Month: May 2017

"The Chinese Encyclopaedia is not a book, but a Great Wall of culture," said editor-in-chief Yang Muzhi. (credit: Wikipedia via Getty Images)

The Chinese government has hired tens of thousands of scholars to create an online version of the national encyclopedia, which will compete in size and scope with the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia.

The third edition of the Chinese Encyclopaedia will be "the nation's first digital book of 'everything,'" featuring 300,000 entries of about 1,000 words each, according to the South China Morning Post, which reported the news on Sunday. More than 20,000 authors from universities and research institutes will contribute to the effort. Ultimately, that will make the Chinese Encyclopaedia twice as large as Encyclopedia Brittanica and about the same size as the Chinese-language Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has a long history of partial and sometimes full blocks in China. Currently, the SCMP reports that most of the Chinese-language Wikipedia is available on in mainland China, but searching for articles on sensitive topics, such as the Dalai Lama, will lead to a lost connection.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Chris Clor)

Nine Republican US senators yesterday submitted legislation that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from ever again using the regulatory authority that allowed the commission to impose net neutrality rules. The "Restoring Internet Freedom Act" would prohibit the FCC from classifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act and "from imposing certain regulations on providers of such service."

The Internet "is threatened by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internet’s infrastructure," Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). said in an announcement yesterday. "That is why I am introducing the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, which would nullify [the] Open Internet Order and prohibit the FCC from issuing a similar rule in the future.”

Lee's bill was co-sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and James Inhofe (R-Ok.). In the announcement, Cruz repeated his charge that net neutrality is "Obamacare for the Internet."

Enlarge / US First Lady Michelle Obama holds a cafeteria lunch at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia, January 25, 2012. (credit: Getty | SAUL LOEB )

Just a week into his position, US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced Monday a rollback of nutrition standards for school meals, previously championed by former First Lady Michelle Obama as part of a larger initiative to improve the health of America’s children.

Under Perdue’s new rollback, schools across the country can now delay a requirement to reduce sodium levels, can serve kids fewer whole grains, and can provide one percent flavored milk in addition to flavored skim, unflavored skim, and unflavored one percent.

In a news release that declared the move would “make school meals great again,” Perdue said:

Microsoft

In all the years it has been making hardware, Microsoft has shied away from making a traditional clamshell laptop, at least in part because the company didn't want to upset its OEM partners by competing with them directly. But it has been edging closer to that territory with each new Surface Pro iteration and with the convertible Surface Book, and today Microsoft is formally announcing its first-ever plain-old, no-gimmicks clamshell notebook, predictably called the Surface Laptop.

Preorders for the new system start today, and it will be available on June 15. A Core i5 model with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD will start at $999.

Enlarge / Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka discussing financial results in Bangalore in April 2017. (credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/Getty Images)

An Indian company that has been accused of abusing the H-1B visa process says it will hire 10,000 American workers over the next two years.

Bangalore-based Infosys, which has been criticized in testimony before Congress over its use of the H-1B visa program, announced today that it will open four new US-based "Technology and Innovation Hubs" to serve Infosys clients in financial services, manufacturing, health care, and other industries. The first one will open in Indiana by August and is expected to create 2,000 jobs there by 2021.

The move comes shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order asking agencies to study changes to the H-1B program, which is largely used to hire technology workers. Members of Congress from both parties have introduced bills this year that would change the H-1B program dramatically.