skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would emphasize that the killer app for Lisp is simply programming. "Simply" in the sense that you're unencumbered and not fenced in to any particular cliche such as Ruby being stereotyped in its association with Rails.

Ten years ago when deep into Python, I'd explain the language to others by including the disclaimer that you probably wouldn't want to use it for writing an OS. Writing a near-deterministic scheduler in it ultimately motivated my return to Lisp.

I offer no such disclaimer when describing Common Lisp to other programmers, executives or founders at start-ups where I've used it.

Apparently, most people want to convince themselves of the value for a tool by citing something external. To this end, it's likely that the success of EVE Online has helped Stackless/Python in terms of reputation.

I suspect everyone paid to write Lisp that I know would respond with something like: if you need that kind of external validation, then you probably don't know what you really need or want, so let's not wake the sleepwalker.

Maybe the sociological question has to do with why some people need/want that validation (killer app) versus those who don't.

For completeness and to preempt questions of what is the EVE equivalent for Lisp success stories: early days of NaughtyDog using GOAL, work at the University of Colorado and 2010 book, _Land of Lisp_, just to name a few.

But that will never be enough for people who prefer commodity languages for the sake of safety in numbers, as Lisp isn't commodity today. More than just a bootstrapping issue or citing decline due to the AI winter, it may never reach critical mass to be commodity because so few individuals are involved with each success story.

That is, since you often need only a few developers when using Lisp, there's less need to evangelize when recruiting. Job postings I've made have often been a single sentence mentioning Common Lisp and the city, which yielded very high quality people.

It's rather like what is said of big dogs: they don't bark nearly as much as little ones because there's nothing to prove.

For Lisp, questions of killer apps and becoming a mainstream or commodity language (again) is unfortunately impacted by this larger context. Certainly, I would love to see my favorite language enjoying popular status. In the end, however, it's rather like some explanations for the meaning of life: it's a personal quest, and the journey is part of the answer. So too with deciding to use Lisp. It's okay to break-away from the crowd.

This brings us back to one recurring theme of Justin's essays: Try it and decide for yourself. Or Don't.

Regarding "aversion to math," many developers unfortunately opt for the least they can get away with and retain only enough to pass exams or interview questions. It's the difference between being able to recite versus being resourceful and the array of implications associated with each. I suspect that statement is aimed at people who became programmers because it pays better than other directions the individual has considered.
I don't have a good explanation why (lack of pressure, maybe?) but this doesn't seem to be the case. For example, I've seen the 60-ton Hoba meteorite in Namibia, and although the surface has corroded and oxidised, its bulk is definitely solid metal (mostly iron, some nickel).

It would still take some processing to separate the compounds, but nowhere near as much as ores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoba_meteorite
It looks like it boils down to the restrictive clauses of the GPL. The reasoning is easy: BSD gives you total freedom. GPL gives you the 4 freedoms and some restrictions. Logical conclusion: the GPL is less free than the BSD.

This forgets a basic freedom principle however: ones's freedom must stop at other's. The GPL guarantees that you can't further restrict the freedoms it gave you. The BSD does not. Effectively, the BSD gives you the freedom to restrict other's freedoms. We have some examples of liberally licensed software which were more often distributed as proprietary software rather than as free software (IIRC, X was such an example). Therefore, when you look at the society as a whole, you could see that GPL software is more free than BSD software. (Now that companies see the practical advantages of Open Source, this effect is arguably weakened.)

My conclusion is that the GPL does a better job at promoting freedom than the BSD licence. To me that's what's matters. You may still disagree, but I'm out of arguments.

PS: Sorry for treating you like Microsoft, I got carried away.
It's just that PROCESSING it takes energy.

Which is exactly why we need fusion power and not the hydro, wind and solar power the shortsighted environmentalists keep pushing. Those will never produce the vast additional amounts of energy needed to make the next step in our general wellbeing. With cheap limitless energy, you can produce all the water you want, bind all the CO2 you want, produce all the O3 you want, recycle everything you want and even use fission to produce whatever materials you want.
intelligence is measured in the eye of the beholder and the intelligence that the author was measuring was an intelligence that coincides with a cross section of people who tend to hold this belief in the social circle

Exactly. It's like ESR's assertion that "a good hacker is someone who is just like me".
I know I'd feel like a shitheel writing an ActiveX plugin for IE.

The last several major versions of Mozilla have inanely required you to fully restart your browser process to install any extensions or NSAPI plugins, and you aren't allowed to have multiple browser processes touching the same profile. It's a fucking conversion killer.

A large part of Greasemonkey's existence is due to how poorly architected extensions are -- the full restart, zero sandboxing, etc.

Webkit's native plugin API is really goddamn cool but I don't think any shipping software used it before ClickToFlash.
Allowing for multiple selection in the browse dialog is a Big Fucking Deal -- would you rather click a minimum of 3n times, or a minimum of 3 times?
One page:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.ht...
The data deluge
Looking at them a couple of years later to cherish the memories.
Here is an example of a "bad" lawyer from my direct experience: at our IPO completion meeting one of our advisers points out to us founders that the way one document has been drafted by the company lawyers means that we would have an immediate large tax liability. Money that we as individuals simply didn't have.

Now to remove this liability would have been a small change to one sentence in one document that wasn't due for submission until the following day. Except the lawyer refused to do it saying that it would take too long (it really was a couple of words).

It ended up being debated for ages - we had no real means of getting the lawyers to do anything (they were the company lawyers, not our personal lawyers).

Eventually we founders had to threaten to pull out of the IPO, which we pretty much had to do as it would have bankrupted us, and only at that point did the lawyer relent and make the change.

For me that is typical of bad lawyers - getting bogged down in silly little fights about their own egos rather than the big picture of actually getting the deal done.
I tried it. It was pretty fast and rendered everything well, however, without lastpass or 1password support it's tough to fully switch over.
No becaus all those laws require them to prove an intent. Which in this case wouldn't wash :-)
We live in Santiago and woke at about 3.30am to mild shaking that was growing stronger, so we got out of bed and went to the centre of our flat, where the building is strongest. The shaking was pretty violent, and seemed to go on for a long time (I imagine it feels longer than it is, but I would say at least 30 seconds). The power
went out at some point.

When the shaking stopped we found a torch and looked around - books and decorations had fallen down (luckily a large pot of jam had fallen over, but stayed on the kitchen table top). In every room there are cracks in the plaster and flakes on the floor - the corner of the kitchen looks like it may have more serious damage, with a vertical
crack where two walls join.

People were going outside, but it wasn't clear to us it was safer (there are many electrical cables in the streets, and we live in a lovely avenue with many old elms - unfortunately they have a habit of dropping branches on people in winds, and at the time we weren't sure how they would be affected, although in retrospect I guess a strong
wind is worse than an earthquake for a tree). But from our window we could see one neighbour, with children, drive away - presumably to a relative's house.

We found a radio with batteries, found a station that was broadcasting news, and listened for a while. Some people's phones were still working, as they were calling in, and the general impression was that it wasn't so bad; this morning the news is worse, and I hope the people we know in Concepcion are OK.

Eventually we went back to sleep - there were aftershocks that normally would have been pretty worrying, but that now felt like nothing worth bothering with.

It will be interesting to see how the big, new buildings (often covered in glass) have survived. Just a little way east of here they are constructing what will be the tallest building in South America (the Costanera Centre)...
You can do much better than that onerror exploit if the site supports arbitrary <img src> attributes, even if they filter everything correctly otherwise.

In IE6, and older versions of Opera, <img src=target> is identical to <script src=target> if it sniffs the content of the response from the target to be javascript. Really.
Massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake strikes Chile, triggering a Tsunami
Tamil Actress Nayanthara Hot Photos
Nayantara is an Indian actress and one of the most famous actress in Tamil. She is a malayalam actress and has acted in movies like Natturajavu and in another movie with Jayaram.
This has less to do with political correctness, and more the idea that posts like yours are just kind of annoying. The tone makes the site seem a lot less civil. It didn't add anything to the thread. Now all we have is you acting very annoyed that we didn't like your joke.

Humor is encouraged on Hacker News, but only when it is actually funny. Your joke wasn't funny.
OK, sure. So, let's say we develop technology that allows us to lower our emissions by a whopping 80% compared to today. OK, now imagine that India, rural China, the middle east, South America, and Africa develop into first world nations. The world CO2 emissions would end up back where they are today, despite the revolutionary technologies developed and employed.

By which I mean to say that forcefully curbing CO2 emissions is a very, very hard problem. And curbing CO2 emissions without forcing developing nations not to develop is even more difficult.

Personally I think that even if global warming is every bit its cracked up to be the Bangledeshis, for example, will probably be better off with higher sea levels and first world wealth and infrastructure than they would be with existing sea levels and another century of poverty.
I'm not clear on what the relevance of your comment is. To quickly recap — I'm contrasting what Picurio offers via a plugin for Safari against what's available in all the browsers on my machine today; which includes Flash based uploaders that allow you to select multiple files in the browse dialog. What were you trying to convey with your comment?
We were taking it with choline also.
The problem is timid edits
Recruiting smart people
Top MBA and BBA College Delhi, Best Business School Delhi
Times Business School is one of best Institutes that provide the various MBA and BBA courses. TBS is a premier institution for advanced learning and research and to impart management education relevant to professional & entrepreneurial development in India.
Return-into-libc without Function Calls
Yeah, this is nothing like Haiti, thankfully. It was deeper, further away from major population, and the building codes here are taken seriously (I think you're also right about soil being a problem in Haiti, but I don't know much about that).

In a sense, it's a relief - even if it's the gambler's fallacy - it feels like "ok, that didn't kill us, so we're OK for another few decades" (no disrespect to the people in Concepcion, who have had it much worse - the news is still coming out; when we went back to bed we didn't know it was anything like as bad there as it is now appearing).
What are good sketching software tools? I know about Balsamiq and Pencil, but I'm not a fan of either for various reasons.
The implicit assumption of this article is that tendency to depression is a heritable genetic trait which is preserved in the population by selection pressure. It goes on to seek an explanation for the prevalence of depression in terms of greater reproductive fitness. The risk is that by not examining this assumption, it may be laboring under a misapprehension. Depression might be a learned behavior: more "software" than "hardware." The near-total failure to validate anti-depressants as an effective treatment for depression[1] suggests that we don't have a clue as to its actual etiology.

[1] E.g. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...

"Given these results, there seems to be little reason to
prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most
severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments
have failed to provide a benefit. This study raises
serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug
licensing and how drug trial data is reported."

Update after reading the whole thing: I like the practical developments this research has led to in Thomson's own practice. E.g. (page 6)

“What you’re trying to do is speed along the rumination
process,” Thomson says. “Once you show people the dilemma
they need to solve, they almost always start feeling
better.”

But he seems to have really been reaching with his scientific conclusions.
As a HN-worthy note, my wife told me about this before I turned on my computer. She learned about it on Twitter.
What Stumbleupon Got Right
Three of five most prevalent Web exploits of 2009 were PDFs
Buy Vertu Replica Phones
Have you ever dreamt about buying one of the shiny Vertu Phones? If yes, you`ve probably gave up this idea after learning Vertu price. Now you have also possibility to buy Vertu Replica with much lower price!
It'd be nice if academics had a rule like this as well.
There is a cadre of programming moralists who will wail and gnash their teeth that the world doesn't need Yet Another Object System, Yet Another Lisp, or Yet Another Language. All I can say in reply is, "So what? I couldn't care less what The World needs. Designing and implementing Bard is entirely about what I need." If you aren't interested in another Lisp, you are quite free to move right along. There's nothing to C here.

Slow clap.
We're having a meetup on the 11th in Mountain View. You're more than welcome to stop by. You can't cook for me, but I'll be happy to buy you a beer.
"But what if someone passes you an email address that's really 500 comma-separated email addresses?"

If I understand the idea of output-normalization correctly you'd keep an email address that's really 500 comma-seperated addresses in the database in exactly that form, but when it came time to send an email you would normalize the value, and at that stage you would check for such a case and handle it as appropriate (i.e. remove all commas, send to only the first, etc.) The point is that you don't try to create a stored value that can be used safely everywhere, rather you make the value safe at each instance where it's used.

P.S. This appears to be the relevant conversation, interesting reading: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/86kgp/xss_cross...
Yes, it was funny to no one. This is why the comment has +5.
When did PRManna launch? If it was before the redesign of HARO I think you've got him. Send a polite letter back saying:

your happy to (and have) remove references to HARO from PRManna

that a simple email indicating this was a problem would have been sufficient. Express concern over the need for lawyers

that you believe the HARO redesign came after PRManna design was created

indicate you feel the matter is now concluded happily for you

but that if they wish to continue to pursue "frivolous" claims you believe you have the evidence required to obtain full damages from HARO due to the design copyright infringement

that you will be happy to countersue

IANAL but that is what I would do. Throw the ball politely back into their court - in the meantime, as a "just in case", speak to a lawyer a build a case. If they reply back aggressively file the suit straight away. It will probably scare him off. (as I said IANAL and I dont know much about this guy; so it might not work).

I've employed a roughly similar tactic before against someone with a frivolous claim who thought he could win by flexing muscles. When I filed against him there was about a week of disbelieving silence when he realised I knew where I stood legally. At which point it all stood down (I accepted an contract between us in which he accepted I wasnt infringing on him as he had asserted previously).

That's the last piece of advice: probably dont pursue the suit. Because if you give him time to get his head straight then he has more cash to buy sneaky lawyers and build a case. Accept any reasonable offer (preferably a contract like I described because then he cant lick wounds for a month or so then come back and hit you with big guns)
With a handful of exceptions, most enterprise companies are sales companies in the long run.
[Ask HN] How would you change Facebook?
Yup, its awkward but I'll ask it anyway. :)
Closos: Imaginary Lisp OS
If I remember my school geography correctly the type of soil, bed rock and water table massively effects the impact of an earthquake.
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Same in Chrome
MySQL and Memcached: End of an Era?
When a company like Sun dies, many of the technologies that are not part of the combined product line die with it. Sadly, many of those are patented, so fewer startups will be able to use them.

A lot of history also dies with it. If there is anyone willing to write the ultimate book about the history of Unix workstations, now is the time to do it. Preserving this history is also important for preventing future mistakes. Nobody wants another HP-150 or Microsoft Bob.

As for my personal hopes, I hope SPARC continues. We need diversity in the processor space.

I also fear for Solaris/OpenSolaris. I don't want them to join Tru64.

Maybe Sun could follow Atari's example and launch a "SPARCstation Flashback" limited edition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback_2#Atari_Flashba...), but with a Niagara 3 inside ;-)
No Lie! Your Facebook Profile Is the Real You
Why do you want to change it?
Installare NameBench 1.1 su Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic
Interplanet Janet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDre36ZW14I
Yep 1password is what is keeping me from using it... I used to use opera a long time ago, but was wowed away by 1password and inquisitor on safari...
I hope they can get some buzz for Opera 10.50. I really love Opera. Try the email client and you know what simplicity means.
debt denominated in a currency you control doesn't work the same way as it does for everyday citizens and companies.

also, the original article is economically illiterate. you can pay off debts larger than the whole economy. say I live on an island and we have 1 dollar in coins that we use for trade. you go into debt to me for 2 dollars. how is this possible? easy, you do a dollars worth of work for me and pay me the dollar. then you do another dollars worth of work for me and pay me again. we're square.

getting sick of the "money = magic" line of grade school economics.
I don't suggest hanging it on strings just pinning it. Hundred was also a symbolic (a lot) rather than real number.
I think what might finally send us to the asteroid belt will be the military. If we are able to pick an appropriate sized asteroid and deflect it off it's course, the asteroid can easily be accelerated using Mars or Venus or the Sun. We can take it anywhere we feel like. We can destroy any target on earth - as small as a city or as large as you want. The energy needed to deflect the asteroid is minuscule compared to the kinetic energy you can exert on your target. The ultimate WMD.
Also see:

"The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession"

http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American-Professio...
Weaponizing Mozart
This is kind-of interesting - I've been looking at the damage in the plaster, and we might have been close to losing an outer, but not load-bearing wall. The building we live in appears to have a "frame" that you can make out by noticing thicker areas in walls; and a central "core". Most of the rest is not load-bearing. So walls are, in a sense, like sheets that join to the frame top and bottom. In the kitchen we have a wall with a thin slit-like window across almost all of the top, and which ends at a corner. I'm not explaining this very well, but perhaps you understand that this wall is only connected to the structural frame at the bottom (the windows at the top separate it from the upper frame). Anyway, it appears to have moved significantly - there are large cracks at either end. :o(

[edit] Bloody hell - and from outside there are major cracks.... Same on each floor. Although - not sure if this is good news or not - it appears from old repairs (that I had not noticed before...) that the same thing had happened in the 1985 quake (the building is from the 60s).
It does, certain mixes give properties like a shock absorber, which is the case I'm guessing with Chile. Haiti unfortunately is an island, and most islands by nature are volcanic which usually not only means the bedrock is usually closer to the surface but that it is a much more rigid material.
Conroy's website removes references to filter
This seems like a rather doomy web site. I'm always sceptical of excessive doom-mongering, which is often used as a vehicle for book selling or other merchandising. Qualitatively the current recession is no different from previous ones, with the primary cause being regular human folly/self-deception/greed.
See the historical UK national debt, which for most of the 20th century was above 100% of GDP.

http://www.economicshelp.org/uploaded_images/uk-national-deb...
Converting Body Movements Into Electricity
I'm nowhere near able to understand the economics behind this, but this quote sets off my BS-detector:

You see, this is what the whole Federal Reserve System was designed to do. It was designed to slowly drain the massive wealth of the American people and transfer it to the elite international bankers.

It is a game that is designed so that the U.S. government cannot win. As soon as they create more money by borrowing it, the U.S. government owes more than what was created because of interest.

I'm no fan of the brand of capitalism that involved politicians buying favours for everyone and his cousin as long as they happen to own a large company, but this smells like a conspiracy crackpot. If the US congress could print whatever amount of money they'd want, which seems to be the authors preferred solution, the US economy wouldn't be anywhere near as strong as it is. A strong, independent central bank is a very good thing for financial stability.
yeah, it's not like we're even at our historic maximum (WW2).
Dream of a geek: Use Nokia N900 as a remote flash for a Nikon camera