skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Using a 3D engine from Common Lisp with the foreign function interface
>> "Well, I know it prevents me from writing good code."

Right, but everyone is different. It depends on how you think and your personal taste. Some people look at 'public void foo()' and apparently recoil in horror. I look at significant whitespace, or foo => |something| etc type syntaxes and recoil in horror.

Lots of people also claim that no one can be productive writing in pure assembly language, and while that may be true for many programmers, it's certainly not true for everyone.

I don't think you can really say which language 'smart people' use. Obviously there's a lisp/functional bias here on HN, but I'd be very surprised if 'smart people' congregate toward any one particular language.

I still think good programmers are defined by the code they write, rather than which language they choose to write it in.
That's an interesting way to spin it in Google's favor, but:

1) When MS signed a non-exclusive agreement with Twitter, they must have been 99% sure that Google would be in on the Twitter action as well (i.e. I doubt they ever thought they were one up on Google), and

2) The point is that Google is not already there. All they have to show for themselves is an agreement so far. (MS has http://www.bing.com/twitter up and running already.)

Being first to market isn't everything, but I still think this is a noteworthy exception to the norm of recent years.
I think only the announcement is hurried, I'm sure this has been in the works longer.

The first company to release the feature won't matter much in the end, it's all about implementation and market share..

So I wouldn't call it "scrambling", more just a "why yes, we've thought of this too, and we're working on it"..
SiliconANGLE's (Minor) Role in the Twitter-Bing Deal
Unless the insurance company holds 50% market share, the odds are pretty high that they won't reap the purported benefits of preventative care.

If a companies market share is 10%, their odds of reaping the benefits of P(customer switches) x 10%.

Regardless, I'm not sure how an insurance company will manage to get people to eat less and exercise more.
YouTube - В Калифорнии разбился истребитель
Have you tried the free trial of Pages from Apple?

http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/

http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/

It's a combination word processor and page layout program. Not sure if it does everything you need, but it's probably worth a try.
Where Will the Jobs Come From?
Is this intended to be put out for others to use? My reaction to it as an internal protocol is "OK, that's interesting" (I have my own streaming JSON message protocol myself), but putting it out for others to use clogs up an awfully full space (you'll note I'm not linking you to a "library" since my protocol isn't worth releasing).

One issue that leaps to mind (based on the fact my streaming JSON protocol also travels through Erlang as it happens) is what you do with dicts? Erlang's native representation for dicts is extremely hostile as a term to send to other languages:

Erlang R13B01 (erts-5.7.2) [source] ...etc

Eshell V5.7.2 (abort with ^G)
1> dict:from_list([{"abc", "def"}, {"efg", "hij"}]).
{dict,2,16,16,8,80,48,
{[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[]},
{{[],
[["efg",104,105,106]],
[],[],[],
[["abc",100,101,102]],
[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[]}}}

That's a hash with two entries, abc -> def and efg -> hij. Note that's the internal representation; dumping out a perl hash gives you a semantic-level representation but under the hood it too has dirty nasty bits like that.

If that's not easy, that's a big price to pay for moving binaries around, in general. In specific cases it could be fine.
Let us now praise... the cliché
Yea, actually very nice interface. Thanks for the heads up on this site! :)
Why? That'd be the first thing we'd vaccinate for, given that capability.
>> "scrambling to keep up with them these days."

huh? Both announced they were going to use twitter data :/

It all depends who presents that information in a useful way - my money is on google reading their blog post. I hardly think google are 'scrambling to keep up with them'.
It's not so silly.

Netbooks account for a little over 20% of all PC sales now. The PC industry has not grown 20% over the same time period. Either netbooks are cannibalizing higher end/margin sales or they are masking what would have been a huge drop in PC sales over the last 2-3 years.

I think one of the biggest problems with trying to makeup margins with higher volume is that support costs don't scale that well. It costs the OEM basically the same amount of money to offer telephone support and warranty service to a $400 machine as it does a $2k machine. So they make less money per machine and, because they sell more machines, it costs more to support them.
Well-written, but ultimately one example does not a trend make (wrt rms 'admitting' GPL doesn't guarantee freedom)

Especially when that example is an outlier compared to most of GPL software. The dual licensing is one aspect, and another is the rare combination of being on the extremes of complexity and adoption.

If an analogous situation occurred with say Wordpress or Drupal (low complexity, high adoption), it wouldn't be as big of a deal. Ditto for a high complexity low adoption project (examples escape me at the moment).
Government's have never killed their own taxpayers. That's ridiculous.
Neither Bing. Whatever that means.
http://www.bing.com/twitter

You're right that it still remains to be seen who puts the data to better use in the long term, though.
Honest question: if you trust dropbox.com enough to let them run a daemon on your box, does this really buy you anything?
Thank you for making my case more succinctly.

I'm intimately familiar with the specifics of medical education as a family member of mine is a high-up muckety-muck at one of the world's better academic hospitals (won't be more precise than that).

There's a perception amongst outsiders that medicine is unbelievably difficult that only a handful of people qualify for medical training on their merits; a more accurate assessment is that the # of slots is fixed and the admissions are as selective as they need to be to filter down the applicant pool to the # of available slots.

It'd take time to ramp up to being able to handle that many students -- medicine is mainly taught by working under the supervision of existing experts, and there's a finite supply of expert-hours at the moment -- but the present rate of doctor-production is far from what it could be without a material drop in applicant quality.
FWIW that page looks absolutely horrible. I'd be ashamed if I had produced that. Being first to market is good, as long as the product doesn't make people recoil in horror.

>> "Twitter search results are currently unavailable."

Presumably it's not live yet, or else broken.
Did you try using Bing? I got: Twitter search results are currently unavailable.
For a human, maybe. We're programmers.
Some of the info in the TrueCrypt FAQ (http://www.truecrypt.org/faq) leads me to believe that each block is independently encrypted.

See question "What will happen when a part of a TrueCrypt volume becomes corrupted?"
In other news, Barnes and Noble is making an ebook reader that runs Android. And a lot of cell phone makers are using it. And there are some netbook makers adapting it to their hardware.

Do you see what's happening here? Android is plumbing! It's becoming the de facto standard way to put a slick GUI on a mobile device.
Perhaps. And a proper comment like this is a good reply. Downvoting doesn't seem right to me in this case.
now if only pgp could get their act together and release their whole disk encryption product upgrade that actually works on snow leopard.
Now...whiteboard paint has existed for some time, but has a reputation of being pretty awful in that it stains, cleans poorly and generally degrades terribly. Has anyone tried this ? I'd get it right away if it's actually better than plain dry-erase paint.
Actually, it isn't that great coders can't write great code in Java, it's that great coders, having virtually by definition a certain amount of experience in a wide variety of languages, require a lot of incentive before they'll choose to write their great code in Java, where the language is fighting them every step of the way.

Some people have managed to put out the necessary incentives, so such code does exist, but seeing a putatively great coder reach for Java as their first choice without such incentives is like seeing a putatively great coder reach first for Cobol... it pretty much proves they aren't a great programmer. Even if you want the JVM libraries, there are better ways.

Yeah, it's an opinion, but it's one from someone with the aforesaid experience in a lot of languages. It's like saying a great marathon runner can run a marathon in concrete shoes. Yeah, maybe they can, but seeing them choose it of their own free will would say an awful lot about their wisdom in shoe choice. Java is a language that simply loathes great code.

Besides, you seem to have missed the core point that optimizing the language for a case that doesn't come up often is a misfeature, no matter how you slice it. Optimize the language for the case that occurs most. "var X"-type syntaxes cover that. "var X" still works in your example, too; there's no reason that a smart compiler can't deal with that sort of separation between declaration and initialization.
It's better to do something properly than be first to market. Better to think through exactly how best to present the information to the users.

http://bing.com/twitter is pretty ugly, and seems to not be working currently.
The comment by dschobel explains most of what I meant:

"It's a calculated risk. Some companies refuse to settle for certain classes of litigation in the hope that it will deter people from bringing frivolous suits down the road even if it means paying more in legal costs up front."

On the other hand, not going to court with a customer also sends a signal.
I knew it was going to be Google Android, but it didn't make me any less disappointed.
That doesn't work in other applications, like desktop instant messengers.
Previously submitted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=882515
>What kind of operating system doesnt come with an e-mail program?

The right kind? The kind that requires people learn there's a difference b/t an OS and an app, and that there are free apps for everything, both from MS and others, and that such programs are not hard to find or use?
Why would you send an actual dict instead of a proplist? Every serialization protocol I am aware of does not send the actual internal dict/hash/map representation but instead flattens it down to what is effectively a list of key-value pairs that may or may not be tagged by the protocol as something to be reconstituted as a dict at the remote end. Looking at the spec it appears that this is what BERT does as well.
Have a fake code that actually wipes the device. When the POW is questioned, he gives them that code and the device is rendered useless.
seems like twitter found a viable business model.
I can't speak to the paint, but I worked at a place with dry-erase wallpaper covering the middle 60% or so of the walls, left-edge to right-edge. There was never any problem with staining or degrading. It was truly awesome.

Here's a photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martincron/4033370404/
I am sorry but the war on drugs is a sham. The refinement and habitual use of refined drugs did not come until prohibition of weaker forms. Think about it, we got Heroin, Crack, Meth and the rest from the unrelenting pursuit of lesser forms of mind altering substances, Opium being the first. Soon after opium’s prohibition Heroin made its debut.

All this war has done is victimizing individuals who have made poor choices and empowered those who are willing to take the risk to traffic in the substances.

Now I agree that drugs have the ability to ruin peoples lives, but that argument is negated by the acceptance of alcohol which has just as devastating of an impact on an abusers life. One must willfully ignore the fact that alcohol abuse, for all intents and purposes, happens in only a small percentage of the population (we are not talking about college party years here but rather life long abusers). As well as, the fact that given it’s availability stronger forms of the substance (liquor) make up for the smallest portion of consumption.

If weaker forms of these substances where available (opium, coca) then I believe that you would see a similar trend.

Now I am not a government conspiracy nut and I don’t think there is this grand conspiracy to control drugs. I just think that our tradition conservative base of the past had a grand idea of trying to save people from themselves and the basis of their assumptions did not materialize, so it is time to rethink the whole thing.

It has been proven time and time again, that you cannot legislate morality and I believe that it is time that the government stops trying to. It just further victimizes individuals.
Well, agree to disagree :) I've used a fair number of languages, and don't really understand the java hate. There's far uglier languages to look at. But then I love writing in assembly - which some feel overwhelmed with.

Personally it seems like some programmers at some point dislike being restrained by anything and become slightly high and mighty about the whole subject - the whole "Unless you use lisp, you can't understand why lisp is the best language" BS.

Why is "var X"-type syntax better? Why does that create better code :/ Sorry, I don't buy it. "var X" would be less precise, and less useful than specifying the explicit type you want.

FWIW, I just checked for fun my own comet server written in Java against tornado (Python). Very similar functionality, except the Java one is a smaller codebase. It's as verbose as you want it to be.
"... We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. These people were much more robust than we were. ...

Generalisation but I tend to agree as I go off and do my 970/1000Km pt this year in an experiment in failure. I want to see how hard I can repeatedly push myself before I crack, 10Km at a time. Haven't yet. The insights have some implications for motivation, completion of tasks and failure.

"... The human body is very plastic and it responds to stress. We have lost 40 percent of the shafts of our long bones because we have much less of a muscular load placed upon them these days. 'We are simply not exposed to the same loads or challenges that people were in the ancient past and even in the recent past so our bodies haven't developed. Even the level of training that we do, our elite athletes, doesn't come close to replicating that. ..."

The question is do you want to? I know people in trades, hard manual labour do this kind of level of exercise and work. The mulsular-skeltal system simply wears out. You're fitter but more worn out.
Well, in other implementations like jython and iron python, the GIL doesn't exist, so I think most people would consider it just an implementation detail
cheers @tokenadult I'll kill it
Photo Essay: Bolivia's Lithium-Powered Future
The examples that you list above don't really matter. Whitespace, "public static void main", sigils on variable names, and so on may look weird when you aren't used to them, but they don't detract from the programming experience.

What matters is how many tokens you need to say something simple. Say you have a list of words, and you want to sort it by length. That's one line of code in Perl, Python, Ruby, Common Lisp, Haskell, etc. It is not one line of code in Java.

When every simple concept in your program requires a new class with a new file, it just becomes unmanageable, even with the best tools. That's why I can't be productive in Java. (Java also doesn't allow quick hacks; private is private, so fuck you. This means that prototypes have to be "as good as" the real implementation, which simply means that you don't prototype. The resulting software sucks accordingly.)

But anyway, I know you have a pretty good app written in Java. I would like to hear more about how you deal with it sometime.
Hug http://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/
A 2 space indent loses at 'visual overview' of larger (and more representative) expanses of code. A 4 space indent maintains clarity at the level of a skim or casual glance, even if it "fails" at the contrived (but simple) example shown here.
Why not REST? What's wrong with HTTP?
Rails stack on OpenSolaris 2009.06
Too early to really judge. Let's see how Bing's results from twitter are and then wait for Google.
I think that a success will be how they will mine the results. Today from the search results in twitter-search are pretty lame and useless. If Bing or Google can reduce the noisy ratio an get useful results, then we will have a winner.
I think a healthy lifestyle involves you always pushing the limits of what you thought you could do -- physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

Activity for activity's sake isn't necessarily a good thing (although there is some truth to the notion that you feel better after strenuously doing something, anything) the lack of any external movement, combined with emotional challenges from games, movies, and such, mean that we've got these bodies made for running around and physically stimulating ourselves yet we're pushing them to sit still and run on artificially-induced stress.

Not a good thing.
`True lambdas' are overrated. The Python way is just fine. If you want to do anything that needs two lines, you are probably doing something complicated enough that this function deserves its own name.
Profile Playlist by Shelby(:
Not working for either. As many others I think that both (MS and Google) tried to win the other with lame PR and a broken application. The result is embarrassing for both.
Australia looking to censor iPhone apps
90%, and 10% very hard work, usually starting somewhere in your teens until you reach it.

If the above rule does not apply then it's 100% luck.
Thanks for giving good advise to a down-voted comment. I guess we should do that more often.
Of course mobile will be BIG! The signs are everywhere
Related thread with additional ideas:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699602
> I use my iPhone like I would use a netbook and then some.

So you can install any software you want on it?
It wouldn't surprise me. Lately the Australian Gov. has done crazy stuff related to Copy Rights Laws, "Net Security" and Net neutrality.
I think foo => |something| does detract from the programming experience. Special characters that have different meanings depending on context are a PITA. Also you're unable to show the code to a programmer unfamiliar with the syntax, without having to explain each character.

I don't really subscribe to the "Less tokens to say something = always better". As long as it's easy to see what's happening... I do agree collections, and specifically sorting is one area Java is slightly lacking, but it's not a big deal really.

Hopefully I'll release the comet server open source sometime. It's similar to tornado in functionality, but slightly smaller codebase. I think it'd surprise a few people about how you can write Java code if you choose to.
I haven't tried either in person, but the paint is very expensive and from what I was seeing the 'wallpaper' solution would work better and be cheaper. You know, if you're working with walls... the paint would work better for irregular surfaces and areas.
Features do not a language make. I believe design to be at the core of PL innovation.
Idea for a global interpreter lock optimized for low contention
We did something like this using big 4x8 sheets of acrylic (plastic) from the local "Lowe's Depot". It turned out to be cheaper than the paints, and we didn't have to get landlord approval to paint his walls. Just a stud finder and 4 tiny screws per sheet turned whole walls into fantastic dry erase boards. Blacklights at their edges made it even cooler.
Sure you did, because if a person says one thing that's wrong (according to you) then all the things he/she says must be wrong.

There's gold to be had just about anywhere, if you simply filter that which suits your diet then you'll come out way ahead by simply skipping some of the stuff and getting to the rest.

If I would disregard the opinions of everybody with who I disagree strongly on one point there wouldn't be many people left.
Ask HN: Computerized Karaoke?
I should know the answer to this, but I can't seem to find it on the web.

I'm a bit of a karaoke nut. As such, I've collected a couple hundred karaoke cds and a few players over the years.

Isn't there some way to play karaoke on the computer? I tried downloading a karaoke mp3 album from Amazon but all I got was music without singers -- and no lyrics. There's a couple of plugins for WinAmp but I can't seem to get anything to work.

I know that a lot of the new karaoke machines have discs "pre-ripped" onto their harddrives, and I know I can use them to rip my current collection, but I'd like to move away from specialized equipment if possible.

So -- any way to computerize my karaoke hobby? or am I stuck having to have special equipment?

Any help would be appreciated!
Gambit Scheme does it better I think.
Well, the code should cause the device to return mostly fake information. If it just stops working, you are going to make the person that threatened you with force mad. I have never been a POW, but I am pretty sure I would want to avoid that. (Note to future government that wants to draft me: You had better believe I would give up the real code to save my own life. I would probably even do it for some cash and a new passport.)

This concept would be good for consumer devices though. Customs officer wants to illegally search your laptop? Just give him the "correct" password.
I found go4it fb app to be the best facebook application with all features I was looking for (and some more) and it was a lot better than 43things. I'd recommend you to proceed and build your app till you are better than your competition (if this is what you are really passionate about building). The space is crowded and there are ~100 goal apps in fb. However, the best one beat the rest by a clear mile and I didn't even have second thoughts about using it. Note that I wouldn't use any other app right away for the following reasons:
1. go4it provides me all features I need. Some other tool should provide me with awesome features that I would definitely want to use.
2. I wouldn't want to copy all my goals, timelines, progress and comments into a different tool.

For new users these factors won't apply. When you reach a point where you are better than the rest, provide screenshots (similar to yammer) of how everything works in your application and what's better. In my case, I had to install each app to try it and it was frustrating.

>> As you can imagine, it is always a bit hard to discover a new competitor when you put some effort in your idea.

- I can't really imagine this happening and I strongly disagree with this. Now that you are spending so much effort on your app, its all the more important for you to know what your existing and new competitors are doing. Its similar to defending your hand if you are the big blind in poker.
what's there to it if not reflective analysis of things that go on in IT?

I think you are exactly correct -- as long as you separate a moral case from a practical one.

I was a bit cranky the other day. Sorry if I went over-the-top in my argument. I'm genuinely concerned about things like Google cooperating with finding Chinese political dissidents and things like this seem to dilute the cause of bigger problems, at least in my mind.