"According to the system, the United States had launched five missiles, which were rapidly heading into Soviet territory. The U.S.S.R. was under attack.
All Petrov had to do was push the flashing red button on the desk in front of him, and the Soviets would retaliate with their own battery of missiles, launching a full-scale nuclear war.
"For 15 seconds, we were in a state of shock," he told The Washington Post. "We needed to understand, what's next?"
Though the bunker atmosphere was chaotic, Petrov, who had trained as a scientist, took the time to analyze the data carefully before making his decision." - Barak B
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"# Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
# When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
# Follow the three Rs:
1. Respect for self
2. Respect for others
3. Responsibility for all your actions.
# Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck." - Barak B
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"In 1973, NASA launched Skylab, the first American space station, where three crews successively lived and worked for more than 171 days. Knowing a call to the fire department would accomplish precious little from outer space, NASA and Honeywell Inc. developed an alarm system that would alert the station’s crew to smoke or fire. Today, of course, such alarms are found in 90 percent of U.S. homes." - Barak B
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"If you start thinking about our faulty perceptions, the first thing you realize is that markets are not perfectly efficient, people are not always good guardians of their own self-interest and there might be limited circumstances when government could usefully slant the decision-making architecture (see “Nudge” by Thaler and Cass Sunstein for proposals). But the second thing you realize is that government officials are probably going to be even worse perceivers of reality than private business types. Their information feedback mechanism is more limited, and, being deeply politicized, they’re even more likely to filter inconvenient facts." - Barak B
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Yes, and others will likely pick up some of its innovations and integrate them in apps / sites / experiences that are more palatable to the larger web & mobile audience. - Dean Terry
If the beta hadn't started on a Friday evening it's likely that Friendfeed could have picked up more new users. - Dave Donohue
Hey I just became active on FF a week or two ago so there's still *some* new growth. Perhaps I should start inviting others rather than just imaginary friending them. I have an embarassing number of imaginary friends on FF. - Daniel J. Pritchett
I want to make FF the place to be! How do we do this? - Kyle Lacy
Be patient...they just hired Ben Golub... I know he's got code genius blood - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)
Susan they had an amazing team in February too. :-) - Robert Scoble
Robert - soo true! This latest Beta actually makes me think they're going in the right direction. What are the top 5 features you want really bad? - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)
I agree - but then, my argument a few months back was that FriendFeed really only appeals to early adopters anyway - and there is a limited number of them - Frederic
I would disagree with you on that Frederic. I feel like it has moved to a more balanced group of people. I am not an early adopter and I love FriendFeed. - Kyle Lacy
I kind of like that FriendFeed is stalled. It's easier to talk to people. Would you see this message if I sent it you on Twitter? Or would it be one of a million responses? - Andrew Warner
I realized today that I spend more time on FF than any other site. - LPH™
There are plenty of people on ffeed to enjoy. In fact, I often feel guilty for not showing most people more attention, and I'm on nearly 24/7. Expand your base. - Michael W. May
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"passionates" is sounding more and more elitist... - abacab
Personally, if folks would use rejaw, I'd bail on both Twitter & FF - that's huge! - Cheryl Allin
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Rushing features could be a mistake. FF still has momentum and I'm seeing new people - Charlie Anzman
The power of this is not even close to being used. Peel back the layers and enable a few things and this could explode. - Brad Nickel
This is a typical "early adopter stage 5" post. Your reduced attention span is showing here, Robert. There are a ton more features I'm looking for as well, but this is the same product you fell in love with a few months ago. If you want them to quicken the pace, that's one thing, or if you're complaining that there aren't enough users, it's another. You can help attract more users, and I know you have already. There's just more work to be done and it takes time (and money). - Louis Gray
I hate that I can't search on FF anymore. - Thomas Hawk
When you've got nothing else to say, talk about how 'over' you are this week with [insert service here]. It's an increasingly obvious move. - abacab
Frankly, FF is the only social aggregation tool that works for me, and that's because it creates a kind of neutral space. It's highly passive, but just interactive enough that it holds my attention more than an RSS feed. Additionally, it manages to create a sense of space and "mine-ness" without a bunch of frills. It's good stuff, I'm sorry to hear it's user base is topping out. - elissa
I originally found FF through a blog that Scoble had written. I was searching for a way to find more people who used Google Reader and my Google searches brought me to Scoble's blog. Once I got here I realized that there was a lot more features than just using it to find people who also used Google Reader. I am also enjoying FF Beta, and feel that FF Beta and FF Original have all of the features I need. Plus, why do I care if its growth has stalled? Does it affect my experience? No..... - Matrixx333
I think the usefulness of FF to aggregate one's own internet activities is often ignored. Is there a better service to do this? - Barak B
Big FF fan until Facebook did all its recent changes. Now, convinced, Facebook will win the "reading your friends' feeds" contest. Enjoying it much more in FB lately. - Barbara K. Baker
Matt, what kind of cliquey experience have you had? I've inserted myself into plenty of FriendFeed conversations where I hardly know anyone, and as far as I can tell, I've never been snubbed. As for meeting mainstream needs, Like and Hide are two features I think could appeal to everyone, as I wrote here: http://friendfeed.com/e/c2f76d... - Bruce Lewis
"Scientists will "switch on" the most powerful particle accelerator ever built on Wednesday in an attempt to answer some of the biggest unanswered questions in physics.
The £5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will smash protons - one of the building blocks of matter - into each other at energies up to seven times greater than any achieved before.
In the flashes from the collisions, scientists expect to reproduce conditions that existed during the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang at the birth of the universe." - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
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Recommenting my tweet here: A few randomly chosen: More Than This (Ferry), Poison Cup (M.Ward), Intervention (Arcade Fire), New Favorite (A. Krauss). - Ayşe E.
"Falling Slowly" from the Once soundtrack, Ani DiFranco's "Fixing Her Hair," Ella doing "Summertime," Goo Goo Dolls' acoustic version of "Iris," Tori's "Tear in Your Hand," Alanis Morrisette's "Not As We," Indigo Girls' "You Left It Up to Me," k.d. lang's "Still Thrives This Love," Yo-Yo Ma's recording of Bach's Suit 1 for Cello in G Major, Bernadette Peters doing "Stay With Me" from Into the Woods, Joanna Koslowska's solo in Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, and the entire Umbrella album from Innocence Mission. - Cyndy
Ella & Louis doing 'Summertime'; Radiohead's 'Exit Music (for a Film)'; Sia's 'Breathe Me'; Cloud Cult's 'I Love You All'; Arvo Pärt's 'Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten'; 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr' by Sufjan Stevens; 'Upward Over the Mountain' from Iron & Wine; Neutral Milk Hotel's 'Little Birds'. - Akiva Moskovitz
"Intervention", "Haiti", and "No Cars Go", Arcade Fire; "Asimbonanga" & "Scatterlings of Africa", Johnny Clegg; the entire album "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane; "Land of Youth", Maire Brennan; "Harry's Game", Clannad; "Shaking the Tree", Peter Gabriel; the entire album "Agaetis Byrjun" by Sigur Ros - Mike Hussein Cohen
Beauty of Days Gone By by Van Morrison, Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell (remade version), live version of In the Gloaming by Jonatha Brooke, Sweet Melissa by the Allman Brothers, Falling Awake by Gary Jules, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight by The Postal Service, The Art Teacher by Rufus Wainwright, My Father's Gun by Elton John, These Days by Nico (though the Jackson Brown version is nice too), Humble Me by Norah Jones. I've got so many more but I'll shut up for now. - Michelle Jones
"Utopia" and "Clowns" by Goldfrapp. There are some others that are deeper than these, but these have had significance for me lately. - Kamilah Gill
cecily, on my last.fm page i have a "kryptonite" tag. Also: "California" & "These Days," Mates of State; "We Are Nowhere and It's Now," Bright Eyes; "Car," Built to Spill; "Hurt," Johnny Cash; "The Curse of Great Beauty," Clem Snide; "Someday You Will Be Loved," "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," and "What Sarah Said," Death Cab for Cutie; "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)," The Decemberists; "The Hill," Markéta Irglová (from Once soundtrack); "When I Was Drinking" and "South Central Rain," Hem... - edythe
Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - Sprague D
off the top of my head..."U Plavu Zoru" by Pink Martini, "One" by U2, "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel (our wedding song). - JA Castillo
"Alone So Far," The Old 97s; "Either Way I Lose," Nina Simone; "You Have Been Loved," Sia... - edythe
Sprague D-Beautiful song but it used to freak me out after having first heard it in Play Misty For Me. - Mark Forman
most of Joni Mitchell's Blue... "Don't Let Us Get Sick," Jill Sobule... - edythe
*a letter to elise* by the cure and *epitaph* by badly drawn boy come to mind immediately. - carlotta fancypants
Some good ones listed... more: U2's "Bad," "All I Want Is You," and "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses." Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill," "Don't Give Up," and, as mentioned, "In Your Eyes" all from Secret World Live w/ Paula Cole and that incredible group. Counting Crows' "Anna Begins." Jane Siberry's "It Can't Rain All The Time." Annie Lennox's "Love Song For A Vampire." - Michael W. May
"Wild World" by Cat Stevens, "Mad World" by Gary Jules, and "What a Wonderful World" by The Ramones. - Anna Haro
bah... Marillion's "Kayleigh," "Lavender," and "Sugar Mice"; Alanis Morissette 's "Your House" (that hidden A Capella at the end of Jagged Little Pill); Indigo Girls' "Ghost"; Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet"; Journey's "Open Arms"; Moving Pictures' "What About Me?" I'll stop now. - Michael W. May
Wow - this is one great thread. I'm pasting this into Evernote. :) - Cecily
Edythe, I love that you have a "kryptonite" tag. :-D - Cecily
Last Kiss by Pearl Jam, not the original... Eddie Vedder's voice is more haunting - Chris Rivait
4hero's "Universal Reprise" puts a catch in my throat on general principle. Tower of Power's "So Very Hard To Go" should've been at the end of "Sunshine" or "Armageddon," and it will be whenever I get around to making an outrageously expensive big-budget save-the-planet heroic-sacrifice movie. The English Beat's "I Confess" soundtracks a memory of a particular spinning-around moment from 1996. - George Kelly
Sting's "Brand New Day" is a little bit about the millennium and a little bit about driving north on a certain road trip. Herbert's "We're In Love" was about a drive to SFO that involved an hour's stop at Ocean Beach. And there's "This Mess We're In," which evokes being in New York on September 12, 2001. - George Kelly
Like Ayşe E. recommenting my tweet here: Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division), Point Blank (Springsteen), I Want You (Elvis Costello), How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (Al Green), Pink Frost (The Chills) so many more - great question! ... And great thread - really enjoying reading all the responses. - Maria Niles
Natural Mystic by Bob Marley; Where the Streets Have No Name by U2. Great thread BTW! - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
All of OK Computer, the song the plays at the end of the finale in Six Feet Under, To Live and Die In L.A. by Wang Chung, ... plenty more but I'm starting to get depressed. - AJ Kohn
Venus as a boy by bjork, destiny by zero 7, where I belong by sia, we both go down together by the decemberists, just as long as we're in love by terry callier and right now, chasing pavements by adele - Jason Toney
How could I have left out Dobie Gray's "Drift Away"? - Michael W. May
AJ, that's Sia's 'Breathe Me'. I cannot listen to it. - Akiva Moskovitz
@Akiva: That's the one. I bought the soundtrack and could have looked it up, but then I would have been forced to listen to it and ... I'm just not strong enough tonight to do that. Absolutely a stake to the heart ... more so since I bring that closing drive from SFU with me as baggage. - AJ Kohn
bookmarking this thread, subscribing to its RSS - Michael W. May
AJ, that's precisely why it kills me each time. I don't know anyone who loved SFU and didn't cry like babies during the finale. Easily the best ending to a series every filmed (and, no, that's not a jab at The Sopranos the ending of which I rather liked). - Akiva Moskovitz
Grace Jones, "Slave to the Rhythm"; Joni Mitchell, "The Last Time I Saw Richard" (or, like edythe, almost anything from Blue); Prince, "If I Was Your Girlfriend." - Nathan Rein
Oh, bummer. I commented on a re-share of this.. Hm. To copy comments over or not to copy comments over.. - Brad McCrorey
In Your Eyes - P. Gabriel, Keeping the Dream Alive - Freiheit, I Will - The Beatles, What a Wonderful World / Over the Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwoole, At My Most Beautiful - R.E.M., Elliott Smith's cover of the Beatles "Because".. - Brad McCrorey
oh wow, this is a great read.. "I Want You" by Elvis is a great @#$% pick. - Brad McCrorey
Chrome is probably the most efficient browser I've seen to date. But maybe that's coz I'm not that old to have seen every browser to date. :) - Imran Hussain
Started Chrome before FF, in fact I don't even have FF open yet. - Roberto Bonini
i am digging it too. weird thing happened to me this morning though. i was in facebook and only certain major nav links were working. I had to revert to firefox. - Don Martelli
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I haven't launched Firefox since Chrome came out. - Akiva Moskovitz
I'm using Chrome on 2 of my PCs as my primary browser -- it's faster and feels better. Still using Firefox on my Mac, because, well, it's a Mac. :) - Thomas Hawk
Running Chrome on the PC's and Omniweb on the Mac. - Richard Peat
feels like I run into more and more crashes tho..that's kinda a bad thing - Pascal
I've been using Chrome off and on. It doesn't support NTLM so at work I use FF, because I don't want to login to every site. @Imran, lynx was probably the most efficient, but then it was text only. - Shawn McCollum
A lot of spin out there that seems to conveniently ignore the fact that this is Chrome 1.0. You think its just going to go away or something? They'll fix the bugs. And Google has quietly encircled Microsoft, and can now slowly choke off their bloodflow. Lots of users (think parents) can now turn on a computer using a non-MS OS, use a Google browser, to read their Google mail, surf the web, and do a couple spreadsheets and WP on google docs, that's all they need, and also they don't have to worry about disk crashes or viruses. The desktop is DEAD. Hear me now, believe me later. - Indio Apache
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Glad Google didn't just release a desktop client, then. - Akiva Moskovitz
Haven't used FF all day. Still missing Greasemonkey, but I love Chrome's speed. - eve shot first
Yeah starting is much faster. only takes a few seconds even with other apps loading, Firefox takes forever. :-( Shame there is no ad-blocking with Chrome, hope that'll come in future versions - Kol Tregaskes
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I had some issue with Flickr that made me flee back to FF. Can't recall what it was. - Orphan Spinster Librarian
Startup time is only relevant if you actually close your browser once in a while. I can't remember the last time I did that. - Eric P
why why why name your tech blog LiveCrunch... :( - Zee.
History is accessible by either right-clicking or hold-left-clicking the back arrow. Took me a bit to find that. Like it so far. - Andrew Smith
it's now set as my default browser.. even though FF is still better for developing currently - Stefan Hayden
- love it too. Just miss the bookmarklets and add-ons the fox gives you! - JA Castillo
It is just so quick to anticipate the website I am typing. It usually gets it after two letters. Fantastic! - Barak B
I've been using it almost exclusively. Even with some Sharepoint sites I use for work and a fantasy football draft. - Brian Newman
I no longer really remember the Chrome startup time, because we've not stopped/quit Chrome since it was installed, nor have we had to. I'd have killed/restarted Firefox a couple dozen times (at least) over the same time period, and IE probably a few times, too. Opera...hard to say, but it doesn't matter anyway. ;) - abacab
Clearing history wipes out cookies...that I don't like. - Peter Simard
I like the feature of 'task manager' for browser, and thats helps keep me running chrome forever, wont have to kill it if some site creats an issue - Veetrag
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Has anyone noticed a lag when loading javascript/ajax call heavy pages? It seems that the javascript/ajax call has to completely finish before the page will show, FF and IE don't lag but chrome does. - Shawn McCollum
now if it only have a plug-in for friendfeed - Dave Hodson
+1 Eric... I only "stop" Firefox when I am updating an extension. - Daniel J. Pritchett
have they said when they will introduce the mac version? - Johnny Sewell
it has a long way to go but I still enjoy using it. For some odd reason it doesn't like to scroll with my trackpad so I can't use it on my laptop. Certain sites it just won't work with and I've run across a few PNG and font rendering issues. I look forward to seeing how it develops - Zach Chisholm
Nice video. A bunch of famous older people being asked about wisdom and other such questions. Has been made into a book, but this is a video with some of their remarks. - Barak B
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Is Wired so completely retarded as to not realize that a large number of the BitTorrent downloads for Prison Break would have been outside North America where they COULDN'T access the new series legally? The numbers don't point to habit, they point to georetardation and the artificial constraints of television distribution deals. - Duncan Riley
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@duncanriley talk about putting the 'retard' in geo-retardation. (Can't believe i just wrote that!) - Warren
As a side point - this show has "jumped the shark" big time. - Barak B
not a fan of the new season, hopefully it'll pick up. - rambn
I agree with Rambn. Loved the entire first season, haven't been as into it this year. Starting to feel repetitive, like what happened in the later seasons of "Sopranos." - Lon Harris
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It's interesting to see how many things still ring true in the advertising and marketing industry: especially when they're selling an idea to a client. Lots of times it'll be one genius idea that just comes after really failing with the original. It's also interesting to see the culture that has bred a lot of traditions and mindsets that are still around today in the industry. I can't wait until they hit 1966/1968: that was a crazy time for advertising. - Mark Trapp
@Mark - yeah I hope this series continues into the tumultuous sixties - many possibilities. right now I'm chuckling at the products they've advertised have gone out of favor - lucky strike cigarettes and aerosol deoderants. - Jason Kaneshiro
Oh, sure there are the cultural aspects of that time period, but I'm more interested in their reaction to Helvetica :-P I love their dismissal of Pepsi. The season has really lost ratings so who knows what type of life it'll have, but their intention was to hit the entire decade in 2 year increments: season 3 would be 1964, season 4 would be 1966, etc. - Mark Trapp
Uh-oh- only seen part of season one so far. Does the second season have a real decline in equality? - Abby Martin
I'm enjoying Season 2 a lot. I actually think it is getting better. - Barak B
Arriving in America with only $40 for a short visit, a young Dane, Jacob Holdt ended up staying over five years, hitchhiking more than 100,000 miles throughout the USA.
He sold blood plasma twice weekly to be able to buy film. He lived in more than 400 homes - from the poorest migrant workers to America's wealthiest families such as the Rockefellers. They not only gave him a hospitality and warmth, but their continuing friendship to this day. - Cee Bee
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He joined the Indian rebellion in Wounded Knee, followed criminals in the ghettos during muggings, sneaked inside to work in Southern slave camps and infiltrated secret Ku Klux Klan meetings as well as Republican presidential campaign headquarters.
Working with prisoners he saw two of his friends assassinated. By the time he returned to Denmark 12 of his friends had been murdered (in the years since so many of his friends have been murdered that he has completely lost count). - Cee Bee
the link above shows these pictures displayed on a message board. this is the link to the original source, which contains an amazing body of work covering several continents (but mostly the usa). the images are incredibly startling and emotional. you really need to see this stuff: http://www.american-pictures.c... - Cee Bee
Fantastic post Cee Bee. Thanks for sharing - Anna Haro
Indeed. His book is worth picking up. - Tsega Dinka