skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How could a Game of Life grid possibly have more state or require more storage than the ruleset for generating it! Gasp!

It can't have more state. The initial conditions have just as much state as any later generation. The initial state is {off, off, off, off, off, off, ... }. That's just as many bits as any later stage.

What you really mean is that the initial state is easily compressible. (Run-length encoding can express an entire empty grid in two numbers as length, value.) And that's pretty much what Kurzweil means, actually the Game of Life is a great analogy here. The genome is a compressed data set, which doesn't express or exhibit anything useful in itself, but can be decompressed using external inputs of organic matter and energy to procedurally generate the neurons that will form the intelligence.
Noisy Typer – a typewriter for your laptop
Co-founder of http://www.SpanDeX.io here, it's cool to see so much excitement around web-based LaTeX editing. As Henry mentioned, scaling sites like this is quite challenging as LaTeX wasn't really built for performance or scaling, but it's still more pleasant than running on your own machine ;) Best of luck to everyone!
It does not takes a degree to know about FSMs.

You have to know several hundred things in order to be a good programmer, and a good chunk of these aren't even on CS program.
Btw this is a play on mixpanel offering for YC rejects, no real site exists.
It is stated that JavaScript doesn't have partial function(al) application. Isn't it available through the built in Function#bind method?
Let op wat je eet bij diabetes | Leef Nu Gezonder | Leef Nu Gezonder
Looks like NASA does not read Fitch and Moody's reports...
I am a graduate student at a big state university, studying complexity theory. I TA for the (required) introduction to discrete mathematics sometimes, and when we study FSM's I get to have a lot of fun motivating them for the students.

Automata theory may seem arcane, but if you want to truly understand concurrent programming, protocol design, robust systems, etc, you need good cognitive models. Heck, Erlang (one of my favorite languages for massively distributed computing) has some nice OTP stuff (http://www.erlang.org/documentation/doc-4.8.2/doc/design_pri...) built in for using FSMs to make your code sane and robust.

FSM's are one of the theoretical CS concepts that it is easiest to see the practical use for, but other TCS tends to be just as useful if you look at it right. Eg, space complexity right? For the most part that doesn't matter, does it? Nope. A bunch of modern internet-sized problems end up being streaming problems (http://geomblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/streaming-algorithms.ht...), and you need to understand basic space complexity, linear algebra, and probability, all of which a good CS degree will get into your head. I think the role of a good CS degree is to get some theory into people's heads, so that they have the right cognitive models for tackling difficult problems that come up in the real world.

I'm not saying that a CS degree is necessary to be a good programmer, or that you can't pick up those mental tools without a CS degree if you need them. But, it is easiest for most people to learn that kind of stuff in a university environment. I for one didn't know that I needed theory to work on the sorts of massive-data problems I was interested in, before going to university. A good CS degree knows about your unknown unknowns.
I've really got nearly zero respect for Kurzweil as a theorist. He made a bunch of predictions for 2010 in his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines. When 2010 came around he graded his predictions and gave himself very high marks, but when I found a copy of the book and read what he'd actually written I found that he'd had to re-write his predictions substantially in order to count them as succeeding.

As far as I can tell the only way to become popular as a futurist is to lay out predictions for the future in far more detail and with far more certainty than could every be justified.
This month marks one year out of college for me. 2012 was the most productive year of my life.

The best advice that I could give anyone is,

"Don't be afraid to be yourself"

While in school a lot of this is defined for you, but the real world will challenge you in ways you haven't seen. Do not roll over for your job, friends, girlfriend, whatever.

If you don't know who you are or what you want (none of us really do), try as many different things as you can. Explore, learn, fail, succeed, cry, laugh... just experience things and find yourself.
Yes, and yet, no. Bind binds this as well as arguments from L2R, so you can't bind arguments while allowing apply or call to set the context. You also can't bind arguments leaving a "hole."
I hate it on smartphones too - it has the exact same issues on them as it does on the desktop. Scroll down a few screens on Facebook, tap a link, read it, hit the back button - welcome to the top of the feed! (This isn't an issue if your phone has enough RAM to keep the FB app open at the same time as your browser, but sadly low-end Android phones barely have enough RAM to hold one app)
But how many people have that kind of will? How many are truly disturbed monsters, and how many are just angry and upset and have poor impulse control and are enabled to commit atrocities by easy access to firearms?
you are talking about bad ui pattern?

why no one talks about the new youtube????
My comment was mean and I'm sorry. It's the quality of my personality that goes downhill - every time I get on HN.
> "Don't have a girlfriend at all, this is a time for lots and lots of friends"

You seem to be suggesting the two are incompatible, but in my experience that's not really the case at all...
Hydrogen can be produced from nuclear, as well as hydro power. If produced in off-peak times (at late night) in bulk it can be efficiently produced and then distributed to filling stations. With at-home production units the distribution system can be largely removed at the expense of slightly higher per unit cost and less efficiency than bulk.

Synthetic petroleum is produced from coal, oil and natural gas, carbon energy sources that don't help reduce environmental footprint.
The Higgs bosons don't live inside the matter, so it's not possible to remove them.

It's more complicated, and difficult to explain without a few algebra and physics study years, but let's try with another broken analogy:

The Higgs field is like an invisible background. When the particles bounce against this background the effective effect is that the particles have apparent mass. Sometimes, the particles create bumps in the background; these bumps can move and they are the Higgs bosons.

It's (probably) not possible to remove the background to make the particles "lighter".

(The equations are so clear, the analogy explanations are so confusing. :( )
Funny: Maurice Lévy's Digital Wishes for 2013
Call for Reviewers and a Free Copy of Rapid Prototyping with JS | Web App Log
This article clarified in my mind what it was that had been bothering me about slate.com. It is tabloid for "sophisticates".
> On top of that we use html5 push state to make sure that the current url is updated as you scroll up and down the page with infinite scroll.

I have no response to this other than a genuine thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I'd wager that the people who don't want 17 year olds having access to porn are probably the same ones who don't really want sex education, either, aside from the "On your wedding night, God will let you know what to do" speech.
A concept can work at both the joking and serious levels simultaneously. Sometimes this has been called "ha ha, only serious":

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/ha+ha+only+seriou...
In fact, as someone who does not have a CS degree, a state machine seems like something that is difficult to avoid figuring out, even in web apps. Maybe it is just a bad example of something more underly though.
The comment was about ScribTeX, where I cannot invite others (unless they already have accounts) but still I can (or at least - could recently) upgrade to paying plan (without any warning that ScribTeX is no longer accepting new users).

ShareLaTeX - sure, I know and understand.
> The current trend is for computing power to get smaller and cheaper, rather than getting more computing power.

I think it's a mistake to compare specific devices from different eras, like a 2007 desktop and a 2012 desktop. In order to find total computing power, you need to add your phone, tablet, desktop, laptop, and cloud services together. When you do that, you see that we all have far more computing power than we did in the past, but we've chosen to spread that power over a variety of different devices.
Smartphone with LCD and E-paper display
I have known about FSMs before starting studying. What I had to relearn though was how to draw them, like basically reading and drawing stuff is what always was/is the big problem to me. I prefer to write stuff down and I am sure in a few years and actually in a few months I'll have forgotten about all of this.

It's actually the reason for really disliking papers that prove something. You forget stuff after you got that paper, but keep your degree.

Also one simply has to say that there are HUGE differences between what you need to get that sheet of paper, even if you went to the same school and often if you attended it at the same time.
Not a main issue but this ... put everyone’s phone in a bag. Great conversations ensue.
Seeing phones out around a table bothers me terribly.
Grammy for MIDI Creators Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi
I'm with you.

After my second year at uni I felt that I should just quit and get a job. Everything I needed for landing a job in the industry, I was getting from my own side projects. I wasn't learning about things like scalability, or robust system architectures, or code deployment, yet half of the interviews I went through expected me to know about them, even if it was for a graduate position.

I still haven't used the vast majority of the theory I was taught at uni, but sometimes, when you come up with an elegant solution and trace it back to that 'Computer Vision' course you've done at uni, it feels like it's all worth it. As others said, coding skill is very important but when you know the theory you know where to look for solutions.
A degree is useful for systematically covering some topics. However, without substantial self-education in areas you might not be interested in, the limitation of a CS degree is that it still has some rather large gaps in terms of what you are exposed to. The discipline to do substantial self-education is still necessary to be a well-rounded computer scientist, and sufficient to become a well-rounded computer scientist. Which is a good rule of thumb for most things.

With the hindsight of plenty of time in the field, I find it remarkable how many fundamental concepts you still need to learn that they do not teach in current CS programs. In my area of work, massively parallel algorithms and distributed systems, the core theory, never mind practice, still has to be learned outside of school and the initial barriers are not trivial. (Small-scale parallelism and distribution is based on functional programming concepts and mutability. Large-scale parallelism and distribution is based on topology and Nash flows. Very different conceptual models.)
118 with what? In IL I could find a 0 coinsurance plan at least, starting at around 300 depending on deductible. You can't do that in WA, they all have 30-35% coinsurance, they have deductibles of 10+ and out-of-pocket maximums at twice of that.

It looks like agents are able to find a much better option, presumably inside group plans, but still.
Is there any food that makes a substitute for bread on sandwiches?

I've always wondered that. I think I could substantially reduce my carbs but I love sandwiches.

Any ideas?
Text Editor, Definitely.
So sorry wrong window.
I see that "just a piece of paper" trope all the time, and I want to suggest to you that if you graduate from college and then look at your diploma and think "Wow, this is all I got out of college?" then maybe the problem is you and not college.
Obviously so the ghost of Alan Turning doesn't haunt us eternally...haven't you watched movies before
The anti-Japanese grudge does run fairly deep, but as far as I can see it seems to be slowing significantly in younger people. The parents of people I went to school with (graduated university 2010) might hold one, but my friends are much more moderate.

Personally I thought the co-prosperity added to the humour with an over-the-top name, and I detected a slight whiff of Eastern Bloc over-the-top naming, akin to Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Polish–Soviet Friendship Society. But then my ethnic background is Polish and not an East/Southeast Asian one.
One aspect of 'the rapture of the nerds' that I find most interesting, is that it will drag parts of metaphysics into the realm of science, since a simulation of the meuronal connections is (rather likely) just a computational problem, while explanation of a working AGI woild be quite a challenge for dualistic ideas.
But you have to know what to look for to know what they are. HS is not going to teach you that
Famo.us Is A Gaming Engine For 3D Interfaces
> Your first job out of college won’t make you or break you

I disagree with this statement. Certainly, if you go to Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple, the choice doesn't matter and you can do whatever after you've learned how to work on real software.

But getting into games and many other fields can be astoundingly difficult even two years out of college, as it's difficult to overcome the "finance," "healthcare," or "consulting" tags once they're on your resume. For better or worse, employers usually only see new college grads as full of potential to do anything; after even a single stint at X, you're branded an X-person.
Agreed. A verbal bandage on an old hurt? Rather, work for civil rights now and in the future. Even apologizing for Turing's persecution seems silly, unless you are one those who 'outed' him or prosecuted him. You can't erase the past so easily, and why would you want to?
…a house cat can't and won't eat you…

Never say never:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1922/will-cats-eat-...
You are missing a fundamental key difference. There is no profit in reaching the stars. Besides that, there are also no barriers that come close to the issues with the Physics and energy requirements of space travel. Unlike a warp drive which we don't even know is possible, the human brain is an actual physical device that exists, and simply uses chemicals as it's logic gates and transistors. We both run on electricity.

I'm a biologist by schooling, and a programmer by occupation. So I understand the science on both sides, and it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And it's coming a lot sooner than people think.
True. Empirically though, very few self-taught programmers seem to know about FSMs or other core CS topics like complexity theory. This has been my experience interviewing programmers at least.
both WriteLatex and ScribTex use codemirror, and ShareLatex uses ace, which editor do you plan to use after merging?
The Java ByteBuffer – a crash course
The key is to keep your expenses "normal".
How is this a case for a degree? It's really a case for being educated, a case for studying your field and understanding concepts like "finite state machine". You don't have to go to college to get that, and lots of people seem to get through college CS degrees without gaining that understanding.
I took in a cat from a shelter that looked worse than that. No shit. Its face had a tumor from birth to the point it couldn't meow - just make farting noises, much to everyone's amusement.
Smaller and cheaper means they'll become more ubiquitous.

Your desktop may not be getting much faster, but your TV got smarter, baby toys have more computing power than your first PC, a new car has more smartphone features than your phone from 2007, and everything else seems to be getting more computing power whether it needs it or not.
Why the “stupid network” isn’t our destiny after all
i wish /this/ site was down for me.
It's not what your degree makes of you, but what you make of your degree (and self-education).
I rarely use state machines when composing web applications. Of the 20 or so times I've spotted an opportunity to use a state machine, only 2 or 3 of those opportunities actually were the optimal choice.

Like all things, state machines can be overused and over abused, even during times when they are not ideal.
Why JavaScript Still Sucks
The one fun one: If you think you're done learning, you're done.
An alternative is to use AttributedMarkdown which also takes a dictionary of attributes per element type and returns an NSAttributedString. https://github.com/dreamwieber/AttributedMarkdown
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I really don't understand why people have such a hard time with this, when it has been gone over so much. Regulated from the latin origin regula or to supply. So well regulated is well supplied. So the founding father where saying that a well supplied militia is necessary to the security of a free state therefore arms are not to be infringed to guarantee a well supply. It has nothing to do with regulation, AKA a governed group of militia people, but people try to contort regulated with regulation all the time to make the second amendment fit their desires for it to read how they want it to.
If I were Google, I would hire him just to mumble into a recorder all day. Then have a small team decipher and escalate possible ideas.
I think the conviction should stand because it's pretty ridiculous to go around pardoning dead people convicted under laws we now view as having been wrong. Where should it end? Should the UK start hunting down and posthumously pardoning some of the convicts it shipped off to other continents for petty crimes during the Victorian era?

Unless you go and systematically posthumously pardon people how are you serving justice by only pardoning historical persons famous enough to have enough of a modern following to petition the modern-era government on their behalf?
A plea to Google: Protect our e-mail privacy
Why make the markup HTML-esque and then provide an emph tag instead of em?
I just graduated last night, but this doesn't feel terribly enlightening to me. I don't know if I didn't have the typical college experience or if people like the author just tend to be more vocal about their experience because those in my position had a less rosy view of the whole thing. But it's obvious that I'm in a different group when I read stuff like

> There’s no more Spring break or three months off for summer.

When I was in college (feels weird to say it in the past tense), summer wasn't 3 months off. If I wasn't taking any classes, I was working full-time so that during the long semesters, I could work only part-time and still be able to pay rent. Spring break meant I could get a little boost to get me through until summer.

I just finished yesterday and I'm intensely relieved. I will have so much more free time than I've had the last several years. Maybe I can start a side project or contribute to open source. I'm playing a video game right now. A month ago I would've felt guilty because weekends were the only time I could catch up on homework.

My post-graduation plans? Seize all that extra free time! Start working out more. Go to that weekly Reddit poker night. Go to more concerts. Go to programmer meetups.
Tu quoque.

Perhaps Dalmatians should be allowed to go extinct.
You and everybody else are interested in that. However, if that knowledge existed the list would probably be a lot smaller.
Of course being in a relationship and having other friends are not incompatible, but the time commitment, reordering of priorities, strain on your mental/physical/pecuniary resources will almost inevitably harm your relationships with other friends.

Not to mention being in a relationship with someone can lead to profound changes in a person's character, and those changes may not gel with existing friends...
Yes, OP. This is a first-fruit of the CS degree. Might I suggest looking at threads and continuations and pondering the interrelation, as well as the pi-calculus & the Occam language?

Metacomment: incoming list of people saying cs education is for "sheeple" and any real hacker can get a job/learn it on his own.

And this is the metareply,

That's not the point of an education. Mistaking college for that is thinking college is trade school training. It generally hasn't been, it usually isn't, and it shouldn't be.

Loosely, the purpose of education ( as opposed to training ) is to provide (i) a broad base of understanding across a wide variety of areas nearly inaccessible without portals created by experts, (ii) a theoretical grasp of the field, providing a framework and sense of theoretical possibilities present, past, and future, (iii) a structured and systematic mechanism to go through these subject areas in ways that are (a) thought-through, (b) approximately complete, and (c) pedagogically competent, and finally, (iv) a standard way to attain a certain competence in the area that is generally agreed upon to provide a base understanding.

It would be disingenuous to suggest, imply, or to ignore the fact that many educational institutions do not fully live up to their promise. It would also be disingenuous to ignore the fact that a vast number of incoming students really just want to be trained for a job and go make a decent wage, which is an entirely morally acceptable desire. These facts are connected by the economics of supply and demand.
Go to parties, but drink very little, avoid drugs, don't get caught up in sex. It's fun, but save it for later. Don't have a girlfriend at all, this is a time for lots and lots of friends.

I personally think the opposite. It's your 20s, enjoy it while it lasts.
>There is no profit in reaching the stars.

There's no profit in the singularity either.
In fairness, display_errors is a terrible idea -- do you actually want errors thrown by your program to be interspersed with the HTML output of your program?

This sort of stuff should be going to the error log. And it is, so "throws error" and "error reporting" in the title are both inaccurate here. It does throw an error; it merely refuses to send that error to the HTML output of the page when display_errors is on. If normal, sane error reporting to the error log is on, the error does show up there.
Celebrating The Transistor and Disruptive Naval Research
The W and Z particles are a little more different. The W+- particles only interact with L-hilarity particles. The Z particle "prefers" the L particles, but also interacts with the R particles.

It's more complicated. There is a W^0 particle that is the neutral equivalent of the W^+ and W^- particles, all of them have the same mass. There is another particle called A, that is like a photon with mass (but it "sees" the hypercharge of the particles, not the charge)

Combining the W^0 and A particles, it's possible to get two new particles the Z^0 and the photon. In this combination the Z^0 has all the mass and the photon has no mass. It's more easy to understand some experiments using the Z^0 and the photon, so to make some explanations more clear it's better to use them instead of the W^0 and the A.

IIRC, for low energy experiments it'd better to use Z^0 and photons, and for high energy experiments it's better to use W^0 and A.
CS programs aren't designed to turn out programmers.

I interviewed a guy once whose list of data structures was "bit, nybble, byte, float, char, int". As I recall, he didn't have a CS degree, and had over a decade of experience in the field. He did not get the job.