skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Haskell doesn't really do inheritance, unless you somehow get O'Haskell to work on a modern machine.

In place of inheritance, you have two mechanisms: algebraic data types and type classes. They work great for many programs, but neither of them is an exact fit for Java-style object-oriented programming.

An algebraic data type has a name ("Bool", in the first example below), and several constructors ("True" and "False"). Constructors can take positional and named arguments, and they can take type parameters:

data Bool = True | False
data Shape =
Square { l :: Int, t :: Int, w :: Int, h :: Int }
| Circle Int Int Int
data Maybe a = Just a | Nothing

Once you define an algebraic data type, you can't add new constructors. But you can write functions which match against the existing constructors at runtime, giving you a form of runtime dispatch vaguely analogous to method lookup:

boolToString :: Bool -> String
boolToString True = "true"
boolToString False = "false"

So algebraic data types work great if you have one abstract interface with known set of concrete subclasses. It's a really great way to think about complex data structures with multiple types of nodes.

A type class is a little bit like a C++ template protocol: It says that a given type implements a set of functions. But as with C++ templates, it's effectively resolved at compile time. (Well, the implementation is quite a bit different, but that's the rough idea.)

Now, ADTs and type classes are great. But if you find yourself using crazy hacks to recreate an OO class hierarchy in Haskell, you're probably fighting against the language. Either structure your program differently, or find a different language.
Stuff you should know: top tech breakthroughs of 2011
One of the reasons I'm leaning toward automation is that I'd be able to build the biggest "hypnosis lab" in the world. Imagine getting anonymous feedback after every session... With that data, I'd be able to quickly sort out the snippets that work from the snippets that don't.
This is ridiculous. In the West we have open discussions even in the "Media" about how much corruption and so forth goes on in the government. In fact everything you say is pretty common knowledge/cliche to hear on any Cable News network. These kinds of discussions could never occur in North Korea. Perhaps things could be better but you cannot compare this to a secretive state such as North Korea in which people believe their "Dear Leader" never had to deficate or urinate. You're hatred for the West is just making you miss a huge problem of scale.
I'm 21 years into my career myself, so the web is younger than my carrer. At this point, I do full stack development as well.

And... I think you are taking on more than you need to for the discussion at hand.

If you are an excellent JS programmer, you don't need to keep up on the latest libraries. You can code what you need yourself. Sure, maybe you do something from scratch that could have been done with a newer library, but the 10 hours you lose there is more than made up by not having to do those 15 hours a week keeping up.

Likewise on your other tech points. Constantly churning your toolkit doesn't speed you up. It slows you down. There is a balance to be found where you keep up "enough", but still focus the majority of your time on delivering work.

I choose to spend a day or so each month trying to keep up, then roll with what I know for a while.

Likewise with some of your other activities. Meetups and business models? They may help you be a consultant, but that is adding yet a 4th role to the topic at hand.

Many of your other points also apply more to a consultant than a heads-down designer/coder.

In general, it sounds like you are trying to be an even rarer breed. More power to ya, but it may be overkill for most people.
Make sure to take it off if they are refueling though. You'd want to get out of there if things light up.
You could just ask: How is lists:reverse(List) implemented in Erlang, or if you don't know it, how could it be implemented? What are the trade-off and limitations for different implementations?

Since most abstractions are leaky, you can make a good argument, that learning how libraries tick, even if you are never going to rewrite them, is a useful skill.
Friend Me, Follow Me or Google Me?
It costs too much

Simple! Pay 'em less & give 'em equity!
every Startups are haz more desingineer?
This seems like a natural extension of MIT's OCW which has been going for 10 years now. It may be influenced by Stanford's recent clases, but "reactionary" is a bit of a stretch. MIT has been giving away free classes online for a long time, adding credentials seems like an obvious extension of that, and one that would have likely happened regardless of what Stanford does.
A recent blog post by Engine Yard claims that they host Groupon's site right now.

http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/groupon-makes-history-in...
You may be pleased to note that this comment finally pushed me over toward finally trying Solarized in Emacs. I'm very used to high-contrast themes (blackboard for almost a year) so it's taking some getting used to. Especially in the emacs rcirc client where chat text is low contrast on the background.

edit: Lasted about a half hour for me; too low contrast and the cursor seems to be invisible, so impossible to tell where I'm about to type.
I suppose one could break this issue down into one of breadth vs depth. You probably can find someone who can do both designing and engineering, but unless you find one of those mythic geniuses, you're not going to get someone who goes very deep in either one. I suppose this might be preferable to certain businesses that just don't have that many deep, involved problems. Of course, as a business grows more complex, you need some specialization. You just can't beat having someone who knows a problem inside and out.

Regardless, I think most startups who hire this way are trying to have their cake and eat it too. It's probably part of the reason why some startups find recruiting so difficult.
I found the x.commerce part interesting. Who is that aimed at? They say it, "gives developers a platform to deliver commerce applications to merchants." Is this something where an independent developer can make money, or is it more geared for a big shop to provide another channel for Target to unload patio furniture?

I'm reminded of a Mixergy podcast podcast about Doba, the drop shipping company. The idea is you just focus on marketing and capturing internet keyword real estate and then fulfill orders with Doba, but when I looked into Doba's prices, it seemed like it'd be hard to make money.
I wonder how a progsysadmin would compare to the desingineer. I'd imagine it's easier to find a progsysadmin just from my own experience. I've had a few jobs where I was responsible for both the programming and system administration, in small companies of course.
I suspect the scarcity of your skillset is the main contributor to your relative scarcity of opportunities. At a previous company I helped found, we realized that we were trying to find people who were pretty good designers, front-end developers, and really good on the phone with clients for support stuff. We didn't have the margins to split these into different roles, and that was the insight that allowed me to realize that our revenue model was fundamentally broken. It's not that these people don't exist, it's that you can't design your business around reliably finding them. So maybe you're left with a handful of startups who are able to find a place for you because they recognize your value and adapt, not because they had planned on finding you in the first place.
If you are implementing, than you are right. If you are interested in studying algorithms and how they work, asymptotic considerations can tell you a lot about the algorithm. You have to decide what you want to ask for in your interview.
MIT's holiday greeting
When I worked as an industrial design, we had a similar person on staff that sat at the intersection of design and engineering - we call this person a design engineer.

We have this role at Airbnb.
When I have no choice, I also tone down the brighness to ridiculous low levels. On some monitors, even 0% is too bright (hint: change the contrast then, some monitors will dim the backlight some more).
No, I haven't, though I'm interested in which library are you referring to. We've been developing our own Python wrapper interface to their API, though this is to share a common interface with the other EEG DAQ (e.g. g.tec) Python wrappers we've been developing.
If this is true does it imply that upper management took too much money out after the last round of funding?
Your 2.6 has a bug http://bugs.python.org/issue4748.
A lot of people can do passable jobs on both roles, but I've never met someone who was awesome on the backend that was also a great UX designer. Likewise, the best designers can whip up a new UI in an afternoon, but it might take them a couple weeks to get it coded.
That's why I always asked for dress code before the interview. You may feel slightly stupid when you ask, but you'll be dressed right when you come to the interview.
Promote your site using WordPress repository
http://www.DownsizeDC.org/

Mission: We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states.

Technology:

Our proprietary “Educate the Powerful System”SM (EPS) is not sending an email on your behalf. Usually, our system fills out the web forms located at the Congressperson's website. Our system gives your letter a more personalized feel — even increases the odds that it will be read.

(I copied the above from their website.)

So - you fill out a simple web form, personalize with your comments if you like, and DownsizeDC will deliver it to all your Senate and House representatives using their own Congressional web sites and web forms. All you have to provide is your address and DownsizeDC will figure out who your reps are.

It makes it much easier for public to communicate with their representatives, which allows for the communication to occur more frequently and in greater volume.

This is a cool hack and I use it several times a week every week to express my disapproval of the erosion of civil liberties in the USA attendant to the War on Terror.
Blame it all on MongoDB
another lucrative market ready for disruption.
Dumb Ideas Your Politicians Have About Technology
Linux Kernel Milestones 2011
I am not a doctor, so I am mostly speaking from experience.

My eyesight without glasses is bad enough (nowadays) that I can't do a fair comparison of uncorrected vision between dark and light (can't read anything either way), but letters on dark background get significantly more blurred than with a light background. The overall room lighting level also seem to play a large role. Hence, pupil size.

My guess is that not only myopic individuals, but people with any visual problems due to their corneal shape. Also LASIK patients with large pupils (but that's to be expected).

Again, not a doctor. I am hoping some doctor will step in and comment :)
When Apple Loses We All Win
Steve Jobs's legacy can be found in Apple’s commitment to design and how that's trickled sideways to its rivals. Increasingly, it's now those rivals who are leading the way in design.
#HNTO - Due to the requests... Toronto HN Meetup
tl;dr: This transistor doesn't use doped silicon, instead it has an extra gate which gives the effect of dynamically choosing the polarity.
That is as it should be. When you are making a new start up the way Groupon is you should be looking at a much higher ROI than the price of borrowing money, so you should throw as much money on growing fast as possible.
Pilates Weight Reduction Program
Lady Gaga Facebook and Twitter Accounts Hacked
"Now where would 8 million of North Koreans immigrate if suddenly communism collapsed in their country? I don't know."

Many would migrate to China, and this is probably one of the main reasons why China tries to keep the status quo in North Korea. China does not want a collapse of their neighbour.
Voila http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3374259
I hate to be smug but that's kind of chicken hawk. Also, who's to say this hasn't happened already and those that have tried were put in prison, tortured, and killed? It's more complicated than that. To put on a resistance, you need food, weapons, etc. This is a country far more closed than Libya or Syria. I suppose you could argue for some Gene Sharp style revolution but I don't know if many people in North Korea have read him.
Xbox 360's latest dashboard update has a revised TOS that includes a very similar clause.

I'm a big fan of the Xbox 360, but I wouldn't mind seeing Microsoft get hit by this as well.

As much as I like the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live products, I hate this increasing practice of revising the TOS as part of an update which, because of the design of the system, is essentially a required update unless you want to turn the product you already own into a brick (game updates often require the latest system updates to be present, playing games online require the latest game updates, basically you either have to update or the system quickly becomes totally useless, and you can't update without "agreeing" to the new terms).
Patented: A single tap makes a call from a number in an email
So your implied argument is that patents hurt consumers because they don't allow one company's patented innovations to be used without restriction by other companies?

Your view is that the limit of one's benefit from an innovation should be the time between when one releases an innovative product and when your competitors release copy-cat products?
DEC went through a long and complicated dismantling during the 90s. In the late 90s, Intel did eventually end up, through two different transactions, with most of the chip IP and fabs, including the StrongARM and the Alpha. StrongARM/XScale stayed relevant for a number of years, but the Alpha was already dead. There was little market for it, and the top guys had already left for AMD to design the Athlon.

Compaq eventually picked up what remained under the DEC name, which wasn't much.

What's left of DEC is scattered throughout the tech industry. What's left of their microprocessors is in Intel and AMD CPUs.

(By the way, one example wouldn't exactly prove whatever point you're trying to make. The pattern of paying a few million to a few tens of millions of dollars for a startup to shut down its existing operations would still be far more common/likely.)
I was discussing this issue with a friend the other day. I think the real 'why' is there is no motivator to become good at both design and development. Both skills take people who are passionate about what they do, usually to the point where they hone their skills in their free time. I actually think most (good) devs and designers have slight inclinations towards each others work, but it is a serious effort to go from "that does look cool/useful" to professional proficiency. The few people who are currently 'designineers' are mostly likely completely passionate about both (which is their motivator). However for the rest why put in the effort? My understanding is that the pay isn't much different (in fact this sounds a lot like, "wouldn't it be great if I could get 2 for the price of 1"). Easier to find a job? Perhaps, but right now I think good designers and developers are having no trouble finding work. Additionally your skill set is now the target of tons of people looking to get something for nothing, or have one person doing 10 jobs
I think we're not communicating well because we're deep in a tangential subthread.

I take your point that repeated insertion at a specific held reference to the middle of a list is faster than insertion into the middle of an array.

I'm just saying that in Ruby, where every list node incurs object overhead and where list iteration is done by tree walking and array referencing is done by pointer dereferencing in the background, lists underperform arrays even in cases where you'd expect the algorithmic complexity of a list to yield a big win.
A few requested this on the thread i posted about iOSTO (http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3373681).

I'm not sure yet if i will have to organize it, but i already have a paid account on meetup, so I'm donating the space.
Airbus could easily be the most unsafe major airline in history. No surprise when I read this article that it said this happened on Airbus. Those things have a nasty habit of randomly crashing for no reason whatsoever. Unfortunately planes cannot be booted back up after a crash. I would not be caught dead on an Airbus because that is probably what I would end up being, dead.
Are you really? I think it's worth providing examples if you're going to claim you're both a great coder and designer.

As the only link I can find to your work that you've shared so far is this http://cookbuk.com/ (from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2289991)

The design's not bad and avoids most developer designed pitfalls, but it's not great either. HTML wise you've resorted to nested divs, there's errant elements floating in the wrong place and there's also a bunch of commented out code in each html page, which imho is always a massive red flag for me programmer wise. You shouldn't have to comment out code if you're using a VCS.

Obviously this is from 2 years ago, do you have any examples that better show off your skills now?

I'm not trying to pick on you here, it's more that I am honestly interested to see some of your work.
if you make sure to build out the UI/UX first and then start coding a feature you can accomodate for this a bit
Giant clouds shaped like series of breaking waves (pictures)
Missed this back closer to when you posted it - but it's less that I don't understand what's going on, and more that this code is more likely to go wrong & be harder to debug than more descriptive code.

Just the other day, I was trying to identify what was being done by someone's "idiomatic" code, and had to keep three vertical screen's worth of data up just to follow what was happening. All that code was wrong, but because they were using pointers "idiomatically", it took a long time to find their off-by-one error.

Granted, they had gone about 4 levels further with pointers than the given example in the article, but the premise is similar.
DeSopa: a Firefox addon to easily bypass SOPA DNS blocking
The fact that:

(a) MacDonalds had been warned about this repeatedly in the past and

(b) that the coffee was being served at temperatures significantly higher than you'd normally get from a kettle at home / work thus rendering the sort of normal expectations you might have moot

didn't seem pertinent to you?
Please explain "the details" which made it "even more absurd" to you.

At what temperature would you start to assign responsibility to McDonalds? Can they, in your mind, give out boiling coffee without culpability?

[edit: typo]
Dumbo Is Jumbo with Tech
It's not 'dumbing down' the process. It's making it clearer for the end user what exactly your site does. If someone on HN couldn't figure it out - you've got problems.

For example,
Change from "Enter a name for your drop" to "Enter a name for your file drop"

On your title it could be - "dropsauce - Drop off your files at Dropsauce & share them"

Right now your site looks like it's about naming your drop. Not about putting files which can be password and time protected.
It's not out. It's not final. It's not official. It could be removed or redone.

Until it is announced by Mozilla, it's not out. Saying it is out and linking to downloads is just irresponsible.
The problem with your argument is that in the West, we immediately knew about those issues. You just can't compare those two things.
The Solovay–Strassen and Miller–Rabin tests, which are fast and accurate, but not easy to implement: the former requires understanding the Legendre and Jacobi symbols (arcane mathematical concepts) and the latter requires an efficient factorisation algorithm.

Its very frustrating how often this comes up: an answer is well known but "hard to implement". The answer here should have clearly been "so then I used Solovay–Strassen and Miller–Rabin". You'd think there would be SOME sample code out there or that translating the math wouldn't be too difficult, yet I often run into this problem myself. The divide between mathematical notation, or perhaps the "language of CS papers" and actual code is distressing.
NDAA FAQ: A Guide for the Perplexed
At least Apple is a company that sells something and is trying to protect their products. They are playing the game under the current law, which is clearly flawed. Rather than complain everytime Apple/Microsoft, etc go after others, can we try to get problem solved?

The game is so flawed that there's an entire industry built around it, and it's getting worse.
I interact with non-technical people almost every day, and I can relate that this is a concern that they have been far more vocal about lately. I don't really understand how it became a concern, since I'd expect that they don't follow startup news like I do, nor do they tend to be early adopters that would have been burned by a service closing.

Every single of the half-dozen or so times that I've recommended Quickbooks Online to someone, their major objection has been that they don't want to rely on it because they're concerned that Quickbooks will just up and cancel it one day. (Or break it.) Just a few days ago, one of my clients asked my opinion of online backup services, especially Carbonite. Her first question was what she would do if they didn't stick around. She's a pretty sharp individual, but not tech-savvy, and even though I explained that in that case she could just sign up for a different service, she still decided it was too risky to rely on.

For me, after reading HN for a while now, I've gotten a toin coss mentality towards whether or not a particular startup will still be around in a year.

My hunch is that several classes of web-based startups are headed for trouble and don't realize it yet. If you're building a game, if you're building a Facebook app, if you're building something that people don't feel like they have to rely on, you're fine. But, if you're trying to address a major business problem or build something that people will have to trust for the long term, I think your pool of available customers is shrinking, not growing.

The funny thing is that what the customers want is lifestyle businesses -- businesses that the founders are totally invested in and wanting to work on for a very long time -- and lifestyle businesses catch a lot of derision in startup circles.
Critical Zero-Day Vulnerability found in 64 bit version of Windows 7