skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
i think pure functional programming is not a practical possibility. functional systems are functional until they are not (scheme's set!, clojure's transactions, ....) maybe the important thing is to keep in mind which parts of your system mutate data, and which parts do not.
This isn't about information. It's about experience.

You're taking the side of the guy who knows the CIA is controlling his thoughts, rather than the one who knows what schizophrenia is.

you don't learn about homelessness until you put yourself in their shoes. Literally.

You probably mean "Figuratively." "Literally" does not mean "Emphatically," it means "Literally."

You persist in claiming that you had a transformative experience, which changed your views without giving you any facts you can use to inform others. The usual term for having a belief that doesn't correspond with the facts is "bias." If my experience with homeless people convinced me that they need to be locked up, but the data implied that they were down on their luck and just needed shelter and a caring hand, you wouldn't be telling me that my personal experience trumps the data, just because I strongly believe in it.
Sorry, I should have been more specific.

I was talking about the 'major' players. IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. (Browsers that have a reach of 5% or more in all the sites I manage.) This is discounting mobile browsers, IE derivatives, the likes of Konqueror, etc.
It sounds like you are overengineeing it.

Modern computers are fast; Program it naively and if you see it's too slow (which it probably wouldn't be) optimize the bottlenecks.

I am pretty sure you wouldn't need to make this multithereaded.
OCaml is one of my favorite languages. I use it, despite its many warts, because it works. (I think there's a much smaller, cleaner language waiting to get out, though.) I wish more languages had decent module systems, for example. The ML family does this better than most, but I bet it's not a very glamorous area to experiment in, because it's hard to really show the benefits of a well-designed module system in small examples. That's what I'm complaining about.

BUT, pure functional programming is an intrinsically poor fit for some problems, and this is seldom addressed by hype. I think functional programming hype needs a reality check now, the same way C++-style OO hype could have used more way back when. I think we would all be better off if, instead of heralding it as the next technique that solves all problems, we work on getting a clearer idea of its strengths and weaknesses.
The idea of making a web browser that is also a web server makes a lot more sense than the current trend of cloud computing. The privately owned data center concept is unsustainable, and defeats the concept the internet, which is distributed data.
Similar to my reason why I'll never move to Australia - too many poisonous things that will kill you.
Local atmosphere > national atmosphere.

Obviously the national laws and economy do play a role, but it's a smaller role then the local economy/politics. Consider rural Kansas, vs. the Bay Area.

The Bay Area is great but you apparently missed out on the great places in Germany/Austria when you visited them.

And it's easy to miss out on the great places, they are few and far between, and they are spread out all over the world.
> If the answer is anything other than "Because I enjoy it" then you probably need to re-examine your decision

Who is going to pay for him to live a life doing only what he enjoys? You?
My vision says that Opera Unite isn't going to live up to the hype. Users don't want a music player in their browser, they want a good music player. Opera would do better to build a sturdy, dedicated server side JavaScript environment than to put a weak offering into their browser.
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Good read, but shouldn't be controversial at all. Functional and imperatives both have their strengths, and that's why Lisp has always stayed in the middle btw.

Also I don't think I heard any serious "purists" lately. Aren't we fighting windmills here?
Shocker: AT&T does something nice for iPhone users
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm puzzled and interested in learning.

How is passing around world state from one transformer function to another an improvement over traditional stateful programming where functions change variables?
Great article, thanks a bunch
can you outline a sketch? closures by themselves do not guarantee the absence of side effects ie:

(let ((state 'someobject))
(defun phase1 ()
(done1 state))
(defun phase2 ()
(done2 state)

.
.
.

and so on
> Too lazy to eat well and exercise - pop a cholesterol drug! Too lazy to motivate yourself and study...

http://yarchive.net/med/lifestyle_drugs.html
i thought it sounded pretty clever
The thought that everything we do must be enjoyable is the wrong attitude. I think that is the attitude that has gotten us in trouble. There are a lot of things in life that we have to do that we don't enjoy doing. Taking certain pre-requisite courses is an example. I didn't like organic chemistry, but I did like the idea of being a doctor some day, so I had to take Organic Chemistry.

The converse is also true, you can't have something just because you want it. Sometimes you have to work for things. You have to practice and try hard.

The simple fact of the matter is, if you don't have the will power to say, "I will do these hard things I don't like doing because I want these other things later in life." Then you are probably on the wrong course or simply not cut out for it.

We do have to make sacrifices and it sounds like that sacrifice for the OP is going to class, studying the material, and doing well -- even if he doesn't want to take that particular course.
Of course you wouldn't know it if you bought it because of advertising. Otherwise it would just be bad advertising.

Anyway, enough of the teasing - as is well known, Apple users don't take lightly to jokes about Apple users ;-)
D is dandy but lacks documentation and tools.

It's a chicken and egg problem, why would you build tools for a language that's not popular, how will a language become popular without tools.

C++ answered that question by usurping C... or did C backward compatibility poison C++ ...

Python did it by being fun and easy and having great tools and great documentation.

D is not ready yet.
No, but I do donate.

Unfortunately, I never can seem to find a donate button on mibbit.
I can't imagine you'd be put in jail for a click?
You might be scientifically right in questioning the veracity of that specific statement but at the same time its generally true and good advice. In other words, Adderall is a powerful drug with some potentially serious side effects. If you haven't been prescribed it, chances are it'll end up bad.

For example, its got a high chance of ending up poorly if you have any sleep issues, if you have depression, if you have an addictive personality, if you're an alcoholic, or if you smoke weed (generally the paranoia one experiences from weed can make amphetamines even more dangerous).

I think that's why folks are downvoting you. You might have a small point here, but its rather nitpicky. If you don't have ADD and you're using Adderall all the time, I'd bet money its going to hurt someone, which is all the OP said.
That's Australia. But wow!
I wish for the day where my internet connection can keep up with these services. Where is 100/100mbit when i need it?
me too at http://oopdate.com :) in my spare time and may be sometimes ...
IBM 1130
CDC 6400
PDP-8,10,11,12,15[,20 same as -10 except system calls]
DEC VAX
DEC Alpha
x86-32
Itanium
http://www.into-asia.com/thai_language/phrases/basics.php lists Thai words for "yes" and "no", and describes other ways of saying yes or no to a question.

http://www.thaifocus.com/phrases.htm also lists Thai words for "yes" and "no", and inter alia mentions a couple of yes/no questions in Thai.

http://www.peacecorp.gov/wws/multimedia/language/transcripts... seems to indicate that Thai even has a special word whose presence in a sentence indicates a yes/no question.

http://thailanguagehut.com/blog/blog/thai-question-words-so-... has many, many examples of yes/no questions in Thai, and shows how to answer them.

What is the basis for your claim that "there are no yes/no questions in Thai"?

(It does seem that binary questions aren't treated the same way in Thai as they are in English -- the conventions for how you say yes and no are different in different cases -- but it doesn't look at all as if there are "no yes/no questions". For that matter, even in English there are some binary questions to which "yes" and "no" would be peculiar answers. For instance, questions that implicitly make an offer ("Would you like one of these?") usually have to be answered more politely.)
I browse with JavaScript disabled, and agree that enabling it is about trust.

However, I fail to understand how axod is making the web "a bit more unpleasant"? His message is humorous, and offers more value than no indication of required technologies at all (which is how the majority of sites deal with issues such as JS dependence).

Clearly you do not use mibbit on a regular basis, and therefore what use is your overly critical contribution?

(For the record, I have JS enabled on mibbit.)
Finally a website toolbar you wont hate. Introducing Wibiya. (Invites)
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Does the world need another video sharing site? Pure Digital thinks so
This is such a joke. I can't tell what is sadder, the fact users have been messed with so much that its "something nice" that at&t is gouging more money from them for MMS (its usually the same price of sms on every phone) or that at&t is so bad that its notable when they dont charge more for something that costs them fractions of a penny to send.
I don't think that there's anything wrong with wanting to do only the things you enjoy. I would strongly disagree with the idea that doing so has gotten anyone in trouble.

Granted that sometimes the things you enjoy entail doing additional things that you may not enjoy so much, but if you really enjoy what you are doing then mostly you will be able to justify this as part of the big picture.

Personally I think that the idea that we all need to do things that make us money rather than the things we enjoy is what has made a lot of people over the years very unhappy.

Imagine working a job you hate for your entire life because you think, or have been told, that it's all you can do. We live in a society that allows us to surpass squandering our lives this way, we should endeavor to do so whenever we can.
That Reinvention Of The Web Thing Opera Was Talking About? It’s Opera Unite
Blackberry Tour 9630 Officially Released, Available on Sprint & Verizon in July
btw. cool domain :)
Holy crap, you need to get out more if you think that the Bay area is somehow magical because you can have a variety of foods, work with smart people and take day trips to fun place.

I live and work here and frankly its no better or worse than many other places I've lived or worked.
"Much more expensive" can refer to the long-term. Any pv setup will be more expensive than getting that much electricity from the grid over a month or a year. But, depending on the variety of panel, the environmental conditions, etc., the electricity over the expected lifetime of the pv setup may not make up for the initial cost.

I'm all in favor of alternative power, but not if it takes more energy and material inputs than conventional power.
Well, if he loves programming and is good at it then I might pay him to do what he enjoys.

No matter what you love, there is almost always a way to make money doing it.
Generating pseudo random text with Markov chains using Python
Beyond a certain point, I don't care how easy something makes a program that will never grow beyond a page, though. (If that isn't easy, your language has serious problems!)

Maybe we can call your thesis "verbosity is power".

A page of COBOL is easy to understand and easy to write; a page of APL is much slower to understand and fiendishly difficult to write. That doesn't mean you should prefer COBOL over APL. It's a result of the fact that you can express more in a line of APL than in a page of COBOL. And, in fact, that line of APL is easier to write and easier to read than that page of COBOL.

Ideally, any time you're solving a problem that's a small variation of a problem somebody has already solved, you should be able to write your program by referencing their solution and describing the variation. In such a world, no program is more than a page.
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But I think you're confusing "being prescribed" and "having ADHD". Plenty of people are prescribed Adderall without having any real tests done, just by saying "I can't focus!" because they want a study helper.

All I'm saying is there are health risks regardless of your ADHD. It isn't as if having ADHD magically makes me immune to the side effects of Adderall. I have trouble sleeping at times and other weird effects, too. I keep my doctor up to date and get regularly checked up on.

Also, you can have ADHD and be an alcoholic / smoke weed / be paranoid / depressed. As I said, I 100% agree you should go to a doctor... I'm just saying that my ADHD doesn't give me "amphetamine immunity" or anything magical.
> Now that's a loaded title, and I know some people will
> immediately see it as a personal slam on Erlang or
> ammunition for berating the language in various forums.

Instead, this is actually a quite good discriminator for those that understand high availability programming in Erlang and those that do not.

E.g. Erlang is about programming in the presence of failure, not about having eliminated everything that could possibly fail.
Disaster planning: Raiding the vending machines
HTTPS security for web applications
Thanks ;-) It cost me, but I like it.
Awesome. However, just because you can, doesn't mean you should...
"stat.us" was also the initial name for twitter: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360/

However, I think the name "twitter" is a better description for the way the service is being used now and "stat.us" seems just right for your idea.

Good luck!
What leads us astray is a failure to invest (intellectually) in the news as much as previous generations did. Some of this isn't a sign of intelligence, it's just a question of how people spend their time.

Are people willing to read a full page analysis, and are they willing to wait while someone dredges up the tidbits to make that page? Or, are they at least willing to do their own research? Not really, and I think that's the real point of the article. It's not that sources are necessarily bad, but that it takes time to know which are good. Ironically, the impatience that gave us instant access to information has now created so much information that it takes more time to process it all.

Twitter is just the latest example of being able to instantly talk to the world, and it feeds on everyone's impatience. News organizations know this too, that's why we have a culture of "breaking news" where all that's needed for relevance is to be the channel that brought you the story: even if there is no story yet, and you're seeing 4 hours of pontificating over a recycled video clip.
Burd speculated that one factor behind the increase he sees is the greater adoption of mobile devices and consumer electronics. Mobile devices are putting computers in the forefront of people’s lives the same way that PCs did in the 1980s, he said.

So kids want to be computer scientists so they can build iPhone apps... Colleges are going to have to start teaching Objective C now?

I don't know... I used to think teaching that low level stuff like assembly and verilog were bad ideas, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it really shapes the mind into a programming machine. Learning the high level stuff is pretty easy once the low level foundations are instilled in the mind.

Kids coming out of college today don't understand linked lists or binary trees or sort algorithms. You don't have to be able to code all of them from scratch, but understanding those concepts expands the mind and actually makes "real world" programming easier because you can understand the ramifications of your decisions.
> No matter what you love, there is almost always a way to make money doing it.

Enough to live on? This is patently false.
Oh, I agree with the strengths and weaknesses, and obviously I don't use FP for all my programming.

But I somehow cannot see any functional programming hype. Where are the people heralding it as solving all problems? Even in a place like HN with a highly non-average community of programmers, the FP links are quite rare and very intro-level. I would say FP is a high-hanging fruit that's only starting to find a few niches in real-world programming.

So I son't see anything close to an FP hype, nowhere near to the Java hype or Ruby hype.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're arguing with what you think I'm saying, not what I'm trying to say.

There are diminishing returns in focusing on extreme brevity. If I'm going to write a script, I just use Lua. (Other people like Python or Ruby. Sure.) Squeezing 10% more out of an already small program is well past the point of diminishing returns.

Depending on the problem, APL/J/K might make more sense. Or awk, make, SQL, etc. (My only experience with the APL family is playing around with J a bit, but they seem like awk in that they gain their conciseness in exchange for being focused on a certain problem domain. That's usually a good trade-off, though.)

I'd rather see more focus into techniques to make larger projects manageable, like module systems, type inference, declarative programming. As techniques, they're intrinsically harder to show off in this medium, though (except for small amounts of type inference, but its payoff increases with project size). That's all I'm saying.
I should have said: I'm considering what looks ( to MHO) like the irresistable pressures on prices of fossil fuels (including $/oil_barrel; taxes on CO2 emissions, etc ).
Very cool, I didn't know that!
> investigate just how many cellphones we carry

Or how many pirates there are on the high seas.

The connection between any kind of background EM and any human disease was discredited many years ago (and in fact was proposed by one specific crackpot.)
"Clever" and "overengineered" often go hand in hand :)
Take it from someone who just finished a degree—you sound like you aren't enjoying your major. I entered college as an engineer, and found that after some time, I was in your position. Your lack of motivation might be because you—like me—are underwhelmed at what the program offered you.

Obviously, it's a life-changing decision that shouldn't be taken lightly, but consider moving to something that you're more passionate about. My life changed tremendously (for the better, if that wasn't clear) when I switched to a major that I was more passionate about.

If it helps, I'm no longer an engineer. I initially thought it was just me, then just my college, but now I've spoken to enough people to know that engineering programs aren't generally what a lot of people expect.
That's a relief. For a second, I thought we might be trying to save some money. Instead we're creating more overhead on top of the government overhead.

Please read "The Systems Bible" http://generalsystemantics.com/SystemsBible.htm. There really is no way to tame the bureaucracy.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy"
This is just how the world works. Someone builds a generic solution for everyone, then lots of vertical markets receive personalized attention. I think it's a good idea really. This kind of initiative will allow the users of these concepts filter out a lot of noise.

Consider MySpace, then Facebook, then linkedin --> trending to focus. Now you have ning which gives even more vertical focus.

Good luck Robbie.
The motivation driving this guy is inspiring. I can't wait to see what you're going to do.
I prefer these instead: http://freakinghugeurl.com/
True, but by increased scarceity they mean slower growth.

research pointing to a decline in software developers. In its 2009 Global Developer Population and Demographics Study, released in May, Evans Data revised downward its prior forecasts of developer growth for several major industrial regions, including North America, Western Europe and Japan.
At this point I would say that is nitpicking...

In some cases maybe not, but you could always supplement your income by doing something related. Or, if you have to, even something you don't like.

At least in that situation you'll be able to look at your crappy part-time job and daydream about the great job that you do the other 50% of the time.
This is one of the many services I provide.
1. You might be right that its too easy to get, but that's changing, and Adderall is a class 2 controlled substance. By the books, it should not be easy to get.

2. Completely agreed -- if you take a lot of Adderall, it can be bad regardless of whether or not you have ADD. One of the common bad outcomes results from a lack of sleep after prolonged use, and that happens across the board.

3. I meant to say that if you're an alcoholic / smoke weed / depressed / addictive personality -- you should be screened from taking Adderall, not that you can't have ADHD. In fact, many folks self-medicate their ADD by smoking weed.
> its usually the same price of sms on every phone

Source? The only data I could find was WAY old (2006) but had the global price of MMS pegged at 4x the price of SMS [1].

You can claim that some plans come with MMS/SMS allotments, therefore they are the same price. That still isn't the same cost, because providers will dock you for a message + the data. That means you need an unlimited data plan AND a text plan for them to essentially be the same price.

It then follows that it makes perfect sense that AT&T would do this. All iPhone users MUST have an unlimited data plan, easily covering the data of sending MMS.

[1] MMS pricing worldwide http://telephonyonline.com/wireless/metrics/mms_pricing_worl...
well, alot of awesome stuff is done just "because you can". for instance jailbreaking ;)
Interview with StrongWebmail's $10,000 Hacker
I believe Europe is widely considered to have a higher Firefox marketshare than the US - by some measurements, it's the most popular browser in Europe. (Citation: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/03/31/two-continents-down-...)
New Google Tool Suggests Competitive Keywords Based on Site Content
There's still the question as to whether photovoltaic is as effective as we would like. It might just be the case that producing them takes more or not much less energy than they produce.

The low tech solutions have the advantage that they are cheap and available. The problem of energy storage certainly remains.
If you as a webmaster told your users to click on ads however, you'd at least get your account suspended.

If any user tells me they clicked some ads to generate some revenue, I tell them politely to stop doing that, and only click if they're genuinely interested in the advert.

I think it's a very small minority though.
Google kind of does this already - when you click on search results, it's not just a hyperlink, it fires an event onMouseDown to tell Google which results you're clicking on.
New venture-mentor program in NYC; Boston VCs heavily involved
Please look into supporting the OpenMicroBlogging protocol. It is a attempt to build a next generation open standard that would allow for federation with other microblogging services. Ideally there should be more public pressure for Twitter to adopt this as well.