In this episode of the #TheWorldMustKnow / #DieWêreldMoetWeet series, based on AfriForum’s comprehensive report on the persecution of minority communities in South Africa, I discuss the “Targeting minority heritage” section of the report.
The heritage of minority groups in South Africa is being targeted by, among others, prominent politicians and the government. Statues are removed or vandalized, Afrikaans town, street or building names are changed, and minorities are scapegoated through distortion of historical facts and criminalizing of their European forebears.
Everyone’s been fawning over the iPhone X recently, but here’s something that’s got us a little puzzled and worried about its facial recognition function.
The idea of that security measure, of course, is to make sure nobody but you can unlock your phone. It’s all very science fiction, but it seems more and more like we’re living in the future, so it’s hardly surprising.
But it seems the future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For while Apple have said their facial recognition software on the iPhone X is top-notch and that the chances of somebody else being able to unlock your phone is – literally – ‘one in a million’, a woman called Yan has already proved that’s clearly not the case.
Hailing from Nanjing in China, Yan got her hands on an iPhone X, only to discover that her co-worker could easily unlock it with her face, too. Even after a major rejig of the configuration settings.
Amazon’s much-vaunted facial recognition software – currently the subject of a concerted effort to halt its production – regularly identifies dark-skinned females as males, it has emerged.
This is not the first time that Artificial Intelligence has had “problems” with the automatic analysis of dark-skinned people. In 2015, Google was the subject of much media controversy when its Google Photos app regularly identified black people as “gorillas.”
In 2018, Google admitted that it had been unable to solve the auto-identification of black people as “gorillas,” and had therefore resorted to simply preventing Google Photos from ever labelling any image as a gorilla, chimpanzee, or monkey – even pictures of the primates themselves.
For example, the identification of dark-skinned females as males is of course due to the well-known African racial trait of androgyny—the state where there is no clear distinction between male and female in facial appearance.
This racial trait is most clear in Africans of unmixed racial origin, such as these two early 20th Century French postcards from Africa reveal. On the left, a female from the Mogandi tribe in the Congo, and on the right, a male from the Bassoundi tribe, also in the Congo.
If liberals did not deny the reality of race, then software identification errors would not occur. In fact, if liberals did not deny the reality of race, then many problems facing the entire globe would not occur.
Oddly enough although many speeches given by Adolf Hitler have been preserved, there is no audio footage of his normal conversational voice. Well, except one tape, recorded in secret by a Finnish sound engineer and released to the public only decades after the war ended.
A 25-year-old man of unknown nationality was sentenced last week at a trial at the Court of Sønderborg to two and a half years in prison and entry ban for possession of illegal weapons.
The incident took place on 28 May at the Frøslev Border Crossing, where the 25-year-old man, along with a 26-year-old Iranian man, was travelling in a passenger car and was taken to the attention of the special Police and Customs Unit.
During the inspection, the customs officer suspected the men, and in a subsequent investigation in the Customs Agency’s investigation hall in Padborg, customs officers found a 9-mm Glock pistol and 49 cartridges hidden in the vehicle.
The two men were subsequently arrested by police and remanded in custody.
Both have pleaded not guilty in the case.
Both were charged with unlawful possession of weapons, but the 26-year-old Iranian man was acquitted by the court as there was no technical evidence to link the man to the illegal gun and ammunition.
The 25-year-old, who was also convicted of using fake Bulgarian ID papers in connection with entry, has asked for a period of reflection on the appeal of the judgment.
On Wednesday 12 February, a robber threatened staff at a supermarket on Egelundsvej in Albertslund with a knife to hand over money and ran away. The following day, a then 23-year-old man turned himself in and was remanded in custody on Friday, February 14.
On Friday, November 13, he – now 24 years old – was serving five other criminal charges, the indictment added. They included the prior sale of a total of almost 300 grams of hashish, violence against his ex-girlfriend and vandalism at a tanning bed.
Despite the defendant refusing to beat the ex-girlfriend, the court found him guilty of all six counts and sentenced him to an unconditional prison term of one and a half years in prison.
The court also ordered that, after serving time, the convicted person must be deported to Turkey with an entry ban for 12 years, even though he was born and raised in Denmark. The sentence was based, among other things, on the basis of previous convictions against the man.
North Jutland Police on Thursday arrested three Romanian men, aged 19, 25, 42, who are suspected of having been behind numerous trick thefts against small businesses and businesses in Jutland in the last few days.
Two Romanian men, aged 20 and 25, were sentenced at the Court of Sønderborg to 10 months in prison and a six-year entry ban for stolen goods at the High Court in Sønderborg.
The two men were arrested on 10 September in a Romanian station wagon on Sønderjyske Highway near Padborg by Jutland police.
The officers suspected the vehicle, which was on its way out of Denmark, loaded with tools, after which the two people were arrested and remanded in custody.
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