skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure, but I think you need to use labels, rather than flet, in this case, since local functions defined using flet cannot be recursive. At least that's how I interpret what it says on page 319.

At any rate, this solution works using labels:

(defmacro ntimes (n &rest body)
(let ((h (gensym))
(g (gensym)))
`(let ((,h ,n))
(labels ((ntimes-local (,g)
(if (> ,g 0)
,@body)
(if (zerop ,g)
nil
(ntimes-local (1- ,g)))))
(ntimes-local ,h)))))

(Sorry, but again I don't know how to preserve the formatting of my code in this newsgroup.)
After reading all the nasty comments about this article on reddit and other blogs, I can only come to one conclusion: none of them bothered to RTFA.
I get the point totally - humans don't work well when in large organizations. I've gone from massive companies down to a organization of 1. I'm not as stable, I'm more stressed, my income is lumpy. But I have ideas. Buckets and buckets of ideas. I have so many I have to write them down in a book to stop them from clouding my mind. And I have learnt - so much. Not so much about programming - I already knew plenty on that subject. No, I have learnt about the 'way the world really works'. I have learnt how to solve people's needs, how to sell things, how to handle people who don't agree with you. I have learnt how to dig deep and find the courage to keep plugging away, just so I can keep that dark corporate cubicle and mindless 'team building' exercises at bay.
Thanks, I figured it out now.
http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
I think this is a good idea and I'd like to do something similar. The current version just adds ordinary hyperlinks to pages and I'm too time constrained to do anything about it right away.
A good example of why it's never a good idea to burn bridges?
btw, the frame that loads the website provided by the user is way too small (100px-ish) in Safari 3.1 OS X.
Ask YC: Help me review my new photo hosting startup
I appreciate any feedback and suggestions for Simplebucket. Good or bad, anything ... I will take it.
Apple: Application Design Fundamentals
http://can-we-link-it.nickj.org/ - Automatically wikifies wikipedia entries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikify - internal Wikipedia project for wikifying more articles.
That's a metaphor. The way metaphors work is that they're accurate in some respects and not in others.

The advantage of metaphors is that they help explain things by isomorphism. The disadvantage is that people often take them too literally. Or pretend to if they want to attack the writer.

Strange as it sounds, I expected to be criticized for telling readers what they wanted to hear, not for insulting them. If you actually read the essay, the thesis is that the famous founders who are made to seem like such gods in the press are actually not that different from ordinary programmers-- that the difference, as it says in the last paragraph, is "due mostly to environment." In other words the exact opposite of the summary Atwood quotes: "Oh... you haven't founded a company? You suck."

How can so many people read an essay saying X and come away believing it said not-X? I think what happened in this case was that a lot of people who were already feeling self-conscious about working for big companies read the first section as some kind of criticism of them, and then either read that into the rest of the essay or (this is the Internet) didn't read any more before writing blog posts about it.
Ruby On Rails Intensive 1-Day Course Video 6 hours
This is an intensive one-day overview of the fundamental concepts of the Ruby on Rails Web programming framework, presented by the UC Berkeley RAD Lab. The overview consists of six sections of approximately one hour each.
No, startup life isn't better than this. But the point is that either of them is better (probabilistically, I think - I know of plenty of my research friends who hate doing what they do) than being a creatively restrained minion in a large company.

Btw, compensation wise, MSR is one of the best as well. The only (and quite serious) downside to MSR is their stupid insistence on using Windows everywhere. Researchers absolutely hate that.
Google Translate’s bug and Google Suggest’s racial oddity
That's pretty much what I was going to say.

To be more specific, though, the author is right that there are a lot of dollars out there being hoarded because the USD is the global standard currency, and that its fall from that status will have some interesting consequences. Pretty much every other factual claim of the article is nonsense. His explanation of fractional reserve banking is upside-down. He pulled the conjecture "if the interest rate is 4%, then 4% of all credit will default" from the deepest recesses of his rectum. The assumption that the economy will revert to the state it was in just before the end of Bretton Woods reads more like the lazy premise of a short story than an economic theory.
Kill level on inspectd.com - one trillion $
Well, just to argue against my original point, the scaling of the travelling salesman problem usually applies to the time taken to figure out the optimal route, not the time taken to actually traverse it, which is O(N). If you're just looking at the route-planning stage, then the "sod it, I'll just sell on eBay" algorithm is indeed O(1).
I realize most of the recent YC posts have been on how to entice technical talents to join your startup and become co-Founders.

This post is actually more on the opposite which is if you have a reasonable good product idea, how do you screen the potential candidates so that you don't pick the wrong ones, and also, once you selected them, how do you build a coherent team out of the pieces.
I had the same thought when I read gruseom's post. His zooming in on your writing style is right on the money. (By the way, I could have begun that last sentence with "I think", but I thought better of it.) This is one thing I struggle with myself. I find that I tend to want to write things that cannot be disputed, but to do so I usually have to include all the phatic cruft that you take out. I'll have to work on that.

On another note, I also get the impression that you write to a certain type of person. Possibly a type that is similar to you. People like Jeff who take issue with your essays are simply not the target audience (whatever that means). As someone who is currently caged in a 9-5 job with a big company, I have to say that your essay resonated deeply with me...and I loved it. I appreciate the way your essays frequently force me to take a good hard look at what I'm doing, where I want to go, and what I need to do to get there.
I tried that for a while but I just lost money - shorting seems to be a suckers game but maybe I just can't do it right.
I then turned the $6 billion into $2 trillion, which broke the site: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143644
Ah, I see what you mean. Try it now.
I'm a hacker so I'm looking for either another hacker or someone with experience on the business/fund-raising side.

I run a .NET development firm and have about 10 years of experience building web apps. I've launched several of my own web apps and a couple products to various degrees of success (sold 2 of them for a small profit, 1 for a better profit, and one brings in about 20% of my income month to month).

If you're interested drop me a line. I'm willing to discuss things further (including the ideas), via email.
Talking to God about the Internet
Talking to God about the Internet.
25 Awesome Beta Research Tools from Libraries Around the World
I would created plugins for popular blog authoring software movable type and wordpress and such.

I might also be cool to make an API so developers could call your service on single words or sections of text from their applications. I might not want whole pages autowikied, but it could be cool to have sections of articles or something. Offering a simple and easy to use webservice can drive adoption of your service in ways that you could never even begin to imagine.

I would also try to find some high profile bloggers in your target audience (in your case politics maybe), and write personal emails to them about how the service could be good for their readers and ask if any would be interested in trying it out, or if there were any features they would really need before the service would be useful for them (such as which wiki links were click through, showing what their readers don't know enough about or are most interested in)

anyways just some thoughts off the top of my head.
You failed to discuss his main point - "Bah!".
I might consider changing the name to something more direct - for example, wikiautolinks, or wikilinkster, or wikilinkr, or wikiglue
> People are used to writing that includes, among its various threads, one whose purpose is to reassure you that the author is a nice guy, that he might be wrong, you can still get along even if you disagree, and so on.

When you read, say, Mencken, you know it's an op-ed and to take everything with a grain of salt. He would even contradict himself from one piece to the next. You just chew on the points and smirk to yourself when you see the flaws. No, Mencken definitely didn't write like he was trying to be your likable friend.

Graham writes like he's building a legal case or trying to get published in a scientific journal, even though the pieces are really casual observational op-eds. The style invites you to poke holes and take each point too literally.

People are used to writing styles adapted to the format for good reason. The reactions like this to Graham's pieces make a good case for learning and using rhetoric.
Live It Green, LLC (http://www.liveitgreen.com/) founded 2006.

What started as a collection of side projects by two late 20's entrepreneurs (a green real estate developer and myself, primarily on the software side) has started taking a life of its own =) We've developed:

A certification system for Carbon Neutral Clothing. CNC certified clothing will be in Whole Foods stores starting next month.

The TreeTini - A martini that plants a tree (avail at both Uncommon Ground locations in Chicago, soon to be available at 3 more bars: The Whiskey Bar, Whiskey Blue, Whiskey Sky (the latter two are in W Hotels))

Tunes for Trees - search iTunes' catalog for music AJAXily; for every 10 tracks purchased we plant a tree.

We're having a lot of fun seeing these grow =)
A server-side XML api would be ideal; javascript loads on every page and would add significant latency to page loads, which is unacceptable (and wasteful, and tough on your servers). Find someone who can code a Drupal and a Wordpress module and you're pretty much set.

The only question with an XML api is how do you benefit from it?
Which meaning of "isomorphism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphism_%28disambiguation%2...) do you have in mind here?
This is definitely better as a software extension to websites & browsers, not a website that you go and visit, like flickr or something similar.
David. Got it.
Paul. Got it.
AS???
So is the approach here suggesting to lay everything out at once and so the user can feel what the interface 'affords' him before he clicks anything, or should an interface be broken down into very simple steps that the user can only see one at a time?

I almost always prefer the 'jet pilot' approach of having everything laid out in front of me, for example, being able to see an entire form before I decide whether to use it. BUT it seems that many usability experts suggest dragging users through one step at a time?

How to decide? Will there be an equal number of people that hate my choice either way?
Do Not Reply
Scramble 2 eggs (teflon pan). Chop jalapanos. Put eggs, jalapenos and cheese on large flour tortilla. Zap in microwave 33 seconds. Serve with beer and hot sauce.
What about this? Put every document in a directory called 'All' or something. Want to tag foo.txt as vacation? 'mkdir vacation && ln All/foo.txt vacation/'
Or use English muffins.
Argh! I hate these casual invocations of evolutionary biology that are really self-serving fables. By numbers of individuals, diversity, and by mass, bacteria and blue-green algae make up most of the biological world. Multi-cellular life only appears dominant to you because that's who you eat and who you mate with. Evolution cares not a whit for smart, dumb, slow, fast, it only cares who has the most babies who live to make other babies. Making arguments for the virtues of entrepreneurs is fine, just don't try to dress them up as scientific truths, unless you actually can muster the evidence.
Cosmos by Carl Sagan
congrats!

I am just in a mode right now where I see victimhood for what it is. Glad you're not letting yourself be a victim.
Probably related to the infinite downside possibility when you're shorting. It's easier to lose a ton of your money when you're wrong.
I was just thinking about how awesome it would be to have a Command-Control-D for real life. Reading books sucks without it.
Do it man!

Honestly, it really is a weird feeling. I always hated working for other companies, but felt that I "had to" because I was afraid of taking the leap. (and yes, of course, it is more secure/stable/etc)

But yes -- I definitely did not go into this blind. Freelanced in the states for 2-3 months to make sure I could get enough work.

It helps that I had a buddy who lives here. Otherwise I honestly would not have had the balls to do it. (foreign language + trying to score an apartment? ouch)
> The only question with an XML api is how do you benefit from it?

As long as the load doesn't blow out my hosted server, then just some branding on the client might be worth it.
Safari uses Apple's font rendering algorithms. They're intended to stay true to the shape of the letterforms without worrying too much about keeping them within the pixel grid. Check out Joel's explanation: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html/. Or Jeff Atwood's: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000885.html

Of course, if you're not on Windows, I have no clue.
Just a few observations.

1.No explianation of what the secret URL is. I uploaded a photo and was unable to add tags straight away. Confused I went to My Photos but was told I needed to login "Hmm I don't have an account...", so I put my email addess into the forgotten section just to see what happens and got an email (In which the link wasn't clickable) from which I pasted in the URL. Then I was in "My Photos" and could edit and tag my existing stuff. But...

2.Users are able to upload photos under the guise of other users?!? Seems that even though I now have an "account", anyone can just use my email address and upload photos into my area. I opened up a different browser and could upload photos without it asking me to authenticate my "account".

3. Seens "My Photos" is just a link to the login section, until I specifically go to "My Settings" and set a password. No where is this clear.

I think it's getting there, but needs a lot more work when it comes to directing users with what to do next. A lot of people who would be using this service will have little clue as to what to do next.
I'd say working for a company is more like being in a circus than a zoo. You have to perform silly tricks and act like you wouldn't rather be napping.
Interesting. I guess it's kinda too late but it'd probably be a good idea if no one could own donotreply.com, like with http://example.com/
A "we're all going to die" article? On the Internet? No way!
These Crazy Musicians Still Think They Should Get Paid For Recorded Music
Thanks for the genealogical, biological, and anecdotal rambling, but most poeple know IQ tests are bunk except for these people: http://www.mensa.org
Productivity and Flow
Did you test it using ie? Doesn't look like it to me.

I'd love to give you feedback, but I'll wait until you get it to render properly in ie.
It's interesting that you write something like, "How can so many people read an essay saying X and come away believing it said not-X?", thinking that the problem is likely with the readers.
Because of the Internet, Haggling is Coming Back in Style
I agree, mostly... Anytime you work for anyone else you give up a part of yourself. The more they pay you, the more of your soul you have to sell. The only way to be free is to do your own thing. For some that's starting their own business. For others it's walking in, working for awhile, learning what you want, and walking out the door when you're done (not when the company is done with you).

Oh, and what's the deal with note #1? That was a silly and unnecessary note to add.
Organize Your Feed Subcriptions by Priority, Not by Topic
1) I tried it in Safari and the Browse and Add buttons are unclickable, unless you click in the left corner.

2) Uploading without entering an email sends me to a login page, although I obviously don't have a login.

3) 1020px is quite wide, especially when you don't make any good use of all that space.

4) I don't feel the very tiny labels with very large inputs.

5) You use 5 different fonts on the homepage.

6) The word "photos" is rather small, while the "upload share and organize" text is huge. Upload, share and organize what?
The developers in my team room seem to swear a lot at what they're working on. I thought jokingly that we need a swear jar.

Then I thought of having an opaque jar, labeled "Swearing Jar." When you put money in, it spits it out and says "fuck off," or some other randomly chosen insult.
My First Experiences with Twine
Star halfway across the universe was visible to naked eye for 30 secs on Wednesday
I had a GPS tell me to drive through a field in rural Germany once. Evidently, the two ruts going through the field were, technically a road and did get me where I was going.

I've also had various GPS units tell me to drive off the side of bridges, in to concrete walls and on train tracks.
arnold schwarzenegger
Easy Install of a Local Web Server on Mac OS X
XAMPP still has some issues when using it on a Mac. I found this website which describes an easy way to set up a test server right on your Mac.
Building a 3-D Camera with 12,616 Lenses
Err, why was that downvoted? Zed Shaw led a team of Rails devs at Bear Sterns, and now they're looking for new jobs... http://www.zedshaw.com/blog
Hmmm...I have a nice stovetop steamer for vegetables which seems to work fine. But maybe I'm missing something. Will have to try it next time I'm cooking at a location that is microwave-enabled.
It's classy to look out for your direct reports before yourself - shows good vibes, more likely to find yourself another manager-y job.
"the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople"

And there we have the reason I prefer to do most of my shopping online.
And why is MAMP better than the Apache installation built into every copy of Mac OS X?

1) Download and install MySQL

2) Enable PHP in the Apache config file

3) Enable Web Sharing in System Prefs
Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto
Thanks for the great comments! It definitely gave me some ideas as to what I need to work on. Yea, it doesn't render ok with Safari and IE.. so far its only FF friendly.
Build a human-level AI by compressing Wikipedia
Asking that question doesn't presume the problem is with the readers. Sometimes the reason is that the essay was unclear. In this case my hypothesis is that it wasn't, but rather that some readers read the essay as meaning something they wanted it to, rather than looking at what I was actually saying. (Much as you just did with the preceding comment.)

If something's unclear, I often go back and fix it. But I'm reluctant to start trying to placate people determined to misread what I'm saying; that seems a slippery slope.
I have never set up Apache, PHP, and MySQL on a computer before and managed to get it to run correctly. This solution offered a service that I found to be of use. That is why I posted the link to the video that explains the process of downloading MAMP and the initial steps to get it up and running.
(New Math) x (SEC Rules) + Proxy=Confusion
Many-Worlds Super Mario [Video]
Ok. In the interests of providing a data point:

* Even as a startup junkie, with full-time founder role and a 13 year track record, I found your analogy belittling and myopic. You will lose the argument that the best work in software is being done in startups.

* Your essay contributed little else but the lightning rod; you've said substantially the same thing in other essays. We get it. You've also watched tens of $6k startups die; you should write more about the downside of being a software startup founder. You've been there, right? Why don't you start with the "vomiting blood from the stress" part?
this is a great idea. i always find myself searching for people or products mentioned within articles. great. could it be like snapshot where we could see maybe a bit of the content then if we are interested, we can click for more and be redirected to wikipedia.
even though the pieces are really casual observational op-eds

If what you mean by casual is that I haven't thought
much about what I'm saying, I disagree. In a typical
essay I probably go over every sentence 20-50 times.
When I'm unsure of something I'm saying, I try to
be precise about the uncertainty. So while I
may often be wrong, it's not out of carelessness.
> There is something wrong with killing civilians and unnecessarily invading foreign countries; but there is nothing wrong with using better weapons to do the same job.

You're assuming that these two issues are independent. I'm proposing that handing our rulers robot warriors will result in harder-to-expose killing of civilians and more unnecessary invasions.

Of course, if all the killer robots were working for me, I would deploy them wisely and reduce civilians deaths.
> The reactions like this to Graham's pieces make a good case for learning and using rhetoric.

No. It's hard to dig out somebody's argument when it's surrounded by self-deprecating rhetorical armor. Presumably pg wants the argument front-and-center. That way if he convinces you, it's definitely the argument and not the rhetoric that's doing it. If you disagree then you know exactly what you're disagreeing with. Ignore the ad-hominem people; they'd just find something else that's wrong with you.
The Worst Thing You Can Say About Software Is That It Works
Those of you interested in astronomical things may enjoy
http://www.badastronomy.com/
Yep. I actually was somewhat credulous until he got fractional reserve banking backwards (getting a $1000 deposit with a 10% reserve requirement means you can lend out $900 of it, not that you can magically lend out $9000 that you don't have), and then it was all downhill from there.

There are a lot of relatively decent arguments that the US economy is in for a prolonged recession, but I would group the article with the crazy goldbug paulites rather than with legitimate, usually fairly well-reasoned economic criticism with which I disagree (Krugman, etc).
Funny, because Science itself is a religion. See Foundation, Part I (Asimov).
Google's master plan [Picture]
So I'm confused... what exactly was incorrect about what I said? I was preparing for a good rebuff, and then you just restated what I said with more words...
Distinguishing Artificial From Natural Is Possible, for Now
He's not advocating new regulations. The point of the article was that the Fed has knowingly allowed the shadow banking system to take over banks role in providing credit without requiring those organizations to bear the regulatory burdens of traditional banks.

The shadow banking system is exactly like the unregulated banks of the 1930s. And as we're now seeing, the result is another financial catastrophe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banking_system