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edward

47,541 karma · joined February 22, 2007

Hello, I'm Edward.

I'm running the Geospatial devroom at FOSDEM.

I build web apps, web scrapers, databases, and search engines. I reverse engineer legacy systems and data formats.

Over the years, I've had the privilege to collaborate with internet luminaries like Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Ted Nelson, Jason Scott, and John Gilmore.

My contributions span a diverse array of projects, including Wikipedia, Open Library, Wikimedia Commons, Debian, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, the Linux kernel, and BusyBox.

I'm on mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@edward

submissionscomments
edward··on Show HN: Who's going to Startup School?
What framework did you use to build it?
edward··on Ask HN: Startup School Europe: were invitations sent?
Now my invitation has arrived, I've very excited.
edward··on Ask HN: Startup School Europe: were invitations sent?
I applied, but I've not been sent an invite yet.
edward··on The bizarre secret of London’s buried diggers
"In some of London’s newest luxury conversions, “sub-basements” are being tucked beneath the existing basement conversions. But developers are stumbling on a new kind of obstacle as they burrow deeper still: abandoned diggers from the last round of improvements."
edward··on Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?
But at least you can park in Dallas, right? In SF public transport is poor and if you drive it is impossible to park and the hills make cycling and walking places hard work.
edward··on SanDisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year.
Thanks, newegg keep messing up the categories.
edward··on SanDisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year.
I have over two years of historical data. I'm going to make some charts.
edward··on SanDisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year.
See my website that tracks price per TB of HDD and SSD:

http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/

edward··on Click – Python library for command-line interfaces
Sphinx was written by Georg Brandl, not by Armin Ronacher.
edward··on Data on PyCon 2014 job fair participants and their positions on remote work.
Thanks for making this, it is very interesting.
edward··on Hugin – Panorama photo stitcher
I didn't use a tripod, these are all handheld.
edward··on Hugin – Panorama photo stitcher
Here are some more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorset_seafood_festival_i...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weymouth_beach_in_July_20...

edward··on Hugin – Panorama photo stitcher
I made this panorama of Ascot Racecourse with Hugin.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ascot_Racecourse_pan...

The image appears on the Wikipedia article about the racecourse.

edward··on Man's high-tech paradise lost: bionic eye removed
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis
edward··on Man's high-tech paradise lost: bionic eye removed
Wired Magazine article about him having the bionic eye installed: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vision_pr.html
edward··on Needy robotic toaster sells itself if neglected
The article shows a map produced by OpenStreetMap, but with no credit to OpenStreetMap. This is clearly a copyright violation. They are required to include the text, "© OpenStreetMap contributors". See http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright for more details.
edward··on BBC News website: responsive design in beta
The business page has a headline: "Energy firms told to hand back £400m". Is character encoding really that difficult?

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/Sl2Hf1m

edward··on What Hard Drive Should I Buy?
Price per TB: http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/
edward··on Google’s Ray Kurzweil predicts how the world will change
Better: http://jimidisu.com/?p=6013
edward··on London, Moscow and St. Petersburg taxi accepts Bitcoin (and ~15 usd off)
Using Coinbase, like Overstock.com
edward··on US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve
Central banks operate provide real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems. This allows transfers to settle in real time.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_gross_settlement

Domestic banks have accounts with the central bank and can move money using RTGS. If the central banks allowed individuals and non-bank companies to open accounts then they could use the RTGS to transfer money instantly.

There would be no blockchain, the central bank acts as a trusted third party. The central bank can see all transactions.

edward··on Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014
I like this one: “The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.”
edward··on Bitcoin and positive vs. normative economics
Why does he write it as BitCoin? I'm sure he is aware that it is normally written as Bitcoin.
edward··on MAME 0.151 ROMs
You can use zipview.php to view inside the zip:

https://ia601001.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/26/items/MA...

edward··on Ask HN: how do you invest?
Buy an index tracker fund.
edward··on Running your JS code in Python
You don't need to escape slashes if you use a regexp string like this: r'no need to escape slash\n'.
edward··on Cars Kill Cities
Instead, you could read the 21 page paper with the same title and by the same author.

http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf

edward··on The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
My HP printer is region-locked. When I moved from Europe to the US it refused to accept ink cartridges bought in the US.
edward··on On Lisp
http://www.mbishop.name/post/4113599512/on-lisp-by-paul-grah...
edward··on BBC blocking articles from UK residents
I wrote to my MP. This is his reply:

10 July 2013

Dear Edward,

Thank you for writing to me with your concerns about why a particular BBC article (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130701-why-you-feel-phanto...) cannot be viewed in the UK.

It is the case that some international BBC content cannot be viewed in the UK because it is not funded by the licence fee, but instead by BBC Worldwide which is a commercial enterprise.

I appreciate that this is frustrating but because BBC Worldwide is run commercially there is no obligation for the BBC to make international service content available in the UK.

Thanks again for bringing your concerns to my attention.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Huppert Member of Parliament for Cambridge

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