skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the lesson for C++ was that well though out decisions in the small can lead to an overly complex and difficult to use language, an all to common result of design by committee. Probably the single worst decision for Java was that the programmer needed to be protected from his own stupidity. What we ended up with is a language that's overly verbose and encourages baroque design patterns.

Bruce discusses some of the well known bad design decisions in Java, such as no operator overloading (.equals(), bah), bolt on generics, primitives instead of being purely object based. And there are a ton of other design decisions that made for a bad language: explicit typing of functions instead of duck typing and specialization, introspection for methods but not variables, no first class methods, everything has to be in a class instead of everything is an object, etc.

In the end Java will fade away and the JVM will endure with newer and better languages. The one thing that no one envisions is a better Java unconstrained by past errors. I suppose that's because of the rigid control by Sun.
Ask HN: Can we add % to poll results?
Because right now it just shows points
If in some countries you work 6 month (per year) only for taxes, there is something wronger...

If you work 1-2 month (per year) for taxes, the need for a secret account will be null...
Social networks 'are new e-mail'
Well, as other posters have pointed out, lisp is multiparadigm, not just functional.

Anyway your question was more about abstract concerns, but concretely, note there are pretty decent SDL and OpenGL bindings for common lisp, and mildly optimised native compiled lisp code borders on "fast enough" for fast-paced 3D games - I mean people write fun games in Python these days, never mind lisp! even if GC is not concurrent, GC pausing is much less of a problem than people make out with a little common sense and care, - prealloc object pools before levels begin, code consless or at least cons-lightly, perhaps even go ahead and disable GC runs except at inter-level breaks...

IMO CLOS is a very nice object system for game code in an object-oriented style due to multiple dispatch (see wikipedia example):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_dispatch#Common_Lisp

http://lispbuilder.sourceforge.net/lispbuilder-sdl.html

http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-opengl/

When I last looked a while back (it might be neater now), the secret to getting cl-opengl and lispbuilder-sdl to play nice together was the following incantation, enabling use of opengl 2 shaders and stuff:

; N.B. don't use any ext. functions which go through GetProcAddress
; until AFTER an opengl sdl surface exists, presumably there's late binding going on...
(setf cl-opengl-bindings:*gl-get-proc-address* #'sdl-cffi::sdl-gl-get-proc-address)
AT&T Fails The SXSW iPhone Test
hey - you've got a full beard :-)
Did they test the same people at all these ages? No.

So yeah, environment/upbringing/schooling could have a huge impact it seems. At least if you believe that skills like this can be kept 'in shape' with frequent use (which I do believe).
Thanks a lot for your suggestions. You're most definitely right with the site being too locked up and I guess this is also the reason why the signup rate of visitors coming over the frontpage is rather low (in contrast to those who have been invited by other members). So I guess it would be better just to show on the frontpage what's going on inside?

Once they're in, users seem to feel quite well. The first thing they do is actually list their equipment and then see what other members use. They also come back quite regularly. I got the idea when I saw users on photo forums creating very elaborate badges showing their equipment in their signature. When you spend a lot of money for cameras and lenses, you're not only proud but you also like to know what others use and chat about it.
App Stores - from exciting to boring (in just one week)
Tell me about it, I'm twenty-six so imagine how old I feel!
I think people might be more inclined to discuss this with you if you were willing to actually address their points. The post you are responding to makes the claim that decriminalization increases the percentage of drug users who seek rehabilitation. Your argument completely ignores this point. Basically, in response to "premise A therefore conclusion B", you respond, "premise A therefore conclusion C", where B and C are totally unrelated.
A well done feminist critique of fantasy, literature, and "real life," and he pulled it off with a sense of humor.

Read "The Colour of Magic" if you get the chance, it's hilariously funny in spots, especially if you're a little bit of a fantasy geek.
Most programmers have the habit of using asymmetric bounds i.e. lower bound included, upper bound excluded.
Some people are talking about the first person to live to 1000 being alive today... so, a 900 year decline? :)

I think whilst you have a point you also neglect to factor in that with medical developments extending life we will also end up with developments in mental care/extension.
That's great.

Using the current histogram, I've got socks that are older than 40% of the posters here.

Or maybe, since it is a weekend, all of us senior citizen programmers are all out surfing, caving, working on our tans, and skydiving. It's the young lamers that are here doing polls on HN.
Like many things in mainstream media, this doesn't show the full picture. Nutritionist and serious athletes and athletic trainers will tell you differently.

Here are some factors:

- Several studies have used no vitamins at all! (only surveys about "Do you take a vitamin?") They don't take account the frequency/consistency, quality, etc.

- Vitamin studies often focus on single vitamins in isolation. Nutrition doesn't work like that. You need the full range.

- Most studies involve really low end or even average vitamins, and I'm specifically suggesting very high end vitamins.

- There are plenty of studies that show the real benefits of high quality supplementation. LEF has cataloged and published many of these. So have countless others.

Nearly all vitamins sold in pharmacies, Walmart, etc. are poor quality. A Center for Nutritional Education study found that many low end child's vitamins are no healthier than candy.

You can always tell by reading the label. If B12 is packaged as "cyanocobalamin" it's an inferior vitamin. Look for B12 as hydrocobalamin instead (but you'll probably have to go to a health food store to find it.)

One time I saw a display of vitamins advertising heart-healthy Omega oils, however the vitamins also included hydrogenated oils (which promote heart disease.)

So, I don't doubt that average vitamins fewer benefits.

There's also the issue that too many people expect vitamins alone will solve their health problems, and disregard other important factors like having healthier meals, exercise, sufficient water and sunlight. Health involves the full package.
Some of us still have dues to pay. I'm at least 6 months from building and selling my first startup, then retiring.
Sigh, I wasted the best years of my life in a startup that didn't get me rich. ;)
PLT scheme has a couple of demo games included in the distribution that you might be interested in.
I think that, from the kid's point of view, it's better to be born to parents in their 30's. The genetic risk is small, but more than offset by the maturity and improved economic circumstances of the parents. It's not until the late 30's or 40's that genetic decline starts to be a serious risk.
Histogram of HN ages.... at midday on a Sunday :-)
I do this. I have been since about 2004. I don't make eBooks though. I'm a programmer so I make software, usually things to help with web-design, and then sell it using a similar site format.

Its been my sole source of income, and its not a bad living, although I personally know people who are making $1-$10 million a year in profit from sites like this.

They're not one-man shops though, they usually have about 5-10 employees to help run everything, but its still very profitable. Digital goods cost pretty much $0 to copy and distribute, so the profit margins are amazing.

It really amazes me how a lot of people, especially in a community as open-minded as this, are quick to label everybody who has a strange-looking site a scammer. I use the salesletter format for most of my sites, and it works. I don't care what it looks like as long as it gets results.

As for the Parrot guy, I know nothing about him so I have no idea if he really does ignore refund requests. I use http://www.clickbank.com/ as my payment processor, and they handle all that. They honor all refund requests, with or without an explanation, so I couldn't even deny one if I wanted to.

I'd be happy to answer any questions anybody has about this market. It's basically an evolution of the direct mail market from before the Internet. Its looks a little strange to the Web 2.0 people here, but its a valid market.
Harnessing the Multicores with Data Parallel Haskell
you need to change it to finer selection from 16-30
Same here, I have been 6 months away from selling my startup and then retiting for around ten years.
Personally, I don't. I've worked very closely with someone who does (managing their campaigns and websites)

Here's what I know.

Pick a niche, be an expert, outsource everything but the content creation, and spend your efforts selling.

Pick a payment gateway that handles charge back procedures well, even if you can get it cheaper somewhere else (use paypal)

Price Higher than you think it's worth.

I've seen some really incredible results. Lots of money being made here. People do buy this sort of stuff, but I think that most of us at HN...don't; which is why it seems foreign.
Just a problem I found - it doesn't limit the new tabs to article links. So if I click to view my profile, then click to see what articles I've saved, it opens a bunch of new tabs when I only really want one. Does the same thing when I click on comments.
And the Microsoft Professional certificates, the iPhone apps, etc.

I'm also 16. But I don't think these are very important things to know, then again, I like CS more than programming.
Are app stores just another type of walled garden?
sad isn't it?

:-)
We need the confidence thingy for this online community giving information about their age.
what else is new, even around the apple campus service is laughable. with att, i've come to expect nothing so i'm surprised by everything.
Does anyone know why JIT-ing Python isn't given more "institutional" support (by which I suppose I mean mostly Google, since they employ Van Rossum after all)? It seems like the logical next step to make Python more generally useful.

As I see it, speed is the last big advantage Java has over Python (and I do realize that a dynamically typed language makes achieving efficiency harder).

Apparently PyPy has some financial support from Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pypy#Project_status), but it really seems like basically any company that uses Python would gain so much from robust JIT compilation in the interpreter that I'm surprised there's not a more concerted effort to make it happen.
Wisdom is what it's called. After 40 your reflexes are slower and you are less likely to have your world shattering idea. OTOH you are probably a better judge of probabilities of success/failure, people's capabilities, and allocation of resources. Lot's of people are significant contributors into their 70's.

I dont think living to 150 means being 80 for 80 years. Probably middle age get stretched forever and the decline is about as fast and as long as it is now.
Also, I'm guessing until probably about age 45, people feel better about hitting the next age bracket so they'll mark the older one if there's any overlap.
Search Monetization vs. Social Media Monetization
Heh, yeah.

I'm more of a business guy. To each their own.
The key issue is being good at statistics, not math. The data can't be relied on to make such an inference because they are not from a random sample of the relevant population.

VOLUNTARY RESPONSE POLLS

One professor of statistics, who is a co-author of a highly regarded AP statistics textbook, has tried to popularize the phrase that "voluntary response data are worthless" to go along with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." Other statistics teachers are gradually picking up this phrase.

[quote=Paul Velleman]

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Velleman [SMTPfv2@cornell.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 1998 5:10 PM
To: apstat-l@etc.bc.ca; Kim Robinson
Cc: mmbalach@mtu.edu
Subject: Re: qualtiative study

Sorry Kim, but it just aint so. Voluntary response data are worthless. One excellent example is the books by Shere Hite. She collected many responses from biased lists with voluntary response and drew conclusions that are roundly contradicted by all responsible studies. She claimed to be doing only qualitative work, but what she got was just plain garbage. Another famous example is the Literary Digest "poll". All you learn from voluntary response is what is said by those who choose to respond. Unless the respondents are a substantially large fraction of the population, they are very likely to be a biased -- possibly a very biased -- subset. Anecdotes tell you nothing at all about the state of the world. They can't be "used only as a description" because they describe nothing but themselves.[/quote]

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...

For more on the distinction between statistics and mathematics, see

http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF

and

http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...
Age doesn't matter. This poll should read something like "I started programming on 1) an Abacus 2) IBM mainframes, punchcards, etc... 3) Apple II 4) Commodore 64, 5) IBM PC, etc... Feel free to take the idea and do another poll. I'm too tired/busy.
most respondents

Good on you to say "most respondents" rather than "most users." This voluntary response poll will tell us nothing reliable about most users of HN, even if more than half of all users respond (which is not particularly likely). See

http://www.edcallahan.com/web110/lectures/litdigest.htm

(you are probably familiar with the example, but this is posted for onlookers) for an example of a poll with a huge sample size that still got the wrong answer.
Somebody posted a study which showed, IIRC, that ~150 lines was the optimum length for subroutines. I really should bookmark these things...

EDIT: Hooray for searchyc:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=509978
I find using key modifiers for mouse actions awkward sometimes.

Middle clicking or clicking both buttons simultaneously also opens links in new tabs.
I couldn't find a figure on the number of registered HN users, so I used the recent number of daily unique IPs from http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html. That number is 22,000.

For a confidence level of 95% with a confidence interval of 4%, we'd need 584 votes.

I'd imagine there's a lot of science to polling which this calculation probably ignores.
First Tech Book Published Exclusively on iPhone
I refuse to believe this.
Ok, so certain mental abilities deteriorate. Maybe, some other mental abilities improve.

The problem with this research is that it is trying look at brain from a certain view point, ignoring all other view points. A more holistic approach would provide a better understanding of how mental abilities change over time.
Ha, I see your 26, sir and raise you 29.

However, I don't feel a day over 12.
I've been to a few big events in Australia - and the big telcos deployed portable mini cell's in order to handle the load. Anyone know if AT&T is doing this at sxsw?
Take a look at InspireData (http://www.inspiration.com/InspireData). It is entirely written in Common Lisp (http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/inspiredata.html). The creators of InspireData used Lisp for its high productivity and ease of development.It uses native menus, drop-downs, and so on, and is uses OpenGL. The customers never know it's written in Lisp. There is no problem at all with garbage collection (i.e. no pauses that anyone ever notices).

It's pretty obvious that since you can do this, a game like PacMan can also be done. I don't see any obstacle to writing 3D games. Common Lisp has been used for a huge range of kinds of application.

If you're looking for a languages with no side-effects in the same sense as in Haskell, the Clojure dialect of Lisp is well worth looking at.
I don't get it - taxes are a percentage of your overall income... so how can you have to work 6 months for taxes?

I do realize that you have to work more to be able to make a living, but keep in mind that:

- By working in any state, you are also subject to their rules/laws/customs. That means you have to pay taxes, and you don't pay them for nothing, but you get something in return.

- If you disagree with the tax system in your country of choice, feel free to move somewhere else. But don't be a jerk and take the advantages (health care, free education up to a certain degree, ... the list goes on) without the disadvantages (giving a (admittedly quite considerable) part of your income to the state in the form of taxes).

So, I rest my case. If you need a secret account, something with your attitude towards finances is wrong. Period.

And on a more anecdotal level, let me say that I am by all means not someone who encourages a very restrictive government in terms of economy. E.g. I'm going to university in Sweden (though not from Sweden), but I'll never work here, simply because, while living here is great, taxes get ridiculously high when you earn more than the average. But tell you what, I'm not going to open a secret bank account, cheat the government and deceive the Swedish people.
Nutritionists, serious athletes and athletic trainers may disagree, but without studies that show a benefit, I have no reason to believe them. As I said in that thread, if there is a benefit, we should be able to measure it.
Aubrey de Grey, not some people.
Parchment: Z-Machine with typography in JavaScript
Could you (and others) elaborate a little more? Are you a reseller for for a large number of titles? Are you a generic site or a very focused topic specific site(s)? Are your materials self produced or exclusive?

I am interested because I am looking for different monetization models for my GF who is a fine art painter and photographer.
Curses: Interactive Fiction in the browser
5 Sci-Fi Inventions That Would Actually Suck
Just because it doesn't matter does not mean we can't ask it. It's interesting to find out the age distribution of HN despite any practical (or other) purpose.

Its a "just for giggles" kind of thing.
Could you elaborate? I know people here are looking for positive models, but advice on how to avoid the perception of being a scam could be useful.
> I suspect that's because the seeds themselves have been genetically ruined. Same with farmers markets: their vegetables are not only tasteless, but they're also ugly and more expensive.

WTF? Here in California (both nor and so) all our home grown veggies and farmers markets and CSA's produce excellent veggies and fruits.

The stuff you buy at mainstream supermarket is all plastic though.
> Which products contain corn syrup?

Every packaged food in the US comes with an ingredient label.

More than likely up until lately you thought only hippies would be interested in knowing what's in their food.
I am afraid that this might have more of a negative result oppose to a positive one. Mosquitoes are part of the food chain...
Norvig's Sudoku solver generalized for KenKen, ported to Javascript
Please source your argument, that I am not allowed to appeal to authority or make bold claims without evidence, but you are. :)
From Russia With Drive
ok, my next startup will be selling suicide gears for 29+ people ...
That goes for most of the stuff on that list really.

I forced myself into reading the full piece but just the way this piece was written smelled of Apple-camp brainwashing and gave the impression that there is nothing in the world the author would wish for more than personally be within the same room as Steve Jobs.

While some of the points on good design were certainly valid, they are hardly exclusive to apple. All in all it was quite an embarrassing read, really.
Does the sales letter format really convert better than a normal site format (menu items at the top and a big buy link at the top and nice layering).

I looked at the parrot site and I had a hard time finding the buy button.
The far right is on the march again: the rise of fascism in Austria
Vitamins aren't the only reason I eat fruits and vegetables. They aren't pills or medicine.
www.USGovXML.com is an index of publically available web services and XML data sources provided by the US government. It includes detailed descriptions of the data sources and their operations. Links to the host systems for documentation, tech support, etc. are also available. Source code snippets are provided to help developers better understand how to use the data sources. Web based applets, for use by mobile devices (i.e. SmartPhones), have also been provided. The mobile applets are available at www.USGovXML.com/mobile.
Most (good) lawyers will keep their mouth shut even if they knew the details of a crime that you committed. They will happily burn any documentation before they hand any over to the government.

Every conversation between you and your lawyer, doctor or priest is confidential – and none of them will rat you out.

Banks (in my country at least) will hand over details of your bank statements without your knowledge to the government.

---

It is only one part of my problem with banks. Banks generally act in their own interest. When you discuss a contract with a lawyer he will act in your interest. Your doctor will also act in your interest when he prescribes you medicine. A banker is the only entity that will give you "advice" that is more in his interest than yours. A good example is contracts with banks - their "standard" contract is extremely one sided.
The pure,lazy, functional programming language 'Clean' includes a jump'n'run in the examples:

http://clean.cs.ru.nl/About_Clean/Platform_Games/platform_ga...
I think he means the histogram might look different at a different time.
(edit) Latest histogram at 50% scale:

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2D games (platform games, side scrollers) using the functional language Clean
Wouldn't this sell way better on a college campus? Put it near the computer lab.
I died when I was 27.
New organic material may speed Internet access
I fixed them.
Quite a few large games have (or still do) use Lisp or Lisp-like languages for scripting.

I work only a few offices away from the Xbox developer support team, so I've heard a few war stories about game scripting. Artists and designers at one huuuuge studio (I won't mention their name) have been using Lisp for runtime tweaking of weapon, AI, and vehicle behavior (among other things) for well over a decade without even knowing that it is Lisp.

Naughty Dog used their own GOAL (Game Oriented Action Lisp) for Jak and Daxter, which you can read all about at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020710/white_02.htm

I think the bottom line is that you need to use raw C/C++ for the fast core graphics stuff, but once you stitch your engine together in a way that supports easy COMPOSITION, then you need a scripting language. Most studios with custom engines choose Lua or similar. Big engines like Unreal and Doom use their own. Some clever teams write their own Lisps.
Can you scale it so it doesn't break the page width?