Raspberry Pi users help keep track of almost all aircrafts in action. by Brian Benchoff via hackaday
FlightAware is the premier site for live, real-time tracking of aircraft around the world, and for the last year or so, Raspberry Pi owners have been contributing to the FlightAware network by detecting aircraft flying overhead and sending that data to the FlightAware servers.
Last year, FlightAware announced anyone with a Raspberry Pi, a software defined radio module, and an Internet connection would earn a free FlightAware enterprise account for listening to ADS-B transmitters flying overhead and sending that information to the FlightAware servers. ADS-B is a relatively new requirement for aviators that transmits the plane’s identification, GPS coordinates, altitude, and speed to controllers and anyone else who would like to know who’s flying overhead.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
It can be startling when iconic brands go on the sale block—all the more so when the buyer is from another country, and still more when the price tag seems pegged to factors divorced from financial reality. With yesterday’s $1.3 billion sale of the venerable Financial Times to Japanese media firm Nikkei, we get the full dose of disorientation—but also a surprisingly encouraging outcome.
Just two years ago, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for the Washington Post, which at the time had a circulation of 472,000, and a $53 million loss in the prior year on $582 million in revenue. Today the FT is reporting combined print and digital circulation of 737,000; it earned £24 million ($34 million) of operating profit on £334 million ($518 million) revenue last year, according to the Wall Street Journal. (The Journal itself, of course, was sold to Rupert Murdoch for $5 billion in 2007, before the technology of the Internet and the financial crisis combined to send the newspaper business spiraling.)
Although facing the same advertising declines as the rest of the industry, the FT has come through with quite a bit more circulation, and more income, than the Post had. But is the FT truly worth five times as much as the Post, under an arguably worse print landscape than even two years ago?
One has to presume that a major factor was the personalities in the negotiating room. Maybe the FT’s owners at Pearson, the London-based media company, had better negotiating chops than former Post owner Donald Graham; maybe Nikkei simply wanted the cachet of the FT more than Bezos wanted the Post’s.
And this brings us to the encouraging aspect of the FT sale, namely the message it sends about the ongoing value of quality print media—and the tremendous blunder other outfits have committed in slashing staff, dumbing down coverage, and retreating from hotbed areas for news.
In the years before its sale, the Post degraded its reach by closing foreign and domestic bureaus; it still won Pulitzer Prizes, but seemed to be carefully picking its big subject areas rather than presenting itself as a paper of record.
The FT, conversely, remains far-flung. Its coverage of Russia, China, the Middle East, and key sectors like oil, for example, is among the best in the world; despite the carnage in the industry, it has continued to put out a must-read product. And the message sent by the price that Nikkei agreed to on July 23 is that this is still something worth paying for.
Last night, there was yet another tragic mass shooting in the US, when a 58-year-old man killed two civilians and injured nine in Lafayette, Louisiana, before killing himself.
The incident, which unfolded at a movie theater, recalls the recent shootings in Charlston and Aurora, wherein perpetrators fired shots towards a captive audience. As horrifying as these events might be, they’re just isolated incidents in a much bigger picture. In the United States from January 1 to July 23, 2013, there have been 204 mass shootings.
Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowd-sourced website that monitors gun-related deaths, defines a mass shooting as an incident “when four or more people are shot in an event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period.” Not all of these mass shootings resulted in a death.
By that definition, forty of all fifty states have suffered some form of mass shooting since the beginning of the year.
To date, New York, California, and Texas have been home to the highest number of mass shootings this year. Louisiana, where last night’s incident took place, has been home to eight.
On July 10, a young woman named Sandra Bland was pulled over on a Texas roadway by trooper Brian Encinia. Encinia accused Bland of allegedly failing to signal correctly when changing lanes, a minor traffic offense. The confrontation quickly escalated, beginning when Encinia asked Bland to put out her cigarette—which she was not lawfully required to do—and ending with the 28-year-old motorist on the ground in handcuffs. Three days later, Bland was found dead, hanging from a noose in her jail cell.
But it isn’t just Bland’s death, which is still under investigation by the Texas State Troopers and the FBI, that has reignited a national debate about racial injustice. The traffic stop alone speaks to something black Americans, and minorities generally, have been arguing for decades: when it comes to dealing with the police, only white people are allowed to assert their Constitutional rights.
In the wake of Bland’s death, many have spoken passionately about the gulf of mistrust that exists between minorities and law enforcement. Activist and actor Jesse Williams highlighted the infuriating nature of this conversation in a particularly epic, 24-part social-media soliloquy on the police and racial inequality.
3 This country is FULL of Americans who actively exercise their rights when given unlawful, unclear orders by police.
As experts like Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, have since asserted, Bland was well within her rights to decline to put out her cigarette in her own vehicle—and to demand a reason for being asked to leave that vehicle.
Over the years, there have been several examples of Americans insisting, both on camera and off, that those rights be acknowledged by police. Take this video shot by motorist Ryan Scott in Dekalb, Illinois. Scott, who appears from the footage to be Caucasian, is ultimately allowed to continue on his way. His video meanwhile was viewed over 900,000 times on YouTube, and he was lauded as a model citizen, bravely standing up for his rights against an overzealous officer.
Which brings us back to Williams, who has earned something of a reputation for his eloquent Twitter commentary on racial inequality. His tweets honed in on an important, if underreported truth about media narratives and bias.
8 A select segment of Americans are granted the privilege of being able to resist said tyranny, scream at it, punch, shove or elude it.
Witness the self-described “patriots” like Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who marshaled a militia to protect him from “overreaching” federal law enforcement officials. Not only was Bundy, a white man, unharmed by law enforcement, he was hailed as a hero by small-government advocates like Janine Hansen, a candidate for Congress from Nevada’s 2nd congressional district.
He was met with similar treatment in the conservative media, where many were so quick to side with law enforcement after the high-profile killings of black men like Freddie Gray or Eric Garner, and where many have consistently argued that there is no such thing as white privilege.
10 Every time the story involves a black citizen, doing far less, presumed guilt BEGINS as their's to shed. But one cannot shed blackness.
Over at Slate, Jamelle Bouie notes that the trooper, Encinia, entered a legal grey area when he made a series of fateful decisions—to pull someone over for a minor infraction, to escalate the situation over a lit cigarette, to threaten and finally arrest Bland. “If you are inclined to blame Bland for her arrest (and by extension her death), then you’re sanctioning an America where police command total deference, where you have to obey regardless of what you’ve done or what’s the law,” Bouie writes.
Do Americans want a society in which the police have unchecked authority? Cliven Bundy certainly would say no, as would Thomas Jefferson—and countless other white Americans who have had the privilege of both creating and then protesting public policy. Sandra Bland was not white, and now she is dead. Only the incredibly ignorant can afford to continue to claim this is coincidence.
For Japanese companies, there’s not much worth sticking around for at home these days. The country’s economy is struggling to grow and its aging population will eventually mean fewer customers. The solution is to get out and find new markets, and, often, the strategy Japanese companies have opted for is to buy existing companies overseas.
According to Dealogic data, which in this case looks at only the biggest deals, Japanese companies have bought or merged with over 5,000 international businesses since 2005. That’s an average of more than one merger or acquisition a day over the past 10 years:
Japanese companies have spent $60 billion merging with or acquiring foreign companies in 2015 so far (including Nikkei’s buyout of the Financial Times, announced yesterday), according to the Dealogic data. That compares with just $53.4 billion for all of last year.
Generally, the value of those deals is rising, and they spike during downturns in the economy:
But among all the companies and markets to invest in, it is US-based companies that Japanese enterprises have their sights set on:
Japanese companies have been so eager to buy US companies, in fact, that in the past 10 years they have spent more money acquiring American targets than all of the rest of the companies in the next 19 biggest acquisition countries combined:
The Guardian, Britain’s progressive newspaper of record, struck an uncharacteristically xenophobic tone on its front-page today, reminding readers that it is “British based, British owned,” below a Union Jack flag.
In recent years, the British national flag has become freighted with nationalistic significance, and its proliferation has been adopted by the far-right UKIP Party as a cause. As a commenter wrote—in the Guardian—”By the 1990s, its association with empire and its eager usage by the National Front and bootboys in general (with their chant ‘there ain’t no black in the union jack’) had, unsurprisingly, made it look more than slightly sinister.”
The context for the Guardian statement today was the sale of the Financial Times—which, like the Guardian, has been British-owned since the 19th century—to the Japanese newspaper publisher Nikkei, for £844 million ($1.3 billion). The FT will remain based in London. “The FT is going to be the FT,” Nikkei president Tsuneo Kita said today (paywall). “It remains unchanged.”
The Guardian didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment. The front-page headline was probably intended as a joke, but it did not go over well with readers.
The Guardian seems to have gone all UKIP this morning. British based and British owned?
“British based, British owned” is the kind of sentiment one might more expect from the Sun or another of the UK’s more conservative papers. And it contrasted markedly with the Guardian’s own editorial on the FT’s sale, which argued, “in a global media world this deal makes sense”:
So there are obviously ways in which the deal might go wrong. But it is at least as possible that it will go right. The better parts of each company’s culture will come to influence the other. The world needs journalism that is both measured and punchy and the FT is today one of the papers that best supplies it. That in turn can only be sustained by a profitable business. Nikkei has the capital and the Financial Times the global reach, the language and the knowhow that could combine to build a media business that can make a profit from quality even in the digital age.
Poland’s lower chamber of parliament passed a bill yesterday (link in Polish) that would simplify the procedure of legally changing your gender. The regulation is sponsored by Europe’s first transgender lawmaker, Anna Grodzka, and gets rid of a process that required a transgender person to sue their parents to change their gender in legal documents.
The bill passed easily, in a 252 to 158 vote, and is likely to pass in Poland’s senate. It’s a toned-down version of the initial bill, its sponsors say. People over the age of 18 would still have to go through a court procedure to change the gender on their documents, but would not have to go through a trial—a painful process for transgender Poles and their families.
The bill still managed to raise controversy among the conservative right wing, a powerful force the majority-Catholic country. “This is a mockery of the state,” said MP Marzena Wróbel. She asked whether people could their genders multiple times, and whether the legislation is being introduced to “de facto legalize gay marriage in Poland,” where it is currently illegal.
“The procedure has become too easy,” said MP Anna Zalewska, from the right-wing Law and Justice party. Because the bill doesn’t require the change of one’s outward appearance, “the ease with which you can legally change your gender will encourage taking advantage of the system,” she added. (link in Polish)
The notion that arming more Americans will protect people from being shot (the “good guy with a gun” theory) is a common refrain of the gun industry and the powerful lobby that supports it in the United States.
The slaughter of nine people at a Charleston, South Carolina church on June 17 was swiftly followed by a National Rifle Association board member suggesting publicly that if the church pastor had supported more lax gun laws, church-goers would have been armed and might have survived, for example. Armed citizens are standing “guard” outside of military recruitment offices around the country after the Tennessee shooting that killed four last week (and occasionally accidentally firing their guns).
Following the latest US mass shooting, which killed two people plus the shooter himself and wounded nine at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, the gun control debate is likely to flare up again. And a look at US gun ownership and gun death statistics casts some doubt on the “good guy with a gun” theory.
Complete and recent breakdowns of gun ownership by state are difficult to find, in part because the National Rifle Association has long pushed to stifle funding for research on guns’ impact on American society. Even based on limited information, though, there appears to be a relationship between high rates of gun deaths and high rates of gun ownership.
The most complete, most recent data on state-by-state deaths related to guns comes from the US’s latest National Vital Statistics report, released this February and using 2013 data, which has been broken out by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation:
Or, here’s another way to look at it. These are the 10 states with the highest rate of gun deaths in the country:
These states all have much higher rates of gun ownership than the average, and are among the top 20 US states when ranked by gun ownership rates (with the exception of New Mexico, which is one of the US’s deadliest and ranks 27th):
Can the media please stop acting like there’s a ‘feud’ between them now, out of a desire to try and perpetuate the idea that succesful women can’t be friends with each other
I thought Nicki was unbelievably gracious about this.
Very, very classy.
I pay no attention to celebrities, but this made me happy.
The "Father's Day" mural, which was already slated for removal, has finally been painted over after repeat taggings (including one that prominently read "rapist").
ROSWELL, GA—Expressing his desire for a high-caliber talent with the creative vision to do justice to the film’s promotion, local man Jeff Crews told reporters Friday he has a list of dream marketers he’d love to see handle the next Spider-Man movie. “I’d see anything with James H. Martin; he’s an absolutely perfect choice for helming promotional events and the Spider-Man–McDonald’s tie-in,” said Crews, who offered the names of several highly acclaimed marketers who he believes have the imagination and brilliance necessary to breathe life into the superhero franchise’s branding. “This is purely a fantasy, but Christopher Sanford would do such an amazing job with the film’s social media strategy. And I’d be equally excited about a young gun like Stephen Edwards who has such innovative ideas—plus, you know he’ll come up with some crazy twists and turns ...
The Skysphere is a futuristic-looking living space created by designer and engineer Jono Williams. Its circular design features 270 square feet in the living area which includes a bed, custom couches, and even a “couch integrated beer dispenser.” The Skysphere is powered entirely by solar panels, and the electronics are controlled using a version of the Android operating system.
EAU CLAIRE, WI—Growing increasingly exasperated by the animal’s indifference to his attempts at affection, local man Joe Dooney told reporters Friday that he didn’t know what else he could do to get his cat, Harvey, purring. “I tried scratching at his ears, gently stroking his tail, and rubbing the fur on his belly, but he’s giving me nothing,” said Dooney, adding that nuzzling the 3-year-old cat’s face and whispering “you’re my special little guy” also proved to be ineffective. “I put him on my lap and used both hands to scratch under his chin and pet his back at the same time, but all he did was lick my arm and go back to sitting there. Christ, I can’t get a goddamn peep out of him.” At press time, sources confirmed that the ungrateful little bastard had run off.
We’ve suspected that Pixels would be an almighty disaster ever since we saw the first trailer, but it’s actually worse than we feared. Director Chris Columbus is clearly trying to create another great fantasy adventure, but he’s hamstrung by a short-sighted script. And Adam Sandler’s painful performance.
It’s been clear for some time now that Marvel won’t be getting back the rights to the X-Men any time soon. 20th Century Fox doesn’t have much in its life, but it does have those characters, and Marvel will have to pry them from the company’s cold, From Justin To Kelly-producing hands. (Now there’s a sequel idea we could all get behind.) And now that the studio is once again setting up Fantastic Four as a big franchise property—assuming the voodoo spell to lift the curse of the previous iteration succeeded—they’re taking a page from the notebook of every other studio in existence and doing that shared universe thing. In a new interview with Yahoo! Movies, director Bryan Singer confirms that a crossover film with the massively successful X-Men series is already in the planning stages.
Hulk Hogan is making headlines again. This time he's been fired from the WWE over a series of controversial remarks on race made over the last 10 years. Hulk smashed.
We’ve had a lotof funwith Donald Trump in recent weeks. But there’s an aspect to the man we may not have realized, until now. There’s a good chance Donald Trump may actually be channeling Danny DeVito’s character Frank Reynolds—the delusional, mentally unstable, ethically vacant miscreant from FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Luckily, Medium has put together a test for you to try and see if you can tell them apart, based on a few of their more evocative statements. Peruse these real quotes from both and decide for yourself which guy is more likely to have uttered each one:
“There’s nothing more threatening to a man than a woman who’s smart and attractive.”
“All the women flirted with me—consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”
“When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in ...
My mother had three pregnancies, and two children. She had a miscarriage, between my brother and I, in that four year span between our births, there was another pregnancy, another child desperately wanted, who didn’t live to term.
My mother had her pre-natal care, and her post-miscarriage care, at Planned Parenthood.
Because it was the best place for her. Because at the time, she had a two year old child and a bike and they were living just around that nice little sweet spot between ‘desperately poor’ and ‘almost have enough to consider a savings account.‘ And when you are poor, and female, and need health services, Planned Parenthood is there.
And my mother walked past the protesters, walked past the people who screamed at her about not killing her baby, about how she was a whore, and she was going to hell. My mother, in mourning for a child that she had lost, blaming herself, hating herself for failing at this most feminine of things, walked through that, to care for herself, to get the medical care she needed. So that someday, two years later, she could have me.
I cannot speak to the courage that must have taken. But that path is walked by thousands of women. Every single day.
She donated to Planned Parenthood until her death. And she said to me, that the people who screamed at her saw her only as a vessel for a baby. They didn’t care about her, they didn’t care about her baby, either. They were pro-birth, not pro-life, because none of them would be there after her baby was born, to offer help and support and care.
The protesters didn’t care about her. And the medical professionals inside did. It is the right of every woman to have access to safe, affordable, quality health care, no matter where she comes from, what her income is, or what choices she makes with her life. And that is what these kind of bills are attempting to take away.
the whitest of white people is a religious extremist with a criminal history who was arrested attempting to commit an act of domestic terrorism 30 years ago and committed another one yesterday
uh, er, sorry, he's white, so he's a "drifter" and "a troubled guy" or fuck you he's a fucking terrorist
"His dad was the tax commissioner for many years and his brother was my stockbroker, so we agreed to hold off on prosecution as long as he got psychiatric treatment and counseling," Swearingen said. "And so when he did, I asked that the case be dismissed. But I do remember he was very intent on burning down the law office. He was some kind of religious fanatic and as I recall, he said God told him to do it."
A LinkedIn page with Houser's name and photo said he was an entrepreneur who owned a Columbus, Georgia, pub from 1979 to 1980, and then another establishment north of Columbus from 1998 to 2000.
The page said he was interested in real estate and finance: "It would be my pleasure to assist you in financial matters or things more important."
The page said he was a regular guest on a TV talk show in Columbus: "Invited political controversy on every one of them, and loved every minute of it."
<img class="img-responsive img_inline" src="http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_30/1138886/150724-john-houser-9a_70fb90a8bf8dc49c6685e2f2bb527563.nbcnews-fp-360-360.jpg" alt="Image: John Houser" title="Image: John Houser" itemprop="image"/>
Image: John Houser LinkedIn
Calvin Floyd, who hosted the "Rise & Shine" television show on NBC affiliate WLTZ, said Houser had extreme political views.
"He was on from time to time because he was a very radical person with radical views," Floyd told NBC News. "He was a Republican and then I would have someone with a real strong Democrat view on."
"His father was tax commissioner in the county," he added. "That's how I knew him, but I had him on my show because he was a very radical person."
The United States have been knocked out in the Gold Cup semifinals.
For the first time since 2003, the United States have failed to make the Gold Cup final. They were eliminated on Wednesday by Jamaica, who beat them 2-1 in Atlanta.
While the U.S. were the better team early, there were signs of danger before they went behind. Giles Barnes should have scored when he was served a ball on a silver platter at the penalty spot in the 27th minute, but fluffed a wide-open shot that he should have buried.
The next time Jamaica created a chance, they didn't miss it -- though it was a bit unorthodox. John Brooks didn't stick on Darren Mattocks on a long throw-in, and Mattocks directed a gorgeous header over the outstretched arm of Brad Guzan, just barely sneaking it inside the near post.
Just under five minutes later, Guzan was caught handling the ball just outside the penalty area and the referee gave a free kick. Barnes stepped up and curled a perfect shot over the wall and into the back of the net, doubling Jamaica's lead.
From the opening kickoff in the second half, the USMNT had a serious sense of urgency, and got a goal back quickly. Aron Johannsson had a 48th minute shot stopped and Clint Dempsey was stuffed on his follow-up, but Michael Bradley followed the play and pushed his team's third effort over the line to cut Jamaica's lead in half.
Jamaica went into full bunker mode quickly, and ultimately, they were able to hold on for the win. Bradley nearly scored in the 57th minute, hitting a shot that went off Jamaica goalkeeper Ryan Thompson's chest, then the near post. Alan Gordon was brought on in desperation and had the Americans' best chance to equalize in the 78th minute, but didn't catch all of his shot from 10 yards, and it was saved comfortably.
Despite the U.S. throwing everyone forward late, they couldn't produce a great chance to score a second goal, and they'll head home early. Because of their failure to win the Gold Cup, they'll have to play the winner of the tournament in a playoff to qualify for the Confederations Cup.
1. The USMNT was unprepared - While the United States had more possession and got the ball into the box more often than Jamaica in the first half, they looked like they didn't understand what they couldn't get away with. Jamaica sit back in two banks of four, have a couple of technically solid forwards and break down the wings very fast. All of the USMNT's turnovers were punished with dangerous counters, but they gave the ball away in the middle third repeatedly, then struggled to recover. They might have played the better soccer, but they also played directly into Jamaica's hands.
2. Michael Bradley led by example - While the team as a whole wasn't great, no one can fault Bradley's effort or leadership. From the second Jamaica goal onward, he took responsibility in all phases, and his goal was only a small part of his contribution. If the U.S. had one player who was up to par, it was Bradley.
3. This is an embarrassing result - Even when they've had bad squads, performing poorly, the USMNT has been able to reach the Gold Cup final over the last decade. Jamaica are a solid team, but this simply shouldn't happen. It might not cost Jurgen Klinsmann his job, but U.S. Soccer should consider this result completely unacceptable and demand serious changes.
I'll be a panelist at an event at the National Archives in Washington, DC. You know, the place where they keep the Declaration of Independence? That place. No big deal.
This is one talk in a series on cocktail history by the National Archives Foundation curated by Chief Spirits Advisor (and DC bar owner) Derek Brown.
This accompanies and exhibit called Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History, an exhibit in the Lawrence F. O'Brien Gallery of the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, through January 10, 2016. You can see some highlights from the exhibit here.
The specific panel I'll be sitting on takes place August 8, 2015:
History of the Cocktail: The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks
Saturday, August 8, at 3 p.m.
In the late 1930s, a cocktail enthusiast named David Embury pens The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, signaling many changes in the way Americans drink, from making cocktails at home to the rise of a lesser-known spirit, vodka. His book is full of both technical suggestions and theoretical discussions. The publication of Embury’s manual marks a turning point in American drinking, ushering in the era of Mad Men and setting the stage for a consumer culture that fully embraced cocktails. Moderated by Victorino Matus of the Weekly Standard, panelists include Tony Abou-Ganim, Camper English, and Derek Brown. This seminar will include a tasting of specialty cocktails. Must be 21+ to attend.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
