Maxim Bange

Free-to-play virtual life simulator Second Life received a major overhaul following the game's 10th anniversary earlier this summer, adding new features and updating the game's graphics, according to a new trailer for the game.

In addition to giving graphics a fresh coat of paint and upgrading the game's lightning, the trailer boasts "better performance" and improved speed of avatar loading. Chat tools have also been streamlined for ease of communication between players, and users can now share in-game screenshots and accomplishments through Facebook integration.

The trailer also mentions a newly improved "welcome experience," presumably for new players who are just getting their feet wet, and a "simplified" in-game shopping...

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Online courses, and massively open online courses (MOOCs) in particular, are quickly moving from a novelty to the mainstream. Leading colleges, graduate schools, and companies are investing significant resources into free education.

There are now hundreds of free courses available online, which can vary significantly in quality. That makes it essential to pick the right course.  

We've found some of the most fascinating, highly regarded, and useful courses around, taught by some of the most accomplished professors at the best schools in the world.

If you take a class through a platform that runs more structured courses, like EdX or Coursera, it can be beneficial to take them in session. Then, you can get assignments graded, occasionally have access to teaching assistants and even professors, and have a community of other people taking the course that you can talk to and rely on. And if you do well enough, you'll receive a verified certificate for completing the course.

Some of the following courses are running right now, while others have already concluded but can still be taken as self-paced courses. We've noted which is the case for each. 

Coursera/Duke: A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior

Platform: Coursera

Length/Start date: The course ran this spring and all materials are available. It's designed to last eight weeks.

Time commitment: Seven to 10 hours a week, and no background is required other than a "curiosity about human nature."

Why you should take it: People aren't always rational. They do unpredictable things that are often baffling to those who try to think rationally.

The course is taught by Duke's Dan Ariely, author of the best selling "Predictably Irrational" and one of the most prominent scholars studying this through the lens of behavioral economics. A student who's taken 36 MOOCs said it was the one he'd most recommend to a first-time MOOC student.

The idea is to introduce students to the range of cases where people make decisions inconsistent with standard economic theory, which assumes rational decision making, and think about how insights about that sort of behavior can be applied.  

Udacity: Introduction to Statistics

Platform: Udacity

Length/Start date: Self paced

Time commitment/prerequisites: The time commitment is entirely up to the student, though those looking to complete it should set themselves some goals. No prerequisites are required other than basic algebra. There is a programming track which uses Python, however.

Why you should take it: Statistics and data analysis are at the core of just about everything in business. Knowing how to read data and pull insight out of it is always useful. This course provides a tool-set that would be valuable to just about anybody.  

This course is designed to teach the basics of extracting meaning from data, visualizing it, and understanding the relationships in data with math. The course is taught by Udacity CEO and Stanford Research professor Sebastian Thrun, who founded Google X, the company's research lab, and helped develop driverless cars and Google Glass. 

MIT: Introduction to Microeconomics

Platform: MIT OpenCourseWare

Length/Start date: Self paced

Time commitment/prerequisites: The course is taken entirely independently. It's the first economics course undergraduates take, so no background is needed there. Some basic, single variable calculus is required, but no more than you'd learn in a high school calculus class.  

Why you should take it: Economics has a bad reputation, but it's absolutely vital. 

This introductory microeconomics class is one of the most popular that MIT has made available, and is taught by Jonathan Gruber. He's been teaching there for 20 years and is an extremely prominent economist who helped design Massachusetts' groundbreaking health-care reform.

Economics, and microeconomics in particular, are about how we make the best decision given scarce resources like money or time. That's useful in itself, as is this course as background for more advanced work. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Apple, we're looking at you

Second Life, it seems, is getting a second lease on life. In a video today, Linden Labs announced a revamp of the now decade-old open world, which has quietly maintained a solid fanbase even as a bout of mid-2000s hype died down. The graphics seem to have gotten a notable update — you won't find the uncanny photorealism of a next-generation shooter, but the chunky solid colors of old avatars have given way to more detailed textures and better lighting. Linden Labs is also promising to make the site friendlier for first-time visitors, and it's added simpler chat and shopping functions and the option to share notes and pictures to Facebook.

But the real surprise comes towards the end of the video, when Linden Labs shows a Second Lifer...

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Back in June soon after Apple offered a sneak peek at the new Mac Pro, a Geekbench result from the new machine appeared revealing some performance information about the machine under its internal product code name of AAPLJ90,1. That machine was running a 12-core Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 at 2.7 GHz, representing what would be a high-end model of the machine.

Today, a new Geekbench result that appears to be a second legitimate Mac Pro has appeared, this time running a lower-end 8-core Intel Xeon E5-1680 v2 chip at 3.0 GHz. As with the previous Mac Pro seen on Geekbench, this new machine is running a custom internal build of OS X Mavericks, in this case Build 13A3010.

Exact Geekbench scores are not comparable between the two Mac Pro models, as the original one was benchmarked using Geekbench 2 and the new one was benchmarked under Geekbench 3, which uses a new baseline measure. The latest machine can, however, be compared to other Mac models tested using Geekbench 3.

On the 32-bit Multi-Core Geekbench 3 scoring, this new 8-core Mac Pro registers a score of 24429, on par with scores achieved by the higehst-end 2010 and 2012 Mac Pro models running dual 6-core processors for a total of 12 cores. The new Mac Pro also handily beats the Geekbench performance of earlier 8-core models.

While Geekbench can assess raw CPU and memory performance, Apple’s new Mac Pro will also bring massive new graphics capabilities that can be leveraged for computational purposes. The new Mac Pro will come with dual AMD FirePro GPUs standard, giving users additional computational horsepower while being able to simultaneously drive up to three 4K displays.

Apple’s new Mac Pro is scheduled for release this fall, but the company has yet to announced detailed specifications, pricing, or an exact release date.

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Google is now refunding its users for any Google offers they've purchased in the past but failed to redeem. The company has emailed impacted customers to alert them that refunds will start being issued on October 7th. It's an automatic process; if Google thinks you've failed to redeem an offer from its Groupon-like service, the original purchase amount will be credited to your debit or credit card. But users also have the option of receiving refunds in the form of Google Play credit. To sweeten the appeal of that method, Google is even tossing in bonus cash for those that go the Play route. Droid-Life has the full email with details, and if you're due a refund, you can expect an email from Google within the next few days.

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Growing up in Madison, Wisc., Ranku CEO Kim Taylor became a force to be reckoned with on the dance floor, the beams, and the ice.  As a girl, she loved dancing and she loved ice hockey. By age of seven, that passion for dancing ultimately led to an interest in gymnastics.

That mix of school and sports has been a theme throughout Taylor's life, right up to her current project: Ranku is a tech startup that helps students discover and rank online college degree programs. It's backed with $500,000 by Mark Cuban, the tech investor who is perhaps best-known as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

Taylor became a very competitive gymnast thanks to the help of her coach, Chellsie Marie Memmel. Memmel was a member of the U.S.'s 2008 Olympic women's gymnastics team. 

"I was a very serious gymnast," Taylor tells Business Insider. "That was my whole life. I also just really liked sports. I was kind of very well known (for the beam). No one could ever beat me at a handstand contest." 

But since her brothers were ice hockey players, Taylor decided to take up ice hockey while continuing to excel at gymnastics. She joined her high school's boys hockey team as well as a private girls hockey team.

Also on that girls' team was Ranku co-founder Cecilia Retelle, the now-former senior director of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. When their team went to the national championship, Retelle and Taylor bunked together and have been friends ever since. 

The college years and dancing in the NBA

Once she entered college, Taylor snagged a spot as an NBA dancer for the Milwaukee Bucks. That year, the team ended up going to the eastern conference finals. 

But that was her first and last year as an NBA dancer. That's because she realized she wanted to be a sports writer or broadcaster.

After her first year of college, Taylor stopped dancing for the NBA, and transferred from a small Jesuit school in Wisconsin to Arizona State University, to study journalism. 

While at ASU, Taylor wrote for The Arizona Republic where she mostly covered football. Her coverage involved a lot of statistics, and that's when she fell in love with research. Research, she says, is most of what drives her online education startup today. 

Given that she essentially grew up in the boys locker room both as an athlete and sports writer, Taylor says, it was good training for the male-dominated tech world.

After college, Taylor switched from the editorial side to advertising. Around 2008, Taylor was working for an online publisher in Chicago where she focused on online education. 

At the time, Taylor says, for-profit institutions were exploding because newly unemployed people saw schools as a safe haven, an alternative to an unstable workforce.

"I knew it was a big industry, but no one in Chicago appreciated it," Taylor says. "So I started thinking that I should look at startups, but I knew nothing about startups."

So she came up with a checklist. Taylor wanted to join an early-stage startup with no revenue, and no capital.

"I wanted to run revenue," Taylor says. 

And that's what she ultimately did.

Starring on Bravo's "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" reality TV show

Taylor came to Silicon Valley as the fifth employee at a startup that builds Facebook ads for brands. 

She joined contingent on fact that they would let her do things her way, she says.

"They didn't know how to make money and had zero contacts," Taylor says. 

Within her first year at the company, Taylor demonstrated how to reach $1 million in revenue.

Along the way, Taylor found out about Bravo's new reality TV show "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley."

"It sounded like a complete joke," Taylor says. "I just wanted to see if I could get on it."

So she bypassed the standard application process and sent the producers a well-crafted email instead. Two days later, she was invited to join the show.

The show received negative feedback from the moment the first episode aired. People criticized it for not depicting an accurate, authentic view of life in Silicon Valley.

A few episodes into the season, we found out that Taylor had decided to leave the Facebook ads company to start a new fashion startup called Shonova.

By the time she left, she was bringing in $3 million a month in revenue. She would've stayed, Taylor says, but the startup's executives wouldn't give her a VP title. 

She told them, "If you don't give me my title or give me a raise, I'm out." As Taylor reflects back on what happened, she wonders if the CEO thought she was kidding. She wasn't. 

"I think a lot of women get held back in their careers," Taylor says. "I was held back. They didn't want to give me a title. They didn't want to push me forward. I always knew I was capable of more."

The show got canceled before the end of the first season, but Taylor has no regrets.  

"It was an amazing thing for me," Taylor says. "Anything is what you will make of it."

Though, she's not sure if she could say the same for some of the other cast members. She didn't specifically mention these examples, but the season featured plenty of drama,  a strap-on sex toy, and other bizarre moments involving some of the other cast members.

From Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley

Just a few weeks out from launching fashion startup Shonova, Taylor pulled the plug. Her real passion had always been in education, so she decided to pursue Ranku, the online education startup that she had first started thinking about back in Chicago.

Even though the application deadline had passed for the new Kaplan Education accelerator powered by TechStars in New York, the program said it would make an exception for her if she could get a team together. 

Within two weeks, Taylor convinced Retelle, her childhood friend and former ice hockey teammate, to quit her lucrative job as the senior director of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to join Ranku as a co-founder. Taylor also brought on board an engineer and user interface designer, and convinced her brother to help out, too.

With a team intact, she received her term sheet for a $20,000 investment in Ranku. 

Ranku wants to become a destination for people to find the best online degree program from top-notch universities. For Ranku, the "best" school isn't necessarily the one with the highest ranking on the "U.S. News and World Report" list. Instead, the best schools in Ranku's lists are the ones that give students great job outcomes.

The three-month accelerator program started this past June. A couple of days before Demo Day, where each startup pitches to an audience of investors, Ranku announced that Mark Cuban would be leading a $500,000 seed round in the startup. 

"Mark was coming to town to do press for Shark Tank," Taylor says. "He pinged me and asked how my startup was doing. I said, 'cranking' and he asked me to meet. I knew he wanted me to pitch."

Aiming to find a place to go where people wouldn't want to talk to Cuban, Taylor scheduled a meeting at her favorite Green Bay Packers bar (Cuban is a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan). 

"No one bothered him," Taylor says. "No one said anything."

So she gave him the high-level pitch, but after a few minutes Cuban interrupts her.

"Kim, stop talking," he said. "I'm in." 

Ranku launched just three months ago, but it's already cash-flow positive. Going forward, Ranku wants to solve some of the biggest, most complicated issues in education and close the skills gap.

"It's something that needs to be solved in the private sector," Taylor says. "That's how I see it. We start here. This is the logical starting point for online education. New rules are being written. There are no rules about what makes a great versus a terrible online school. No one even understands if and why they're good. We want to champion idea of measuring the quality of schools by output."

It goes in line with what President Barack Obama wants for our education system, Taylor says. The only difference is that Taylor and her co-founder Retelle plan to have that done by next quarter.

SEE ALSO: Google Begged This Woman To Stay, But She Left To Start Her Own Company

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On the morning after the Oppo N1 launch, Steve “Cyanogen” Kondik was surrounded by several Oppo ambassadors and tech writers at a hotel lounge in Beijing. It’s a far cry from where he started: toying with Android ROMs out of “boredom” about five years ago.

“When I started this thing, I had, like, no idea that people would actually care,” said Kondik, the creator of CyanogenMod. “I was kind of watching out to see who was going to bring Linux to the first mobile device, in a way that it didn’t absolutely suck.”

In the end, it was Android that stood out with its open-source development, and Kondik saw the potential of adding his own enhancements to devices running on this OS. By day, the Seattle-based developer was a lead engineer at a bioinformatics startup in Pittsburgh; but during his free time, he worked on what later became CyanogenMod for the legendary T-Mobile G1, the world’s first commercial Android device. And of course, he bought it on the day it came out.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

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Wireless speakers still aren’t usually the first choice of those primarily concerned with sound quality, but high-end manufacturer Bang & Olufsen is setting out to change that perception with its latest offering. Announced at the CEDIA conference this week, the company’s new wireless speaker platform promises to deliver 24-bit, uncompressed audio to either a pair of speakers or a full 7.1 surround setup. To do that, the platform employs the WiSA open standard, which operates in the 5.2-5.8 GHz range, along with some more proprietary tech from B&O and Summit Semiconductor. The end result of that, the company says, is not only speakers that provide a “second-to-none multi-channel wireless experience,” but ones that are compatible with any WiSA-compliant device. The company isn’t quite ready to show off any new speakers based on the new platform just yet, though; it’s saving that announcement for late October, when a new set of “Immaculate Wireless Sound” speakers is set to debut.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Apple today posted a new job listing seeking a Maps Web User Interface Designer to “design, develop, and maintain complex front-end code for a new secret project.”

While the job listing briefly mentions Maps, it appears that the position could have a broader web development focus. According to the posting, the designer would join a small team that is working on an advanced web platform that will be the backbone of many future Apple services.

Qualifications for the position include a minimum of three years of experience building both applications and web services, along with understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, DOM, XML, JSON and various Javascript testing frameworks.

Design, develop, and maintain complex front-end code for a new secret project

Document and build unit tests for your code.

Work with operations, QA, and product management to maximize product effectiveness

Though it is unclear what the secret project alludes to, it is possible that Apple is working on building up a more prominent web presence, developing a series of web-based apps that would extend the Apple experience outside of Apple products.

For example, the company could build a web-based Maps app, similar to Google Maps, which could possibly be incorporated into iCloud or other Apple products in the future. At the present time, Apple still uses Google Maps for Find My iPhone in iCloud, and a new web-based Maps app could present a unified Apple mapping solution for the company.

It is also possible, however, that this position involves the building of internal web tools to manage Apple services that would not be public facing.

Apple has been working on expanding the reach of its products in recent months, introducing iBooks and Maps apps for the Mac with Mavericks and debuting iWork for iCloud, which allows Apple’s iWork apps to be accessed anywhere.

(Thanks, James!)

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It was announced this week that Kurt Russell is set to star in the new "Fast and Furious 7." This is excellent news, as whenever it is announced that Kurt Russell is going to be in a new movie it should be celebrated with the appropriate amount of nostalgic excitement. 

And why do people get excited whenever Mr. Russell is announced to have a part in a new movie? Because we all love and remember just how awesome 1980s Kurt Russell was. 

Yes, he had some great movies and roles in the '90s that included "Backdraft," "Captain Ron," "Tombstone," "Escape From L.A.," and "Breakdown," but the decade that defines Kurt Russell was easily the '80s.

Without further delay, here's a 1980s Kurt Russell retrospective of his "most Kurt Russelly" films and roles. 

"Used Cars" (1980)

Character: Rudy Russo

When "Used Cars" hit in 1980 it marked Russell's first big part in a Hollywood film. He had a role in 1976's "The Captive: The Longest Drive II," but the Robert Zemekis-directed and Steven Spielberg-produced wacky comedy hauled in $11 million domestically and put Russell on the map, which led to his role in the cult classic "Escape From New York."

In the movie Russell plays the sleazy Rudy Russo, a used car salesman who takes over the lot when the owner dies. He has to make the lot a success before the dead owner's brother, Roy L. Fuchs (Jack Warden), can swoop in and take over. Hijinks ensue with a couple of classic scenes that include faking the death of a dog to get a family to buy a car, a stuntman driving a man around wildly to induce a heart attack, and interrupting Jimmy Carter's presidential address to show a foul-mouthed car commercial. "Those prices are just TOO ... F**KING ... HIGH!" 

Have to watch out for those protesting nuns.

"Escape From New York" (1981)

Character: Snake Plissken

John Carpenter's "Escape From New York" is an utterly ridiculous movie, and for that reason it has achieved cult classic status and spawned a similarly fun sequel in 1996 called "Escape From L.A." But "Escape From L.A." didn't quite match the insane fun of the first. 

Russell stars as Snake Plissken, a convicted bank robber who is sent into Manhattan — which in the film's universe is a max security prison in 1997 — to save the President.

This is Snake. Snake is a badass. 

You don't mess with 1980s Kurt Russell.

He shoots.

He flies and shoots.

He's 1980s Kurt Russell. Action star.

"The Fox and the Hound" (1981)

Character: Voice of "old" Copper

In the same year that Russell starred as the gun-toting Plissken, he also voiced the character of the "old" Copper in Disney's animated film "The Fox and the Hound." While the movie has never particularly been looked upon as a classic, it was classic tear jerking Disney and added another notch in Russell's acting belt; that of voice actor. 

But he soon ditched voice acting to fight aliens that same year.

"The Thing" (1982)

Character: R.J. MacReady

 

From used car salesman to rampaging Snake Plissken to the voice of an animated dog, Russell then took on one of his most recognized roles as R.J. MacReady in John Carpenter's horror sci fi classic "The Thing." 

"The Thing" was an awesome, gruesome thriller of a movie that featured Russell fighting to survive against a shape-shifting alien hell bent on taking over Earth after being awakened when he was pulled from a spacecraft buried beneath the arctic ice.

"The Thing" is now widely thought to be the pinnacle of John Carpenter's career even though it bombed out at the theater. 

Russell's gritty performance moved away from the cheese he'd previously displayed and showed he had some real chops and range. Comedy? Check. Action? Check. Horror thriller? Check.

Russell took a couple years off from making iconic movies with a stretch that included the likes of "The Best Of Times," and "Silkwood." But then in 1986 Russell took on a role that would forever change the history of film.

"Big Trouble in Little China" (1986)

Character: Jack Burton

John Carpenter's BTILC got destroyed at the box office, pulling in $11 million after costing $25 million to make. No matter. This is the film that gave us the truck-driving, ninja- and supernatural-challenging, and wise-cracking Jack Burton. 

Russell again channels his goofy action demeanor to venture into the depths of the supernatural Chinese underworld of San Francisco. 

This is Ol' Jack.

Ol' Jack was perpetually lost and confused.

While it did nothing in theaters, BTILC has gone on to live a long life on late night cable and DVD. Long live tank top wearing, quotable, confused Ol' Jack Burton. 

"Overboard" (1987)

Character: Dean Proffitt

 

Starring alongside Russell is his long-time love Goldie Hawn whom he met on the set of "Swing Shift" in 1983. "Overboard" has Russell essentially kidnapping a rich Hawn and enslaving her into indentured servitude as his wife and "mother" of his children after she awakens from a fall off a yacht, resulting in amnesia.

Oh the hilarity.

"Overboard" still managed to somehow turn the slightly horrible premise into an at-times funny and now nostalgic comedy, and largely did so because of Russell and Hawn's chemistry. 

Russell loved his tank tops in the '80s.

"Tango and Cash" (1989)

Character: Lt. Gabriel Cash

Rounding out Russell's '80s run was "Tango and Cash," another return to action where he starred alongside Sly Stallone as one-half of a pair of cops who are framed and out to something something to clear their name something or other. 

The plot isn't important. What's important here is Russell teaming up with Sly in a cop buddy movie. Every actor worth his salt in the '80s had to star in at least one buddy cop movie. 

"Tango and Cash" wasn't a good movie per se, though it did spawn a sequel, feature every '80s action movie cliché and some suggestions that Tango and Cash were a bit more than buddies ...

Then there's this.

And there you have it, 1980s Kurt Russell. 

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De Amerikaanse president Obama heeft telefonisch met de Iraanse president gesproken. Het is voor het eerst sinds 1979 dat een Amerikaanse leider direct contact had met een Iraanse president. Obama belde Rohani toen die in de auto zat op weg naar JFK Airport na zijn bezoek aan de VN.

President Obama spoke by phone with Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, today, marking what he says is the first time that the countries' heads of state have spoken together since 1979. Speaking to the press, Obama said that he and Rouhani discussed Iran's nuclear program, which the US has been increasingly concerned over. Iran has maintained that the program is meant solely for developing energy, while the US is concerned that it will ultimately be used to construct weapons.

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Germany's Federal Patent Court invalidated an Apple photo-management patent because Steve Jobs showed how the technology worked during a keynote months before the company applied for the patent in Europe.

People dream of seeing the Big Five—lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards, and rhinoceros—in one of Africa's incredible national parks, but it's an expensive and time consuming trip that's not always feasible.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other places to see big game outside of Africa.

India has tigers, Brazil has jaguars, and the U.S. has bears, wolves, bison, and more.

Here are the best places to go on safari that are not in Africa.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is considered one of the best safari destinations outside of Africa. The Southeast Asian country has its own "Big Five": Asian elephants, leopards, sloth bears, blue whales and sperm whales.

Yala National Park is supposed to have the highest leopard density in the world, while herds of Asian elephants make their home in Udawalawe National Park. Several tour operators also organize trips through the Indian Ocean to spot blue whales.

The best time of year to go to Sri Lanka is January to April, during the dry season.

Brazil

From the dense Amazon jungle to the wetlands of the Pantanal, Brazil is teeming with wildlife. The country also has its own "Big Five": Brazilian tapirs, giant anteaters, giant river otters, maned wolves, and jaguars.

Many of these animals are difficult to spot, but if you head to the right region, you'll have a good chance of seeing them. The Pantanal region, the world's largest wetland, is probably your best bet, as it's home to jaguars, giant otters, macaws, pumas, and giant anteaters. Mato Grosso, which is home to maned wolves, river otters, and countless species of birds, is another good wildlife viewing region.

The best time of year to visit is during the drier months of June-October, when the Jaguars are easiest to spot on safari.

India

You won't find lions or hyenas in India, but you will find tigers, elephants, one-horned rhinos, and more.

There are over 80 national parks in India. One of the best places to see one-horned rhinos is in the northern state of Assam in Kaziranga National Park, which has over 1,600 Indian one-horned rhinos, as well as elephants, swamp deer and birds.

The state of Madhya Pradesh in central India is home to several national parks, including Kanha National Park, which served as the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book," and Bandhavgarh National Park, a remote park which is one of the few places where you have a good chance of seeing tigers. In Kerala, in southern India, the Periyar Tiger Reserve is home to tigers, elephants, leopards, giant squirrels, and dozens of bird species, including the elusive Kingfisher.

It's best to avoid visiting India during the monsoon, from June to September.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

On Saturday 21 September, as a number of gunmen from Somalia's Al-Shabaab Islamist militant group began their assault on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic snapped a picture of a small girl running towards a man.

The image became one of the many iconic photographs from the attack, which dragged on for days, eventually leaving 72 dead and the mall in ruins. While few details were included with the Reuters description of the picture, the visual image of the small girl running alone to safety was striking enough for the image to go viral.

Now more details about the photograph — in particular, the black man holding a gun who is trying to reach the girl — have become known, and they're remarkable.

The man's name is Abdul Haji. The photograph is not a member of security forces, just a humble citizen and a Muslim who is ethnically Somalian. He had rushed to the mall to find his brother.

Speaking to Kenya's NTV television, Haji admitted that his first thought when he realized it was a terrorist attack was that men had come to attack his brother (the two men are sons of Mohamed Yusuf Haji, a Somali politician based in Kenya). Haji teamed up with plain-clothed police officers and a civilian security group and began working to get the people out of the building.

Asked by the hosts about the now iconic photograph, Haji said that his group were communicating with two women and their three children hiding behind the white table in the picture. After asking the women to run, they said they couldn't do it with the three children at once, so Haji asked the eldest child to run towards them alone.

The full interview is below (the moment where Haji talks about the photograph begins at 14:30):

Haji isn't the only one who has been found. The Daily Telegraph have identified the family of the girl in the photograph as four-year-old Portia Walton, the daughter of American expatriates.

"She's not normally the kind of girl that would run to a stranger, particularly one with a gun," her father told the Telegraph, adding that Portia seems fairly well after the attack, though she does want to stand a little closer to her parents than before.

Here's another photograph taken by Tomasevic showing Haji:

Here's a photograph of Katherine Walton, Portia's mother, in the background carrying another child:

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Global warming is almost certainly the fault of human beings, a new report by the United Nations climate panel states. It offers 95 percent certainty of that assertion, based on “some 2,500 pages of text and…millions of observations and over 2 million gigabytes of numerical data from climate model simulations,” and it cites over 9,200 scientific papers (75 percent of which are from the last three years). The report also suggests “substantial and sustained” efforts to reduce greenhouse gas production; greenhouse gases (everything from water vapor to nitrous oxide) are the primary cause of the greenhouse effect, which destroys the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are the main culprits causing the Earth’s ozone to deteriorate. CO2 levels have risen by 40 percent “since pre-industrial times,” much of which was absorbed by the Earth’s oceans (about 30 percent), resulting in rising acidity levels. Moreover, due to that absorption, the oceans — specifically the upper ocean (0 to 700 meters) — have been warming since the 1870s.

As one might expect, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the UN’s climate change panel) suggests a greener lifestyle worldwide to help roll back the compound effects of global warming. A Tesla for each of us, perhaps? But even if we all go super green and massively cut back on greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, it sounds like humanity won’t see the positive for quite some time. “As a result of our past, present and expected future emissions of CO2, we are committed to climate change, and effects will persist for many centuries even if emissions of CO2 stop,” co-chair Thomas Stocker says.

Filed under: Misc, Science, Alt

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Source: IPCC (1), IPCC (2), IPCC (3)

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A krokodil user with necrosis of the hand.

When the nasty, highly addictive street drug krokodil appears in a new area, it tends to spread fast. So when doctors at the Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center got two separate reports of suspected krokodil use in the last month — possibly only the second and third cases ever reported in the US — they alerted media, government, and the medical industry.

"We’re taking it very seriously because we’re worried that this drug has finally made it here in some substantial quantity," says Dr. Aaron Skolnik, a toxicologist at Banner. "We would love to be wrong, but whenever we hear about stuff like this, we usually get more."

Krokodil has been called a "moonshine drug,"...

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Yesterday, I mentioned that I think the stock market might crash.

I'm not predicting a crash — I just think the odds of this happening in the next couple of years are higher than usual (logic here).

More importantly, I think the odds are very high that, even if the market doesn't crash, stocks will return far less over the next decade than the double-digit percentages they have returned in the past four years.

In light of that view, several readers have asked why I am not selling my stocks or even going short the stock market to profit from a crash.

After all, if I think there's a "decent chance" of a 30%+ crash in the next year or two, wouldn't this be a wonderful opportunity to make (or at least save) some money?

That's a perfectly reasonable question.

Here's why I'm not selling my stocks or going short the stock market:

* My portfolio is already well diversified.  My savings are composed primarily of low-cost index funds holding stocks, bonds, cash, and real-estate. If the stock market collapsed, this diversification would cushion the blow. It would also (I hope) keep me from panicking and selling near the bottom. I also have enough allocated to cash that, if the market does crash, I'll be able to rebalance into stocks at a much lower level.

* I never invest money in the stock market that I need to use in the next 10 years. The stock market does crash occasionally. And the last thing you want is to have to sell your stocks during the period when the market is "crashed." If the stock market crashes permanently, or we get in a Japan-type situation in which stocks remain clobbered for decades, then, yes, I'll be bummed I didn't sell some now. But otherwise I expect any crash to be relatively temporary, just as the crash of 2008-2009 was.

* The outlook for other asset classes over the next 10 years is no more attractive than it is for stocks (and, in some possible scenarios, it is worse). If interest rates rise back to normal levels, bonds will get obliterated. Cash is earning nothing. Real-estate is also expensive by many measures. So the last thing I want to do is leap from the pot into the fire.

* There seems a reasonable likelihood that inflation will accelerate at some point over the next decade, and stocks are a good hedge against inflation. Unlike bonds and cash, stocks are "real" assets. They represent an ownership share in an enterprise whose business will adjust to inflation by raising the nominal level of prices, wages, and profits. Stocks don't necessarily do well in high-inflation environments (stocks were flat in nominal terms from 1966-1982 and dropped considerably after adjusting for inflation). But they do better than bonds, which get demolished.

* Just because I think there's a "decent chance" of a market crash doesn't mean I am highly confident there will be one. I am never highly confident of any short-term market behavior. And I would suggest that anyone who is highly confident about short-term market behavior either doesn't have much market experience or is deluding themselves. I am reasonably confident that stock returns will be crappy for the next decade — because all the valid valuation measures I know of suggest that they will. But sometimes things change fundamentally and the old rules no longer apply. And it's certainly possible that it's "different this time."

* I have learned the hard way that market timing is very difficult and is generally a terrible idea.  It is really hard to correctly "time" major market reversals. (I learned this as an analyst during the dotcom crash in 2000, and my mistake cost me and my clients a fortune.) And it is really, really hard to correctly time two major market reversals in a row, which is what I would have to do for it to be a smart idea for me to dump my stocks now. Specifically, if I sell now, and the stock market does, in fact, drop 30%+ from this level in the next couple of years, I will then have to figure out the right moment to get back in. (Given inflation, remaining on the sidelines forever would be a disaster.) If the market drops, say, 25%, it will be because things look so terrible that it will look like the market is going to drop another 25%. And who wants to buy only to have the market crash another 25%? If I set a hard "buy" floor at 30%, meanwhile, the market will no doubt drop 28.8% and then skyrocket, leaving me alone at the station as it rolls away.

* The market might not crash. Instead of crashing over the next year or two, the market might rise another 10%-30%-50%-100% and then correct the "imbalance" by parking in place for 10-20 years. It will be psychologically very difficult for me to buy back in at a higher level after selling here, especially if I am still worried about a crash. (And if I wait to buy in until I am NOT worried about a crash, I'll be waiting for Godot.)

* If I sell now, I'll have to pay taxes. Thanks to my indexing strategy, I have captured every point of the move up from the 2009 market low. When markets crash, I also buy more of them, so I was lucky enough to get some new stock in 2008 and 2009 at much lower levels than today. So if I sell now, I'll have some capital gains taxes to pay. (I did, stupidly, "rebalance" out of some stocks in 2011 or so, in part because I persuaded myself that we were experiencing a sort of sucker's rally. That dumb-ass move has cost me a lot of money between now and then and reaffirmed by conviction that market timing is idiotic. But, on the bright side, I have fewer embedded capital gains taxes to pay.)

* The best thing that could happen for my long-term stock returns would be for the market to crash 50% and then stay crashed for 5-7 years. I reinvest dividends. So if the market drops by, say, 50% over the next year, and then stays at, say, DOW 7,500 for 5-7 years, I will get to reinvest 5-7 years worth of dividends at half the price per share that I am paying today. This will result in my accumulating twice as many new shares over the next 5-7 years as I will if stocks stay where they currently are. Then, 5-7 years from now, when the stock market finally begins to recover, these new shares will act as a sort of portfolio turbocharger, boosting my returns.  

In short, the only thing I am really worried about as a stock-market investor is a permanent crash. And if the stock market crashes permanently, it will likely be because the United States has experienced a communist revolution in which all private assets are seized or some other cataclysm. And if that happens, I'm going to have bigger things to worry about than my stock portfolio...

SEE ALSO: I Think There's A Decent Chance The Stock Market Will Crash

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Particle accelerators range in size from massive to compact, but researchers from Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created one that’s downright miniscule. What you see above is a specially patterned glass chip that’s smaller than a grain of rice, but unlike a broken Coke bottle, it’s capable of accelerating electrons at a rate that’s roughly 10 times greater than the SLAC linear accelerator. Taken to its full potential, researchers envision the ability to match the accelerating power of the 2-mile long SLAC linear accelerator with a system that spans just 100 feet.

For a rough understanding of how this chip works, imagine electrons that are brought up to near-light speed and then concentrated into a tiny channel within the glass chip that measures just a half-micron tall. From there, infrared laser light interacts with patterned, nanoscale ridges within the channel to create an electrical field that boosts the energy of the electrons.

In the initial demonstration, researchers were able to create an energy increase of 300 million electronvolts per meter, but their ultimate goal is to more than triple that. Curiously enough, these numbers aren’t even that crazy. For example, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin were able to accelerate electrons to 2 billion electronvolts over an inch with a technique known as laser-plasma acceleration, which involves firing a laser into a puff of gas. Even if Stanford’s chip-based approach doesn’t carry the same shock and awe, it seems the researchers are banking on its ability to scale over greater distances. Now if we can just talk them into strapping those lasers onto a few sharks, we’ll really be in business.

Filed under: Science

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Valve has designed a unique input device for computers: the Steam Controller, the company announced today.

Built over the course of the past year, the Steam Controller features no analog sticks; in their place sit two high-resolution circular trackpads for the player's thumbs. The pads can be clicked, which allows them to also function as buttons.

"The trackpads allow far higher fidelity input than has previously been possible with traditional handheld controllers," reads the announcement post. "Steam gamers, who are used to the input associated with PCs, will appreciate that the Steam Controller's resolution approaches that of a desktop mouse."

According to Valve, the Steam Controller's trackpads are sensitive enough to allow entire...

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Yesterday we told you which states have the biggest problems with which drugs.

What about for the country as a whole?

Via the DEA, here is the evolution of drug seizures between 1986 and 2012.

The figures can be largely taken as a proxy for which drugs were most popular when.

But they're also a reflection of laws and economics.

As a result, you'll notice that seizures of some drugs have come down significantly thanks since the Great Recession, as well as the dialing back of the war on drugs under the Obama administration. Meanwhile, cheaper drugs have seen their popularity climb.

ACID: The huge spike in 2000 was largely due to a single, legendary seizure at a former missile silo.COCAINE: There was a large surge in the mid-part of the 2000s thanks in part to a Operation "Busted Manatee," aimed at targeting Caribbean trafficking routes. The numbers may also have come down during that period thanks to more aggressive policing by then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Also, it was around this time that everyone was starting to feel wealthier.MARIJUANA: Our Walt Hickey just documented what drove the large decline after 2010.HEROIN: Its popularity seems to come in and out, but has seen a recent resurgence because it is relatively cheap to make.METH: Its the cheapest drug to make. As a result, seizures continue to soar.

SEE ALSO: Do Not Miss The Maps Showing Drug Popularity By State

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In an unexpected turn, Delta has informed employees that it will be issuing a Surface 2 running Windows 8.1 RT to every pilot over the next two years. The airline ran an Electronic Flight Bag pilot program with iPads back in 2011, but for reasons unknown, that popular slate has since been scrapped. According to WindowsITPro, Delta had since planned to move forward with Nokia’s rumored tablet, but has opted for the Surface 2 instead. The decision follows a move to equip flight attendants with Lumia 820 handsets, which will be used for processing payments and tracking passenger information. Considering the importance of a reliable cockpit device, however, this Surface 2 news is arguably far more significant.

Filed under: Tablets, Microsoft

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Via: GeekWire

Source: WindowsITPro

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Eurostar wil eind 2016 een rechtstreekse treinverbinding tussen Amsterdam en Londen beginnen. Het is de bedoeling dat er twee keer per dag een trein gaat rijden tussen de twee hoofdsteden. Eurostar ondertekende vandaag met de NS een akkoord over de nieuwe verbinding.

"We hebben sinds lange tijd de ambitie gehad om uit te breiden naar nieuwe bestemmingen", zegt directeur Petrovic van Eurostar. "Deze route is een van de populairste in Europa, met meer dan drie miljoen reizigers per jaar die het vliegtuig nemen."

Volgens Eurostar duurt de reis ongeveer vier uur en gaat de hogesnelheidstrein via Brussel, Antwerpen, Rotterdam en Schiphol naar Amsterdam Centraal.

Op dit moment moeten reizigers die vanuit Amsterdam met de trein naar Londen gaan nog overstappen in Brussel.

Most American adults can drive, but that doesn't mean we understand everything about our cars.

And it turns out, much of what we think we know is totally wrong.

For the purposes of education, we've compiled 15 common car myths.

Some are outdated, some are misunderstandings, and one or two are dangerous.

They're all total bunk.

1. Manual transmissions offer better fuel economy than automatics.

This used to be the case, when automatic transmissions were relatively new.

But recent advances in the technology (like the continuously variable transmission, which offers an infinite range of gear ratios) eliminate the advantage of manuals, and in some cases put automatics ahead.

2. You can make your car much more powerful by filling it with jet fuel.

Definitely not — in fact, your gas-powered car won't go anywhere at any speed if you put anything but gas in the tank. Conventional car engines can't combust kerosene.

Last year, a fuel delivery service accidentally delivered kerosene jet fuel to a New Jersey gas station. Some cars were filled with the fuel, and promptly stalled.

3. A bullet to a car's gas tank will lead to a big explosion.

A common trope in action movies is the moment where a well-aimed shot turns a bad guy's getaway car into a flaming wreck.

Discovery's "Mythbusters" proved that in real life, bullets go right through the tank — without fire, there's no ignition, and no explosion.

4. Turning on the air conditioner is better for fuel economy than opening the windows.

This one's harder to pin down. Mythbusters found an SUV with open windows will go farther than one with the A/C on. Consumer Reports looked into it, and found that A/C leads to a "slight decrease in fuel economy," but recommend using it anyway, to keep the driver alert and comfortable.

For the final word, we looked to a 2004 study by GM and SAE. It found that for both sedans and SUVs, at a variety of speeds, turning the A/C on (at medium power) gobbles up more fuel than driving with the windows down.

5. Using your cell phone while pumping gas can trigger an explosion.

I was once scolded by an aunt who was convinced that my checking my email while she filled her gas tank would engulf us both in fire.

The Federal Communications Commission investigated "rumors" that a wireless signal can ignite fuel vapors, and concluded: "there is no documented incident where the use of a wireless phone was found to cause a fire or explosion at a gas station," and "scientific testing, however, has not established a dangerous link between wireless phones and fuel vapors."

6. You get more for your money when you fill your gas tank in the morning.

The logic behind this one is that when temperatures are cool, gasoline is denser, so you get more fuel per gallon pumped.

But, as Consumer Reports explains, gasoline is stored in underground tanks, where the temperature hardly fluctuates. So the gas coming out of the nozzle is basically always at the same density, whenever you decide to pump.

7. Hiding behind a car will protect you from gunfire.

Another common movie move is to hide behind your ride when the bullets start flying. Some bullets may not be powerful enough to cut through the steel, but it's not a safe bet.

As Business Insider reporter and former Marine Geoff Ingersoll has written: "Cars are not cover! They are concealment. This isn't the movies. Bullets go through cars. Quietly find some earth, stone, or steel to hid behind."

8. Off-brand gas will hurt your car.

Actually, there's no good reason to avoid "off-brand" gas stations that charge less. Name-brand stations like Mobil and Shell may put extra engine-cleaning additives in their gasoline, but using generic gas won't harm your engine in any way — it has to meet the same standards as the pricey stuff.

9. Electric cars are more likely to catch fire after a crash than conventional cars.

Stories of Fisker Karmas and Chevy Volts catching on fire have spread, but the truth is that gas-powered cars can ignite too, in the right (or wrong) circumstances.

In 2012, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated the crash-related fire risk in the Chevy Volt, and concluded: "The NHTSA does not believe that Chevy Volts or other electric vehicles pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles."

10. The Toyota Prius gets worse gas mileage than a BMW M3.

This one comes from a 2009 episode of "Top Gear," which ran a test in which the powerful BMW actually got more miles per gallon than the little hybrid. But what people forget is that that test was done on a track, with the Prius driving as fast as possible, and the BMW just keeping up.

Yes, the M3 is more efficient than the Prius in very specific conditions. But if you drive on public roads and want to save on fuel, take the hybrid. Host Jeremy Clarkson explained, "It isn't what you drive that matters, it's how you drive it."

11. You need to change your oil every 3,000 miles. Or never change it at all.

That rule may have held for older cars, but it's now a thing of the past. By now, it's been so thoroughly debunked, it has its own Wikipedia page. In turn, that has spawned another myth: You never actually need to change your car's oil.

But while most modern cars can go as far as 10,000 miles without fresh oil, the occasional change is still necessary. Taking on the question, "What if I never changed the oil in my car," How Stuff Works answered: "Eventually, as the oil gets dirtier and dirtier, it will stop lubricating and the engine will quickly wear and fail."

12. A dirty car is more fuel efficient than a clean one.

The thinking here is that mud caked on the side of a car works like dimples on a golf ball, reducing drag. Mythbusters checked this one out, and found that dirt particles actually create more drag — and can reduce fuel economy by a whopping 10%.

13. Premium fuel makes your non-premium car run better.

More expensive gas isn't purer or cleaner than the regular version. It is less combustible, which makes a difference for powerful engines, but has no effect in your Camry.

The Federal Trade Commission puts it simply: "In most cases, using a higher octane gasoline than your owner's manual recommends offers absolutely no benefit."

14. Red cars are pulled over for speeding more often than non-red cars.

When it comes to cars most likely to get pulled over, color doesn't make a difference. A study by Quality Planning, published by Forbes, revealed the most ticketed car is the Mercedes-Benz SL Class convertible. That's no surprise, as the 2013 version goes from 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, according to Edmunds.

15. Circuses use trap doors and other tricks to fit all those clowns in those tiny cars.

We can't guarantee there aren't some frauds out there, but the true clown car doesn't use any slight of hand.

Greg DeSanto, executive director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center, explained to Car and Driver that the key is taking everything possible out of the car, "then it's a matter of shoving in the clowns."

Bonus: BMW drivers are the biggest jerks on the road.

This one, it turns out, is true. A 2012 traffic study looked at how often drivers stopped to let pedestrians cross the street. "BMW drivers were the worst," research Paul K. Piff told the New York Times.

Consider yourself educated.

MORE DEBUNKING: 10 Airplane Myths That People Still Believe

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Snapchat, the photo-messaging app, now boasts 350 million photo uploads daily, the same number as Facebook. 

That's a major tipping point. The app landscape is getting fractured. Photography, messaging, social media — all are witnessing the rise of new mobile-focused apps and services that threaten legacy players like Facebook.

Even Instagram appears old-hat now next to Snapchat's disappearing photos and more private peer-to-peer model. And WhatsApp, the messaging service with 300 million users, has been able to collect paid download and annual subscription revenue. 

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we analyze how these new upstart apps are becoming powerful platforms of their own, thanks mainly to their popularity among youthful demographics. 

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Take a look at this infographic: 

In other words, established Internet companies like Facebook are threatened by teen audiences and their tendency to fragment across platforms, especially decentralized messaging and blogging platforms like Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Tumblr. 

Teenagers are flocking to mobile services that peel away many of the features at the heart of Facebook. Like most trends in the tech industry, the fragmentation of messaging and social media has started with the youngest users and is working its way up the age chain.

Right now, cross-posting softens some of the edges of competition. However, given the spate of conflicts between networks recently, one shouldn't assume cross-posting will always be allowed.

As we argue in our report, we may be witnessing is the unraveling of a unitary, centralized social media landscape, dominated by Facebook, into a set of multipolar nodes. Facebook warded off the Instagram threat by buying the company, but it won't always be possible for the company to neutralize threats with acquisitions.    

To access BI Intelligence's full report on How Mobile-First Habits Threaten To Upend The Tech Industry, sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today. 

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