Authored by William Blum, originally posted at Strategic-Culture.org, On November 16, at a State Department press briefing, department spokesperson John Kirby was having one of his frequent adversarial dialogues with Gayane Chichakyan, a reporter for RT (Russia Today); this time concerning U.S. charges of Russia bombing hospitals in Syria and blocking the U.N. from delivering aid to the trapped population. When Chichakyan asked for some detail about […]
All of a sudden, it’s executive pay time. Here is The Purposeful Company, the product of a steering group of seven grandees, a task force of nine more, plus a dozen contributors, together demonstrating that those getting today’s executive pay have nothing useful to say on the subject, as Neil Austin forcefully pointed out on our letters page this week. This followed an earlier suggestion that incoming […]
Photo Residents whose home was destroyed by a fire in the Jewish settlement of Halamish in the West Bank. Credit Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images NATAF, Israel — When Rama’s Kitchen, an earthy and much-loved restaurant in the small Israeli village of Nataf, was burned last week by one of the wildfires that raged in the area, the last civilians who stayed to fight the blaze […]
A digital battle is being waged over the huge amount of technical data that will be stored in autonomous vehicles Just like credit cards, smartphones or search engines, autonomous cars will carry a trove of information about their owners as they make driving more comfortable, raising new concerns about privacy. Automakers are engaged in a fierce race to develop the first driverless car, which experts say should […]
DirecTV Now reestablishes the channel paradigm in a system built for apps Graduations are often accompanied by proclamations. Such was the case for Apple TV when Apple’s former hobby became a full-fledged OS vessel as Tim Cook proclaimed, “the future of TV is apps.” The prediction invited skepticism for many reasons. A year earlier, Google had made its own run at app TV with Android TV, which […]
An algorithm is just a series of instructions – a set of rules to solve a problem. You can perform one in your head or with a pencil. But if there is one thing computers are brilliant at, it’s following rules, and the most important algorithms today are all performed by computers, and written in programming language that computers can understand. Type anything into Google and powerful […]
This week was full of Big Data news, including new releases, a brand new product, a new acquisition and an update to one of the major Hadoop distros. Let’s get a survey of what was announced and then see if we can’t draw a conclusion or two. A big driver for much of the news was this week’s Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference, providing an opportunity for […]
Your daily guide to community and cultural activities across the Emirates for December 3, 2016, including performances, festivals, art exhibitions, film screenings, health and fitness events, talks, classes, workshops and family fun. newslide Nationwide New movie See The Edge of Seventeen, a coming-of-age film about a young woman in today’s world. Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), 17, is a bullied high-school student suffering from depression who finds life unbearable […]
Credit: Yale University On the wall of Aaron Dollar’s office is a poster for R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 1920 Czech play that gave us the word “robot.” The story ends with the nominal robots seizing control of the factory of their origin and then wiping out nearly all of humanity. Dollar, fortunately, has something more cheerful in mind for the future of human-robot relations. He sees […]
Mr. Mater is now publishing these photos, and more than 600 others, in a book that aims to showcase often-hidden aspects of the holy city. Continue reading the main story The book, “Desert of Pharan: Unofficial Histories Behind the Mass Expansion of Mecca,” provides an unvarnished photographic catalog of the city: labor camps for foreign workers; slums where undocumented residents live; aerial views of scores of construction […]
When Dala Farouki Kakos was a child, her parents invested in three Syrian chests, with matching mirrors, in the traditional sadaf style – on the understanding that they would be passed on to Kakos and her two siblings once they were grown up and had homes of their own. Beautifully embellished with mother of pearl, Kakos’s set has accompanied her on her travels around the world, and […]
While one can say that Motorola’s MotoMods feature is yet to take off, the fact remains that it is one of the most compelling reasons to buy a Moto Z, the company’s flagship device. The Lenovo-owned company has been trying to aggressively push it of late and its latest move involves the announcement of two new modules. These include Incipio’s Car Dock and Mophie‘s Juice Pack mods. […]
Pérez made it clear that Benítez was safe as long as he picked what the president felt was his strongest team: an adventurous lineup that included the Colombian midfielder James Rodríguez. Such a selection ran against Benítez’s cautious instincts. He would have preferred the more defensively minded Brazilian Casemiro as a bulwark against Barcelona’s formidable attack, but eventually Benítez relented. Continue reading the main story Rodríguez started; […]
Good morning. Here’s our daily summary of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Since Jim VandeHei and John Harris proved most everybody to be idiots, VandeHei can only hope that reflexive suspicion of his new gambit again proves to be entrepreneurial bliss. The two journalists famously pitched the notion of an all-politics digital […]
By Gavin Jones | ROME ROME With his political career on the line, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi launched a final day of campaigning on Friday ahead of a Dec. 4 referendum, saying Italy would be the strongest nation in Europe if he wins. Financial markets and Europe’s politicians fear victory for the opposition ‘No’ camp could trigger political instability and renewed turmoil for Italy’s battered banks, pushing […]
Despite powering dashboards for at least two years, Android Auto lacked a Google service that is probably one of the most useful for driving, which is the OK Google voice command. Interestingly, the feature had a low-key rollout. As of this writing, Google has not officially issued a statement announcing the update. If not for Reddit user neo5468, the world would probably have trundled on, without ever […]
The Cohort is Poynter’s bi-monthly newsletter about women kicking ass in digital media. Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I caught up on several post-election podcasts. Nearly all of the conversations veered towards self-care. From Another Round’s Heben Nigatu and Bim Adewunmi to Call Your Girlfriend’s Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow, the women I listened to checked in with each other and offered up their go-tos for feeling good. […]
First Draft News released a handbook Thursday with guidance for how journalists should deal with images, videos and information captured by people who witness news. “A Journalist’s Guide to Copyright Law and Eyewitness Media,” by Sam Dubberley, includes country-specific advice for journalists in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Austrlia and Finland. It also looks at some common misconceptions. Here are a few of them: Terms […]
An Indian aerospace startup has said that it will launch its mission to the moon in a year’s time, as it takes part in a Google-funded competition to become the world’s first-ever privately held company to make a soft landing there. A group of more than 100 scientists and engineers, including around a dozen former ISRO scientists, make up Axiom Research Labs’ Team Indus. The team is […]
By now, you know the photo — some version of it, anyway. President-elect Donald Trump is smiling over a bowl of young garlic soup. Across the table, former Republican nominee and current Secretary of State candidate Mitt Romney is smiling tightly underneath his furrowed brow. The photo, taken at Jean Georges in Trump Tower Tuesday, has since taken on a life of its own on social media, […]
The start of your story hooks a reader, but the ending is what leaves an impression. It deserves as much attention as your opening. Here are three strategies from columnist Leonard Pitts for writing powerful kickers. End with a twist. Give readers a surprise, and take them in a direction they didn’t expect. End with a quote. A great closing quote is rare. But every once in […]
In late July, Moussa Aksar, the director of Niger’s L’Évènement newspaper, answered his phone and heard a familiar voice warning him that he was, once again, in danger. “Be careful,” a friendly source told Aksar. “Look out for yourself and be careful what you say on the phone.” Aksar had just published Niger’s first exposé from the Panama Papers, the investigation based on a leak of documents […]
As a microcosm of the wrenches and stresses enterprise services are experiencing, Cognizant‘s week has been pretty fascinating. Last weekend Elliott Management took an activist controlling role in Cognizant, one of the most strategic services firms, with an open public letter to Cognizant’s management essentially chastising them for too much investment in the future and for not squeezing enough money out of the IT services world as […]
Submitted by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.org, Some of the weirdest and most disturbing advertisements ever created are done so for military campaigns. They come in the form of propaganda leaflets, which are dropped by air or otherwise disseminated into a country or territory that is being invaded. Virtually every war since the beginning of the 20th century has produced these leaflets, which are also known as psyops […]
