Author Archives: Matt

Apocalypse in New Orleans | Politics News | Rolling Stone

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Classic from the Rolling Stone archives

It’s a little before midnight on Friday, September 2nd, and I’m sitting in a hotel bar in Houston. Somewhere to the southeast, the worst natural disaster in American history is unfolding in the darkness, with an entire city shrouded in death, panic and disease – and here we are, a bunch of half-drunk, affluent white people quaffing eleven-dollar foreign beers and planning what appears to be a paramilitary mission to rescue two cats and a maid in the wreckage of New Orleans.

via Apocalypse in New Orleans | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

Why You Should Hold Onto Your “Old” iPad | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

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If you own a third-generation iPad, you might be feeling a little burned by Apple this week. You’re fine with the iPad Mini the company announced. You saw that one coming. The fourth-generation iPad, though? And just six months after you bought Apple’s last latest-and-greatest iPad? Not cool. Not only are you now carrying around an iPad that doesn’t have Apple’s fastest mobile processor, what used to be an innocent port for the 30-pin connector is now an ugly scar compared to the little bellybutton of a hole for the fourth-gen iPad’s Lighting connector. Oh, and the new iPad has speedier graphics and a better camera, too.

Good news: You can ignore your buyer’s remorse. Your third-gen iPad is awesome. Hell, even the iPad 2 (which Apple still sells, by the way) is still relevant. So if you’re feeling less enamored with your third-gen iPad, stop. And if you’re thinking about ditching it altogether for the fourth-gen model, don’t.

via Why You Should Hold Onto Your “Old” iPad | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

Why Things Fail: From Tires to Helicopter Blades, Everything Breaks Eventually | Wired Design | Wired.com

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In 2009, Mohawk Industries—one of the largest makers of carpeting in the country—was forced to discontinue an entire line of carpet tiles when the tiles failed unexpectedly, costing the company millions. In 2010, Johnson & Johnson had to recall 93,000 artificial hips after their metal joints started failing—inside patients. In 2011, Southwest Airlines grounded 79 planes after one of its Boeing 737s tore open in midflight. And just this past summer, GE issued a recall of 1.3 million dishwashers due to a defective heating element that could cause fires. Unexpected failure happens to everything, and so every manufacturer lives with some amount of risk: the risk of recalls, the risk of outsize warranty claims, the risk that a misbehaving product could hurt or kill a customer.

via Why Things Fail: From Tires to Helicopter Blades, Everything Breaks Eventually | Wired Design | Wired.com.

Tech City: two years in, how is east London’s technology hub faring? | Technology | The Observer

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At the Google campus in east London last month, an unshaven, scruffily dressed 31-year-old man took to the stage to address a packed room. Introducing the panel beside him – which included David “Two Brains” Willetts, the geekish minister for universities and science, and Mind Candy founder Michael Acton Smith – he remarked that the last time he’d visited the building, he’d been with George Osborne shortly after “that budget” and their ministerial car had been pelted with Cornish pasties (after the chancellor announced a so-called “pasty tax”). It’s fair to say that Rohan Silva, the senior prime ministerial adviser and the person many credit with putting east London’s technology cluster of startups on the map as “Tech City”, enjoyed a rather less hostile welcome this time, as he unveiled plans to open up London’s equity markets to high-growth tech companies.

via Tech City: two years in, how is east London’s technology hub faring? | Technology | The Observer.

Double the Firsts at Heineken Thirst!

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Lighting up the December darkness like a solar flare, Heineken Thirst – Malaysia’s leading electronic music festival – powers back to life on December 8 at Sepang International Circuit. Expanding into new dimensions of music and creativity with a series of exclusives, this year Heineken Thirst brings you two stages of passion and excitement against a backdrop of towering light sculptures and creative wish fulfilment.

Every year Heineken Thirst searches for sound barriers to break and visual limits to exceed. In 2011, it was lift-off with ever-accelerating super producer Tiësto. In 2010, the awe-inspiring spectacle of Godskitchen Boombox touched down at Sepang. This year Heineken Thirst scores a double first: with twin headliners in the shape of Swedish house supremo Avicii and French electronica pioneers Justice across two arenas, both playing their debut Malaysian sets, Heineken Thirst 2012 is set to eclipse its own supersonic achievements.

“Heineken Thirst is a premium progressive music festival with an internationally renowned reputation and features global stars and local talent personifying the values of the brand. Our consumers can open their world to the experiences of destination music festivals without jumping on a plane,” comments Loh Ee Lin, Heineken Senior Brand Manager

Alongside these international icons, a line up of top-flight international and local artists will be bringing Heineken Thirst to its pulsating climax. Progressive electro maestros Above & Beyond need little introduction to Malaysia’s Electronic Dance Music fans. This globe-spanning UK-based trio ranks Malaysia as one of their favourite destinations, ripping the roof off whenever they appear.

Joining the line up is underground favourite Brodinski whose mix of dirty house and electro and unceasing work ethic have made him a firm favourite on indoor and outdoor stages worldwide. Along with Gesaffelstein whose cosmic electro nods to the 1980s darkwave synth movement.
And that’s before you consider Heineken Thirst’s line up of local artists. With a reputation for nurturing talent and connecting it to the leading edge of international music trends, the local talent reads like a who’s who of Heineken’s talent development achievements of the last decade. Goldfish & Blink, Malaysia’s first EDM superstars will be drawing a capacity crowd at the main arena, while Thirst winner DJ Blink’s underground electronic project LapSap, along with DJ XU, will be rocking the second stage.

Then there’s Mr Nasty & GuruGuru, featuring another Thirst winner, Hoong (part of Altered Image), and Found @ Thirst alumni Phil K Lee (Champion, 2010), Tommy Cham (Champion, 2011) and Nick Haydez (Finalist, 2011), which all adds up into a line up of incredible Heineken discoveries. Not to mention Jee Hoe and Hypeembeats whose fresh-faced indie, pumping electro and techno have rocked everything from dark room club nights to events like Heineken Green Room and outdoor shows.

“For one night they can escape the city and immerse themselves in the creative universe of Heineken Thirst and bring their music experience bursting to life,” Ee Lin added.

Of course, Heineken’s continuously evolving roll call of creative and collaborative talent doesn’t end with the music talent. In the search to find ever more exclusive and inclusive experiences for Heineken Thirst, last year’s festival included 10-metre tall pillars-like science fiction-inspired turrets – that welcomed 25,000 people into an arena flanked by our futuristic Infinity Bar and Heinekabanas to create a Heineken drinking experience unique to Heineken Thirst.

This year promises to develop those themes ever further at a specially designed Heineken Thirst festival site featuring some of the latest innovations in creative technologies, digital landscaping and interactive collaborative installation pieces. In another Heineken Thirst exclusive, the festival will feature a huge sculptural centrepiece in the form of Robert James Buchholz’s Wish, fresh from its appearance at this year’s Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, a 17 metre high installation consisting of three LED lit flowers that pulse in time to the music.

Add to that the presence of the world’s leading DJ celebrity snapper Rukes, the self-taught LA based photographer who tours the EDM festivals of the world with his lens and you have the recipe for a night of supercharged thrill-seeking and discovery on December 8 at Heineken Thirst, Malaysia’s leading electronic music festival.
To be part of Heineken’s exciting calendar of events, stay tuned at our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Heineken) or Twitter (www.twitter.com/Heineken_MY).

The Dark Side

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By now you’ve probably heard about Stop 114A, a campaign to bring awareness to a new amendment to Malaysia’s Evidence Act 1950 which, its supporters allege, could lead to Internet freedoms being curtailed in this fair state. Who knows, by the time you read this it could be dead in the water but at time of writing a bunch of leading Malaysian websites went dark for a special Internet Blackout Day.

There’s even a Facebook page – 1Million Malaysians against Evidence (Amendment) (No2) Act 2012 – which is bound to be full of exactly the kind of comments that the Act seeks to shut down. Don’t worry, the rest of this article isn’t going to be an exhaustive treatise on the pros and cons of online sedition or a puff piece for either side of the tiresome political divide. But whether you’re an activist turk or an apolitical berk, it’s worth remembering that there’s a whole movement out there dedicated to curtailing what you can do and say online.

The Internet, as far as most of its users is concerned, is only about a decade old (doesn’t matter that it was conjured up in the 1950s as a secure military communications network). Sites we use everyday like Facebook are far younger than that, while Hotmail, the redoubtable netizen that introduced many of us to free email and enduringly embarrassing nicknames@hotmail.com is being put out to pasture, to be replaced by a new suite of services under the Outlook umbrella.

Times move fast online. Sites like Facebook and Groupon have gone from being the darling of the analysts to the shame of the bubbling classes. Who remembers dot com bombs like Friendster, Bebo or the increasingly lonely looking MySpace? Walled gardens are increasingly the buzzword of the day. Facebook’s is by far the largest (if you discount China’s massive firewalled Intranet) with close to a billion members willingly opting out of the Net to sit in secluded safety on virtual lawns surrounded by the neat hedges and landscaped pathways of their Facebook Friends.

It’s not new. Many US citizens and residents started off their online lives with America Online, an Internet that sat on top of the Internet in the 1990s, curating its own content. But the world of online commerce was never going to agree to those limits and gamers and porn surfers chafed to go beyond its none too opaque borders. And roam they did. Into nooks. Behind crannies. Leaving flaming posts and trolling their way happily across message boards, blogs and the nascent social media networks, happily ripping electronic lollipops from the mouths of babes (or “hos” and “bit#$@” as they prefer to term them) and leaving misery and destruction behind them.

And if there’s anything your archetypal international politician really hates it’s the sadness and discomfort of the average voter. You can practically hear them squealing with well-oiled disgust and approbation as the cogs of ill repute mesh their visages into a death mask stare. Doesn’t hurt that there are also plenty of big business interests that have their sticky beaks stuck in the trough of online legislation, looking for ways to tighten the screws around their own purse strings.

Whether it’s Stop 114A, SOPA, PIPA or any number of cookie cutter slices of legislation, we’re seeing a concerted effort by governments the world over – and the businesses behind them – to curtail our online behaviour. It could be the walled gardens created by the likes of Apple and Facebook, the intrusion of criminal or cyber-sleuthing hackers, or governments wishing to force Internet users to register in the name of anti-paedophile, terrorism or piracy protections, they all have one ultimate aim: control.

For some it’s because they understand the Internet poorly and think of it as a broadcast medium like TV or radio where state regulation and interference is as old as the technology itself. And then there are those who understand it only too well. A recent Wired magazine profile (August 2012) of Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow based cyber security company whose anti-virus suite now rivals those of Norton and McAfee, quoted the enigmatic Russian with close Kremlin ties as saying that there is too much freedom online – even within the moats of Facebook – before exploring his suggestion of a digital passport that would allow a user’s movements to be tracked as they journey across the binary ocean.

Of course, it’ll never happen. Not as long as we keep starting Facebook pages to demonstrate our ire. And even if it does come to pass, this kind of oversight shouldn’t worry you. You have nothing to fear. After all; you never do anything wrong.

This post first appeared in the September issue of NewMan magazine