skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know enough Ruby to refactor this, but using continuations to enumerate possibilities seems like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.

Am I understanding correctly that your goal is just to arrive at the tail call of 'contract_sentence' in two parallel ways? In other words, you don't want to collect the possibilities into an array, and then at the apply contract_sentence() to each in turn? Is this because you're worried about violating the form of a proper tail call?
That site looks awfully dark and gray to me.
The core of that demo is the Working Model 2D physics engine (http://www.design-simulation.com/WM2D/index.php), which wasn't produced at MIT as far as I know. MIT added the whiteboard interface. The recognition of circles, arrows, and other symbols is also part of Working Model. One of my friends (a Stanford prof who teaches ME) coded a large part of the engine, and he told me it worked like a charm on Intel 486 chips. I'm helping him look for some seed money for a related venture, so interested angels should drop me a line. (YC isn't a good fit for him.)
Ruby and ActionScript libraries for new Adobe Share API
Hackers, some advice on finding a co-founder that knows business
Animal shelter site features pics of cute puppies... with a clock counting down hours to their death
Headline liberated from Fark
So, what has this to do with "Hacker news"? Do we imply that hackers are more effective when they are horny?

Sorry, but stories like this are better suited for reddit or digg.
Submitted because I like the tight coupling between the web and the real world, especially with regards to broadcasting time-sensitive local offers to a worldwide audience. I wish there were a web portal that would show deals on food in local stores that was about to expire as a way of reducing the millions of tons of pre-consumer food waste per year.
pagerank is published, but patented.
Depending on their circumstances, it could also make sense that they would try hardest not to get pregnant at that time of the month.
Well, part of what I get from PG's writing is that "business" is something a hacker can figure out, and that perhaps it's better to get technical people on your team, and figure out the business stuff as you go, rather than try and find someone who "knows business".
Sometimes that is true. I know business and there are many times that I wish I new how to program. It's definitely not black and white. I really think you need both.

I got a lot of reaction from programmers looking for a co-founder that had good business sense. PG probably has a lot of business acumen naturally.
I do think it has gone downhill a bit since the new editor came on board. But I still think it's the best single news source out there. However science articles that boil humans down to testoserone and estrogen sacks have been their bread and butter for a while. Personally, I don't mind it.
even on a video like this, the YouTube comments are absolutely retarded
Ask YC: Anyone use LaTeX?
I use LaTeX a lot, but I couldn't find an online version, so I wrote this one. It's very rough in terms of styling, but basic functionality is there. What else would you like to see it do?
Reddit is down... American sheep, wake up from your slumber! Bush did it.
The Bush Administration is trying to silence reddit for spreading the Truth about 9/11 and the Bible. We need to protest in suits imminently.
and another piece of the puzzel
Your post and the one above by Goladus have helped me change my attitude towards this. Thanks for your replies.

That "pre-Web 1.0" stab wound will certainly take time to heal, though ;)
death to reddit!
If fully implemented, this could be incredibly useful for me. Initial comments:

x The ability to merge in a tex file. That is, allow me to download the tex file from your server, and then send you a new version, obviously you'll track changes.

x EDIT: Bibliographies. Having a single point to place bibtex style bibliographies, and manage them. That would be amazing.

x I don't like that the user login persists at the top of the screen. The UI needs a lot of work, i imagine you're working on that.

x if tex compilation fails, highlight it in red. If it succeeds highlight in green.

x On the file list, next to the .tex file, show the most current pdf file. Ahh apparently you do, you call that view. I don't like that word. I think you should show a.tex a.pdf. View makes me think that you view the tex file.

x Can we upload images? If you're clever, you might be able to figure out a way for figures to be grabed from a url within latex.

x Add some simple templates. When a new file is created, it should have a skeleton that produces a pdf file. If you're on a mac, take a look at texshop.

x Add the ability to jump to the error in the .tex file, this is hard to do apparently, but texshop figured it out.

good work.
Capistrano 2.1 Released
Wow that is the coolest thing ever. Would love to have one of those for my mechanics classes. Great work.
I have to use LaTeX for my number theory & elliptic curve cryptography class. I'll be sure to use this on the next team-project.
Yes. I use it for everything. It's been five years since I used a word processor.
Many hackers are interested in science generally.
All I mean by this is that the user interface is available in multiple languages. In my case this consists of creating a different lexicon file for each language and allowing users to switch between them (based on their Accept-Language header or manual overriding).

I use Catalyst for Perl, so I do this with Catalyst::Plugin::I18N http://search.cpan.org/~bricas/Catalyst-Plugin-I18N-0.06/lib...
I second the suggestion about integrating bibliographies - one approach would be to pull in data from bibliographies managed with http://www.citeulike.org
Agreed. Adsense CPC advertising has horrible, pathetic return.

Unless you're a spammer with 5 million spam landing pages..
Since many of the other members of community suggest looking for your own domain name, I would suggest you read: http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-name-types/

It will help you think creatively of the domain name. I've used GoDaddy's service before as well as just negotiated it on my own, and the GoDaddy service increases the total cost of the transaction, but either way, chances are always slim.
One of the World's Foremost Meteorologists Has Called the Theory That Helped Al Gore Share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous"
I wrote my PhD thesis in it, but these days I write most documents in html and css to be honest.
Beware the Online Collective: Individual Creativity Is Being Replaced by Dangerous Groupthink
Every book I've written (including Hackers & Painters) was done with LaTex.
Damn I should tell one of my former co-workers at Western Electric => ATT => Lucent Microelectronics => Agere that you're using his former email handle as your site name. I'm sure he would get a kick out of it.

It's not obvious what the hell Zombo.com is. Visual design is clean and uncluttered on the splash page, the voice over is a little freaky makes me think of some African dictator, perhaps Idi Amin. I cant say anything about the rest of the site because I cant get past the splash page. Kudos for the candy colored "hypno" throbber, I'm sure it will be a hit with the Mary Jane and Dancing Bears crowds.
The sad truth is that there's really no elegant solution to this problem. To make matters worse, the author's proposed solutions are only moving mark-up garbage from one place to another; they don't do much to improve the quality of code.
Zend Framework for web apps.
Is it good to use zend framework for your web app. development? Please discuss in terms of speed, and scalability.
I will be in China in January. I've been there twice before and was always amazed by the progress since the last time I went there. I'm definitely interested in bizdev in China. If anyone wants to contact me & tag along or meet there, email's in the profile!
My book was written using Docbook SGML with a LaTeX based processing chain and custom style sheets. The publisher ended up importing from the HTML version (the least pleasant of all of the output formats) into Word documents with their custom tags, so it kind of lost some of the magic.

Eventually I ported it to Docbook XML and moving to RenderX XEP for processing, in order to get better (by some definition of better--mainly just better maintained stylesheets, and the tools seemed to handle the length of my book better) PDF output.

Now it's in a wiki at http://doxfer.com/Webmin and I probably won't be back to LaTeX for that particular project.

I do keep coming back to it, though, out of curiosity, every time I read Knuth.
Yes, but it's mostly an esoteric tool to impress people with how smart you are. It's useful for mathematical typesetting. These two statements are not mutually exclusive ;)
Couchurfing is great. I have been using it for few years already. Its completely different way to travel. Most people take you straight into their lives - take you out with their friends, show local pubs, shops, parks or concerts that other way wouldn't get int tourist route. Its more of a view into local culture and life not just visiting landmarks and talking with other travelers in hostel. Hostel are also fun. Hostels are like going to meet with other travelers. Couchsurfing is like visiting a distant friend. And you can also have both of them. Just because you stay in hostel doesn't mean that couchsurfers don't welcome you. You can still meet for a drink or party or walk around city. Its more of a network for meeting local friendly people than just crashing their couch.
Government spooks helped Microsoft build Vista
Lap dancers?
Heh, you're right that it says that. That's a shame, it's largely good.
I've used LaTeX for basically everything: reports, letters, papers, course handouts, Ph.D. thesis, book. Typesetting is superior to word processing in so many ways, but unfortunately LaTeX seems to be going out of fashion. Except for physics and math journals, even technical publishers seem to prefer Word (!) to LaTeX nowadays.
You're right that I should be careful with what I call ridiculous. I am.

(Will now explain more details in response to the other guy's comment where he proposes bohm and grw theories as non-ridiculous)
Ask YC News: Ever had any luck catching a scam artist?
I'm being solicited to tutor 'someone's son' who is supposedly moving to the Berkeley area. The father is supposedly in Germany. I'm supposed to take payment for an entire month, and then wire the money to a nanny who's taking care of the kid.

Neat variation on the classic overpayment scheme.

http://www.scambusters.org/overpayment.html

But I want to catch this thief. I haven't lost any money, but since I was counting on the funds until I received more of an indication of this fraud (it's taken a while), I'm kind of in a hard place.

Has anyone ever had any luck counter scamming, or catching the scam artist?
Have you tried TeXmacs?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=67111
Gray is a longtime 'climate change' denier. I'm not sure if he is in the back pocket of the oil industry, but probably. Here's an article on real climate written back in April 2006. It should at least raise your eyebrows.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/gray-o...
I am not anti-gun or anti-hunting. But "sport" usually means killing things (unless you're talking clay pigeons), and so does saving lives. Injuring at least. They are designed to propel bullets quickly and accurately so that the bullets can strike living things. Shooting cans isn't the intended purpose (although it can be a lot of fun).
Amusing to see the article surrounded by three fat adsense blocks.
Are standardized angel contracts a good idea?
One of the strengths of individually negotiating contract terms is that a court will have little doubt that the bargain was fairly reached. However, in this situation, where you've got hungry entrepreneurs signing something that looks more like the kind agreement you'd sign at a car dealership and perhaps without a lawyer, it might raise some interesting flags
Barnes & Noble turns to Austin startup to create a mobile e-commerce storefront
BlackBerry users can buy books, CDs and DVDs using free Digby software
when creating an account, please have a second password field for confirmation. Without that, it is far too easy to fat finger the password when creating an account.
I've had some fun scam-baiting a few times, never really led to anything too significant, but I was just in it for the fun.

If you're read some of the various scam-baiter sites, then you'll see that the basic formula is some combination of convincing the scammer that you are totally bought in, without seeming overly anxious. Led THEM along, let THEM start to count on the money, and then throw a wrench into the mix. Get them to send you a small sum of money <$101, to cover postage for something. Get a real address to ship them something, verify the address and then alert the local authorities.
I think it is the option for writing with any degree of complexity: articles, theses, books, etc. Word processing (and Word in particular) pales in comparison. Having all of the bookkeeping and style taken care of for indices, lists, contents, cross references, citations, etc. makes it very nice to work with. I convert everyone I can...
Except for physics and math journals, even technical publishers seem to prefer Word (!) to LaTeX nowadays.

This is a sad state of affairs indeed. Almost reason enough for me to look for alternate venues for publication.
We can learn that one should only present to investors when most fertile.
Wrote my theses in LaTex. It's excellent for large documents.
texMacs is great, but is a non-option for many scientists. A large fraction of us are switching to OSX. texMacs runs slowly on osx, but worst, it looks ugly running on a mac.

I use texshop, it's not a texmacs replacement in terms of features, yet, i like it better on my mac.
2 Reasons Why All Online Storage Should Scale
Scaling is a hot topic in businesses, especially with startups that expect to become Slashdotted or Digged anytime soon. Google recently announced they would increase the speed at which their Gmail would gain storage capacity, mainly in response to Yahoo! and Microsoft recently upgrading and surpassing Google's storage offerings.
Seems to go for arty over readable.
Hmmm, in the Architecture (Building) world we've had standardized contracts for over a century. They work quite well at a cost of about $5 apiece. I can see how the author, being a lawyer, is concerned by the need of fewer lawyers with standardized contracts in the startup world.
> Joyent Accelerators ( http://www.joyent.com ) are flexible, and they're the "official" Ruby on Rails host.

WTF? "Official" Ruby on Rails host?
In the Steven Levy book Hackers, I gather that the MIT hackers in the 60s/70s could do tasks like shape recognition with hands behind their back, in assembly, in less than 30 lines of code.

I'm not sure if current MIT hackers can do amazing robotic/visual recognition coding that efficiently, but I haven't got any books on modern-day MIT.
A Facebook-Yahoo Partnership That Just Might Trouble Google
5 Things That Make Me Believe Nothing Is Impossible
Not catching per se. I just let the scammer know that I was on to him. My account of it is at:

http://www.ideatagging.com/domain-name-scam/
That's truly an amazing piece of technology with a wide range of potential. MIT certainly holds just as much (if not more) of the proportion in innovation by introducing the whiteboard. I'm extremely interested in seeing what kind of work is currently being done on this piece of tech. I'm curious as to why they're sticking strictly to 2-dimensional space.

any links?
Any YCnewsers with a blackberry tried this?

Not sure how big the market is... I would think most people would rather just wait till they get to a computer to buy something that won't show up in 3-5 days anyways.

Its good to see an austin startup get some deals done though!
Note that she's posting updates based on feedback she's getting.

Her blog is a 'free content' site, not a services site. She only has to worry about keeping it clean enough to be comfortable to read. Her issue is with sites ostensibly selling a product or service being cluttered with ads (for competitors even!).
The Inner Life of a Cell animation
A minor quibble: read about intentional programming, you'll find that while it _is_ magical, it's not software that writes itself...
Design: Voting up or Down is Dead
Can't you convince a few key conferences/journals to accept TeXmacs submissions? For just how much longer do they expect to use TeX anyway?
I agree. However, I would suspect that having at least one hacker who enjoys the business of startups is important. If all of the hackers hate dealing with business, I could see that being a potential problem.

On these lines, an interesting hypothetical question is what would Apple have become if founded by 2 Wozniak's? Woz loved to hack, but strongly disliked the idea of starting a business. I think it took a Woz + Jobs to make things happen, personally.
I have used TeX before, but now use OpenDocument in its stead. I know TeX is well loved, and I admire Knuth too, but I think a lot of its benefits have been surpassed by other formats.

Note I do not create mathematical documents, but technical ones. OpenDocument uses MathML for this, but I personally have little experience with it.

Here's why I use OpenDocument:

- Content and presentation are still separated

- I can generate and manipulate OpenDocument just as easily as TeX

- Massive documents are handled just as well in my experience

- XML is easier to transform into other XML dialects.

- OpenDocument is easier to transform into popular proprietary document formats, ie, MS Office. At some point, you need to communicate with non-technical people.

- Metafont produces very poor screen output due its love of bitmap fonts. Yes this can be worked around by TeX users, but there is no reason to expect them to do that.

Knuth doesn't understand usability concepts and wouldn't consider this a bug. I have higher standards (as would most computer users).

Yes, I said that. Remember TeX's goal:

"allow anybody to produce high-quality books using a reasonable amount of effort, and to provide a system that would give the exact same results on all computers, now and in the future."

Anybody. There is no reason to require people to understand a markup language in order to create a presentation-separated document. Nor is there any special requirement to work around an ancient poor-quality custom font scheme that should have been dumped years ago.

I know this is a topic close to people's hearts, but read the goal above: TeX has quite clearly failed to meet it.
rVibe launches innovative social networking music download service
I voted up because I agree. Would I have done so if I disagreed, despite it being decently well-presented? Should I have?

So here's the question: How do you do better?
So in other words, best to keep that MacBook on the desk.
Top Blogs On Google Reader
i bet he could roll a phat doobie.
I would form a startup that had a better idea and I would try to adapt it to make more users happy!

Not trying to be a pain, just that it's a big question, and whoever makes progress in this area is going to be accomplishing something big, in my opinion. I have my ideas, which I'd like to try out in the market and not kick around on a board. Hope that's an okay answer. I'm not a "cool idea makes the business work" guy, but neither am I a "give away the store" guy either. I think there's going to be some proprietary magic going on when this nut gets cracked, much the same as when search was cracked there was a lot of behind-the-scenes magic that Google did.

BTW -- thanks for the vote. Karma whores unite! :)
I think you must have arrived since the explanation of how we're going to avoid drift.

http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

Vote weighting isn't turned on yet, but for the last couple weeks I've been thinking it was time to.

Incidentally, the poll problem can easily be fixed by changing the frontpage ranking algorithm to treat poll votes as worth e.g. a third as much.
good lord. has stallman ever had anything happen to him that didn't turn into a giant battle of wills?

i try to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, because of all his accomplishments, but he's making it difficult.
There seems to be at least as much variety of opinion now as before the web, probably more.
This guy deserves a lot of credit. As far as I can tell he came out of no where (with a stupid name "Center Networks") and is now getting a Techcrunch/Mashable level of attention. The advertising revenue for these blogs is insane too, so he may already be making tens of thousands of dollars per month. The business of talking about startups is a lot more profitable than many startups themselves.
I think up/downs are to judge the worthiness of the link, and agreements should be expressed in the comments.
Awesome!

Color me skeptical about stopping drift, though. It'll be neat to be proven wrong. I wonder how you'd prevent the system from just emulating the editors, instead of the audience. Now with YC perhaps that's exactly how you'd like it, but for a more general purpose site I'd want more of a user-focus than an external-editor-focus.

For the newer people, thank you for the link about what the appropriate topics are. I think a time or two I asked "what does this have to do with hacking?" Now that I know the larger focus, I'll be more reticent.
Would you vote up for a link to a story that you violently disagreed with? Be honest now. And if you would (I _think_ I would) do you really think that's the way others are voting?
From RubyOnRails.org, at the bottom of the front page:

"If you need hosting, Joyent is the official Ruby on Rails host, offering fantastic plans with a knowledgeable staff. Whether you need shared or dedicated hosting, these guys are experts in Ruby on Rails. For alternatives, see the wiki for a full list of Rails web hosts."

Not sure how much more obvious, or less of a WTF, that could possibly be.
the problem is that even though WE don't like poll stories or random bush bashing on the front page, a TON of people do like them obviously, and you need to accomadate them too

anyone ever used pandora.com?

you give it an artist, it plays you a song by the artist or in the same genre, you vote the song up or down, eventually pandora learns enough about your tastes to only play songs that you enjoy

what if a social news site kept track of what kind of stories you voted up or down, did some magic to draw connections between types of stories, so the front page of the site would look different for each user... people that don't like poll stories wouldn't have poll stories on the front page, etc, etc