skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am working my way through RWH at the moment. Its biggest flaw is that you have to work your way through it, in order. Don't care about reading barcodes? Tough, because you can't read the later chapter on Monads unless you grit your teeth.

The authors spend an awful lot of time showing you the wrong way (i.e. non-idiomatic) to do something and revealing with a flourish the Haskell way. Really you ought to just skip the first half of each chapter and not waste time learning techniques that you have to unlearn later. But you can't, because of the way it's all so intertwined.

Latest peeve - sometimes they talk about wrapping and unwrapping values, which is fine. But sometimes they talk about "peeling". What's that? Is it just another word for unwrap? Is it some special Haskell term? I don't know, I'm a beginner!

On page 369 of my copy there's code that fails to compile and in the session output in the book there are actual error messages from the compiler - but the following paragraph of text talks about it as if it was giving the "correct" results...

The only reason to read RWH is that there's a dearth of Haskell books so you make the best of it - but compared to say Learning Python or Programming Python also from O'Reilly it's really quite poor.
Scientist! You Are Far Better Off If You Set-Up A Company
Aye - being a stay-at-home husband and father ought to be as equally socially acceptable as wife & mother.
"When you think of a sanitation worker — riding on a garbage truck and dumping trash can after trash can — most people would picture a big, tough guy in their minds. But out of 7,000 uniformed city workers nicknamed "the strongest," 200 of them are women. In honor of women's history month, the department celebrated some of the the first females to suit up in green. Verilyn Gallo was only the third woman in the department. Now, 21 years later, she says when people see her drive the largest Sanitation truck there is they still can't believe it:

GALLO: I drive "the wrecker" — any piece of equipment that the department of sanitation has — I could pick it up. I have people in the truck - who say, you don't drive that big truck and I say, "oh yes I do."

REPORTER: Sixty-year-old Gallo says she still enjoys her job and the physicality of the work and is no hurry to retire."

http://beta.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2008/mar/29/city-hon...
18 year old BBC Micros used in retro programming class
Our current best theory of gravity is Einstein's General Relativity.

The model in this theory is that mass (and energy) curves spacetime. A body that doesn't have a force applied to it follows a straight line, but in curved spacetime, a straight line might correspond to, for example, a planet's orbit.

This is, however, just another level of description, and you could ask why this happens. We don't yet know the next level of description. It is hoped that some future theory will reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity and that might give us some further insight into "why".

It's worth pointing out that any theory isn't necessarily a description of how something actually works. It is merely a model that fits experimental results. Often a model can be reformulated using different, but ultimately equivalent, mathematical language and it would give the same predictions.

In a similar vein, you could ask why objects continue to move in a straight line if no force is applied (Newton's first law). That's something I would like to know.
The github-hosted Maven repo process I described works, but it's far from the ideal of just having a proper repo. I'd like to see Sonatype's OSS repo become the obvious choice (they certainly know what they're doing in that arena, and have a privileged position vis á vis their maintenance of central, and probably what will replace java.net and kenai), but they're not making it as easy as it should be. See my reply to Brian Fox's comment on the original post.

As for whether you should cut your losses or not -- that's a tougher question. I'd love to see a properly competitive market for repo hosting services. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to try to compete with a company that quite literally sets technical standards based on how their products are implemented. Sorry, that's not much help, is it? :-/
good feedback... I'm reading thru it right now and have found there is great stuff there... I'm half way thru already!

specially for entrepreneurs I found that knowing the way people go around your products and providing the tools for people to take them to the next level is key nowadays.

there is so much a startup can make, but by providing the right features for the majority and a platform for your lead users and crafters to build upon, makes you set your self as the founding platform while focusing on the long run and keeping the boat going.

somehow I feel this is a shot to the close environments that the Apple's of world are putting around products like the iDevices... build great products but also give the chance for others to innovate freely on top of that!
At the moment I'm using Paypal.
The documentation is insufficient and code samples (at least the Java one) are horrible, but it gives you the ability to accept credit card payments (without requiring the user to sign up for a Paypal account). Unfortunately that's not the case for Google Checkout, which requires a google account.

My next step is Braintree http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/
Its API is much better, and it's more flexible than Paypal. It has some fixed costs, but nothing too bad if you are serious about your business.
Thanks, I've edited my comment. You're right that it's less an issue of underpricing per se, and more that she had complementary skills that she wasn't taking advantage of. The fact remains that working less did not, in itself, add value for the customers.
I like how the author contrasts monads with applicative functors and demonstrates why monads are more powerful.
I agree - if anything, being a stay-at-home mother is seen as a luxurious option these days. Most of the mothers I know dream of the time they can quit their job and just be a mother, instead of having to juggle work and kids.
But that means you're expecting the C14 rates to be the same now as when the subject died. A reasonable assumption but as far as I understand C14 hasn't reached any kind of equilibrium for some reason. Aren't there different amounts in the air than say, 50 years ago?
Here we go: http://www.frid.ge/?ginvitation=3kharhhlv8owo4wgk0wwo4kcc
This makes me wonder: how likely is it that a startup does not apply for YCombinator? In other words, assuming YC is good at picking the best, how likely is it that the YCombinator startups are actually the best current startups overall?
There's also an European Crunchboard at
http://uk.crunchboard.com/ukcrunch.php
i pay 30€ for (up to) 20MB Interwebs.

Hulu doesn't exist here though.
10 iPhone Apps to Get You Back to School
As August nights get cooler, we begin begrudgingly counting down the remaining summer days. Once Labor Day passes, it’s back to school time for millions.
Sales figures for an ebook compared to it's hardback edition
So many jobs that pay that sort of cash. They're just not easy to get. It's that old 10,000 hours of practice thing again. If you're willing to build up a lot of experience in an arcane technical field that is in continuous demand, you can easily get that sort of cash, particularly in short-term fly-in-and-fix-the-thing gigs.

I know of COBOL programmers in a bank that make $150/hr because they are irreplaceable now.

Another way to look at things is that a lot of speaking roles pay in the 000's for a 1 hour talk. Assuming $2,000 speaking fee for a 1 hour talk, and say, 2 hours of prep and 1 hour of travel - that's $500 an hour.
there is something about Prolog and ML-like languagges that makes them unique and powerful, but also makes their approach a bit difficult to grasp at first sight.

as the article puts it, it's just a new way of thinking that you have to put on yourself... a new way of putting the right things together and then let the magic happen... somehow letting us wondering how it works.

even though I think more of what we do nowadays fall into the magic hat, the forward thinking and keeping developers feeling "under control" of the structured programing languages is what have made them keep ruling... maybe we need a bit more of UX build on functional and predicate languages to go a bit with the change of mind.
There are efficiency explosions now and again that create huge shifts, but mostly you just get little tweaks here and there (e.g. increase factory output by 5% or even 50%). Not numbers that can touch sacking half your staff or replacing all of them with a production provider in e.g. China.
If you read the whole book you'll find much of those statistics in there. They explore the high cost escort option as a way of looking at economic principles.

I don't find the book anything but an easy read and a different take on subject matter. The authors didn't murder any prostitutes.

If you want to complain, try your state government and ask for legal brothels.
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To put it another way, some people want to do the minimum they can to get paid and don't get any kind of fulfilment from their work. Couple this with the prevailing management practice of "man hours" scheduling[1] and the reason for the resentment described becomes obvious.

On the subject of "common sense" always trumping science I suggest reading the examples linked from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterintuitive

[1] The line is usually "Well blah managed to process 200 forms while you only managed 150, why are you so slow?". The debate the advisability of this method is another question.
You should definitely have a look at http://startupjobs.eu/
I think that's a little trickier to pin down than that. Yes food costs less. Housing? Maybe. But now things you didn't have 100 years ago are requirements. For example, if you don't have a phone today you're going to have a hard time finding and keeping a job. Keeping someone from 100 years ago alive would certainly cost less than it did then but you have to also consider if they could function in today's society on that money, otherwise it's not a realistic comparison.
15 scientific research papers that will define the future of web analytics
French polynesia must be one of the most paradisiac places on this planet.
I've signed up and created a couple of groups. Here's my thoughts and feedback after exploring what I could find:

1. Need a favicon. In the expectation that I'll use the service, I added it to my bookmarks bar - where it shows up as the default icon. d'oh!

2. Notification on new posts is great! I'd also like the option to subscribe to new comments as well. Two levels: 1) an option to automatically subscribe to comments for each new post, and 2) an option on each post to subscribe to that post. I would use the former; but most would probably like the latter to subscribe to the occasional interesting post. Also, 3) if both above options were implemented, an option to unsubscribe from new commenta made to a post (that would over-ride the global subscription comments - so I could opt-out of a post I had no interest in)

3. UI when uploading a pic could use some work. I'm not sure what you can detect, but I assume you can know how many files you're getting - at a bare minimum, "Uploading $num of $total..." would be a help.

4. Youtube videos are only embedded when the URL is the entirety of the post. Took me a few tries to figure that out... Perhaps a button like "Add a Youtube video" that, when clicked, becomes a text box to paste the URL into with a "Post" button on that...

5. Similarly - it looks to me like pictures upload as a separate post - so instead of clicking in the post field, then clicking 'add pictures' - maybe that should be separated out like the Youtube button idea above - an "add pictures" button (or separate function somewhere easy to find, but separate from a text post). Well, could even have tabbed submission - chosing text or pics or youtube...

6. Profile pics need a little work: looks like it makes the largest square it can from the picture, starting at top-left, and cuts off the rest of the picture. All thumbnails seem to do this, which is a little odd. Might be better to at least center the square in the cropped dimension... On the profile pic: Being able to drag the image to set what part of the image was displayed for the profile pic would be awesome, and UI-light, I'd think.

7. Per a suggestion below, I set up an "HN" group - for anyone interested: http://www.frid.ge/?ginvitation=3kharhhlv8owo4wgk0wwo4kcc - I note that the email address to send is at "hn@" - which is great. To test, I set up another group also called "HN", and its email is "hn1@" - which means this is extraordinarily easy for spammers to guess... certainly to send to a@, b@, c@ etc... Also, when I changed the name of the group and created another "HN" - it got the "hn1@" email - meaning if the name is changed and someone has the old addy in their address book and someone else uses the name.......... I don't see how this can end well, even if I like the email feature itself.

I like the cleanliness of the interface. I like the ease of switching between the groups I created.

I hope this takes off - it seems useful and good.
RabbitMQ 2.0 is out includes paging messages on disk and support for AMQP 0-9-1
Bingo! YC abhors any startup that wouldn't be started anyway without their investment — like Mark Twain's refusal to join any club that would have him as a member. In this round a huge chunk of the startups were already founded and taking revenue / profitable before joining YC.

"We invest in people, not ideas" is a hell of a depressing way to get rejected.
Point taken that it's too early to lay flowers at the grave of physical music - but would you invest in a shopping mall music store? I've seen a lot of them close down.

The killer feature with downloadable music is (virtually) unlimited storage, and having your entire collection with you in one device. It won't be long before cars don't have CD players (it's 10 years since they dropped cassette players, and it was about 5 years while they had both). I would say iPod docks in cars are already ubitiquous - most car reviews in magazines will mention if there is one or not, and journalists usually moan if there isn't.

I also disagree with the thought that displaying in living rooms and swapping with friends is a feature. I put all my old CDs in a box years ago. It's only music tragics that want everyone to see their collection.

The thing is, the biggest consumers of music are young people. Try and find a 17 year old with a CD player. As this demographic moves through life, CDs will shrink into niche stores just like print films.
As soon as people, when faced with a choice between Everything and Nothing, start choosing Nothing.
'Dead' means 'dead as a way of making bulk money'. There will always be specialist businesses dealing with old technology.
Where's the pun in that?
Came over here to wonder that lying about the provenance of the items you're selling is a bit beyond the windy side of the law, but apparently they make it clear that the stories are fictitious!

http://danariely.com/2009/12/25/the-significant-objects-proj...
Hah! bong from an N64 controller? Kids these days...
Blender hot keys cheat sheet
Cloud + BPM = Business Process Scalability
The fact is, money won't get the majority of people off the street. That being said, when I give money to homeless people I don't give it with the hope that they may take the first step towards assimilating with regular society, I give it with the hope that it may pay for their next meal or even help towards putting a roof over their head for the night.

I can personally guarantee you that if someone handed me £100k it would change my life exponentially and allow me to turn things around because I have the drive and determination to do so. If the same person handed me £1k it wouldn't change my life but it would relieve a lot of pressure when it comes to bills and so on.

Be it £100,000 or £1,000, either donation would be hugely appreciated and help me enormously. For someone who has no money & doesn't know where their next meal is coming from then I guarantee they will have the same attitude if you took a couple of zero's off those amounts.
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Lost technologies
Misadventures in urban planning (cities in the shape of animals)
Motorola bought Metrowerks, makers of CodeWarrior/PowerPlant, back in the day, then spun it off as part of Freescale. They do have an interest in dev tools.
Apple patents iMac touch-screen with swivelling display
1984 - turned me from a die hard socialist to a rabid anti authoritarian.

Cosmos - helped me fall in love with Physics, and the sciences.

Tao Teh Ching - If I could tell you how it influenced me, we'd both have the wrong impression.
Fascinating that NASA are now having to reverse engineer existing spacecraft parts that they have lying around in junkyards, since they forewent the opportunity to document during development, apparently due delivery pressure and use of contractors.
Star Wars Uncut
> 1 hand-picked prostitue that was a guest lecturer in his college class.

Actually, two. One's higher-end, another a street hooker.

> PROSTITUTION IS THE MOST DANGEROUS JOB IN AMERICA.

Levitt actually says right there in the text, that street prostitution is the worst job in America.

I don't quite understand what you argue about. The article is not about morality, cruelty or whatever. It's on how social pressures shape the economics of prostitution.
It seems they still support their own "search grammar", though? For example link: - I don't think it works in Bing, and Yahoo was a lot more reliable than Google for this. Any alternatives?
Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. From the Lofoten Islands, through Tromso, and then over to the Russian border.

Twenty-four-hour sunlight, landscape that looks like an epic fairy tale, friendly English-speaking people, extremely well-maintained infrastructure, whale watching, not particularly crowded, tons of little ferry rides past and through beautiful fjords.

Only drawbacks: a bit pricey due to the location and the robust Norwegian currency. Also, I wouldn't call it a culinary trip - although you can eat reindeer (pretty much like venison) and whale (ethically interesting but delicious), and beers from Mack are pretty solid.
Paul Graham and his "no asshole" rule (Interview)
I wonder how she does her taxes.
No, I am sorry it is not. Anybody can stay at home. Not anyone can start up a company, or work at a senior level, or even work at a technical level. There are plenty of people who could never achieve that level of competence, they can stay at home.
Which Programming Language Should I Learn Next?
you need to work on articulating what this product does.

> It's simple, Fennce is a SME for "conversation on controversy & perspective"

is way confusing.

it seems like you ask a question which has two answers and see who swings which way?
I disagree with that most of these oldies are 'cast aside', they actually fetch good money (if you can find them, they're collectors items) and are still some of the easiest machines to learn with and to teach with.

We should really revive that somehow and make a teaching course around a simulated 8 bit computer that you run as a VM on top of your regular OS.

I'd contribute to an effort like that, both financially and with work.
I can't speak for California, but certainly here in Australia, there's been one factor increasing the cost of higher education: the rise of a managerial class within universities, who cost plenty but whose contribution to education and research is questionable.

It'd be almost impossible to quantify - and it is probably only one of several factors - but the take-home point is that increased spending isn't necessarily an indicator of better education.
The difference is that a notification is not coming from me. It can be disabled or even filtered easily. If I send the pictures directly I am taking that control away from my friends: I don't have an unsubscribe button.
Spot The Logical Fallacy
More details here: http://lists.rabbitmq.com/pipermail/rabbitmq-announce/2010-A...

The new persister is going to help a LOT of people. Check it out!
A mental model is essential to successfully use _any_ machine.

You don't need to have a correct mental model of how it works, just a mental model that given the most common input, predicts the output.

From your comment, I can see you have a mental model of how the car works. You press on the gas, and expect the car to go faster. You press on the brakes, and expect the car to slow down until it eventually stops. You turn the steering wheel to the right and you know that the front wheels point rigthwards, making the car go in that direction. This mental model allows you to predict the outcome of pressing the gas and the brakes at the same time, and therefore know that you should not do it.

You do not need to know the inner workings of the car. You might as well think there are midgets under the hood doing all the work.

The problem is that the mental model that most people form about computers is so wrong, that it doesn't predict anything. So they can't use a computer properly.

And this is mostly the fault of interface "designers". An interface to _anything_ should allow the user to form a mental model that predicts the outcome of the operations that users will need to perform. This does not mean exposing the inner workings of the machine, but also not over-simplifying and use metaphors excessively. Like I said, the mental model does not need to be accurate, it just needs to help the user do whatever it needs to do.
UVB-76 (The Buzzer) transmitted a new voice message
Wikipedia article on The Buzzer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76
Chronolapse - time lapse screen captures as a productivity tool
Adblock Plus Extension Developer Raises Funding From Mystery Partner
Jackie Chan,
28 year old I think you'll find.
WikiLeaks plans to release CIA paper on Wednesday - Payback time.
I strongly disagree. It should be the choice of the man, or at least of the family. Society shouldn't punish men socially for making that choice.
We chose daycare because of the long-term implications. Some careers are harder to rebuild, so we took the hit for a few years in order to be in a better place (career wise if not financially) later.
Why Get Involved in Free Software?
PDF-Slides: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-356...
Car Analogies? Even Stephenson's book that the GP references doesn't pull that off.

Why do cars need to be refilled with gas? Why do their engines require regular oil changes? Why do their doors and ignition devices have keyed locks? Why do you need to learn to drive it, coordinating your arms, legs, eyes, and ears? Why do you need to learn the legal and social rules of traffic?

There's essential complexity here. The "mental model of how a computer works" is learning the UI paradigm (rules of the road), not busses and syscalls (drive shafts and carburetors).

The iPad doesn't have a 35-year legacy of physical removable media for user data. It also requires syncing to iTunes as the sole means of initialization and backup.
1. Use GHCi to check types and ideas.
2. Write your own monads. How about a monad for (->) e? (It already exists, but so what?)

That's at least the strategy that works best for me.
hmm, We answeed that question before with

> It's simple, Fennce is a Web app for "Conversation on controversy"

does that sound better?

We are torn on this because we did'nt want to limit it to just plain kinda mainstream controversy. It could be anything that involves two sides. So we decided to add perspective there to make it seem less limiting. Maybe just saying "conversation on controversy" is our better option.