The future of the black box flight recorder explored This article was taken from the August 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online. They were guarded by silent corpses, the passengers and crew of an Airbus A330 that plummeted to the bottom of the Atlantic in June 2009. For nearly two years, the boxes -- not black, actually, but bright orange -- had lain amid some of the most rugged undersea terrain in the world, 3,500-metre-high mountains rising from the ocean floor, covered with landslides and steep scarps. Until May when an advanced robotic submersible, the Remora 6000, brought the two black boxes from Air France flight 447 to the surface, they were among the world's most sought-after artefacts, the keys to understanding why a state-of-the-art wide-body jet fell out of the sky on a routine flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 aboard.
The Indian Express Columnists The special Prevention of Atrocities Act court on Thursday convicted a Mumbai-based columnist for making casteist comments in an editorial article written for a Mumbai tabloid in 2006. Anish Trivedi, a writer and a columnist for Mid-Day, was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and slapped with a fine of Rs 25,000. The case pertains to an April 30, 2006 article in the tabloid in which Trivedi wrote about the "bad condition of government offices" and attributed this to the policy of reservation. Trivedi's column entitled 'Children of a Lesser God' blamed caste-based reservations as a primary reason for the poor condition of government offices. While a case was registered with the Bhoiwada police station, the police also made the editors of the publication accused in the case. All accused were booked under several sections of the Scheduled Caste and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. A senior editor of Mid-Day said it was inappropriate for the paper to comment on the case.
102 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories from 2012 | Byliner Anthologies Each year, I track the most exceptional stories I encounter while assembling my twice-weekly newsletter, The Best of Journalism, as well as acting as an editor-at-large for Byliner. These projects afford me the opportunity to read as much impressive nonfiction journalism as any single person possibly can. The result is my annual Best of Journalism List, now in its fifth year. If you’re feeling nostalgic, here’s the 2011 edition. There are, of course, worthy pieces of writing and reporting that escaped my attention in 2012, but I can assure you that all of the 102 stories listed below deserve wider attention—as do the authors of these stories. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll also note that I’m a staff writer at The Atlantic (where my colleagues neither saw nor influenced this list) and have done my best to remain objective. No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 "Four hundred feet long. No. 5 No. 6 "In five hours Walker will take the court for the Idaho Stampedes. No. 7 No. 8 No. 9 No. 10 No. 11 No. 12
Death in a Box The truth and consequences of reporting from a war zone. Photograph courtesy of Christoph Bangert “My country is dying,” my friend, an Iraqi, says and looks at me. We’re standing in his garden and he is cradling some oily nuts and bolts in his hand. The sprinkler system he set up in our yard is filling the air with a thin mist. “Mine too,” I say, “I think mine too.” Luc, the photographer I’m working with, is upstairs sleeping. Luc prefers to keep death to himself. Luc once photographed an Afghan as the rounds whistled through the grass around him and hit the sand—thppt, thppt. After Nasiriyah, I began to have death fugues. When I come to, I am on my side. The fugue of the musician: “A contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.” My fugue: I am stopped at a traffic light in Kuwait City. I am not sure. I run through the events again. “You listen to all that?” Mr.
American Online Newspaper Columnist and Commentators Index Cormac McCarthy's Apocalypse The acclaimed author's dark vision - and the scientists who inspire him. The world's most unlikely genius club meets in a sprawling adobe retreat amid the piñon scrub and juniper trees in the hills above Santa Fe. The lean physicist in baggy shorts and sandals sitting at a long table designed the first wearable computer, which he used to beat roulette in Vegas. The older scientist across from him, with curly white hair and the turquoise jeweled bolo tie, won a Nobel for discovering the quark. The attractive blond neuroscientist nibbling enchiladas nearby studies the modulation patterns of pigtailed macaques. But among this rarefied gathering of leading intellects, none is more respected than the spry old cowboy dipping his tortillas in beans at the lunch table. The discussion soon turns to the topic of suicide. Brains churn. Then the cowboy chimes in, as he often does, with the answer. "Dolphins," he says softly. "If it doesn't concern life and death," he says, "it's not interesting."
Tencent: March of the Penguins It’s hot and crowded in the Shatang Internet Café in the southern coastal city of Shenzhen, where some 300 young factory workers sit amid flickering lights and discarded cigarette packs. At one computer, Zhou Qingqing chats with her boyfriend about 600 miles away in Zhejiang province using QQ, the popular instant messaging software. She interrupts the conversation to play an online game called QQ Dancer, maneuvering a fashionably dressed avatar to the beat of a catchy Chinese pop song. “This is the only game I know how to play,” she says. “It’s easy.” Across the smoky room, not far from one of the No Smoking signs, Yan Huan also has QQ open on two screens, mainly to accrue the loyalty points that come from spending time on the service. Zhou and Yan are both in their own digital worlds, yet like almost everyone else in the cafe, they’re mostly engaged with the products of a single company: Tencent. Tencent is the Internet Goliath you’ve either never heard of or know little about.
Blogueurs du Québec sur OverBlog Un pays? La campagne électorale tire à sa fin. On a pu assister comme à l'accoutumé à des prises de positions, des débats où l'on a entendu des idées mille fois ressassées, de vieilles idées remodelées,… "La peur", stratégie politique d'apartheid On se souvient du slogan de Charest aux élections 2012 : les carrés rouges, de la crise étudiante, c'était <<la violence et l'intimidation>>. 2014, Couillard emboîte le pas : le Parti… Fang (1) ... Fang. Bangkok 14 (1) ... Bangkok, Thailande 11 - 13 janvier 2014 Environ 8,280,925 habitants en 2010 Ces dernieres annees, j'ai choisi de partir des le debut de janvier pour eviter les pires froids de l'hiver quebecois qui… La quenelle, c'est pas du gâteau! Ah! Chez les caribous en passant par nyc 6 Cet article est la suite de chez les caribous en passant par nyc 5, qui est la suite de chez les caribous en passant par nyc 4, suite de chez les caribous en passant par nyc 3, suite de chez les… Chez les caribous en passant par nyc 4 Les vagues et le vent
100 Websites You Should Know and Use (updated!) In the spring of 2007, Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH, gave a legendary TED University talk: an ultra-fast-moving ride through the “100 websites you should know and use.” Six years later, it remains one of the most viewed TED blog posts ever. Time for an update? We think so. Below, the 2013 edition of the 100 websites to put on your radar and in your browser. To see the original list, click here. And now, the original list from 2007, created by Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH.
Leave the Driving to It How would lives and landscapes change if every car had a computer in the driver’s seat? Brian Hayes Jane has a meeting this morning, so the car comes to pick her up at 8:15. En route, she finishes her breakfast, reviews her PowerPoint slides, updates her Facebook status, and does her daily KenKen. After the car delivers her to the office, it drives to a parking garage on the outskirts of the city, where it slips into a low, narrow slot. Later it will take young Judy and Elroy to their music lessons, then stop for a load of groceries before bringing Jane home. Cars that drive themselves were already a cliché of futurist fantasies 50 years ago, and their long association with cartoonish fiction and dioramas at the World’s Fair makes it hard to take the idea seriously. Already, some cars come equipped with “driver assistive technologies.” More ambitious levels of automation are at the research-and-testing stage. Even with these milestones behind us, huge challenges remain.
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