alexleavitt

Dreadful, if you take the Dark Forest theory to heart (see Liu Cixin's second book in the Three Body Problem trilogy).

"Everything is Obvious," by MSR researcher Duncan Watts.

Imagine every time when people infer seemingly-obvious extrapolations from data. This book addresses that phenomenon to make you more self-conscious about the limitations of data and the constant need for more research.

The Shikoku pilgrimage is still one of the best experiences I've had in Japan. The hospitality, generosity, and respect you encounter along the route, not to mention all the people you get to meet, are so unique.

In fact, I would argue that Ghost in the Shell's entire franchise remains the most intriguing and exciting science fiction media about networked technology.

If you have never seen the 2-season TV series (and 3 additional films), "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alon...), it is by far the best contemporary outlook on near-future internet technology still. Black Mirror is up there, but I think that Ghost in the Shell: SAC presents this cultural criticism in a much stronger (ie., less unhappy) tone.

I really liked this article. It reminded me a lot about Tim Rogers' Earthbound review, which is my all-time favorite game review article: https://web.archive.org/web/20080219052007/http://www.largep...

I think one easy improvement could be putting some headers throughout, so the reader has a better sense of the outline, structure, and flow of your argument. Personally, I'd also love to see more comparisons across games: like, why does Cave Story matter in the context of the other games of its time (or even games that have come before)?

To be realistic, too, the original "six degrees of separation" did not take into account this international context.

"Let's help fight high-rise buildings in San Francisco." Welp...

But on another note, if you're fascinated by this history, I highly recommend Fred Turner's excellent 2008 book, "From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism" (https://books.google.com/books?id=2SNFpgX_WigC). His more recent article, "Burning Man at Google: a cultural infrastructure for new media production," is also a great read (http://nms.sagepub.com/content/11/1-2/73 ; http://web.stanford.edu/~fturner/Turner%20Burning%20Man%20at...)

> "Japan has a very low crime rate, which is surely a key reason parents feel confident about sending their kids out alone. But small-scaled urban spaces and a culture of walking and transit use also foster safety and, perhaps just as important, the perception of safety."

Honestly, this perception – that they try to place secondary – is KEY. Living in Japan, it's a stark contrast to walking around the States in any major city. Japan feels – and is – significantly safer.

Hatsune Miku is also a projection, not a hologram. But I think it's "further" than you think, because every single song at the concert is created by a musician or team that releases the song online for free. The extremely popular ones are put into the concert, as a way of saying thanks by the company who makes the voice synthesizing software to the fans.

Miku is likely part of my dissertation; extremely outdated research page here: http://alexleavitt.com/vocaloid

Yes, I am pretty sure this article is just rehashing the Twitter grants (I believe there were only 6 to 8 rewards), rather than announcing full open data to any researchers (thereby making the title misleading).

Just keep in mind an R^2 of 15 isn't that high, so these variables are only accounting for a small portion of the variance in the model.

I think there's an important control here: number of followers per user. It'd be interesting to see how followers would affect the model, especially because you could assume that "knowing to add more hashtags" likely correlates with "use of the platform," which they likely correlates with "increased # followers," who can then produce more likes on each photo.

EDIT: Another thought: if you're looking at # likes, you might want to go for a negative binomial model instead of an OLS regression, because it'll account for the dependent variable being a "count" measure.

This is the entire underlying message of Banksy's film, Exit Through the Gift Shop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_Through_the_Gift_Shop

This is the same in the social sciences. I'm currently a PhD student in one of the top Communication departments in the US, and it's painful to see how far behind in technical skills and tools the curricula are (eg., Excel and SPSS). I've been self-teaching Python, R, and SQL, and extending my knowledge base from simple regression-based stats to data mining and machine learning, to make up for it. Not only does that allow me to work on massive datasets (and push the field forward across methodologies), but it allows me to improve more 'traditional' approaches by sharing data and models (eg., with .R scripts).

How much of "the Reddit" did you actually use to calculate these stats? Is this based off a one-time snapshot from the API (which limits to 1000 posts, per type of query) or is it a longitudinal crawl (and how data was produced in that sample)?

The worst part of Academia.edu: you must log in to download the PDFs.

What this post doesn't describe is usage numbers per person. I wonder how many Tumblr users are also Facebook, Snapchat, etc. users...? Also, how many respondents chose none of the options?

Highly recommend picking up this book. As a former local colleague of Nick Montfort, I can say it's going to be a great read.

Oh no... :(

http://i.imgur.com/FlPXf.png

This is seriously one of the best bundles released yet. All these games have been lauded, and all were on my to-play list. :D

Having moved to Los Angeles only 7 months ago, I was really surprised to see fixies as a dominant mode of transport, especially within the Latino community (colored, deep-V rims are a huge trend). And even though LA tops the chart in terms of # bikes for sale, that doesn't mean it's a high percentage of people biking (very unfortunate). LA's trying to add more bike lanes, but it's a pretty dismal situation here.

(It'd probably be less than $1 via media mail anyway.)

1) Thanks for the edit; the more you know!

2) I think I've flash-learned a lot about the process now (of which I knew little before). I'm really interested in disruptive uses of digital social systems, so taking advantage of online vendors might be something I'll actually look into for a future research project.

3) Random thought: Given the increase in algorithms that weigh prices against other sellers (and the obvious examples I linked to in the piece) I wonder what the potential is for mom-and-pop businesses to employ their own algorithms... or at least what the conflicts are when you have small businesses with different levels of technical skills and access to those sorts of advantages. Is that a new business competency that's necessary if you're a small business looking to work within these systems?

But I see an interesting parallel between clothing and media, in terms of "trying them out," if you will. Over the years, Amazon has (at least anecdotally -- would be interesting to confirm this empirically) adopted a try-and-return policy on a lot of clothing, taking a hit on the shipping so that people can retain the "in-store experience" of making sure everything fits. Why does that necessarily have to be different for books and other media? Is it just a question of physical weight + price?

Can you even return a car after you purchase it? That's a poor metaphor.

Sorry, but your response sounded a lot like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU