skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
it's funny that wherever zed goes there are problems. Hm, what's common to all of these situations?
Life was just the first item on my list. I also said mathematics. There's plenty of precedent for programming languages to "mimic" mathematics due to being a branch of mathematics, after all. Having only one obvious way to do something is religious dogma unmatched by any similarly practical activity I can think of right now.
i never thought i'd quote happy gilmore here but there's a scene where the pro golfers are trying to give him advice and he cuts them off and says "whoa you're confusing me. just let me put the ball in the hole."

if you're a small team, just make the best possible product. don't spread yourself too thin.
Judging from this ad - http://www.decisionengine.com/ - Bing is nothing more than just Wolfram Alpha for shopping addicts. Looking for "digital camera"? Microsoft is convinced if you enter this phrase you want to buy one, but not that you are interested how digital cameras work or maybe their history. "Spain"? Of course you may enter "Spain" only if you are planning a trip.

Excuse me, Microsoft, but this is not the next thing that I expect from the Internet. Internet is not just for spending money.

P.S. The name is probably "Bing Is Not Google" rather than "But it's not Google".
Bing, Wave, and Other Painful Attempts to Change Culture
I did this in the 90's in pascal as shareware. No one bought it. – This may be one of the best lines I heard in weeks. I will use it to dismiss uninteresting ideas until someone threatens bodily injury upon me.
I would hesitate to call his code "excellent". How about chunked encoding for mongrel? Here (http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/142852) is his naive rant about it, but it turns out that there are real reasons for CE. I would describe his code as a ghetto.
Very good graphs. Aside from X (time) and Y (code size), the center of the star implies "typical" performance, and the relative spread of the star shows specific data points. Ruby, for example, shoots out from the bottom right - to me, this says, "This is quite expressive, and if you know what you're doing, you can get reasonably good performance". It doesn't show memory usage or sample size, however - Rebol probably has significantly fewer samples than Python, for example, but it only looks like half as many.

It's also interesting how the LuaJIT star has about the same shape as the Lua star, but with 1/3 the width (which is consistent with my experience); Psyco relates similarly to Python. Surprisingly, the Lua star's center appears to be at the same X as GHC's, but lower down, and LuaJIT's overlaps OCaml's. While I can accept well-written Lua being approximately as expressive as Haskell (depending on the problem), I don't think it's in quiiiite the same ballpark as OCaml, speed-wise.

The most interesting shape, to me, is Io's: While the default performance seems pretty poor (the right edge meaning 8x as slow as the left edge), there are bands shooting all the way to the left, without adding any real height. I don't have any experience with Io (I'm curious, but have never had success porting it to OpenBSD/amd64); can anybody here comment on this?
Is it weird that I still don't use GMail much because my customary username (not this one) was taken by the time I finagled an invite? I don't really have a second choice, so I just stick with Yahoo! Mail. I guess I'm more vain than I think...
Pirate Bay plaintiffs release their new album on Pirate Bay
Sigils on variables are a good point. This is an area where I think Python wins out. Dependence on "self" all over the place is irritating at first but ultimately quite comforting - especially when you wonder whether you're going to screw up your attributes when you use the same name for a local variable in your Ruby method ;-)

But on inheritance - you have to put the class name in round brackets in Python, no? That's 2 characters to Ruby's 1.

Stuff like a ||= shouldn't be considered Ruby-specific noise as Python also has the same idiom as in a += and a -=, just not with ||. || is arguably noise over "or" but it shouldn't seem like cryptic noise with any sort of experience of C, C++, Java, JavaScript, or almost any other mainstream language.

Further, that Ruby code of yours does seem more Perlish than Rubyish, but I suspect this is because Ruby style is gradually shifting away from Perl-like styles to more idiomatic approaches. For example, I'd probably choose 'string'[/re(g)ex/, 1] or if I was trying to be "proper" then something like m = string.match(/re(g)ex/); m[1] (or potentially use Regexp#match, but I far prefer String#match). I see those solutions more typically than those you present - and the latter is quite like your Python example - but.. TMTOWTDI and that's Ruby's greatest asset :)
Leave it up to MIT to combine Cellular Automata, CFGs and Gödel, but then also:

Special software is required to use some of the files in this section: .rm.

:(
Not exactly a solution, but I have five credit cards. A few of them I don't even use any more but it's handy to have them there.
I'm sorry but I didn't get a lot out of this diagram.

Is there supposed to be some kind of relationship or definition between either the boxes or the groups of boxes? To me it looks like a brainstorm of the facets of business put into little boxes and then grouped by topic area.

Is there some sort of structure beyond that? I mean, the boxes inside the "engines" aren't put into any special relationship with each other and the groups all have arrows pointing to the other groups. There's a "funnel" symbol, but then every large group has one, and it's not connected to anything to be funneled.

Perhaps it was so simple I missed it.
Should Facebook sell vanity URLs? If they do, should they allow a secondary market?
There's a big difference between a person stating an opinion or a preference, as you have, and a community standard being defined and defended to the hilt. The first is choice; the second is religion.

People who blindly defend Python's wacky standards as some sort of community issue are the religious nutjobs, not people like you who merely have a personal preference.

So, no, you're not necessarily a religious nutjob. But, yes, it was meant to inflammatory; people who blindly defend groupthink deserve to have their cages shaken from time to time.
flagged for howtoforge linkbait
Languages which include functional features such as lambda, map, and tail call optimization are highlighted in green.

I found one minor inconsistency: Lua has all these but is still colored blueish.
I know in the tech community its nice to be able to link together all of your different 'profiles' so that people can find them. However, I really don't see this as being a feature that 'normal' people will use. When was the last time you actually visited someone's profile page without following a link for them off either your news feed or a friends profile? Unless Facebook's game is to try and move away from the 'friendship' model and open the whole system up.
So this so called "perfect desktop" prescribes no less than ten media players and four cd/dvd rippers and burners? Would it be less than perfect if I only installed two or three media players?
seriously.. is this kind of thing hn worthy? it's definitely not NEWS and it was already referenced on some other "ASK HN for Mac stuff" thread..

go on, vote me down
Depends - I hate having to keep track of a thousand different usernames, so I think it makes sense to stick to one.
just because someone is registered for a few months doesn't mean that same person hasn't been lurking for longer..
OTOH, If it's a commonish name/nick, you have to endure countless incorrect emails from people who have you confused with someone else.
The trick is to convince yourself that moral is a made up concept. Once you do that, a plethora of efficiency increasing tactics become possible.
Poll: Is my own car worth it?
I'm starting a new job that requires me to drive 30 miles each way. Someone offered to let me borrow their car for the summer (it's a summer job), but I don't exactly feel comfortable using their car, so I'm also looking for my own car.

I've been shopping on craigslist for used cars, and I've basically stumbled upon two choices that I can afford: cheap, older cars (c. 1995ish), or more expensive, newer cars (c. 2002ish).

Anybody have any ideas or suggestions?
Get a cheap, older car (c. 1995ish)
Get a more expensive, newer car (c. 2002ish)
Borrow someone's car for the summer
oh god, is that realmedia? i haven't seen one of those extensions since the 90's.
Of course people are going to use it; you don't think the type of people that like to collect "friends" are going to put up a vanity URL?
Just jump in and try. You'll probably fail a few times. You learn and get better and try again. Eventually you'll get it. Or not, in which case time to try something new!
It doesn't have a native map command, but that's a rather trivial implemention.

But I agree, it should be colored green in the "functional programming" section.
I think this guy is teaching his kids to be manipulative.

No shit Sherlock! It's called "How to Teach A Kid To Argue." That's where you bat a point of debate back and forth in an attempt to manipulate the other side to agreeing with you or at least seeing your viewpoint.

Reasoning is manipulation because you use reason to change other people's opinions or actions.
Come to the Silicon Valley Google Wave Discussion lunch today (5/31)
Come, Bring a Friend and let's discuss Google Wave over lunch.

Please use the following link: http://www.socializr.com/event/976099347 to RSVP.

Feel free to forward to anyone who might be interested.
Borrowing someone else's car would save you the most money. (It has problems of its own, as others have pointed out.)

That said, choosing between buying older and newer is a tradeoff between risk versus cost. The older a car, the more likely it will need repair sooner. But since you've ruled out the most recent model years, most of the cars you're looking at (ca. 2002) will have already gone through the biggest depreciation.

If you want your own car, I'd aim for a used newer car (ca. 2002, for instance). Another factor to consider: whether or not you plan to have this car long-term, or if this is just to get you by until you can afford a better one.
Borrowing someone else's car is probably more hassle than it's worth. You'll have to deal with insurance, maintenance and there's problems, you risk that relationship.

You assume that older cars are cheap and newer ones aren't. Get something reliable (good engine, good transmission) that's ugly or damaged in some non-functional way. I've had friends that have driven $500 cars all their lives and had them work. The secret is finding something that nobody else wants for non-functional reasons.
Come, Bring a Friend and let's discuss Google Wave over lunch.

Please use the following link: http://www.socializr.com/event/976099347
to RSVP.

Feel free to forward to anyone who might be interested.
...And it is making the "true Windows replacement" approach - again (so many)... Gimp=Photoshop, OpenOffice=MSOffice, yadda-yadda-yadda... Need a great Linux desktop setup? Find distro with the best package manager and packages for your needs and install the software to suit what you are trying to get done... Need to edit a Word doc? Install Abiword or OpenOffice... Need to edit a JPG? Gimp.
Related note: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22perfect+linux+desktop%22
And appeal to probability, appeal to consequences and fallacy of the undistributed middle.. :)
I don't think.
There is also data about how many peolple is working on it.
See this pic : http://twitpic.com/69s1t/full

40.5 SEs, 2 UI, 3 PM, 5 TEST, 5 SRES, 2 managers

SE : System engineer, PM : Product Manager.
Don't know what is SRES.
i thought we were supposed to avoid feature creep seth. shouldn't we avoid brown rice if it isn't part of our core competency? aren't we diluting the brand?

this is the problem I have with posts like this, they reduce to not very useful rules of thumb and often wind up contradicting each other.
Do not borrow someone else's car, unless of course you plan to owe that person for the rest of your life. + it opens you up to huge problems if you get into an accident.

Here is what you do, buy a reliable older car(something like a Honda Civic, Honda Accord, Acura Integra, Toyota Camry), Spend at most 4-5K. Drive that for the summer, then at the end of the summer you can sell it for the same amount.

Hell, if you spend the time to find a deal, you can probably even make money on the transaction when you sell it. Since you'll be buying a reliable, popular car, you'll have no problem making a quick sale at the end of the summer, when everyone is buying cars for the start of the school year.
Here is another one:

Sell a a nicer "native" client, either by wrapping the website in a custom browser like http://mailplaneapp.com/, or make a version that looks as close as possible to Exchange.
um...why not just buy insurance on the car?
I feel like Godin is going deeper–focusing on gullible startup founders who think he's saying something revolutionary because he wraps it in a catch-phrase like "buffet dilemma"

Its called vertical/niche market vs. horizontal market. Pick one, build a great product, and provide great service. Nuff said.
Good blogs that follow the 4 Steps Model are:

Steve Blank (author of the book) - http://steveblank.com/

Eric Ries - http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/

- An advisee/investment of Steve Blank, started IMVU.com, Venture Advisor at Kleiner Perkins) His blog has become somewhat less useful lately though as he's been using it mostly to promote his "Lean Startup" classes.

Sean Ellis - http://startup-marketing.com/

- Has applied 4 Steps model at many companies, consults on "Customer Development" with VC backed companies

Also Venture Hacks is a great place to start. Check out the archives at http://venturehacks.com/archives/
In the UK you cannot legally insure someone else's car, you have to have them extend their insurance to cover you.
I'm pretty sure that you can't insure a car that you don't own.
dependability mostly is a stand in for a program making more assumptions for you no? In a language that makes a lot of assumptions its easier to create something where assumptions conflict somewhat invisibly.
Lua isn't usually associated with the functional languages. Besides mainly being promoted for embedded / extension use, I think the single biggest reason for this is that, while it has tail-call elimination, closures, first class functions, etc., you still have to say "return x" at the end of functions. I do a lot of FP-style stuff in Lua, and while the language doesn't actively resist it the way Python does, it's not the main direction its design flows.

It seems like a small thing syntactically, but languages that return the result of their last expression by default (I think of them as "expression" languages), and that require an explicit block for side-effects (begin in Scheme and OCaml, progn in Common Lisp, etc.), tend to get idiomatically used in a functional manner, while languages that default to a series of statements with side-effects and require an explicit return at the end ("statement" languages) typically do not. While you can use several of the latter languages for functional programming, only the former are functional "by default".

Saying "function(x) return x + 1 end" is a tiny bit more trouble than "fun x -> x + 1" or "(lambda (x) (+ x 1))", so while lambdas still get used where they're the best fit (as arguments for map or filter, for example), they're less common overall. Defaults influence a language's overall style at least as much as what's theoretically possible. Python's concept of what's "pythonic" seems to be the most explicit acknowledgement of this.

Incidentally, I would love to see a language that crossed Lua with the ML family: a small, portable, clean implementation that interfaces easily with C, but with type inference, ML's top-notch module system, and (ideally) Haskell-style type-classes. OCaml is such a good language that I'm willing to tolerate its warts, but I'd strongly prefer a minimal ML-like language. (FWIW, I haven't used SML, though that's just because I do most of my programming on OpenBSD/amd64 and the smlnj port is i386 only.) When standalone, Lua is best suited to small/medium projects. Its historical emphasis on embedding in an existing project has made a module system for standalone use a bit of an afterthought.* As a project gets larger, static checking and stabilizing the module interfaces becomes far more important, and this is one area the ML languages really excel.

* For a good summary, see "Almost Good Enough to Scale: A Lua Mail Handler and Spam Filter" (http://www.lua.org/wshop08.html#ramsey)
right, the guy extends the insurance to include another driver. you pay him the extra funds it costs.
"So, there are two ways to go. Much deeper, or a bit wider."

Ah, there's only one way to go. Whatever the market is telling you. If you're not listening to that, all the little hacks in the world won't help you.
Poll: Is your whois contact info real?
I'm not talking about email, I'm talking about phone #, address, name.
All information is real.
Using a privacy service.
Using mostly fake info
My favorite choice is probably MythTV + Boxee for a nicer front-end/social media application. The Mac stuff is nice, but you're locked into a single hardware piece. MythTV + Boxee let you add/modify your hardware as you see fit, select the OS and all that.
Market makers would likely disagree with you, but I digress... so very, very few startups ever reach that level. :)
Nah, they probably don't even have toilet seats.
maybe you should have used a murder example, because I don't see the problem with minors drinking on private property if their parents don't mind.
I call facebook.com/myspace
Some will use it; most won't. Facebook search works well enough to satisfy most users' needs when actual hyperlinks aren't available.
It's all real, and not too long ago I was making fun of a stranger on the Internet. He whois'd one of my domains and gave me a phone call. I guess it serves me right.

Fun fact: here in Canada if you have fake whois info they can take your .ca domain away!
I used a privacy service (NameCheap WhoisGuard) at first, but after the one-year subscription expired I haven't renewed on most of my domains.
Older car, for sure!

During high school, a friend and I bought a car together to go to bike races with. The car was as old as we were (1975), and cost us 500$, plus several hundred dollars in needed repairs. It ran fine for the 2 years we used it.

The last time I was in the states, I borrowed my parents' '87 camry (which I had owned previously). Great car - it was pushing 200K miles a few years ago when my dad got into a minor accident that had the unfortunate side effect of ruining the seal on the trunk, making it useless for hauling his camera gear around in rainy Oregon. It was still running great after all those years and miles, though. You could probably pick up a car like that for less than $2000, no problem and drive it well beyond just one summer.

Now, with a family, I'd consider getting something nicer, but before having a kid, there's no way anyone would dissuade me from getting an older car that runs well.
No, that's just what you need for News specifically. But News does more than you might think. Take a look at the source.
That'll work if the person has full coverage. If they only have liability, you'll still be screwed if you have an accident.
In HN spirit you shouldn't buy or borrow a car. You should build one.
SABnzbd runs on just about anything, it's great.
I'll donate a potato battery for the cause.
See which one your mother prefers. You know it'll save arguments.

Personally, I have better things to do with cash than spend it on a flash car, so buy a robust older model of car with a reputation for reliability. Learn enough to do simple servicing yourself. Purchase breakdown cover.
It's all fake, because too many people want to kill me. Why make it easy?
you still have to say "return (val)" at the end of functions

We have a bunch of code that compiles to both Common Lisp and Javascript, and those nasty "return" statements are one of the two biggest mismatches between the two languages (the other being Javascript's weird semantics around null, false, 0, and ""). One of these days I intend to try inserting them all automatically.
Programming? Nerds? Open Source Software? People running businesses? Hacker News?

I dunno, what do you think is common to all of these situations? :P

(point being, zed surely could stir the pot less, but he's not changing what's in the pot. And if two pots happen to be similar, i don't know that that's his fault)
That's true for many registrars. Here's ICANN's complaint form: http://wdprs.internic.net/
Why on earth do all of these so-called "perfect desktops" just rely on installing some n packages? By that measure any reasonably-supported distro could become the "perfect desktop".
Real, got nothing to hide and gave up my privacy on the web a loooong time ago.
You could use Gmail with your own domain name.
When you want to visit Facebook itself, do you type in http://69.63.184.142/ or http://www.facebook.com? User friendly will win in the end.
For small, technically-oriented companies, this article probably sounds kind of lame. But think about 80legs, or SmugMug, or someone with a 200-machine farm and 20TB of data squirreled away in S3. Moving to a different cloud would be an expensive, tedious, big-bang proposition.

It doesn't matter how open the data formats are. If it's difficult to simultaneously use two or more vendors at a time, you are locked in.
Missing option: all information is real but my country's privacy laws stop the information from being accessible by anyone who doesn't work for the registry.
It's not just about privacy. If you have your real number up there, you'll start getting 5 calls a month from ecommerce and seo experts offering you all kinds of great services for a low low price.
My name's ever so common - it's taken in all the popular domain extensions, all the major email services, most of the social sites (I got in early on Twitter!). It's a pain; I don't want to use a "nickname" and I really don't want numbers at the end of my name.

Then again, because so many people share my name, I'm barely traceable on Google which I quite like.

(It's the reason I use the startup email provider Zenbe. They had my name available. I just hope they don't go tits up!)
If Facebook really cared about their users, this feature would have been available a long time ago.
use name.com as your registrar they give you free private whois
Twdsc.us : Discussions in Twitter
A little bit. I was given an SDK by a Symbian partner company, but it was a pain to use, it was integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio. So I never got anything other than a simple command-line app (file conversion from Symbian Word to RTF) written and compiled - and that source code had already been developed for ANSI C.
This is the approach used by Exediff (B.S. Baker, U. Manber, and R. Muth, Compressing Differences of Executable Code, ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Compiler Support for System Software, 1999).

I can't say that I'm very surprised that it's making an appearance in Chrome, given that one of the authors (Udi Manber) is a VP Engineering at Google.
Nominet in the UK have a far more enlightened approach - as long as you register as an individual, you can opt to have your info hidden at no extra cost. WHOIS just displays your name and the various technical details such as nameservers; all other details are replaced with a message to the effect that "this registrant is an individual who has opted out of the WHOIS database".

Saves having to use all these pricey WHOIS privacy services. Businesses are still required to put address details up, but you don't have millions of people being obliged to shove their home addresses and phone numbers online.

(I voted "using a privacy service", although that service is simply the Nominet opt-out.)