skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's stop for a moment boys and girls to fix one recurring theme in some of these blog posts and discussions: You are not supposed to be able to patent ideas. There's a reduction to practice requirement.

Sadly, I must say that there are tons of patents out there that are nothing more than ideas or concepts turned into patents. I've run into lots of them in the hundreds of patents I must have read over the years. They fact that they are or were mere ideas becomes a glaring reality when you look into actually implementing the patent and discover that nothing works as advertised.

This is another sad failing of the USPTO: While the rules of the game say that ideas are not patentable, in reality, they are. So, yes, I contradict my first statement. I still prefer to speak with more precision when it comes to patents and not say things like "patent you idea" or "people like to file patents to protect their ideas". You are not supposed to be able to do that.
Those two symbols are merely to make the code easier to read as there are a lot of thunks and forcing. Previously it was Fay$$force and Fay$$thunk.

Technically these are global within the Fay output, but that is all wrapped up in a closure, so it won't interfere with anything outside.

Additionally, _ is not a valid function name in Haskell, and $ (and any other non-letter symbols) are encoded as $123$ where 123 is the unicode point.

So these two symbols are free to use, if that bothered you at all. enumFromTo is defined in the Prelude.
Simplest advice: Structure your schedule so that you can devote one semester each to the proof-based courses: Abstract/Modern Algebra and Real Analysis.

My Story:

I earned a BS in mathematics (and BA in Philosophy/History) as a working adult (late twenties – early thirties, tech support and later developer) with a 1.5 hour commute between work and school.

I didn't have any significant difficulty until Real Analysis. That's usually the "weed-out" course for math majors and for which absolutely none of my programming experience prepared me[1]. I ended up switching to Philosophy/History for a while but luckily got the confidence to try Real Analysis again before completely giving up on the math degree.

I think anyone with an aptitude for programming will be fine in the math courses that are science and engineering-oriented. However, real math is about reading and doing proofs; if you have not done much of that I would try to arrange the schedule so that you end up studying stuff like Real Analysis and Abstract/Modern Algebra exclusively in a semester.

[1] In fact, my programming experience probably hurt me because I was overly focused on the “fine logic” aspect of proof writing rather than trying to understand the big picture.
Hey apl, thanks for considering my ideas! I hope you won't mind if i try to defend them against your objections:

re: "it's widely known that amph. can induce Parkinson's-like motor symptoms"
This may be widely known among neuroscientists, but it's certainly not widely known among the general public, which is my audience for the essay.

re: "some of your graph readings are horrifically beside the point"
There's really only one graph I read from, so I'm going to assume you're talking about the "Loss of DA Neurons After Heavy Meth Use". Why, exactly, reading that graph beside the point? The study I cite immediately prior to that graph (from a Michael J Fox source, no less) states my point for me: using amphetamines can lead to fewer dopamine neurons.

re: "some of what you've written is simply wrong"
Please be more specific! I want to know what you found wrong.

re: "grab a book on neuropharmacology"
I was actually a psychology major in college and took several classes on neuroscience and neuropharmacology, so I'm not totally new to this field.

re: "armchair bullshitting is not how progress is made"
This wasn't armchair bullshitting; I was combining the results of several different published studies and other concrete information to arrive at a novel hypothesis. I agree my reasoning isn't enough to remove a great deal of uncertainty about whether the hypothesis is true, but all I'm trying to do is establish that it's plausible enough to warrant people's attention. Many scientific advances are made this way; for example, in physics there are often speculative theories made that need to be verified through experiment: Einstein's theories and the idea of a Higgs Boson, the idea of dark matter and dark energy. All of them started off as unproven possible explanations of observed phenomena, and all needed to be verified. But that doesn't mean they weren't worth giving attention before they were verified.
Have you met or spoken to the Soundcloud guys? I met a bunch of their engineers here in NYC a few months ago, and they were very cool to hang out with. Seemed like a pretty cool company to me.

Edit: they could be an outlier, of course.
Monopoly isn't illegal, it is the anti-trust or anti-competition that got MS in trouble. If MS didn't try all the scare tactics that they did, then they would still be allowed to keep IE bundled just like Apple.

Because MS got convicted, they're forced to make up for all sort of things and that is why MS is getting all sort of attentions about the browsers, they're still regulated by the governments due to the laws that MS broke.

Apple hasn't done any of that, so there are no regulations and Apple is fully in its right to do what it wants.
>Nobody is going to put up that kind of money unless there's profit in it, period.

I don't know what kind of fantasy world you are living in but there are plenty of governments and charities who fund scientific and medical research without the goal of profit.
What's aesthetically pleasing to a OSX-user might be something totally different to a Windows-user. A UX designer who doesn't know that, is worthless as well ;)
Yes that bit was anticlimactic. Its still useful info though.
Ableton? Native Instruments?
Hi, I'm Carlo, the Droplings dev. I wrote it because I'm a freelancer, and often need to send files to clients. Just sending them the link would work, but I feel having a branded preview page makes for a more professional appearance.

But if you don't like the preview page, Droplings can give you a direct link to the file, too. Just hold the Shift key when dropping the file.
True but I suppose if you assume something like a negative political story, the major sites would be the target. a large team of people could try to flood all of the major discussion sites. Obviously it doesn't go away, but we all get distracted with shiny things and the original story quietly goes away.

I have no doubt that groups are trying to do this. How often they succeed is the question.
It's reaaaaaaaly hard to claim monopoly and restraint of trade when your are the highest priced thing in the market. The platform is also not locked down, in the sense that it can be jailbroken and apps (without QA or other oversight) can be bought, sought, installed and used. Yes, they have a commanding position in key areas of their markets, but plenty of folks are willing to pay a premium and plenty of other folks are willing to write apps under Apple guidelines and restrictions. There are too many ways to distinguish the Apple of today with the US Steel of yesterday. The problem is, the headstart grabbed by Apple isn't something any other single COMPANY (Android isn't a company) has been able to counter. This is all legit competition and it is lethal. Apple has just confiscated market participants formerly belonging to RIM, Nokia, MS, Dell, HP. Their stupidity is not legal grounds to oppose Apple's success.
Just dont put it live, main challenge to check if link doesn't go to porn or even something worse.
Because YOU are responsible for content you are redirecting.
It's worse than that; it's not just no recurring revenue. Sparrow is stupid cheap. Comparable software such as eudora cost $50 - $100 in the late 90s. Compare to $7 for the mac app or $2.10 for the ios app.

And they're pinched between a platform vendor who wants a good email client on the platform; Google who gives gmail away for free because it's strategically important / they monetize it with ads; and people who are nearly unwilling to spend developer-sustaining amounts of money barring a giant hit, particularly for software requiring ongoing development.
Spot on summary. Fay and Elm are indeed both well known among Haskellers interested in language developments in the browser.

LiveScript is a good comparison only in the way it transforms and is part of the wave of "compiling to JavaScript". For that reason it might be nice for me to mention it on the page.
You can always try moving "the line" between paid and free with A/B testing, though I admit it would be rather elaborate. You can also be sure that you're forcing them to choose by taking away the free tier altogether. I'm not sure how you'd A/B test a business model change, though.

In our case we took away Free altogether and replaced it with Free Trials. We didn't A/B test this first, but we could tell it had a decent chance of working based on what our users had been telling us.
One more data source to support your point (the US accounts for 10 of the 20 worst rampages in Western democratic countries):

http://www.statista.com/statistics/1871/number-of-victims-of...
You can't say that people are fat because they're slobs with no self control, no, it's fructose, fast food ads, or whatever.

I'm going to accept your premise that people are fat because they are slobs with no self-control. So what now? They're doomed to have tough lives and die young? I think that if we can make healthy foods more attractive, tasty, and affordable, then we should do that.

My cousin is an Optometrist. I currently wear contacts but I do not sleep in them. I saw a commercial for contacts you could sleep in and thought that would be a nice feature to have. Turns out that's not the case. It is unhealthy to sleep in contacts, regardless the type. Those contacts were developed because some people will sleep in their contacts even when they know it is bad for their eyes. So Optometrists won't prescribe sleep-in contacts to people who wear their contacts according to the directions (it would be less healthy for the eye than what they currently do), they prescribe them to people routinely sleep in contacts which are explicitly not made for sleeping in. The sleep-in brand mitigates the damage.

In other words, if you can design around behavior it is often helpful to do so. It is difficult to get people to change, especially when it requires giving up a near-term convenience or pleasure for a long-term gain. Nagging doesn't work. If we can help people with bad habits by making it easier to make the right choices or by making the habits less bad, I think that is a good thing.

Also Optometrists will try to prescribe one-a-day contacts to overwearers people who sleep in their contacts before they try the sleep-in brand. That is another example of making the right choice (remove your contacts at night) easier (throw em in the trash, no upkeep) instead of making the wrong choice less harmful. One-a-days are relatively expensive, though, so the sleep-in contacts are another option.
How marketing can cause a product to fail?
I agree. Over the Summer I wanted to do the Python course with my son (9 years old) but it doesn't start until October, when he'll be back at school. Shame. Doing the Learn Python the Hard Way with him instead
I noticed that too, but I kind of felt it was harsh to criticize when the poster's server is being hammered by HN and so on.

I did notice that the requests were very large, however. I believe around half a megabyte, for such a simple concept.
As is usually the case, both extremes are wrong, or rather half-right. People are fat because they lack self-control AND corporations are lining up to take advantage of said lack.

I see no abdication of individual responsibility in creating a joint retirement fund to balance risk, merely a recognition that humans are impulsive and fallible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average#Hi...

If you bought the original djia in 1896 and were still alive you'd be very wealthy.
The bigger issue is that when something becomes "conventional wisdom", it ceases to be effective. The stock market in our current post-dividend era is largely a sham, in this regard. "Put your money in an index fund and forget about it" is sound investment advice as long as increasing numbers of people are doing the same. Once the population growth tapers off, as it has, this is no longer a surefire way to save for retirement.
I do have some plans to make a JSON Fay-in-JS-out service. Possibly with some “export compressed as .tar.gz” feature to give you a production-ready export.

It would even be quite cool to make a REPL and development environment, but that's a little far off.
This is just ridiculous. I'm not a fan of most patents, but you don't need to invent a bigcorp bogeyman. You seem to be deteremined to believe that bigcorp can completely screw you regardless of the evidence.

Commercial products are often different than the prototype. However, if it uses the same basic innovation, it's generally not going to be so different that the patent doesn't protect it. Patent protection is generally pretty broad.

If the final product doesn't actually use the novel innovation demonstrated by the prototype what advantage does the prototype offer bigcorp?

For example I invent a screwdriver that can work with any screw without a bit change, and I make the handle from rubber, I then file for a patent and am granted it.

Bigcorp comes along and decides to file a patent for the same thing, but for the production version that uses injection molded plastic instead of rubber.

The patent office will reject bigcorp's patent.
>The problem with this argument is that patents apply even if the infringer came up with the idea independently.

While I agree that our broken patent system is in dire need of reform, I'm not in favor of complete abolishment. That said, if an accused infringer claimed that she had come up with the idea independently I can't imagine a fair method of proving or disproving that. Hence, I don't see how one could make exceptions for independently developed ideas that aren't prior art.
The point that's being made is that it's not that hard to disrupt a functioning online community, so you wouldn't even need an army. You could probably do it with a staff of a dozen or less, and honestly looking at how places like reddit and slashdot have transformed over the years I really wouldn't be surprised if there was at least some influence by government agencies(how do those same 5 military propaganda images keep getting to the front page? I'd also be curious to see how those getting to the frontpage compares to recruitment needs for the military. Not saying that it's a conspiracy, but it would be an interesting thing to examine). The tone of those places has changed, and any intelligent, valid criticism of the status quo is consistently ignored and rallied against. I don't know if it's just because people are by and large impulsive and unable to handle criticism, or because of a conspiracy, but the former lends itself to control by the latter.

It would be a bit naive to rule it out completely, but it would be pretty silly to say for certain that it's a conspiracy.
Could someone help me with the "thread" example at the end? Something in my shallow understanding seems wrong:

"Threads in Clojure give access to concurrent processing."

"Nothing in the recursive (defmacro -> ...) starts a parallel process."
Are you saying you like Jack Daniels more than Evan Williams Black Label?

I am happy to have provided the opportunity for someone to draw the distinction between "Tennessee whiskey" and "Bourbon", that written point being a regulatory requirement for all message board discussions regarding whiskey. :)
Google wants me to sign in before I can even read them. Am I doing something wrong?
If there's no risk of your shot being blocked for a free throw there's no reason to shoot overhand, either.
Plus externally monetized by the hardware you have to buy.
> Have you personally ever taken LSD and actually suffered flashbacks? If yes, how bad were they?

No, of course not. I am a law-abiding citizen who believes in the rule of law, and I would never consider breaking it. I did, however, have some ruffian, rebellious, criminal friends--albeit, the type of criminal who goes to MIT or who goes on to get a PhD in Math--in college, and they told me what it was like.

Re flashbacks, they told me that no that didn't happen. They did, however, perceive textures on real objects (e.g., the kind in carpets or detailed wallpaper) continue to "breathe" and undulate a bit for the next year or two. (My guess is that such textures are always undulating a bit, perceptually, only you train yourself not to notice it.)

It was the actual experience, I am told, that could be very grueling. I.e., imagine watching "The Exorcist" alone in a big haunted house, only you can't turn it off, and you can't stop watching it, because if you close your eyes, it's now being projected in 3D onto the insides of your eyelids. Only multiply this by 1,000X. I imagine that this kind of stress could have lingering effects for those who already have difficulty dealing with it.

Despite the scariness of the experience, the friends who experienced it this way said the experience was still very worthwhile, and they wouldn't change anything. They just wouldn't necessarily do it again anytime soon.

Some friends didn't find it scary; they just found it fun.

One acquaintance went crazy shortly thereafter, but he was probably teetering on the edge to begin with. Friends who did it dozens of times, were invariably a bit strange ever thereafter, so I wouldn't recommend becoming too much of a rebel.
Google+ Hangouts On Air + Smooth Radio + Live Music
Well, licensing will earn them a negligible amount of money, while continuing to promote the notion of a "rock & roll American whiskey label" that just happens to comprise all the distinct elements of the Jack Daniels label; that's textbook dilution.
Sure they fund research, but how many of these governments and charities actually work on the final end product.

The research they are doing is generally not in the final phase of actual development of the drug which is where it gets incredibly expensive.
Most of your criticism is of a particular part of the American financial services sector, not of health care.

Finally, according to the WHO, the US ranks 37 in the world for system efficiency.

WHO rankings are predominantly a measurement of inequality of marginal costs of health care. The WHO's measurement is so flawed that one can make all sorts of pareto improvements (e.g., make 50% of the population live 10 years longer, while the other 50% lives only 1 year longer) and reduce one's rank.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1636063
The Launching Pad
Technically the console.hs example works in node, and node is how I test Fay and run my test suite and benchmark. Example:

$ fay -autorun examples/console.hs
$ node examples/console.js
Hello, World!

You're free to use it on node if you like.
None, non-existent. They are conservative thinkers and don't understand the tech industry, so any risk is too risky for them. It's very sad. So what happens is young people who potentially have the best understanding have to go elsewhere, whether to start a company or be hired by a company who has money - because they don't exist here because it's impossible to get funding unless your idea is based on similar brick & mortar models. It makes me sad, and frustrated.
Yep, as I said upthread: "Apple targets people who want their computer to look pretty. Lenovo targets the people who want to get stuff done."
He rigged his apartment with, supposedly, 30 or so IED/IIDs, and had full body armor during the assault. As far as I can tell, he pulled out all the stops. If he could have done more, I'm pretty sure he would have.
You got it, pal. You are not the real society. And once the USSR is gone, nothing can limit the corporate greed anymore, so more and more people will be delusioned, separated, fed to machines and thrown away for the sake of the immediate profit.
It's quite difficult to write a VM target that is fast for both dynamic and statically typed languages. The CLR probably comes the closest but is far from perfect.

Since we have to have legacy support for javascript approximately forever anyway, I'd say the best way forward is to embed a vm from the statically typed world as a target for static languages and leave js as a cross compilation target for dynamic languages.

To avoid nasty cross vm memory leaks you'd probably want to limit interoperability -- at least at first.
Thanks for sharing. Mind if I ask where you're getting the degree from?
As a counterargument, if one is able to get past their own internal paranoia about why other people are doing the things listed here, the information laid out is quite good for what makes a bad poster bad, how to avoid them, and how to not be a bad poster.

You could argue that this stuff shouldn't be framed in the conspiracy theory idea, but then it wouldn't have gotten as much attention, which could start a discussion about the most direct way to present this information, but then if you don't give it some controversy how is it going to get the necessary exposure for people to read and listen? You might have a better manual, but if nobody reads it, it's useless.

On that note, who else wants to try writing a better manual than these guys? Is it even worth it? After all, the most important thing is to get people thinking on the right track, and stuff like this is at least a step in the right direction.
Before ending up featured on HackerNews by way of the illustrious Cryptome, the various components of this document had a rich life of their own.

For example, the first part was spotted 3 years ago on http://www.infoterror.com/ . More recently, it showed up on EncyclopediaDramatica https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Forum_COINTELPRO_Techniques

Even more recently, it was the subject of a great many enlightened and thought provoking discussions on reddit: http://ww.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/duplicates/v7abp/

The lineage of the other four parts can be found easily by googling representative sentence fragment. For example, https://www.google.com/search?q=fall-back+positions.+Using+a...

For extra-credit, enumerate all the techniques from the linked document that could be construed to apply to my post.
I've never worked anywhere that was even close to the size of Apple, so I can only comment on my imagination after reading this. But I can't tell how I would feel about being at a company so strictly compartmentalised. Can anyone who has worked at an analogous company shed some more light on your experiences?
Indeed. The verb of dumb is "Simplify or reduce the intellectual content of something so as to make it accessible to a larger number of people;" Essentially turning something into layman's terms - layperson's terms?

Context that matters the most. Groups can either try to reclaim the word or start using new ones, which I believe many are doing.
To piggy back on your comment, overall ATT generated $126.7 billion in revenues in FY 2011. There are more important issues at stake here, focusing in on the financial aspects is missing the mark.
When you say "How much time do you spend on Emails?" does that mean just time with focus on the e-mail client, or does that include the time spent on gathering data to compose a response?
They understand it well. Problem is, you rarely produce big headlines without jumping to conclusions.
Skill knowledge, such as programming or writing, takes time and practice.

Deep skill knowledge, the ability to work on hard problems, requires that you practice working on hard problems.

Studying the underlying knowledge that supports skilled performance, in programming that would be computer science, especially things like algorithms and data structures, can speed things up, but the practice is essential.