Alex Davies

A rollicking exploration of why the stuff we use (mostly) works – and a celebration of the mad genius of the engineers who ensure that it does.

This volume reports on two excavations carried out by Oxford Archaeology on the outskirts of Wallingford, at Slade End Farm and Winterbrook. The two sites provide windows into the same gravel terrace landscape and together shed significant new light on the prehistory of the south Oxfordshire Thames Valley. Slade End Farm was repeatedly visited for settlement in the early Neolithic. Numerous clusters of pits were found that contained pottery, flintwork and other finds. A pair of inhumation burials was also discovered. Sparser settlement subsequently occurred at the two sites during the middle and late Neolithic and the Beaker period. Landscape organisation dramatically changed in the middle Bronze Age, when ditched field systems or enclosure complexes were laid out at both sites. A waterhole containing a log ladder was also found. Environmental evidence suggests a landscape of largely open grassland used for grazing. While no buildings were found, concentrations of finds in some enclosures suggest that they were foci for domestic activity. Several burials were also found at each site. Both sites were reoccupied for settlement during the early and middle Iron Age. Roundhouses were built, and a series of boundaries and enclosures laid out. A double pit alignment dug in the early Iron Age at Slade End Farm separated the occupied area from the lower, wetter ground to the south. One of the pits from this alignment contained an inhumation burial. A complete, decorated copper alloy bracelet that had been placed in a posthole is a rare survival. At Winterbrook, part of a settlement dating to the 11th to 12th centuries was also uncovered, providing the first good archaeological evidence for a rural community in the immediate hinterland of the medieval town of Wallingford.

The self-driving car has been one of the most hyped technological breakthroughs of recent years. But early promises that these autonomous vehicles would soon be on the roads have proven premature. Wired editor Alex Daviesfollows the twists and turns of this story from its origins to today. The story starts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was charged with developing a land-based equivalent to the drone, a vehicle that could operate in war zones without risking human lives. DARPA issued a series of three “Grand Challenges” that attracted visionaries, many of them students and amateurs, who took the technology from Jetsons-style fantasy to near-reality. The young stars of the Challenges soon connected with Silicon Valley giants Google and Uber, intent on delivering a new way of driving to the civilian world. Soon the automakers joined the quest, some on their own, others in partnership with the tech titans. But as road testing progressed, it became clear that the challenges of driving a car without human assistance were more formidable than anticipated. Davies profiles the industry’s key players from the early enthusiasm to their growing awareness that while this spin on artificial intelligence isn’t yet ready for rush-hour traffic, driverless cars are poised to remake how the world moves. Driven explores this exciting quest to transform transportation and change our lives.

Alex Davies tells the dramatic, colorful story of the quest to develop driverless cars--and the fierce competition between Google, Uber, and other companies in a race to revolutionize our lives. The self-driving car has been one of the most vaunted technological breakthroughs of recent years. But early promises that these autonomous vehicles would soon be on the roads have proven premature. Alex Davies follows the twists and turns of this story from its origins to today. The story starts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was charged with developing a land-based equivalent to the drone, a vehicle that could operate in war zones without risking human lives. DARPA issued a series of three "Grand Challenges" that attracted visionaries, many of them students and amateurs, who took the technology from Jetsons-style fantasy to near-reality. The young stars of the Challenges soon connected with Silicon Valley giants Google and Uber, intent on delivering a new way of driving to the civilian world. Soon the automakers joined the quest, some on their own, others in partnership with the tech titans. But as road testing progressed, it became clear that the challenges of driving a car without human assistance were more formidable than anticipated. Davies profiles the industry's key players from the early enthusiasm of the DARPA days to their growing awareness that while this spin on artificial intelligence isn't yet ready for rush-hour traffic, driverless cars are poised to remake how the world moves. Driven explores this exciting quest to transform transportation and change our lives.

This book gives a new account of society and social change in the upper and middle Thames Valley from the Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age, 1150-100 BC. A model is developed from social anthropological case studies setting out expectations on how societies are structured based on certain material manifestations. Patterns are found within the wide range of types of evidence that are integrated and synthesised. This includes settlements, house forms, metalwork, pottery, human and animal remains, monuments, landscape boundaries and special deposits. The main interpretation offered is that Late Bronze Age societies were fluid and unstructured by either social status differences or lineage identities, whereas Early Iron Age communities were more concerned with ancestral genealogy and inter-generational inheritance. By the Middle Iron Age, communal aspects of ritual practice and material practice were largely replaced by local and household concerns in which smaller groups displayed increasing autonomy from each other.

This book is for experienced C# developers that need to get a quick yet in depth look at what the new feature async in C# 5.0 means for their current and future projects.

This book uses the approach of a cookbook. Each recipe provides the reader with easy step-by-step descriptions of the actions necessary to accomplish a specific task. It is designed to present what often appear as extremely complicated techniques as a series of simple-to-follow recipes, allowing readers to achieve high uptimes on their MySQL servers. This book is targeted at system administrators or database administrators who have basic familiarity with Linux, the shell, and MySQL. The typical user will be able to get MySQL installed and working, but needs practical guidance to make it highly available.