Viewing profile — Amnon

What I do is split the window vertically (C-w v), and resize the left window so that the text in the right window is centered on the screen.

Actually, 10. doesn't necessarily repeat the last command 10 times, it just runs it again with an argument of 10. For example ">>10." will indent the current line and then indent i…

The advantage of "streams" is that it can be used to elegantly define infinite sequences recursively. For example, you can define powers of two as: var powersOf2 = new Stream(1, fu…

Of course Python doesn't automatically ensure good code. But the Python code in your example is readable -- pretty match as readable as it gets, considering the constraints I menti…

shells were specifically made to operate with external programs (the Unix way) while Python is a more general programming language, so naturally it will be more verbose for this ki…

Did anyone notice the mailing list? It's one dedicated to the author. Interesting alternative for a blog.

Yes! Something changed in the search algorithm recently, for the worse. I search for X and get Y. Is this documented anywhere? (I didn't know that a "+" prefix can fix this. Thanks…

It will also be the slowest only 1/3 of the time, so in fact this isn't an explanation why "the other lines" seem to be faster.

Not if you don't know what the Fail Whale is.

Turns out the page is a reference to a certain Fail Whale -- http://www.whatisfailwhale.info/ . The thing that's bothering me about the fail whale -- all the strings that hold the …

Statement 1 isn't true. If you have 10$ in the envelope, and it's the smaller envelope, you gain 10$. But if it's the larger envelope you don't lose 10$. The fallacy is that "x" re…

Actually I wasn't talking about the monetary value. It's not an investment scheme but a way to keep souvenirs for the future. (Apparently the people at HN tend to think of everythi…

Interesting. The glossary at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_2.html#GLOSS19 defines hyperlink as "a relationship between two anchors, called the head and the tail. The…

> Everything in the world has a U-shaped value curve. On this point, a good thing to do is to keep some of the ubiquitous everyday things when you want to throw them away. Especial…

Yes, it's a little disappointing. It's like saying the Unix cat is a self referential program since it can be used to display its own source code.

This should be mentioned in every discussion about HN's negative aspects: click your login at the top of the screen and change noprocast to yes. Next time you'll visit HN, you'll s…

What's with the periodicity of the graph? It looks like users who have signed at the beginning of the year -- any year -- are more likely to comment? Or more likely, much more peop…

> The end result is that people always tell me I am too skinny even though I eat a lot. Umm... Doesn't being too skinny mean you're not eating well? (I'm asking because I'm in the …

I wasn't explicit enough about the fact that the article originally attributed the term to Grice, and then an anonymous editor changed it to this scholar who isn't mentioned anywhe…

I wanted to write about how linguistics should be handled by linguists not philosophers, so I checked the citations. I noticed that Wikipedia says implicature was coined by Patrick…

I suppose you're right. It was the rich man's bias, thinking that you don't need money to be happy. (That word again). Also, I didn't realize that you were speaking more generally.…

The "tips and tricks" section is interesting. I didn't know that iterating over node lists can take O(n^2). Also the Closure Compiler was new to me.

> So, how about if we could compile JavaScript into native code? Isn't that what all modern JavaScript engines do? If so, how are the results for the experiment so good? My guess i…

You assume that Internet access makes you happier. I'm not sure. At least they are spared a lot of distractions :)