Friday, October 25, 2013

This Lexus Paints Your Portrait Based On How You Drive

Car aficionados will readily defend their favorite vehicles as rolling works of art, but art collector Walter Vanhaerent might be the only driver on earth who can definitively make that claim. Because his new Lexus IS 300h hybrid actually paints his portrait every time he hits the road.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/1N6AQfFgIgM/this-lexus-paints-your-portrait-based-on-how-you-drive-1452061986
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Ashley Greene: Hooray Henry’s Hottie

Kicking off her weekend a little early, Ashley Greene blew off some steam at Hooray Henry’s in Los Angeles last night (October 24).


Joined by a few friends, the “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1” starlet was hard to miss in her magenta top and black trousers as she made her exit from the hot spot.


After finishing work on Zach Braff’s “Wish I Was Here,” Ashley has been busy filming “Staten Island Summer” with Gina Gershon, Graham Phillips, and Kate Walsh.


Per the synopsis, “Pals Danny and Frank spend the summer after high school working as spend as lifeguards while figuring out what their future.”


Source: http://celebrity-gossip.net/ashley-greene/ashley-greene-hooray-henry%E2%80%99s-hottie-949538
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Fab.com Updates Site To Give Better Recommendations As It Pursues Global Growth


Lifestyle focused e-commerce company Fab has unveiled a new design for its website in time for the holiday shopping season. The core of Fab.com’s new user interface is its ‘Personalization’ feature, which leverages collaborative filtering technology developed by Fab to make product recommendations more relevant to each shopper’s interests. Fab will also update its iOS and Android apps within the next few days. The company is offering a $10 credit today at this link.


Fab.com’s collaborative filtering tech, which integrates users’ activity on the site as well as social networking sites, evaluates the items each visitor has viewed, faved or shared on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, past purchases, and activity by other shoppers Fab believes have similar tastes. The site’s recommendation engine takes advantage of data points accumulated from its members, which numbered 14 million in June.


Fab and other sites that use collaborative filtering (including Pinterest) constantly try to refine their algorithms so they can provide the most accurate recommendations based on the smallest amount of data. This is important to hook users as early as possible, even if they have clicked on only a few items. Fab’s collaborative filtering technology uses Apache Mahout’s machine learning libraries, which also includes support for user and item based recommendations.
Fab new app
The company says its next step is working on singular value decomposition, or the factorization of a real or complex matrix in linear algebra. This helps Fab because collaborative filtering may become slower as the amount of data it has to evaluate increases. Singular value decomposition, on the other hand, offers more scalability and potentially make more accurate predictions using data sets with less dimensionality.


Fab’s redesign (which also includes a new user interface that follows the recent trend for flat design among tech companies and larger product photos) comes as the company focuses on expansion in Asia, part of its goal to join a roster of e-commerce companies that are valued at more than $10 billion: Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and Rakuten.


But Fab’s growth strategy has not come without its share of headaches. Earlier this year, Fab made the latest in a series of pivots by moving its business model away from flash sales to focus on its “lifestyle shop,” including home goods, which account for 50 percent of sales. The company said it abandoned its flash sales model because it is difficult to scale globally if Fab wants to be able to sell the same products around the world.


Then in July, it was sued for trademark infringement and unfair competition by shoes and apparel site Just Fab. Around the same time, Fab.com laid off about 150 employees from its Berlin offices in what it said was an effort to reduce redundancies.


The lay-offs came just one month after Fab announced the close of $150 million in Series D funding, with plans to raise another $100 million. Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg said the company started down the fundraising route in March to raise enough capital to have several years of runway, at least until 2015. The funds will be used to invest in additional enhancements to its supply chain, logistics, customer service, technology and merchandising.



Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/wkwcjCrE9C0/
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Google Sound Search lands in Canada [Update: not anymore]

What's this song?

Update: Looks like things have reverted back, and the Sound Search widget is once again unavailable in Canada.

Original story: Though they're still unable to stream from Google Play Music, Canadians now have the ability to use Google's Sound Search widget to identify music. The widget works on home screens and lock screens, and uses your phone or tablet's microphones to match what's playing against Google's vast library of music. (The same library still unavailable in Canada.)

Strangely, MobileSyrup reports that asking Google Now "What's this song" still returns an error message in Canada, while the standalone widget works as expected.

Would it be overly optimistic to think Sound Search's launch in Canada might signal the arrival of more Google music content for Canadians in the near future? Who knows, but surely it's about time.

Source: MobileSyrup


    






Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/NTTwjBshAtg/story01.htm
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Meghan McCain dishes about her 'pain in the ass' dad


Top Line

Sen. John McCain says his daughter Meghan can be a “giant pain in the ass.”

But the 29-year-old daughter of the Arizona Republican is laughing off her father’s comment, which he makes in jest during an interview with Meghan in an upcoming episode of her new reality show, “Raising McCain.”

“I feel like McCains are pains in the asses!” McCain told “Top Line.”

McCain, who first rose to prominence by keeping a blog during her father’s 2008 presidential campaign, said that she and her father are both working through a shared frustration with the current state of the GOP.

“We’re both frustrated with the idea that only the hyper-conservative wing of the party is going to represent the masses,” said McCain, who later added that “Republicans are giving young people no reason to join their party right now.”

McCain said the emotional toll of her father’s frustration rivals the disappointment he experienced after losing the 2008 election.

“I’ve never heard him this depressed other than maybe after the ‘08 election,” McCain said. “He’s so depressed, so down-trodden. The way he’s talking about it, he’s never seen it this bad in his 30-plus years in office.”

Asked about the recent comments from her 77-year-old father that he may run for another term in the U.S. Senate, McCain said the news came as a surprise.

“I know, and I found out through Twitter, again,” she said, but added that his age isn’t why she hesitates in supporting the concept of another campaign.

“My father has more energy than I do and I legitimately say that, so it’s not his age, it’s just the idea of having another dirty tea party election,” she said.

But if you think this junior McCain might step up to fill her father’s shoes, think again. She insisted that she has no intention to ever run for public office.

“I think women have to give up so much to run for office, which maybe makes me a hypocrite, because I think more women should be in office,” McCain said. “I always say, I want more tattoos and I don’t plan on getting married anytime soon so I think those two things might automatically make me not eligible for running for office.”

To hear more about McCain’s new show that airs on Pivot, and her advice to the millennial generation about protecting their online identities, check out this episode of “Top Line.”

ABC News’ Alexandra Dukakis, Tom Thornton, Gary Westphalen, Melissa Young and Bob Bramson contributed to this episode.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/meghan-mccain-dishes-about-her-pain-in-the-ass-dad-204306215.html
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SlingPlayer gets AirPlay support, Blockbuster arrives on SlingBox 500 in new update

Sling Media has just rolled out an update that brings a number of improvements to the Slingbox 500 and to the SlingPlayer app. For the Slingbox 500, Blockbuster On Demand is now available as a premium video service along with a new My Media feature that lets users access media via a USB drive. Only ...


Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/hPHRfAT4dJE/
Category: courtney stodden   vince young   Rihanna   Chelsea Manning   Cyclospora  

Guy On Train Live Tweets Former NSA Chief's On-Background Interview



You'd think he'd be more careful: The man who was once responsible for the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency was giving a background interview during a train ride, but he didn't notice that a fellow passenger was live tweeting the highlights.


In truth, we didn't learn any secrets from Ret. Gen. Michael Hayden, but Tom Matzzie, who used to work for the liberal group MoveOn.org, provided a riveting — and funny — account of the ordeal on his Twitter feed.


Matzzie said Hayden told the journalists that he could only be identified as a former senior administration official and then went on to give "disparaging quotes about" the Obama administration. At one point Hayden, said Matzzie, was "bragging about rendition and black sites."


Hayden, you might remember, served as the NSA director under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He served as CIA Director for Bush and Obama.


As you might imagine, eventually Hayden got a call from his office telling him what was going on. Matzzie wondered if he should hide. But Hayden graciously offered an interview and even took a picture with Matzzie.


Eventually, Matzzie tweeted, Hayden got off the train in Newark.


"He touched my back... again," Matzzie tweeted, before adding that he was about to get off the train himself and someone should "email my wife and explain all this."


Micah Sifry, the co-founder of Personal Democracy Forum, Storified the entire thing:



Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/24/240587739/guy-on-train-live-tweets-former-nsa-chiefs-on-background-interview?ft=1&f=1001
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