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secondtimeuse

137 karma · joined July 24, 2015

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secondtimeuse··on Human Research Loopholes: Alive and Well
The public behavior loophole is likely protected by first amendment. While it is true that common rule can be used as criteria for denying grant applications, it has potential of having chilling effects on number of experiments. Consider recent imagenet type challenges which rely on images collected from public datasets such as flickr. Going ahead each study will require an IRB approval with enormous breaucracy burden leaving only corporations without any restrictions to do this type of research. There is a strong precedent in IMS health vs Sorrel by Supreme Court against speaker based restrictions on speech.

Finally I am sick of hearing Anonymization != De'identification it's tired trope where there are barely any solutions put forward other citing a bunch of papers and calls for more breaucracy.

There is an interesting article by Dr. Atul Gawande on IRB issues when implementing a simple checklist that reminded doctors to wash their hands.

secondtimeuse··on U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers
Apple recently opened a new R&D center in Taiwan. Which shows that not only production but also research and development can move / will eventually move to other countries.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/12/16/apple-taiwan-factory-ole...

secondtimeuse··on U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers
There are 62,000+ degrees in Computer Science alone awarded every year. With sample size 705 you are showing a decrease of 6% then p < 0.5. Further OPT program was established long before the "STEM Extension" came into effect during 2008. Finally in spite of STEM extension in place, the Software Developer jobs as well as salaries have recorded solid growth during 2008 - Now. Just because you became aware of the STEM program due to a judgement on a minor procedural issue, does not invalidates the robust job and salary growth over the last 7 years enjoyed by the profession. You are simply trying to map your flawed beliefs and sensational news reports to justify non existent decline.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/10/03/the-10-job...

secondtimeuse··on U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers
Wages are not being driven down by labor supply. Rather as this particular example clearly shows, they are being driven down by the underlying economics of production. Another example of this trend is Detroit. The United Auto Workers union succeeded in keeping the wages high, but the underlying economics of production destroyed the industry.

The lesson in this scenario, is counter-intuitive. You can regulate, unionize and force wages to stabilize. But that can only help you in short term. On a longer timeframe, innovation and foreign labor catches up and now instead of losing few jobs to talented foreigners you end up losing the entire supply chain. The Software Industry thankfully has been able to resist this trend. The same report shows solid growth across all software related professions.

secondtimeuse··on U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers
Actually there was a 6% increase in salary between 2013 and 2014. And the "data" for 2015 is derived from mere 705 "# of Salaries".

There aren't any new recent moves by DHS regarding "OPTs". The proposed change in "STEM Extension", won't come into affect at least until mid 2016.

secondtimeuse··on U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers
If you think hon hai precision industry co. ltd (aka foxconn) is merely doing "soldering" in China you ought to catch up with the market reality. Almost everyone I know who is employed at Apple (in California) with electrical engineering degree, goes on multi-month annual visits to Chinese plants.
secondtimeuse··on U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers
To pre-empt anticipated comments Job Outlook "Growth" is change in number of people employed: From the source here are the numbers for other disciplines.

Software Developer Job Outlook, 2014-24 17% (Much faster than average) http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...

Computer Hardware Engineers Job Outlook, 2014-24 3% http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/computer...

Database Administrators Job Outlook, 2014-24 11% (Faster than average) http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/d...

statisticians Job Outlook, 2014-24 34% (Much faster than average) http://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/statisticians.htm

computer-and-information-systems-managers Job Outlook, 2014-24 15% (Much faster than average http://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/computer-and-information-s...

Yet the article conveniently uses cherry picked data for arguing against H1B. The majority of the H1B are being awarded for above categories and not for electrical engineering.

The simple explanation is that it's cheaper to manufacture components in Taiwan, Korea and China. H1B is not causing electrical engineers to lose jobs, it's the fundamental economics of production that are stacked against the occupation.

secondtimeuse··on University of California launches $250M fund for student startups on campus
Universities have always been in the incubator business. The bubble actually forces universities to be more transparent about their IP licensing policies. Do read how Netscape was rewritten due to licensing issues. There is a reason why UIUC gets a bad rep. If anything this is good side effect of bubble, since it forces universities to re-examine their licensing practises and invent new IP models that distinguish between software and medical drug/device inventions.

" University of Illinois v. Andreessen (1994) - The web revolution began at the University of Illinois with the first graphics based browser, Mosaic, but few are aware of its history. The open source code which spawned both Netscape and Internet Explorer was created by graduate students using open source code. The university sued the students for trademark infringement in an attempt to capture royalties even though the source code was available for free on the web. The developers offered the university shares in the newly launched Netscape which would have netted UL over $8 million. Instead, the university chose a prolonged legal battle which was settled for $2.7 million, bankrupted Netscape, allowed Microsoft Explorer to capture the browser market and left University of Illinois out of the legacy of the innovation. "

http://www.ipadvocate.org/forum/dispute.cfm?Type=Disputes

http://markvillacampa.com/2014/01/13/the-day-i-learned-about...

secondtimeuse··on Tensorflow 0.6.0 Release
Python 3.3+ support via changes to python codebase and ability to specify python version via ./configure.
secondtimeuse··on Show HN: Image segmentation and background removal in JavaScript
Depending on the size of the object you are trying to segment relative to the image, you can adjust the size of superpixels. To segment parts such as clothes you can set large superpixel size by enabling developer option on top right corner. You can also see superpixels rendered to understand which size gives best results. This method can perform even approximate non-interactive segmentation.
secondtimeuse··on Show HN: Image segmentation and background removal in JavaScript
OpenCV has GrabCut implementation which works on android. There are numerous implementations of SLIC superpixels. Even this will work through a cordova style wrapper, but I would really not recommend it, since you can use a much faster and accurate native OpenCV on android.
secondtimeuse··on Show HN: Image segmentation and background removal in JavaScript
Thanks, I added it to the readme.
secondtimeuse··on Show HN: Image segmentation and background removal in JavaScript
It will be released under Open Source compatible license, I just need to make sure since I am a PhD student.

Note that the underlying algorithm implementations are MIT licensed.

https://github.com/kyamagu/js-segment-annotator/blob/master/...

secondtimeuse··on Show HN: Image segmentation and background removal in JavaScript
Its actually based on https://github.com/kyamagu/js-segment-annotator which implements two algorithm SLIC and PF.

Regarding compiling C using emscripten, I wanted a pure JS implementation so that it was hackable using Chrome Developer tools, E.g. using LAB data internally produced by SLIC algorithm. Hopefully in future, I will use a emscripten implementation. It might be important for version that proceses short gifs or videos.

Also there is a developer mode on top right, enabling it allows visualization of superpixels and change parameters of the algorithm.

secondtimeuse··on Show HN: Image segmentation and background removal in JavaScript
This is an alpha version, I hope to improve it over the next week by incorporating ConvnetJS, to label pixels in mixed superpixels (Superpixels with both positive and negative labels). And incorporate additional functionality to such as blurring the boundary.

The current restriction on the size of canvas 640 X 640 (Instagram size) , will also be removed over next few updates.

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