skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sigh. This thing clearly only works for a limited set of browsers. Trying the Read Later thing gives this on Opera:

You tried to access the address javascript:var d=document,w=window,e=w.getSelection,k=d.getSelection,x=d.selection,s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),f='http://www.instapaper.com/b',l=d.location,e=encodeURICompone...(l.href) +'&t='+e(d.title) +'&s='+e(s),u=f+p;try{if(!/^(.\.)?instapaper([^.])?$/.test(l.host))throw(0);iptstbt();}catch(z){a =function(){if(!w.open(u,'t','toolbar=0,resizable=0,status=1,width=250,height=150'))l.href=u;};if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))setTimeout(a,0);else a();}void(0), which is currently unavailable. Please make sure that the Web address (URL) is correctly spelled and punctuated, then try reloading the page.

Would it be too much trouble to say it only works on Firefox on the front page?
urbandharma has perfect content :) also buddhanet.net is full of books on meditation practice.
I use MindManager (although other mind mapping software is available) all the time. I find it incredibly useful for noting my ideas and attaching links, documents, etc., into those ideas as they expand. I currently have 14 business ideas on the go, two of which I am taking forward now and, hopefully, the rest in the future. There is no way I could manage them all without this type of software.
"I'd just use an n-by-k array of closures to represent this."
Paul Graham has claimed quite a few times that OOP isn't very significant. From http://www.paulgraham.com/pfaq.html: "A lot of what seem to be OO problems turn out not to be if you have random access to the concepts that together comprise object-orientedness. If I were writing a CAD program or a simulation, for example, I'd probably use OO abstractions (though I'd probably end up creating my own OO model with macros instead of using whatever came with the language)."

I wonder, if you had 5 different Paul Grahams working on different subsystems of the same project, if they'd each create 5 different mutually incompatible object models, with no code reuse between them. How about performance? The CLR and the JVM use a lot of techniques to make method dispatch efficient; why reinvent the wheel if you need performance?

In the particular case of a serial port protocol, I could easily see how the protocol could involve keeping track of state, in which case an object would be extremely convenient. Stuffing all that into a single closure could easily become awkward; what you want is a way to manage state and behavior together, which is exactly what an object does.

Yes, objects matter more if you don't closures, because then you can simulate them using the so-called strategy pattern. But nevertheless both closures and objects are something I use frequently based on what reads easier and is easier to express.

I say this as someone who has used Lisp, who programs with map, filter, and fold all day long, and so on. I like Lisp, and also I think objects are a good idea. If you actually are working with real-world things, the ability to create a domain-model is a wonderful resource. Having a language as powerful as CLOS to work with is a blessing and I think that should be recognized, that's all.
So you are proposing that chemicals cause aggresion in rats, and aggression in humans, but for a different reason? Seems unlikely to me.

Double blind experiments do show causation (ignoring metaphysical discussions).

There are 3 possibilities: Chemical -> Behavior, Behavior -> Chemical, or ??? -> (Chemical and behavior).

A randomized trial eliminates the latter two possibilities (since chemical is correlated only to a coin flip). Double blind eliminates experimenter bias.
Right. It would be killer if you used the bookmarklet as normal, but it would save to your delicious account with toread. And then when you've read it, you could write a summary and tag it as normal.
Sure, you'll need a Mac if you want to run the Mac OS (legitimately). But to call it a dongle is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.

I have to reply because a lot of people seem to be making this mistake. You precisely described a dongle in that paragraph. A dongle is a piece of hardware which is necessary if you would like to run the software. It doesn't necessarily mean the dongle is worthless, it just means that you can't run the software without it, which is what you said.
bayareaguy read jkush's comment, and was at that moment Enlightened.
Prototype 1.6.0.2 Cheat Sheet
Heh heh. +1 for good humor. ;)
StumbleUpon & Discovery: It's What's For Dinner | WebProNews
I really like to use reCpatcha. Sure it's not the most secure, but it's for a good cause, and it keeps out the basic bots.

For anyone who doesn't know what recaptcha is: http://recaptcha.net/
So suppose we are studying sad people, and we randomly give some of them a chemical, in a controlled and double blind way. And those people become happy, and the others don't.

Then, it could be that the chemical somehow causes happiness. Or it could be that the chemical causes memories of one's children, and everyone in the study has happy memories of their children.

So, the causation is still in doubt. Many explanations are consistent with the observed data.

---

Yes I am proposing that chemicals correlate with "aggression" in humans and rats for different reasons. But I don't accept that the thing called "aggression" is the same thing in humans, and in rats. To help illustrate why not, consider aggressive behavior by video game characters. Same word, but not the same phenomenon -- in that case, no emotion is present, and the cause is some C code.
Programming in it is a little like prolog. You declare a bunch of facts and you declare some pattern rules.

Oh, and there is this cute little story too:
http://www.math.psu.edu/clemens/IF/Turing/source.html
I liked the article at first because it was pointing out the flawed hypocrisy in the education/job market, where you are expected to learn and show knowledge of something you're not likely to use. Moreover, I want to be the lazy programmer. The lazy programmer does more with less lines of code in addition to using the IDE more effectively. One paragraph in particular that I agreed with was:

You were lazy. Now, laziness is said to be a virtue in a programmer. And if you want to be one of those super-smart programmers who can tell me why the only birds you need are Starlings and Kestrels, you might start a company that we buy for big bucks. But quite honestly, we don't appreciate laziness in someone we are hiring to toil away in the bowels of our enterprise application code.

I agree totally. Clearly the problem is that it is necessary to "toil away". Now the example used was recursion, and I totally understand the need to know recursion and data structures, but it could easily be extended to databases or networking protocols. To expect someone to know a skill which is not going to be needed on the job is unfair.

So what is my problem with the article? In the comments, the author is totally bashing this programmer. The failure does not lie with the programmer, but with the system.
Marketing exec to Steve Jobs: "9 out of 10 people will choose a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook Air"

Steve Jobs: "Then build Nine MacBook Pros for every one MacBook Air."
If you're looking for a cut-rate PR firm, what you really want is the web.
Engineers of Jihad | The Oxford Study on "Engineering Mindset" and Terrorism [pdf]
I dunno. I don't think this guy has seen enough xkcd comics. Most easily meet the 'bizarre' requirement. Quite a few, especially the ones with a 'love' theme are cruel and / or naughty. They often involve 'in-jokes' that you'd have to be a bit computer culture / scientifically inclined to get (either in the comic itself or the tooltip) that qualify as clever, and nearly all of them are clever in the sense presenting a common experience / situation of fans of the comic and presenting it in a way that all will find funny.
Probably higher than 25%-- it's why I navigated away.
awesome...Thanks, I was just thinking I need something like this.
I assume rand() returns an index of how much a person likes Atlas Shrugged.
So who here is going?
Our chief hacker and I will be there from Pluron.
A "Hello World" for Ruby on Ragel
Yes census data is interesting when you dig into it. There are thousands of columns and the schema definition itself is hundreds of pages long.

The interactive site is easier for most people who just want quick answers.

- http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html
I just want to make sure its clear that in my previous post, "barrier to join" is probably more accurate than "barrier to entry." I was talking about the amount of time, effort, and money it takes to actually sign up and create a profile. It's a relatively enjoyable process, but it weeds out people who don't have patience.
I enjoy most xkcd comics, but only find a few especially funny.
Your comment is not bitter, arrogant, or whatever? It's nice and helpful?
Slashdot Founder Questions Crowds Wisdom
On Reddit. Apparently it has resulted in a much better signal/noise ratio ;-)
Well, don't brag about that. You could have learned not to click Matt Maroon links, if you dislike his writing enough to complain.
1. Voted for the continuation of the Patriot Act

Understand though that this is in the context of getting through a compromise which was significantly less harmful than the original. If all those who opposed the USA PATRIOT Act on principle refused to budge on that compromise, the congress would have managed to instead ram through something worse. All of which is to say that the vote in favor doesn't necessarily indicate that Obama supports PATRIOT ACT-like policies.
Tracking Consumer Savings on eBay
You're in the minority.
Did you buy OLPC?
Any hacks to share yet?
:CueCat is back
Obama looks, sounds, and acts presidential, and the disproof was in some way or another inadequate.

The assertion was "Obama simply looks presidential", not "sounds" or "acts". I displayed the portraits of ALL PRIOR PRESIDENTS, and NONE OF THEM LOOK LIKE OBAMA. Even if that as-perfect-as-humanly-possible disproof was somehow "inadequate", the proof in the first place was completely absent...only a bald declaration.

By "party mouths" I mean the "four legs good" people who do the talking. The left media has been falling over itself to kiss Obama's ass from Day 1 until the present--and I don't predict that will change. Clinton, by contrast, has been viewed quite negatively.

Would you feel the same about an Obama/Edwards ticket?

I don't see that happening. Edwards has already been an unsuccessful #2, and I don't think he would do it again.

What reason do you have to think that Romney won't be winning the nomination?

A gut feeling. The media, for reasons unknown, has been handling madman McCain very gently. You know, I'm just reading chicken entrails [1] here, don't you? It is pyschologically interesting to me how someone could utter "Obama looks presidential"...it is received wisdom, because there's no way a brain could derive such falsehood on its own. If I passed by Mitt Romney on the street, I'd probably think, "That guys looks like the VP in charge of operations at an auto parts factory". McCain looks like a retired security guard. Edwards looks just like a trial lawyer, of course.

But if I saw Obama, I might think, "That guy looks like a schoolteacher." That's what he looks like. To think he "looks presidential", you'd have to be pretty damn brainwashed.

[1] I mean, public declarations by candidates, coverage by the media, operations of the parties, etc, are all one or two or three steps removed from the truth. You have to guess at what's really happening...
Despite Housing Slide, Real Estate Sites Sell
Actually, I was fully expecting the same thing, after which I would have immediately hit Back and then come into the comments thread to see all of the "Hacker News is not Reddit" comments.
New tool: See into a PPC campaign -- typically a blackbox
Pretty standard etiquette for just about any irc room with a specific topic and a fairly steady, longstanding group of regulars, really. Still probably justified in being posted though, since people new to IRC regularly break that etiquette. :(
If you're lucky, you might even win a prize: http://www.darwinawards.com/newsletter/200801.txt
Saw this today with a clearer description on mefi:
http://projects.metafilter.com/1314/Get-your-money-back
This means at&t sucks so bad that people risk bricking their iPhone to jailbreak it. I hope at&t gets the message.
Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley is a notorious pessimist.

For the record, I agree with almost everything he says here, though.
Touche.

Not that it solves the problem on this site though.
Bug Labs

http://www.buglabs.net/team?page=3
Slightly off topic but I just sat quietly for a few minutes and received a bit of enlightenment in the form of some creative fixes to some bugs in my code. :P
"To expect someone to know a skill which is not going to be needed on the job is unfair."

Complete rewrite

I am going to respond on the post, this is a very good question that deserves the widest possible audience.
I'm going to MtWest RubyConf in March, but have zero interest in RailsConf.
Yes typing a short URL is relatively easy in current phones.

But 2D bar codes allow you to make each URL very long and contain a ton of other information. Which can be immensely useful for tracking the effectiveness of each print ad and each campaign.
Once you build it, make sure you know when to drop it. Building something people want is the most important advice. Throwing away something when you realize people really don't want it is just as important.
I love the MS 'Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000'. It feels a bit goofy at first, but it's really nice once you get used to it (There's this riser thing that goes on the front, so it puts your hands in a position where they fall down from the wrist instead of angling up). I work IT for a small city government, and the dispatchers in the police department -love- them. Hit up newegg (or your preferred hardware seller) and search for fa6-00010. The included mouse isn't too bad either.

Another recommendation that may sound stupid but is actually great: get a gamer mousepad...one of those gigantic ones with a nice wrist rest. I use a Razer eXactMat, and I love it. The bigger mousepad makes it much easier to get in the habit of mousing with your arm, not your wrist.
Arc's Out
At long last...
And there was much rejoicing!
Junior dev at an ecommerce co. I too am plotting my escape.
BTW, most existing News.YC usernames are reserved (with the current News.YC password) on arclanguage.org. The UI should also be familiar...
Before I take on a non-trivial task (programming or otherwise) I just write down a few ad-hoc examples on paper and make notes of special cases, concerns or questions I need answered.

I don't buy into the more organized attempts to get me to adopt any specific scheme.
I didn't say you would only have to describe one picture. Make it 16 pictures and you got 1/64k to succeed.
Edit: Ontopic: "So while Arc is not the perfect Lisp, it seems to be better for at least some kinds of programming than either of the leading alternatives." What kinds did you have in mind?

Offtopic, but what exactly is that a picture of? I see chairs, and a face in the background (looks like a reflection) - is it a picture taken through a window? Why is it there?
Handy, thanks.
no, you're thinking of Lib::Rtarian
How Facebook's fbFund rejects wantrepreneurs
By having an exclusionary policy, eHarmony appears to be attempting to improve their results by keeping people out that are less likely to fit their algorithm.

I'm impressed that they've hired so many PhDs, but on the other hand, I don't believe that having the computer match you is going to be very successful overall.
You make an extremely significant qualification here:

If you actually are working with real-world things

A lot of computation involves abstractions that don't correspond to real world things. Modeling techniques aren't nearly as applicable in cases when there's nothing objective (like a chemical system) or semi-objective (like a business process) to model.

Freud said sometimes a cigar is only a cigar. Well, sometimes a function is only a function.

I worked for years on OO projects and slowly came to realize that many complex object models act like a straitjacket. They're highly coupled and thus difficult to change. This of course is the exact opposite of the benefit most often claimed for OO. It's one of the oddities of the software world that people repeat for a very long time assumptions that their own experience is contradicting. Once you've accepted a language or a paradigm as a way of thinking, you frame all problems in terms of it and you just don't see its weaknesses even when they're directly affecting you. OO was oversold way beyond its roots in simulation, partly because of the irrational economics of the software industry, and a lot of people were trained not to think about programming from any other point of view.

When a partner and I began working in Common Lisp we made a conscious effort not to take the approach we were accustomed to. For example, we didn't begin by asking "What are our objects?" We simply let ourselves follow the path of least resistance, programming incrementally in a functional style. I fully expected to end up with an object model but that never happened: we just had a lot of orthogonal functions that were easily organized in a modular fashion. Subsequent experience has borne this out, and in fact most times I have defined object models in CLOS, I've regretted it. (Generic functions are a different story.)

I'm not claiming OO isn't useful, which would be absurd as people mean different things by OO anyway. But I am sympathetic to Paul Graham's statements about objects (and also about design patterns being human compilers) because I was becoming aware of these aspects of my own experience by the time I encountered them.
Books are dead (long live books)
Christianity without a god, I suppose. Or, swaying in a hammock without a hammock. "Zen" seems mainly interesting for the paradoxical aphorisms it induces. One hand clapping and all that...

Think twice about anyone selling a philosophy so unfalsifiable.
"Which is why, incidentally, Arc only supports Ascii."

Is this why unicode is absolutely broken on ycnews? :( Seems a shame not to be even to use characters like pi in comments/titles IMHO Does a pound sign work? GBP

edit: no it doesn't. Seriously, if done right unicode support doesn't have to take that long. Especially if you're building something without the need for backward compatibility.

Just my 2c.
I predict a goldrush of people writing open source frameworks, widget libraries, and blog software.
Wouldn't that be much slower than using cp?
I think these statistics about how much money is lost in revenue is silly. Nobody cared to think if people would have bought the iPhone in the first place without knowing they were going to be unlockable.
Congratulations! I'm looking forward to 'exploring' it.
Now is your chance. The source code is just sitting there. ;)
Gotta go with tichy's response here. If he's a consultant, he's working for a company that should, theoretically, treat their programmers even better than a software company should, since they are the product.

As a consultant, it also speaks volumes about the second point: Being able to write and influence people is important since that's how you get your ideas across.

I'm not seeing how his stance is necessarily hypocritical.
I'm a college student working at my university's tech support desk while doing freelance web design jobs on the side while simultaneously working on my startups.
www.playforcleanwater.com
Unemployed/Graduating this spring/Looking for work
looks like pg in europe taking the picture of a old hotel from the outside
The kind of apps I use (browser, text editor, shell), don't exactly tax the CPU. Even running XP and Ubuntu in parallels is handled fine on my MacBook. Sure the Air is marginally slower, but will I notice? no.

I'm getting the Air for the backlit keyboard, the multi touch support, lighness, and lack of a dvd drive.
PG: "I am a fairly representative Lisp hacker"

I thought representative Lisp hackers liked long descriptive names over short cryptic ones? ;P

PS: I feel my karma's going to hell in 3, 2, 1...

edit: It wasn't a challenge. It wasn't "oh, I'll pretend to think my karma will go down to look like a cool rebel". Hope that clears things up.
Very cool . . . it'll be nice to play around with Lisp again.

What's the license, by the way?
Developing for facebook is turning into its own private dot bomb folly.

I reserve the right to laugh at any of you who think otherwise.
So...what happens to Common Lisp now?

As well, any bets on who writes the first book?
If you go to the website of the company it says for promotional and entertainment use. Nobody was really saying it's viable. It's quite awesome though.
Webapps like this one.

The new picture on the frontpage of pg.com is a self-portrait shot in/through a window at the Grand Trianon, in the grounds of Versailles. I noticed that if I held my head in the right place I could line up my eyes with the wallpaper pattern.
I'll be speaking there, and at least three of my coworkers from Viget Labs will also be attending.
I thought that article was about the other kind of lazy evaluation...
There are instances where it is in widespread use. Japanese print ads have 2D barcodes on them. Even blogs and webpages have 2D barcodes, so you can access URL from your phone. (You can use the 2Dbarcode to forward the blog to your friends, which your phone already has a list of them)

There are a couple things different there. Most Japanese peoples' access to the internet has been through their cell phones, rather than through their computers. Landlines are much more expensive than having a cell phone. In addition, the majority of Japanese are in urban areas where they use public transportation. That gives them a lot of down time to play with their phones. The print ads in the train have the 2D bar codes on them, so people can check out the ad while they're riding the train. Given that unless you have a full keypad (real or virtual), it's still harder typing in a phone, than using a 2D barcode.

That said, I don't think Americans (Don't know about europe) will find as much use for 2D barcodes for print ads, as we drive everywhere.

However, if I'm walking around the city, I'd find it very handy to be able to check out how many tickets are left for a show and being able to buy tickets for the show from the URL in a 2D barcode on the print ad for a show across town for some impromptu entertainment.

It would also be useful if sewn onto tags of pillows, clothing, other products, etc, so that would provide product information, or at least a URL that has the manual, or specs. That way, if some piece were broken, it'd be an easy way to order replacement parts.
His argument works much better against Macs in the pre-OS X days. But OS X is a Unix (UNIX 03 certified, as of 10.5 on Intel). So if one uses OS X mostly as such, then one isn't locked in: if you get fed up, or were Apple to pull the plug or go under, then one could switch to some other Unix. Try the parallel case if (har har) Microsoft went under.
(load "blog.arc")
I work from home as an ATG (www.atg.com) Architect. At the moment there is a ton of demand, which lets me do things like work from home. I work on side projects and startups as much as time permits.

I love working from home. My stress level has dropped immeasurably since I left the office buildings of AT&T. No commute, no politics, no spending 5 hours/day trapped in a small conference room. My happiness, health, and waistline have all benefited from the change. Granted some folks can't work effectively from home, but I've found that since I generally really love what I do, it's easy for me to be productive without oversight.
The interesting thing about Brad Warner (author of said article) and generally Soto Zen (his practice) is that "Enlightenment" is really just a distraction and not important at all. It is not intended to be the point of zazen/meditation.