skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good progress indeed. Even though I am not sure if then laser beams is a cost effective way. But it is certainly one of only few choice we have got. Carbon nano tubes seems to be the other good option, hope next decade will bring big breakthroughs in that area.
Goldman's business was subsidized by the Government, in the form of funding Goldman's transaction partners, so that they could pay Goldman what was owed.

That is as true for them as it is for RBS! My point is that the government isn't doing a very good job of running a bank...
Thanks for retrieving that. What he says and does may be slightly different (especially in a TV interview), but pretty good video.
I remember RuneScape, from ads in old Dragon magazines. But I always thought it was a pen and paper game. Was it originally a P&P before going online, or were the ads simply unclear?
it seems they took advantage of eBay's ignorance. Screwing people over is not a good longterm strategy

When one does a $2.6 billion deal, there is no ignorance regarding what is being sold. There are teams of lawyers on both sides of the table checking and re-checking every detail.
we should also punish google and apple and microsoft and oracle for spending too much money to achieve success. jerks.
Actually,

I think you answer your own question here. Perl seems dead because the Perl articles have titles like "Perl's Not Dead". If a language's supporters have to argue for its very existence, the language can't be doing very well. And with many languages very visibly growing, not being dead isn't enough, if a language isn't growing, it can easily seem dead.

An article like "Why Is Everyone Excited By Perlfoo, The Latest Perl Library That's Transforming The World" would actually be a better argument that Perl had life in it.
What you consider "profit" depends on what you are trying to achieve. There are plenty of billionaires who'll be forgotten but in 500 years people will talk about Einstein like we talk about Newton, and about Tim Berner-Lee like we talk about Da Vinci.
If x was a global variable then you don't have a closure, just an anonymous function.

Closures require closed over variables.
Job market recovery is at the horizon, so it’s the time to make it even
Technical Co-Founder, Where art thou? 
I'm looking for a technical co-founder and have been building a world-class team in the health IT and financial markets. Its my goal to be the best co-founder, ever. I'm a business guy with a stats background. Email mike.biostat for more and I can treat you to lunch.
I’m Paul Graham
Wow, see you in Portland Paul...

An invitation from Paul Graham:
I’m Paul Graham. I made it rich several years ago selling a company to Yahoo! I now spend my days thinking about problems, and publishing solutions to those problems. I have been on stage many times but I have never been portrayed by an actor on stage. At first, I had reservations, but I was pleased to find that an attractive, strapping man has been cast for my role. So come on November 11th to hear him, oh..ah me, give a lecture on constructive disagreement requiring the evacuation of the theatre and cake for all.

Stay for the Cake is an all-original work written, directed, designed and performed by The Montgomery Street Players, Portland Actors Conservatory’s new alumni performance group. Each of the three slices skewer the creative process with sardonic hilarity and cake for all! PAC will present one slice of the Cake at South Waterfront: “I Am Paul Graham.” We’ve heard it’s delicious!

Portland Actors Conservatory has been providing quality stage productions to the greater Portland community for 24 years. The Conservatory gives student actors the opportunity to put acting theory into practice in weekly performance labs, public showcases and the Conservatory Season of Plays.

Shows run Friday through Sunday October 30 through November 15
>Closures require closed over variables.

Is "over variables" a term here? Is that the same as "upvalues"?
While I agree the moderation is better than Digg and Reddit, etc I think Slashdot can be a pretty harsh/negative environment because the culture accepts (and even likes to see) gladiatorial intellectual commenting. Things like, "Actually, if you had ever even seen the abc variation of blah blah expression you would know that it isn't nearly the same, there is a full .00002 measurable difference" etc.

I'd like to see HN get past this sort of bullying and trend more towards helpful/intelligent.
Google Wave Hackathon in Boston - Saturday Nov 21
I think it's a vicious cycle.

The more blog drama (AA killed my dog!) which gets through, the more people who like blog drama are drawn to the site and up-vote it.

If I were PG, I would look at the data and try to categorize the type of submissions which draw the most negative comments (and I think we still do a good job of -4'ing useless comments) and set a high threshold for a story of that type to get through to the front page.

As another example, if submissions about 37s tend to be really vitriolic, make it harder for those submissions to get through and make it harder for people with a history of incendiary -4 comments to post in them.

The bottom line is that there is a lot of data collected here which can be used to optimize the content towards quality, since we all seem to be talking about the same thing when we talk about quality.
Metafilter's always the example I bring up; I avoided saying it here because I think I've mentioned it a dozen times in the last week and I don't want to seem to be recruiting. (Not that I'm a MeFi poster, just a reader.)

Metafilter did a smart thing by forcing users to pay to join. It's also got the most anal modding of any civil site I've ever seen. Cortex will remove entire discussions if he doesn't like them.
Don't get me wrong: I love your product; but I specifically wanted to support you with the payment.

And you did. Your purchase had a lot more direct benefit than even 100 people downloading it for free. I'm sure the author appreciates you. They just figured out anyone who would buy it already had so there's little loss in building up an audience to make even more money down the road.

But, still, if the software were worth buying a few months ago, then whatever the price changes to in the future makes no difference to the value you see in it.
Me too. Great graph, would have taken a lot of words to convey otherwise. Effective communication at its best.

I'm thoroughly disappointed though... from crystalis' later post, it appears you guys all have areas of expertise, but I'm just some kind of generalist or something... cries
Howto add SMS functionality to your web app
The Law of Hacker News Comments: Any sufficiently long comment thread will converge on a semantic argument.

Prediction, the comments in this post will converge on the semantics of the word "negative".
That's one of the reasons why I allowed them to put ShoveBox in the bundle, despite my initial trepidation.

MacHeist users generally hate anything that requires them to pay money. The standard line about free not being cheap enough for some people applies here. So paid upgrades are a no-go with those users, but some of them will pay for the iPhone app if it's cheap.

I'm modifying the app and my site today to get more of them to convert.
Think of it like a hardware purchase. As soon as you have splashed out the money an upgrade comes out. There is always something better and cheaper tomorrow.

When you buy stuff, only buy something which you feel you will be happy about regardless of what happens tomorrow. Otherwise you can wait until that feeling emerges and spend the money then.

And you bought it months ago you said, so you have had much pleasure from it for less than 50 cent per day. How can you beat that?
Also, more about how it works:
http://www.gumband.com/learnmore.php
valid email?
On the harshness scale, I'm surprised with the number of downvotes some recent comments get not on the quality of a comment, but that the voter disagrees with its stance.

I like well-crafted comments that I completely disagree with; it challenges me to rethink my own position. I'd hate to see people get fed up and not write comments simply because it goes against the grain; it would change the nature of the site, and to me, part of its value.
A 'green' entrepreneur's success story
Where to find angel funding in Boston
I don't know... comments here have always had a dose of healthy skepticism. Now, if I never again read a comment starting with "meh", "yawn" or "shrug", I will die a happy man.
I'm going to look through my comments to see if I'm contributing to that. Admittedly, it's tempting to react when I see something I disagree with.
Have you looked at Catalyst?!
About Cartography And Book Typography
Cooperative art game using Canvas
Most of the things the article talks about are actually possible in a SQL database. You can easily store JSON data in table rows if you want; foreign keys and joins are just further options that SQL offers you and MongoDB doesn't.
I also don't understand the argument for a schema-less database. After all, you always have a schema; in a SQL database it is explicit, whereas in MongoDB it is implicit. Seems similar to the argument between proponents of dynamic and static typing.

Overall I think the only reason for going with MongoDB is performance.
When MySQL came out it [...] said that speed of development and operation matters more than correctness. [...I]ts initial success stands as a testament to the principle that there are a lot of problems (particularly in the web area) where people [...] are tolerant of occasional problems.

I wonder if this would still be true today? Things are very different from 1994, when MySQL was born.

Back then, the Web was so small it was almost possible to visit every site. Site designers, site developers, and customers were all trying new things constantly and learning what worked. There weren't many expectations because everything was so new.

Today, my guess is that people have a much higher standard for e-commerce. But that's just a guess.
The information collected is actually pretty interesting. I assume voting will have something to do with sounding good in addition to speed and accuracy. Besides making a cool site, he just crowd-sourced music production (everything is released with a CC license).
Thank you for posting this. I think I'll use Shovebox and maybe Writeroom.
Finally which social media portal is so elite, so stealthy that they have no fears at all?

I don't know if you'd call us "elite", but we're still really small over here (full disclosure: this is my website) http://www.gibsonandlily.com (this is mostly just my friends and I along with a few people that jumped ship from reddit)

Most of the articles are science and technology related, with a few funny, economic, and political things peppered in.
If You Want a Job Tomorrow, Cultivate Your Career Today
getting downvoted just means a lot of people disagree with you

Not here it doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. Getting downvoted here means that people don't think you are contributing constructively to the discussion, I'll usually upvote a thoughtful comment that I disagree with, especially one that's a reply to one of my comments.
I'm also very slow... It's not immediately clear to me what a 'favorite' is.
Congrats PG. Reminds me of http://www.sl4.org/archive/0707/16399.html. Though Eliezer as a mad genius sounds more entertaining than you as a guy giving monologues.

Alternative title is How to Have an Argument. "A presentation from philanthropist and technologist Paul Graham on engaging in constructive disagreement results in an existential crisis, an exploration of the creative process, gratuitous accents and cake." From the director's blog: http://boegle.blogspot.com/2009/10/stay-for-cake.html
Price elasticity doesn't enter in to it.

The barrier is having to pay at all. When you contribute to something online you are already paying, with something far more valuable than that $1, with your time.

It also limits the speech to the voices of those that happen to be able to use the method of payment and adds significant overhead to the running of the site.
The #2 Reason Why VC's Say "No" - Market Size
The author here. The whole thing is written in Rails and hosted on Heroku which has been great. Canvas was surprisingly easy to work with coming from almost no javascript experience. Anyways let me know what you think. Thanks
> Overall I think the only reason for going with MongoDB is performance.

Isn't that reason for almost all decisions regarding which db to use? Going with the db that performs the best while suiting your specific needs?
Apart from a nicer website, how is this service any different from Mobivity, or half a dozen others? Maybe it's substantially cheaper but I can't seem to find any pricing information.
Wow! I really like this!

It seems to be a simple, flexible version of TextMarks, without all the bullshit.

[edit] Yeah, you should publish the prices on the page. It appears to be 5¢ per SMS, or $25 for 500.
Too bad they don't list any real pricing information. Also, what about non-US customers?
Ruby and Python are basically Perl with superficial differences? How in the world did you come to that conclusion? I don't think I have ever seen anyone make that argument before.
The "Stop emailing yourself" headline looks funny to me. It had to look at it a second time because when I first loaded the page I thought it was an ad and subconsciously skipped it.

I don't know why that is. I think maybe it's the font, coupled with the fact that it's on a white background.
Using Ruby on Rails and running on Mongrel, I assume?
To be fair, python 3 now has a complete, usable implementation, whereas perl 6 does not.

That said, I very much like what I've seen/heard of perl 6, and will certainly learn it once it's production-ready.
Their pricing information is available after you log in. Here it is below:

1 More Keyword - $5.00
100 More Credits - $10.00
250 More Credits - $15.00
500 More Credits - $25.00
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=923793
1) The top 1% of programmers will indeed go to the tools that make them the most productive, which are not necessarily the tools that happen to be currently most fashionable with the youngsters. Claims that Ruby is more productive than Perl are vaporware. Ruby did have an advantage for a while, but now Catalyst, RoR, and Django have now very similar feature sets (only you get CPAN as a bonus with Perl).

2) A language that is currently gaining momentum is not necessarily a language that will still have that momentum in 5, 10, or 20 years time. Perl popularity reached its peak years ago, then slowed down and has now settled and remained constant for a number of years. Given the kinds of mission critical applications that have been written and are still being written in Perl, with all my respect for Ruby (which I think is a fantastic language) I think it is a safe bet that in 20 years' time there will still be more Perl programmers than there will be Ruby programmers.
I'm not sure you can mimic pg's ability to inspire, even in a theatrical setting. That being said, I'm sure it's an enjoyable show, for those who know who he is.
He posted sample python code for the rating system in a blog post.

http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-11-6.html
Someone ought to make a deal with mr. Walker and polish up speak-freely, add video and create an open source competitor to skype.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/netfone/windows/speak_freely.html
Wow, thanks for linking to that. First I hear of it. Absolutely hilarious.
This is an API, not an application. In other words, if you want the end-user to get an SMS reply, you have to write code and instruct the API to send a message.

Mobivity gives you simple marketing tools (voting, pre-defined messages to reply with, etc.).
We recently added a script include that referenced the google AJAX api via http instead of https. That was causing the scary message. It's been fixed now.

I agree we need to add some copy and badging to reassure the user that we store all cc information securely through our payment gateway.
IMHO, the root problem is the corporate entity, which is a creation of the State, and not a necessary aspect of capitalism.

The nature of the corporate entity is a problem that capitalists (including Rand) like to avoid discussing. Limited liability naturally results in risk taking. What do people expect with limited liability ??? If the shareholders were actually liable for the obligations of the corporation, I think companies would be more careful.

IMHO, only natural persons and partnerships of natural persons, without limited liability, should be legal entities. Getting rid of corporate "shares" also makes it harder to accumulate massive assets...partnerships get tough to deal with when you have lots of partners.
US-only for now. We'll edit the frontpage to include more information. Thanks.
According to my definitions, good code must perform correctly or else fail gracefully. It must also be robust, debuggable, and maintainable. Those extra conditions mean thinking more, and writing more code. That takes extra time over hacking out the quick-and-dirty version.

For example, right now I'm helping a friend out with a project to send email. In about 10 minutes I could whip something out that does this using backticks (i.e., shell escapes), no error checking, no logging, etc. It would be in front of the customer and suitable for feedback very quickly. It would also be short, easy to understand, and would do its job correctly 99% of the time. All of these are good things, but it would still be bad code, because the other 1% of the time it's going to break horribly and someone is going to have to come in and fix it.
Yes, that is obviously his strategy and of course there is value in the product. My point was that it still doesn't change a fundamental human flaw: We see value emotionally. Ultimately, it's still a great software. Even though I recognize that I also recognize that I am upset. I'm just trying to provide an illumination of the downside of that strategy.
So you're saying choosing realistic goals is _bad_?
Man, facebok.com is nasty. It's custom made to even look like Facebook. They are raking in the big bucks, I'm sure.
Very glad you engaged, now on to my rebuttal...

Really?

Show me a piece of legislation that hasn't shoveled things around? And show legislation that actually changed things significantly and effectively without already having legislation in place that it enhanced? Drugs? Education? Prostitution? None of those for sure. I know, gun laws? Nope, not there either.

And in regards to your response to my use of the saying "locks keep out the curious, but not thieves", you have to understand the underlying principle to completely get it. No "locks" (and we aren't talking just physical) keep out thieves, only the curious. Bernie Madoff anyone? The underlying principle to that saying ties with the really corny saying "where there is a will, there is a way". When someone really wants to do something, locks are not a deterrent, they will find a way.

Cheers to you for debating with me, really enjoy it.
ww.com pulls in 1500 users each day completely out of nowhere, it has done so pretty much since I bought it.

As for facebok I checked them against some known numbers, they peaked around 100K visitors per day but right now they're below 5,000 per day.

It looks like all their traffic dropped to next to nothing in one go, which makes me wonder if it was typo traffic to begin with.

If it were typo traffic that component would have kept pace with the growth of facebook and it clearly didn't. So my guess is they were pulling in traffic in some other way and that got shut down.
Vint Cerf mods Android for interplanetary interwebs
Breaking into Agile
We had the "What language?" talk when we started work on Cloudmin, as well as when we began planning some web services. Perl ended up on top in both cases. Admittedly, we have a historic codebase of several hundred thousand lines of Perl, but we've both worked in Python at least as much as Perl in the past several years and there is a version of our API in Python that we could have started from. We weren't forced to choose Perl for legacy reasons, but we chose it, anyway.

We're pretty much agnostic about languages; we prefer dynamic languages, but not much beyond that. Our website is running on Drupal and several custom modules in PHP. We'll be adding those afore-mentioned web services via frontend PHP code, but the backend will be Perl. Haskell might make an appearance at some point in the future for concurrency work where performance matters, but for now, Perl is plenty fast and has reasonable concurrency mechanisms for our needs.

So, we're still cranking out tens of thousands of lines of Perl every year, and will be launching a couple of new products in the next six months also written in Perl.

But, I will mention that our products directly and easily support PHP, Ruby on Rails and Django deployments, but not Catalyst. And it's because we're simply not hearing requests for Catalyst from paying customers. Maybe the Catalyst developers are more old-school and don't trust a control panel (even one written in Perl), or maybe there's a helluva a lot more PHP and a handful more Ruby on Rails and Django developers out there (note that PHP developers using our software outnumber RoR and Django developers to a degree that makes the latter two practically noise in the signal). So, realistically, I have to agree. Perl is a niche language for new developments, but then again, so are Python and Ruby.
That's a bit weird, though I do want to chuckle. I didn't think pg was known at all outside of tech circles, even outside of SF.
I agree with your statement. I'm just unhappy that the article gives arguments in favor of Mongo that equally well apply to any SQL database. I would have liked more insights into the actual performance differences.
Is this US only? What is the pricing?

The landing page or at least the "learn more" page should have answered these questions.
I feel bad when I get downvoted because I respect the opinions of other people on HN and they tend to use their downvotes pretty responsibly.

I don't think upvotes are quite as meaningful, though.
I can only explain in terms of an experiment:

Write an algorithm (or app) in your favorite language of the three. Then port it to a different one of those three.

Now port to Common Lisp or Haskell, and see how your code feels different.

I find that Ruby/Python/Perl basically let you write the same program with different syntax. "$self->foo" instead of "@foo". I find that Haskell changes the way you actually program. Example: Nobody (except me) uses a type like Haskell's Error monad in Perl; they use exceptions.

(Similarly, look for a "web framework" in Perl/Python/Ruby. Perl has Catalyst. Python has Django. Ruby has Rails. They are all different, true, but the idea is the same. If three people each started the same project on those various frameworks, the end result, code-wise, would be very similar.)
>>> learn_how_to_greet()(first_name="Joe", last_name="Smith")
'WHOA! Look at me!'
The version I know is:

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.
--- Fran Lebowitz
People want to believe that their money is safe. But people are still pretty tolerant if something like twitter has an outage.
Congatulations on the improvements. You're definitely headed down the right path, but I doubt the 25% conversion increase is significant with a $5 a day budget for testing unless you're getting large amounts of traffic and conversions from other sources.

Once you get Google Website Optimizer up you'll see that it not only tells you the difference in conversion rates, but also how statistically significant the results are.
That's still just high-level lexical sugar - the 'scope' is not captured, just rewritten. After desugaring, there is no scope left, even lexically.

It's completely different from a 'closure' in a language that has variables.