skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm coming around to the view that a DSL is a thing where you have actually created a new syntax. If there is no parser, there is no DSL in sight.

Few Haskell libraries actually provide DSLs, though I can name some that do, usually very small ones, often ones where if you still desire to write the raw Haskell you can. It's just that APIs take effort to learn and use, and Haskell can use some patterns that many other languages can't, just as Ruby can use some patterns many other languages can't.

I actually think seeing DSLs where there aren't actually any is somewhat dangerous, because people's brains stop being able to abstract correctly. I have a perl "DSL" at my workplace that I wrote that I have been desperately trying to convince people is not actually a DSL, because it makes people think about it wrong. It is a way of decorating functions in such a way that I can reach the metadata and do other helpful while they can get on with their lives, and it looks like this:

special_sub subname =>
permission_check { $_[0]->had('some_permission') },
xml_rpc(name => "Category.subname"),
does {
blah blah blah
};

and there are various other sundry things it can do easily that would make less sense out of context. This does things like expose this function to the local XMLRPC handler, and the xml_rpc function takes in the XML-RPC-specific metadata for this case. "xml_rpc", "permission_check" (which actually has a shorter name in real life), and even "does" are actually functions that return values which do the real magic, but I have the problem where people don't understand;

my $common_permission = permission_check { $_->[0]->has('perm') };

special_sub sub1 => $common_permission, does {...};
special_sub sub2 => $common_permission, does {...};
special_sub sub3 => $common_permission, does {...};

People see the DSL magic and suddenly its like everything they knew about the base language just goes flying out the window.
I boycott Wal-Mart. But I still use Google. Not yet comparable.

That said I'd be slightly tempted to go protest outside Google's Santa Monica office (the one near me).
> It's already far cheaper to drive or to fly(!)

From what I'm aware (and I should do some more searching about this later) there's also plenty of subsidies for flying. I don't know how somebody could think that $60 for a short-range ticket would be anywhere cost effective for an airline.

Good comment btw.
US States Renamed for Countries With Similar GDP
In Python, you could write your snippet as a generator and not need to break up the function. It is also possible to throw exceptions into generators.
The connection between your box and the Atombox server is SSL. Hourly backups are made using Tarsnap (http://www.tarsnap.com), which is built and designed by Colin Percival, the FreeBSD security officer. They are encrypted and stored off-site in Amazon Web Services S3.
But why this as opposed to a whole host of other things that they might learn instead?

I think people should think more carefully about how they spend their time.
This Is Pete Rose's Corked Bat
Chill out comrade. The country you left and despise so much doesn't exist anymore and I've learned to treat these sentiments as a mental reinforcement for your decades-long decision to leave.

The country I left and frequently keep visiting is great: I love the people, the food and the culture. I love what I hear from young graduates, I like seeing people smile more and new businesses pop up everywhere. I like doing business there myself. And by the way we are growing. The quality of tech. talent is impeccable, easily on par with US schools and the latest waves of graduates have good English as well.

Not everything is rosy yet, but the risks are manageable, especially when you "zoom out" and face the entire spectrum of possibilities of why your business may fail. Lack of customer interest/traction is orders of magnitude scarier problem that issues with authorities.

Be my guest and stay out, it only makes me easier to compete because I'm in.
The server runs Rails, and the interface is jQuery and custom JavaScript (have a look!).
Also http://www.positioniseverything.net/

I'd go so far as to say that the only really difficult thing on the technical side of web design is working round the millions of bugs in IE (and occasionally the odd one in other browsers). That's usually where over half my coding time is spent on a new site, client-side.
I don't think that it is quite RTFM material. I looked at the documentation on decorators in the python manual(actually there was only passing mention in the manual it was fleshed out in the pep3129) and it is fairly lacking. Sure it describes how the decorators operate in a syntactical sense it does not provide the motivation for them or the examples that this stack overflow question answers.
Google has the brains and infrastructure to build a great social networking tool. But in order for it to be useful to me everyone I know that currently uses Facebook would need to switch to to Google's new platform.

I just can't see that happening anytime soon unless Google can come up with a killer feature that Facebook can't easily replicate.
Africa has produced a number of insanely successful start-ups, though mostly not in the tech area. e.g. De Beers is dominating the diamond market worldwide & was founded in South Africa. Same for Anglo American PLC.

On the tech side there is Dimension data. They are in talks regarding a take-over for 2bn pounds. MTN Group is operating in 21 countries. Then there is Mark Shuttleworth's startup Thawte consulting. Sure, none of those are on the scale of Google, but given the circumstances its not bad.

I'd also like to point out that this part is deceptive "110 million connected online (growing in triple digits)". Being connected in Africa does not mean that the connection is really usable. Its expensive & slow and has only been really improving in the last year or so.
Not to stereotype, but I have noticed all my friends who have a live-fast, die-hard sort of attitude- the type that is appropriate when you're not entirely sure if you'll see tomorrow- were born in Russia.

So, I would hazard a guess the folks you speak of are simply not conditioned to be thinking about 'later'.
> Finally, and this cannot be overstated, the insertion of business logic into templates is the worst cardinal sin of modern web development.

Agreed. This is why I started using haml; it makes doing this _possible_, but really, really hard and ugly.
Firebug is great for CSS because it allows you to find the specific CSS rules for a selected element, along with the line number it appears on in the CSS file(s), helping you find it in the separate text editor in the first place. Also you can try out new rules very quickly and get instant feedback without switching programs and setting up an auto-refresh.

I switched to Webkit's JS debugging tool not long ago, it has much better warnings than Firebug.
Right: we are not interested in trying to make money using advertising; we intend to make money by charging for a service that we would pay.
> risks are manageable

Not really. I live a hundred meters away from the future Skolkovo site and if they decide they want my land, it will not be manageable for me, even though they have no rights for it.

You're right though that not everything is so bad. But I don't see it getting better at macro-scale. If anything, the economic growth of the last X years was despite, not because of government actions.
Love the ice-cream they make at the end!
I bought a Neo Freerunner back in 2008. The Freerunner didn't have much internal flash capacity, and I had a world of trouble finding an SD card that was compatible with it. The Nexus One has more internal flash than the Freerunner, but still not much. So I'm getting an HTC Droid Incredible mainly because it has more internal flash so that I won't be "stuck" if I run into SD card compatibility problems.

Note that despite the confusingly similar names, the HTC Droid Incredible is completely a different phone than the Motorola Droid(s). Google themselves recommend to get the HTC Incredible if you cannot get the Nexus One.

However, bear in mind I haven't actually gotten the phone yet. Better ask me again after I've gotten the phone whether it was a good idea or not. At one time I also thought the Freerunner would be a good idea, but as a phone it was so flawed as to be unusable.
Oh: and we're definitely interested in creating shared lists, it's just a matter of prioritizing features we want to implement with the limited time we have.
The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 11.3 x86_64 [ISPConfig 2]
If you're anxious to start a startup, you should probably move to the US, Europe, or East Asia. There is simply too much infrastructure to replicate. That's also true of starting a startup in Oskaloosa, Iowa, too.

If that's a problem, it would be interesting to know why.
But assuming P!=NP, it's resolution will probably have very little impact on the world.
Why does this have 23 upvotes?

Nothing of any substance is stated here. Vague comments about "the players" and "the debt"--what players? Whose debt? To what extent an opinion can be extracted from this post, it's wrong. For example, I don't know who "the players" he refers to are, but my guess is they are supposed to be for profit.
I'm sad that 13 people at HN have voted this up so far. I did the opposite. Uncov was incisive. This is warmed over and semiliterate.

Complaining about startups being "web software" is like complaining about them using the color orange. There are too many fucking orange startups, FOR REALS, YO.
So how do you handle the case of a non-techy user who logs in and wants to upload some pictures? They have to go to Flickr (or equivalent), create an ID there, come back, and link that new ID to the social network feed? Or do you end up providing that sort of service, too, in addition to the option of using an external service? If so, how is this better than a Facebook app that lets you feed your data from an external service into your feed?
"The author made a well-researched, well-formulated, convincing argument."

The author presented a number of fairly well known facts, but made the mistake made by many writers in treating Apple much like Gateway or another PC vendor. He threw out what sounded like facts when talking about PC Vendors having something like a 10% gross margin, but clearly was way off in assuming that figure could be used to predict Apple's sales requirements for profitability. Even most people vaguely familiar with Apple knew it as a premium brand (generally with higher prices and higher margins).
When a writer doesn't know what he's talking about, he can make an argument that seems to have substance by throwing in facts that apply to something else.

Strangely, while the author was aware of problems with Macs sold as commodity items in places like Sears, and he opens quoting Steve Jobs talking about the bad experience of people shopping for computers, he seemed clueless to the notion of stores with good presentation in upscale locations reaching people besides the Mac faithful. So in addition to using PC-vendor margin numbers, he assumes the buyers are only those needing to upgrade from existing Macs.

Not taking into account the stores going after converts shows a serious lack of insight.

From the article:

"What's more, Apple's retail thrust could be one step forward, two steps back in terms of getting Macs in front of customers. Since most Mac fans already know where to buy, ..."

The funny thing is, most of his arguments against success do seem like they'd apply to the Microsoft stores.
I think a company named after "De Beers" or called "Anglo American" is not what people think of when they think of an African startup. It wouldn't be seen as a triumph of African startups if all the big companies were started and run by non-Africans.

But MTN is a good example. There's also Naspers, which is not quite a startup, but which is starting to act like one. (They took a big stake in DST a couple months ago.)
... if they decide they want my land, it will not be manageable for me ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
http://www.contactchile.cl/en/news-chile.php :-)
I understand the impeccable logic behind not building an advertising driven model.
I just wonder about the magnitude of the 'problem'[recording ThingsToDo], and the cost of the 'solution'[$5/mo]. I would be very curious to see if this sustains the business [founder salaries and server costs].
Regardless, one wishes success to the project.
Things to Consider Before Investing – The First Article
My guess would be that the best and brightest end up overseas. Of all of the African kids I went to high school with in Nairobi, only a handful remain in Kenya. Most, particularly those that went on to complete tertiary education, now live in the US and the UK. I suspect many educated Africans realise early on that they'll need to make a life for themselves elsewhere.
Bordering on Mediocrity
Is it "real" to predict Apple failure based on the margins seen by PC vendors, and to assume that the buyers are just a percentage of existing Mac owners upgrading?

Yes he had figures for both of those things, but they're the wrong numbers to look at!
Fluff is like entropy, it only grows. I start to think that paywalls could be our last chance to contain it.
I understand "all players" as "households + companies + banks + governments"
Easy to install Shelving boards | Home Improvement & Health Care
> I really don't understand the Journals (in particular) fascination with doomsday.

Because Democrats are in control?
If you listen carefully to this interview and others, you'll only hear he says he's going to fight corruption, but he doesn't say how. Politicians are usually all like this in any country, though. I listen a lot to Obama's speeches and interviews and he's pretty much the same. It's all blabbing.

To give you an impression of how it probably should be, may I remind you of Mikhail Saakashvili, a Georgian president, who is so much hated in Russia. Personally, I don't know what happened at that war in 2008, but what many people in Russia realized recently is that he managed to eliminate corruption in Georgia in a matter of 3-4 years. How? One example: they fired all of the police force there overnight, hired and trained new people, raised their salaries and punished seriously for any bribes. What was the result? A great raise in respect for police in Georgia in less than 2 months.
This just in: an uniformed writer has ten reasons not to invest. In other news, there's unrest in the Middle East.

Almost nobody in the world can predict stock trends profitably. You especially cannot predict stock trends from articles in the paper. In general, people smart enough to predict stock trends and understand the macro factors will be working in stocks, not writing second-rate personal finance pieces for the WSJ.

(Also, the article essentially begins with, "I don't make predictions... but here are 10 reasons I predict a crash might happen". How silly.)
Clickables:

http://historio.us/

http://historio.us/pricing/
Except for the further spike at 4000m---what the heck is that?
i entered as well. i posted some small lessons learned. dunno what skill level you at, but maybe they'll help. http://meeech.posterous.com/small-lessons-learned-prepping-e...
As a Nigerian Internet start up founder

Note: I'm an American and not an expert on Nigeria. Still, my impression is that Nigeria doesn't have a very robust legal system or real property rights enforcement; when I think of law in Nigeria, I remember Ken Saro-Wiwa and the innumerable articles I've read about people fighting over oil spoils. (Once again: this could be wrong and Nigeria's legal system might be very good, with the Western press merely gravitating toward sensationalistic stories).

If you don't have a functioning legal system that enforces contracts (and a culture that respects contracts), I don't think you can have tech startup investments. If you have a high level of political risk, coups, and corruption, you're not going to get tech startup investments. Westerners have an unfair but real habit of lumping Africa together; when we read about the Zimbabwe disaster, for example, the possibility of political risk wiping out investment in other countries becomes very real.

One other commenter compared development to the technology stack, which is pretty astute.

It might also help to read William Easterly's paper, "Was the poverty of Africa determined in 1000 BC?": http://aidwatchers.com/2010/07/was-the-poverty-of-africa-det... . You might be running up against not just decades of difference in development, but centuries.
"Kenya's startup scene is light years ahead..."

I'd like to know what you're basing that assertion on.

I contend that Kenya's tech scene is woefully primitive. Ushahidi is one example but it is hardly a model for success or sustainable business.

"Startups that would be useful here and meet local needs" is, in my opinion, precisely the wrong approach particularly if we're focusing on technology startups. That kind of thinking is precisely why facebook is the dominant social network in Africa and not some other localised service.
It's actually in the article:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agrees—in theory at least. [...] But his bold speeches against corruption are largely ignored.
That is probably one of the most correct stereotypes about Russians. For example almost no one ever saves money here. Nor in the banks, neither under the pillow.
Hey I am the CEO of PeerIndex -- the rationale is design patterns and frameworks.

For our business, UX is important but not absolutely critical (at least at the working proof of concept stage).
Excellent design is expensive and time consuming and vital for some businesses. I felt for ours, good and clear would get us very far along--and could be done with a lower investment by using a framework (e.g. blueprint) and some commonly used design patterns.

When we know more about our users (A/B test, A/B test, etc) we'll invest increasingly more in the UI and perhaps we'll look and feel different. Although I still see us leaning heavily on frameworks, for the attendant benefits.

If you are an awesome UI designer or visualisation person in the mood to challenge us with your thinking, let me know ;)
Thank you, is there any way to edit the post to make them clickable?
Please don't post NYTimes links that hit the paywall.
I really like the idea of introducing difficult problems like these to outsiders (I'm an outsider in this instance) for the sole reason that it greatly increases the odds that someone may come out of left-field and either solve it or at least provide an insight that helps solve it.

Speaking of breaking down complex ideas with analogies, I'm reminded of this Wired article [1] which examines the inhibition of breakthroughs caused by experts' cognitive biases:

Modern science is populated by expert insiders, schooled in narrow disciplines. Researchers have all studied the same thick textbooks, which make the world of fact seem settled. This led Kuhn, the philosopher of science, to argue that the only scientists capable of acknowledging the anomalies — and thus shifting paradigms and starting revolutions — are “either very young or very new to the field.” In other words, they are classic outsiders, naive and untenured. They aren’t inhibited from noticing the failures that point toward new possibilities.

Or a more specific observation from one of the cited studies in the article:

[A diverse lab] mulled the problem [of unexpected protein synthesis results] at a group meeting. None of the scientists were protein experts, so they began a wide-ranging discussion of possible solutions. At first, the conversation seemed rather useless. But then, as the chemists traded ideas with the biologists and the biologists bounced ideas off the med students, potential answers began to emerge. “After another 10 minutes of talking, the protein problem was solved,” Dunbar says. “They made it look easy.”

[1] http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all...
Clickable:

http://atombox.net
The game theory of perfect complements
Awful examples man. De Beers are colonial profiteers, not an African firm. Sheesh.
how much programming ability is necessary? I'm decently competent, but I have a hard time making sense of things like Linux drivers, which I fear is relevant to this.
Kangaroo physics engine (for Grasshopper / Rhino)
Give me a break! If the US government decides to take your property through Eminent Domain you will be properly compensated and you can appeal all the way to the Supreme Court without fear of being thrown in jail.
My eye first went to the screen cap (which could have the white space at the bottom of it cropped off). Then I read the "Sign up for Atombox for Free" link. At this point I am still wondering what is going on. Finally I find the first sentence "Atombox keeps your GTD...". I suggest the first time you mention it, spell out 'Getting Things Done'. I would also like to see more use examples.

Good luck.
Right, that's exactly what I was referring to. I didn't realize you had to attribute the acronym GTD. Your attribution is what surprised me.
As someone working in a "super angel" / "micro VC" firm, I can attest to this shift. Happy to answer any questions HN has.
I'm lost. I've read maybe half of GTD, and spoken with a number of people who , so they say, follow the dictums.

Still, I have on idea why they, or I, would want or need this.

I uses assorted to-d-like things, in particular todoist.com. Stupid easy to store stuf there, pull it out, etc. Mostly I do it from the CLI, or form an Android app I wrote for myself.

Point being, I don't see what problem this solves isn't already solved by several existing apps or services that are set up for easy interaction.
As for the indebtedness, I was speaking about the key layers of the economy - personal/household debt[1], corporate debt and public (government) debt[2].
We've grown accustomed to the debt as a regular part of our life, of how our households, businesses and whole countries work. This is very dangerous.

Regarding the unaccountability of the for-profit players, mind you, I'm pro-free-market as anyone here. But this piece of news[3] makes you rethink what happens at the highest level of the market, how the largest enterprises become uncontrollable institutions on their own.

[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png

[3] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64796
The iPod was a good thing for Apple, but the real kick start out of the dismal Performa days in consumer space started earlier with the original iMac. Some may recall Steve getting the nickname of iCEO after that.
I think that retooling with Python would be such a huge undertaking that they could not do it. Not so much for their own software, but lets face there are ~100,000 Java apps out there for android now.

It would be interesting if they could do either of:

- Switch to use the GPL version of Java and be fully conformant with the java specs. This presumably would hurt performance unless they could do some miracle engineering to obviate the reasons Dalvik exists. Perhaps though, as phones get more powerful it's not so important.

- Keep Dalvik but work around whatever ip violations Oracle is successful in claiming. They probably believe they have already done this.
That's what I meant, thanks.
Global net fluff might only grow, but there is a long and illustrious history of pumping entropy out of a non-closed system, and therefore keeping the bit you care about (kitchens, online communities) cool and contentful.

The place has kept fluff nearly constant for a long time now, ostensibly by explicitly pumping it away. This fluff is no fluffier than the fluff of last year, or the year before that.
Does HN have a suggestion of how to make them work for me, when I lead a lifestyle that requires the wearing of boots everywhere? I am genuinely interested in them.