The first thing that visitors to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg see is a wall of identity cards-- the pieces of paper that determined where people could live and work and whom they could love. From the outset, the apartheid regime's ability to discriminate against "nie-blankes" (non-whites) depended on having a robust system of identifying people. The opposite problem confronts most other countries in Africa today. Governments have little idea who their citizens are [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: African countries struggle for several reasons. One is racial di[...]
There's a lot of enthusiasm for intermittent fasting -- a term that can encompass everything from skipping a meal each day to fasting a few days a week. Or, how about this approach: Simply limit your daily eating window to 10 hours. This means that if you take your first bite of food at 8 a.m., you'd need to consume your last calorie of the day by 6 p.m. A new study published in Cell Metabolism offers some evidence that the approach can be beneficial. From a report: Researchers tracked a group of overweight participants who followed this approach for about three months. "Typically, people woul[...]
Magnus Carlsen, the world's best chess player for the last decade, is on the brink of reaching the top in another game -- fantasy football. From a report: The grandmaster is enjoying his best season ever in the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game and after Sunday's results he climbed to the sixth position in a table of more than 7 million players worldwide. Carlsen, who is currently competing at the London Chess Classic at Olympia, puts his fantasy football success down to luck. But his FPL team, Kjell Ankedal, has consistently scored high in the overall rankings for the past four years, finishi[...]
Intel chief executive Bob Swan says he's willing to let go the company's traditional dominance of the market for CPUs in order to meet the rising demand for newer, more specialized silicon chips for applications such as AI and autonomous cars. From a report: Intel's Bob Swan blames being focused on 90% CPU market share as a reason for missing opportunities and transitions, envisions Intel as having 30% of all-silicon TAM instead of majority CPU TAM. Just a few years ago, Intel owned more than 90% of the market share in the x86 CPU market. Many financial models used Intel's revenue as a proxy f[...]
An anonymous reader shares a report: Verizon, which bought Yahoo in 2017, has suspended email addresses of archivists who are trying to preserve 20 years of content that will be deleted permanently in a few weeks. As Verizon announced in October, the company intends to wipe all content from Yahoo Groups. As of December 14, all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. The mass deletion includes files, polls, links, photos, folders, database, calendar, attachments, conversations, email updates, message digests, and message histories that was uploaded to Yahoo servers si[...]
China has ordered that all foreign computer equipment and software be removed from government offices and public institutions within three years, the Financial Times reports. hackingbear writes: The government directive is likely to be a blow to US multinational companies like HP, Dell and Microsoft and mirrors attempts by Washington to limit the use of Chinese technology, as the trade war between the countries turns into a tech cold war. The Trump administration banned US companies from doing business with Chinese Chinese telecommunications company Huawei earlier this year and in May, Google,[...]
Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with "dead zones" proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned. From a report: Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were at particular risk, scientists said, with many vital ecosystems in danger of collapse. Dead zones -- where oxygen is effectively absent -- have quadrupled in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when researc[...]
An anonymous reader shares a remarkable story from Fortune's Data Sheet newsletter:
The story begins on Dec. 3, when an artist going by @Hannahdouken on Twitter posted an image of hand-drawn text reading, "This site sells STOLEN Artwork, do NOT buy from them!" And asked followers to reply that they wanted the image on a shirt.
They were testing a theory. For years, artists posting their work online have found the art turned into t-shirts and other merch without permission or compensation. The theory was that this was being done by automated bots that combed Twitter for images with such [...]
An anonymous reader writes:
The Free Software Foundation is holding its annual fundraiser, with a goal of attracting 600 new members by the end of December. (New members so far: 112.) "We are still fighting the oppressive nature of proprietary software," explains the campaign's web page. "We have made solid inroads, and the community is as passionate as ever."
As a 501(c)(3) charity the group's membership dues are all tax deductible, and associate memberships are just $10 a month ($5 for students). They come with special benefits including up to five email aliases in the member.fsf.org do[...]
A former Oracle employee filed a lawsuit against the database giant on Tuesday claiming that he was forced out for refusing to lie about the functionality of the company's software.
The civil complaint, filed on behalf of plaintiff Tayo Daramola in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, contends that Oracle violated whistleblower protections under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act, the RICO Act, and the California Labor Code.
According to the court filing, Daramola, a resident of Montreal, Canada, worked for Oracle's NetSuite division from November 30, 2016 through October 13[...]