China’s leading e-commerce marketplace.
Taobao, China’s leading e-commerce marketplace, racked up RMB 1 billion ($164 million) in mobile purchases from over 14 million user accounts one hour into China’s annual Single’s Day shopping blitz,
Amazon partners with USPS to begin seven-day delivery
Amazon.com is partnering with the U.S. Postal Service to begin Sunday delivery, initially in NY and LA.
On Monday, the online megastore, Amazon announced a deal with the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages on Sundays. Amazon said the first Sunday deliveries would be made this coming weekend.
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How much money do people with your personality make?
Whenever presented with a theory like Carl Jung’s theory of personality types (which Myers and Briggs formalized into a personality test) it’s important to remember that you are in possession of a unique set of neurons whose synapses fire in unique patterns that cannot easily be slotted into one of sixteen “types” from which one can draw conclusions about your destiny. (Infographic)
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Optimizing Evil
Would the world be a better place if Adolph Hitler never existed?
While many people will argue over who exactly was the worst of the worst, with names like Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Idi Amin, Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, Nero, Osama bin Laden, Attila the Hun, and Hirohito entering the conversation, it’s easy to attribute a face to the evil we all despise.
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Why are science fiction writers so pessimistic?
Neal Stephenson launched the Hieroglyph project to rally writers to infuse science fiction with optimism.
When you think of recent films such as The Road and TV series like “The Walking Dead,” today’s science fiction, Neal Stephenson argues, is a fixated on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios. Gone are the hopeful visions prevalent in the mid-20th century. According to Stephenson, author of modern sci-fi classics such as Snow Crash, that’s a problem. He fears that no one will be inspired to build the next great space vessel or find a way to completely end dependence on fossil fuels when our stories about the future promise a shattered world.
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Do astronauts believe aliens exist?
“I don’t know of any astronauts who think we’re alone in the universe,” Chris Hadfield.
Chris Hadfield is a reasonable man. He is a former astronaut, former commander of the International Space Station, and a social media superstar.
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Halo – an intriguing new iPhone security gadget that implements a loud alarm
Halo
Smartphone thefts are on the rise in cities. It was only a matter of time until someone decided to bring the concept of a car alarm to your iPhone. (Video)
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World’s first bitcoin ATM gets 348 transactions in first 8 days
The world’s first ever permanent bitcoin ATM.
The first Bitcoin ATM in North America made a lot of hoopla when it went live in a Vancouver coffee shop last week. The ATM trades cash for Bitcoins. How many people actually used it? Here are some of the numbers:
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Instagram photos that are mostly blue get more likes: Study
When Curalate, a visual analytics platform, set out to quantify the impact that different image qualities have on Instagram, it discovered that photos with blue as the main color got the most likes. Reds and oranges on the other hand tended to receive 24 percent less likes than blue-tinted shots. (Infographic)
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Electric cars have almost no grid impact so far
Electricity usage doesn’t seem to be affected by electric cars so far.
Since electric cars lessen dependence on fossil fuels, what effect are they having on power consumption? The concern is that the large numbers of electric cars will increase the demand for electricity and overwhelm power grids — despite studies to the contrary.
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World’s first 3D printed metal gun
Solid Concepts 3D printed metal gun.
The first 3D printed gun was the Liberator pistol. Then came the Grizzly, a 3D printed rifle. Now a third one has surfaced, and it’s a doozy. This one is printed entirely out of metal and the gun’s design was copied from a classic 1911 model. (Video)
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Sono could soundproof your home from city noise
Sono
Living in a city has plenty of perks. You have convenient metro systems, plenty of gourmet dining choices and endless shopping destinations. But with all that activity comes a whole lot of noise pollution. The noise is an unavoidable side effect of living with millions of other people. That noise is likely to permeate your living space unless you’ve gone through the trouble of retrofitting your home with some kind of soundproofing. (Video)
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