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Hasnain says:

"“This is how a community of knowledge can become dangerous,” Sloman and Fernbach observe. The two have performed their own version of the toilet experiment, substituting public policy for household gadgets. In a study conducted in 2012, they asked people for their stance on questions like: Should there be a single-payer health-care system? Or merit-based pay for teachers? Participants were asked to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the proposals. Next, they were instructed to explain, in as much detail as they could, the impacts of implementing each one. Most people at this point ran into trouble. Asked once again to rate their views, they ratcheted down the intensity, so that they either agreed or disagreed less vehemently.

Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, “may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitudes.”"

Posted on 2017-03-08T05:08:19+0000

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Gregory Szorc's Digital Home | Better Compression with Zstandard

compression algorithm at a Mercurial developer sprint in 2015. At one end of a large table a few people were uttering expletives out of sheer excitement. At developer gatherings, that's the universal signal for

Click to view the original at gregoryszorc.com

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Google is acquiring data science community Kaggle

Sources tell us that Google is acquiring Kaggle, a platform that hosts data science and machine learning competitions. Details about the transaction remain..

Click to view the original at social.techcrunch.com

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Hasnain says:

This is huge.

There is this quote in here which is hilarious and scary at the same time, which I'd love independent verification on.

"In what is surely one of the most astounding intelligence own goals in living memory, the CIA structured its classification regime such that for the most market valuable part of "Vault 7" — the CIA's weaponized malware (implants + zero days), Listening Posts (LP), and Command and Control (C2) systems — the agency has little legal recourse.
The CIA made these systems unclassified.
Why the CIA chose to make its cyberarsenal unclassified reveals how concepts developed for military use do not easily crossover to the 'battlefield' of cyber 'war'.
To attack its targets, the CIA usually requires that its implants communicate with their control programs over the internet. If CIA implants, Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. The U.S. government is not able to assert copyright either, due to restrictions in the U.S. Constitution. This means that cyber 'arms' manufactures and computer hackers can freely "pirate" these 'weapons' if they are obtained. The CIA has primarily had to rely on obfuscation to protect its malware secrets."

Posted on 2017-03-07T23:05:49+0000

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YC’s Online Class (Sign up at StartupSchool.org)

We’re excited to announce our new online Startup School, with classes beginning on April 5. Anyone can sign up at StartupSchool.org for the 10-week massively open online course (MOOC), starting today. We want to teach everyone how to start a startup and help them along the way with guidance from peo...

Click to view the original at blog.ycombinator.com

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How a biotech billionaire used a donation to boost his business

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong was hailed for donating $12 million to University of Utah. But the contract ensured that $10 million came back to his company.

Click to view the original at statnews.com

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SNAKISMS

Life is meaningless! Maybe you need some kind of ism to attempt to ward off the inevitable and unavoidable despair! Here, have some isms made of snakes! Life is still meaningless but now you have a…

Click to view the original at pippinbarr.com

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