skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But he did give an example. In his example, bar is a function object that is a closure. He just didn't make it do anything that would demonstrate it had to be a closure.

As for Pascal, you need to look again. From the beginning Pascal had the ability to pass functions and procedures as parameters to other functions and procedures. If those functions and procedures are defined in an inner scope, they will carry the original lexical scope, and are in fact full closures. OK, they are clunky to use, but they work. Skip to the end of the section starting at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Pascal_and_C#Func... to see the necessary syntax demonstrated.

Don't quote me on this, but I believe that Pascal was actually the very first language with full closures. All of the necessary pieces are in ALGOL-68, but I think that Pascal was implemented first and so wins.

Incidentally Sussman claims that he got the idea of lexical scope for Scheme from studying ALGOL. Of course Scheme realized the possibilities of the construct as no language before it had, and a lot of credit is due for that. But you shouldn't lightly dismiss the contributions to Lisp from languages out of the Lisp family.
my parents were middle class, but when I first got a computer my parents were lower middle class and my dad just got his first engineering job.

I think it is either social class or your parents worked in tech and wanted you to learn about it.
Done: http://mongrel2.org/tktview/b685326bc0ded7a466b61fb0d1c6e7d5...

I tend to spew at the mouth then tighten it up later.
The B52 is intended to be in service until 2040 - long enough for the great-great-grandchildren of the original pilots to be flying it!
Forgot the most important one:

C-X C-c; vim
Ah, but if you met him - - - you might think a little differently.

Although, the number of people that I know that learned Japanese in America is, like, two. I would say that makes him exceptional in that regard.
As entertaining as those comments might be, "making Apple jealous", "destroying basecamp", and throwing SalesForce out of a boat, I'm troubled by this.

When you describe/compare yourself by other competing services, you user their service as a yardstick and are therefore constrained by that. Rather than "set out to destroy basecamp and salesforce while making apple jealous", just "set out to create the best productivity tool". I realize that wouldn't be quite the same link fodder, but it's so much better in the long run.

Digg and Reddit ran into this problem once when they started comparing one another. Hacker News managed to stay out of that meaningless crap.
Oh, well my appologies then, I was assuming you were offended (there's plenty of them :-)

Actually, quite the contrary. Even the people who hate that I insult them still read it...and then talk about it for days on end like they have no lives.
Easily create dynamic and robust sandbox environments from Ruby on OSX.
Through the use of technology found on Apple's Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems, Dia can create dynamic and robust sandbox environments for applications and for blocks of ruby code. The Ruby API was designed to be simple, and a joy to use. I hope you feel the same way :-)
Ah interesting, yeah I don't have windows so someone else submitted those instructions. I'll go and try to do them myself and see if they can be improved. Although, I think for windows folks this will be a big hurdle at first either way.
Ask HN: Co-founder dating site traffic looking for a good home. Suggestions?
I built startuplinkup.com over a few days as an exercise on Semantic Mediawiki. It became a bit more than just an exercise, but it also became obvious that is not the best model to solve the co-founder dating problem.
So I am looking for a good co-founder dating site to redirect my traffic.

What site would you suggest? What are your experiences, if any, with "co-founder dating" sites?
Here are a few that I also contacted directly, and received some warm responses:
http://www.techcofounder.com/
http://fairsoftware.net/home
http://www.partnerup.com/
http://startupsquare.com/
http://cofoundr.com/
http://www.cofoundergoogledocs.com/
http://amb.itio.us/

After a spike in January, startuplinkup.com traffic settled at around 1000 unique visitors per month and an Alexa ranking of 360,000 - whatever that means. Interestingly enough, USA and India were the top , everything else was a distant second.

No reasonable offer refused. And anything between a million bucks and "I'll buy you a beer" is reasonable. But more than maximizing the number of beers I receive, I am interested in giving it away to the site that is likely to emerge as the leader, and ideally begin the process of consolidating this "business". It's not large market, and too much segmentation is detrimental to innovation. A single, good place to find your co-founder would be great.

Adrian
Mobile Dev Rap Battle: Native Code vs. Web Apps
Funny, I do the same thing. Recently my notes moved to ~/Dropbox/Notes and I also use git.
Is it a Ford car or truck?
Yeah, this is what I don't understand. so when do you cut your losses, close down the company, and move on to your next venture?

I mean, I understand about pivoting. when I first started I blew a bunch of money building a setup to sell storage, then amazon s3 turned that market upside down. (as an aside, I'm considering that market again. S3 is still here, and it's still pretty good, but it's prices are way higher now, relative to hardware and bandwidth costs, than they were then.) I pivoted fairly quickly to FreeBSD chroot jails, which also didn't do so well, and then to Xen VPSs, which worked okay, though it took me another few years before I got the formula completely right.

The thing was, I blew through a significant amount of money (well, significant to me; we're probably not talking about more than two porsches of consulting income) but if I had used other people's money, they would have owned quite a lot of the company. and other than my own experience and knowledge, the money spent before a pivot doesn't really help after a pivot. (I mean, the experience and knowledge matter a lot, but bankruptcy court can't take that away)

Now, from my perspective (I own my company wholly; no investors, any company commitments and/or debit are co-signed by me personally) unless I'm willing to declare personal bankruptcy, there isn't much difference between shutting down the company and starting a new every pivot, vs. keeping the company the same every pivot. However, I did spend some significant money. If I was using investor money, wouldn't it make sense for me the founder to close the business and start a new one, thus either retaining more equity or gaining more capital (if I got new investors)

I mean, obviously, if you do that from one very similar business to another, you are going to probably have legal problems, and at the very least damage your reputation amongst potential investors.

But, take for example, my first pivot. Going from selling raw storage to selling shell accounts could reasonably be said to be a completely different business. I don't think investors would blame me for failing to anticipate amazon would swoop in with a price point I couldn't beat, and I don't think they'd hold it against me if I decided to start another company later, selling chroot shell accounts.

How does that usually work? what motivates the founder to stick with the existing investors when the business must 'pivot' to something unrelated to it's original intent?
No, bar is not a closure. It is basically just a local procedure.

The original Pascal did not have full closures. Functions did only exist as long as their surrounding function was called. They could not be returned from functions. Pascal lacked also the necessary Garbage Collection. Pascal had lexical scope, but not full closures.

All you could do was pass functions to other functions. But that's trivial, since each time one passed function X, it gets its active environment, which always is on the stack. There was no way to have closures, where functions have their own set of variable bindings, even when the surrounding function is no longer active. Being able to pass a function downwards is not sufficient to require full closures.

Basically the same applies for Algol. Functions can't be returned and are not first class objects.

What Algol contributed to the evolution of Lisp was lexical scope, but not closures. Also note that it was not Scheme that introduced closures in Lisp.

That's what I fear, many people think they know what a closure is, but in reality there is a lot of confusion.
Even more of a practice is to ask for you to code or solve problems or build a small something-or-other during the interview process. This seems pretty common.

My (unasked-for) advice if you are a programmer looking for a gig is to put a project in some publicly-visible place like github. Or try out google codejam or topcoder for practice.

When I first heard about the fizzbuzz tests and the results from them, I was rather surprised. Scary examples abound.
Since we're all requesting features... I want the ability to send messages to the spam folder with a custom filter. I receive certain types of spam that always get through, despite flagging it multiple times. They're easily killed with the "create filter" feature, but I end up having to send them to the trash, which is less than ideal, because now my trash is full of spam.

So, in summary, please add "send to spam" to the custom filter actions.
Agreed. But a kardasian is a little better than a snook for those scoring at home.
I also don't like when people downvote when they merely disagree.
IBM acquires Storwize for real-time data compression capabilities
Hidden features of Google
Sure, it still needs a bit of additional features that are nice to haves, and get some testing and stuff, but it could be made as a standalone thing.

http://mongrel2.org/tktview/ff6e599f6bdb7dc63387aaad48f10f84...

There ya go.
I am a designer, and I agree. The article is a childish wish list that portrays designers as pampered prima donnas.

It shames hardworking designers that believe in honest work, open communication, and finding creativity in constraints.
Really useful commands:

^X-2: Split window horizontally
^X-3: Split window vertically
^X-0: Combine window with sibling
^X-1: Undo all splits

From my .emacs file:

;;; Key bindings
(global-set-key "\C-xg" 'goto-line)
(global-set-key "\C-xl" 'what-line)
(global-set-key [f1] 'goto-line)
(global-set-key [f2] 'switch-to-buffer)
(global-set-key [f3] 'shell)
(global-set-key [f4] 'query-replace)
(global-set-key [f5] 'compare-windows)
(global-set-key [f6] 'set-left-margin)
(global-set-key [f7] 'find-file)
(global-set-key [S-f7] 'revert-buffer)
(global-set-key [f8] 'save-buffer)
(global-set-key [f9] 'auto-fill-mode)
(global-set-key [f10] 'call-last-kbd-macro)
(global-set-key [S-f10] 'apply-macro-to-region-lines)
(global-set-key [f11] 'sort-lines)
(global-set-key [f12] 'undo)
(global-set-key [home] 'beginning-of-line)
(global-set-key [end] 'end-of-line)
;;; no insert key on mac keyboard
(global-set-key [insert] 'other-window)
(global-set-ke y [help] 'other-window)
(global-set-key [S-help] 'yank)
(global-set-key [C-home] 'beginning-of-buffer)
(global-set-key [C-end] 'end-of-buffer)
(global-set-key [S-next] 'scroll-other-window)
(global-set-key [S-prior] 'scroll-other-window-down)

Not key bindings, but very nice to have in .emacs:

;;; this highlights the marked region
(transient-mark-mode t)

;; don't automatically add new lines when scrolling down at
;; the bottom
;;of a buffer.
(setq next-line-add-newlines nil)

;;; Don't truncate lines when windows are split vertically
(setq-default truncate-partial-width-windows nil)
What is the difference? Is it possible for the difference to not matter?
Augen Gentouch 78 preview - $150 Android Kmart tablet
Apture launches highlight to search Extension
> Could you give me an example of a concurrency feature that really, truly benefits from being in the language and not the standard library?

Isn't that a bit of a loaded question? In some academic sense, an ideal programming system might have a kernel language that is probably rather small and certainly clean, flexible and extensible in its feature set, and then almost everything else built on top of that kernel in libraries. In practical programming systems, the perfect kernel has proven rather elusive, though.

It's rather like the question of whether a standard library should be small, clean and extensible or comprehensive with a good-enough version of everything. Many of us might be inclined toward the former approach from an academic/theoretical/intuitive point of view, but in practice, just about every widely used programming language from the past two decades has come with a batteries-included library. While those libraries are often criticised for various technical weaknesses, and many of those weaknesses are never addressed because it's too much work, these systems are still good enough for most users out of the box.
Well, again, this is a question-begging term. There is no magic bullet -- there are only things that, in hindsight, worked very very well, and disasters that you avoided.

Friendster in particular shot themselves repeatedly in the foot by:

a) fetishizing immense graph calculations which made their site unbearably slow & expensive to run.

b) ignoring a huge influx of overseas users until they became a big capex problem

c) not working out ways to exclude or better monetize those overseas users

d) not really innovating because they were preoccupied with a).

Now things could have turned out differently. If those hugely expensive graph calculations had been hugely beneficial to the user experience, they would have won, hands-down. But that turned out not to be the case. It was a bad bet. Hard to say if it was "bad execution".
I work with designers every day and I can tell you I had to share this around and their reaction along with my own is summed up perfectly in your comments. What a terrible way to portray the expectations of the design profession.
How is phone number not private user data?
Nearly all of my emails are from real people... that is, the ones that get past GMail's spam filter, which is the only subset I care about.

I pretty aggressively mark as spam any auto-emails. Pretty much the only company I won't do this to is Amazon, not because I don't want to, but because I am scared to.
If nothing else this has been a great lesson in hardware manufacturing

That said, I would still like some sort of verification that my preorder has been cancelled and that I wont randomly be getting charged 45 dollars sometime in the future.
I posted this on the blog, but it is relevant here also:

"As someone who is in a similar position you were, what advice do you have? I have a website that generates a few thousand dollars a month. Like you said, it's enough to live by, but I'm doing everything myself and I'm not sure how to scale.

You mentioned being able to see what you were doing wrong...what was that? Do you have any tips?"
irc is very helpful when interacting with people who don't speak English as their first language, or have a very thick, difficult-to-understand accent.
MA: "I”m never wrong."

I'm not sure if even god can say that and back it up.
The volume real market participants want to buy or sell.
Cost of 3G data in the US among highest in the world.
Are those confidentiality-for-life kinds of agreements, or just N years until you can write up the full story (if you wanted to)?
Nothing for super early startups? Might expand your audience a bit more, people looking for less than $50k (ie. YC sized investments)
if you have a blog and there's tens and tens of entries and nary a comment to be seen, doesn't that look sad somehow?

Some people blog on locked-down (private) blogs. You don't have to make it public.
The Physics of a Rolling Rubberband
... any guesses on how long it will be until this can be successfully (UX-wise) paired with head-mounted displays? My bet is that we'll get this no sooner than 2012, but no later than 2014.
Ok, it's not just my imagination, this is link-bait if I ever saw it:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/international-laun...

Title is: iPhone 4 antenna woes "significantly worse" than competition

1st paragraph explains: one consulting firm says it's worse, another review says it's better.

I'm pretty sure I didn't see this type of thing from Ars in the past.
As Peter mentioned, with the services available today, many startup ideas are much, much easier to implement.

What hasn't changed are the needs of getting users, charging enough, and having the guts to do it in the first place.
interesting... so what are the rules here? I mean, you sold a company, now you are thinking about starting another company that essentially competes with it... is that legally questionable? is it rude? is there usually a time-limited non-compete written into the sale contract?

I mean, I've turned down a few offers for my own business in the same price range. If I could turn around and build another, competing business, it would likely make sense for me to sell. but if I have to find some other line of work? well, unlike you, I value the few grand a month I make over the couple hundred grand I'd get from selling it. I really, really like doing this.

But if I could sell out, then turn around and start over, competing with the company I sold, keeping my knowledge and experience uh, I probably would.
While I don't have any real-life experience myself, most deals would include a non-compete agreement for a certain amount of time.
It’s not about tribalism, Mark.
What They Know
Problematically for those seeking 100% (which I tend to do because 100% perfect solution is like geek-heroine), the 80% products hit the market first and tend to make more money. :(
It is semi-private data. I hate to say this but phone numbers are not exactly private anymore and anyone with clue and motivation can dig it up for pennies. But a user is justified to feel negative about such data being transmitted.

I could imagine a real use for it in the way the developer mentioned if it ends up acting like the only unique identifier that changes between specific phones and carriers. You're likely to port your phone number with you and thus the identifier travels with you.

Edit: I honestly don't know what kind of unique identifiers Google provides so the number could still be inappropriate.
Bali beautifull islands
> which is a spurious to start with -- simply documenting making an idea public is just as much of a defense

The idea behind defensive patents isn't that they defend your use of that idea, but that they defend you from competitors who have patents that might affect you. (Since they hopefully allow you to countersue.)
You are pretty much totally right. However, my only aim was to point out what I believe to be the fallacious nature of the argument that you should be able to drink if you can be a soldier. It plays off emotion well, but the criteria for making good soldier material are unrelated to the criteria for making a responsible drinker.
hm. and after that would it be considered evil or rude to go out and compete with my old company? (on the other hand, nobody wants my target market; anyone who bought me would jack up my prices, if not directly, then by not continuing to lower prices as hardware becomes cheaper.)

How long is standard for a non-compete? I'd expect anyone who bought me would want to hire me for a certain period of time afterwards, if nothing else to integrate my stuff with their stuff, train staff, etc...
Given that there are microsecond markets, second markets are disadvantageous. However, that doesn't mean that the existence of microsecond markets is advantageous, does it? What do people want microsecond-liquidity for, except to trade in microsecond markets?
What exactly is "running on a slice"?
2 combined with 4 is a secret weapon when parsing record-oriented files from old mainframes or minicomputers. Replace 500 lines of Java with one--very long--line of Erlang.
A non-compete is typically for around two years I believe. If they get too broad in length or scope courts tend to limit them or nullify them altogether.
Even more blatant - how is the voicemail password not private user data?
Can you take a leave of absence or jump over during a sabbatical year? I don't know many tenured academics who have made the jump, but the few that I do know have done of those two things when trying out a research lab or trying their hand at a startup.
InspIRCd is pretty nice and a bit less crufty than the older implementations (unreal etc.). But as others have said, depending on your needs, a simple skype groupchat might work just as well.
"Becoming"?

Just cursorily, first there were the colonies - some of which felt more British than others - who well into the 1800's were essentially nations: you had your Georgia mans and your Virginia mans and so on. Even during the secession there were more than two groups people associated themselves with.
> "is just downright frightening."

The most frightening part is that while we see European and Asian powers investing heavily in mass transit infrastructure, there is basically zero chance any American city will develop a mass transit system like this in the next 100 years.

Or maybe it's just my gripey Seattle side.
irc is still the only way to meet "the guy on the street" online. that's mainly why it still survives, despite its quirks.

i don't know what you mean by "good" server/channels, but let me say this:

back when irc was _the_ chatting medium, all the low-iq trolls that today are on the web were on irc. so the channels were ruled by a very strict dictatorship. you needed to be very lucky (or meet with real-world friends) to have a decent chat.

now that the trolls and other offenders largely moved out to the http space, i think irc has gotten its "underground" status back. this means you'll most probably find whatever you're after inside large networks. for example, if you want to know a quick fact about norway, go to #norway in undernet and shoot. somebody will reply. you need a python tip, #python in freenode is where some python gurus hang out.

i personally admire freenode for having managed to establish the "showing op status is not polite" netiquette. you can see channels with hundreds of users where not one op has shown up for ages. that was not easy to imagine not so long ago :)
Slice = virtual server at http://www.slicehost.com/