skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think democracy is implementing the will of the people. No scrap that.

Democracy is doing what a reasonable man would do. There is no arguing that the people might have not been told the true reasons for going to Iraq. Nonetheless most of the people are reasonable hence there is no reason to lie to them.

Democracy is about being guided by high principles, by acknowledging that each human on this earth deserves equal treatment, by acknoledgin that my interests do not come before another etc.

Socrates said that the rulers ought to be philosophers taught in academia for 25 years. Or maybe it was Aristotle.

The point is that we know that the majority might be wrong, we certainly know that the minority might be wrong, but in the system of governence we currently hold it is rather apparante that the prevailing principle is that if you have more I will have less.

There must have been a time when people realised thatthey could have been born into any family, any country, any social status, etcetera. I believe that is the time when empathy emerged for fellow human beings.

If we as people realise what it means to be in someones shoes and continue to treat that someone inhumanly, or take away from him privileges that we ourselves enjoy, we become barbaric and not much different from our ancestors who found slavery convinient or colonialism profitable.

The people posses empathy. It is this question of what if that person was I that I believe has hlped us advanced somewhat.

If people are not governed by leaders whom are guided by reason rather than personal or country interests there will never be peace on earth nor happiness in the houses.
I predict that the economy will rebound a lot more quickly than expected.
This is so wrong in so many ways, but I think the ur-mistake, the one that leads to all the others, is writing an article like this in the first place. You like Ruby? You like Ruby. Use it! Why write a whole article trying to justify how you feel? It's as if the author is trying to give himself (and others) permission not to use Lisp.
Why Wikipedia is not so great
More Linux on the desktop, mostly via netbooks.

Solid-state disks will probably make average load and response times for desktop-based applications significantly drop for the first time since the introduction of the GUI. By the end of 2009, people will have different expectations of computer response time.

Perhaps more importantly, the increased read speeds will be used by someone to work some database magic that's never been seen before. I'm not sure what the killer app will be.

Android will not become dominant in any meaningful sense, but Google will sustain it as a platform.
Including this prediction?
Pedantically, they don't merge, you just rule out GB or BG. So, initial conditions:

1) X: G, Y: G
2) X: G, Y: B
3) X: B, Y: G
4) X: B, Y: B

If you are told, "at least one is a girl," as in the posted question, you can only rule out case (4). If you are told more specifically that X is a girl, you can rule out (3) and (4), giving the 50-50 chance.

Which still seems a little weird to me, that knowing which is a girl, regardless of which one you know about, changes the chances.
There are so many mac-sites already that if one is to surf them all, the entire day would pass. Even then, a mac community builder is welcome, but the name "macmod" is turn-off! Something bearing Mac and Community/Social should be there.
No. Ponzi schemes are zero-sum; that's why they're doomed to failure when they promise above-unity average returns. Academia discovers knowledge; once the knowledge is discovered, everyone everywhere benefits from it, but especially in academia. It's as far from zero-sum as you can get!

The "leverage" of N Ph.D. students per [insert desired definition of success] position amplifies the effectiveness of academia considerably, but academia would still work more or less the same way without it.

(I am not now and have never been an academic, although I've spent a fair bit of time with academics. Consequently I am both reasonably-well-informed and minimally biased.)
I don't see how Ruby could be called a Lisp.
To me, the fundamental concept of Lisp is that the basic data structure is the cons-pair, and that both code and data can be represented and manipulated as graphs of cons-pairs.

The blog is arguing that Ruby is an acceptable alternative to Lisp, which may be true. But that doesn't make Ruby a Lisp.
I guess there is a lot to learn from this article which goes way beyond digg to the internet in general and maybe AI and also probably the genetic coding which we see happening and will see much more in the future.

What this article tells me is rather simple and important. Programms do what they are told to do. There is no human element to reason nor decidions being made, it is simply fucntions, orders which are very very predictable.

Knowledge is power of course and no one ought to have power which is why I believe that the author's cause seems noble, namely sharing your kowledge. But it really goes to the heart of the matter as far as the internet is concerned.

Everything is a program and programms follow orders therefore every programm can be manipulated whether directly or inderectly to achive the desired maybe mal intentioned results.

Hence will there ever be a proper democracy, a unity of people, a place where the market forces do not manipulate the good intentions of the users?

Will there ever be a place where the people in general can share with each other deserving articles, unifluenced by other motivations or bias, but the simple desire to share worthy kowledge, I presume with the aim of advancing civilisation itself and educating felow human beings?

The answer seems to lie not with the internet where robots (algorithms) follow orders but with the humans themselves who are imensly much more complex and driven by many varieties of purposes.
Hopefully this will be the KO hit to IE6 cruft.
Aha. Guess I should have searched past finding a Google document saying it was possible!

Riobard should join the other AppEngine users pushing Google to restore this previously-available functionality, at this open AppEngine issue:

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=77...

Viewing the comments there, AppEngine users have had their inlinks and search rankings ruined by this change. So chalk this up as another reason to be wary of building in the Google-controlled cloud.
They can and do, for the most part. iPhone knockoffs are a dime a dozen, for the most part, although Apple has design patents to keep them from looking too close to they original.
70% is true as an overall average. 90% is true in some places. Mibbit is very atypical, but even at 20%, you still have to support it.

That's the problem with browsers, you're always stuck with the lowest common denominator.
You ask him why not. Try to find out what his misconception is, so you can explain about that particular issue. Then he'll learn about the specific area he doesn't know.

If things are going right, sometimes he'll want to have a discussion. Other times he'd rather just do what you said without understanding it, so he can proceed now (nothing wrong with that if it's voluntary). And other times, just let him do it his way, if it won't be a huge disaster, and he can learn something from his mistake, and about how good your advice is.
No offense but I think a great deal of hacker news fans have seen this one way or the other. I remember there was response to this called lisp is an acceptable lisp. If you want lisp and are using ruby why not just use lisp? If you want ruby but use lisp just use ruby. It doesn't matter which programming language you express your ideas in. It only matters if you actually get cracking and implement your ideas. Pointless saber rattling about programming languages is quaint and dandy if you aren't actually programming. To quote feynmann "If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be 'Shut up and calculate!"
For free accommodation I recommend couchsurfing.org. It might be a little tricky with 3 travelers, generally people have couches for 1 or 2 people, but all of those cities will have lots of couches available. I have hosted lots of couchsurfers (highly recommend this if you can do it) and I've couchsurfed in other countries, never had a bad experience. When you are staying with someone living and working in a city you will have a much different experience than if you are staying at a hostel or hotel.
The startup mythos as interpreted by Arrington (and, to a lesser extent, HN) does not involve non-whiz-bang stuff. Social bookmarking? Yes, that's great, it's got an API or something right? Flash video games for kids not old enough to ride the bus alone? Not cool enough. Not hackery.
1. Microsoft will buy a majority stake in Facebook

2. war between android and iphone, new iphone format released, between 20+ android handsets also released

3. facebook omnipresence, it's the new Yahoo!
Liar paradox.
My advice would be to skip Stockholm and go to Berlin or Vienna.

Having been to several Scandinavian countries, I can assure you they are the most boring and American-like places you can go in Europe[1], owing to the relative newness of their cities and also mind-bogglingly expensive. Even for Europe. We're talking $10-13 US for a beer.

Berlin is dirt cheap, even with the exchange rate, and full of interesting and exciting culture and things to do and (as far as these things go) a very friendly citizenry who speak great English. Its ultimate personality is the personality of a fanastically diverse mutt of a place, and yet it all works. It feels amazingly alive.

Vienna, by contrast, is more expensive than Berlin but cheaper than visiting NYC. It is less exciting than Berlin, being more homogeneous and sedate, but still has its own incredibly distinct personality and gobs of awesome stuff to see and do.

[1] yes, even more so than London, call it the tyranny of small differences
IE6 will still be around 5 years from now...solely due to corporations not upgrading their shit.
It would be nice to see Yahoo does the same thing.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/who_writes_linux_corporate_am...
The era of subscription-based consumer internet services will begin.
Comparing GTD, "Never read email in the morning" and "The 4-hour work week"
It won't be. Gmail isn't as popular as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail. The death knell for IE 6 will be when Windows XP disappears from the desktop.
I upvoted you, but one thing: if you wanna be unbiased, show not tell it! Saying you're not biased isn't much good at all. Just say stuff that isn't biased.
Idiocracy in the AppStore
A good way to get a highly credible link is to contact your old university, tell them your story and they may decide to feature you on their news section (promoting enterprise is a big thing for most universities now).
Worked for me, within a month of being featured on my uni's news page we were top of google page rank for 'fair trade jewellery' - of course you need to do everything else right too.
Can you give me your reasoning? I think the only conclusions you can get from that quote is that the person has two children, and at least one of those is a girl. Do you disagree with that?

If I am correct about that, then it matches the conditions discussed in the article and the answer would be 2/3 for a boy and a girl.
The US is going to be in a world of hurt. With Europe not far behind in the pain stakes. As always the countries with the most open markets will recover first.

Un-fettered markets are not the end solution but they are far better than the current politically controlled markets.

The handouts are damaging on two fronts. Firstly, it rewards poor businesses and stops better firms entering the market. Secondly, Joe Public who made dumb financial decisions are not punished but instead everything is done to allow them to make more damaging decisions later on.

The current debt loading of the US currency is not sustainable at the current levels of productivity. The US looks more and more like the USSR of the late 80s, running as fast as it knows and still sliding into bankruptcy.

I rather think we are looking at the end of the US as a going concern.

I'm hopeful that a short civil war will ensue and that out of that there might be the chance for a small Capitalist/Anarchist state to be founded.

Feudalism, Democracy, Fascism, Socialism and Communism have all failed the acid test. What other forms of government do we have? It would seem that Karl Marx was the last political thinker to offer a new idea for governmental organization.
Maybe I should have been more clear. I agree that social constructs designed to chain people to a given location are bad; I disagree that rent control is one of these constructs. It might be true that people tend to hang on to apartments that they otherwise wouldn't because they're getting a great deal, but this is a voluntary choice, not the company store. The bit about "allow[ing] the plant to catch flight and land somewhere better" seem like a little bit of movie logic. Many people do derive real value from being established in a community, and would be hurt by being forced to move.

Why does the debate always veer back to renovation of the buildings? Do you really think that adding stainless-steel appliances to an apartment is a more desirable goal than not displacing established residents?

As for your personal experience with the wealthy lawyer, here's the balancing anecdote: I live in the Mission, a part of town where rents are rapidly increasing (I'm sure I'm guilty of driving up prices). There are plenty of people down here who can only afford to stay in their homes because of rent control, and stories of tenant intimidation are plentiful.
The crux of the post seems to be that because Ruby has lambdas, it is an acceptable alternative.

In my experience, being that I'm learning Haskell and coming from a Ruby background, merely having lambdas doesn't qualify for functional status.
This is fun, so I'll join in with some wild guesses.

- Most people in the news who are making 2009 predictions are overestimating the amount of new tech developments that will happen in 2009. With the economic situation, it will be a generally slow year.

- The personal health records space will heat up, with more hospitals and employers supporting HealthVault, Google Health, etc.

- The smartphone will have a great year, spurred by great competition, free platforms, hungry vendors, and features that appeal to customers. The iPhone will continue to grab market share from all other smartphone OSes (except Android).

- BlackBerry will stagnate and eventually (post-2009) go the way of Palm unless it changes its platform and strategy somehow. The outlook for Symbian isn't rosy either.

- Phone manufacturers will fall in love with Android. Even though Symbian will be free as well, phone manufacturers will be wary of using a rival's platform (Nokia). There will be a bunch of Android devices on the market by year's end.

- If Apple launches a large touchscreen device apart from a tablet laptop, it will be a failure. I just can't see this happening.
I predict I'll (finally) get married :)
An interesting argument.

I suspect that js is not yet the world's most popular language but by this link's argument, it may become one of the world's most popular languages.

However, as ajax evolves, js may become more of a "virtual machine" into which the initial UI source code is compiled rather than being the raw language in which the UI specified.
It is not the same question, they only seem that way. The information given is different. The answer in the second case depends on the popularity of the name Linda.
Well said. The latest version of PHP is going to have lambdas, and I'm quite certain that it's not a Lisp.
That's right; our perception is constantly changing. Thank's for the poem. It brought a smile to the New Year. :-)
Memo to Jeff Bezos, Re: The Kindle
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptab... ?
Suppose you're right. He is trying to give himself permission to not use lisp, so he feels better. Then writing this helps him use ruby (as you advise). so it's good that he wrote it. (but no need for you to read it).
Yea I agree with yegge. I think that lisp is what you make of it. Language doesn't matter.
Definitely. I even showed my developer friend the pictures and ended up explaining what Fog Creek does.
If you build an arduinome, please document the process and put it online somewhere. It looks interesting; the Monome has always been one of those things that is super fascinating to me, but I could never justify buying.
Give a Little More to Succeed
Along the lines of the first string change; don't try to tune the strings until they're all on and in the general vicinity of the correct tension.

It takes some practice until you realize you really have to tune all six strings at once until everything is tuned approximately right. Then you can fine tune on a string-by-string basis.
The difference is that you have specified that the child picked up from the police station is a girl, thus only the sex of the other child is unknown. This other child is either a boy or a girl, presumably with a 50/50 chance either way, resulting in a 50% chance of one being a boy and one being a girl. Concretely, using a capital letter to denote the sex of the child picked up from the station, there are only two possible permutations Gg and Gb, each of equal probability, and 50% of those are girl and boy (Gb). On the other hand if we only know that at least one is a girl we have the permuations, gg, gb, bg - resulting in the 66% chance.
My predictions:

1. Web apps will start to die, and will start being replaced by web connected desktop or device apps

2. Integrated and restricted stores for distributing software by the major players

3. Some company that is still using spinning media will dissolve the entire line and switch to solid state media

4. Stock market will quickly rebound within the first quarter

5. TV will move mostly online
Exactly - the difference is between "at least one is a girl" and pointing out a specific child as a girl.
The lisp vs foo is somewhat special. An accessible, easy-to-learn lisp platform with a full complement of libraries is pretty much a bit of a Holy Grail.

edit: Ups, read the "Lisp is not an acceptable Lisp". Makes the same point...
So most of the population then. You can't avoid stupidity.
Is it better to work for an established employer or be self-employed?
Recessions promote breakthrough innovations
This sounds like a person who has never uttered a shameful giggle after hearing someone rip a loud one in an unacceptable circumstance or something.
3G cards beginning to be standard for laptops.
Perhaps not to us, however Nintendo bet the farm on this vision. The Wii is weaker graphically and in online connectivity than its competitors. It also had the disadvantage of following the (relatively) disappointing Gamecube. Had the interface failed Nintendo could have ended up like Sega: left to publish games for other consoles.
BillMeLater; Just Not on Amazon
I think Twitter, Mint & Mobile Apps are going to reach a larger part of US society?
Humm... I still think the problems with the platform are about an order of magnitude greater then the problems with the language per se. You first need to have something to work with, and only after that you can think about improving it.
I know people raised like this. Their parents were psychologists. You ever hear the old saw about the people raised by psychologists?
Presumably, you're not asserting that much of what parents and teachers do is "hurting" children.
Time management: I want to become expert at time management.
Math and business in general.
Regarding programming instead, SICP, Erlang and Closures are what I'm working right now.
Stating the obvious: there's a difference between "provides much of the value of in practice" and "being". The same logic says that Esperanto is an acceptable English.
'Overshare' Announced as Webster's Word of the Year
The only collapse I see is that it's possible that "I have one girl" would imply ONLY one girl.

BG and GB as possibilities that often collapse in the minds of those thinking about this problem but that is exactly why the problem is paradoxical, why a certain group of people not only get it wrong but also can't let go of their wrong answer.
- Chrome surpasses Firefox in market share

- Amazon Kindle 2 will be a huge hit and trigger a frenzy of copycats

- Facebook continues it's fast growth and a few other social networks stop growing and go on the decline. Facebook Connect gains big traction.

- OpenSocial becomes the largest platform on the Web around the end of 2009 after they clean up the garbage that's the current version
Sure I am. For example, children who don't like a given set of homework problems are made to do it anyway. Doesn't matter if they have something else productive they want to do, it's outside of their interests, they have reasons (which have not been addressed) to think it's a waste of time, etc... That hurts.
"Typically a verb, but also used as a noun, it is the name given to 'too much information,' whether willingly offered or inadvertently revealed. It is the word for both the tedious minutiae on personal Web sites and blogs, and the accidental slips of the tongue in public."

For anyone who uses Facebook this is an important word to know about.
I use to ship more than what committed when I work for small companies (websites mostly), in these cases I usually deliver as a bonus free statistics, newsletters, etc. They usually appreciate that and the result is more word of mouth and more business.
No you don't know anyone raised like this. If you give me a comprehensive statement of what they did, I will point out ten ways they hurt their kids. You may say I am wrong on every count, but you won't be able to dispute that what I advocate is different than what was done.

People all the time come up and say they already do the stuff on the TCS website. So far the rate of that being true is exactly zero.

PS I do not like psychologists.
Now Italy finally has to cut costs. Perhaps it's better in the longer term for them.
Is it crazy to quit a 6+ figure salaried job to do a startup right now?
Is it crazy to quit a 6+ figure salaried job to do a startup right now? Is my new year's resolution misguided? Was thinking about pulling the trigger tomorrow.
Ask YC: Is it time for the sugarcrm of word processors to compete with ms word?
With openoffice sick and ms word overpriced and proprietary why doesn't somebody create a competitor that truly is open source? I think it is a huge opportunity for the right team. I dont have the numbers in front of me but the office market is
Wow, a bunch of comments here and no one's mentioned that oil is traded in dollars. If oil kicks of a wave of commodities being traded in Euros, then yes, the Euro will be the new Dollar.

At the end of the day, the dominant currency is the one most people use. In 1900, the language of international relations (and trade) was French.
Since when did javascript become a "language"? Is it even Turing complete? I thought the word "script" meant "scripting language" which is NOT the same thing as a full fledged language. If indeed javascript is the most popular "language" then God or Turing help us all.
The startup would be a two person company me and a friend are co-founding.
Will This Bold Shakeup Save Dell?
of course it's turing complete. the bar for that is very low.
A Forebrain for the World Mind (W. Danny Hillis)
huge. Sugar crms model is great imo. Open source encouraging creativity and paid support encouraging enterprise adoption. Enterprise users need to pay so they have somebody to go after if something goes wrong.
I don't think that's actually Yegge's point, is it?