“Proving itself a staggering 42 times faster at rendering JavaScript than IE 7, our benchmarks confirm Apple’s Safari 4 browser, released in beta today, is the fastest browser on the planet. In fact, it beat Google’s Chrome, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6 and even Mozilla’s developmental Minefield browser.” – CNET UK
Read the article: Safari 4 benchmarked: 42x faster than IE 7, 3.5x faster than Firefox 3
You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.
But this is not true…
Read the article: Game theory explains dinner-party dates
The film has been sharply criticised as “poverty porn”. Well-respected local filmmakers have described the film as titillating western audiences with its portrayal of slum life. “It’s nothing but a mediocre Bollywood film, which has used references from several Hindi films very smartly,” …
Read the article: ‘Slumdog’ Oscar success divides India
China is taking advantage of the economic downturn to go on a major shopping spree, investing in energy and other natural resources that could give it an economic advantage it has never had before.
Read the article: China invests US$41 billion in one month
Governments around the world are grappling with some of the toughest decisions faced in generations. In severe recession, they are collectively considering as much as $4,500bn (€3,600bn, £3,200bn) in stimulus investments.
Read the article: Smart ways to prepare for a world beyond recession
So how should we make a decision? The key is something called metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Because the mind is like a Swiss Army knife – it’s stuffed full of different mental tools, each of which is well-suited to a specific situation – it’s essential that we learn how to adjust our thought process to the task at hand.
Read the article: Decision time
In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it’s not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites.
Read the article: U.S. and Russian satellites collide
Somalia is a state governed only by anarchy. A graveyard of foreign-policy failures, it has known just six months of peace in the past two decades. Now, as the country’s endless chaos threatens to engulf an entire region, the world again simply watches it burn.
Read the article: The Most Dangerous Place in the World
Over the past two decades, the United States and China have developed a special relationship based on the safety of U.S. debt.
Read the article: Why China Needs US Debt
There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy.
Read the article: Galaxy has ‘billions of Earths’