skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Consider the transformations you might do on a piece of source code while you're playing around. A lot of these (for me, anyway) are things which change not just position or name, but the part-of-speech of words, or temporarily make a nonsensical expression. (I do it in my shell a lot, too.) Rigid structure-enforcing editors hinder this.

I hope that this can be mitigated by using an incremental parser (pretty easy to write for a lisp), which gracefully switches to a plaintext representation if the underlying code cannot be parsed anymore. The advantages of an editor which understands the code (both, syntax and simple semantics) you are writing or reading are just too promising.
You couldn't be wronger. In fact, it is ahead of Android.

People don't like == miserable sales numbers. The narrative for Windows Phone 7 is so bad that naturally the only people who buy it are generally going to automatically like the platform -- they had some ulterior motive, generally, for selecting it.

Windows Phone is evolving quickly and is turning credible, but that satisfaction survey is complete discardable nonsense.

Windows phones have some of the best ratings on carrier websites and Amazon.

Fringe things generally do. That isn't an insult to it, it's simply truth.

It is also failing because of carrier stores and salesmen, who seem to be steering people away from Windows Phones to Android LTE devices.

Maybe because they think the Android devices are better? For much of Android's life salespeople have rightly steered users to the iPhone. A "held down" conspiracy doesn't follow.
Hmm, how can you open an account without going to a branch? Don't you have to sign forms, etc?
The problem with scratch is that code visualization kinda dies on the vine for procedural programs.

For pure functional languages, each chunk of code is a world unto itself, and one can exploit this to make "visual proximity" correlate with "causal proximity". This is good for our eyes and brains because we don't have to look far to understand what is going in a certain part of a program.

The underlying reason this can work is that functional languages tightly couple syntactical proximity and causal proximity by design.

Because of hidden state, procedural languages can't. Instead, they have a tight mapping between syntactical proximity and temporal proximity (think back to BASIC and its line-numbers, which almost look like time-stamps).

Now, flat text source files aren't bad at preserving causal locality for functional languages. But because an intervening sub-expression can cause two parts of the same s-expression to be really far apart in a source file, they aren't great either.

We use indenting and code folding as a cue to mitigate this problem, but these techniques are really just telling us that flat text is the wrong medium to represent ASTs. Serializing a syntax tree to a string of characters will always spoil the party.

In theory, graphical code presentations can do better because they have an extra dimension to play with, so they can achieve the mapping from syntactical proximity to visual proximity more faithfully.

However, this 'pretty lisp' project doesn't do that. It's just another form of indenting. In a sense it is still stuck in the flat-text mindset.

I should mention I've done a bit of playing around of my own, though I haven't seriously tried to solve the graphical-AST challenge yet:

http://taliesinb.net/the-structure-of-a-mathematica-package
http://taliesinb.net/quicksort-in-61-characters
It's a concise description of the difference in incentives between investors and founders. But I'm not sure if it isn't a false dichotomy. Larry and Sergey are asserted to have been better off in their garage; how do we know that they wouldn't have been even bigger starting in a shared space? Maybe they could have attracted some other very bright sparks that reduced the size of their engineering-oriented blind spots.
Demoscene / Fractals / Rendering Tutorials
I have been struggling to find an elegant way to persist data across a peer to peer cluster of MS SQL Servers. Our data center is setup so that writes are made to an arbitrary server and replicated across all peers. This makes generating primary keys a challenge as they need to be globally unique but GUIDs result in poor performance. I would love to hear hacker news' opinion of my proposed solution.
A new way to take and experience pictures
You're absolutely correct. Right now we focus on moving text around. Where the magic will come in, as these sorts of things progress is developing interactions to move the ideas around. Moving further up the power curve is always a good thing.

My comment was based on the concept and my interpretation of those concepts in the future. Not necessarily on the reality right now.
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic, or serious, but it's pretty common practice to "hack" around particular provisions noted in lots of different specs in order to provide a faster browsing speed (perceived or actual for the user).

ie, RFC 3390 ( http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3390.txt ), provides algorithms for determining/detecting the maximum initial window for TCP traffic.

min (4MSS, max (2MSS, 4380 bytes))

Just a few lines later the spec specifically says that:

> "This change applies to the initial window of the connection in the
> first round trip time (RTT) of data transmission following the TCP three-way handshake."

Well, guess what, lots of large companies ignore this, and they start with a much larger initial window. They do this in order to shave off as many round trips as possible, to reduce your load time. (Google AMZ Apple etc)

This spec was written 10 years ago! (Read here for more information http://blog.benstrong.com/2010/11/google-and-microsoft-cheat... )
Obviously I can't speak for the original poster's intentions, but I figured it was just meant as a helpful reminder that parts of the code shouldn't be considered "best practise".

It's great that they post code - it's just that newcomers might look at it, think "oh hey this might look like an OK way to do XYZ" - and then be surprised later when new iOS versions or whatever break because of shortcuts taken earlier.

A gentle reminder that "this is not necessarily the proper way to do it" is appropriate in this context, I think.

(I'm sure issues like these are common for many studios' games)
What if what you are feeling is only a personal opinion reflecting your particular skill set? There might be a large pool of people who think in the node.js style and to whom it is completely natural.

Your argument could be applied to functional programming languages that to many feel 'unnatural', but to others feel like the one true way. Similarly RPN or 'normal' calculators. RPN feels natural to some, alien to others.
"How Not to Sell [Cheap] Software in 2012."

or

"How Not to Sell Software [to Small Companies] in 2012."
PlentyOfFish sued because of third-party ad
Are you talking wolfram workbench or eclipse? (I don't have workbench). If eclipse has mms support I'll be trying that out tonight.
Pretty much the entire CAD market is in that price range...
Of course it's expected! When you have a solution that is going to make a huge amount of money for some other organization, you'd like to capture some of that upside as well.

Did you know that HBO prices it's channel lineup to the CableCo's at 50% of whatever they sell it for -or- $minimum_price_per_subscriber.

Enterprise software is a whole different game and blog posts like these dont fully capture the wide range of customers in the enterprise space OR the WIDELY varying levels of technical acumen that they possess. YOU might be able to take an executable and integrate it into your systems just fine, but the IT-shop at the local car dealership down the road probably doesn't. They'll happily pay for the handholding.

I guess I just find it amusing when a startup gets frustrated by the software business. If you think their sales process is cumbersome or opaque, that's probably a clue that you're not their target customer.
Also: http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/another-us-laws...
I think the answer, as usual, is "it depends". It can be bad when the open-source portion relies heavily on the closed-source components to function properly. One example: when Linksys was required to release their Linux-based router firmware, the wireless driver stayed closed-source. This effectively forced the use of 2.4 kernels for years, until a suitable substitute was developed. This exact situation is happening with Android: building a functional version for real hardware requires a large number of closed-source components, and they are a pain.
Article about the enthusiasm surrounding the San Diego Tech Scene.
In Australia it could qualify as spam, as it's promoting a commercial service.
http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_310513
Paredit is nice, but barely works for stock Lisp syntax. One of the best things about Common Lisp is reader macros, and in order to integrate them with structured editing, you'd need to change the reader macro mechanism to be based around a composable context-free grammar description that can be shared between the reader and the structure editor. I'm pretty sure that's still an open research problem.

Personally I think structured editing is an idea that seems great until you actually try it.
I have a friend who works for the TSA. We argue about the value of the organization a lot. And about airport security a lot.

Here's my view. It's not just the TSA that is to blame. It's the fact that American politics is often driven by hysteria. As an American, I say the answer is teaching people about real security strategy.

The hard truth, and one the American people have not accepted is that any idea of security must be firmly conditioned on the idea of acceptable risk. No matter what we do, the risk will never reach zero, so we are better balancing risk with the intrusiveness of the effort to eliminate it. Any security professional in any field worth his or her salt will tell you that.

So the TSA folks on the ground are put in a bind. They are sold as the answer to security and told they must prevent all future attacks. But the TSA is not in a position to do that. What they are in a position to do is to make it hard enough to carry out an attack that the real security folks (FBI, etc) can stop the plot before the terrorists get to the airport. This means that the right screening measures are important because by the time a terrorist gets to the airport, having planned and prepared with airport security in mind, it's simply too late for airport security to stop them. Therefore you have to see airport security as an assist to security rather than as the mechanism as a whole.

In that regard, the TSA has failed miserably. The article lists a few points, but misses one of the biggest problems with the way the bodyscanners are currently implemented: they replace metal detectors.

Nobody has ever brought down a plane with a bomb detonated by a non-metalic detonator. There have been a few attempts (the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, etc), but these require a lot more human intervention to set off, and therefore provide crew and passengers a better chance to react. In many cases they are also more difficult to get to work in the first place.

So the bodyscanners eliminate a small security hole but in the process create a much larger one. Metalic devices can be hidden in body cavities and are invisible to the scanners. And without metal detectors we don't even have a chance to detect the worst of them.

The TSA has shown that they are worried about this. They have repeatedly said they are concerned about, say, radio-controlled toys and cell phones, but they have created a situation where they can't do anything about it.

Security is a process and not a product. When it becomes a product, we see what happens. The TSA is both a product of the product mentality (pun intended), and a product that was sold to the American People after 9/11 as the answer to our security woes. Until we can get the American people to go through the security assessment process, we will be stuck with more of the same.
Might I join your frustration team? (I am also not an American) Which country in the world has something called as "Federal Inspection"; it's not "immigration", it's "federal inspection". By the mere wording, it sounds like I am walking into a prison.

I have traveled good handful places and most places are frightening friendly - I carry the paranoia of TSA/Immigration to all these international places and get surprised always.

The only one friendly experience I've had in the last 8 years was in ABQ, where this friendly TSA agent 'inquired' in a very friendly way. I somehow felt respected, which got me thinking if there was something to it - are they going to get me telling something irrelevant and make a case. That's the paranoia that the TSA/Immigration has trained my brain from the past years.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

"In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."
Will they still pay when the novelty wears off, though? Also, it's one thing to send money to a guy who makes you laugh. How many people would voluntarily send money for a textbook or an SAT prep workbook?

I doubt anyone would be buying music if Napster hadn't been shut down.
A Million Dollars from AdSense
The vernacular is 'acquihired'. Haven't made Crunchbase so probably hanging between the Angel and the Seed round.

I find these interesting exits from the perspective of the employment strategy game. Lets say you want to get a job at one of the 'big names', you now have an option of going to YC or an equivalent, doing the incubation thing, working your buttocks off to deliver a product, and then you have someone (your angel investor) in your court trying to get you acquired by one of them.

Not trying to imply that these guys did this, its just an interesting way to get hired. Sort of like the 'please-hire-me' web site but more work.

I expect a number of these since there are a lot of folks between Seed and A, with questionable velocity to reach orbit.

As a hiring organization I wonder how these folks play out longer term, having tasted the startup life are these folks easier or harder to retain? Do they work more or less than folks who came through the 'regular' route? What is there impact on the existing teams. Etc.
I'm the developer from Insurgent Games. Thanks for explaining the licensing details so well. I've just updated the readme in all git repos at https://github.com/insurgentgames to include a licensing block that says:

This game is licensed under the GNU General Public License (see gpl.txt). As the copyright owner, I hereby give anyone permission to re-license my GPL code under a non-GPL license for the purpose of distributing it in the iOS App Store or the Android Market.

So people are welcome to fork my project and still publish in the App Store without even having to contact me.
gladly.

i think the single biggest contributor to our success has been the fact that we are in close contact with our customers.

if we lose a sale, we have the opportunity to learn why we lost. during a webinar, we hear the reactions of customers. with RFP's we get a list of the features they want.

when we win, we stay close to them during implementation. we learn what works/what doesn't work with our products.

based upon this feedback, we're able to constantly refine our products and messaging to what our customers want.

we started with a product guy who could pump out code (me), and a phenomenal sales guy. the two of us essentially built the initial business.

we never took any funding.

the most surprising thing is how long it takes to build a solid product. how long it takes to get momentum. everything just takes a lot longer than you'd expect. it's also a funny thing. once you've achieved a small amount of success (and mine is small), people start thinking you actually know what you're talking about. in my experience - apart from geniuses like jobs, gates, musk, etc - there's nothing that separates you from me. it just takes time, dedication and hard work.

edit: most people find us. we also have business associates who resell to their customer base and customers sometimes give us nice referrals.

advice: b2b is great because people actually pay for shit. lots of b2b software is just awful, i think you can differentiate by providing an excellent product. it'll stand out and give you a solid niche.

i'd also say that you should not give your software away for free in b2b. but you should give it to a trial set of customers initially who can help you work out the kinks. stay close to the customers, they can help guide you and tell you where they look for software like what you're selling.

online advertising works great. use landing pages, a/b test them. all the things that you probably already know, just put them into practice. they exist because they work.
I think this is more about not pissing off random untechnical customers that haven't bothered to update their off the shelf blogging software since 2005. Guess the tipping point is when they are losing more customers not upgrading than they will upgrading.
Absorbed
Do you know the price point at which purchase orders predominate over credit cards for payment? I'm launching a product soon and I plan to price it at $6k per year.

I assume that the software will be paid for by PO but if anyone here has a different view, I'd like to hear from you.
No. I never said that nor implied that.

I believe Linus can express this particular opinion in a much more civilised way (especially since he has such a special position in the tech-world), just as the restaurant guest that's talking obnoxiously loud on his telephone could talk at a normal volume.
New Relic really gets all these right too.
Have a startup and need user attention?? go to gamma-tester.com
Make Sure Your Applications Crash
I'm a lisp history nut, but I wasn't around at that time. Paredid doesn't really turn emacs into a structure editor, its more like a "standard editor with some of the better ideas of structure editors miked in" kind of mode. Structure editors introduce a lot of complexity in general. Maybe Interlisp was able to work well in practice despite the added complexity, I don't know, I really would like to know more about such systems.

As for your last sentence, Erik Naggum who had a bad opinion on structure editors in general, seems to have liked the idea of a structure inspector, as in using such tools to inspect code, ratter than create it: http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3064225496493947@naggum....
Can you elaborate a little more on how this works, why we should use it etc?
I don't really buy the argument "TSA has never [...] foiled a terrorist plot or stopped an attack on an airliner.": it could be argued that the TSA measures act as an effective deterrent.

The thing is that's the wrong metric.

The TSA isn't in a vacuum. The metric is whether the security measures have made it hard enough to mount an attack that law enforcement could disrupt it before it began.

Right now, I don't see enough evidence to evaluate that either way. However I can say without a doubt that there are plenty of huge issues with the way the TSA is going about things and a lot of things, like body scanners, do not support an effort to score high on the above metric.
Sad to see what the once-mighty Microsoft Flight Simulator has become.
I've started this: https://github.com/dpogue/gmusic-daap

Unfortunately the DAAP library I started with doesn't support some of the options that iTunes looks for. It works with Rhythmbox and Banshee on Linux, and someone told me that it worked with an Android DAAP client.

Unlike the API posted here, which emulates requests from the web interface, mine is based on the internal API used by Google's Android client.
The network takeover
Ask HN: Will Ubuntu for Android also run undoked?
Greetings! I'm extremely excited about the newly announced Ubuntu for Android [1] [2]. However, to me it would be critical to be able to access Ubuntu also when the phone is not docked... or at the very least the terminal portions, with the ability of apt-getting any relevant package on the go.

Could somebody shed some light on this? Thank you very much in advance.

Cheers.

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3617238
Don't forget The Feynman Series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E
I agree for the most part, however, there is no real reason why this technology can't be built on top of node.js

This is why we have seen the massive launch of all of these modules, trying to help developers avoid the spaghetti code.

I use node.js, but I don't use it for projects. In my tool shed it is really on a hammer that I use on particular nails.
Google's Schmidt warns regulators against killing innovation
Foundation Medicine: Personalizing Cancer Drugs
Huh. I wouldn't call this pretty. Why do you need a box around everything? One of the arguments about Lisp is how visually distracting the parentheses are (and yes, experience Lisp hackers learn to tune them out; that doesn't change the fact that they are visually distracting); the boxes are even more visually distracting. To use Tufte's terminology, this is decreasing the data-ink ratio, not increasing it.

Take a look at Slashdot comments, and compare them to Hacker News comments. Slashdot has a whole lot of extra chrome that doesn't increase the information density. Hacker News has very little on the screen beyond the actual content; it simply uses indentation to indicate nesting of threads.

Why do you need all of the boxes? Why not just use indentation, perhaps highlighting only the currently focused expression? Python has already shown that indentation is sufficient for readably delimiting nested blocks of code. Using indentation to delimit code blocks in plain text has some problems when moving code to a different nesting level, but if you have a structure editor like this in which the indentation is only for display, that's not a problem.
Does IE10 respect the system's ClearType settings or still forcing its own way?
Princess Leia-Like Hologram Coming Soon
There's too issues here:

1) It is too difficult to gain citizenship in the USA. We should make this process easier and attract people with high-tech degrees.

2) Our corporate tax rate is not too high. Think of all of the protections and benefits that this tax rate can afford businesses and citizens in the US. There are numerous examples, but we have a lot of public infrastructure that Singapore does not because of our high tax rate.
Yeah, it's depressing that as computer and graphics power, multi-monitor, and eye tracking is becoming mainstream, realistic flight simulators are apparently no longer an interesting market niche...
I haven't tried yet(still downloading) but others have... https://news.microsoftflight.com/blogs/news/archive/2012/02/...
Ah, my bad. You can install it as an Eclipse plugin, but that seems to require access to an internal server. So guess you're stuck with the Workbench, our branded version of Eclipse, which requires "premier service".

Sorry!
Actually, CPU intensive applications are a bad fit for seamicro products. Basically, the cpus in their blades suck, and the entire architecture is designed to favor io-heavy, jumpy (so not fit for GPU), but easily partitionable loads. Basically, web servers.

with AMD, they will be able to better integrate the cpu cores with their IO systems -- Intel was unwilling to let them fiddle around with Atom IP. I expect that there will be some kind of custom-fit Bobcat-derived cpu products for the web server market. Very low price tag, but also very low cost to build.
What is the underlying technology here? Some UDP based protocol?
What is Software Defined Networking and Why Should We Care?
Well that depends on your social circle then. You can check the press for yourself if you are unaware of the reputation of "patrons"or "capitalistes"　in France. They hardly come under a positive light.