skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It has to be as fast as possible, so interpreted languages are out.
You don't want to micro manage memory, so C is out.
You don't want to require programmers to have a degree, so C++ is out.
You want fast startup and not depend on a big runtime, so Java is out.
It has to run on most systems, anything with a C compiler, so D is out.
You want to have fun making something new.

If you remove his last requirement I think lof of languages still qualify. Effeil for instance, and maybe OCaml.
There needs to be some balance between discoverability and usability. The most discoverable interface, after all, is a black screen that does nothing. It doesn't do anything, so it's easy to learn. It's also completely useless.

Remember mice before they had scroll wheels? Neither do I -- my brain has blocked out that painful memory. (It may have been "hard to learn to use", but once you learn a simple motion it makes every day significantly easier. Multi-touch may be similar, or it may not be... I can't say since I avoid the mouse now.)
Good idea. The pricing structure is part of the product. I did the halfway version of this in a previous project: there was a special magic credit card number which didn't actually get charged, but I got the emails every month telling me what had been fake-charged so I felt that part of the customer experience. Recommended.
'Pop-up' stores are becoming an overnight sensation
Took some digging to find out it's compatible with C# and C++. Looks neat, but I'm not using either of those languages.
I know the science in the article is wrong. But if you actually read the article, it isn't really about the science, it's about the CDC hiding data from the public. And this has not been challenged, in fact the CDC admits it.

So I ask again, how are you supposed to make an educated decision based on facts, when the CDC admits that they have no qualms about hiding the facts from you.
It's very seasonal.

There is a lot of money it, considering that parents usually just pay for it, but me and my cofounder decided are taking a humane approach to it and trying to not rip off students.

A bunch of the big companies charge upwards of 50 dollars for a box that is about 2x1x1.5 feet. I realize business is business and that people are willing to pay that much, but it's nice being able to half those people's prices and still make a good profit.

We're looking to expand and maybe go head on with a bunch of the companies.
It's not saving that is for suckers, it's savings accounts.

This is link bait. You have to get to the second page to find out he recommends investing in the stock market when savings accounts and stocks are two entirely different things and have much different risk/reward ratios and he doesn't explain the difference.
I actually thought that was the neatest thing about this proposed language. I didn't get too excited about any of the design goals, but regarding syntax, this seems pretty original.

It allows for less syntax, which is a win for readability and also less boilerplate tokens, but still gives you a little freedom to mess with your indentation, unlike python. It means that (true) lambdas wouldn't be a syntactical enigma like they would be in python.

I don't think that you would need to use "}" to end a block though, since it looks like its missing the opening bracket, but maybe double semicolons would work, since they apparently aren't used elsewhere:

MAIN()
IO.write("Hello, World!\n")
;;

To be honest, the syntax that I have found to be nicest on the eyes so far has been Io:

whois := method(host,
socket := Socket clone setHostName("rs.internic.net") setPort(43)
socket connect streamWrite(host, "\n")
while(socket streamReadNextChunk, nil)
return socket readBuffer
)

taken from http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoGuide.h...
Not necessarily. Setting up the hook on GitHub's end lets you not worry about having the proper hook set up on your laptop (I guess).
While I do think it's important to get the tried, tested, and true vaccines, I am not sure about some of the newer ones. There have been many stories in the past of people getting worse off from brand new vaccines. For new vaccines I use at my own discretion.
I think that very philosophy is the single biggest reason for Java's success. It's "show me where people are actually using this well", not "tell me why people ought to be using this".

If you ask some people what is the practical use of certain concepts you get answers like "Uh, you can't even understand why this is so good, because your brain doesn't work in my language, see the Blub Paradox... But see how nice my factorial function looks!"

Ironically, I think Java is now one of the most used language in academia, which seemed to have been explicitly an "anti-goal".
Very pretty!

My own take on the same tool also uses jQuery, plus an invisible embedded Java applet to (1) have access to Java's expanded regex syntax, and (2) enable step-by-step animation of probes of the input text used to discover matches. Try it at:

http://regex.powertoy.org
Probably what everyone said about python's indentation syntax.

I like both approaches. it's better then having useless {.
In some cases improve readability over python lack of marks.
and risking mod down by the audience we have here, it's (much (better then (the gratuitous use of (parenthesis in lisp)))))
Unix Keyboard Shortcuts
i really just want our dev email list to receive a post whenever someone pushes...
> Gold seems to continue to drop in price

Huh? Gold (and commodity metals in general) has been the trade of the decade.

> Gold does not have a lot more intrinsic value than anything else.

You can go any time in history any where in the world and buy a decent suit with an ounce of gold. Gold has always preserved wealth in the long run. Not true of any other asset class. Everybody should be at least a few percent in gold. It's cheap catastrophe insurance.
Amazing. The ISP's are threatening to stick us with use-based pricing unless the government backs down to their demands.
The link in this article to "95% of businesses fail" points to an article titled, "95% of online businesses fail" and he disputes it with statistics for ALL businesses.

Be honest. If you start your article with a lie, why should I believe the rest of it?
Having a savings account lets you do some really amazing things, though. I quit my full-time job as of last Friday (although they retained me as a consultant for part-time remote work), and will spending the next year or two (a) focusing on my new company, and (b) traveling.

Having the freedom to make that happen, especially when nearly everybody around me is burdened by debt, is incredibly valuable. I couldn't do this if I had spent all my money on 'enjoying' myself all the time.

True, you shouldn't wall yourself off from the world, but at the same time, spending every penny you earn, when you earn it, is just folly.
Most viruses just make you sick. It's at least possible that a virus could evolve where the RNA coded for THC or alcohol. Or some other chemical that affects mood. That would make for an entertaining, non-sobering flu season. Can someone estimate the probability of something like that happening spontaneously?
furthermore, it means instead of a personal filter you get a mob filter. kind of sucks.

at least reddit has categories.
I hope this can lead to more long lasting discussions. Sometimes I find a thread late and want to add something but it seems pointless when the last comments were added more than a day ago. I think this site could be better if there was a way to keep having the threads active and maybe summarized and condensed every so often.
to solve this is not hard mixing the time factor inside. "hot" is using this algorithm but it sucks because in a thing like comments you want to add a "barrier", that is, for the first 24 hours time will do his work, but will affect the rating less as the whole discussion gets older.
Twitter-Microsoft Bing Deal Confirmed, But So Is Facebook-Bing
I'm not disagreeing, but just remember - I heard tons of comments like this about the "iPhone" years before it was actually released. So there very well may be a "iTab" on its way.
Yeah - I'm friends with Phil. He owns http://nobletreecoffee.com and http://www.dollopcoffee.com. Sometimes I wonder if he ever sleeps. He is trying to also open up a bar. He is also constantly photo blogging http://philcoextra.com and just launched www.texthog.com
PHP.net landing page for string documentation:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.strings.php

(also available in 7-8 other languages). Note all useful string concepts are one click away, and the documentation allows user commentary (much of which is quite helpful).

Common Lisp Hyperspec landing page for Strings:

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/16_.ht...

CMUCL string documentation:

http://common-lisp.net/project/cmucl/doc/cmu-user/unicode.ht...

SBCL's manual has no "table of contents" item that even mentions strings.

Stuff like this matters if you care about accessibility.

It should be trivial to google yourself a well-documented list of a given language's standard string functions without a lot of work.
You can change this factor just modifying a bit the equation. In the vanilla version the amount of votes play a very important role indeed, but it's simple to hack it in order for avoid this problem. For instance using the logarithm instead of do everything linear like I did.
I tried to start this: http://www.HapTap.com in college an emoticon keyboard. What do you guys think?
I take your point, but it's more that users have to have to fit a particular profile, ie have a desire to design work patterns - so they have to know what a pattern is, and that it will include duties. Be interested to know what you think on that basis.
Most of what you're saying here (that existing markets are not 100% free) is obvious and uncontroversial, but does nothing to back up your claim that the free movement of labor "distorts" free markets.

>Can you name a single country that has a completely free labour market?

No, in large part because they all have restrictions on immigration.

>Yes I stand by my statement that immigration (especially the illegal kind) distorts the free market.

Maybe you should actually explain this statement instead of just standing by it. The term "free" in "free market" generally refers to the absence of external regulation, so it is odd to say that strict regulation of the labor market makes the market less free.

>If the job is not worth doing then you have a decision to make don't you. I buy lots of things in a free market. Sometimes the price isn't worth it, a free market allows me to make that decision.

Yes, that's exactly what I said in my previous post. Why are you copying it back to me?
"Mind you, there are some bankers who are so lame that they won't make money."

that thar is some gud ritin'
In the UK, you're told specifically not to bother going to doctor/hospital etc if you have swine flu (Unless you have complications/other conditions etc).

We had it in July or so. It was kinda like a normal flu :/

The media loves to scare the hell out of everyone - gets them to buy stuff. Sad, but I can't see that ever changing.
Selling your stock at the top of the market then sitting on cash until the bottom before piling back in is hardly the insight of the century.
I agree that the choice of "}" makes this seem weirder than it needs to. Something that doesn't "look" unbalanced would be better. What about "end" (like in Ruby but with no "begin")? It may be longer, but I actually find it easier/faster to type than a curly brace...
I tried to re-upmod your post back to 1 point.

You state an observation. And while that anecdote flys in the face of what many here (including myself) believe about vaccination, there's nothing wrong with your comment.

For what its worth, I had have lots of flus, but was never vaccinated against influenza (as far as I can remember).
I think what would be infinitely more useful is some kind of jQuery plugin that would create a tooltip with the clip title in it for every youtube link. I put http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJYxCSXjhLI on a webpage and the tooltip displays "Rejected Cartoons by: Don Hertzfeldt" You could make it into a firefox extension or jetpack extension.
Does Amazon have to improve their user experience? Amazon.com is one of the most-used sites on the planet, and you can download any mp3 from its product's page. I use it more than I use iTunes, at this point.
Thanks, I was wondering what Column Address Strobe had to do with interpreters
Overall, the opinion touches on many subjects, but I agree with some of the comments on the NYT Site: not everyone can be an entrepreneur.

Perhaps the inflation of the idea of being an entrepreneur is the next bubble?

For example, before, anyone can own a house and, now, anyone can own a business. (A transformation of "why rent when you can own?" to "why work for someone else when you can be the boss?".)
Mass producing medicine is easy.

Mass discovering and FDA-approving new medicines is the hard part.
I used to work in clinical trials, and while I cannot comment on exact figures, the drug companies pay a lot of money over a very long period to release a drug. The big problem is that they only have 3 to 5 years to make all the money back and get enough of a profit to develop more drugs. Not every clinical trial actually works out, and the courts will be a constant problem for every drug.

Do some research on the financial documents of the companies that do the clinical trials.
I can understand why Bram wants to target C. Vim runs on almost every operating system and architecture. Right now that's only really possible with C-targeted languages, languages with portable VMs/intepreters written in C, and (to a slightly lesser extent) C++.
It's a self-correcting problem. Those who don't vaccinate will eventually dwindle in numbers and their offspring won't reach reproductive maturity.
You are agreeing with bonaldi, though your statement appears as though it doesn't intend to.
I think you said it yourself. You've seen a ton of evidence that the vaccines are safe (and presumably very little evidence otherwise). If you believe they are credible sources then you should make your decision based on the available evidence, not some worry that the CDC has other evidence that they are hiding from you.
Forecast for cybercrime expected to worsen
The real reason epidemiologists are concerned about swine flu is its novelty. It's possible that it's very far away in phase space from a truly killer flu, but it's also possible that it's only a couple of mutations away from becoming deadly.

Since flu mutates fast, any truly novel strain that reaches pandemic status represents a serious threat. Fortunately this kind of leap only happens every few decades; unfortunately, we have no defense against it.

An interesting article covering this point: http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/04/swine_flu_i_be...
GE unviels a flip-phone sized ultrasound device - Hello tricorder
You can have mine! I'm currently on my 5th Mac, love it lots, but I have always hated the Mac mice. The latest one is no exception.
You will not get reasonable inflation adjusted returns unless you do this to some extent. You cannot get returns without periodically re-balancing between equities, cash, and commodities, and different currencies.

There is no free lunch. You can't plow money into a simple "diversified" portfolio and do OK. Yet inflation forces you to play the game or lose.
Google and major labels team up on music search
Windows 7 set to break retail records
I say call their bluff. The market will eventually sort it out. If any ISPs do switch to use-based pricing, I expect their competitors could easily steal customers by offering a flat rate. We might even discover there's a market for both options.

(Of course, this requires competition, which is a definite problem in some areas.)
I own several well known franchised fast food restaurants for 25 years.
This is great stuff, definitely will be using it in the future.

It's worth noting, though, that this only runs the JavaScript style Regular Expressions. Escape sequences and such things will vary to a degree between different RegEx flavors. So keep that in mind if you use this tool to trouble shoot any patterns for other languages with this tool.
Which is to say, those who don't get the vaccine will die in proportion to their natural weakness to a particular disease. The survivors will have the strongest resistance out of the entire population.
Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation.

Edit: "I can't explain my flu infection"

I can. You got the flu strain which wasn't covered by the shot.
Do you have evidence that the CDC is hiding data from the public in this case?
I know the guy who started Ike's Place in San Francisco. He went from being homeless at some point in his life to the number one SF restaurant on yelp.com. I think the reason why he is so successful now is because he has some big failures under his belt. He has a tech degree but was always interested in starting non-tech businesses.
I think making the keywords all-caps is a mistake. Capital letters draw the eye -- all-caps doubly so, and at the expense of readability.

Anything in all-caps had better be pretty damn important for the programmer to read. And while keywords are vital to the compiler's understanding of the program, they are arguably among the least important text for the programmer to read, as they can generally be inferred from visual length, placement, and formatting.
Microsoft Inks Deals With Twitter and Facebook to Put Status Updates in Bing
Ask HN: Are you getting the flu shot?
There's a lot of noise on both sides, and each side has its share of science and superstition. What's the consensus here? What factors did you consider? For me, frequent air travel, frequent subway use, and spending a lot of time out in public areas makes me feel at higher risk. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just building a tolerance :) Others I know have done it because it is a public health issue, and they want to participate. Thoughts?
Easiest solution is to embark on a serious 10-year plan to double-and-then-triple the number of newly-created mds passing through the system.

This can't be done immediately -- it'd take time for institutions to ramp up their teaching staff and associated facilities -- but it could be done over time.

Some federal program that'd make funds available on condition of a particular school hitting a particular # of enrollments would the simplest solution; given a choice between mad money and placating the AMA boffins most administrators would take the money.

There's no real shortage of people capable of being decent physicians; most of the selectivity of medical school admissions is b/c the # of slots the schools allow is low.
Object allocations on the web
Brightness is not color gamut.
A local courier company in Bucharest. Mainly fast deliveries on scooters. After about one year it paid its bills, but I didn't get along with my partner and got out. Since then he turned it into a sub-contractor for a larger courier company, and swapped the scooters for vans - more profit, but a whole lot more risk.
Idea works well for subscription type payments. I don't know if it works that well for one-time software sales, though.

I'm making a mac application. Most likely I will be charging $50 for this application. It looks like my current design budget is about $1,500. I feel that if I find the product worth $1,500 someone might be willing to pay $50.
Me too. I had a hard time reading on after that.

Java is absolutely chock-full of "things that sounded like a good idea" -- unboxed types, single inheritance, interfaces without the possibility of shared implementation (or state), public / private / protected / default, positional constructor arguments, "Type foo = new Type", etc. Actually, none of those even sound like good ideas. (But I guess after the brain damage that was C++, it was inevitable that The Industry would overcorrect. Hopefully we've learned one important lesson from Java -- making the language "simple" won't stop people from writing bad code, but it will stop people from writing good code.)

Java also popularized some very very experimental ideas, like virtual machines and automatic garbage collection. (And I am very thankful for both.)

So now that I think about it, I don't get that quote at all.
I didn't get past the first page (since I can't sign into Twitter @ work), but I have to agree that some explanation of what the service is first would be a huge help for conversion. Also, as a pet-peeve of mine, if you are going to link to CSS and XHTML validation, make sure your website validates (in this case it doesn't).
I'm part of a company that my brother started. We oversee the production of fair trade products in Zambia and sell them (mostly) in the US. Right now we have an organic beeswax lip balm, and also soap. Other products are in the works as well.

http://zambeezi.com/
http://zambiansoap.com/

We're doing pretty well, have a couple employees that we pay — one hourly and one on salary/commission. We aren't yet making enough that the owners are getting paid, but that may soon change.

I am also writing two web apps that we use for managing customers, ordering, invoicing, etc... I'm planning on releasing them as SaaS for other small businesses, but have not yet done that.
How We Made GitHub Fast: A detailed look at GitHub's new architecture
In Common Lisp, strings are a subtype of Sequences :-) The PHP String library you linked to is appalling. It includes a lot of stuff that shouldn't be squashed together in one "section"; strings, characters, locale management, i18n, cryptography, sequences, generic formatter, currency parsing and formatting, uu(en|de)coding, even fuzzy string matching!

Who does this appeal to? no abstraction, no modularity, no visible type hierarchy or any sense of order.
Introducing BERT and BERT-RPC: GitHub's new serialization and RPC protocol
A comparison of social networks for promoting a game company
BERT and BERT-RPC 1.0 Specification
Encrypting Your Dropbox Seamlessly and Automatically
As a teacher, I've been fortunate over the years not to get most of the stuff students 'graciously' share. I don't know why, lucky I guess.

I've taken every precaution in the computer lab to slow the spread -- sanitizers, keyboard/screen cleanings, constant reminders how to cough, etc. Some years, we've gone through 2 large pump bottles of sanitizer.

One year I decided to get a flu shot just 'to be sure." Within 45 days I came down with one of the worst bouts of flu I had ever experienced and got into serious dehydration problems (almost hospitalized) before turning the corner. The strain I had actually induced 'projectile vomit.' I remember thinking "wow, I didn't know my body could do that." It was horrible, scary, and impressive all at the same time.

I'm keeping a very close eye on this H1N1 business and like the other posters here, will read all I can to know more. But there's no way I'm marching down to get a flu shot just because the CDC says so. I've done that already. I'm not a conspiracy guy, nor am I herd-stupid. I'm just cautious by direct experience.
Heh, the design of the site I got from a decent free template site. I didn't bother to remove (or check for that matter) the validation links. I had assumed they validated :).
I found it to be a really well designed and presented game and really enjoyed playing it. I still play a level every now and then. Also, if you buy it directly (as opposed to buying off Steam), you get the Windows, Linux and Mac versions :-)

Finally, it runs perfectly on my eee PC 1000HE!
Amazon: Windows 7 is 'the biggest pre-order product of all time'
Well, honestly, even if you broke it down in terms of one disease versus another, I think vaccines still take the cake:

Don't vaccinate: Might get polio, whooping cough, meningitis, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus or superflu. All of which are either deadly or crippling diseases, in some cases even when treated.

Vaccinate: Might become autistic. Which is a serious behavioral disorder.