skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My point is that one doesn't use a natural language to get the job done, one uses a computer language in the likeness of a natural language to get the job done. The similarity speeds learning process.

As for an example, you just gave one. But if we wanted to make it more natural-language-like it would be a slightly different syntax:

DECLARE FUNCTION q_rsqrt (float number) THAT RETURNS float AS (
....
);

Now if you think of the natural language phenomenon of ellipsis, this gets shortened essentially to

function sqrt(float number) returns float (

and we might want to change this to make it more concise

float function sqrt(float number) {
}
If no, what is the requirement? Masters or PhD

Launching payloads to the ISS is good enough for me.
Why's Kollywood silent on the Viswaroopam controversy?
Out of curiosity, why do you need UPnP exposed to the Internet?
OK, maybe writing arbitrary English as a program won't work; but, I can think of a lot of occasions where it would be useful for a computer program to be understandable by any English speaker. I'm thinking of lawyers, who want to be able to review whether a program conforms with legal requirements, or managers, who want to be able to confirm that business logic is doing what they want it to do. Zed Shaw kind of hints at this in his classic "ACLs are Dead" talk, where he talks about using metaprogramming to make Ruby syntax more readable for lawyers.
Drone: BeagleBone expansion board (should we prototype?)
All of these are propaganda because they represent an edge use case. Fructose is horrible for the human body in quantities almost all Americans consume it in on a normal basis.

Obesity, Insulin-Resistance, Impotency, Diabetes, Cardiac, Auto-Immune...the list goes on!

This is not the way to approach this subject. Not all hormones act on the same receptors, not all hormones are synthetic and not all hormones aromatase.
For games and other reactive systems, you should check out functional reactive programming (FRP)[1]. The basic idea is to model time explicitly, working with time-varying values. So you would express your game logic as a network of event streams and signals.

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1028250/what-is-functiona...

This is a radically different from the normal imperative approach, and I've found it to be much nicer. Admittedly, I haven't tried making games per se, but I have used it successfully for several other interactive UI programs.

FRP is a good approach for any system where you would normally use events and callbacks. This includes UIs and games as well as things like controllers or even music. So at least for that sort of IO-heavy and stateful domains, there is a very good declarative approach.
It's https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat...

No response yet that I know of.
So what's the motivation for using these batteries in the 787 anyway? Can they just switch to whatever they've used before?
I didn't realize what this was at first. It's an edit in place javascript for a rather nice inline text editing.
Boeing Knew of Problems With 787 Batteries Before Fires
You just don't like using English punctuation as function names.
I transcoded it in to FLV and it worked
www.cloudshoring.in
It's more like saying void pointers are a wart in C. It's appropriate in two ways: for one, void pointers are a wart, and for two, there's no good way to get rid of them without radically changing the language.
If Apple wants to compete in cloud services like mapping, they should publish a REST API for web apps as well. If I was developing a local search app for mobile and web, I imagine I'd want to use the same data provider on both platforms.
Is anyone else equally excited to see what's on his hard drive? Is that already available?
I think you're missing the practical use cases of natural language programming, at least those in the next decade or so.

"Hello Computer! I need an inverse square root function. It should take a float as a parameter and..." - Not practical

"Hello Computer! I need this image to pan across the screen. It should take one second. When it gets there, I want it to stop and become clickable. When you click it..." - Very practical

The practical solution here could even be iterative...

"No computer, no! The image should ease into position, not just go straight there!"

The point is you wouldn't rely on it for precise logic, just "good enough" behavior. You can definitely argue that this isn't programming though.
Pardon me if I am wrong, because I believe I am more clueless than most, but the reasons VCs invest in their MBA buddies may not be because that is an easy (as in lazy) decision but because it is a safe decision. Traditional coaching does ensure that the candidate has at least his/her basics clear. Of course, the decision has to take into account the necessary skills as well, there is no denying that, but Ivy League should be guaranteeing some minimum competency.

> .. Silicon Valley is how much nepotism and old-boy-network

If I am ever in a position to hire (and affect through it entirely and only my own economic well being) I wouldn't mind having people I enjoy company of and can relate to. Genuinely awesome people are a plus point, but even in that category if I am able to find people who share the same background as mine, is it really that bad a decision?

> It was an absolute disaster but my own fault for taking this as proxy for being good on a startup

But there are bad apples in all baskets. I am sure there would be some evidence of great hackers without Ivy League credentials being poor matches for some startups. And I am not arguing that credential replace the need for a test of actual skills, interest and commitment; I am just arguing that the probability of the candidate possessing some minimum value for all three points is fairly high.
Except they're both clueless about battery use in planes.
I've definitely soured on the idea of having threaded discussion in blogs. Or unmoderated discussion, for that matter. On the other hand, I think threaded discussion is great on sites like Hacker News which are divorced from the original content.

If I were to create a new blog in this day and age, I would only permit pre-moderated flat discussion on my blog, so I could publish interesting feedback and reactions - like an inline "Letters to the Editor" section. That way you give readers an effective way to "react" to the post on the page without opening yourself up to comment-to-comment discussion, spam, trolling and flame wars.

Knowing that the comment won't be published unless it is insightful will lead to fewer comments, but those who do comment will probably put extra effort into making the comment worthy of being seen. And really, the point of a blog post is the post itself, not the comments. Hacker news, in my opinion, is a way better format for real discussion sparked by a post, rather than reactions meant for the author of it.
The name is a joke, the project is not.
"LiveScript was one of the original names for JavaScript, so it seemed fitting. It's an inside joke for those who know JavaScript well."
(from the site)

LiveScript hasn't been used as a name for JavaScript in almost two decades.
Something Awful (~1999) was around way before 4chan (2003)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan
> Of course, the solution is is some combination of:

And as always in Haskell: more type trickery. Like lenses, which help with the splitting. Applicative functors might help with "Have functions return a description of updates to the world-state [...]" for free in a sense similar to http://gergo.erdi.hu/blog/2012-12-01-static_analysis_with_ap...
Applescript has junk like extra meaningless words added to programs just to make them resemble English. And things that are easy to express usually, like a function with four arguments, become a mess because of a fear of punctuation.
I'm obviously oversimplifying, and an AI-driven English->asm compiler comparable to my godlike programming abilities is at the far, far end of the technology gradient from now to Lieutenant Data, but it doesn't seem far fetched to have such compilers be "good enough" for designers to create certain MVPs and such without programmer intervention, in the next decade or so.
From my limited experience with smoke in cars, sadly they often turn to fire. Because, you know, like the first humans that did create fire, very often when a fire starts there's smoke...

I've seen a Saab in which the ashtray started to smoke and then before we could pull out (on the highway) the dashboard had flames and started to melt.

And I've seen a very nice and shiny Porsche 911 Carrera model 964 whose alternator belt did broke and then started "burning" on the engine. We smelled it and then we could see smoke. By the time we opened the engine trunk (with our fire extinguisher in hand) it was on fire. Funnily enough the repair were under warranty and there wasn't much to change (the trunk needed to be repaint and one or two pieces changed).

When there is unexpected smoke on a plane it is a safety issue.

Seen that a Boeing supplier's factory went up in flames due to a battery that took fire, I'm not exactly sure there's "no doubt Boeing know that even if the batteries smoke and fail they won't be a threat to safety". Same for the 16 hybrid sport cars that burst into flames on that parking lot due to batteries shorting.

I think that: "There's no smoke without fire" may be the sentence you're after ; )
Our First Node.js App: Backbone on the Client and Server
Actually, 4chan was founded by a SomethingAwful member, moot, who I think frequented the anime forum on SA (ADTRW). I'm not sure where this reversed order of formation came about.

Nowadays of course SA generally stays away from 4chan, which has become about a lot more than anime and games.
DECLARE FUNCTION q_rsqrt (float number) THAT RETURNS float AS ( .... );

And no programmer will want to write in such a language because it's so verbose.

I don't mind making programming languages look more like natural languages; I would offer Python as an example of a language that takes advantage of this where it makes sense.

But I draw the line at having to type boilerplate; if it's absolutely necessary, at least keep it to an absolute minimum.
Beginner question: I'm working on web application which I will releasing to the world soon. Right now, I'm using AWS free tier to test my application written in Asp.Net Mvc 4.

I follow HN and Reddit. I have seen many sites crash or become unresponsive when the submission gets on front page of this site and can't handle the huge load that user pour on the site.

Now I want to be ready for this situation if submit link to my app to these sites and get same huge load. But this load may vary. So I want to know how could I know when to increase/decrease the number of instances. Is there any benchmark/threshold for Asp.net mvc to let me know that I can handle this much requests at the moment and you will need another instance in next few mins or requests? Or is it the case that EC2 automatically creates new instances depending on the load and I just need to enable the settings somewhere? Or there are some third party tools that does all this for me?
Ha amazing, I started a side project to solve the exact same problem a few months ago. Grats on actually shipping!
That was done by Musks company, not Musk alone.
What you want isn't "natural language programming"; what you want is an AI. I think that's more than a decade away.
D) take EM's offer and source the batteries / solution to a joint boeing-spacex/tesla project and proudly proclaim that they're going to the world's experts on batteries, the same people that NASA trusts - SpaceX. This provides positive press for both companies and (provided they fix the problem) resolves any long term problems that might completely destroy their business (like having multiple planes catch fire or blow up).

All it will take is to swallow their pride for a moment and go to their competitor to help solve the problem.
Do batteries start working differently when they are placed in planes?
Li-ion fires tend to generate oxygen and so they are quite hard to put out. At 30,000 ft in the air I would consider this a fairly significant threat to safety.
Which covers 0 information about Li battery vs other kinds, especially considering when he earned his Bachelor's.
A good read. You can tell from the language and the terminology that the concepts were not mainstream as they are today.
Obesity is more dangerous than (intelligent) steroid use
The public doesn't see this as Larry Ellison criticizing Bill Gates, but that is essentially what is happening.
This is a very poignant article. personally, it doesn't bother me as much since I actually know what each platform is capable of. Most people don't bother to research and rely on friends or media telling them what to think. Either way, all that should probably matter is that they spend their money on apps and spend their free time using apps :)
They are assuming that functional programming is on the rise. With the exception of Clojure (which is more popular by virtue of being new), I don't know of any functional language that are in any measurable way more popular (I assume that is what they mean by on the rise) than it has been in the last 10 years.

In fact, the only application I use that is built using functional programming is Xmonad.

Also, none of the top languages on the TIOBE survey are purely functional, although one in the top 20, 'lisp' with .9% and falling, does promote a functional style.

People expound the virtues of functional programming year after year, and then go off and get a bunch done with Python. Steve Yegge said it best: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers-...

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
Most telling of journalistic laziness perhaps. Possibly even revealing a lack of awareness or knowledge by the author. It might even be just some low-paid, technically unskilled assistant tasked with attaching vaguely relevant images to articles.

My guess is that -- whoever it was -- typed something like "maps iphone" into Getty Images and picked whatever came up top.

Here's the same Getty photo in its intended context:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-13/new-google-m...
I fear Boeing's problems are not limited to these batteries.
Easiest way to reach him is to make a burner account on ProhormoneForum.com - he's got his own section there where he posts a few times a day.
I think this is a very smart move by Musk. Grow the Tesla brand at very little cost, and potentially win a new client to sell batteries to.

Surely a Boeing contract would bring decent margins (they will now pay a premium for a quick fix) and much bigger scale economies for Tesla to further decrease their operating cost base.
Akrasia: How You'll Die Hard From It
Does someone know what's the last date to apply?

Also, what is the expected output during the hackathon? Simulation result?
New Apple TV Has A5X Chip and Single WLAN + Bluetooth Antenna
I don't think smoke is the issue. It's toxic fumes. It's not like you can open a window.
All this food services bubble is making me itchy. Allergy?
same people will ask for our votes
Does this allow hyperlinking? I guess not, and if so the front page is misleading since it gives the impression that one can put hyerlinked text. But seriously hyperlinking is not required..
That's a really good idea, thanks. I have `e` aliased to `emacsclient -nt` but there's no reason why it couldn't make scratch files if not given an argument.
I don't think raganwald is right here, or rather he's only right about a subset of DSLs -- the subset of DSLs which attempt to map a specific domain to english. I think most good DSLs eschew mapping domains to english in favour of mapping those domains to some new language designed to express information about that domain.
Tangentially, this reminds me of something else: the grandparent studied another STEM discipline (aerospace engineering). Yet he's not only been able to master programming well enough to be employable as a core software engineer, is able to self-study non-trivial topics in Computer Science (that are generally only taught to early graduate students or advanced undergrads), and works as an attorney.

I think that illustrates the real value of education, which has nothing to do with brand name or credentialing. I like that I studied enough electrical engineering to do hobbyist projects with FPGAs; enough physics, math, and other sciences to be able to make sense of Nature articles, as well stay up to date with relatively new and fast growing fields like neuroscience and molecular biology.

Not everyone will extract this out of their degree program and there are definitely a few universities that make it difficult to get this kind of background knowledge. However, I'd wager that most good universities (ABET accredited CS/engineering programs, most faculty having Ph.D.s and publishing, healthy portion of students going on to graduate schools, etc...) offer this to students -- irrespective of their USNWR rating is (which, I think, at least for general undergraduate studies becomes more of a game beyond a certain point).

Could MOOCs offer this? Probably, but having structure and providing a toplogical sort (just like you've described it) of disciplines -- as well as things like labs for hard sciences -- is also valuable.
...and on what basis do you make that claim?
A few inaccuracies in your comment:

Estrogen will induce breast and uterine cancers unless it is given with progesterone. Hardly zero side-effects.
It is considered proper to only administer estrogen alone to women with severe symptoms of menopause.

For the purpose of contraception, the COCP uses low levels which inhibit further hormone release by acting on the pituitary gland; it effectively simulates the state of pregnancy.
Even this has risks especially for women with coagulation disorders.

With regard to your comments about men receiving hormone supplementations: the problem here is that testosterone production doesn't actually decrease as you get older. Or at least, falling testosterone seems to be the result of, and not the cause of, age and lifestyle related changes and declines.

This result was shared with my med school class by one of the principle investigators of the 2011 study in the links;
I apologise for using science daily Links as I don't have access to research journals ATM

http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20110607/testosteron...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110607121129.ht...
but you still require a hyperdefined subset of English to make that work, and such a parser cannot take into account dialectal and language drift issues.
Could this be a trend for Amazon that they'll expand vertically? If that is the case they'll be competing with their customers eventually.
The new engine requires much higher-capacity batteries to start them. A battery with the old tech would be huge and heavy. The new battery technology is much lighter than the old ones.
It's not that far from PL/SQL and PL/PGSQL

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION foo (int bar0) RETURNS int language plpgsql security definer volatile as $$

begin

return $1 + 1;

end;

$$;
Well, we start to split hairs here, although my over the top "Hello computer!" skewed what I was getting at. If NLProgramming gains ground, there will likely be some level of AI behind it, but not necessarily a "true" AI. And it's not what I want...it will put me out of work ;)
or they could've gone the route of the new yorker and have a paywall. serving ads isn't the only source of revenue possible.
Stefan Kudelski, Who Made Sound Recording Portable, Dies
Tesla's /cells/ are also "fundamentally unsafe", but they make the /batteries/ as safe as possible.

Fundamentally _safe_ would be LiFePO4 chemistry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery

Longer lifespan and significantly cheaper than cobalt, manganese, etc; but 20% lower specific mass. Survives having a nail driven through a fully-charged cell with only some smoke and a small bit of flame -- not a meltdown like the more active chemistries.
What do you mean by this analogy?
Hypothetically you are a big company able to deliver increasingly complicated software that far outperforms the competition because of functional programming. Would you want to correct a remark like this by IBM?

Why on earth would you want to educated pointy-haired individuals when you can be another vapid supporter of the six-sigma model?
Pedantic: Boeing subcontracted the jet engine efficiency improvements to Rolls-Royce (Trent 1000) and GE (GEnx).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Trent_1000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_GEnx
Great post (oops just said what you explicitly said not to in one of your posts)! My main takeaway from your articles was that most of these skills only come to people who very pro-actively develop them. As a college student, I used to think that what I needed to learn for my career would be eventually taught to me in college. Boy has that been wrong. This has been a pretty good kick in the behind for me to really start developing these skills if I ever want a shot at becoming a great entrepreneur.
Does it have an overlaid div fallback option?
Thanks to everyone again, especially Exabrial for posting my article here. If anyone has any questions, please post them and I will address them or ask Dr. Rider for a response.

I was hoping someone might be able to point me to another site where I could post my article that would result in as many eyes coming for a look.

As to Tokenadult's comment... the article isn't a plea for funding, it is an attempt to get DRACO into the public's mind. However, myself and a few others have come together to search for a way to fund Dr. Rider's work. So, this post, is a plea for funding. We will have a site up soon as we have found a way to fund his research. We have no desire for financial reward for ourselves, we simply want the full potential of his work explored... rapidly.
Redis foreign data wrapper for PostgreSQL updated
Probably like a lot of people, I'm addicted to reading these articles now. I had a lot of respect for Aaron when he was still here, and even though he's gone now, it's encouraging that his actions continue to inspire so many people to make change for the better. The Economist did a really good job on this.

And I have to imagine Aaron would have laughed too when he heard them call Perl an "elegant langauge".
"I'm saying this because he is a businessman, not an engineer."

Musk is the Chief Designer at Space-X, Product Architect at Tesla Motors, and a member of the Stanford University Engineering Advisory Board. He has previously served as a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. - Wikipedia.