Monthly Archives: November 2007

Two tidbits

Posted on November 19, 2007 by ast

A couple of completely unrelated and slightly old, but interesting pieces of news: Now that the Nepalese army (hopefully) doesn’t have anyone to fight at home, some Nepalese special forces have been deployed to Darfur as peacekeeping forces. From the … Continue reading →

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Netflix Progress Prize

Posted on November 14, 2007 by ast

The annual Progress Prize for the Netflix contest has been announced. The prize was won by Team BellKor, two researchers from AT&T Research who “blend[ed] 107 individual results” to come up with their 8.5% improvement over Netflix’s Cinematch algorithm (Thanks … Continue reading →

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Happy Tihar, everyone! Suntiya bhintuna!

Posted on November 9, 2007 by ast

Wikipedia entry on Tihar, the Nepalese festival of lights (and a lot more). And from the BBC website, “Nepal dogs honored” (thanks to Rosie for the pointer). I just realized that they could be talking about our politicians (they’re not).

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Colbert mania

Posted on November 2, 2007 by ast

Stephen Colbert has been in the news a lot lately, especially with his new book I am America (and so can you!) (currently #1 on the New York best sellers’ list, as he just pointed out himself on TV), and … Continue reading →

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