skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The table of contents doesn't seem to mention LL(*) grammars, which are used by ANTLR. I think this is the same thing as a "pack rat" parser (which from memory has a very straightforward implementation, but isn't an academic concept).

I've been writing parsers for a few years now, but I have found the academic work on it to be actively misleading - at least, for the specific things that I want to do. I'm including studying it as an undergraduate, teaching it to undergraduates, and studying it as a PhD candidate.

I've actually read papers where it appears the authors have been misled in precisely the way I had been. Or it could just be that I'm doing something quite strange and weird (i.e. novel and non-obvious).
As I never heard of FizBuzz test mentioned in the article, I followed the link to Jeff Atwood's site (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html).

FizzBuzz turned out to be an extremely simple problem (description in the post).

Atwood's article starts with a quote of yet another article with the following lines:

Like me, the author is having trouble with
the fact that 199 out of 200 applicants for
every programming job can't write code at all.
I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever.

Surely, this is an exaggeration I'd thought... How can someone who calls themselves a programmer can fail to solve FizzBuzz even at under the pressure of being at a job interview?

To my horror, I discovered that a lot of comments to Atwood's post provide an incorrect solution and only prove the point of the article.

I realize that anecdotal evidence like this does not technically prove anything, however it does make me shudder inside...
I'm not advocating total awareness, though that would be cool and it is achievable according to some philosophies. I'm advocating the pursuit of an honest interpretation of the world. We know there aren't little trolls living in our walls that grant us creative powers. We know that isn't true.

I believe it is possible to be aware of our impact on the world, even negative and continue to live. On 60 Minutes tonight there was a story about a recycling center in Colorado that was illegally shipping used computer monitors and televisions to Hong Kong. People there disassemble them and in doing so pollute their environment and damage their health.

But I'm using a computer. There are two monitors in this very room. My behavior indirectly harms the world. I am aware of that. Perhaps I am adding a bit of negativity to the world, but that doesn't mean I should choose ignorance of that. It doesn't mean I should invent a little troll in the wall that is actually creating that monitor.

I think it is okay to acknowledge the accomplishments of the creative. I think it is okay to accept responsibility for the good that we create and the harm that we inflict.

I'm advocating honesty and pursuit of truth. Sometimes that requires that we forgive ourselves for that which we do that harms others. Those apologies can be truthful as well.
It took me a few hours to sort this all out on my own on Friday, but now that something like an "official" guide for Ruby developers has been released, I'm glad to find that I ended up choosing the preferred path!

After recompiling Ruby 1.9 as a 64-bit binary, installing the 64-bit version of MySQL, and getting the rest of my gems back in shape, things worked quite well.

That said, I'm not looking forward to spending several days helping people out with upgrades at work, haha. This one was quite a bit more involved than I expected.

NB: Had to do the same for Python's MySQL bindings with MySQL-64.
My favorite parsing function: substr()
I have Google as my home page. Also a TON of rss feeds on igoogle.
I use Bing for the cashback sometimes. I'm happy to take Microsoft's money.
I am aware of this argument, but it has always seemed strange to me. Surely slave labor is not efficient.
If I recall correctly that's actually used to sync network home directories to a local drive on machines that are bound to a directory service. Some blogger mistakenly thought it was related to the iPod home directory feature and the connection's just never died.
Question about the code:

(defmacro set-sqrt (place v) `(setf ,place (* v v)))

What does the comma right before place in its second usage signify?

Also, am I right in assuming that setf turns:

(setf (f1 arg1) arg2)

into

(setter-for-f1 arg1 arg2)
I'm curious, are you saying that you know a lot about the oil business.

And do you think that calling someone's position names (free-market fundamentalism) is a strong argument?
I've actually switched to bing for search. I like their UI better and the results are just as good or better.
One's an early return due to error, one's a conditional return value.
Breaking 3×3 Boggle
Am I the only one who thinks the word "hack" has been tossed around all willy-nilly lately on HN? No offense to the parent post, it's just a trend that I'm starting to notice..
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=778952
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The comma means to use the value of place there, instead of the literal symbol 'place'.

(Ironically, MJD made one of the same mistakes there he complained about in his C examples -- mentioning 'v' twice, which makes any side effects happen twice. Lisp macros are better than C's, but still require some care.)

defsetf turns that expression into whatever the defsetf expander for f1 returns -- it's up to the code.
Best Places To Begin A Career: San Jose, CA and Cambridge, MA
Cleveland browns tickets
The Cleveland Browns-a professional American football team located in Cleveland, Ohio. The team is at present members of the Northern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). They started playing in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference and joined the NFL in 1950 after the AAFC combined into the older league. The Browns has won 4 AAFC titles and 4 NFL Championships.
There's also KLone (http://www.koanlogic.com/klone/): "KLone is a fully-featured, multiplatform, web application development framework, targeted especially for embedded systems and appliances." It uses C/C++, and can be used with either the GPL or a royalty-free commercial license.
The comma 'unquotes' the place variable so it is replaced with the value passed to the first argument on set-sqrt. I'm not in front of a lisp interpreter, but I think both those v's should be unquoted too in order to get the expected behavior ... (plus they are a bit leaky since they are evaluated twice, but that's just being pedantic).

Read http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/macros-defining-your-own.htm... for a more thorough explanation.

As for setf, a user can create arbitrary 'setters' using syntax like that described at http://gigamonkeys.com/book/object-reorientation-classes.htm...
I wonder if this could be applied to car traffic, especially in emerging countries, where traffic is at best rush hour conditions during most of the day.
Gmail may hand over IP addresses of journalists
If you installed Ruby using MacPorts you won't have this problem when you upgrade. You will have to reinstall MacPorts from their latest svn though.
I am switching to bing as well. The result is as good as google and I am happy. The way Google handles the whole adsense stuff just make me sick.
I don't think that's what you think it is. The Home Sync menu I'm familiar with is for mirroring a network home directory on your local disk, in conjunction with another machine running Mac OS X Server. As far as I know, this feature has nothing to do with portable home directories on iPods.
No, Bing results are actually much worse, especially for detecting typos in not so popular queries.
Really neat idea.

I'd say you want to give more people an incentive to get out, since part of the dynamics will be hour the middle and back of the crowd work, but I really like the idea of the cash reward.

The only difficulty will be to make it big enough that people feel the same stress as when they think there is a fire but not so big as to bankrupt the study :)
The close contact all the south american world leaders had during #UNASUR creates an unimaginable risk of chaotic repercussions. Consider, also, that none of the other presidents (except ofcourse, Chavez) have responded on the issue. I hope it is as you say, a misdiagnosis. Although, it was not even offered as a possibility by the health officials.
Best quote:

Last week Control Data ... announced the 6600 system. I understand that in the laboratory developing the system there are only 34 people including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers ... Contrasting this modest effort with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer.

-- Thomas Watson, IBM, Aug 1963 (slide 44)

It seems like Mr. Watson has answered his own question.

-- Cray's response

I started my career in hardware, and Cray was always one of my heroes.
This has nothing to do with ZFS, but FYI: you can configure consumer-grade Western Digital drives to report failures immediately, rather than retrying, just like their more expensive "enterprise" counterparts. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limited_Error_Recovery for details. A bit of Googling will turn up the WDTLER.exe binary that you need; make a bootable FreeDOS CD or USB stick, then run WDTLER from the command line to toggle the feature on or off.

Possibly there are other good reasons to buy the enterprise models, but using the cheaper drives is working out for me. I'm running 6 WD15EADS drives with TLER disabled in a software RAID6 configuration on a GNU/Linux machine, and except for the fact that two of the drives failed within hours of first use (the replacement drives work fine), I've had no problems running the array 24/7 for over a month now.
After reading the article it is clear to me that perhaps the best treatment for depression would be a start up. The symptoms fall right in line with a startup lifestyle: ability and need to continuously work on problems dividing them smaller and smaller, eating disorders and weight loss or gain, isolation and not spending time with friends and loved ones, etc.
I'm not depressed but my startup lifestyle sure has me living with the symptoms.
That wasn't what I was suggesting, though in fairness I didn't even bother to read the code.
It already is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout
Doesn't seem like a hired gun to me. Seems he's very ethical and loyal to whoever happens to be his employer and is not driven solely by financial reward.
In my experience, running ruby in 64 bit mode is very much not a win. It's detectably slower, and absolutely chews up memory.

But you should never be using the system Ruby anyways.
I know several guys, who were doctors in former USSR, came to US, and now are working in department stores, or driving a taxi, because the path to get licensed in the US is too long, overcomplicated, and costs lots of money.
Except for health insurance, where people insure against the risk that they're going to go to the doctor for a routine annual checkup this year. (Other people have said it better than me: its like submitting a claim against your car insurance to pay for an oil change.)
From: http://altmedicine.about.com/od/healthconditionsatod/a/Depre...

St. John's Wort
Omega-3 fatty acids
Sam e
Folic Acid
5-HTP
Diet (sugar, caffeine, alcohol, vitamin b6, magnesium)
exercise
sunlight
etc.

I suppose you might include psychotherapy, various other non drug therapies, a whole range of activities, socialisation, sex, pets...

Most of those probably wouldn't be considered drugs at all. I think the jist is that you can get good results managing depression with a mix of treatments (that may include drugs), which will vary from person to person. I think it is similar to how HIV or high blood pressure gets treated. You need to find what works by trial and error.

I like the fact that in the above list it is not obvious where the lines are: drug or non drug, medicine, paramedicine, pseudo medicine, alternative medicine or old wives tale. That kind of blurriness also applies to the diagnosis of the condition itself.
Planning For Your Destination Wedding
Destination Weddings are always fun but at the same time they present you with many challenges when it comes to wedding planning. Before finalizing your wedding destination make sure that you have enough time to prepare for your wedding. Destination weddings would not be a good option for last minute arrangements. You must decide your wedding destination, there are so many exciting wedding destinations in the US as well as outside the US
Carver Mead. Didn't make it to slide 2? :)

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/craytalk...
To be completely accurate, H1-Bs are attached to an existing company. You can transfer your H1-B to another company, as long as that company is will to spend time (a couple of months) and money (several thousand dollars) to sponsor your H1-B. You cannot, however, start your own company. H1-Bs are, as the blog post says, a huge barrier to employee mobility and the creation of startups.

Another common type of visa in the valley is the L1. Big companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, who have foreign subsidiaries, hire people in those countries. After they have worked in the foreign office for a year they can apply for the L1, which is an "internal transfer". This allows them to work in the US, but only for that company. You cannot ever work another company than the original sponsor of your L1. This really is indentured servitude (though of course it's usually quite well paid).
Modern Crowd Control Lessons from Ancient Pompeii
Enough crazy shit happens that you don't hear about --- crazy random shit, with no possible rational explanation --- that these thoughts are cold comfort.
No trouble at all. I'm glad it has provoked some constructive discussion. I only wanted to mention the situation for the benefit of those saying that my post was an example of the kind of rant it was ranting against :-)
INS would stop you at the very first one. Do you think they haven't thought of this loophole?

INS has strict rules about the companies to which it will issue visas. Companies must have established physical offices, have existed for a certain length of time, have a minimum number of other employees, and be able to produce statements showing real customers and actual revenue to prove they are a "real" company.

None of these apply to a startup. Even for medium-sized companies, the lawyers, time and expense required to sponsor an H1-B is a big barrier to hiring immigrants on this visa. For a startup it's completely impossible: not just inconvenient or expensive; impossible. INS will not let H1-Bs join a startup, even a genuine one.
That must have been at Linuxcare... I was there too and have a few memories of him.
You're all right, of course. It has been around for ages, Snow Leopard merely revamped it. Updated the article accordingly.
Definitely a good read, and coincidentally written on my 15th birthday.
All you need is this for a full database of DC startups and their open jobs: http://crossmine.com/

Take a look at the Startup sponsors on these RSVPs:
http://twintech.eventbrite.com
http://twintech2.eventbrite.com
http://twintech3.eventbrite.com
http://twintech4.eventbrite.com

Oh and for an upcoming event (10/30 - big tech/creative party): http://techarts.eventbrite.com

-Peter Corbett, iStrategyLabs (@corbett3000)
> China was the worst place I've ever been

Saw the whole country, did you? That was fast.
Anecdotal, but this seems to back up what I've experienced in life...

I've dealt with bad depression for most of my life..and it really, really sucks. When I "come out" of it, I'll look back at some of the things I did and said while I was depressed and just be like "WTF!?". It will usually result in my apologizing to people around me for acting bizarre, and alienating myself from whatever friends I had previously made.

Suck-zore.

The GOOD thing about it is that depression has almost always been a major brain-catalyst for me. When I was young, the first thing that got catalyzed was dirt-bikes. For a summer I did almost literally nothing other than read about, and ride dirtbikes. I emerged from that knowing more than anybody I know of about all the racers and bikes and parts and tracks etc. etc.

Then I discovered computers...

I know it's stupid and childish to reference the Hacker's Manifesto...but that pretty much nailed it for me. Here is something that doesn't get mad at me for being depressed, or scream at me to stop talking back, or think I'm weird, or anything like that....

Hands down, my best code has been written while I'm depressed.

For somebody that can't imagine what being depressed is like...imagine taking a photo that is out of focus, nothing really makes any sense at all. You can make out shapes, but they're blurry and not that meaningful. That is depression (well, that is actually a better descriptor for mania, not depression...depression would be more like really low light)...

Sitting down at a computer and getting buried under a bunch of code is...in focus, if that makes sense. When you're manic, or depressed, code is something solid that you can grab on to.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense.
The problem you are describing is a result of ghetto-ization, both self-imposed (people like to live near their "fellows") and externally imposed (lack of a wide range of property values in an area leading naturally to income-segregation, with recent immigrants likely to end up stuck all together).

If you solve the problem of income-segregation by somehow generating a city where rich and poor live side by side, then I think you go a long way to tackling the source of ghetto-formation, both for immigrants and the local poor.

I have seen several cities where this has been achieved, though I have no idea why it occurs in one area and not another. I have a suspicion that it is tightly related to the density of development. A city with lots of skyscraper apartment blocks (both fancy and simple) can fit so many people in such a small area that even if the rich and poor live in different buildings, the buildings may be so close together that they share the same services (schools, hospitals, restaurants, etc).

As a concrete example, I live a short 5 minute bicycle ride from a friend of mine. My 8 story apartment building has about 24 units, all of them relatively modest. My friend lives in a million dollar condo in a building with probably 30-40 units as well. This is in the very heart of the city.
VMware May Be Microsoft’s Top Rival After Google
Yes, I believe it is correct.

Keep in mind Clojure is running on top of jvm so they had to, first, figure out a balance between being practical and being "pretty" and, second, work within the constraints of the environment. I think Rich Hickey has done a tremendous job here (and keeps doing it).
This article seems to be mostly speculation and is frankly weird in its assertions.

The very definition of depression is unproductive behaviors, and patterns of thought that go in circles.

There is a productive emotion that causes both reflectiveness and social isolation; it's called "sadness". People often describe a period of mourning as a necessary downtime, a reconfiguration, to get ready for the rest of one's life. I have never heard anyone describe depression as anything other than a waste of time.
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for a 1 time command that I don't need to look at again I'd just use alt+f2 kde's 'run prompt' is pretty good. of course it doesn't actually provide the 'shell environment'.
> The table of contents doesn't seem to mention LL(* ) grammars, which are used by ANTLR.

It's true, this book mentions LL(* ) only in passing. There is a short section (8.3.3), which concludes by saying:

"LL-regular is probably of theoretical interest only; if a parser writer goes through that much trouble, the effort is more wisely spent on LR-regular. Still, it offers many interesting insights, and the parser landscape would be incomplete without it."

Notice that they call it "LL-regular" instead of LL(* ); after reading the somewhat scant literature about LL-regular, I have become convinced that LL(* ) is one in the same as LL-regular, which saw some research in the late seventies. I have been in contact with Terence Parr (author of ANTLR) to see if he comes to the same conclusion. I sent him the LL-regular papers (some of which he had not seen before), and have not heard back from him since.

I'm also working on a parsing project that uses LL(* )/LL-regular (http://www.gazelle-parser.org). It's too bad the technique has not received more attention, because it can be quite powerful.

> I think this is the same thing as a "pack rat" parser (which from memory has a very straightforward implementation, but isn't an academic concept).

No, packrat parsers are not the same as LL(* )/LL-regular. They are both top-down methods, but LL(* )/LL-regular is deterministic, meaning you build a table ahead of time that tells you what decision to make when you're faced with a choice. Packrat parsing, on the other hand, is based on memoized search.

Packrat parsing is linear time, linear space. LL(* )/LL-regular is linear time, constant space [0]. While both are linear time, LL(* )/LL-regular is faster. On the other hand, packrat parsers can handle all non-left-recursive grammars, while LL(* )/LL-regular can only handle a subset of such grammars.

[0] Technically the time could degrade to n^2, but no real language would trigger this. Also, the space is technically proportional to the nesting depth, but this is typically omitted.

> I've been writing parsers for a few years now, but I have found the academic work on it to be actively misleading - at least, for the specific things that I want to do.

Really? What do you find misleading? I've been reading more and more parsing literature, and while it can tend toward the impenetrable and mathematical, I've never found it misleading. And I quite like the book mentioned in this article -- if you don't own it already you should definitely get a copy if you're active in the field.

> Or it could just be that I'm doing something quite strange and weird (i.e. novel and non-obvious).

Out of curiosity, what are you doing? And is your PhD focused on parsing? I'm always looking to meet people who are active in the field.
Here is another interview of vembu (from India perspective)
http://www.pluggd.in/indian-startups/interview-with-sridhar-...
I'm twelve, and what is this?
> I think this is the same thing as a "pack rat" parser (which from memory has a very straightforward implementation, but isn't an academic concept).

Also, packrat parsing was popularized in the academic literature by Bryan Ford's Master's Thesis "Packrat Parsing: a Practical Linear-Time Algorithm with Backtracking". It is best known in the context of Parsing Expression Grammars (PEG).
And with an engineer’s logic, he laid out his reasons for returning to the fray. Search determines where users go online, and search advertising is the most powerful economic force on the Internet. The business is too important to be controlled by a single company, he says.

Whatever search engine you prefer, it is kinda hard not to agree with that statement.
I'm not a CL guy so I don't know how defsetf actually works, but I skipped down in that link to where that Lisp macro is, and if defsetf works like he describes (and I don't know if it does), then

(setf (f1 arg1) arg2)

will cause an error, but

(setf (sqrt arg1) arg2)

will expand into

(setf arg1 (* v v))

which, as you can see, is nonsensical in terms of what it looks like he was trying to do.