Your brain operates with electricity; why couldn’t electric current or waves boost it a bit?
Amol Sarva on how neurostimulation is one of the next big things. 

News: Mobile Trends to Keep In Mind

News: Mobile Trends to Keep In Mind

News: Mobile Trends to Keep In Mind

www.mondaynote.com/2013/12/0…

A compilation by Frédéric Filloux for Monday Note. Very interesting. 

Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.

He must be thanking a whole array of gods that he didn’t go to war. The US already went to war because of wrong intel, let’s not do that again. Long but research piece. 

Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.
He must be thanking a whole array of gods that he didn’t go to war. The US already went to war because of wrong intel, let’s not do that again. Long but research piece. 

The Brilliant Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From the Dead

The Brilliant Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From the Dead

The Brilliant Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From the Dead

www.wired.com/business/…

Very clever; Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare envisioned his app as a “fellow traveler” and not something you had to check in to for it to give you recommendations. 

It now dispenses passive recommendations as you stroll through a city. Any users with feedback? 

Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama

Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama

Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama

www.nytimes.com/2013/12/0…

Inside the West Wing, where junior researchers monitor Twitter and other social media, officials knew the political controversy had moved beyond the broken website. Now it was about a broken promise. But for Mr. Obama, the mounting criticism was more than political. It felt personal.

The HealthCare.gov website has not been built adequately, that is a certainty. (Read the article, you’ll understand: many different contractors, pieces of software wrongly stitched together and not enough server space.)

I’m wondering what would have happened if Obama made some actual hackers or Silicon Valley devs come to make the system initially. They know how to scale. They know better than suited-up coders how to build incredibly complex architectures. Think of Facebook. 

Watch Godard’s film of the birth of Sympathy For The Devil by the Rolling Stones. 

Watch Godard’s film of the birth of Sympathy For The Devil by the Rolling Stones. 

How successful people make themselves luckier

How successful people make themselves luckier

How successful people make themselves luckier

qz.com/152501/ho…

Among the lessons in the book, the luckiest people:

  • Don’t simply “communicate” with others, but find ways to authentically connect with others.
  • Use the right toolkit of people skills, conceptual skills, judgement and character that helps them succeed in finding new opportunities and re-framing setbacks to their advantage.
  • Swing for the fences when a big, fat pitch of opportunity comes their way.
  • Know when to lighten up and maintain perspective.

Interesting stuff. The book is called Be Luckier in Life by Craig Forman. 

To summarise, in understanding this problem we must not ignore its inherent observation selection effect. This resides in the fact that when we randomly select a driver and ask her whether she thinks the next lane is faster, more often than not we will have selected a driver from the lane which is in fact slower and more densely packed. When we realize this, we see that no case has been made for recommending that drivers change lanes less frequently in order to speed up overall traffic flow.

It seems like cars in the next lane really do go faster, at least according to Nick Bostrom, a lecturer at Yale who wrote this post on maths.org.

To summarise, in understanding this problem we must not ignore its inherent observation selection effect. This resides in the fact that when we randomly select a driver and ask her whether she thinks the next lane is faster, more often than not we will have selected a driver from the lane which is in fact slower and more densely packed. When we realize this, we see that no case has been made for recommending that drivers change lanes less frequently in order to speed up overall traffic flow.
It seems like cars in the next lane really do go faster, at least according to Nick Bostrom, a lecturer at Yale who wrote this post on maths.org.

What are bitcoins?

What are bitcoins?

What are bitcoins?

www.bitcoins.com

Mt.Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, has launched this website trying to explain to us mere mortals what the fuck bitcoins are. 

Q: Are real spies as talented and lethal as the characters depicted in movies, such as Jason Bourne? - Quora

Q: Are real spies as talented and lethal as the characters depicted in movies, such as Jason Bourne? - Quora

Q: Are real spies as talented and lethal as the characters depicted in movies, such as Jason Bourne? - Quora

www.quora.com/Homeland-…

A:

The NCS direct-action arm is the Special Activities Division, which conducts raids, ambushes, sabotage, assassinations, unconventional warfare and psychological operations (“covert influence”) in denied areas.

Read more on Quora.

Origins of common UI elements. Click for a bigger image.