skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Lots of people like their pet language more than JavaScript, so why don't we see tons of compilers like Python->JavaScript, Lua->JavaScript, Ruby->JavaScript etc?

Uuuuhhh, I'm really embarrassed to ask, but did you check with Google before posting that? "Tons of compilers" is exactly what we have now: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang... . In fact my own job involves writing Java code that ends up being compiled to JS.

I'd be overjoyed if such things were not necessary. I would even be okay with never using things like 1 + "2" or monkeypatching in 50% of my code if that made that 50% conform to some widely adopted cross-language standard. That would mean 50% less effort spent on any future rewrite. 50% less risk from using the new and shiny platform that came out yesterday. 50% lower rate of platform-induced bitrot for the project as a whole. C'mon, who wouldn't want the world to work like that?
If your project team has people comfortable with functional programming - there's absolutely nothing wrong with that code.

As far as changing the way you think, it certainly came as a shock for me when I encountered it years ago in SICP and I'm still enjoying the benefits of lazy sequences in Clojure and ClojureScript.
hahahaha, the writer of this article doesnt use fb, evernote, or have an interest in tablet pcs... Somehow I doubt he is ifttt's target audience. Its like me, an apartment dweller, writing a blog post about how im indefferent to lawn mowers, cuz I have no use for them, which is to say, really kinda pointless.
This headline (by the author or editor) is completely misrepresenting the article.

HDMI cables are different. Badly made ones, and ones rated differently, can fail in unpredictable ways. The article describes failure modes, and alludes to but brushes over technical differences.

Coincidentally, I personally spent 16+ hours on the better part of this past Thursday and Friday nights trying to get a Cablevision set top box (OptimumTV) to cooperate with an Onkyo receiver over HDMI.

I'd been using the receiver with a variety of equipment, and with a long run to a wall mounted TV, for several years. I swapped in a new TV, and added the set top box, and suddenly all HDMI related functions of the receiver started failing randomly, 90% of the time.

I eventually attributed this to HDMI negotiation between receiver and Cablevision's box. With STB plugged in, Boxee and DVD player would fail too. Without STB, the others would work.

With eight cables I had on hand, all "known good", the receiver HDMI indicator would either fail to light, with no picture and no sound on the TV, or blink rapidly, and the picture and sound would come and go rapidly. (To me, this suggests a flawed implementation of HDCP by the Optimium box, likely failing the receiver handshake as it acts as a repeater between STB and the TV, and this Onkyo has a hardware upscaler. An HDCP cable failure is alluded to in the CNET article, but all eight types I had on hand failed in the same way.)

Cable brands that failed: Monoprice, Amazon Essentials, Radio Shack, Firedog (Best Buy), and Monster. Also, these were all cables purchased before 2010.

I was not in the mood to buy a new receiver just to work with Cablevision's box, so I decided to try the Home Depot "installer" aisle, and selected "GE Ultra Pro HDMI with Ethernet" in a two pack of 6' lengths, and a 15' foot "in wall" installer kit as well.

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202742223/h_d2/Produ...

These are labeled as supporting audio return channel, 3D, and Ethernet, and are rated for 4K video (not mentioned in the linked article). The Cablevision OptimumTV set top box does not use any of these features.

When I used this new HDMI cable, the whole system worked flawlessly. Dumbfounded, I repeatedly swapped in my other cables, but they all failed, while these worked. I had both a 15' and two 6' ones from this brand, and all three worked.

So no, not all HDMI cables are the same. I cannot attribute this particular behavior to "bad cables" or even "cheap cables", it has to be some feature of the cable design.

// Disclaimer: I dislike cable TV for its "bundling" practices, and hope Google wins their custom Hulu bid to force the studios to keep content online for non cable subscribers longer. I was doing this install for someone else.
This has been my response to ifttt thus far. Because I've got a smartphone, I've set up one task to email me something in response to an RSS feed item just to test it out.

However, the beauty of the concept as I see it is: all it takes is one killer recipe for me to get hooked.

As a developer, I could probably recreate any recipe for myself pretty minimally. But I like the design of the site enough that I'm willing to save myself the minimal hassle and use their interface.

If I'm not mistaken, the concept is basically the same as Yahoo Pipes, no? Or a simplified version of it. I loved the idea of Yahoo Pipes but found using it a bit of a hassle for one reason or another. ifttt has factored out the hassle.

What both Yahoo Pipes and ifttt are missing which would make them much more useful to me are a way to scrape a web page (one that doesn't have an RSS feed) and then filter the information I may want out of that.
Best Muscle Building Supplement – Deer Antler Plus
"If you can't at the absolute minimum pay market rate for the level of talent you require you shouldn't be in business. End of story."

One of the key pillars of the startup ecosystem is that you can offer someone equity in exchange for significantly "below market rate" wages. In some or even many cases, this will be below the "the absolute minimum pay market rate for the level of talent ... require[d]."

If you view that as a sign of disrespect, then you should probably only ever work for 1)bootstrapped businesses that are pretty far along the bootstrap curve or 2) venture-funded businesses that have significant funding. That's a totally viable approach to working for a startup, and I respect you for refusing to work under less than a given rate.

But I don't think it's fair for you to impose your minimum wage upon others. Some people are willing to work for more nascent businesses in exchange for more upside. That should be their right too.
Useful Resources related to Technology & Startups
Following are some great technology and startups related resources that I have come across:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc (Steve Jobs Speech. Watch it again and again and again...)
http://news.ycombinator.com/ (Latest News in the Tech/Startup Industry)
http://ycombinator.com/lib.html (YCombinator Startup Library)
http://www.sfu.ca/~mvolker/biz/ (Business Basics for Engineers)
http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/ (Stanford CS Library)
http://stackoverflow.com/ (Tech Q & A)
http://answers.onstartups.com (Startup Q & A)
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html (Paul Graham Essays)
http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book (Ruby on Rails Tutorial Book)
https://www.djangoproject.com/ (Python - Django Framework)
http://angel.co/ (Angel List)
http://webchat.freenode.net/ (Join any channel, for example, #rubyonrails, #css, #jquery, #ubuntu, etc. for quick Q & A and chat)
http://www.github.com (For open source code)
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/popularVideos.html (Stanford E-Corner Popular Videos)

I will keep the list updated. If you believe I am missing something, please mention it in the comments.
Funny, after reading through this list of issues, it sounds like a pretty great service that I'll likely start using.
Missing the bigger picture IMO.

Sure, the popular recipes seem to be of the archive/backup/life hack variety. YMMV on those.

But I'm already finding ifttt helpful for customer development for my startup (Cilantro).

I've got tasks that search various Craigslist computer gigs for the word "restaurant" and emails me. These are usually restaurant owners looking to build a new site. I can then email them back and say "hey I'm building this restaurant homepage tool. I'd love for you to give it a try" ... its already worked a couple times.

Give ifttt a chance and get creative with it.
If you're on a Mac, check out Self-Control. Great application.

http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/
Let people choose what tools they use to get the job done. It really sucks to be forced to use inferior tools/software/hardware/etc at work than what you have become accustomed to using in more progressive environments.
Sorry, I'm not a native english speaker. I picked that term up during the whole discussion :)

When I said "FUD" I wanted to pick a word that expresses the fact that even outside of Acquia, there are people on both sides of the issue. As far as I read the threads, it's not like the vast majority of people are strictly against the direction Drupal is moving in. I'm simply not embedded enough inside the community to give you any specific examples, sorry :(

I just wanted to say that it's important that these concerns are raised and discussed. From what I hear in the meetings and read in the emails, Acquia is really dedicated to advancing Drupal both on the enterprise side (which helps site builders get contracts and gets Drupal publicity) and the developer/user side by contributing to/maintaining modules and fixing bugs (core and contrib).

p.s. I don't speak for the company, I just wanted to relay the impression I get from the inside :)
What this article doesn't tell you is that the human who wrote it works for Narrative Science.

For those who don't know, if you see a story in your local paper, and it doesn't involve a car crash, crime, weather, or sports, it was probably placed there by a PR representative. Most of the things you read are not the result of random reporters deciding to cover X or Y, but a paid, concerted effort to place story X or Y in the paper by providing the paper with a fully pre-digested story to perhaps rewrite, or perhaps not.

The words "narrative science" appear 14 times in that story, including such clunkers as "To generate story “angles,” explains Mr. Hammond of Narrative Science...." when Mr. Hammond has already been introduced earlier in the story. It even includes pricing: hey readers, this is not only cool and will win the Pulitzer Prize, but it's cheap too! No mention of competitors... It reads like an ad because it is an ad.

This story was provided, probably almost word for word, by a PR person to the NYT reporter.

I'm not sure if computer-generated text will be better or worse than the media system we have now.
Here's a description of my venture into this territory, in which I generated formulaic lottery result briefs:

"I wrote this article with one mouse click"

http://coding.pressbin.com/60/I-wrote-this-article-with-one-...

I can't imagine the sort of code base that would be needed to make these stories not seem formulaic.
And the rest of the discussion is playing out on their main site this month:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/
Agreed. Seems like a simple application of rectangle detection, coordinate conversion, and use of socket libraries. The first two even come pre-packaged with the OpenCV distribution.
Naming issues get overlooked too often, I think, and it just asks for "no true Scotsman"-style discussions. The confusion you're having seems to be thinking that "Objectivist-style Libertarians", with no compromises, and self-proclaimed "small-l libertarians", of the type jerf and Eliezer belong, are the same when they're in fact pretty different.
This is not a helpful comment. It only sounds like one. In fact: since nobody on HN would sponsor a "respect-free" or "autonomy-free" or "control-free" work environment, it actually doesn't say anything at all.

This is frustrating because there are probably a million things we could do for (e.g.) Matasano team members without having to restructure the business, and I'd love some more ideas.
"Actually try to understand and address the grievances?"

When the people of Anonymous decide to act like civilized adults rather than teen-angst laden teenagers, I might start to agree with you.

The group reminds me of many people I see on Reddit that can't get their way and their only response to this is anti-social and childish behavior.
Draw and vote on the best drawings, live voting (websockets, canvas, node)
border-random, nice touch ;)
I had the new design for about a week, before it even showed up on HN, but it seems to have gone away for me.
Unique Opportunity For Job Seekers (2610)
I wonder if these automatically generated articles will ever become good enough to be worth reading. Currently, they seem to be just good enough to fool Google, and convince people to click the link. Do any sports fans bookmark and come back to these sites?

No matter how good the algorithms get, they are still limited by their input, the statistics. If for example a player scores a very unusual goal, say a bicycle kick in soccer, then a real writer who actually saw the match would surely mention it. An algorithm could not if there is no field for unusual goal in the match statistics.
Good idea. After the list is a bit more populated, I'm going to send an email to all of the Boston folks.
Late Night 'Hack': Share/Track Household Expenses
No matter how complete, precise and accurate an abstract description is, I don't understand something until I see examples.

I believe this is why spreadsheets are so popular: you're never working with abstraction alone. It's always incarnated in an example. That seems to fit how most people's minds work. By contrast, tools that require users to specify their abstractions first and only then instantiate them with data have a much more limited appeal. It can be hard for programmers to appreciate this because we're on such familiar terms with abstraction.
login out and back in. the new design's already deployed.
Hackers break into Linux Foundation and Linux.com, both taken offline
Mere Brother ki Dulhan Movie Part 1
Mere Brother Ki Dulhan Online also known by the abbreviated form MBKD, is an upcoming Bollywood romantic film, Mere Brother Ki Dulhan Online Songs which are also romantic that marks the writing and directing debut of Ali Abbas Zafar and stars Imran Khan, Katrina Kaif and Ali Zafar in the lead roles, while John Abraham appears in a cameo role. Produced and distributed by Yash Raj Films, the film is a romantic comedy set around a love triangle. The official theatrical trailer was released on 13 July 2011. The film is set to release on 9 September 2011. Mere Brother Ki Dulhan Online Songs which are listed above in one of them a rock video song by Katrina Kaif.
Seems like a smart project, but I think they should change the image: With Heise facebook didn't agree to the modified like image, and I guess here the same will apply.
+1 Monoprice is the best place to get cables of all sorts, IMO. And overnight shipping is only $4.95!
I wish HDMI equipment would display a counter of digital errors. For all non-defective cables, this counter should be 0 all the time.

Does the HDMI signal provide a checksum of any kind? I was under the impression that it's just a raw TMDS bitstream of color values with no redundancy.
Good call on the display of errors...why is that not available in today's TVs?

Or is it? Maybe in some special diagnostic mode?
$100,000. Rent out for $500/ 1/2hour after 5 lessons at $100 - $200 a piece (not in the air -- or closely tethered at 2-3 ft). Gimp the flight controls a bit by the fly-by-wire controller for an extra measure of safety.

If you can book 10 hours a month, the machine is paid for in 10 months. Since you'd likely get a lot of press right off with very little effort, you could probably book a lot more time than that.

OF course your clients would have to sign away all liability and no one would insure it so you'd have to figure out how much this thing is to repair but I could see someone making a tidy living off of these things.
The scotch library is pretty silly.

1/2 day on Halloween is a great idea.

I am not a fan of company-sponsored lunch; it sends a message that you're expected to be working constantly. Many of the big finance companies do it, and the employees are clear about why.

Books are so cheap relative to FTE cost, I don't know why you'd even come up with a "training policy" for them. We just give everyone an Amazon account and say "go to town". You buy a book, it's yours; the only rule is, don't buy books for your friends on our dime. :)
"geographical arbitrage" - Even with the "geographical" modifier, I don't see how it is arbitrage; niche or segmented?
Ramit hits it right on the spot by being as specific as possible in your pitch and cater to a specific target audience and learn their language, and not trying to cater to everyone. That guy Ramit has a lot of hustle in him that I think every startup can learn from.
It's my mistake - I made two wrong assumptions.

1) Firstly, that you were in business to add value to customers and that was the primary motivation. It seems your primary motivation was to learn/experience it. Which is fine - it's just not what I assumed it was.

As Zig Ziglar would put it - To get everything you desire in life you just have to give enough other people what they want from life.

* Who knows what approach works better. For me, the Zig Ziglar approach has worked much better but that's a sample size of 1 person.

2) Secondly, my mistake in assuming your post was meant to help other people. If you could have added a note that it was meant mostly as a catharsis and written for yourself.

Then I wouldn't have assumed that there might be a lot of value for me.

Right now the value is in seeing a few things but the amount of effort is just not enough to actually know whether any of your mistakes other than not putting in enough work matter.

*

See, the key thing is your line on work being from 0 to 10 hours per week with some weeks being over 10 weeks.

How can you know your ideas and business were right or wrong with that amount of time?

For entirely selfish reasons (to help myself) I wanted to learn from your experience. However, if your experience is based on working an average of 10 hours a week, then it doesn't really say anything about what the market opportunity really is/was.

*

On a related note there seems to be a fascination on hacker news lately on apps done in 5 days and 'passive income' and how to succeed without working hard.

Are there any people there who are succeeding after working really hard?
Who are spending 5 months on their app and not 5 days?
EauClaireDentalTip's Channel - YouTube
Um, 'new data structure'? You have to be kidding. This is implemented in practically every single functional programming language. Also, this was already done in JavaScript: https://github.com/Gozala/streamer and looks surprisingly similar to your library. As you can see, streams in JavaScript are nothing new.
Procrastination and not getting work done can be caused MANY different things. There is no way that a few sentences exchanged with strangers will crack this problem.

You have to find the root cause of your problem in your own way. For some that means seeing a counselor or talking to a loved one or mentor who understands you.
You service is great, however, I am trying to withdrawal 246.00 USD and I am getting an Error.

Not Good.

How is it that this guy's Bitcoin thingy has hit the front page of HN 3 times in the past 3 days?
What diolpah said.

I'd rather learn from the experience of someone who became an absolute master. Because the lessons of absolute mastery apply across fields.

Who cares about the top 10%? The top 10% isn't worth wasting your time on. Especially if it means you spend 6 months each on 20 different areas and become top 10% in 20 areas.

Much better to find 1 or 2 areas you absolutely love and become top 1%.

Top 1% - Going to the Olympics.
Top 10% - Impress your friends.
You buy a cable. There 'would' be rusting. There 'would' be oxidation of conductor.

$5 cable would be that way in 20-40 weeks.

$50 would be there in longer, because the conductor (of the connector specifically ) is different. Gold plated ones last longer, also the quality of the gold plating matters.

They don't matter when they are new.
Les Beatles - Please Please Me
I don't understand why people take such a cynical attitude towards new things.

If you bothered to think or look around a bit, you would notice that some people are already using ifttt for things, which a lot of people might find useful, such as tracking jobs, apartments and flights. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2970550).

If you have no use for something, why blog about it with an undertone implying it has no use for anyone?

Maybe it's not your intention, but this just comes across as taking the mickey out of people's creations just for the heck of it. Just because you've got a blog.

Sometimes, it's best not to say anything. Enjoy the silence while it lasts.
I feel like there's lots of blank space in the main area and everything seems to be cramped into the nav.

I feel like somebody like my parents wouldn't know where to click (or even start to look) if they were looking to buy a book.
The article is a bit complicated, centering on an array of tax provisions that favor EA, but there are some fascinating tidbits:

> In 1981, as Americans worried that Japan’s growing dominance in the auto business would be followed by a decline of the high-tech industry in the United States, Congress added another research and development credit, this time specifically for companies that increased their R.& D. spending from the previous year...

> Within a few years, the credit was being claimed by businesses with little technological background — fast-food restaurants, hair stylists and fashion designers. So Congress tried to restrict what research would qualify. The credit was denied for social science research and marketing...

> The failed attempts to restrict the R.& D. credit to basic research have been a boon for video game companies. Even when companies are merely creating new versions of existing games — conducting research that would have little value to anyone but themselves — their development processes usually involve enough experimental uncertainty to qualify for the tax break.
Your implementation is indeed elegant and simple.

However, there are several things I don't like about it.

1) There are still specific cases that require memory. The cases for treaps are always the obvious ones --- comparing priorities and comparing keys.

2) It obscures the connection to B-trees, which is what leads one to derive all of the special cases after all.

3) Maybe I'm dumb, but the running time guarantees aren't obvious.

4) If you're doing rbtrees in Haskell, you might as well enforce your invariants with the type system.
High-speed cables are certified to run at the full HDMI bandwidth (allowing 3D, high-bit-depth color, higher resolution, etc.), while standard-speed cables only carry standard 8-bit-per-channel RGB or YUV data at 1080p or lower (source: comparison between [1] and [2]). On Monoprice, high-speed cables aren't significantly more expensive, so one should always buy the high-speed cable.

[1] High speed cable: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&c...

[2] Standard speed cable: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&c...
That's a jaded and misguided view of the world. Very few reporters will accept articles written by others, and they predominantly work for trade rags, not the New York Times.
I think you raise a good point about company lunches. It depends on if it's "grab some food on us and go eat at your desk," or "put out tables and sit beside people you don't know" kind of lunch.
Closures/lambdas in Java may affect how implementations of other JVM languages implement their corresponding features.

This may affect interoperability between languages positively. Currently JVM languages interoperate nicely with Java but advanced non-java-like features between other JVM-based languages do not match so well (can you pass a ruby block from JRuby to Scala?)

I think it was Neal Gafter who raised this as a good reason for closures in Java, but I could be mistaken.