skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If I had to guess, he thinks this way because he isn't yet used to thinking about space-free tail calls. In that sense, he's correct -- you really couldn't create a usable reduce if the function grew linearly in the size of the list. However, this is not a restriction that we actually face.

It amazes me how some programming language authors seem to be clueless about really major areas of our field.

If I ever were to design a language, it would only be after studying all of the various interesting programming languages. How else can you be certain that you aren't doing something that hasn't been done before?
Would you live in a Google house?
The Business of Code, The Code of Business
The logic you've employed here works for stealing cars, too. If cars are really important to you.
I understand your desire for more content that you find useful. But keep in mind that this is a post on a personal blog. The goal of the post is not to conform to your taste in content but rather it's a spot for the author to deposit a thought. If you should happen to read the post and find it useful then that's a great outcome for you but not necessarily the intended one.
Why would they? This generates revenue for Google.

There's no excuse for them not having banning them from day one, like they do every other individual trying to capitalize on the same tactics -- only the sheer capitalization and size that Jason brought to the table allowed him to get away with this at scale.

Shame on Google for having double standards, IMHO.
> if there is a broad tradition of people saying and writing, "I can do that easy"

But is there? It sounds awful to my ears. Does this not just boil down to the distinction between prescriptive vs descriptive camps?

I believe there is in fact a broad tradition of people saying "I be (going to the store)", but I would say that usage of "be" is incorrect. As well with "I'm gonna ..." or even "Ongonna ...". This type of language can certainly be used "correctly" in prose, to add color and flavor, but I would never expect to see it in a proper non-fiction context.
Hah, every few seconds a new person pops on / off the document. Currently, 28 looking.

Quite interesting, especially the other two sheets.
It was only a matter of time. I'm surprised I haven't yet seen an FPS based on public map data. As our phones and other devices increasingly serve as a window into a parallel digital environment, I think we'll see geography used as a standard reference bridge between a lot of other things. At some stage you'll be able to play top-down Zelda on your phone while someone else plays Doom, but you're on the same map, based on or generated from your local geography. Visual styles for each player will be more of a graphic filter than any fundamental difference in game mechanics.
Answers:

How much went to temporarily prop up state govt budgets? Zero, even though preventing a teacher layoff would've been about the most efficient use of stimulus dollars possible. The twins from Maine held the bill hostage until no money was given to state government. (If you're wondering how much went to tax cuts, that figure is around 40%).

How was texas so successful while refusing this temporary windfall? I don't know, but they definitely didn't refuse anything. Rick Perry made a bunch of noise, got his headlines, convinced you that he's a true believer and then took the money.

The weatherization project you got about right, although those studies finished on schedule a month ago or so.. that was a stupid provision and they should have eliminated it, they probably didn't realize it would lead to a bureaucratic snafu.

Hopefully, what Mr. Tufte will show us, are some very compelling and illustrative graphs that do a good job of explaining where the money went. There seems to be some confusion abounding, especially on the tax cut part.

EDIT: A further hope I have is that people who normally respect things like statistics, figures and Mr Tufte don't immediately do a 180 and disown the guy if he doesn't produce a pie chart of the stimulus money that says "100% = SOCIALISM"
There's two different links in these comments that explain at length why pie charts do not clearly show relative proportion. This is even less true of 3D pies.
Automatic merge conflict resolution with Git
Did you actually read the article? It isn't so simple.

They transitioned from lemons to limes without realizing that they had gone from a kind of citrus that protected from scurvy to one that didn't. Their interest in meat was due to expeditions which unambiguously demonstrated that lime juice did not protect against scurvy while polar bear meat did. And no simple categorization would have explained to them why you don't want to use copper in preparing food.
My HOSTS file:

# localhost: Needs to stay like this to work
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 www.mahalo.com
Thanks, but I have used Scheme for more than 5 minutes.

[edit: more generally, what is the point of this conversation? You've stated that you don't understand how anyone could want dynamic types, and that strict evaluation is a pain. It's pretty obvious that you want completely different things to me. Given that, are you really trying to help me here, or just being a bit of an asshole? You're welcome to disagree, but simply repeating your opinions as if they are somehow more valid than mine isn't helping anyone.]
I could see it working well. Overall, there's a good sense of balance and flow, but my main concern would be the transition between the each-post detail mode and the single-post detail mode of the right column. The arrows and shading don't quite seem to express the change in linking readily enough; I'd suggest a more pronounced visual differentiation between the two.
It's easier to evolve Python programs along that particular axis because of duck typing and dynamic dispatch, but otoh, it's harder to rename or remove methods or change method signatures without thorough unit tests. I really don't think one is better than the other in all cases, and neither really seems to get it 'right' in the sense that there's no room for improvement.
He's allegedly building a business on scraping sites and re-hosting their content to exploit long-tail search. SEO is in general germane to Hacker News. What Google does (or does not do) to deal with Mahalo will be relevant to many YC-style startups.
I dunno, seems to me that the data.gov initiative represents the Obama administration making a pretty significant effort towards ensuring that interested citizens can learn about the government's finances.
I would stress composability (which fits in with that whole DRY fad).

Also, the ability to reason about your code is a big selling point of side-effect free code. When you don't have to keep track of a bunch of state in your head, it's much easier to reason about what code does, and find any bugs or unexpected behavior.
I was just thinking about making a thread about that yesterday. If anything happens, I'm onboard. Will be there 12-17th

Email in my profile if anyone needs it
Yes, you're right. I need to clarify what I meant. Usability can make or break a product; I'm talking about aesthetics.

I'm also talking about designers who are unable to differentiate between (1) the business value of their work and (2) the aesthetic value and artistic skill that it demonstrates.
I like the idea! I don't know anyone that has space though, so it would likely be a night at a restaurant...
I think the grandparent is an entreaty to HN readers, not to the blogger.
Amazon Fires Colorado Associates
Not to thread-jack but for Atlanta residents we have a Hacker News meetup thursday evening:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=376015031398&ref=m...
Bazaar vs Git vs Mercurial
pekpongpaet and chadpaulson used it to win the iPhone hackathon competition at this past weekend's Day of Mobile. Chad claims he'll write a post about it, but if he doesn't, the tl;dr is that it made him a believer.
Well, at least my comments aren't one sentence saying how the other person is wrong with the overtone of "no, that's not good enough, I am a unique flower and eveyrone else is wrong".

Er, this one is, but...
A one-minute history of communication in the Western world
The "uncanny valley" would result from seeing pictures picked out to be almost, but not quite, perfect clones of your beloved, which would be creepy as hell.
Nothing Happened To Programming - It's The Problems
You can count me as one of the unsurprised.

The fact is that the sanitizers only work while moist, and they evaporate quickly. You'd basically need to bathe constantly in it (which would destroy your skin, by the way) for it to be effective. After handling raw meat or between handling infected patients? Sure, good idea. After driving to work? It won't make a damn bit of difference once you push the elevator button, much less once you hang out in a co-worker's office or pick up your phone.
While Tulip is significantly more capable, have you seen Canviz before? It's graphviz rendered on a canvas.

http://code.google.com/p/canviz/
This becomes really apparent if you live in a country with a less-capable legal system. Contracts are basically meaningless. It's the people behind the contracts - and their character - that are more important. That is why if you try to do business in a place like China or Brazil, the hosts will take you out to dinner and events to get to know you first before talking business.

This is even true in North America although you don't need to spend as much time getting to know someone as you have a little more safety.
3D Text Water FX in Photoshop
learn how to create a 3D text in cinema 4D and adit it in Photoshop cs4
Is this question a preparation to accuse him of being an unethical shill if his findings disagree with your ideological predispositions?

Because it really sounds like you're gearing up to find a reason to dismiss his message if it doesn't mesh with your preconceived ideas.
Photoshop Fashion Model
learn how to create professional looking photo model from your simple image
Robin Hanson's latest talk* contends that automation is a complement, rather than a replacement, for human work; and that this holds true even when automation gets smarter.

* http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/03/econ-of-nano-ai.html
There's a shortage of them, too. Okay, perhaps not for Microsoft "admins", depending on your requirements for such a position.
Augmented reality maps in Bing with integrated video and indoor imagery
Wasn't Mahalo's founding goal to improve search by creating quality pages written by humans, without the spam and low quality content you get with traditional search engines?
My Favorite Boston Startup Resources
Innovative New Online Business Models
LOL.

(I only say that because I did.)
I think it helps to have a platform or idea that you stand for, because marketing yourself generically probably won't generate too much interest. For example, a local news personality where I live is well known in the gay community, and his name pops up on its own in that context. What are you into? Food, "financial responsibility," horses, etc.

Or maybe you can start a phony rivalry with the weather guy and post catty things about each other. That might get some attention!
The Spread of Superbugs
If google cared they could switch him off in 2 seconds flat.

And if they're not aware by now they're asleep at the switch.
I want to know how much money I can get paid by the government when I finish my PhD in statistics.
How about trading off code readability for code complexity that has some potential future payoff? Library developers might want to trade more of their readability than app developers because of the nature of 3rd party code. It's ultimately a trade off that you have to make, but there are some general rules of thumb can help you so that uber flexilibity doesn't take over.
Lately I've set up a virtual machine to set up a developing environment. In OSX I can get everything up and running with ports but it isolating it in a virtual machine running Debian or something feels safer and more robust.

I love this idea and will certainly check it out for my next project.
OK I'll bite. I didn't vote you down, but I'd guess that you got voted down because you didn't add anything to the conversation. And it sounded a little sarcastic maybe to say "Thank you for your important research." Write something interesting and people will vote you up.

Oh, and you can't vote down until your account reaches a certain points threshold. I think it's 200 right now.
This is a strong interview and should be more highly rated!
New Website for Geeks
I completely agree with baddox. It is the incorrect use of the word "easy" when there is a perfectly good word "easily" at hand. "I can do that. Easy." I would accept.

However, this is an interesting point. Good grammar used to be set by those who who were either educated or at the top of society. There were not many recordings of people using bad grammar, by definition.

Now we have a million recordings of "i can haz cheezburger". I fear that the mechanism you describe - actual recorded use - has been opened by the web to all, and good grammar in times to come may be dictated by YouTube comments.
Now PayPal Goes for Cryptome, Suspends Account
Not in the topological sense, which is what she is appealing to.
Ah, a simple metaphor we all can relate to. :)
Just got this e-mail from Amazon, terminating my Associates account - effective immediately. No warning at all.

A few stats: in the five years I've been an Associate, I've generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales for Amazon. (Tried to get an exact number, but my Associates account is closed, and historical data isn't working properly.) My referral commissions are typically $500-600 a month, with seasonal spikes as large as $1,200.

This is a good lesson in counterparty risk - if my business was based primarily on Amazon Associates, I'd be totally screwed.

Here's the full text of the e-mail:

====================================

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team
They get to look through your personal emails?
64mpg, Highly efficient gas engine
I wish SVG would work seamlessly with LaTeX...
Hi, yeah, I agree, it was my first impression, too.

It would be interesting, but for some sites we can't disclose the destination domain. What we could do however is to show which _type_ of site was visited.
Someone do one for us hungry Londoners!
How does Blippy work with credit cards? How does it know the products you buy from your credit card statement?
yes, i've never had any flu. the symptoms of viral infections as strong as that of the influenza virus can't go unnoticed with any healhty person. one might carry viruses around without them ever managing to infect you, though. the rhinovirus, which lives in the human crowd, is a good example of this.
... from adults who should really know better.

I do agree that adults should know better, but I disagree that reminders such as these have no use, because people are human. There are ups and downs, and the downs can often be enough to bring people within inches of quitting. People want to believe, but oftentimes doubt begins to creep in when bad news or setbacks hits from all sides; it's in these instances that clinging to something, anything positive, even if it's corny, can be the only thing that keeps one going. When balancing all the complexities which often have to be dealt with I think it's surprisingly easy to forget basics sometimes. As I said, we're human. I say use what works, whatever it is, be it motivational quotes/advice, inspirational stories or whatever.
I assume you mean the checklist article that dmlorenzetti found, which I've read. That article is about people in the ICU--not merely outside the OR--where it is indeed paramount to take all measures possible to reduce the risk of infection.

If checklists are effective in reducing mortality in the ICU, then great; doctors and nurses should be insistently prodded to use them. But this shouldn't be confused with a mandate to go hand-washing crazy for all hospitals and doctor's offices. ICU patients make up a tiny percentage of all patients.

(As an aside, I am a bit skeptical of these pieces written in the popular press by experts in a certain field which criticize their colleagues. Sometimes, it's a case where the field really has settled into a bad equilibrium, and the contrarian must go outside the fold to right the situation. But often, it's simply an outlet for the contrarian to preach to an audience which doesn't have the expertise and experience to assess his claims.)
How to succeed on Hacker News:

1) Post a quality, well thought out comment on the subject at hand. "Thank you for you important research!" sounds like something a spam bot would post. Also be sure to watch your spelling. That should have been "your" not "you".

2) Never complain about receiving downvotes. That just results in more downvotes for you. Instead look at your comment, think about why people may have downvoted it, and then adjust your commenting pattern to better fit what the rest of us want to see on the site.
> Image editor says the vertical on the B, D, and right hand of M are all 3 px wide for LaTeX.

Yes, but the smaller caps should have thinner lines. Instead the larger font is thinner.
In our infrastructure we use a ruby gem called warble to deploy jruby app's as war files into a tomcat servlet.
Create a more compelling experience for your users through game mechanics
And what country does any better? "People" as a general class are woefully educated in statistics around the world, or at least all share the common ability to turn off their ability to make rational decisions based on statistical evidence whenever their favored group is not supported by the available statistical evidence.
Couldn't you also archive the binary for OpenOffice and MS Word? In seems appearing consistent between versions is an issue on all platforms.
Brilliant design, but it doesn't seem like it would degrade very gracefully for lower resolutions.
Callbacks vs Events
Well, you can see where the money goes here: http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/
It's come to the point where I actively avoid SEO-optimized sites on Google. If I see my search terms in the URL ("how-to-become-a-travel-agent") of a result, I'll just skip over it. Even moreso when there is generic, cut-and-paste content in the description. SEO may help you rank, but you won't get any clicks from me until I've run out of options.
I'm getting a video not found error.
>So what does that say about the tool?

That there is probably room in the market for more search engines - perhaps specifically ones that specialise in translating only human queries and returning results rather than trying to be more general like Google is.

Like almost all professions that utilise tools in some way, sometimes you just need more specialised tools. A chef wouldn't be that great if he (or she) only had knives to cook with.
Attacking RSA exponentiation with fault injection
Some great points here, I've always noticed that sites with "game mechanics" have a tendency to make me addicted, even if the content is mediocre.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Statistician/Salary
Damn. That sucks.

This is like when the states do "insurance reform" -- and drive most insurers from doing business in the states. Colorado wants "online retail reform" so it kills all Amazon affiliate businesses based in Colorado.

What happens with insurance is that whoever is left has less competition and the rates go up. I imagine, extrapolating, that associates in states without these restrictions should stand to do very well in the future.

Was there any indication from Amazon beforehand that this was going to happen?
Is New York’s Startup Scene Surpassing Boston’s? Not So Fast
The article seems to focus on the big picture of log files of services that are all interconnected in some way... this makes for the most impressive mental picture perhaps, forming "the tributaries feeding an ocean of data in the Cloud"; however, the exponential decrease in cost of computing power, data storage, and bandwidth has this effect on any information that we can digitize. Some of the most interesting developments will likely be in more or less isolated fields. I am excited to see the interplay between field-specific developments (finding patterns in a genome) and broader algorithmic work (finding patterns in any data). I suppose this is already happening, but it will become increasingly visible to laymen over time.
My personal opinion is that the "stop posting Mahalo stories" comments aren't any better than yours, but apparently other people here feel differently. That's just the way it is.

If you feel that it's an important conversation though, then there are several things you can (and should) do rather than just post "Thanks." (1) Vote up the top-level HN post so that more people will read it. (2) Respond to comments complaining about seeing this conversation repeatedly on HN with your analysis of why you feel it's important. Then you're adding something useful.
It can work both ways. I hated bluegrass with a passion (music, that is; the plant I'm agnostic about) until I came back to Indiana the first time (from Europe). Now I like it - I went through a period of really liking it, though.

But the US still drives me batty. It's just that houses are so damn cheap here.
google reader starred items feed.
I'd recommend the book "Polite Fictions" to this guy. (I have a summary at http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~prewett/writings/BookRevi...) I felt like I understand Japanese culture a lot better (the little bit I see from here in the U.S.) because of it.
Alas, the Law of Facebook Login states that people will click anything on Google because they blindly trust Google.