skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would like to start a service where you can receive unbiased criticism on demand because in my experience it is almost impossible to get.
the incentive in such a business (counselors, psychology) is to tell your client what they want to hear. Even when they want to hear criticism, they want to hear the criticism that they want to hear. Thus an actual honest service would be valuable.

I fear the market is too small though.
I don't like pre-interview surveys much. I tend to fill them out biasing against myself which tends to be a disservice to myself and to the employers.

To use an example. Lets say I'm considered an expert in a closed pretzel making community. I worked for the Bavarians who are renown in the pretzel making community. While there I made some waves in the pretzel making arts. Lets say the Bavarians are very secretive and won't talk about their pretzel making to other pretzel makers. They're Bavarians, they don't need to.

Later I saw a job at a medium sized pretzel factory in Portugal. I liked the location and applied as an operational pretzel maker. They asked me to fill out a survey and I listed that I didn't have experience with dough pullers and have only shaken the salt shaker a few times in recent history.

Quickly said factory sends a "you're not what we're looking for email". Needless to say, I was slightly perplexed.

The survey didn't give me a chance to state that I had invented new pretzel recipes (and pretzel making techniques that did not require dough pullers at that) and had a different view on pretzel making because I was working for the Bavarians for so long. They also missed out on my motivation to get closer to people eating pretzels and take my ideas outside of the schnitzel tower the Bavarian pretzel makers occupy.

In short, I wrote all this to say I'm not a fan of pre-interview surveys.
I think it's self-promotion, for better or worse.
Beautiful Horizontally Centered Menus/Tabs/List. No CSS hacks. Full cross-browser.
I wrote a Java scripting lang that supports continuations. Lots of fun stuff: http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2008/07/24/fun-with-contin...
I'm curious if Pingdom's DNS testing is sufficient to draw performance conclusions about these services. I ask because the summary results table is curious: it only lists the first NS record for each hostname. (NB: luilui.com does not see to use netriplex currently). If 14 worldwide testing nodes are pegged to try one nameserver and that nameserver is not an anycast node, it seems to me this test is not accurate. If someone knows what Pingdom is doing behind the scenes -- or if this is just a data display issue -- I'd love to know.
I know their lead programmer, and I can vouch that their team is very much on the ball. :)
I was half expecting a single page site that said "Use Rails." or some other framework.
Jeff is just an anti-intellectual. He has a vendetta against people who know things like C and actually program. He is just trying to justify his rude previous comments. It would be nice if Jeff would stop blogging until Stackoverflow "cured cancer" as he said.
YouTube - Learning Chinese - "Weather is so good" - Lan's Chinese lesson 24
I don't really understand this comment.A push back for blogging abnout technical work? I'm not sure this passes the "simplest answer is probably the correct one" test.
Symbolic integration would be much more interesting than Riemann sums.
I am one of those recent arrivals. I do work in software, but in a semi-academic environment and don't have the slightest interest in owning or working for a start-up. I came here for the signal to noise, so I guess I am exactly the newcomer that vexes the author (though not having commented until today, I can safely say I have not stoked any flamewars).

For the record I don't have a problem with user identity - after all I post under my real first name which is unusual enough to google me very quickly. I certainly do object to the suggestion of user identity being enforced through membership of a social network. Much as I love Hacker News, I don't love it enough to jettison my misgivings on social networking.

It would be a real shame to kill interesting stories because of the comments they would attract. Perhaps allow those stories to be posted, but lock them down for comments?
Even on a day you don't have a net connection? What would you do, play solitaire and code in notepad? Ubuntu comes packed with goodies.
It would certainly be an interesting experiment for some social sites to make. I wonder what a non-anonymous 4chan or reddit would look like?
There's exceptions to all those examples you've given.

Web dev: There is tons of Java web dev junk Tomcat and all that. MochiWeb and Yaws are Erlang web platforms.

Video games: Eve Online is mostly Stackless Python with some C++ libs.

General desktop software: (not sure what this category means) but wings3d is written in Erlang, plenty of examples here http://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=browse&c=32

Complex enterprise development: I doubt there is such a beast written in only one language. And I argue that Java is used because it is close to best for hordes of programmer drones working for enterprises. The non-hordes are why jruby, jython, scala are becoming popular.

pg did the airline ticket thing in Lisp cause it was best for him.

You claim short experience and reiterate long held stereotypes. I claim 20 years of experience and see a vastly different picture than you do.
Open Source and Agile - oil and water?
...just think of it as PPC marketing in reverse. Instead of figuring out keywords, figure out an offer for a phrase. Hope this helps.
Psychological Criticism Of The Prototype-Based Object-Oriented Languages
I think it's youthful exuberance too. The blog post is not bad but my guess is that she heard or read it from other people. It's not based on experience.

I remember when I was in college, we had a shortage of professors. They started hiring fresh grads and they taught courses such as project management, entreprenuer, etc. The new teachers were teaching from the book. Students never listened and we passed the course just by reading the book.
I think this is the leading edge of the next revolution. MapReduce, Hadoop, Cloud CPU cycles are the building blocks but we still need the tools that make it easier for scientists to operate on their datasets without having to be a hard-core coder. I wouldn't be surprised to see Matlab or some other offering from Wolfram take on that role.
"The solution isn't to identify users. That would be too intrusive." - Tara Ploughman

The irony is delicious :)
He does give you the source (http://github.com/lincolnloop/django-best-practices/tree/mas...), submit a patch.
Well, that's one way to keep people away.
One other thing. The Lisp is rather non-idiomatic. Here is how I'd write it:

(defparameter small-dx 0.00001)

(defun integrate (f a b &optional (dx small-dx))
"integrate a function f from a to b"
(loop for x from a to b by dx sum (* dx (funcall f x))))

Then you can use it like:

(flet ((f1 (x) 1)
(f2 (x) (expt x 2))
(f3 (x) (* x (exp (expt x 2)))))
(format t "f1: ~A, f2: ~A, f3: ~A~%"
(integrate #'f1 0 5)
(integrate #'f2 0 5)
(integrate #'f3 0 5)))

In conclusion, CL is not Scheme.

(Edit: Initially I said that the code doesn't compile. It does -- storing functions in the value slot of variables threw me off a bit. Very Scheme-like.)
I would really impressed by seeing some kind of wacky function paired with a fixed point combinator so that when a function is integrable, the combinator spits out as a fixed point the answer.
I am a relatively recent arrival in that I've got nothing to do with the "seed" group: someone mentioned this site and Paul Graham at a DC OLPC meetup last year, and I checked it out.

I would not object at all to linking what I say here to my real name. Indeed, my name is Thomas Doggette. My username is my first initial and last name. I don't use my real identity on sites where I argue with others about sex and religion and politics (in rather mixed company), nor where I play games, but something like HN provides a benefit to me (reputation among potential future colleagues and employers) in exchange for being upfront about who I am.
Came here to say the same thing, I was impressed on how articulate Renzor is throughout the interview. Plus, he clearly 'gets' the direction things are moving.
I never knew this, and stand corrected. (+1)
The Truth About Digg’s DiggBar
I predicted this a while ago, and his suggestion ignores the economic principles in my analysis, which enabled me to see it coming. His solution would make things worse, not better.

Google "giles bowkett summon monsters" to find out why. I predicted it would get worse, it got worse. My analysis is based on fundamentals of economics. His solution exacerbates the fundamental problem rather than ameliorating it.

He does raise one interesting point which my blog hadn't answered a year before he made his post: most people on the board being applicants to Y Combinator enforced politeness. However that statement about the population here might never have been true and becomes less true every day.

The only way to retain the incentive against trolling is to restrict discussions to people who have applied to Y Combinator. Getting in vs. failing wouldn't matter, as long as there's a pre-existing social obligation. (Read Dan Ariely "Predictably Irrational.")

I'm not saying that this is worth doing, just that this is the only way it would succeed.

Everything else I've already addressed definitively.
This is rubbish. From comments right there on that site, Python and many other languages "leak" the iterated result, and combined with closures this doesn't work. The right way to do it is there:

>>> fs = [(lambda n, j=i: j + n) for i in range(10)]
>>> fs[3](4)
7

Anyway, Python 3.0 got rid of lambda. It complicates things and always there's a way to do it more pythonic.

Note for lisp knee-jerkers: I don't have anything against anonymous functions. In Python, 3rd party code is harder to understand if it has lambdas all over the place. At least for me.

HN: This is yet another example of front page trash.

EDIT:

Seems this teacher guy is not even recognizing his mistake. Now it's a "design error."

While I could accept the explanation about how closures capture the location
and not the value, this really is a design error. The loop variable ough to be
local to the loop. But I suppose I get what I deserve for using a dynamic language.

From http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/ref/naming.html, it is either a module, function, class definition, script (file|command|eval), or the expression fed to input() (rare.)

4.1 Naming and binding

Names refer to objects. Names are introduced by name binding operations.
Each occurrence of a name in the program text refers to the binding of that
name established in the innermost function block containing the use.

A block is a piece of Python program text that is executed as a unit.
The following are blocks: a module, a function body, and a class definition.
A script file [...] is a code block. A script command [...] is a code
block. The file read by the built-in function execfile() is a code block.
The string argument passed to the built-in function eval() and to the
exec statement is a code block. The expression read and evaluated by the
built-in function input() is a code block.
I am using the same browser/OS and see it fine.
The code compiles and runs just fine on any CL compiler. Try SBCL or CLozure CL.

Actually the loop macro in CL can be a very contentious topic. I'd hardly refer to the loop macro as idiomatic.
Imperative and functional styles in CL can both be idiomatic.

Anyway who said CL was Scheme ?
It would be interesting to allow people to link their accounts to Facebook or LinkedIn simply to see if there is any correlation between comment scores and willingness to give up anonymity. If non-anonymous posters routinely score better by a significant margin, maybe you could give a bonus starting point to their comments. Slashdot does something like this with their Karma Bonus system: http://www.slashcode.com/articles/03/01/18/0015227.shtml
Glad to have you, Frossie!

I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression- I'm glad to see the site expand, and I think it's great that you're coming ;)

I just want to preserve exactly that signal to noise ratio that makes the site attractive to both of us - The comments in particular suffer when people don't try to maintain a good front.

You're absolutely right that Social Networking may not be the best way to do that- My contention is that digital identities are inexpensive; They don't require substantial investment to maintain, so it's easy to turn abusive.

For example, say for whatever reason, I chose to be acerbic and taunting to people on the forum, rather than engaging the larger community.

It would be trivial for me to create a new username, do things which are destructive to the idea of a community of interest.. It's not just outright trolling, but I might reply to comments sarcastically, and attack people when they "Ask HN" on something I think is somewhat obvious.

The harm to myself would be minuscule- In this example, I've substantially diminish the enjoyment of other people, and might even do so for months or years under the same username.. But when I'm ready to move on with my life, I discard the username I created for HN, and no one is the wiser.

I haven't left any trace that people might find when googling my name. Essentially, I've made myself dispensable.

If I were applying for the YC program, I'd not want to do that, for fear that PG et all would reject my application, but if I'm visiting, and this account is in no way linked to me, what incentive do I have, other than common decency?

Sadly, I think that common decency does not get us very far.

You might want to take a look at the article I linked at the bottom of my post, on creating online communities.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters

I think that it does a very decent job at giving a general overview, but it doesn't yet account for way inexpensive digital identities allow people to behave in an uncivil manner.

Again, welcome to the site, and I hope I haven't scared you away ;)
Not really ironic... both his statements and actions are against identifying people.

- Ron Tackle
For HN: Polls histogram Greasemonkey script
I made a Greasemonkey script which scrapes Hacker News polls and creates embedded histograms (using Google Charts API):

http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/hn/hnpollhist.user.js

Note: This is a variation on my previous GM script which did pie charts (pie chart and histogram can coexist if you install both scripts).
Here is a clickable link:

http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/hn/hnpollhist.user.js

And this is how it's supposed to look like:

http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/hn/hnhist.png

Here is a previous pie chart version:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528172

Some polls to see it in action:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=553794 How much do you bill per hour?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=493152 How many hours do you really work each day?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 How old are you?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=527681 Where are you from?
Solution: Locally-hosted clouds.

Few of the advantages of clouds are actually bound to them being over there, instead of over here. If you want to outsource management, go ahead; the cloud management company can reach in orders of magnitude more easily than you can move your data around out of the cloud. Remote backups to another cloud, yours or somebody elses, aren't that hard either. (The remote cloud would still be, well, remote, but it would be better than nothing while you're waiting for your local replacement servers to arrive.)

The only reasons that clouds currently must be hosted remotely is that A: it's slightly easier and B: the cloud owners want you to be locked in. A would be easy to overcome with some software if people wanted it. Everything else about the entire cloud idea works just as well if the cloud lives in your own server room or your choice of colo; easy server replacement, task migration, easy upgrades, whatever, it's all just software, not magic.

But the cloud owners don't want you to realize that.

(Once again, I think RMS is way ahead of the curve, and I think the next five to ten years will prove he was right.)
Anyway who said CL was Scheme ?

Your style strongly hints at a Scheme background. Nothing you do is wrong, but if you read a bunch of Lisp code, you wouldn't see many people doing things the way you did. OTOH, if you read a bunch of Scheme code, it would look exactly like yours.

Also, I don't think the use of loop is a point of contention. LOOP is in the CL spec, tail recursion isn't. (The ITERATE package is a nicer loop, but the idea is the same.)
Great to meet you, Thomas! Welcome to Hacker News.

Thank you for the wonderful post- That's exactly the point I was trying to make in my article.

"I don't use my real identity on sites where I argue with others about sex and religion and politics "

People avoid certain subjects and behavior when they're using their real name and identity. They focus on building an account which will help their reputation.

It just so happens that the best way to do that is to civilly discuss news and information that's relevant to a Hacker News site ;)

If the goal is to keep conversation civil and on-topic, encouraging people to post under their real names, using their reputation as collateral, just might work.
"The definition of crap may have to get broader. We may have to kill stories related to politics even when they're intellectually interesting."

That would only make sense if there were too many intellectually interesting articles about politics. There aren't. The vast majority of articles on politics say nothing new at all.

A quick and dirty solution would be just to delete any articles if someone can find a link to an earlier article saying essentially the same thing. This would get rid of more than just the junk stories on politics, it would get rid of all the rehashes of the ethics of nootropic drugs, or the link between race and IQ, or whatever. We have all these topics on this site where people find it necessary to upvote thinly rewritten versions of the same dumb ideas every few months; that's what needs to be banned, posts with nothing novel except the URL.
I think it is astounding that Arrington (and everyone else on the team -- I'm sure there are many) was able to pull this off. A lot of people have bones to pick with him, and he can certainly be a little brusque (speaking as a former TechCrunch intern), but he is one incredibly capable guy -- a consistently excellent writer, bitingly funny commentator, and, apparently, a mean product designer/manager. I almost wish TechCrunch didn't take up so much of his time -- there's probably a lot more he could be doing.
If I talk to the guys at pycon we might be able to do a transcript if we had another volunteer. I was thinking about doing this after I read this fluff piece.
It's important to remember that legal systems have humans in them, too. It's one thing to read a law, spot a loophole, and exploit it relative to what a hypothetical law computer[1] would say the law is. It's another to see a loophole, exploit it, and convince a human that what you did is not covered by the law.

Yeah, sometimes it happens, but I think we hear about it when it does because it's news. Much more likely, somebody's going to jail anyhow with your scheme. Judges are not stupid, in general.

1: You know, this guy: http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Computer_Judge
That's what Haskell does. Your universal joiner is called "fold", sometimes pronounced "reduce" (Scheme/Python) or "inject" (Smalltalk/Ruby). From the Haskell prelude:

sum = foldl (+) 0
product = foldl (*) 1
and = foldl (&&) True
or = foldl (||) False
any p = or . map p
all p = and . map p
concat = foldl (++) []
unlines = concat . map (++ "\n")

Google calls it "reduce" as well - this is what MapReduce is based upon.

(BTW, bad search query: [haskell unlines] gives me the Haskell prelude definition as the last result on the first page, even though that's the authoritative source. It gives me the Zvon and Informatik mirrors as #1 and #2, and then lots of useless discussion. Couldn't there be a way to boost "authoritative" sources up the rankings?)
I hope that at least some people see this as a genuine post -- it was inspired from a true event that happened just a week and a half ago. I don't have facts to back up a lot of what I say, but basic experience in getting business feedback will make it quite clear what I mean.
First Impressions: BackType (YC 08) Connect WP Plugin
Groups Spend Most of Their Time Discussing the Information Already Shared by Members
This is a good issue to raise and is an important reminder why you should choose a cloud storage vendor that provides easy mechanisms to physically export your data in bulk, avoiding any network limitations. Diomede's bulk import and export functionality enables just this.

Diomede Storage is going to keep your business because we have the best service and the best solution for you - we're not going to "hold your data hostage" for technical reasons or otherwise. If you ever need to get all your data out for whatever reason, it's yours and we can ship it to you in bulk very quickly. Regardless of how much you love Diomede, we understand that things come up - acquisitions, partnerships, legal regulations, etc - that you'll need to be able to handle.

As a side technical note: the author is saying this is due to network "latency". While the latency to access "hosted clouds" (like Diomede) is higher than private clouds or services on your LAN, network latency is not specifically the reason it's difficult to transmit large amounts of data to or from clouds - it's typically due to the max throughput of the client (i.e. the size of their pipe to the Internet). It is possible to achieve high data transfer rates over high latency connections and a number of companies (one example) have developed protocols to tackle this problem. But regardless of the technical reason, it's a good issue to bring up.

Blog post: http://diomede.typepad.com/diomede-storage-blog/2009/04/arch...
I don't play puzzles much, but anagrams are usually easy. It doesn't seem to work as well with pictures. I don't know what "where's waldo" is.

Words to me often look like what they mean. My favorite example is "eager." It just looks like it's barely restrained, waiting to leap forward: a kind of "visual onomatopoeia" I guess. I used to think everyone was like this when I was a kid, but asking a few people about it soon pointed out that I was just a weirdo :-)

I think the reason it's declined with age is that as a child I read constantly - I always had my nose in a book - so words became associated with mental pictures. As an adult I read much less.
Yes. You just have to try it.

However a specific group of users does not necessarily embody "the truth" either. An example of this is being captive to customers, as in the innovator's dilemma. Listening to the wrong group of users can lead you in the wrong direction. Sometimes you have to select who to listen to - something that users can't tell you.

Of course, who cares if it's "the truth" or not? Users are users, and approximate feedback is better than none, even if it is not precisely "true".
Broke my xmonad. :-(
Make public option is added. You can now make link stats publicly accessible.
Haskell, using Parsec seems to have the same kind of advantage. Being new to the language, I've found Parsec shockingly easy to use.