List of All Articles with Tag 'person'

Petitioners allege it benefits the white and wealthy while discriminating against minority students.

Twitter rival Bluesky has been forced to temporarily pause sign-ups after experiencing a surge of interest following Elon Musk’s decision to introduce new limits to his social network. The tech billionaire began limiting the number of tweets people can read on Saturday, claiming that it was necessary to address “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”. The move prevents unverified users from seeing more than 600 Twitter posts a day, while paid subscribers can view up to 6,000. It prompted renewed interest in rival apps, including Mastodon, whose creator said 110,000 new users joined the platform in just one day. Bluesky, which was founded by former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, is currently in private beta, meaning people can only sign up if they have an invite code from another user. “We will temporarily be pausing Bluesky sign-ups while our team continues to resolve the existing performance issues,” the company said over the weekend. “We’ll keep you updated when invite codes will resume functionality. We’re excited to welcome more users to our beta soon!” Among those making the transition from Twitter to Bluesky to Twitter is Paul Cooper, host of the Fall of Civilization podcast. Last month, Mr Musk encouraged the history podcast to “please upload your podcasts” to Twitter, though Mr Cooper replied that he considered the platform “too compromised” to make such a move. “It’s become a safe haven for hate speech, and meanwhile crypto scammers and bots are paying to be boosted to the top of replies,” the podcast host wrote. “Everything that once made Twitter special seems to be leaching away.” Mr Musk said the limits introduced for Twitter users would be temporary, though did not specify when they would be removed. Twitter responded to a request from The Independent for more information with its customary poop emoji. Read More Twitter alternative Bluesky launches as Android app

Chaos at Twitter has seemingly led to a new surge of activity on Mastodon, a rival social network, according to its creator. Mastodon has seen some success since Elon Musk took over at Twitter, as users search for alternatives. Unlike its rival, Mastodon has a decentralised structure that relies on users to support and build the network itself. “Looks like Mastodon‘s active user base has increased by 110K (110,000) over the last day. Not bad,” Eugen Rochko, creator and chief executive of Mastodon, wrote on the platform late on Sunday. “I would prefer it if Elon Musk was destroying his site during the work week. This isn’t the first time,” another post from Rochko read. On Saturday, Twitter boss Elon Musk announced new limits on the number of posts accounts can read in a day. Previously, he had expressed displeasure with artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for using Twitter’s data to train their large language models. Musk took over Twitter in October 2022. Since then, his erratic management style has prompted some users and advertisers to turn away from the site. Mastodon has similar features to Twitter but rather than being controlled by one company, it is installed on thousands of computer servers, largely run by volunteer administrators who join their systems together in a federation. After Mr Musk’s announcements over the weekend, Twitter is also now requiring people to log on to view tweets and profiles - a change in its long-time practice to allow everyone to peruse the chatter on what Mr Musk has frequently touted as the world’s digital town square. The restrictions could result in users being locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets. Thousands of users complained on Saturday of not being able to access the site. In a tweet on Friday, Mr Musk described the new restrictions as a temporary measure that was taken because “we were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users”. Additional reporting by agencies Read More Twitter is breaking more and more What Twitter’s ‘rate limit’ message means and why Elon Musk has imposed restrictions Jack Dorsey calls for ‘open internet’ as Musk imposes new reading limits on Twitter

Days after the US Supreme Court struck down race-conscious university admissions, civil rights groups have filed a federal lawsuit targeting so-called “legacy” admissions at Harvard University. The lawsuit, alleging widespread discrimination at the college in violation of the Civil Rights Act, is the latest challenge to the practice of prioritising university admissions for the children of alumni. “There’s no birthright to Harvard. As the Supreme Court recently noted, ‘eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.’ There should be no way to identify who your parents are in the college application process,” said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights, which filed the complaint on 3 July. “Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?” he said in a statement. “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.” The group filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England and the Greater Boston Latino Network. Last week, the conservative supermajority on the nation’s highest court ruled that private and public colleges and universities may not consider race as a factor in admissions, striking down the precedent affirmed in the 2003 ruling in Grutter v Bollinger. Civil rights advocates and justices who supported the decades-long precedent, intended to promote racially diverse college campuses, derided what they argue is the court’s ongoing perversion of the 14th Amendment and the foundational concept of equal protection. The latest lawsuit points to Harvard data finding that 70 per cent of the college’s donor-related and legacy applicants are white. So-called “legacy” applicants have a roughly six times greater chance of admission, according to records, pointing to a “custom, pattern and practice” that is “exclusionary and discriminatory” and “severely disadvantages and harms applicants of color,” plaintiffs argued. The complaint calls on the US Department of Education to initiate a federal investigation into Harvard’s application process and for the federal government to declare such practices illegal. “Harvard’s practice of giving a leg-up to the children of wealthy donors and alumni – who have done nothing to deserve it – must end,” Lawyers for Civil Rights litigation fellow Michael Kippins said in a statement accompanying the complaint. Following the Supreme Court ruling, Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden urged universities to reconsider their legacy admissions, which he said “expand privilege instead of opportunity.” The Independent has requested comment from Harvard. Read More Biden condemns Supreme Court striking down affirmative action: ‘This is not a normal court’ Biden reveals ‘new path’ to student debt relief after Supreme Court strikes down president’s plan Pence ‘doesn’t believe’ racial inequality exists in schools as he celebrates SCOTUS affirmative action ban

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s group Monday announced an internet-enabled phone at an entry price of 999 rupees ($12) as

TweetDeck, a major Twitter client, has stopped working properly. The app is seemingly a victim of the same problems that have meant that Twitter has not been loading properly in recent days. Over the weekend, Twitter owner Elon Musk announced that the site would be limiting the number of posts that users could see. He indicated that the change was meant to stop bots scraping the tweets posted on the platform, though some have suggested that the problem could have other causes. The site also cut off the ability to read tweets without a login. The changes were described as a “temporary emergency measure” by Mr Musk, who said that bots on the platform had degraded the user experience. It has plunged the site into chaos as users look to deal with the ration on the number of posts, as well as a number of apparently linked problems. One of those issues is that TweetDeck is failing to work properly. Some reported that the app was unable to load tweets at all, while others found that they might initially show and then disappear, or that specific columns were not working. TweetDeck is a power user tool that is used by companies to manage multiple accounts, and by those who look to follow updates on the site through its columns and other tools. While a relatively small number of people may use the site, that includes some of those who post and follow prolifically. It is unclear whether the outage is linked to either the restrictions on the number of posts, or removing the option to view posts without being logged in. Experts have suggested that both changes appear to have been made in a rushed and haphazard way, and so might have accidentally broken other parts of the site. TweetDeck does not have an official status account. While Mr Musk has been giving ongoing updates on the situation on the main Twitter site in recent days, he has not mentioned the outage on TweetDeck. The app has been largely neglected for years. The last major announcement was that the TweetDeck Mac app would be closed down, in June 2022, before Mr Musk took over the site. In the time since, Mr Musk has made changes that have taken other third-party clients offline. Though TweetDeck was founded as an independent service, it has since been bought by and integrated into Twitter, presumably meaning it was able to avoid those initial problems in accessing Twitter’s data. Some rumours have also suggested that TweetDeck could become paid-for, or part of Twitter’s premium “Blue” offering. But the company has offered few official updates on its future at all. Read More What Twitter’s ‘rate limit’ message means and why Elon Musk has imposed restrictions Jack Dorsey calls for ‘open internet’ as Musk imposes new reading limits on Twitter Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day

(Reuters) -Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, the telecom arm of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd said on Monday it

A civil rights legal group is challenging legacy admissions at Harvard University, saying the practice discriminates against students of color by giving an unfair boost to the mostly white children of alumni

A civil rights legal group is challenging legacy admissions at Harvard University, saying the practice discriminates against students of color by giving an unfair boost to the mostly white children of alumni

'The Canterbury Tales' author Geoffrey Chaucer's work spanned poetry and prose and ranged from the humorous to the scientific—but there's so much more to know about the "father of English poetry."

'Forget that charity match it'll be a boxing match the way you keep leaking his stuff,' a fan wrote in response to IShowSpeed leaking KSI's number

Daedalic Entertainment will no longer develop games after the failed launch of 'Lord of the Rings: Gollum'.