skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Yes, I did. Does it hurt to offer a different perspective?

No, I was questioning whether you had considered his arguments at all, given the "why do we start counting at 0" question which he tried to answer.

> I didn't make a case that 0 was odd, I asked how I should look at it: as element 0, or as the first element.

You can look at it either way, as both are correct.

> If you look at it as element 0, the first element of the vector is an even element. If, on the other hand, you look at it as the first element, you will think it is an odd element.

Ah, I see your point now. To me this wouldn't be a question because everyone knows programmers start counting at 0 -- a machine instruction would operate on indexes, not ordinals. "The first element" is the element with index 0. It is not "element number one", or if you do want to see it that way, "number one" is the ordinal you use when you start counting on your fingers, which is something we deliberately ignore.
That's exactly what I'm saying. I haven't asked pg or jl if they'd be willing to do it like this. The paperwork is certainly cheaper, but their stock would have fewer rights. I don't plan on needing the money.
DMCA exemptions expire after three years - and SIM unlocking was initially exempted in 2006, so it's up for review now-ish.
The War on (some) Drugs is so friggin' stupid! We'd be better off just doing what we can to make drug production a respectable and not so dangerous trade.
Damn the semi bluff!

The move to the bay area was independent of the shutdown. There are so many more opportunities, for biz dev, investment, talent, acquisitions, etc.
Please don't take my comment to imply all art is this way. I'm just saying that artists who join this culture of obfuscation are doing so because there are buyers who like or depend on it.
I don't know about #2. Here in the US, the TV networks will pull the cameras off streakers and make sure they aren't televised.
I write in primarily in 3 languages, 2 start indexes at 0 and the third starts at 1.

Not withstanding Dijkstra's logical arguments, I have adopted starting at 1 for 2 reasons:

1. I don't have to think about "shifting" data in order to look at it in the third language.

2. I don't have to "think" at all. It's intuitive that the first element is "1".

I just insert a null in the first position of any array in a 0-starting language.
Absolutely. His penmanship is as thoughtful as his bearing. I just hate pdf links.
Actually, it's not being split at all. There's going to be a "small" variant that is a proper subset of the "large", or complete variant. Small would just be a reduced feature set.
I've been thinking very hard about this topic lately and actually went ahead with writing some code. Then I found http://www.opencoin.org who already did some of the work.

I think there's a lot than can be done in this field - not with micropayments, which everybody seems to think about first when they see this. What I find a lot more interesting is the possibility of many competing Internet currencies not tied to any national one.

How about turning HN karma into a currency? Probably no mass-market appeal... what's lacking is a killer application for digital money and when it comes, it'll probably be in a form that doesn't seem like money to us now.
A while back I played this joke on Ruby people. It was an elaborate joke, where I wrote a fully dynamic assembler in a couple weeks, and then did an entire presentation at RubyEnRails (Amsterdam) basically showing how my “literal machine” beat the pants of all the Ruby virtual machines

What are "Ruby people" to Zed? I happen to use Ruby but I didn't even know who _why was until about 6 months ago, when somebody mentioned his book and asked how I possibly couldn't have heard of it. I don't follow any of the DHHs of the blogosphere unless I stumble on a story about them. I don't attend Ruby and/or Rails conferences.

I just happen to use Ruby from time to time, in situations where I believe it is the appropriate tool, and because I like it. The thing is, I may have fallen for this joke. I don't have the expertise to know that it was a prank. How would misleading somebody like me be funny? It would be like a a professor misleading her students instead of teaching them. How did things get so sour between Zed and the "Ruby people" that he feels the need to play these pranks at conferences where presumably he was called in because he had the respect of the attendees?

I was sad to see the fallout happen and at the time I emailed Zed and thanked him for his effort. What I didn't mention was that he shouldn't assume that the only people using Ruby and Rails were the type of people he mentioned that he hated. I'd like to think that a lot of programmers who use Ruby are modest and amicable, and like me, uninterested in the peripheral fluff that has sprouted up with the birth of Rails.
My friends loathe the taste of onions. I consider them to be diseased.
Why do languages always have to evolve? On average, do languages get better over time or do they deteriorate? I am sure that Java has deteriorated a lot.

Keep it simple, please!
They would take away the livelihoods of a large number of farmers. From an Afgan farmer's position, when there are these foreign troops with strange customs and behavior that you don't really understand or like, and then they destroy all your crops and leave you and your family to starve, it tends to turn you against them. And when you have a lot of anger and time on your hands, some will decide to take up arms against the troops instead.
That's a pretty bold statement, and on the face of it incorrect.

Our messages was first and foremost to assure users that their money is still there. And then we made a comment on the market that we failed to succeed in.
Makes me wonder how I've never thought to look into that while I was writing 15 page papers all the time.
Look at your hand and start counting your fingers while naming them:

[1] thumb

[2] index

[3] middle

[4] ring

[5] pinkie

so we have a simple range [1..5]

which can be represented in so many ways in computer programs:

for i=1 to 5 print finger[i]

for(i in [1..5]) print finger[i]

my first finger[1] is my thumb

my last finger[5] is my pinkie

how many fingers we have? as many as the last index in the list: 5

-

now, C programmers like to count this way:

for(i=0;i<5;i++) print finger[i]

where finger[0] is thumb

and finger[4] is pinkie

how many fingers we have?

as many as the last index in the list plus one: 4+1

how human-like!

And that's why you get so messy when trying to get the string position of a substring:

if(pos>-1) exists, since pos=0 means the substring is in the starting position

again, how human-like!

But how dare I argue with C programmers without being burned at the stake?
Worth noting clojurebox exists, if all you want is clojure and emacs.
Hours of fun: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=twss
Perhaps they wouldn't all have contributed code back.

On the other hand, maybe yet more would have used the code, and some of them would have contributed code back.

Copyleft vs. copyfree is not a zero-sum game. Choice of license doesn't only affect the restrictions placed on those who use the code; it also affects the likelihood that someone will use it at all, and we really don't know how many people avoid using some code for a given license and might have contributed their improvements to the community.
Indeed. The peg parser generator is quite nice:
http://piumarta.com/software/peg/

I recently used it to implement an s-expression reader:
http://zwizwa.be/darcs/libprim/ex/sexp.leg

(It's incomplete, but it illustrates the principle: peg parsing is very nice for quick & dirty parsing work.)
> GPLed software is Free™ software that remains Free™.

FTFY
Autonomous Systems: social, legal and ethical issues
Yes, use the google group in place of the meetup. http://groups.google.com/group/boston-startup-poker
I wish I had the answers for where to go with this, because there's no doubt in my mind it's the Next Big Thing (TM). That said, I strongly suggest reading Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingd...), as his Whuffie system seems like a path that needs to be taken, somehow.
Guigo Duarte
The Bessemer Venture Partners Anti-Portfolio
I will definitly have a look on this feature. dunno how it can be generalized to all languages though.
This might be cool or not, I don't understand a word of it (also for lack of patience). However it reminds me how simple it is to appear smart: just keep babbling about things nobody understands. The thing is they might actually be easy things, but because other people are not used to the context of the things, they can not follow you as quickly as you can talk. Therefore they'll assume you are smart. In reality, you are just talking about irrelevant stuff.
Worrying trends in programming languages: Javascript
My brother's girlfriend is highly allergic to onions.
I consider her to be cursed.
"keeping the lower bound within the natural numbers; having the upper bound be the number of elements in the preceding sequence, etc."

Read your post and understand the same can be said of using one-based indexing.
PyMag looking for startups using Python. Anyone?
That kinda seems to be the point: the GPL folks come off as hypocritical form the BSD folks' point of view, and the BSD folks are unwilling to be that hypocritical about it.
People sometimes complain about Lua's tables, which use 1 as their first index when treated like arrays. I suppose it could make some algorithms more complicated but in my day to day programming it's never made any difference to me so far.
Assuming you're not being facetious, I happen to think mathematics would be more advanced today if a little attention was paid to standardizing its notation:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=733265

But don't take that as enthusiasm for committees.
"...It's a real shame that we don't have any numerical way to measure overall wealth level across time periods, all we can do is measure relative distributions at a single time..."

We are creating such database and a tool for analyzing it. The data are collected from SEC Form 4, Form 3 submissions then aggregated. The problem is the quantity of data to be analysed is enormous and COTS data bases cannot handle it. So we needed to create a new parallel columnar time series database technology from scratch in order to do that. Also in order to compare different time frames there is a need of better visualization.

Here is some info here:
http://www.thstart.com/THStart/trader-head-start
I agree that it still doesn't make a lot of sense, especially today. But consider

1.) Even if the carrier only charged me for the second leg, it would still be a charge for an incoming call, which is what the OP was complaining about.

2.) This was, as you point out, back when cellular was just starting out, and roaming was a lot more common, even within your own theoretical "home area," because coverage was so poor, and because we had a decent amount of competition back in the early days - every area in the U.S. initially had two carriers (called an "A side" and "B side"), and they all used an analog technology called AMPS which was generally configured such that you roamed on each others' networks quite frequently.

3.) My last point about big stodgy carriers unwilling to give up a money maker still stands. :)
I don't think it's that simple. Take, for instance, this gentleman [1] on YouTube with Aspergers and Tourettes lapsing into a state similar to low-functioning autism. Take note of his own description of his state: "I lose the ability to control my body, I cannot express my desires, and I can't walk without falling." That's not at all akin to a culinary preference.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt1tLnwVpG4
> No, I was questioning whether you had considered his arguments at all

Ah, yes. No, I wasn't trying to disprove him. I just gave a different approach to the issue. My mind is not made up on this subject. I've been a programmer for too long: 0 is burned in my fingers and my mind.

> a machine instruction would operate on indexes, not ordinals

The interesting aspect isn't the difference between indexes and ordinals, but the difference between indexes and cardinals. The cardinals match the ordinals for normal people. For normal people, indexes have no meaning.

But the difference between indexes and cardinals aren't that easy for programmers either. In an example presented by Dijkstra a young programmer used 0 in everyday language as a cardinal replacing 1. Indexes have little meaning in real life, but cardinals do.

Good response, BTW. Thanks. It's interesting to link the concepts of ordinals and cardinals to the discussion.
Oh, yeah, I forgot something in my other response.

> If you contribute to a BSD'ed project you take the risk of your competitor taking your code and making it a competitive advantage against you.

The GPL actually has more value as a tool of anticompetitive advantage than the BSD License:

http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=622
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenness_of_zero

Learning that such article could exist (it DOES exist), and reading it was a shocking experience to me.
Seems at odds with this recent post, "The Seven Vices of Highly Creative People"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=744053

One those vices was dressing well. Who would have thought it.
Could be helpful to the blogger crowd in trying to connect more with their audience members.
It's evidence of something.

I wonder how many failed Linux distributions there are.
A Demonstration of Data Mining
I wish I was shown this in my "introduction to programming course".

All they told us was "because that's how things are. [MEMORIZE IT!]"

Perhaps I should read more of Dijkstra's writings.

Edit: I love when directory indexing is NOT forbidden.
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/
I called this one also: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=200025

Another YC company that will soon be going under or losing its founder will be loopt.
I partly disagree. Of course, networking, contacts and "who you know" are important. And DailyBooth were undoubtedly helped in getting TC coverage by the YC connection. But that's PR, which is different to creating a compelling product in and of itself, which is where I believe context and positioning (eg. link shortener for bacon) is important.
> You're not in the minority. Fanatics are just loud.

Hmmm. That statement has implications you may not have intended.
. . . or, alternatively:

BSD shares. GPL tells you to share.
DailyBooth could easily switch on anonymity - there's nothing technically difficult about that. But 4chan has a culture that allows for anonymous posts, which is why I think the context of a community is often more important in defining a service that technology.

Admittedly, individual feeds do change the way users behave a lot...but I'd argue that this feeds into changing the context that the tech is place in ;-)
Twitter pro accounts coming by year's end
Wow, Never knew. Wonder why they removed the finger. Is it supposed to contain a part of his soul?
Thanks God. The potential energy you've locked up in matter is totally useful! Without a potential difference, I wouldn't be enjoying this Big Mac. Thanks again!
How open source saved enterprise IT...
It's still not a contract, no matter how many times you say it is. See above.
You may want to take a look at Clojure/Compojure. A bit young, but already easier to use and more stable then some stuff I tried a few years ago.
> you usually don't need any more than "first" and "last" anyway.

Apart from FP people - they need "the first" and "the rest" ;)
I think JavaScript is pretty cool, actually. Everything is a hash - how much more simple can it get? In my opinion programming languages should strive for a small number of concepts, and JavaScript does very well in that regard.
This.

An interview candidate showing up in a T-shirt is a serious black mark, not because I care about how they dress at work, but because they don't care enough about the interview to put on a shirt with buttons and a pair of dress shoes.

If somebody has that level of respect for me, the company, or the whole song-and-dance process, what are they going to be like to work with? What happens when we need them to deal with customers?

Sure, they may be an amazing coder, but a bit of politeness and some social graces make for a better working environment any day.
"We could still achieve the same effect if we started indexing at 1, but it would require more code, and it would be less clear."

Really?

How about dealing with strings?

"123456789" how many chars we have? 9

char[1] = 1

char[2] = 2

:

char[9] = 9

Now, let's try the C approach:

"123456789"

char[0] = 1

char[1] = 2

:

char[8] = 9

where is char "1"? at zero index!

how many elements we have?

last index plus one!

see? there is already confusion in place, or as you say, more code and less clear...
I don't understand a word of it -> nobody understands

Quite a leap, sir.
"Where Do Professional Writers Write?" certainly matches up with Roald Dahl's writing space: http://boingboing.net/2009/02/13/roald-dahls-writing.html
Yes, things used to be better. It's the decay of the youth.
AFAIK you can't sign binding legal documents until you're 18.
No, but maybe featuritis is how languages die, to be replaced by newer, simpler languages.
I said it might be the sort of thing you guys were up for http://twitter.com/doughellmann/status/3451664681
Probably a bad idea. Poor, angry, disenfranchised people make for great terrorism recruits.
FWIW, I'd say I dress well, just casually.
Yeah, right now I have it displaying the changes. The trouble is I don't have an ordering for the versions. Gerry Giraffe doesn't depend on Kramer Koala. I'll fix that up though so that it toggles the changes. Might turn them into checkboxes to make it clearer?
That's false. You'd be forced to sacrifice the exclusive upper bound, which would then force you to sacrifice the difference between the upper and lower bounds being the number of elts in the collection. Unless the lower bound was exclusive, in which case it could be an unnatural number.

No, the only way there's no lump in the carpet is his way.
A better solution would be to just pay the farmers more than they get for the poppy to produce something else instead. With some basic sanity checks on the amount of stuff they produce the inevitable cheating of the system should be somewhat manageable. It might not be very cheap, but neither is handling the effects of drug-based crime at home or posting troops abroad.
BlackBerry Curve 8520 
BlackBerry Curve 8520 is the first RIM device that will be able to sync iTunes playlists, personal info, organizer memos etc. with Mac-running computers. The release of the new version of the BlackBerry Desktop Manager in September will enable that kind of functionality for the rest of the company's product line.
q
BlackBerry Curve 8520 
BlackBerry Curve 8520 is the first RIM device that will be able to sync iTunes playlists, personal info, organizer memos etc. with Mac-running computers. The release of the new version of the BlackBerry Desktop Manager in September will enable that kind of functionality for the rest of the company's product line.
Do keep in mind that one of the strengths of the U.S. is its overall lack of refinement; culturally, we idolize elegance, but respect scrapiness. More refined cultures tend to smack down imperfections, which is why a lot of start-ups happen outside of the Old World.

I also love suits and bespoke clothing (having a custom-tailored shirt makes such a difference), but I understand why a lot of people don't -- it's expensive, and a chore to deal with all the time.

Speaking of which, I need to get my shirts pressed...
I heard saffron could be a viable alternative cash crop.
Relevance needs to be influenced by a language classifier. I don't need Italian and Russian results.
I'm a actionscript developer at my day job and I would totally take up this approach if I didn't have to deal with screen/stage coordinates all the time.

You see, the backend of our project is in Coldfusion which has 1 based indexes for Array's and it has led to head-butting screen confusion when requesting the current index from the server. Then the visual side is always 1 based when showing data to the end-user, I'm always thinking I'm the problem in the middle.

There have been numerous occasions where QA have called me to ask why the first slide in a slideshow is called "Slide 0"!
Why people complain about the quality of Hacker News
After yesterday's _why backlash and the return of the Erlang outbreak, I thought I'd point out why I think people complain about Hacker News.

PG has basically said that he thinks the degradation of a site into crapville can be delayed or prevented by constant careful tweaking of the rules. Somewhere behind the scenes, he's pulling the levers guiding his creation away from the obvious potholes that he thinks Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, etc... have hit.

Generally, we all feel some ownership of Hacker News. We are submitting links, commenting and voting on submissions and other's comments. This is basically the only influence we have on the site. We each have a different idea of what an ideal HN would look like but in the end have relatively little control over it.

We use the few tools we have to register our disapproval. We down-vote people we disagree with. We cheer on and up-vote others who attack people we disagree with. We mass-submit stories to try to drown out the ones we don't like. We flame. While somewhat amusing, these are absolutely anti-social behaviors. They come about because we don't have other options.

One common response is "let me filter HN in x way" so that I can make it mine. There are a few custom views (i.e. classic) that have been played around with. If I were pg, I would resist this solution. I think part of what makes a good community is having a set of rules to deal with opposing views rather than tools to let them coexist like oil and water. A social common ground where ideas can mix. Once you allow your community to fragment like that, the news stories submitted become defined by the boundary layer. If you allow people to filter, then you risk creating flamewars when the filters fail. The tone of the site becomes a contest to 'win' a point for your side; to break through other people's filters and taunt them.

In the end, I'm not sure what the right answer is here. One group of people thinks that articles about _why and zed are valid; one doesn't. If it keeps going, I think at some point pg will have to tell one group "this is not the site for you" by pulling a lever. Until he does, people are left trying to fight to make this into the site they want with the few tools I have: bitching, retribution votes, flames, crap-flooding, etc...
We already have both Theory Focused Lisp (Scheme) and Practice Focused Lisp (CL).

What did I (sorry, I meant you :) miss?
This (subsidised legal crop production) was suggested by Columbia in the eighties as a way to curb cocaine exports, the response: We don't make deals with Terrorists...
"The problem is that his proposals ignore the economics behind banking. If you take someone's money and put it in a vault, how can you provide interest on that money?"

Except that he said this:

SafeBank would maintain a reserve level 2-3x higher than Fed requirements and any other bank.

What he's saying is this. SafeBank would be less risky and could spend a LOT less money. Revenue would be lower, but he's saying that spending at financial institutions is nigh ridiculous and could more than compensate for it.

"And he hasn't satisfied the most important question: how would this be better than a member-owned credit union?"

How is that the more important question? What if it was just as good as a credit union?

How much better is Starbucks? I think 80% of what he's talking about is a marketing opportunity.
Downvoted the best comment? That does it. I am going to start at the bottom of the comments from now on. :)
Java was never simple. Scheme is simple, Smalltalk is simple, Java was always a beast.