The company has no plans or need to focus on the U.S. market, Mssrs. Mazzella and Brusson said. They explained that in the U.S. the cost of car ownership and fuel is still relatively low, so many city-to-city travelers or commuters have a ride of their own, or one they can easily rent or borrow. Otherwise, U.S. geography and topography make longer-distance ridesharing less appealing, they said. The distance between U.S. cities is so great that many travelers have to book a flight to reach their destination in time, they said. In fact, Lyft and others have tried but failed to popularize pay-to-carpool marketplaces in the U.S. Lyft rebranded and sold its carpooling business, ZimRide, to Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co. last year to focus on its ride-hailing business.
French Company BlaBlaCar Raises $100M to Make Ride-Sharing Easy - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ July 7, 2014
The line between our physical lives and the lives we lead in our minds, with our thumbs, on a touchscreen, is rapidly fading.
Yo | TechCrunch June 22, 2014
You’re at a bar with your best friend and a love interest. Both put a hand on your shoulder when they talk to you. From the outside, it all looks the same. But there’s a big difference between the comfortable touch of a close friend and the explorative graze of someone you may very well have sex with soon. The next morning, your friend and your crush send you the exact same text. It says simply “Hey.” From your old pal, “hey” just means hey. But from your sexy friend, “hey” can mean anything from “last night was fun” to “I’m still thinking about you this morning.” As with anything, a “Yo” can just be a yo. But you’ll feel a very real difference between a “Yo” you get in the morning from a friend and a “Yo” you get at 2 a.m. from a friend with benefits. Trust me. And that’s… supposedly… the magic. The context of the Yo says much more than two little letters.
Yo | TechCrunch June 22, 2014
Do's & Don't's Visiting The Vatican Museum No shorts, bare shoulders or miniskirts. This applies to both men and women. Even if you get through security, you will be turned away by the attendants at the door.
Vatican Museum Tickets - Fast Track Skip The Lines June 9, 2014
Italians are not big readers, but they've taken to nights out in book bars, where they drink, have fun and discuss literature. Caffè Letterario led the charge in a part of the city bustling with Terza Università students. The move came on the crest of a cultural wave accompanying the transformation of peripheral Mattatoio into an area of cutting-edge cool. Bohemian Trastevere, just across the river, boasts the highest concentration of book bars, the largest of which is Bibli, where readers can mingle with artists and authors over a glass of wine.
20 great things to do in Rome - Time Out Rome June 9, 2014
لغو توقیف این فیلم در حالی است که وزارت ارشاد در چند ماه اخیر جو پرحاشیه ترین وزارت خانه های دولت یازدهم بوده است. رفع فیلتر و مجرمانه نبودن شبکه اجتماعی فیسبوک، تک خوانی زنان، ماجرای ممیزی کردن قرآن!، ارسال فیلم غیر ایرانی "گذشته" به اسکار، لغو توقیف نشر چشمه از جمله مهترین اقدامات چالشی این چند هفته وزارت ارشاد است و اکران ضد انقلابی "زادبوم" نیز میتوان جدیدترین برنامه این وزارت خانه دانست.
فیلم ضدانقلابی "زادبوم" هم اکران میشود! May 25, 2014
جوان امروز ايراني از نگاه فیلم يا عشرت طلب عاشق دوبي است يا نابغه فراري از جمهوري اسلامي و پناهنده به غرب و يا حزب الهي احمق! که در حالي که در باز است اصرار دارد از ديوار وارد شود و لاينقطع شعار بدهد؛ آن هم چه شعاري! براي شيرفهم کردن مخاطبان که اين جوانهاي ريشو چه موجوداتي هستند فارابي و حوزه هنري چندصدميليون داده اند تا فرياد " حقيقت برو گمشو! " يک مشت جوان ريشوي احساساتي افراطي شعاري! را در اثر ملي جشنواره هفتم ثبت هنري بنمايند.
فیلم ضدانقلابی "زادبوم" هم اکران میشود! May 25, 2014
Ultrawealthy nonresidents who own property in New York City certainly make a ripe target for potential revenue. People who spend fewer than half the year in New York City don’t pay any city income tax, even if they generate much of their fortune in the city. Many have elaborate systems for keeping track of their whereabouts. Since even one minute in a 24-hour period may count as a day for residency purposes, there’s often a frantic, Cinderella-like dash to cross the city line before midnight, although it’s black limousines ferrying the passengers rather than horse-drawn carriages.
Julian Robertson’s Carefully-Crafted New York City Tax Avoidance Lifestyle At Risk, Maybe « Dealbreaker: Wall Street Insider – Financial News, Headlines, Commentary and Analysis – Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Banks May 23, 2014
از دیگر ترجیع بندهای دلنشین داستان، عبارت «تو در عکس نیستی» است که مجید در بیمارستان به هنگام تماشای عکسها و پرواز به گذشته و خاطراتش آنرا به ما میگوید. چراکه ایرج چه پیش و چه پس از انقلاب در زندان بود و حتا به هنگام با خانواده بودن نیز خودش عکاس بود. از همینجا به عبارت «فریدون سه پسر داشت» میرسیم. عبارتی که هم نام داستان است و هم مدام تکرار میگردد و نکته همینجاست. ایرج نیست! ایرج ها در عکس نبودند و نیستند. ایرج ها را نادیده گرفتیم. فقط مجید و سعید و اسد دیده شدند. پس فریدون سه پسر داشت نه بیشتر! ایرج میتواند همان مجید باشد یا مجید میتوانست ایرج باشد. بهترین تمثیل برای تاریخ معاصر ایران. ایرج که نماد خردورزی و باسوادی است در عکس نیست، (توجه کنید به معنای مثال انگلیسی he is not in the picture!) و سه پسر دیگر که وجه مشترکشان تعصب، دگم اندیشی و ایدئولوژی پرستی است دیده میشوند.
انجمن پژوهشی ایرانشهر » آرشیو » نگاهی به رمان فریدون سه پسر داشت؛ نوشته‌ی عباس معروفی May 14, 2014
Despite cheekily borrowing an acronym from a less than salubrious hallucinogenic, this beverage offers a health enhancing, environmentally and ethically sound coffee substitute. LSD stands for latte(s) of soya milk and dandelion. Could this humble herbal concoction help you to kick the caffeine habit?
10 Reasons to Quit Coffee and Drink LSD ceres cafe and lsd dandelion coffee liz eve - Gallery Page 1 – Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building May 4, 2014
To me, the grounds for hope are simply that we don’t know what will happen next, and that the unlikely and the unimaginable transpire quite regularly. And that the unofficial history of the world shows that dedicated individuals and popular movements can shape history and have, though how and when we might win and how long it takes is not predictable. Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or will decline from it; despair is a confident memory of the future, in Gonzalez’s resonant phrase. Optimism is similarly confident about what will happen. Both are grounds for not acting. Hope can be the knowledge that we don’t have that memory and that reality doesn’t necessarily match our plans; hope like creative ability can come from what the Romantic poet John Keats called Negative Capability. On a midwinter’s night in 1817, a little over a century before Woolf’s journal entry on darkness, the poet John Keats walked home talking with some friends and as he wrote in a celebrated letter describing that walk, “several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature.… I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable : The New Yorker May 4, 2014
Generally, a person with warm eyes is one whose eyes are wide open and who looks like they are smiling, even if their mouth isn't smiling. They may be looking at you in a friendly way or a loving way. A person with cold eyes may have them narrowed. There is none of the softness that you would find from the warm person. They may be looking past you or just not connecting with you.
Cold or warm eyes?? May 4, 2014
The simplest model for predicting a new rating is to just guess a single number each time. What number to guess? The one that minimizes the prediction error. This happens to be the mean (3.7 stars I think). But while we have a very robust estimate of the rating mean, derived from 100 million examples, our model is too simple, and the error rate is around 1.05 stars (the Netflix “Cinematch” system is off by 0.95 stars; the winning system is off by 0.85 stars).
Predicting Movie Ratings: The Math That Won The Netflix Prize April 26, 2014
Let’s make the model a little fancier. We’ll add an offset for each movie and for each user to acknowledge that "The Shawshank Redemption" is better than average and I am more critical than average. The predicted rating according to the new model is the overall mean plus a movie offset plus a user offset. My predicted rating for Shawshank Redemption might be 3.7 (overall mean) + 0.8 (Shawshank offset) – 0.3 (my offset) = 4.2. This new model, which adds 500,000 user parameters and 20,000 movie parameters, improves the error rate to 0.97 stars. Again the parameters are estimated from the training data to minimize the error rate.
And, in fact, modeling these biases turned out to be fairly important: in their paper describing their final solution to the Netflix Prize, Bell and Koren write that Of the numerous new algorithmic contributions, I would like to highlight one – those humble baseline predictors (or biases), which capture main effects in the data. While the literature mostly concentrates on the more sophisticated algorithmic aspects, we have learned that an accurate treatment of main effects is probably at least as signficant as coming up with modeling breakthroughs.
Winning the Netflix Prize: A Summary - Edwin Chen's Blog April 26, 2014
The issue, for us here, is not the role of knowledge or innovation in economic growth–but is it the role of government to create and diffuse that knowledge to trigger constant innovation. And constant innovation destroys whatever it makes obsolete. That is a terrible two-edged sword and is our government up to the task? Forget about whether you like government or not. Put aside the old Democrat vs Republican, conservative vs liberal election year hoopla! I’m talking about whether the real government in day to day life has the capacity, judgement, and independence to play the role Innovation Economics cuts out for it? What worries the Curmudgeon about government and creative destruction is that: (1) it does involve picking winners (sectors, occupations, basic research priorities, which monopolistic firms to break up, etc.); is government good at this? (2) diffusing education, usually thought of as a state and mostly local activity in the USA, invites the Federal Government to either be a third-party payer for somebody else’s decision-making, or it will make those decisions itself and mandate them downward–making Federalism obsolete; (3) and letting losers die, despite political pressures to protect them, is not something democracies do very well;
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014
And mainstream Two Neo economists do not see government as all that effective and as a mechanism for a permanent growth machine. Government can’t deliver the goods, they felt. Warsh, for instance, acknowledged Solow’s observation that the chief limitation inherent in growth economics is that “we can’t routinely double R&D spending and expect to get results, any more than we can routinely slash taxes and expect revenue to increase”. (P. 401) Apparently, there exists no Laffer Curve for knowledge diffusion. As to Innovation itself? Just what do we mean by “Innovation”? Romer acknowledged that the innovative impact of knowledge and technology on economic growth is more or less confined to the “meta” ideas. Meta ideas support the production and transmission of other ideas.(Warsh, P. 401) Innovation is confined to “Platform” ideas i.e. the Internet (thank you Al Gore)—but not an Internet router (sorry, Norman Abramson, Univ of Hawaii, 1970). Run of the mill, derivative, copy cat “innovations” which are produced daily are not what the growth economists were talking about. They were talking about combustion engines, assembly lines, computers and chips, not about the thousands of micro variations, or the transfer of innovations from one sector to another sector. Today these micro innovations are regarded as the core product of “innovation” policy and programs–but they are not, at least accordingly to Growth Economics.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014
Perhaps the most noisy reaction came from Harvard’s, Greg Mankiw, a firm proponent of an augmented Neo-Keynesian Solow model of growth (remember that, you read it earlier). Mankiw, as does Warsh, begins by complimenting innovation economics for its elegant modeling explanation of the obvious. Every Two Neo economist would always have agreed with the core knowledge-based economic concept– “living standards (growth) rise over time because knowledge expands and production functions improve”. (P.377). A great deal of what Krugman and Romer had written in math was, to Mankiw, already part and parcel of conventional economic mainstream thought. But then Mankiw, not so gently, questions why there were still differences between nations (and firms) in growth rate. Why do some nations either choose or simply do not benefit from easily accessible knowledge and technology? Knowledge and education in today’s world are pretty common and given that the Chinese among others, the Japanese before them, and the Americans first of all, had stolen technology and reverse engineered for centuries, why are there still differences in national growth patterns and why do economies decline. Knowledge diffusion already exists and there is no growth machine. Are these nations and firms stupid or incompetent? Or is knowledge diffusion flawed either as a concept, or at least deficient in its day to day application? Neither, Mankiw boldly goes in another direction. No, Mankiw states knowledge is NOT a non rival good. Trade secrets, proprietary knowledge, the presence and absence of technological know how and the sticky transferability of intellectual property itself mean education and innovation are rival goods. They are consumable by only one consumer. Instead, Mankiw asserted the missing ingredients for growth were entrepreneurs who given a favorable environment seize upon knowledge and technology to earn a profit and a fortune.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014
A non rival goods (a good, even if consumed by one person, is still available to others for consumption. For instance, the online article you are reading right now is likely being simultaneously read by thousands. You can read it and others can read it because it is not consumed by your reading it. Well, a rival good cannot be diffused, but non rival goods can be diffused. If knowledge and education are rival goods, then they cannot be diffused. So these economics folk felt compelled to prove they are non rival goods. Education was key, it had to be a non rival good–without a non rival educational process there would be no knowledge diffusion. So many an article was written in math and modeling to demonstrate that if I take a class in economics, my consumption of that class in no way limits the reader’s ability to take a similar class in economics somewhere else. To make diffusion operative, and the growth machine realistic, growth economists had to prove that education, skills training, technological innovations are, or could be made by government regulation or policy to be non rival goods. Frankly, the Curmudgeon would have conceded the point just to shut these fools up. No one asked him.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014
Growth economists had expanded the Two Neo models by adding two new forces which could create future economic growth. Economic growth now could result from adding to the two Two (awkward, but correct) Neo traditional sources of economic growth (capital accumulation and demand) and expanding to four (by adding technology and human capital) sources of economic growth. As importantly, growth economists were also constructing a model which they intended to be a growth machine, capable of overcoming any reversion to the mean syndrome and even the business cycle itself. This growth machine was to be accomplished through diffusion of knowledge, which more or less leveled the competitive playing field, and accelerated technological, change, entrepreneurism and innovation. Presumably capital accumulation and demand creation would be positively affected and economic growth would follow. Technological change and knowledge, skills training and education prompt change, innovation, and productivity enhancements which cause sustained economic growth sufficient to overcome business cycles and the “lock in” effects of monopolistic capitalism (patents, proprietary knowledge or software and research for new applied technologies) and also reduce the gap (or inequality) between rich and poor nations or large and small firms. Say it another way, this is a perpetual Schumpeter creative destruction machine. [Editor's Note: A future article on creative destruction and innovation is already underway-a Christmas present] The mechanism for this diffusion of knowledge was governmental policy (chiefly regulatory, applied research, and educational and skills training).
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014 | Modified
For Krugman, the key to how government could do this was to better understand “Knowledge”;how it was created and how it diffused through the economy. If knowledge (in all its forms) were available to all, technology advances and the relatively speedy integration of existing technology (commercialization), would not be confined only to monopolistic competitors and developing nations. Any free and accessible knowledge, which was diffused through the economy, its labor force (human capital), and would create disruptive spillovers which would break the lock-in of monopolistic firms and developed nations on economic growth. Innovation, based on knowledge and spillovers, would be constant and able to occur despite the best efforts to the powerful. The growth machine could work in a knowledge-based economy. But again the question was how best to accelerate the spread and integration of these drivers of economic growth — the choice was through (1) unplanned and natural “spillovers” injecting themselves automatically into the normal activities of the private markets OR (2) the conscious intervention of government and public policy.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014 | Modified
At its inception in the 1980’s, and galvanized by an important lecture by Robert Lucas in 1985, several researchers began to focus on the second question “how can one consciously and continuously grow an economy” (i.e. not leave it just to the invisible hand). The two mainstream Neo wings specified two core factors of economic growth: investment capital and demand. For a perpetual growth machine, more input factors were required. On the fringes of the orthodox mainstream Neos, there existed a model of growth outlined by Robert Solow (he is probably less a growth economist than a Neo-Keynesian). In this outlying model Solow had added a third force in addition to capital and demand: technology. Technology and its introduction into the economy was a very critical driver of economic growth. But Solow left it uncertain as to whether technology was a force external to the economy (and hence not a part of economic theory), but whose impact could drive economic growth (and decline) OR was technology actually a process internal to the economy and the consequence of normal interactions of the private market (and hence suitable to be included into economic theory). You have to be an economist to get “into” this external versus internal debate that followed. We are not economists and so suffice it to say the latter position would eventually be accepted. Once technology and its successful commercialization became kosher for economists to include in their models, the next issue was whether technology (and innovation) could be encouraged/inhibited through economic policy to enter into private markets OR whether technology more or less, Deus ex machina-like, invaded the economy and transformed it without meddling by government or economists.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014 | Modified
Krugman developed a series of mathematical equations which ”explained” the observable reality that some firms become near monopolies (Microsoft) and sustain indefinitely their dominance. Similarly, developed nations, having enjoyed a head start in economic growth, would also be able to indefinitely “lock in” their dominant lead over the developing nations. For the Growth Economists convergence or reversion to the mean was the exception, and not the rule–and the Two Neos were themselves wrong!. For Krugman, there existed an imperfect competition which allowed near-monopolies to continue indefinitely and to compete with other near monopolies—monopolistic competition. Further evolution of Krugman’s thought led him to conclude the best, most effective remedy to monopolistic competition (GM competing with Toyota) was an involved government (P.234).
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014 | Modified
In developing this growth model, the new growth economists broke with the two mainstream Neo wings because the dissident growth economists were unwilling to accept the inevitability of economic convergence or reversion to the mean, as specified by the Two Neos. Mainstream Neo economics both accepted that over time, the advanced economy would decline and sooner or later the emerging economies would grow and “converge” to some sort of rough equality with the developed world. The Neo mainstream, therefore, accepted the notion of an inevitable decline and the impossibility of creating a virtually perpetual growth machine. Inevitable decline and the impossibility of perpetual growth was unsatisfying to the new generation, in part, because the young rebels asked a second question. Growth economists believed that under some conditions Mainstream Neo economics was wrong, incorrect, faulty in at least one respect. The growth economists believed (and they felt they mathematically proved) that growth by one firm or nation could be maintained indefinitely, condemning all competitors or less developed nations into a more or less permanent inferiority.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014 | Modified
There were two questions in particular which prompted them to move in new directions. The first question was “growth”. These semi-dissident economists wanted to know how emerging economies of the third world could expand more or less continuously, not in cycles and never, ever maturing or declining at least until they had caught up with the developed world. They wanted to offset the likely possibility that an initial growth by one nation (or firm) could be “locked in” or made permanent , preserving indefinitely their initial growth advantage and precluding any possibility of “convergence” over time. If the first economies to grow could lock in its advantage (achieve, in effect a monopoly) that meant the emerging economies could never really hope to ever catch up. To eliminate the threat to economic convergence, growth economists would eventually devise a model which included a set of governmental policy prescriptions. If government enacted these prescriptions, the growth economists suggested, their economy would be transformed into a growth machine which could not only alleviate the late 1970 era disparities between the developed and the developing nations, but could also reduce intra-national inequalities in the allocation of goods and services to their population.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014 | Modified
While Keynesian’s advocate using government more than the Neo-classical approach (and hence can appear more macro-oriented), both prefer a government which limits itself to certain types of policies with narrow objectives and responsive to specific situations (business cycle, deficits in a recessionary period or government tax policy to encourage savings) rather than a government which is an active player in the private economy. The government ought to “tinker” with the private economy—not bend, fold and spindle it on a regular and long term basis.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014
Modern capitalist economic theory, like Christianity, is divided into two major faiths: Neo-classical and Neo-Keynesian. Both capitalist wings share belief in the primacy of impersonal, disaggregated “private markets” (driven by the interaction of individual firms). (Are you bored already?) This private market, reflecting a supply and a demand for individual goods and services, creates a price. This is the proverbial “invisible hand”, which allocates the distribution of goods and services produced by the economy. The primary unit of economic activity for both is the firm or the individual consumer and their key variables and concepts, which typically underlie both approaches, are usually more micro-economic (firm/individual-specific) than macroeconomic (national economy). The goal of both is to induce the individual firm or consumer to behave in a manner to achieve the desired ends, usually making a “profit”. Growth economics (a sub-discipline of economic theory and “their” name for innovation economics) arose in reaction to important limitations of the mainstream, orthodox Neo-classical and Neo-Keynesian wings. Since World War II, Neo-classical economists (such as Glenn Hubbard and Robert Rubin) believe that capital accumulation (wealth, investment, savings, for instance) primarily drives economic growth. If economic growth is desired, one must encourage savings which can then be used to finance new productive assets such as capital equipment and workforce hiring. Savings equals investment (Says Law), investment pays for the injection of new resources which create new demand. Neo-Keynesian economists, (Larry Summers) however, stress that the demand side drives economic growth. Growth can be induced by government spending, in particular, which increases the supply of wealth and savings by “printing” money”. Printing money is another name for budget deficit. When economic growth is desired, government spending is increased to stimulate new investment and hiring–and eventually enhanced demand.
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014
but who bedeviled us with Innovation and Knowledge-based Economics? Eureka! He found a box, hidden away in an obscure corner of the Neo-Keynesian basement, which he believes contains the foundation texts of our current innovation and knowledge-based paradigm. The box was labeled “Growth Economics”. Unless you are a professional economist, and a recently trained one at that, it is not likely you ever, ever opened this box before. For most economic developers, innovation and knowledge-based economies are old hat–but innovation and knowledge-based theoretical framework developed in the late 1970′s, 80′s, and early 90′s. To be sure there were Moses-like forerunners (you heard of Schumpeter, haven’t you?) but, for most of us, the prophets of the new order are relatively unknown
What’s the Theory Behind Innovation and the Knowledge-Based Economy | Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development April 26, 2014
As is the case with the road, Zzyzx, California, is the USBGN's lexicographically greatest (alphabetically last, at least in English alphabetical order) place name.
Zzyzx, California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia April 26, 2014
In the opening plenary session, Dr. Walter C. Willett, a Harvard epidemiologist who has spent many years studying cancer and nutrition, sounded almost rueful as he gave a status report. Whatever is true for other diseases, when it comes to cancer there was little evidence that fruits and vegetables are protective or that fatty foods are bad.About all that can be said with any assurance is that controlling obesity is important, as it also is for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke and other threats to life. Avoiding an excess of alcohol has clear benefits. But unless a person is seriously malnourished, the influence of specific foods is so weak that the signal is easily swamped by noise.
An Apple a Day, and Other Myths - NYTimes.com April 26, 2014
It's strange that people even talk about recruiting top (and I mean top) engineers when I can count on one hand the number of startups I've ever seen that'd justify that kind of talent (think John Carmack level).The vast majority of startups are business process improvements (think AirBnb, think Uber) where there's no freaking way you'd really need a Carmack on your team.I disagree with the point about finding talented but under-recognized people. I've seen companies do this, and in this market they will get discovered, it's only a matter of time - and the switching cost of jobs right now is nearly zero.
Employee Equity: Too Little? | Hacker News April 20, 2014
