skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Surely not. The implementation already has to check that the number of provided arguments is valid. The decision of whether to evaluate the default expression can be part of that.

The code that evaluates the default expression doesn't need to be in a separate function, either, so the argument that calling that function is too expensive also doesn't hold water.

I just tried a test in SBCL:

(defun foo1 (x) x)
(defun test1 (n) (dotimes (i n) (foo1 (cons nil nil))))
(time (test1 100000000))
=> 4.4 sec, or 44ns / iteration
(defun foo2 (&optional (x (cons nil nil))) x)
(defun test2 (n) (dotimes (i n) (foo2)))
(time (test2 100000000))
=> 4.1 sec, or 41ns / iteration

The version with the optional parameter is actually slightly faster, which completely blows a hole in the performance argument.

Look, no language is perfect -- not even Common Lisp :-) I think users are better served when design flaws in a language are acknowledged without defensiveness than when bogus justifications are offered.
The "game" is bad and and this article is bad.

A lot of the points the author is making in favor of HTML5 are simply not true.

No Compiling - Languages like flash can build while you and work and compile in under 5 seconds. This is also not a compelling reason to choose a platform, and no intelligent person has ever chosen a platform based on how fast it compiles.

Easy Testing - HTML5 is no easier to test than anything else. Perhaps having to connect a device to test would be an exception. Simply not true.

It's not a plugin - This is irrelevant. If we're talking about browsers, flash has more penetration than HTML5 does right now. So which is worse -- a plugin that 99% of PC users already have, or an executable installer that needs to be run in order to update or change to a browser that supports canvas?

You can rapidly prototype with many languages. I am not arguing against HTML5 at all. Infact, I believe it is probably the future of casual web games. I am only arguing against this poorly written article. The author actually claims that HTML5 is better because of the "hype" around it. Give me a break.

The only final thing I will say is that javascript is a shitty language to write anything like a big game in. If you know anything about CS fundamentals, then you can't refute this fact.
Apparently this was already done for python a few years ago:

I just discovered a very similar, albeit older project that essentially does the same (i.e. implementing the actor model on top of threads, greenlets or stacklets)

http://osl.cs.uiuc.edu/parley/

The most important part, i.e. the download section, seems to be down though.
Precisely. Thank you for stating this concisely. I'll need to add it in at some point.
I'm pretty sure this was an emotional decision. I'm sure he had the tools to figure out that he coud cut back a little and save it over time, but he wanted nothing to do with it – what's wrong with being debt free anyways?
From the article: "The firm did this by tapping into a 63 million share over-allotment option, or greenshoe, according to sources familiar with the deal."

The title of your post is inaccurate. No one knows for sure how many shares MS bought during the initial day of trading.

For a full breakdown of the first day of trading, check out Zerohedge's analysis:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/facebook-complete-forensic-pos...
The problem with the Chomsky nonsense about how the syntax of a language can't be learned from input (so much, so fast, with such bad data!), so it must be innate, is that they are not proving that the input is insufficient. They're just claiming it. They just say that they don't see how we could learn so much from so little, so it can't be done, so it isn't learned, it's inborn.

That's just the creationist argument: I can't see any way that something as complex as a human could emerge randomly, so it must have been assembled deliberately by a super-human creator. There's no other way.

Well, no. The thing you're missing here is that there might be algorithms that can do more than you realize.

If the Chomskians proved that the information to be learned simply didn't exist in the input--not that they didn't see it, but using information theoretic methods proved that it could not be there, then the learning algorithm wouldn't matter. It would not be possible for any algorithm.

But unless linguists prove the needed info isn't there (which is probably not possible using our limited knowledge of information theory), the ockham's razor hypothesis for how kids end up speaking the exact dialect they're surrounded with is that they possess algorithms capable of extracting the information from their surroundings.

Declaring such learning impossible because it doesn't look possible is like declaring human evolution impossible for the same reason. We're just beginning to discover that there are spectacularly powerful algorithms capable of doing things we never imagined.
How long do you plan on being in the Bay Area for? If it is a short time period maybe your time would be better spent meeting directly with business-oriented folks.
1 was on the sidewalk, ran into me as I was turning. (No dmg)

2 were on roads, ran stop signs.
You've read enough of Tesla's diaries to know that?
Amen!! Patrick "marlowe" McDonald has really given us a gift by publishing the Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News every week. We're coming up on the Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News one-year anniversary next week. ☺
>Where I disagree with you is in your assessment that a) there aren't many skilled programmers who use PHP, and c) language features of PHP make it very difficult or impossible to write well-designed software.

a) didn't make that assement
b) ??
c) difficult, yes

>As to your assertion that PHP is only good for simple projects employing low-skilled developers, tell that to the various PHP startups paying top dollar for skilled PHP developers.

No, my assertion was that PHP is only a good economic choice, when you choose to hire low-skilled, cheap employees. That's its niche.

>Twitter and Facebook have problems you and I are unlikely to have.

Agree. But that does not make what Facebook did with PHP, anything less than working around the issues caused by the initial commitment to PHP.

>JavaScript is another language that has a crazy-ish type system, but it doesn't get the hate that PHP does.

But it did. Even now, claiming that Javascript's language design isn't optimal isn't somethign people will argue against. Say the same thing about PHP, and you get threads like these...

>I have never had a case where PHP's arrays caused performance problems, but that's probably because I've also never written an application that didn't interact with some kind of back-end store like a database that was inevitable slower.

Now, the type of problems I'm pointing at, are the ones that read their head when the datasize gets larger. For example, an algorithm interacting with an array in PHP. Every loop it inserts or removes an element. Now depending on where that data can be found in the array, and if it's key is a number or a string, if these number-keys are close together in range or not, the algorithmic complexity is anything from O(n) to (2^n).

In other words, the normal fauna of sorting algorithms are very hard, if not impossible to correctly implement in PHP.

This is not very relevant, if you just need a good sorting function for your array, since that is build-in. This is not relevant if you datasizes are always small.

So, this is not relevant in the small-scale world. But if there is a chance that will need to be implementing a complicated algorithm in PHP, that perhaps needs to interact with large datastructures, than PHP is a dangerous choice.

Beyond the limited scope of a database powered template with a bit of logic, it is simply not suited. It is not designed well enough to be 'general purpose' programming language, and its civic duty of all to warn those who think it is. (like the authors of this Node.php project)
If you've got a rootkit on the machine, an easier way is to simply read out of memory? I presume the key would be in the clear, in memory at some stage.
Aha, right.. That helps me understand the link to optimisation. So the point of spheres getting "spiky" is that if you are searching for the inside of the sphere then you need to go into the spike which gets harder and harder to find as the dimension increases.
Given the current political climate I think his seat might come at the expense of a Labor senator.
Because it doesn't stick out from the case at all. Decent idea, I suppose, but micro SD is not designed for the kind of drive activity it looks like their selling this for. If people came to rely on this for storage/backup, I bet they'd regret it at some point once they start burning through what's really cheap, disposable storage cards.
It is possibly this: http://samuelhughes.com/HNWeb.tar.gz

It got rejected from the App Store.

It tracks unread posts based on your scrolling and highlights new unread posts. It displays web pages in a native browser, makes voting buttons bigger and asks for confirmation, makes the font size appropriate. It works by filtering the HTML that goes to the browser widget, and that aspect of it might need updating if the site's HTML has changed.
Mobile Payments Startup Seconds Is Looking For An Engineer. Who’s It Gonna Be?
By crazy high rates do you mean the 6.8% that federal stafford loans were when he was in school? Or the 8.5% that Graduate plus loans were during that period? If not, what conservative investments to you have?
Making the most of the tablet for your business
>It's interesting that I asked a simple technical question, and rather than just answering it,

Your question was:
Why is this bad? (referring to frankenarrays of PHP)

The summary of my answer was:
1. you can't easily tell the algorithmic complexity of most algorithms in PHP involving these "arrays"
2. naming something an array, that doesn't have the associated algorithmic complexity of an array, is misleading and hurts education, research and knowledge sharing.

I explained both these answers, with two examples:
1. Whats the order of complexity of adding an element in the middle of "an array" in PHP? (i'll answer: its undefined)
2. What would you think if PHP named a function a a variable, and a variable a function?

So, I did in detail answer you question.

> you threw in a slew of insults and opinions about PHP and PHP programmers.

It wasn't meant to be insulting. And the majority of my reply was a direct answer to your question. I think it was just a bit too broadly stated, for you to see the forest through the trees of my answer. And then i went off topic for your particular reply.

I hope I clarified it now.
Bug: If you add a task to "today" and then switch couple of times between monthly and future tabs, and come back to "today" tab - task is gone! If my task tracker drops my tasks I'd be very worried! But good effort overall
It might work the same depending on your use of it but it's not the same. In that instance L will become a blank list if it is equal to None, zero, or a zero length string. There are many cases where this wouldn't affect anything, but there can also be instances where that will cause you to define L as a blank list when you really wanted to keep L's value. I think it's always better to be explicit and test for the value(s) you expect.
Agreed. And worse, the article states he saved $40K by paying in one year vs 15 years, which implies that his interest rate was around 3%. That's inflation! He could have effectively had the same savings by just waiting.
Horse drawn carriage to man on the moon in < 100 years and smoke signals to the internet in < 100 years.

We're doing pretty good.
I think design is the most important thing. It's your first impression and you have to make it a good one. If there were a website that cured cancer but it looked ugly upon first glance people probably wouldn't stay on it long enough to figure out what it does or sign up to try it.

Lazy registration is also a good idea probably. I never once built anything that used any registration and I'm embarrassed to say I'm not sure how it works. I'm sure 5 minutes on Google would get me going though.
Outside of finance and tech, what other internships even pay anything?
Exactly. Being frugal is can be great, but I think it's important to remember that it can sometimes cost more to be frugal. For example, walking for his trip to Michigan—if he had spent $100 on a bus, he could've shortened his trip by hours, during which he could've made money by working. I'm not saying it was a bad choice—maybe he wasn't going to be working during that time anyway. But there's always an opportunity cost, and it isn't all about getting the lowest price tag. It's better to aim for efficiency rather than frugality.
Could you add any contact info in your profile? :) There are not many people that know joys of rakija on this site :)
Holy shit. I know this guy - went to school with him.
Redis new commands: BITOP and BITCOUNT
You're assuming that the function-calling overhead is the same in python as in CL. I don't think that's the case, and it definitely wasn't at the start.

I don't agree that this is a design flaw. As I recall it bit me once as a beginner, and never again in over a decade of using python, and as a lisp hacker you know you don't design a language for beginners. :-)
Further up the line ubiquitous hosting was mentioned. Even so, it's still yet another way to judge its usefulness.
UL didn't seem to mind. There is a lot of insulation between the primary and the USB socket: tape, plastic, the secondary winding, more tape, and so on. I can't imagine a failure mode for this system that would occur in normal use.
Twitter as art (Assembling tweets into poetry)
Having been in both situations, I'm pretty certain the magsocket has saved more in avoiding damages than I could reasonably expect to lose on those that are already battery-dead. And if it's a permanent failure, epoxy or sugru or something will probably serve you just as well.

I don't know if Apple hold significant patents on the idea, because I'd absolutely love to see it applied to other connectors, especially headphones and wired ethernet leads.
55 USD seems like quite a bit to pay since I need to supply my own microSD anyway. I'll pass.
I think education and the internet also have lots to do with this decline. People in the third world have seen a huge increase in internet adoption, which facilitates second hand learning; they are now more aware and educated and can take better preventive actions. Great news.
> which behaves very interestingly

Check out Bill Thurston's comment on why this is deeply misleading geometrically:

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53119/volumes-of-n-balls-w...

As several commenters there point out, if you must choose a ratio, a more geometrically natural choice would be the ratio of the unit sphere to its circumscribed cube (which decreases monotonically) or to its inscribed cube (which increases monotonically).
That's good and I agree (and sorry if that came off too antagonistic).

It occurred to me that what I was responding to was actually the notion (which always comes up in this duscussion) that an appropriate response to a discussion of "How not to kill cyclists" is to say "well, but they shouldn't do this thing that annoys but really has no effect on me".
fathom, unless you're seeing ghosts.
netrus, I don't think it works like that. You just described a crystal ball. You sure they know everything that is in this stock? Would there be a justify reason behind something called "Stock exchange" if everyone would know everything in the future?

And what do you mean by instantly? Like the first day or first year, or what? because as far as I remember everywhere I talked with bankers, everyone from teen that just turned 18 to a 95 years old grandpa withdrawing last savings were going to buy Facebook stock. But this is not what Friday has showed to us. 2 things; either: a) entire world change its mind overnight (I spoke with banker as late as last Thursday), or b) there was so much selling happening, that if the world was buying, it wasn't just enough to build demand and push the stock up. I go with gate #2, considering how much underwriters were willing to buildup on $38. A $300,000,000 worth dam!! I guarantee you, plenty of big fish is shitting in pants right now. To many of them this weekend, before Monday opening, is not a chilling out and relaxing time. I think by next Friday you will see some spectacular action on this stock.

Further, I think that Zynga, Groupon, Zillow, Linkedin, ZipCar, Pandora and others -- they are all assuming dramatically increase in revenue. But yet they are all below (some significant like Groupon or Zynga) their IPO price.
or to spin it back the other way, the psychological impact of "Hooray, I just scored a great bargain", even if actually provably false, might also provide a boost of happiness beyond the nominal opportunity cost. I wonder if there's a market in placebo coupons? :)
I can say with absolute certainty that if my wife could bring home the same salary as I do, I would trade places with her in a heartbeat and be a stay-at-home dad. It's not even a ? in my mind.
China Finally OKs Google's Acquisition of Motorola Mobility
Well, they just fix the error by replacing the offending code with code that emits a run-time type error.
Note that many of the pictures don't include all the insulation. (I mention this in Footnote 5, so it's easy to miss.) In particular, there was a black plastic insulator over the USB output plug that only appears in the first picture. And there are several layers of insulating tape around the transformer. This should meet the safety standards; if it didn't, they wouldn't approve it after all.
My lisp is a bit rusty, but it looks like what you're doing there is returning a function which gets redefined every time you reuse the function.

The equivalent Python would be something like this:

def function():
x = 3
def internal(x, foo=[]):
foo.append([7])
foo.append(x)
return foo
return internal(x)

print function()
print function()

Which does what you would expect:

[[7], 3]
[[7], 3]
I don't understand the "student loan crisis". Go to college, start at six figures, pay off loans. What's hard about that?
Christoph Niemann on Happiness, Work and Creativity
I personally don't know much about bioinformatics but what I do know about potential commercial applications has come from hearing speakers from Singularity University discuss what they are working on. You might be interested in looking into http://singularityu.org/ or their FutureMed conference http://futuremed2020.com/

Good luck!
BitTorrent 7.6.1 Build 27238 Final on Downloads App
SpaceX looks to relaunch Tuesday after reviewing fail data.
Ad hominem would be "a douche like that could never have invented anything."

What I'm saying is "he was a douche so I don't care if he invented anything."
This is really cool, but is it legal to do something like this in an office space? Just thinking about health and safety, accessibility etc. Would love to be enlightened.

God I'm such a bore.
Port of the cool GitHub's EmailReplyParser library in PHP
There are a few use cases for default variables on effbot's site: http://effbot.org/zone/default-values.htm

Basically, sometimes you do want to reuse the mutable between function calls, and in those cases it can save a fair bit of code passing it in repeatedly.
Sorry, what do you mean with "bridge design"? Great first app, by the way!
Ethics are in place for a reason. Growing organs on animals is not something everybody thinks ought to happen.
FBI 'looking at' law making Web sites wiretap-ready, director says
"But the 20 posts there didn't create real world value. dhouston did."

Do you believe that blog comments can create value in general?
Are people more honest when they text?
> Each side wants all of the rights and none of the responsibilities, which should be no surprise. Cyclists like to ignore traffic signals when they're inconvenient. Cars like to pass bicyclists unsafely when staying behind them is inconvenient. Both sides abhor signaling.

Can we please stop with the moral equivalence nonsense. Yes we should all be more considerate, but please at least try to acknowledge the incredible power imbalance here.
When I plug my Galaxy S2 into a cheap generic USB wall charger, the touchscreen is almost unusable. The problem certainly exists and is not limited to Apple hardware.
Mark Zuckerberg married
Nice idea! This paper (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~hweather/publications/racs-socc20...) called RACS from Cornell explored the same space about two years ago, but it's really nice to see it rendered to practice in usable filesystem form.
Reminds me of Terry Pratchett's concept of retro-phrenology...

You can go into a shop in Ankh-Morpork and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection. What you actually get is hit on the head with a large hammer, but it keeps the money in circulation and gives people something to do.
Ask HN: enabling vi shortcuts to navigate HN
The first time I logged in, I pressed 'j' to see if I can use the vi shortcuts (like I can do in Google Reader). Anyone else thinks this would be a good idea?
Didn't see this coming: The Goldman Sachs Github Account
Heh. You sound like me. I get too impulsive with my ideas sometimes.

If I had to choose between the two, reject.ly.

Curious to hear your idea :)
Most Android phones have MHL or MicroHDMI and most of the other stuff mentioned can be quite happily accomplished over USB.
Ask HN: Why would a Google Sys Admin need "large Windows Network" experience?
I saw this requirement in a Google Sys Admin job description (exp with a large Windows network -500 clients) and was curious as to what operation(s) the large Windows network supports. Anyone have any ideas?
You can't live in a degree.

Essentially, a Harvard professional degree gets you to the top of the resume pile. Is that worth $800/mo for 25 years?

How about a non-Ivy professional degree that costs the same?

Psychologically I reckon it is more pleasing to just be rid of the payment, even if financially you are losing by paying it off so quickly. Good for him. Now if all kids with $90,000+ student debts could find 6 figure jobs we'd be on the right track!
Check if someone or your neighbor is stealing your wi-fi
If you're not on Facebook, it's just this pic.
http://imgur.com/zxZkN
Off-site Google engineers working to integrate Google products into customer networks?
Mark Zuckerberg Married Priscilla Chan
thank god this is on hacker news
The Oatmeal
I have a different set of policies than most programmers, which arises from my observation that our field's priorities are out of whack with the actual cost-benefit.

What metrics do you use to determine if code is readable or not? What metrics do you use to determine "actual cost-benefit"?
No. In my example the function is created only once, and called twice.
> The point is that when you're on the surface of a high-dimensional sphere, what you're standing on has characteristics that we, with our 3D intuition, would normally associate with spikes.

Can you explain why the "spikiness" should be associated with the hyperspheres instead of the hypercubes?
Ah, Guido's time machine strikes again :)

Here's my (now mostly obsolete) version:

def count(string):
counts = {}
for item in set(string):
counts[item] = string.count(item)
return counts

print count("abracadabra")

I had a look into the collections library, and it just uses iterable.iteritems(). I suspect that this might be faster for larger strings with multiple repeating characters, since set() and count() will pass the string directly to C.
Anyway, sorry for the offtop, I think we should get back to discussing why would GHC want to become a Python interpreter.

Really? You're going to troll dons on Hacker News?

Massive downvote.
I'm never going to escape that thread, am I?