I think this depends on the student. I do not have a CS degree. I dabbled in Python, but the first programming course that I took was Harvard's CS50 MOOC. I really appreciated learning C because it taught me about the underlying system through concepts like memory management. I agree that Python is friendlier, but I feel like C trains a particular mindset. Python may be more suitable for those who want to get off the ground quickly.
Like with GPS and the internet, innovations from the military sector slowly spread to civil society. By 397, trousers, in all their odiousness, were becoming so common that brother-emperors Honorius and Arcadius (of the Western and Eastern empires, respectively) issued an official trouser ban. The ban is cited in a code named for their father, Theodosianus, which read: “Within the venerable City no person should be allowed to appropriate to himself the use of boots or trousers. But if any man should attempt to contravene this sanction, We command that in accordance with the sentence of the Illustrious Prefect, the offender shall be stripped of all his resources and delivered into perpetual exile.”
“What the ban basically does is that it bans civilians from wearing a military outfit in the capital,” says Elm, “so one could see it as an indirect way to make it easy to distinguish civilians from military men at a time where tension was high.” Four years prior, Emperor Valens had been killed in battle within Roman borders, and a third of the army had been wiped out. So banning trousers could have been a way to make sure that the capital was easier to police, and that fighters were kept out.
The ban could also be read as the desperate attempt of late-period emperors to cling to a sense of Roman identity at a time where the empire had become a melting pot of traditions, after hundreds of years of expansion and cultural appropriation. Long hair and flashy jewels soon joined boots and pants as forbidden fashion.
“Barbarian influence on fashion was something that emperors wanted to control, but then their own bodyguards, which presumably they trusted, were barbarians,” says Elm. “So rather than anti-barbarian, they were mostly anti-barbarian-identity.” Restoring concepts such as “purity” and “identity” is not uncommon in fading empires—authoritarian ways to make rulers feel in control at home in the face of external weakness.
This looks like a series on how to build a relatively straightforward operating model with a focus on cash balance and "founder value" (I guess that's attributable equity to the founder)
China sells US debt treasuries in exchange for dollars.
China sells the dollars it raised to buy Yuan.
Demand for the Yuan increases, hence the Yuan becomes more valuable, hence its exchange rate vis-a-vis the dollar appreciates (it will also appreciate vis-a-vis other currencies).
Dollars are being dumped into the market, so the dollar should decrease in value.
A more valuable Yuan means that China's currency is more expensive, hence its exports become more expensive (and drop) and its imports become cheaper (and rise).
Other people now own US debt, for which they will receive interest payments and a repayment when the debt is due.
In the press conference shortly after the flyby, one of the staff (I can't remember her name) said that the speed depends on the position of the probe relative to the ground antenna. So not only is transmission not 24 hrs, but when the probe appears to be on the horizon, transmission speeds are slower.
In a previous submission on YC (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836651) some commenters were weary of an article that wasn't published in a journal. This one has been published in "Research in Endoctrinology"[1]
The banlieues are the suburbs (of Paris). The word has become terminology which is used in international media. It's valid English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue
In all of the other pictures the batteries are completely opaque. Is this actually indicative of how much charge is left? And is this also how those Duracell pinch indicators work?
I commented below that it's marked by laser, but the counterargument was that if you can aim a laser you can aim a rifle. Let me rephrase: the goal of this system is to correct for deviations from the actual target which occur in the air. Because of wind, temperature, rotation of the earth (when taking really long shots) and other factors a marksman might have to adjust his or her aim and actually aim off-target to get the bullet on target. However, using this system you would just keep the crosshairs on target and the bullet will correct itself in the air to hit that target. I think that aiming the rifle in a different spot is only done for test purposes. I can't imagine why you would want to create a system that automatically determines the target instead of letting a trained marksman determine the target and help that marksman.
The video and program page[1] don't reveal anything about how this works. I remember watching a documentary a few years ago on Discovery channel where this project was discussed. The bullet was essentially divided into a front and back portion, which could twist independently. The twisting then allows for corrections in the air. There's another design by Sandia labs where the bullets has little "fins" (like a missile)[2], however judging by the render provided on the DARPA page[3] it's not the bullet by Sandia.
You can't really compare the category of homeless drug users in Liberia with homeless drug users in NYC without adequate controls for the resources available to these people as well what kinds of addiction are prevalent and perhaps certain background characteristics that could influence decision making. Here's a very crude hypothesis to illustrate my point:
In Liberia I can't imagine that there are many soup kitchens or organizations like the NYC Rescue Mission. Thus, when an individual receives cash they will spend it on items such as food and clothing because these are basic neccessities. Perhaps the disutility of not having anything to eat or to wear is greater than the utility gained from using drugs. This also depends on the type of addiction.
Now imagine that you're homeless in NYC. Being homeless your standard of living is relatively poor, however you can still scour the bins for pizza leftovers or go to a place like the NYC Rescue Mission and get a meal. Homeless people might not be adequately dressed to withstand winter, but they do have something. So now when you get money, you spend it on your addiction because while life is painful, it's not painful enough to give up drugs.
I haven't read through the 19+ studies implicitly mentioned in the article, but this is definitely something that should be taken into consideration.
The wording in the original article isn't entirely clear to me. If the test is across different "states" of one factor, then the number of required datapoints should be approximately f*n. So for example, testing four different button placements is like testing four different treatments:
However, if multiple states also coincide with testing multiple factors, such as four different button placements and also three variations of text on the buttons. Then the number of combinations is 12. In this case, if we add another text variation, we would be adding four more treatments.
Calling it futuristic isn't very descriptive of what it does.
In short (but not the tl;dr) this application attempts to act as a "contacts backbone"* for all possible "social applications". Basically it's a contacts list that shows you what services your contacts are subscribed to and what services you are subscribed to. The value proposition towards the individual is that you don't have to figure out what apps they are using, instead "it's just there"™. OP also claims that this will improve efficiency and reduce social network lock in (SNLI).
However, the problem of SNLI is not a search problem. Figuring out which apps your contacts use, especially the ones…ya know…you care about (like 10% of your contacts list) is not that difficult. The problem is getting enough people from your social network to switch to the new platform and abandon an old and familiar platform. The only time this works is if the new platform is somehow better than the old one. That is to say, the problem is with the social network application itself. And that problem is not addressed by this application.
Instead this application attempts to solve a problem that has largely been solved through concepts such as "notification center" which efficiently display notifications from your friends from whatever app it is you have installed.
Apps need to be experienced for people to start using them, a simple list of all the applications that your contacts have is not enough.
I have two comments with respect to what you wrote:
FWIW I'm an undergrad who is currently writing his thesis (empirical economics). I use the German Socio Economic Panel data set, which is a representative survey of ~11,000 German households (totaling about 79,000 individuals over 28 years). The reason why I picked a data set instead of collecting my own data is precisely to avoid the situation of the social sciences student you describe. As an undergrad, getting data is extremely difficult. You usually get about 6 weeks to write your thesis and you have absolutely no training in data collection and/or survey design. Getting data from students is your best bet, but nobody wants to answer your questionnaire because…hold your breath…everyone is sending out questionnaires. I get spammed with these things. Luckily, nobody has asked me to pretend that I am a 13 year old. So quite frankly most students panic after about 2-3 weeks and they will try to do anything to get out the situation. The alternative is not graduating and paying tuition for another year.
Secondly: Undergrad thesis =\= scientific paper. The fraction of undergrads who end up being social scientists is…tiny. Out of 300-400 econ students who graduate at my uni every year, I think 20 or less will go onto grad school (I'm proxying the number by thinking about how many went to do an MPhil). Now econ grad school is a different beast. Essentially you either end up doing experimental research or you work with observational data (assuming you are not a theoretician, those exist too; Economics is pretty much applied mathematics at that level.). Experiments can be checked and working with observational data requires a trove of econometrics. Trying to fool a panel of econometricians isn't easy, especially when these days you have to send in your data to the journal (or so my supervisor says; he has a paper forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics).
Social science in general is becoming more and more computational and statistically rigorous. Gone are the days when an "expert" would find a correlation between two variables and then speculate which way the causality flows…if any.
