skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can only rely on macroexpanding macros that you have some control over.

I think we're looking at this from exactly opposite directions. I'm not talking about code-walking pre-existng macros, but rather providing hooks for other people to extend yours:

;; Completely hypothetical package management-system.
(define-module foo
(require 'bar)
(file "foo.ss")
(file "foo-tests.ss" :in-mode 'test))

There's a lot of macros like this in the Lisp world, and they define non-extensible DSLs. For example, you can't define a macro tested-file to eliminate the duplication above:

(define-module foo
(require 'bar)
;; Doesn't work:
(tested-file "foo"))

This could be supported if define-module internally called macroexpand-1 on unrecognized child forms until it saw either require or file. Then you could define a tested-file macro to extend define-module.

Note that the actual advisability of this approach varies greatly between Lisp and Scheme dialects.

Contrast the following ActiveRecord example:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :organization

state_machine :initial => :starting do
state :starting
state :online
state :stopping
state :offline
end
end

Here, we have a third-party state machine library extending ActiveRecord. This is just one of several places where many Lisp macros tend to be broken or inflexible.

Of course, macros are a very useful tool. But they have limitations, and other languages also provide interesting mechanisms for "writing programs that write programs", with different tradeoffs.

You should never write a def-your-class macro.

Well, even if the CLOS metaobject protocol does solve this problem, it doesn't fix defsystem, or any of the other thousand non-extensible defblah forms in the Lisp community.
https://github.com/ashleyw/phrasie

I believe it's pretty rough (and nearly all of the commits are "Misc. changes") but still. It's a port of some similar work in Python.
The Chromebooks have 16GB of storage. Last I checked that was more then enough to hold 700MB.

You should be able to download all the photos locally to the Chromebook. Granted I don't have a one but on the Cr-48 it simulates a local filesystem for downloaded files/etc.

Ultimately though it comes down to get the tool that works for you.
Sometimes it's worth asking because researching it yourself brings little value compared to a honest exchange with a knowledgeable person. This exchange is a two-way process and a worthwhile path to travel along in itself, to which asking is only the entry point. Core to the hacker ethos and at the heart of the Internet, Unix, open-source and free software is that exchanging ideas increments both persons knowledge. The key lies in the way and the intent with which you ask: don't ask to receive, but ask to build yourself.

(I can't seem to write something about the workplace without getting personal and it wouldn't be wise currently)
Feynman simplified. Best caricature ever.
Ironic that this concept is identical to the very first implementation of Facebook itself.
I would happily work for this guy. Seems like an opportunity to be both a programmer and help out with operations too. Sounds fun.
my follow count has no merit,the most I have is that I help build a 60 million dollar a year business ect.. again I didn't want to come at this from a bad place, I was trying to start a conversation that should be had
Here is an example of it in action: http://www.mavenlink.com/community/tutorials/134-google-task...
Not to make this a mutual admiration society, but I couldn't agree more. I sent that BusinessWeek article to all of my friends that work for Google and eff-book.

One of the problems is that doing innovative things is, by defacto, riskier. I perceive that the general appetite for risk has decreased a lot for whatever reason.

People are happier than ever hitting singles or doubles rather than opting for the grand slam that really revolutionizes industries and... solves the goddam problem. It's been the hardest thing for me to hire smart/talented people to join an awesome team with a bold vision alone when well capitalized companies can provide safety, enticing salaries, back massages, free food/beer.

One thing that I think could help are solving problems that are really concrete and tangible -- Like putting a man on the moon. We need more of that sort of drive in order for people to be inspired to swing for the fences.
That analysis looks wrong to me -- Adam Engst claims that the developers can't settle with Lodsys because it would "affect Apple's rights or bind Apple in any way". That's wrong. Lodsys isn't claiming anything against Apple's rights -- they are claiming the developer's "buy now" button violates their patent, and there's no reason why the developer and Lodsys can't settle this between them, without it affecting Apple's rights or binding Apple at all.

I think it's an absolute bullshit patent and I hope everyone vigorously fights it, but there's no reason why developers can't settle, if they feel they should.

I'd love to see Apple indemnify developers, too, but that would probably create as big a headache for Apple as this situation will.
Moses its true I was on SUL and you bleed a lot of fake accounts, I am investor only by buying stock of Blaine Cook one of the early guys there. I hope u are super well
my experience has been that the ease with which mechanical work can be done is directly proportional to the quality of your manual.

During the first .com, I owned a '92 bmw 325is. Fun car, but don't take it to a mechanic. I mean, parts weren't /that/ much more expensive, but mechanic time and parts markup was, I assume for the "well, if you can afford a bmw, you can help pay for my kid's braces" effect.

First I got the Chilton's brand "book of lies" and yeah, figuring out how to do even simple mechanical things was pretty difficult. I ended up wiring a bunch of stuff in with 24awg wire.

Later I bought the 'bently publishing' manual for the thing, and god damn. everything was really simple, and it all fit perfectly.
I try :) I care, context matters and so does intent and I want to engage!
Dolls houses is something you can make with virtually no space - and because it's furniture in miniature some of what you learn can scale up when you've got more room. Things like measuring, marking, joints, and wood types all apply - if you can accurately build something at 1/12th scale you can prob build it full size. And it costs virtually zero. And your kids will LOVE you for it.
No idea. I've never used a Sansa.
Code_duck I really agree with your overall thesis on this but please know we are a small shop and I am not really looking to take over the social media world, not what i am really looking to do, but thnx for keeping it real!
No technical limits were hit. They have nearly the same feature set.

Geocoder's api feels a little bit more modern Geokit (rails3 vs 2). Having read the code for both, Geocoder was cleaner and would be easier to tweak if necessary.

So really it's just a preference: they do the same thing.
In all this you are glossing over what ownership really means (whatever that might be), and how that particular meaning is justified. It is inadequate to simply proclaim it all as some axiom. You need to explain it rationally.

Let us assume mixing of labour gives ownership. Does that mean the owner can demand everyone pay not just when buying the product, but every time they use it? or every time their descendants use it? or every time they merely think of it? That surely sounds absurd. But what makes that absurd and not lesser rights? Aren't they all fruits of the original labour? Wouldn't they all offer economic benefit to the creator? How are the limits set to what rights the creator should be given?

You speak of the objectiveness and deducibility of moral rules. That is fine. So deduce the rightness of payment-for-copies, as opposed to the wrongness of payment-for-thoughts etc..

Somehow you are really going to need to refer to the real-world and its effects on people. What else is more fundamental? and that people really care about? And if you are to stay within any kind of bounds of normal ethics, any rules must be somehow general or universalisable -- that is what makes a rule ethical.

(A Kantian demonstration of the immorality of lying really depends on two things: universalisation of lying as a rule, and the substance of what lying does. Something is found contradictory in general -- what? the actual effective features concerned.)

Just look at the facts of reality. IP imposes restrictions on a beneficial abundance (copyability), where there is no intrinsic need. It is logically possible to compensate people for labour with no restriction on copies. And if you are not interested in the actual effects, why propose rules that have actual effects? Why not simply say that creations are owned in principle, but that everyone need only acknowledge that, and not in any way change their behaviour? Real rules need real justifications.
1) His website says his patents are owned by Lodsys and Webventions. I did not see anything that said he runs those companies. What I find by Googling is that one or both of these companies may be owned by Intellectual Ventures, or if not owned by IV, they likely acquired their Abelow patents from IV. Abelow seems to be at least two steps removed from both companies.

2) I see nothing in those Google searches that shows a history of patent trolling, unless you are using a very broad definition of patent trolling (one so broad as to be close to meaningless).
They should (in advance) post the exact algorithm by which they choose the pseudorandom results, and (on lottery day) post a truly-random seed selected by a process performed in public or verified by independent observers. Then anyone would be able to verify the lottery results after the fact.
No one so self-aware that they can openly discuss their shortcomings and their fears is "mentally still in high school".

Discussing them openly does have consequences, though. Especially for those following you who may not see it in the same light. As shown in the comments of this thread many are vicious against it and see it as weakness. In my experience, though, those who do share the same frame of mind as the OP (Many of whom are very successful leaders) see it as a strength.

So I partially agree in that perhaps it's wise to keep it to close confidants I disagree that this is something that needs to be rallied against.

It's lonely at the top in a startup. Figuring out where to go can destroy you if you let it. It's like guiding a ship through a thick fog (The doubt) and the only thing getting you through it is the lighthouse (Your determination to never give up and belief in the idea) and the skills you've developed to steer the ship away from the rocks to get to the lighthouse. I'd doubt anyone's ability to get through that if they weren't unsure and constantly questioning themselves. Over-confidence is the killer of great performance.
IANAL, but let me share with you how this works from the perspective of someone who is well versed in being kicked in the nuts by people with more expensive lawyers.

The person with the advantageous position gets to demand indemnification. Everyone else gets to pound sand.

The chances of app developers receiving indemnification from Apple is nil for some reasons that are lawyer-ish, and some that are basic math. Consider that there are thousands of app developers, and only one Apple. If the agreement granted indemnification to every app developer, Apple would be on the hook for a whole lot of attorneys in cases just like this. No lawyer is going to put that in to a contract, because it violates the client's interests. In other words, "you're on your own buddy."
What I'm saying is that the research team pulled their hypothesis out of their collective asses.

It's like blaming TV because people want to take Viagra. No mention that the Viagra actually works wonders, in many senses, for someone suffering from ED or in this case, a readily available opioid in pill form dispensed by a credible source that does exactly what it is designed to do.

> since it is well known that these drugs are easily available online

whenever a researcher uses the phrase "since it is well known", one should automatically discount their work.

What is well known, or should be by both authors, is that these drugs are easily available at hospitals (A. B. Jena) and pharmacies (D. P. Goldman).
I don't think the author thinks it's better elsewhere. I assume he's American and is just lamenting that this generation isn't living up to his standards. I don't really know that it matters how much innovation there is or isn't. We can always get better. I'd rather see this argument than the opposite.
I'd love to work for him. There is an opportunity for me to learn what he is learning, and to even help with ideas and researching.

He is ultimately doing exactly what he wants to be doing and from the looks of it he is working very hard at solving the issue of not knowing.
If you liked that series and want to check out some other good historical fiction, you might also like:

- the Belisarius series (starting with "An Oblique Approach") by Eric Flint and David Drake which is an alternate history / military science fiction series chronicling Belisarius' (one f the all time great Roman generals) war of survival against a being from our far future. My description doesn't really do it justice... it's a great read.

- the Ring of Fire series (starting with "1632"), also by Eric Flint, in which a small West Virgina mining town is suddenly moved to somewhere in Germany during the 30 Year's War. The first book is a little too pro-union for my taste, but it's still a good read. The series really blossoms a couple of books in when Flint opens things up into a shared universe and invites a lot of other authors to come and play
I don't disagree with you at all about the kid's behaviour. I just feel that it's odd to be surprised when kids do things like this, given the example provided by us adults.
Mental Illness and Startups
> If a TV show did pick on fifty random women from the street and start pointing out the flaws in their appearances then people would be rightfully upset about that too...

Isn't this exactly what entertainment shows do? I suppose they're not random women, but celebrities, but...
Patent troll shakes down iPhone app programmers
Ah the merits of off-the-books weekend work. I had a badly rutted moderately long driveway with drainage problems. One Saturday a Caltrans operator brought his grader over and for $1200, including a couple of truck loads of crushed rock, I got a driveway worthy of a public road.
Gah. I just told our corporate counsel that it was ok to use Dropbox because everything was secured "even the app" and all the files were encrypted on Dropbox's site.
Can anyone speculate as to what the ultimate goal of bringing this to FTC's attention is?
it isn't smart for a ceo to be publicly open about these weaknesses, but it is brutally honest, and i respect that. you may gain more than you lose from this post, but in general i have found that confidence in your ability to get it done and figure it our means everything, and that telling people you don't know what you are doing creates FUD in an organization.
This is true, but that is not to say solutions are not on their way. From this script that was submitted yesterday (https://gist.github.com/9c4955e5a3662e4cd5e1):

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API

http://chromium.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/audio/speci...

Real-time audiosynthesis is coming, but it will take a while to reach the level that Flash currently offers.
This is why people who say "ignore the trolls" are idiots. The internet makes trolling permanent and a mob affair. Your best strategy now is to fight back with your own better words, pranks, and trolling or else everyone simply assumes your silence means the mob is right.

Trust me on this, I am probably one of a handful of people who has been on the receiving end of a massive hateful mob and managed to kick the living shit out of them with just a blog and some hilarious jokes.
My first thought on reading Rowe's speech was this might be a symptom of public education itself. Do-gooders using other people's money to push their agenda (higher education is the American dream) on other people. It means the people making decisions are disconnected from the outcome and reality. The result is a distortion of of the market, and also the distortion of culture that not getting higher education is disrespected (as Rowe says). Unfortunately, Rowe wants to use the government to push his agenda.
This a completely off-topic and pendantic, but I just thought I'd throw this out there. On this page:

http://mailgun.net/pricing

I personally have a hard time parsing how much money $0.5 is. I'm assuming you're charging 50 cents per 1K messages. My mind groks $0.50 per 1K messages, much more easily.
Is it also true that you can't be a social media expert with <500k followers? I don't know the answer to that one, probably not.

It depends on the niche and market size. I know someone who runs a social media consultancy in the rural area I live who does well out of training people on this stuff and she only has about 800 followers. She's an expert to them, although she's obviously not Gary Vaynerchuk or whatever.
"Reality 86'd" A film by David Markey (a year with Black Flag)
Wow. That is an incredibly insightful, concise (and cynical) comment. Well said.
You're right. I was thrown off by the message higher in this thread that called them Torx screws. These are not Torx, they're pentalobes, and yeah, it's a non-standard by any reasonable measure.

That said, I'm still not agreeing with all this carping. You buy a product that's not advertised as having user-serviceable parts inside, then complain it's hard to service. I don't see folks complaining that the inside of their Android phone or Dyson vacuum are hard to hack, and that's what the iMac is equivalent to - it's an appliance. You trade away the flexibility of a desktop form factor for the coolness of the all-in-one.
That's cool Gary, hope you guys keep on keepin' it real! I was commenting from a theoretical, logical standpoint, not really about you or your company in particular. A touch of that pedantry for which Hacker News is noted. Here, the best kind of correctness is 'technically correct'.
I'm using Keypass with Dropbox to sync the db files. Without 2 factor. If you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, I'd suggest using separate databases. One for each client is a good method. You have to remember more passwords so your secretpass+clienthash method.

One thing about using a password manager is that it needs to be easily accessible or you will fail to enter all your assets in it, and it becomes less valuable. That's why I use Keypass & Dropbox which makes my passwords available on my Win7 workstation, my Android phone and my iBook.
Is it really a good idea for the RIAA to sue companies which have the cash reserves to purchase their clients outright?
I don't think we're ever not in test mode :)
$50 a year? I pay $36 a year for Grooveshark and I've yet to not be able to find a song I wanted to listen to.
>> I actually am able to digest the content from all of the comments, simply because I'm forced to devote a few moments more to them than before, rather than jumping to the "Top Votes"

I see your point. But for me, I often don't have time to digest everything. So if I'm going to only read some of the comments, I'd rather quickly find the best ones and read those.

I guess it just depends on your approach to how you consume HN comments. That's probably why this topic is so divisive.
What
did you want to bring that
book that I didn't want to be read
to
out of
up
for?
"work that cannot be outsourced welders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters."

The company I work in in Spain, big European hi tech multinational is planning to replace 92% of all welders with laser automatic machines.

Laser machines work 24/7, no unions, much less safety cost, better precisions, faster, and way cheaper.

Laser or plasma has been there for a long time, the cost is the thing that goes down and down.

Plumbers-> Now pipes are pre fabricated.
Electrician-> Very easy to do it yourself.
Carpenters->IKEA

No, people do not need people to fix the TV. They could go to the shop and buy a new one by 600$(in the near future is going to be 300$), people could buy a 30$ pendrive to see it on their computer.
A much too long article which basically says two things: HTML5 audio doesn't allow raw access to the audio data (which could be used for sample generation, making a spectrum analyzer, etc.), and doesn't have the fine control over timing that a game developer might hope for.
How many times has this been asked in the past month?
I can't find anything in a quick search, but I recall seeing a report ~15 years ago on what was considered sufficiently random for lotteries. It was kind of tiered, most low-level stuff was based on pseudo with a seed based on dice throw (i.e. they rolled something like 10d10 under specific conditions, then used that as seed) with some higher up stuff being die or ball pick. This was before having entropy generators (like an over level amp hooked to a A/D) being commonplace. Not sure what they like now, but I'm sure political/legal argued about it, yelled at each other and eventually settled on what was "random enough" fairly arbitrarily but sufficiently enough that no one complains. There's probably enough stuff around that needs to be "legally random" to have laws about it though.
+1

I hate the new system. Can I be any more explicit?

EDIT: I'm at -1 now and that's ok, because I have no other way to share my approval of the parent comment. If you enjoy reading long threads of +1, keep the scores hidden.
From the article:

...charges that Dropbox “has and continues to make deceptive statements to consumers regarding the extent to which it protects and encrypts therir data,” which amounts to a deceptive trade practice that can be investigated by the FTC.
Watch something borrowed online
watch something borrowed online
know it seems difficult to manage a situation where you do not want to hurt anyone, especially the person next to you. Now,
Christopher Soghoian[1] filed the complaint. I would assume he was concerned with the deceptive practices of Dropbox?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Soghoian
Given absolutely identical conditions, yes. Ignoring quantum effects. But rolling a die is definitely in the realm of chaotic behavior, especially when any reasonable force is applied, so extremely minor changes cause massive, unpredictable end results.

In practice, such precise conditions are completely impossible, and the end result is unpredictable as long as it tumbles enough times. Shake it around in a cup to randomize the starting location, and you're as good as you can get.
And we'll keep asking until it comes back. Pg better show amazing metrics of why the new system is better before I buy into it.
The many people happy with the change won't ask this question.
Great feedback, we'll fix this - thank you!
I got xanthippe = ill-tempered woman. Do you suppose she was the real reason that Socrates took the hemlock?
The Constitution is fine; the government's habit of ignoring it is the problem.

EDIT: The Constitution is fine; our habit of letting the government ignore it is the problem.