skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lisp has a lot syntax. It is just a bit different and it looks different externally.

Lisp has a 2-stage syntax.

The first stage is the syntax of s-expressions, which is surprisingly complex. S-Expressions provide a textual syntax for data: symbols, lists, pairs, strings, various number formats, arrays, characters, pathnames, ...

The first stage is implemented by the 'reader' and can be reprogrammed by an ancient API to the reader via read tables.

The second stage is the syntax of the Lisp programming language. This is defined on top of s-expressions and is really a syntax over data structures (not text). This Lisp syntax deals with: data items, function calls, special forms (thirty something) and macro forms.

This syntax stage is implemented as part of the interpreter/compiler (EVAL, COMPILE, COMPILE-FILE) and can be extended by writing macros, symbol macros and compiler macros.
In earlier dialects it could also be extended by writing so-called FEXPRs, functions which get called with unevaluated source code (-> data in Lisp).

So, we get a lot of complex syntax due to special forms and macros. It just looks a bit different, since the data syntax is always underneath it (unless one uses a different reader).

For example a function definition would be:

(defun foo (a b) (+ (sin a) (sin b)))

The syntax for that is:

defun function-name lambda-list [[declaration* | documentation]] form*

With more complex syntax for 'function-name', 'lambda-list' and 'declaration'.

Lambda-list has this syntax:

lambda-list::= (var*
[&optional {var | (var [init-form [supplied-p-parameter]])}*]
[&rest var]
[&key {var | ({var | (keyword-name var)}
[init-form [supplied-p-parameter]])}*
[&allow-other-keys]]
[&aux {var | (var [init-form])}*])

Not every valid Lisp program has an external representation as an s-expression - because it can be constructed internally and can contain objects which can't be read back.

Not every s-expression is a valid Lisp program. Actually most s-expressions are not valid Lisp programs.

For example

(defun foo bar)

is not a valid Lisp program. It violates the syntax above.
Will Unsocial Succeed? 
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/18/unsocial-foursquare-plus-linkedin-minus-all-your-friends/
There is some great advice in Getting Real, but I don't remember being particularly influenced by it. I was more influenced by Ricardo Semler's book Maverick. And by wanting to build a company that I myself would want to work for, regardless of anything anyone else has to say. That has driven nearly every decision.
Any comments on how you (either personally or GitHub as a whole) manages the work/life balance issues?

Any pointers for dealing with cases when the people you work with turn out not to be "reasonable"?

(I ask because I tend to find that soft-skill management issues are where I'm lacking in expertise)
When are new Github tshirts coming?

What are your thoughts on the BitBucket/Atlassian deal?

Are there any new features coming soon that you can give us a sneak peek at? I'd personally like to see some kind of "looking for contributors" interface (similiar to OpenHatch), maybe even with recommended projects based on my repos or the repos I have watched in the past.
I have had the same experience. When I was a teenager, my day would be ruined if I took a nap. I would feel really tired, and a bit nauseous. Nowadays a short nap is almost never wrong, but I can still feel a little bit off sometimes.
> I'm tempted to create a LOOP clone for Clojure, then laugh villainously as I unleash it upon the world.

DOOOO IT
If you know the idea can work, than a limited/non-existent marketing budget shouldn't stop you and it certainly shouldn't discourage you this much.

It sounds to me like you need to dig deeper, both into getting more funding and reviving your motivation. You've come this far. It seems a foolish idea to me that you would consider pulling the plug becacuse you lack cash for marketing.

Cash can be found. Keep at it. Perseverence is hard and success has peaks and valleys. Just because you're in a valley right now, doesn't mean it will last forever.
Have you started working on anything ?
I'd like to see how much was made or lost on each of these, enough to do angel investing after all of that. I know the $500/day was mentioned, but just curious. Was the bulk of the money made that is now invested from these startups, or some other income?
Yeah, the title is misleading and it's intention is to flame... Please change it to something meaningful.
Not closing an img tag is not lazy HTML; it's actually correct HTML. HTML bans closing img tags! (At least some versions still in use, I haven't exhaustively checked them all.) See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.html#h-13.2 , right below the declaration of the tag: "Start tag: required, End tag: forbidden" Of course, including them doesn't do anything bad, but they're still not supposed to be there. (Nor should you <img src="..." />, that's an illegal empty attribute called "/".)

There are a lot of misconceptions about what standards-complaint HTML is. For example, before I went and looked up the link I just gave, I thought they were optional. Nope.

XHTML is a different story, of course, but you didn't say XHTML. Probably because you're not using it. Nobody sane does.
My uncle has worked for the Swedish patent office for his entire life. He has a mattress under his desk and takes a nap every afternoon.
Farmville for people with more than 1 neuron
If you agree that code is good, you need to bone up on your HTML. <img> tags are self-closing in all versions of HTML (as far as I can recall), and the end tag is specifically invalid in later versions. In XHTML, you can write it that way, but using the self-closing syntax (<img/>) is more efficient and readable. A closing <img> tag is wasteful at best and invalid at worst.
Sorry for not posting the URL at first.
The website is http://www.yatrader.com.

To reiterate, the goal of the site is to create an international community, where traders can interact and compete with other traders by predicting the week’s end financial markets (we offer 4 categories of markets). In return for user participation (i.e. predicting markets, posting "YaNotes" which are reasons for trades) we give them a chance to earn virtual dollars called "YaDollars" which can then be redeemed for real prizes.
Where does your weather data come from?
I'm not sure that I'm convinced that technology is really the answer here. Sure it can work if everyone is scanned and the monitors watched but will that always 100% be the case?

I've worked on scanning systems before for security purposes (festival id tags, I appreciate, a lesser concern) and there are almost always ways around the system, be it accidental or intentional. But if those ways round are abused the technology completely fails to fulfil its intended purpose if that one person is missed.

The issue with airport security and kabooms is can certainly be just that one person who has the kaboom and such an instance would take us right back to square one.

As a brief example might I state that diplomats have immunity from these scanning systems and are allowed to bypass them.
Are You A Visionary Entrepreneur?
China-Japan Rare Earth Fracas Continues
This is a great summary with a clean wording.

I always shudder when web projects / frameworks claim to do MVC when they're in fact doing something different.
Talk about how you started getting out into the community and connecting with real users. IE - how you got Github drinkups off the ground. As a company with a small but growing number of happy developers around our platform (notifo.com), we'd love to attempt something similar.

We are thinking about doing things like API contests to help grow the community as well as occasional meetups.

unrelated- whose idea was it to give away pappy van winkel? I recall some old contest you guys ran. Did that contest fare well.. how'd you publicize it? Sorry for all the questions!
Nice, some folks will demote you here for any reason.
Certainly interesting idea, but the article is way to heavy on the conjecture, with little to no facts at all.

It's great that the subject feels better--but it seems like a real stretch to me that it's all about the porn. What else are they doing with their new found porn-less time (working out, going for walks, sleeping?), and what made them come to this decision (religion, shame?).
gmail also threads by subject, and I need proper display of threaded message trees too, not forum-style flat threads. That's the other problem with Mail.app :)
Except to the extent that the technology exacerbates the social problem. Or even just enables the social problem to continue.
Don't forget about users from other countries who prefer F over C.
The URL of my startup is http://www.yatrader.com.

* When users Sign Up, they choose their geographic location (choices consist of City/State and Country around the world). So let's say, Joe Trader (from Moscow, Russia) joins. He can find other traders from Moscow/Ukraine. Or also see other traders from other Cities and Countries (Main page description should emphasize that this is a International community site)

* Traders can come and showcase their skills by making prediction on future markets through our weekly contest. Again, the markets can be their local COUNTRY markets or they can play other (international) markets (Joe Trader from Russia can play our NASDAQ U.S. market).

* Traders can interact through private messaging or through profiles by posting comments on wall to wall.

* Every trader has a profile that shows their information such as but not limited to: contact info, buddies, and local buddies (users that are from their location) as well as their preference for markets they follow.

* There is also a "Streak" indicator. When a user correctly (or accurately) makes predictions each week he/she will be awarded Streak points that will allow them to earn extra points which can later be redeemed for prizes. Streaks will also elevate the user's reputation on the website because it will show him to be knowledgeable in the financial markets he plays.

* Prizes can be redeemed for virtual dollars earned called YaDollars -- it is our unique currency system.
I can't really describe it. It's as if literal size grows, it's harder for me to wrap my head around what is where and why - I suspect it is due to the fact I don't write very pythonic code... more like I'm writing C code with Python syntax, if you know what I mean.

I am not particularly familiar with python too, I should educate myself properly, dwell more into it though. I only get by for what I need to do in Maya with it.
I would say it's not just a matter of writing portable code, but writing portable, generic, useful code. Code can be portable but not useful.

I think object-oriented code is slightly more prone to being portable-but-not-useful because it tends to be designed around real-world models for a particular problem, while functional programming tends to prefer generic abstract models like lists, hashes, graphs, and sets.

Also, code can be useful but not obviously so. A method like org_chart.peruse, for example, might be a solidly generic and portable tree-traversing method that you'd never think to use elsewhere.
Yea, the host is quite a character. I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone on HN post anything about it yet. The show is a good mix of been-there-done-that with startups as well as good digressions into tech / politics / philosophy. Definitely worth a listen.
And now we're getting into the some good stuff. While there were events named "panics", before Quantitative Easing was even a buzzword, they oddly resemble their central banking modern day equivalents, primarily because they were/are caused by the same reason - Government meddling in/with the money supply.

I won't go through them all, but they faced the same problems we face today, and the same actors are the cause:

In the panic of 1873, lots of railroads had been financing up to the hilt with debt because you couldn't lose money building railroads (or houses, right?) and they lobbied the government for easy money policies (non-convertable notes, issuing more currency) so that the value of the greenback would drop, making their outstanding debt worth less in real terms.

Then the supreme court ruled in Hepburn v. Griswold in 1870 that "Legal Tender" (non-convertable US notes) was unconstitutional as per article 1 by a 5-3 vote. That shook up the market for the greenback, which was already trading at a heavy discount to gold dollars. But, don't worry, sure to create fear in the markets, President Grant appointed two new Republican judges (one open spot, and another spot created by a Majority member retiring post-vote), who quickly overturned that decision in Knox v. Lee by a 5-4 vote in May 1871.

Add on top of this divide between wanting Gold backed dollars vs US non-backed "greenbacks", the money supply doubled as new banks opened and loaned out too much. According to Murray Rothbard:

"The panic of 1873 was, not to initiate a great depression, but to cause bankrupt- cies in overinflated banks and in railroads riding on the tide of vast government subsidy and bank speculation."
So You Want to Work for a Startup: Part Two
Owe Me Cash: Easy debt collector - Rails Rumble 2010 - Built in 48 hours
Bummer, I thought it would be an emacs tutorial :-[
I submitted my application a year ago literally minutes before the deadline, and was eventually accepted to the W2010 class.
"I think there are two mind sets when it comes to programming, those that relish in learning every detail in a particular technology and those that find beauty in simplicity."

These don't strike me as conflicting traits.
I can love succinct solutions and still like knowing minute details about what I'm using. (It seems like a requirement for the best solution).

(You need these traits if you want to 'hack/kludge' in changes to an existing (ugly) system without breaking it; so you can be a terrible hack too!)

You would have to provide a proper definitions of simplicity, beauty, etc.
Our Rails Rumble entry - Beware facebook login doesn't work on that domain name - If you want to use facebook please login on http://omecash.r10.railsrumble.com - Give us feedback! :)
Using Python's NLTK and Lucene can produce results like this. I wrote something similar using Wordnet, PHP/Zend Lucene, and and Freeling (C++ NLP) for NewsCup.

I think what makes this project interesting to me is the interface and quality of search results. They show a really good understanding how to use NLP and search in conjunction.

Nice work.
Flexible LEDs to boost biomedicine
Did you mean to reply to me with this comment?
This is not a complaint, but simply a bug report.

With javascript disabled, if you type something in the provided text box and hit enter, you end up with an error message:

Not Found
The requested URL /projects/autotag/php/search.php was not found on this server.

I just figured you'd want to know.
> This is true. Java is missing something like Perl's "roles" that allow you to have code in interfaces. Imagine an "Equal" interface that defines equals and not equals. In Perl, you can provide a default implementation for not equals in terms of equals in Equals. In Java, well, I hope you like cut-n-paste or messy delegation

Scala has this feature too, as "traits". Under the cover, it does exactly what you describe with the JVM bytecode.

Of course, you can "achieve" the same feature with IntelliJ Code->Generate>Generate Delegators. You can use Yasnippets with emacs to do this and I am sure Eclipse has this feature too. While using an IDE can save the tedium of cut and paste ), it can't save the tedium of reading this code and understanding what it does (especially if you're manually mixing in multiple traits this ways).

Many good Java people are very receptive to Scala, but some tell me "my IDE can generate this, why do I need it?". They miss the point of abstraction.

Of course, that doesn't even cover abstractions that the IDE doesn't have: like pattern matching, or typeclass like abstractions with implicits, optional lazy evaluation (you can make a class called "public class LazyRef<T> { T force() { ... }}", but this is something your IDE doesn't have a "refactor button for").

Java's community has been to codify abstractions not present in Java using "design patterns" e.g., visitor pattern for multiple dispatch, delegates for traits/MI. Of course, if you want these features now you can just use other JVM languages (Clojure for MD, Scala for traits). What's interesting is that Microsoft/.NET team has been integrating these features into their "blub for the masses" (C#) e.g., Monads in LINQ despite also support distinctively non-blub languages (F#, funding Scala on the CLR).
Tell HN: The "Doogie Howser" Startup Test
If your startup has eclipsed "Doogie Howser" in Google Trends, you can feel satisfied that you've crossed the first line and are well on your way to becoming a household name.

For example, Posterous passed the Doogie Houser test in mid-2009:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=posterous%2C+%22doogie+howser%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1

And Mint.com in late 2007:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=mint.com%2C+%22doogie+howser%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1
> If one vulnerability is found, terrorists will just continue to exploit it, and it will erode trust in our transit networks.

I don't see this. We have had one 9/11. We had one 7/7. Certainly RE: 7/7 that kind of stuff is VERY hard to prevent (no scanning possible) and UK society and public transport has changed _very_ little since this, if not at all.
However we are not seeing more 7/7 attacks.

Terrorists are in incredibly limited supply, certainly competent ones (Edinburgh Airport anyone? :D). We should possibly consider that we might see exactly the same number of terrorist attacks even if we had zero security.

It worth considering as opposed to being convinced that the barbarians are _definitely_ at the gates.
At what point does it send out a 300lbs guy with a baseball bat to my non-paying client?
Links from original post:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=posterous%2C+%22doogie+howser...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=mint.com%2C+%22doogie+howser%...
I submitted my application a year ago literally minutes before the deadline, and was eventually accepted to the W2010 class.

Is YC funding really considered a class?

Edit: Sorry, I accidentally downvoted you. I really did not intend to. I hope someone may come along and vote you back up to 1.
so, here's what I'd do. I'd make it free (if you intend to start charging at some point, make that clear to your customers. It's best to never raise prices, you know instead add some premium feature... you can have the old thing for free, but we have these new useful features you have to pay for. but sometimes, that's not practical. Next best is to say "It's free... but won't always be so")

Now, for free to work, you need to make sure your infrastructure is cheap. You'd be amazed how many users you can cram on to a $2500 AMD server with 8 cores and 32GiB ram that costs you $200/month to co-locate. (depending on your financial situation... if those numbers aren't trivially small to you, you may want to start with a $20/month VPS and scale up as you need. I'm just pointing out you can save a whole lot of money once you start needing capacity by outsourcing less.)

This will give the site a chance to grow, if users like it. If it does grow, well, that's exciting, right?

See, meanwhile, I'd get a job. It's nice to have a job. It's a different pace, you get health insurance and a bunch of cash, and you don't have to work so hard. A job isn't forever. My experience has been that if I'm feeling frustrated and hopeless with my company, a year at a regular job cures me.

If people start getting interested in the site and it excites you, you can quit and go back to doing it. If people start getting interested in the site and you still want to keep your job, well, customers will attract new investors and possible partners. Stock brokers are usually good marketers, so I think you may have potential marketing people in your customer base.
Why Companies Keep Pay a Secret
The problem with the Blub paradox is that there's no total ordering.

I do Common Lisp and C++ at my day job (ITA), and I do much of my personal hacking in Python. In Python and C++ I miss macros; in Lisp and Python I miss RAII and strong typing; in Lisp and C++ I miss dictionary literals.

And, in all of them, I miss algebraic datatypes.
Once I heard a story about Disney buying ABC (quotes not exact).

DreamWorks had hired some of Eisner's top guys producing TV animation and had a deal lined up to produce a slate of shows for ABC's Saturday morning lineup, which was a big deal in the mid-90s for a just-starting studio like DreamWorks. Of course, when Disney bought ABC, that deal quietly came to a end, and eventually so did DreamWorks' TV animation department.

Jeffrey Katzenberg was asked by one of his staff why he thought Disney bought ABC. He was convinced that what Eisner most wanted was to take the ABC Saturday morning lineup away from DreamWorks -- to torpedo one of Jeffrey's first deals at his new company.

The staff member said, "But come on, this is business, this is a nineteen billion dollar deal! Nobody pays billions of dollars in order to personally screw someone over." Jeffrey laughed and replied, "No, when it's that much money, it's always personal."
This is because Shannon entropy is basically useless when it comes to proving anything about randomized algorithms or cryptography.
The true value in this post is that you gave your unedited email to TC. The world of information in general needs more of this. I'm tired of blog posts about how to do things - everybody wants to reveal what they think worked (e.g. the Secret Sauce) without showing how they acted on that advice (e.g. the meal and its recipe). I don't want a template of your advice, I want to see what YOU did.

Thanks for being strong and bold enough to provide a REAL example!
All very good points! And I misspoke when I said I wanted to develop a site similar to zazzle and cafepress. What I want to know is, what do you need to use to create their product developer and the ability to compensate the designers that put their work on the site.
If you weren't at SUS2010 and are going to only watch a few of the talks, I would highly recommend Tom's talk (as well as Brian Chesky's). He was extremely engaging, and the content (bootstrapping - "Optimizing for happiness instead of money") was great.

Tom -- Across the industry, figures such as 1% paid accounts seem to be typically mentioned. What sort of ratio do you see on Github between paid/free accounts? Do you see any difference in that ratio internationally vs. domestically?
We're building that into the next release. I'm sure the Amazon Turks will love this.
Invest in synthesizing the next Bieber.
Can you share details about some critical decisions you made that led to the success of Github?
The Python philosophy is that macros do more harm than good, making it harder for someone to read/understand your code in the long term. These and other "constraints" make the code more accessible to others and even yourself.
The site itself is very attractive. A suggestion for the implementation, though: login/signup tab full page turns are jarring (especially with the bar dropping down again after each loads)...maybe just use JavaScript/CSS to swap div visibility?

In general it looks like it's a nice library, but how about some more information before the required registration? Why do I want to use this over a freely available JS library? Does it cost money? Etc.