Cinematic obscenity in America: A hundred years of over-baring censors - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/11/cinematic-obscenity-america <comment><USER2> The idea that there is such a thing called "obscenity law" always struck me as profoundly backwards - the idea that someone can be so bothered by a piece of media they chose to willingly consume that they can take away the right of others to do the same.

This is one glaring inconsistency in the way courts have handled exclusions to freedom of speech. Normally, any abridgement requires a strict scrutiny test, and as far as I know, nobody has been able to articulate what, exactly, the legitimate and narrow government interest in regulating "obscenity" is.

AFAICT, it's a vestige of the puritan roots of the country.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a codification of a quite natural and sometimes reasonable thing.

Imagine I said something completely disgusting in a HN comment. I'd have it flagkilled faster than I could say "freedom of speech". We accept that because a community needs to be curated and maintained. Now extend this sentiment to the society at large, and you have an argument for some kind of obscenity laws.

That those laws may have gone too far is another issue though.

<comment><USER4> With hacker news you can leave and form your own community where that sentiment can be expressed. One just needs to visit a website belonging to some fringe group to see that. But with society's laws, you can't do that. Those communities, because they are now illegal, will be hunted down and destroyed. Instead of flag killing the opinion, imagine if the one who posted it could be banned from the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still much better than the situation in Britain. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlielyne/make-the- ce...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlielyne/make-the-censors- watch-paint-drying)

</comment><comment><USER6> "The nudity that was once "bold" and "daring" is now commonplace: hardly a rom-com goes by without a sex scene. Sexually explicit films are released without the batting of a censorial eyelid."

And yet, in one of the seasons of US Hell's Kitchen, one of the chefs is in a T-Shirt and her breasts are covered by a blurring mask. I guess it's because you could see her nipples? In a show where Ramsey calls people "fuckface"? US censorship is really really weird.

<comment> vezzy-fnord I don't agree with the author's characterization. Little of the sex scenes in Hollywood films are "bold" or "daring" in the slightest. They're timid, lifeless and quite often completely pointless. They're put in there more to appease some informal filmmaking convention rather than to drive the film itself. A few are explicit, most are comical and still suffer from puritan tropes (like the infamous "his-and-hers bed sheets").

Lars von Trier is certainly controversial, too. _Antichrist_ received quite a bit of opposition from ratings and censorship boards. Then, in the USA, even if your film isn't censored, the NC-17 is a de facto death penalty.

<comment><USER3> Actually, from my personal observation, Hollywood seems to have toned down on sex scenes significantly in the last decade or so. Actually, I can honest-to- god say that Hollywood blockbusters are now higher culture than theatre in my country is...

<comment><USER5> Simple math - more people will turn out to see a movie rated PG-13 instead of R. So that's what the studios tend to shoot for.

<comment><USER3> It used to be that they were shooting for superfluous sex scenes, and a similar argument could be made - sex sells. Theatre is apparently behind the loop and it tries to exploit it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will never understand the taboo that is nudity in the USA society

<comment><USER8> I don't know. Seems like we have plenty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Think censorship is over? Express opposition to feminists/muslims/blacks/gays/multiculturism/drugs etc. and watch the fireworks. Neo-puritan morals police are stronger than ever.

<comment><USER10> What does "fireworks" mean here? Actual literal censorship, or just people loudly complaining and criticising the expressed sentiment? Because that is the opposite of censorship.

<comment><USER11> A recent example:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north- yorkshire-34...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north- yorkshire-34857143)

<comment><USER12> Overheard three college students at the next table in a restaurant two days ago talking about how free speech is outdated and the Constitution should be changed to limit it so that you can't speak in anyway that was offensive to others.

I was flabbergasted.

These are students who are supposed to be going to school to get exposure to ideas different from their own and learn about the value of freedom of expression especially when it comes to expressing views the majority might not agree with.

I feel like an old man wondering what is wrong with kids today and I'm not that old.

<comment><USER4> I'm only a half decade out of college and I'm wanting all these whippersnappers off my lawn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Over-baring censors" \- Freudian slip, headline wordplay or typo?

Discuss.

<comment><USER14> Bad headline wordplay. The Economist loves those, and it's too carefully- edited otherwise for it to be accidental.

<comment><USER15> Terrible wordplay, if this is actually the case. The play exactly contradicts the thesis.

<comment><USER13> Which was what got my attention too. The Economist is usually very particular about such choices.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo and Facebook try to validate six degree separation hypothesis - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/facebook-and-yahoo-test-six-degrees-of-separation-idea/2011/08/17/gIQAlngILJ_blog.html?wprss=blogpost

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that yahoo does not seem to rely on graph algorithms to do that. To reach from X to Y, where X is not directly connected to Y, they ask X which of their friends might connect them to Y.

Have there been any other prominent attempts (besides the famous friendster feature) to validate this hypothesis?</comment>


Tom Peters: Pissed-Off People Drive Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2EdCl-CX4Q New short video from Peters where he argues angry people are the only source of innovation, so keep your furious people around. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> awesome video clip. hardly the behavior corporate america aims at though.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's why I love Tom, he speaks to corporate america, but says whatever he wants.</comment></comment>


Six more radio signals from deep space deepen mystery - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/6-more-mysterious-radio-signals-have-been-detected-coming-from-outside-our-galaxy <comment><USER2> We do know that under the laws of physics evolution of intelligent creatures is possible. We also know that against someone capable of coming here, we're defenseless, conveniently pinned to this beautiful, but small rock and with no way to escape. We also know that space is huge beyond imagination and that the law of large numbers means that after billions of years of unfamiliar evolution across the billions of unfamiliar worlds throughout Milky Way alone almost anything may conceivably come out of it.

At times, I find it weirdly surprising that I don't actually experience fear every time I look up at the sky. Then again the lack of fear is easy to understand: a deadly encounter with an alien race happens only once, so evolution had no chance to tune our responses appropriately.

This reminds me of dodo of Mauritius [1]. It is said that the birds were not fearful of humans (nor presumably of other abstract threats that could conceivably come from across the seas).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo)

<comment><USER3> There is no reasonable reason why we should fear aliens. There is absolutely nothing present on earth that is not hyper abundant elsewhere and more conveniently harvested from a shallower gravity well. There is just nothing here that is special, especially special enough to travel many light years to get to. It is also hard to image why a species that have that capability would not be able to synthesize what they want from base materials.

<comment><USER4> There's a line of thought that annihilation of one species is the only possible outcome from two spacefaring species meeting. This stems from the assumption that both are growth-seeking, which makes sense since they wouldn't be likely to meet without being expansionist.

Seeking growth, they will need more and more resources. Direct competition inevitably ensues, leading to conflict and destruction either via warfare or economic means.

That's all pretty theoretical, but just one example of why aliens might not be benign. I don't think it's reasonable to say we have nothing to fear.

<comment><USER3> Aliens arriving today must be technologically superior to humans by several orders of magnitude. If they are not they would exploit their local resources first before finding need to expand. So the changes of technologically equivalent aliens arriving today is negligible.

The amount of material present in Jupiter is rather large. If a species arrives that is routinely capable of converting gas giants into habitats and is currently in pressing need for housing then yes, we may be bulldozed into extinction - there might be even some poetic justice in that. But why would the Developers choose Jupiter, why not some other system with many more Gas giants or currently coalescing clouds ?

Resource based arguments don't hold much water for me, not at this scale anyway.

<comment><USER4> An aggressively expansionist species will always be "in need of housing". They will behave like locusts. It's not a given that most species would be like that, but if they come to us, the odds are pretty good they are aggressively expansionist. If they weren't, why would they bother to go to the trouble of space travel in the first place?

<comment><USER5> Any civilization that can travel between the stars will be able to build space habs more cheaply. There's no good reason to sit in the bottom of a gravity well when you can build something better yourself.

Unless maybe you are losing a war, being chased relentlessly across the stars and need to make a bomb shelter under a thousand miles of rock. You could offer the natives all sorts of technology, or all the precious metals you find in exchange for a few cubic kilometers deep under ground. Whatever deals you make with them don't matter anyway. They'll all be glassed in a few years when your pursuers figure out where you're hiding and begin bombardment.

<comment><USER6> Or maybe they need warriors, since their race has already collectively modified itself to delete wasteful things like aggressiveness and anger. Queue the intelligent aggressive naked apes. And throw them at your problems!

Or imagine making peace with the aliens, what will they think of our nearly endless collections of movies, video games and stories wherein we're slaughtering, mutilating and murdering or visitors from the sky? I wonder how _that_ is going to look once they understand what they're seeing.

<comment><USER7> > Or maybe they need warriors, since their race has already collectively > modified itself to delete wasteful things like aggressiveness and anger.

Highly doubtful. Any trait that's collectively exhibited was adaptive and such a spefies would value it to some extent, so they wouldn't breed it out entirely. If some new sub-species found a better way and outcompeted those with this trait, then they are already better adapted by definition, and so wouldn't need this trait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article makes a number of incorrect statements. First of all, all observed FRBs so far are at cosmological distances, well outside the Milky Way. Second, even before the discovery of a repeating source, neutron star collisions have already been ruled out as being a primary source of FRBs because of their rate. Only a very small fraction of neutron stars collide with another neutron star or black hole in the lifetime of the Universe (of the order of 1 every tens of thousands). On the other hand, the FRB rate inferred from the observations is around several percent of the core-collapse supernova rate, ie, the rate at which neutron stars are formed.

 __EDIT __

Also the energy estimate given in the article are way off. The energy released by FRBs are of the order of what the Sun emits in 1 year not 1 day (assuming that FRB emit energy isotropically and that the distances estimated from the dispersion measurement of FRBs are correct).

<comment><USER9> _The energy released by FRBs are of the order of what the Sun emits in 1 year not 1 day (assuming that FRB emit energy isotropically and that the distances estimated from the dispersion measurement of FRBs are correct)._

Each burst lasts only a few milliseconds. What does the energy consumption look like assuming the FRBs emit RF directionally and aim at plausible targets in their sky? That's what an attempt to communicate would probably do.

<comment><USER8> The energy requirements are proportional to the beaming angle, so if we assume FRBs to be beamed, then the energy required decreases significantly. For example assuming a beam of 10 deg^2, this would give a reduction of a factor 648.

<comment><USER9> Assume the sender has an antenna at least as good as Arecibo. That antenna has a beam width of 4 minutes of arc.[1] That's 0.066 degrees, or about one ten millionth of the sky. So you get to divide the power requirements by 10^7.

[1] [http://egg.astro.cornell.edu/alfalfa/ugrad/backgrnd/intro2ar...](http://egg.astro.cornell.edu/alfalfa/ugrad/backgrnd/intro2arecibo.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Better story: [http://www.sciencealert.com/6-more-mysterious-radio- signals-...](http://www.sciencealert.com/6-more-mysterious-radio-signals-have- been-detected-coming-from-outside-our-galaxy)

Preprint: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08880](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08880)

<comment><USER11> Changed from [http://www.ibtimes.co.in/six-more-radio-signals-deep- space-d...](http://www.ibtimes.co.in/six-more-radio-signals-deep-space-deepen- mystery-are-we-being-hailed-by-intelligent-beings-709741), thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If they are organized like human civilization, they will have a scientific and artist caste, discussing how human civilization should be protected and how tragic its demise is, while a capital caste mines human civilisation for exotic materials and protein. After 99 % of humanity is gone, the survivors are taken to a galactic zoo and are allowed to speak on "Never again" dinner galas.

</comment><comment><USER13> > they tend to generate so much energy that it could parallel the amount of > energy generated by the Sun for a whole day

This is not a good enough reason to think it could be life. So many objects in our universe are orders of magnitude more powerful than our unremarkable sun.

> Repeating Nature an enigma

This is not a good enough reason to think it could be life. Repeating is fundamental to every single branch of physics. So many phenomena emit photons periodically. Charged particles in circular motion, pulsars, quasars, binary stars, solar systems at certain viewing angles, etc.

<comment><USER14> The amount of energy used actually makes it _less_ likely to be intelligence.

<comment><USER13> Initially I thought that as well: "why would intelligent life spew tons of energy into random solid angles?". But there may be a reason to do this. I wouldn't be sure if they would go through the effort to not pollute -- just look at humans. We pollute space with our signals. Civilizations that command astronomical amounts of energy as if they were pennies might just do the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you scale the way our technology works up to sufficient levels to accomplish the original event, I could see the following still holding:

It is always easier to take advantage of matter/energy existing in the universe than to create it yourself.

Supposing a civilization could communicate across galactic scales using this method, which seems easier? Crushing neutron stars / dropping things in black holes or constructing an appatus to emit an equivalent amount of power?

Just because even we can technologically do something doesn't mean we don't take easier shortcuts. Working smarter, not harder scales.

If it's based on naturally occurring raw material, it's not unreasonable that the source would jump around anyway.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is the amount of energy per burst based on the assumption that it's radiating in a sphere versus being directional?

<comment><USER17> If we're talking K2 I think it doesn't matter. Either power requirement outstrips anything otherwise naturally occurring.

<comment><USER11> The ratio between K1 energy and K2 energy is the ratio between a sun's radiation falling on one planet and the sun's radiation over the entire sphere.

So a directional transmission with the beam angle of a planet from the sun at K1 power should look similar to an isotropic transmission with K2 power.

For earth, that angle is 0.0025 degrees, entirely possible with parabolic antennas.

<comment><USER18> Shouldn't we try to get outside that arc as soon as possible and set up the means to corroborate this? We might need several satellites it seems like.

<comment><USER17> It might take something orbiting Pluto to figure out though. I wouldn't know, but with the variables involved that seems possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lets not jump to conclusions, maybe this is being caused by life but there are also lots of other things besides life that can cause radio bursts in regular intervals, like a neutron star.

</comment><comment> open-source-ux A signal from deep space, the meaning of which is unclear. Is it a sign of alien life? Is it friendly or hostile?

And thus we have the perfect premise from which so many science fiction stories have sprung. One of the earliest from TV is a BBC sci-fi drama called _A for Andromeda_ broadcast in the early 1960s. The Wikipedia plot summary:

 _" A group of scientists...detect a radio signal from another galaxy that contains instructions for the design of an advanced computer. When the computer is built, it gives the scientists instructions for the creation of a living organism named Andromeda, but one of the scientists, John Fleming, fears that Andromeda's purpose is to subjugate humanity."_

At the risk of derailing this thread, can any one recommend any other sci-fi novels (or comics) in the same vein?

<comment><USER20> Contact.

Liu, Cixin - Three Body Problem.

<comment><USER21> > Liu, Cixin - Three Body Problem.

The second book in the series is the best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find this quite exciting, not because I hope for a signal from an intelligent civilization, but because it might point to some new phenomenon.

When pulsars were discovered, they dubbed them LGM-1, LGM-2 etc for "little green men", (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1919%2B21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1919%2B21) ). The radio signals turned out to have a perfectly "normal" source, with exciting new properties.

There's always the off chance this time, it's actually caused by "LGM", but for now we should think of these signals as an observation that needs an explanation, not as caused by an alien civilization.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is this site for real? Nothing but clickbait titles.

</comment><comment><USER24> Serious question: how many years old are the signals estimated to be?

</comment><comment><USER25> It is terse and somewhat dramatic illustration of plato's allegory of the cave ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave))

<comment><USER26> How is it remotely related, other than that both scenarios relate to having a partial understanding due to a limited viewpoint?

<comment><USER15> Parent was attempting to attempting to correlate a classical epistemological exercise with a much more modern epistemological quip about the continuity of modern experience, informed by (among others) neo-Hegelianism, philosophical realism, and proto-pragmatism (similar to James and Spinoza).

In other words, yes, they are the same... in the way a pebble is a mountain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one immediately thinking "war"?

These bursts might be some start detonations in a war between two alien species, which would be really frightening..!

<comment><USER28> Considering they are coming from "outside our galaxy" and our galaxy is 100,000 light years across, that means two things: (1) This "war" (if it happened) happened long ago, and (2) The victor is very far away.

In any case it's far more likely this is some natural phenomenon.

<comment><USER29> A space war from a long time ago and a galaxy far away? Where have I heard that before... maybe this is just a Disney marketing ploy...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This might just be a neutron star as said in the last line. But the moment we realise that we are not special, we start to believe the possibility of another life form elsewhere.

<comment><USER31> The possibility of another life form does not make us any less special. Each of us exists as a single individual; the same goes for each of them. I welcome and cherish any life forms that may yet exist.

<comment><USER32> > the same goes for each of them

That's a bold claim. What do you base this on? What makes you think there's more than one? And if there is, why wouldn't they have, say, a hive mind?

<comment><USER13> Humans are already in the process of creating a hive mind (very early stages). Consider the limiting case when every brain has access to the same information. Suppose you get born into such a civilization. Their doctors inject a quantum chip which integrates with your entire nervous system and then open sources all of your data into the common information highway. Your thoughts are known by all as you know them. Data is released, not to be "owned". After all, you're a piece of matter, and your brain represents an unknown to other people who deserve to know the state of the universe just as much as you. Morally, we humans aren't there yet, however, hive minds aren't unreasonable in more advanced and connected societies.

Perhaps someone from 2000 years ago, looking at our society today, might have thought that we had a hive mind (at a first glance). After all, you seem to know your friends' birthdays as they know them. You seem to know their messages to you as they know them.

But our society is still stuck in the "ownership" phase. We have concepts of "corporations" and notions like "privacy" and "secrets", which are in direct contradiction to a pure hive state. Even if we have the technology to do it, we will remain bounded and unable to converge into a hive state. The notion that other societies may be capable of utilizing matter to such an extent doesn't surprise me.

<comment><USER33> Neat! You've just invented the Borg.

<comment><USER34> Or Alastair Reynolds' Conjoiners, for a less dystopian vision of a collective mind.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Easy way to compare IaaS vendor prices and features - <AUTHOR> http://piqwat.com/

<comment><USER2> I went from happy to sad so fast.

Those are not PaaS.

They are IaaS.

<comment><AUTHOR> updated..PaaS comparison has been on the mind lately..sorry this didn't meet your needs (yet!)</comment></comment>


CSS Animations and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/css-animations-and-javascript/

<comment><USER2> If we have libraries (jQuery, Scriptaculous, etc) that do this for us, do they need to be added to main technology too? Would it allow a performance increase or something?

</comment><comment><USER3> tried the demo on my iPhone. Just made safari crash and burn and didn't animate anything.</comment>


Grading Tim Cook - <AUTHOR> https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/1/19/grading-tim-cook <comment><USER2> I have a hard time figuring out where Neil Cybart fits into the world of Apple punditry and analytics. He seems to have ambitions to succeed in both areas, but I don't think he has much traction.

Technical folks like us don't care very much about Cybart's views on the Apple executive inner sanctum -- we're more interested in the Apple ecosystem of development tools, products, and services, and where they fit into the larger high-tech universe. Besides, he wants us to pay him to read his punditry. Heaven forbid!

Wall Street investors and analysts probably don't trust him much and don't value his perspective -- to them, he's a maverick and an outsider. Some of them may subscribe to his newsletter, but I doubt if they take it seriously.</comment>


Making a Mini-Lisp: Introduction to Transpilers in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://angularclass.com/making-a-mini-lisp-introduction-to-transpilers/ <comment><USER2> Is the ad hoc distinction between compilation and "transpilation" really worth it? Can't we just call them compilers? I get that the difference between compilation and transpilation is that the target language of the latter is not a lower lever language, which would be in the case of C and Assembler, but that it targets a language that's more or less of a similar level. Is this really worthy of another term? I'm not sure.

<comment><USER3> While as you point out there's not necessarily an academic difference, the notion that your target language will itself require a compiler and/or runtime is useful to know up front. Transpilers also usually attempt close to 1-to-1 translation. Functions become functions, constants become constants, etc.

As someone who has written many compilers before, I'd almost feel it would be a slight disservice to call a transpiler a compiler, mostly because their architecture and goals are often different.

<comment><USER4> I think the distinction is useful too, as it gives you a better idea of where a language actually sits in a development workflow.

<comment><USER5> Then why not just use the term "translator"?

<comment><USER3> Translate usually means something bijective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The language being defined here is not a Lisp, it's a (trivial) language that just happens to use (something like) S expressions as the surface syntax. (The reason it's only "something like" S expressions is that it has ad-hoc commas to delimit argument lists.)

The characteristic that defines a Lisp is that code is not a sequence of characters, it's a data structure -- typically a tree of cons cells -- which can be manipulated within the language itself. The language being defined here doesn't have that property.

It is this property that allows you to write macros, which is what makes Lisp cool. Without it you don't have Lisp, you just have a run-of-the-mill programming language with weird syntax.

<comment><USER7> You make an interesting and important point, but to be honest the article's intended audience is people who are intimidated by language translation or just have never done it before. The "Minilisp" is not really a language so much as a tool to demonstrate the concepts of tokenizing, parsing and recursion. It is unfortunate if the result is a mischaracterization of real Lisp, but I was trying to cut a balance between being accurate and filling the article with tangential information.

<comment><USER6> That's a fine goal, but there's more at stake here than mere "accuracy". When you design a language that uses S-expression syntax (sort of) and has "Lisp" in its name, but eliminates the _reason_ for using S-expressions, you're not really laying a foundation for understanding, you're creating a cargo cult ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult), specifically [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Metaphorical_uses_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Metaphorical_uses_of_the_term))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shameless Plug here.

Inspired by Peter Norvig's 'How to write a Lisp Interpreter in Python', I created three variants of it along the same lines as the OP. The first is a Simple Lisp Interpreter in Javascript [1]. The second separates Syntactic Analysis from Execution [2]. And the third supports non deterministic computing [3].

[1] [https://bitbucket.org/sainamdar/lisp2js](https://bitbucket.org/sainamdar/lisp2js)

[2] [https://bitbucket.org/sainamdar/lisp2js2](https://bitbucket.org/sainamdar/lisp2js2)

[3] [https://bitbucket.org/sainamdar/lisp2js2nd](https://bitbucket.org/sainamdar/lisp2js2nd)

</comment><comment><USER9> As someone who's been working on figuring out a way to transpile or interpret a powerful dynamic language to Lua, JavaScript, Python and Go, the really tough thing to do is non-local exits. If you can solve that, I think that everything else is easy (well, a Simple Matter of Programming anyway).

It's okay if your target language already supports non-local exits, particularly parameterised ones (although even that can be faked with a well- designed global), but if it doesn't then it's a pain (imagine how you'd do it in Go: every single function call will return an additional value, indicating if a non-local exit is intended).

Alternatively, imagine trying to transpile call/cc to JavaScript…

<comment><USER10> Just transform it to continuation-passing style[1] and call/cc is no problem (neither are non-local exits). Granted your compiled code will be somewhat large and not much like 'regular' code in the language. That can be solved by doing selective CPS transform (IcedCoffeeScript[2] does this), but that gets slightly less straightforward.

Compiling continuations to a dynamic language is actually really easy.

\--

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation- passing_style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation-passing_style)

2: [http://maxtaco.github.io/coffee-script/](http://maxtaco.github.io/coffee- script/)

<comment><USER9> > Just transform it to continuation-passing style and call/cc is no problem > (neither are non-local exits). Granted your compiled code will be somewhat > large

I'm well aware, but CPS code can be _insanely_ large (essentially a function declaration for every line of code in the original source). That's quite painful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great article! Really accessible for a newbie. I'd love to see a comparison between using a manual lexer/parser like the one seen here and using OMeta/JS, which seems like a real time saver for people playing around with languages. [https://github.com/alexwarth/ometa-js](https://github.com/alexwarth/ometa-js)

<comment><USER10> For playing around with languages I'd actually recommend writing your own lexer and parser. It isn't hard, and writing a recursive descent parser really helps understanding grammars and BNF. Before you have a solid grasp of how context-free grammars work, parser generators aren't much of a time saver IMO.

In my experience getting a BNF grammar right is something of an art which you pick up after having written a few parsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> formatting on code sample was wonky, just fixed them , refresh and enjoy!</comment>


GitHub's Wild West Approach To Licensing Has Hidden Costs - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/07/16/githubs-wild-west-approach-to-licensing-has-hidden-costs

<comment><USER2> I wonder how they weighted a repo. If I have a toy project up on GitHub that I never really intended to do anything with or have anyone use, is that really the same thing as putting up a useful library that I made and simply didn't license?

</comment><comment><USER3> Out of curiosity when did open source become "The Man" as implied by this article?</comment>


U.S. Airlines Report Delays Caused by System Fault - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> URL seems to be missing. Article with same title on wallstreetjournal [https://www.wsj.com/articles/southwest-airlines-says- systemw...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/southwest-airlines-says-systemwide- technology-problem-affecting-flights-11554117011)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Poster here — I don't know what happened to the URL (I was pretty sure I posted it). Apologies for the inconvenience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/southwest-delta-united- airli...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/southwest-delta-united-airlines-say- they-are-experiencing-systemwide-outages.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your business paying for internet? - <AUTHOR> My company is moving, and we are looking at internet and the cost, is nearly 10x what residential is, for 1/3 the speed.
I know there is an higher cost for commercial internet but this seems insane, and wasn't having a lot of luck finding this data.
I'm trying to get a general idea of what people are paying for internet.
speed/location/cost? <comment><USER2> Former employer was paying $1200/mo + $40k install for 100/100 fiber via wave business. This was for around a 1.5 mile off of the main highway install.</comment>


Facebook changes everyone's listed emails to 'Facebook.com' - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-changes-emails-20120625,0,1918913.story

<comment><USER2> Earlier discussion, from 2 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433>

Here's some discussion and a link describing how to fix it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157589></comment>


Ask HN: What is your coolest project in Python? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Why _in Python_?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I am learning Python, and looking for inspiration. What have you built in Python?

<comment><USER2> Several things, usually for sysadmins. RPC daemon whose configuration is procedures to expose. Log parsing daemon. A small toolbox for building monitoring systems. RRD browser/plotter.</comment></comment></comment>


Using Chrome Extensions to Add Features to 3rd-Party Websites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bcoe/mrpopular

<comment><AUTHOR> I built an extension, to sum up some of what I've learned working on Attachments.me over the past year. Using extensions to add additional functionality to 3rd-party websites, such as Gmail, can be a pain. But it can be well worth it, it's helped us grow our user-base a ton.</comment>


Google demands neutrality (just don't apply it to them) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/google-demands-neutrality-just-dont-apply-it-to-them.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

<comment><USER2> Seriously Ars Technica? That was one of the worst articles I have ever read. The mental gymnastics required to equate network neutrality to mandating "search neutrality" for a search engine made me question the validity of anything in the article.

There is nothing hypocritical nor dishonest about Google's stance. The interests of Google are luckily perfectly in line with the interests of every internet user in the world. Preventing the telecom monopoly/oligopoly from abusing their non-competitive market has nothing to do with controlling the content of any given website.

Was this article intentionally absurd? I'm genuinely confused how anyone could put forth such a fundamentally unsound and illogical argument.</comment>


Dear Apple - Answer my emails - <AUTHOR> http://screenshots.dustincurtis.com/Re__iPhone_Developer_Program-20100617-225216.jpg <comment><USER2> I don't know if the terms have changed, but when I enrolled last year it was explicitly stated that it would take at least a week.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rather than send 4 emails, why not call the toll-free developer support number?</comment>