaken on foot or by bicycle. Your "holy grail" is just a new coat of paint on the same deteriorating sprawl.
The problem with organs is that for most of them, you need freshly-killed young people. Old people's organs are usually no good, as are the organs of those who die of natural causes (if their organs were any good they wouldn't have died), but healthy young people on motorcycles provide top-notch organs, assuming they weren't damaged in the accident itself.
Legendary and controversial video game artist Paul Steed passes away
Isn't this obviously mental illness? Should we be mocking that?
I'm glad Gruber seems to be writing more of these long form pieces. Short and snarky is not as much of a strength for him as he thinks it is.

My thoughts exactly. His recent talk with Siracusa must have helped.

[edit]

From the show, 1h24m23s:
“You haven't done one of those in a while where you do like screen shots and stuff, you used to do that more…”

He also changed his favicon soon after Siracusa remarked that it wasn't retina ready, so he probably listens him.
http://daringfireball.net/graphics/favicon.ico?v=005