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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

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  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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No iconic 'Bong' sound, Apple lovers confused

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In an historical move for Apple lover, the Apple has dropped the iconic “bong” sound that its laptops make when started up. The chime - a fading F sharp chord - has been used on every Mac since the iMac G3. The sound has become a cultural icon, and was famously used in the Pixar film WALL-E when the movie’s robot protagonist reboots, although it never made it to the iPhone or iPad.

Apple MacBook Pro
Apple users are stumbled after the move. Many are still thinking why Apple had dropped it. Latest MacBook Pro, unveiled last week, has no power button and automatically turns on when it is opened, apparently making the startup sound obsolete. Apple unveiled the new laptops, which feature a new touchscreen “Touch Bar” above the keyboard and Touch ID fingerprint recognition, last Thursday. They are due to be released in mid-November. While the removal of the startup chime will be welcomed by those who have loudly opened their laptop in meetings and classrooms or unwittingly woken a sleeping infant, it marks the end of a computing tradition.

According Apple officials, the sound was created by Jim Reekes, an engineer at the company, who played it on a Korg synthesizer. The original chord - which Reekes said was inspired by the final chord in The Beatles’ "A Day In The Life" - was raised from C Major for the iMac G3 in 1998. Macs have had a startup sound since 1984’s Macintosh, which was intended to be a reassuring sign that the computer is operating normally. The current chime has been the same since 1998 but is itself a modified version of the sound used since 1993’s Quadra 840AV.




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