On programming.reddit.com, I have referred to a list of Big Haskell Projects I'm keeping. I've been keeping it in my head, because it's been short, but I thought I should go ahead and start actually keeping one.

Haskell as a language intrigues me, but I can't help but notice that there aren't a lot of large projects that use it. My intuition suggests that this could be difficult, because I suspect the type system may become increasingly unwieldy. I once asked about this directly, and the results were less than impressive. I'm asking for examples of large projects because concrete results trump my intuition.

In the interests of honesty and transparency, I'm actually going to keep this list in a public place and try to keep it updated as people suggest things until either A: It satisfies me and I start trying to learn Haskell or B: It becomes too much of a time sink, which would basically mean that there are a lot of large projects. That is, my goal is not to keep a list in perpetuity, but just until the point is made.

Update March 8, 2007: This has been up for three weeks now and attracted some attention from some people who really ought to know. I'm willing to say now that pending further updates, I see no compelling reason to believe that Haskell is practical for larger projects. Furthermore, Haskell arrogance is totally unjustified by evidence. It may someday be proven a compelling choice for Real Programming, but there isn't even any significant evidence of that, let alone enough to justify arrogance.

I've seen this sort of spam before, but never with such purity, usually only with the Subject or something left unprocessed. Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:42:06 -0500 Received: from 192.168.0.%RND_DIGIT (203-219-%DIGSTAT2-%STATDIG.%RND_FROM_DOMAIN [203.219.%DIGSTAT2.%STATDIG]) by mail%SINGSTAT.%RND_FROM_DOMAIN (envelope-from %FROM_EMAIL) (8.13.6/8.13.6) with SMTP id %STATWORD for <%TO_EMAIL>; %CURRENT_DATE_TIME Message-Id: <%RND_DIGIT[10].%STATWORD@mail%SINGSTAT.%RND_FROM_DOMAIN> From: "%FROM_NAME" <@FROM_EMAIL> %TO_CC_DEFAULT_HANDLER Subject: %SUBJECT Sender: "%FROM_NAME" <%FROM_EMAIL> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html Date: %CURRENT_DATE_TIME %MESSAGE_BODY Also note that the bit starting with %TO_CC_DEFAULT_HANDLER was the beginning of the messaged body, which is also wrong.

All the talk of benchmarks for American performance in Iraq makes me wonder if we shouldn't reverse them. Tell the Iraqis as a nation, for every week that goes by without a (well-defined) terrorist incident, we will pull out 1,000 troops. (We need at least one fine-grained condition that is likely to happen, so we can actually do it, and show that we are serious.) Serious terrorist events may pull troops back or delay our leaving.

Via dangerousmeta: How Not to Talk To Your Kids (The Inverse Power of Praise). Self-esteem uber alles as mortal menace. This strikes me as one of the most important lines of research into education I've ever seen.

Prediction: Iran will be in a civil war at least as intense as the Palestinian and Iraqi civil wars by the end of this year. Physical Evidence: A significant car bombing and the inevitable failure of centralized economies, with all that implies (and that implies a lot). I freely grant that's not a lot to go on, although it is telling that we've heard about these things. The real reason I make this prediction is cultural: The entire culture has been built on the premise that if you have a grievance, it's acceptable to bomb people.

Would police officers be happy having that fact tatooed across their foreheads? "Police Officer" in big letters. Leave space so "retired", "dismissed", "ex-" or "disciplined" can be added later. Would that be acceptable? Of course not. It might make certain social situations... uncomfortable. It might mean they find it harder to get jobs. It might mean they're open to being attacked on the streets... So why is it acceptable to publish personal information about everyone else?

Apparently, mentioning the word "Superbowl" on my website means I get spam asking me to add my website to a list of sports sites. On the strength of that one word. ("What's the deal with people still 'asking' you if they can link to your site?" he asked rhetorically.)

You should read The Psychology of Security. It has nothing to do with programming or computers. As I post this, I'm still reading it. I recommend it before finishing because it's just that good. It might be interesting to have a discussion about practical techniques for mitigating fallacious risk assessments in real life. One I've noticed w.r.t. Prospect Theory is that if I have two choices, one phrased in terms of loss, and another in terms of gain, I try to convert them both into the same domain (both loss or both gain); I never would have explained it as the essay did, but my reasoning is definitely covered by the prospect theory discussion.

And the winner of this year's Superbowl is... the rain.

Comments and other text you can post on iRi use standard HTML, with some helpful additions. I'll start with a quick primer on HTML, then tell you what you can use on iRi. iRi uses HTML despite the fact it's not the easiest language, because it's the only standard language you may be able to carry your knowledge of elsewhere; see Please Stop with the HTML Replacements for more on that.