This is why, in my opinion, Netflix's model will inevitably beat cable programming models:

> THR: How do you know that’s why women or young people are tuning in?
> Sarandos: You see it in what else they watch — the algorithmic similarities to what else they’re watching and why they’re watching. And then we can very directly focus-group with them and survey them about what their attractions are. So we found that there’s overlap with Gossip Girl and House of Cards.

Cluster bombing children.

"On that day, U.S. cruise missiles loaded with cluster bombs struck a remote mountain community in the al-Majalah region, killing 41 people, including 21 children and 14 women. Initially, the Yemeni government claimed responsibility for the killings, but reports that the U.S. had actually executed the strike began leaking out almost immediately. The publication of a January 2010 diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks confirmed these reports as well as an orchestrated U.S.-Yemeni effort to cover up the truth."

Fairly bold prediction:

"More importantly, every Google Fiber home will have a public wifi component. In order to get Google Fiber, you’re going to have to agree to put a router in that lets anyone use a portion of your bandwidth."

Keep it up Googs.

That moment right before someone yells "timber!"

It's snowy in Chicago today. I am an expert photographer.

‎"The executive claims that residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options, she said."

Read: "A very small fraction of our customer base can afford those options."

‎"Technology is advancing so fast his bionic hand will soon be obsolete. 

Rex's components include an arm with 26 degrees of movement, one less than a human arm, which teaches itself to work, glasses which send images to a microchip in the retina which then sends electrical impulses to the brain, and a battery powered heart which is currently being used for temporary donors. "

If it is impossible for the host to know what you've uploaded then the copyright responsibility argument shifts completely onto the user.

France wants Twitter to help it censor tweets.

"The Time Warner Cable system in Kansas City appears to be freaking out about the rollout of Google Fiber, and for obvious reasons. Google Fiber puts the Time Warner Cable offering to shame."

"What is most striking is how sweeping, probing and invasive the FBI's investigation then became, all without any evidence of any actual crime - or the need for any search warrant"

"The federal standards will pre-empt state rules in at least one respect: the national health plans will automatically be eligible to compete against other private insurers in the new exchanges, regardless of whether they have been certified as meeting the standards of those exchanges."

Why is this the first I am hearing of this? Did legislators just sneak the Public Option through the back door somehow?

Godspeed you, Pirate Bay.

“All communication with users goes through TPB’s load balancer, which is a disk-less server with all the configuration in RAM. The load balancer is not in the same country as the transit-router or the cloud servers,” The Pirate Bay told us.

OK Cool.

"The orders need not specify who is going to be spied on or even allege that the targets did anything wrong.  The only guarantees that the FAA gives are that no specific American will be targeted for wiretapping and that some (classified) rules about the use of intercepted information will be followed."

Grabbing the popcorn on this one.

In case you care, the US is installing cameras everywhere with facial recognition technology.

Kind of long, but probably worth it for anyone interested in sexual harassment and social issues. I like Criss a lot. She has a bit of a potty mouth at times, but intellectually she makes some very satisfying points.

Joe The Plumber wants to shoot small business job creators.

"The top countries of birth for immigrant business owners includes Mexico first, followed by India, South Korea, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Canada and Iran."

Awesome panorama of Curiosity pictures.

Paul Ryan sums up everything wrong with today's conservative movement. He's got a really big mouth and his actions don't match his words.

In summary: "I disagree with these atheists, therefore I will stereotype all atheists as dicks."

You didn't build that.....monopoly.

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A friend's role playing game - Broken Rooms. It can be found here:
http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/g/greymalkinDesigns/v5748btpy8k80

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Our new book! It looks great, and everyone worked so hard on it. It's finally done and in physical form. Broken Rooms will be released at Gen Con 2012 in a limited edition hardback, with a pdf/POD edition to follow a few weeks later. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

New idea for a NYT New Yorker op-ed piece. Make a bunch of shit up and then say it's crazy.

Doesn't sound like the Ron Paul crowd is that into Mittens. He's getting harshed on Twitter. He has almost zero chance of getting elected. Every move he makes is a embarrassing blunder. He's going to get thrashed in the debates.

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Cool tricks

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Say you are looking for email messages that contain any variation of the string “gray color”. There could be one or more spaces between the two words, the words may use either British or American spelling and the first letters may or may not be capitalized. The regular expression thus will be:

[Gg]r(a|e)y\s.*[Cc]olou?r

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We need the government to regulate these evil banks!! They are stealing from the people via regulation!!

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JPMorgan’s share of the subsidy is $14 billion a year, or about 77 percent of its net income for the past four quarters. In other words, U.S. taxpayers helped foot the bill for the multibillion-dollar trading loss that is the focus of today’s hearing. They’ve also provided more direct support: Dimon noted in a recent conference call that the Home Affordable Refinancing Program, which allows banks to generate income by modifying government-guaranteed mortgages, made a significant contribution to JPMorgan’s earnings in the first three months of 2012.

Science = Determination

Holy wow, this is possibly more insane than the current (known) American self-spying programs. Basically the UK government is just quite simply recording everything you do.

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Pretty impressive step forward for voice search. I assume iPhone5 will have improvements as well, though...

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head to head Google voice search and siri

It definitely would be valuable to have a status code for censorship, and I think the 400's makes sense for it...

Enabling #donottrack  by default sets up an interesting front between advertisers and consumers. Especially with such a major browser like IE. Twitter has already taken sides, electing to not honor it.

Help us CIA!! Protect us from you!

Mitt Romney is an insane, big government control freak.

#cispa is a very open-ended piece of legislation that gives US government the power to monitor Internet usage and violate privacy rights. EFF and ACLU are both strongly against the legislation. I have signed this petition and hope anyone valuing the free Internet will do likewise. #stopcispa

Truth found here.

This has the potential to be a real market disrupter in a market that desperately needs disruption.

Microscopic analysis revealed clear evidence of burning, such as plant ash and charred bone fragments. These materials were apparently burned in the cave, as opposed to being carried in there by wind or water, and were found alongside stone tools in a layer dating back about 1 million years.

I think this is cool.

I love it when the market openly frustrates dinosaur businesses.

Do we really need legislation for this?

“These drones would fly off and hover above the city, and create ad hoc connections and networks in a new form of nomadic territorial infrastructure,” Young tells Co.Design, “a flock of interactive autonomous drones that form their own place specific, temporary, local, Wi-Fi community--a pirate Internet.”

Huxley offers his thoughts to Orwell on 1984.

First there was Facebook, then Twitter, but now the real question is this: how is +Wil Wheaton going to monetize himself?

"By practically any measure, the quality of public K–12 education in the United States is dismal. Of the high school seniors who in 2009 took the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, administered by the U.S. Department of Education, fully 74% scored below proficient in mathematics, 62% in reading, and 79% in science. Within those sorry aggregate scores lay the familiar disparities among black and Hispanic Americans, who lag behind their fellow students on the exams by as much as 20 to 30 points."

This guy is insane. #drummerface

"Judging by the amount of iPhones sold so far, we’d say that the Cupertino-based company will pay several hundred millions to Google, who bought Motorola for a fee of $12.5 billion last summer."

Now that Wikipedia is back I can confidently get into internet arguments once again.

There's a Thundercats Wiki. Just so you know.

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Romney's top campaign contributors are banks and financial institutions. His platform is inextricable from those interests.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?cycle=2012&id=N00000286

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Surprised? Not me. He's not a conservative so he must hide his intentions and connections. I don't like him one bit.

The cognitive fracture happening right now to progressives is fascinating to watch unfold. Hopefully it continues and those who recognize the elephant in the room (that Obama is essentially just like Bush) will win out. There is something fundamentally wrong with democracy when there is no choice.

This is over a year old, but I thought it was a good point of view.

"It’s unfortunate that both political parties, and the current President, are largely in agreement on these vital issues. Finding ways to subvert that consensus is imperative for anyone who actually believes in their importance."

Read this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-the-us-can-no-longer-fight-the-worlds-battles-6285629.html
Then read these:
http://rt.com/usa/news/us-troops-israel-iran-257/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/16/us-usa-australia-idUSTRE7AF0F220111116

Me - how about some Bailey's in that coffee today?
Me - Alright.

MN Senate Leader who tried to ban gay marriage resigns after being caught in an illicit affair. The gay and lesbian community apologizes for ruining her marriage.

"We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry."

Why the secrecy? If Bradley Manning committed such terrible acts then there should be no problem prosecuting him publicly. Right?

Have you noticed when you copy text from certain sites lately you get an extra URL bit added to your paste? Well that's Tynt, the Copy/Paste jerks.

Racists aren't smart enough to understand economics.

Much more absurd than the tax is what they are doing with the revenue: promoting Christmas trees. Why does the federal government need to be involved in promoting anything? This is so ridiculous.

Wowsers. Åresjön, Sweden.

Photographer: Ola Harström

Found this on reddit spaceporn:
http://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn

Heh

My first rage comic

OK, yeah, I am impressed. I don't like Tom Cruise that much but this is some insanity right here.

If you're a fan of the Song of Ice and Fire series, this is an incredible picture.

Wow, coming from the HuffPo.

The Jelly Shot Test Kitchen. Awesome.

If Google+ were as important to modern life as gmail, then I could see the point. But if these guys don't post on FB or anywhere else the point made here is completely invalid. G+ isn't something that everyone needs or even wants to use.

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This is fascism.

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Ah.

"JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD's main data center."
http://jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Home/article/ny-13.htm

h/t Reddit

#occupywallstreet

Owning both Hulu and YouTube makes for some interesting game theory around not only the future of video content delivery but maybe more importantly video production. Specifically, how would this affect syndication and content resale and rights negotiations with the major TV networks?

The problem with the "Social Contract" is that there is only one.

We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with.

Finally the Browns take a game. #notyourtypicalclevelandbrowns

One of the problems in politics today (maybe all time?) is that people immediately knee-jerk one direction or another. But the concepts that Elizabeth Warren promotes are much more rooted in philosophy than typical political jargon. She's making a structured case for her political position.

This is a good thing: instead of talking about symptoms she's bringing the conversation over to the root systems. We're all better off talking about root causes and rooted decision making.

The problem with figurehead leaders like Romney, Obama, Bush and Pelosi is that they don't have any underlying principle that they are attempting to accomplish, it's just vague party talking points. There is no foundation. With principled leaders you not only know what you are getting but why you are getting it. And on this foundation we can truly evaluate what works and stop what doesn't work instead of arguing endlessly through spin and biased media jargon.

I don't agree at all with Warren's ideas, but in a democratic situation (which we are all stuck in currently) I'd much rather engage with someone who has thought through their position than a puppet.

As always, I'm interested in the dynamics of social thought. If all you want to do is call Warren a bitch I'm not interested.

Came across this post by +Edwin Perello via +Steven Sudit.

While I disagree that property (a loaded word) is the root of all evil, I do think it's time the real libertarians separate themselves from the fakes.

Business value via Ayn Rand Objectivism is isolationist in nature and severely underestimates the value of those around you. The right to self-interest must inherently, simultaneously and logically accept the right to self-interest of others. This is a simple but apparently true error in a large part of the co-opted liberty movement. Liberty means freedom not for me, or you, or the individual alone but for everyone at once. Self-interest is not a license to abandon the interests of others. It is in fact a requirement to ensure the possibility of all self-interest at once. You cannot have a market by yourself. And the wealth of the market stems from the success of everyone around you, not from you alone.

Spam Singularity: spam content will surpass user content in both quality and usefulness in the next four years. #prediction

Special thanks to +Richard Mueller

Chrome is starting to gain some serious market share.

"Turkey suspended military ties with Israel, expelled top Israeli diplomats, pledged to support the Palestinians' statehood bid and vowed to send the Turkish navy to escort Gaza-bound aid ships in the future."

This is like a really nasty game of Jenga.

VaderNo improves all movies.

Fry on philosophy.

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The problems immigration can create are all short-term. The long term benefits are both obvious and evident.

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A great piece by Michael Clemens on why people should be able to cross borders freely

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* Click this link to see a higher resolution of this series *
http://www.natezeman.com/photo/photo-1094/

So here's something you don't see every day. I shot this sequence a few years ago. This was definitely the most fascinating animal interaction I've seen. The coyote and grizzly were both out in a large snowy meadow apparently playing some sort of game of animal tag. At first When I saw the coyote actually nip at the bears foot and make contact. I thought perhaps it was defending a den or something, but every time the coyote made a move the grizzly would run a bit and then roll over on its back, taunting the coyote to play. I watched this interaction for about 20 minutes as they took turns chasing each other. Eventually their antics continued over a hillside and I lost site of them, but it was something I will definitely never forget.

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This feels like a landmark event to me. Yesterday a Japanese woman circled me and I didn't circle her back because I couldn't read her posts. Literally moments later I saw +Josh Estelle post about the G+ Translate extension, installed it, circled the friend, and read some posts. In some ways this is like Star Trek's universal translator. It is absolutely amazing to read anybody's posts.

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After announcing yesterday on Google+, announcing today on our blog feels kind of old-school.

http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2011/08/google-translate-for-google.html

Perks of being an English major:

"Booz Allen — which earned $1.3 billion, or 23 percent of its total revenue, in the last fiscal year from intelligence work — might be particularly worried about the federal spigot’s being tightened after this new security breach."

There's a Porky Pig joke in here somewhere.

"The order...requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries."

This is no joke this is actually happening right now. For a three month period that ends in mid-July Verizon must hand over both phone lines, location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of ALL calls.

Google is looking to extend wireless via blimps and satellites to a billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

This site is making the social rounds lately. Just know that the website is put forth by a fast food lobby, the "Center for Consumer Freedom."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Consumer_Freedom

Horsetail progress pic.

"In addition to Scout, Scanadu has also created a saliva test that can determine quickly if you have anything from the flu to strep throat, and a urine test that can test your glucose levels, as well as protein, nitrates, blood, and yes, even tell whether or not you’re using drugs or are pregnant.

Tests are done using a smartphone, taking a photo of the paddle before and after you pee on it. The phone analyzes the difference in colors of the test strip between the two photos and provides instant results."