skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I hate it when websites recommend books because I end up buying them all.

http://imgur.com/6pL6V.jpg
Substantial commitment is not necessary in practice. Joining the private beta of gaming.stackexchange.com required me to commit, but the site turned out to have a high XBox 360 and (surprisingly) Dwarf Fortress to everything else ratio and I have not returned with any enthusiasm.

I've outgrown games perhaps, but committing didn't require anything. Maybe if it had cost me 1000 Stack Overflow reputation points I would have thought twice about signing up? If it did cost that much, it would be a high barrier to entry for non-programmer-non-stackoverflowers and the site would get less people committing (resulting in the "ghost town" effect).
A really long-life cookie, say a 6 months or more.

The concept: on the first visit, give the user a long-life cookie that stores the timestamp of the visit. When a sale happens, check the value of this cookie and store in a database.

You can make it more elaborate by storing and analysing referral information, geolocation of the IP address, exact time of day and other things you think might be relevant.

Also, if you're doing an A/B test on new visitors, this cookie should also store which version they were shown. This is a more complicated situation as to how you tie it into the A/B testing framework, but it's not hard with a bit of thought based on how you implement it and how you test.
So the options are either bloatware or git?

How about something that just works?
Grumby: A Book About A Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Living The Dream
This is why people pirate software
I'm still trying to figure out this "quick blogging" phenomenon (and microblogging also), having no desire or apparently no inclination to do either of them.

I looked around the tumblr directory at some blogs and I didn't find anything that wasn't just glossy regurgitated content. Not one held my attention for even a second.

Anyway this article helped me out understanding tumblr (and how it contrasts with posterous)

http://arstechnica.com/business/reviews/2010/02/tumblr-vs-po...

Someday soon I'll need to do a little blogging. Can anybody recommend something easy to use but not so gimmicky as tumblr or posterous? I'll probably want a nice way to format code, and probably a comment section. I'm a developer and not afraid to get my hands dirty but I'd rather have something self hosted because I'm not interested a potential cracking vulnerability I'd get hosting my own.
The drives Apple sells aren't, but my X25 definitely is. An SSD is one of those rare upgrades that gives you an immediate and dramatic improvement in performance.

The only drawback is the cost, and the way it will ruin you for any computer that doesn't have an SSD...
While I do like the idea, and it could certainly be nice to have as a user... I've got to vote against it. Abandonware can be pretty easily detected once you look at the page (name/description/readme/last update(!)), this would just put the "abandoned" label a layer higher.

I haven't looked through the GitHub API, but is there a way to pull the description? I see "abandoned" or something similar in there more frequently than anywhere else; a browser plugin could fetch that data and display the tag moderately accurately. Or color based on last activity, etc. and that way you don't have to add a field.

edit: on second / third thought, maybe that's a possible solution: show the last-updated date when multiple repos are listed. I know I'd find that useful. What defines an "update" is debatable... commits? Issues? Wiki? All of the above? Something else?
As a good pythonista, I know this is not a list, but a set.

And it makes sense - why would one need the same phone to appear more than once?
Antennaid for iPhone 4
Your first example is actually a tail call. It's just a tail call to the || operator. Every function has a tail call by definition.
Maybe that has something to do with them finally adding oauth support

http://staff.tumblr.com/post/806396160/oauth
Distribution is definitely big. Look at how much the top iPhone apps make, look at Farmville. People generally will not seek stuff out. They will only consume stuff that's placed directly in front of them, like pigs at a trough.
Microsoft Money /had/ been available, not /has/. It was discontinued several years ago.
It seems to require turbo pascal to work.
Is it possible to find this?
Electronics Video Lectures
It should be obvious both ways. On one hand, the people most dispositionally inclined to skip school are the people most inclined to drop out. It should be fairly obvious there's a causal link too, because if you're missing every fifth day of school you're probably going to fall way behind in your classes and understand less and less.

Still, the magnitude of the effect is surprisingly large, and this information is useful to schools if they're trying to minimise dropout rates.
Windows key + digit (1-9) restores (or brings to front) the window corresponding to the respective application in the taskbar. If there are multiple windows belonging to the application, the combination will let you cycle through them all. Very useful in combination with pinning of programs to the taskbar.

Also, Windows key + l locks the screen (this one is old though).
They charge some users for "premium themes".
Check out hacker news daily: http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ (top 10 stories per day)
Craigslist is generating an enormous amount of wealth. Every time it facilitates a successful exchange between two users -- the sale of a used lawnmower, a room that gets rented out, a job posting that reaches the right person -- both sides of that exchange get something they want, and both sides get richer.

It's hard to see, because there's no centralized accounting totaling up the cumulative value of all these transactions, but make no mistake: wealth is certainly being created.
actually in python you make sets from lists, as in set([1, 2, 3, 4]). {} is for dicts.
In summary: instead of getting a hash back from a function and pulling out the (single!) desired key, pass the key to the function and get the value back directly.

A limited-use but handy technique, and they're not arguing for dogmatic adherence to the rule. Something to keep in mind, but don't go re-wiring old code unless you're bored. You could also code the function so if you pass no key-args, you get the whole hash back.

I'm personally a fan (sometimes) of code like this when I really want to one-line something but need multiple values:

# ruby
value1, value2 = [(x=aFunction(arg))[:key1],x[:key2]]

:)
On your blog post you mention that you are keeping the free shipping option up for another day. Given that you will be getting a lot of traffic traffic from HN, I'm wondering what your conversion is from HN traffic alone?
From the perspective of one of my parents, neither of whom have probably ever heard of Git, it's not supported by any phone model. This is a serious problem with the ecosystem, and saying that that's how Free Software works isn't going to make it not a problem.
It's hard to say what active means. For example http://github.com/technoweenie/acts_as_versioned/commits/mas... hadn't had any commits in more than a year until today, but now it's up-to-date with rails 3.
I have both MRI and JRuby installed on my systems. For quickie scripts I use 'ruby' and for anything with a noticeable runtime (Or multi-core processing!) I use 'jruby'. I'm sure the JRuby fellows will continue working on startup time, but for me at least, it's not an issue.

I think having a Ruby toolbox instead of a single big hammer is a win for everybody.
I don't think that deserved to be downvoted, but I think that it implies "all other things being equal".
Wordpress can be as basic as you want (just text posts in reverse chronological order) and can be enhanced with plugins.

Host it yourself: wordpress.org.
Have it hosted for you: wordpress.com.

For any hosted blog, I'd put it on a domain or subdomain you own so that if you do decide to move later, you control it 100%.
Good stuff. My only comment is to make a macro like defmemo. That way instead of writing something like: (def set-m (memoize set)) you could write (defmemo set-m set).
Are you looking for "quick blogging"? If so - I can't help. I don't see the point either.

For more standard software typo, drupal, blogspot and wordpress are not bad (probably try them in that order). I don't know that typo or drupal have dedicated hosting, but wordpress and blogspot do.
"But it’s hard to argue with brevity."

No, it's really not. Brevity != clarity. Clarity is hard to argue with, brevity is not. By his own admission this new code is harder to write and harder to debug.

It's interesting to me that in the article the author dismisses any performance impact of his changes because "we can profile and deal with it latter", but fails to realize that by attempting to reduce the length of his code he is at risk of creating exactly the same type of needlessly hard to read, hard to debug, code that premature optimization does.
We look forward to it! We have Riak t-shirts too.

We've also just started the San Francisco Riak Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Riak-Meetup/ .
Effective Marketing Tips While Using Folders
The best way to use folders for marketing is to customize them. They are quite easy to be customized and they have many varieties to meet various needs in style.
More specifically, they want to get the data from mobile phone users and they want mobile phone users to use Google for search.
Internet startup nightmare story
That's half the battle - here's my suggestion: before you build a video build out an all-text lander.

Just super simple - 400 pixel high, two column. Left column just bullet points of the benefits of the product, rigth column awesome picture of the product.

Then A/B test that thing 3 - 4 times.

once you've got your messaging confirmed, move to video - video is much more difficult to a/b test IMO due to production
I am thinking Python 2.7/3.1 ;-)

http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.7.html#python-3-1-feat...
Would be nice to know Wordpress numbers too.
It's definitely a JVM problem, but contrary to Java, there is a sort of REPL available. Instead if writing a file, modifying it and running 'jruby my-script.rb', just issue 'load myscript.rb' in your (j)irb. That makes for much faster iterations.
Did you see an upswing in your invoice requests? I have a e-commerce site and currently do not offer this service. What luck have you found with this?
Mailing list thread: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2010-April/1241...

Blog post about it: http://jrvarma.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/the-sec-and-the-pyth...

Proposal (pdf): http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2010/33-9117.pdf
You have pointed out a problem with mainstream regurgitation of Consumer Reports recommendation, not with Consumer Reports.

CR are doing the right thing by only recommending exceptional products. That should be what a recommendation is. "It's not total crap" and "it's better than the other total crap that's out there" are not recommendations and shouldn't be.

(For the rhetorically impaired: I realize there are several levels of quality between total crap and exceptional.)
Yep, that'd be better. I didn't want to have to explain a macro, though I guess anyone bothering to read the code can handle a simple macro. Thanks, maybe I'll change that.
Is OpenStack Cloud Computing Rocket Science?
Monadic design patterns for the web: 2-day workshop, September 17, Seattle WA
Just a warning, this article is from September 2009
Apple and PR: Surviving Success
I believe he was quoting the article:

But the 12-year veteran of the Suffolk bench has also issued three foreclosure decisions over the past eight months that have made him the darling of the tabloids and the Internet for, as the New York Post put it, sticking it to "ruthless bankers."
Found this
https://downloads.embarcadero.com/free/turbopascal
How about you make a clone of OkCupid, but instead of finding dates people use it to find co-founders? That's something I, and I think a lot of other people, would like to see.
'Five Second' Rule for Dropped Food Unsafe | GreenAnswers
That that that that offers a nice example too.
ah. carry on, then.
When he talks about performance, he mentions that memoization allows performance to not suffer very much, but what he doesn't mention that almost the entire performance gain comes from memoizing frequencies... which stores the hashtables anyway; it just does it behind the scenes. This is fine for CPU usage, but it does have a significant storage penalty depending on the characteristics of the input.

There's some low-hanging fruit to cut down on the required storage, namely wrapping to-words and frequencies together, and memoizing that. This doesn't reduce the number of hashtables, but at least there's no need to store the entire word lists. As it stands, this will simply fail if your corpus is too large to fit in your RAM all at once.
Ask HN: LLC vs C-Corp? What about the State?
After doing some research, this is what I've come up with - it's better to start off as an LLC (they are simple to set up, avoid double taxation and still support multiple classes of stock if needed) and convert to a C-Corp later when we're ready to take funding (an LLC does not really allow for shareholders, so if we want outside investors, an LLC won't fly, in fact some VC firms have structures that do not permit them to invest in an LLC).

1. Does this make sense?

2. We're based in NYC, but I'm hearing that the cost of setting up an LLC can be 10x the cost of setting up a C-Corp. Any advice on the state to incorporate in? Why? (Assuming of course that we can incorporate in a diff state and work out of NYC)
Better yet, an "Alert me" button instead, collect an email address and notify them later when it's back.
I'm thinking about getting this just for the TypeKit sub, but I don't/haven't used the others.
Amazon: Kindle Books Now Outselling Hardcovers
It does seem a pretty random sort of subject, especially if it's actually "not news".
That is great for you, but for 99% of the rest of the planet that doesn't give a flying f* about open source or couldn't care less about hacking a phone, the fragmentation of the Android market is only going to piss them off when they eventually encounter the day where their friends can do some cool thing on their Android phones, and they can't. With the iPhone the path of progression from one phone to another is simple and clear. Not the case with Android.
Harjeet Taggar on "The relationship between Sequoia and Y Combinator"
Insight, "Apple: Pushing around MobileMe"
The term itself is inherently confusing. If only the best products are 'recommended', are the rest 'not recommended'? That's how it was interpreted, by the mainstream media and blogs alike.

They could just as easily label them as 'Outstanding' or 'CR Choice' products and avoid the confusion.
Why does wanting something to work make you a fan boy/girl? Should someone want something that doesn't work and needs to be fixed manually?
How does this guy get any coding done? He's always writing rants and waving his hands to get attention. He writes, "Send an email and I'll add your name to the donation page." I hope he doesn't get a million donation emails asking to have their names listed. If so, he'll never be able to code another line.
Sure they do - but that isn't really surprising; why not take the better writer? It might be useful, can't hurt and there is no downside.

The really interesting thing is _how_ much they are willing to compromise; would they prefer a mediocre programmer with flair for writing? If not, it is just meaningless platitudes.
http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2010/33-9117.pdf

Warning - huge document, you should save it rather than try to view in the browser. See page 1 and section III.B.1 (page ~200 & surrounding).

What's being proposed is not so much writing regulations in Python (the sort of idea I have been fascinated with for some time), but requiring sellers of complex securities to supply Python code as part of their disclosure requirements. Calculations of potential returns and so forth can then be undertaken by potential buyers using the same methodology used by the sellers.

Currently, information about cash flow related to a security are described verbally in a special financial dialect of legalese, or sometimes in mathematical terms. Calculating the actual profits or obligations in $ is left as an exercise for the reader, and their calculation is only as good as their underlying assumptions about the meaning of specific terms. Should a dispute arise later on, the result is a long technical argument over how these calculations should be performed and whether the accounting methods employed are standard in the industry or not. Of course, if this argument takes place in a court it can become very expensive and last for years, which is why buyers of securities perform all their due diligence before purchasing the security. As this due diligence can easily become expensive and time consuming, a lot of buyers try to reduce the up-front costs by considering the rating assigned to the security by an agency like Moody's or Fitch, who are presumed to be specialists in evaluating these things. Unfortunately, excessive reliance on such ratings has resulted in significant loss for a lot of fund managers and investors in recent years.

So what the SEC is proposing (and which you have until August 2 on which to comment), is that in future some securities offerings should come with the cash flow calculations pre-documented in Python, which would be the equivalent of a mortgage calculator offered by a bank to people who are thinking of buying a house and which is supposed to give an accurate picture of what the monthly numbers will be for a given set of input conditions, eg interest rates or whatever.
From a user's perspective, I find that the date of the last commit as well as the number of open issues are tell tale signs of the the project's state.
Use MRI for short-lived and JRuby for long-lived. Problem solved?
That "that that that that" that that comment included would only be correct if you included quotation marks.
Yes, but only to the ones that might find the app/idea useful. The feedback is the best part - they will be very honest with you and see things that you don't see. So it is great for a soft launch or to test out ideas before hand.

I haven't seen much success in the word of month, but that is probably based on friends/family and could vary.
Ask HN: How to locate the unread comments on a HN post since I last visited it?
Is there a way?
Cisco owes PoE patent holder $112 million
China Passes U.S. as World's Biggest Energy Consumer
Incorporate in Delaware.

I'm going about a very similar route as well.
This is actually a pretty common technique in Haskell. If you look at the Alex lexical analyzer generator's source code, it represents CharSets as functions from Char -> Bool: they return true if the character is in the charset or false if it is not. Internally, they work just like the article describes: the union of two CharSets doesn't actually enumerate every possible character in the set, it just calls the two CharSets and performs an OR.

There're other languages that do this two, eg. JavaScript written by functional programmers often ends up looking like this. In Arc, the distinction is completely meaningless, because you "call" a hashtable to index an object anyway.

The problem with it, I've found, is the lack of debugability. You can enumerate a hashtable, and you can inspect it in the debugger. You generally can't enumerate a function. I've found that with complex systems, the biggest correlation to programming productivity is the amount of debug information available, not the size of the code. Trading off debugability to get short code is usually a poor trade-off, once you get past a certain code size.
What's frustrating is that pretty much every Android phone is sold with a "with Google" stamp on the back, and that this basically means fuck all.

It should mean "this is an Android phone that is built with Google's blessing and with Google's support, so lean back and don't worry".
I was on holiday there at the start of the year. Most of the cars are still set up for driving on the right (driver sitting on the left). This makes it hard to judge the where center line is, so people tend to drift over it! Luckily the speed limit is 50km/h but it is still pretty "exciting" to be a front-seat passenger, it feels like a continuous game of chicken :)
Not per capita of course - the US is still a big outlier on that front.
That's fairly common style in Scheme as well, fwiw; a "named let" is very similar to Clojure's recur, and some programmers prefer it over tailcalls, at least for many common recursion/iteration patterns.
I bought a Nexus One a few days ago. I suspect many would feel sorry for me, but don't worry, I'm just fine.

Google will continue to improve the OS, and I'm sure the device will get better and better in the years to come.
I am now the only employee aside from the CEO. He continually complains of being broke, accusing me of having money saved up and even hinting to me and the board that he's going to kill himself. He seems less and less stable. I continue working.

Wow. The ability of people to do the right thing and do their work under ridiculous conditions has always amazed me, but this one is one magnitude over anything I have personally seen.

Somebody hire this guy.
I have said it before in this space and I'll say it again: I love the hell out of my Nexus One, circumstances be damned.
Typically I agree with ars, but at least in this case the edit added clarity.
Re: the bubbles, that was my first thought too. But actually I liked the way she just threw it on there WITH the bubbles, and how they were easily patted away. Shows how easy perfect installation is - but this should be highlighted as a feature instead of potentially giving viewers a bad perception.
This.

Google never wanted to try to cut out the middle-men. Google didn't want to push the phone too much. They just wanted to put it out there to be able to let them know, "Here, look, this is what you can do with this technology at this price point."

As was pointed out at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1529657, Google achieved its aims. The Nexus One was a success. It can go away now.

If you pay attention, you'll often see companies do strange and counter-intuitive things because their goal isn't simply to make money on every single product. Study and learn, because they often aren't being nearly as stupid as you might think.
Yeah that's what I'm hoping to see as I transition a couple of test apps over. The scala/lift folks see this as a big advantage for their JVM web stack too.
This Settles It: Kindle eBooks Are The Standard Now
You could do the same with SD cards, the card readers for that are very, very cheap and you could fit a lot more data into it.
That whole set is surprisingly bad... it goes from "OMG that's a LOT" to "oh, that's not so bad then, is it?" to "1/64th of an inch...? How thick is that?"

Aimless, perspectiveless, and confusing.
Any downsides? Does everything work? What about battery life? Might flash my dev phone 1
SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (11)
No, it's emphatically not a problem with the ecosystem. Android 2.2 phones are being designed as we speak, and Android 2.1 works perfectly fine for people in the meantime -- it's not like Google had to play catchup with Android 2.2 the way Apple did with iOS 4.

Like you said, typical users such as your parents have no idea what software their phone is running; they just want it to work. Android 2.1 works perfectly well, and the fact that 2.2 has been announced but is not yet commercially available is no hindrance to people who don't care for such matters.

The only people who really seem to be getting up in arms about Android 2.2 not being available right now are the Apple fanatics.
New Survey Confirms Shoddy U.S. Broadband