January 2013 Archives

The University of Minnesota is paying $3,656 for a workshop dedicated to sexual health and women's empowerment, said the New York Post.

The workshop has accumulated some conservative criticism by on-campus groups, like Students for a Conservative Voice. The group's spokesperson said that it is improper for the university to sponsor an event that advocates "a moral standing that is not at all universal."

In a statement made Wednesday, the University responded by saying that "as the state's preeminent education and research institution, the University of Minnesota provides information on a wide range of topics...the vast majority of these topics are not controversial, but some are."

According to the Pioneer Press, the workshop is intended to cover topics from women's body image in the media to multiple orgasms.

The workshop will take place at the St. Paul Student Center Theater on April 10.

Ticketmaster is in the process of changing its verification process used to purchase tickets online, reported the Huffington Post.

Captcha, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart," has a reputation of being hated by users on the Internet, due to its difficult comprehension even by humans.

In hopes of creating easier access to purchase tickets, Ticketmaster plans to implement software created by a New York based company called Solve Media, said BBC News.

The new software has the same use as Captcha--identifying whether the user is human or automated--but its ease is much more geared towards human accessibility. Instead of difficult-to-decipher words, the new software will have common phrases or multiple choice questions with answers that humans should be easily able to answer.

A study from Writing in Nature Communications revealed that cats that roam in the wilderness of the US have become increasingly dangerous to wildlife, reported BBC News.

Un-owned cats, which the team of scientists that performed the study defines as "strays, feral, and farm cats," are responsible for the extinction of 33 species, according to BBC News.

There has been a longstanding debate in the US about what to do about the cat killings and the study has now furthered the debate's intensity, reported USA Today. The main species impacted by the un-owned cats is birds, and the most endangered of the bird species are those that are native only to the US.

The video service, Vine, recently integrated into Twitter, surprised users Monday when a video containing pornographic content appeared under the category of "Editor's Pick," according to NBC News.

Twitter soon removed the video from the category and apologized to its users. BBC News stated that the video was mistakenly placed in the category because of human error.

The video, which contains a young woman and a sex toy, according to NBC News, came from a Vine account named "nsfwvine." The account was created for the sole purpose of posting pornographic content.

BBC News reports that Vine has been facing criticism over the amount of pornographic content on its service. Though pornographic content can only be found through searching keywords on the website, if it's chosen as a featured video--as was the case with Twitter--it is automatically highlighted in whatever category it is featured in.