News Stories

[Ridwan]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Arabic: A language with too many armies and navies?

Good thing that this finally gets attention.


Meanwhile on the Haze : oh lol

[serenade_beta]

Ah~ah, USA getting scolded from every side in this PRISM revelation.
Whether I agree with that program or not is one thing, but can't help but have that feeling. China must have that feeling too. USA always being holier-than-thou and accusing China of hacking... then BAM! Now everyone knows the finger-pointer was a hypocrite.
But China got rid of the thorn in the US-China relationship and handed it to Russia, so now it is their turn to defy US.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Voice recognition technologies seem likely to undermine all written languages in the years to come. I was surprised at how well Google Voice could convert spoken queries into English text. How well do they do with Asian languages?

It fares quite well with Mandarin and Cantonese. It managed to interpret my search request for 黃飛鴻 (Huang Feihong) in Mandarin, and my request for 劉德華 (Andy Lau Tak-wah) in Cantonese.

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Is there a Siri for Asian iPhones?

You had to ask.

Spoiler for some translations. I'm too lazy to explain them all. I'm sure most of you would get the gist of what SIMI says:

Simi is Hokkien/Singlish slang for "What is it?"

Singlish: Wah lao eh, why you fly my aeroplane?
English: Damn, why did you break the engagement without warning?

Singlish: Wait ar, checking. Sibei jialat ah! The CTE jam from Ang Mo Kio to Orchard Road, you still want to drive ah? Take MRT lah!
English: Please wait, let me check. Oh my god! There's a jam along the CTE from Ang Mo Kio to Orchard Road. You shouldn't drive. Take the MRT instead!

Seriously though, I've never used an iPhone, so I don't know about Siri's effectiveness. I do remember, however, plenty of Singaporeans complaining about its relative uselessness (the earliest versions of Siri could not understand the Singapore accent, let alone our local patois).

Hence the spoof above by Mr Brown (real name, Lee Kin Mun), arguably Singapore's best-loved blogger-comedian.

[RRW]

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar for 18 years, has transferred the "reins of power" to his son.

The outgoing emir made the announcement to hand over power to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, 33, in an address to the nation on Tuesday .

"I declare that I will hand over the reins of power to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and I am fully certain that he is up to the responsibility, deserving the confidence, capable of shouldering the responsibility and fulfilling the mission," Sheikh Hamad, 61, said.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...516403468.html

and the "celebrate" this as national holiday

[ganbaru]

Supreme Court strikes down key part of Voting Rights Act
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95O0TU20130625

[GDB]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

Ah~ah, USA getting scolded from every side in this PRISM revelation.
Whether I agree with that program or not is one thing, but can't help but have that feeling. China must have that feeling too. USA always being holier-than-thou and accusing China of hacking... then BAM! Now everyone knows the finger-pointer was a hypocrite.
But China got rid of the thorn in the US-China relationship and handed it to Russia, so now it is their turn to defy US.

To be fair, PRISM isn't actually hacking. It's data extortion. Those in charge of the data knowingly give it up, but likely not willingly.

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Supreme Court strikes down key part of Voting Rights Act
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95O0TU20130625

The only way this can end well without the GOP having a hayday with "poll taxes" is to just say EFF IT and require every state to comply.

[SeijiSensei]

Rachel Maddow ran a story last night on recent elections to the board that oversees a community college system scattered across metropolitan Houston. The state proposed reducing the number of polling places from 84 to 12 and, in those remaining 12, the precinct with the highest proportion of white voters had to serve some 6,500 citizens. The precinct with the largest proportion of nonwhite voters encompassed about ten times as many citizens.

The Justice Department struck that down under the now-"immobillized," to use Justice Ginsberg's word, Title V.

Personally I don't have any objection to extending the purview of Title V to cover the entire nation, though I doubt Congress would appropriate the funds needed for the Justice Department to enforce the law everywhere. That would provide a basis for "selective enforcement" suits if the pattern of Justice Department actions seemed concentrated in the places where it now has jurisdiction.

As someone for whom the Civil Rights movement was a formative political event, this is a sad, but not unexpected, outcome.

I don't see much chance of Obama being able to flip the Court before his time runs out either. That will fall to whomever is elected in 2016. Stevens held on until George W. Bush left office. I'm sure the older conservatives like Scalia and maybe even Kennedy will do the same.

So now we're left with the two remaining "biggies," the cases concerning same-sex marriage. Wearing my fortune teller's hat, I predict DOMA will fall, but the Court will punt on the Callifornia Proposition 8 case on the basis that the plaintiffs did not have "standing" to sue. I wouldn't be surprised to see six or seven votes overturning DOMA, and possibly a unanimous decision on Prop 8. Remanding the case back to the local courts would be a victory for same-sex couples in California since the state has clearly announced its intention not to uphold the proposition. However it also means the Court can dodge the question of whether homosexuals have a constitutionally-guaranteed right to marriage.

Overturning DOMA will have far-reaching effects. One example is the recent kerfuffle in the Senate over the amendment to the immigration reform bill that would have allowed Americans to request green cards for their foreign same-sex spouses. ICE would probably have to treat all legally-married spouses equivalently if DOMA is overturned.

[ganbaru]

Obama takes on power plants, Keystone as part of climate plan
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95O0G120130625

Putin rules out handing Snowden over to United States
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95M02H20130625
What's the probability than Snowden ended in either a interrogation or a debriefing room ?

[GDB]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Putin rules out handing Snowden over to United States
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95M02H20130625
What's the probability than Snowden ended in either a interrogation or a debriefing room ?

It's possible, but I think Russia's having more fun lording freedom of speech and liberty over the US's head.

[SeijiSensei]

I'm sure Putin wants Snowden to be able to speak warmly about his Russian hosts. The bigger question concerns what happened to whatever documents he was carrying with him.

Is Wendy Davis Currently the Most Powerful Woman in Texas?

The Texas state legislature, where Republicans hold large majorities in both Houses, has been meeting in special session and are now consdering a highly-restrictive anti-abortion bill that would close the vast majority of clinics in the state offering abortions. That session comes to an end at midnight tonight.

The attempt to consider the measure in the lower House committee was blocked by a "citizen filibuster" late last week when hundreds of people showed up to speak for the three minutes they were granted under the rules. This event continued on into the wee hours of the morning at which point the House committee holding the hearing recessed. They came back on Sunday morning to face an even larger horde of opponents, but after some parliamentary manuevering the Republican leadership managed to get the bill voted out of committee. It was taken up by entire House early yesterday morning and passed around 10:45 or so whereupon it was sent on the Senate.

However the rules require a 24-hour waiting period before the bill could be brought up before the Senate. Democratic representative Wendy Davis vowed to filibuster the bill by herself. She started speaking at 11:34 am and has about four hours left. Unlike those hokey filibusters in the US Senate, Ms. Davis must remain on her feet and speak continuously for the entire time and cannot eat or drink. When asked if she had been catheterized, she responded that she had "taken care of it; that's all you need to know."

[synaesthetic]

If he's smart (and it's clear that he is very, very smart) the only documents he carried are in his head, and the rest are somewhere in the electronic aether where only he or his trusted friends can obtain and decrypt them.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by GDB

It's possible, but I think Russia's having more fun lording freedom of speech and liberty over the US's head.

same with China

which is why both countries have taken a hands off approach to this.

[Sugetsu]

Well guys, today the sky fell down. It began falling in 2010 when the supreme court passed Citizen's United, but now it crashed to the ground that The supreme court struck down the Voting rights act; which will allow all voting suppression laws to be passed all over the United States if the states deem it "appropriate".

Get ready for the fireworks guys...

PS. The fun has just started now that congress is getting ready to move forward on the immigration bill.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Farewell, new friend

Hong Kong (June 24, Mon): Mr Edward Snowden has proved a divisive figure in America, where everyone has been debating whether he is more hero or traitor, or something else entirely. But by the time he lifted off from Chek Lap Kok airport on June 23, he had succeeded in doing something that few had done before him: uniting the fractious body politic of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong (HKSAR).

Mr Snowden looks like a hero to nearly everyone who lives in this odd place, perched half way between mainland China and the rest of the world.

It is hard to persuade Hong Kongers to share a single point of view about anything. These are people who can’t agree whether to trust or distrust their own government, whether they are "Chinese Hong Kongers" or instead "Hong Kong Chinese", or even whether their guests ought to be served shark-fin soup or $1 chicken.

By the time he flew the coop Hong Kong’s most famous guest, whether he was a yellow-bellied chicken or true-blue patriot, had managed to bring together nearly all the people of this tiny, semi-autonomous territory.

For the governments of Hong Kong and China, and perhaps also for America's, it was all for the best that he was allowed to take flight for Russia, Cuba, Venezuela or Ecuador, Iceland or wherever. There is virtually no country in the world that has a more important and potentially fraught relationship with the United States than China.

It was Mr Snowden's leaks about America's cyber-snooping in Hong Kong that account for the remarkably stroppy final lines of the government’s statement about his departure: "The HKSAR government has formally written to the US government requesting clarification on earlier reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by US government agencies."

The Hong Kong government, it went on, "will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong".

Once the political reasons aligned in Mr Snowden's favour, the legal justifications could not have been too hard to manage.

Some American officials had been banging on about Hong Kong's need to obey "the rule of law". But perhaps Hong Kong did just that, even as it differed from the official American interpretation of the law. One country's chicken flying the coop can be another country's chicken coming home to roost.

THE ECONOMIST

Gay rights in China: A queer state

ANALECTS: THE ECONOMIST

(June 25, Tue)

LAST weekend, hundreds of Beijingers enjoyed ales and pies at the second annual craft-beer festival. The Beijing LGBT Centre, a non-profit organisation, had a stall there too, where they handed out T-shirts and answered questions.

This in itself was a small victory — the venue management had informed the festival's organisers earlier that the LGBT stall would not be allowed to use the space, as they "don't fit in with our architecture". No other explanation was given.

The management later backtracked and apologised, which was perhaps the only surprise.

China's queer community is used to not having an easy ride. Beijing's sixth Queer Film Festival, which this year ran from June 19 to 23, asked for a press embargo to keep quiet all reports (such as this one), until after the festival's closing ceremony.

They advertised chiefly by e-mail, fearful that if news got out the authorities might intervene and force a last-minute change of venue, as they had done in the past.

This year's festival screened 28 films from nine countries. Roughly 300 people are estimated to have attended.

Elsewhere in China, events in cities including Shenyang in the far north and Guangzhou in the south marked Gay Pride month.

Shanghai Pride, an annual LGBT festival, now in its fifth year, went off without a hitch.

Homosexuality has been legal in mainland China since 1997. It was removed from an official list of mental illnesses only in 2001. Prejudice is still widespread and there is as yet no civil-rights law to protect gays against various sorts of discrimination.

For the most part, public attitudes are changing for the better. To most urban youth, homosexuality is just another part of society. There are decriminalised gay bars and club nights in cities across China. The closing ceremony of the Queer Film Festival was attended by a handful of "gay mamas", there to support their children.

Ultimately, the greatest difficulty they face has less to do with bigotry than with the fact that they are trying to form organisations that might draw large numbers of people together on the basis of shared interests.

That's always a problem in China. As Yang Yang, organiser of the Queer Film Festival put it: "Everything is political".

[Vexx]

yeah, I have to say Kerrey and Holder's Rule-of-Law is some of the deepest bullshit I've heard since Cheney. A country can make it a law that lets it torture you for information, it's legal -- just evil and not actually very good at stopping terrorism or witchcraft.

[ArchmageXin]

Originally Posted by Vexx

yeah, I have to say Kerrey and Holder's Rule-of-Law is some of the deepest bullshit I've heard since Cheney. A country can make it a law that lets it torture you for information, it's legal -- just evil and not actually very good at stopping terrorism or witchcraft.

I find it more ironic that America used to complain about China not following DUE PROCESS and justice of the law, now they complain China for respecting HK's rights.

Also guys, there is another side of the story. If America really manage to get HK to process the charges, one of those things HK police will do is confiscate whats on those 4 "magic laptops"

Do you really need HK go over those damn things with a fine comb?

[andyjay729]

Originally Posted by Sugetsu

Well guys, today the sky fell down. It began falling in 2010 when the supreme court passed Citizen's United, but now it crashed to the ground that The supreme court struck down the Voting rights act; which will allow all voting suppression laws to be passed all over the United States if the states deem it "appropriate".

Get ready for the fireworks guys...

PS. The fun has just started now that congress is getting ready to move forward on the immigration bill.

My opinion of Obama has certainly gone downhill with all these NSA revelations...though in this instance it's just a case of him going back on most of the promises he made at the 2004 convention and ending up being not much different than the man he excoriated then. Of course, leftover neocons like Charles Krauthammer continue to insist that "Bush kept us safe for eight years" and of course when they had the reins to the Patriot Act, they were using it with utmost caution. Sen. Saxby Chambliss of course talked about how mass wiretapping protected us from "bad guys and only bad guys" over the past decade, and Bush's Homeland Security advisor Fran Townsend talked about it could've prevented the Boston bombing. At least the libertarian types are somewhat consistent when they say Obama acts as much like a neocon as Bush.

But I think the pressure to overturn the VRA instead of apply it equally across the country speaks not so much of latent racism on the GOP's part as it does extremely petty anti-Obamaism. They seem to think he's just such an abomination that electoral laws have to be rewritten to assure that such a mistake as him never happens again. That's what politics have become in this country at least since Clinton; a political pissing contest.

[andyjay729]

Oh man, no one thought to report on the latest episode of "Otakus Do The Darnedest Things"?

You may remember Rie Tanaka got married a while ago. The fans seemed to be behaving themselves, even the otaku extremists...until last weekend, when a guy bumrushed the stage at a fan event with Rie and waved a knife at her for the "crime" of marriage.

She tripped trying to run away, bruised her knee, and seems to be in some shock. Today she decided to shut down her Twitter account for the moment.

Stay classy, Akiba.

[Sumeragi]

Originally Posted by andyjay729

At least the libertarian types are somewhat consistent when they say Obama acts as much like a neocon as Bush.

To me that just shows how ignorant and uneducated they are.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

I'm sure Putin wants Snowden to be able to speak warmly about his Russian hosts. The bigger question concerns what happened to whatever documents he was carrying with him.

Is Wendy Davis Currently the Most Powerful Woman in Texas?

The Texas state legislature, where Republicans hold large majorities in both Houses, has been meeting in special session and are now consdering a highly-restrictive anti-abortion bill that would close the vast majority of clinics in the state offering abortions. That session comes to an end at midnight tonight.

The attempt to consider the measure in the lower House committee was blocked by a "citizen filibuster" late last week when hundreds of people showed up to speak for the three minutes they were granted under the rules. This event continued on into the wee hours of the morning at which point the House committee holding the hearing recessed. They came back on Sunday morning to face an even larger horde of opponents, but after some parliamentary manuevering the Republican leadership managed to get the bill voted out of committee. It was taken up by entire House early yesterday morning and passed around 10:45 or so whereupon it was sent on the Senate.

However the rules require a 24-hour waiting period before the bill could be brought up before the Senate. Democratic representative Wendy Davis vowed to filibuster the bill by herself. She started speaking at 11:34 am and has about four hours left. Unlike those hokey filibusters in the US Senate, Ms. Davis must remain on her feet and speak continuously for the entire time and cannot eat or drink. When asked if she had been catheterized, she responded that she had "taken care of it; that's all you need to know."

And sadly, the lt. governor decided to abrogate the protocol and rules and simply halted the filibuster. So much for rule-of-law in Texas and now it will cost the state millions in court cases as various groups file suit against the constitutionality of the law.