Amnesty
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Study: Women are abused every 30 seconds on Twitter
Earlier this year Amnesty International released a report discussing what many of Twitter's female users already know: the social network is not always a great place to be if you're a woman. Now, a new study reveals the hard statistics on just how toxic the situation is. According to the report by Amnesty International and global AI software company Element AI, female journalists and politicians were abused every 30 seconds on Twitter in 2017.
Apple, Samsung and Sony linked to child labor in Africa
A new report from Amnesty International claims that some of the world's biggest technology and automotive companies are failing to check whether cobalt mined by children is being used in their products. Its joint investigation with African Resources Watch (Afrewatch) suggests that Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung and Sony are linked to the sale of cobalt used in lithium batteries in smartphones, notebooks and tablets, from mines in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where children as young as seven are put to work.
Europe's lawmakers suggest giving Snowden amnesty
The European Parliament has voted to grant amnesty to Edward Snowden, the former US government contractor who revealed the depth of the country's surveillance programs back in 2013. By a vote of 285 to 281, the European Parliament is recommending that the 28 states of the EU "drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender".
Jagex levies a lawsuit against RuneScape botters
As RuneScape staggers under the assault of thousands of bots, Jagex is pulling out a pair of big guns to meet the problem head-on. The first weapon was yesterday's "Bot-Nuking Day," in which a patch was released that was supposed to deal with 98% of the botting in the game. The second is an official email sent to suspected botters threatening them with a class-action lawsuit if they don't desist. In the email, Jagex calls out the suspected behavior and offers the player a "one-time amnesty lifeline" to shape up. These players will be placed on a watch list and will be monitored for any further botting action. If the player persists in cheating, then Jagex promises to not only remove their account permanently but to include the player in a mass lawsuit. "If you ignore our offer and instead continue use botting software, we reserve our rights to pursue statutory damages against you for between $200 to $2,500 per act of past, present, and/or future botting," the letter states. A Jagex mod on the RuneScape forums confirmed that these emails are real.
O2 offers early iPhone 4 upgrade amnesty in bid to retain customers
Would you look at that. Following in the footsteps of AT&T, O2 has today announced it'll allow current customers to pay off the remainder of their contracts at a discounted rate when they re-up with the network for the iPhone 4. Irrespective of how much you're paying now, the UK carrier will charge you a flat rate of £20 ($29) for each leftover month. Considering most iPhone users rock out at £30 and above, that's a solid 30 percent discount (or contract amnesty, however you wanna view it) for the impatient types. Of course, you'll be trading away your usual 14-day cooling off period if you take them up on this deal, so you'd better make doubly sure you want the iPhone 4 on O2 before taking the plunge.
Turn Google gadgets into widgets, widgets into apps
Google, like seemingly almost every other web services company on the planet these days, offers a personalized Google homepage that allows you to customize the page with more or less the internet version of widgets. Google calls them gadgets, and you can drag and drop them to create just the page you want.Recently, Google announced they were breaking the chains that bind their gadgets to their homepage, allowing anyone to copy and paste some simple HTML to place any gadget on their own site. But why stop there? Dan from Uneasysilence dropped us a line about Mesa Dynamics, an interesting app company who has created two widget and gadget wrangling apps.First up is Amnesty Generator, a free utility that turns any Google gadget into a Mac OS X Dashboard widget. It sounds like one catch with this process, however, is that any gadget-cum-widget is 100% internet dependent, even if it's something like a standalone game. This makes sense to me though, since the HTML is still calling out somewhere to get whatever makes up the gadget widget.Second on the list from Mesa Dynamics is Amnesty Singles, which unleashes widgets from the Dashboard and turns them into full-blown apps. This utility costs $9.95 and requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 (though it's Universal), and I would imagine the internet dependence still exists for Google gadgets when turned into apps, though I would imagine Mac OS X Dashboard widgets which don't need the internet to begin with will act just fine without being online.So there's your time-waster for the day: gadgets to widgets to apps, oh my!
