Google patents ad-powered taxi service that would offer free rides to shoppers
Advertisers would pay for your transportation in the hope that you buy something.
Stephen Hawking: 'There are no black holes'
Notion of an 'event horizon', from which nothing can escape, is incompatible with quantum theory, physicist claims.
Stripe: Capture the Flag
The mysterious programAt the heart of any distributed system is an undistributed one. You've recently become the Director of Big Data at Large Corpus Systems, Inc. It's your first week on the job, and you've just received an urgent alert that your data pipeline has ground to a halt. After some pains...
Love, Actuarially - Wired Science
Mathematician Chris McKinlay hacked OKCupid to find the girl of his dreams. Emily Shur Chris McKinlay was folded into a cramped fifth-floor cubicle in UCLA’s math sciences building, lit by a single bulb and the glow from his monitor. ...
Hasnain says:
"On that early morning in June 2012, his compiler crunching out machine code in one window, his forlorn dating profile sitting idle in the other, it dawned on him that he was doing it wrong. He’d been approaching online matchmaking like any other user. Instead, he realized, he should be dating like a mathematician."
Posted on 2014-01-22T04:44:29+0000
1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell
Robert McCrum tells the story of Orwell's feverish race to finish 1984, living in a remote Scottish farmhouse
Hasnain says:
"In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Here, Robert McCrum tells the compelling story of Orwell's torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book"
This is from 2009, but still quite interesting.
Posted on 2014-01-21T22:31:58+0000
2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths About Foreign Aid - Gates Foundation
Learn how foreign aid reduces overpopulation, dependency on aid for impoverished countries, and makes a sustainable future for our planet.
Click to view the original at annualletter.gatesfoundation.org
Hasnain says:
I encourage everyone to read this in its entirety. Hats off, Mr Gates.
Two relevant snippets:
"Many people think that development aid is a large part of rich countries’ budgets, which would mean a lot can be saved by cutting back. When pollsters ask Americans what share of the budget goes to aid, the average response is “25 percent.” When asked how much the government should spend, people tend to say “10 percent.” I suspect you would get similar results in the United Kingdom, Germany, and elsewhere.
Here are the actual numbers. For Norway, the most generous nation in the world, it’s less than 3 percent. For the United States, it’s less than 1 percent."
"There is a double standard at work here. I’ve heard people calling on the government to shut down some aid program if one dollar of corruption is found. On the other hand, four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to prison for corruption, and to my knowledge no one has demanded that Illinois schools be shut down or its highways closed."
Posted on 2014-01-21T22:02:21+0000
Shooting reported at Purdue University
A suspect was in custody after a reported shooting on the campus of Purdue University, posts on the school's official Twitter account said Tuesday afternoon.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2014-01-21T19:09:30+0000
Quicken Loans' Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge Offers $1 Billion Grand Prize for Perfect...
DETROIT, Jan. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Detroit-based Quicken Loans, the nation's fourth largest mortgage lender, has joined forces with Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway to offer a chance at a $1 billion prize for completing the perfect bracket in this March's men's college basketball championsh...
King has trademarked the word CANDY (and you're probably infringing)
King has trademarked the word CANDY (and you're probably infringing)
For the Love of Money
We are letting money addiction drive too much of our society.