This Guy Took Out a Gigantic Loan to Destroy the Financial System In 2008, anticapitalist campaigner Enric Durán borrowed €492,000 ($642,306) from 39 different financial entities with absolutely no hope or intention of paying it back. But—as you might expect from an anti-capitalist campaigner—he didn't spend it all on diamond kitchen knives and luxury frisbees. Instead, he ploughed it into a number of unspecified anti-capitalist causes and spent the rest on Crisi, a free newspaper that detailed how he'd done what he did and urged others to do the same. That display of reckless Robin Hoodery turned him into a hero overnight, but the one problem with becoming a hero through questionably legal means is that, for whatever reason, the police feel like they have to go and lock you up for it. I’ve been trying to interview Enric for a couple of years now, but—as the 14 financial entities currently trying to send him to jail for embezzlement can attest—he’s kind of a tough guy to get a hold of. Enric with a copy of his newspaper, Crisi. I see. Enric in court.
No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry Content warning: This post contains graphic language, slurs and triggering content "Women are the niggers of gender," the email said. "If you killed yourself, I wouldn’t even fuck the corpse." I blinked at my phone, fighting simultaneous urges to hurl my phone across the room in anger and cry. I haven’t been out to my car at night by myself since January 2nd. My name is Brianna Wu. If you are a woman working in the games industry, especially in a public way, you’re going to experience harassment. The problem with sharing these stories in broad terms is that people think men and women receive the same harassment online. Case Study #1: Nina The Myth: Everyone in the games industry experiences harassment. The Reality: If you are a woman in the industry with a critical opinion, you will get a disproportional amount of criticism, hostility, and scrutiny compared to men. "Anita Sarkeesian once reblogged a Tumblr post of mine and it ended up on Reddit. Case Study #2: Nicole Case Study #3: Elise
Iraq: War's legacy of cancer - Features This report contains photos of a graphic nature. Fallujah, Iraq - Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq. Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah. Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. Toxic environments The research team interviewed Fallujans about abnormally high rates of cancer and birth defects.
Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds I was going to write about The Big Bang Theory—why, as a nerdy viewer, I sometimes like it and sometimes have a problem with it, why I think there’s a backlash against it. Then some maniac shot up a sorority house in Santa Barbara and posted a manifesto proclaiming he did it for revenge against women for denying him sex. And the weekend just generally went to hell. So now my plans have changed. This annoys me. Because, let’s be honest, this device is old. We (male) nerds grow up force-fed this script. This is, to put it mildly, a problematic attitude to grow up with. I’m not breaking new ground by saying this. And I’m not condemning guys who get frustrated, or who have unrequited crushes. Before I went on Jeopardy! But a lot of things about the show did give me pause. But look. Classic nerd fantasy, right? It’s also, you know, rape. Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. I know people who’ve been through that. And yet. What the fuck is wrong with us?
Why 2013 is the Year of PHP 2012 was an excellent year for the PHP community, thanks to many badly needed features being added to version 5.4, as well as the countless projects, advancing PHP to the next level. In this article, I'd like to review a handful of the issues that people had with PHP in the past, and provide a glimpse at why 2013 just may be the year of PHP! Why the Hostility? This may come as a surprise to you, but many people have negative feelings toward PHP developers, and the language as a whole. You likely know exactly what I mean, if you've considered learning Ruby in the past couple of years, due to some sense of peer pressure. However, before you make any changes, you have to ask yourself: "Why does PHP have such a stigma?" Well, like many of life's important questions, there is no clear-cut answer. Roughly eighty percent of the arguments against PHP are rooted in ignorance. The Beginners There are the beginners, who don't really know how PHP works. One Language to Rule Them All Fighting PHP 4 Scaling
I've Been Forced Out Of My Home And Am Living In Constant Fear Because Of Relentless Death Threats From Gamergate - xoJane They threatened the wrong woman this time. I am the Godzilla of bitches. I have a backbone of pure adamantium, and I’m sick of seeing them abuse my friends. The misogynists and the bullies and the sadist trolls of patriarchal gaming culture threatened to murder me and rape my corpse, and I did not back down. The BBC called me “Defiant,” in a caption. My name is Brianna Wu. Today, I’m being targeted by a delusional mob called “Gamergate.” If you don’t know what Gamergate is, my God do I envy you. It started two months ago, when my friend Zoe Quinn dated Eron Gjoni. If Zoe had been a man, the blog would have been laughed off as the work of a jilted lover. But, no. It tells you everything you need to know about Gamergate that this mob went after Zoe and not the journalist. The Gamergate mob isn’t a new thing, though it’s only recently been named. They ran through their playbook. It’s a playbook that works. What was my crime? I loled. I have to be honest. There’s no easy way to say this.
Update from the CEO Sergey and I first heard about Android back in 2004, when Andy Rubin came to visit us at Google. He believed that aligning standards around an open-source operating system would drive innovation across the mobile industry. Most people thought he was nuts. Fast forward to today. Going forward, Sundar Pichai will lead Android, in addition to his existing work with Chrome and Apps. Today we’re living in a new computing environment.
Tak świat traktuje kobiety: ogólnie lepiej, ale wciąż gorzej niż mężczyzn Poniższa mapa przedstawia, jak sytuacja kobiet zmieniała się (albo nie) w poszczególnych krajach od 2006 r. Wystarczy wybrać interesujący nas rejon, żeby otrzymać komplet danych: Doroczny raport Światowego Forum Ekonomicznego (The Global Gender Gap Report) porównuje sytuację kobiet i mężczyzn w 142 państwach świata na czterech płaszczyznach: jakości i długości życia, dostępu do edukacji, udziału w gospodarce kraju i zaangażowania w politykę. W analizach uwzględnia się wyłącznie twarde, publicznie dostępne dane (np. Światowej Organizacji Zdrowia, Międzynarodowej Organizacji Pracy itp.). Jeśli brać pod uwagę wszystkie uśrednione wyniki, najbardziej uderza jeden wniosek: nigdzie na świecie kobiety nie zarabiają lepiej niż mężczyźni. Badanie jest przeprowadzane rokrocznie od 2006 r., ma więc charakter podłużny i pozwala ocenić, w których rejonach świata można mówić o postępie (czyli stopniowym wyrównywaniu szans kobiet i mężczyzn), a przed którymi jeszcze daleka droga. 1. 132.
Voices of women in technology A diverse workforce is critical in helping us build products that can help people change the world. That includes diversity of all life experiences, including gender. Women were some of the first programmers and continue to make a major impact on the programming world today. Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, and as one of our contributions to the celebration, we’re proud to support Voices Global Conference, presented by Global Tech Women. The Voices Global Conference is the brainchild of Global Tech Women’s founder Deanna Kosaraju, who also started India’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in 2010 with grant support from Google. Our sessions will feature a range of material, from new episodes of the Women Techmakers series and interviews with women leaders like the head of Lexity India Mani Abrol, to discussions focusing on technologies like Google Compute Engine.
The Top 25 Best Countries To Be A Woman Women represent about 50% of our worldwide population, but they do not yet receive 50% of the opportunities. But governmental regulations, mentorship programs, and companies like Citi, whose Citi Women program encourages women to reach their leadership potential, have helped close the gender gap in many of the world's nations. Each year since 2006, the World Economic Forum releases its annual Global Gender Gap Report, which "examines the gap between men and women in four fundamental categories: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment." Globally, this means women are getting more opportunities than ever for economic participation, are gaining greater access to education, are living longer and healthier lives, and are playing a much larger role in political decision making. This is Iceland's fifth year in the top spot, meaning the nation continues to have the smallest gender gap of all the countries participating. 1.
Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind | Google Drive Blog (Cross-posted from the Android Blog) Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. Changing priorities isn’t a problem: just open Keep on your Android phone or tablet (there’s a widget so you can have Keep front and center all the time) and drag your notes around to reflect what matters. Pro tip: for adding thoughts quickly without unlocking your device there's a lock screen widget (on devices running Android 4.2+). Google Keep is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above.
Not Male or Female? Here’s Your 50 Gender Options on Facebook: Facebook Gives More Gender Options Facebook recently added a new twist to its gender options on user profile pages: there are more options than being either male or female. In fact, there are now more than fifty different gender options on Facebook! Strange as it may sound to those who aren’t well-versed in gender studies, many people don’t identify themselves within the typical male-female binary. And Facebook decided it wanted to accommodate those perspectives. According to CNN, Facebook executives worked with “a group of leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organizations to come up with the new gender categories.” According to many professionals in psychology and pundits in gender research and equality, gender is not something you are born with. Whether you agree with these ideas or not, it’s at least worth learning how a growing number of people identify themselves. In Facebook’s profile options under “gender,” you can now choose the option to “customize.”
Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all...it’s rarely where you need it when you need it. To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. Changing priorities isn’t a problem: just open Keep on your Android phone or tablet (there’s a widget so you can have Keep front and center all the time) and drag your notes around to reflect what matters. Pro tip: for adding thoughts quickly without unlocking your device there's a lock screen widget (on devices running Android 4.2+). Google Keep is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above.
Artist Proves that Men’s Faces Aren’t Much Different than Women’s It’s long been said that the devil is in the details. Is it also safe to say, at least visually, that masculinity is in the minutiae? A photographic series created by French-Canadian artist and photographer Ulric Collette provokes fascinating questions about the nuances in men and women’s faces that we interpret as gender. Collette, in his series “Genetic Portraits,” digitally composited photographs of pairs of genetic relatives (two sisters’ faces, two cousins’ faces, a father’s face with his son’s face) to make up a single face. While each edited photograph in his series is fascinating in its own right, the most glaringly interesting (or surprising, depending on your perspective) is how naturally a man’s face blends with a woman’s face. Twin brother and sister: Alex and Sandrine, age 20. Sister and brother: Karine, 29 and Danny, 25 Cousins: Justine, 29 and Ulric, 29 Daughter and Father: Ariane, 13 and Andre, 55 Father and Daughter: Daniel, 60 and Isabelle, 32 Help spread visual literacy.