skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The points you describe are valid, but there are a few nits:

Regarding your first point, your referenced article makes a misstep of its own, conflating the implementation with the semantics. From the article: "Do some folks believe we’re still doing what Church did, i.e., to encode all data as functions and build all types out of ->?"

From a semantics perspective: Yes. If it makes it easier to reason about, then treat variables as nullary functions. In the Spineless, Tagless G-Machine paper, both values and thunks are represented as closures, which may or may not be evaluated. For example:

infiniteSeries :: [Integer]
infiniteSeries = iterate (1+) 1

Is this a variable or a function? Having a special case for Double ("a closure containing a value") versus [Integer] ("a closure containing a thunk") is a distinction only important once the implementation becomes an issue (ie, lazy evaluation affecting memory usage).

As for your second point, typeclasses can include partial implementations. For example, the Eq typeclass [2] has a minimal definition required, either (==) or (/=), as one can be defined in terms of the other.

[1] research.microsoft.com/pubs/67083/spineless-tagless-gmachine.ps.gz

[2] http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/Prelu...
Clayton M. Christensen: How Will You Measure Your Life?
As someone on /. noted, Slashdot was also founded in September 1997, the same month that Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
Maybe this coincidence influenced Rob's decision.
I thought 'conservatives' and Murdochs Wall Street Journal hated "big government" and government intervention? But if it's in the interest of protecting corporate monopolies and profits they like it? How about some more tax payer subsidized bailouts to failed corporations while we're at it?
I definitely share this experience, for instance in many of the recent "Groupon is a scam" threads, or anything having to do with Android. It becomes a disincentive to participate in conversations about certain topics.

I find that the worst area of discussion is intellectual property law.
Hi Leej, the early adopter is considered full payment for Construct 2. There are many more releases to come! We like to release often with small increments rather than big monthly ones. See http://www.scirra.com/construct2/releases for our release history.
Support for DBRefs is fantastic news! Not having this has been my number 1 frustration using node & mongo.
Sounds like Colingo: http://colingo.me/
They'll be extinct before they get counted
What if your Karma was Currency?
Just a quick thought... What if you were able to use your Karma to give multiple upvotes, instead of just one? If people agree (by also upvoting that post), you can earn additional Currency. If you assigned multiple upvotes where others downvote, you lose your currency.

In my head, it creates an interesting environment where the people that frequently "invest" their Currency correctly will earn an abundance. But that's fine if they're actually good at picking what I want to read.
On Site Mobile Box Office
This is a neat little app. Went through the whole setup wizard in about 10 minutes, I could see myself playing with the different channels and adding more data as I have it for my startup. Integration with analytics and quickbooks would be great. Keep it up and I'd pay $49/mo for that.
I have nothing to add other than I agree with the premise of the article, and I expect this thread is going to be very meta.
And that they certainly know about it, and still let it go on... you have to think that they are in on the joke.
Jake from Verbling here. So far, most of our users are at the intermediate to advanced level, though we've got a bunch of beginners as well.

For beginners, we've built beginners conversation topics to provide some initial Spanish context to get you started. Click the "Beginner" button once you've got a native speaker on the other end.

My co-founder Mikael actually knew zero Spanish before the summer but just started using Verbling to learn (and get feedback). He's now very conversant, at the stage where I can hear him use phrases that real Spanish speakers would use in everyday life, which is often very different from what they put in textbooks.
It was included on a CD-ROM of a computer magazine. I guess back then they'd include anything to fill 650 megabytes.

Also, in a city nearby, one store had a lot of the Walnut Creek catalog on offer. So, it was fairly easy to get hands on Slackware Linux and FreeBSD without an Internet connection.
Nextbus.com already does this with several public transportation systems, including Boston and San Francisco. I'm actually in the process of putting together a service to alert riders when the bus is about to arrive, based on that data. It's still in beta, it only supports Boston, it's ugly as all hell and probably broken in places, but if anyone wants to look around, it's live here:

http://www.buscalling.com

PS: if anyone wants to beta-test, let me know!
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Updated With More Than 150 New Words
Yes, free lunches are fine, and communal eating thing much of the week would work well for me and no doubt for the team's performance. If I was told we each together a few times a week, that would be hugely important. As it was, I tend to imagine individuals scurrying to the kitchen, and taking a boxed meal from the fridge back to their desk while they're still working. I should have asked which of these actually happened.
I missed Calc in hs/undergrad but need it much more later on (and felt pretty innumerate without it), I remember picking up the classic "Calculus Made Easy". I was immediately stunned by it's simple description of integral:

"Now any fool can see that if x is considered as made up of a lot of little bits, each of which is called dx, if you add them all up together you get the sum of all the dx's (which is the same as the whole of x). The word 'integral' simply means 'the whole'"

After reading this and more I asked a few people who I know knew calculus how they would explain an integral (figuring that they would give a similar definition and would delight in finding a book which explained it so clearly) and was shocked to discover how many could calculate it without really understanding what it was or at least being able to describe what it was in clear terms
Build it. Test it.
SEOmoz's Fishkin: The Most Transparent Fundraising Saga Ever?
F8 2011 Conference by Facebook
I don't have much hope for webOS, even if it becomes open sourced it will end up as a toy OS without major financial backing and support.
It's not an either/or situation. There is active work in both areas.
This is done in many cities with Chicago being one of the largest:

http://www.ctabustracker.com/bustime/home.jsp

It really changes how you use public transportation because now you don't have to stand around waiting for the bus or train.
Interesting how Linus thought so poorly about portability prospects. Turns out in spite of a "bad" (from the perspective of porting) initial design, it was still in far better shape than HURD or BSD.

Another story whose moral is basically "artists ship."
What the downvotes probably indicate is that your argument is not well supported with detailed rationales and relevant examples. In other words, downvotes are a sign that your post could benefit from additional editing in the near term.

Taking downvotes as either a failure to communicate your ideas, or as the price for saying what you feel you must is the healthiest approach.

BTW, I didn't vote on it.
How to install Urban Terror in Fedora
Most people in the Netherlands didn't, where the then telco state monopoly charged 25 guilder cents per minute for calls.
Ok. I can see myself using this for my business, since I have some solid data for most metrics. I could then get a better sense of the kind of impact improving one metric or another would have. Still not sure of the usefulness when you start from scratch and make assumptions for everything though.
Gates is spending his wealth and remaining time rebuilding the karma he destroyed during his decades in the business. I don't think Jobs has the same task ahead of him. Perhaps he does.
Thanks so much! We built an existing product that integrated with QuickBooks, but it turns out looking back isn't as useful if you can't use that info to look forward. We're marrying the two models right now so look for budget vs actuals real soon now.

One more thing: Scenarios are coming in the next week or so.
Is there any hope for other DVCS in the Git imperium?
Despite the seemingly striking dominance of Git, there are still brave contenders sprouting out of the dvcs land.
Assuming I was karma-rich and wanted more, I'd contact other high-karma folks and rig the system with them.
Account Chooser: A Better Way To Log In To The Web?
Please provide an ePub/mobi version. I don't mind if I have to pay for it.
I liked Haskell when I tried it for all of these reasons. However, there were a few problems I had:

1. Debugging logic. I LOVE its typesystem, which catches most of my errors. However, sometimes I have algorithmic/logic errors. In a perfect world, I would have worked those out well before coding. But once I have coded it, I just don't know how to debug my code. I have gotten so used to gdb/pdb as my last resort that I am lost without it. Does anybody have any idea debugging Haskell programs?

2. Its Lazy evaluation sometimes get in the way of tail recursion optimization unless you force it, and can lead to the stack getting full. But this can be handled by forcing evaluation with seq.
Going even further and showing the actual voters, in addition to the score (like kuro5hin does) can also sometimes remove the need to post. I especially miss it here at the end of an exchange, where I want to say something like "good point" or "well I still disagree but your argument is a good one". On k5, I'd just vote "3" on that comment, which they would then be able to see I upvoted. Here it feels like I need to post an acknowledgement, or else it feels like I've rudely just ignored a good criticism or went off in a huff, because there's no silent way to signal that I'm breaking off the conversation amicably.

I also find it useful as a way of recognizing names. If a comment of mine gets 10 upvotes here, I know that some amphormous subset of readers liked my comment, but I don't build any recognition of who.
Agreed. The primary issue with an S-to-C conversion is that any assets with built-in-gain (i.e., worth more now than when they were acquired) may result in "immediate" income to the corporation. This is not an issue for most startups, unless they start off spending lots of money (i.e., Color). (Also, "immediate" in tax world really just means they'll be part of that year's income.) The conversion itself is otherwise tax-free at the federal level, and in most (but not all) states.

LLCs, however, are a frigging nightmare. They're the most difficult form of business entity to set up (except for non-profit 501(c)(3)'s). Accounting for LLCs will require an experienced (expensive) accountant. Plus, state laws on LLCs aren't uniform in the states that matter.
>most classes of bugs are caught at compile time

This is false, can we stop pretending that hindley-milner solved the Halting Problem?
I'm not sure that's correct, because it's very much a tiny subset (confirmed with my iPad keyboard dock) of what I use every day on my Mac. A short list of things that don't work:

^T: Transpose two characters

^Y: Paste (yank) what you just ^K-ed

^D: Forward delete

^P/^N: Move to previous/next line

Running iOS 5 so YMMV.
AngryAnna - New Game
Anna Hajare movement is gaining big support from everybody in India. People are supporting to campaign in their own way. Social Media is used widely by youth and it has shown its influence. Now Geek Mentor Studios has shown their support in an interesting and innovating way. They have come up with a new facebook game - AngryAnna. Yep, I am not kidding on this. Our favourite angry birds, which was biggest success of gaming market last year has been presented in a new avatar by geek mentor studios.
yeah, that was confusing. Don't assume that people actually read every single word on your page ;-)
Doesn't this post simply contribute to the problem, though? I mean, if Raganwald
wants the community to be more focused on content, rather than pointless
meta-discussion, shouldn't he or she post content? I mean, all this post
serves to do is give even more attention to the hipsters and trolls.

My recommendation? If you see a comment that's clearly off-topic, vote it down
if you're able or ignore it if you're not. Even if you disagree with the content
of the comment, don't respond to it. If its a thread; scroll past it without
stopping. If enough people do this, the HN algorithm will push these off-topic
threads to the bottom, where they'll slowly wither away.
Can't resist giving a shout-out to the sole proprietorship without outside funding. It's pretty amazing how much cheaper it has gotten to start a whole range of software businesses in the last three years.
Just a quick note from the advisory site

"When using a third party attack tool to verify vulnerability - know that most
of the versions in the wild currently check for the presence of mod_deflate;
and will (mis)report that your server is not vulnerable if this module is not
present. This vulnerability is not dependent on presence or absence of
that module."

Not sure if that's how you are checking for vulnerability, however it was reporting that my site was "not vulnerable" when it was very much so.
>I find that the worst area of discussion is intellectual property law.

IP discussions are a veritable oasis of circumspection compared to "Macbook Pro gets new battery" threads.
This site rendered my back button useless and trapped me on the site.
> We destroy species before we have any knowledge of them. That's my interpretation but I can see why you're asking it.

That's not my interpretation. In any event, species have been going extinct for almost as long as there have been species. It's unclear that we've appreciably changed the extinction.

And, while one may be scared by species extinction, it's how things work. (I'm scared of height, but that doesn't imply that someone should do something about height.)

BTW - we've probably preserved and enabled species, especially at the low-end, that would have otherwise gone extinct or never come into being.
This is the kind of comment that isn't helpful.

I really have no idea why you're assigning one columnist's opinion to "conservatives" in general, nor charging hypocrisy based on one rather carefully-reasoned opinion that maybe one arm of the Government should overrule the decisions of another arm of the Government. And I'm especially not sure why you think it's all about 'protecting corporate monopolies' when such a decision, if made, would merely be taking the side of one huge company against another huge company, and furthermore on the anti-monopolistic side.

I suspect, therefore, that you may be letting preexisting political opinions cloud your judgement.
This was done at univ. of michigan as a student project: http://mbus.pts.umich.edu/
My suggestion is to upvote all that you find here that is thoughtful and helpful. Upvote a comment (or story) that makes you think. Upvote a comment (or story) that "gratifies [your] intellectual curiosity." Upvote comments that ask other commenters please to provide information backing up their opinions. Upvote other comments that provide other thoughtful guidance to the discussion or new information beyond what is already posted in the submitted article or in other comments. Upvote to mark and thank the good. Since no one has the time to read the site exhaustively, not even any one of the curators, mostly ignore the bad and crowd it out with the good.
I like the friend's response. Almost always, the only wrong response to a "two roads diverged in a yellow wood" situation is to stall.
I was always impressed with the story selection on Slashdot. There was a certain mindset that they were pandering to, but it flat-out worked.

I was a voracious reader of Slashdot in the early years until I had an epiphany when reading the They Might Be Giants interview in 2000. I realized that the collective geek mindset was rooted more in fantasy than reality. Posters were so desperately wanting the TMBG guys to be off-the-wall wacky and absurdist, but really it was more that the two John's were just doing their own thing, and that thing was outside the realm of normal music. Yet no one picked up on it.

I couldn't read Slashdot after that. The geek fantasy fog was too thick and pervasive and self-referential.
This was churning in the back of my head, so I toyed with it a bit.

wget http://doublerecall.com/images/mockups/DoubleRecall-iPod-engagement-explainer.png
gocr -i ./DoubleRecall-iPod-engagement-explainer.png -m 4 -C A-z -d 1

Nets me:

__ ___ __ _______ ____ ___ __________ ______
___ e_ n _ Apple iPad
___l_J__
Movies_ TV shows_ games_ and music_ Now
pIaying on an iPod near you_
Now pIaying iPod I _ ce_ con_en_ \

Throw out the non-recognized characters, and I've got a list I can grep against a dictionary and I've detected all the required words already. It wouldn't take much glue to call up imagemagick and detect color differences between word chunks and fill this in automatically. Chrome Extensions can capture page content to canvas datauri's and upload to a server for analysis.
The John Carmack Slashdot archive
That hasn't been my experience with LLCs. If you're making money and you're a founder, you need an accountant full stop. But having said that: you make distributions, and the principals pay self employment tax. Where's the big deal?

Here's where I get jumpy on this stuff:

S- and C- corporations are complex enough to put people off until they get a lawyer. Most startup founders probably don't have a lawyer when they start.

When you say "LLCs are a nightmare", besides the fact that they're aren't for most people (they aren't even notably complicated for most people; that's the point), and that it's not that hard to switch out of an LLC when things get complicated (by that point, you have a lawyer)...

... besides those things, you're also probably effectively talking people out of incorporating at all. That's more than suboptimal; it's dangerous. It creates situations where you can be personally liable for all sorts of company expenses. We've had HN posts from people who were told by cofounders and business partners that they were personally liable for huge expenses, and had those same people discovered they owed zero because they were incorporated.

Don't do business as a sole proprietor. Get a structure with limited liability as soon as you can. If it's between an LLC now and an S-Corp "maybe 6 months from now, maybe earlier if we can find a good lawyer and we're making money" --- do the LLC.

You're the expert here. Where am I wrong in this analysis?
Steve Jobs Preparing for First TV Appearance (1978) (97 Seconds)
Why not think this was made by some Chinese dissident at Alabama/Birmingham? Not that it's likely, but its absurdly credulous to link it.
"Is Apple ever going to go after the enterprise market?" (Steve's response, a refreshing "If you're interested in that, you're probably at the wrong company.")

You like our software enough to want to use it at work and/or want others to get to use it? Yeah, fuck that.
AMD Hires A Million Dollar CEO
Arguments of this kind are both wrong and dangerous. Becoming a good Haskell programmer isn't easy, but then neither is becoming a good programmer simpliciter.

The language itself is conceptually novel compared to imperative languages, but the concepts themselves are neither difficult nor abstruse. Actually I find Haskell refreshingly simple; it's a lot like Lisp that way.

I'm sure you'll agree that it's unfortunate that so many people are put off by a subject's alleged difficulty, rather than encouraged by it. However, given that this is in fact the case, wouldn't it be better if we concentrated on saying how enjoyable, intellectually stimulating and useful learning certain things was rather than discouraging people from even having a go?
In fact one of the better books Simon Thompson's Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (better than Real World Haskell or Learn You A Haskell IMO) emphasizes the importance of testing.
ActiveState's Stackato already has Tornado support (we have a demo of Tornado Chat with MongoDB), amongst other features that are not yet in Cloud Foundry (Perl, run and db migration, ...). More about those at http://www.activestate.com/blog/2011/08/python-cloud-foundry....
arnoldwh mentioned it here -

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2922846

This really blows me away - amazing contrast between that and how highly polished he is now. Shows how far people can go with persistence and chutzpah. Inspirational.
I've seen a car with the license place "WWSJD" pull into their Cupertino headquarters before. I hope there's more people like that there.
Gowalla: Going Forward
Do you have any uses of it so far that are really cool? (other than your lighting/thunder example)
AMD appoints former Lenovo president as CEO
Yes. Even if I partly disagree with you, I upvoted you. Actually, I find myself upvoting comments that are in a negative territory and that present a valid point more often than good comments that are in a positive territory!

I believe we need upvotes for the reasons hugh3 mentioned. Regarding downvotes, there should be a cost, like with StackOverflow where each downvote costs you one reputation point.

Another orthogonal dimension to voting could be agree/disagree. I saw this on a national news forum and it's quite useful (e.g., 5 people agreed, 100 people disagreed).
Jake from Verbling here. Beginner/intermediate/advanced refer to the different levels of conversation topics available to users.
You can click through all of them while you're in a conversation, so you're never "stuck" in any of the categories. Specifically, at the beginner level, you're exposed to mostly the present tense and beginner's vocab. At the advanced level, you'll see some conditional tense and more advanced vocabulary, for example re. politics, culture, technology.

Re. ratings: We simply ask you, "How was your conversation?" Based on whether you superlike/like/dislike, we can pair you up with that same native speaker more often, at the same rate, or never again.

Hope this helps!
Genius ...
Probably the only letter from an incoming CEO where I believe the "we are not going to change" rhetoric.
I was a pre-teen as well, using 0.99pl circa '92-93ish (fuzzy memory). I heard about it from IRC. At the time I was using a 2400 baud modem to dial up into Rutgers (an older friend's college account) to get a terminal. Rutgers supported SLIP so that you yourself could become a node rather than just getting a terminal. I wanted to try this so that I could use virtual terminals to IRC and still do other things and generally be more stable than trying to use DOS with a SLIP packet driver. So, it took a while to download a 0.99pl distro onto 3 floppy disks and even longer to get it working with little or no documentation, but in the end it was worth it!
Perhaps I am taking your post too literally, but I think this is an example of the mythos that Apple generates.

I don't believe for a second that Jobs had the iPad in mind in 2000.

They probably just brainstorm, try different stuff internally, see what works and see if they can make a product out of it that meets their high expectations. Jobs was no doubt an important part of this process but it is not impossible for the culture and process to outlive the person who helped create them.

I would not be surprised if Jobs was speaking honestly when he talked down tablets in 2008.
RealNetworks crushes Dutch webmaster for hyperlink
http://www.strongapi.com/src/celebritymatching/
Economists could do students a huge favor by switching supply and demand graphs so that the independent variable is on the X axis, like every other graph in the world.