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As part of a new series, TechRadar Pro has asked designers from freelance platform Fiverr to give the branding of a selection of well-known companies a makeover.

The idea isn't to return to the drawing board completely, only to imagine what famous branding might look like with a few tweaks here and there.

Last time round, a design expert reworked the Twitter logo and UI. This time, UK-based designer Kevinsdesign gave Wikipedia the same treatement, and also talked us through his decision-making process. Here's what he came up with:

Overall goal"To reinvision the digital product of Wikipedia focusing on a way to enhance the user experience for a particular user group or flow."

Research"This project was largely based on my personal insights and thoughts on best practice, however I was keen to do a small micro research project - this took the form of 4 timeline interviews. These interviews encouraged the user to talk about past experiences with Wikipedia, their goals and frictions points."

Homepage"Ill be honest the homepage of Wikipedia is a page I have never visited until now, not a single person brought it up in the interviews, so to be perfectly honest I saw this as a nice opportunity to make some UI porn. I took what was there and visually reinvisioned it, I wanted to create a design that gave a feel or knowledge and respectability but also fun and modern."

"In terms of function I did add in a few new things like language selection being brought to the forefront and a more prominent search bar."

Article page"Aside from just a general restyle of the article page and just making it look a little cooler, a few ideas came out of the research:

Accessibility"This is where I spent the most time. Wikipedia is accessed by billions worldwide with the common goal of consuming written articles, however reading isnt a given for everyone, between 5-10% of the population are dyslexic (myself included), even more have visual impairments and so on. Things like colour contrast, font size, and even black text on white backgrounds can make content very hard to consume."

"I asked the question could I bake in accessibility options to the new design that would break down these barriers and make Wikipedia more accessible to people. The new accessibility option in the menu allows user to customize the setting to their needs, be it making the font size bigger, making the content seizure safe, changing the font to child friendly and even adding a color overlay to the article which for many dyslexics massively helps them read."

See the article here:
We asked an expert to redesign Wikipedia - here's what they came up with - TechRadar

These are interesting times in Northern Ireland. Yesterday, Arlene Foster announced she'll be standing down as Northern Ireland's First Minister. While it may seem remarkable to those of us down here, Foster was seen by many in her own party as 'too moderate' and her decision to abstain on a vote on gay conversion therapy is seen as playing a major role in the heave against her by the grassroots of the DUP.

The bookies favourite to be next First Minister is Edwin Poots. Interestingly, Poots has reportedly said he'd only take the role if he'd also be DUP leader. The Lisburn MLA is currently Northern Ireland's agriculture minister, and Poots will be manna for heaven for the hardliners in the DUP if his wikipedia page is anything to go by.

Like a lot of people on this island, we paid Poots' wikipedia page a visit this morning and were surprised to see some of the quotes correctly attributed to the man in the 'Personal Views' section

Poots is a proud creationist. He told the BBC:"My view on the earth is that it's a young earth. My view is 4,000 BC".

In that same interview, he explained his suspicion of the Big Bang Theory:

You're telling me that cosmic balls of dust gathered and there was an explosion. We've had lots of explosions in Northern Ireland and I've never seen anything come out of that that was good. And you look at this earth and you tell me that there was a big bang and all of a sudden all that is good about this earth came out of it?

In 2012, Poots banned blood donations from gay people. He explained the reasoning behind the ban to the BBC. However, he wanted to extend the ban.

"I think that people who engage in high-risk sexual behaviour in general should be excluded from giving blood... And so someone who has sex with somebody in Africa or sex with prostitutes, I am very reluctant about those people being able to give blood."

On the occasion of Arlene Foster becoming First Minister in 2016, Poots also said that Foster's most important job is as a 'wife, mother and daughter'. He explained that 'when I was Health Minister, I used to say that it was my second most important job, the most important one being a husband, father and son.'

In the same interview, he confirmed that his nickname is Pootsy.

Again, all of these quotes are real and are there to be found on the internet. A lot of this was said between 2006 and 2012 and there's a chance Pootsy - who's had both covid and cancer in the past year - has mellowed with age. We hope his views have *ahem* evolved with time.

Go here to read the rest:
The Man Most Likely To Lead Northern Ireland Next Thinks The World Is '4000 Years Old' - Balls.ie

It was definitely divisive. And the legal wrangling was intense. But Hasbrouck Heights, under pressure to raise the pride flag for Gay Pride Month alongside the United States flag, the New Jersey state flag, and the prisoners of war flag, voted the motion down, 4-2.

For the uninitiated, June is recognized as Gay Pride Month. The pride flag is a rainbow flag that represents the LGBTQ community.

I feel for people who felt they needed to fight this fight. I feel for people who want to have their communities respected and recognized. The problem is, flying the pride flag opens up a can of worms. It means that every protected group in the state might feel slighted that their flag representing their group isnt flown, too.

And if you do a little research, youll find that there are thousands of groups with thousands of flags in New Jersey and country wide. There are more groups than youd think who have a flag thats important to them: Political flags, religious flags, cultural and ethnic flags.

Just a few I can name here are the thin blue line flag, the Black Lives Matter flag, Antifa and QAnon flags.

The American legion and Vietnam veterans both have a flag. So does the 4H club. Theres a Masonic flag. And the Boy Scouts of America have a flag. Who knew?

Plenty of upstanding and deserving American citizens belong to groups that deserve to be celebrated.

Do a quick Wikipedia search of ethnic flags and youll see there arent enough flagpoles in New Jersey to fly them all. Hasbrouck Heights had to do what it had to do and so this doesnt turn into the war of the flags, lets hope that other towns in New Jersey dont get pressured by any protected groups to fly their flags.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco. Any opinions expressed are Judi's own.

Average scores for the 2019-2020 school year are listed by county, from highest to lowest.

Many of the actresses in this story not only made a name for themselves through their collection of iconic performances, but also through the selfless, philanthropic nature with which many of them approached their stardom. In an age of flipping the script on societal norms, many of these actresses are using their voices and platforms to be advocates for those who are otherwise unheard.

See original here:
Hasbrouck Heights was right in voting not to raise the pride flag - New Jersey 101.5 FM

PHOENIX Political parties have no legal right to observe extra audits that counties perform on election equipment beyond those required by state law, a judge has ruled.

In a decision published Tuesday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Mikitish said the Arizona Libertarian Party was invited to oversee the four audits that are required by state law. That includes two before each election and two afterwards, including the random hand count.

This year, the judge said, county supervisors agreed to two additional "forensic audits'' following complaints by some, including Republican state legislators, who questioned the outcome that saw Joe Biden get 45,109 more votes in the county than Donald Trump. That enabled the Democratic challenger to win Arizona and its 11 electoral votes by 10,457.

But in both cases, the county declined to have party observers. Instead, it invited the League of Women Voters and deputy registrars, arguing the space restrictions at the county offices due to COVID-19 precluded party participation.

The Libertarian Party sued, contending its exclusion violated the law. And the Arizona Republican Party filing arguments in support, arguing that keeping out the political parties "aggravates the atmosphere of distrust that the county has fostered over the past year through their own misconduct and lack of transparency.''

Judge Mikitish, however, said there's one major flaw to all of this: There's no basis for the argument in state law.

He said the record shows what the county wanted and conducted was an examination of its hardware and software to analyze its vulnerability to being hacked, verify there was no malicious software installed, test to ensure that tabulators were not sending or receiving information from the internet, and conduct a logic and accuracy test to confirm that there was no vote switching.

Judge Mikitish said both Arizona laws and the state Election Procedures Manual do have specific requirements for political party participation or observation of these. But what the county conducted, the judge said, is separate from these and not legally required.

He also also said there are procedures about who is entitled to watch the official counting of ballots. But that's not what occurred here, Judge Mikitish said."The forensic audits did not count or audit ballots from the November 2020 general election,'' he wrote. "Because the audits at issue in this case did not related to the counting of ballots, the statutes do not require that they include observation or participation by political parties.''

Judge Mikitish acknowledged nothing prohibited the county from including parties in the special audits. But he said it's not up to judges to decide whether they should have done so.

"Such policy decisions are left to other branches of government,'' the judge wrote.

Tuesday's ruling does not affect a separate audit of Maricopa County election results being conducted at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

But there are links. Most notably, Republican senators ordered that audit after they said the county's audits the ones at issue here were insufficient.

And attorney Michael Kielsky, who represents the Libertarian Party, said there's a bit of irony in the county using the results of its own audits to boast of the accuracy of the 2020 general election and then criticizing the Senate for following up with one of its own.

"The fact is, what they did is everything they're complaining about now that the Senate is doing, which is just an audit with a pre-determined outcome,'' he said of the county.

"They hand picked who they wanted to do what they wanted to do,'' Mr. Kielsky continued. "And they didn't want anybody to look too closely.''

Mr. Kielsky also noted that the Republican-controlled Senate, unlike the county, invited members of other political parties to observe the process at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Mr. Fischer, a longtime award-winning Arizona journalist, is founder and operator of Capitol Media Services.

Excerpt from:
Judge: Arizona political parties don't have to be invited to extra election recounts - Your Valley

A group has taken the first step to asking voters next year to eliminate qualified immunity for police officers and other government employees accused in shootings or other actions.

The group calling itself Accountability Ohio Now filed paperwork Monday, and then gathered to promote the issue in front of the Statehouse.

Among those who came out to support it included family members of people who died in police shootings, community activists with Black Lives Matter flags, the far-right and armed Boogaloo Boys and libertarians.

Spike Cohen was the Libertarian Partys vice presidential candidate last year and lives in South Carolina. He said he flew in to join the cause of ending the civil defense for police officers and other public sector workers who say they were just doing their jobs.

By being able to do that, they arent held accountable. And what this would do is, it would disallow them from doing that. They would have to defend themselves on the merits of the case,Cohen said.

Law enforcement groupsare largely opposed to eliminating qualified immunity, saying police actions in volatile situations are complex but that officers who act within the law should be protected.

The group filed its petition language with the Ohio Attorney Generals office. If its certified, the group would have to gather more than 440,000 signatures from 44 counties to get it on next years ballot.

Read more:
Group Hopes To Ask Voters To End Qualified Immunity In Ohio - ideastream