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So You Think You're Smarter Than A CIA Agent

When 3,000 average citizens were asked to forecast global events, some consistently made predictions that turned out to be more accurate than those with classified intelligence.

Click to view the original at npr.org

Hasnain says:

"Galton was at a fair where about 800 people had tried to guess the weight of a dead ox in a competition. After the prize was awarded, Galton collected all the guesses so he could figure out how far off the mark the average guess was.

It turned out that most of the guesses were really bad — way too high or way too low. But when Galton averaged them together, he was shocked:

The dead ox weighed 1,198 pounds. The crowd's average: 1,197."

(slightly better source: http://www.economist.com/news/21589145-how-sort-best-rest-whos-good-forecasts)

Posted on 2014-04-02T16:52:19+0000

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The man who went looking for freedom

Fighting the system used to be dangerous anywhere in Eastern Europe. For one protester from a small Romanian village it was disastrous - and for his family.

Click to view the original at bbc.com

Hasnain says:

"When he left home, the car stuffed with placards and leaflets, my father knew what he was returning to. Yet he had no choice. For him the family was his country and the country was his family. If he did not fight for everyone else, he could not have hoped to put food on our own table. Or a shred of dignity in our lives. He left us out of desperation and moral conviction."

Posted on 2014-04-02T16:50:05+0000

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Amazon Fire TV

Amazon Fire TV is a tiny box that connects your HDTV to a world of online entertainment. With a huge selection of TV episodes and movies, voice search that really works, plus exclusive features like Amazon FreeTime, it’s the easiest way to enjoy Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, low...

Click to view the original at amazon.com

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Redis new data structure: the HyperLogLog - Antirez weblog

antirez 3 minutes ago. Generally speaking, I love randomized algorithms, but there is one I love particularly since even after you understand how it works, it still remains magical from a programmer point of view. It accomplishes something that is almost illogical given how little it asks for in ter...

Click to view the original at antirez.com

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Big data: are we making a big mistake? - FT.com

Five years ago, a team of researchers from Google announced a remarkable achievement in one of the world’s top scientific journals, Nature. Without needing the results of a single medical check-up, they were nevertheless able to track the spread of

Click to view the original at ft.com

Hasnain says:

“Big data” has arrived, but big insights have not. The challenge now is to solve new problems and gain new answers – without making the same old statistical mistakes on a grander scale than ever."

Posted on 2014-03-31T23:56:53+0000

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Microsoft Azure – Innovation, Quality and Price - Windows Azure - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

This week Microsoft has the pleasure of hosting thousands of developers from all over the world at our Build conference in San Francisco. They don’t travel because they like airline food. They travel because they recognize we’re in the early stages of a platform shift and want to influence the next…

Click to view the original at blogs.msdn.com

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How One Man Ruined The Most Expensive Game Jam In History

...game jam in the history of the video game industry, and how it was dismantled by a single man. Let’s get started. GAME_JAM didn’t start out as a...

Click to view the original at indiestatik.com

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Hasnain says:

"In this paper, we propose to turn JIT compilation into a precision tool by adding two essential and generic metaprogramming facilities: First, allow programs to invoke JIT compilation explicitly. This enables controlled specialization of arbitrary code at run- time, in the style of partial evaluation. It also enables the JIT compiler to report warnings and errors to the program when it is un- able to compile a code path in the demanded way. Second, allow the JIT compiler to call back into the program to perform compile- time computation. This lets the program itself define the translation strategy for certain constructs on the fly and gives rise to a powerful JIT macro facility that enables “smart” libraries to supply domain- specific compiler optimizations or safety checks."

Posted on 2014-03-31T18:38:28+0000