skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It is normally implemented via vtables.

OK, irrelevant. We are not discussing runtime implementation, we are discussing language semantics. A table lookup and a cascade of if statements are semantically the same. Value in, result out.

Polymorphism is the core of OOP, which consequently means that Haskell is OO.

You're going to have to explain this with more than one statement. "OOP" is a meaningless expression. "Haskell is OO" is similarly meaningless.

My Haskell example shows that functions can be polymorphic over values. OOP is polymorphic over types. Haskell typeclasses provide polymorphism over classes of types.

Not the same. But similar expressive power is possible either way.
In our extra tests we get 15k real user hits (get an image on a popular web-site front page, 3req/sec average), and then added 2 servers with load generators to get to 50-80 requests per second. We haven't noticed when it auto-scales (that was "proper" sharded counter application). Probably it never scales on non-billed account (but we were far from our limits).
4) Yes, you're right. Naysayers do abound. I refer to the world's "collective" opinion because, yes, it's all too easy to find a token naysayer who's eager to shoot you down.

That said, once you have a beta out, or some kind of working concept, the world becomes your sounding board -- where else, after all, will you get your users and customers? While it's important at some point to ignore what people think, it's just as important to keep at least half an ear open to their thoughts and opinions. I believe that you can learn more by listening deeply and attentively to people than by ignoring them.

5) As I said in the post, teams work for a number of people. They're one of the most common structures for getting companies off the ground. In the case of companies with strong technical needs, they can be particularly helpful, as different people can bring different skill sets and perspectives that may prove to be instrumental.

That said, I challenge the widely-held assumption that a founding team is necessary, vital, or inherently "better" than starting a company by yourself, and bringing people on later.

I hold that a single person, charged with focus and determination, can launch a concept with speed and single-mindedness that's difficult to replicate in a team environment. A team, despite the benefits it confers, adds added complexity to decision-making, and can dilute an idea as easily as it can rally behind it.
Google's Long Road Back To $500
1) Pick a problem and solve it.

Interesting, Christian never mentioned any of the "problems" Trogger wanted to solve. It does seem, at first glance, that this idea was a solution looking for a problem.
for me, signal < noise.
This same topic came up in a comment thread on HN a while ago... The drug approval process in most countries definitely needs to be shortened.

There are thousands of people that have terminal diseases which are unresponsive to treatment that are willing to undergo experimental therapies. Animal testing is not very nice for the animals and doesn't always provide useful results. Voluntary human trials need to be more accessible...
The same article in Russian (click "RU") has the following title: "Should you use Google AppEngine?". The author has been lost in translation.
Yes. Though Europe is just as bad.
I don't need someone to acknowledge everything I say.

Then why are you posting this to a social news site?
2 Things I've Learned from other People's Failed Startups
1) Starting a tech company is hard.

2) Writing about a failed tech company is easy.
Venturebeat aquires Tradevibes
Though on the other hand most new drugs aren't that much more effective than the old ones. If at all.
Please. This is such an outrageous claim to make that you need evidence to back it up, calling anything on this scale 'inevitable', let alone to stick an upper limit on it less than two centuries into the future is not very realistic.

So, instead of looking for all the excellent arguments that have already been made 'contra' Kurzweil, the biggest of which is that nobody can predict the future, let's hear some of the reasons why this is 'inevitable' that do not contain any qualifications or build upon other technologies that we do not have today.
"Learn how to tell them to go to hell in such a way they'll want to go." - heard in the 61st Emmy Awards, forgot who said it though !
i was hacking on
http://raphaeljs.com/chart.html
first because the animation is just so beautiful. definitely got me digging into the SVG path specs
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/paths.html#PathData
but man is that code a rats nest. i just had a look at analytics.html and it is a breath of good design.

i really want analytics and chart demos, plus
http://raphaeljs.com/github/impact.html
to be part of g.raphael.
read first two already :P

2nd was life changing
You're absolutely right. This was one of our biggest failing points from the time we started. We built a cool, graceful, elegant solution... that ultimately solved little.
Zend Technologies launches "The Simple Cloud API"
This kind of scares the shit out of me.

To me, the human condition seems like a very fragile thing; more so than many seem to appreciate. With predictions like Mr Kurzweil's, I wonder and worry that our possibilities will grow too large too fast and beyond control. I usually assure myself in optimistic spirit that "the humane will prevail". But it's no absolute truth.

I'm reminded of an interview with Douglas Hofstadter that I think was posted here on HN, on a similar topic.

http://tal.forum2.org/hofstadter_interview
No one legitimate is going to do this because of the legal risks. No one illegitimate is going to do this because it's probably not as profitable as building a botnet.
Venturebeat raised 320K of funding. Tradevibes raised close to 1M.

Any guesses as to the acquisition price? Probably all stock, and I would guess Tradevibes was in zombie mode, out of money. This is all pure speculation - anyone have any insight. Quite a curious deal.
Ask HN: Rate my start-up - muZixs
So, I've been reading various posts here about social networking sites, checking what people are doing/saying and generally just being curious about why/how these sites grow in popularity. So I thought I'd test an idea out with this mocked up site: www.movix.co.uk/muzixs

It's a dating site for the 'we're really into our music' niche. The idea comes from that uncomfortable, first time chat with someone that you maybe meet at the bus stop, in the queue at the supermarket or maybe on a poorly planned blind date. The conversation often seems to go something like 'hey, so what sort of music are you into? Then you find you have the same tastes and wow... it's all good.

If you like this, we'll build it.
Intriguing idea, at least as a sort of practical joke. The problem is, it would change the ideas. For example, when I rewrote the paragraph about labor unions, I had to ditch the point about fallen civilizations overrating past eras; though I didn't make the link explicitly, the comparison to medieval history would be obvious to anyone who'd studied much of it. (People in medieval Europe felt inferior to the ancients long after it ceased to be true.) I didn't like tossing this point, but there was no convenient way to get it into the new version.
Where's the full article? All I see is an introduction.
You can also use the newish Appengine feature for Task Queues (http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/taskqueue/)
Yahoo CEO tees off on media
Grinders, modders, etc - "Grinders" is Warren Ellis's term for it, and I've been rereading his stuff recently, so...

Basically, anybody who starts tinkering with the physical form itself - whether by small modifications, such as improved eyesight, or large modifications, like swapping your legs out for a tank chassis.
What I meant was, within EU the notion of having two weeks to pack your bags is already absurd. This, I think, is what should be fought against, not specific immigration rights. What is needed now is to enlarge this space with countries like US, Japan or Australia, and slowly with the whole world.
Drug approval processes can take anywhere between several months and a decade, the problem here is that a longevity drug would be screwing around with so many systems in our body that the usual 5 year process (for standard drugs) or even the 10 year process (like for Hep C meds and such) would likely look like a blur to the people developing longevity drugs. My personal bet, the drug approval process alone would take up all of those 20 years.

The only way a longevity drug would get through testing quickly is if the benefit seriously outweighed the costs and there was serious public outcry for it.

The only fast way to market for a drug like this might seriously be to sell to China or Africa and prove it in the field. The only problem here is that you won't ever get the big bucks from Westerners.

Perhaps the best market for drugs like this would be to sell explicitly to countries with universal health cares and form an agreement that a subscription constitutes a 20 year contract. Instead of selling on a premium or by quantity, you sell by longevity and nail entire countries on dependence.
I read more on the internet than just tech stuff, and those are interests I'd like to discuss with the people I spend a lot of my time with. What do you plan on talking to someone about if not shared interests?

What heuristic would you use to find people who would complement your views rather than reinforce them? It doesn't sound like an easy problem to solve. Looking at what someone reads does give a good indication of what their views are, but that's not how you have to use it. You can just use it as an indicator of a general interest in politics, for instance.
Scaling Twitter: Making Twitter 10000 Percent Faster
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:mfi_ssC0kxwJ:highscalab...

(highscalability.com is down. perhaps they need highavailability.com?)
That's just a subtler manifestation of the same principle. Selecting agents with behaviour X vs. selecting behaviour X within agents.
People usually go on dating sites to get laid and/or find soulmates

I often wonder if this is why most dating sites struggle: most people who are trying to get laid feel they need to at least pretend they are looking for a mate(1) or else they come across as being too crass. This then leads to mismatch between the "I want to get laid soon" and the "I am looking for a long term mate" groups and both end up unsatisfied. It's for just this reason my gut tells me that OnlineBootyCall.com will succeed.

(1) sometimes the unexpected happens and they converge: my wife and I met on Yahoo! Personals about 10 years ago when we were both just looking for a booty call :-)
I think this misses the point of the original article. While the overall point of ignoring progress may be valid, Mankiw is aware of the ability of markets to reduce costs. He is asking about how to allocate scarce resources. If there is a method for immortality which costs more than the average production of the population, there is no way to give it to everyone. Who gets it? It is a thought experiment, not a prediction for advanced cultures.
They could, but AFAIK they don't (not that I pay much attention to the drug market in Lower Elbonia). Roughly speaking, the looser a country's drug regulations, the smaller its market.

There's not really that much time to be saved here anyway, not compared to the time frame we're talking about. Look at figure 2.1 here: http://books.google.com/books?id=zlzwOEtDu4IC&pg=PA11...

If you skip the Phase III trials and the red tape, you save maybe 5 years. Probably not enough to do much for a codger like Kurzweil, any more than it did for a couple of other dead people who loudly proclaimed that they would live forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM-2030

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson
a) He's not talking about drugs, the word 'drug' is not even mentioned in the (hype-filled 'article').

b) Even if he was basing his ideas on one or more drugs, what sort of stumbling block does 'government approval in the USA' present if you're a multimillionaire with contacts in high-tech industries, looking to avoid death? Not much of one.

c) The article claims 'could be as little as twenty years' not 'in twenty years exactly'.

d) His predictions are based on transformational technologies such as nanotechnology and/or AI, they wont follow on linearly from current ailing pharma, so that's not relevant.

e) He has made pots of cash from software that depended on improving technology for many of it's improvements (voice recognition), has predicted when computing power would hit certain levels in advance and designed and made inventions to meet the predictions and his predictions were accurate enough to do that, he has written whole books presenting and justifying his claims, he works part time from a doctor's office while being treated with the currently best available anti-aging and rejuvenation treatments and has changed his life around gunning for longevity. To dismiss him as merely a sad fantasizing old man is completely unjustified as well as being an ad-hom attack.
Doesn't that just mean you're following the wrong people? It's not like Twitter forces you to listen to (or continue to listen to) people when you're not getting value from them.
Something similar I have been thinking about for a while; credit rating for businesses by consumers. Right now, we have ratings, which are basically meaningless -- companies are not punished for being poorly rated. (Look at AT&T, everyone hates them, yet they keep paying their iPhone bills.)

I want to get a critical mass of consumers so that poorly-behaving businesses can be punished. If bank foo makes it a habit of not answering customer support emails, then the base of consumers moves their accounts elsewhere. (Bank foo does this to us; if your personal credit rating is below a certain value, they won't offer their services to you.)

Sadly, I don't think this will ever work. Companies pay people millions to get rid of bad customers, but consumers are happy to be jerked around if it's less effort than not being jerked around. Too bad.
The problem is with the publications who accept positions on the SUL and then won't write a negative piece about Twitter for fear of being removed from the list. Those publications have an integrity issue. Most of you guys are looking in the wrong place. It's hard to argue that Twitter did anything terribly wrong. The ones you should be looking at are the journalists who are still on the list.
Sustainable nuclear fusion has been twenty years away for the last fifty years or more.

It still is twenty years away.

That's a long twenty years.
is there a reason why you want to build another one and not improve the current one? stop on by.. it is every ones space.. we actively encourage other groups to come try and take us over =].
The strength of path dependence and network effects in the economy is overrated, see the book "Winners, Losers, and Microsoft", http://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Stan-Liebowit... , for a pretty thorough discussion.
Our app got rejected again. We're trying to figure out why.
Alternatively, save the entirety of your genetic code as a data file and update it to the latest storage medium every few decades. Even the best-preserved original cells will become unusable after a while.
I would really like to see a Tufte style graph showing: a) number of people involved over time, b) % of time spent by each person, and c) profitability for the same time period, with a wide range of failed and successful startups.

Assuming one could come up with a way to clearly display that information.
...don't have the ability to install stuff on their machines

But their IT departments can install it. Those IT departments usually want to upgrade because they have to write internal web apps and they feel the pain, too. But they can't upgrade due to various legacy apps that are tightly coupled to IE6. This lets them have their cake and eat it, too.
When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves. Try this thought experiment: if Arrington seemed like the nicest, most self-deprecating guy in the world-- like Father Mulcahy, for anyone who remembers MASH-- would people be so angry about his supposed lack of journalistic scruples?
> You ignored the requirements and demonstrated expertise in the wrong area, IMO.

The assignment was about implementing the functionalities of a simple library management app. And it was explicitly to test using pointers, linked lists ecc.

The requirements were fully implemented. And all the queries were handled by functions which were completely separated from the gui code.

Basically, instead of a textual menu (1 - borrow, 2 - return etc.) you had a Mac Os menu and the results were presented inside fields in a window instead of a textual output.

If I had to convert the program to a textual interface by editing my source (instead of doing everything from scratch) it would have took me 5 minutes (or less). IIRC the code was already there and simply commented out.

Keep also in mind that our lab was full of Macs (50-60 machines) with just a PC (which, btw, has been used by a guy who had made the app with his own advanced textual interface - something like ncurses - and who had a similar fate as mine). So I thought it was a plus to use the native gui of the OS we were using all the time.

> Of course, it doesn't matter now.

Of course. It happened 17 years ago :-)
A gem from that site:

<Shipments>
<LineItem LineNumber="1" SKU="123456">
<Order Number="555444">
<Package ShipMethod="UPS" Tracking="1Z123467WW53631"/>
</Order>
</LineItem>
<LineItem LineNumber="2" SKU="654321">
<Order Number="555444">
<Package ShipMethod="UPS" Tracking="1Z123467WW53631"/>
</Order>
</LineItem>
</Shipments>

The designer of this schema was on crack.

http://sites.google.com/site/yacoset/Home/an-open-letter-to-...
The Most Controversial Magazine Covers of All Time
True - and Chrome (the full install) already does this - it installs everything into your C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome folder.
I think the main issue isn't this, it's that many of the corporate desktops that are still running older IE versions are no-installing-anything-at-all-locked-down.
I am not sure of the source of this post (newscientist - they haven't mentioned any references) but I found a paper describing the new animal model using naked mole rat in the area of aging. The paper also talks about highly reduced incidence/severity of cancer.

"The Naked Mole-Rat: A New Long-Living Model for Human Aging Research" http://biomed.gerontologyjournals.org/cgi/content/full/60/11...
There's another reason people "dislike" Arrington: they love participatory righteous indignation, and Arrington is willing to play sink to it. The ability to bear that, and even revel in it, is something many great people share, and makes me think TC isn't the biggest thing he'll accomplish.
When you’re met with confusion, doubt, and dismissal, it’s time to reevaluate. The world, collectively, is smarter than you are — pay attention to it.

I learned exactly the opposite from my startup. I was met with blank stare after blank stare as I explained my idea over and over.

As it turns out, if you are going after a non-mainstream market as I was (Internet culture), you're going to get this reaction a lot.

Okay, so my startup isn't huge. But it pays for itself and my modest salary. It's been 3 years now!
Reading this reminded me of Ellis and Harper's concept of Core Irrational Beliefs, from their book "A Guide to Rational Living" (http://books.google.com/books?id=3JB9sLEV-SoC&dq=isbn:08...):

"Everyone I meet must treat me just the way I like; otherwise, they are completely worthless!"

The key, of course, is to recognize when you're reacting to those kinds of mental triggers and change your attitude and manner accordingly (which is easier said than done).
Good piece but it neglects another category of writing to its own detriment, that on the opposite end of the spectrum of "pleasing everyone", namely, writing which exists for no other reason than to provoke a response (aka the Ann Coulter school of writing).

My personal experience is that this sort of writing is far more common than the ingratiating kind when you get out of the school/professional environment.
Oh, I see.

Then, guess which one doesn't require me to seek out and contract a firm to handle my admin for me?
Yes, but which part of "IE" is sending the User-Agent header? Does IE send User-Agent for the initial request and Chrome Frame sends User-Agent for all subsequent requests (after it detects the <meta> tag)?
>a longevity drug would be screwing around with so many systems in our body that the usual 5 year process (for standard drugs) or even the 10 year process (like for Hep C meds and such) would likely look like a blur to the people developing longevity drugs. My personal bet, the drug approval process alone would take up all of those 20 years.

I think we'll see a host of longevity drugs working on different pieces of the puzzle - a longevity Unix toolkit rather than one monolithic drug. Each of them will have a tractable clinical endpoint to measure, and in the aggregate they will extend lifespan. Of course, we won't really know that until we see a lot of 100+ year old people, unless we get AIs first with models of the human body so good that we can be really confident that they're right. I'm not holding my breath.

>The only fast way to market for a drug like this might seriously be to sell to China or Africa and prove it in the field. The only problem here is that you won't ever get the big bucks from Westerners.

I don't know how patent law would work here - I think your patent would expire in the West while you were field testing your drug in China, so you would fail to enhance shareholder value.
a google search got me another article
"Genetic Mechanism In Mole Rats Can Be Targeted In Cancer Research"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315223845.ht...

"Researchers have found that subterranean mole rats have developed cellular mechanisms in order to survive the low levels of oxygen in their underground habitat -- mechanisms that are similar to those used by tumors to survive and progress in humans."
I haven't programmed at all in lisp and less then a year in Clojure so my opinion doesn't carry much weight, but I did notice that a) imperative code is harder to read and b) later versions look more functional. So for what's worth I'm happy Clojure considers functional style and immutable data as defaults.
Enough women in Coders at Work?
They could also, if needed, point out they have a "doomsday machine" ready to go if they were pressed into it by the US.
I don't get why saying "crippleware" in front of a crippled person is offensive either. It seems that when a word becomes closely associated with a type of person or a personal trait, then somehow that word automatically becomes offensive. And yet, it doesn't happen with every descriptive word. You wouldn't think twice about calling something "lame" around the same friend with polio, would you? Or ask someone to "mute" the TV if that person had a close relative who was unable to speak?
Hmmm, we barely understand how human biology works, and won't be able to cure most current deadly diseases in that time. The more we learn about human genetics, the more we realize the less we know. In other words immortality is only 20 years away in the minds of those who believe in their own hype.
Glad you brought that up....what is valuable in twitter? The tangential ramblings of a handpicked group? I would argue that only a small subset of even the very best lists actually equates to value for most users.