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A social-network illusion that makes things appear more popular than they are

An illustration of the “majority illusion” paradox. The two networks are identical, except for which three nodes are colored. These are the “active” nodes and the rest are “inactive.” In the network on the left, all “inactive” nodes observe that at least half of their neighbors are “active,” while in the network on the right, no “inactive” node makes this observation. Credit: arXiv:1506.03022 [cs.SI]
A trio of researchers at the University of California has uncovered a social-network illusion that might explain why some things become popular in cyberspace while others do not. Kristina Lerman, Xiaoran Yan and Xin-Zeng Wu have written a paper describing the illusion and how it works and have posted it on the preprint server arXiv.
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Happy Pi Day!

 

Today 3/14/15 is Pi Day–the date is the first 5 digits of Pi. Of course, Europe doesn’t get a Pi Day since the day is first there and there is no 31.4.15 since there are not 31 days in April. That date is really 01.5.15, but I digress.

Pi time is 9:26:53. Which, when appended to the date, gives the first 10 digits of Pi. And sometime between 53 and 54 seconds, Pi will be expressed exactly for an instant in time.

Ain’t that a kick?

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The DIY Robots That Ride Camels and Fight for Human Rights

 

The first self-driving cars are expected to hit showrooms within five years. Their autonomous capabilities will be largely limited to highways, where there aren’t things like pedestrians and cyclists to deal with, and you won’t fully cede control. As long as the road is clear, the car’s in charge. But when all that computing power senses […]

The post The DIY Robots That Ride Camels and Fight for Human Rights appeared first on WIRED.

via WIRED http://ift.tt/1FRE8tN

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Salang road reopen for traffic

Happens every year–BB

KABUL (Pajhwok): The operation to clear the Salang Highway from snow is ended and the strategic route is now reopened to traffic on Saturday, an official said.

The Salang Highway which connects Kabul with nine northern provinces, has been closed for traffic after avalanches closed the… read more

By Mohammad Halim Karimi on 28 February 2015

 

via Pajhwok Afghan News (English) http://ift.tt/1BpOTEC