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Oil prices rise as worries about economic outlook fade
Thu, 06 Jun 2024 11:33:00 GMT
Oil futures rose Thursday, finding support as worries about the outlook for U.S. economic growth faded, though concerns remain about fuel demand as the summer travel season gets under way.
Match ID: 0 Score: 35.00 source: www.marketwatch.com age: 0 days
qualifiers: 35.00 travel(|ing)
Renting a beach house? Here’s what travel experts say you should pack.
Thu, 06 Jun 2024 10:00:16 +0000
Your Airbnb probably has the basics. But for a really great time, you’ll want to bring some extras.
Match ID: 1 Score: 35.00 source: www.washingtonpost.com age: 0 days
qualifiers: 35.00 travel(|ing)
Let’s commemorate D-day – but not how Nigel Farage wants us to | Luke Turner
Thu, 06 Jun 2024 09:17:40 GMT
The second world war is not fodder for the culture wars. We owe it to those who fought to keep it that way
Nigel Farage launched his campaign to become Clacton’s MP by citing a recent survey that revealed more than half of 18- to 34-year-olds couldn’t correctly identify what happened on D-day. Praising a local veteran travelling to Normandy for the 80th anniversary commemorations, the Reform party boss described the poll as representing “a complete failure of the education system … as if we’re telling our youngsters to be ashamed of our past”. It formed a key part of a speech full of supposedly patriotic, anti-immigrant, anti-trans rhetoric.
A narrow, nostalgic view of the second world war that connects the conflict with culture war issues and a sense of contemporary British decline is frequently exploited by reactionaries such as Farage, both as a political tool and a stick with which to beat supposedly ignorant young people. Jibes that millennials and Gen Z are “too woke” to fight might in fact be familiar to anyone who has read letters between British commanders of the second world war. General Montgomery, one of the architects of the D-day invasion, wrote in 1942 that “the trouble with our British lads is that they are not killers by nature”. A 1943 army report, meanwhile, blamed books, cinema, plays and education for making soldiers weak under fire.
Luke Turner is a writer, editor and the author of two books, Men at War and the Wainwright prize-shortlisted Out of the Woods
Continue reading...The photographer Andrew Esiebo travelled around the city capturing how car tyres otherwise destined for the dump are finding second lives as seats, fences and swings
The work of a vulcaniser is not unlike that of a surgeon, says the Nigerian photographer Andrew Esiebo. Armed with precision tools, vulcanisers across Nigeria extend the lives of tyres otherwise destined for the scrap heap.
“Vulcanisers are like doctors for tyres because the way they work is like surgery,” says Esiebo, who has chronicled how used tyres are being repurposed in Lagos in a photography series exhibited as part of the British Academy-funded Pneuma-City project.
Vulcanisers see their role as keeping the city moving
Continue reading...Artist duo Lola Paprocka and Pani Paul travelled the world photographing teenagers they connected with – along with their broken phones, braces and acne scars
Continue reading...Knepp estate was £1.5m in debt. Now it thrums with wildlife, visitors flock there – and farmers are stampeding to copy its success. We meet the star of a captivating film about this amazing rebirth
Take a stroll through the classic English countryside of West Sussex, and you’ll notice things becoming strange just beyond the village of Dial Post. Here, a patchwork of tidy fields bordered by neat hedgerows becomes a bamboozling maze of flowery glades and thickets of hawthorn, blackthorn and sallow. Rabbits dart between billowing brambles, watched by a fallow deer sporting furry new antlers. Stranger than the unexpectedly abundant plants and mammals is the cacophony of birdsong – the common melodies of thrushes, robins and blackcaps but also songs virtually extinguished across Britain: cuckoos, nightingales and turtle doves. Oddest of all is a clacking noise that sounds like two hollow sticks being banged together.
“Isn’t it a great sound?” says Isabella Tree, landowner, author and now star of a new film, Wilding. “Storks have these pouches that make the sound echo and travel even further.” And there, in an enormous hammock of sticks at the top of an ancient oak, stand a pair of bill-clacking storks looking proudly over a tiny chick.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Rivals from two forces fighting to control Darfur region would be subject to asset freezes and travel bans
The EU intends to impose sanctions on six Sudanese military figures who are fuelling the conflict that has led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, European diplomats have said.
EU foreign ministers meeting later this month are expected to approve sanctions against six individuals from the rival forces who have been fighting for control of Darfur, the vast, largely arid region of western and south-western Sudan.
Continue reading...Interesting story of breaking the security of the RoboForm password manager in order to recover a cryptocurrency wallet password.
Grand and Bruno spent months reverse engineering the version of the RoboForm program that they thought Michael had used in 2013 and found that the pseudo-random number generator used to generate passwords in that version—and subsequent versions until 2015—did indeed have a significant flaw that made the random number generator not so random. The RoboForm program unwisely tied the random passwords it generated to the date and time on the user’s computer—it determined the computer’s date and time, and then generated passwords that were predictable. If you knew the date and time and other parameters, you could compute any password that would have been generated on a certain date and time in the past...
Trump fans say his conviction is an overreach. But a close look at another recent fraud trial shows his case was run-of-the-mill.
The post To Understand the Trump Verdict, Look at the Case Against Shukhratjon Mirsaidov appeared first on The Intercept.
Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.
Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
Brian Krebs reports on research into geolocating routers:
Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geolocate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally—including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems—and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops...
Is this what the “pro-life” movement wanted?
The post Sterilization, Murders, Suicides: Bans Haven’t Slowed Abortions, and They’re Costing Lives appeared first on The Intercept.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
Continue reading...A large team of tech nostalgia enthusiasts have made a PiDP-10, a replica of the PDP-10 mainframe computer first launched by the Digital Equipment Corporation in 1966
On my desk right now, sitting beside my ultra-modern gaming PC, there is a strange device resembling the spaceship control panel from a 1970s sci-fi movie. It has no keyboard, no monitor, just several neat lines of coloured switches below a cascade of flashing lights. If you thought the recent spate of retro video game consoles such as the Mini SNES and the Mega Drive Mini was a surprising development in tech nostalgia, meet the PiDP-10, a 2:3 scale replica of the PDP-10 mainframe computer first launched by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1966. Designed and built by an international group of computer enthusiasts known as Obsolescence Guaranteed, it is a thing of beauty.
The origins of the project go back to 2015. Oscar Vermeulen, a Dutch economist and lifelong computer collector, wanted to build a single replica of a PDP-8 mainframe, a machine he had been obsessed with since childhood. “I had a Commodore 64 and proudly showed it to a friend of my father’s,” he says. “He just sniffed and said the Commodore was a toy. A real computer was a PDP, specifically a PDP-8. So I started looking for discarded PDP-8 computers, but never found one. They are collectors’ items now, extremely expensive and almost always broken. So I decided to make a replica for myself.”
Continue reading...While the film industry tanks, the internet has learned that ‘Bond, James Bond’ candles and ‘pasta la vista’ meatball T-shirts are where the real big bucks are
You might have heard that the film industry is in trouble. You might have seen how big movie after big movie has underperformed at the box office, or watched as giants such as David Lynch and Francis Ford Coppola struggle to find financing or distribution, and wondered if the glory days of cinema really are behind us.
But relax! Movies still represent a thriving marketplace, just maybe not necessarily the one you thought. In fact, if you want to see how bursting with life the movies still are, you simply need to look at all the stuff on Etsy that has film quotes on it.
Continue reading...The star directs, writes, composes and acts in this beautifully shot and sombre film about an old-school hero in a 19th-century frontier community fraught with tragedy
This sinewy, sombre, handsomely crafted and beautifully shot western is Viggo Mortensen’s second feature as a director, an impressively authored movie in which Mortensen is also writer, composer and star. With almost anyone else that might be the recipe for narcissism, and yet the self-effacing and even reticent quality in Mortensen’s screen presence works against that danger. He is, however, certainly working within the traditional strong, silent template of the old-school western hero.
Holger Olsen (played by Mortensen) is a Danish immigrant to the United States of the 1860s, who finds himself in San Francisco – a carpenter, rough-hewn outdoorsman and military veteran. He finds himself meeting the frank, unabashed gaze of Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps) a French-Canadian woman of modest means but independent temperament, who has just broken off an understanding with a wealthy but obnoxious man (Colin Morgan).
Olsen and Vivienne move in together in Olsen’s shack just outside a distant frontier town, and Vivienne is soon going to give birth to a son. But before their family responsibilities arise, Vivienne finds herself a job in the town’s saloon bar, where she comes into fateful contact with the town’s weaselly mayor, Rudolph Schiller (soft-spoken Danny Huston). Schiller is complicit in the unlawful affairs of the town’s crooked land baron, Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt), and always ready to turn a blind eye to the behaviour of Jeffries’s psychotically violent son, Weston (Solly McLeod). As the civil war approaches, the tensions within this frontier community come to the surface.
The Dead Don’t Hurt screened at the Toronto film festival, and is in UK and Irish cinemas from 7 June.
Continue reading...The movie that launched a million memes has lost none of its conspiratorial power, and its action sequences still dazzle – but was it actually trying to tell us something we’ve all missed?
To paraphrase Apu in The Simpsons, this was the year filmgoers were partying like it was on sale for $19.99; it offered the vintage of American Beauty, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense and more. But The Matrix seemed to me then – and seems to me now – more exciting than any of them, first among equals in the previous century’s final graduating class. Rereleased for its 25th anniversary, this barnstorming sci-fi paranoia thriller, produced by action veteran Joel Silver and written and directed by the Wachowskis, holds up tremendously well. The martial arts sequences choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping are gripping and nothing about the bullet-time effects or production design feels dated. Even the ringing payphone – an unexceptional detail in 1999 – now looks like an inspired steampunk touch.
Keanu Reeves, inscrutable, adorable and eccentric in his utterly individual way, plays Thomas Anderson, a talented young software programmer by day, and by night a mysterious online figure on global networks with the handle “Neo”. He has attracted the disapproval of shadowy government forces, led by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) who are worried by Neo’s anti-establishment posts and technical savvy, and his intuition that the government is keeping secrets, or just one big secret, from the people. But Neo is also being pursued by rebel activists, including Trinity (played with icy severity and style by Carrie-Anne Moss) and led by the charismatic Morpheus (a suavely assured Laurence Fishburne) who, despite his name, wants the whole world to wake up. Morpheus confronts Neo and offers him a fundamental choice in a now legendary scene: a blue pill which will return him to his current state of befuddled but basically placid ignorant acceptance, or the red pill which will irreversibly reveal to him just what is going on: the reality behind the illusion.
Continue reading...She is bringing her Eras tour to the UK this week. But just how easy is it to steer clear of the world’s biggest pop star? The Guardian’s stage editor finds out
Playing Cluedo, I realise I’ve cracked. There’s something about my Miss Scarlett card – that glint in her eyes, the knowing smile. Or maybe this is what happens when you have spent an entire month on an impossible mission to avoid the planet’s biggest pop star. You see, hear, simply sense Taylor Swift everywhere.
For the month of May, with Taylormania raging as Swift’s Eras tour headed to the UK, I was assigned a sort of inverted Where’s Wally? quest. Is it possible to shield yourself from the daily blanket coverage of a ubiquitous superstar who is one of the most photographed people in the world, had more than 26bn streams on Spotify last year, whose tour is blazing through five continents and has become a record-breaking movie, and who also just happened to drop a new album?
Continue reading...Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more we employed and mastered technology, the better things got. We don’t live in that world anymore. Not only has technology become entangled with the structure of society, but we also can no longer see the world around us without it. The separation is gone, and the control we thought we once had has revealed itself as a mirage. We’re in a transitional period of history right now...
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
The journal’s board of directors took the entire website down after the "Nakba" article published.
The post Columbia Law Review Remains Offline After Students Reject Disclaimer Undermining Palestine Article appeared first on The Intercept.
Researchers tested for bias in Facebook’s algorithm by purchasing ads promoting for-profit colleges and studying who saw them.
The post One Facebook Ad Promotes a For-Profit College; Another a State School. Which Ad Do Black Users See? appeared first on The Intercept.
The narrative that took hold ignored inland campuses, like in the Rust Belt and into Appalachia, where students formed their own encampments.
The post Not Just Coastal Elites: Here’s How Three Rust Belt Colleges Protested Israel’s War in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
“It’s hard to see this wildly disproportionate response as anything other than an attempt to chill speech on this issue.”
The post Columbia Coincidentally Rewrites Disciplinary Rules Just in Time to Screw Over Student Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.
The megadonor’s plan for a $25 million research center at Cornell fell apart. So he took his money to Texas A&M.
The post Leonard Leo Built the Conservative Court. Now He’s Funneling Dark Money Into Law Schools. appeared first on The Intercept.
Is this what the “pro-life” movement wanted?
The post Sterilization, Murders, Suicides: Bans Haven’t Slowed Abortions, and They’re Costing Lives appeared first on The Intercept.
Activists suing the Biden administration over Gaza policy are demanding the judge recuse himself over the sponsored trip.
The post A Federal Judge Visited Israel on a Junket Designed to Sway Public Opinion. Now He’s Hearing a Gaza Case. appeared first on The Intercept.
Trump fans say his conviction is an overreach. But a close look at another recent fraud trial shows his case was run-of-the-mill.
The post To Understand the Trump Verdict, Look at the Case Against Shukhratjon Mirsaidov appeared first on The Intercept.
Andrew Bailey’s office has a losing record of fighting against exonerations recommended by local prosecutors — but it’s not giving up.
The post Missouri’s Attorney General Is Waging War to Keep the Wrongly Convicted Locked Up appeared first on The Intercept.
All over the country, architecture firms make the case for bigger jails — then get hired to design them.
The post The Little-Known Reason Counties Keep Building Bigger Jails: Architecture Firms appeared first on The Intercept.
It is revealing how casually the prime minister has abandoned any attempt at integrity under the pressure of an election
The function of televised election debates is an airing of rival policies by competing candidates, allowing an audience to judge which has more merit. In practice it has become a game in which the object is to project scripted attacks into the public arena – an opportunity to frame the terms of combat for the rest of the campaign. That is not debating in the traditional sense, but it is a legitimate use of a broadcast platform. The whole exercise is corrupted, however, if the power of message amplification is used to spread falsehood.
This is what Rishi Sunak did in the first televised debate of the election campaign when he claimed that “independent Treasury officials” had costed Labour plans and calculated an increased household tax burden of £2,000. That number is a fiscal fiction drawn up by the Conservative campaign. The permanent secretary at the Treasury has made it clear that the civil service does not recognise Mr Sunak’s analysis and that it should not be presented as having official endorsement.
Continue reading...Researchers tested for bias in Facebook’s algorithm by purchasing ads promoting for-profit colleges and studying who saw them.
The post One Facebook Ad Promotes a For-Profit College; Another a State School. Which Ad Do Black Users See? appeared first on The Intercept.
Party says it has reached out to opposition leaders after election result as it looks to form coalition
An influential committee in the African National Congress (ANC) has recommended the party form a government of national unity, as the group tries to build a coalition after losing its parliamentary majority in South Africa for the first time since it swept to power at the end of apartheid.
The second largest party, the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA), has ruled out working with the fourth-largest, Marxist-inspired Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). However, some analysts said that the lure of power may end up bringing most of the largest parties together.
Continue reading...In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, revealed the tactics and traits that help him face the daily frustrations of leading a country at war for more than two years.
Within a ceremonial room inside Kyiv’s presidential compound, Zelenskiy spoke for nearly an hour with a Guardian team, including the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. The interview took place during perhaps the toughest time for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Russia is on the offensive in Kharkiv, an advance that follows months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities
Continue reading...In Gainesville, Florida, children are on the front lines of the hazards long ignored by local and state government officials.
The post For Decades, Officials Knew a School Sat on a Former Dump — and Did Little to Clean Up the Toxins appeared first on The Intercept.
The leader of the Morena party could pass legislation and budgets unopposed through congress
Claudia Sheinbaum seems poised to cement her historic victory as Mexico’s first female president with a supermajority in congress that would let her party pass legislation and budgets unopposed – and perhaps even change the constitution without need for compromise.
Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with 59.5% of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico’s electoral authority.
Continue reading...Party will have to pick coalition partners and then try to reform itself in response to declining support
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its three-decade electoral majority in devastating fashion. As the former liberation movement faces the task of building a coalition government, it remains to be seen how it will respond to the message sent to it by voters.
The ANC’s vote share collapsed from 57.5% in 2019 to 40.2% in last week’s elections, amid chronic unemployment, degraded public services and high rates of violent crime.
Continue reading...Government prosecutors claimed they didn’t know a former detainee recanted his testimony in interviews with the government.
The post Guantánamo Prosecutors Accused of “Outrageous” Misconduct for Trying to Use Torture Testimony appeared first on The Intercept.
The megadonor’s plan for a $25 million research center at Cornell fell apart. So he took his money to Texas A&M.
The post Leonard Leo Built the Conservative Court. Now He’s Funneling Dark Money Into Law Schools. appeared first on The Intercept.
Found guilty on 34 counts by a New York jury, Trump might find himself campaigning behind bars.
The post These Convictions Thwart Trump’s Plan to Pardon Himself appeared first on The Intercept.
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