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Amit Patel › Likes

Jason Wehmhoener
Audi e-tron sales to be limited to 1,000 units — Autoblog Green - http://green.autoblog.com/2009...
Audi e-tron sales to be limited to 1,000 units — Autoblog Green
"Audi may not be positioning itself as a "green brand," but it's still putting a rather big toe into the environmentally-friendly waters of electric sportscars with its R8-based e-tron, which is reportedly headed for production in 2012. As a refresher – as if you needed one – the e-tron debuted as a concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September with some truly impressive statistics: four separate electric motors with 230 kW (313 horsepower) and 4,500 Nm (3,319.03 pound-feet) of torque (sort of), which is enough to push it to 62 mph in a mere 4.8 seconds." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet
tony chang
Chrome Linux and Mac betas along with extensions beta. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009...
Peter Norvig
Amazon.com: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd Edition) (9780136042594): Stuart Russell, Peter Norvig: Books - http://www.amazon.com/Artific...
We sent the final pdfs of the new edition of this book off to the publisher. The market reacted by gaining 2% on the day. - Peter Norvig from Bookmarklet
Nassim Taleb would be proud. =) - Darren
Bet you are pleased to have that behind you; great to see Alan Turing -http://tinyurl.com/no85d4 - on the front cover. Seb. - Seb Schmoller
What is new in the third edition? - Brandon Smietana
Brandon: I think if you value your time at about $5/hr or more, you should buy the third edition. What's new: http://aima.eecs.berkeley.edu/3rd-ed... - Peter Norvig
That is a bargain; I end up paying about 25 $/hour in tuition to sit in lectures. Thank you, for writing such wonderful books! - Brandon Smietana
Matt Cutts
"Sorry, but Microsoft Silverlight doesn’t work with this web browser."
bing-maps.png
Sigh. :) - Matt Cutts
Which one? Works in Chrome Windows. - Hayes Haugen
It does not work on Chrome OS X. - Gary Burd
It definitely does not work with Chrome on Ubuntu. - imabonehead
STOP USING THE BETA! - Andy Bakun
Guess you don't get to check it out. - Hayes Haugen
I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu. - Matt Cutts
Be a man. Get IE8 :) - dannysullivan
Danny, what would I run IE8 on? I don't have any Microsoft OS software any more. :) - Matt Cutts
I find it informative to use my competitor's products. - Hayes Haugen
I keep trying, Hayes, but when AdCenter rolled out, it wouldn't even work on Firefox. - Matt Cutts
The Web wins again. :) - Ray Cromwell
Does this mean you've broken your "stop using Microsoft OS/software" challenge? Or are Microsoft websites excluded? - Tony Ruscoe
Google's bet on HTML5 and the web is the right one. - Diego Barros 
who gives a tard about Chrome :) Grow up Cutts! - Jose Fajardo
Matt it works fine on Chrome on Windows. This is the only platform on which a non-beta version of Chrome is available at the moment. You should use only supported browsers like IE8 and Chrome on Windows, Firefox, Safari and Opera on Windows and Mac OS. If you are using a Linux-based distribution, you should get the latest Moonlight binaries and use a supported browser like Firefox or... more... - Lituus Limacon
Silverlight used to work with the Chrome Dev beta. Not sure what changed.... - Roberto Bonini
Tony: Microsoft websites are excluded from my challenge. :) - Matt Cutts
Andrew Hogue
Google Goggles, visual search for Android, launches on labs, congrats to my team! http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Mark Trapp
Tell me again why real-time search is valuable?
tiger woods - Google Search.jpg
I wish Google would put some "this entry is worthless" logic into its real-time search instead of showing everything, including irrelevant and information-less entries. - Mark Trapp
A Twitter exec (I forget which) recently said they believed that 'the most recent result is the most relevant'. I couldn't disagree more. I think the value of realtime search is huge, but there is so much data there that could be used to score relevancy in a more sophisticated way than 'newest'. This just feels like it's a trendy me-too feature with little practical value. That said, I'm assuming this is just the 1.0 proof of concept and, like everything Google makes, it'll get much better over time. - Kevin Fox
I hope so. I'd take a significant delay (up to a few minutes) in order to get more useful results. I wonder what the authority mechanism starts to look like, as something like PageRank seems to break down for new entries (not enough time for someone else to link back to the originating entry). - Mark Trapp
I think entries from more popular people will be more meaningful, right? - Gabe
I think reputation may be a good filter, but honesty, there's not a lot of information in most realtime messages outside of links. Resurrect USENET + real time search would be far more valuable. To this day, I still find valuable information in USENET. USENET was a global archive of what the public was talking about, the only difference (besides spam) was a) people wrote longer, more... more... - Ray Cromwell
DeWitt Clinton
ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition
Play
I can only imagine in another few years, Google Streets/Google Aerial flying/driving camera over the world creating one big 3D model of the earth. Can you imagine augmented reality first person shooters anywhere on the planet via mobile devices? :) - Ray Cromwell
I wonder if they can do a similar analysis when the camera moves, not the object, though that seems a lot harder. And toward the end of the video I thought it was cool that the system asked the user to rotate the object into new positions to resolve ambiguities. Also, I thought the superimposed feedback system displayed in realtime on the monitor was brilliant. - DeWitt Clinton
Andy Baio
Google launches Public DNS service - http://code.google.com/speed...
lookups are permanently logged but not shared inside Google; 8.8.8.8 is a great IP - Andy Baio
Have any of you actually tried this out yet and noticed any difference in speed or quality? I'm going to switch our work DNS this morning and see how we go. - Michael Howarth
Okay, we use BT Broadband (I know!) and I've switched this morning and noticed pages resolve so much quicker... my browser opens with six different tabs - I usually notice a significant pause until they all load, but after switching, all the tabs resolved and loaded much quicker, like... and that. - Michael Howarth
DeWitt Clinton
What Earth Would Look Like With Rings Like Saturn - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
What Earth Would Look Like With Rings Like Saturn
Play
Semi-interesting for the rendering of the rings from the perspective of various cities. Neat idea that could be developed further. Related: why was a Ringworld movie never made? - DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton
Those slanted lines in URLs? They are called slashes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...), not backslashes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...).
A friendly FYI to radio commentators, particular those on NPR for some reason. Not sure why people make that mistake -- it's not like saying backslash is any more intuitive. But this problem has been around forever. Strange... - DeWitt Clinton
Thank you MS-DOS\Windows. - Jim Norris
That mistake just screams N00b. - Louis Gray
DeWitt Clinton
bruce_at_google: I miss determinstic destruction. RAII from C++ is one of the most practical patterns for efficient (and sound) resource access. - http://twitter.com/bruce_a...
DeWitt Clinton
Evan Williams
Many of the great businesses of the next decade will be about making information about our behaviors more visible.
DeWitt Clinton
Setting up Clojure, Emacs, Slime, and Swank: http://wiki.unto.net/setting.... There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Updated slightly while setting up the MBP to account for the new .jar names. - DeWitt Clinton
Writing these steps up is a bit of a right of passage that everyone learning Clojure goes through. There are literally dozens of nearly identical pages out there. But this is the process that has worked reliably for me on several OSX and Linux boxes, so I figured it was still worth sharing. - DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton
Bummer that Alpha was (incorrectly, as many said at the time) described as a search engine when it launched. It's a platform for exploring knowable systems, and it is only getting better over time. - DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton
Technically speaking, what makes Google Chrome fast? - http://blog.chromium.org/2009...
MG Siegler
Google Officially Launching Chrome Extensions Next Week - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Google Officially Launching Chrome Extensions Next Week
Ruchira S. Datta
How False Rumors Can Cost Lives http://canonical.org/~kragen...
PLEASE RETWEET - Jim Norris
You're such a wag, Jim. :-) - Ruchira S. Datta
I want Kragen to write more! Or at least make it easier to discover his new posts. - Amit Patel
Amit, do you know about Kragen's mailing list? - Adewale Oshineye
I do, but it needs a feed ;) - Amit Patel
DeWitt Clinton
Sigh. Someone signed up for a Facebook account with my email address and the "if you think this is an error" link does nothing.
What's interesting is that Facebook doesn't make you wait until you confirm your email address before you can start using the account. So I'm seeing her add friends, get messages, etc. The "if you are receiving this in error" link in the email takes you to a "Report Abuse" page, which has a button that does nothing but return you to the Report Abuse page. - DeWitt Clinton
Spectacular fail. - Roberto Bonini from iPhone
People have signed up for so many services using my email addresses. I'm amazed by how many services don't require confirmation of the email account — including banks!! I'm getting people's bank statements and the bank ignores my protests. - Amit Patel
Reported the link not working correctly as a bug. Let me know which email address of yours it was and I'll try to get it sorted out. - David Recordon
Thanks for looking into this, @David. The email address they signed up with is 'dewitt' at gmail, which I don't use myself, but it forwards to my normal account. But the real bug isn't the Report Abuse form, of course. Why not verify email addresses before enabling the new account? - DeWitt Clinton
The link is now fixed. - David Recordon
Rock on. Thanks, David! - DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton
After nearly two decades of programming and a dozen IDEs left by the wayside, I find myself back in emacs every time.
M-x why-cant-emacs-start-a-fire - mikepk
[No match] - mikepk
I think you misspelled vim. - Mark Trapp
Mark wins. - Fulaan, inna Hebel
DeWitt Clinton
Introducing Google Public DNS, for a faster, and safer, internet experience: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009...
I'm also pleased with the Privacy Policy: http://code.google.com/speed.... Full IP logs are deleted within 24-48 hours. This is a very good thing. - DeWitt Clinton
And Google Public DNS telephone support! http://code.google.com/speed... - Tony Ruscoe
I'll have to do some tests to see if this is any faster than my local ISP DNS. - Benjamin Golub
hmmm... and the reason behind this offer? - MikeAmundsen
They will then know every single domain name that every user is trying to resolve, and how often, etc. - Glen Mistletoe
DeWitt that doesn't mean they aren't copied elsewhere or they will actually follow through with the policy. - Todd Hoff
anyone know what appears when the domain request is invalid? i.e. will i see a google search page w/ ads? - MikeAmundsen
Yay! This is super cool. I'm using it to work around my ISP (Comcast) hijacking DNS requests. - Joe Beda ()
Another cool thing are the vanity IP addresses that were obtained for this: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. '8' is a lucky number, you know. - Joe Beda ()
@Todd: Actually, the privacy policy is pretty clear about what's temporary and what's permanent. If temporary logs were "copied elsewhere" as you suggest, it would be a pretty obvious violation of this policy. And I think it's pretty unreasonable to suggest that Google wouldn't "actually follow through" on its own privacy policy. - Joel Webber
Joe, do you know who had 8.8.8.8 prior? - Micah Wittman
Fast, doesn't seem to hijack 404s in any way. But I will have to go over the privacy policy carefully, in the context of Google's broader privacy policy. I wish we knew if the NSA had direct access to Google's traffic like they do for ISPs. This will certainly give Google a lot of data about web use. - LogEx
Joel, it's just a policy. If the NSA or some other agency says Google won't get this slice of spectrum etc then don't be surprised of all that traffic is split off some switch somewhere into total information awareness. - Todd Hoff
@Todd - half the company would quit in protest on the spot if Google even contemplated doing something like that. Including our own founders. But here's a question -- what could a company do that would reduce your fear? Clearly you use the Internet, and DNS, today. What assurances did your ISP make that cause you to trust them? Personally speaking, I find the Google DNS privacy policy a heck of a lot more reassuring than my ISP's. At least Google is promising in writing to do the right thing. - DeWitt Clinton
People don't know DeWitt. All those fat internet pipes hook into switches that have tap lines on them. And are there any examples of people quitting en masse in protest? I've not seen it. There's nothing people can do to reduce my fear because I know too much about it. Those promises don't matter. They can change at anytime and there's no external verification and as I said, the data is... more... - Todd Hoff
I wonder how much this gets traction beyond things like Chrome OS where Google can require the client to use their name servers. DNS is an abstract concept to most people, and for businesses, Google Public DNS doesn't offer the level of control other managed DNS services offer (like OpenDNS, for example). As an IT guy, one thing that I see missing is the ability to manually refresh the cache. I'm also interested to see how Google respects TTLs. - Mark Trapp
BTW, here's the Speakeasy Privacy Policy: http://www.speakeasy.net/tos.... Here is Comcast's: http://www.comcast.net/privacy.... Here is AT&T/SBC's: http://www.att.com/gen.... Guess what? None of them publish a log deletion policy and ALL of them reserve the right to do nearly whatever they want (even sell) your personally identifiable information, including IP addresses. Those ISPs are seeing every bit of traffic from our machines today. - DeWitt Clinton
@Mark - technical details, including TTL policy, can be found here: http://code.google.com/speed... - DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt, I went through that, and I'm still left wondering what Google's caching does. It doesn't explicitly say that Google will always respect the TTL on a record, and I don't see a remedy to resolve an outdated cache (for example, if Google fetches a record with a TTL of 86400 10 minutes before I change that record, if there's no way to force a manual lookup, even changing the TTL to... more... - Mark Trapp
@Mark -- I can't see how to force a manual refresh either, but I'll find out. I agree that it's necessary in some situations. - DeWitt Clinton
Mark, that page DeWitt linked to seems to infer that they respect TTL for prefetches: "The complexity of the name selection problem makes it impossible to solve online, so we have separated the prefetch system into two components: a pipeline component, which runs as an external, offline, periodic process that selects the names to commit to the prefetch system; and a runtime component, that regularly resolves the selected names according to their TTL windows." - Matt Mastracci
@micah Level3 owns 8.0.0.0/8 and Google has 8.8.8.0/24. BTW, 7.7.7.7 is owned by the US Dept. of Defense. - Joe Beda ()
Matt, what concerns me about that is it seems they interpret the TTL as a range of times they're allowed to ask for a new record; that is, if they automatically refresh records faster than the TTL, that's okay, as long as they don't hold onto it for longer than the TTL. A TTL shouldn't be a guideline: if I set a TTL to 86400, unless I manually tell you to fetch it again, you shouldn't... more... - Mark Trapp
Cool, added them to my list of servers that dnsmasq is to use. - Grant Bierman
The RFC does specify TTLs as "a 32 bit unsigned integer that specifies the time interval ... that the resource record *may be* cached before it should be discarded" I don't know if there's ever going to be a rock-solid guarantee that a resolver will cache your records (its cache could always overflow or become corrupted). Jumping TTLs isn't half as annoying as the broken resolvers that cache one of your round-robin DNS responses for all their customers for days, though. ;) - Matt Mastracci
Oh yes, checking too quickly is definitely a better problem than checking too slowly. One of the things we used to deal with was managed DNS that charged by the record lookup; in cases like that, you absolutely want people to respect the TTLs you specify or it can wind up costing you dearly. I don't really know if companies still get away with that (we get managed DNS for free now), but... more... - Mark Trapp
seems pretty good to me so far - Logan Lindquist
http://OpenDNS.com have been doing the same thing for a while if you are worried about Google owing all your data! - John Cooper
OpenDNS FTW - Shey, Jamaican of FF
I'm not happy with this. I feel it is a step too far. They could know and control way too much... from the OS Chrome to DNS/ mweh! And then what about a system fail! Laugh! I'm sure Murphy is working on it. How much of the network could go down with it. #don't-put-all-your-eggs-in-one-basket - DC Crowley
4.3.2.1 - Fulaan, inna Hebel
@Glenc +1 - Serkan Unsal
Paul Buchheit
World-Class Performers Don't Work - They Enjoy High Performance - http://personalmba.com/world-c...
World-Class Performers Don't Work - They Enjoy High Performance
"There are two goddesses in your heart: the Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks that they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet
I can spend my life chasing wisdom and never regret a moment, great share. - Mark Essel
Gabor Cselle
"Good things happen to entrepreneurs who start fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically positive companies."
Matt Cutts
Portal-itis. noun. The condition of trying to keep users on your site when you should be sending them away.
Matt Cutts
It looks like AT&T doesn't offer a femtocell/microcell (device to boost cell phone signal) option in my area. I can't pay to fix failings in the network? @$#%. It also looks like AT&T doesn't support a MiFi device to turn 3G into a wireless network. #@$%. Also, Verizon doesn't support FiOS where I live. @!$%. Isn't this Silicon #@$%ing Valley?
Also, last year DirecTV said that they'd have a HD TiVo this year. Nope. All these companies could get some money if they'd offer what I wanted. - Matt Cutts
I am told that AT&T does offer a special type of microcell or "repeater" for some customers here -- not the femtocell it is rolling out slowly elsewhere. I haven't looked into this earlier because they had said their femtocell would be here "soon," but I don't believe them anymore. Droid does... - Daniel Dulitz
If only there were one magical company located just outside of Shoreline that could solve everything! :) - Louis Gray
The DirecTV Tivo is scheduled for 2010, not 2009. They announced that back in May: http://hd.engadget.com/2009... - Otto
Right Otto, but if you follow the link in that story to http://hd.engadget.com/2008... you see that in 2008 they promised the DirecTV TiVo "in the second half of 2009." :( - Matt Cutts
On the bleeding edge, big media/cable CEOs can't hear you scream. - Bill Strathearn
To be fair, I was reading that the femtocell offerings were largely a "beta" test at this point, so they weren't offering them everywhere. It actually kind of makes more sense that they would first offer/test this in less population dense areas than in places where cell tower coverage is already overall pretty solid like the bay area. - Greg Grothaus
The whole microcell thing doesn't make sense to me anyway. If I'm going to pay to operate my own phone tower over my own internet access, then why not go with a VoIP solution like Vonage or something instead of paying extra fees to my already-too-expensive cell phone company? With Google Voice, an extra phone number doesn't matter. (BTW, this is why Google Voice needs to support voice-over-ip solutions better, just Gizmo alone doesn't cut the mustard...) - Otto
Piaw Na
How the city hurts your brain - The Boston Globe - http://www.boston.com/bostong...
I grew up in a city, and didn't think much of it until I started living in the suburbs. Now that I've lived in Silicon Valley for 17 years, I find that I dislike cities. This article explains why. - Piaw Na
"While people have searched high and low for ways to improve cognitive performance, from doping themselves with Red Bull to redesigning the layout of offices, it appears that few of these treatments are as effective as simply taking a walk in a natural place." - Private Sanjeev
Validates my preference for trees. I find Manhattan overstimulating whereas Toronto is relaxing--I noticed Toronto put a lot of care into their meridian planters. But this doesn't really have to do with how urban the place is, necessarily. For another example, I find Rockridge oppressive compared to downtown Berkeley, even though they're not far apart and about equally urban. Rockridge just seems to have less trees. - Ruchira S. Datta
After a year in Silicon Valley, I moved up to Seattle, the "Emerald City" for graduate school. I was surprised by how oppressed I felt. I simply could not function. Downtown Berkeley doesn't have a lot of trees, but Berkeley campus itself felt very green. - Piaw Na
I find Manhattan just stimulating enough! =) - Andrew C
I hated Manhattan. Was glad not to visit too often. - Piaw Na
Brooklyn has lots of trees. - Christopher Chung
If Brooklyn has so many trees, how come the book is called "*A* tree grows in Brooklyn", huh? Huh? =) - Andrew C
born and raised in Queens before moving out to the east end of LI so I had the best of both - VAL D.
From the article: "There's the confusing urban grid, which forces people to think continually about where they're going and how to get there." Huh? Don't people have to go places regardless of where they live? And isn't an urban grid easier on the brain than, say, Saratoga? - Doug
If any city is an exception to this article's thesis, it has to be San Francisco, with rich natural vistas available from so many angles in so many different locations. I've never felt cognitively overwhelmed after walking around SF...quite the opposite :-) - Doug
[dislike] - Mona Nomura
Doug: Did you mean Saratoga, CA? Saratoga, CA is definitely nice and easy to get around in. :-) - Piaw Na
Doug: Other than getting your bike stolen while you take a phone call, there's nothing overwhelming about San Francisco. (Yes, true story, no, it wasn't me) - Piaw Na
Andy Baio
Google Zeitgeist 2009 - http://www.google.com/intl...
Paranormal Activity was the fastest-rising U.S. query this quarter!? - Andy Baio
Jenna Bilotta
Congrats, Jack! Square is looking very cool! RT @jack: Announcing our new company, called @Square: http://squareup.com
Noah Gray
DeWitt Clinton
I always saw Gears as a means not an end. An accelerant, a proving ground for new ideas. Propelling HTML5 forward, not itself.
It did well at that: worker threads, file access, offline manifests all made it into HTML5 (mostly) from Gears. - Matt Mastracci
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