SSD shadiness: Kingston and PNY caught bait-and-switching cheaper components after good reviews...
There's an increasing about of evidence to suggest that certain manufacturers are swapping out SSD hardware behind-the-scenes, and that products are suffering from it. It wouldn't be acceptable in other markets, and it's not acceptable here.
The Largest Black Hole In the Known Universe
It’s a huge surprise, and shows up in the most unlikely of places!
Hasnain says:
"For this galaxy, there must be a central black hole with a staggering 17 billion Solar masses, or a whopping 14% of the stellar mass of the galaxy! This is an unprecedented number; not only is this by far the most massive black hole we’ve ever found, but this is also the largest ratio of a black-hole-to-host-galaxy mass we’ve ever seen!"
Posted on 2014-06-16T01:16:34+0000
I’m Just Now Realizing How Stupid We Are
Some things I've learned. - Morgan Housel - Financials
jq
jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor. jq is written in portable C, and it has zero runtime dependencies.
The End of Cuisine
Nathan Myhrvold, the Mad Hatter of modernist cooking, invited the movement’s leading chef, Ferran Adrià, over for a 50-course, lab-prepared meal. It was a lot to digest, sure, but what does a feast like this mean for the future of eating?
Hasnain says:
"After 45 courses, I was lowing like a cow. In my food- and wine-altered state, I began to meditate on the notion of death by senseless beauty."
Posted on 2014-06-16T01:14:03+0000
Window into Airbnb’s hidden impact on S.F. - San Francisco Chronicle
Thousands of San Franciscans have transformed their homes into impromptu inns using Airbnb, the website that lets people rent rooms or houses to travelers.
Ars tests Internet surveillance—by spying on an NPR reporter
A week spent playing NSA reveals just how much data we leak online.
German man locked up over HVB bank allegations may have been telling truth
Gustl Mollath was put in a psychiatric unit for claiming his wife was involved in money-laundering at the Bavarian bank. But seven years on evidence has emerged that could set him free
Hasnain says:
"A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims."
Posted on 2014-06-10T02:12:41+0000
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman,” the Chatbot that’s All...
If you haven’t read about it yet, “Eugene Goostman” is a chatbot that’s being heavily promoted by the University of Reading’s Kevin Warwick, for fooling 33% of judges in a recent Turing Test competition into thinking it was human, and thereby supposedly becoming “the first program to pass the Turing…
Hasnain says:
Scott Aaronson on the chat bot everyone seems to like.
Posted on 2014-06-10T02:03:19+0000
No, A 'Supercomputer' Did NOT Pass The Turing Test For The First Time And Everyone Should Know...
So, this weekend's news in the tech world was flooded with a "story" about how a "chatbot" passed the Turing Test for "the first time," with lots of publications buying every point in the story and talking about what...