CYBERIA

RULE
On The Web

Rulers

www.rulers.org

Can you name all the leaders who have served as the President of Pakistan? Do you know who the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was during World War II? What about the King of Spain; do you know who currently occupies the throne? If the history of world leaders fascinates you, then head to Rulers.org, a website that contains lists of the heads of state and heads of government of all the countries and territories as well as lists of the leaders of major religions around the globe. The information dates back to 1700 A.D. in most cases. The tenures as well as the birth and death years of each leader are also provided. You can access the list of rulers for any country by looking under the relevant alphabet or through a clickable map. You can also find a chronicle of political events around the world from 1996 till present. The site is simple but very informative and will give you a quick dose of global political history.

Field Work Fail

www.fieldworkfail.com

Field Work Fail is an amusing website where “scientists working in the field share their more embarrassing stories”. Originally created on Twitter as a way for relating the amazing stories of biologists, botanists, mineralogists, and other researchers, the project has since morphed into an amusing site where standout fails are uploaded along with illustrations and brief interviews of the respective scientists. The project will give you a witty look at the surprises, which come up in the life of scientists working in the field, as you read snippets about researchers being chased by bats, gluing their fingers to crocodiles, and inhaling fossils. The downside is that the website is not updated regularly and there are only a handful of fails illustrated here. However, you can always head to Twitter and look up #FieldWorkFail for more research blunders.

News-e-land

• Raspberry unveils cheapest computer: Raspberry Pi Foundation has released the Raspberry Pi Zero, “an ultra-low-cost variant of the original Raspberry Pi”. Made in Wales and priced at just US$5 (around PKR530), the computer has a 1Ghz, single-core CPU, 512MB RAM, mini HDMI and USB On-The-Go ports, micro USB power, HAT-compatible 40-pin header, and composite video and reset headers, and is also being given away for free with each copy of the December issue of The MagPi magazine.
• King to be acquired in a record setting deal: King Digital Entertainment - the social game company is best known as makers of the immensely popular Candy Crush Saga - is being purchased by Activision Blizzard - the company behind video game franchises like Call of Duty and Warcraft - for US$5.9 billion in the biggest acquisition ever of a mobile gaming company. The deal is anticipated to be closed in the second quarter of 2016.
• Mark Zuckerberg to give away his Facebook fortune: Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of social networking website Facebook, and his wife Priscilla Chan will give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares, which are currently worth about US$45 billion, to their new philanthropy project. The couple announced the creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in an online letter to their newborn daughter Max, saying they “feel a great responsibility to leave the world a better place for” her and that their for-profit charity will help “to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation”.

Defined

Sneakernet

Sneakernet refers to the mechanism of physically moving files from one computer or location to another as opposed to transmitting the information over a network. A floppy disk, compact disc, flash drive, or external hard drive is physically removed from one computer and carried, transported, or mailed to the destination system to transfer the files. The term is derived from the idea that a person is walking - and therefore using their feet (and sneakers) - to transfer data instead of using the Internet.