WIRED

A federal hearing today on NSA surveillance programs leaked by...

arielzambelich — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:12:18 -0700

A federal hearing today on NSA surveillance programs leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden produced some interesting numbers about the scope of the data collections and other issues. We’ve produced a roundup below of some of the interesting stats and intelligence gleaned from the discussion.

The hearing, before Congress’s Select Committee on Intelligence, included NSA Director, General Keith Alexander; Deputy Attorney General James Cole; Deputy Director of the FBI Sean Joyce; and General Counsel Robert Litt, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence General Counsel.

Here’s the breakdown of the NSA hearing - by the numbers.

good: 33 Photos of Famous Dads Hanging Out With their...

arielzambelich — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 13:02:23 -0700

good:

33 Photos of Famous Dads Hanging Out With their Daughters
- Tasbeeh Herwees shared in Photography and Father’s Day

LIFE dug into their archives and collected photos of famous fathers hanging out with their daughters. Click through to the link for some delightful vintage photos of Orson Welles with his baby daughter Rebecca, Pablo Picasso walking his daughter through a cobblestone street, and Steve McQueen kissing his daughter good night.

Continue to time.com

To all the awesome dads out there: Happy Fathers Day, y’all. <3

Two weeks ago, Jack Dongarra flew to Changsha, China for a...

arielzambelich — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:01:07 -0700

Two weeks ago, Jack Dongarra flew to Changsha, China for a meeting with researchers at the National University of Defense Technology, home to the country’s top supercomputing program. He expected an update on their plans for a new mega-machine, but they had a little surprise for him: The system was already up and running.

It’s called Tianhe-2, and with more than 3 million processor cores, it’s the world’s most powerful supercomputer.

[MORE: China Could Supplant U.S. as the Supercomputing Superpower]

OMG GUYSSSSS <3<3<3 Y’all are the best!

arielzambelich — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 11:58:21 -0700

OMG GUYSSSSS

<3<3<3

Y’all are the best!

The Man of Steel movie hits theaters today, the latest cinematic...

arielzambelich — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 10:01:14 -0700

The Man of Steel movie hits theaters today, the latest cinematic reimagining of the iconic character of Superman. And while the “S” logo is recognizable the world over, some people say that the man of steel isn’t the easiest character to identify with, either because he’s too much of a “Boy Scout” with an antiquated moral code, or because his omnipotence and alien origin make him less relatable compared to other superheroes who are more grounded in reality.

But after taking a deeper look into Superman’s psyche, we beg to differ. Sure, he’s from another planet and can fly, shoot laser beams from his eyes, and see through unleaded objects. But, if you look beneath the “S” on his chest from a psychological perspective, you’ll see that Superman is more human than superhuman, with the same sort of conflicts, crises and identity issues as the rest of us.

[MORE: Psychiatrists Explore Superman’s Emotional Issues in Man of Steel (And Beyond)]

Not much happens in Geraldine, a small farming community in the...

arielzambelich — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:23:32 -0700

Not much happens in Geraldine, a small farming community in the interior of the South Island of New Zealand, about 85 miles from Christchurch. So when Hayden MacKenzie, a fourth-generation farmer there, picked up the phone last Tuesday and got a request to participate in a secret project—one that he wouldn’t even learn about until he signed a vow of silence—he and his wife Anna figured that they’d take a shot. That evening, two men showed up at his cozy farmhouse. They bore a peculiar red device, a sphere slightly bigger than a volleyball perched on a short collar, and attached it to his roof. Then they left.

Only when the men returned the next day did they reveal what they were up to. Inside the red ball was an antenna that would give the MacKenzies Internet access. It was custom-designed to communicate with a similar antenna that would be floating by in the stratosphere, over 60,000 feet above sea level. On a solar-powered balloon.

Oh, and the men work for Google.

[MORE - EXCLUSIVE: How Google Will Use High-Flying Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands]

buzzfeed: Have a good weekend! This GIF represents all that is...

arielzambelich — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:21:21 -0700

buzzfeed:

Have a good weekend!

This GIF represents all that is good in the world.

chels: Justin sent me an email this morning with the subject...

arielzambelich — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:57:00 -0700

chels:

Justin sent me an email this morning with the subject line “CRITICAL INFORMATION” that just contained a link to this story of a pipe-cleaning ferret named Felicia from Fermilab.

Back in the ’70s, the scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory were looking for a way to clear the tubes of their newly built particle accelerator of the bits of dust that could derail a high-energy beam of particles whipping around at the speed of light.

Some ingenious scientist remembered that ferrets were used on English estates to go down rabbit burrows and scare the critters out (hence the phrase “ferret out”) and so, Felicia the ferret was employed by Fermilab to clean out the atom smasher. They tied a piece of string with a cotton swab to her tail, set her in the tubes, and then banked on her natural curiosity to lead her around the four-mile particle collider.

Felicia is now officially my favorite animal in science history.

Here’s something for your adorable break in the day.

That’s one way to take advantage of the GIANT free...

arielzambelich — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:38:29 -0700

That’s one way to take advantage of the GIANT free swag-bags at E3.

shortformblog: amzam: futurejournalismproject: A Crowdfunded...

arielzambelich — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:46:26 -0700

shortformblog:

amzam:

futurejournalismproject:

A Crowdfunded Investigation of Internships

ProPublica:

Late last month, ProPublica launched a Kickstarter to cover the costs of hiring an intern to help with our internships investigation. Our intern will create a microsite on the intern economy, traveling around the country to collect interns’ stories that will supplement and enhance our more traditional watchdog reports. But to do this, we need to raise $22,000 by June 27.

Our editor-in-chief Steve Engelberg sat down with ProPublica’s community editor Blair Hickman and news application fellow Jeremy Merrill to talk about our unique approach to investigating the intern economy.

“Beyond the Kickstarter, from a reporting perspective and project perspective, what’s particularly noteworthy about this is we’re starting with community and we are starting with data and news applications,” said Hickman about the project. “We’ve said from the get-go, we are investigating internships and we’re doing this in a very open way — which is a little bit different than our normal investigations. And because of that, we’ve gotten a ton of tips flooding in and we’re starting to do news reports off of that. But it’s starting with the crowd.”

FJP: This will be fantastic. Here’s a link to the Kickstarter, and here’s a podcast about the project. Reminds us of Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation, which is a fairly interesting read.

Thank you for Tumbling!!

You want to solve the intern problem? Consider donating to this pretty darn awesome idea for an investigation.

More than brilliant.

fastcompany: …had it not been for social media, the government...

arielzambelich — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:02:03 -0700

fastcompany:

…had it not been for social media, the government would likely have succeeded in hiding the protests from many Turks. Turkey is a country that jails more journalists than Iran, and it is hardly surprising that the mainstream Turkish media, which has been additionally co-opted by the authorities through financial measures, broadcast pictures of beauty contests and cooking shows for several days while parts of Istanbul and other cities were blanketed with tear gas.

“On Friday [May 31] I saw on Facebook that there were riots, and I came here [to the center of Istanbul],” a 29-year old teacher named Ulas said in a bar near Taksim Square. “There were many people and we fought them [the police] all night. But on Saturday I spoke to some of my friends here in Istanbul, and they had no idea what was going on. One, a leftist, was at the zoo. This is because they were watching penguin documentaries on the mainstream channels.”

How social media forced Turkish news organizations to change course

[Photos by Victor Kotsev for Fast Company]

Wherein social media becomes a way to change the world. Again.

E3 is getting started… and it’s already chock-full...

arielzambelich — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:05:29 -0700

E3 is getting started… and it’s already chock-full of weird. Check out updates from the show over at Game|Life!

WWDC is about to get rollin’! Apple Nerds - follow our...

arielzambelich — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:00:35 -0700

WWDC is about to get rollin’!

Apple Nerds - follow our LIVEBLOG and get all the dirt/running commentary/important facts/fun things you could ever want to know.

buzzfeed: Co-signed. HAPPILY EVER AFTERRRRRRRR!

arielzambelich — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:54:43 -0700

buzzfeed:

Co-signed.

HAPPILY EVER AFTERRRRRRRR!

"I do not see how Obama can talk his way out of this one. Snowden is not Bradley Manning: he’s..."

arielzambelich — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 21:52:58 -0700

“

I do not see how Obama can talk his way out of this one. Snowden is not Bradley Manning: he’s not a disturbed disco bunny but a highly articulate network security specialist who has left behind a $200,000 salary and girlfriend in Hawaii for a life on the run. He’s not a sleazy opportunist like Julian Assange, either. As he says: “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

It will be very difficult for the Obama administration to portray Snowden as a traitor. For a start, I don’t think US public opinion will allow it. Any explanations it offers will be drowned out by American citizens demanding to know: “So how much do you know about me and my family? How can I find out? How long have you been collecting this stuff? What are you going to do with it?”

Suddenly the worse-than-Watergate rhetoric doesn’t seem overblown. And I do wonder: can a president who’s presided over, and possibly encouraged, Chinese-style surveillance of The Land of the Free honestly expect to serve out his full term?

”

- Damian Thompson, The Telegraph - Edward Snowden has blown the whistle on this presidency. You have to wonder: Will Obama see out his full term?

arielzambelich: The things I do for work. Spring [product...

arielzambelich — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 20:06:59 -0700

arielzambelich:

The things I do for work.

Spring [product testing] Camp, 2013.

futurejournalismproject: Snow Fall, Meet Firestorm If you...

arielzambelich — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:35:38 -0700

futurejournalismproject:

Snow Fall, Meet Firestorm

If you haven’t checked it out yet—and I hope you have—The Guardian’s Firestorm, a Snow Fall-esque interactive long-form multimedia piece came out last month and it’s completely stunning.

From Poynter’s story on the teamwork required to put it together:

“I think you have to capture people’s hearts,” Francesca Panetta, special projects editor of interactive storytelling projects, said in a phone interview. “As with all kinds of storytelling, you can’t lose sight of that need to connect and touch people, whether it’s writing or radio or a complicated interactive.”

Firestorm is remarkable for a number of reasons, including the stellar video images and the subtle way that looping video is used behind the written story. The integration between words and video is handled with such finesse that the one doesn’t distract from the other.

“We’re very happy with the subtlety,” Panetta said.

The chapter navigation uses clear images and concise icons and labels, ensuring it’s always clear where you are in the story.

A project like Firestorm or The New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning interactive,Snow Fall, demands considerable resources. Twenty-three people are credited for Firestorm, which was three months in the making — actually a speedy turnaround for a project of this scale.

Many newsrooms don’t have that level of resources, of course. But they can still learn from The Guardian’s process and the project’s experiments with layered storytelling — and figure out ways to do something similar on a smaller scale.

Keep reading for key takeaways from the project.

FJP: I’ve been hearing people favor this one to Snow Fall but perhaps that’s because the story itself (which is incredibly moving) lends itself to a slightly more poignant interactive than Snow Fall…but both are fantastic. —Jihii

Bonus: E-book version of the story, which you can buy here, along with other Guardian shorts.

This is a beautiful way to showcase good journalism.

The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has...

arielzambelich — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:15:30 -0700

The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that “intuition and hunch” are among the primary reasons why it is “inadvisable” to establish constitutional safeguards protecting travelers’ electronics from being searched for any reason along the U.S. border.

[MORE]

newsweek: The guy who wrote this synopsis now writes jokes on...

arielzambelich — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 13:43:36 -0700

newsweek:

The guy who wrote this synopsis now writes jokes on George Takei’s Facebook page for $10 a pop. Progress!

If only he could work for TV Guide, then maybe people would watch more TV?

This man is obviously amazing.

shortformblog: According to this document obtained by The...

arielzambelich — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:29:06 -0700

shortformblog:

According to this document obtained by The Guardian, the federal government, through a court order granted to the National Security Agency, is using the Patriot Act to collect the phone records of millions of Verizon users over a three-month period. Awesome. Read the full document here. It’s like the AP thing, except extended to everyone else.

Take note.