skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is only really half the story. Modern computer science is an intermingling of an engineering-heritage and mathematics-heritage tradition, and the people quoted here are all definitely on the math side. The intermingling has only partially taken place, too: you can often still tell from a particular CS department's focus whether it broke off from an engineering dept, or broke off from a math dept.

Which makes sense to a certain extent, because if you want to reduce all of computation to something, "machines" and "mathematics" are both things it reduces to, depending on how you look at it. Everything at its base is lambda calculus, but everything at its base is also machine code and bits in registers.
You may not wish he posted more. I'll bet his infrequent posting is a prime cause of all the great things you say about the blog.
good point. not yet but that's a great idea. It's a problem in cultures that take long vacations a few times/year but it's not exactly clear what week that vacation will be. It's croudsourceable - someone can make note of the closing before it happens, so you don't have to rely on the restaurant owners.
While there is an art to the day-to-day craft of programming, computer science proper most definitely has mathematical underpinnings.

There's a reason computer science doesn't belong to the art departments in universities.
There's no email in your profile. You should put it in the ``about'' field, the ``email'' field is not visible to other users.
Which version control system would prevent Kevin Smith from checking in code because he's a "danger to the code base?"
Took me a second to understand who "Peter File" is...Doesn't really sound that similar to Pedophile when I say it.
The Wikipedia page on warp drive seems pretty well-curated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive

Trek-universe ships don't travel through space; they travel in "bubbles" of local space so that relativity is preserved. These bubbles then move at hundreds or thousands of times the speed of light... somehow.
I hope the Basho, 10Gen and other alternative database companies make a dent into Oracle's marketshare.

They'll need seamless integration with other technologies that provide complete solutions, because that's what Oracle now sells, and that sales strategy is working.
A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook.
How does that work? Wikipedia appears equally in the competitors' results - it's not like the Bing or Yahoo developers don't know of this obscure Wikipedia thing - so that's not it; and Google benefits from users spending more time on search pages, since they will see more adds, so providing results that instantly solve their problem isn't very helpful either (and targeted ads are well-targeted independently of the search results); and users going into Wikipedia don't add anything to the bottom-line since Wikipedias don't run ads (Google's or otherwise).
Please do not build a web app if all text is going to be in unreadable italics. It's used for emphasis, not making it look 'slanty'.
Questions about the blocking of HTML5, informative answers from W3C participants
The Suite - Recording Studio and Live Venue, live on line 24/7
And then that's no longer synchronized between my various machines and browsers via Xmarks?
Nope, this is "To as many nonprofits as you like." only
Venture Capital Survey - Silicon Valley Fourth Quarter 2009
How does that avoid the problem? Assuming you used a signed integer for size and the list is large enough, there is a sign roll over on size. If size becomes less than -2 then low + size/2 is less than low (on the first pass of a binary search you now have an invalid iterator for mid). Assuming you used unsigned integers size can still not be the correct value if a rollover has occurred though this time mid will always be valid.
That would be Subversion.
30,000 servers sounds like an awful lot for "office, IT and web operations". Estimating about 90,000 employees (and it's probably lower[1]) that's 3:1 users per server.

[1] http://www.intc.com/intelAR2008/business/employees/index.htm...
What still blows my mind is the fact that the Speed of Light is a constant. Meaning: if you're on a train moving a 0.9c, any light emitting from you will STILL travel at c in your reference frame, while at the same time an observer outside of the train will also see the beam of light travelling at c.

As for time dilation, it's a very simple formula called Lorentz Contraction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction. At 0.99996c, you can cross the Milky Way (100,000 ly) in one year.
Corrected. Thanks for noticing.
Clearcase Airlines is run by one of the largest megacorps in the world and usually only have business executives flying in them. They are a pretty old airline whose ownership has changed hands many times over the years, each owner adding a new carpeting and furnishing layer without removing the old one.

This resulted in a lot of customers complaining about the speed of the journey but since its control is under singular management, change has been slow. There is frequent time lag of messages between the control tower and the airplane though this does not seem to affect the dependability of the flight. Its usually considered more reliable than the Sourcesafe airline where the communication loss between the tower and the airline results in an immediate stall.
I've heard it reported that someone asked James Doohan (Scottie) "How do the inertial dampers work?"

His reply was: "very well, thank you."
Certain parts of computer science (e.g. machine learning) qualify as experimental science.
The animations are so smooth.

Unfortunately not in Firefox, at least for me (FF3.6 / Win7).

Especially this test was horrible:

http://razorjack.net/quicksand/demos/one-set-clone.html

Chrome, Safari and Opera performed much better. Even Explorer had smooth animation, though alpha-channel transparency animation there is broken.
I think there is a growing concern among people using these social sites, about the type of information and the access to it. Every story that runs about 'employer sees employee's drunken pics instead of going to work' or 'she didn't get the job because she believes in <something>', etc raises awareness at least a little bit for some people about the issues surrounding these types of services. I also think the real content generators (I am using this in opposition to the ones that create it unknowingly - facebook albums, status updates, etc that are not meant for public consumption) are becoming more aware of the risks as each story goes on. There is the HN/tech savvy crowd that gets outraged each time this happen, there is a larger, but quieter group of people actually working in a relevant area and then the masses... the masses certainly don't care, but that middle group who participate, might or will soon as more of these incidents occur.

Also, agree 100% on championing companies that treat people right, people love to be treated like human beings and it's sad it such a rare phenomena that we get giddy with excitement when a company does it.
Stop Saving Time; Save Attention
How is the reader powered? Their copy on the home page (as well as in the video) says:

"Read payment cards from any device with an audio input jack, including your mobile phone."

From the image on their page, the reader is using a 4-pole 3.5 mm plug, which might mean it's powered from the host device. If not, I guess it needs a coin cell which would have to be replacable unless the entire reader is disposable.

I searched for a pin-out of the headphone jack, and it seems the 4th pole is for the microphone which (of course!) is used to send the credit card data. Is their app playing some sound, thus allowing the reader to power itself from the audio outputs?
What is wrong with Android
Wikipedia provides valuable content which increases the usefulness of Google (and all other search engines).

If Wikipedia were to go under and nothing similar were to replace it (unlikely, but who knows) people might go back to using encyclopedias on dead wood or walled garden online encyclopedias both of which would lead to people spending less time searching.
Woman With Genetic Disorder Seeks Husband with Health Insurance on YouTube
The one time I wish it wasn't referentially transparent...
it's time to drop the prejudice against git's UI. The time where git was incredibly hard to use and required total knowledge of its inner workings are long past.

In it's most basic pattern of use, it's not more complicated than subversion, but of course, then you are not using the majority of the features that make git so nice to work with and that help improve the quality of your code base.

But even if you are using this additional features (rebase -i, add -p, bisect), it's not hard to use and for sure it's never acting in unexpected ways.

Sometimes, the opinion about git feels like all the people saying that PostgreSQL is hard to use and slow. Can't people get over paradigms of the past?

I lived and worked in days when git was hard and PostgreSQL slow. Didn't stop me to see the change happen and to begin using them. Why can't others see and don't stop retelling the same old and obsolete stories over and over, be it in an earnest of funny (like this one here) package.

(disclaimer: I'm in a really bad mood today and I don't know why. I don't want to troll. I'm just bitter)
The only thing you need to know about the Star Trek is this: anything unexplained is being done by the deflector dish.
They got it right on about Git Airline. I use it but I never understood it completely.

though sometimes they secretly wonder if the Mercurial flight got there faster

I think that this airline thingy is the kick in the ass that I needed to finally at least try Mercurial. I hate git since the beginning but felt like "I had to use it".
Wow, a flash animation that actually works in Gnash.

I'm surprised I even click to played it as I'm so used to finding a broken attempt at a whizz-bang video player for a file that my browser can handle itself anyway.
Black Circle: A Carol Reed Mystery Game Download Free
summer arrives, English private detective Carol Reed is asked by a neighbor to look into the discovery of a dead body that mysteriously disappears. Carol must discover Hidden Objects and interview suspects and helpful residents to get to the bottom of this stranger’s death. What starts as a routine investigation quickly becomes something more as Carol uncovers broken alliances and a cult long thought to be inactive in Black Circle: A Carol Reed Mystery.
Seems like a problem with your browser, works just fine in safari.
If they did, they would know the Borg don't bother cloaking.
Very cool app.! I was going to build it myself but you beat me to it. Now, can someone build a feed for HN submission comments/comment replies? And why not a feed for StackExchange answers/comments ?
"It is impossible for matter to travel at the speed of light, yes?"

isn't this an oft quoted erroneous conclusion?

I thought the correct statement was that matter could not accellerate to the speed of light. Thus something could instantaneously attain FTL/Light Speed velocity or come into existance travelling FTL/Light Speed?
To keep things in reference, if we were allowed to use hydrogen bombs in space, we could build a starship with present day technology that would get us to alpha centauri in 20 years.

No word on the return trip though...
I second. All my favorites are lined up under my URL bar and I don't have enough space to keep the website titles, I only keep the favicons.
Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
And ever after called him a curse
Then why did he hurry to let him in?
He might have hid in the house.

It was not right of Coleridge in fact it was wrong
(But often we all do wrong)
As the truth is I think, he was already stuck
With Kubla Khan.

He was weeping and crying, I am finished, finished
I shall never write another word of it,
When along comes the Person from Porlock
And takes the blame for it.

http://www.artofeurope.com/smith/smi4.htm

Oh, and also: http://www.robertfulford.com/porlock.html
You are quite correct that certain aspects need to be accepted. I'll use your example to describe a little about how I go through the process of self-investigation.

The Trinity is an excellent example of something I have questioned at various points in my life. There isn't the space here to fully detail my whole exploration of the topic, but I have asked questions like, "Assuming there is an all powerful God, how is it possible for this being to be simultaneously in human form? What if this is all just a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally? Given what I know about physics and biology, isn't it possible this Holy Spirit thing is not real?"

Obviously, one can't arrive at conclusive "proof" in the scientific sense for any of the answers to these questions. But as a professional scientist, I find the process of asking them gives me a way to go and look into these specific topics more fully. It satisfies the analytical part of me that is always asking "why?" about everything. For this reason, I don't really put many limits on my line of questioning, since it's important to ferret out the things that are causing me trouble.

Note that I'm also not constantly questioning everything all at once. This is counter-productive since you basically end up at the extreme wondering if everything you observe in the real world is fake and not being able to believe anything, metaphysical or otherwise (it has been a few years since my philosophy courses in college, but I know this is well-traveled ground in philosophy). To put it another way, at several points in my life, I have explored the idea that God may not exist (or that maybe I'm dealing with the "wrong one"). Ultimately, I have made the decision that I believe there is a God. So I don't go back and re-hash that concept every time I want to explore another facet of my faith.

One of the things I have come to appreciate about Catholicism as an adult is that it's internally consistent from a philosophical point of view. There is a rich history of writings by various Catholic philosophers (such as St. Augustine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo) on why we believe the things we believe. Furthermore, the Church publishes the Catechism which has extensive citations for the source texts for every facet of the Catholic faith. From the outside, many of the teachings of the Church can seem proscriptive and arbitrary. But when you dig into the details, you find there is a structure to how it all fits together into a coherent and consistent picture. You may have to do a lot of digging and reading to get to all the details, but it's all there.
PageRank: Stand on the shoulders of giants
NTT DoCoMo demo eye-controlled music earphones
Mathematics would be regarded as a science. Though this seems open for debate :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Logic_and_mathem...
Feynman used to ask Danny Hillis (Connection Machine) this question as form of ribbing.
Keeping the U.S. in the space race
The key to regenerating bodies
What Kevin Smith means for the future of PR
Is the Web a Threat to Creativity and Cultural Values?
Nah. I just didn't realize WooThemes was as big as it was until a few readers filled me in.
Nothing from Microsoft? No TFS? They missed a golden opportunity to lay into Visual SourceSafe too ;0
Lavora da casa on-line nel settore e-commerce
rest: Can I at least use a nice font?

dev: NO FONT FOR YOU!
Not that I ask it, but it's a question about induction, not psychology. They are "pirates", not pirates.

Imagine if the interviewer instead asked "Convince me you know induction." as that's what they are really after. Without a framework to hang the answer on, it becomes a lot harder.

It's a bad question because it has fallen into the "riddles with memorized answers" category, but not because the skills necessary to solve it are useless.
Joel’s new strategy - what does the future hold?
Peter Dumbreck in the Mercedes, Le Mans, 1999

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3rxq7U1mA at about 33 secs.

Here's another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M3NQeDzedk

Yes, when cars go fast enough, keeping them on the ground is one of the challenges.
Neurocapitalism
Why We’re Selling Our Angel-Funded Software Company … On eBay
The trick is that Wikimedia provides little valuable content, beyond the web hosting and software updates they do on Mediawiki.

I'm not sure how much of the money will go towards full time "wikipedia editors", for example.

So, if we believe the wikipedia marketing that most of the editors are "largely anonymous internet users who write without pay", what exactly are they spending the money on ?

If it's hosting and such, I'd rather see them not manage their own infrastructure and try to move towards the cloud (no matter how corny it sounds). Putting Wikipedia on EC2 or AppEngine should be transparent for users and might allow them to focus on their core competency (which would be what, btw -- crowd sourcing management ?)

Not trying to be snarky but I fail to see how this money is helping that much.
A Guide to Self-Employment
I agree, but technically this is not true:

The details on the strip aren't much more than what's on the front of the card.

The magnetic stripe gives you Track 2 data, which you can't read of the card without a machine.
In summary - fashion colors and big bold iconography.
This always reminds of me of Dijkstra's quote:

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
"A different way of (mathematical) thinking" is too vague a definition for me. In my mind CS is the study of how to precisely define a problem and how to precisely define a process to solve it.
Global App Store to Challenge iPhone?
Computer science is a "formal science": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_science
For N balls, the other balls can/should be binary searched. It's just a little tricky when it comes to the last two..
Sorry, no idea. I don't know any details.
Research to Measure Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders
RIPE Members and Their Internet Number Resources
Could someone help me parse this differently?

...generated $30,000 in profits (for charity, but profits nonetheless). We donated $15,000 to the SF/SPCA that December of 08 and the rest went back into Breadpig, Inc...

I'm reading that as only 50% of the money actually made it an actual charitable organization? I realize Breadpig is probably not running a not-for-profit 501c(3) charity, but that doesn't sound quite right.

(edited to reflect Kliment's statement)
Philosophy of a Startup - Location
Really thankful for your comments. The article had nothing new because it was basically meant to be a summary of set of several articles I was preparing for my exams tomorrow.

But as a blogger I really find your criticism very helpful. Thanks a lot.
I wonder how much it would cost to move to the cloud and provide the same sort of availability.

I suspect a pretty hefty sum; I've no idea what they spend on hosting right now but I bet it wouldn't be a drastic cost cut.
Whether Star Trek or sci-fi in general, we're talking about fiction here. Any problem that true science can through at a plot, the writer can work around.

I just finished re-reading 'The Forever War', and in that novel, the issue was resolved by two energy fields, at 5K and 10K in front of ships... and that was for sub-light travel. The time dilation was actually a major plot point, too...

Or look at the Ringworld series. The original novel had so many scientific holes in it that he HAD to write a sequel to resolve all of them.

It is the same here -- poke holes at the stories all you want. It will just inspire the writers to become more clever.
It also happens the other way around, for example with Zopa and Prosper.
They donated 50% to charity and financed their next project with the rest. They didn't get cash money out of it, so it's profit quoted. Also, breadpig != xkcd. Their next project, the xkcd book, gave them a lot more profit, all of which they did donate.
It said the rest went toward production of the xkcd book. I don't know if that means solely inventory and production costs, or if it includes administrative overhead as well (I would assume some)
At least you can resort to the court for domains, and that threat goes a little way towards preserving the stability of the system. You sign away thise rights if you're using an internet namespace controlled by anyone else.
Startup Riot (Atlanta) live stream (50 startups presenting)
Perhaps a new commercial: "Our Server Requirements Aren't Like Your Server Requirements"
"We donated $15,000 to the SF/SPCA that December of 08 and the rest went back into Breadpig, Inc. to purchase more inventory and fund our next project"
Food to avoid if you want beautiful skin & Food Secrets For Beautiful Skin
Well, they say overhead as well as investment in more inventory/next project. It probably could be worded more clearly, but unless they gave the impression initially that the proceeds were solely for charity I wouldn't consider it a problem.
Yet more proof that the world appears to reward those who behave unethically rather than creating something of value.
Edited re: xkcd != breadpig, thanks :)
Things that are "computer science" but I contend are not mathematics: programming language design and implementation, operating system design and implementation, computer architecture and networking.

All of these things depend on math. But they go beyond the scope of math because they deal with the realities of designing and building systems for computation. Physics also relies on math, but I've never seen anyone make the reductionist statement "Physics is a branch of mathematics."
I thought it was fairly well established that questions like these may have been in vogue 10 years ago, but are not really used anymore?
FTA: the rest went back into Breadpig, Inc. to purchase more inventory and fund our next project, the xkcd book, xkcd: volume 0.

From the recent kerfuffle over Amazon eBooks, it seems that an average book takes about $10,000-15,000 to get from a basic idea to a published copy (at least that was a number that was quoted more than once). Its not an administrative overhead, its re-investing 50% so they can do it again.
+1 for the porcelain reference.
If Oracle's stated goal is to make as much money from the carcass of Sun, then why would they be interested in OpenSolaris?

The old school Solaris admins, who represent customers who actually pay for support contracts, aren't amazingly keen on OpenSolaris because it does away with all the tools they know and love. While the old packaging tools are awful, there's infrastructure around them. And there's no good replacement for JumpStart, which is essential for large scale admin of Solaris boxes.
Most of these are SMP machines (and probably multicore chips) so you probably have >1 core per employee... Most of these are probably running engineering tools: simulations, verification, silicon back-end tools.

Current chips require tons of compute power to develop, so this is not surprising [I do wonder how many of these are based on Itanium processors?]