Wikipedia article of the day for February 1, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for February 1, 2020 is Prince Romerson.
Prince Romerson (c. 1840 – 1872) was a Native Hawaiian who fought in the American Civil War at a time when the Kingdom of Hawaii was an independent nation. Living in the American Northeast before the war, Romerson enlisted in the Union Navy in 1863 and served in the Atlantic Blockading Squadron. After being discharged, he reenlisted in the 5th Regiment Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry, a United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiment, in April 1864. Romerson rose to the rank of sergeant and was mustered out in October 1865, due to illness. After the war, like many USCT veterans, he remained in the army as a member of the Buffalo Soldiers (pictured), serving on the western frontier. In 2010, he was commemorated with over 100 other Native Hawaiian and Hawaiian-born "Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War" when a bronze plaque was erected along the memorial pathway at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Why Google Backtracked on Its New Search Results Look

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The Week in Tech: London Hands Washington a Loss on Huawei

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 31, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 31, 2020 is Roman temple of Bziza.
The Roman temple of Bziza is a well-preserved first-century AD Roman temple in the Lebanese town of Bziza. It is dedicated to Azizos, a personification of the morning star in the Canaanite mythology. The temple's name is a corruption of Beth Azizo, meaning the house or temple of Azizos. The building has two doors that connect the portico to a square chamber. To the back of the temple lie the remains of the adyton where images of the deity once stood. The ancient temple was meant to function as the dwelling place of the deity. It was converted into a church and underwent architectural modification during two phases of Christianization: in the Early Byzantine period and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The church, colloquially known until modern times as the Lady of the Pillars, fell into disrepair. Despite the church's condition, Christian devotion was still maintained in the nineteenth century in one of the temple's niches.

Amazon Powers Ahead With Robust Profit

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Ginni Rometty to Step Down as C.E.O. of IBM

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 30, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 30, 2020 is Golden swallow.
The golden swallow (Tachycineta euchrysea) is found in Hispaniola and Jamaica mainly in isolated montane forests of Hispaniolan pine. The Jamaican subspecies is likely extinct, perhaps through predation by mammals and habitat loss, and the Hispaniolan subspecies is considered to be vulnerable by the IUCN. This is a small swallow with mainly copper-bronze upperparts and white underparts. The legs, feet, and irises are dark brown, and the bill is black. The extant subspecies differs from the Jamaican form in having a more forked tail and bluer upperparts. The female is similar, but with mottled grey-brown on the breast, and occasionally on the throat and undertail. In Hispaniola, this swallow breeds from April to July, laying a clutch consisting of two to four white eggs in a cup nest in Hispaniolan pine, in caves or under eaves. It is an aerial insectivore, usually foraging up to 20 m (66 ft) above the ground.

Facebook to Pay $550 Million to Settle Facial Recognition Suit

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Facebook to Pay $550 Million to Settle Facial Recognition Suit

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Facebook’s Revenue and Profit Rise Again, Despite Controversies

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Interior Department Grounds Its Drones Over Chinese Spying Fears

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Lyft Said to Plan Restructuring and Job Cuts

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 29, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 29, 2020 is 23rd (Northumbrian) Division.
The 23rd (Northumbrian) Division was an infantry division of the British Army in the Second World War. Formed in 1939 from a cadre of the Territorial Army's 50th (Northumbrian) Motor Division, it was sent to France in April 1940 with scant training and preparation and inadequate administration, logistics, and heavy weapons. When Germany invaded Belgium, the British Expeditionary Force and French armies advanced, leaving the 23rd Division behind to guard airfields. After the main German attack came through the Ardennes, the division was ordered to the front line to defend the Canal du Nord—the only river between the main German assault and the English Channel. By the time the division arrived, the Germans had already crossed south of their sector where French forces had yet to take up positions. One of the division's brigades was caught by armoured forces and overrun; the other conducted rearguard actions during the retreat to Dunkirk. The remnants of the division were evacuated on 31 May 1940, having suffered heavy losses.

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Britain Says Huawei Won’t Be Banned From Its 5G Network

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 28, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 28, 2020 is Persoonia linearis.
Persoonia linearis, the narrow-leaved geebung, is a shrub native to New South Wales and Victoria in eastern Australia. It reaches 3 m (9.8 ft), or occasionally 5 m (16 ft), in height and has thick, dark grey papery bark. The leaves are linear in shape, up to 9 cm (3.5 in) long, and 0.1 to 0.7 cm (0.04 to 0.28 in) wide. The small yellow flowers appear from December to July, followed by small green fleshy fruits. P. linearis interbreeds with several other Persoonia species where they grow together. This shrub is found in dry forest on poor sandstone-based soils, and is adapted to a fire-prone environment; the plants resprout epicormic buds from beneath their thick bark after bushfires. The fruit are consumed by vertebrates such as kangaroos, possums and currawongs. P. linearis is rare in cultivation as it is very hard to propagate by seed or by cuttings, but once propagated, it adapts readily, preferring acidic soils with good drainage and at least a partly sunny aspect.

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 27, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 27, 2020 is Japanese battleship Hyūga.
Hyūga was the second of two Ise-class battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the 1910s. The battleship supported Japanese forces in the early 1920s during the Siberian intervention in the Russian Civil War, and assisted survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923. The ship was partially modernised between 1927 and 1932 and rebuilt in the pagoda mast style, with further improvements in 1934–1936. Hyūga played a minor role in the Second Sino-Japanese War, but was considered obsolete by the eve of the Pacific War. Following the loss of most of the navy's large aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway in mid-1942, the battleship was rebuilt with a flight deck, but lacked aircraft and qualified pilots throughout the war. In late 1944 the ship helped to decoy an American carrier fleet away from the landing beaches at Leyte. Hyūga was sunk during American airstrikes in July 1945. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)

Wikipedia article of the day for January 26, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 26, 2020 is Walter Krueger.
Walter Krueger (26 January 1881 – 20 August 1967) was an American soldier who commanded the Sixth United States Army in the South West Pacific Area during World War II, rising from private to general in his army career. A child immigrant born in Flatow, West Prussia, he served in the Spanish–American War and the Philippine–American War and was promoted to second lieutenant in 1901. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, he was assigned to the 84th Infantry Division as assistant chief of staff, later as chief of staff. In October 1918, he commanded the Tank Corps. Between the wars, he served in various roles, and in 1941 he assumed command of the Third Army. In 1943 he was sent to the Southwest Pacific Area as commander of the Sixth Army, which he led in a series of victorious campaigns against the Japanese. In the Battle of Luzon in 1945 he was finally able to maneuver his army as he had in 1941 against a Japanese army under Tomoyuki Yamashita. Part of the Command in the South West Pacific Area featured topic.

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 25, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 25, 2020 is Æthelbald, King of Wessex.
Æthelbald, King of Wessex (died 860) was the second of five sons of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. Æthelbald's elder brother Æthelstan defeated the Vikings in 850 in the first recorded sea battle in English history, and probably died in the early 850s. The next year Æthelwulf and Æthelbald inflicted another defeat on the Vikings at the Battle of Aclea. In 855 Æthelwulf went on pilgrimage to Rome and appointed Æthelbald king of Wessex, while Æthelberht, the next oldest son, became king of Kent, which had been conquered by Wessex thirty years earlier. Æthelbald refused to give up his throne when his father returned to England in 856, and continued as king either of west Wessex or the whole territory until his father died in 858. Æthelbald then married his father's widow, Judith, a great-granddaughter of Charlemagne, to the scandal of later monastic chroniclers, and ruled Wessex until his own death. Æthelberht now re-united Wessex and Kent under his sole rule and they were never again divided.

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The Week in Tech: A Tech Mogul’s Phone and the Saudi Crown Prince

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 24, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 24, 2020 is Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts.
The decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts was accomplished in the early nineteenth century by several European scholars, especially Jean-François Champollion (pictured) and Thomas Young. Egyptian writing, which included the hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic scripts, ceased to be understood in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Afterwards, it was believed that Egyptian scripts were exclusively ideographic, representing ideas, rather than phonetic, representing sounds. The Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799, bore a parallel text in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, but deciphering the Egyptian text through its Greek translation proved difficult. Young, building on the work of Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy and Johan David Åkerblad, identified several phonetic signs in demotic. In the early 1820s Champollion realised the hieroglyphic script had both phonetic and ideographic elements. He identified the meanings of most phonetic hieroglyphs and established much of the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Egyptian.

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 23, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 23, 2020 is Suillus luteus.
Suillus luteus is a bolete fungus common in its native Eurasia and widely introduced elsewhere. English names such as "slippery jack" refer to the brown cap, which is slimy in wet conditions. The mushrooms are edible, though not highly regarded, and are often eaten in soups, stews or fried dishes. The fungus grows in coniferous forests in its native range, and pine plantations where introduced. It forms symbiotic associations with living trees by enveloping the underground roots. The fungus produces spore-bearing mushrooms above ground in summer and autumn. The cap often has a distinctive conical shape before flattening with age. Instead of gills, the underside of the cap has pores with tubes extending downward that allow mature spores to escape. The pore surface is yellow, and covered by a membranous partial veil when young. The stalk is pale with small dots near the top. It bears a distinctive ring that is tinged brown to violet on the underside.

Twitter Tells Facial Recognition Trailblazer to Stop Using Site’s Photos

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How Jeff Bezos’ iPhone X Was Hacked

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Put Alexa and Siri to Work

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G.M.’s Cruise Unveils a Self-Driving Car. Don’t Look for It on Roads.

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Analysis Said to Tie Hacking of Bezos’ Phone to Saudi Leader’s Account

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 22, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 22, 2020 is Muhammad II of Granada.
Muhammad II was the Nasrid ruler of the Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula from 1273 until his death in 1302. Succeeding his father Muhammad I, he maintained Granada's independence in the face of its larger neighbours, the Christian kingdom of Castile and the Muslim Marinid state of Morocco. He added the Tower of the Ladies and the Tower of the Points to his father's palace and fortress complex, the Alhambra (pictured). To defend Granada against the Christians, he recruited soldiers from North Africa and organized them into the Volunteers of the Faith. He instituted the Nasrid royal protocol and the court chancery and increased the importance of the vizier in government. Muhammad II built a series of strongholds in strategic positions that remained for centuries as the backbone of Granadan border defences. He was known by the epithet al-Faqih, the canon lawyer, reflecting his education and his support for scholars and poets.

This Company Says It Will Fix Your Smile. It May Shush You if It Doesn’t

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 21, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 21, 2020 is Onychopterella.
Onychopterella was a predatory aquatic arthropod of the order of eurypterids, often called sea scorpions. Fossils of the species O. kokomoensis (pictured) and O. pumilus have been found in the United States, and fossils of O. augusti in South Africa. Onychopterella (from Greek for 'claw wing') lived from the Late Ordovician to the Late Silurian, from 444 to 422 million years ago. The head was almost rectangular, with bean-shaped compound eyes. The limbs were generally long and narrow with a spine on the tip, and the body was ornamented with small, pointed scales. Lengths ranged from 16 cm (6.3 in) for O. kokomoensis to 4 cm (1.6 in) for O. pumilus. Onychopterella was able to swim, and probably able to walk on the seabed with its spines and dig with its head. The best-preserved specimens of O. augusti show similarities to modern scorpions in their alimentary canal, limb musculature and respiratory system.

Unmasking a Company That Wants to Unmask Us All

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India Targets Jeff Bezos Over Amazon and Washington Post

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Unmasking a Company That Wants to Unmask Us All

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 20, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 20, 2020 is Buzz Aldrin.
Buzz Aldrin (born January 20, 1930) is an American former astronaut and fighter pilot. As lunar module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission, he and Neil Armstrong were the first humans to land on the Moon. A graduate of West Point and MIT, where he earned a doctorate in astronautics, Aldrin served as an Air Force fighter pilot during the Korean War, flying 66 combat missions and shooting down two MiGs. He was selected as an astronaut with NASA's third group in 1963. His first spaceflight was in 1966 on Gemini 12, during which he spent over five hours outside the spacecraft. He set foot on the Moon on July 21, 1969 (UTC), nine minutes after Armstrong. He left NASA in 1971 and became commandant of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. His autobiographies Return to Earth and Magnificent Desolation recount his struggles with depression and alcoholism. He developed the Aldrin cycler, a Mars spacecraft trajectory, and continues to advocate for space exploration, particularly a human mission to Mars.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 19, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 19, 2020 is Jill Valentine.
Jill Valentine is a fictional character in Resident Evil, a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Appearing in the original Resident Evil (1996), she featured as the protagonist in several later games in the series. From 2002 onward, she was drawn to resemble Canadian model and actor Julia Voth (pictured). Valentine also appears in the Resident Evil film series, portrayed by actor Sienna Guillory, and in several other game franchises, including Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom and Project X Zone. Video game publications praised Valentine as the most likable and consistent Resident Evil character. Several publications praised the series for making Valentine as competent and skilled as her male counterparts and for avoiding sexual objectification; others criticized her costumes as overtly sexual, and argued that her role as a heroine was weakened by her unrealistic features.

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Wikipedia article of the day for January 18, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for January 18, 2020 is Coldrum Long Barrow.
The Coldrum Long Barrow is a ruined British Early Neolithic chambered long barrow near the village of Trottiscliffe, Kent. Probably constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, it was built by pastoralist communities soon after the introduction of agriculture to Britain. Built out of earth and around fifty local sarsen-stone megaliths, the barrow consisted of a tumulus enclosed by kerb-stones. At the eastern end of the tumulus was a stone chamber containing the remains of at least seventeen human bodies, at least one of which had been dismembered before burial, potentially reflecting a tradition of excarnation and secondary burial. The long barrow later became dilapidated, possibly exacerbated through deliberate destruction by iconoclasts or treasure hunters. Local folklore associates the site with the burial of a prince and the countless stones motif. Excavations took place in the early 20th century, and in 1926, ownership was transferred to the National Trust. Entry is free, and the stones are the site of various modern Pagan rituals.

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Does the F.B.I. Need Apple to Hack Into iPhones?

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The Week in Tech: Does the F.B.I. Need Apple to Hack Into iPhones?

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