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One might imagine that the precise design specifications of the Vatican flag would be laid out for anyone to access,like they are for the flag of the United States, for example.But they arent. The best the Vatican provides is a web page with a verbal description and history of the flag, along with alow-resolution image showing a square version.

Becker told CNA that the saga of the Vatican flag on Wikipedia demonstrates a need for the Vatican to step in and clarify exactly what its flag should look like, especially considering the fact that Catholic churches all over the world display the Vatican flag.

It was precisely this lack of clarity on the official design of the Vatican flag that led Becker tocreate a websitedetailing, as best as he could, the correct design for the flag.

Cultural communities in general have turned to flags in a stunning way, Becker commented, citing in part a proliferation of cheaply made, mass-produced flags. And, anecdotally, there seems to be an ever-increasing interest in the Vatican flag as a way for Catholics to claim an identity, whether by flying a flag at home, waving it at a papal event, or by putting one in their social media profile picture.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Vatican flag is less than 100 years old, as is Vatican City itself. For more than a millennium before 1870, the pope ruled over the Papal States, large regions mainly within present-day Italy. After the Vatican lost control of the Papal States, it found itself a tiny island surrounded by an acrimonious Italy. It took nearly 60 years until the ratification of the Lateran Accords of 1929 ushered in harmony between the Vatican and Italy, and the creation of the worlds smallest sovereign country.

In the days of the Papal States, many different flags were used, but the yellow and white color scheme was a common feature. Becker said the modern design was first used by the merchant fleet in the Papal States from 1825 to 1870. In 1929, that design was chosen as the new flag of Vatican City, the sovereign country.

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Wikipedia had the wrong Vatican City flag for years. Now incorrect flags are everywhere - Catholic News Agency

A person looks at an Abortion Pill (RU-486) for unintended pregnancy from Mifepristone displayed on a computer on May 8, 2020, in Arlington, Virginia OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

A Texas judge on Friday overturned the nationwide FDA approval of abortion medication with a ruling that legal and healthcare experts told Insider is full of inaccuracies.

In addition to citing the Wikipedia definitions for both "pregnancy" and "disease" in his ruling, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk falsely claimed abortion medication "ultimately starves the unborn human until death" and made sweeping generalizations about the psychological impact of abortions on women who receive them which health care providers told Insider aren't accurate.

"Whim and caprice aren't the same as facts and evidence, and are not an objective foundation for good law," Los Angeles attorney Vineet Dubey, co-founder of Custodio & Dubey LLP, a law firm specializing in injury, environmental litigation, and civil rights cases, said in a statement emailed to Insider, indicating the judge's ruling came "without the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision."

Dubey added: "Judges aren't intended to be subject matter experts outside of interpreting the law."

The conservative, Trump-appointed Texas judge behind the ruling in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA casehas long supported the anti-abortion movement. His mother, Dorothy, is a microbiologist who began working at anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, his sister, Jennifer Griffith,told The Washington Post.

In his ruling, Kacsmaryk included common phrases used by anti-abortion activists, not scientists, and misinformation.

"Mifepristone also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex is a synthetic steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone, halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death," Kacsmaryk's ruling reads, calling those who provide the medication "abortionists."

But an OB-GYN told Insider the judge's interpretation of what the drug does is medically inaccurate.

"I would say that's not a medical description of the way that that it works," Daniel Grossman, MD, the director of the University of California San Francisco's reproductive health care program, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), told Insider.

Mifepristone, Grossman said, blocks the progesterone receptor early in the pregnancy to keep the lining of the uterus from getting thick enough for an embryo to successfully implant on it, causing the pregnancy to start to separate from the uterine wall. Working in tandem with a second medication called misoprostol, which causes the contraction of the uterus, the drugs cause the expulsion of the embryo.

The process is "kind of like having a really heavy, crampy period," according to Planned Parenthood.

"From a medical perspective, we call the developing pregnancy an embryo at this stage. Mifepristone and misoprostol are sometimes used before we can even see an embryo on ultrasound," Grossman told Insider. "So, that term 'unborn human' that's not a medical term that we use."

He added: "And the language around nutrition and starvation is certainly very emotional language, but those aren't the medical terms that we use in this context."

Prior to implanting in the uterine lining and the development of a placenta, an embryo relies on nutrients from endometrial secretions, which are present during the second half of the menstrual cycle whether a pregnancy occurs or not, according to SITNBoston, a Harvard science publication.

But the medical processes and descriptions of how the drugs work weren't the only inaccuracies in the judge's ruling.

M. Antonia Biggs, PhD and social psychologist at ANSIRH, told Insider that Kacsmaryk was "perpetuating misinformation and propagating the myth that abortion causes mental health harm" through his ruling.

"What we do know is that abortion does not increase people's risk of having depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, suicidal ideation, or substance use disorders, which is completely against many of his claims," Biggs told Insider. "We also know that people do not come to regret their abortions."

In the ruling, Kacsmaryk writes that women who receive an abortion are at higher risk of death by suicide, "self-destructive tendencies, depression, and other unhealthy behavior aggravated by the abortion experience," citing studies debunked by the broader scientific community, Biggs said.

Kacsmaryk also claims women experience "intense psychological trauma" from seeing an expelled embryo.

Biggs said when she worked on a longitudinal research project called The Turnaway Study, examining the mental, physical, and socioeconomic consequences of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, the results showed the opposite 95% said that they felt that it was the right decision for them.

"When we did find harm, any kind of psychological harm, it was not to people who had an abortion, but it was people who were denied abortion," Biggs told Insider. "So people who are denied abortion experience short-term, elevated levels of stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem."

Spreading such misinformation through an official judicial ruling, Biggs said, is "inappropriate, unethical, and jarring."

"When you're issuing a ruling that's going to impact people nationally, one would hope that that ruling would be evidence-based and that it would look at the body of evidence instead of cherry-picking studies that are really not in line with the scientific consensus on the topic," Biggs said, adding, "so many of the things in this ruling I would say are completely flawed.It's definitely not going to help or prevent mental health harm or physical harm as it claims it's going to do the opposite."

Kacsmaryk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

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Texas ruling to ban abortion pills nationwide gets basic facts wrong: experts - Business Insider

Is your next logo something musical? Intel makes a big comeback. And fake ransomware groups? Dont these guys have any ethics?

These stories and more on Hashtag Trending for Wednesday, April 5th.

Im your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and TechNewsDay in the US heres todays top tech news stories.

What was that? It was the sound of the new logo for Wikipedia. Thats right. Its a sound logo and as an article in FastCompany described it its delightfully nerdy.

Whats the point? Glad you asked. Apparently the Wikimedia Foundation, wants to define its brand at a time when people are starting to use voice and speech to access their phones, tablets and of course, their smart speakers.

A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation Mathoto Matsetela-Harman noted that 27 per cent of worlds online population use voice search on their mobile devices or smart speaker. And more and more people are getting the answers from Wikipedia content. So the logo will reassure listeners that the information they are getting is accurate, reliable and verified by thousands of volunteers in the Wikimedia movement.

The sound logo is the creation of Thaddeus Osborne, a Viginia based nuclear engineer who produces music in his spare time. It was picked from thousands of entries in a contest run by the foundation, looking for the sound of knowledge growing

Its not the first-time sound logos have been used the first audio trademark was registered in 1929. And whether it will join the ranks of well-known sounds like the sound your Mac or Windows computer make when they boot up or the McDonalds jingle or others that we associate with brands, its an idea that somehow sounds right

Source: FastCompany

Despite the overall industry experiencing 20 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) Intels revenue growth has been in the single digits since 2015, with decreasing market share and pressure on gross margins.

Some blame this on Intels failure to innovate and catch the mobile, data centre and even Artificial Intelligence markets ceding these to Nvidia and rival AMD. And with a great deal of its manufacturing overseas, Intel was inordinately hit by supply chain issues that had rocked the industry.

But CEO Pat Gelsinger has devised a plan to return Intel to its past leadership position.

Gelsinger has made a 20 billion dollar bet, with contingency for more if necessary, to invest in foundries in the United States bringing back production to the US and with that, greater control over supply chains. These new foundries will employ the technology made by Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography or ASML a Dutch corporation that has the worlds most advanced chip manufacturing technology, which has been embargoed since 2019 so it cannot be licensed for use by Chinese manufacturers.

Intel also caught or maybe caused the wave of government support with the Biden adminstrations Chips Act which may contribute as much as 3 Billion dollars per foundry.

The company is betting on this tech to produce a new set of chips called Sierra Forest, a chip with an astounding 144 cores, which Intel hopes will compete with AMDs 128 core Bergamo chips.

According to an article in Nasdaq.com, the Sierra Forest chips scheduled for delivery in 2025 will be deployed a year ahead of schedule in 2024.

To pull this off, the company has had to strip back dividend payouts to shareholders, cut executive pay and even have some layoffs.

Will it be worth it? In the short run, nobody is certain. The slump in PC demand has cooled part of the market, but even in tough times, most analysts are predicting growth in cloud data centres and AI two areas that are exactly what the new Sierra Forest chips are designed for.

Source: Nasdaq.com

Speaking of the tech slowdown, industry journal The Next Platform reports that forecasts for growth in on-premises hardware will be lower next year by close to 11 per cent. But spending on large cloud providers is expected to grow by close to 7 per cent.

While this is nothing like 20 per cent growth of recent years its still a major gap between shrinking on premises and expanding cloud services demand.

Noting that recessions dont cause IT transitions, they accelerate them, the article shows a projected decline in non-cloud and dedicated on premises servers from 43 per cent to 32 per cent in 2027 with a corresponding increase in cloud for corporate infrastructure.

Even in Canada, which has been slower to adopt cloud, ITWC Researchs CIO Census showed a huge potential increase in cloud usage with CIOs predicting that in two years, cloud will be the dominant infrastructure in Canada.

Source: The Next Platform

Fake ransomware attacks are the next big thing, according to an article in Bleeping Computer.

The gangs dont actually mount an attack, they pick on those who they think have been attacked and then claim to be the attacker, or one of the attackers, and demand a ransom or they will publish and sell stolen data or even mount additional attacks on the company or its customers. Its not a new idea its been observed since 2019 and even given a name by incident response company Coveware, who call it Phantom Incident Extortion or PIE for short.

Bleeping Computer has identified called Midnight and says it has been targeting companies in the US since March 16th.

Midnight has claimed to be part of the Silent Ransom Group, a splinter of the Conti syndicate also known as Luna Moth. In another attack they have masqueraded as the Surtr ransomware group which was first reported encrypting data in its attacks in December of 2025.

The Kroll group, who specialize in investigation and risk consulting, note that this fake extortion and impersonating much more well-known groups is a way for relatively unsophisticated or low skilled attackers to use social engineering to extort victims.

So far, according to Kroll, the only real attacks mounted by these impostors have been relatively low-level denial of service DDoS attacks, again a strategy that was used by a number of groups in years past.

Its unclear how the group selects its victims or even where it gets data from. Some speculate that they could be partnering with other attackers or simply be tracking other groups and finding data on the sites these groups use to publish or sell data.

So companies are advised to be doubly careful if they receive ransom demands. The attacker may not be real.

It adds a whole new meaning to that phrase fake it till you make it.

Source: Bleeping Computer

A new study explains why we get so fatigued by online meetings. Weve all felt it, that awful, lethargic feeling that comes over during Zoom and Teams meetings. Its not, as you may think, simply that your colleagues are droning on or that the meetings are pointless. Thats just part of corporate life.

Nope, according to this study there are actual physiological reasons why you feel so down and lethargic. Research published in the journal Trends and Cognitive Sciences says that important visual cues we rely on to communicate are rendered meaningless or disrupted over video calls.

According to Nikolaus Troje, a Canada research chair in reality research at Torontos York University, This whole sophisticated dance that two people and their visual systems play when they communicate in the real world is just disrupted, Or to put it even more simply. It doesnt work anymore.

Troje says that we cant get the same eye contact that we do in real life the way we look at each others eyes in conversation. Even if we try to look into the spot just below the camera lens, so it looks like we are making eye contact, the effect is somehow artificial even a little creepy.

Trojes team is one of many working on new tech solutions that can somehow make the experience of virtual and hybrid meetings actually pleasant.

Solving this challenge might be a worth lot of money. HPs CEO Enrique Lores noted in a keynote last week at HPs Amplify conference that there are 90 million meeting rooms across the world and only ten per cent of them are even equipped for video calls. Making them work better is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity.

Source: Toronto Star

Efile.com, an IRS authorized supplier of electronic filing software for tax returns has been caught serving up JavaScript malware, according to an article in Bleeping Computer. Researchers stated that the malicious JavaScript file has been on the eFile.com website for weeks.

According to some reports, the site was infected as early as mid-March but the offending malware was not removed until April 1st.

No-one seems to know exactly who did the attack or even why. The main functions of this code are to communicate with a command and control server and to reload updates. As SANS researcher Johannes Ullrich noted, there are Chinese comments in the code, and the server it pings back to is in China so the source is likely Chinese. But the purpose is a little less clear. Ullrich notes that the the code is very cobbled together and the clumsy inclusion of PHP points to a not-so-advanced, but maybe still persistent, threat actor.

Hard to understand? Not very clear in what it does? Persistent? Sounds like if belongs with income tax filing.

Thats the top tech news for today. Hashtag Trending goes to air five days a week with the daily tech news and we have a special weekend edition where we do an in depth interview with an expert on some tech development that is making the news.

Follow us on Apple, Google, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to all the stories weve covered can be found in the text edition of this podcast at itworldcanada.com/podcasts

We love your comments good or bad. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or on Mastodon as @therealjimlove on our Mastodon site technews.social. Or just leave a comment under the text version at itworldcanada.com/podcasts

Im your host, Jim Love, have a Wonderful Wednesday!

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Hashtag Trending Apr.5th- Wikipedias new logo, $20 billion to revive Intel, Fake ransomware attacks - IT World Canada

The history of the internet is awash with cautionary tales. Stories of catastrophe that never came to pass like the millennium bug to widely lauded, future-altering innovations that have faded to become a mere stitch in the tapestry of the worlds digital footprint.

By Joe Baguley, vice-president and chief technology officer of VMware EMEA

The nature of technology and its cycle of self-perpetuating betterment means that there will always be the next big thing. In this regard, step forward ChatGPT and its subsequent updates such as GPT4.

The claxon of caution

Since the tail end of 2022, ChatGPT has been that thing. The white knight to solve the ills of modern society. Depending on which news source you read, it will improve; how we study, write, research, code, work, create and evolve in the workplace. There is more, of course, because the potential use cases are endless, but there are also grounds to sound the klaxon of caution.

For a start, weve been here before. People of a certain age will recall the fanfare to which Wikipedia arrived. That too was going to revolutionise how we learn and research. That too was going to change the world. And did it? Im afraid not quite.

What happened is what is almost certain to happen to ChatGPT and the innovations that follow after it. That it evolved to become a tool, albeit an incredibly useful one. A tool in the box that helps our day-to-day lives alongside the other incredible tools that have been developed in recent years, like Alexa or next-day delivery. On its own, will it change how we operate? Almost certainly. Will it change the world? Almost certainly not. Like Wikipedia, we will grow to learn its limits.

An AI-infused world

Perhaps the key question is, where and how far will it catapult society? The excitement around ChatGPT stems from what it is, not necessarily what it does. By consumerising an artificial intelligence (AI) product into something everyone can use it has opened our eyes to the realities of an AI-infused world.

The fact is, that this is happening already in sectors such as healthcare (for early detection, image scanning and analysis and predictive care to name a few examples) and manufacturing (for instance, to increase production capabilities and cut emissions) but those applications are limited only to a select few, hence the massive disparity in reaction.

The reality is, we are already in an AI-infused world of which ChatGPT is simply the next chapter and it wont be the last. It is, however, a very clear signpost as to where we go from here. The Genie is out of the bottle as far as the positive impacts AI can have but beyond the excitement and appetite to use it as a digital travelator to get to the next point more quickly, society needs to harness it appropriately.

This means starting at an education-level. Were already seeing reports of it being used in exams. In a recent test, it passed law exams in four courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business, according to a story on CNN.

Unsurprisingly, were also seeing tools being developed to detect and prevent its usage. This creates a developmental cat and mouse whereby students will want to use it both because they cant, and because they shouldnt. But this sends out a wrong message and arguably fuels the fire of scepticism around AI. Knowing that theyre here to stay, we should accept ChatGPT and other AI tools into education and encourage people on how to best engage with them.

Essentially, to use every tool in the box to get the job done better and quicker because this is the world of work they will walk into.

Embrace AI to do something better

The same message applies to businesses. It is far too linear to suggest that these types of AI advances alone will kill job X or Y while that, in and of itself, isnt the end of the chain anyway. Just because ChatGPT can create job adverts, brand copy or legal letters does not mean businesses ought to dismiss their HR, marketing and legal teams.

Far from it. These teams are more vital than ever because their years of experience, diverse backgrounds, soft human skills and unique personalities are not only what is required to get a job done today, theyre the foundation of society tomorrow.

The cleverest businesses and the ones who will come out on top in the end will be the ones who get to grips with these types of innovation. To learn them, incorporate them into day-to-day operations and evolve the skills of their teams accordingly and in lockstep with any new development.

Microsofts new 365 Copilot is just another example of such tech rapidly being integrated into existing business tools. The leaders will be the companies that embrace AI to do something better than they are doing today without jettisoning the people and skills required to adapt to our ever-changing world.

Another way to look at it is that early machine code developers didnt disappear because we invented compilers what in fact happened was that more and more people could access the power of computing as coding became progressively easier and easier with each generation; with generative AI such as GPT4 now generating code and creating websites from sketches it will just enable even more people to engage and create.

Understanding limitations

We will, of course, reach a point where enough is enough as far as AI is concerned. Perhaps in years to come well reach that moment and identify this period as the start of that journey, but it is a long way from now. What it will look like is an age-old question. A moral and societal issue far too deep to cover here, though Professor Stuart Russell did so expertly in his 2021 Reith Lectures.

All we have now is a new technology, no more, no less. ChatGPT is a computer system taking big steps forward in communication and generation, and that is an amazing advancement, but using this tool and combining it with other tools alongside the scientific method and human intelligence is where the real excitement is. In short order we are already discovering its flaws and limits.

Thinking critically about combinations and application is how and where we can realise the potential of AI to change lives for the better. Once again we should look at how technology augments humans and advances us all. In order to do that, we first have to understand limitations and that were always in the middle of history, never the end.

Related

Continued here:
ChatGPT and GPT4: Wikipedia 2.0 or a fresh starting point for society? - IT-Online

This article is taken from the April 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now were offering five issues for just 10.

Plane untrustworthy

A sincere thank you for the helpful, fact-filled (unlike Wikipedia) and ultimately depressing article WHO WATCHES THE WIKIPEDIA EDITORS? (MARCH).

As an example, I would like to point readers to the Wikipedia entry for Norwich City Station (checked 20 March 2023). It states, The station was further damaged when a badly damaged USAF B24 Liberator bomber was deliberately crashed there to avoid greater loss of life, with no reference to check this.

Suffice it to say that proper history books, for instance A J Wrottesleys The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, and N J L Digbys The Stations and Structures of The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway: Volume 2, Norwich to Peterborough and Little Bytham, a magisterial work of great depth and erudition, fail to mention this at all.

While there are many easily found photos of the bombing raid, one would have thought that such a significant event as a deliberately crashed bomber would have been of great interest. How do you deliberately aim a badly damaged bomber at a specific site in the middle of a lot of housing with no recorded loss of life from crew or civilians on the ground?

In our house Wikipedia is avoided as much as possible, and rudely labelled Wankipedia as it is load of old cock.

R Lincoln

Groby, Leicestershire

Green screen

In his interesting article about Henry Green (AN OFF-KILTER VISIONARY, MARCH), Alexander Larman stated that there is no definitive biography.

I would be interested to learn of what he thinks are the shortcomings of Jeremy Treglowns biography, Romancing, published in 2000.

He also believes that none of Greens books has been filmed. However, a film of Loving was made by BBC Northern Ireland in 1996, starring Mark Rylance.

Graeme Creffield

Hemel Hempstead, Herts

A swift correction

Fergus Butler-Gallie (SOUNDING BOARD, MARCH) quotes Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels but misplaces the condemnation of humans as the most pernicious race of little odious vermin.

This does not occur in Book IV of the novel as might be expected with its portrayal of the Yahoos but at the close of Book Two Chapter VI where the King of Brobdingnag draws his scathing conclusion after listening to Gulliver eulogising his homeland.

Swifts irony is so pointed that at the beginning of the next chapter (Book Two Chapter VII) he has Gulliver point out that I artfully eluded many of his questions and gave to every point a more favourable turn by many degrees than the strictness of truth would allow which results in the reader wondering just how savage the Kings conclusions would have been had he been told the truth by Gulliver.

Tony Macilwraith

Worcester

Figures and form

Please remind Simon Heffer (HAVE WE LOST OUR MINDS? MARCH) that 29 Labour MPs were elected in 1906 three years before the Peoples Budget, not two.

On the subject of Russian aggression (Mark Almond, THE BALLOON GOES UP, MARCH), India has form. She failed to condemn Moscow over Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Mark Taha

Ealing, London

Failing the test

I enjoyed reading Christopher Snowdons balanced perspective on grammar schools (THE ROOTS OF SCHOOL RAGE, MARCH). One of the issues mentioned, but not contested, was Hitchens champions selection by ability. There is no psychological reason that a test should be set at eleven years, it is for administrative purposes. The idea that development is set in stone at this age is untenable.

The belief that one test, on one day, can accurately measure academic ability is problematic. For example, an individual may be ill or nervous, and fail to fulfil their potential. There is also confusion about the construct validity of the test: does it actually measure academic skills/intelligence? (Never mind the excessive private tutoring for the test which tests the idea of selection by ability.)

In a democratic country there would need to be some overwhelming reason to segregate people, and if that community is not even prepared to set up a comprehensive and valid diagnostic tool as the starting point, there may always be many people who will be critical of grammar schools.

Michael Moore

Loughton, Essex

Sideways mobility

Christopher Snowdon has some telling observations in his piece on grammar schools. The head of my South London grammar school wrote in his autobiography that he had seen an important part of his job being to turn working-class boys into middle-class men. One of my old schoolmates observed when I told him this, Not necessary in my case. Not necessary in most cases.

Harry Harmer

Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Original post:
Letters for April | Letters to the Editor - The Critic