247 news ☑

RT @querenciazine: Dude just asked me, "ca finit quand le manif?" I said, "ca finit avec la revolution." We high-fived. #GGI‬ #loi78‬ #manifencours - Adriano from Bookmarklet

The fair market value, one year prior to the IPO filing, fluctuated narrowly around $33. It closed at $38.23 on the day of the IPO, 18 May 2012. (Trivia: when Friendfeed was acquired on 10 August 2009, FB was valued at $2.10.) Currently, http://www.google.com/finance... - Adriano

Here's The Inside Story Of What Happened On The Facebook IPO | Business Insider: "The analysts cut their estimates because a Facebook executive who knew the business was weak told them to." (...) At best, this "selective disclosure" is grossly unfair to individual investors who bought Facebook stock on the IPO (or at any time since). At worst, it's a violation of securities laws." http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusi... - Amira

"Institutional investors, having digested the news of the underwriter estimate cut, were comfortable buying Facebook stock at $32 a share. Retail investors, meanwhile, who were presumably unaware of the estimate cut, were comfortable buying Facebook at $40 a share." -ibid. \\ + MS over-allocated shares at IPO... three days later: $31, that -23% right out of the gate. - Adriano

"German chancellor Merkel said that the Greek debt reforms were of "utmost importance". That message was underlined by European Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, who said Brussels "hopes and expects that the future government of Greece will respect the engagement that Greece has entered into". Any political instability in Greece may prompt fresh questions over the country's place in the eurozone. Under Greece's current bailout plan, a further 11bn euros of cuts in spending is due to be found next month." - Adriano

#grexit "How Greece could leave the eurozone – in five difficult steps. Two years ago, the prospect of a state falling out of the single currency area was unthinkable. But as the Greek electorate turns against austerity, it is becoming all too easy to picture how breakup might happen..." http://www.guardian.co.uk/busines... \\ See also http://online.wsj.com/article... - Adriano

Drachma banknotes: "commercial printer De La Rue needed to be alive to the possibility of a Greek exit from the single currency." http://uk.reuters.com/article... #EURGRD - Adriano

"A schoolgirl from the British seaside town of Deal in Kent has been found to have the most scientifically beautiful face. Eighteen year-old Florence Colgate, who works part time at a fish and chip shop, won the competition after she sent a photograph of herself into a television programme, and then won a public vote. \\ Researchers who've studied attractiveness say that on a perfect face, the distance between pupils is 46% of the width of the face from ear to ear -- Florence's is 44%. The distance between the eyes and mouth should be a third of the length of the face -- Florence's is 32.8%." \\ And, drink lots of water :-) ... what about fried foods though? - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Quora looks like a simple Q&A site, but it’s also a reinvention of the ask-an-expert column you can find in almost any newspaper and magazine. Reddit’s I Am A board, with threads like “I am an astronaut, ask me anything” looks like any other internet forum, but it is also what interviews and profiles can look like in the 21st century. We used to peruse the entertainment section of our favorite magazine for movie reviews and recommendations. Now most of us use IMDB or the recommendation engines behind Amazon and Netflix. Same thing for music: people still find new music through Pitchfork or Rolling Stone, but services like Spotify and Rdio actually replace music journalism for many. More music and less bullshit. Better recommendations and you can start listening right away." - Adriano

Among U.S. IPOs, it would rank No. 1 by market value, and stand third by amount raised. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Débat avant l'élection présidentielle du 6 mai 2012. 72 minutes. \\ Confrontation des deux candidats [Partie 11/13] http://youtu.be/IX_L7_1EfVA \\ Conclusion [Partie 13/13] http://youtu.be/cw_f6C_goas - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Microsoft has drastically overhauled the network running its Skype voice-over-IP service, replacing peer-to-peer client machines with thousands of Linux boxes that have been hardened against the most common types of hack attacks. The change, which Immunity Security's Kostya Kortchinsky said occurred about two months ago, represents a major departure from the design that has powered Skype for the past decade. Since its introduction in 2003, the network has consisted of "supernodes" made up of regular users who had sufficient bandwidth, processing power, and other system requirements to qualify. These supernodes then transferred data with other supernodes in a peer-to-peer fashion. At any given time, there were typically a little more than 48,000 clients that operated this way. Kortchinsky's analysis, which has not yet been confirmed by Microsoft, shows that Skype is now being powered by a little more than 10,000 supernodes that are all hosted by the company. It's currently not... more... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"The car is owned by Guy Fieri, a Santa Rosa chef who stars in Food Network's "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives," in which he explores classic "greasy spoon" restaurants around the country in his red 1967 Chevy Camaro SS convertible. The Lamborghini was stolen in March 8, 2011, from the Bentley, Lamborghini, Lotus dealership on Van Ness Avenue, SF. Police said the thief had climbed to the roof of the dealership, attached a climbing rope and rappelled into the showroom. The thief then cut the lock to the dealership's garage door and drove off with Fieri's car. Later that week, the sports car was caught on security cameras tooling across the Golden Gate Bridge, into Tiburon and back out again. The car, which can hit 60 mph in less than four seconds, is capable of topping 190 mph." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"The Rays signed outfielder/designated hitter Hideki Matsui to a Minor League contract. Matsui, who turns 38 in June, has played nine seasons in the Major Leagues with the New York Yankees (2003-09), Los Angeles Angels (2010) and Oakland Athletics (2011) following a 10-year career with the Yomiuri Giants of Japan's Central League. He owns a career .285 batting average with 173 home runs, 753 RBIs and 248 doubles in 1,202 games after hitting .304 with 332 home runs, 889 RBIs and 245 doubles in 1,268 games in Japan. Matsui was a nine-time All-Star in Japan (1994-2002) and a two-time American League All-Star (2003-04). While 25 players have reached 500 home runs in the Major Leagues and eight have done so in Japan, Matsui is the first to combine for 500 home runs in both leagues. The three-time Central League Most Valuable Player (1996, 2000, 2002) played for three Japan Series Champions with Yomiuri (1998, 2000, 2002) and one World Series champion with the Yankees in 2009, when he was named World Series MVP. Matsui has the most home runs, RBIs and walks (539) of any Japanese player in Major League history." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

2012-01-25 François Hollande leads at 69%, followed by Sarkozy. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

2012-04-30 update: Hollande 89% v. Sarkozy 11% pre-Le-Pen-endorsement -- final vote 6 May 2012. - Adriano

Le président a bien tenu cette phrase, lors d'un déplacement à Longjumeau, mardi 24 avril 2012. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Sunday's electoral menu consisted of quasi-fascism, quasi-Marxism, soft socialism and the bouillabaisse ideology of a failed and desperate incumbent. Yet Americans should also take note that we aren't so different from France, either: in our debt-to-GDP ratio, our employment rate, our credit rating. Above all, both in France and in America there's a belief that, as exceptional nations, we are impervious to the forces that make other nations fall. It's the conceit that, sooner or later, brings every great nation crashing to earth." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

He was travelling with his older brother, working as a sweeper on India's trains. "It was late at night. We got off the train, and I was so tired that I just took a seat at a train station, and I ended up falling asleep." That fateful nap would determine the rest of his life. "It was a very scary place to be. I don't think any mother or father would like to have their five year old wandering alone in the slums and trains stations of Calcutta." The little boy learned to fend for himself. He became a beggar, one of the many children begging on the streets of the city. " [... must see link] - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"The European Parliament voted on 19 April a new agreement concerning the transfer of EU air passengers' personal data to the US authorities. The controversial agreement enables the US Department for Homeland Security to keep on record sensitive data about people flying from the European Union to the US including their names, credit card details, addresses, phone numbers, meal choices and health information. With the new agreement, US authorities can keep Passenger Name Record (PNR) in an active database for up to 5 years. After the first 5 years, the data will be moved to a "dormant database" for up to 10 years, with stricter access requirements for US officials. (...) The EU is currently negotiating a PNR agreement with Canada." - Amira

See also: CISPA will give US unprecedented access, internet privacy advocates warn: "As it stands the bill allows companies to turn over private information to the government and for them to use it for any purpose that they see fit, all without a warrant." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world... Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Amira

INDECT -- a research project in the area of intelligent security systems. “INtelligent information system supporting observation, searching and DEteCTion for security of citizens in urban environment”. It is a research project of the European Union launched in 2009 and planned to be finished in 2013. (...). It is not limited to monitoring the internet. People on the street won’t escape... more... - Amira

"Imagine you walked into the bank, told them you were going to be taking pay cuts for the next few years, and then asked for a loan. You'd be laughed out of the office or else pay an interest rate so high that "usurious" wouldn't do it justice. Nearly a quarter of Spain's population is unemployed. Half of its youth are out of work. And it's only going to get worse. Spain is supposed to trim its deficit by some 5.5 percent of GDP over the next two years. That's not a recipe for growth. Just ask the IMF, which downgraded its projections for Spain's economy back in January. What matters for a nation is its GDP. That's a country's equivalent of personal income. If Spain's GDP is set to fall for the foreseeable future -- and it is -- then who would want to lend to Spain? The markets gave their answer -- practically nobody!" - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"The group of military and secret service agents were partying at Cartagena's Pley Club, which has been described as a high-end strip club in an industrial part of the port city. Members of the secret service paid $60 (£38) each to the club's owners to bring at least two women back to the Hotel Caribe, where they were staying. The next morning one of the women demanded more money and a dispute ensued. All 11 agents have been placed on administrative leave and had their security clearance revoked. Senator Susan Collins: "Who were these women? Could they have been members of groups hostile to the United States? Could they have planted bugs, disabled weapons, or... jeopardised [the] security of the president or our country?"" - Adriano

They were quietly building a global database of images with name identification "behind the curtains." \\ Reference to http://face.com the software company. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

9 April 2012 -- Facebook acquisition of Instagram for $1 Billion makes sense given above goal and the fact that the vast majority of photos are now taken by smartphones (with time and location encoded in the image file). \\ Kara points out, "Photos are what allowed Facebook to grow so quickly and what made it more than just a blue sea of text and links to consumers. Its new Timeline... more... - Adriano

Charlie Brooker wrote on his twitter today: "At this rate Facebook's going to end up owning the rights to all actual human faces." - Amira

"Facebook has passed on on a pretty comprehensive record of time spent on the social network. As you can see in the embedded document below, wall posts, messages, photos, contacts and a record of all of Markoff’s past activity are included. Privacy is a very messy issue in social networking. The Facebook file contains much more than info on Markoff: it also intersects with a bunch of people who had nothing to do with this investigation. And the police, in this case, didn’t redact anything from that Facebook file when passing it on to the Phoenix. That also leads to questions about who, ultimately, is responsible for this information?" - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, said that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done: "We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing. We now want colleagues to check them independently." If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster. That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works. The totally unexpected finding emerged from research by a physicists working on an experiment dubbed OPERA run jointly by the CERN particle research centre near Geneva and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy." - Adriano

comment on the *aftermath* by Jay Wacker, Professor at Stanford University in Particle Physics: http://www.quora.com/Superlu... - Adriano

"The combination of the prolonged zero interest rate and the bloated supply of bank money is potentially lethal. The Fed has effectively replaced the entire interbank money market and large segments of other markets with itself—i.e., the Fed determines the interest rate by declaring what it will pay on bank deposits at the Fed without regard for the supply and demand for money. By replacing large decentralized markets with centralized control by a few government officials, the Fed is distorting incentives and interfering with price discovery with unintended consequences throughout the economy. For all these reasons, the Federal Reserve should move to a less interventionist and more rules-based policy of the kind that has worked in the past." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"The Taylor rule provides a fairly accurate summary of US monetary policy under Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan. According to Taylor, his rule was not followed in part of the 2000s, possibly leading to the housing bubble." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... \\ Koenig (2012) shows that the Taylor rule is formally a special case of nominal-GDP targeting: https://docs.google.com/viewer... - Adriano

"As Target statistician Andrew Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy. Then they started mixing in ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random, e.g. a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes." \\ "We found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

NYT full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012... by Charles Duhigg. And the funnier version by Stephen Colbert on predictive analytics: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col... - Adriano

1. Trademark (U.S.) 26 Sept. 1972. Name coined by creator Jim Henson (1936-1990), who said, despite the resemblance to marionette and puppet (they have qualities of both), it has no etymology; he just liked the sound. \\ 2. a stupid person (slang) \\ 3. a despised trading counterparty \\ 4. derogatory term used by GS to characterize its clients. - 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

8 March update: spiked up to 60% in the interim, but leveling out around 40% since Netanyahu personally gives Obama the Book of Esther, http://ff.im/SH5jI - Adriano

"The EU's foreign policy chief, who represents the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in dealings with Iran, said they had accepted Iran's offer to return to talks after a standstill of a year that has seen a drift towards conflict in the oil-rich Gulf. The talks could dampen what U.S. President Barack Obama has called a rising drumbeat of war. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, however, raised doubt about what the talks could achieve. "I am a little skeptical ... I think Iran continues to be two-faced," Juppe told France's i-Tele television. "That's why I think we have to continue to be extremely firm on sanctions (already imposed on Iran), which in my view are the best way to prevent a military option that would have unforeseeable consequences." Iran has pledged to float "new initiatives" at the talks, whose venue and date must be decided, but has not committed itself explicitly to discussing ways of guaranteeing that its nuclear advances will be solely peaceful, as the West demands." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Now that NVIDIA is a member of the Linux Foundation, all three of the major graphic chip designers–AMD Graphics Technologies (formerly ATI) and Intel–are backing Linux. NVIDIA, best known for its GeForce chipsets, has long had an uncomfortable relationship with Linux. While NVIDIA has long shipped Linux graphic drivers and has kept its Linux drivers up-to-date, the drivers for their graphic processors have always used proprietary binary blobs. This meant free-software users couldn’t use the drivers and open-source developers couldn’t work on them to improve them. Even now though, it’s still not clear that NVIDIA will be open-sourcing its drivers." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Book of Esther tells of the genocidal plot against the Jewish people devised by Haman the Agagite. It’s a familiar-sounding story: In Persia, an oppressive and vengeful leader seeks the total annihilation of the Jewish people. It sounds like a line from an Israeli speech, but it’s also the story of the Purim holiday that Jews mark this week, beginning Wednesday at sundown." \\ ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Last night's earthquake near Berkeley provides a good extrapolation point for drawing the red active line (cf. historical estimate of fault line in blue). - Adriano

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

2012-03-02 Obama 59.5%, Romney 33.2% -- each of the rest have less than 2% probability. - Adriano

"Fairey, 42, sued Associated Press in 2009 after it contended he had infringed on the copyright of one of its photographs in creating the poster. Fairey had claimed in his suit that he had used a different photograph of Obama, but later admitted that he had been mistaken and had tried to conceal his mistake, by destroying documents and fabricating others. "I was ashamed that I had done these things, and I knew I should have corrected my actions," he said on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Fairey pleaded to one count of criminal contempt and could face up to six months in prison. A prosecutor, Daniel W. Levy, told the magistrate judge, Frank Maas, that the government was likely to seek some term of imprisonment for Fairey, who will be sentenced on July 16." - Adriano from Bookmarklet