skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree wholeheartedly with the first half of your comment, but the second half is the same uninformed dogma you rail against in the first!

Python is not really a functional programming language -- it has statements and suites, neither of which are first-class.

lambda is implemented as an inline (suite-less) value-returning statement (like the ternary statement) because dealing with indentation would be a bitch. Since statements cannot contain other statements outside of suites, it's impossible to implement full-fledged anonymous functions in the language grammar without breaking something.

While I'd love TCO in python, I like the stack traces better (ever dealt with a stray head [] in GHC?).
Success & Motivation – A Great Letter Dissed
So what? In other words, Rackspace runs $30-off sale. By attaching a "cool" angle to it, though, they manage to get it in the news. Well done to their marketing department, I guess.
So you're saying that we should not or can not learn from the experiences of others. The idea that most people are wired roughly the same holds no sway with you, and that only personal experience can possibly show you how things work. This means you never take into account reccomendations for movies, or books or restaurants. Never learn from others' mistakes right? Thats what you are saying.

Of course none of the above takes into account the fact that you are biased to judging yourself well (my actions were of course right). Your analysis could be based on some flawed assumption (the happiness i get from X is the maximum of happiness, maximizing the little happinesses reaches a global maximum, not a local one, etc). Or that other people could possibly know more than you.

Not that this comment matters, only your judgment and thoughts could possibly be correct in the end.
My living expenses are not taken care of, my tuition and school related expenses are (books, supplies, etc.).
The way I have always understood it, being smart isn't an extra above and beyond sort of thing(except for the truly gifted). It is avoiding all the possible ways of being dumb: getting good nutrition, getting enough sleep, avoiding diseases, getting new and interesting experiences, etc. Also while IQ does correlate well with income in general After you get to a certain level not so much(think professors and engineers vs upper level management )
This is SO MUCH a US phenomenon, though. It's so weird to hear talk about bicycles like they're some kind of lifestyle choice, like they stand for something. Sad to hear that, in the face of all the opposition against bicycles and the poor infrastructure, there seems to be a bicycle culture which goes against casual use.

Which reminds me of this classic: http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/ ;)
It's a fine line between doing a nice gesture for a friend simply because you want to and doing it for an acquaintance in order to earn favor. If you're the least bit phony, it will show and it will backfire. Sounds like your friend was the real deal. Good for him and good for you!
Because if they restrict browsing fewer people might read slate?
Many teams did have a designer or somebody with some web design chops - so don't feel too bad.

Smart move, too. For a rapid development competition like the Rails Rumble, a good first impression goes a long way.
I like the idea of a real baseline grid, but...

"Safari 3, Google Chrome, Firefox 3, Opera 9 and Internet Explorer 8 all work correctly with some minor differences."

Seems like cross-browser compatibility (including Firefox 2, IE7, and heck if you're making a framework, IE6) would be at the top of the list of your priorities when creating something like this, though ;-).
From my perspective, most of the stuff about C++ complexity rings untrue. Most people I know seem to know enough about C++ that they can produce pretty good code.

Yes, there's a lot of depth to C++ but you derive a lot of benefit from other's wizardry even if you're not a magician yourself.

Maybe this guy didn't invest as much time on C++ as he did on his other languages.
Although I am sympathetic to everyone's disgruntlement with Google over the adsense and adwords programs, it makes for very boring news for the rest of us unconcerned with revenue streams derived that way.
Which is why this is important:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligenc...
I do this all the time! Yet, I am not sure if the close friendship with these people is a cause or effect of the lunch. But looking back, I think I get this cool fun friend vibe from these people at our very first meeting.

I don't use this as a technique. I don't know if it scales:)
It wouldn't just come into being by chance (if we make it). We'd write its source code, which is why FAI is important.
Why did him buying the lunch make any difference? If he didn't buy the lunch would he be less of a good guy?
A design pattern is an artifact of a missing feature in your chosen language
More Muscle = Weaker Immune System?
In some cases, acquisition might be a better and cheaper PR than going directly to newspapers, as it signals that acquirer has money, is aggressive and allows to use, at least for a while, acquired company's PR karma.
I'll probably get a full-time job, keep it for a few years, then go back to school and get my MBA. I already have a job...two, in fact. Gotta make rent.

I don't know that I can pick up a full-time gig easily. Where I live now doesn't have much in the way of a tech industry, so I'd have to move. That leaves me in an unfamiliar territory with limited cash reserves.

It would be nice to be done with school, but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot doing so.

The idea of taking an independent study and using it as a motivation to do a start-up sounds like a good one.
Absolutely true. I did a solo project, and not only did my site suffer from my poor design, but design sucked up an inordinate amount of time because I'm so much slower at it.
These kind of sales don't meet the definition of a market.
Ok, I should've included more caveats. I meant that the calories you're consuming are solar power, though there's definitely other energy involved. The comparison is still invalid.
When I read this comment, I had just eaten a Pop tart (no Dew though). I'll let you know in 6 months when I turn 30 how it feels then!
Slicehost has some good articles on configuring linux servers for various webservers/frameworks:

http://articles.slicehost.com/
I'll make you a prediction:

It won't scale. I have similar sites in my 'breakdown', but as soon as any of them get significant traffic it drops right back down to < $0.25 CPM.

I think the reason is simple, as soon as you get in to a very targeted niche there are very few advertisers that match that niche. By the time you've exposed all of them a couple of times the click rate & ECPM drop right back to average.
It wasn't the actual buying of the lunch, it was the friendly and outgoing gesture and attitude. (Which can be characterized and cultivated by buying people lunch.)
Is a Bing & Google mashup the future of search?
Coming across a site such as badabingle.com makes me wonder if more results are always better or is it just more??

See for yourself: http://www.badabingle.com
Tighter oversight on border laptop searches
Not at all.

I meet and get to know a lot of people in my line of work. I've had the privilege to work with some tremendous folks.

Looking back, you try to spot patterns.

It's just that I've always thought fondly of the guy, more than all the other nice people I know, and never really thought about why. Reading that article made me think that he really knew how to enjoy himself. He knew how to spend money to make himself happy. And in return, he did this really cool thing for other people too.

It's not that buying lunch made him any nicer, I don't think. He's just a regular person -- not a salesperson or some charismatic person at all! He wasn't trying to game the system. He just learned that buying people lunch and stuff made him a happier person. And for the rest of us it had this incredible effect.
I would make this engine:
http://www.badabingle.com because what else do you need?
have a look at 'wowza' for live stuff if you ever go that way.
I feel like Apple has big plans for iTunes, and isn't really worried about this. There's a reason they're building a $1B datacenter.
"Adsense often makes sites look like crappy, low-rent. low-content, spammy, rip-off sites"

True. Thus I use Yahoo ads. They are much more customizable and you can make them blend better with the rest of the site in order not to have spammy Google branded blocks.

Many websites are better off with CPM ads (sites with high visitors numbers) or affiliate ads (authority sites based on personalities or other trusted sites).
An observation about Designers versus Developers
Not really. In Google's eyes (or Google's algorithm's eyes) you "earned" your Adsense credits in a way that was unfair to the advertisers. So basically Google's returning the TV, sofa and cat that you "stole" from advertisers in the Adsense network in the first place. Obviously the process by which Google decides what accounts are fraudulent is imperfect, so some of the time legitimate accounts will get flagged.

I do agree though that this is a big enough problem that Google should devote more time and effort to improving the systems they use to flag Adsense accounts, and certainly improve the letter and general customer support experience once your account has been flagged.
Perl, that miserable little unwanted orphan of a language, has real anonymous, first-class functions complete with closures. Python, sadly, does not

Which Python are you talking about? The language I use has had closures and first-class functions for years.
How about reporting in 1000's, instead of including every zero? Typical in financial statements.
His blathering might hold up a bit more if Apache wasn't such a kitchen-sink heap of shit that would have been end-of-lifed a long time ago if the ASF hadn't lost itself in SOAP, WS-*, and Java for a goddamn decade.
http://www.badabingle.com
If I were competing with vid.ly, bit.ly or any of the other ly's, I think my main strategy would be to post material guaranteed to offend Libyan national pride without offending American sensibilities, and see if I could provoke a ruckus. The reliance on geopolitically shaky TLDs is bound to bite someone eventually.
This is part of a pattern. The US state has been making a concentrated effort over the last decade to establish an infrastructure that will protect them from their own citizens (the establishment of Northcom being the foremost example). Why the sudden fear, unless they plan on imposing something they anticipate will be met with widespread resistance?
> Brag that you called Perl from Python because it was "quicker" to experienced Python programmers.

A coworker found that calling out to grep can be faster than using Python's regular expressions for large amounts of text processing. My first reaction was to cringe, but it was indeed much faster for this particular problem; I think I was the bad programmer for reflexively cringing instead of saying "nice performance hack".
It's great to see this discussion here and especially to have Matt Cutts weighing in.

It does seem like this is an endemic problem in Google and comes right from the top. Some startups focus on customer service and use it as a differentiator. Others focus on product and believe they can build their way out of support.

Google is and always has been in the second category. The mindset is from what I understand firmly held by Larry and Sergey and manifests itself through the whole company. Until they change, it seems unlikely the support teams will change.
America's unjust sex laws
Guidelines for highly effective websites
I feel like a real jerk for even mentioning this, so first let me say it sounds like this guy was a really good guy.

But this is a researched social phenomenon known as the reciprocity effect. He's done something for you, so now you feel like you somehow owe him something in return. Often that's "paid back" by positive social feelings. I really hoped I could find a solid citation for you, but the basis of it is found in Robert Cialdini's excellent book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion".

[This is as close as I could get for sourcing, I apologize for the lack of quality on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_of_reciprocity]
"Instead of buying things, we should buy memories...Money spent on experiences - vacations or theater tickets or meals out - makes you happier than money spent on material goods"

It's funny, because my intuitions always ran the other way--you should spend money on something you'll enjoy over and over again, not just a single experience that ends soon. The fallacy, of course, is that a sufficiently good experience is remembered again and again, and that is often more valuable than a durable good you've grown tired of (or a higher number on your online banking site for you to look at).
Any user that recognizes de HN button knows how to submit to HN anyway. Too much visibility of the site has lead to connectivity problems. And surely it's no good to HN become a clone of reddit, digg, delicious or whatever. HN is better being a different taste of internet.
New EveryBlock feature: draw your own neighborhood
really only skims the surface of the idea which is too bad.
there are a number of similar pieces out there that tackle the subject in depth. i'd link to them, but i'm feeling lazy and don't want to go tracking them down.
Why would serious cyclists want more people to get on bikes?
For an entrepreneur, it could be pretty awkward to have everyone in your life know exactly how much money you've just acquired, especially if it's a lot.

For a VC, on the other hand, it's pretty good business to let everyone know how much one of your companies was just acquired for, especially if it's a lot. I wonder, when we do hear about the amounts paid, whether that's a condition inserted by the VCs, (or whether there's some law requiring it when, say, the acquiring entity is a public company).
I probably have the worst.

Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM [?]	Earnings
44,031,234	8,098	0.02%	€0.01	€548.35
Hardly, I know many people who spent years learning C++ in the 90's only to avoid it now. The reason is they had no love for the language. The C++ language design has serious flaws that whenever someone brings them up there's the usual, rolling of the eyes and the "yeah we know" sort of look. The if you criticise you must be a dumb attitude is encouraged by the C++ community too, and that was not borrowed from the C community: where the emphasis was beautiful tight code (like the K&R manual itself).

Lets face it C++ is something like 30 years old this year. For a 30 year language to have so many flaws, and for newer languages to make a better job of integrating OO while still keeping the power: you have to ask whether the C++ community really knows all about technology and nothing about design. The whole project has been mislead from start to finish. It strikes me it had to take a couple of ada programmers to write the STL.
Given most mobile devices have built-in AAC codecs but not Vorbis (Android is the odd one out here, I think, probably Maemo as well) if Spotify starts expanding to mobile devices an AAC stream (maybe lower quality than the Vorbis ones) would make sense.

I sent a mail to Spotify's support to ask, though they probably won't reply.
If I am going to be around a phony person I'd rather get a sandwich out of it than not. Since the act of buying lunch doesn't actually make someone phony, I don't see a downside.
What the fuck are you talking about? Making a goddamn syscall to get the VM usage of other processes is not an undocumented API.
Handcrafted Haiku Winners Announced
Successful Ruby freelancer. Interview with famous Rubyists.
Stylesheet for hiding annoying content on sites
Many web browsers allow you to define a single custom stylesheet. You can use this to hide parts of web sites that you don't like, as long as the component is contained in a parent (like a "div") that is easily identified by a style class or id.

For instance, this style hides sponsored links on Facebook pages:

.UIHomeBox_Sponsored {
display:none;
}

Just view the source of a site to figure out what style or id would disable the parts that annoy you.

Some caveats:

- Some browsers only read the custom stylesheet once, at startup, so if you modify it you won't see differences immediately.

- Since there's just one stylesheet, all sites using the same style names would have the same filter. (Though, I've yet to see any real problems from this.)

- Occasionally a site's layout will depend on the visibility of all its boxes, so hiding one of them may cause layout issues.
oh i know the answer to this one: no.

when you're really busy it may in the form of things that go out, like sending e-mails, especially if you're not a programmer -- and sometimes when you're really busy, you have sent no e-mails in a while....because you're busy working on something. today i plan to send one e-mail: prototype complete, and published at this url.
If You Love Your Imagination, Set it Free
It sucks to be a clone
I second that! I am an overweight guy, not your typical "Bay Area Fundamentalist Cyclist". I started biking to lose some weight, but mostly because I am truly concerned about the environment and I thought that would help.

The "looked down" is not even so much the issue. I actually got yelled at several times, intimidated, and actually ran over by other cyclists who thing they are Lance Armstrong or something. Close to the place where I lived (in Mountain View) there was a creek, and I was tired to hear other cyclists yelling "get off the way". And, you know, I am not really a slow rider and I really make sure to keep the left side clear. When I got ran over was some guy who had plenty of space to pass me by, but didn't want to wait to get back to the track and actually PUSHED me with his hands. I am dead serious.

Then I moved to China... Bicycles are TRULY ubiquitous here, and everyone uses it, from all ages and societal classes.

If the US wants to get serious about alternative forms of transportation, these elitists must need to change their attitude.
My previous bike cost 50 euros, the one before that was 25 euros. Second hand though.
"That feeling you get after a successful pitch, is what rockstars feel when they go off stage"

I can see Keith Moon right now, stumbling off a stage with his ears ringing, shrieking groupies straining to get past his bodyguards, thinking to himself "this must be what it's like to pitch an electronic business card startup".

Pro tip: you are not a rock star.
Additional "data":

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/avecora.com+avecoraondemand...

disclosure: I used to work for leadlogsys.com
This was discussed here a couple of days ago. Probably comments covered this question.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=787890
For example because it makes traffic more cyclist friendly if there are more cyclists. And generally people want other people to use what they're using (e.g. programming languages, text editors).
Perhaps, or perhaps C++ programmers who defend the language haven't spent enough time in other languages.

If you are just plugging components together I can think of better languages.

In my experience C++ demands more time that most languages to master. Which is a far longer time than, say, C.
Top Fascinating Desert In The World
Here is the latest photo collection of Top 10 Fascinating Desert In The World, Enjoy and Free Download for your computers & mobiles.

At over 9 million square kilometers, the Sahara covers most of North Africa and is home to a number of peoples and languages. The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the Atlantic Ocean

The average rainfall in Antarctica is less than 5 millimeters, but at the same time, 98 percent of the land is covered with ice and snow. The result of these extreme weather conditions is dryness, humidity and cold temperatures that make Antarctica uninhabitable for humans.
ouch... any idea about the causes ?
I'm no expert. Can anyone think of a set of circumstances under which this power could be reasonably used?

Alternatively, can anyone think of a likely misuse of this power? (I'm not talking black-helicopter stuff here, just standard-issue governmental overreaching).
Newspeak language
Simpson's paradox: why mistrust seemingly simple statistics
This is an interesting approach to add data to see how well someone is doing processing invoices, following up on customer requests, or coordinating a large project.

For programming, it's an utter disaster. Not because of technical or privacy issues (which are quite real), but because for certain jobs, there is absolutely no correlation between apparent activity and achievement.

This has been a serious issue in almost every shop I've ever worked in. Whenever a phb got concerned because he observed what he thought was a lack of activity by me or any of my people, I have always responded the same way, with a copy of the project plan and one question, "Exactly where are we behind and what makes you think so?" No good answer? Then STFU.

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln.

I guess if you examined Lincoln's emails and logs, he would have looked like quite the slacker.
I wonder, if I don't need hugh amount of bandwidth should I go for a home solution?. Is it worth the hassle of administrating my own machine for web-hosting vs paying a web hosting service? Hostgator has a plan for 5dls a month. My admin time, power consumption, etc costs less than 5dls a month?
Probably because I don't stick them in my users faces every chance I get; they are just a couple ads in a side bar.
I'm pretty sure this guy is just trying to impress his friends on codinghorror's comment section.
That's because hulu Usually only has the most recent episodes.
Note the comparison is to C, not C++. The runtime improvement came from aggressive inlining.

I'm pretty sure that C++ code (which allows templates, function objects etc) can be written to do the same.

Of course, then we'll get into discussions about whether the C++ code is "idiomatic", requires "wizardry" etc.

The biggest win I see for JIT'd dynamic languages is their ability to optimize across source files. I wish C++ had the capacity to slurp in ALL of a project's C/C++ files and compile it one pass.

In these days of 16G developer desktops, is this an unreasonable demand? :)
Yes. It is much more time/cost efficient to host from a server farm these days.
Truly, I say unto thee, that this one hath not the heart of a hacker.

;)
Please never, never, never ever write C/C++.

С - simple and stable, C++ - huge and changing.
C - portable and easily parseable, C++ - unpredictable and unparseable.
C - good, C++ - bad.