skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Overall nice site. It hooks you as soon as you press a play button. Alas, you may lose many users in the critical seconds before that happens. The newcomer experience is too busy: too many "mottos" that allude to the purpose of the site with more cuteness than explanatory power. You could learn a bit in this respect from reddit: they only have one motto, and as a newcomer, you are welcome by a short text that stands out visually (but more elegantly than your three color salute) on a yellow background. It reads:

"reddit is a source for what's new and popular online. vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what's popular, or submit your own!"

You see, short and to the point, but made to explain rather than to make an impact. You could add a "more..." link at the end of that if your site requires it.

The site could lose a bit of visual noise. For example, each song entry consists of four sub-rectangles. It's not clear what this division gives you. I'd make it just one rectangle and group similar items with whitespace in the same background color (that is, gray instead of white).

I don't get why some actions (download, +add) are treated so differently visually. Given the focus of the site, I can understand that you want to highlight Play and Bump, but that's it.

Believe it or not, I missed the player at the top right corner until I read about it in this thread. I'd make it stand out more, and use good old play, pause, previous, next buttons.

Your number of points is displayed in the player area. It looks like somehow it's the currently playing song who has "90 points".

OK, enough nitpicks for today. As I said, great work overall!
If objects == hash tables, any language with decent hash tables, including lisp, has objects that you're perfectly happy with. Lisp also has other data types, but their existence means that lisp has more power, not less.
I worked at Nuance Communications for about a year doing voice application development. I'm not familiar with Sphynx, but I did talk to a number of people at the company about it (this was 2004-2005).

From what I gathered it would be pretty difficult to get speech synthesis up to their level. A single "voice" will be generated by taking tens of hours of audio and using algorithms to splice them together based on the text.

The only significant monetary constraint is going to be if you want to have a real voice talent doing your recording in a studio, but I wouldn't try to tackle the technical issues without a subject matter expert
> But, what I mean is the "dominant metaphor," which I suspect is still lists.

That tells us more about the basis for your suspicions than it does about lisp.

It's okay to like javascript more than you like lisp. It's also okay to be mostly ignorant of lisp. However, it's poor form to make up things to "support" those positions.
RscueTime seems like one of the more credible YC startups, with an actual value proposition and a pretty killer initial user experience.

After all the YC help, weekly dinners, and demo day, this article says they're still looking for seed funding. Not an A-round; just seed money.
Cool decision, also google map is slow to load and it's clear it is designed to be an interactive thing even when you don't touch it. A more reasonable approach could be to have the Google Chart API to allow to render Map data but this is not possible currently.

Btw every time I see a Google maps mash-up in a web
site my first feeling is "dirty".
No macros, no plugins, no extensibility, no embeddability or automation (a la COM/OLE and VBA for Excel).

Excel's position in companies that give Microsoft tons of money for copies of Office is still far from threatened.

But for the local girl scout troop deciding which neighborhoods to sell cookies in and who sold how much when, this seems, like, superduper.
Yes. A couple of years ago, I was implementing the Quadratic Sieve integer factorization algorithm in Maple (technically, I was implementing PP-SIQS). Taking a routine which used the Pollard rho algorithm to factor 12-16 digit values from MAPLE (a dynamically typed language) and implementing it in C -- using calls to exactly the same GMP primitive functions as Maple was using -- resulted in a tenfold speedup; this routine was used commonly enough that the overall routine was sped up by roughly a factor of two.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdownforeveryo...
i would say in most cases it doesn't matter if its secure because

A) The person breaking into the source code server isn't your competitor

B) Source code isnt the life of most web 2.0 startups. If I gave you the source code to Twitter it wouldn't get you very far.
Aztecs devised sophisticated arithmetic system
Unfortunately that is not really what people mean with "big system" - although I do agree with your point. It shows how nice it can be when you add on complexity.

I really should get that book in paper form.
Are you worried that someone might copy your code or that your code might become inaccessible to you?
Why not keep your source code local and upload only the object code to your host?
You win my wicked cool site of the week award. There is no such award, but nice work on the site!

This is eerily close to a project we've been working on. But you deserve mad props for doing it so well.

My biggest gripe are your fonts so that says a lot. (When I Firebug it to verdana it looks rather nice.) It is a bit too complicated, but every little bit I explore seems rewarding.

Random plug/advice, you might consider using one of our little tools, featurelist.org, to get user feature voting and/or a feedback widget.
Hosting at home over your DSL is kinda crazy. You lose far more in maintenance and uptime headaches than you win in price.

You can get a shared webhost for under $10/month, and it's good enough for probably 95% of possible consumer webapps. If it's not good enough, you can get a VPS or cheap dedicated server for $80/month or so. If you've got a day job, that should easily be affordable.

A colo definitely isn't necessary at this point, and is probably more of a maintenance headache than you need.
> I do not want to throw excessive cash at something that possibly could not have a chance of bringing money back.

You may need to invest significantly more than that. You may need to throw your career at the project.
Sure Linux just works... but your presentations on a shiny Mac Book Pro will be all the slicker than a boring old Ubuntu Dell. Besides, not staring at an ugly UI all day has its advantages as do the rest of the Mac productivity features.
Wouldn't that defeat the point of using SCM?
I am familiar with functional programming. In fact, for some reason recursion and higher-order functions always seemed easy to me (unlike pointers and virtual methods), but I think that's a quirk of my brain. Many other people seem to have a lot of trouble with the idea that you can just make a recursive call and trust that it's going to do what it is supposed to.

Not me personally, though.

But the lisp style leverages the linguistic propensity to give words special significance. We're also very good at learning languages and parsing sentences in context, so the lisp linguistic style leverages similar natural cognitive abilities.

Linguistic processing does require more cognitive effort, especially when it involves something like a macro that can change the context in which it is invoked. For exactly the same reason, most people are more productive with a graphical user interface than with a command-line one. This is directly related to the fact that abstract linguistic processing is more difficult than manipulation of the tangible, physical objects you find in a GUI.
I'm worried about someone accessing to my code.
Maybe it's just because I've been using Common Lisp exclusively for a year, but what's so hard about macros? Especially, using them (as opposed to writing them).

You don't have to think about how the macro is written or what it's expanding into when you use it, you just have to know the semantics of the macro. "When I pass such and such, it will produce code that evaluates this in that way". Similar to a function or a language primitive right? If you're writing a for loop in Java, do you have to care how it's implemented in the JVM?!

As for writing macros: you're writing a function that takes an AST and returns an AST to use as replacement. This function will be called at compile-time to change your nice high-level macro call into lower-level code. There are a couple pitfalls (variable capture, multiple evaluation) but they're always the same and you'll learn about them quickly enough that it will become a sixth sense.
B) What if we could get access to an early release of Basecamp?
svn blame >
Thanks! I did't notice that.
Fine! I'm not the onlyone! :)
You weren't meant to have a boss (paulgraham.com) 
I'm no programmer by any stretch, but as an entreprenuer, having worked for larger companies/organizations, I identify completely. Right out of a Cabinet Making program, I already knew I needed more "field" experience before trying to open my own shop. So, I try working for a few shops in town...all of whom were, in some manner or another, constrained by a sense of regionality in their product/style. Of course, a shop owner/manager's 1st consideration's going to be what the customer wants, sallied up next to what markets will tolerate. But me, being the newbie and "low-man" on the pole, could only see the monotony, boredom, and "good-ole-boy", ass-kissing politics that just killed the joy out of woodworking.

The same w/ an AAS-AutoCAD, I felt an opportunity to work for the State DOT doing working plans for bridges/structures would give me more experience in addition to a steady income. Same deal: boredom, monotony, and "good-ole-boy", ass-kissing politics...
Now, I'm home doing my own custom woodworking projects, using AutoCAD. No ass-kissing politics; No "Boss"; a few repeat customers and a lot more to look forward to learning. Mostly, I'm happy working at home...my trips to the frig are a lot shorter too.
Coupe06
What size team? If you are only one person then have a local svn repository and backup to S3.
If PHP wasn't easy to get started with, I would have never started developing for the web, period.

Remember, everyone was a novice once. Lowering the constraints to get started can only mean that more great things will be created, not less.
Arrington: 'Demo needs to die
Let’s Get Real: Business is Not Personal
Just translating would probably leave it as a "derivative work". However, note that licenses like the BSD and MIT licenses came specifically from universities releasing their code under very permissive terms. Perhaps your university can be convinced to do the same.
I don't read the statements are a contradiction. I read "to put it up against DEMO" as meaning "in the same calendar slot." If DEMO does support entrepreneurs--which it does--how does having more choice hurt? If you don't like their fee structure, then apply to TC50. Chris Shipley has been in the industry for a while and has helped a number of startups: I don't read her statements as hypocritical or believe that she is a hypocrite. If DEMO were really moribund Arrington wouldn't be able to attack it to get attention. From a YC/Hacker perspective, even if you prefer the TC50 model to DEMO, I don't believe that anyone is well served by having them collide in the same week.
There is a long and ignoble tradition in the software industry of programmers who prey on the ignorance of managers and executives to convince them in uselessness of productivity enhancing technologies so that the programmers can enjoy building their own productivity enhancing technologies that are subjectively (and very rarely objectively) superior to alternatives.

At least we agree on the ignorance of managers and executives :)

It is difficult to pin down your argument, since it isn't clear if you are talking in anecdotes about specific instances of product failures or if you are describing the entire marketplace. Assuming your claim is about the latter, you are missing the context of the general trends: yes, most of the "new crop of tools" that come out every few years fail. However that is in line with most new products -- over 90% of new software products that are released every year fail, so it shouldn't be surprising that tool products fail at a similar rate.

However, at what point are you throwing baby out with bathwater? Just because most of the workflow products are crap, doesn't mean there aren't a few innovative ones that truly improve productivity and deserve to be used.

Finally, you are confusing programming and writing workflows or designing business processes. Very much like BNF grammars are an effective way of describing parsers, flowcharts (or workflows) are an effective way of describing invariant, sequential operations. Neither are an effective general purpose programming language.
I can explain the antithesis:

1. They fear the unknown;
2. They fear fanatics.

Mac OS is The Unknown to them + Mac users tend to be pretty rabid fanatics = Let's bash them!
I am baffled that someone ten or fifteen years out of college would have their college grades given more weight than their work accomplishments. There are certainly "late bloomers" and "street smart" folks who make a strong contribution who didn't shine in college. A startup mimicking this aspect of Google's approach will be missing a number of strong candidates.
When the build fails - the Business of Software Development
"If you look at languages in wide use, they're all procedural"

SQL?
I think the double-negative is slightly confusing.

My favorite available one is:

safeftw.com: "safe for the work" OR "safe for the win"
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/validator.w3.org/?uri=htt...
We now think the problem is with us, but we're not sure exactly where. When stuff starts to break down under load it's hard to tell what's a bug and what's just a bad interaction. So we're investigating further.

The good news is that the problem does seem to sort itself out. That is, the server gets slow for a while, and then it goes back to normal. So till we fix this, the solution is just to come back in 5 minutes and things will probably be fine.
This looks solid. Users++
How many universities have ever given a startup trouble for making software that was a "derivative work," though? Not one that I know of. In practice it's enough to rewrite under conditions where no one has claim to your IP.
My Startup: One Green Day. One Green Deal. One Green Planet.
www.dailygreenproject.com

WHAT?
Daily Green Project is a site trying to make a difference through eco-shopping. DailyGreenProject.com offers "One Green Deal A Day" on environmentally earth friendly products while donating 10% of every sale to various non-profit, environmental and eco-friendly organizations. You shop with the earth in mind, we then take that mentality further with donations and service projects that make a difference. This will begin to positively affect people who shop for online deals as well as those who receive donations from the 10% we donate from each sale. So the strength of Daily Green Project is threefold:

1. Giving money to something you believe in.
2. Positively effecting the environment around you.
3. Donating to charities that help to make the world a better place for everyone!

Mission?
To make a difference everyday. We want the users experience to feel like they are buying a product they will feel is making a difference as well as knowing a part of their purchase will be going to a couple different causes as well. We also have a "DGP Fund" where we deposit $1 from every sale to go towards hands-on service projects. This gives us, and our customers, two different opportunities to make a difference. We will blog about where the money goes so everyone can see where their donation is being spent. We will eventually promote those projects but we are still working on how that is all going to be displayed - thoughts?

About?
Daily Green Project is a small company looking to do big things. The Co-Founders are myself(Don) and Lea. We are working every day to make a difference and love the joy that giving brings in our lives. I'm a UX Developer who has worked for companies like Dexma, Digital River and Musician's Friend. Lea has been a number of things from a school bus driver, chemist (for cosmetics) and dental assistant (Orthodontics).

Daily Green Project is built on Shopify with design and customizations by me. Our name comes from the fact that we sell a different eco-friendly item every day and put a portion of the money into projects that help the planet and the people on it. We currently use blogger as our blog choice only because it is free and works for the time being. We messed a little with Typepad and liked it but our free trial has run out and the main reason is we really didn't get it looking how we wanted.

I would love to hear your feedback for the site overall and comments/additions/critique on anything you like pertaining to Daily Green Project. All your wisdom is very much appreciated!
There may be something to that argument, but another probably bigger factor is that there are now other dynamic languages. In 1990 there was no Python or Ruby. If you wanted to program in that kind of high level style, the only options were Lisp and Smalltalk.
I have always likened php to those old Kodak brownie cameras. Doesn't seem like much, but in the hands of a skilled practitioner, magic can be made.
Have you checked out Amie Street? They have a similar model. You can pick early tracks when they're unheard of and free. Then as they get more downloads they gather points and then you get points, like you have one share in the song. You can then spend these on buying different songs.
DHH is the one who led the way for much of the PHP bashing that has gone in the past few years. Still, his contributions have influenced many (PHP, django, merb, some java). Its kind of ironic that he complements PHP now, but its also kind of sad. DHH probably figures (and rightly so) that so many people take his word for gospel so he has a bit of social responsibility in admitting that PHPs many benefits have a place.
Solving this problem is the main goal of the Cobra language:

http://cobra-language.com/docs/why/

I'll be curious to see if it succeeds.
Ditto. There's a lot to be said for being available on every $8 shared hosting platform on the web. In a couple weeks I had my first database driven site up and running using the LAMP stack with no prior programming or Linux experience at all.

Thank god it is now defunct so I can't embarrass myself by linking to it.
Courses can't teach you how to invent...this is more of a "history of inventions and patent law class"...
Why Git won't mean Rails snubs Windows
well... if you are sharing the code with the world does it matter? unless you are worried it will get corrupted. use git with your co-founders/employees if you are worried about it being stolen.
We're trying to fix the slowness.
Dynamic languages like Perl, Python and Ruby all do. Many of their core features have been written in C to give them more performance.
Ten futuristic (but already developed) construction/textile materials
My claim pointed out specific types of problems that are solved by workflow software

It did? I wonder how I read it ten times and missed that. "Distributed systems" doesn't seem like a very "specific type of problem" to me.
All the programmers I know who wrote lisp in the 80s, now own software companies or are in management. That may explain some of it.
On User Feedback
Most people find OO modeling natural

I can't resist pointing out again how laughable this sounds to anyone who remembers the long debates about how hard it is to "think in objects" and how objects "would never work for the masses". (Actually, that was right, because the "most people" in question are still largely writing much the same code as they always did and always will; now they just surround it by "public class".)

I'm not disagreeing with you at all; I just feel compelled to make sure that somebody else sees this irony!
Given that:

1) Many programmers don't even bother to look at the source of open source libraries and projects they use instead of just cargo culting

2) Code changes really often because of the never ending list of bugs and new features

3) A lot of code (including some of my past work and probably some of yours) is garbage (at any given point)

4) Even if your code isn't garbage, the guy looking at it may think it's garbage

I wouldn't worry too much until your application gains in popularity
I read your post. So, you appreciated the core beauty of the thing but the details got you down. What a shame.

I think what happens to most of us who love Lisp is that, at a certain point, the initial frustrations are eclipsed by how much more productive we are (and liberated, if I may put it that way). That point comes sooner for some than others. In your case, not soon enough. But Lisp will no doubt still be around if you ever do decide to get back to it.
Could the YCombinator idea submissions be shared with potential competitors?
I personally do not feel ideas belong to anybody. They are more of a starting point to build products.

But just wondering if there is a possibility of the ideas that people apply with being shared with other ycombinator startups working in the same fields.
There's no formal pledge of secrecy but you have their word that they won't share your app with anyone outside of YC - and that includes other YC startups. It says so on the first para of the app.
According to Larry Wall:

"use Lingua::Perligata;

If you allow a language to mutate its own grammar within a lexical scope, how do you keep track of that cleanly? Perl 5 discovered one really bad way to do it, namely source filters, but even so we ended up with Perl dialects such as Perligata and Klingon. What would it be like if we actually did it right?

Doing it right involves treating the evolution of the language as a pragmatic scope, or as a set of pragmatic scopes. You have to be able to name your dialect, kind of like a URL, so there needs to be a universal root language, and ways of warping that universal root language into whatever dialect you like. This is actually near the heart of the vision for Perl 6. We don't see Perl 6 as a single language, but as the root for a family of related languages. As a family, there are shared cultural values that can be passed back and forth among sibling languages as well as to the descendants."

I'd say Perl is getting comparable macro-level functionality. Perl also has one likable feature that is less present in lisp; different idioms look different. When I hear Paul Graham talk of (a i) being an array index or a function call, I start to think about concepts like Hungarian notation to keep my code more readable.

A uniform syntax structure isn't required for macros.
have someone else write the code then buy it from them.
At least we agree on the ignorance of managers and executives :)

Heh.

programmers who prey on the ignorance of managers and executives to convince them in uselessness of productivity enhancing technologies so that the programmers can enjoy building their own productivity enhancing technologies that are subjectively (and very rarely objectively) superior to alternatives

I'm not sure I agree with that. It's true that programmers often want to build something instead of buy off-the-shelf solutions. But in my observation, they're right as often as wrong. Then again, it's true many programmers prefer their own intellectual gratification above all else.

You're quite right that I haven't surveyed all recent workflow systems and my generalization shouldn't be applied to all of them. I'm talking about a pattern I've observed and am highly skeptical of.
It depends on the school policies. You'll need to just find out what they are. We can't tell you that.

Some schools are quite friendly to business arrangements, while others are grabby. There are plenty of products on the market that were developed at universities and later commercialized.
Governing Sovereign Wealth Flows