skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As I understand these terms:

A scope is the duration (in code, not time) during which an identifier (name) is bound to a value (thus becoming a variable). When a variable is said to "go out of scope", what is meant is that the execution leaves the scope in which the name is bound, rendering it invalid (which is why, eg, in C++ automatic (local/stack) variables get destructed when execution leaves their scope - it is invalid and can no longer be accessed.

C++:

{ // In C++ we can create arbitrary "scopes"
int a = 5; // Bind the name 'a' to some variable
...
} // 'a' is not accessible after here, because the scope is terminated by the }

Clojure:

(let [a 10] ; Bind the identifier 'a' to the value '10'
; 'a' can be accessed here
...) ; This ')' closes the scope, so 'a' is no longer accessible

An environment is a special kind of scope that includes functions, variables, classes etc. In some languages this distinction is more important than others (ie, languages with first class functions, normal function-level scopes may contain function definition, whereas languages like C++ do not allow this). I think generally an environment can be thought of as a table of functions and values (usually named, eg, think of shell environment variables) which can be accessed in the current execution context (what is currently being executed). A language may define an environment to have different things, such as I/O functions, state etc, or a language may not have a notion of environment outside of a global collection of names/identifiers bound to something.

A closure is a function (anonymous or named) which "closes over" (captures) the variables in the environment or scope in which it is defined, essentially capturing those variables and/or values. The distinction between variable and value is important here. Eg, Python captures the variable, so if the variable is assigned a different value between when the closure captures it and when the closure is evaluated (called as a function), the closure will see the new value. If it were instead to capture the value, then the changes will not be visible. Java, for example, only allows final (constant) variables to be used in locally defined classes - Java captures the variable but enforces value capture semantics by forcing the variables to be constant.

A continuation is a representation of the programs execution. You could think of a continuation as a jmp_buf used with C's longjmp and setjmp functions. The current continuation is a representation of the next point of execution.

For example:

function foo (a, continuation){
// do something with a
// call continuation
continuation();
}
...
1: call_with_current_continuation(foo, 10); // call/cc function foo
1:

Line 1 calls the function foo, passing the current continuation as the last argument. foo calls the continuation at the end, which essentially returns program execution to the continuation, which is line 2. Used in this way, a continuation is the same as a return statement or function. Of course, you can use continuations to jump anywhere, not just the caller. For example, you can use continuations to implement coroutines or exception handling.
"losing money while nobody cares"

tl;dr it's really hard to come up with a technology that justifies the investment in that domai
Net neutrality is politics. I'm just saying this is the least of our political worries right now. When the president and half the democrats are also anti-net neutrality, basically it's gone.
By less well-funded public services let's be clear here that this means people who are already getting services for free simply feel that they would just like more free stuff, thankyouverymuch. Well, we would all like more, whether that's stuff or people doing things for us. But the world doesn't owe you a living.

The beneficiaries of a stable banking system are just as much the man in the street paying his mortgage or working in a factory as anyone.
Not political controversy, just the psychological aspect that it was The Secret Service, the dramatic earpiece-wearing folks in movies who keep the president from being shot, not to mention a police agency with the conspiracy-driving word "secret" in their name. If we instead had the U.S. Government Computer Crime Agency, it'd be a lot more pedestrian.
Show HN: Simple palette explorer using Colourlovers API
If I am not mistaken, setting up a working telecom startup is quite capital intensive, and has high running costs on top of it, just in terms of handling Marketing and competitive pressures.

How would a new startup survive and scale by any change in rules? The market would still serve the incumbents more than the startups - since their scale would make them stronger bets.

I'm curious to know what type of regulation would help circumvent the high startup cost and create genuine competition.

Edit: I am genuinely interested to know what regulation the original poster had in mind, or any other regulation that would help achieve his stated goal.
It's been a mess for a long time. And it's not just the Republicans. Anyone with a brain can look back over the past 20-30 years and see the fingerprints of both parties all over the collective disaster that is the current situation politically, financially and militarily.
For everybody hating on the author, he is not just a nay sayer, he actually offered a valid solution. Also there is nothing that will disenfranchise employees faster than tying their income to something that they cannot control. Also, Google has dominated search, web mail, smartphones, this author is just lending advice on how to bring it all together for social. It might be just me but I would rather have friends tell me what's wrong with me than praise me all the time.
From the guidelines (linked in the footer):

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
I thought I read that if the current bill passes the president would veto it. Is it because he's pro-net-neutrality or anti-anything-republican? The last question isn't partisan, it's a perfectly valid reason for a democrat president to veto a republican-led bill. Happens the other way, too.
Like a functioning government, why do you ask?
I personally (tho' I don't think this idea will ever catch on) would like to see tax fixed, but optional. Let's say for sake of argument $10,000/year. Those who pay get a vote in how it's spent but there is no penalty for not paying.
Having an incubator in South Africa is actually more noteworthy than if it were "Startups in the Congo".

Here in South Africa, as other commenters pointed, we still don't have a strong software industry, neither from the academic side, nor from the hacker culture side.

However, in comparison to other African countries, we have a developed infrastructure. We have fast broadband access (although only recently), and access to current technology (smartphones etc), which is not as much the case in north african countries. That means that the sort of startups could be on the same global level, as opposed to targeting different (region specific) problems or technology.

We also have strong universities that could become strong software universities, given enough pressure.

One other significant difference that I've come to realize after lots of thinking about it, is that South Africa is one of the very few countries in the world that is first language English...outside of America and England (Australia would be the other). This obviously makes a huge difference in terms of potential for first class membership in the same industry / network. So to some degree we have had South Africa almost hiding away as an unattended asset in this regard. This is probably acts as a large hurdle in European / Asian / other African countries and puts SA in a different category.

Also noteworthy, is the fact that (as far as I know) this is Google first proper incubator project anywhere in the world. Viewing this as part of Google's "Africa Project", for all these reasons, would be looking at it from completely the wrong point of view (IMO).
This is interesting, because it works on the same principal as software piracy: The original isn't "stolen" it's merely copied. The original is still intact.

I'm wondering if the same people that are so zealous and pro-piracy would be fine with someone taking their site and duplicating it.
Ask HN: Did Leibniz beat Newton?
In The Information, Jame Gleick posits that Leibniz "triumphed" over Newton during Babbage's time, becoming the preferred Calculus. Is today's Calculus more Leibniz than Newton?
My point is that there is little empirical basis for these criticisms. In the absence of this, what basis do I have to trust this author's intuition? His experience running enterprises like Google? His experience managing some of the brightest engineers in the world? Or his experience chasing an ephemeral position on Techmeme?
It probably has more to do with how few people understood that the Secret Service is was really more like the Treasury Police, and protecting the President was only a small part of what they did. The protective details are the only thing interesting enough to make movies about, hence the mystique.
I'm not complaining it's inappropriate, certainly it's on topic, just highly misinformative.

Honestly I thought people had gotten over ignorantly repeating the "Loudness Wars" meme by now.
Even if you don't get really into tea you might just try making a cup of tea with hot water instead of boiling water and only let it steep for 2-3 minutes (ie. don't just leave the bag sitting in the cup while you drink). I've found that it can give the tea a better flavor with less bitterness. There certainly is a whole world of loose leaf teas to explore, but at the same time, it's plenty possible to make a really good cup of tea from a standard tea bag.
While South Africa is more industrialized than other African countries, I think you are selling Google short here. They are intentionally expanding to the African continent- a hugely populous region currently under-served. While South Africa might be more developed than the rest of the continent, people there must undoubtably know the African market better than Googlers in Silicon Valley. Seems like a smart move to capture a growing mobile market.
I've had a similar experience. WiFi doesn't work, no room to use laptop anyway. Also, something be aware of, if you book a trip with a connection and your bus misses the connection, they will not take responsibility. You will be stuck where you are unless you book a new ticket. Customer service is extremely difficult to contact as well, I was in this situation and the "Sales Representative" only offered to sell me a new ticket. I couldn't even talk to anyone from customer service.
Startup Founder Lessons: Fahd Butt on Why thinkpanda.com Failed
Every time someone says this I think back to the politics of the 19th century, or the early 20th. It's probably true that we're at a depressing ebb of productivity and good faith in national politics, but politics 'twas ever thus. You think Fox News is bad? Try Hearst's papers in the 1890s.

There are 307 million people in the United States. That the three million? people of in the original colonies managed to agree on a system of government that scaled this far and this well over so many diverse interests and conflicting worldviews is astonishing.
Ask HN: Aspera expertise?
I am looking to talk to and hire a consultant who has experience working with Aspera On-Demand for AWS.

It would be great to have a chat first up to get some technical assumptions out of the way.

Look forward to! Thanks!
nobody cared about Clojure? Scala? Go? D? the macros that PG used to build his storefront generator? I am asking about a general framework for valuing the creation of a new language and it's attendant components, considered alone. The network effects required to popularize a language are not truly, in my opinion, to be considered "costs" because such a network peforce is a considerable asset. In other words, if you own a network that can make a new language valuable, then that in iteself is one valuable metric for the worth of your network.
Investing vs. Wasting Budget on SEO
I was surprised to see the mention that dynamic mics are more expensive. Perhaps when looking at mics specifically designed for podcasting this is true, but not in general.

If you want a general purpose, gold-standard inexpensive mic, go with a Shure SM-58 or SM-57. They're designed for live performance, so they're really durable. They sound pretty good for the price, which is under a hundred bucks.

Also, it's weird that the article talks about "XLR mics" as if they're something special - XLR is just a type of connector, and it's the type that 99% of all mics use anyway. USB and anything else is the exception, and you're paying a big premium for a USB mic.

IMO if you ever plan on using your mic or the rest of your recording equipment for anything besides podcasting, you're better off NOT getting gear specifically designed for podcasting. No matter what you're recording, the fundamentals of a good sound are the same - a good mic, good preamp (which excludes most preamps built into live mixers, though the Mackie Onyx pres are pretty good), and a good analog to digital converter (which the Onyx doubles as too). If you get a condensor mic, you need to make sure your preamp has an option for "phantom power", which is what your mic will need in order to work.

Actually, the most important consideration here is YOUR VOICE. There's a reason that professional recording studios always have multiple vocal mics - different mics are best for different voices. If you've got a nasal or high-pitched voice, make sure you get a mic that can counter that and make you sound more soothing. If you have a deep voice (like me!), make sure you get a mic that can bring out the higher frequencies enough that you don't sound like a movie preview all the time.

Lastly, make sure your recording location is QUIET and has minimal echo/reverb. If you have to record halfway in a closet, so be it - your listeners will thank you.
This has pretty much been my process with it. I started using it sometime last year. Fumbled completely for a day or so, but started out just using menus and slowly changing to keyboard commands. That, and googling when I wanted some behavior that wasn't immediately clear to me.

What I need to do now is read a fairly substantial book/site to tell me about the things I don't even know I would want to know. The Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns.
Compressors, depending on how they are set (eg, very, very short attack time), act as limiters which will reduce the amplitude of a transient sound. I assumed this is what the article was referring to based on the perceived result. Since transients tend to be perceived as louder, you're going to notice when they're not there.
Very interesting comment. For me the line is profiting from the copied content/software. I am opposed to people selling pirated movies on the streets and not so to people downloading and watching them in their homes.
I'm working on something like that -- I'm starting with discovering where you can go on your airline miles, but it's all visual. I'm planning on integrating suggestions of low miles tickets where your friends are. I know this isn't quite what you're suggesting, but I'll be getting there :)

I just have a launch page up right now: http://flybymiles.com - but private beta coming next week.

In the meantime check out http://wanderfly.com - they could use a much better recommendation engine, but the content is there (ie: beach for $500)
So is starting an airline, but deregulation still got us Southwest and Jetblue.
Recorded for posterity that somebody voted this non-sequitor comment up.
W3 suggests tables are okay for presentational data as well?
IS IT the same principle? Usually pirated software distributors don't claim original authorship.

I'm not saying that the "merely copied" argument is correct, I'm just saying that I think the situations are different.
List of identity facets, revised (response to Ev Williams)
That's probably the most convoluted sign-up process I've seen in a while.

On the landing page, they ask for an email address, and the hint is "you@myopera.com". So I enter "me@myopera.com" since they must be asking what I want my Opera address to be.

Nope. The next page puts that email in a username field, with another email address field below it, and a password field.

OK, so what kind of email address do they want now? A confirmation address? Crap. me@myopera.com is an invalid username. Hmm, maybe I'm supposed to put "me" in the username field and me@myopera.com in the email field.

Great, they sent a confirmation email to me@myopera.com, which I just created and evidently can't use until I confirm the email address.

Fuck it. Back to Gmail.

Honestly, how hard is this?

1. "Sign up" link
2. Username
3. Password
4. Done. Show me my inbox with my email address prominently displayed somewhere.
Your story is really moving. Have you found a techie co founder?
The thing I like about riding the bus and trains versus plains is how low tech they are. When I fly it seems like 1000 people had to work together to ensure my safety, with buses it seems like 10 or 20.
Paleo traveling
I have often wondered, how do you go about this? A few tips from fellow hackers would be welcomed :)
one sneaky thing you could have done is to modify your site very slightly so that his site would load your ads instead of his. He wouldn't have noticed ;)
Cool Paleolithic Diet Blog
2nd half of Step 3 reminded me of Kent Beck's exhortation:

1) Make it run.

2) Make it right.

3) Make it fast.
Secondary Markets and Private Capital Formation Reform: A Distraction?
Did you read the article? There is a section entitled "Digital Compression" which actually seems to be just describing the nature of digital representation of sound, and what happens when you reduce the resolution of that representation ie. bit depth/sample rate. Then it awkwardly jumps into talking about MP3 compression. None of this is relevant to the "Loudness Wars" topic, which as you've rightly pointed out deals with dynamic range compression, yet all these things are referred to in the article. GP is confused by the inclusion of the unrelated material. The article is sloppy and unfocused.
What are some good books for tech company founders?
>Article points out the advantages of busses over high-speed rail, which has tended to get more press as being the future of mid-haul intercity

It doesn't have to be an either-or situation, as both modes have their strengths and weaknesses. For example, while bus is cheaper than rail, it still has to deal with the same problems that automobile traffic has to deal with (weather and traffic delays being the most common). HSR is more expensive than bus, but is faster (talking about real HSR, not the Acela) and it's cheaper to add capacity.

That said, buses and HSR are complementary in lots of ways and there's no reason why they can't work together (just like no one is asking people to choose between buses and cars, we can have both). One example is the joint-ticketing arrangement between the Amtrak Downeaster (Portland ME) and Concord Coach Lines. Buy a bus ticket and miss the bus? Just jump on the next train (and vice versa).
Could you change the title to something like

...is *OFFICIALLY* online

This is the author's repo, not another unofficial mirror.

I almost skipped over this post.
The Harvard Business Review
According to [1] tuition was $150 in 1900. According to [2] average annual wage was $450. Assuming women in the work place was a lot less common I will bump it to $500. So about 30% of household income? Harvard costs $34,976 in 2010. According to [3] median household income in 2009? is $49,777. So 70% of median income.

Prices as a percentage of average income has certainly gotten steeper but you cannot argue that things now are less open than they used to be. There are more women and minorities and scholarship opportunities for different groups. Certainly things could be a lot better but progress has surely been made. You can't throw a number like $100 without context.

[1] http://kwharbaugh.blogspot.com/2005/02/educational-costs.htm...

[2] http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
Spatial Bytes (http://spatialbytes.com) -- my lame old blog. As of Dec. 2010 I'm an official business in Chicago. Some ideas but no prototypes. For now, it's just consulting side gigs. I have another business in planning as an LLC with a prototype complete. I'm in the Hyde Park neighborhood.
For this exact reason Google Apps is one of my only choices. If Opera would do something similar I'd consider giving their service a try.
Their wifi is just a hub plugged into a 3G modem. If it's not working, your 3G probably isn't either.
And in the end, his insights were invaluable. Scotty helped save the day.
Google push “Reading level” feature to the masses.
RESTful Business Architecture
I think that education is continuous. We are trying to squeeze all learning, all education, and all wisdom in first 25 years of life. That is just wrong.
Turning the Classroom Upside Down
Most millionaires didn't get there without hiring anyone. They also pay for many other things that most likely require paying people (assistants, etc). So, those millionaires are providing jobs to the economy which in turn adds more tax revenue to the government.

"Why should I care what percentage the millionaire pays? Because if they pay a lower percentage, then I have to pay a higher percentage (or receive less well-funded public services)"

This is the problem with government entitlements. People get used to certain cervices and when you try to take them away (less tax revenue, no funding, etc), you get riots in the streets.

There are already problems with this line of thought in Sweden and France. The government has started cutting back because they can't afford these services anymore. I'm not surprised by this because the system just doesn't scale (I think of it like running a business).

The problem I see is that when you dump 60-70% of your money in taxes to the government, you don't have that much left over to save. In 10 or 15 years, if the government collapses, are you going to have enough to get by without it? Nobody thinks long-term, they only think about the now.
So you are saying LESS regulation is the change in regulation you would like to see?

So what regulations would you remove?
It strikes me that Larry Page shouldn't be making this decision about bonuses at all. It should be up to the head of social to make the call about how he wants to motivate his folks. One of the biggest complaints you hear in large organisations is that they don't get to reward their people how and when they want to. Larry Page just made this a problem for Googlers, big time.
The author used the word "weird" to refer to a language that is not commonly considered mainstream. So did I paraphrasing the title.
So, if I copied your startup (website, graphics, and name), and didn't make a profit on it (even if you were charging), it's okay?
The main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that there is still an original copy.

Just like with the OP's site.
Hmm, I'll definitely check that out. Thanks!
probably 10x more eco-friendly

I don't claim to have done the numbers myself, but during the volcanic shutdown last year, More Or Less' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd) presenter was stranded on the far side of Europe and calculated the emissions cost of travelling back overland by various means as he did. The answer - it was roughly level; the problem wasn't so much the plane as the long-distance travel.
Brian’s functional brain in Lisp (vs Clojure)