This is purely my guesswork, but I think that the benefits would be marginal. An improvement of 1 fps might not be convincing for game devs to modify the kernel. However, if you can execute even a single trade before others do, and multiply it by the number of trades executed per second (which must be in millions), the profit margin would be non-trivial.

As mentioned in the summary, linux allows the firms to modify the OS kernel to serve their purpose. For example, the performance of trading algorithms would considerably degrade if context switching is allowed. So you can modify the kernel so as to dedicate certain cores for the main algorithms to which the OS can pass a very limited number of signals.

I know for a fact that at least one bank employs this in their high frequency trading group and probably all of them do.

To me, it seems like a simple Machine Learning problem. The number of common friends will obviously be the most influencing input parameter followed by school, work place, etc.

Unless someone makes me understand the complexities underneath, I am going to assume that anyone can solve this problem by taking one course in Machine Learning.

Link to the S&P report which contains their rationale for downgrading, future outlook, etc.

Exactly. It is also one of the reasons why some sites such as reddit start out being genuinely intellectual and as the user base grows, they progressively become just banal - which is what reddit is today.

The study in TFA indicates nothing.

It includes reviews by anyone who has never used the product. Example, this Zenith watch. I won't debate the hilarity of the reviews, but no doubt they are fake.

I think the "undecidability" factor comes into play in any machine learning problem. For example, which email is spam and which isn't? But significant strides have been made to solve that problem and I don't see why online review system is any different.

Are you assuming that all Americans with same qualifications as H1-B visa holders are jobless? I highly doubt that.

The current law stipulates that no more than 65,000 H1-B visas be issued each fiscal year. As of July 18, only 20,500 of these are filled. Of those, around 12,800 hold a Master's degrees. Are you suggesting that stopping the H1-B program is going to improve employment in US? No. What you'll be doing is reducing the quality of workers in American workplaces.

As regards to removing taxation, I am somewhat ambiguous. One could argue that since H1-B holders are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits, so they should not pay taxes However, a significant number of H1-B holders stay on to obtain a green card, making them eligible for the said benefits. Personally, I have no problem paying the Social Security taxes. The job that I am going to start in a month or so is fairly high-tech, the work is very intellectually stimulating and is simply not done in my home country. I am more than happy to help the currently unemployed Americans by paying my share of taxes. I view this as a price I pay for the better living conditions and greater job satisfaction. Mind you, that does not mean that either of them will be able to do my job. If any American is as skilled as I am, he won't have any problem getting a similar job position as mine.

The German movie Das Experiment is based on this experiment. Although they exaggerate quite a lot towards the end, first few days of the movie are real. Overall, an entertaining watch.

I've tried it myself and found it to be horribly buggy/unstable! At least I can work on Superputty without worrying that it'll crash any moment.

My search for a good version of tabbed putty still continues. Currently I'm using Superputty. Unfortunately, it is far from a finished product - the main problems being lack of proper keyboard shortcuts and non-regain of focus on maximize/minimize.

If someone knows a good tabbed putty version, my life would become a lot simpler.

Interestingly, software is affecting law industry big time. Gone are the days when lawyers needed to burn the midnight oil to research relevant cases. With a document managing software with proper tagging features, even you can become a lawyer!.