247 news ☑

Bret is co-founder of Friendfeed and ex-CTO of Facebook. “We aren’t releasing anything and aren’t yet talking about what we are working on,” Taylor wrote in an email. “I will be happy to talk when we are, though.” \\ Stay tuned here: https://twitter.com/quip - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Lehrer executed one of the most bewildering recent journalistic frauds, one that on Monday cost him his prestigious post at the magazine and his status as one of the most promising, visible and well-paid writers in the business. An article in Tablet magazine revealed that in his best-selling book, “Imagine: How Creativity Works,” Mr. Lehrer had fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan, one of the most closely studied musicians alive. Only last month, Mr. Lehrer had publicly apologized for taking some of his previous work from The Wall Street Journal, Wired and other publications and recycling it in blog posts for The New Yorker, acts of recycling that his editor called “a mistake.” By Monday, when the Tablet article was published online, both The New Yorker and Mr. Lehrer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, made it clear that they had lost patience with him." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

That apology was a wonderful letter (to his future daughter), and quotes the real Bob Dylan: “She knows there’s no success like failure and that failure’s no success at all.” \\ Lehrer is a very good writer, and I wish he will continue his work. He examined himself as a case study in self-blindness -- Bravo! - Adriano

"The federal law prohibits U.S. citizens from adopting children who are Russian citizens, and also prohibits activities relating to selecting and transferring Russian children to U.S. citizens for adoption from being conducted in Russia. In this connection, the Agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States of America Regarding Cooperation in Child Adoption, signed in Washington on July 13, 2011, has been terminated. The federal law also provides that the law itself, as well as the Federal Law On the Exit from the Russian Federation and Entry into the Russian Federation, concerning the undesirability of the presence (residence) of foreign citizens in the Russian Federation, will affect citizens of countries that have prohibited Russian citizens from entering their territory and frozen Russian citizens’ assets because of their supposed involvement in human rights violations in Russia. " - Lit

2012-01-25 Obama 56.5%, Romney 27.9%, Gingrich 8.2%, Paul 2.6%. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

FINAL: Obama got 332 electoral votes out of 538, thus the observed realization of the probabilistic event resolves to 61.7%. (The Obama binary option paid out 100% at settlement.) Although the popular vote had no bearing on the contract settlement, we note Obama received 51% (62,088,847) of such votes. It was indeed a close race from the polling perspective, but it's noteworthy that the prediction market was not perturbed by the media. - Adriano

"In 563 AD, a deadly tsunami on Lake Geneva poured over the city walls. Originating from a rock fall where the River Rhône enters at the opposite end of the lake to Geneva, the tsunami destroyed surrounding villages, people and livestock, according to two known historical accounts. Researchers now report the first geological evidence from the lake to support these ancient accounts. The findings suggest that the region would be wise to evaluate the risk today, with more than one million inhabitants living on the lake's shores, including 200,000 people in Geneva alone." http://dx.doi.org/10... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

just injecting some humor into the prediction market http://ff.im/PRP5n When is the Lincoln film with Daniel Day Lewis coming out? :-) - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Eye-opener! publication bias practically constitutes research fraud... "When a new drug gets tested, the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world -- except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go unreported, leaving doctors and researchers in the dark. In this impassioned talk, Ben Goldacre explains why these unreported instances of negative data are especially misleading and dangerous." - Adriano

"He gets two more appeals first. The 76-year-old media mogul won’t serve a day until he’s exhausted those, and this first trial took six years. That doesn’t necessarily mean the next two appeals would take as long, but if they did, he would be 88. • Statute of limitations could save him. It certainly has before. Just this February, Italian courts had to drop a case against Berlusconi, for allegedly bribing a lawyer to lie on the stand in the 1990s, because the appeals process had exceeded the statute of limitations. According to the AP, the statute of limitations on this particular case is set to expire next year." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Source: United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, Author: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Presented in 09-CR-01184 (RJH) US District Court SDNY." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"The researchers' experiments showed how specialized, mature cells could be returned to a embryonic-like state, and then be coaxed into becoming all other cells of the body. The ability to pull off this trick—the biological equivalent of turning back time—ranks as one of the more head-spinning feats of modern science. It has triggered the rewriting of biology textbooks and given birth to new areas of research. Without this discovery, known as cellular reprogramming, Dolly the sheep and all later cloning experiments would not have been possible. It also allows scientists to create human embryonic stem cells without having to destroy human embryos, sidestepping an approach that has long been fraught with ethical controversies. Most important, perhaps, it has significantly advanced the prospect of using a patient's own mature cells to create fresh tissue and treat disease." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

must see excerpt from Gurdon's high school report card: http://ff.im/15VuMJ - Adriano

"The "Ecce Homo" a depiction of Christ crowned with thorns painted by local artist Elias Garcia Martinez has graced the wall of the Santuario de Misericodia Church in the village of Borja, near Zaragoza, Spain, for more than 120 years. But over the last 18 months its surface has deteriorated due to moisture in the church, causing parts of the painting to flake off. A woman in her 80s, upset at the worsening state of an image she loved to gaze on, took it upon herself to restore the artwork to its former glory, but with devastating results. The result was a botched repair in which the original face has been almost completely painted over with amateur brushstrokes and the image now resembles more ape than man." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

That lady later demanded payment from the Church for her work -- legal heads-up for those using her derivative image as avatar on social networks :-) - Adriano

currently 22.5%, details https://www.intrade.com/v4... \\ Another indicator is the USDIRR http://finance.yahoo.com/q... NB: "Iran's rial currency has declined 40% to 55% against the dollar on the black market since December. Iranian inflation, meanwhile, now exceeds 20% a month, according to the Central Bank. While the rial has been falling for almost a year, the latest drop appeared to be triggered by a recent U.S. announcement that it would penalize companies that do business with Iran's Central Bank, and a proposed plan to ban Iranian oil purchases in the European Union later this year. The rial was changing hands at 16,000 to 17,000 in recent days, down from 11,000 to 12,000 in December." http://online.wsj.com/article... - Adriano

2 Oct: currently USDIRR in Iran is officially set at 12,260 -- however, the rial is trading between 35,500 to 40,000. "The [Central Bank] announced that people who hold dollar accounts would no longer have access to their money in dollars and the bank would compensate them in rials at the official rate." The official rate is restricted to imports of food and medicine. http://online.wsj.com/article... - Adriano

"A French citizen has unintentionally breached the security of the French central bank over the phone and was freed by French authorities after being accused of "hacking" the central bank’s and triggering a 48-hours shut down of that particular computer system which handles the consumer indebtedness files. The man was trying to go around the paid telephone consumer support system and got from Internet forums what he thought was a direct-line to the central bank employees. When asked for a code by an automated system, he entered 123456 and it worked – he had just breached the central bank’s security. It gets better: according to the man’s attorney, 654321 would have worked as well." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"A 1,000-year-old Buddhist statue discovered in Tibet by Nazis searching for the origins of the Aryan race was hewn from meteorite. The "Iron Man" statue, which bears a swastika on its chest, was brought back to Germany in 1938 after being found in Tibet by a team of SS members led by zoologist Ernst Schäfer. The expedition was backed by Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief, who believed that the secret origin of the entire Aryan race could be uncovered in Tibet. Now the first scientific study of the statue's origins by experts from Stuttgart University has found that it is made of ataxite, a rare type of iron meteorite with a high nickel content. Experts concluded it had been chiselled from a remnant of the Chinga meteorite which fell to Earth near the border of Mongolia and Siberia 15,000 years ago. The 10 kg statue, believed have originated from the 11th century Bon culture, depicts the god Vaisravana, the Buddhist King of the North, known in Tibet as Jambhala." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Swastikas remain widely used in Indian religions, specifically in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, primarily as a tantric symbol to evoke shakti or the sacred symbol of auspiciousness. The word "swastika" comes from the Sanskrit svastika - "su" meaning "good," "asti" meaning "to be," and "ka" as a suffix. The swastika literally means "to be good". Or another translation can be made:... more... - Adriano

"Seven rent-to-own companies and a software maker are settling charges with the Federal Trade Commission that rental computers illegally used spyware that took “pictures of children, individuals not fully clothed, and couples engaged in sexual activities.” The FTC slapped the hand of DesignerWare of North East Pennsylvania and the rent-to-own companies. The settlement only requires them to halt using their spy tools, which has been employed on as many as 420,000 rentals. The software, known as Detective Mode, didn’t just secretly turn on webcams. It “can log the keystrokes of the computer user, take screen shots of the computer user’s activities on the computer, and photograph anyone within view of the computer’s webcam. Detective Mode secretly gathers this information and transmits it to DesignerWare, who then transmits it to the rent-to-own store from which the computer was rented, unbeknownst to the individual using the computer." - Adriano

"For more than half a century, Magnum photographers showed us the importance of picturing the human condition alongside reporting the news. An unintended consequence of their success has been to reduce news stories to a strikingly similar set of images: brave soldiers, weeping mothers, hungry refugees, election candidates reaching for a wall of hands. With the decline of the press and its demand for relevance, we have lost the tension between good and good-enough-to-show-the-world. When there were fewer photographers, Magnum admitted only the best to its club, and we trusted it to be our gatekeeper. Now we live in a world without Life magazine, but with too many pictures. What form of photojournalist will emerge from these conditions? Who can make images for the digital world that will show us something we can't see without them?" - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Using hashtags for live events or ongoing stories can help increase engagement by 100% for journalists, and 50% for brands. \\ Use @mentions. “If you include @mentions rather than just URLs, you’re absolutely going to grow your followers and traffic at a higher rate than what you would just by tweeting links,” says Luckie. In other words, it’s better to use “@MittRomney” than “Mitt Romney.” \\ Use the re-tweet button. Tweets that are re-tweeted in full using the automatic Retweet button are retweeted three times as often compared to tweets that are quoted." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Violent protests in Muslim countries may presage a sustained crisis with unpredictable diplomatic and political consequences. While pressing Arab leaders to tamp down the unrest, Obama and his advisers are left to consider whether to scale back diplomatic activities in the region. The unrest has suddenly become Obama’s most serious foreign policy crisis of the election season, and analysts say it is calling into question central tenets of his Middle East policy. Did he do enough throughout the Arab Spring to help the transition to democracy from autocracy? Has he drawn a hard enough line against Islamic extremists? Did his administration fail to address security concerns? Has his outreach to the Muslim world yielded any lasting benefits?" - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Model accurately explains why the waves of unrest that swept the world in 2008 and 2011 crashed when they did. The primary determinant was soaring food prices... a threshold for global food prices, if breached, would lead to worldwide unrest. Whenever the UN’s food price index climbs above 210, the conditions ripen for social unrest around the world. CSI doesn’t claim that any breach of 210 immediately leads to riots, obviously; just that the probability that riots will erupt grows much greater. For billions of people around the world, food comprises up to 80% of routine expenses. When prices jump, people can’t afford anything else; or even food itself. And if you can’t eat—or worse, your family can’t eat—you fight." http://goo.gl/3WNPm - Adriano from Bookmarklet

added kicker: "Because of climate change-exacerbated disasters “the average price of staple foods such as maize could more than double in the next 20 years compared with 2010 trend prices,” a new report from Oxfam reveals. That report details how the poor will be even more vulnerable to climate change-induced food price shocks than previously thought. After all, we’ve “loaded the climate dice,” as NASA’s James Hansen likes to say." \\ Oxfam: Extreme Weather, Extreme Food Prices http://goo.gl/fngkm - Adriano

FAO Food Price Index dataset via Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: http://www.fao.org/worldfo... - Adriano

"Digital maps on smartphones are brilliantly useful tools, but what sort of information do they gather about us – and how do they shape the way we look at the world? (...) In Harry Potter, there's a map that shows what everyone in Hogwarts is doing at every moment. But in the era of Street View Trekker and Liquid Galaxy, these fictional maps seem somewhat less absurd – and the level of detail is only one way in which maps are changing. Increasingly, the boundary between consulting a map and interacting with the world outside it is blurring: when Google glasses, currently in prototype, can project directions, or reviews of the restaurant you're looking at, directly into your visual field, what does the word "map" mean anymore? (...) Exactly what information the companies collect, and what they do with it, remains much debated. But it's easy to grasp the basic commercial calculation. The more exactly your phone knows where you are, the more accurately you can be served with... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Combining GPS with the new Indoor Positioning System, which uses cellular and other phone data to track phones much more precisely, shops could easily track customers' movements among the aisles, adjusting displays on a day-by-day basis for maximum revenue. "The map is mapping us," says Martin Dodge, a senior lecturer in human geography at Manchester University. "I'm not paranoid, but... more... - Amira

See also: How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything http://www.theatlantic.com/technol... - Amira

"By buying short-term bonds, the European Central Bank will help hold down short-term interest rates, but it’s not the cost of credit in the short term that’s the problem in Europe. The problem is sky-high long-term rates, which are linked to the cost of mortgage loans and some business borrowing. Draghi didn’t make clear why he’s avoiding long-term bonds. The ECB’s action could make national governments and their banks more dependent on each other, even though the goal of the ECB and the European Union is to lessen that fatal interdependence." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

what was more surreal at the RNC than Clint Eastwood conversing with that empty chair? http://mashable.com/2012... "President Obama is teaming up with a decidedly younger, more hip -- and yes, more stoned -- celebrity in his quest to win the November election: Kal Penn." http://www.hlntv.com/article... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Eastwood's appearance at RNC was not only surreal but also sad and embarassing.. :/ - Amira

"A woman reported missing from a tour to the Eldgjá volcanic canyon in southern Iceland ended up joining the search party formed to find her. The mix-up occurred when the woman left the tour bus and changed clothing. When she returned, the other tourists didn’t recognize her and began to worry about the missing passenger. Going off of the bus driver's description, a search was organized for an Asian woman in dark clothing who spoke English well. The missing woman didn’t recognize the description of herself and joined in the search. The following day, as the coast guard prepared to send a search helicopter, the woman realized her mistake." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Hi, I’m Barack Obama, President of the United States. Ask me anything. I’ll be taking your questions for half an hour starting at about 4:30 ET. By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD!" http://www.reddit.com/r... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill. Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street's greed revolution." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Have you seen this? http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs... probably the greatest 'Freudian' slip in this campaign. :-) - Amira

that pic sums up a lot about values passed along :-) - Adriano

"Value by market cap: Microsoft: $256.78B Google: $221.48B Facebook: $41.43B Amazon: $111.26B Total: $630.95B Meanwhile, Apple currently clocks in at $632.56B. Just staggering when you think about it. Especially when you consider that Apple’s market cap in 1999 was only $9.29B." $AAPL - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"A brief critical and source-based guide to some common misconceptions." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Political backstory: "The opportunity to settle a grudge with the United States by refusing to deliver Julian Assange to authorities in either Sweden or the United States, where he could be charged with leaking classified documents, was simply too good to miss. In asserting Ecuadorean sovereignty and defying the United States, President Correa is also vying for hemispheric leadership.... more... - Adriano

“I, in the past, thought about getting a mohawk myself. My team keeps on discouraging me and now that he’s received marriage proposals and thousands of new Twitter followers, I think that I’m going to go back to my team and see if it makes sense.” - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Phelps pictured as a nirvana dolphin :-) "The goal for the 50-meter freestyle final couldn't be any simpler: Get to the other edge of the pool as fast as possible. But the stroke that may propel humans through water faster than any other, the DOLPHIN KICK, is banned after the first 15 meters. Critics say the current limits on underwater swimming violate the notion that there's anything "free" about a freestyle race. They say the lack of choice discourages swimmers from trying new things in the pool. Without changes the 50-meter world record of 20.91 seconds, set in 2009, may stand for a long time. The current record was set before the sport banned a generation of high-tech polyurethane SWIMSUITS. When Denis Pankratov and Misty Hyman brought underwater swimming to the butterfly with 30-meter underwater dolphin-kick starts at the 1996 Games, FINA extended the 15-meter rule to butterfly and freestyle. An underwater swim race is probably not the best spectator event. But it is nonsensical to say swimmers can't be UNDERWATER for 20 to 25 seconds, in a 50-meter race." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Freestyle diving... WTF, What the Feck! http://i.imgur.com/cUCda.gif German diver Stephan Feck's second round attempt in the Men's 3m springboard event. Larger and better GIF, http://qph.cf.quoracdn.net/main-qi... - Adriano

"Until now, the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were considered unforeseen surprise attacks. However, it has recently come to light that Japan detected American preparations prior to the attacks. The program examines developments on the Japanese side surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Why was the tragedy of the A-bomb repeated, even when Japan knew an attack was imminent?" Special Intelligence unit knew that the second bomber also used call sign V675 which only days earlier had destroyed Hiroshima, however, the Japanese fighter crew just 11 miles north of Nagasaki was never ordered to intercept the B-29 bomber which departed from Tinian island. Not even an air raid warning was issued to the inhabitants: 60% of Nagasaki was destroyed and approximately 70,000 people were killed. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Allied military leaders were appalled by the use of the atomic bombs. General Eisenhower recognized that Japan was ready to surrender and said, "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." General Hap Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Corps pointed out, "Atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." Admiral William Leahy, Truman's... more... - Adriano

cf. the suppression of information by the Japanese government regarding the diffusion of radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster: http://nakamura-syounika.cocol... - Adriano