skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Based on this reply, it sounds like you want the easy way out. It's time to "nut up and make a decision" (Liz Lemmon).

If you want to go to Silicon Valley, go. If you want to stay at home, time to become an adult and not rely on your parents for everything.

Maybe you'll tell me it's the smart way out, but it is a compromise I will not make.

Yes, you can save 6-8 grand each year by living at home, but you're living at home. I guarantee that your friends that went out and are living on their own are mocking you behind your back.
تحميل فيلم زهايمر - عادل امام
This will fail and I'll tell you exactly why. Longish articles are already being TL;DR'd by something, called
"attention spans". So as this service gets better and more popular, and I'm not sure exactly how that's possible, the feeds it will be shortening will already be shortening by pressures from editors and audiences.
For non-hygienic macros, it's essentially the variable capture problem.

For hygienic macros, I don't know of a good argument that they are inherently more difficult to understand separately from their invocation than a function.

(I'm not personally arguing against macros - or global variables for that matter - just trying to state the argument).
> significant white space

Nit: significant indentation. Mostlanguageshavesignificantwhitespace, somemorethanothers (for instance, at least in 1.8, Ruby seems to have more whitespace issues than Python)
You are right of course, but this kind of syntax doesn't help the programmer to cognitively parse the code, which is what I am talking about.
My point still holds, just replace manipulating the structure of a program with manipulating the structure of a grammar. In no way is that comparable to manipulating raw parse trees.
Michael Arrington is no Hunter S. Thompson..
Ask HN: Has anyone launched a successful start-up to help their local economy?
I live in a smaller city of about 80k, local businesses have been closing down and it's really sad to see ones hometown go down the drain. Has anyone launched anything in smaller markets and had success?
You've had more conversations about your sexual preferences and anatomical details than about money you've earned? Sounds fun but I suspect that puts you in the minority ;-) At least on HN where "I made $X yesterday!" type comments and posts seem to be reasonably common.
I would recommend adding a slide-show or short screencast on the homepage to give users an overview of the features.
> that feature alone puts it head-and-shoulders over Python

Uh no it doesn't. Python uses OS threads. It cripples them with the GIL (hence multiprocessing), but it never used green threads.

And of course, using green threads can be an advantage if you're not dumb about it (see Erlang).

> it has a wicked fast compiler. So it makes a kick-ass webapp development platform.

What?
Hmmm. I think your argument is roughly that there is a "sweet-spot" for abstraction when it comes to readability?

That is a point at which less abstraction makes the code harder to read, and more abstraction makes the code harder to read?

I will agree with this in specific cases (i.e. for any given solution, there is a point at which adding abstraction can't improve readability), but I'm not certain I agree in the general case (i.e. that using macros cannot improve readability).

I guess it also depends on what you mean by "really understand what's going on." I started out programming in C. Now in C, if you know your compiler well, you can predict fairly accurately what binary code will be generated when you compile with optimizations off. Moving to higher level-languages you lose this ability, and no longer "really understand what's going on."

For systems programming, I may still use C to get this advantage. For other problem domains, I sacrifice this knowledge because representing my problem more tersely in a higher level language makes the code more readable and easier to understand. Now I will never know exactly which instructions will be executed when I write in Python.

Similarly, with sufficiently fancy macros, I may not know what LISP code is generated, but if the macros do what they say they do, it can make my code less verbose, more understandable, and easier to maintain. There are times when really understanding what is going on trumps the terseness, and those times I don't use macros.

Also, I love Python. It embeds well in C (which is where my original background is), and it has very good portability, and a good set of libraries.

I also implied, but didn't say straight out that Python has a good reason for not having macros: Part of its design is to look like pseudo-code. See also Norvig's comment to the OP. Macros that operate on text rather than trees (C preprocessor, m4, etc) are far more error prone, and probably a Bad Idea. Therefore if you want your language to look like something other than a tree, you have to forsake macros that operate on code as it is written. I have seen for several languages (Python among them I believe) Lisp-like macros that operate on the AST of the language. They have not caught on. I have several theories why this is so, but right now my preferred one is that it feels too much like you're hacking the compiler, and Compilers Are Scary.
aren't sub-reddits much broader than something like... you're not a new yorker until?
There's already a loose association of events called "Startup Drinks"... we've got a fairly popular one here in Pittsburgh.
You just have to make sure you're not asking them for money. You're just looking for feedback on your project.
Depends on the project, but for a long-running project with a large code base and many contributors (many of whom are no longer actively involved in the project), it can be very valuable. In the case of PostgreSQL, the commit history goes back to ~1995, and most changes are described with a detailed commit message, which can be very helpful when understanding why a certain piece of code behaves the way that it does.
Well, since they wanted the ability to build any previous version of PostGreSQL from the version history, for them I'd say it was quite valuable. I would suspect this is the main driving issue for whether or not to preserve commit history when porting to a new VCS; for some developers they may almost never go back and rebuild old versions from scratch. For OSS developers though I can see that they would need to preserve "full disclosure" and if possible make every commit history available for others, if not the devs themselves, to analyze.
In your first CS courses, you learn how to build linked lists, sets, etc., and implement your very first algorithms using these data structures.

Relational databases come later, and many of the important concepts (set theory, tuples, etc.) build on knowledge learned by studying and implementing and using these initial data structures. It is in this way that I believe lists, sets, etc. are more fundamental than relational database tables, columns, and rows.
I think Ballmer is not CEO material for a tech company. However he may be good COO material.
I hate to be so flippant, but do you not care where your money is? If money is hard to track, it's hard to tell who has been paid. Money laundering, for example, would be easier if money were harder to track. So... I can't imagine that making money laundering easier, in general, would be a good thing.
Internet shopping for tools
Learning from Haskell in the real world - monads and middleware
Sweep it into your account, then sweep that into another account lest they decide to withdraw it.
Profit taking from the "Buy on rumour, sell on news" crowd. Happens every time.
Beware This Venture Capital Investment Scam
Yes. I do. I was going to bet on the supershort, and superlong funds. (2-4 x average market returns) for short term periods, and double my money every few days. I was only waiting to build capital.

Now I have zero time to build capital before it's leveraged away. FUDGE!

I am righteously pissed off now. I had investors on the hook. now it will all be arbitraged away from me.

It's just like quicksilverscreen when Rupert Murdoch litigated it away (one of the senators who voted for the DMCA was one of the lawyers defending Fox).

I am ANGRY.
Hey, Dropbox got away with only having getdropbox.com for a long time.
> and avoid many of the little python headaches that come up often like d['k'] vs d.k vs d('k').

When does that come up? d['k'] is a key access (to a collection), d.k is an attribute access (to an object) and d('k') is a method call. I'm not sure where the headache/confusion would be here, unless you're trying to do very weird things with Python (which you should not)
AdGrok applied at the last minute. I happened to notice the 'apply now' message on the main Y Combinator page (I was trying to find one of PG's blog posts), which was a couple days before the deadline. We did the video literally at 1145pm on the last day.

What were we thinking? Get it out the door and done as quickly as possible. We were stil at our previous employer at the time and hadn't finalized an idea, so there was some doubt about applying. But once the momentum got underway, our only thought was submitting the best application possible, and fully sketching out our idea. I read the blog posts from other YC companies about the application process, and they were very helpful making us understand what was expected from YC, and what was coming in the application process.
I completely agree, I'd like to get zazu.com but we're now actively thinking of another name just in case that doesn't pan out.
I wouldn't worry about it either. Just as the jacquesm stated - Google launched when there were tons (infoseek, yahoo, excite, microsoft, etc) other search engines. When Ford introduced the model T there were other car companies. When Michael Dell sold his first custom made computer, there were many existing computer manufacturers.

Ultimately if you can build something that is a better product - through price, experience or customer service, people will want yours and not your competitor. I wouldn't worry about it.

Personally I would worry if your idea was so far fetched no one's even thought about it.
How is that nice to know? It'd be much more edifying if he were rich precisely because he doesn't make this kind of mistake.
Hello, my co-worker, whoever you are.

John Stracke. (I've been staying pseudonymous, but today I mentioned Adder, which is tied to my real identity.)

Common Lisp does have strong typing.

True. I need to remember to be more precise; "doesn't have strong typing" just means "doesn't have type feature Blub". Common Lisp has runtime type safety, and type hints for efficiency; what it does not have is the pervasive typing that I'm used to from C++, which has a separate set of benefits. The most obvious is that, in C++, I can change the interface to a class and be certain that the compiler will catch any caller that uses it incorrectly. (Although I suppose it may be possible to do something like that with CLOS. I haven't used much CLOS, since ITA avoids it.)

There is controversy over whether we can find a way to have the benefits of both static and dynamic typing in the same language.

I'd say that type inference already brings us nearly there: the convenience of dynamic typing, with the rigor of static typing.

I may be wrong, though; I've used ML and Haskell, but not enough to really feel where the pain points of type inference are.
AT&T Half Price: we're getting half the service, why not half the price?
(This sentence is immediately preceded by a highlight of iPhone sales and a dismissal of iPhone competition from RIM.)
Zazu.com is apparently not for sale.

see: http://www.zazu.com/

Maybe he's just playing hard to get but it could also simply be the truth.

The guy is called 'Glenn Zazulia'.
No, why not?

I can parse Lisp quite good.
Smartphones: Our national obsession
OTOH, it's not completely irrelevant. If you can launch 10% faster, that's a big advantage.
What a Boost From Steve Jobs Can Get You
Headwall Software: stolen IP from Pivotal Labs?
Compare http://headwallsoft.com to http://pivotallabs.com

Then, check out http://headwallsoft.com/stylesheets/app_all.css and search for 'pivot'.

Hilarity ensues.
Marc, that's a really long explanation (iron man? microstore? a new form of marketing?) for something that's basically a somewhat improved alarm clock?

Feedback: the homepage doesn't really explain what it is clearly. The wording can be better ("wakes you up verbally"?). You should show screenshots of the app, and try to communicate its value/why it's cool (with quotes from users perhaps). I couldn't even find a screenshot in the blog.
Fundamentals of Computing
These are lecture notes of a single semester (very) introductory course on computing by Manindra Agrawal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manindra_agrawal).
Were you getting paid W-2 or 1099 reported wages?
"Sometimes, though, caring for one's fellow man is beautiful just for its own sake."

And it's easy to show by not stealing a laptop from your injured neighbor in the first place.
They always say something like that, and there's a big Mac event scheduled for Wednesday.
Watching this all play out has been an object lesson in management killing innovation.
To what extent to you implement ROWE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE

It sounds like you have a few of these qualities... choosing your work hours, for example... but what about measuring results. Do you have any specific tips on how to measure results without getting too confused or attached to the a new incorrect metric?
I have so damned many phonecalls to make tomorrow. A lot of powerful, and wealthy people will never talk to me again because of this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity. Fuck.
Could it be they bought the same template?
Sexism in the Software Industry, as Encountered by the Cranky Product Manager
My impression is that there's never been a particularly good relationship between the product groups at Microsoft and the more long-term focused researchy groups (not necessarily limited to MS Research proper?). A lot of "employees in the trenches" of the product groups seem to perceive the researchy guys as useless, impractical, a waste of money, etc.

Ozzie's concrete responsibility at MSFT, so far as I can tell, was running a bunch of medium-term focused groups to try and bridge that divide. They seem to have been generally regarded as unsuccessful in that respect so it's not too surprising that he would eventually quit/be pushed out/whatever.
I didn't mention in the description of the post what the next general step for the company is. We're going to be leaving the morning space fairly soon, meaning we'll integrate with your calendar to let you know what you need to regarding where you are and where you need to be (both physically and metaphorically). We're trying to transform the moment of alert into a moment of informed decision making. We'll be looking at emails and other areas that involve alerting and decision making, too.

We're aware of the lack of information conveyed on the website. That's on the backlog, but it's just recently been pushed closer to the top of the stack.
In my experience with Django, the commit history has been incredibly critical. There's been a good number of bugs that required digging back to nearly the beginning of the public commit history (July 2005). There have even been a few bugs that we only really understood after prying into the old private repo (which was converted from CVS and goes back to 2003).
Some people learn set theory before data structures and algorithms. People focusing on math rather than computer science, for example. As long as we're speculating about hypothetical aliens, I wouldn't reject that possibility.

Arrays, linked lists, binary trees and mergesort could be more fundamental than the relational model, but the relational model in turn may be simpler than (say) red-black trees, BSPs, skiplists (depending on how the aliens view randomness), or OOP.

It's an interesting thought-experiment, though - if CS were being re-invented from the ground up, which things would be more fundamental and likely to be discovered first, especially with significantly different hardware?
One can come up with an example that makes the same point I made before, but isn't 'two distinct acts'. Stabbing yourself in order to donate blood in person versus doing it the usual needle-and-bag way, for example.

My point is that arbitrarily adding costs to a given act doesn't make it better. Charity isn't good because it sucks for someone; it's good because it's good for someone.

If you're giving your last $10, you're putting yourself in financial danger; you might need that money. The billionaire isn't in any danger from being $10 short. Thus, the first person is causing net harm to the world; the same $10 has been donated to the same charity, but the result is one person closer to penury. Whereas if the billionaire did it, that wouldn't happen.

I don't know if this was intentional, but this implies a higher order magnitude of help. I would personally balk if I hear of a charity that donates only 50% of what they receive to the intended audience.

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&...

Lots of charities do that.

My main point is that judging charity by cost is dumb. It produces bad incentives. Arguably, those charities are superior to other charities, since they make it so expensive to help someone. To do $100 worth of good at the Disabled Veterans Associations, you need to donate nearly $10,000! Donating to a more efficient charity means you suffer less pain for a given amount of money making it to the end recipients. If costliness makes charities better, shouldn't we seek out the most inefficient possible charities? Why not?
Based on the number of comments below of people who applied late and did get in, don't be surprised if you see a lot of hits to http://news.ycombinator.com/apply2, http://news.ycombinator.com/apply3, http://news.ycombinator.com/apply4... in your logs in the coming days/weeks!
As Microsoft CSA, Ozzie had to live up to the legacy of Gates while steering the direction of hundreds of product groups. This is certainly no simple task.

Ultimately, he was doomed to fail. His job was to advocate the right technologies at the right time. Yet MS rarely makes the right choices in this area. Technology decisions are made by political GMs who want to hold on to their empires. They are made by VPs who don't want to sacrifice short term profits for a longer term vision.

Steve Jobs made an excellent point at the D conference this year about how Apple tries to pick technologies that are in their "Spring". These are technologies that are on their way up. Certainly Steve has the luxury of not worrying as much about backwards compatibility, etc. But he certainly has the courage of his convictions to pick a path that's best for his company and customers.

I don't think Ray had that kind of fortitude, and unfortunately, I don't think he had that kind of power. Ultimately, the CEO needs to push the technological vision of Microsoft. Leaving it to mid-level managers will only result in further mediocrity.
I joke about article length and even satirize myself, but speaking candidly, the drive towards link-batish titles and articles that simply summarizes other articles actually encouraged me to write longer pieces, not shorter ones.

It's just simple contrarian thinking. There may be a massive market for blink-of-an-eye posts that are forgotten in moments, but there is a small niche of readers who are looking for reading they can savour and dive into.

Naturally, the market for blink-of-an-eye reddit front page posts is many orders of magnitude larger, but it also has many orders of magnitude more competition. Niches are smaller but with less competition.

The niche for blowhards may have a small readership, but the more the rest of the world goes towards tweets, the hungrier those readers are for that 141st character of exposition.

JM2C.
Steve Jobs slams Google, RIM, and rival tablet makers on conference call
Mad Money's Jim Cramer Stock Picks Analyzed (Part II)
If you want local reasoning you will have to reject Turing completeness, otherwise you could implement a language with global variables and eval a bunch of code in that language.

I think we shouldn't be limiting our tools. We should instead limit their use. Global variables can be nasty, but it's nice to have them when your code is best expressed with global variables. Same for macros.
You mentioned below that all employees get equity, but it also sounds like you guys are quite happy with the growth you're having and are in it for the long-haul. (Incorrect?)

Do you expect to ever have a liquidity event (sell the company), or is there some proportionate profit-sharing plan with the equity?
How to Pick the Right Color for Your Brand or Logo
Steve Jobs: "Android isn't open it is fragmented"
Unlikely, the css class names are pivotal, pivots, etc which seems pretty unique to them.
Mice That 'Smell' Light Could Help Scientists Better Understand Olfaction
There were rumors of an Apple 7" device earlier this year. I wonder if they were deliberately started by Apple to send competitors down what they considered a blind alley.
I don't know that I'd classify us as a traditional freemium offering. The only difference between the free and paid accounts is privacy. In any case, this has worked out extremely well for us. In exchange for free access to the site for open source we get a tremendous amount of exposure. In essence we are trading free accounts for free advertising. I think this approach has been critical to the rate of our growth, both for free and paid accounts.

Virality couples well with certain types of freemium models, as long as you're getting significant exposure from the free accounts to make the cost worthwhile.
I'm going by the Hyperspec and what I remember from reading Kaisler's Interlisp. From the former:

"One of the Interlisp ideas that influenced Common Lisp was an iteration construct implemented by Warren Teitelman that inspired the loop macro used both on the Lisp Machines and in MacLisp, and now in Common Lisp."

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/01_ab....
Hey, some quick thoughts on the home page.

- There's a lot of odd looking empty space around the logo. In general the homepage just looks like you've placed the elements in random locations. Maybe move the Blog/Team/Press/Contact links to a horizontal list to fill the space at the top and lose "The Perch" for starters.

- The text on the rotating set of images is hard to read due to downsampling and jpeg compression. You probably shouldn't have paragraphs of text displayed in this way - I want to read it at my own pace. I don't want to rush because the image is about to change.

- The logo's colour at the top is far too similar to the background. The green would work much better.

- Have an informative page title. Currently it just says "Zazu". Others may know about SEO implications, but imaging I'd looked at your site earlier and couldn't remember the name - the first thing I would try is typing "Android" or "Alarm" into my Chrome/Firefox bar.

Currently installing the app itself...

- The first screen said something like "Use existing login or enter an email address and password to create and account". Does that mean if I misspell my email address I'll actually just create a new account? You should have a quick "New account? Yea/nay" dialog.

- As yet no email confirmation saying "Welcome to Zazu!"

- I'm not sure about the AM/PM option on the "new alarm" screen. It's not consistent with the default Android alarm screen, and incrementing the time over the AM/PM boundary isn't optimal this way.

- IMPORTANT: A bug. Create several alarms. Deleting one deletes them all.

That's all I have time for. Basically I like the idea. You need to tighten up the execution. {olish up the interface and the website for the real thing, try and integrate with Google Reader or similar (I don't want to set up my feeds all over again), change the word "infostreams" to feeds or something.

Good luck!