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Wikipedia

Why Women Have No Time For Wikipedia 579

Posted by timothy from the busy-doing-real-stuff dept.
Andreas Kolbe writes Wikipedia is well known to have a very large gender imbalance, with survey-based estimates of women contributors ranging from 8.5% to around 16%. This is a more extreme gender imbalance than even that of Reddit, the most male-dominated major social media platform, and it has a palpable effect on Wikipedia content. Moreover, Wikipedia editor survey data indicate that only 1 in 50 respondents is a mother – a good proportion of female contributors are in fact minors, with women in their twenties less likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation efforts to address this "gender gap" have so far remained fruitless. Wikipedia's demographic pattern stands in marked contrast to female-dominated social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest, where women aged 18 to 34 are particularly strongly represented. It indicates that it isn't lack of time or family commitments that keep women from contributing to Wikipedia – women simply find other sites more attractive. Wikipedia's user interface and its culture of anonymity may be among the factors leading women to spend their online time elsewhere.

Submission + - Seagate Ships World's First 8 Terabyte Hard Drive (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Seagate announced today that it has begun shipping the world's first 8 Terabyte hard drive. The 8TB hard drive comes only five months after Western Digital released the first ever 6TB HDD. Up until then, Seagate's high capacity HDDs had been shipping only to select enterprise clients. The 8TB HDD comes in the 3.5-inch form factor and, according to the manufacturer, features a SATA 6Gbps interface and multi-drive RV tolerance which makes it suitable for data centers. It's unclear what technology the drive is based on, or if PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) or low-resistance helium technology was employed.

Submission + - Why Government Researchers Think We May Be Living in a 2D Hologram

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Operating with cutting-edge technology out of a trailer in rural Illinois, government researchers started today on a set of experiments that they say will help them determine whether or not you and me and everything that exists are living in a two-dimensional holographic universe.
In a paper explaining the theory, Craig Hogan, director of the Department of Energy's Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics writes that "some properties of space and time that seem fundamental, including localization [where things are], may actually emerge only as a macroscopic approximation from the flow of information in a quantum system." In other words, the location of places in space may constantly fluctuate ever so slightly, which would suggest we're living in a hologram.

Submission + - Scientists Bioengineer Real Cheese Without Animal Products (indiegogo.com)

Submitted by MikeChino
MikeChino writes: A group of scientists has developed a process to create Real Vegan Cheese from a yeast-based, non-animal-derived milk protein. To do this they bio-engineered regular baker’s yeast to make milk proteins known as caseins. These caseins then get blended together with sugar, oil, and water, to brew up a non-animal-derived milk that can be transformed into cheese by standard, time-tested methods. The team recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to bring the cheese to market.

Submission + - Stanford Launches Online Course on Government Surveillance (coursera.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: American law can be impenetrable, especially once the FBI and NSA get involved. It appears Stanford Law School is trying to level the playing field, providing a 'comprehensive, accurate, and accessible explanation' of government surveillance. The free online course promises to explain the rules for tracking, hacking, backdoors, and more. And for the tin foil hat crowd, the course is even available as a Tor hidden service.

Submission + - UK prisons ministry fined for lack of encryption at prisons

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: http://www.theguardian.com/soc... reports that the UK Information Commissioner has levied a fine of £180,000 on the Ministry of Justice for their failure to encrypt the data held on external hard drives at prisons. The fine is nominal — one part of government fining another is rather pointless, but it does show that there's a little bit of accountability. Of course it's interesting to consider the dangers of this hopefully old way of storing backups; but the question of whether we do a lot better now is quite pointed.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Calif. governor signs smartphone 'kill switch' bill - CNET (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Calif. governor signs smartphone 'kill switch' bill
CNET
After initially stalling in the Senate, a bill aimed at curbing smartphone theft has passed in California. by Richard Nieva @richardjnieva; 26 August 2014, 7:49 am AEST. comments. 0. facebook. twitter. linkedin. googleplus. more. more +. email. tumblr. stumble.
Jerry Brown signs kill-switch bill to deter smartphone thieverySFGate
California's smartphone kill switch bill has been signed...The Verge

all 4 news articles

Submission + - Bitcoin User tells of Interview by FBI and Treasury Department (thedrinkingrecord.com)

Submitted by MrBingoBoingo
MrBingoBoingo writes: Recently a Bitcoin user reports being interviewed over their past use of a now defuct exchange service by agents from the FBI and Treasury Department. This encounter raises concerns that earlier Bitcoin users who entered the space inocuously and without ties to Dark Markets or The Silk Road might need to prepare for Law Enforcement questioning about their early Bitcoin related activities.

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