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13 Feb 2012 21:17

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Tech: To give you an idea of Tumblr’s massive scale, some quick numbers:

  • 500 million page views go through Tumblr every single day
  • 40k requests added each second at Tumblr’s peak usage hours; and it’s growing, too
  • 50GB of posts added each day; follower list updates are roughly another 2.7 terabytes daily
  • 1M number of writes made through the dashboard each second, and 50,000 reads per second source
  • » It’s tough to scale, too: According to Blake Matheny, Tumblr’s Distributed Systems Engineer, the service’s broad distribution makes it different from many other social networks, adding complexity that can stress the servers greatly. “It’s not just one or two users that have millions of followers. The graph for Tumblr users has hundreds of followers,” he writes. “This is different than any other social network and is what makes Tumblr so challenging to scale.” Matheny says that people will go back hundreds of pages on the dashboard to read content. And the network will only grow in complexity over time — the site is growing by 30 percent each month, and requires hundreds of servers to do what it has to do. If you’re technically-inclined, read High Scalability’s entire article — it’s super-fascinating.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Feb 2012 16:47

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Politics: GOP caves on payroll tax cut; 10-month extension set to pass

  • 10 month extension of the payroll tax cut is likely to pass source
  • » Good news for Democrats:  GOP leadership has indicated that they’ll pass a 10-month extension of the payroll tax without any offsets in spending. Democrats had wanted to balance the tax cut, in part, with higher taxes on the rich; Republicans wanted to do so, in part, with cuts to unemployment benefits. Ultimately, they couldn’t agree, and so it will be passed with no offsets at all. Why is this good news for Democrats? Well, the GOP took a hard-line against the payroll tax cut–which largely benefits the middle-class–last December, making the once-benign policy a partisan issue. Democrats, by and large, were okay passing it sans offsets–the suggestion to pay for it via tax cuts on the rich was more a general effort to increase taxes on the rich–and so the fact that the extension is going to pass is a political and legislative win for Democrats. But the extension expires in ten months–right around the presidential election–so this fight is only over in the short-term.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Feb 2012 15:39

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Politics: Washington legalizes same-sex marriage…but there’s an asterisk

  • I’m proud that the children in our schools and neighborhoods will no longer have to wonder why their loving parents are considered somewhat different than other loving parents.
  • Washington Governor Chris Gregoire • Upon signing legislation today that legalized same-sex marriage in her state. The law is set to take place in June, but there’s a catch: If opponents of marriage equality succeed in putting a ballot initiative on the November ballot, the law won’t take effect until after the election returns in December. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Feb 2012 15:26

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Culture: Having too many Facebook friends can make you depressed

  • 354Facebook friends ought to be your limit source
  • » There’s nothing wrong with denying that friend request: A recent study presented at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology meeting asked a group of participants to check their friend’s status updates. After doing so, they rated their lives as “much less satisfying” than a group that didn’t check their news feed. They looked at how many friends the users had, and found that 354 friends was roughly the point at which reading status updates started making them sad. The theory is that status updates often paint a disproportionately positive picture of peoples’ lives. Readers of said updates compare their own lives to those represented in status updates, and figure that they’re having a lot less fun than everybody else. The solution, then, is to either clean up your friends list, or befriend a bunch of depressed misanthropes.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Feb 2012 10:28

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Culture: Autopsy inconclusive: Coroner’s officials don’t know how Whitney died

Despite claims from TMZ that her death may have been an overdose, officials say it’s too early to tell if that was the case. She may have also drowned in the bathtub inside her hotel room. Officials say there were no signs of trauma. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Feb 2012 10:13

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Politics: Rep. Emanuel Cleaver: Obama’s budget a “nervous breakdown on paper”

  • This budget is a nervous breakdown on paper … We are still in a recession. We’re still struggling. Unemployment is still too high in every major city in the country. People are struggling.
  • Rep. Emanuel Cleaver • Offering a tough take on Obama’s forthcoming 2013 budget, which Cleaver suggests leans too heavily on spending cuts. Cleaver, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, says that while he disagrees with elements of the budget, the biggest problem Obama’s budget will face, however, is a broken Congress: “It’s going to probably have some difficulties over in the Senate. And it’s probably dead on arrival over at the House,” he told CNN this morning. “But that’s because of Congress is dysfunctional. The danger here is that we’re going to struggle around without addressing the major problems.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Feb 2012 10:02

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Politics: Three things you should know about Obama’s forthcoming budget plan

  • cuts While still leaning on the “Buffett Rule” that he’s been pushing for months and planning to end the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, Obama’s plan would also cut $2.50 for each dollar raised from tax proposals affecting high income-earners.
  • jobs With the GOP blocking much of Obama’s job plan last year, he’s taking another try at it, offering up $350 billion in job-growth spending, which includes $50 billion to improve infrastructure and $60 billion to modernize schools.
  • defense Echoing the words of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the budget proposal would cut non-war spending. However, automatic cuts set to kick in next year will likely get replaced by a “balanced deficit-reduction package.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Feb 2012 11:51

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Politics: Forbes: Is Mitt Romney’s biggest problem his Facebook page?

  • Romney’s page on Facebook strikes me as particularly bad for a politician who needs to connect and for a campaign that is well aware of Obama’s social media pedigree. It’s almost as if the Romney team is not really trying.
  • Forbes contributor Haydn Shaughnessy • Suggesting that Mitt Romney’s real problem is his Facebook page, which, despite over a million fans, feels a little poorly-suited for its job. Shaughnessy got a couple experts on the beat to ask their opinions on Romney’s page, and their feeling was that he was lacking “genuine engagement” — focusing on broadcasting rather than communicating with readers. “If Romney or his team took 30 minutes each day,” claims social media expert Amy Porterfield, “thanking his supporters, commenting on their posts and listening to their concerns, he would not only have a keen understanding on what people are talking about, but he would also create solid, valuable relationships with Facebook users.” The advice here goes beyond hollow-seeming presidential candidates. It’s really good for anyone with interest in social media. (Edit: Per Josh Sternberg, Shaughnessy’s a contributor to Forbes rather than a staff writer.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Feb 2012 11:17

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World: Japanese Emperor Akihito will undergo heart surgery next weekend

The Japanese monarch, 78, has reportedly had health issues of late, and as a result is up for his first surgery in nearly a decade after an examination showed worsening heart issues. He had surgery for prostate cancer in 2003. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Feb 2012 10:45

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World: Libyan rebels-turned-prison-guards exacting revenge on Gaddafi backers

  • They told us that they planned to shift control of a few prisons this week, but it has not happened. … The government has to take over the prisons one by one by negotiating with the people who run it. It is not uniformly or automatically done.
  • A United Nations official, based in Tripoli • Discussing the situation with Libyan prisons, where conditions in the post-Gaddafi era have gotten quite bad, as rebel-sympathizing prison runners are using the prisons to exact revenge on people who supported the former Libyan leader during the revolution. Prison owners have tried to tell a different story, but some humanitarian groups have stopped helping Libyan prisons due to torture allegations. The United Nations has complained about the problem for months, noting that the government should be in control of the prisons to ensure fair treatment, not former rebels. Roughly 8,500 detainees, many sub-Saharan Africans suspected of fighting for Gaddafi, are being held in detention centers nationwide. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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