skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is something to be said for the "laws of attraction", albeit not to the degree that the secret goofs get on about.

Aligning your mind in the right direction with a positive output and surrounding yourself with the right crowd can be beneficial in not only recognizing opportunities, but acting on them.

That being said life isn't built on positive thinking alone, so the guy is right, there is no secret.
I'll just state here that this is also what powers _why's excellent Hpricot HTML parser.

Back in my last job, I implemented a Java libconfig clone using Ragel. It was the most fun I ever had at that company.
Ruby has method aliases. Python does not allow a string to capitalize itself.

>>> "hello".capitalize()
"Hello"

Python has decorators so you can write functions that return functions that return functions to create a new function.

Or functions that return classes, or classes that use other objects, or any possible other use for the pattern "wrap this with that and save the result"

Python will let you mix tabs and spaces for indentation, but passive-aggressively mess up your scoping as punishment.

$ ./mixed.py
File "mixed.py", line 3
print "b"
^
TabError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation
VC Vinod Khosla: Vision is 'bumbling' around
Any engineers interested in working on a non-profit idea in developing a new type of bicycle for 3rd world countries? While working on a bike sharing program for my campus this past year I had a few ideas and created contacts who are willing to put money into green transportation - it could be interesting to see where it leads.
Wouldn't you have to be little multiple times for those things to change?
Not even necessary. Remember the Million Dollar Homepage?
Python presented me with one insurmountable cognitive hurdle, and that's what drove me to Ruby: whitespace scoping. That single misfeature in Python is enough to keep me from ever using it in my own projects.

The compiler/interpreter should work for me, not force me to work for the compiler/interpreter. (And no, there's not always preferably one way to do things, which is an attitude I can't stand.)
I can say that I've worked with several excellent Indian developers here in the United States, and they regarded Indian firms as (by and large) unsuitable places for competent people to work. They said the prevailing approach was to hire the cheapest possible people, scrupulously go through the motions (cargo-cult style,) produce copious evidence of work, and be sure to meet the project requirements in some literal sense so you get paid. As for quality, as for whether you produced something that the client could actually use, well, that's someone else's concern. If you managed to provide something that resembled the requirements and it isn't usable, that's someone else's fault.

I can sympathize with this from a cultural point of view, because it's frustrating to try to fill in the blanks and detect deficiencies in requirements when you don't have the same cultural context. It's easier to just work to the spec, and naturally (under business pressure) this devolves into working to spec in a very minimal and cynical way.
The EFF could advice people on the legal wall between corporations and individuals. Or how to start a corp. rent a tiny office and run a dedicated tor node from there.
300 million in page views net $15K in revenue. Not a business I want to be in. Google makes a very nice living because people who are googling are looking for information and the ads provide links to information. People who are socializing are not looking for something, they are already there. Most of the time the ads are even below the level of annoyance. (Mouseover videos are definitely over the threshold.) CPC vs CPM doesn't address the issue. Radio and TV ads work because you cant avoid them. Print ads works because people do scan newspapers in search mode.

The real issue is how to engage people when they are socializing. The advertiser needs something more engaging the current social event. Sex sells and flash sells, but the post is talking about something beyond that. I dont think target advertising is much more than the same old same old, but more refined. The break through will be something that enhances the social experience.

Maybe something like a chat about Paris brings up a live feed of a Paris cafe complete with tables for your avatars, with an urchin trying to sell you a travel guide. Whatever it is it needsto be engaging an not annoying.
There is no way that existing copyright law can even remotely be stretched to say that incidental linking to a site on the web constitutes copyright infringement.

This would be akin to saying that a library's use of the Dewey decimal system to help you locate a book infringes the copyright held by the book's owner because it directs you where to find it.

The judge's proposal is purely a political one and that is why it appears in a blog.

Unless Congress acts to do a radical extension of current copyright law, linking of any normal type will not come under legal scrutiny of any sort, even from Judge Posner (who, whatever else he is, is nobody's fool). The danger here will lie with politicians who might succumb to lobbying pressure. It will not come from judges.
That's it! Close down the Internet!
Interesting idea to silo off "s-expressions" into only the data part of the language. He's stealing the idea of having a syntax for tree structures, without going all the way into macro-land. The syntax for whitespace as method invocation and the very sparse block syntax, however, gives a lot of flexibility for DSL contstruction, though.

I also like that objects are not just tables, but some thought was give to efficiency. I also see that Potion compiles into machine code, so I wonder to what extent efficiency is driving the design compared to other "dynamic" languages. Is the absence of anything more than integers just a sign of the early stage of development, or does he want an efficient model for floats and bignums and not willing to settle for just any old thing? It would be nice to see another language shooting for that small, fast lower left corner of the graph.

http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependabil...
NYCEDC Building "Startup Connect" for NYC Entreprenuers
I think it's mostly about maturity, of the runtime, of the language, and of the community.

For example, Ruby has backward incompatibility issues in minor releases that would never be permitted in Python. They had to jump to Python 3 for even fairly small things that wouldn't be accepted in the 2.x line. Even subtle incompatibilities between Python versions are taken seriously, and there's a documented process for deprecation that involves multiple releases and means when a feature is deprecated it'll probably still be available for years. There's cruft in the language as a result, but for people using Python seriously this is more than worth it.

I think the Python-Dev community is also more mature. Changes get serious review. Though there's not a formal "core", strong objections from certain people are enough to bring a new feature back to zero and require a restart (not because those people have special weight, but because they are respected and everyone kind of understands there's a benefit to listening to crotchedy naysayers if they are smart crotchedy naysayers).

The community is large enough that there's a lot of domain knowledge. Python is better at getting a canonical and complete solution to a domain problem than Ruby. WSGI discussions for instance involved some people with a very intimate knowledge of HTTP. People work hard to get 95% solutions instead of 80% solutions. In part because Python has been around a long time, and there's already at least an 80% solution for whatever problem you are looking at, and if you are going to throw your hat in the ring you ought to be ready to try harder. I think the more aesthetic tendencies of the Ruby community work against it here, as people are more likely to rewrite for aesthetic rather than functional reasons. (OTOH, when Python settled early on some 80% solutions, it's caused a lot of difficulties because it's been hard to overcome inertia to introduce a better solution, while it's hard to get really good adoption of the 80% solution; pydoc would be an example.)

Then there's simple maturity. The VM is more stable; it may not be a great VM, but it is predictable. There's lots of tools for writing extensions. There's code for dealing with large data sets, for dealing with images, for accessing system libraries, etc. For any one problem Ruby might work fine, but for the problems you don't yet know you'll have to solve it's less likely you'll hit a blocker with Python.
"One can't change their luck."

You can only give yourself more chances to get lucky.
RE and FSM are equivalent. There are no problems handled better by regular expression than by FSM. Of course, this is for a very narrow definition of problem. And, by most accounts, a narrow definition of FSM. SCM calls its systems FSMs even though they have stacks. Sure, the number of programmer defined states is finite, but the number of system states is infinite. Also, what do you mean by better? :)

So, for an un-specious response: FSMs are well suited to stream processing, while REs do well with block processing. (And are generally implemented by compilation into FSMs, anyway.) FSMs also do well as program logic/control structures, often clarifying the underlying system.
This might be more aptly titled "The Hacker News Linkbait Experiment".
Showing green only supports one side in the fight. If that's what you want to do, go ahead. But promoting free speech helps everybody.
(d) a lot of people buy into the "school is worthless" line so hard that even when something as practical as state machines are paraded in front of them they don't notice

(Granted, the education system might have some responsibility there, but personally I recall examples being made. There's only so hard the profs can make the point that this stuff actually matters.)
Erlang encourages this style through its OTP library; all of the default OTP behaviors include state machines as part of their operations, or make it so easy that they might as well. (gen_fsm is, as the name implies, a finite-state-machine, and it's trivial to use pattern matching to use a piece of the state in gen_event or gen_server to do the same thing). It doesn't sound like it has the full range of awesome that Ragel state charts do, but it has a lot of the value. It definitely gives you a lot of confidence that nobody can trick your server into doing something unexpected with weird input unless you do something very wrong yourself.
Huntbach's article was pure nonsense when it was written[1], and it remains pure nonsense now.

[1] As I wrote two years ago: http://www.halostatue.ca/2007/03/17/whats-wrong-with-bitwise...
You're right, that's pretty C/Python-like. Nice. In fact, I've often thought that Python could make the syntax "n..m" expand to "range(n, m+1)" or equivalent.

However, Python's TOOWTDI comes to mind. Not that it's quite true, but probably closer than with Ruby. I guess one could debate whether TOOWTDI is a good thing -- but I reckon Perl is the argument as to why it is a good thing.
Even wikipedia doesn't know!
GDGT won't be here for long if they can't get their website up...
SourceForge Gets A Makeover
... Except that there's a large body of research demonstrating otherwise. The recent New Yorker article "Twilight of the Books" at http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071... is a good place to start.
Any HTPC (or what I use these days, the Mac Mini), plus a HDCP compliant DVI-HDMI adapter and you're golden.
One must be at least slightly lucky in order to not undergo a total existence failure due to random quantum fluctuations.
I don't like being called a mike. I only dislike it for the site name - it is moderately memorable, after all - but i hate that i have to call myself a mike when selecting a gender. I'm not mike. I dont know anyone named mike that i like. Just make it say im a guy or girl.

Don't require a one liner. I hate one liners. Make it optional.

The logo and logotype are ok, but everything else looks like a default template. Why not take the design seriously and actually develop a theme? It looks like the microsoft guys hired out for the logo and did the site in house. no offense. Well, just a little.

Why are you getting into this crowded marketplace? What is new about this?

After logging in you say something like, "We're a dating site, but were also kind of like facebook, and if you get a hook up here you're totally lucky, cuz we're way too chill to stress it, bro". I lost faith immediately.

Also, Advanced search has major problems:

Notice: Undefined variable: latitude in /var/www/dating/trunk/html/search-advanced.php on line 700

Notice: Undefined variable: latitude in /var/www/dating/trunk/html/search-advanced.php on line 700

Notice: Undefined variable: longitude in /var/www/dating/trunk/html/search-advanced.php on line 700

Notice: Undefined variable: latitude in /var/www/dating/trunk/html/search-advanced.php on line 700

Notice: Undefined variable: longitude in /var/www/dating/trunk/html/search-advanced.php on line 700

Notice: Undefined variable: latitude in /var/www/dating/trunk/html/search-advanced.php on line 700

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Zend_Db_Statement_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ')) * (69.1 * (latitude - ))) + ((69.1 * (longitude - ) * COS( / 57.3)) * (69.1 *' at line 1' in /var/www/dating/trunk/library/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php:238 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/dating/trunk/library/Zend/Db/Statement.php(283): Zend_Db_Statement_Pdo->_execute(Array) #1 /var/www/dating/trunk/library/Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php(464): Zend_Db_Statement->execute(Array) #2 /var/www/dating/trunk/library/Zend/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Abstract.php(232): Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->query(Object(Zend_Db_Select), Array) #3 /var/www/dating/trunk/html/search-advanced.php(708): Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Abstract->query(Object(Zend_Db_Select)) #4 {main} thrown in /var/www/dating/trunk/library/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php on line 238
SSC examinations in India to be abolished : a quick thought
Yeah. Turns out they're no silver bullet either. These days, my approach is pragmatic: use whatever works and produces the most readable code.
Modernizr: a JS toolkit to help you start using CSS3 and HTML5 today
Why on earth would you store XML data in a database? XML is for when you have structured data but no database. Any structure you can store in XML is already catered for in conventional RDBMS design. And if you just want to store the string, there is nothing stopping you from doing that.
"A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release."

Don't know much about postgresql, but that sounds fun...
messaging is free, as is everything on the site. I'll look into adding feeds ;) Good idea
Just looks like two bunnies to me. Is one wearing a bow or something? I didn't look that close.
Me too. I tried both words and numbers.
This is just stupid. I'm usually fine with the TechCrunch criticism — frankly, we deserve it sometimes. But this was about protecting a source.

Oftentimes when we receive information like this we won't reveal the source unless we're given explicit permission to do so. This is especially important when an application or service is running on a platform they don't control, like the iPhone or Twitter, because the informant stands the risk of retaliation.

I agree that the Tweetknot site design is derivative, but that wasn't the point of the story in the first place. What is important is the fact that Twitter is changing its stance with regard to the use of words like 'Twitter' and 'Tweet'. In fact, Twitter just wrote a blog post about it: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/may-tweets-be-with-you.html
allowing old people to regulate technology is like putting fish in charge of the FAA.
This is actually a really clever way to advertise his real site: http://themeshaper.com

I'm sure a lot of people will follow the funnel from this site to his store. And if they don't he's only out a $10/year domain registration fee and some time.
If academics will just insist on not assigning copyright, they may get further; publications need authors, and to demand copyright assignment will become a competitive disadvantage.

"The ACM copyright form now explicitly says that authors can post a copy on their personal websites" --scott_s

Actually, ACM can be pushed further than that. When ACM solicited an article from me for their Communications magazine, I (nicely) refused to execute their copyright assignment, even with the personal website permission. So ACM proposed instead a simple licence to publish (royalty-free, worldwide, non-expiring, any medium, non-exclusive) which I was happy to sign while preserving my copyright ownership, and which gave them everything they need. But recently IEEE has refused a similar licence arrangement, insisting on a copyright assignment or no publication (which was what I chose). I expect ACM to prosper over IEEE.
Another one like this is called OnLive:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123787473566622741.html
- you can't monitor DNS and http together -- you have to pick one or the other.

- its DNS monitoring cannot handle round-robin.

- but i still signed up. it's free :-)
Just in case people aren't familiar with this story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage
We were protecting a source. End of story. The majority of the time tipsters do not want to be named when there's a possibility they could be retaliated against (as is the case on platforms like Twitter, iPhone, etc).
Even if people don't follow the link, the google juice will.
doh... got it ;)
Why? What did he do that was so linkbait-y?

From what I can understand, his aim was to create an article interesting to read for the community around Hacker News. This article itself was an observation about what the community finds interesting, as well as a note about an anomaly he observed. Is there something wrong with that?
Mike Rowe (yes, the Dirty Jobs Mike Rowe) has been talking about this for a while - he has a pretty interesting TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...
Health Area | Stretch Mark Cream
If you think from the perspective of the actual doer, it might be an admissible, perhaps even superior strategy to focus on "hard work" and "discipline" (where is the difference, btw?) and leave out "luck". But actually, when you're honest about it and take the perspective of an observer, you'd be foolish to focus on those things because you'd see that for every great success that worked hard to get there, there are at least a hundred "failures" (let's just take the conventional notions here) who worked equally hard. It's kind of demotivating though to have to realize that all your hard work is merely the necessary condition of success and that in the end it will be luck that will make the real difference.
What I meant is the following: Contrary to what you wrote, there is opinion in business. There are strategic decisions to be made, which are affected by political and cultural goals. And these are off course opinions. As an example I wanted to have cited Apple against Microsoft. A culture that values making money with the right product over making money with as much products as possible.
Generic ("beer" or "cold beer") and purely descriptive terms ("computer repair") cannot be trademarked. Terms that are suggestive, arbitrary, or fanciful can be registered, with fanciful getting the most protection.

However, if an otherwise descriptive term has become associated in the public mind with the products of one competitor, then the term acquires what is called a "secondary meaning" and can thereby be registered as a protectable trademark.

Secondary meaning usually is the result of a massive and long-term marketing campaign (e.g., "Windows").

That is the general terrain for this area. Using these standards, common words that appear in a dictionary can wind up being protected as trademarks.

I think the issue with "tweet" is not yet decided. Time will tell on how this will come out.
Right now, I need the ACM more than the ACM needs me.
I think it's pretty well-established now that peer review without compensation happens constantly. Welcome to the internet, right?

As far as I know, even before the internet era, you never got paid for referee reports. I've certainly never been paid for one, though I've only been writing them since 2006.
I use the Microsoft Stack for my weekend projects, and it cost me a grand total of $375 to set up my development environment, including all the packages you mention and more. That's the cost to get in to the EmpowerISV program, which gives you a full MSDN license (meaning you get everything that Microsoft makes except games).

I spent way more than that on 3rd party tools to make my life easier. Hell, I spent more than that on coffee since I started the project. If you're an open source developer, and you value your time, you'll spend cash money on good tools too.

Cost is certainly not a reason to shy away from MS stuff (and it's good stuff).
if you are making a million/mo in revenue, you can afford to spend $100K/mo on servers/bandwidth.
I should point out that capitalize(), of course, returns a new capitalized string, just as it does in Ruby. But in Ruby you also have String#capitalize!

And as for indentation, I think Guido should have followed through with making tabs a syntax error, because they are part of the syntax and are fiendish sources of error. Let's just say you have this code, properly indented with spaces:

class X:
def visible(self):
pass

And you open it in a non-Python-aware editor, say for Windows, which has a four-space tab length and does not convert them to spaces. You add:

def invisible(self):
pass

at the end of the file using your tab key. Now you have a potentially crazy-hard-to-figure-out bug.
pretty bad example, considering the people might be chatting about Paris Hilton.
countercounterpoint: They are available in a free version because Microsoft really wants you to build things for Windows. If they could give you the full versions for free without cutting off the air to the 3rd party tool vendors, they absolutely would:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
I was looking for that exact article, I read it a few months back. I'm a bit hesitant to run TOR on my home connection because of it. Would there be an alternative that only allowed twitter or social news/image/blogging sites (I know this may be defeating the purpose of running a filter-less proxy, but it seems a bit safer)?
Nicolas Nassim Taleb had a few things to say about that. It depends on the environment you choose to compete. In most of them, luck is non-essential. It helps to have it, but that's it. In some though, notably including many kinds of startups, luck is unfortunately necessary.
Twitter did buy their images from a stock photo site and they didn't buy the exclusive rights to the image.
Everybody can buy the start site image and can run his own site with the same image as background!
oh my god, my eyes are open
I browsed around the source. I like that it's actually possible to get something out of this activity.

There's some use of macros where inline functions (or even C++ templates) would have been prettier. It's a shame C has such a lame macro language.

I was interested in how he claims space efficiency for objects, while still leaving open the possibility of abusing an object (not its type; it's a prototype based duck typed language) as a hash table via definition of new methods. It seems that the object model does have vtable sharing between instances of the same type, so I assume there's some kind of copy on write when you add a method.