skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most sane programming language syntaxes are confined to a subset of CFGs, usually LALR, which is nice and easy to generate fast parsers for. To parse any CFG you have to fall back to strategies like CKY that have worst case behaviors that are way worse than linear, like CKY or GLR or what have you.

But yeah, context sensitive stuff can be way worse.

Unless new evidence has surfaced in the years since I finished a degree in linguistics, there's only a couple of pieces of evidence for language constructions in natural languages that can't be generated by a context free grammar, like a Adv1Adv2Adv3Adj1Adj2Adj3 construction in Zürich dialectical German (where Adv = adverb and Adj=adjective, and numbers represent which adverb modifies which adjective).
I think you should edit the title to "some vim screencasts"

That takes the sensationalism out, and would've kept me from clicking (no interest in vim)
big diff is that suqarelog.com can be a replacement for 4sq's client ... for launch i'm touting the photos feature because it's the biggest differentiator over 4sq's official app

I wanted to make squarelog.com to feel like an app designed by apple. Heavy on polish and refinements.
Ah, what happened to curling up under your desk to catch a few winks?
Which makes sense given his professed strategy of discovering sound businesses and investing in effective management teams for them and then staying out of their way.
I think it's awesome that they allow naps - I'd probably get 25-50% more done if I could take naps during the day.

But one thing I'm wondering about is, how do you manage expectations about how much is appropriate and create the culture that it's okay to sleep in the middle of the day? In a lot of places I imagine this could get out of hand where people who don't nap might think less of those that do.
Haha, yeah, that would be typical Slashdot - sneer at VB.NET then go right back to PHP...
Yes, I agree and that was my point, OO provides the simplest mechanism to achieve that abstraction when it comes to the UI. I know it can be done with the others but my experience has been that it is at the cost of added complexity. I see beauty in simplicity and for the UI OO provides simplicity to the problem domain.
Looks neat but I'd love for it to just let me set a password from the get-go vs. emailing me a temporary one I'll have to change later.
How I made an instant phone auction w/ Kynetx, Twilio, Twitter, and Google
Thank you, I've send them a contact enquiry. How can it be so cheap, though? PayPal does 3.4% + $0.35, and WorldPay does just 1%? Is there a catch?
Lala was effectively bought for under 5MM (they were still flush from an investment).

And, like FriendFeed, that was a marquee talent acquisition.
And they all fail in Safari, because Safari blocks cookies from 3rd party domains.
Just one suggestion for your timeline. I would suggest "decided on domain name" and "bought a domain" appear one after the other. I just don't trust sitting on domain ideas if they are available for hand registration.
Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010.
Two days ago I had the pleasure of speaking at Startup School. Never before have I see such a high concentration of smart ambitious people in one place.

I've posted a followup on my blog at http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/10/18/optimize-for-happiness.html that covers some of the ideas I introduced in more detail.

Since I only had about 25 minutes for the talk and 5 minutes for questions, I wanted to make myself available for additional questions. So today I'll be answering any questions you have here on Hacker News.

Ask away!
Very inspiring. However, entrepreneurs lie to themselves thinking they want to make a better world. Money is the incentive. Real vocation needs no financial reasons.
Looks neat. Can you make it a translucent overlay bar instead of moving the whole page down? Moving the whole page can be annoying visually.
Awesome stuff!
I tried a couple of searches, and the search ranking looks decently good (at first glance, atleast).

I also like the fading of text as the results become less relevant.

What kind of relevance algorithms are you using? Since this site is targeted at hackers, who tend to like more control, you could expose some of the parameters and allow users to tweak their relevance.

For instance, sliders that let you determine the importance of article age, # of comments in the article, karma points of article, avg karma points of readers, and of course the pattern match counts...
14 Reasons Why Joining A Coworking Space Beats Renting A Private Office
Optimize for Happiness (Followup to my Startup School talk)
In the same sense, we've also forgotten about flossing and eating lots of vegetables. Accessibility is one of those things that everybody knows is nice but they simply have other things that take precedence most of the time. Similarly, lots of application developers used to ignore Mac users when the platform had 2% marketshare (which is greater than the proportion of visitors to your site who will be using a screenreader). Other things were more important to them, like getting a product out that works for most people and makes the company money. As a lifelong Mac user (even in the '90s), I know it's annoying being left out, but at the same time, I've come to realize it wouldn't be better if nothing got made because putting in heroic effort to support every minority group makes development too time-consuming and expensive.

His site is even a great illustration of the problem: For all the talk of including everyone, his search box is literally inaccessible in my 575px-tall browser window.
Domain Modeling in Haskell - Combinators for Composition
Nokia announced new C5 Touch Screen handset
> I remember laughing at people (in the late '90s) who tried to search the Internet with English-language queries: how do i cook pancakes without butter vs pancakes +"no butter"

Are you sure it's only the technological advance that's responsible for that?
I've always written search terms like that because I figured the search engine isn't some ai that's answering my question. Instead it's a program searching a database of sorts and by searching for what I think other might have searched for I'm able to get similar results.
This is a great reminder about how changing the world for the better doesn't always have to involve making a living too:

"It took me a long time, but as I got older I realized that life was more than just about work, technical innovation and business. Michael and others worked to preserve and protect the values that made life worth living. And while we were making things, they were the ones who were who changing our society into a more just place to live."
Over in Drupal land we are talking a lot about the direction we want to take Drupal 8; FP vs OOP.

The last couple of posts on this blog are a good read.
http://www.garfieldtech.com/
When people argue that IPv6 is necessary because NAT is a terrible hack that breaks applications, they are talking about the concept of NAT, the thing that makes it hard to pass a callback address in protocols they design and that requires their routers to peek into their FTP traffic.

I'm sure ISP NAT is at some level worse than home NAT, but the point is, we can scale our IPv4 address space if companies stop, for instance, spending /19's to give every one of their desktops a routable IP address (which are then firewalled off the Internet anyways). We'll simply have to accept some form of self-managed NAT to do that.

I'm fine with that. We're freighting IP with too much responsibility and it's holding us back. We'd have multicast in several different service models by now if people would just stop trying to get Cisco IOS routers to do it for us.
Can you give any examples of late applications that eventually become YC-funded companies? Just curious.
Any interesting conversation with Linus, you could share with us?
In what sense is a "fuzzy graph" different than a standard weighted graph?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_graph#Weighted_graphs_...
After reddit and HN I am horrified at even the useless stuff slashdot crams into their comment system but going to php forums of any kind is just another dimension of crazy: multiple animated gifs, the specifications of the machine the person is writing on. Small wonder stackoverflow-like Q/A sites are eating their lunch.
I always use JAWS on any project that I work on, if it does not work correctly it gets scrapped and reworked. Many times the UX designers I work with do not, are ignorant of the fact and combative about it. So in the end the onus falls on me to make the damn thing work which can require some pretty involved JavaScript tricks and browser hacks. I have thought about releasing a library of all of these accessibility helpers. As I have never really found one that focuses on accessibility.
This comment is for your post, not your question.

Maybe I just have a short attention span, but I could not read through this giant block of text. I'd suggest breaking it up into bite-size paragraphs and adding a URL so people can have more of an idea what you're talking about.
Maybe I should be more specific. All mainstream desktop browsers do this not just chrome. In Chrome it pops up, in Firefox/Safari/IE they call it the "Status Bar" and this is what I'm referring to.

On my mobile browser (Android) It highlights the links for me on mouse over and highlights phone number in a different color when I use the trackball from time to time.

The point is that I don't think of this as interference but as something I have grown to depend on.
How to make an iPhone App – Part 3: Table Views
Table views are probably the most common control in iPhone apps. If you have used the Messages app, Mail app, Twitter app, between many others, then you know what i’m talking about. You may have seen them with just text, with a tittle and a description, with an image but they are all table views.
Chemical origami used to create a DNA Möbius strip
I flew yesterday, and arrived early enough to watch the crew get onto the plane. There was a cursory check of their IDs, but very cursory. The main thing seemed to be that everyone knew each other; the crew had worked together before, and the flight agent who checked their IDs knew them. I would not be surprised if the flight agent was given pictures of the pilots as well as their names, though, which would probably provide the greatest security (identity verified by a trusted third party, the airline, without any chance for the pilot to interact with the verifying document, as happens with passports or other ids. If you never get to see it, you can't tamper with it).
We actually haven't talked to Linus. He only takes part in discussions around Git when he notices something wrong. The model that the Linux kernel uses for contributions is pretty well set in stone (and email) and so it's likely that GitHub doesn't really offer him, personally, much benefit. We do, however, speak regularly with the top core Git maintainers and have a good relationship with them.
Dude, I live in Lithuania too, I buy books at www.bookdepository.co.uk. Free shipping, takes 3-5 working days.

But I know what you mean. We have way less choice when it comes to buying stuff in this part of Europe, that's why so many people tend to skip the buying part, cause they want it right now.
There must be some cheaper accountants in Cyprus. It sucks getting bad advice from your accountant or lawyer, it's a good idea to at least give a quick read to the relevant legislation yourself. Especially the double-taxation treaties that apply in your situation.
Anyone want to open a hedge fund?
Exactly. "Non-smartphones."
For UI elements it is OO hands down.

I was thinking about this assertion on a walk, and I realized that this is just a matter of opinion. I can see it apply if you were programming with Tk. The same goes for Gtk, but when you add glide, the UI construction becomes declarative, and to be honest with you, I have preferred that style of UI construction over having to figure out my arrangements by pencil and paper. I would say that for 90% of your cases, you are not writing a truly dynamic UI that requires OOP to construct things.

When we talk about responding to events, we respond with functions. Presumably, we bury those functions in random placeholders, like a class dedicated to the callbacks, but they are still just functions that describe how to behave.

When I do web programming, I find myself with a mixed approach: HTML and CSS (declarative), javascript with jQuery (OOP and functional).

jQuery is an interesting use case of the blending of OOP and FP. Consider that when you make changes to objects in jQuery, a jQuery object is returned. Thus, you can chain things like this:

jQuery(element).action().action().action();

This is actually an improvement over typical OOP as implemented by people who do not understand the benefits of FP, and it reinforces the fact that OOP and FP are compatible, not some kind of opposing forces.

In you example I have to package up the functions

Packaging issues really have little to do with OOP.

Yes. One way to do that is with a class. Another might be a package or namespace. Organization is a social issue. What you described is not a strength of OOP. In fact, the way most people I have seen do OOP is bulky because they are trying to mitigate this packaging issue: they try to put everything into one single class that is easy to share, as opposed to breaking it down to its logical parts with multiple classes.

Take a simple textarea widget, for example. Let's say you want to extend it to have a spell-checking feature. You extend the class to be TextAreaWithSpellChecking. The typical poorly designed resulting class will include the spell-checking code as opposed to implementing spell-checking in a separate module. It is easier to send the single class than multiple classes, right? Where should the spell-checking live? The answer is not about OOP or FP or other approaches/tools. It is about how you choose to abstract and break things apart.
I was going to post something about that as well, but then I saw that you have already taken care of that.

The article was somewhat interesting, but I didn't feel that the title flowed naturally from the content.
Work online, get free advice about making money from home online
Work online offers free advice about earning and making money online. Fight scams and we will help you every step of the way.
It sounds like your problems are more to do with IRS/US financial regulations than with Paypal. I doubt Paypal invented the concept of 501(c). Disclaimer: I don't live in the US so maybe I am not aware of some subtlety here.

On a more general note, it boggles the mind why anything like 501(c) would even exist in the first place. Sounds like unnecessary, out-of-control beauraucracy.
.Net get's more respect on HN than you might think. IMO it goes something like Python > .Net > Java.
@Goldus - you seem like a old timer here. why post comments like these? Are you adding any value to the main conversation - python/lisp.
I wonder how long it takes for the observation to influence the results, thereby invalidating the observation.
I love GitHub. Can you give the HN community a sense of your monthly revenue?
I submitted our application with Fabricly a few hours before the deadline. We got funded (W2010). The shorter wait made the suspense easier to handle :)
What's the lack of motivation due to? If you're not motivated by the product anymore then get out now, but if you're just feeling beaten down then absolutely keep at it.

When you say you outsourced all the development it sounds like you expected this project to take off without getting your hands dirty. What have you been doing to market it? Word of mouth won't help you if you're not even talking about it. Go out to conferences and meetups and talk. Get to know bloggers or journalists who write about investing. You have some users? Talk to them. Ask them what they love and what they hate about your product. Find out how they're using it. Find people who aren't using your product and see how they're solving their own problems. I know a trader who still uses IRC chats. Start asking a bunch of questions and get excited!
Back then this was not his strategy. There are actually 3 types of Warren Buffett over the years.
I wonder why. I never really use map over list comps, but I've used reduce in several situations where a comprehension wouldn't have been appropriate.
Ask HN: What data-integration alternatives are there to Informatica?
I have two questions:
What are the most prevalent data-warehousing solutions used by Telecom service providers (Oracle, SAP, IBM)?
And what are the most prevalent data-integration tools? Informatica? And are there any other comparable alternatives? What are the pros and cons?
Any help is very much appreciated!!
Regards,
Nick
I did, when the accountant told us he wanted another 2,000 euros to unregister us from VAT. It turned out to be a simple, two-page form. God I hate that guy.
to give you any type of valuable (and actionable) response, you need to tell us the url. otherwise, you will get comments like

find another investor?
pivot your idea?
"keep up with it"
try to monetize on your users in other ways
F# is just another CLR language, so the "Framework" is just as big under F# as it is under C#. It's just a different way of looking at development (specifically, the OCaml way).

.NET is big because it actually contains a lot of useful APIs. I think this is a natural outgrowth of a framework that attempts to be all things to all people.

I'm not a .NET apologist, but I use it every day at work and it has it's strengths and weaknesses (like everything), but overall it is a fairly well-designed framework. My biggest beef with most .NET development is that you have to do it on Windows...
How We Raised $1.3 Million as First-Time Founders
Reluctant Self-Promotion
Hi Tom - I saw your talk (streamed) from Startup School, loved it, and also read Drive over the weekend. I'm currently strongly considering bootstrappping my new company (healthmonth.com) similarly to how you've done.

Are you willing to share a bit more detail about the timeline of the first year when you went from 2 people to ? people... when you hired, how much you spent on salaries versus how much you were making in revenue (exact numbers not required), and how certain you were that revenue would continue to grow at the pace required to support your staff.

Also, what were the "other means" by which you supported yourself until GitHub was able to support you? Your jobs? Or something else?
Learning lessons is good, but it's preferable to not blow a significant fraction of your net worth learning something you'd probably have learned anyway.
Wabi Sabi, Abu Dhabi, Harry Caray
Very very inspiring post.
I've built and released only two web sites and just a couple of C++/C projects in storage area (of course nothing successful), so I have way to go...

It be would interesting to know what did you learn of each these projects?
Which project do you consider the most important from learning perspective?
I believe both Wufoo and Weebly only decided to apply a few hours before the deadline. IIRC David Rusenko of Weebly applied without even telling his cofounders.
It's funny, but the thing I miss most from Common Lisp when I write in other languages is the LOOP macro. It's ugly, and non-lispy, but most loops I have to write can be expressed clearly and concisely using LOOP, and writing the equivalent code in another language is annoying.

I'm tempted to create a LOOP clone for Clojure, then laugh villainously as I unleash it upon the world.
I read a post regarding you guys following some of the tips from the book "Getting Real." How greatly did it influence you guys in running the company? What would you have done otherwise?
It's not a figure that we publicize, but let's just say it's enough to support thirteen well paid employees, a San Francisco office, 34 physical machines at Rackspace, and plenty left over to put in the bank account.
Can I buy cheap IPv6 SSL certificates yet?
How to Flourish in Writing Art Dissertation
Writing an art dissertation is not the same as writing any other dissertation. There is no set rule to writing an art dissertation. However, the most important element is to ensure that adequate creativity and precise knowledge is included. This will ensure a good art dissertation.
Your logo is an image, not a H1
Well, what python calls a "decorator" is just a function that accepts a function and returns a function with roughly similar functionality. In python, the old way to decorate functions was

def my_decorator(f): ...
def my_function(...): ...
my_function = my_decorator(my_function)

and the new "@my_decorator" syntax is just sugar for this.

Function composition is only one of many things you can do with decorators. You could implement a K-combinator with them if you wanted to:

def kestrel(x):
"decorates a function to evaluate that function, but then return x"
def decorator(f):
def g(*args, **kwargs):
f(*args, **kwargs)
return x
return g
return decorator

@kestrel(4)
def foo(x):
y = x + 1
print y
return y

foo(5) # => 4, but prints 6
Thanks for the comment, definitely things to consider. Unfortunately I'm not ready to move away yet which sort of rules out both options for now although I would love to travel.
Writing my own framework was a learning curve and I've created something bespoke which does exactly what I want, and does it well resulting in a fraction of the overhead again giving me a really good level of performance.
The idea about setting deadlines is great and I wish I'd done that thus far.

Taking up rails has actually been a goal of mine this year, I'm fairly competent with Python already -- but for immediate work PHP is the most viable option since I feel I have a lot of knowledge to offer.

Thanks again for your comment!
"And isn't aggregating all these witness accounts what reporters actually do?"

Only if you completely trivialize what reporters actually do. The good reporters will give you the story behind the witness accounts, with well-crafted, spell-checked, and edited copy. They will also synthesize the various witness accounts to provide a complete (as possible) picture. Just printing what other people say is called gossip.

I think it's important nowadays to separate the job of reporters with the business of newspapers.

Yes, you can get volunteers to do it -- as long as it's not the only thing they do.