skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, a lot of these suggestions are the sort of "tricks" that you wouldn't want to use in any normal situation. I think the additions to python are mostly making it cleaner and simpler.

List comprehensions are a great example. If you want to reverse the keys and values of a dictionary you can do

reversed_dict = dict((value, key) for (key, value) in original_dict.items())

Whereas in c++ this would have to be something like...

map<string, string> reversed_dict;
for (map<string, string>::iterator it = original_dict.begin();
it != original_dict.end(); ++it) {
reversed_dict[it->second] = it->first;
}

C++ may have added a lot of new stuff but they did not make the simple cases simple, they just made the simple cases possible but still ugly.
Reddit, Digg, every other community site which started out with a narrowly focused group and then slowly become popular.

Is that enough actual real world evidence? I can keep listing social sites, that this has happened to, all day long.
From Physics to Security: Postfix's Creator Outlines Spam Solution
Try this one: http://www.sergeykolos.com/cusp/intro/
Not everything you want, but at least an effort to make it close to your requirements.
Working on large and complex application becomes near impossible without extensive unit test coverage.

If you're using unit test of all things to guide the design of your application, you are off the deep end. That makes you a bad programmer, it doesn't make TDD bad.
Nokia BH102 Bluetooth Headset
The Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-102 is for you if you want to stay connected with family and friends but keep busy at the same time. Easy to use and comfortable to wear, with a discreet, light-weight design and ergonomically adjustable earloop. With its efficient power management you can be hands-on and handsfree throughout your day.
Sexism pays: Men who hold traditional views of women earn more than men who don't
Wikipedia is now deleting entries about its own practice of deleting entries
I was hoping to find links to VC's that invest in areas of questionable legality.
A New Google Data API for Book Search
"Tech companies will start leapfrogging the United States, he said, producing cutting-edge instead of copycat technologies."

Somehow I don't buy that
I wouldn't blame the language for code being hard to maintain. As long as the people doing the maintaing are as competent as the ones that wrote the code to begin with, and the code is well structured, tested and documented there should be no problem maintaining and extending it.
You haven't pointed to evidence of it happening here. One political post every hundred or so (if that - I doubt it) doesn't tell me the sky is falling.

Testing the predicted feedback loop, especially for #1 and #2, would seem to required actual evidence of #1 and #2 happening here.
The market is so different there, companies will have to stop copycatting to keep up
web news, startups, programming are the key topics that should be focused on, but please don't throw out the startup/ entrepreneurial focus with general biz bathwater.
DIY online app-dev tools for building DB-driven Web apps
Is this the usual way of figuring something out in other contexts? It sounds like the "trying to get my WiFi to work" crowd is doing Javascript. Those folks wouldn't know what to do with a language spec, nor have ever entertained the concept of a universe that works like that. ("You mean there's something that explains precisely what everything in Javascript does?")
Review: Coghead for non-coders
this post seems misinformed. in a massively multicore world, parallelism is more important than concurrency, and the two are not the same. basically concurrency means the order of tasks is not known a priori. parallelism means segmenting a problem so subproblems can be solved in many places at once.

in a massively mutlicore world, i offer parallelism is the goal these people want to address. how they did not mention haskell is beyond me.
Microsoft to Buy Back $40 Billion of Stock
"If Microsoft is going to be relevant to the next generation of computer users, who better to pay attention to than the leading expert on how the next generation is using social networks?"

Yeah, just like hiring a leading expert in social networks helped Apple become relevant? Oh no, that's right, they did it by designing better products and software. Why not figure out how to do that again instead?
Sorry, but if she has so much deep understanding of social networks why isn't she creating her own social network?

Writting as a skill focused on one subject is nowhere near the understanding of the process of executing and causing evolution/creating something new.

In my eyes it's just a PR move.
It takes a generation or two, but it happens. Samsung and Hyundai, anyone? Already, Tata is doing some ambitious-ass things.

And just in the web space, how about Zoho and SlideShare?
Long term, VCs who do not nurture entrepreneurs will not find the good ones coming to them -- word gets around.

(And I'm speaking as one who has been through this with the mentioned firm. I like them a lot.)
I never even knew about attr_protected / attr_accessible until I saw them being used in acts_as_authenticated.

Come to think of it, I learned a lot of good practices from AAA (and restful_authentication). attr_protected, salted/hashed passwords, and several other nifty tricks.
I see the complaint as this:
Does Lisp Feature a PECL Installer? - What if you need a clustered server environment - how are you going to role out a large application to 20, 30, 500 servers?
PECL and PHP Offers libraries (functions really) to accomplish much more off the shelf through it's Standard Library than many other languages.
-Compiled-In DB Drivers (MSSQL,MYSQL,PGSQL,ODBC,SQLITE)
-LDAP
-KADM5
-Mcrypt
-PDO
-Sockets
-XML
-SOAP
-(an excellent set of string and array functions)

Actually can someone who knows more about .Net, Ruby, or Java tell me of the features I listed what languages have these features that come with, or are optional?

I don't find the language to be ugly, dirty, or unpleasant.
Java is the most popular programming language in the world, and I cannot stand it, if I have to create one more NEW object simply to format CSS text I am going to explode.

I have no problem properly naming and using 1,000 functions.
I would rather know each function than have 10 objects with 100 methods each.
Objects have their place for Webapps (which ultimately output text last time I checked) Web Applications do not need to be abstracted to the point of Object Inheritance Oblivion!

Can someone please tell me of all the better ways to write this in other languages that are so far superior to PHP?

<?php
$br = "<br />";
if(!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] && !stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'],$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'])) {
print "Remote Login Denied!" . $br;
} else {
print "Success!" . $br;
}
?>
Confessions of a textual loser
I wonder how many "young" people they surveyed...Young people tend to be more progresive and make less money. One is not necessarily a direct result of the other...
You're comparing the python syntax with the equivalent C++, not with the python syntax it replaced, which by my count is three lines shorter. The point is this: does the savings in code size from a list comprehension (which is 100% pure sugar on top of the existing loop syntax -- there's no new semantics in that feature) balance out the difficulty of teaching them to every new python programmer?

If you're a python expert, clearly your answer is "yes! this is a great feature!". But that's what the C++ experts say too, even as their language buries itself under a mountain of complexity. From the outside looking in, I'm seeing exactly the same thing happen to python.

Some fancy features make a language fun and productive. Too many such features make it a mess.
HN is the last refuge of high-quality, user-submitted articles. The articles here that appear off topic are rare, but usually are extremely well-written and informative.

Digg and Reddit are awful. It's spam central on both those sites.
How GPS navigation devices can be duped
I'd go with a compromise along the lines of Ruby or Python, myself.
Well I think the commercial aspect will probably be the ticket price for the trip. As far as for-sale accommodations during the trip, I expect them to be analogous to those you get during airplane flights: mostly refreshments. Since looking at the earth will probably be one of the main attractions of such an elevator trip, I bet most people will plan to bring binoculars, so I don't foresee a significant market for that particular item.
Hacking NYC: Turning parking spots into... whatever you want
Good points; nothing really new here for the experienced hacker.
Northern Virginia, where anyone reading this would live, is more urban than most of Boston and is solidly blue. The weather in DC is standard mid-atlantic. It's the same climate from philly down through DC.

DC is a fairly horrible place for any sort of consumer or business targeted venture. This guy is kidding himself. That said, a whole boatload of people have got rich selling things to the government and DoD. And more than a few companies have spring boarded off government sales to private sector success. That's how Oracle started.
Sorry, but if she has so much deep understanding of social networks why isn't she creating her own social network?

Because her interest is in the academic studies of social networking and how the current and future generations use them (something that is lacking in academia and needs more attention). If her interest were in creating a business around a web application that has a central theme of social networking then I think your question would be more applicable to danah.

You could ask the same question of Duncan Watts as well, but again, he is an academic who now works for Yahoo!
I wonder how many of these "professional designers" casually support the downloading of music; harping about the RIAA on their blogs and in their conversations?

One would think that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
You are starting wrong. Real programmers won´t use Windows even at gunpoint. Windows is good mostly for gaming. For Photoshop, there is OSX, which is a full fledged Unix. For people who use Real Operating Systems, a bunch of Lisp environments (including Emacs + Slime) are just an apt-get away. Weblocks seems to be a nice web framework. As for the third hit on Google (Kanamit), it was a prank.

As for #2, http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index... seems to be a good start

As for #3, that one got me. I am mostly a Python/Plone guy learning Django, but I am sure plenty was developed in the last couple decades for Lisp. Since it takes a smart person to do it, you shouldn't find lots of lousy stuff.
Timberland pays out to settle text spam lawsuit
Extending the online shopping idea a bit, this would be of great use for folks buying jewelry, watches, etc. online.

Let's say you are buying a watch, amazon has images, but those are not actual sizes; although amazon lists the dimensions separately. Having the actual image size would, in my opinion increase sales in this category.

Also, check if you can integrate any of this with like.com.

Good idea, good luck!
When he says "not much in terms of community to help answer questions or maintain your code", he meant "I can´t google my way out of a tough programming problem"

Lisp is not for sissies.
The most useful trick I've used is writing out numbers or calculations algebraically (in my head). For instance, if you're squaring a number near some round number, say 52, one can write.

(52)^2 = (50 + 2)^2 = 50^2 + 2 * 50 * 2 + 2^2 = 2500 + 100 * 2 + 4 = 2704.

Also really helpful: you can do powers by memorizing a few precomputed logarithms, knowing extrapolation and knowing how to convert bases.

My favorite method for doing logarithms tends to be a mix between a 'guess and check' Newton's method, and Feynman's algorithm:

Consider the problem of finding the logarithm of a fractional number between 1.0 and 2.0 (the algorithm can be generalized without too much difficulty). Feynman observed that any such number can be uniquely represented as a product of numbers of the form 1 + 2^-k, where k is an integer. Testing each of these factors in a binary number representation is simply a matter of a shift and a subtraction. Once the factors are determined, the logarithm can be computed by adding together the precomputed logarithms of the factors. The algorithm fit especially well on the Connection Machine, since the small table of the logarithms of 1 + 2^-k could be shared by all the processors. The entire computation took less time than division.

http://www.longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php
Top 10 Influential Space Thinkers
Yahoo Loses as Google Moves Search to the Toolbar
From what I know social networking was a subject in academia for more than 50 years.
I too found it annoying, but it still might be a good idea. Maintaining quality of content is a big deal. Obviously you'll lose some good posts, but in the end it might be worth it.
if she has so much deep understanding of social networks why isn't she creating her own social network?

Does the world really need yet another social network? There is value in both people who do, and people who analyze.

In my eyes it's just a PR move.

I don't think you understand MSR's mission.
Here's Fred Wilson's blog. He's a partner at USV, the featured company.

http://www.avc.com/
The most removed 3-word item was "Barack Obama will", and I suspect the most added item was "Barack and Biden will".

On top of that, some rephrasing and mixing up of issues to highlight the parts of his policy which McCain/Obama swing voters care for instead of what Hillary/Obama swing voters is just smart politics.
How about a separate "On-topic" metric with voting.
they did it by designing better products and software. Why not figure out how to do that again instead?

Right, because a company of Microsoft's size is capable of only doing one or the other. The purpose of MSR is not to directly ship software.
Does the world really need yet another social network?

Convince first yourself, then trying convincing me.
No offense to Ms. boyd, but when I think of some of the people who are or have been associated with Microsoft Research (Erik Meijer, Simon Peyton-Jones, Jim Gray, Pat Helland, Charles Simonyi, C.A.R. Hoare, Jim Blinn, Butler Lampson, etc.) I have a hard time thinking of this as a "key hire".
I was thinking for the last couple weeks "oh man, now hn has jumped the shark". And as I was reading through some of the comments here, and it occurred to me that while I do keep tabs on the 'new' articles (not trusting the good ones to make their way up) I would only upvote if I thought it was a truly amazing article.

I will change my upvoting habits. I believe the system can indeed work. I will upvote a little bit more often on articles that are very pertinent to this group.
Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (by W. Danny Hillis)
You can read about that stuff everywhere right now (news.google, front of popular magazines). => The existing guidelines hint at this by suggesting that if you can find it on certain other sites, it explicitly doesn't belong here.

It doesn't really help start my business as it provides little actionable advice. => Very insightful.
This isn't about Wikipedia's practice of deleting entries, which is documented in huge, sprawling, mind-numbing detail, accompanied by 3x the word count of huge, sprawling, mind-numbing debates about the wisdom of those policies.

What it is instead is an article about one guy's side project, "Deletionpedia", which is a wiki that captures the pages Wikipedia deletes. That article hasn't even been deleted; it's just (apparently) been put up for deletion.

Wikipedia is a huge project. You can put Bill Gates' article up for deletion right now. Nobody will stop you. The debate will be short (I'd expect "seconds, not minutes"), but that's because everyone knows who Bill Gates is, and nobody knows what Deletionpedia is, which means it lives or dies on its merits, and not name ID.

Can we stop making mountains out of molehills now?
Nokia's NFC phones - Touch to command.
LUXURIEST MOTOROLA V8 IN BLACK/GOLD
The Motorola RAZR2 V8 Luxury is the Rolls Royce of the mobile phone world, boasting 18-carat gold plated accents and a snake skin effect exterior; the Motorola Z8 Luxury is not just a mobile phone but a statement in its own right.
While an amazing article, this has already been posted here. I guess it might be good enough for a repeat?
I agree, let's not continue arguing on the internet.

My hypothesis is: As this place continue to gain in popularity it will continue to become more generic and reddit like.

I hope to be proven wrong.
This is one of the major security design flaws in Rails, and this is a good article on the problem. What's worse is that the correct design is "folk wisdom" in the community (for instance, a 37Signals dev is never going to make this mistake), but the best-known Rails sample code is all vulnerable.

Every other web stack has this problem in one form or another; for instance, in J2EE, which is either the first or second best-secured web stack out there, you can bypass the best-known best-documented access controls by changing your HTTP verb from "GET" to "SUPERGET", "GETX", or "GIMME".

But Rails kind of went out of its way to win this particular vulnerability, and so now it's something you have to audit for on every project.
I don't know... Good designs are already "democratized" in the sense that clients and designers are already in a free market situation. This site tips the balance so far in favor of what clients want that I can't see it inspiring anything but resentment in designers. The site will attract mostly inexperienced designers and will democratize art the same way Rentacoder democratizes code.

Traditionally, most designers generate multiple proposals for their clients -- but they are paid to do so. In the case of this marketplace, all unaccepted proposals are unpaid. If, say, all designers have approximately equal chance of developing a winning design, all designers will eventually have a run of losing designs, just as a random walk is likely to go negative. This increases the volatility of the artist's income, encouraging experienced artists to go elsewhere.

The site actually refunds the client's money if they get less than 25 proposals on a project. Since the artist in the "hire" model may only be generating 2-5 quality proposals, an artist using the site must either seek payouts over five times greater than the "hire" model or they must put only a fraction of the same effort into their proposals. This encourages rushed work and the participation of inexperienced artists who can't accurately estimate how much they need to charge to stay in business.

Probably the biggest problem, though, is that this model makes it very hard to fight plagiarism. A client gets to see all the proposals, but they only need to choose one accepted proposal. There is little to stop them from "borrowing" elements from the other proposals without paying -- many artists do not have the means to launch a copyright suit, especially over a design detail. Any designer who experiences this a few times will sour on the site.
Thank you for including the part about building an executable, and the little backstory on it.

When I first started in Lisp, one of my early questions too was, "how do you make an executable?" For a seasoned Lisper, that question might seem foreign, but it makes perfect sense to a C programmer.

I asked the question on Usenet, trying to explain that not everyone I wanted to give programs to had Lisp on their computer.

In response, someone tried to persuade me that you don't do such things with Lisp. Someone else turned out to be a Franz salesman asking, "which platforms are you talking about that don't have Lisp? we can supply Lisp on any platform!"
Generation or two? How about right now? What about all the mobile payment (MChek, Paymate) companies? Something like WiMAX is def going to be bigger in India...Dating services?

Things are already starting to diverge...it's on a smaller scale right now but it's definitely visible
Should students be allowed to blog about what goes on in the classroom?
He who controls the present controls the past.
Marshall, Texas, Capital of Missouri
700 Billion bailout? Ebay it
I was almost embarrassed to ask as I thought it's something I should know! 8)
The utility of TDD varies tremendously from one language to another. Its biggest advocacy is usually associated with dynamically-typed languages, such as Ruby, Python, and Smalltalk, because TDD is a great workaround for mistakes that can easily occur in those languages. That doesn't mean it's a panacea for all programmers, though. For example, the type systems in OCaml and Haskell are effective for automatically verifying many of the same conditions. (Testing is used within those languages, but very differently -- Comparing TDD to Haskell's QuickCheck may prove enlightening.)

Some day, better tools than the type systems in OCaml and Haskell and TDD will be invented. Let's not get so hung up on either as a solution that we miss out on even better ones (or fail to invent them).
An intelligent discussion on ligatures for 'wtf' and 'lol'
Thank you. That's incredible to hear and I hope we can continue to please.

We need to do more advanced metrics to capture this kind of behaviour (cohorts, stickiness).
You forgot my hero - Leslie Lamport.
Agreed. The decorator idea didn't just come out of nowhere: It merely codified a convention that appeared in a lot of code where `function` would be defined and then you'd see `function = decorate(function)` afterward. (This is, for example, arguably the core idea of WSGI.)
An idea to improve voting - get users to upvote
I've been more active on HC than on other community news sites, but I've always seen one big weakenss to voting.

I usually open links in tabs, and then go through them all, rather than going back and forth between pages, so I often don't go back to vote for submissions.

However, if the results opened with the HN submission as a banner at the top with the submitted content in a frame below, Then I don't have to go back and forth, and maybe a link in the banner would change the size of the frames so reveal comments.

If this gets enough votes, I'll code it up and send it to PG.
A No-Frills Introduction to Lua 5.1 VM Instructions [pdf]
Corporate Blogging: The Fallacy of Quantity vs Quality
Clojure Programming wikibook
This is an idea I toyed with but could never bring myself to implement once I realized its most popular probable use. If you want to email (see my profile), I have a suggestion for a domain name that does not involve the word "size" or "big."

Also, forget the "screen size" thing. Just use physical measurements in CSS ("width: 1cm") - it works remarkably well on a variety of browsers.
I try to write lapidary code, but sometimes it includes arbitrary personal choices. Also, there are times when I can't find a way to avoid combining ideas that I'd like to express separately: maybe I'm doing a performance optimization, or maybe I'm balancing different strata of abstraction. Those are times when it's great to have tests that describe what's essential about my code-under-test. The test assertions can be automatically checked, and they're expressed in formal language.

TDD certainly is a good way to help beginners gain confidence and improve their skills. And, I don't see what's so bad about a stronger programmer who chooses to start with the sparse essence of a program rather than building dense stand-alone code at the beginning. Especially if you're already committed to having tests for qc purposes or as a sort of compromised form of literate programming.
Power sleeping cube. A must have if you spend more than 8 hours at the office.