Dicembre 2013 archivio

Il Sydney Morning Herald in otto domande e otto risposte districa la crisi in atto nel tormentato Sud Sudan a un passo dalla guerra civile.

Why are people in South Sudan killing each other?

The violence started on December 15, when troops in the presidential guard started fighting against one another, in what is a depressingly accurate metaphor for South Sudan's problems. That fighting quickly spread and is now engulfing entire swathes of the country.

If that seems like a strange way for a potential civil war to start, it will make more sense once you hear the backstory. In July, the president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, fired his vice president, Riek Machar. The two were more rivals than partners; Kiir thought that Machar was gunning for his job. Here's the really important thing: Kiir and Machar are from different ethnic groups, and in South Sudan ethnic groups are really important. Kiir is ethnic Dinka, the largest of South Sudan's many ethnic groups. Machar is Nuer, the country's second-largest group.

Tension between the Dinka and the Nuer goes way back in South Sudan, and the political rivalry between the groups' two most powerful members, Kiir and Machar, always had the potential to become an ethnic conflict. It did on December 15, when members of the presidential guard who are Dinka tried to disarm members of the guard who are Nuer, maybe because they feared the Nuer would try to stage a coup. (Kiir later said the fighting had started because Machar had tried to stage a coup, although evidence for this is thin.)

The fighting between Dinka and Nuer presidential guards very quickly spread across the country. The main antagonists in the fighting are a group of Nuer called the White Army. (Some reports say the group got its name because fighters smeared themselves with white ash to protect themselves from insects.) The White Army militants have seized territory, including some oil-producing land, and may or may not be marching on the city of Bor.

Alcuni residenti a Casselton, cittadina a 40 km da Fargo nel Nord Dakota, hanno filmato l'esplosione del convoglio di carburante deragliato.

La spiegazione è più semplice di quanto si possa immaginare ed è contenuta in questo video. Ha a che fare con i costumi dei circensi e dei lottatori degli anni '30, i quali per l'appunto indossavano stretti short sopra le loro tute attillate.

Una splendida riproduzione animata della tana del Joker a firma Paul Hetherington. Il Gotham Park completato dagli scontri tra Batman, Robin, il Joker e Harley Quinn realizzato con oltre 30 mila mattoncini Lego.

The French had no official word for French kissing... until now. It's "galocher".

100 aneddoti, scoperte e curiosità raccolte nel corso del 2013 e presentate in un almanacco dalla BBC.

La guida di sopravvivenza ai droni permette di riconoscere dalla sua silhouette ogni singolo drone di sorveglianza in azione.
La guida è comodamente stampabile o acquistabile pre stampata su fogli di stagnola che, per gli amanti della privacy, hanno il pregio di riflette i raggi solari e disturbare l'azione dei suddetti droni.

L'arbitro David Banfield della AHL, la lega di sviluppo per la National Hockey League, ci regala uno sguardo inusuale sull'incontro di hockey del 7 dicembre tra i Rockford IceHogs e i Charlotte Checkers, grazie a una telecamera GoPro montata sul casco.

Il balletto dei camion UPS carichi di doni in un giorno di festa sotto Natale in time lapse.

TechRadar racconta la genesi di John Appleseed, il nome dell'utente fittizio più famoso al mondo presente nei keynote di Apple. Dall'alias che Mike Markkula usava per firmare i suoi programmi che giravano su Apple II, fino alla sua presenza nelle icone di alcuni celebri software per OS X.
Un omaggio all'omonimo pioniere americano, al secolo John Chapman.

If John Appleseed's name doesn't ring a bell, let us do some jangling for you. He's the face you saw demoing the original iPhone, and in demos of subsequent iPhones, too. His face beamed out from the dashboard when Tim Cook showed off iOS in the car, and it's his name you often see when Apple demos new software.

Appleseed's connection with Apple goes back to the start of the 1980s. Apple then was a very different company than it is today: it became a public company in 1980 but wasn't a buttoned-up, blue-suited corporation like IBM; it was a blue-jeaned, open-necked shirt, bearded kind of company out to make a difference. Apple was Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's baby, but the firm's CEO back then was Mike Markkula, who Jobs had lured out of retirement with the promise of Apple's potential.