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Pan Am Plane Crash That Inspired Modern Safety Briefings Found After 74 Years

Longtime Slashdot reader BeaverCleaver shares a report from the BBC: The wreckage of a Pan American Airways plane has been found 74 years after it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in a crash that prompted mandatory airline safety briefings. The Clipper Endeavor was found 2,000ft (610m) below sea level off the coast of Puerto Rico with a sonar-equipped drone. It went down on April 11, 1952, following multiple-engine failure shortly after take-off.

Everyone onboard survived the impact -- but passengers struggled to locate life vests and rafts as the plane rapidly sank. Of the 69 passengers and crew onboard, just 17 survived. The disaster led to sweeping reforms in aviation safety, including compulsory pre-flight safety briefings on every commercial flight. [...] Today, before every commercial flight, cabin crew are required to outline where a plane's exits are, as well as the location of life vests and how to inflate them.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

‘People are looking at Scotland for good fun’: Glasgow prepares for Commonwealth Games

Glasgow stepped in at the last minute to host the games, after Victoria in Australia pulled out

“A lot of people aren’t fully aware it’s happening,” says one man working on a stall selling Commonwealth Games merchandise in Glasgow city centre on Wednesday, a day before the competition begins.

“It’s been slow – the first two days we didn’t really sell anything but it’s picking up now.”

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Nobody in Europe knows or cares what Kemi Badenoch thinks. That’s a big mistake | Simon Nixon

The opposition leader wants to pull the UK out of the ECHR, wrecking treaties from the Good Friday agreement to the Gibraltar deal

Sitting in Brussels, or one of the EU’s 27 chancelleries, one could be forgiven for tuning out the latest psychodramas in Britain’s Conservative party. After all, the country has a new Labour prime minister who is a pro-European keen to build upon the “reset” begun by Keir Starmer. Who cares what a party in opposition thinks about anything when it is still reeling from its landslide 2024 defeat, and languishing third in the opinion polls as it haemorrhages support from its right flank? It is easy to dismiss Kemi Badenoch and her party as a sideshow.

That would be a mistake. Following her latest pronouncements, Badenoch has effectively committed the Conservatives to a policy of conflict, and possibly even rupture, with the EU. She recently suggested in a newspaper article that anyone who opposes her policy of withdrawing from the European convention on human rights (ECHR) or ditching net zero commitments would be considered “not serious”, and thus excluded from consideration as a Conservative candidate at the next election. She then withdrew the party whip (a UK parliamentary euphemism for “kicked out”) from Gavin Barwell, a member of the House of Lords who criticised Badenoch’s stance. Such a choice revives memories of Boris Johnson’s purge of pro-Europeans from the party.

Simon Nixon is a journalist and economics commentator

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Iraq’s impossible predicament: why the country is trapped between Iran and the US

With the outbreak of this year’s war, Iraq’s balancing act between the two antagonists has collapsed, exposing a perilously fragile state

One week after the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and ignited a regional war, drones started flying over Basra in southern Iraq. They were targeting Iraq’s oil industry. They hit an oilfield operated by BP, as well as a cargo terminal at Basra airport and a large compound that houses foreign companies that service the oil sector. Another attack on 6 March hit the same compound, striking offices and warehouses used by Halliburton and KBR, two US companies that have been in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The attack sparked a massive fire that lit up the night sky.

In the wider war, it was not a particularly notable day – but in Iraq the strikes laid bare just how weak the state had become and “how easily sovereignty could be violated”, as one senior Iraqi security official put it to me. For 40 years, the US, Iran and Israel existed in an uneasy equilibrium of neither peace nor war. As this has come to a sudden, dramatic end, Iraq finds itself caught in the middle.

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‘I would rather be poor’: man says money cannot compensate for partner’s death after failed cancer diagnosis

Exclusive: Darren Rosheski won NHS payout over partner Helen Dutton’s death from rectal cancer after GP misjudged her symptoms

“I remember the doctor, after he’d examined Helen and found a large lump in her colon, saying ‘it’s very sinister – we need to bring you in to be investigated.”

Darren Rosheski is recalling the moment a consultant doctor at Tameside hospital broke the news to his partner, Helen Dutton, that her symptoms – which also included back pain, passing blood and altered bowel habits – were so worrying that they needed further tests.

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US senator wants urgent answers from Barclays over Jes Staley’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein

Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren says it is unclear how bank failed to uncover former CEO’s links with sex offender

The leading US senator Elizabeth Warren has called for urgent answers from Barclays over what she claimed was its “apparent failure to meaningfully investigate” ties between the bank’s former boss, Jes Staley, and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a letter sent privately to Barclays’s chair, Nigel Higgins, and seen by the Guardian, Warren – the most senior Democrat on the US senate banking committee – said it was “deeply unclear how Barclays, supposedly investigating Staley’s connection to Epstein, failed to uncover this decades-long relationship”.

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Orcas seen ramming prey so hard it explodes may be playing game

Scientists believe sunfish-smashing behaviour could be form of entertainment or to help younger whales feed

Orcas have been observed ramming into giant fish so hard that the prey explode, possibly as a form of gory entertainment.

On several occasions, orcas were observed to hold sunfish in their jaws while a second whale smashed into the target at high speed, causing it to break into thousands of pieces. Since the fish had already been killed, scientists suggested the behaviour may represent a form of play.

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‘A statement of freedom’: T-shirt slogan goes viral and book sales rocket in Taiwan after Hong Kong raids

Taiwanese people look on with concern at fate of Hong Kong’s independent booksellers, after series of arrests in recent months

Walking out of one of Hong Kong’s last remaining independent bookstores, hands behind her back but head held high, the woman’s T-shirt was emblazoned with a simple slogan: “I am a bookstore employee”.

Escorted by police, the woman was among five people arrested during raids on two bookstores last week, suspected of displaying and selling publications with “seditious” content, a national security crime which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

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Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander apologizes to Courtney Stodden for ‘inappropriate’ sketch made when she was a teenager

The actor, who is one of the writers credited for the Funny or Die sketch, said he was ‘deeply sorry for any harm or distress’ caused by the 2012 skit

Seinfeld star Jason Alexander has apologized to the model Courtney Stodden for a decade-old comedy sketch in which he rubbed a mobile phone on her breasts when she was 17, saying, “It was inappropriate and I truly regret it”.

Stodden made international headlines in 2011 when she married her ex-husband, The Green Mile actor Doug Hutchison, when she was 16 and he was 51. Though she was a minor, the marriage was legal due to her parents giving their permission. Stodden and Hutchison divorced in 2020.

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Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Orka’s betrapt op het ‘rammen’ van maanvis, wellicht voor de lol

Vijfde journalist in amper zes weken vermoord in Mexico

Vlamingen krijgen allemansrecht op zwemmen in natuurwater ‘naar Nederlands voorbeeld’

Alles wat je moet weten over zonnebrand

Huidkanker is de meest voorkomende vorm van kanker in Nederland en het aantal patiënten groeit. Daarom is het belangrijk dat we ons beter gaan beschermen tegen de schadelijke…

BOKEH HYDRANGEA

photo-tez has added a photo to the pool:

BOKEH HYDRANGEA

塩船観音寺

Found Kodachrome Slide

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Found Kodachrome Slide

date stamped on slide November 1965

Your Only One

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Your Only One

Fokke & Sukke

F & S

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Google is hoarding TPUs to develop Artificial General Intelligence

Google’s parent company Alphabet is managing its fleet of AI accelerators to prioritize research on artificial general intelligence, rather than renting them all to customers. CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the company’s priorities during its second quarter earnings call, during which the company confirmed it has delivered on its plan to sell its tensor processing units (TPUs) to some customers. In response to news of those sales, Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan asked how Alphabet balances demand from customers who want to buy its TPUs and the web giant’s own need for processing power. “In terms of allocating our TPUs … our first priority is making sure we are allocating what we need to compete at the frontier in terms of AGI development,” Pichai replied, referring to Artificial General Intelligence –AIs that possesses human-like intelligence. “That is the foundation for everything we do,” Pichai added. Another analyst, Mark Shmulik of Bernstein, revisited the matter by asking how Google allocates processing capacity among its search business, cloud operation, and model training efforts. “On allocation, I think the baseline with which we start is what it takes to continue AGI development at the frontier,” Pichai responded. The CEO said Alphabet is also “prioritizing our core product areas like Search, YouTube, et cetera, as well as Cloud.” And in the G-Cloud, Google is “prioritizing the compute to make sure we can serve our models in the context of Vertex and Gemini Enterprise, and our core solutions, be it data analytics and cybersecurity.” “Our core services for our core products across consumers and enterprises is where the compute is primarily going, and that’s how we think about it,” the CEO added. Google’s core services are going gangbusters. Google Cloud revenue leapt 82 percent year over year, to $24.75 billion for the quarter, and delivered an $8.8 billion profit which represented 214 percent growth. The Big G said that growth came from “strong demand for AI infrastructure and AI solutions.” There’s probably more to come as the G-Cloud now has $514 billion of cloudy backlog on the books, meaning customers have signed up for services they’re yet to consume. Search revenue grew 17 percent and YouTube ads grew 13 percent. When generative AI came along some pundits suggested it could threaten Google’s search ads biz. That was not a good take because Pichai said the company’s AI Mode for search is “driving an incremental increase in Search queries overall.” AI search needs specialist hardware that is expensive to buy and run. Pichai said Google is on top of that. “Thanks to our engineering and hardware optimizations, this quarter we reduced the cost of AI Mode responses to its lowest level since launch, even as we’ve brought more advanced AI capabilities.” Google continues to spend megabucks on AI infrastructure – CFO Anat Ashkenazi said the company now plans to spend between $195 billion and $205 billion this financial year, up from a previous estimate of $180 billion to 190 billion. Ashkenazi said Google can’t get all the kit it needs due to what she described as “the supply-constrained environment.” Google therefore plans to “expand the use of third-party capacity in Q3 as a bridging strategy while we build out more internal capacity.” Pichai said buying bridging capacity will help Google to land monster cloud clients. “There are very, very large customers of ours on Cloud who we are trying to support them through this extraordinary moment,” the CEO said. “The incremental opportunities they are bringing to us, while a short-term cost over a few months may be very high, in the lifetime of the deal, as we bring more capacity on, is highly ROI positive.” “Those are factors we are taking into account. Are you willing to take upfront six-month deal to be able to serve that customer in what is a multi-year opportunity, where the margins and the returns are very, very attractive over that multi-year horizon?” Alphabet’s quarterly revenue landed at $119.8 billion, up 24 percent year over year. Operating income hit $40.8 billion, up 34 percent. Yet even those torrents of money couldn’t stop Google’s free cash flow landing at -$5.9 billion – the first time the company hasn’t had spare cash to splash since 2004. Investors seem not to like that and sent the price of the company’s shares down by four percent in after hours trading. ®

MetaFilter

The past 24 hours of MetaFilter

The Billionaires' Vagina Club

With her motto, "Sexual health is health," Dr. Sally Greenwald aims to optimize orgasms for the women of Silicon Valley. Greenwald likes to say that she is the happiest gynecologist in America. She is certainly sought after, having attracted a following of high-powered Silicon Valley women of a certain age. Archived link

Recently, Greenwald was the guest of honor at a small luncheon hosted by one of her patients, the tech entrepreneur and philanthropist Gisel Kordestani, in Atherton, California, one of the wealthiest towns in the country. Her sparkling Jimmy Choo flats peeked out from under a long, rainbow-striped dress, and her language immediately signalled that she shares Silicon Valley's obsession with optimization and innovation—"perseveration on perfection," she calls it, a determination to bring the entrepreneurial mind-set into every aspect of one's life. The women at the lunch were not content to enjoy good health; they were looking for a way to level up. (The latest term for this is "healthmaxxing." At her practice, Greenwald decided that patients would never wait, that she would be available from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and that she would never have to cancel because she was delivering a baby. The office would provide spa-fluffy robes, heated towels, and premium teas. She would answer texts and calls at all hours, including on weekends, and would travel to patients' pool houses for a quick infection check or meet them on the tarmac when they flew, in a private jet, up from L.A. She tracks all of her patients' metrics: blood tests to check that hormones are balanced; Oura rings to show resting heart rates and sleep scores; glucose monitors to keep tabs on blood sugar; food-tracking apps for logging daily protein targets. She raised her prices a few times. Consultations became a thousand dollars, then two thousand. She decided to accept new members with tiered annual fees, starting at ten thousand dollars and exceeding thirty thousand for the most extensive care, which can involve assembling a specialized care team to monitor complex comorbidities. "I love being in concierge medicine, because practicing at the top 0.001 per cent—that's where innovation happens," Greenwald told me. "I get to sit around and think about these things." She went on, "I am always, like, 'What's next? What's better? Why don't we try this?' " She added, "But at some point the system needs to evolve so other people can access this kind of care." Midi Health, a virtual-care platform for women in menopause and perimenopause which was founded in 2021, offers the same sorts of hormone treatments that Greenwald does, including options for cancer patients, and it accepts insurance.

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Best early Hungarian GP bets and latest odds

We’ve checked the latest betting markets and selected the early bets offering the best value at the Hungaroring.