skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hello! Evernote employee here, I first wanted to say thanks for posting. Its always good to hear from our users directly. I've been at Evernote for a while and it is still weird to see us show up on HN.

Anyways, I enjoyed your comments wanted to give my personal opinion & point of view for at least points 1 & 2.

1. You're right that scaling is very hard. If you want a closer look at it, we have a tech blog that even I can read and understand. https://blog.evernote.com/tech/
Perhaps the most reassuring thing I can say is that Evernote runs on Evernote. Err... maybe this is more clear, Evernote (the company) runs on Evernote (the service). We eat our own dog food as they say, which means I've lost count of how many water cooler conversations turn into "there's something weird that Evernote's doing on my computer..."

2. Our Mac and Windows apps let you export your notes into HTML (including resources). Both these apps run natively against local files so you could export if you were offline or if for some reason our service was down. We try to compete by making a great app and a great service. In fact, we don't make money unless we've done a good enough job for you to upgrade to Premium. It seems like your main concern is that your text-only notes export to HTML instead of plaintext, which is a fair point. One of the nice things HTML is that there are third party applications that can convert from HTML into a number of other formats, so we're relying on that if you want your notes in RTF or as a .txt or something else.
or just use scr.im [¹], originally developed by Ozh [²].

[1] http://scr.im

[2] http://ozh.org
Does Google's Voice Dictation work for you at all?
"Yet when was the last time you saw feminist and women's organizations actively campaigning for more females to register in the military and fight in the battlefield?"

This is the stupidest argument. Why is this same argument brought up every single time?

Feminists would say that selective service IS sexist, and that we should abolish it. In fact several women's organizations have helped challenge the legality of it to the supreme court (The American Civil Liberties Union Women’s Rights Project for one).

Remember in 1980 when Jimmy Carter urged congress against enacting male only registration and the 97% male congress enacted it anyway? How is this the fault of women?
I only picked 2 because every language I know besides PHP and Javascript (Java, C++, C#, VB and Python) I only know through study, and I have yet to do anything useful with them. Other than pass classes.

And this (not exactly non-trivial though): http://www.codeskulptor.org/#user14_OI6cFSxxCICXtA5_37.py
America is relatively cheap.
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2005/12/alexa_web_searc.html
Very vague, ill defined question. You've not defined what you mean by 'programming language', nor 'program', nor 'nontrivial', etc.

Most people are probably using a bunch of languages without realizing it (SQL, Bash, Make, Tex, Regex, Yacc, etc) which aren't necessarily general purpose but can produce nontrivial programs. Also, there's no clear distinction as to what makes a `general purpose` language, so it would still be unclear if you limited the scope of the question.

I know a bunch of different assemblies and a bunch of lisps, but I don't consider them each unique languages. It'd perhaps be a stretch to consider C#, Java, Vala, D and C++ as unique languages too, since they're mostly different dialects of the same language (i.e, primarily imperative OOP with generics and iterators). I don't really need to change the way I think when switching between these languages, only remember the variations in syntax and vocabulary, but using the same ideas to reach my goal.

On the other hand, I've switched to using functional languages in the past 5 years or so, and it has massively changed the way I think. So much that I struggle to 'effortlessly produce programs' in OOP languages because they lack the capabilities I've come to expect, but I'm no less 'fluent' in them.

I'd go as far as saying that the distinction between named language with syntax and a library or API is pretty vague too. For example, I'd consider OpenGL to be a language, although it's just a bunch of functions and types which behave the same in whatever syntactic face you use. One could argue that any API is actually a "DSL" (popular term which means basically nothing.)
Why does Paul's motivation matter? I'm just happy to see something being done.
COM hates MTA threading, most of the Office object model actually insists on STA single-threads sitting in the main UI thread to even work (i.e. you cannot use BackgroundWorker() )! Some guy @ MS even released this byzantine code to deal with the situation (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andreww/archive/2008/11/19/implement...) which unfortunately doesn't work. It's completely nuts how bad the object model is.
Tom Lehman here (Rap Genius co-founder)

The fact that all our text and song page URLs end in "-lyrics" is a relic of a time when we hosted almost exclusively lyrics.

Making the changes required to host all kinds of annotated texts has been a big project and making the URLs make sense is something we haven't gotten around to.

The reason it's not a totally trivial change is that both users and texts share the same top-level namespaces, and so right now we use the "-lyrics" suffix to differentiate song and text pages from user profile pages.

We want to change the suffix to "-annotated" for non-music pages and will hopefully get around to in the next few weeks. To our knowledge the existing situation doesn't help with SEO (no one is searching "bartleby the scrivener lyrics"), and it's confusing, so we 100% agree that the current situation is bad.

For more info on the "Worse is Better" philosophy that caused the current jank situation to persist for so long, see this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X45YY97FmL4
My only advice is to provide socks too. Socks get gross and/or wet or hard if you can't easily wash them.. and they're not too expensive.
exactly. fashion is completely abstract, whether something becomes fashionable is largely based on how useful it is otherwise. Dark glasses covering your face would be supremely ugly, if they weren't so useful at shielding your eyes from the sun. Because they are useful, they have become fashionable.

Wearable technology will come into vogue the same way - you can't make something fashionable just by making it unobtrusive or inoffensive, it will be considered fashionable when the celebrities who set trends find it useful enough to start wearing it. And no google, paying models to wear it during fashion week doesn't count.
You are also legally allowed to remix for personal use. It's how legitmix.com sells unlicensed remixes legally.
> Once you understand the space of possible programming languages you can often learn a new one in just a week or two,

This is only true if that new one is closely related to the ones you already know.

Learning, say, Haskell, in the period of week for the person with knowledge of “standard set” like C,Python,JS,Go will be somewhat painful exercise include some brain explosions.
I definitely echo that comment, with an addition. The best writing, I find, is not actually written as someone would speak it. Academic writing in particular, but fiction and non-fiction as well.

I've written a few speeches that went across very well, and with those I didn't simply follow a person's speaking habits. I wrote in what is actually a very structured and thought out fashion. It's just not 5 paragraph format because it's not an essay for my teacher to grade.

Perhaps a better point would be 'To become a better BLOGGER you have to stop writing and start speaking.' Blogging is inherently informal, much like how I'm writing this comment now.
No need to be rude. The video itself implies that the sample wasn't cleared. I wouldn't expect everyone who saw this post to watch the video AND read the whole thing. Still, you're right of course.
Considering this experiment was started in 2006 and the results published in 2008, I imagine most bots or newer bots have been configured to handle these.

Anyone interested in starting a new experiment? I guess I will. It might get me on the front page of HN in 1 to 2 yeras!
Brilliant insight. Having successfully completed the building of something on Christmas day that has been my primary creative focus for nearly 10 years I am well placed to understand the high he talks about and know that there is none like it (I've a lot of experience with highs of all sorts.)

Something he doesn't address is the ennui of post-completion blues. I've suffered it for significant duration many times as an engineer and am in the middle of one now, primarily spending my time in other people's moments like right now. He provides the solution though; whether or not I feel like it it's time to start building the next thing. Thankfully I buffered a list when enthusiasm ran high. :-)
The Inverse Amish and Special Innovation Zones
I'm not sure how it's sustainable either. Sustainable via getting people to continue donating blankets and books?
Sure you're right, but if Obama lost his last election do you think they'd be any difference to the NSA today? Maybe Rand Paul cares more about the morals than the politics, maybe he doesn't. I don't like the guy, but whatever his motive I'm happy he's doing this. At the end of the day, both sides would be happy to claim morality when really just playing politics, so even if that is what he's doing, I don't see it as making him any worse than his colleagues or rivals.
This submission looks like it's to promote slant (and checking, the submitter is from slant). Nothing wrong with that!

I think because comparisons often cause a flurry of opinions, experiences and religious wars, slant seem to have instant publicity baked into the very essence of their idea (of comparisons).

Interestingly, nobody has commented on slant itself - suggesting that the interface is seamless, invisible. Arguably, the very best feedback possible!
Key Mapping and Vintage Mode Setup for Sublime Text 2
The only problem with this is that there's no real course of communication with google. They make it a matter of policy to not provide customer service.
The thing about Workflowy is not the saving/backing-up/etc functionality per-se, which is the easy part. It is the user interface design that makes it so productive. It's like you can zoom in to any aspect of your life and you can have your whole life as a single tree on it - so yes, there is only one list per account on Workflowy (afaik), and this is the beautiful part.

The closest I've come is to use org-mode in emacs with the foldout package enabled [1]. This works well actually and I even wrote my thesis this way (which I can't do using Workflowy btw ;) .. but you got to manage the syncing etc yourself.

It is valid to argue that a tree structure is not the ideal mind-map, but the speed advantage of editing a tree structure way more than compensates for a more complex graph structure ... and you can always hyperlink.

[1]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2007-10/msg0...
On a similar topic, how do affiliate linking programmes even work anymore? Surely Google would classify all affiliate programmes as paid links. Even big ones such as Amazon Affiliates, Commission Junction, Affiliate Window are all being plugged by affiliates, and the vast majority of those affiliates are using templated sites or stuffing keywords in blog posts that are largely irrelevant to the product or service they are plugging for affiliate fees?

Aren't all affiliate programmes technically bad for the publisher after Penguin?
That's what I was thinking. On the one hand is the C family of languages (C, C++, Java, C#, Go) and then you can get mileage from the Lisp family of languages (Lisp, Scheme, Racket, Clojure) - you can get a lot of languages there but you're still only working within two language families.

Throw in some Haskell, Forth, Prolog and now you're getting interesting!
Oops, sorry about that! Fixed now.
What I meant was that explaining my work to a layman would necessarily start with "I work on compilers", and then I'd have to explain what a compiler is before going into the specifics of my own contributions.
The reason there are many homeless in SF, is because there are many shelters in the Tenderloin that provide these things you are talking about. Think you should first ask why are they homeless, not just give them random things. They are homeless either because, they have drug problems, psychological issues, or the least likely -- they have a problem getting employment.
What I meant by the "space of possible languages" is the set of design choices involved in making a programming language, and this obviously includes deciding on the imperative, logical or functional (or yet another) paradigm. A good general programming languages book like the one I mentioned, or a general programming languages course at the university, will teach you things like dynamic vs. static typing, lazy vs. eager evaluation, different possible type systems etc. Once you learn those things in a general setting it is much easier to learn a new language, by identifying it as a point in this space (e.g. strongly typed, lazily evaluated, functional language with pattern matching ...), unless it's a total outlier from all the current major streams of thought.
Not in my experience. I use IntelliJ IDEA (and previously used Eclipse) on OS X and Linux on a daily basis.

Anytime they start indexing or re-indexing a huge code base in a "background" thread, they end up locking the machine to varying extents. Linux is not as bad, as it only tends to lock up instances of the offending application... But that maybe because the Linux PC is a beefy workstation. OS X is on a much less powerful MacBook Pro, and freezes tend to lock up the whole system, or at least most of the other apps, especially Chrome.

I've also had problems with Chrome, and especially Flash, on OS X. Spinning beachballs on every page load. Click-to-flash was such a lifesaver, but I can now sorta see why Steve Jobs wanted Flash dead.

The spinning beachball has grown to be a frequent source of rage for me over the last 5 years. I'm surprised nobody else complains about it more. Maybe it only happens for heavy Java GUI-based apps?
And I'm sure Microsoft iterated with the tablet PC. Blackberry iterated and look where it got them.

I think Gruber is arguing that the concept may be sound (just like tablet form factor computers, portable MP3 players, and smartphones), but the implementation is probably shit.

The reason everybody carries around something that looks more like the 2007 iPhone than the 2007 Blackberries is that Apple didn't iterate. They took the concept and completely rethought it.

Somebody may be able to do this with Glass. Who knows—it might even be Google!
High Speed Internet --> To have more data & serve you more ads throughout your whole internet experience (not just google).

Cars --> Oh, have more time while you're not driving? Spend it on your tablet / computer / device & see more ads.

Robotics --> Time freed up around the house? Spend more time online. Need to have your robot run errands for you? Approve these coupon offers at nearby grocery stores & have your robot pick them up.

Glass --> Like the outfit that person is wearing? Here's a coupon to buy it right now.

Google is an ad company. They have cool tech - but they it comes back to ads.
The solution is that they should (at least in part) become showrooms for Internet Retailers and manufacturers pay them to show off their merchandise.
The source itself: http://ioccc.org/2013/cable3/cable3.c

Or after running through preprocessing (not a huge help I found, sadly): https://gist.github.com/peterc/8259713
I counted language families, but the hardest was lumping in all the SQL and stored function/procedure languages together to count them as 1. My highly conservative total is 4, and it occurs to me that less is more, and I should consider cutting back to increase focus.

Thanks for the nominally thought-provoking question.
Google tries many more high-profile "MoonShots" than most other companies.
While this is not motivated by some altruistic desire and in the end is expected to make money, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

In fact this is the essence of Silicon Valley- try innovative stuff, move the needle on what the public sees as "cool" & get more people talking about the possibilities.

Gruber is too quick to write-off products that are "creating the market" if they do not have a certain Fruit logo.

Edit: Spelling
There are pieces of Python 3 that are syntax errors in Python 2. And there are Python 2-isms that are valid syntax in Python 3 but have a different interpretation. It's not as simple as importing certain features (which creates a sort of language version hybrid).

The idea to allow one project to switch between Python 2 and Python 3 for individual files is more interesting, but practically speaking would lead to sort of a mess.
When people tell me that they love C, I don't get it.

C is so tiny that if you're going to write anything non-trivial you either have to re-implement various common data-structures yourself, or find appropriate libraries. No built-in string type, no vectors, no nothing. Also, the lack of generics makes for really ugly code, filled with void pointers and casts whenever you attempt to write type agnostic data structures such as lists, queues, etc.

It also seems that whenever I have to write in C, I end up writing code that painfully wants to be object-oriented, or implementing features that are already part of C++.

So why would you willfully pick to use C when C++ is around?
Heck, even if some sick reason you don't want to use explicitly use objects, at least you can enjoy some of the other benefits of C++ (e.g. its standard library).
While I totally agree that the 5 paragraph essay format can be restrictive and is not suited for every situation, I think a good thesis statement in the first paragraph or two is frequently a good idea

In many circumstances it is. I wrote an essay that describes the thesis statement issue: "Paul Graham and not being as right as he could be in 'The Age of the Essay'" (https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/paul-graham-and-no...).

I've also discovered from teaching college freshmen that having a thesis statement usually improves the quality of their work product. But experienced writers working in some genres don't need thesis statements and indeed would be constrained by them (that's one of pg's points in "The Age of the Essay:" http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html), and inexperienced writers probably need thesis statements to avoid a document filled with random thoughts. In this respect thesis statements are like training wheels.
Maybe next time around you can harness them both:
https://github.com/rxl/angular-flask

"""
An AngularJS (frontend) + Flask / Python (backend) Boilerplate Application
"""
I think that's more the later stuff. Fat of the land certainly sounds like it was composed lying down.
Haskell performance: A case study
It's an interesting problem space, I actually quite like retail as I grew up around it and it's fascinating as it's constantly under threat so what do you do to push on. Beating Amazon prices is almost impossible, unless you like to work for free, but it does seem there's a push towards smaller independents that don't need to compete on price as they sell an experience. There will always be people willing to pay a little extra for a perceived value, and always people who'll try and find the best price possible.

I have nothing but respect for people willing to follow their principles, but Amazon is here to stay and contains a huge customer base so leaving is cutting your nose off to spite your face. Work out what you can do better than Amazon to earn your premium, there's plenty of places to go with it.
It's a nice gesture, but it won't 'fix' homelessness.
There are some homeless who will stay that way; you can see them roaming around in packs.
And then there are the mentally ill; they need medications and structure.

There's too much money to be made by the established people, so chances of fixing homelessness are negligible. It's a corrupt system.
If what is relayed in this story is factual (most intent to purchase a book, discovery, happens offline), then surely bookshops still have a lot of power a should refuse to stock books distributed on Amazon.

It's not realistic, but would be an interesting controlled experiment.
I find speaking aloud does result in a better flowing essay.

But I wonder which effects are due to the speaking; and which to how speaking reminds you that you are trying to communicate to someone, and give them something of value?

Consider the problem-solving technique of explaining the problem to someone - which also works well when explaining it to a duck. Would writing a letter to a duck work as well as telling it? Is the helpfulness inextricably tied to verbalizing?
Or baking your laser printer in the oven: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Other-Printing-Questions/Has-HP...
Is there anything that can be used as a "research notebook"? Specifically, I need to embed graphs/images within the text.
News from Herb Sutter -- cool.
Rather subjective attack on "hostile templates" -- not cool.
Way to take that quote way out of context. You make it sound like the Slate writer is supporting the quote, when it seems to me like he's arguing against it.

> A lot of people will see this video as proof of how building songs from samples takes a keen ear and a lot of skill: You’re not just “stealing” something, you're transforming it. Others will see it as proof of the opposite: Anyone can put a urinal on the wall and call it art. Of course, those people didn’t put a urinal on the wall, and they aren’t Daft Punk.
I'd thought that Google had an exclusive license, but I just checked and the exclusive license expired in 2011:

http://www.seroundtable.com/pagerank-patent-12731.html

So yes, anyone can license PageRank now.
Keep in mind that from a business perspective, the main use of these vehicles might be military. Think of them as drones in car form.
As much as I make fun of java developers for over complicated solutions, I've never quite seen anything as over-engineered and byzantine as COM. I remember at my last job we had legacy COM objects that inherited from about 5-7 different templated objects, and that was... normal. COM is the worst.

I actually like windows as a user, but I'm amazed that it won as much developer mindshare as it did considering how much the win32 api sucks. It's brutal.
If I recall correctly Andy Warhol used to do exactly this (sign everyday items, including urinals). He called it "ready made art."

I want to say "see also: Banksy", but I don't know if that idea is completely thought out.
Whatever your style, the structure of your piece ought to be customized to its content

This is good advice, but for novice writers it may be quite difficult or impossible to follow. The distinction between novice and expert writers is important and tends to get overlooked in these kinds of discussions, as I wrote in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7012474 .

Most of us experience writing lessons through school, where we're frequently not by not-very-good teachers and where the lessons tend to focus on extreme novices. But what is good for an expert may not always be good for a novice and vice-versa, so some of the lessons we're taught don't apply across the entire range of writing expertise / skill.
Ditto for New Zealand.