skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I concur that the Haskell libraries are pretty crummy. (There's no built-in function to split a string on an arbitrary delimiter? Really?)

I'll also say that Haskell has a really steep learning curve, especially if you're coming from a procedural/object oriented background. I've programmed in Scheme and ML before, and neither were as mind-bending as Haskell.

I haven't done any projects yet that involved mixing Haskell with another language, so I can't comment on that. That's probably the most sane way to do a large app with Haskell--use Haskell for what it's good at, and use C/Python for what they're good at.

If I had heard about Erlang's concurrency support earlier, I might have gone with it instead of Haskell, because Haskell is so hard to learn. Now that I'm already partway over the Haskell learning curve, it seems nice enough to stick with.

I really can't say yet whether Haskell is worth learning. Keep in mind that it will be hard to bring new programmers on board with a large Haskell code base. (I'm using it for hobby projects, so that's a non-issue.)

The best answer I can give is: If you're going to be writing large swaths of code that make few or no system calls and that are CPU intensive, it might be; otherwise, no.

EDIT:

Let me try to clarify what I mean by the "mind-bendingness" of Haskell. Think about the Integer and String objects in Java--once instantiated, they are immutable. All data in Haskell behaves like this. However, this immutable data lives on the stack, so you can't just reassign the reference to a new object. (If you want to increment your parameter x, you have to make a recursive call with x + 1.)

The exception here is a construct called a monad. Inside a monad, you can reassign references to new objects, and the old objects are cleaned up by the garbage collector. The intermediate objects are invisible to code outside the monad. (As an example, I/O is done inside of monads.)

The two things I like about Haskell are the concurrency support (if you can wrap your head around the above paradigm!) and the syntax (you can do Python-style significant whitespace, or C-style semicolons and brackets, your pick). Unfortunately, Haskell manages to screw up almost everything else.
I'm sometimes annoyed by programs who won't terminate when I ask them to. When I ask a program to quit, I mean it. I don't care if work is unsaved, I don't care what it is doing on my behalf, I want it dead.
Hear hear.

I think it's fine to use MS stuffs for fun, hobby, side project, or even some consulting jobs (if money is good and the task is not that hard).

For me personally, I'm trying to move away from languages that requires heavy-weight tooling because I'm seeing a pattern where most people whom I consider to "know their stuff very well and can do great things" seem to come from Open Source background. They do stuff with C, *NIX, Python, Ruby, Perl, JavaScript, and various other small tools that do great things.

Just a personal observation nonetheless.
I read the headline as, "How much wine do I need to create a sub-3-hour weekend project?"
But there's nothing substantial to complain about yet... What's been shown so far are applications; and the use of these is optional, not mandatory.
Actually, he backs up his claims with pretty hard data. He draws conclusion from a wide variety of metrics and evidence like core samples, records, tool use, geological standing, possible trade relations, genetic sampling etc.

You really need to read him. Check his wikipedia page out ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond )

>>>are at a much earlier phase of technology<<<

Ironically, our ancestors said analogous things. Are we truly that different?
OpenDNS blocks your second link with a phishing warning.
Any lessons you can share after your 2nd or 3rd time? What would you have done differently?
Try http://art.gnome.org/, I mean I find the gnome UI in ubuntu pretty depressive (Its better than the previous versions but still not perfect). Try making skins for the ui that make it look better. I mean seriously, what can brown/orange skins do for you do for you?
Yes, would be great to use on the television. Anyone here with a GoogleTV box? Does the site work?
Windows 8 To Be Released In October 2012?
You paid ahead of delivery or just a (small) downpayment ?
Sounds like you guys are doing the right thing ... I am doing the same personally, living and breathing my idea just like I was before YC and just like I will be after YC. Whether or not I am chosen I will continue to do just as I am today. Even if I get an interview I certainly will not change my routine simply for the sake of YC ... I should have a demo by the time the interviews come around and I will be happy to show it to the team if selected to do so.

So many people seem to look at YC as a do or die ordeal. Simply put, it is not ... It is a wonderful program for a number of great minds and startups, they will likely pass on more good applicants than they will accept, that is not to say the YC guys do not know what they are doing, they have presumably well over 1,000 applicants and only accept around 40 companies. If you get rejected and decide not to continue on your project you were probably not the kind of founder they were looking for in the first place.

Use YC as motivation for your project, not as a gauge for your company's success, that is not what is what meant to be.

Zach
Chris makes a good argument, but there are counterexamples. It's well known that Ron Conway doesn't use these services. PG's a pretty good counterexample too, though he did finally dip a toe into Twitter. Ok, two toes.
Well let's get real for a second here.

Suppose you rely on Public Transit to get around.

You get a job, you check the bus schedule...there's a bus that drops you off right outside of work at 8:50.

That's pretty reasonable imho.

However, fairly regularly the bus is going to be 5 minutes late...this may cause you to be exactly on time..maybe a minute late.

Also fairly regularly the bus will be 20 minutes late...causing you to be about 10 minutes late.

Rarely it will be even more late, but not very often...probably about as often as a commuter gets stuck due to an accident or something.

Is it really a big deal to be 10 minutes late sometimes for an unavoidable reason?

I could see if you had to relieve someone, but again..let's get real. Most HN readers probably don't HAVE to be at their work exactly on time.

Buses generally run about once every 1.25 hours...even upt to every 2 hours.

Is it really fair to ask someone to be at work 1.5+ hours early every day just so they are not occasionally 10 minutes late?

The problem is with PT, you have basically 0 control over things. If you are driving a car, you can listen to traffic reports, avoid congestion, drive faster, take shortcuts. With PT you are completely stuck.

This is not a contrived example, this is based on what I have seen with Public Transportation and people using it to get to work. Unless you live downtown or in a city with excellent PT, you can find yourself in this dilemma.

It's easy to write it off as avoidable, but it seems silly in my book to advocate going through a huge hassle just to avoid being a few minutes late.

Obviously if it is critical that you are there at a certain time, that's a different story. If I'm a surgeon who needs to be on call 24/7...taking the bus is not going to cut it.

I'm also not saying we should give carte blanc to people to show up whenever they want...

However it's something that really depends on a lot of things.

There are a lot of things that can cause a person to be late, are most of them preventable and avoidable? Yes, but the effort may not be proportional to the benefit,

I honestly think these days showing up exactly on time is disproportionately valued.

It's definitely a factor, but it's one of many and if someone is a little late but good elsewhere I don't think it's a big deal.
A genuinely curious question with the subtext that I do not agree with you but wish to find out where you form your basis. The core languages of both are nearly identical (ignore active patterns, computation expressions, .net libs f# functors, polymorphic variants ocaml etc). You can port basic ocaml and F# code and only have to change letters here and there.

What are your parameters for a Good functional language?
We arbitraged Facebook application development when the platform was brand new. I had developed some applications in the first few weeks platform was out, and had done some early work on the predecessor to rFacebook. I used these examples and some well placed adwords ads to drive customers to us. The phone was ringing off the hook with people wanting apps, many calling just to waste our time, but a fair number of solid leads. We hired competent subcontractors to do the development and most of the product management (so we could spend time coding for our startup). This turned out to be a mistake as our subcontractors tried to steal a client from us behind our backs. This of course was against both our contract with the client and our subcontractors.

However, our client was a hedge fund manager with an in house attorney who kept trying to convince me that because of my age (I was 21 at the time) I had no idea what I was doing and was being unethical for subcontracting work. He refused to pay and threatened to have his in house attorney waste enough of our lawyers time to make it unfeasible for us to pursue litigation (we didn't have a lawyers fees clause in our contract in case of disputes). After a lot of back and forth, he ended up settling for 50% of the contract amount ($12.5k IIRC) and we didn't pay anything to our subcontractors as a result of their breach of contract. The $12.5k plus some other purely advisory (non-development) work we did paid for us to stop arbitraging consulting (which was great since we didn't have any subcontractors anymore since we fired them) and to live on for the rest of the summer and work on our startup.

We raised money from YC right before that money ran out.
There is no reason because it's not true. I've used the with statement to help with auto-closing tags (and just readability) in templating and it helps a lot. I've used in on sites which received over 1 million hits a month. It's been used on over a dozen sites and projects from hundreds of lines of codes and even into the tens of thousands of lines of code.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1605249
Packaged Apps as Commodity and The New KingMakers
If the iOS model of a locked down consumption oriented operating proves to be more profitable that is what Apple will focus on. Its not evil or wrong it will just be what makes the most money. Its really that simple. Apple isn't out to make the core group of users happer but rather the casual user.
I coached tennis for some extra money on the side.
A little late to the conversation here, but I have a domain that I think would be a pretty good fit. I originally registered for a very different purpose. I don't expect to renew it in 2011.

TheProfitPalette.com

Clearly, you've received a lot of feedback with a lot of good ideas. If you want this domain because it is just that good (haha) then let me know.

Best wishes for your success.
You could contribute to making decent Gtk themes.

Gnome tends to be the face of Linux, as it's the default desktop for Ubuntu & Fedora, so the way gnome looks is the way Linux looks.

Now, Gnome uses Gtk for widgets, and in my opinion, Gtk is inherently flawed, and it will probably never look as good as Aqua. But I definitely see room for improvement. If more graphics designers get involved, it's more likely that Gtk will get "fixed", where by "fixed" I mean it will evolve to a form where it can compete with Aqua.
Despite the fact that unifying two codebases makes much more sense than selling a truck to a family I must say that I disagree.

The problem for me is not convergence per see, I would not mind having features from an portable OS in the OS that I use in my laptop or workstation, the problem is the impression that since iOS devices came to exist OS X is becoming more irrelevant, I think this tweet summarizes the situation: http://twitter.com/iTod/status/27297928138#
I think many people outside of New York wouldn't ever consider an apartment share, but it's pretty common here. I live near Times Square in Manhattan and I'm paying $900 for a room in a (small) two bedroom apartment.
Huh? That shouldn't stop you from complaining! Technically you don't ever have to use anything but Terminal, that doesn't mean you shouldn't complain when new features are confusing or not quite coherent. Oh, and it would suck very much if the better app management would only availible for App Store apps. That's a complaint Apple should hear!
No functor support. Questionable if it would fit idiomatically with .net framework culture but not something you miss.

In order of wish list to F#:

- ability to create a structure isomorphic to GADTS
- further enhancements to metaprogramming and how it does quasi quotation stuff
- Support for Higher Kinds

The above would ameliorate the need for functors too, I feel.
What's Your Personal Social Media Strategy? - Harvard Business Review
As a poster above said, is it worth being ~20 minutes early every day to avoid being 10 minutes late some day?
Those keys are good not only for typing in mathematical operators, but also for shortcuts. They must emit different keycodes from the ones one the main keyboard, and you don't need shift. I don't know how to do Shift+ or Control+ without them.

Maybe I should finally switch to Linux. There, you don't even need F keys in the terminal ;-)
How about face-up in a stack of books? Fastest way to find them, too, as then the lines are identical to how people read, no head-tilting needed.
Both CO2 concentrations and the global temperature varied significantly over that period of Earth's history (~400-250 millions of years ago). Around 300 Mya, CO2 was comparable to what it is today and temperatures were likewise comparable. Around 400 Mya, CO2 was in the 4000ppm's and the temperature was likewise higher (by ~ 8 C). No contradiction.

Also, when discussing matters scientific, please cite your scientific sources --- otherwise the discussion is of little value. Like so:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7159/abs/nature06...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/1052-5173(2004)014<4:CAAPDO...
It depends. What I have learned is that every professional can and will give advice and derail bad developments. This is not a problem at all. The problem is that sometimes you absolutely need to do something and then you need somebody who understands you and just does. On most cases the world is grey, there is no wrong, no right. What I described in my previous posting is just a test, can he walk the walk.

BTW. I have to ask, is "BLINK tags and Comic Sans" wrong on every occasion, on every target group, on every situation, on every web page, absolutely no matter what? Because if you agree that there can be one in a billion situation where "BLINK tags and Comic Sans" are acceptable or even good thing to do, then ... you are not professional :-)
This reminds me of an idea I had for a product: place value on your and your colleagues time by creating a market for it. The market runs in the calendaring application - you are allocated a certain amount of everyone's time to take for meetings. If you want or need more than your allocation, you have to trade for it. That way you are forced to invite only the people you really need, it quickly becomes obvious whose time is most important, the overall amount of time spent in meetings is limited, and people become cognizant of the "value" of others' time. It could be built as an outlook plugin, even.
I vouch for todayiamme's valid reasons to be anonymous.
Ehrenrich did a book called Nickel and Dimed: http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/08...
It's Dave Winer, so it's pretty easy to guess which he means.
Wait, a software glitch is equivalent to "outlawing" something? I'm not sure I understand the terminology.
F# is a bit weird to folks who are used to C# or VB, which is what PG was referring to with the "Blub" paradox. F# is different enough that the majority of .NET programmers I meet, or work with, have no frame of reference to understand F# with. The only ones I know who code outside the office are trying to get rich with iPhone or Android apps.
Ask HN: Is it possible to capture webcam output and store directly on server?
Hey.

I'm just wondering if it is possible to capture the output of a webcam and store it directly to the server. I can then run a cron script to encode the video that is not a problem, but can the actual capture be done on a website (using Flash for example), and saved through PHP?

Has anyone done this?

I'm thinking similar software to what ChatRoulette uses, but not for live streaming but instead saving as files on the server for encoding later.
I've taken some interest in it and sometimes try to play against the computer, but I'm horribly bad at it.
On the other hand, you could get a lawyer to vet it. Or, if you wanted to give it more heft, get a divorce lawyer to write a chapter or two about the legal ramifications or how a lawyer like him/her see these things. You could pay the lawyer to do it or give a cut of the profits. In addition to allaying your concerns, it might also let you charge more for the product.

I say all this because I'm not sure how easy it would be to sell a slice-of-life type of eBook vs. How To's, which are all over the place.

Slice-of-life would work on a blog, though, which you could monetize with Google Ads, ads from other networks, etc., but that's not likely to be as good as an eBook.

Though you could also monetize it by being an affiliate for related eBooks and regular books -- if you went to ClickBank.com you could probably find some related eBooks that you could get commissions for and similarly with Amazon w/r/t dead-tree books.

One other idea: start small with a short report -- say 10-20 pages -- and sell that cheaply, say $9.99 or less--and see what happens. And/or give it away to build up a mailing list, if you can think of how to sell related stuff. This sort of thing is done a lot.
High-End Varnish – 275000 Requests per Second
This reminds me of portfolio theory in finance: as long as your goals are diverse enough, generally you will track the market (i.e. how life is going generally). That being said, I think the most successful business people are those that really closely tie their happiness with the success of the company (Steve Jobs, I think, is a good example).
Come on, this is a simple software purchase, $100 or so. It's not a moral choice of any significance whatsoever, and laying the moral dimension onto it is not productive or helpful.
And for those of us not familiar with Dave Winer?
If you have papers or a laptop that can't get wet, get a nice messenger bag made of Cordura and truck liner. I highly recommend PAC Bags, which are easily the best made bag I've ever used.

http://www.pacdesigns.com/
@jpdbaugh, it's not an either-or proposition, it's a both-and proposition. Creating an app store will make the Mac both better for "average" consumers AND creative developers who want to monetize. Additionally I think increased usability from increased touch gestures and advanced expose functionality will help everyone. It's very difficult to argue that OS X advancements have been tailored to strictly one the consumer or the other creative professional: Time Machine, Spaces, Expose...these have been a win for everybody.

I think if there's something to learn from Apple it is trying to take seemingly divergent markets or divergent goals and finding creative ways to reconcile them: form and function (look at the battery compartments in their wireless keyboard, for example), cost and sustainability, business and consumer markets, young and old.
Okay, but networking a thousand jihadists makes a stronger jihad, while doing nothing to make them better or less violent people. Networking a million cancer survivors makes people feel better but doesn't do much to cure cancer. Where is the proof that networking millions of apathetic people is going to make them one iota less apathetic, as opposed to just reinforcing their preexisting condition?
It's probably a better algorithm when discussing multiple topics. Nobody is an expert in everything.
He likes to whine.
Kinda minimal on the content side for this article. But the linked article http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20101022/is-twitter-going-ba... does have some interesting info in it. Partly that "...the company still has the majority of its cash from the last round in the bank"
Is It Cheaper to Be Vegan, Vegetarian, or a Meat Eater?
From China, The Future of Fish
Talent Pool in Ad Industry Can't Keep Up With China's Fast Growth
Good point man.
To "fix" it all that we need to fix is: type rendering.
That's the MAJOR difference between MAC OS and Windows
or Windows XP and Windows 7
or MAC OS, Windows and Ubuntu (haven't used Fedora, new around here)

If we can pull this one off - good type will begin to fix the design. It will tell you when things are off.

Writing an open letter / blog post about it!
Ya I hear that.

My take is if you have a way to announce to people that you are quitting social_network_001 then you likely didn't need it and aren't even close to an average user anyways. It's when your average user stops or worse slowly stops using your service that should set off the alarms.
But it's not just networking apathetic people — it's networking all sorts of people.
UberCab Ordered to Cease And Desist
It's all about maintaining momentum. Sure, a guy can work till 5:00 AM but the next day is usually shot.

If you stopped at 9:00 PM though, and bottled up that momentum (your progress) till morning - you'll have a brain full of fresh energy for another full day.
0 is not like any other number. It is of very special import, along with 1. In particular, when dealing with 2D graphics, people look at area. Area is defined by multiplication, and 0 and 1 are the two numbers y for multiplication such that f(x,y)=y and f(x,y)=x for all x.

0 is the only number that is not arbitrary in a scalable measurement such as a graph. That's what makes it important.
I don't know that .net is necessarily not tuned for that use-case. Generally, a generational garbage collector like .net's handles short-lived immutable objects better than it does longer-lived mutable objects. It can allocate and deallocate objects very quickly as long as they're collected in the first generation. I'm speaking mostly in generalities though. I'd be curious to know if this isn't the case on .net.
Hawaii is the guinea pig for grid power storage solutions
What's the point of this post? What did anyone learn from this? This is a pointless rant that belongs on someone's Facebook wall, not on a blog with thousands of readers.