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End of the car age: how cities outgrew the automobile

Cities around the world are coming to the same conclusion: they’d be better off with far fewer cars. So what’s behind this seismic shift in our urban lifestyles? Stephen Moss investigates

Click to view the original at www.theguardian.com

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Thinking About Performance | Chad Austin

First, when I announced BufferBuilder on reddit, one early commenter asked "Did you run your Haskell through a profiler to help identify the slow parts of your code?" A fairly reasonable question, but no, I didn’t. And the reason is that, if stuff shows up in a Haskell profiler, it’s already going t…

Click to view the original at chadaustin.me

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Category Theory for Programmers: The Preface

Table of Contents Part One Category: The Essence of Composition Types and Functions Categories Great and Small Kleisli Categories Products and Coproducts Simple Algebraic Data Types Functors Functo...

Click to view the original at bartoszmilewski.com

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Microsoft announces full preview of the .NET Core runtime for Linux and Mac OS X

Last November, Microsoft said that it would bring some of the core features of its .NET platform -- which has traditionally been Windows-only -- to Linux and..

Click to view the original at techcrunch.com

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Microsoft announces a lightweight cross-platform code editor for writing modern web and cloud...

Visual Studio Code will run on OS X, Linux and Windows. The application is still officially in preview, but you can now download it soon.

Click to view the original at techcrunch.com

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The days are long but the decades are short

I turned 30 last week and a friend asked me if I'd figured out any life advice in the past decade worth passing on.  I'm somewhat hesitant to publish this because I think these lists usually seem...

Click to view the original at blog.samaltman.com

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Five Disturbing Things You Didn't Know About Forensic "Science" - The Intercept

The FBI’s review of flawed hair analysis — its largest-ever post-conviction evaluation of questionable forensic evidence — is just the tip of the iceberg.

Click to view the original at firstlook.org

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As Cognition Slips, Financial Skills Are Often the First to Go

Studies show that the ability to perform math problems, as well as handling money matters, are typically one of the first skills to decline in diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Click to view the original at nytimes.com

Hasnain says:

“A person can appear to have their wherewithal cognitively, but not have the ability to understand money in the same way anymore,” said Ms. Clark, a retired registered nurse and family therapist in Cottonwood, Calif."

Posted on 2015-04-28T20:36:40+0000

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Take Nothing, Leave Nothing

Seventeen hundred miles from what is customarily called civilization—in this case, the western shore of the Republic of South Africa—lies a tiny British-run volcanic island populated by fewer than thr

Click to view the original at laphamsquarterly.org

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This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

As the Supreme Court considers extending same-sex marriage rights to all Americans, we look at the patterns of social change that have tranformed the nation.

Click to view the original at www.bloomberg.com

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Volatile and Decentralized: Rewriting a large production system in Go

Matt, have you tried the margo and gocode systems? I use GoSublime with Sublime Text, but am otherwise a Vim snob, and if I hadn't gotten used to using Sublime Text for Go, I believe from what I've read that I'd be using these. The plugins turn Sublime Text into something very close to an IDE, and I…

Click to view the original at matt-welsh.blogspot.com

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Docker Without Docker

Some common questions What is Docker? Do I really need it? How does Docker actually work? How can I set up a single dev environment to work on any computer? My code works on my computer. Now how do I put it on a production server? Can't I just write code and have it "just work" everywhere? Package m…

Click to view the original at chimeracoder.github.io

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A Bot Made Millions on Wall Street by Reading the Web. It Also Ate This Guy’s Lunch.

On the afternoon of Friday, March 27, as several news outlets reported at the time, somebody apparently made $2.4 million from a tweet. That tweet was a bit of breaking news from Wall Street Journal writer Dana Mattioli: Quicker than any human seemingly could have done it, someone—or rather somethin…

Click to view the original at www.slate.com

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Forgotten Wonders of the Digital World: World of Warcraft

As more and more of our time and lives move into the digital world, the online landscape is becoming so vast, we have begun leaving some things behind.

Click to view the original at www.atlasobscura.com

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Legacy of Agent Orange

As April 30 approaches, marking 40 years since the end of the Vietnam War, people in Vietnam with severe mental and physical disabilities still feel the lingering effects of Agent Orange.

Click to view the original at widerimage.reuters.com

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An Android is urinating on the Apple logo in Google Maps

Google and Apple have always had their differences, but a new Easter egg inside Google Maps has just taken their rivalry to a whole new level. As spotted

Click to view the original at www.engadget.com

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Apple now rejecting apps with Pebble Smartwatch support

We have just had the latest version of our SeaNav US iOS app rejected by Apple because we support the Pebble Smartwatch and say so in the app description and meta-data (we also state in the review notes that "This application was approved for use with the Pebble MFI Accessory in the Product Plan xxx…

Click to view the original at forums.getpebble.com

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Transcript of Speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at Founders Forum Smart Nation Singapore...

Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening and welcome to Singapore! At a time where grey clouds are hovering over the world economy, we are lucky. Firstly, there were no grey clouds in the sky this evening. Secondly, the tech industry is one of the bright spots in the world. There is a sense of adventure,…

Click to view the original at pmo.gov.sg

Hasnain says:

A speech from a leader who gets tech.

"I take a personal interest in this. 40 years ago, after doing a math degree, I went on to study computer science, on my father’s advice. He said there is a future in that, and he was right. So for the Smart Nation Programme Office, I have put Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in charge, reporting to me. Vivian is both a hacker and a dabbler – He used to be an eye surgeon but since he does not get to operate on eyes nowadays, he dabbles in building simple robots, assembling watches, wireless devices and programming apps. His day job is to be the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, and so when he builds apps, he uses the real time APIs generated by the Ministry. That’s called user-testing. I used to enjoy this; it is a long time since I’ve done anything. The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++ several years ago, so I’m out of date. My children are in IT, two of them – both graduated from MIT. One of them browsed a book and said, “Here, read this”. It said “Haskell – learn you a Haskell for great good”, and one day that will be my retirement reading. "

Posted on 2015-04-22T16:45:57+0000

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Japan maglev train breaks world speed record again

A Japanese magnetic levitation train breaks its own world speed record, hitting 603km/h (374mph) on a test run near Mount Fuji.

Click to view the original at www.bbc.com

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Hasnain says:

" If you bought it, you should own it—simple as that. It’s time corporate lawyers left the bullshit to the farmers, who actually need it."

Posted on 2015-04-21T15:26:15+0000

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Google’s Steely Foe in Europe

The European Union’s commissioner for competition has a reputation for being tough, but she says it’s her responsibility to make sure that competition is fair and open.

Click to view the original at nytimes.com

Hasnain says:

"As minister of the economy, for instance, she pushed for changes to Denmark’s generous social welfare benefits, including substantially curtailing unemployment benefits. Subsequently, a group of jobless builders presented her with a gift: a life-size sculpture of a hand with a raised middle digit. She keeps the artifact prominently displayed on a coffee table at her office in the European Commission."

Posted on 2015-04-20T16:35:49+0000

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Workers Seeking Productivity in a Pill Are Abusing A.D.H.D. Drugs

Interviews with users and treatment experts suggest a growing number of young American workers are taking stimulants to enhance concentration and stamina at work.

Click to view the original at mobile.nytimes.com

Hasnain says:

"Those lawyers said they and dozens of young colleagues at their firms had casually traded pills to work into the night and billed hundreds of extra hours a year in the race for partnerships."

Posted on 2015-04-19T19:38:21+0000

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Manna, Chapter 1, by Marshall Brain

Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17. It seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal moment i…

Click to view the original at marshallbrain.com

Hasnain says:

I don't know how I took this long to find this great story. It's a light 30 minute read that covers both possibilities of what happens when software, robotics and automation are taken to their logical conclusion. Scary, enlightening and uplifting.

Posted on 2015-04-19T19:13:02+0000

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United Airlines Stops Researcher Who Tweeted about Airplane Network Security from Boarding...

Our client, Chris Roberts, a founder of the security intelligence firm One World Labs, found himself detained by the FBI earlier this week after tweeting about airplane network security during a United Airlines flight. When Roberts landed in Syracuse, he was questioned by the FBI, which ultimately s…

Click to view the original at www.eff.org

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The photographers who refuse to abandon traditional film cameras

Film photography was supposed to have been killed off by the digital era - but a committed band of enthusiasts refuse to abandon the traditional camera.

Click to view the original at www.bbc.com

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French Senate Backs Bid To Force Google To Disclose Search Algorithm Workings

In France, the upper house of parliament yesterday voted to support an amendment to a draft economy bill that would require search engines to display at least..

Click to view the original at techcrunch.com

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Microsoft Just Took Android’s Future Out of Google’s Hands | WIRED

Microsoft partnership with open-source, Android-based Cyanogen OS makes one thing very clear: Android’s not just for Google anymore.

Click to view the original at www.wired.com

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Meet the lawyer taking on Uber and the rest of the on-demand economy

"Here’s Uber, a business model with $40 billion behind it, that is seen as the future, but if she’s correct about their needing to classify all of these drivers as employees, it destroys that model."

Click to view the original at fusion.net

Hasnain says:

"Liss-Riordan says that Uber, Lyft and other on-demand companies are making the same kind of arguments she’s seen before. “FedEx argued that it was a logistics operation, connecting people who wanted to deliver packages, not a delivery service. Strip clubs argued that dancers weren’t employees, that they were in the business of selling drinks and that naked women just danced on the side,” said Liss-Riordan. “These arguments have not gone well for these companies.”"

Posted on 2015-04-18T02:55:35+0000

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Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact

The journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology recently banned the use of p-values and other statistical methods to quantify uncertainty from significance in research results

Click to view the original at scientificamerican.com

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Chord progressions of 25 000 songs!

The Hooktheory.com database contains analyses of over 25000 songs. These analyses are uploaded by users and allow for all these songs to be analyzed in bulk, as well as individually. One of these '...

Click to view the original at amitkohli.com

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Snapchat Sneakily Uses Its Own App To Poach Uber Engineers

Snapchat is using geo-filters matched to Uber's San Francisco headquarters to recruit Uber employees through its Snapchat app.

Click to view the original at forbes.com

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The Cult of Work You Never Meant to Join

Are our most valuable qualities being exploited at work? How our strengths get twisted into forming bad habits that just…

Click to view the original at medium.com

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Remote Code Execution Via HTTP Request In IIS On Windows

Patching time. A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the HTTP protocol stack (HTTP.sys) that is caused when HTTP.sys improperly parses specially crafted HTTP requests. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could execute arbitrary code in the context of the System accoun…

Click to view the original at ma.ttias.be

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How Two Sentences Overturned 200 Years Of Mathematical Precident

For almost 200 years, Euler's conjecture reigned in mathematics unchecked. Then, a paper came out that turned the whole thing on its head... and it did it all in just two sentences.

Click to view the original at io9.com

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dotnet/llilc

llilc - This repo contains LLILC, an LLVM based compiler for .NET Core. It includes a set of cross-platform .NET code generation tools that enables compilation of MSIL byte code to LLVM supported platforms.

Click to view the original at github.com

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Owner of a Credit Card Processor Is Setting a New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year

The owner of a small company in Seattle said he heard stories of how tough it was to make ends meet even on salaries that exceeded the federal minimum wage.

Click to view the original at mobile.nytimes.com

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Saudi Arabia’s Plan to Extend the Age of Oil

The biggest exporter has let prices plummet—delaying the day when climate concerns, efficiency, and fuel switching break the world’s dependence on crude.

Click to view the original at www.bloomberg.com

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To Raise Productivity, Let More Employees Work from Home

The study: Nicholas Bloom and graduate student James Liang, who is also a cofounder of the Chinese travel website Ctrip, gave the staff at Ctrip’s call center the opportunity to volunteer to work from home for nine months. Half the volunteers were allowed to telecommute; the rest remained in the off…

Click to view the original at hbr.org

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The one line you should add to every makefile | John Graham-Cumming

If you enjoyed this blog post, you might enjoy my travel book for people interested in science and technology: The Geek Atlas. Signed copies of The Geek Atlas are available.

Click to view the original at blog.jgc.org

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U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels' Cross-Border Trade

The cartels are still smuggling harder drugs but advocates point out the success of legalization in cutting illegal trade

Click to view the original at time.com

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Working Remotely From A Tropical Island in Thailand

Mobile Jazz is an engineering and design agency. But unlike our peers, when it comes to working at Mobile Jazz we are becoming known for sometimes taking a rather different approach to the work/life balance. Unlike most companies out there, our main objective is to optimize for happiness, rather...

Click to view the original at blog.mobilejazz.com

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Hidden backdoor API to root privileges in Apple OS X

TL;DR The Admin framework in Apple OS X contains a hidden backdoor API to root privileges. It’s been there for several years (at least since 2011), I found it in October 2014 and it can be exploite...

Click to view the original at truesecdev.wordpress.com

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Unit tests fail when run in Australia · Issue #5017 · angular/angular.js

I'm receiving the same error reported in this comment: #3474 (comment) I'm also in Australia/Sydney. I was able to skip with --force, but it'd be good to get a clean bill of health for contributing! Chrome 31.0.1650 (Mac OS X 10.9.0) ...

Click to view the original at github.com

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VP9: Faster, better, buffer-free YouTube videos

As more people watch more high-quality videos across more screens, we need video formats that provide better resolution without increasing bandwidth usage. That’s why we started encoding YouTube videos in VP9, the open-source codec that brings HD and even 4K (2160p) quality at half the bandwidth use…

Click to view the original at youtube-eng.blogspot.com

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Meet the most fascinating part of the F-35: The &u0024;400,000 helmet

To truly understand the F-35, the most expensive weapons program in the history of the Pentagon, forget the plane for a minute. Consider the helmet.

Click to view the original at www.washingtonpost.com

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Microsoft: An Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible' | WIRED

One day, Microsoft could "open source" the code that underpins the OS---giving it away for free. So says Mark Russinovich, one of the company's top engineers.

Click to view the original at www.wired.com

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We’ve Been Cheated Out of Condoms That Actually Feel Good During Sex

In 1993, Danny Resnic was having anal sex during a casual hookup in Miami Beach when his partner’s latex condom broke. Resnic had been using condoms ever since the man he describes as “my best friend and love of my life” died from AIDS in 1984. “I have always been...

Click to view the original at www.slate.com

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Tesla is a Battery Company • Jeremy Welch

Tesla Motors started as a Car company, but they should now be considered to be a Battery company for three key reasons: Tesla Leadership has Expertise in Batteries and Energy Systems Batteries Are the Most Important Component of an Electric... | Jeremy Welch | Pattern Recognition and Acceleration

Click to view the original at blog.jeremyrwelch.com

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