tagged w/ functionality
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neham
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added this
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8 months ago
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This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/15027-are-you-living-in-a-computer-simulationThis paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the... more
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worrg
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added this
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1 year ago
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hey currentians,
i know, i know...it's been SOOOO long since our last feature release. all jokes aside, the second part of our feature release doubleheader just rolled out, and it introduces a brand new concept to current.com called "bundles."
Q: what is a bundle?
A: a bundle is a group of stories packaged together based on their relationship to one another. these stories usually come from different sources, but are all related based on keywords and other similarities.
Q: why are you calling these "baby-bundles" then?
A: well, the bundling concept is still in the infancy stage -- hence, the use of the word "baby." we have much, much bigger plans for these once they reach the "adult" stage, but we are not quite there yet in this release. so let's get into some of the details.
Q: where can i find these baby-bundles?
A: each homepage channel on current.com (news, music, movies, tech, green, gaming, comedy, and art & style) has a new module in the right rail of the channel homepage. this module is titled, "real-time news" and it includes a cloud of trending terms and links to the most recently created bundles for that channel.
Q: how do baby-bundles work?
A: for our first iteration, we've deploying a team of current bots (e.g. current_news_bot, current_tech_bot, current_movies_bot, etc.) to scour the web for stories to turn into baby-bundles. these baby-bundles are created specifically for the current.com community to engage with and discuss. baby-bundles are similar to individual items on current.com -- you can comment, vote, and share them with others.
Q: what can i do with a baby-bundle?
A: when someone comments and/or votes on a bundle for the first time, the bot associated with the bundle's channel will place the bundle in that channel's stream. by voting and commenting, you tell our bots which bundles are interesting enough to place in the channel. so, if you see a bundle in the music section that looks like something the current.com/music community would be interested in, vote and comment! the bundle will automatically be added to the current music channel, where others can vote and comment on it as well.
Q: can i create my own baby-bundles?
A: baby-bundles? no. full-blown "adult" bundles? yes! as i mentioned, this is just the early stages for bundles, but we plan to roll out the ability for our community to bundle stories together when we get closer to releasing the fully matured bundles.
Q: what do the trend links mean?
A: these are terms that we recognize as trending within our bundles creation flow. clicking on these links will take you to the bundles that directly reflect those trends.
so, take our new baby-bundles for a test drive and let us know what you think. we'll be tweaking the process for bundle creation over the next few weeks, so any feedback you have will be very helpful. you can ask questions or offer suggestions over on our Get Satisfaction page.
in the meantime, here are a few bundles that caught my eye:
Movies: Orci and Kurtzman talk about deleted Shatner cameo (in the new Star Trek film directed by J.J. Abrams)
Music: Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, and David Lynch album, Dark Night of the Soul, scrapped
News: Tamil Tiger rebel leader dead, Sri Lankin state TV reports
Tech: Wolfram Alpha: The Beginning
Green: Northern Florida burning more wood to meet renewable energy targets
shoot us feedback, and feel free to share some of your favorite baby-bundles with me,
-- mariohey currentians,
i know, i know...it's been SOOOO long since our last feature... more
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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Mystery Bug photo by aussiegall on flickr"][/caption]
hey community!
we've been receiving reports that some community members are noticing issues when they try to share their stories with others. i thought it would be a good idea to clear up a couple of things, and let those of you who are experiencing this problem know that we are on the case.
first, a while back we noticed some strain on our submission tool, which we like to call "the clipper." this strain was a direct result of pulling in a posters contacts list for the sharing portion of the clipper, so we revised this flow to only pull in 100 contacts at a time. we realize this isn't ideal, and we are going to be making improvements to the clipper workflow in the future. for now, this helps reduce the load and keep things running.
second, let's talk ghosts in the machines. a number of you have reported that when sharing items with some of your contacts, you are finding that those shares never actually reach their intended recipients. typically, this sort of behavior is a result of someone blocking you for oversharing, but for a few we've noticed that isn't actually the case -- shares are just not being sent out due to some unknown bug in the system. most cases center around people who copy and paste lists of usernames into the sharing field under the "invite a friend to chime in on this" section. our team is looking into the matter, and trying to get to the bottom of things, so we hope to have this resolved soon.
for now, if you've noticed any odd behavior when attempting to share items with people, please head over to our Get Satisfaction thread on sharing and post some details. your experiences could provide the necessary clues needed to get to the bottom of the case.
thanks!
-- mario[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240"... more
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Hey Currenteers,
Welcome to April! We have some new features to cover, but first I'd like to welcome you to our new digs...say hello to the brand new Current.com Blog! Each one of our new channels and our TV shows will be setting up blogs in the coming weeks. So far Current Music, Current Movies, and Current Comedy are all up and running, but keep an eye on our main Current blogs page for new additions.
Let's dive right in, shall we?
// Email verification //
In our never ending quest to thwart spam on Current, we've turned on email verification for newly registered members of the community. Until validated, these new members are not able to contribute items, comment, or vote. Requiring that new community members validate their email address is pretty standard for social sites, and we feel that although it isn't the sole answer to battling spam, it is certainly a step in the right direction.
Those of you who are already members of the Current community will not be required to validate your email to participate, but I still highly encourage it. We occasionally like to send out swag and inform our community about special ways to contribute to Current, and we can't do that without a valid email. So, take a minute to update your account preferences and request verification for your email address. Thanks!
// Channel Curators //
In one of our recent Town Hall chats I mentioned that the team is working on building group creation functionality into Current.com -- which we are calling channels. We're still a long way away from launching this new feature, but we are making some headway. In the next few weeks we'll be opening up a set of tools related to our channels project to a handful alpha testers, and we'd like to invite some of you to join in on the test. If you're interested in testing out our new tools head over to our alpha test page on Get Satisfaction page and put your username on the list. If you don't make it into the alpha this time around, don't fret. We will open this up to a wider group of testers in the near future, and we already have a target date for a full release. Stay tuned!
// Improvements to Search //
Our search functionality on Current.com has been improved in the last few releases. This time around, we've added a new "highlights section" at the top of the search results page. The "highlights section" is used to surface some of our TV show content for certain search queries. For example, someone searching for comedy will now find the latest clips from infoMania in the highlights section. Try it out and let us know what you think.
// Questions about Channel Staleness //
We've been receiving frequent questions about the staleness of content on the channels, and we totally agree. When we made the switch to our channel structure, we knew it was only a layout change for the time being, and we still have some heavy lifting to do with regards to channel specific algorithms, scoring, freshness, and decay. The good news is, we have a brand new addition to our team, and figuring this out just happens to be on his project to-do list! So, ladies and gentlemen of the Current.com community, I'd like you to meet Gary:
[current 89941974]
Thanks Gary! We're all looking forward to some of the coming improvements, but in the meantime if you have suggestions or wish to shoot us feedback, feel free to start a thread on our Get Satisfaction support page, or as always you can shoot us your thoughts at feedback@current.com.
// Increased File Size for Video Comments //
If you've ever tried uploading a video file as a comment, you've probably bumped your head on our 200mb file size limitation. NO MORE! We've upped the total file size for video uploads in our comments to a full 1GB. So what are you waiting for, fire up that camera and record some video comments. My suggestion? Upload video reviews for this week's movie releases for a chance to get on The Rotten Tomatoes Show. Check out Current Movies this Friday for the updated list of eligible films to review via video for the next episode of The Rotten Tomatoes Show!
(Note: this update to file size does not pertain to webcam comments.)
Well, that's it for this release. As always, let us know what you think!
MarioHey Currenteers,
Welcome to April! We have some new features to cover, but first... more
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