http://elitedaily.com/dating/gentlemen/10-signs-youre-dating-woman-girl/638177/

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/verizons-perma-cookie/

Verizon added a unique identifier on the header whenever you access any website via your mobile devices using Verizon network, that means any website you use your phone to access can build a profile of you using that unique id.

http://www.quora.com/How-can-a-beginner-learn-algorithms-in-order-to-get-a-job-in-companies-like-Facebook-Google-Microsoft-etc

Learn data structures and algorithms by taking relevant classes at your school, reading textbooks, reading online material, and watching video lectures. Make sure you understand all of the following algorithms and concepts:
Breadth First Search
Depth First Search
Binary Search
Merge Sort
Quick Sort
Tree Operations
Bit Manipulation
Recursion
Big-O Performance

If you lack a basic understanding of data structures and algorithms, start with a class or textbook. I'm using Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java (3rd Edition): Mark A. Weiss.

Get an interview preparation book like Cracking the Coding Interview (5th Edition) that includes programming practice problems. Solve problems from the book.

Search online for real interview questions from the companies you are interviewing with. Solve problems. Some popular websites:
CareerCup
TopCoder
GeeksforGeeks
Sphere Online Judge (SPOJ)
Project Euler
HackerRank

There are also some good MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) on algorithms. I've seen a few over on Coursera that might be good as a supplement to an algorithms class (or a replacement, if you can't take one at your school).

Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 1 (Stanford)
Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 2 (Stanford)
Algorithms, Part I (Princeton)
Analysis of Algorithms (Princeton)

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140825195748-7374576-the-counterintuitive-trait-that-will-make-you-significantly-more-successful by Shane Snow

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a pessimist says, "I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist."

Truthfully, most of us think we're "realists." We see the world the way we see it. But how we actually behave is a different matter, and reveals the truth about our outlook. A "realist" who complains about how the country will be worse under President X is really a pessimist. A "realist" who thinks that because she's won three hands in a row means she's more likely to win the next hand is optimistic, but in a very bad way.

Optimism: hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.
Pessimism: a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen; a lack of hope or confidence in the future.
Generally, pessimism is seen as a bad thing. It prevents us from going after our dreams. Yet, smart investors rely on pessimism to hedge bets and not lose money. And though glass-half-full optimism is typically praised by society and touted by successful entrepreneurs, Bernie Madoff went to prison because of his faith in his ability to beat the financial system without getting caught.

After spending the last few years studying and interviewing unconventional successes and the factors that lead to faster-than-usual progress (and even writing a book about it), I've found that something that's commonly conflated with pessimism actually makes a crucial difference between moderately successful people and incredibly successful people. This trait is a key ingredient in the formula that leads to breakthrough innovation, and goes often unrecognized.

Fact is, Optimism vs. Pessimism—one's measure of faith in the future—is an incomplete yardstick for future success. But when we add second dimension to that yardstick, we reveal a combination that makes optimism much more powerful. That dimension is credulity.

The differences between Optimism and Credulity, Skepticism and Pessimism, are subtle. But they're crucial. On their face, credulity seems to be a marker of good faith, a noble value, and skepticism is thought of as grouchy or stubborn. However, here's how the dictionary defines them:

Credulous: having or showing too great a readiness to believe things.
Skeptical: not easily convinced; having doubts or reservations.
When charted by these two dimensions, it's clear that some measure of success and failure can be found in every category:

A compulsive gambler, is both optimistic and credulous, believing she can and will win. And yet, entrepreneurs are often both optimistic and credulous.

Someone with a persecution complex is both skeptical and pessimistic, believing people have ill intentions and things won't get better. And yet, some hoarders and hermits leave their kin valuable property in their wills.

A conspiracy nut is perhaps worst of all: he is both eager to believe and pessimistic about the future. And yet conspiracy websites make money from advertisements. (Not to mention, some investors make—or avoid losing—lots of money using this attitude.)

Though people can find success with any of these combinations, the most counter-intuitive quadrant is the one where the most breakthrough success can be found: Optimistic, but Skeptical. This is where the innovators reside, where inventors who dare to doubt the status quo ask the questions that need to be asked in order for the world to change. They need a healthy amount of optimism to believe that the world can change for the better, and that drives them to make transformative things happen:

*(Note: I don't intend to downplay the hardship that is clinical depression, re: Quadrant 3. Depression comes with, by definition, an inability to see a better future. You're skeptical of the value of basic things in life including life itself, and that's an incredibly difficult obstacle.)

As you can see, credulous optimists can be quite successful, and do a lot of good. But there's something special about optimists' skeptical counterparts.

While credulous optimists rely on good winds to push their sails (and often find them), skeptical optimists ask questions like, "Do we need sails?"

Once you recognize the trait, it's easy to see why the world's great change-makers fit in this category, and why skeptical optimism is under-appreciated. Steve Jobs was one of the world's greatest optimists, and that's what people remember him for. But he was also incredibly demanding and skeptical. He was constantly unsatisfied, consistently pushing back against what was shown him or what was conventional. He continually said, "That's not good enough."

Jobs was not easily convinced. But he believed in an incredible future. And that combination helped him unlock it.

Harriet Tubman, one of my favorite historical characters, was clearly an optimist when she had many reasons not to be. She was born a slave, lived a hard life, suffered a head injury that caused her seizures; her husband remarried another woman and declined to flee north with her. And yet, after she escaped from her captors, Tubman ventured back into slave territory to rescue people. She clearly had faith in a better future for her and them, and that's what people remember.

But Tubman wasn't credulous. She was extremely careful, carried a pistol with her (and had occasion to pull it out). She was wary of circumstances and people's loyalty and intentions until proven otherwise—and that allowed her to rescue dozens of people from slavery and inspire millions more.

The skeptical optimist believes things can be better, but doubts conventional wisdom. Sure, madmen also fall under this definition. But as I've written before, crazy is one of genius's main ingredients.

For those of us who have faith in a better future, personally or professionally, cultivating a skeptical eye can transform how we operate—for the better. For those that lack confidence, let's harness that doubt into healthy solutions and big ideas.

It doesn't matter if the glass is half full or half empty if you think you can make a better glass.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140825195748-7374576-the-counterintuitive-trait-that-will-make-you-significantly-more-successful

Several weeks ago, I shared the above Venn diagram in a status update. With 20k+ likes and comments on LinkedIn and over 2.2k retweets and favorites on Twitter, it's become the most viral update I've shared to date. As a result, thought it might be interesting to provide some additional context on where the diagram came from.

It all started in a meeting where a talented team was presenting their plan for a potentially high impact initiative. Midway through, they covered the measurable results they expected to achieve in three years. Granted, they were being somewhat conservative, but their objectives were still way off what I would have expected them to be targeting based on the addressable opportunity and the assets we were bringing to the table.

Without hesitation, I challenged the team to increase their long-term goal by roughly 20x. Regardless of whether or not they could hit the target (which I think they can), the point was to get them thinking much bigger, without constraints, and to start by asking the question, "What would it take...?"

Dream Big

Oftentimes, my favorite exchanges are with people who are naturally predisposed to think at truly massive scale and without limitations. When well reasoned, that kind of vision can be highly inspirational, change the way teams solve for a specific opportunity or challenge, and ultimately, transform the trajectory of a company. During this particular meeting, I ended up writing down two simple words to capture this quality: "Dream big," with the intention of cascading the theme more broadly.

Get Sh*t Done

Almost immediately after seeing those words in writing, I realized the message was incomplete.The team leading the discussion that day may have been conservative in their approach to articulating what was possible, but they were also highly capable and credible -- and had a proven track record of delivering results. Demanding excellence is an important value for us. It's something I would never want taken for granted or crowded out by the singular objective of thinking at scale. Asking people to dream big without delivering on the vision was not only an incomplete sentiment, it could carry the unintended consequence of producing pie-in-the-sky thinking without anything to show for it.

If a goal is truly visionary, it's going to be confronted by doubters, skeptics, and those threatened by its realization. As a result, there will always be walls put up on the way to achieving the objective. Some of the most capable people I've worked with know how to go over, around, or straight through those walls by virtue of their resourcefulness and sheer force of will. In other words, they just "get sh*t done."

I added those three words to my notes, drew overlapping circles around "Get sh*t done" and "Dream big", and thought about how invaluable it is to work with people at the intersection of the two.

Know How to Have Fun

It then occurred to me that I've known a number of people who embodied the ability to dream big and get sh*t done, but who also proved very difficult to work with. Perhaps shielded by the immense value they brought to their respective organizations, they never cultivated the ability to manage compassionately, or even cared to. Rather, they did things their way and expected everyone around them to adapt accordingly. More often than not, that's exactly what people did.

While this has clearly proven to work at some now legendary companies, it's not an easily scalable or reproducible model, it's not necessary, and in my opinion, it's not fun (I say in my opinion because there are those who will argue that winning is fun, regardless of the means employed).

I've reached a point in my career where I want to be surrounded by people who not only share a vision, but a genuine commitment to upholding their company's culture and values. They are team players, don't take themselves too seriously, and "know how to have fun." And with that, I added a third circle to the Venn diagram.

At the nexus of these three circles are the people I most enjoy working with. I'm extraordinarily grateful to have the opportunity to do that every day.

The answer is very disturbing.
I thought it was less than 10. Watch the video to find out.

The worst offenders are USA, USSR, FRA, UK, & China, with India & Pakistan in the mix too.

It makes you wonder how safe Nevada & parts of California are.

"A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto"

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/

http://www.gemnation.com/base?processor=getPage&pageName=forever_diamonds_1

http://www.mmartinjewelry.com/newpage8.htm

http://columbiaisa.50webs.com/diamonds_guide.htm

http://www.world-trust.itgo.com/index3.htm

http://www.pricescope.com/wiki/diamonds