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Cyclone Dikeledi kills three in Madagascar, and Mayotte is hit again
Mon, 13 Jan 2025 10:02:30 GMT
Tropical storm batters eastern parts of Africa, including French territory still recovering from Cyclone Chido
Over the weekend, eastern parts of Africa were threatened by Tropical Cyclone Dikeledi. What started as a slight tropical disturbance between Indonesia and Australia on 2 January progressed westwards while developing into a depression over the week that followed.
The depression strengthened into a moderate tropical storm with heavy downpours and gusty winds exceeding 39mph (63km/h) across central parts of the Indian Ocean. At this time, the system was named Dikeledi. It continued westwards and deepened into a tropical cyclone on the evening of 10 January as maximum sustained wind speeds hit 74mph – the equivalent of becoming a category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.
Continue reading...He wants to seize the Panama Canal, Canada and Greenland. And now wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America
Donald Trump’s silly season has already caused irreparable damage to United States national security. Despite not yet holding office for a minute, Trump has made it plain that in his second term the U.S. will be an unreliable partner swayed by his personal whim, that he has no respect for historic alliances and that he has contempt for the rule-based international order that the U.S. has led since the end of World War II to prevent the reemergence of catastrophic great power collisions.
Beginning with his “Merry Christmas to all” tweet that he wanted to seize the Panama Canal, Canada and Greenland, Trump has not relented in his absurd claims, extended to renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. His disdain for the sovereignty of independent nations—two of them NATO allies and Panama a fellow member of the Organization of American States—has undermined the credibility of opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s ambition to grab Taiwan. The soft power of the U.S., ultimately based on its democratic example and respect for international order, has been tossed away by Trump’s fantasy Manifest Destiny that is simply the latest wrinkle in his isolationism. Hardly the Rough Rider, if Trump were acting as Putin’s or Xi’s agent he could not have kowtowed more for their benefit.
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
Quake damaged buildings in Shigatse and could be felt hundreds of kilometres away in Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar
A strong earthquake has struck near Shigatse, one of Tibet’s holiest cities, killing scores of people, damaging buildings, and sending people running to the streets in neighbouring Nepal and India.
Chinese state media said at least 126 people had died, more than 188 had been injured, and about 1,000 houses were damaged in the quake, which hit at 9.05am on Tuesday. The US Geological Survey said the earthquake was centred in the Tibet region at a depth of about 10km (6 miles). It measured the tremor at magnitude 7.1, while China recorded it as 6.8.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. For the latest on US politics, see full coverage here
It’s just past noon in Washington DC, meaning that one week from today, Joe Biden will no longer be president. The outgoing president is looking to make the most of his remaining time in office, and will at 2pm make a speech from the state department outlining his foreign policy accomplishments.
“When President Biden entered office, our alliances had been badly damaged. We had abandoned agreements that made America safer. We were falling behind in our competition with China. US troops were still engaged in America’s longest war. Our adversaries were gaining strength. And the nation and the world were in the midst of a global pandemic,” a senior administration official said, in previewing the speech.
St John’s Church Service
Tea at the White House
Swearing-In Ceremony
US Capitol
Farewell to the Former President and Vice-President
US Capitol Departure Ceremony
The President’s Signing Room Ceremony
JCCIC Congressional Luncheon
The President’s Review of the Troops
Presidential Parade
Pennsylvania Avenue
Oval Office Signing Ceremony at the White House
Commander in Chief Ball
President Donald J Trump Delivers Remarks
Liberty Inaugural Ball
President Donald J Trump Delivers Remarks
Starlight Ball
President Donald J Trump Delivers Remarks
Public investment in technology is the right move. But ministers must not become boosters for an industry that causes harm as well as good
Digital technology companies have reshaped our world and will continue doing so. Sir Keir Starmer knows his government must seek a role in shaping this new order – and avoid ceding all control to the US and China. According to official estimates, the UK is the third-largest AI market. Its universities are important incubators of talent. Google DeepMind, two of whose scientists won a Nobel chemistry prize last year, was a British company until Google bought it in 2014. But the world’s two largest economies, and particularly the US corporations that dominate our online lives, are a long way ahead. The danger for the rest of the world is being swept along in an AI wave over which it has little control.
Expanding Britain’s publicly owned computing resource – a national asset known as sovereign compute capacity – is a necessary step toward securing technological independence. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is right to warn of a coming battle to ensure democratic control of computing. Countering private-sector dominance with new public investment is part of that. Plans to boost the AI industry, beginning with a new growth zone in Oxfordshire, make sense as part of a 21st-century industrial strategy.
Continue reading...  | submitted by /u/indig0sixalpha [link] [comments] |
Coming of Age Day is celebrated in Japan every January, when those becoming adults dress in formal kimonos, pray at shrines and hear speeches about their new responsibilities. Thousands attended a ceremony in Yohohama
Continue reading...Chancellor’s mission to Beijing weighted with greater expectations
Rachel Reeves hailed a new era of “respectful and consistent future relations with China” as pressure grew on the embattled chancellor to deliver on her government’s central promise to fire up UK economic growth.
After meeting China’s vice-premier, He Lifeng, in Beijing, Reeves said Britain’s relationship with the world’s second largest economy would be “frank and open on areas where we disagree”, while stressing it would be pragmatic in “finding opportunities for safe trade and investment”.
Continue reading...UK chancellor becomes first holder of her office to make an official visit to China in a decade
Rachel Reeves has said the UK “must engage confidently with China”, as she arrived in Beijing amid market turbulence at home.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had demanded the chancellor call off her China trip after the value of the pound plummeted to its lowest level in a year. But ministers argue that improved relations with the world’s second-largest economy will help boost growth, and that under the Conservatives the UK lagged behind the US and EU when it came to high-level engagement with Beijing.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world
Continue reading...A year in Palestine, living in fear of not just genocide — but AIDS.
The post Queer, HIV-Positive, and Running Out of Medication in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
The grand version of the 12-yearly Hindu pilgrimage is expected to draw more than 400 million devotees
The world’s largest religious gathering kicked off on Monday as millions of Hindu devotees gathered on the banks of Ganges in India to mark the beginning of the Maha Kumbh Mela.
The Kumbh Mela pilgrimage takes place every 12 years and is widely seen as the “festival of festivals” in the Hindu religious calendar in India, attended by a vibrant mix of sadhus or holy men, ascetics, pilgrims and tourists. This year’s celebration is particularly significant as the Maha or grand Kumbh Mela only takes places every 144 years, marking the 12th Kumbh Mela and a special celestial alignment of the sun, moon and Jupiter.
Continue reading...News:
A sponge made of cotton and squid bone that has absorbed about 99.9% of microplastics in water samples in China could provide an elusive answer to ubiquitous microplastic pollution in water across the globe, a new report suggests.
[…]
The study tested the material in an irrigation ditch, a lake, seawater and a pond, where it removed up to 99.9% of plastic. It addressed 95%-98% of plastic after five cycles, which the authors say is remarkable reusability.
The sponge is made from chitin extracted from squid bone and cotton cellulose, materials that are often used to address pollution. Cost, secondary pollution and technological complexities have stymied many other filtration systems, but large-scale production of the new material is possible because it is cheap, and raw materials are easy to obtain, the authors say...
Under Meta’s relaxed hate speech rules, users can now post “I’m a proud racist” or “Black people are more violent than whites.”
The post Leaked Meta Rules: Users Are Free to Post “Mexican Immigrants Are Trash!” or “Trans People Are Immoral” appeared first on The Intercept.
The revered cinematographer was making an apocalyptic musical with Tilda Swinton deep in a salt mine when he realised he had to flee. Can he now save his son?
It was March 2022 and Joshua Oppenheimer was waiting at Copenhagen airport for the young man who would be staying with him for a few weeks. Oppenheimer, who directed two devastating Oscar-nominated documentaries about the 1965 Indonesian genocide, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, had been working closely with Russian cinematographer Mikhail Krichman. He was now preparing to make The End, an audacious musical about the last family on earth hiding in their bunker following a climate-related apocalypse in which they were complicit. And Mikhail’s 22-year-old son, Vlad, was travelling to Copenhagen to participate in a workshop addressing the challenges implicit in The End, which was to be shot partly in German and Italian salt mines.
Oppenheimer had never met Vlad before, though he knew of his joie de vivre and infectious good humour. But the young man who emerged at arrivals that day, having stepped off a flight from Moscow, cut a very different figure. “He looked terrible,” the director recalls. “He was pale. He was stuttering. He was traumatised. It was frankly heartbreaking. I asked him, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘I can’t go back.’”
Continue reading...Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed coup attempt in December plunged country into worst political crisis in decades
The impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, will receive a pay rise, official documents revealed, as he continues to resist arrest over his ill-fated martial law declaration.
Yoon suspended civilian rule on 3 December, sending soldiers into parliament and plunging the country into its worst political crisis in decades. He was forced to backtrack hours later.
Continue reading...Neither Russia nor North Korea has claimed the soldiers as their own yet, while South Korea could accept them as defectors
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he is ready to hand over two North Korean soldiers captured by Kyiv in exchange for the return of prisoners of war held in Russia. But the future of the two injured men, who have been interrogated in their hospital beds, is far from certain.
Speaking after South Korea’s National Intelligence Service confirmed Ukraine’s claim that it had captured the two soldiers – part of a North Korean force estimated at 11,000 – Zelenskyy issued an important caveat.
Continue reading...Lawyer for suspended president says concerns about ‘potential incidents’ have arisen following thwarted attempt to arrest him at his residence
South Korea’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, will not attend the first hearing of his impeachment trial next week because of safety concerns, his lawyer has said.
Yoon has been holed up in the presidential residence and protected by an elite guard force since being suspended and impeached last month following a short-lived declaration of martial law that plunged the country into political chaos.
Continue reading...Recording of flight data ceased four minutes before Jeju Air crash that killed 179 people, says transport ministry
Flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air plane that crashed in South Korea in December, killing 179 people, stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at Muan airport, the transport ministry said.
Authorities investigating the disaster, the worst plane crash on South Korean soil, plan to analyse what caused the black boxes to stop recording, the ministry said.
Continue reading...Billionaires gonna billionaire — and lick the boots of whoever will bring them more riches and impunity.
The post Facebook Fact Checks Were Never Going to Save Us. They Just Made Liberals Feel Better. appeared first on The Intercept.
Conservatives have been hyperfixated on TikTok content that’s sympathetic with Gaza — and accused the company of algorithmic bias against Israel.
The post The TikTok Ban Is Also About Hiding Pro-Palestinian Content. Republicans Said So Themselves. appeared first on The Intercept.
From the Washington Post:
The sanctions target Beijing Integrity Technology Group, which U.S. officials say employed workers responsible for the Flax Typhoon attacks which compromised devices including routers and internet-enabled cameras to infiltrate government and industrial targets in the United States, Taiwan, Europe and elsewhere.
After 30 years of relentless growth and capitalism, a new trend has emerged in China. The search for a simpler, calmer life is leading some Chinese people to seek a life abroad. The trend is so popular that it’s gained its own internet buzzword: the 'run philosophy'.
Chiang mai, in northern Thailand is the country’s second biggest city. It’s a tourist hotspot popular with backpackers but has recently become an unlikely second home for thousands of Chinese people seeking alternative lifestyles.
Continue reading...Whether it’s banning articles on X or killing fact checks on Meta, the only constant is that it benefits the powerful.
The post My Ban From X Is About One Simple Thing: Elon Musk Controlling the Flow of Information appeared first on The Intercept.
Critics worry that a sweeping ban based on predictions rather than more concrete proof of TikTok’s security risks sets a precedent in line with repressive regimes.
The post To Ban TikTok, Supreme Court Would Rank “National Security” Before First Amendment appeared first on The Intercept.
The Franco-Haitian artist’s 2002 portrait exemplifies his gift for taking photographs that transcend time and place
Henry Roy’s book, Impossible Island, a survey of 40 years of his photography, is threaded with images of sleepers and dreamers in different corners of the world – Thailand, Tunisia, his adoptive France, his native Haiti. Roy took this picture of a girl making an impromptu cradle of a wheelbarrow in Congo-Brazzaville in 2002. Like all of his most evocative photographs, it asks several questions of the viewer – but the overriding one seems to be: how sleepy do you have to be to take a nap here?
Roy’s photos often work this way: they create little mythologies that seem to take their subjects outside their particular time and place. As he noted of his practice in his 2017 book Superstition, what he is always restless for are images that “murmur the secret language of a world free from what contaminates us”. Here, the vibrant Sunday-best floral prints of the girl, the precision of her hair, seem to elevate her above the clay and dust of her surroundings. It comes as no surprise, looking at Roy’s pictures, that they have been cited as primary inspirations by cinematographers and film-makers, notably Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins, who has suggested that he was inspired to create some of the visual sensuality of Moonlight by looking at Roy’s work.
Impossible Island is published by Loose Joints
Continue reading...The prisons are open, the secret files are unlocked. Now Syrians are trying to figure out how to hold war criminals accountable.
The post Searching for Justice and the Missing in the New Syria appeared first on The Intercept.
Siddiq has referred herself to a watchdog after allegations she lived in homes tied to her aunt’s ousted regime in Bangladesh
Tulip Siddiq should give up her ministerial responsibility for UK anti-corruption policy, a group of charities has said, amid concerns about her links to the former Bangladeshi regime of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina.
The UK Anti-Corruption Coalition – which includes international groups such as Oxfam, Transparency International and Spotlight on Corruption – released a statement on Monday night urging the Treasury minister to hand over her anti-corruption role.
Continue reading...Mukesh Chandrakar had reported on alleged corruption in the construction industry and had a popular YouTube channel
Indian media rights groups have called for an investigation after the body of a missing journalist was found hidden in a septic tank.
Mukesh Chandrakar, 32, was a well-known freelance journalist in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh who contributed to some of the country’s biggest news channels. He had also widely reported on alleged corruption in the construction industry on his popular YouTube channel.
Continue reading...Ohio has become the latest state to allow police to charge high fees for access to footage.
The post Ohio Puts Police Bodycam Footage Behind a Paywall appeared first on The Intercept.
Anti-money laundering officials ask banks for information on UK minister and seven of her family members
Anti-money laundering officials in Bangladesh have demanded bank account details for Tulip Siddiq, the UK anti-corruption minister, in the latest escalation of the inquiries into her family’s financial interests.
The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), which investigates money laundering and suspicious transactions, wrote to the country’s main banks on Tuesday asking them to provide account details for Siddiq and seven of her family members.
Continue reading...Phone video shared by mining NGO appears to show dozens of wrapped bodies in underground tunnel
The South African government has launched a mission to bring to the surface potentially hundreds of people in an illegal mine who last year had supplies of food, water and medicine blocked by police in an attempt to force them out.
The government agreed to the attempt on Friday after the sister of one of those underground initiated a court case in response to letters from miners brought to the surface on Thursday.
Continue reading...Australian mainland states permit killing of nearly 5 million annually as part of industry supplying meat and leather products
Wildlife advocates are calling for a halt to the commercial harvesting of kangaroos in Victoria’s Grampians region after bushfires there.
Wildlife Victoria warned of “long-term impacts” on native plants and animals due to the fires, which burned through 76,000 hectares of national park and farmland, and called for a stop to the controversial practice until the impact on kangaroo populations could be fully assessed.
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Continue reading...A dish that layers creamy and crunchy textures for a sustaining midweek vegetarian main course or a colourful side
I make variations on beetroot gratin all the time, and this one with celeriac, dill and goat’s cheese is an absolute winner. You’ll want to use a mandoline (very carefully) for the celeriac, to make sure it’s sliced thinly enough to cook through in half an hour (alternatively, do everything in a food processor using the slicing/grating attachment). If you happen to have a bunch of salsify, or spot one when you’re out, by all means peel, slice and add that, too. This gratin tastes even better the next day, so it’s definitely worth having leftovers.
Continue reading...Experts condemn his conspiracist thinking as dangerous – but some ‘crunchy’ Trump backers feel vindicated by the health secretary pick
For Mikyla Page, keeping a three year-old daughter healthy is serious business. Before eating anything, the stay-at-home mom reads an ingredients list, staying away from artificial colors, flavors, dyes, and excess sugar. She doesn’t support vaccination, instead believing that “bathing in sunlight” will keep her family healthy, making sure her family gets outside every day to soak up vitamin D.
At first, Page felt alone in her choices. “You’re called crazy for even questioning the medical field,” she said. “My intuition was telling me one thing, but the world was telling me something else. My husband was like, ‘Are you sure this is where you want to go?’ I just went with my gut.”
Continue reading...This week: what we learned testing toothbrushes, fitness kit worth the investment, and slow cookers for warming winter feasts
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When the Filter asked me to write a roundup of the best electric toothbrushes, I didn’t see any reason not to. After all, I’ve been reviewing battery-powered gadgets for more than a decade, and I have all 32 teeth and a comfortable toothpaste budget, which makes me as qualified as anybody else.
Or does it? Actually, in the absence of professional toothbrushing leagues*, how would I know if I’m an expert in the art of oral hygiene or not? Conventional (and, as it turns out, likely bogus) wisdom suggests that anyone can become an expert in anything with 10,000 hours of practice.
The best blenders to blitz like a pro, tried and tested, from Ninja to Nutribullet
14 of the best men’s boots for winter, from Chelsea to brogues to western
The best slow cookers for effortless homemade meals, tried and tested
Continue reading...A thrifty and delicious way to use leftover bread to make a gnocchi-like pasta
Just like the other three bowls on the top shelf, the wooden salad bowl is full. However, unlike the other bowls, with their pick’n’mix of clothes pegs, coins, aspirin, Ikea pencils, cables, wet wipes, sunglasses, business cards, Kinder Surprise figures and Sellotape chewed by the dog, the salad bowl is a holding (or dumping) place for just one thing: bread crusts. In Italian, the crust of a loaf of bread is sometimes referred to as il culo or culetto, meaning bottom or little bottom, making this a bowl of bottoms.
Its position on the highest shelf, plus the depth of the bowl, means I can’t be reminded of what’s inside until there are enough crusts that they start rising, like brown icebergs, above the rim. Then follows a period of days (or weeks) during which I keep seeing those tips, and reminding myself to do something with them, but don’t, so they continue to rise, and when the morning sun hits the shelves, I can see the dust drifting and settling. Eventually, I take the bowl down from the shelf and examine the contents; it then sits on the table for a day or two before I make breadcrumbs, ideally drying the already-dry bread in a low oven, which makes it brittle and reduces to crumbs more easily. (Less than ideal is putting them straight into a food processor, which has a rattle worse than a set of keys in the washing machine, and produces uneven crumbs.)
Continue reading...A year in Palestine, living in fear of not just genocide — but AIDS.
The post Queer, HIV-Positive, and Running Out of Medication in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
Like a host of online influencers, the man likely to be the US’s next health secretary has denounced the vegetable oils used in countless foods. The science is not on their side
Seed oils are in many foods. They are usually cheap and easy to cook with, and their inoffensive taste means they can be used in a huge variety of things. Go on any social media platform, though, and you will find self-appointed health influencers blaming them for everything from inflammation to the obesity epidemic. Politicians do it too: the man Donald Trump wants for his health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has claimed that Americans are being “unknowingly poisoned” by them. But is any of this true, and should it change how you buy or cook your food?
To be clear, seed oils are oils extracted from – well, seeds. In the UK, the most common are rapeseed (known in the US as canola oil) and sunflower (both often called vegetable oil), though you will also find soybean, corn, grapeseed, rice bran and safflower in countless products.
Continue reading...Some people never learn to read or swim or even cook as children - but with the right spirit there’s still time to make things right
I was 44 when I learned to cycle. I grew up in Yorkshire and when I was about five, my younger brother had broken his leg falling off a tricycle. We never had bikes after that – and like many girls my age of Asian heritage, I wasn’t pushed to do sporty or outdoor activities.
Continue reading...From Whole Earth and Meridian to supermarket staples, which is the best crunchy peanut butter, and how much do you really need to spend on it?
I came late to the peanut butter party, and my mum remains convinced that it’s extremely unhealthy stuff, which, to be fair to her, is probably true of the sugary versions of my childhood. In the past few years, however, peanut butter has gone back to its health-food roots. It is now championed for its protein and monounsaturated fat content, as brands stripped of their sweeteners and emulsifiers have occupied the premium end of the market. Given that these new-wave natural peanut butters tend to contain nothing but peanuts – give or take the odd pinch of salt – the difference between supermarket own-label and luxury jars tends to be slight. The biggest variations are largely in the sourcing and quality of the peanuts themselves.
This means that peanut butter is a handy thing to have in the cupboard at all times. Personally, I prefer a loose, crunchy consistency; for all the claims about sustainable palm oil, there’s simply no need for it in peanut butter, which, like tahini, separates naturally over time and is just as easily stirred back together. To slow the separation, simply beat the oil back in, then store the jar upside down in the fridge – assuming it lasts that long.
Continue reading...A job listing for the Super Bowl LIX halftime show offers $12 per hour — part of a long pattern of host-city residents getting the short shrift.
The post Everyone’s Making Millions But the Super Bowl Haltime Show Wants to Hire New Orleans Locals for $12 an Hour appeared first on The Intercept.
Whether you’re making comforting curries, casseroles or chilli con carne, we’ve tested the top slow cookers for serving up winter warmers
• The best blenders to blitz like a pro, tried and tested, from Ninja to Nutribullet
As January beds in and our craving for cosiness increases, you may be minded to dig out the slow cooker. Coming home to a warm, bubbling meal – with very little effort – is a real treat in the cold and dark. Plus, slow cooking can be an economical method of cooking.
If you have yet to experience the comfort and joy of a slow cooker, or if your ancient model has finally died a death, it could be time to treat yourself to a season of stews, casseroles, curries and more. I’ve spent weeks testing slow cookers to compile a shortlist of the most functional, useful and well-designed recommendations to transform your dinner time.
Best overall slow cooker:
GreenPan slow cooker
£200 at GreenPan
Best basic slow cooker:
ProCook digital slow cooker
£49 at ProCook
Best multi-cooker:
Ninja Foodi 8-in-1 PossibleCooker
£120 at Argos
Best pressure-cooking slow cooker:
Sage Fast Slow Pro
£179.95 at Sage Appliances
Hi Reddit! We’re a team of tech journalists from MIT Technology Review, excited to answer all of your questions about emerging tech in 2025 and beyond.
We are:
We just published our annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Every year, our reporters and editors look for promising technologies poised to have a real impact on the world. We consider dozens of advances across the fields of AI, biotech, computing, and climate. We can’t see the future, but we expect these ten breakthroughs to affect our world in a big way, for decades to come.
Here are the ten items on this year’s list:
Ask us anything! (We’ll be here responding to your questions this Friday, January 10 at 12 p.m. EST, but feel free to get 'em in early.) Proof pics here.
A weekly email from Yotam Ottolenghi, Meera Sodha, Felicity Cloake and Rachel Roddy, featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas
Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigel Slater, Meera Sodha and all our star cooks, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent and Jay Rayner.
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Continue reading...Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, direct to your inbox every Thursday
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday
Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you
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Imagine a world in which you can do transactions and many other things without having to give your personal information. A world in which you don’t need to rely on banks or governments anymore. Sounds amazing, right? That’s exactly what blockchain technology allows us to do.
It’s like your computer’s hard drive. blockchain is a technology that lets you store data in digital blocks, which are connected together like links in a chain.
Blockchain technology was originally invented in 1991 by two mathematicians, Stuart Haber and W. Scot Stornetta. They first proposed the system to ensure that timestamps could not be tampered with.
A few years later, in 1998, software developer Nick Szabo proposed using a similar kind of technology to secure a digital payments system he called “Bit Gold.” However, this innovation was not adopted until Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to have invented the first Blockchain and Bitcoin.
A blockchain is a distributed database shared between the nodes of a computer network. It saves information in digital format. Many people first heard of blockchain technology when they started to look up information about bitcoin.
Blockchain is used in cryptocurrency systems to ensure secure, decentralized records of transactions.
Blockchain allowed people to guarantee the fidelity and security of a record of data without the need for a third party to ensure accuracy.
To understand how a blockchain works, Consider these basic steps:
Let’s get to know more about the blockchain.
Blockchain records digital information and distributes it across the network without changing it. The information is distributed among many users and stored in an immutable, permanent ledger that can't be changed or destroyed. That's why blockchain is also called "Distributed Ledger Technology" or DLT.
Here’s how it works:
And that’s the beauty of it! The process may seem complicated, but it’s done in minutes with modern technology. And because technology is advancing rapidly, I expect things to move even more quickly than ever.
Even though blockchain is integral to cryptocurrency, it has other applications. For example, blockchain can be used for storing reliable data about transactions. Many people confuse blockchain with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Blockchain already being adopted by some big-name companies, such as Walmart, AIG, Siemens, Pfizer, and Unilever. For example, IBM's Food Trust uses blockchain to track food's journey before reaching its final destination.
Although some of you may consider this practice excessive, food suppliers and manufacturers adhere to the policy of tracing their products because bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella have been found in packaged foods. In addition, there have been isolated cases where dangerous allergens such as peanuts have accidentally been introduced into certain products.
Tracing and identifying the sources of an outbreak is a challenging task that can take months or years. Thanks to the Blockchain, however, companies now know exactly where their food has been—so they can trace its location and prevent future outbreaks.
Blockchain technology allows systems to react much faster in the event of a hazard. It also has many other uses in the modern world.
Blockchain technology is safe, even if it’s public. People can access the technology using an internet connection.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had all your data stored at one place and that one secure place got compromised? Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to prevent your data from leaking out even when the security of your storage systems is compromised?
Blockchain technology provides a way of avoiding this situation by using multiple computers at different locations to store information about transactions. If one computer experiences problems with a transaction, it will not affect the other nodes.
Instead, other nodes will use the correct information to cross-reference your incorrect node. This is called “Decentralization,” meaning all the information is stored in multiple places.
Blockchain guarantees your data's authenticity—not just its accuracy, but also its irreversibility. It can also be used to store data that are difficult to register, like legal contracts, state identifications, or a company's product inventory.
Blockchain has many advantages and disadvantages.
I’ll answer the most frequently asked questions about blockchain in this section.
Blockchain is not a cryptocurrency but a technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible. It's a digital ledger that records every transaction seamlessly.
Yes, blockchain can be theoretically hacked, but it is a complicated task to be achieved. A network of users constantly reviews it, which makes hacking the blockchain difficult.
Coinbase Global is currently the biggest blockchain company in the world. The company runs a commendable infrastructure, services, and technology for the digital currency economy.
Blockchain is a decentralized technology. It’s a chain of distributed ledgers connected with nodes. Each node can be any electronic device. Thus, one owns blockhain.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which is powered by Blockchain technology while Blockchain is a distributed ledger of cryptocurrency
Generally a database is a collection of data which can be stored and organized using a database management system. The people who have access to the database can view or edit the information stored there. The client-server network architecture is used to implement databases. whereas a blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, stored in a distributed system. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, timestamp and transaction information. Modification of data is not allowed due to the design of the blockchain. The technology allows decentralized control and eliminates risks of data modification by other parties.
Blockchain has a wide spectrum of applications and, over the next 5-10 years, we will likely see it being integrated into all sorts of industries. From finance to healthcare, blockchain could revolutionize the way we store and share data. Although there is some hesitation to adopt blockchain systems right now, that won't be the case in 2022-2023 (and even less so in 2026). Once people become more comfortable with the technology and understand how it can work for them, owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs alike will be quick to leverage blockchain technology for their own gain. Hope you like this article if you have any question let me know in the comments section
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