skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think I can completely agree with this. There are tradeoffs and the issue isn't that simple. Dynamic typing is better than bad static typing but so far I'm finding my Scala code is every bit as expressive as Ruby and a lot easier to maintain.
It's serious but not the end of the world. Of course if your uplink is smaller than that it might be a real problem. Then you'll have to talk to your upstream provider to do the filtering job for you.
This is not the only reason. Sometimes you just can't do it with a dynamic language. For example it is impossible for the IDE to help you with auto complete int this case:

def some_function(arg1, arg2)
arg1.

The IDE won't show you a list with possible functions because arg1 can be everything.
Contest to Live for a Month at the Museum of Science and Industry
I agree that haskell's type system is far more useful than c/c++. No argument there. I don't find the type system from C# or Java to be anywhere near as useful as haskell's.

That is part of the problem with the question... there are many different type systems out there that people would call 'static'.
The Hacker's Life: My Weekend at Defcon
I almost broke an ankle once and lived in a place with stairs. Doing stairs with crutches was bad enough. I don't think I could have handled a ladder! Good luck.
Seen _Fog of War_ by Errol Morris? Highly recommended! Credit where credit is due on SE Asia: a lot of this is McNamara's doing.
I think the subdomain approach is quite nice when the user account has a published component (think Posterous/Blogspot, not Gmail).
That example, in a statically-typed language could be handled with overloading or polymorphism, which are both far more concise IMO.

C#'s standard library, for example, has common interfaces for collections so the code will still work on all kinds of lists, arrays, etc.
Unless you are Google? Though, I think most advice can be refuted by that question.
I suggest you to search and participate in a coding dojo group at your city.

A friend I had the same problem of you so we decided to start a coding dojo here in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro.

Remembering the past, we've met a LOT of brilliant people.

If your city doesn't have a coding dojo group, start one.

More info here: http://codingdojo.org/

And here are some photos of #DojoRio sessions to excite you: http://www.flickr.com/groups/dojorio/ :)
Monkey patching has nothing to do with duck typing. Monkey patching is both incredibly powerful and exceedingly dangerous at the same time but, there is nothing about monkey patching that says you need duck typing. You do static typing AND have open classes. To pretend that problems related to open classes is somehow connected to duck typing is simply false.
So, maybe we can say one of the reasons that Twitter succeeded was that marketing was taken out of the hands of CompuServe marketers and their like and put the hands of bloggers and such?
While duck typing is not type inference, you can still get the benefits of duck typing and real OO with structural typing, which can be done statically.
> If the algorithm works on a dictionary or set just as well as the list I had in mind, so much the better.

This is the key difference in attitude. I don't want a language that frictionlessly helps me screw up. If what I'm doing might work but nobody actually knows, I want some kind of warning. At the very least I need to add your code to my test coverage.
Three nice things about using subdomains are that you can:

a) point a single account's DNS to an entire server (or cluster) without forcing all traffic to a specific machine or proxy

b) offering custom domain names to customers is simply a matter of adding a DNS alias

c) don't have customer URLs "polluting" your app's URL namespace

At least IMHO, could be wrong though. :)

edit: abcs
Why Game Thinking is a Bigger Idea Than Game Mechanics
Heh, I've never run into or even thought of this - it seems like a very rare and very hard problem to solve. It's almost a semantic problem of language and meanings as opposed to a technical one -- I guess the solution would be to find some technical means of adding specificity...

hmm, if you have two objects which both support the method 'run', one of which is a jogger that will move into a 'running' state, and the other is a program which will actually begin executing code, and you have them both in say, an array that gets iterated over and every object is sent a 'run' message.. and they both take one argument and return nothing distinctive, well, that's extremely contrived. But such things happen. Scary.

I'm gonna start thinking about this. Thank you :)
Once again, an "infographic" at InformationIsBeautiful.net contributes very little beyond the underlying prose it's based on (in this case a Google spreadsheet, which is actually easier to read).
No, sorry.

50gbps would rank as one of the largest attacks I've ever heard of on the Internet. And I hear about quite a few of the really big ones. :-)
I believe you meant

if isinstance(lst, str):
It was indeed a Putnam problem. Good guess ;)
It wasn't my question. My question could be boiled down to... so as you spent most of your time talking about things that have nothing to do with dynamic vs. static, i take it that they aren't really relevant to you. You said no. But you answer still seems to have little do with static vs dynamic but about more concrete comparisons that seem to be, at best, orthogonal to the question at hand.
While the type system might be more complicated, programs are simpler. Dynamic languages often need runtime checks dealing with types, and /that/ complexity is there in either case. Static languages just make a pretty interface for it.
I think dynamically typed languages represent a kind of history of thought about programming, while statically typed languages have developed largely along their own path. Dynamically typed languages declared victory over "types" decades ago. That hardly signaled the end of language development, it was just one of many decisions made by a group of practitioners. Purely along the axis of dynamic-or-not you can make a bunch of arguments, speculate that a statically typed language can meet any particular feature or benefit a dynamic language has, etc.; but those statically typed languages have had an opportunity cost, and the opportunity they missed wasn't one of types but of all the other aspects of software development -- because in any community of practitioners people will hit a wall, it's just what wall, and how they get past it. I personally think people using dynamically typed languages have spent their time banging their head against more interesting walls.
Ad.1
If in the reasoning A is a fixed number then you can't assume that you have 1/2 probability that the other envelope contains more money. Probability depends on distribution and if you don't know the distribution it cannot be calculated. Fact that it cannot be calculated does not entitle you to assuming its 1/2.

If you have problem with that imagine stack of cards. You and your opponent pick one card. Whoever picks higher card wins. Until you see your card you have 1/2 probability of winning. But after you see you just picked 3 you see your probability of winning sharply changes (depending on what cards are left in the stack).

Ad.2
When you don't open your envelope you must treat amount in it (A) as random variable. Then all I wrote in post above applies.

It doesn't matter that you did not looked into an envelope. Because whether you got higher or lower amount is significant and you don't know which occurred you must split your reasoning and consider both cases. But upon splitting you must remember that condition you assume for each given branch of your reasoning must be taken into account. You can do this by pruning your random variable A with the appropriate condition and that influences its expected value. So by all means you can sum up expected values but not before appropriately adjusting them with the conditions you assumed for branches of your reasoning.

Consider solving equation x^2 + yx +1 = 0 While solving your may split you reasoning to three cases depending on whether y^2-4 is larger, smaller or equal to zero (even though you don't know what is the value of y). But when summing up solution you must remember that you assumed something about y in your branches so for the x you've found y can no longer be any real number.
Free ("The iTunes Store is a failure.")
Seriously, we should be setting this precedence now, before we "need" it.
Fantastic advice, that reflects a lot on what I'm going through right now.

Thank you!
Regarding your statement that it wasn't very cluefully done, isn't that sort of a hit and miss area? You can't really control much where your malware spreads (and thus where your bots are).

As a sidenote, I've been reading your posts for a while now and it seems you always have something insightful to say - cheers!
sort of like:

http://hnhackers.com/

?
> Fastest to slowest is approaching a factor of 100 in some cases.

Which cases?
To be fair, I'm sure that the cyclists find the cars on highway 9 to be equally frustrating, especially when they're being treated like they don't belong there.
While that's definitely a practical benefit, it's not limited to dynamically typed languages. It's completely possible for IDEs and/or JIT frameworks to offer this same functionality.
Economical cost of a cloud vs local computing cluster debate
I have a feeling that if you list everything that at least one study or credible report found to be good or bad for our brains, it'd end up looking sort of like the compendium of "things that cause and/or prevent cancer": http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/
It's a social and sociable take on the problem RSS was intended to revolutionize but hasn't really delivered on. Its only ideological conceit, of 140 character messages, actually simplifies the user experience and keeps the "communities" that form there on the rails. "Chat" is arguably one of the "stickiest" and most compelling applications of the Internet, and Twitter delivers a chat-like experience with huge numbers of people that manages to be both non-ephemeral (IM and IRC conversations disappear forever as soon as they end) and (therefore) discoverable.

I don't believe for a second that Twitter realized any of this when they started; like so many good things on the Internet, Twitter's benefits are emergent, not planned.

Wave is what you get when you try to catalog all the possible benefits of Twitter and plan a product to deliver those benefits.
Can someone please explain to me what DNSMadeEasy actually does?

Is a domain provider like 1and1 a client of theirs or is my hosting provider a client?

This entry on Hacker News led me to wikipedia where I went from an article about Level3 to an article about Tier 1 Network to Internet Backbone. I feel like I'm on the verge of understanding more about how the internet works but it's all a bit above my head.
Good ideas for websites
It's weird reading a post, going to comment, and then finding out that you already made the comment you were about to write a year ago. Deja vu...
I had a CompuServe account but never spent much time on CB. I have been on chats, from Renegade BBS's on to IRC on to IM, for 20+ years. Twitter is not simply chat; it admits to persistant and semantically meaningful applications layered on top of it.

It's like a weird cross between NNTP and IRC, as I see it.
1k of Javascript and many tens of thousands of lines of C code to implement the <canvas> attribute.
Consider integrating Slashdot into your service. I love Slashdot, and the comments there are the best anywhere.
Why is it easier to maintain? What specifically about static typing makes it easier to maintain?
Can somebody please explain rule #4 to me? Thank you.

"4. Must work on current fx, sa, ch and o. (Let's level the playing field)"
The best way to do multi-threaded programming is to find some way to make your task data-parallel or divide it up into work units using a technique like MapReduce and then divide it into separate processes or separate worker threads that run mostly like separate processes.

If you have a lot of critical sections all over the place, you're probably doing it wrong.

The only exception is when you're forced to implement network code using a thread-per-connection or thread-per-socket model, in which case you might end up having to have your client/server threads work within your app's regular workflow. Icky, and should be avoided when possible.
Aliens Amongst Us
Iris Data Set Visualization Web App in
Nice idea!

I noticed though that you're including the user's password in the confirmation email. This isn't recommended for security reasons (as it's easy to intercept, and users often use the same password for multiple services). Also, I hope you're storing the salted hash of the password on your server (as opposed to the actual password).
It really depends on where you go and what you do. At most big public schools, I suspect the "TAs do everything / uninterested faculty" is the norm, chiefly because the faculty are rewarded for research, not teaching. If you go to liberal arts colleges (I went to Clark University: http://www.clarku.edu) and engineering schools like Harvey Mudd, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, etc., then undergrads are the focus, professors are rewarded for teaching, and you're more likely to have a better and in-depth experience.
I personally think people using dynamically typed languages have spent their time banging their head against more interesting walls.

I'd agree but I think that's because designing a static typing system rigid enough to be useful but flexible enough to be expressive is a lot harder than building a dynamic language. That doesn't mean though that there's nothing to be gained from that hard work. It took a long time to design operating systems that allowed truly robust, compartmentalized multitasking too, but they clearly turned out to be superior for most things in the end.

My instinct is that we're going to see a return of static typing at the cutting edge of production coding but I'm not sure if this current crop of options is going to effect this. Scala seems to me to be the only one with a shot at the mainstream for this round.
I think that's good advice for many situations.

But the problem with this and all business advice is that it's very situation-dependent. Good advice for a B2B company might be horrible advice for a B2C company. Good advice for a software company might be horrible advice for a hardware company or a marketing company... and so on.

The business landscape changes too. Good advice from two years ago might be mediocre or bad advice today.
Probably less hesitation, yes.
Speaking from a customer/user perspective: for things where I'll want to interact with other users/customers of the app and where there will be a publicly visible page (i.e. flickr, twitter) it seems to make more sense to use directories. For things where it's more of an internal use only and not visible without being logged in (basecamp, for instance), subdomains seem right. I think that's partly because of precedent from those widely used services, and partly because subdomains feel more private/secure.
How much has changed since 1997 in computer science fundamentals? Especially in the first two years curriculum. The first year is general ed with a gentle introduction to cs(overview of basic computer science constructs and some data structures implementation and analysis.) The second year is general ed with a bit more computer science stuff. The third and fourth years are where the more interesting stuff happens. Even there though the stuff that they are going to teach you are as fundamental and theoretical as it gets. An algorithms class? They are going to teach you the asymptotic behavior of the more fundamental algorithms. You are not going to implement them you are just going to analyze the running times and storage space behavior.

Also, just because it says 1997 does not mean that the teacher has not edited it without changing the date in the header.
It'd be really cool if you brought in the content of articles. That way you could follow real people outside of the Hacker News community (assuming that the content was posted on Hacker News). Then if a public figure like say, John Resig, made a post to his website I could get that in my feed as well.
Los mercados de los EE.UU. suben impulsados por el buen dato de empleo
Ask HN: Does an irrational, normal number generate all strings?
Recently the Everything2 article "Converting Pi to binary: Don’t do it!" [1] has been a popular read on Reddit.

It begins, "WARNING: Do NOT calculate Pi in binary. It is conjectured that this number is normal, meaning that it contains ALL finite bit strings."

Now all that a number being "normal" means is, all the digits in its base tend to show up in roughly equal proportions.

My question is whether the following is valid reasoning, and why or why not:

Given:

1. Pi is irrational.

2. Pi is (assumed to be) normal.

Conclude:

3. For any string consisting of digits from the base Pi is written in, this string exists somewhere in Pi.

It seems counter-intuitive in its broadness, but if Pi is infinite and never repeats, then I guess we have a classic infinite-typing-monkey situation, right?

At the same time, this conclusion would mean we should expect to eventually find a string of a googol consecutive zeroes within the digits of Pi.

[1] http://everything2.com/title/Converting+Pi+to+binary%253A+Don%2527t+do+it%2521
That's basically "customer development in 5 paragraphs" :)
Ask HN: How do you find out about local tech events?
I found out about the Erlang Camp on HN. I'm sure there are other local events like it. Where do you go to discover them?
Nice idea. Haven't registered, so forgive the ignorant question, but are daily digest emails an option? If not, I'd suggest making them one.

Also, suggested users to follow would be neat, similar to Amazon's "other people who bought x also bought y".
Back when I used AOL/AIM in high school there was an explosive adoption of "always on" internet services such as DSL and cable. During this time, it became fashionable for teens to express their current emotions/actions/likes as their "Away Messages" on AIM, which was something new compared with the limitations their previous dial-up connections. I'd go as far to say these messages were the precursor to services like LiveJournal.

Since college, with the mass adoption of social networks, I would guess that 95% of all my friends no longer use independent chat services, like AIM.

I see twitter as the next iteration of "Away Messages" - or, what they now call status updates.

Personally, I dislike Twitter for my personal use. I think it is a fascinating way for brands to sell products to unsuspecting consumers, but there is no value as a standalone "Away Message" platform... that would be the job of something like Facebook status updates, since all of my friends are already connected on there.

As for how it grew? It both filled the need for people to continually express themselves and that other really important thing... celebrity endorsements.
Google Chrome Tips & Tricks: Incognito vs Click&Clean
How can I get traction for marketplace app?
www.meshipu.com

The last time I posed this question I got very little in the way of answers, instead I got a lot of advise as to why such a service would be a bad idea (drug dealers using, thieves...etc). I already considered all those issues before coding the site and considered them non-deal breakers.

What I really want is ideas on how one could get visitors to this type of site (perhaps really any site).

What sort of web forums might be useful? I have already being posting craigslist ads in the rideshare category.

I have thought about paying people to holdup signs on the side of major highways such as the New Jersey Turnpike.....Any ideas?

Please only ideas about generating visits, NOT advice about the worth of the website:)
Half of our core business function is based on open source code. However we have people who are intimately familiar with that code and very comfortable hacking it. This gives us the best of both worlds. We can quickly fix bugs and add features, but we can also leverage the work of countless very smart people adding features which we would never have time to develop ourselves.
Secrets-to-maximizing-social-security: Personal Finance News from Yahoo Finance
It is really great we have this diversity on languages nowadays, and that important aspects such functional programming, dsl support, and readability is being considered more seriously by both language designers and developers alike.

Vive la différence!
'Porn mode' not necessarily anonymous
I read the first couple of pages, really good. Thanks for suggesting this.
Seems like I watched a demo of google wave online and it had stuff just like this. I thought that google wave would have been a perfect replacement for the threaded discussion model that we have here.

These discussions seemed too short lived for my taste. I know that many people come up with insightful observations after they think about an issue for a day or two. By then the story is off the front page and what is the use in making the comment?
Just saw this, posted in a duplicate thread (why's there a duplicate...?) Reposting here:
Nice idea. Haven't registered, so forgive the ignorant question, but are daily digest emails an option? If not, I'd suggest making them one. Also, suggested users to follow would be neat, similar to Amazon's "other people who bought x also bought y".
Of course not, in the same way that you don't expect privacy when you're walking down the street.

On the other hand, if you find that someone is following you whenever you walk down the street, well, that's a little creepy.
* Your SSL certificate will be considerably more expensive for a wildcard

* URI components have a wider scope of acceptable characters than domains, plus uri escaping e.g. spaces with a %20

* subdomains can be traffic shaped / cluster managed using IP addresses (until you run out if IPs)

* URI components can be traffic shaped using internal IPs via your web server

* In my experience it's easier to mod-rewrite and pass $1 than a DNS and parse a hostname

I remember lots of people going with subdomains that have since switched to URI components, particularly http://news.bbc.co.uk/ now goes to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
I would say that it is easier to categorize as one drills down. It is a shame that domains ended up backwards or else it would make more sense - http://uk.co.bbc/news

So my personal preference is for URI components
Solved a real problem: sending text messages to a group.

Later, it allowed people to get semi-personal access to people they admire.
MS doesn't need to sue, they just do intimidation and forces small companies to pay them licenses, taxing all their competitors. I'll let you google the glory details. Also, when MS sue a company for a patent on the FAT file system, that's because they refused to pay them royalties/licenses unlike the 100 more companies they secretly threatened before them.
firefox, safari, chrome, opera
You know it's funny, A really close friend whose programming prowess i admire told me that great programmers always have another passion. I will tell him, he's not alone in thinking so.