Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 120
July 7, 2017
Facebook is building a new campus that includes 1,500 apartments and a grocery store
It’s been just over two years since Facebook moved into its 430,000-square-foot, Frank Gehry-designed headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Now the company is ready to expand again, and this time it wants to build a lot more than just office space for its workers.
Facebook on Friday unveiled plans to build what it will call its “Willow Campus,” a “mixed-use village” that sounds like a combination of a strip mall, a condo complex and an office park.
The new campus, which will be right behind Facebook’s existing headquarters in Menlo Park on a site the company acquired in 2015, will include a grocery store, a pharmacy and 1,500 housing units, more than 200 of which will be rented at “below market rates.” All of this will be open to the public, according to the company’s blog post. There will also be 125,000 square feet of retail space, and 1.75 million square feet of office space, though it is unclear if the office will be reserved exclusively for Facebook. (A spokesperson said the company is “not able to discuss other specifics right now.”)
Facebook thinks the grocery, retail, housing and office portions of this project will be completed by 2021. This campus will be in addition to the company’s existing office space, not a replacement for it.
Facebook also envisions that this new campus will help with transit, which is poor in the Bay Area, both due to traffic and to a lack of public transit options between San Francisco and cities along the peninsula, where tech giants like Facebook and Google have set up sprawling campuses.
“The region’s failure to continue to invest in our transportation infrastructure alongside growth has led to congestion and delay,” the company wrote on its blog, saying it plans to build a transit center on this new campus and offer “east-west connections” (which don’t exist at the moment).
Imagine a Facebook-owned city that’s open to the public and also swarming with Facebook employees. If you fast-forward to the 2:35 minute mark on this video Facebook posted, you can get a better idea of what the company has in mind.
Tech companies have provided a lightning rod for angry Bay Area locals who have seen tech money dramatically change neighborhoods and rent prices. The buses that many tech companies use to shuttle employees from San Francisco down to their corporate headquarters have been protested and even smashed in the past.
Facebook is conscious of the stereotype and is trying to get out ahead of complaints early with its new campus.
“Going forward, we plan to continue to work closely with local leaders and community members to ensure Facebook’s presence is a benefit to the community. It’s one we’re lucky to call home.”
Source:
Amelia Earhart’s disappearance may finally be explained with one photo
Ever since Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on their around-the-world flight on July 2, 1937, what happened to the two has been one of the great unsolved mysteries of the 20th Century.
A recently discovered photograph from the U.S. Government archives may actually provide an answer to all the speculation that has circled the case and HISTORY will present the evidence in a two-hour special Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence on Sunday, July 9 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
The photo taken on Jaluit Atoll and uncovered by Former US Treasury Agent Les Kinney, who has been searching for an answer for 15 years as to what happened to Earhart, was filed away because it was considered to be a picture of Japanese movements in the Marshall Islands. No one guessed that it might provide a clue as to Earhart’s fate.
But if you look closely, you can see a Caucasian woman sitting on the dock with her back to the photographer, and to her far left is a man who very much resembles Noonan. The person who took the photograph is believed to have later been executed as a spy.
If that is Earhart and Noonan, it would mean they survived the crash. Of course, that raises more questions about what happened to them after their her rescue.
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In Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, Former FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry investigates evidence that Earhart survived her final flight, crash-landed in the Marshall Islands, and was captured by the Japanese military – dying in their custody on Saipan — and why there may have been a cover up.
The first step for Henry was to determine if the photograph is possibly Earhart and Noonan, and toward that end, he enlists the aid of photo recognition expert Kent Gibson, who rated the photo “very likely” to be Earhart and Noonan.
“When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that’s been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that’s Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,” Henry told NBC News.
Additionally, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence” presents evidence verified by some of the most reputable professionals in the world including: plane parts found in an uninhabited island of the Marshall Islands by Earhart Investigator Dick Spink consistent with the aircraft that Earhart was flying in 1937; and an original interview with the last living eyewitness who claims to have seen Earhart and Noonan after their crash.
Will the 80-year-old mystery be solved? Tune in when Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence premieres Sunday, July 9 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HISTORY and form your own opinion.
Source:
July 6, 2017
Prototype ‘3D’ chip from MIT could eliminate memory bottlenecks
Future CPUs will have to deal with growing amounts of data, but all too often they are slowed down by bandwidth issues between the processor and RAM. A prototype chip built by researchers at Stanford and MIT can solve the problem by sandwiching the memory, processor and even sensors all into one unit. While current chips are made of silicon, the prototype processor is made of graphene carbon nanotubes, with resistive RAM (RRAM) layered over it.
The team claims this makes for “the most complex nanoelectronic system ever made with emerging nanotechnologies,” creating a 3D computer architecture. Using carbon makes the whole thing possible, since higher temperatures required to make a silicon CPU would damage the sensitive RRAM cells.
This technology could do more than just speed up the framerate on your next Xbox too, as the current prototype used a top layer of one million carbon nanotube sensors to detect gases, with the information processed and measured directly on the chip. So far, the development has been funded by organizations including DARPA and the NSF. The next step in the process is to work with Analog Devices on new versions of the technology — unfortunately like so many graphene-related breakthroughs we have no idea when this one will be commercially available.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/06/prototype-3d-chip-from-mit-could-eliminate-memory-bottlenecks/
Marvel’s Luke Cage adds two new cast members for season 2
Two new faces will be coming to Harlem in season two of Luke Cage, with Marvel and Netflix announcing that Mustafa Sahkir (The Night Of) and Gabrielle Dennis (Rosewood) have been cast in the upcoming season.
Shakir will portray John McIver (a.k.a. Bushmaster), who is described as “a natural leader, brimming with charisma, whose mission is focused on Harlem and vengeance.”
Dennis, meanwhile, will portray Tilda Johnson (a.k.a. Nightshade/Nighthawk), “a brilliant, holistic doctor with a complicated history in Harlem where, as much as she tries to stay far from trouble, it seems to always find her.”
Interestingly, just last month, actress and singer Nabiyah Be revealed that she is also playing the character of Tilda Johnson in next year’s Black Panther.
“Mustafa’s incredible presence and power ignited us from our first meeting, and Gabrielle brings the charm and smarts to a very complicated role,” remarked executive producer Jeph Loeb. “Both will be wonderful additions to our already magnificent cast.”
“I can’t wait for audiences to see the compelling paces we put both Mustafa and Gabrielle through,” said Marvel’s Luke Cage executive producer and showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker. “From the moment you see each of them on screen, I feel they will be powerful additions to the world of Marvel and Harlem’s Luke Cage.”
Luke Cage season two will star Mike Colter as the titular Luke Cage, with Simone Missick as Misty Knight, Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple, Alfre Woodard as Mariah Dillard and Theo Rossi as Shades. Colter will be seen next as the character in Marvel’s The Defenders in August.
Source:
https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2017/07/marvels-luke-cage-adds-two-new-cast-members-for-season-2/
Japan’s population is falling faster than it ever has before
Japan’s population fell at the beginning of this year at the fastest pace since 1968, when the earliest comparable figures started getting collected.
As of January 1, the number of Japanese people (excluding resident foreigners) fell by a record 308,084 from a year earlier to 125,583,658, marking the eighth consecutive year of declines, government data showed Wednesday.
These changes highlight a mounting demographic challenge to Japan’s economic growth that has been roughly two decades in the making. Some economists even call the situation a “demographic time bomb,”given the vicious cycle that has formed between low fertility rates and low consumer spending.
The conflict lies in the tension between Japan’s traditional work culture — which emphasizes the role of men as primary breadwinners — and younger generations’ desire to have flexibility in their personal and professional lives.
Younger people increasingly want more egalitarian relationships in which men and women can both pursue their careers and share household duties. But career pursuits have won the battle for the last decade or so, while starting or growing families has taken a backseat on a mass scale.
The number of births in Japan fell 2.9% from the previous year to 981,202 today, the lowest since comparable data became available in 1974. People at or above the age of 65 account for 27.2% of the total population, the highest ratio on record, while those 14 or younger make up just 12.7%, the data showed.
The number of registered foreign residents in Japan increased 6.9% from a year earlier, according to the data. Japan has long been reluctant to open up to immigration, since many Japanese people pride themselves on what they see as their cultural and ethnic homogeneity.
But recently, the government has been increasing its efforts to attract students and high-skilled workers from overseas.
The overall population, which combines both Japanese and resident foreigners, fell 0.1% from a year ago to 127,907,086, the data showed.
Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/japans-population-falling-faster-than-ever-before-2017-7
