skwosh

I was thinking more along the lines of: instead of daydreaming about planets > 1000 ly away, we might find a system nearby that we can study in detail...

Indeed, Kepler covers only 0.25% of the sky, and is only capable of detecting systems that are edge-on (around 0.47% probability for Earth-like planets)[1]. The mind boggles at what we might discover with a more complete picture...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_%28spacecraft%29

> Is there any reason to use monads in (let's say) Javascript rather than promises?

Not intrinsically, IMO. The main value of monads is the shared interface, and its utility is contingent on tools that recognise that interface.

In that respect, it's as useful as providing e.g. a `map` method for promises, arrays, dictionaries, etc. Though in my experience JavaScript rarely seems to be written with this kind of generic interface in mind (e.g. there's no coherent interface mandated between classes in the standard library).

I agree, and I actually think a better word for `bind` is `then`.

For anyone unfamiliar, the `then` of Promises corresponds to the monadic `bind` or `flatMap` (if the given function returns a Promise) or the functorial `map` (if the given function returns a plain value).

A monad then is just the interface shared between Promises (`then` and `resolve`, collections (`flatMap` and `wrap`), etc.

The hard part for me was visualising the pattern for more complicated types like parsers (functions from strings to results) and continuations.

I hope not, both for the reasons @ufo pointed out above (uncertainty about what kind of function you have and how many arguments are yet to be supplied), and that I find partial application (à la `bind`) to be more in line with JavaScript's typing/semantics (always returns a normal function (modulo the treatment of `this`)).

I haven't used either but since they're based on Haskell I would assume that currying is inherent to the language (functions are curried by default).

I like the idea, though with corporations it's clear where the intentionality comes from: the CEO, the board, etc. It doesn't seem to "emerge" as much from lower level entities à la neurons. Not that that invalidates a group-level consciousness of course...

While we're here, the article you linked recommends equality comparison w.r.t. "the maximum number of possible floating-point values between the two values".

Any idea on how to go about this in JavaScript? The binary representation of the float isn't as easy to come by (compared to C, for example), but I wonder if you couldn't get a decent approximation with Math.log2.

If only there was a way to submit both the original title and some kind of summary...

Along similar lines to Primer (both in terms of story and production), you might enjoy the film Coherence...

The key employee was Victoria Taylor, Director of Communications who was fired without notice.

Discussion here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_ha...

One can only speculate on the grounds for such swift termination, but this and the handling of the recent subreddit evictions suggest that Reddit has difficulty with PR (certainly ironic in this case)...

Maybe Reddit is trying to pivot, perhaps into something more like Digg?

I somewhat agree about computer music, though it appears to be an extension of the process driven composition that has been part of western (art) music for a while now (e.g. modulation).

Sometimes I wonder if linguistics has more to offer composition than algebra (speculation, as I know next to nothing about (non-CS) linguistics).

> It's not that this is an impossible problem. It's more that the set of people who can code machine learning algorithms and understand music theory and are creative enough to invent new algorithmic techniques and to create more-than-listenable music is incredibly small - double figures, if that.

Are you pursuing something like this? Or know anyone who is? This is one of my main interests (alongside better interfaces for composition and well, making music). I'm actually back at University for my second degree to study this sort of thing.

If you have a blog or anything I'd be interested to find out...

For me the correct position is to recognise that the law isn't fixed and absolute, but dynamic (as interpreted through the courts) and evolving.

Without privacy (or with pervasive surveillance), we might never have achieved the critical mass required to overturn historical legislation regarding blasphemy, homosexuality, drug use, etc.

In other words, privacy provides the necessary sand-box for the evolution of law.

I was going through your stuff [2] today and developed a much better intuition for the universal property and initial/final-ness than I had previously (from the beginning of Awodey, Mac Lane, etc), so thanks!

j2kun's site [2] is highly recommended for anyone looking for a foothold into CT. It begins with a brief look at the universal property of free monoids (by implementing lift for lists), followed by various constructions (many in the category of Set). It (currently) ends with a discussion of map, filter, and (the universal property) of fold. Some constructions/proofs are provided in ML (which I've been meaning to get acquainted with (and while "clunky" is better suited than Haskell for the intended purpose, imo)).

So yeah, thanks again! I hope you get time to continue the series...

I would have liked to have seen:

* Skinny arrows as a shorthand for functions (for methods and constructors that don't get 'this' from outside.

* Rest parameters with trailing arguments, e.g.:

    function zip (...xs, f) { ... }

Seems like an oversight but I'm sure there was a reason (anyone care to comment?)...

I guess arguments parsing isn't quite dead...

I was going to mention this also. I'm currently working around it with conditional comments (serving /fonts/ie/9+/index.css, etc).

Anyway, thanks for your service, bookmarked... (I've been thinking of doing something similar). Good luck with finding a solution to this problem...

Onanism?

Yeah, that show [1] suggests that there are number of positive effects to limiting calories and protein intake, such as reduced risk of cancer, heart disease, cognitive disorders, and an increase in (neuronal) cell-repair and longevity.

Something that I have noticed is an increase in self-control. Previously my relationship to food had been rather habitual and sometimes even addictive. I've found that fasting has made it a lot easier to control what I eat on the other days...

[1] http://vimeo.com/54089463

Fasting (< 500cal) two or three times a week is rapidly decreasing my volume, and bringing increased mental clarity and alertness. It's a good rhythm to get into, has a pretty dramatic (positive) effect on how I feel, and it's a nice way to atone for yesterday...

I don't think that whether it's humour or not is relevant. Just as it makes no difference if a derogatory caricature of a jew is a "cartoon" or if The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a "work of literature".

Good point.

You might say that this kind of thing validates a particular way of thinking for people who already lean that way.

It's not likely to inspire rape, but it has the potential to reinforce a negative perspective of women.

> Right now, though, d3.js gives me 80% of my income. It's something I like, and I noticed a lot of demand

Very interesting.

If you don't mind my asking, what kind of work are you typically doing with d3? Visualising what kind of data and for what purpose?

For me, there's a pretty big gap between the available educational materials and research papers. My understanding of the academic stuff is mostly intuitive. It isn't until I read a paper like Monadic Parser Combinators [1] or sigfpe's blog [2] that it really becomes concrete.

I find that for a lot of higher-level ideas much of the heavy lifting isn't necessarily through application of functional ideas per se, but through more sophisticated type gymnastics.

Because expressions are often written in short-hand (to expose structure), as well abbreviated and underspecified (to get the compiler to do the work), making sense of academic code can be a challenge.

In another life I'd have dedicated more time to learning the fundamentals (of Programming Language Theory and Category Theory), because I find the whole field insanely facinating. Maybe I'm looking for a short-cut but there isn't one?

[1] http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/237/1/monparsing.pdf [2] http://blog.sigfpe.com/

Hope this goes into a lot of depth...

My main issue with existing books and tutorials is that I'm left in the dark about the more interesting/advanced parts of Haskell.

Some of the areas I would like to have a better understanding:

- More advanced kinds of monads e.g. Logic, Continuation

- Monad Transformers

- Arrows

- Rank-N types

- GADTs

- Category theoretical ideas e.g. Bananas and Lenses

- Type derivatives and TypeClass abuse c.f. Conor McBride

- Control patterns like Iteratees, Generic Zippers c.f. Oleg Kiselyov, Chung-Chieh Shan

I have an intuitive grasp of the above, but to me Haskell is more about programming with types than anything functional.

On the practical side, it seems like Haskell excels as a language processor, and parsing/compilation would be a great way to explore how to structure certain kinds of applications (like web servers, graphics pipelines, etc).

Please don't make it too real-world, I already have bash ;)

Can anyone comment on the impact of this result on the theory of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG)?

My understanding is that one of the predictions of LQG is that photons of higher energy are likely to lag behind those of lower energy due to propagation through spin-foam (meaning velocity isn't c but dependent on energy or frequency).

It seems like this is what they're getting at in [1]...

Would something like this categorically invalidate something like LQG or merely some of its assumptions?

[1] http://phys.org/news/2013-01-spacetime-smoother-brew-knew.ht...

Regarding the existence of life...

Seems all that's really required to kickstart life and evolution is any self-replicating structure.

Chemicals are well suited for creating complex structures, but it doesn't rule out self-replicating forms embedded in other kinds of matter held together with other kinds of force.

Other applications of long URLs:

- Unique and unforgeable references for capability-based security (e.g. the Waterken Server)

- Serialized continuations, or unforgeable references to server-side continuations (as in continuation-based web servers)

I would be interested to hear how piracy can justified, not for multi-million dollar corporations and defunct organisations, but for small businesses and individuals.

Adobe and Microsoft can sustain their products being pirated wholesale partly because it undermines their smaller competitors.

It's easy to justify downloading episodes of syndicated television shows, platinum albums, or computer games from 1992, but as a startup-centric site, it seems more relevant to question the impact of piracy on small independent businesses/artists/producers.

Maybe they should be "grateful for the publicity", or "flattered" that their product has been downloaded thousands of times on thepiratebay.org. Maybe the losses incurred are made up for by a wider audience and more sales once the user has reached maturity...