A question on this if you know more about black holes: The article suggests that due to Doppler effect, one side should be asymmetrically brighter than the other. This image seems to show a really large asymmetry (this is specifically called out in the article as how Interstellar movie does not depict an accurate image). However, the actual photo taken recently doesn't seem to show that much of an asymmetry. Any idea why?

Our university is all aflutter with excitement on this proposal. The profs seems to feel that this is the right time to ensure that what we build next is on solid foundations.

Shah comes from 'Xšâyathiya' cognate with 'Kshatriya'

What worries me is the fact that the two organizations attacked are comparatively low value targets. So this is more of a "serving notice" kind of attack, suggesting that they have more powerful weapons in their arsenal.

I think we'd both agree that multiculturalism is a positive thing. My asterisk is just when done Right

I suppose the difference I am seeing is simply that, it seems that any mimicking seems to be a bad thing by default unless shown otherwise in U.S, while the opposite seems to be true in India (I think I have seen this view pervasive enough in India to make this claim, though I am not knowledgeable enough with the western and rest of eastern culture to know if this can be extended to them too).

I feel that it is rather difficult to get multiculturalism right with the first view point, in that it requires an inordinate knowledge of a culture before a person can start using the symbols of it, and even then you can be accused of misappropriation just on the basis of not belonging to the original culture.

It promotes a kind of exclusivity. I wonder if your Indian friend, who took offense to misappropriation of "Guru" would have similarly challenged another Indian with the same level of ignorance of what it means in India (or even in US)? I suspect he wont (Look for word guru in linked pages).

but in general Christianity gets a bye because it holds a position of power in the western world and it has encouraged its own spread into as many cultures around the world as possible.

But the same is true for eastern religions too. They have their own power centers, and encourage spread to other parts of the world. Christianity was certainly a minority for us.

I am not entirely sure what the difference is, but the difference seems rooted in the different world views. My wife is a Jain, and she loves it when particularities of her religion are coopted by the mainstream. They tend to see it as increasing their influence rather than as being diluted. (As her folks love to point out, the habit of not eating meat in Hinduism has its origin in Jainism, and so does the symbolism of color white for purity. The mainstream hinduism does not interpret these exactly as Jains do, but Jains (at-least those that are visible and vocal) in India seem happy that they are being used at all).

However, I have also found that even Indians who come to US seem to want their exclusive identity preserved, and complain about others coopting their identities, which seems rather different from the mainstream approach in India.

I will pass on the Islam prayer because I don't understand Islam mainstream even in India well enough to understand their response to some one else using it, but I have celebrated Bakrid, and my friends have always encouraged me to participate.

No, not mine :)

Very interesting, it seems that it is powered by two ARM cortex -M0 processors fabricated at 65nm and 180nm. I wonder if its power/size could be further reduced using a forth processor. (A 4-computer forth (greenarray) chip using 180nm).

You see a lot of similar stuff in the fetishization of eastern religions among college youth: embracing and appropriating cultural elements without an understanding of where they come from. I've seen white yoga instructors give lectures on Buddhism (not bothering to specify which branch, omitting all mention of Jainism, and emphasizing the elements of mysticism) to rooms full of only white participants. Then said participants repeat the few words they remember from the session afterwards, feeling a bit more spiritual and enlightened, but still ignorant of the tenants of those religions and regions.

I belong to the above said culture, and I celebrated Christmas for quite a number of years before I understood what it was about. As a kid growing in a normal household in India, we had the cross on our sacred place too (where it share the space along with a number of other idols), and the Bible was considered sacred, along with our own sacred books, even though it was deeply boring, and I could not get through more than a few pages -- much less understand what it was about. Were we wrong to do that without understanding what it meant, the differences (and similarities) between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and also the sects in Christianity?

I would like to give the benefit of doubt to people who are using eastern religious symbols for harmless purposes. I don't see how it harms the cause of these religions (or the culture) if some one does not understand the subtle differences between the different religions (or even neglect to explain them to their audience if they do understand it).

I didn't know about the Wiki feed. Thanks!

Ah thanks! :), I have updated my post.

Each of them reduces the bits in your fingerprint to some extent. Ghostery (and others that block third party requests) is reasonable if you trust the domain (not just the embedded objects in the page) you are visiting to not be interested in collecting data about you. However, if the domain itself is collecting data about you, then you have just provided one more bit of information that distinguishes you (since the percentage of population running Ghostery is smaller than the full population of browsers).

Secret Agent seems more reasonable in that it is actively targeted towards detecting fingerprinting. The way it works is by spoofing your HTTP headers, which are used in generating some bits to identify you. However, if you are directly on the internet (not behind a NAT (NAT is a way of sharing ipaddresses with others in the same network) -- being directly on the internet is rare these days), your IP is still accessible. If you are behind a NAT, you will have to trust your ISP not to track you.

Disconnect me is similar, and routes your request through a VPN, but you will have to trust them. (By routing your request through a VPN, they make your request seem to come through a different part of the world, than your original location, which removes one bit of information about you -- they do more, but this seems the most salient of what they do.)

NoScript works by removing the vector of many identification techniques, by disabling Javascript. However, it can also make your browsing experience painful if you are expecting dynamic look and feel in websites that are enabled by Javascript (you can whitelist, but how effective that is, depends on your browsing habits). Secondly, it does not eliminate all bits of identification.

All in all, all these are useful techniques, which can reduce the exposed bits identifying you to a degree (You will also have to trust the tool itself not to send any incriminating data back. There has been instances when these tools themselves turned traitor). They are all complementary to each other to a degree too.

You are right. It wouldn't have been possible before the invention of these light weight materials.

but was only recently able to cut down its weight down to less than half a kilogram per leg, light enough to provide a net energetic benefit.

I wonder if such overriding divisions are just artifacts of our brains limited computational power, and whether it will survive when such limitations disappear.

Think for a moment about why and where we use `we'. I think that we use it as a heuristic to represent a group who are similar to us in some sense, ignoring the various differences individual members have, and I suspect we evolved such a notion for an evolutionary advantage.

Distinguishing members or environment which allowed for the best chance of survival or propagation of one's progeny gives one a certain advantage, and in the absence of computational power to precisely compute how best to do it, the simple heuristic of distinguishing a group based on some similarities could serve as a substitute. This heuristic holds some value even now, because we still lack the power to compute the relationships and advantages precisely.

But will it hold the same value in the future when the required computational power becomes available to individuals? And if its value diminishes, why should some entity feel the need to deploy this heuristic?

Thanks, that post is informative, and I agree about food delivery point there.

Being fingerprinted is a problem that has not received wide attention. Unfortunately there are very few guides as to how to avoid it. Here are a few ways you can avoid being fingerprinted by porn (or ad companies for that matter) in decreasing order of identifying bits (at the very least ).

- If nothing else, always use incognito or private mode (It reduces the plugins that are active, and removes some bits from your unique fingerprint)

- Use a different browser entirely for porn or other private things

- Get in the habit of using a virtual machine for your private browsing.

- Use an anonymizing proxy, or a separate VPN for private things than the one you use for your other browsing. (removes your original IP info)

- Use TOR

Finally, use the eff tool panopticlick to verify that you are indeed not unique.