skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I could make it as easy as I wanted to write a codewalker, by changing the language where necessary. But it's not a priority right now. I haven't been doing anything where I felt I needed a codewalker.
readall keeps calling read till it runs out of input, and returns a list of all the results.
Right. (It was a revealing slip. I've already started thinking of indexable stuff as like functions.)
That's what I asked for, all right.

Sorry for asking obtuse questions obtusely. Let me try this way:

How much would codetree need to change to accept a function or macro as input instead of a file, and produce output that is similarly meaningful? (Not at all, a little bit, a lot).

Sorry again for poor question quality, and to harp on what increasingly appears to be an unimportant point.
Automatic creation of the numerical lambda return. Clever...

Why "atom" instead of "leaf"? Especially since you acknowledge it's a "tree"?
Talpiot -- elite Israel Defense Forces school feeds startups
The main link was to a comment on an old thread. If he'd made the top level of this thread the actual comment it linked to (assuming that makes sense in news.yc), it would take up a whole lot of space on the front page...
Just curious, how do you plan on sustaining it?

I realize not everything has to be a business. It would be great if people just provided us with things for free out of their own charity, but not everyone can do that forever...
Perhaps this is a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side."
BlockQuote:

JERUSALEM -- After graduating from high school in 1993, Arik Czerniak entered a secretive Israeli military program called Talpiot. The country's most selective institution, it accepts 50 students a year and trains them in physics, computers and other sciences. Its mission is to create innovative, tech-savvy leaders capable of transforming Israel's military.

Upon graduating from the nine-year program, Mr. Czerniak took a different route: He helped launch Metacafe Inc., an online company that lets users post short videos, such as a clip of an acrobatic squirrel and one of a bikini-clad woman making a snow-angel. Now 32 years old, Mr. ...

EndBlockQuote

There is a great article on Talpiot in today's WSJ. If you are a subscriber you can read further at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118368825920758806.html?mod=...
If you are running a startup you really should be reading WSJ, it's a great resource. Either way, a free version of this article will probably show up at one of WSJ properties soon enough.

Note, that the college + 6 year of service is not an exception in Israel, like the article implies. You can enlist before college and serve shorter period as a private, or you can signup, go to college and then serve for 6 years as an officer.

The recipe seems to select the 50 most promicing freshmen in the country. Train them hard (in existing university), have them serve the country, let them grow and then watch the GDP grow.
While you don't have any other responses yet, I think this is an interesting question, though possibly somewhat off topic for news.yc.

Either lifecasting will promote good behavior on the part of the lifecasters, or they'll eventually stop worrying about it. I myself expect everything I say or do to eventually be public knowledge to anyone who wants to know, with increasing data processing tech, and try to govern my life accordingly.
Designing Interfaces [book]
I'm hoping to get support the site with advertising and sponsors, preferably from startups and from VCs. It's not a YouTube-like site where I'm expecting multi-million pageviews a day, but I think building a small yet strong community of entrepreneurs and VCs may be an attractive place for either of these groups to advertise in.

Edit: I'm not trying to break anyones bank or wallet here, if the community can be built up, I would just like to keep it self-sustaining, meaning paying for the dedicated server. Like I said, this was just an experiment - I am working on another project I hope to release as my primary source of income.
Well, I'd like to gather a similar user base to sites like GoBigNetwork (.com) and Vator.tv, while encouraging the great discussions had at places like news.yc and Reddit.

Just a place to showcase your companies, write about any of your experiences and have thoughtful discussions.

Which features do you think are somewhat complicated? I know I started off with a lot of features (which may not have been too wise), but I tried to keep it as simple as possible.

That said, I am very, very open to suggestions and will mold the site around the community, not the other way around.
Video Ads: Every Startup Has A Different Solution
Looking at the expression

(isnt it #\;)

I'm assuming "it" is an implicit variable meaning the result of the last expression. I'm also assuming since you have "isnt" you also have "is" and it's used like this:

(when (and (regex-match "[0-9]" foo) (is it 4))
(print "it is 4"))

Does boundp exist in Arc, or are unset variables null? I've always thought making them null would make code shorter, though it might cause more problems than it's worth.
Why wait for Apple?

http://openmoko.org/

I'm pretty excited about this... I can't wait to see where it goes.
Update on the design - Dan saw the previous version with the rounded version and character and was fine with it. Either way, I think I'm going to stick with the new design just to keep far away from any confusion.
Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki
Best of Craigslist: To the gay guy that I inadvertantly flirted with. Sorry.
if you need a good laugh check this out.
video:iPhone can cause problems (like addiction-caused family conflicts - entertaining :)
I get what you're saying re Guy's common sense rhetoric, however his business of selling books and hosting seminars appears really successful. What do you make of that?
Step 2) Invest and repeat
The trouble with getting VCs to advertise is that their preferred way to generate deal flow is through trusted relationships. It would be difficult to do this purely through advertising (and it costs them less to just use word of mouth, not that they are tight on the money these days...).

Getting startups to advertise isn't very logical either because most of the time the target audience isn't the so-called TechCrunch 50K (unless they are advertising a job opening, but again, this is more often that not fulfilled through word of mouth and personal recommendations).

This is an unfortunate reality of the way the world works (although arguably word of mouth is a lot more effective in some cases).

Honestly, I think you're best chance at monetization is advertising for companies that provide the proverbial "picks and shovels" to startups--cut a deal with a hosting company, a domain registrar, The Company Corporation (to register as an LLC or C/S-Corp). Perhaps you'd have better luck getting some lawyers that deal with this stuff to advertise on there. (Think about this: you know who all the big VCs are, but do you know any good lawyers?) There are few other types of services that fall into this category. It would be neat to let people rate their experiences with different service providers.
Who Applied to Techcrunch TECH20?
So are Robert Kiyosaki's books and seminars, but if you actually have a clue about finance and the industry, you know he's a total sham.
I felt the same way after reading Guy's book.

I do not deny that the book sells well, all I'm saying is that for the serious (aspiring) entrepreneur, it's not worth the money or the time.
I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think any YC-funded startups did. The problem is that you have to launch at the event. Most startups can't plan their launch so precisely so far in advance.

You should launch as soon as you're ready, and no sooner. Usually you don't know when that will be till a few days before.
While making a cursory clickthrough to your site, the first thing I noticed was that higher-than-default font sizes flows outside the divs and disappear. I have seen this on several sites (even some large ones), but that doesn't change the fact that it's a bit bothersome. I just wanted to let you know in case you weren't aware of the issue.
Looks different enough to me, at least at the current time.
is is just CL eq (or rather eql)

Unset variables are not null; that would lead to horrible
bugs. But I don't think boundp exists either. So far I
haven't needed it.
I really liked Art of the Start. I read it cover to cover in a day, and then read a couple of his previous books.

However, when reading his earlier books I noticed that a lot of the ideas had been picked up by other bloggers, e.g. Seth Godin. Because of this, the book didn't seem nearly as insightful as it would have if I read it when it was published.

I suspect the same would be true today for AotS because of all the VC bloggers. While many VCs did have blogs two years ago, most of them weren't giving that kind of practical advice at the time. Paul Kedrosky and Fred Wilson had yet to publish many of their best columns, and Venture Hacks and Presentation Zen didn't even exist. Not to mention that PG had only published the first two or three of his essays on startups, the ones in Hackers and Painters (not counting the essays on lisp/coding).
I thought that's what personal consciences were for... no religion, lifecasting, etc. necessary.
Since I haven't used a language where unset variables are null or tried to design one, I'll assume you're right. I haven't had to use boundp much in Lisp, but I've had to use its equivalents in other languages quite a bit when working on other people's code for money. I suspect that boundp showing up in code a lot is a sign of badness - most likely in the choice of variable scope. I'm not sure if leaving it out will encourage people to write better code or just write their own workarounds.

Edit: aand binding test results to "it" reminds me of Apple's Hypercard. I will read the entire thread carefully before asking questions next time.
This is true and probably explains part of my frustration with the book. The first pieces I ever read on startups were PG's, so I suppose by the time I read AotS, all the points were sort of cliches.
I applied, just today. It was a last minute thing. I didn't want to push my launch to September, but realized that I can release a private beta while waiting for the results in August. If selected, it's a one month delay and it's worth it because I would get publicity that I can't get otherwise.

I'm not YC-funded. If you're curious, my startup is in my profile.

Plus, I just read a post here yesterday about the benefits of collecting a lot of emails to announce the launch to; and I like that strategy.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32696
That's a clever solution to a difficult problem. I hope they see this.
I know of two other startups that applied that had a social bookmark app. I think all of you guys have a chance. Good luck!
Kiyosaki is one of the worst scammers of all time. His books are not only wrong but dangerous to your financial health. Absolutely irresponsible. He got rich by writing books about how to get rich. This is a must read:

http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html
Very smart! We haven't applied either... for a multitude of reasons.
Lots of Guy haters here... why? AoS is an excellent book. If you followed his "obvious" advice, you'd do well. Fact is, there really are no big secrets to being successful. All it takes a lot of effort, tenacity, ethics and perseverance. Guy's AoS captures these perfectly. Look at successful people... many of them have no formal education and no degrees from Ivy schools. WHat they do have are those qualities I mentioned above... and they excel at them. Because his book has a lot of common sense in it, that should tell you something: just do it! Persevere, release that app... get the feedback and iterate until it works and the feedback becomes positive. Never give up!
Personally I didn't get very much useful out of AoS. As others have mentioned, most of the advice was simply common sense, at least if you've already read PG's essays. I also found the writing style to be annoying and gimmicky -- one "top 5 list" after another, and terms like "make mantra" and "rainmaker", for example. In general, the book felt like it over-promised and under-delivered. For example, the book is not for "anyone starting anything", it is plainly about how to start a startup company, and not a school, charity or non-profit organization. Chapters on bootstrapping, raising venture capital, and pitching investors aren't very relevant to a typical charity organization, to the best of my knowledge. Although I bought the book with only an interest in learning about startups, there's something to truth in advertising...

Then again, I put the book down after a few chapters, as I wasn't getting anything out of it -- but in fairness, I should probably give it another try.
Read this some years back during the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" craze. It opened my eyes I can tell you that.
I totally agree that "Art of the Start" is a waste of time. It reads as if Guy just collected a couple years worth of notes and Powerpoint slides from his inane pep talks and grinded them up into book form. And yet, paradoxically, it is difficult to criticize Guy. The very fact that he has managed to achieve some measure of Internet renown from the warmed-over banalities in "Art of the Start" represents a certain type of business success that I can't help but begrudgingly admire.

In a strange way Guy reminds me of a fascinating series of articles about Noka Chocolate that I read some time back (http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&file=art... While the author of the series clearly demonstrates that Noka chocolate is grossly overpriced and deceptively marketed, I ended up respecting Noka's chutzpah for convincing so many people to pay an exponentially higher price for repackaged Bonnat chocolate.

Such is Guy. He repackages the same slogans and epigrams that you can't throw a rock in the business section of any bookstore without hitting, and yet he is perceived as a creative business author. His entrepreneurial resume shows only the Web 0.01 Nutsack that is Truemors, and yet he has convinced a respectable cross-section of our industry that he knows something about building startups. You have to respect that. Guy Kawasaki: the Noka Chocolate of Startup Gurus.
This project has already earned a spot at the Errata page for Agile Web Development with Rails:

http://books.pragprog.com/titles/rails2/errata (page 25)
i know of at least 1 YC startup that has applied
sounds like a pretty cool dude...
This is silly. Guy Kawasaki is a good writer, and his books are good, inspiring books. They are not full of secrets, nor are they going to guarantee you success, but they do sum up a lot of things you need to know to be successful. Maybe you already know them, and if so, that's great! You've got a head start. Not everyone does.

I really enjoyed his Art Of The Start talk. I also found "Selling the Dream" among the best marketing books available, along-side Ogilvy on Advertising, "Focus"/"Marketing Warfare" (either one will do, as they are effectively the same theme by the same authors), and "What's the Big Idea?" by George Lois. As someone else mentioned, Seth Godin has successfully re-purposed quite a bit of "Selling the Dream" into "Permission Marketing" (and it wasn't original when Guy was pushing it over ten years ago). It doesn't mean "Permission Marketing" sucks, it just means some things are worth repeating.
I actually got something useful out of the "rich dad, poor dad" book. I don't care if it is made up or not, but I like his encounter with the aspiring young author who thinks she is so much more worthy as a writer than he is. He then explains to her that he is known as "best selling author", not "best writing author". His books teach a good lesson about marketing, just think how much money he made just by choosing a catchy title.

The other thing where I think he is right is that you have to start trying things to gain experience. I know it sounds trivial, but it isn't (I don't think many people would think about investing in that way, anyway).
"If your competitor builds a more interactive site
than yours, customers will flee to the flashier foe"

That must be the reason, why no one uses Google anymore.
Just a bit of feedback for your ziizo demo site. A bit off-topic, but I didn't see contact details on your site (I reckon you should show your email or at least a contact form).

A like the name -- short and easy to remember. Nice clean/simple looking site. Nifty idea to not have a search button at all.

Just wondering about "adapots to your needs". Adapts? Also, the demo site was a little sluggish, even just to show the Login page. I don't think it was my end.
In general, combining multiple packages that each attempt to perform concurrent operations is error prone, especially if they use locking. The STM papers make an interesting argument for why using transactions rather than locks as the typical concurrency primitive leads to concurrent programs that can be more easily composed.
Sprint "fires" needy customers
I've learned of this option in theory, but who would dare do that explicitly?
Thanks for the feedback. I added the contact email. The sluggishness is probably due to the flash videos on the home page. Not sure how to get around that. I'll think of something. Yes, it's adapts not adapots. Fixed.
Procrastination: Ten Things To Know
The iPhone Threat to Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Real, BREW, Symbian
5 Strategies To Web Work Without Distractions
I read this article in the WSJ this morning. Sprint released users who were essentially abusing the system (making on average 25 calls per month). These thousand users were probably not profitable for Sprint with their increased strain on the tech support. I think this is a reasonable course of action for Sprint, and it ought to benefit the remaining Sprint customers.
Lots of Guy haters here... why?

This comment sums it up nicely: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26958
Nokia N800 does what iPhone doesn't
Is there more content in the dead tree version, or is it all online at that site?
Good article. One thing it says resonates with me--the part about developers choosing to avoid flash since the iPhone won't support it. Our app has reporting and charting as a main feature and some of the best charting components are flash-based. I've already decided to find something else (JS/CSS/whatever) so that it can run on the iPhone.
I have one and I think it has a decent chance of holding its own against the iPhone.

There's a need for tiny computers. For programmers, the iPhone doesn't cut it, because the user doesn't have enough control. Unless Apple makes the iPhone more open, there's room for someone else to make the device a lot of hackers end up carrying in their pockets. And what hackers use, they write apps for, which in turn makes the device more valuable for everyone else. Like the Apple II.

If you can't be root on your own computer, then it's not a computer.
Very Interesting ! - especially the idea of using a count of the parse tree to optimize the language. Can you tell us anything about how well (or if) Arc is converging to a potentially releasable state?
Am I right in guessing you've worked for smallish organizations? I've seen some amazing programmers promoted, mostly as a mechanism to pay them more. I've even seen one forced to quit after not accepting repeated promotion attempts.

IMHO the single most important advice for any hacker who wants to be happy is to avoid large organizations, even Google. Large organizations are the plague, a small company is good medicine, and your own startup is the cure.
Free And Cool Web 2.0 Badges
http://download.archub.com/arc-0.99r1.tar.gz
"Search engine" is an amazingly ambiguous term, to the point of being almost meaningless. It can refer to anything from a one-line SQL query to Google's system. Searching data that's completely under your control just isn't very difficult in general. When money is no object it's usually trivial, just throw memory at it. I look forward to the many clueless articles claiming this is a challenge to Google.
Is that url correct? I get a "Server Not found" result for download.archub.com though archub.com works fine.

Could be a server in the middle I guess.

Can someone reading this attempt a download and post the result here?
New: Initial text in discussions
Now when you post a question for discussion, you can supply some additional explanation that will show up here at the top of the discussion page. I'm not 100% sure this is a feature. The previous version at least forced people to be brief. We'll see how things go.
Don't you believe there are people like the guy described in the Consumerist article who have to keep calling the support because Sprint continuously fails to do their part?

In any case, I think it's bad PR for a company to tell their customers their business is not wanted anymore. Of course it's a problem if your customers aren't profitable after all things are considered, but wouldn't there be more reasonable courses of action?

If a customer isn't satisfied, try to help them. You might learn something doing that. If you don't think you can satisfy a customer, tell them that and try to negotiate an agreeable solution. With early termination fees, the customer feels they must get the subscription to work or they lose something. If a customer is wasting your time, make them understand that. Perhaps you need to bill more for some of the support.
Sorry, I was joking. I've seen the "arc we there yet?" question asked so many times I feel the need to tease. I made sure to reply here quickly though :-)
no harm done :-)

Just to clarify, I didn't ask for a downloadable. I just wanted a sense of whether arc was converging or not and how the language evolved and what was learned. e.g: the decision to have constants in function call position return themselves. I would really love to know how that came about (though it maybe burdening Paul too much to ask him to write down how he came to that design decision :-) )

I find language design fascinating. One of my favorite books is Stroustroups' "The design of the C++ language". It is not often one can ask question while the language design/evolution is going on.

The question wasn't intended to be "Is Arc ready?" but rather "what is your sense of where the language is going?" .
iPhone Hacked For Shell Access
Apple has been pretty good at leaving an outlet open for the hacker steam to escape. You can install Linux on your iPod and write any application you want. Hackers already have shell access to the iPhone. It won't be long before it's running Linux. And it's not open enough for me, but lots of hackers love Mac OSX.
I expect that ] to close all open parens would lead to code that is even tighter jammed to the left margin. I like that I feel comfortable writing nested code in Lisp, and if I was always looking for somewhere to put a ] I'd be tempted not to write nested code, and hence start leaking private identifiers.
Allow users to choose to either add a comment or add a sub-link to the primary link. It's amazingly common to have great links burried in the comments. It would be great if there was a way to have them show up near the top, under the primary link.
The Bible is full of ridiculously common sense stuff. Some people still manage to use it as a tool to keep them doing those common sense things. That one doesn't strike my fancy, but I have some books that are similar for me.

It's so easy to understand a concept intellectually and yet fail to practice it on a day-to-day basis. Books can be a tool to refresh your thinking and get a (partially) objective point of view. A clear-thinking real person is almost always best, but books can be used in total privacy and on-demand.