All posts tagged: Hundreds

They Searched Through Hundreds of Bands to Solve an Online Mystery

They Searched Through Hundreds of Bands to Solve an Online Mystery

The first advancement in years came in May, when a user on the buzzing Reddit community r/TheMysteriousSong found a reference to Hörfest, a contest for amateur bands the radio station held every year in Hamburg, Germany. “It was a very likely way to solve our riddle,” says Arne, a moderator of the subreddit who posts under the handle LordElend (Arne declined to give their last name, citing privacy concerns), “since this was a good explanation as to why an amateur band tape would have been aired on NDR, which usually had high standards.” A search of local government archives turned up thousands of pages on Hörfest, but they wouldn’t be easy to comb through. “We realized that 800 bands, most obscure and not on Google, will need a larger group of researchers,” says Arne. Soon, hundreds of people across multiple platforms were collaborating on extensive spreadsheets, listing band members, sounds, songs, and anything else they could find. One of these investigators, who posts using the handle marijn1412, found that a member of a band on …

How a PhD Student Discovered a Lost Mayan City From Hundreds of Miles Away

How a PhD Student Discovered a Lost Mayan City From Hundreds of Miles Away

A new Mayan city, lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico for centuries, has been discovered from the computer of a PhD student hundreds of miles away. This is the story of how he did it. The settlement, named Valeriana after a nearby freshwater lagoon, has all the characteristics of a classic Maya political capital: enclosed plazas, pyramids, a ball court, a reservoir, and an architectural layout that suggests a foundation prior to 150 AD, according to a newly published study in the journal Antiquity. And how did Tulane University graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas find it? The answer lies in lasers. Until recently, archaeology was limited to what a researcher could observe from the ground and with their eyes. However, the technology of detecting and measuring distances with light, known as lidar, has revolutionized the field, allowing us to scan entire regions in search of archaeological sites hidden under dense vegetation or concrete. Let’s travel back in time. It is 1848 and the governor of Petén, Guatemala, Modesto Méndez, together with Ambrosio Tut, an …

Hundreds of One Direction fans gather in London to sing, cry and say goodbye to Liam Payne

Hundreds of One Direction fans gather in London to sing, cry and say goodbye to Liam Payne

Hundreds of One Direction fans gathered in London’s Hyde Park on Sunday to pay their respects to Liam Payne, the former member of the British-Irish boy band who died on Wednesday after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Despite rainy weather, the queue to get in front of the park’s Peter Pan statue — where fans young and old were placing flowers, heart-shaped balloons and letters in memory of Payne — stretched back as far as the eye could see. Minute-long moments of silence were held every hour on the dot, when the crowd got so quiet one could hear a pin drop. At other times, spontaneous singalongs would break out, with throngs of fans shouting the lyrics to One Direction hits including “Best Song Ever,” “What Makes You Beautiful” and “History.” The emotion in the air was palpable, with the sea of fans containing many tear-streaked faces and the occasional cry ringing out. Jordi, 24, choked up telling Variety how One Direction helped her find a community during adolescence. “I was thinking about it on the train here, …

US, UK Send Hundreds Of Troops To Cyprus For Lebanon Contingencies

US, UK Send Hundreds Of Troops To Cyprus For Lebanon Contingencies

Earlier this week amid escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, and with increasing airstrikes hitting Beirut – resulting in commercial air traffic at Beirut’s international airport coming to a total halt – the Pentagon said it is sending more US troops to the region.  At least some of them have already arrived in Cyprus, CNN has reported. Dozens of American troops are there, with Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder having confirmed that the US has sent “a small number of US military personnel forward” to the region “out of an abundance of caution.” Close US ally the United Kingdom has ordered a surge of hundreds to Cyprus alongside the US troops. Illustrative US Army photo: A US CH-47 helicopter over Cyprus This is to prepare for a range of contingencies which could include warships going to the Lebanese coast to conduct an emergency evacuations of remaining American citizens in Lebanon. “The support that you’re seeing when it comes to US forces in the region is for our own force protection and should we need to …

A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s

A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s

Audio cas­sette tapes first appeared on the mar­ket in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, but it would take about a decade before they came to dom­i­nate it. And when they did, they’d changed the lives of many a music-lover by hav­ing made it pos­si­ble not just to lis­ten to their albums of choice on the go, but also to col­lect and trade their own cus­tom-assem­bled lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences. By the eight­ies, blank tapes had become a house­hold neces­si­ty on the order of bat­ter­ies or toi­let paper for such con­sumers — and just as with those fre­quent­ly replen­ished prod­ucts, every­one seemed to have their favorite brand. Some pre­ferred tapes from Philips, which devel­oped the for­mat of the Com­pact Cas­sette in the first place. Oth­ers had their pick from Fuji, BASF, Sony, Radio Shack, Scotch (which also made tape of the sticky vari­ety), and a host of oth­er brands besides. Even some mem­bers of post-cas­sette gen­er­a­tions rec­og­nize the old tagline “Is it live or is it Mem­o­rex?” or Max­el­l’s “Blown Away Guy” in his scarf and LC2. If you’re old …

Canadian Death Doctor Has Euthanized Hundreds of Patients

Canadian Death Doctor Has Euthanized Hundreds of Patients

This article is reprinted from National Review with the permission of the author . Legalizing euthanasia corrupts everything — the ethics of medicine, the public’s perception of people experiencing illness, disability, or elder frailty, the media that continually swoon over medics who kill. This latter phenomenon is on vivid display in a National Post story profiling a doctor who spends half her time legally killing patients by lethal injection, and most of the rest legally killing fetuses. In “This Kindly MAID Doctor Helped More Than 400 People Die: How Many Assisted Deaths are Too Many?” we learn that Dr. Ellen Wiebe loves her work: For Wiebe, medical assistance in dying (MAID) is “incredibly rewarding” work. She hasn’t faced nearly the same sort of stigma she once faced as an abortion provider and says that while she and her MAID colleagues “all work within the law,” she’s also not as “conservative” as some. . . . Most recently, Wiebe was featured in the BBC documentary, Better off Dead?, an exploration of the assisted suicide debate by British actor and comedian Liz …

Kenya police use tear gas, water cannon as hundreds protest over tax hikes | Protests News

Kenya police use tear gas, water cannon as hundreds protest over tax hikes | Protests News

Parliament debates controversial but watered-down finance bill that many fear will up cost of living. Police in Kenya have fired tear gas and used water cannon to disperse protesters gathering near parliament in the capital to demonstrate against planned tax hikes that many fear will worsen the cost-of-living crisis. Tense scenes played out in Nairobi on Thursday as hundreds took to the streets in opposition to a finance bill, which proposes introducing new taxes and levies that would increase the price of basic goods. The tax increases were projected to raise 346.7 billion shillings ($2.7bn), equivalent to 1.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and reduce the budget deficit from 5.7 percent to 3.3 percent of GDP. The cash-strapped government of President William Ruto agreed to make concessions on Tuesday, watering down the bill after hundreds of mostly young protesters clashed with police. But the government will still go ahead with some tax increases and has defended the proposed hikes as necessary for filling its coffers and cutting reliance on external borrowing. Protesters have decided …

Biden unveils plan allowing hundreds of thousands to gain US citizenship | Joe Biden News

Biden unveils plan allowing hundreds of thousands to gain US citizenship | Joe Biden News

United States President Joe Biden has unveiled one of the largest immigration regularisation programmes in recent history, offering a pathway to citizenship to hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the country. The new measures, announced on Tuesday, will allow some undocumented spouses of US citizens to apply for permanent residence — and eventually citizenship — without having to leave the country. The move will affect more than 500,000 spouses of US citizens. About 50,000 noncitizen children under age 21 — whose parents are married to a US citizen — will also be eligible. In a White House speech, Biden pitched the new executive action as a “common-sense fix” to the “cumbersome” system that is already in place. “Under the current process, undocumented spouses of citizens must go back to their home country, for example to Mexico, to fill out paperwork to obtain long-term legal status,” he explained. “They have to leave their families in America with no assurance that they will be allowed back in the United States. So they stay in …

‘Brazen and fearless’: Handguns hidden in children’s underwear drawer among hundreds of firearms seized in London | UK News

‘Brazen and fearless’: Handguns hidden in children’s underwear drawer among hundreds of firearms seized in London | UK News

Three handguns hidden in a children’s underwear drawer were among 386 illegal firearms seized across London last year. The Metropolitan Police says its blitz has led to a record drop in gun crime, which is at its lowest level in 15 years. Firearms offences have been cut from 196 to 145 since March 2023, while shooting murders are down from 12 in 2021/22 to eight in 2023/24. But despite the highest detection rate for 11 years – some 52% of criminals responsible for shootings were prosecuted last year – the force is still failing to solve almost half. No arrests have been made after a drive-by shooting in Dalston, east London, last month left four people injured, including a nine-year-old girl, who remains in critical condition in hospital. Image: A nine-year-old girl was shot in Dalston. Pic: Simon Robinson Commander Paul Brogden said the majority of shootings in the capital involve gangs but “wholly innocent victims” like her can “be caught in the crossfire”. Tyrese Miller, 22, was shot dead in a case of mistaken …