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Contents Middle East The Middle East[b] is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, the Levant, and Turkey. The term came into widespread usage by Western European nations in the early 20th century as a replacement of the term Near East (both were in contrast to the Far East). The term "Middle East" has led to some confusion over its changing definitions. Since the late 20th century, it has been criticized as being too Eurocentric. The region includes the vast majority of the territories included in the closely associated definition of West Asia, but without the South Caucasus. It also includes all of Egypt (not just the Sinai region) and all of Turkey (including East Thrace). Most Middle Eastern countries (13 out of 18) are part of the Arab world. The three most populous countries in the region are Egypt, Iran, and Turkey, while Saudi Arabia is the largest Middle Eastern country by area. The history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, and it was long considered the "cradle of civilization". The geopolitical importance of the region has been recognized and competed for during millennia. The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have their origins in the Middle East. Arabs constitute the main ethnic group in the region, followed by Turks, Persians, Kurds, Jews, and Assyrians. The Middle East generally has a hot, arid climate, especially in the Arabian and Egyptian regions. Several major rivers provide irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas here, such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, and the basin of the Jordan River that spans most of the Levant. These regions are collectively known as the Fertile Crescent, and comprise the core of what historians had long referred to as the cradle of civilization; multiple regions of the world have since been classified as also having developed independent, original civilizations. Conversely, the Levantine coast and most of Turkey have relatively temperate climates typical of the Mediterranean, with dry summers and cool, wet winters. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of petroleum. Monarchs of the Arabian Peninsula in particular have benefitted economically from petroleum exports. Because of the arid climate and dependence on the fossil fuel industry, the Middle East is both a major contributor to climate change and a region that is expected to be severely adversely affected by it. Other concepts of the region exist, including the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which includes states of the Maghreb and the Sudan. The term the "Greater Middle East" also includes Afghanistan, Mauritania, Pakistan, as well as parts of East Africa, and sometimes Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Terminology The term "Middle East" may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office. However, it became more widely known when United States naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to "designate the area between Arabia and India". During this time the British and Russian empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, a rivalry that would become known as the Great Game. Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but also of its center, the Persian Gulf. He labeled the area surrounding the Persian Gulf as the Middle East. He said that, beyond Egypt's Suez Canal, the Gulf was the most important passage for Britain to control in order to keep the Russians from advancing towards British India. Mahan first used the term in his article "The Persian Gulf and International Relations", published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar; it does not follow that either will be in the Persian Gulf. Naval force has the quality of mobility which carries with it the privilege of temporary absences; but it needs to find on every scene of operation established bases of refit, of supply, and in case of disaster, of security. The British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden, India, and the Persian Gulf. Mahan's article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled "The Middle Eastern Question", written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include "those regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India." After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term. Until World War II, it was customary to refer to areas centered on Turkey and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean as the "Near East", while the "Far East" centered on China, India and Japan. The Middle East was then defined as the area from Mesopotamia to Burma; namely, the area between the Near East and the Far East. This area broadly corresponds to South Asia. In the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, which was based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term "Middle East" gained broader usage in Europe and the United States. Following World War II, for example, the Middle East Institute was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1946. The corresponding adjective is Middle Eastern and the derived noun is Middle Easterner. While non-Eurocentric terms such as "Southwest Asia" or "Swasia" have been sparsely used, the classification of the African country, Egypt, among those counted in the Middle East challenges the usefulness of using such terms. The description Middle has also led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, "Near East" was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while "Middle East" referred to the Caucasus, Persia, and Arabian lands, and sometimes Afghanistan, India and others. In contrast, "Far East" referred to the countries of East Asia (e.g. China, Japan, and Korea). With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, "Near East" largely fell out of common use in English, while "Middle East" came to be applied to the emerging independent countries of the Islamic world. However, the usage "Near East" was retained by a variety of academic disciplines, including archaeology and ancient history. In their usage, the term describes an area identical to the term Middle East, which is not used by these disciplines (see ancient Near East).[citation needed] The first official use of the term "Middle East" by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, which pertained to the Suez Crisis. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defined the Middle East as "the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east, Syria and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia." In 1958, the State Department explained that the terms "Near East" and "Middle East" were interchangeable, and defined the region as including only Egypt, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Since the late 20th century, scholars and journalists from the region, such as journalist Louay Khraish and historian Hassan Hanafi have criticized the use of "Middle East" as a Eurocentric and colonialist term. The Associated Press Stylebook of 2004 says that Near East formerly referred to the farther west countries while Middle East referred to the eastern ones, but that now they are synonymous. It instructs: Use Middle East unless Near East is used by a source in a story. Mideast is also acceptable, but Middle East is preferred. European languages have adopted terms similar to Near East and Middle East. Since these are based on a relative description, the meanings depend on the country and are generally different from the English terms. In German the term Naher Osten (Near East) is still in common use (nowadays the term Mittlerer Osten is more and more common in press texts translated from English sources, albeit having a distinct meaning). In the four Slavic languages, Russian Ближний Восток or Blizhniy Vostok, Bulgarian Близкия Изток, Polish Bliski Wschód or Croatian Bliski istok (terms meaning Near East are the only appropriate ones for the region). However, some European languages do have "Middle East" equivalents, such as French Moyen-Orient, Swedish Mellanöstern, Spanish Oriente Medio or Medio Oriente, Greek is Μέση Ανατολή (Mesi Anatoli), and Italian Medio Oriente.[c] Perhaps because of the political influence of the United States and Europe, and the prominence of Western press, the Arabic equivalent of Middle East (Arabic: الشرق الأوسط ash-Sharq al-Awsaṭ) has become standard usage in the mainstream Arabic press. It comprises the same meaning as the term "Middle East" in North American and Western European usage. The designation, Mashriq, also from the Arabic root for East, also denotes a variously defined region around the Levant, the eastern part of the Arabic-speaking world (as opposed to the Maghreb, the western part). Even though the term originated in the West, countries of the Middle East that use languages other than Arabic also use that term in translation. For instance, the Persian equivalent for Middle East is خاورمیانه (Khāvar-e miyāneh), the Hebrew is המזרח התיכון (hamizrach hatikhon), and the Turkish is Orta Doğu. Countries and territory Traditionally included within the Middle East are Arabia, Asia Minor, East Thrace, Egypt, Iran, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and the Socotra Archipelago. The region includes 17 UN-recognized countries and one British Overseas Territory. Various concepts are often paralleled to the Middle East, most notably the Near East, Fertile Crescent, and Levant. These are geographical concepts, which refer to large sections of the modern-day Middle East, with the Near East being the closest to the Middle East in its geographical meaning. Due to it primarily being Arabic speaking, the Maghreb region of North Africa is sometimes included. "Greater Middle East" is a political term coined by the second Bush administration in the first decade of the 21st century to denote various countries, pertaining to the Muslim world, specifically Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. Various Central Asian countries are sometimes also included. History The Middle East lies at the juncture of Africa and Eurasia and of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea (see also: Indo-Mediterranean). It is the birthplace and spiritual center of religions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Manichaeism, Yezidi, Druze, Yarsan, and Mandeanism, and in Iran, Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, Manicheanism, and the Baháʼí Faith. Throughout its history the Middle East has been a major center of world affairs; a strategically, economically, politically, culturally, and religiously sensitive area. The region is one of the regions where agriculture was independently discovered, and from the Middle East it was spread, during the Neolithic, to different regions of the world such as Europe, the Indus Valley and Eastern Africa. Prior to the formation of civilizations, advanced cultures formed all over the Middle East during the Stone Age. The search for agricultural lands by agriculturalists, and pastoral lands by herdsmen meant different migrations took place within the region and shaped its ethnic and demographic makeup. The Middle East is widely and most famously known as the cradle of civilization. The world's earliest civilizations, Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia), ancient Egypt and Kish in the Levant, all originated in the Fertile Crescent and Nile Valley regions of the ancient Near East. These were followed by the Hittite, Greek, Hurrian and Urartian civilisations of Asia Minor; Elam, Persia and Median civilizations in Iran, as well as the civilizations of the Levant (such as Ebla, Mari, Nagar, Ugarit, Canaan, Aramea, Mitanni, Phoenicia and Israel) and the Arabian Peninsula (Magan, Sheba, Ubar). The Near East was first largely unified under the Neo Assyrian Empire, then the Achaemenid Empire followed later by the Macedonian Empire and after this to some degree by the Iranian empires (namely the Parthian and Sassanid Empires), the Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire. The region served as the intellectual and economic center of the Roman Empire and played an exceptionally important role due to its periphery on the Sassanid Empire. Thus, the Romans stationed up to five or six of their legions in the region for the sole purpose of defending it from Sassanid and Bedouin raids and invasions. From the 4th century CE onwards, the Middle East became the center of the two main powers at the time, the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire. However, it would be the later Islamic Caliphates of the Middle Ages, or Islamic Golden Age which began with the Islamic conquest of the region in the 7th century AD, that would first unify the entire Middle East as a distinct region and create the dominant Islamic Arab ethnic identity that largely (but not exclusively) persists today. The 4 caliphates that dominated the Middle East for more than 600 years were the Rashidun Caliphate, the Umayyad caliphate, the Abbasid caliphate and the Fatimid caliphate. Additionally, the Mongols would come to dominate the region, the Kingdom of Armenia would incorporate parts of the region to their domain, the Seljuks would rule the region and spread Turko-Persian culture, and the Franks would found the Crusader states that would stand for roughly two centuries. Josiah Russell estimates the population of what he calls "Islamic territory" as roughly 12.5 million in 1000 – Anatolia 8 million, Syria 2 million, and Egypt 1.5 million. From the 16th century onward, the Middle East came to be dominated, once again, by two main powers: the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid dynasty. The modern Middle East began after World War I, when the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with the Central Powers, was defeated by the Allies and partitioned into a number of separate nations, initially under British and French Mandates. Other defining events in this transformation included the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the eventual departure of European powers, notably Britain and France by the end of the 1960s. They were supplanted in some part by the rising influence of the United States from the 1970s onwards. In the 20th century, the region's significant stocks of crude oil gave it new strategic and economic importance. Mass production of oil began around 1945, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates having large quantities of oil. Estimated oil reserves, especially in Saudi Arabia and Iran, are some of the highest in the world, and the international oil cartel OPEC is dominated by Middle Eastern countries. During the Cold War, the Middle East was a theater of ideological struggle between the two superpowers and their allies: NATO and the United States on one side, and the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact on the other, as they competed to influence regional allies. Besides the political reasons there was also the "ideological conflict" between the two systems. Moreover, as Louise Fawcett argues, among many important areas of contention, or perhaps more accurately of anxiety, were, first, the desires of the superpowers to gain strategic advantage in the region, second, the fact that the region contained some two-thirds of the world's oil reserves in a context where oil was becoming increasingly vital to the economy of the Western world [...] Within this contextual framework, the United States sought to divert the Arab world from Soviet influence. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the region has experienced both periods of relative peace and tolerance and periods of conflict particularly between Sunnis and Shiites. Geography In 2018, the MENA region emitted 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and produced 8.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) despite making up only 6% of the global population. These emissions are mostly from the energy sector, an integral component of many Middle Eastern and North African economies due to the extensive oil and natural gas reserves that are found within the region. The Middle East region is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. The impacts include increase in drought conditions, aridity, heatwaves and sea level rise. Sharp global temperature and sea level changes, shifting precipitation patterns and increased frequency of extreme weather events are some of the main impacts of climate change as identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The MENA region is especially vulnerable to such impacts due to its arid and semi-arid environment, facing climatic challenges such as low rainfall, high temperatures and dry soil. The climatic conditions that foster such challenges for MENA are projected by the IPCC to worsen throughout the 21st century. If greenhouse gas emissions are not significantly reduced, part of the MENA region risks becoming uninhabitable before the year 2100. Climate change is expected to put significant strain on already scarce water and agricultural resources within the MENA region, threatening the national security and political stability of all included countries. Over 60 percent of the region's population lives in high and very high water-stressed areas compared to the global average of 35 percent. This has prompted some MENA countries to engage with the issue of climate change on an international level through environmental accords such as the Paris Agreement. Law and policy are also being established on a national level amongst MENA countries, with a focus on the development of renewable energies. Economy Middle Eastern economies range from being very poor (such as Gaza and Yemen) to extremely wealthy nations (such as Qatar and UAE). According to the International Monetary Fund, the three largest Middle Eastern economies in nominal GDP in 2023 were Saudi Arabia ($1.06 trillion), Turkey ($1.03 trillion), and Israel ($0.54 trillion). For nominal GDP per person, the highest ranking countries are Qatar ($83,891), Israel ($55,535), the United Arab Emirates ($49,451) and Cyprus ($33,807). Turkey ($3.6 trillion), Saudi Arabia ($2.3 trillion), and Iran ($1.7 trillion) had the largest economies in terms of GDP PPP. For GDP PPP per person, the highest-ranking countries are Qatar ($124,834), the United Arab Emirates ($88,221), Saudi Arabia ($64,836), Bahrain ($60,596) and Israel ($54,997). The lowest-ranking country in the Middle East, in terms of GDP nominal per capita, is Yemen ($573). The economic structure of Middle Eastern nations are different because while some are heavily dependent on export of only oil and oil-related products (Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait), others have a highly diverse economic base (such as Cyprus, Israel, Turkey and Egypt). Industries of the Middle Eastern region include oil and oil-related products, agriculture, cotton, cattle, dairy, textiles, leather products, surgical instruments, defence equipment (guns, ammunition, tanks, submarines, fighter jets, UAVs, and missiles). Banking is an important sector, especially for UAE and Bahrain. With the exception of Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Israel, tourism has been a relatively undeveloped area of the economy, in part because of the socially conservative nature of the region as well as political turmoil in certain regions. Since the end of the COVID pandemic however, countries such as the UAE, Bahrain, and Jordan have begun attracting greater numbers of tourists because of improving tourist facilities and the relaxing of tourism-related restrictive policies. Unemployment is high in the Middle East and North Africa region, particularly among people aged 15–29, a demographic representing 30% of the region's population. The total regional unemployment rate in 2025 is 10.8%, and among youth is as high as 28%. Demographics Arabs constitute the largest ethnic group in the Middle East, followed by various Iranian peoples and then by Turkic peoples (Turkish, Azeris, Syrian Turkmen, and Iraqi Turkmen). Native ethnic groups of the region include, in addition to Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Baloch, Berbers, Copts, Druze, Greek Cypriots, Jews, Kurds, Lurs, Mandaeans, Persians, Samaritans, Shabaks, Tats, and Zazas. European ethnic groups that form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians (including Kabardians), Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Franco-Levantines, Italo-Levantines, and Iraqi Turkmens. Among other migrant populations are Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Pashtuns, Romani, and Afro-Arabs. "Migration has always provided an important vent for labor market pressures in the Middle East. For the period between the 1970s and 1990s, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf in particular provided a rich source of employment for workers from Egypt, Yemen and the countries of the Levant, while Europe had attracted young workers from North African countries due both to proximity and the legacy of colonial ties between France and the majority of North African states." According to the International Organization for Migration, there are 13 million first-generation migrants from Arab nations in the world, of which 5.8 reside in other Arab countries. Expatriates from Arab countries contribute to the circulation of financial and human capital in the region and thus significantly promote regional development. In 2009 Arab countries received a total of US$35.1 billion in remittance in-flows and remittances sent to Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon from other Arab countries are 40 to 190 per cent higher than trade revenues between these and other Arab countries. In Somalia, the Somali Civil War has greatly increased the size of the Somali diaspora, as many of the best educated Somalis left for Middle Eastern countries as well as Europe and North America. Non-Arab Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey, Israel and Iran are also subject to important migration dynamics. A fair proportion of those migrating from Arab nations are from ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution and are not necessarily ethnic Arabs, Iranians or Turks.[citation needed] Large numbers of Kurds, Jews, Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians as well as many Mandeans have left nations such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey for these reasons during the last century. In Iran, many religious minorities such as Christians, Baháʼís, Jews and Zoroastrians have left since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Middle East is very diverse when it comes to religions, many of which originated there. Islam is the largest religion in the Middle East, but other faiths that originated there, such as Judaism and Christianity, are also well represented. Christian communities have played a vital role in the Middle East, and they represent 78% of Cyprus population, and 40.5% of Lebanon, where the Lebanese president, half of the cabinet, and half of the parliament follow one of the various Lebanese Christian rites. There are also important minority religions like the Baháʼí Faith, Yarsanism, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Druze, and Shabakism, and in ancient times the region was home to Mesopotamian religions, Canaanite religions, Manichaeism, Mithraism and various monotheist gnostic sects. The six top languages, in terms of numbers of speakers, are Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Modern Hebrew and Greek. About 20 minority languages are also spoken in the Middle East. Arabic, with all its dialects, is the most widely spoken language in the Middle East, with Literary Arabic being official in all North African and in most West Asian countries. Arabic dialects are also spoken in some adjacent areas in neighbouring Middle Eastern non-Arab countries. It is a member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Several Modern South Arabian languages such as Mehri and Soqotri are also spoken in Yemen and Oman. Another Semitic language is Aramaic and its dialects are spoken mainly by Assyrians and Mandaeans, with Western Aramaic still spoken in two villages near Damascus, Syria. There is also an Oasis Berber-speaking community in Egypt where the language is also known as Siwa. It is a non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic sister language. Persian is the second most spoken language. While it is primarily spoken in Iran and some border areas in neighbouring countries, the country is one of the region's largest and most populous. It belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Other Western Iranic languages spoken in the region include Achomi, Daylami, Kurdish dialects, Semmani, Lurish, amongst many others. The close third-most widely spoken language, Turkish, is largely confined to Turkey, which is also one of the region's largest and most populous countries, but it is present in areas in neighboring countries. It is a member of the Turkic languages, which have their origins in East Asia. Another Turkic language, Azerbaijani, is spoken by Azerbaijanis in Iran. The fourth-most widely spoken language, Kurdish, is spoken in the countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, Sorani Kurdish is the second official language in Iraq (instated after the 2005 constitution) after Arabic. Hebrew is the official language of Israel, with Arabic given a special status after the 2018 Basic law lowered its status from an official language prior to 2018. Hebrew is spoken and used by over 80% of Israel's population, the other 20% using Arabic. Modern Hebrew only began being spoken in the 20th century after being revived in the late 19th century by Elizer Ben-Yehuda (Elizer Perlman) and European Jewish settlers, with the first native Hebrew speaker being born in 1882. Greek is one of the two official languages of Cyprus, and the country's main language. Small communities of Greek speakers exist all around the Middle East; until the 20th century it was also widely spoken in Asia Minor (being the second most spoken language there, after Turkish) and Egypt. During the antiquity, Ancient Greek was the lingua franca for many areas of the western Middle East and until the Muslim expansion it was widely spoken there as well. Until the late 11th century, it was also the main spoken language in Asia Minor; after that it was gradually replaced by the Turkish language as the Anatolian Turks expanded and the local Greeks were assimilated, especially in the interior. English is one of the official languages of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. It is also commonly taught and used as a foreign second language, in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. It is also a main language in some Emirates of the United Arab Emirates. It is also spoken as native language by Jewish immigrants from Anglophone countries (UK, US, Australia) in Israel and understood widely as second language there. French is taught and used in many government facilities and media in Lebanon, and is taught in some primary and secondary schools of Egypt and Syria. Maltese, a Semitic language mainly spoken in Europe, is used by the Franco-Maltese diaspora in Egypt. Due to widespread immigration of French Jews to Israel, it is the native language of approximately 200,000 Jews in Israel. Armenian speakers are to be found in the region. Georgian is spoken by the Georgian diaspora. Russian is spoken by a large portion of the Israeli population, because of emigration in the late 1990s. Russian today is a popular unofficial language in use in Israel; news, radio and sign boards can be found in Russian around the country after Hebrew and Arabic. Circassian is also spoken by the diaspora in the region and by almost all Circassians in Israel who speak Hebrew and English as well. The largest Romanian-speaking community in the Middle East is found in Israel, where as of 1995[update] Romanian is spoken by 5% of the population.[d] Bengali, Hindi and Urdu are widely spoken by migrant communities in many Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia (where 20–25% of the population is South Asian), the United Arab Emirates (where 50–55% of the population is South Asian), and Qatar, which have large numbers of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian immigrants. Culture The Middle East has recently become more prominent in hosting global sport events due to its wealth and desire to diversify its economy. The South Asian diaspora is a major backer of cricket in the region. See also Notes References Further reading External links 29°N 41°E / 29°N 41°E / 29; 41 |
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Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us Apps The app economy continues to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores. Keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. More in Apps Save up to $680 on your pass before February 27.Meet investors. Discover your next portfolio company. Hear from 250+ tech leaders, dive into 200+ sessions, and explore 300+ startups building what’s next. Don’t miss these one-time savings. Most Popular FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI Hollywood isn’t happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead) © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2017-03-17-not-commoditized-no-phd.html] | [TOKENS: 1762] |
Machine learning hasn’t been commoditized yet, but that doesn’t mean you need a PhD Rachel Thomas March 17, 2017 On this page This post has been translated into Chinese here. Here’s the latest installment of my Ask-A-Data-Scientist advice column. Please email your data science related quandaries to mailto:[email protected]. Note that questions are edited for clarity and brevity. Other posts include: In the last week I received two questions with diametrically opposed premises: one was excited that machine learning is now automated, the other was concerned that machine learning takes too many years of study. Here are the questions: Q1: I heard that Google Cloud announced that entrepreneurs can easily and quickly build on top of ML/NLP APIs. Is this statement true: “The future of ML and data post Google Cloud - the future is here, NLP and speech advancements have been figured out by Google and are accessible by API. The secret sauce has been commoditized so you can build your secret sauce on top of it. The time to secret sauce is getting shorter to shorter”? Q2: Is it true that in order to work in machine learning, you need a PhD in the field? Is it true that before you can even begin studying machine learning, you must start by studying math, take “boring university level full length courses in calculus, linear algebra, and probability/statistics, and then learn C/C++ and parallel and distributed programming (CUDA, MPI, OpenMP, etc). According to this top rated comment on a Hacker News post, even after doing all that, we must then implement Machine Learning algorithms from scratch first in plain C, next in MPI or CUDA, and then in Numpy, before implementing them in Theano or TensorFlow. A: It’s totally understandable that many people are having trouble navigating the hype, and the “AI is an exclusive tool for geniuses” warnings. AI is a hard topic for journalists to cover, and sadly many misrepresentations are spread. See for instance this great post for a recent case study of how DeepCoder was misconstrued in the media. The answer to both of these questions is: NO. On the surface, they sound like opposite extremes. However, they have a common thread–many of those working in machine learning have an interest in either: Yes, advancements in machine learning are coming rapidly, but for now, you need to be able to code to effectively use the technology. We’ve found from our free online course Practical Deep Learning for Coders that it takes about 70 hours of study to become an effective deep learning practitioner. Why “Machine Learning As A Service” (MLaaS) is such a disappointment in practice A general purpose machine learning API seems like a great idea, but the technology is simply not there yet. Existing APIs are too overly specified to be widely useful, or attempt to be very general and have unacceptably poor performance. I agree with Bradford Cross, former founder of Flightcaster and Prismatic and partner at Data Collective VC, who recently wrote about the failure of many AI companies to try to build products that customers need and would pay for: “It’s the attitude that those working in and around AI are now responsible for shepherding all human progress just because we’re working on something that matters. This haze of hubris blinds people to the fact that they are stuck in an echo chamber where everyone is talking about the tech trend rather than the customer needs and the economics of the businesses.” (emphasis mine) Cross continues, “Machine Learning as a Service is an idea we’ve been seeing for nearly 10 years and it’s been failing the whole time. The bottom line on why it doesn’t work: the people that know what they’re doing just use open source, and the people that don’t will not get anything to work, ever, even with APIs. Many very smart friends have fallen into this tarpit. Those who’ve been gobbled up by bigcos as a way to beef up ML teams include Alchemy API by IBM, Saffron by Intel, and Metamind by Salesforce. Nevertheless, the allure of easy money from sticking an ML model up behind an API function doesn’t fail to continue attracting lost souls. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all trying to sell an MLaaS layer as a component of their cloud strategy. I’ve yet to see startups or big companies use these APIs in the wild, and I see a lot of AI usage in the wild so its doubtful that its due to the small sample size of my observations.” Is Google Cloud the answer? Google is very poorly positioned to help democratize the field of deep learning. It’s not because of bad intentions– it’s just that they have way too many servers, way too much cash, and way too much data to appreciate the challenges the majority of the world faces in how to make the most of limited GPUs, on a limited budget (those AWS bills add up quickly!), and with limited size data sets. Google Brain is so deeply technical as to be out of touch with the average coder. For instance, TensorFlow is a low level language, but Google seemed unaware of this when they released it and in how they marketed it. The designers of TensorFlow could have used a more standard Object-Oriented approach (like the excellent PyTorch), but instead they kept with the fine Google tradition of inventing new conventions just for Google. So if Google can’t even design a library that is easily usable by sophisticated data scientists, how likely is it that they can create something that regular people can use to solve their real-world problems? The Hacker News plan: “Implement algorithms in plain C, then CUDA, and finally plain Numpy/MATLAB” Why do Hacker News contributors regularly give such awful advice on machine learning? While the theory behind machine learning draws on a lot of advanced math, that is very different from the practical knowledge needed to use machine learning in practice. As a math PhD, knowing the math has been less helpful than you might expect in building practical, working models. The line of thinking espoused in that Hacker News comment is harmful for a number of reasons: As I wrote a few months ago, it is “far better to take a domain expert within your organization and teach them deep learning, than it is to take a deep learning expert and throw them into your organization. Deep learning PhD graduates are very unlikely to have the wide range of relevent experiences that you value in your most effective employees, and are much more likely to be interested in solving fun engineering problems, instead of keeping a razor-sharp focus on the most commercially important problems. “In our experiences across many industries and many years of applying machine learning to a range of problems, we’ve consistently seen organizations under-appreciate and under invest in their existing in-house talent. In the days of the big data fad, this meant companies spent their money on external consultants. And in these days of the false ‘deep learning exclusivity’ meme, it means searching for those unicorn deep learning experts, often including paying vastly inflated sums for failing deep learning startups.” Cutting through the hype (when you’re not an ML researcher) Computational linguist Dan Simonson wrote a handy guide of questions for the to ask to evaluate NLP, ML, and AI and identify snake oil: As an NLP researcher, Simonson is excited about the current advances in AI, but points out that the whole field is harmed when people exploit the gap in knowledge between practiotioners and the public. Deep learning researcher Stephen Merity (of Salesforce/Metamind) has an aptly titled post It’s ML, not magic: simple questions you should ask to help reduce AI hype. His questions include: Merity also provides the reminder that models are often evaluated on highly processed, contrived, or limited datasets that don’t accurately reflect the real data you are working with. What does this mean for you? If you are an aspiring machine learning practitioner: Good news! You don’t need a PhD, you don’t need to code algorithms from scratch in CUDA or MPI. If you have a year of coding experience, we recommend that you try Practical Deep Learning for Coders, or consider my additional advice about how to become a data scientist. You work in tech and want to build a business that uses ML: Good news! You don’t need to hire one of those highly elusive, highly expensive AI PhDs away from OpenAI. Give your coders the resources and time they need to get up to speed. Focus on a specific domain (together with experts from that domain) and build a product that people in that domain need and could use. |
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[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/about/copyright/] | [TOKENS: 808] |
Copyright Copyright YouTube is designed to ensure that every player in our ecosystem can be successful. This includes both protecting rightsholders and giving creators peace of mind so they can focus on producing original content. How YouTubeâs Copyright Protection Tools work Weâve invested millions of dollars in developing a Copyright Management Suite thatâs designed to balance the needs of our entire ecosystem â and we have clear rules when it comes to copyright. YouTube has worked directly with rightsholders to ensure that copyrighted material on our platform is authorized, and we provide those robust tools to allow rightsholders to notify YouTube of alleged infringement, which we remove in accordance with the law. There are three main tools that make up our Copyright Management Suite: Who is it for? Available in more than 80 languages, all rightsholders have access to the webform, which weâve built as a streamlined and efficient way to submit copyright removal requests. What does it do? Rightsholders enter a few details of their request, which is then reviewed by YouTube to see if it meets legal requirements for removing the reported content. Rights holders have access to powerful features, including the ability to ask YouTube to automatically prevent copies of the removed content from being reuploaded. Whoâs it for? It helps creators and rights holders protect their content by automatically finding videos that are the same or very similar to ones previously uploaded. What does it do? If a match is found, the creator or the rights holder is notified. She can then review the video that potentially reused their content and decide whether to request the videoâs removal. Whoâs it for? Rightsholders who have the most complex rights management needs and experience heavy reposting of copyrighted material, like movie studios and music labels. What does it do? Rightsholders can pre-determine rules for when content matches are found â choosing to block a whole video from being viewed, monetize the video by running ads against it, or track the videoâs viewership stats. Who is it for? Available in more than 80 languages, all rightsholders have access to the webform, which weâve built as a streamlined and efficient way to submit copyright removal requests. **What does it do? ** Rightsholders enter a few details of their request, which is then reviewed by YouTube to see if it meets legal requirements for removing the reported content. Rights holders have access to powerful features, including the ability to ask YouTube to automatically prevent copies of the removed content from being reuploaded. Whoâs it for? It helps creators and rights holders protect their content by automatically finding videos that are the same or very similar to ones previously uploaded. What does it do? If a match is found, the creator or the rights holder is notified. She can then review the video that potentially reused their content and decide whether to request the videoâs removal. Whoâs it for? Rightsholders who have the most complex rights management needs and experience heavy reposting of copyrighted material, like movie studios and music labels. What does it do? Rightsholders can pre-determine rules for when content matches are found â choosing to block a whole video from being viewed, monetize the video by running ads against it, or track the videoâs viewership stats. How YouTube Addresses Copyright Claims Appeals The majority of copyright claims and removal requests on YouTube come from our automatic detection technology. We empower uploaders to report wrongful takedown requests, and we measure how often creators push back against removals and Content ID claims in our Copyright Transparency Report. Of the more than 1 billion Content ID claims made between July 2023 and December 2023, fewer than 1% have been disputed. Over 65% of those disputes succeeded, because claimants either voluntarily released the claim or did not respond within the 30-day window, resulting in the claimâs release. (Source) |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shacknews] | [TOKENS: 307] |
Contents Shacknews Shacknews is an American video game journalism website founded in 1996 that publishes news articles, reviews, and cheat codes. History Shacknews was founded in 1996 by Steve Gibson. The website, originally named 'Quakeholio', was dedicated to the then-upcoming ID Software game Quake. FileShack, a spinoff-site for game demos, patches, videos, and miscellaneous game-related assets for Shacknews users and others, was launched in August 2002.[better source needed] On February 3, 2009, Shacknews and all related Shacknews destinations were purchased by GameFly. Asif Khan, a financial analyst, contributed to purchasing the site from Gamefly near the end of 2013 and became the site's CEO. The sister site FileShack was shut down in 2014.[better source needed] Reception In August 2004, Maximum PC magazine featured Shacknews in its list of "11 Websites That Every Geek Should Bookmark". Then, in November 2007, PC Magazine recognized Shacknews in its "Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites" list. In 2018, Shacknews raised over $100,000 in the Extra Life 24-Hour Gaming Marathon for the Children's Specialized Hospital Foundation. David L. Craddock, a long-form videogame journalism writer of Shacknews published several books on Diablo, Shovel Knight, Pillars of Eternity and Quake and credited Khan with publishing his findings. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/about/press/] | [TOKENS: 1850] |
Topics YouTube Official Blog Homepage Hero Slider 1 / 5 2 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5 5 / 5 1 / 5 2 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5 5 / 5 1 / 5 2 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5 5 / 5 1 / 5 2 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5 5 / 5 1 / 5 2 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5 5 / 5 1 / 5 2 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5 5 / 5 YouTube enters V&A collection By Renato Verdugo, Senior Staff User Experience Researcher, YouTube Feb 18, 2026 The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is helping preserve and document the history and culture of the internet with its latest landmark acquisition: a reconstruction of an early YouTube watch page, featuring the first-ever upload, "Me at the zoo.” Opening February 18 at V&A, the exhibit captures YouTube as it appeared on December 8, 2006. Developed by the museum alongside YouTube’s UX team and interaction design studio oio, the exhibit showcases the early designs of elements that continue to shape the internet today like badges, rating buttons, and sharing and recommendation features. The 19-second clip of YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, filmed on a low-res camera in 2005 is widely considered a foundational moment in the rise of user-generated content, enabling new modes of public self-expression, changing how media is created and consumed. Visitors can experience this piece of history in the Design 1900–Now gallery at the V&A South Kensington, while a behind-the-scenes look at the technical reconstruction will be hosted at the V&A East Storehouse. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is helping preserve and document the history and culture of the internet with its latest landmark acquisition: a reconstruction of an early YouTube watch page, featuring the first-ever upload, "Me at the zoo.” Opening February 18 at V&A, the exhibit captures YouTube as it appeared on December 8, 2006. Developed by the museum alongside YouTube’s UX team and interaction design studio oio, the exhibit showcases the early designs of elements that continue to shape the internet today like badges, rating buttons, and sharing and recommendation features. The 19-second clip of YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, filmed on a low-res camera in 2005 is widely considered a foundational moment in the rise of user-generated content, enabling new modes of public self-expression, changing how media is created and consumed. Visitors can experience this piece of history in the Design 1900–Now gallery at the V&A South Kensington, while a behind-the-scenes look at the technical reconstruction will be hosted at the V&A East Storehouse. Megan Thee Stallion joins NBC and YouTube for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics By The YouTube Team Feb 10, 2026 The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are underway and about to get a major injection of "Hot Girl" energy as three-time Grammy-winning superstar, Megan Thee Stallion, joins the NBC Milan Cortina Creator Collective and YouTube on the ground at the Games. With over 7.3 million subscribers and more than 630 million views across her music in the last year alone, Megan is uniquely positioned to bring her fans behind the scenes for a closer look at all the action in Milan. What does this mean for the fans? Bringing today’s most influential voices directly to the heart of the action in Italy exemplifies the unique role artists and creators play in taking today’s most exciting cultural moments and driving global conversation around them. Thanks to NBCuniversal’s Creator Collective, Megan and many more creators will be there to capture every iconic moment through their unique lenses on YouTube! The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are underway and about to get a major injection of "Hot Girl" energy as three-time Grammy-winning superstar, Megan Thee Stallion, joins the NBC Milan Cortina Creator Collective and YouTube on the ground at the Games. With over 7.3 million subscribers and more than 630 million views across her music in the last year alone, Megan is uniquely positioned to bring her fans behind the scenes for a closer look at all the action in Milan. What does this mean for the fans? Bringing today’s most influential voices directly to the heart of the action in Italy exemplifies the unique role artists and creators play in taking today’s most exciting cultural moments and driving global conversation around them. Thanks to NBCuniversal’s Creator Collective, Megan and many more creators will be there to capture every iconic moment through their unique lenses on YouTube! The YouTube Partner Program is coming to Armenia By The YouTube Team Feb 10, 2026 Great news for the creator community in Armenia: the YouTube Partner Program is set to go live this Spring. Creators in Armenia can monetize their content and join the global community of more than 3 million who have turned their passion into a business on YouTube. Creators can learn more about eligibility to join the YouTube Partner Program here. YouTube is built on a simple idea: we only succeed when our creators do. It’s why we’ve paid out over $100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies in the last four years alone. With the upcoming launch of YPP in Armenia, YouTube is continuing its commitment to help grow the global creator economy, invest in their content, hire talent, and empower them to build successful businesses on and off the platform. Great news for the creator community in Armenia: the YouTube Partner Program is set to go live this Spring. Creators in Armenia can monetize their content and join the global community of more than 3 million who have turned their passion into a business on YouTube. Creators can learn more about eligibility to join the YouTube Partner Program here. YouTube is built on a simple idea: we only succeed when our creators do. It’s why we’ve paid out over $100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies in the last four years alone. With the upcoming launch of YPP in Armenia, YouTube is continuing its commitment to help grow the global creator economy, invest in their content, hire talent, and empower them to build successful businesses on and off the platform. New YouTube report shows massive growth for the NFL By The YouTube Culture & Trends team Feb 05, 2026 The latest Trends Report from YouTube’s Culture & Trends team, "The Expanding Entertainment Universe of the NFL: The NFL’s video evolution on YouTube," is now live, providing an inside look at the league’s massive growth on the platform. Key insights from the data include: Visit the YouTube Culture & Trends site to read the full report. The latest Trends Report from YouTube’s Culture & Trends team, "The Expanding Entertainment Universe of the NFL: The NFL’s video evolution on YouTube," is now live, providing an inside look at the league’s massive growth on the platform. Key insights from the data include: Visit the YouTube Culture & Trends site to read the full report. TUNE IN: Harry Styles official music video for “Aperture” By The YouTube Team Jan 23, 2026 Music fans everywhere can tune into the worldwide video premiere of Harry Styles’ new track “Aperture” today at 12 PM ET. This is the first official music video from Harry’s new album “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally” dropping March 6th! Fans can visit the watchpage right now to set their reminders and experience the real time reveal of the album’s tracklist leading into the video premiere, exclusively on YouTube. The countdown is on and we can’t wait! Music fans everywhere can tune into the worldwide video premiere of Harry Styles’ new track “Aperture” today at 12 PM ET. This is the first official music video from Harry’s new album “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally” dropping March 6th! Fans can visit the watchpage right now to set their reminders and experience the real time reveal of the album’s tracklist leading into the video premiere, exclusively on YouTube. The countdown is on and we can’t wait! YouTube Official Blog Card Grid Follow along @UpdatesFromYouTube 1 6 YouTube TV YouTube on the big screen From your living room to entertainment in the skies, here are all the ways to enjoy YouTube on the big screen. Discover More Want more from The YouTube Blog? Join our newsletter! Explore the latest company news, creator and artist profiles, culture and trends analyses, and behind-the-scenes insights on the YouTube Official Blog. Our Channels X (Twitter) About YouTube YouTube Products For Business For Creators Our Commitments Join our newsletter to receive the latest news, trends, and features straight to your inbox! Your information will be used in accordance with Google's privacy policy. You may opt out at any time. Let's get contenting! 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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#bodyContent] | [TOKENS: 10628] |
Contents Computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs, which enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. The term computer system may refer to a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system, software, and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation, or to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or computer cluster. A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems, including simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls, and factory devices like industrial robots. Computers are at the core of general-purpose devices such as personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones. Computers power the Internet, which links billions of computers and users. Early computers were meant to be used only for calculations. Simple manual instruments like the abacus have aided people in doing calculations since ancient times. Early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long, tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century. The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II, both electromechanical and using thermionic valves. The first semiconductor transistors in the late 1940s were followed by the silicon-based MOSFET (MOS transistor) and monolithic integrated circuit chip technologies in the late 1950s, leading to the microprocessor and the microcomputer revolution in the 1970s. The speed, power, and versatility of computers have been increasing dramatically ever since then, with transistor counts increasing at a rapid pace (Moore's law noted that counts doubled every two years), leading to the Digital Revolution during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a microprocessor, together with some type of computer memory, typically semiconductor memory chips. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored information. Peripheral devices include input devices (keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc.), output devices (monitors, printers, etc.), and input/output devices that perform both functions (e.g. touchscreens). Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source, and they enable the results of operations to be saved and retrieved. Etymology It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word computer was in a different sense, in a 1613 book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by the English writer Richard Brathwait: "I haue [sic] read the truest computer of Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer [sic] breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number." This usage of the term referred to a human computer, a person who carried out calculations or computations. The word continued to have the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. During the latter part of this period, women were often hired as computers because they could be paid less than their male counterparts. By 1943, most human computers were women. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the 1640s, meaning 'one who calculates'; this is an "agent noun from compute (v.)". The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean "'calculating machine' (of any type) is from 1897." The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the "modern use" of the term, to mean 'programmable digital electronic computer' dates from "1945 under this name; [in a] theoretical [sense] from 1937, as Turing machine". The name has remained, although modern computers are capable of many higher-level functions. History Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was most likely a form of tally stick. Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, likely livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers.[a] The use of counting rods is one example. The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BCE. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money. The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to approximately c. 100 BCE. Devices of comparable complexity to the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until the fourteenth century. Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in the early 11th century. The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE and is often attributed to Hipparchus. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computer and gear-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan, Persia in 1235. Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe, an early fixed-wired knowledge processing machine with a gear train and gear-wheels, c. 1000 AD. The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots, was developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation. The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage. The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, by the English clergyman William Oughtred, shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Slide rules with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as the E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft. In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automaton) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates. In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar machine, which through a system of pulleys and cylinders could predict the perpetual calendar for every year from 0 CE (that is, 1 BCE) to 4000 CE, keeping track of leap years and varying day length. The tide-predicting machine invented by the Scottish scientist Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location. The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In 1876, Sir William Thomson had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators. In a differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers. In the 1890s, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo began to develop a series of advanced analog machines that could solve real and complex roots of polynomials, which were published in 1901 by the Paris Academy of Sciences. Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer", he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, titled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables". He also designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an analytical engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete. The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. In his work Essays on Automatics published in 1914, Leonardo Torres Quevedo wrote a brief history of Babbage's efforts at constructing a mechanical Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. The paper contains a design of a machine capable to calculate formulas like a x ( y − z ) 2 {\displaystyle a^{x}(y-z)^{2}} , for a sequence of sets of values. The whole machine was to be controlled by a read-only program, which was complete with provisions for conditional branching. He also introduced the idea of floating-point arithmetic. In 1920, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the arithmometer, Torres presented in Paris the Electromechanical Arithmometer, which allowed a user to input arithmetic problems through a keyboard, and computed and printed the results, demonstrating the feasibility of an electromechanical analytical engine. During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers. The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine, invented by Sir William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) in 1872. The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in 1876 by James Thomson, the elder brother of the more famous Sir William Thomson. The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer, completed in 1931 by Vannevar Bush at MIT. By the 1950s, the success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized applications such as education (slide rule) and aircraft (control systems).[citation needed] Claude Shannon's 1937 master's thesis laid the foundations of digital computing, with his insight of applying Boolean algebra to the analysis and synthesis of switching circuits being the basic concept which underlies all electronic digital computers. By 1938, the United States Navy had developed the Torpedo Data Computer, an electromechanical analog computer for submarines that used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II, similar devices were developed in other countries. Early digital computers were electromechanical; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform the calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes. The Z2, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939 in Berlin, was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer. In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3, the world's first working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer. The Z3 was built with 2000 relays, implementing a 22-bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz. Program code was supplied on punched film while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating-point numbers. Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design), using a binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. The Z3 was not itself a universal computer but could be extended to be Turing complete. Zuse's next computer, the Z4, became the world's first commercial computer; after initial delay due to the Second World War, it was completed in 1950 and delivered to the ETH Zurich. The computer was manufactured by Zuse's own company, Zuse KG, which was founded in 1941 as the first company with the sole purpose of developing computers in Berlin. The Z4 served as the inspiration for the construction of the ERMETH, the first Swiss computer and one of the first in Europe. Purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents, at the same time that digital calculation replaced analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers, working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the 1930s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the telephone exchange. Experimental equipment that he built in 1934 went into operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network into an electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes. In the US, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1942, the first "automatic electronic digital computer". This design was also all-electronic and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory. During World War II, the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park achieved a number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes which were often run by women. To crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus. He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building the first Colossus. After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944 and attacked its first message on 5 February. Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer. It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both five times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in the U.S. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. The programmers of the ENIAC were six women, often known collectively as the "ENIAC girls". It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. The principle of the modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936 paper, On Computable Numbers. Turing proposed a simple device that he called "Universal Computing machine" and that is now known as a universal Turing machine. He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is computable by executing instructions (program) stored on tape, allowing the machine to be programmable. The fundamental concept of Turing's design is the stored program, where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory. Von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper. Turing machines are to this day a central object of study in theory of computation. Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores, modern computers are said to be Turing-complete, which is to say, they have algorithm execution capability equivalent to a universal Turing machine. Early computing machines had fixed programs. Changing its function required the re-wiring and re-structuring of the machine. With the proposal of the stored-program computer this changed. A stored-program computer includes by design an instruction set and can store in memory a set of instructions (a program) that details the computation. The theoretical basis for the stored-program computer was laid out by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper. In 1945, Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory and began work on developing an electronic stored-program digital computer. His 1945 report "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the first specification for such a device. John von Neumann at the University of Pennsylvania also circulated his First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC in 1945. The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer. It was built at the University of Manchester in England by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948. It was designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the first random-access digital storage device. Although the computer was described as "small and primitive" by a 1998 retrospective, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer. As soon as the Baby had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project began at the university to develop it into a practically useful computer, the Manchester Mark 1. The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. Built by Ferranti, it was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam. In October 1947 the directors of British catering company J. Lyons & Company decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. Lyons's LEO I computer, modelled closely on the Cambridge EDSAC of 1949, became operational in April 1951 and ran the world's first routine office computer job. The concept of a field-effect transistor was proposed by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs, built the first working transistor, the point-contact transistor, in 1947, which was followed by Shockley's bipolar junction transistor in 1948. From 1955 onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to the "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes, so give off less heat. Junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum tubes and had longer, indefinite, service life. Transistorized computers could contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialized applications. At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. Their first transistorized computer and the first in the world, was operational by 1953, and a second version was completed there in April 1955. However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory, so it was not the first completely transistorized computer. That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955, built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960 and was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. With its high scalability, and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors, the MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits. In addition to data processing, it also enabled the practical use of MOS transistors as memory cell storage elements, leading to the development of MOS semiconductor memory, which replaced earlier magnetic-core memory in computers. The MOSFET led to the microcomputer revolution, and became the driving force behind the computer revolution. The MOSFET is the most widely used transistor in computers, and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics. The next great advance in computing power came with the advent of the integrated circuit (IC). The idea of the integrated circuit was first conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer. Dummer presented the first public description of an integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C., on 7 May 1952. The first working ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as "a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated". However, Kilby's invention was a hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC), rather than a monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip. Kilby's IC had external wire connections, which made it difficult to mass-produce. Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby. Noyce's invention was the first true monolithic IC chip. His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium. Noyce's monolithic IC was fabricated using the planar process, developed by his colleague Jean Hoerni in early 1959. In turn, the planar process was based on Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide. Modern monolithic ICs are predominantly MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) integrated circuits, built from MOSFETs (MOS transistors). The earliest experimental MOS IC to be fabricated was a 16-transistor chip built by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at RCA in 1962. General Microelectronics later introduced the first commercial MOS IC in 1964, developed by Robert Norman. Following the development of the self-aligned gate (silicon-gate) MOS transistor by Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace at Bell Labs in 1967, the first silicon-gate MOS IC with self-aligned gates was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968. The MOSFET has since become the most critical device component in modern ICs. The development of the MOS integrated circuit led to the invention of the microprocessor, and heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal use of computers. While the subject of exactly which device was the first microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on the exact definition of the term "microprocessor", it is largely undisputed that the first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004, designed and realized by Federico Faggin with his silicon-gate MOS IC technology, along with Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel.[b] In the early 1970s, MOS IC technology enabled the integration of more than 10,000 transistors on a single chip. System on a Chip (SoCs) are complete computers on a microchip (or chip) the size of a coin. They may or may not have integrated RAM and flash memory. If not integrated, the RAM is usually placed directly above (known as Package on package) or below (on the opposite side of the circuit board) the SoC, and the flash memory is usually placed right next to the SoC. This is done to improve data transfer speeds, as the data signals do not have to travel long distances. Since ENIAC in 1945, computers have advanced enormously, with modern SoCs (such as the Snapdragon 865) being the size of a coin while also being hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, integrating billions of transistors, and consuming only a few watts of power. The first mobile computers were heavy and ran from mains power. The 50 lb (23 kg) IBM 5100 was an early example. Later portables such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable were considerably lighter but still needed to be plugged in. The first laptops, such as the Grid Compass, removed this requirement by incorporating batteries – and with the continued miniaturization of computing resources and advancements in portable battery life, portable computers grew in popularity in the 2000s. The same developments allowed manufacturers to integrate computing resources into cellular mobile phones by the early 2000s. These smartphones and tablets run on a variety of operating systems and recently became the dominant computing device on the market. These are powered by System on a Chip (SoCs), which are complete computers on a microchip the size of a coin. Types Computers can be classified in a number of different ways, including: A computer does not need to be electronic, nor even have a processor, nor RAM, nor even a hard disk. While popular usage of the word "computer" is synonymous with a personal electronic computer,[c] a typical modern definition of a computer is: "A device that computes, especially a programmable [usually] electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information." According to this definition, any device that processes information qualifies as a computer. Hardware The term hardware covers all of those parts of a computer that are tangible physical objects. Circuits, computer chips, graphic cards, sound cards, memory (RAM), motherboard, displays, power supplies, cables, keyboards, printers and "mice" input devices are all hardware. A general-purpose computer has four main components: the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), the control unit, the memory, and the input and output devices (collectively termed I/O). These parts are interconnected by buses, often made of groups of wires. Inside each of these parts are thousands to trillions of small electrical circuits which can be turned off or on by means of an electronic switch. Each circuit represents a bit (binary digit) of information so that when the circuit is on it represents a "1", and when off it represents a "0" (in positive logic representation). The circuits are arranged in logic gates so that one or more of the circuits may control the state of one or more of the other circuits. Input devices are the means by which the operations of a computer are controlled and it is provided with data. Examples include: Output devices are the means by which a computer provides the results of its calculations in a human-accessible form. Examples include: The control unit (often called a control system or central controller) manages the computer's various components; it reads and interprets (decodes) the program instructions, transforming them into control signals that activate other parts of the computer.[e] Control systems in advanced computers may change the order of execution of some instructions to improve performance. A key component common to all CPUs is the program counter, a special memory cell (a register) that keeps track of which location in memory the next instruction is to be read from.[f] The control system's function is as follows— this is a simplified description, and some of these steps may be performed concurrently or in a different order depending on the type of CPU: Since the program counter is (conceptually) just another set of memory cells, it can be changed by calculations done in the ALU. Adding 100 to the program counter would cause the next instruction to be read from a place 100 locations further down the program. Instructions that modify the program counter are often known as "jumps" and allow for loops (instructions that are repeated by the computer) and often conditional instruction execution (both examples of control flow). The sequence of operations that the control unit goes through to process an instruction is in itself like a short computer program, and indeed, in some more complex CPU designs, there is another yet smaller computer called a microsequencer, which runs a microcode program that causes all of these events to happen. The control unit, ALU, and registers are collectively known as a central processing unit (CPU). Early CPUs were composed of many separate components. Since the 1970s, CPUs have typically been constructed on a single MOS integrated circuit chip called a microprocessor. The ALU is capable of performing two classes of operations: arithmetic and logic. The set of arithmetic operations that a particular ALU supports may be limited to addition and subtraction, or might include multiplication, division, trigonometry functions such as sine, cosine, etc., and square roots. Some can operate only on whole numbers (integers) while others use floating point to represent real numbers, albeit with limited precision. However, any computer that is capable of performing just the simplest operations can be programmed to break down the more complex operations into simple steps that it can perform. Therefore, any computer can be programmed to perform any arithmetic operation—although it will take more time to do so if its ALU does not directly support the operation. An ALU may also compare numbers and return Boolean truth values (true or false) depending on whether one is equal to, greater than or less than the other ("is 64 greater than 65?"). Logic operations involve Boolean logic: AND, OR, XOR, and NOT. These can be useful for creating complicated conditional statements and processing Boolean logic. Superscalar computers may contain multiple ALUs, allowing them to process several instructions simultaneously. Graphics processors and computers with SIMD and MIMD features often contain ALUs that can perform arithmetic on vectors and matrices. A computer's memory can be viewed as a list of cells into which numbers can be placed or read. Each cell has a numbered "address" and can store a single number. The computer can be instructed to "put the number 123 into the cell numbered 1357" or to "add the number that is in cell 1357 to the number that is in cell 2468 and put the answer into cell 1595." The information stored in memory may represent practically anything. Letters, numbers, even computer instructions can be placed into memory with equal ease. Since the CPU does not differentiate between different types of information, it is the software's responsibility to give significance to what the memory sees as nothing but a series of numbers. In almost all modern computers, each memory cell is set up to store binary numbers in groups of eight bits (called a byte). Each byte is able to represent 256 different numbers (28 = 256); either from 0 to 255 or −128 to +127. To store larger numbers, several consecutive bytes may be used (typically, two, four or eight). When negative numbers are required, they are usually stored in two's complement notation. Other arrangements are possible, but are usually not seen outside of specialized applications or historical contexts. A computer can store any kind of information in memory if it can be represented numerically. Modern computers have billions or even trillions of bytes of memory. The CPU contains a special set of memory cells called registers that can be read and written to much more rapidly than the main memory area. There are typically between two and one hundred registers depending on the type of CPU. Registers are used for the most frequently needed data items to avoid having to access main memory every time data is needed. As data is constantly being worked on, reducing the need to access main memory (which is often slow compared to the ALU and control units) greatly increases the computer's speed. Computer main memory comes in two principal varieties: RAM can be read and written to anytime the CPU commands it, but ROM is preloaded with data and software that never changes, therefore the CPU can only read from it. ROM is typically used to store the computer's initial start-up instructions. In general, the contents of RAM are erased when the power to the computer is turned off, but ROM retains its data indefinitely. In a PC, the ROM contains a specialized program called the BIOS that orchestrates loading the computer's operating system from the hard disk drive into RAM whenever the computer is turned on or reset. In embedded computers, which frequently do not have disk drives, all of the required software may be stored in ROM. Software stored in ROM is often called firmware, because it is notionally more like hardware than software. Flash memory blurs the distinction between ROM and RAM, as it retains its data when turned off but is also rewritable. It is typically much slower than conventional ROM and RAM however, so its use is restricted to applications where high speed is unnecessary.[g] In more sophisticated computers there may be one or more RAM cache memories, which are slower than registers but faster than main memory. Generally computers with this sort of cache are designed to move frequently needed data into the cache automatically, often without the need for any intervention on the programmer's part. I/O is the means by which a computer exchanges information with the outside world. Devices that provide input or output to the computer are called peripherals. On a typical personal computer, peripherals include input devices like the keyboard and mouse, and output devices such as the display and printer. Hard disk drives, floppy disk drives and optical disc drives serve as both input and output devices. Computer networking is another form of I/O. I/O devices are often complex computers in their own right, with their own CPU and memory. A graphics processing unit might contain fifty or more tiny computers that perform the calculations necessary to display 3D graphics.[citation needed] Modern desktop computers contain many smaller computers that assist the main CPU in performing I/O. A 2016-era flat screen display contains its own computer circuitry. While a computer may be viewed as running one gigantic program stored in its main memory, in some systems it is necessary to give the appearance of running several programs simultaneously. This is achieved by multitasking, i.e. having the computer switch rapidly between running each program in turn. One means by which this is done is with a special signal called an interrupt, which can periodically cause the computer to stop executing instructions where it was and do something else instead. By remembering where it was executing prior to the interrupt, the computer can return to that task later. If several programs are running "at the same time". Then the interrupt generator might be causing several hundred interrupts per second, causing a program switch each time. Since modern computers typically execute instructions several orders of magnitude faster than human perception, it may appear that many programs are running at the same time, even though only one is ever executing in any given instant. This method of multitasking is sometimes termed "time-sharing" since each program is allocated a "slice" of time in turn. Before the era of inexpensive computers, the principal use for multitasking was to allow many people to share the same computer. Seemingly, multitasking would cause a computer that is switching between several programs to run more slowly, in direct proportion to the number of programs it is running, but most programs spend much of their time waiting for slow input/output devices to complete their tasks. If a program is waiting for the user to click on the mouse or press a key on the keyboard, then it will not take a "time slice" until the event it is waiting for has occurred. This frees up time for other programs to execute so that many programs may be run simultaneously without unacceptable speed loss. Some computers are designed to distribute their work across several CPUs in a multiprocessing configuration, a technique once employed in only large and powerful machines such as supercomputers, mainframe computers and servers. Multiprocessor and multi-core (multiple CPUs on a single integrated circuit) personal and laptop computers are now widely available, and are being increasingly used in lower-end markets as a result. Supercomputers in particular often have highly unique architectures that differ significantly from the basic stored-program architecture and from general-purpose computers.[h] They often feature thousands of CPUs, customized high-speed interconnects, and specialized computing hardware. Such designs tend to be useful for only specialized tasks due to the large scale of program organization required to use most of the available resources at once. Supercomputers usually see usage in large-scale simulation, graphics rendering, and cryptography applications, as well as with other so-called "embarrassingly parallel" tasks. Software Software is the part of a computer system that consists of the encoded information that determines the computer's operation, such as data or instructions on how to process the data. In contrast to the physical hardware from which the system is built, software is immaterial. Software includes computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data, such as online documentation or digital media. It is often divided into system software and application software. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither is useful on its own. When software is stored in hardware that cannot easily be modified, such as with BIOS ROM in an IBM PC compatible computer, it is sometimes called "firmware". The defining feature of modern computers which distinguishes them from all other machines is that they can be programmed. That is to say that some type of instructions (the program) can be given to the computer, and it will process them. Modern computers based on the von Neumann architecture often have machine code in the form of an imperative programming language. In practical terms, a computer program may be just a few instructions or extend to many millions of instructions, as do the programs for word processors and web browsers for example. A typical modern computer can execute billions of instructions per second (gigaflops) and rarely makes a mistake over many years of operation. Large computer programs consisting of several million instructions may take teams of programmers years to write, and due to the complexity of the task almost certainly contain errors. This section applies to most common RAM machine–based computers. In most cases, computer instructions are simple: add one number to another, move some data from one location to another, send a message to some external device, etc. These instructions are read from the computer's memory and are generally carried out (executed) in the order they were given. However, there are usually specialized instructions to tell the computer to jump ahead or backwards to some other place in the program and to carry on executing from there. These are called "jump" instructions (or branches). Furthermore, jump instructions may be made to happen conditionally so that different sequences of instructions may be used depending on the result of some previous calculation or some external event. Many computers directly support subroutines by providing a type of jump that "remembers" the location it jumped from and another instruction to return to the instruction following that jump instruction. Program execution might be likened to reading a book. While a person will normally read each word and line in sequence, they may at times jump back to an earlier place in the text or skip sections that are not of interest. Similarly, a computer may sometimes go back and repeat the instructions in some section of the program over and over again until some internal condition is met. This is called the flow of control within the program and it is what allows the computer to perform tasks repeatedly without human intervention. Comparatively, a person using a pocket calculator can perform a basic arithmetic operation such as adding two numbers with just a few button presses. But to add together all of the numbers from 1 to 1,000 would take thousands of button presses and a lot of time, with a near certainty of making a mistake. On the other hand, a computer may be programmed to do this with just a few simple instructions. The following example is written in the MIPS assembly language: Once told to run this program, the computer will perform the repetitive addition task without further human intervention. It will almost never make a mistake and a modern PC can complete the task in a fraction of a second. In most computers, individual instructions are stored as machine code with each instruction being given a unique number (its operation code or opcode for short). The command to add two numbers together would have one opcode; the command to multiply them would have a different opcode, and so on. The simplest computers are able to perform any of a handful of different instructions; the more complex computers have several hundred to choose from, each with a unique numerical code. Since the computer's memory is able to store numbers, it can also store the instruction codes. This leads to the important fact that entire programs (which are just lists of these instructions) can be represented as lists of numbers and can themselves be manipulated inside the computer in the same way as numeric data. The fundamental concept of storing programs in the computer's memory alongside the data they operate on is the crux of the von Neumann, or stored program, architecture. In some cases, a computer might store some or all of its program in memory that is kept separate from the data it operates on. This is called the Harvard architecture after the Harvard Mark I computer. Modern von Neumann computers display some traits of the Harvard architecture in their designs, such as in CPU caches. While it is possible to write computer programs as long lists of numbers (machine language) and while this technique was used with many early computers,[i] it is extremely tedious and potentially error-prone to do so in practice, especially for complicated programs. Instead, each basic instruction can be given a short name that is indicative of its function and easy to remember – a mnemonic such as ADD, SUB, MULT or JUMP. These mnemonics are collectively known as a computer's assembly language. Converting programs written in assembly language into something the computer can actually understand (machine language) is usually done by a computer program called an assembler. A programming language is a notation system for writing the source code from which a computer program is produced. Programming languages provide various ways of specifying programs for computers to run. Unlike natural languages, programming languages are designed to permit no ambiguity and to be concise. They are purely written languages and are often difficult to read aloud. They are generally either translated into machine code by a compiler or an assembler before being run, or translated directly at run time by an interpreter. Sometimes programs are executed by a hybrid method of the two techniques. There are thousands of programming languages—some intended for general purpose programming, others useful for only highly specialized applications. Machine languages and the assembly languages that represent them (collectively termed low-level programming languages) are generally unique to the particular architecture of a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For instance, an ARM architecture CPU (such as may be found in a smartphone or a hand-held videogame) cannot understand the machine language of an x86 CPU that might be in a PC.[j] Historically a significant number of other CPU architectures were created and saw extensive use, notably including the MOS Technology 6502 and 6510 in addition to the Zilog Z80. Although considerably easier than in machine language, writing long programs in assembly language is often difficult and is also error prone. Therefore, most practical programs are written in more abstract high-level programming languages that are able to express the needs of the programmer more conveniently (and thereby help reduce programmer error). High level languages are usually "compiled" into machine language (or sometimes into assembly language and then into machine language) using another computer program called a compiler.[k] High level languages are less related to the workings of the target computer than assembly language, and more related to the language and structure of the problem(s) to be solved by the final program. It is therefore often possible to use different compilers to translate the same high level language program into the machine language of many different types of computer. This is part of the means by which software like video games may be made available for different computer architectures such as personal computers and various video game consoles. Program design of small programs is relatively simple and involves the analysis of the problem, collection of inputs, using the programming constructs within languages, devising or using established procedures and algorithms, providing data for output devices and solutions to the problem as applicable. As problems become larger and more complex, features such as subprograms, modules, formal documentation, and new paradigms such as object-oriented programming are encountered. Large programs involving thousands of line of code and more require formal software methodologies. The task of developing large software systems presents a significant intellectual challenge. Producing software with an acceptably high reliability within a predictable schedule and budget has historically been difficult; the academic and professional discipline of software engineering concentrates specifically on this challenge. Errors in computer programs are called "bugs". They may be benign and not affect the usefulness of the program, or have only subtle effects. However, in some cases they may cause the program or the entire system to "hang", becoming unresponsive to input such as mouse clicks or keystrokes, to completely fail, or to crash. Otherwise benign bugs may sometimes be harnessed for malicious intent by an unscrupulous user writing an exploit, code designed to take advantage of a bug and disrupt a computer's proper execution. Bugs are usually not the fault of the computer. Since computers merely execute the instructions they are given, bugs are nearly always the result of programmer error or an oversight made in the program's design.[l] Admiral Grace Hopper, an American computer scientist and developer of the first compiler, is credited for having first used the term "bugs" in computing after a dead moth was found shorting a relay in the Harvard Mark II computer in September 1947. Networking and the Internet Computers have been used to coordinate information between multiple physical locations since the 1950s. The U.S. military's SAGE system was the first large-scale example of such a system, which led to a number of special-purpose commercial systems such as Sabre. In the 1970s, computer engineers at research institutions throughout the United States began to link their computers together using telecommunications technology. The effort was funded by ARPA (now DARPA), and the computer network that resulted was called the ARPANET. Logic gates are a common abstraction which can apply to most of the above digital or analog paradigms. The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile, distinguishing them from calculators. The Church–Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a minimum capability (being Turing-complete) is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore, any type of computer (netbook, supercomputer, cellular automaton, etc.) is able to perform the same computational tasks, given enough time and storage capacity. In the 20th century, artificial intelligence systems were predominantly symbolic: they executed code that was explicitly programmed by software developers. Machine learning models, however, have a set parameters that are adjusted throughout training, so that the model learns to accomplish a task based on the provided data. The efficiency of machine learning (and in particular of neural networks) has rapidly improved with progress in hardware for parallel computing, mainly graphics processing units (GPUs). Some large language models are able to control computers or robots. AI progress may lead to the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a type of AI that could accomplish virtually any intellectual task at least as well as humans. Professions and organizations As the use of computers has spread throughout society, there are an increasing number of careers involving computers. The need for computers to work well together and to be able to exchange information has spawned the need for many standards organizations, clubs and societies of both a formal and informal nature. See also Notes References Sources External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday#Birthdays_of_religious_figures] | [TOKENS: 4101] |
Contents Birthday A birthday is the anniversary of the birth of a person or the figurative birth of an institution. Birthdays of people are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with birthday gifts, birthday cards, a birthday party, or a rite of passage. Many religions celebrate the birth of their founders or religious figures with special holidays (e.g. Christmas, Mawlid, Buddha's Birthday, Krishna Janmashtami, and Gurpurb). There is a distinction between birthday and birthdate (also known as date of birth): the former, except for February 29, occurs each year (e.g. January 15), while the latter is the complete date when a person was born (e.g. January 15, 2001). Coming of age In most legal systems, one becomes a legal adult on a particular birthday when they reach the age of majority (usually between 12 and 21), and reaching age-specific milestones confers particular rights and responsibilities. At certain ages, one may become eligible to leave full-time education, become subject to military conscription or to enlist in the military, to consent to sexual intercourse, to marry with parental consent, to marry without parental consent, to vote, to run for elected office, to legally purchase (or consume) alcohol and tobacco products, to purchase lottery tickets, or to obtain a driver's licence. The age of majority is when minors cease to legally be considered children and assume control over their persons, actions, and decisions, thereby terminating the legal control and responsibilities of their parents or guardians over and for them. Most countries set the age of majority at 18, though it varies by jurisdiction. Many cultures celebrate a coming of age birthday when a person reaches a particular year of life. Some cultures celebrate landmark birthdays in early life or old age. In many cultures and jurisdictions, if a person's real birthday is unknown (for example, if they are an orphan), their birthday may be adopted or assigned to a specific day of the year, such as January 1. Racehorses are reckoned to become one year old in the year following their birth on January 1 in the Northern Hemisphere and August 1 in the Southern Hemisphere.[relevant?] Birthday parties In certain parts of the world, an individual's birthday is celebrated by a party featuring a specially made cake. Presents are bestowed on the individual by the guests appropriate to their age. Other birthday activities may include entertainment (sometimes by a hired professional, i.e., a clown, magician, or musician) and a special toast or speech by the birthday celebrant. The last stanza of Patty Hill's and Mildred Hill's famous song, "Good Morning to You" (unofficially titled "Happy Birthday to You") is typically sung by the guests at some point in the proceedings. In some countries, a piñata takes the place of a cake. The birthday cake may be decorated with lettering and the person's age, or studded with the same number of lit candles as the age of the individual. The celebrated individual may make a silent wish and attempt to blow out the candles in one breath; if successful, superstition holds that the wish will be granted. In many cultures, the wish must be kept secret or it will not "come true". Birthdays as holidays Historically significant people's birthdays, such as national heroes or founders, are often commemorated by an official holiday marking the anniversary of their birth. Some notables, particularly monarchs, have an official birthday on a fixed day of the year, which may not necessarily match the day of their birth, but on which celebrations are held. In Mahayana Buddhism, many monasteries celebrate the anniversary of Buddha's birth, usually in a highly formal, ritualized manner. They treat Buddha's statue as if it was Buddha himself as if he were alive; bathing, and "feeding" him. Jesus Christ's traditional birthday is celebrated as Christmas Eve or Christmas Day around the world, on December 24 or 25, respectively. As some Eastern churches use the Julian calendar, December 25 will fall on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar. These dates are traditional and have no connection with Jesus's actual birthday, which is not recorded in the Gospels. Similarly, the birthdays of the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist are liturgically celebrated on September 8 and June 24, especially in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions (although for those Eastern Orthodox churches using the Julian calendar the corresponding Gregorian dates are September 21 and July 7 respectively). As with Christmas, the dates of these celebrations are traditional and probably have no connection with the actual birthdays of these individuals. Catholic saints are remembered by a liturgical feast on the anniversary of their "birth" into heaven a.k.a. their day of death. In Hinduism, Ganesh Chaturthi is a festival celebrating the birth of the elephant-headed deity Ganesha in extensive community celebrations and at home. Figurines of Ganesha are made for the holiday and are widely sold. Sikhs celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak and other Sikh gurus, which is known as Gurpurb. Mawlid is the anniversary of the birth of Muhammad and is celebrated on the 12th or 17th day of Rabi' al-awwal by adherents of Sunni and Shia Islam respectively. These are the two most commonly accepted dates of birth of Muhammad. However, there is much controversy regarding the permissibility of celebrating Mawlid, as some Muslims judge the custom as an unacceptable practice according to Islamic tradition. In Iran, Mother's Day is celebrated on the birthday of Fatima al-Zahra, the daughter of Muhammad. Banners reading Ya Fatima ("O Fatima") are displayed on government buildings, private buildings, public streets and car windows. Religious views In Judaism, rabbis are divided about celebrating this custom, although the majority of the faithful accept it. In the Torah, the only mention of a birthday is the celebration of Pharaoh's birthday in Egypt (Genesis 40:20). Although the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth is celebrated as a Christian holiday on December 25, historically the celebrating of an individual person's birthday has been subject to theological debate. Early Christians, notes The World Book Encyclopedia, "considered the celebration of anyone's birth to be a pagan custom." Origen, in his commentary "On Levites," wrote that Christians should not only refrain from celebrating their birthdays but should look at them with disgust as a pagan custom. A saint's day was typically celebrated on the anniversary of their martyrdom or death, considered the occasion of or preparation for their entrance into Heaven or the New Jerusalem. Ordinary folk in the Middle Ages celebrated their saint's day (the saint they were named after), but nobility celebrated the anniversary of their birth.[citation needed] The "Squire's Tale", one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, opens as King Cambuskan proclaims a feast to celebrate his birthday. In the Modern era, the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestantism, i.e. the three main branches of Christianity, as well as almost all Christian religious denominations, consider celebrating birthdays acceptable or at most a choice of the individual. An exception is Jehovah's Witnesses, who do not celebrate them for various reasons: in their interpretation this feast has pagan origins, was not celebrated by early Christians, is negatively expounded in the Holy Scriptures and has customs linked to superstition and magic. In some historically Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries,[a] it is common to have a 'name day', otherwise known as a 'Saint's day'. It is celebrated in much the same way as a birthday, but it is held on the official day of a saint with the same Christian name as the birthday person; the difference being that one may look up a person's name day in a calendar, or easily remember common name days (for example, John or Mary); however in pious traditions, the two were often made to concur by giving a newborn the name of a saint celebrated on its day of confirmation, more seldom one's birthday. Some are given the name of the religious feast of their christening's day or birthday, for example, Noel or Pascal (French for Christmas and "of Easter"); as another example, Togliatti was given Palmiro as his first name because he was born on Palm Sunday. The birthday does not reflect Islamic tradition, and because of this, the majority of Muslims refrain from celebrating it. Others do not object, as long as it is not accompanied by behavior contrary to Islamic tradition. A good portion of Muslims (and Arab Christians) who have emigrated to the United States and Europe celebrate birthdays as customary, especially for children, while others abstain. Hindus celebrate the birth anniversary day every year when the day that corresponds to the lunar month or solar month (Sun Signs Nirayana System – Sourava Mana Masa) of birth and has the same asterism (Star/Nakshatra) as that of the date of birth. That age is reckoned whenever Janma Nakshatra of the same month passes. Hindus regard death to be more auspicious than birth, since the person is liberated from the bondages of material society. Also, traditionally, rituals and prayers for the departed are observed on the 5th and 11th days, with many relatives gathering. Historical and cultural perspectives According to Herodotus (5th century BC), of all the days in the year, the one which the Persians celebrate most is their birthday. It was customary to have the board furnished on that day with an ampler supply than common: the richer people eat wholly baked cow, horse, camel, or donkey (Greek: ὄνον), while the poorer classes use instead the smaller kinds of cattle. On his birthday, the king anointed his head and presented gifts to the Persians. According to the law of the Royal Supper, on that day "no one should be refused a request". The rule for drinking was "No restrictions". In ancient Rome, a birthday (dies natalis) was originally an act of religious cultivation (cultus). A dies natalis was celebrated annually for a temple on the day of its founding, and the term is still used sometimes for the anniversary of an institution such as a university. The temple founding day might become the "birthday" of the deity housed there. March 1, for example, was celebrated as the birthday of the god Mars. Each human likewise had a natal divinity, the guardian spirit called the Genius, or sometimes the Juno for a woman, who was owed religious devotion on the day of birth, usually in the household shrine (lararium). The decoration of a lararium often shows the Genius in the role of the person carrying out the rites. A person marked their birthday with ritual acts that might include lighting an altar, saying prayers, making vows (vota), anointing and wreathing a statue of the Genius, or sacrificing to a patron deity. Incense, cakes, and wine were common offerings. Celebrating someone else's birthday was a way to show affection, friendship, or respect. In exile, the poet Ovid, though alone, celebrated not only his own birthday rite but that of his far distant wife. Birthday parties affirmed social as well as sacred ties. One of the Vindolanda tablets is an invitation to a birthday party from the wife of one Roman officer to the wife of another. Books were a popular birthday gift, sometimes handcrafted as a luxury edition or composed especially for the person honored. Birthday poems are a minor but distinctive genre of Latin literature. The banquets, libations, and offerings or gifts that were a regular part of most Roman religious observances thus became part of birthday celebrations for individuals. A highly esteemed person would continue to be celebrated on their birthday after death, in addition to the several holidays on the Roman calendar for commemorating the dead collectively. Birthday commemoration was considered so important that money was often bequeathed to a social organization to fund an annual banquet in the deceased's honor. The observance of a patron's birthday or the honoring of a political figure's Genius was one of the religious foundations for imperial cult or so-called "emperor worship." The Chinese word for "year(s) old" (t 歲, s 岁, suì) is entirely different from the usual word for "year(s)" (年, nián), reflecting the former importance of Chinese astrology and the belief that one's fate was bound to the stars imagined to be in opposition to the planet Jupiter at the time of one's birth. The importance of this duodecennial orbital cycle only survives in popular culture as the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, which change each Chinese New Year and may be used as a theme for some gifts or decorations. Because of the importance attached to the influence of these stars in ancient China and throughout the Sinosphere, East Asian age reckoning previously began with one at birth and then added years at each Chinese New Year, so that it formed a record of the suì one had lived through rather than of the exact amount of time from one's birth. This method—which can differ by as much as two years of age from other systems—is increasingly uncommon and is not used for official purposes in the PRC or on Taiwan, although the word suì is still used for describing age. Traditionally, Chinese birthdays—when celebrated—were reckoned using the lunisolar calendar, which varies from the Gregorian calendar by as much as a month forward or backward depending on the year. Celebrating the lunisolar birthday remains common on Taiwan while growing increasingly uncommon on the mainland. Birthday traditions reflected the culture's deep-seated focus on longevity and wordplay. From the homophony in some dialects between 酒 ("rice wine") and 久 (meaning "long" in the sense of time passing), osmanthus and other rice wines are traditional gifts for birthdays in China. Longevity noodles are another traditional food consumed on the day, although western-style birthday cakes are increasingly common among urban Chinese. Hongbaos—red envelopes stuffed with money, now especially the red 100 RMB notes—are the usual gift from relatives and close family friends for most children. Gifts for adults on their birthdays are much less common, although the birthday for each decade is a larger occasion that might prompt a large dinner and celebration. The Japanese reckoned their birthdays by the Chinese system until the Meiji Reforms. Celebrations remained uncommon or muted until after the American occupation that followed World War II.[citation needed] Children's birthday parties are the most important, typically celebrated with a cake, candles, and singing. Adults often just celebrate with their partner. In North Korea, the Day of the Sun, Kim Il Sung's birthday, is the most important public holiday of the country, and Kim Jong Il's birthday is celebrated as the Day of the Shining Star. North Koreans are not permitted to celebrate birthdays on July 8 and December 17 because these were the dates of the deaths of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, respectively. More than 100,000 North Koreans celebrate displaced birthdays on July 9 and December 18 instead to avoid these dates. A person born on July 8 before 1994 may change their birthday, with official recognition. South Korea was one of the last countries to use a form of East Asian age reckoning for many official purposes. Prior to June 2023, three systems were used together—"Korean ages" that start with 1 at birth and increase every January 1st with the Gregorian New Year, "year ages" that start with 0 at birth and otherwise increase the same way, and "actual ages" that start with 0 at birth and increase each birthday. First birthday celebrations was heavily celebrated, despite usually having little to do with the child's age. In June 2023, all Korean ages were set back at least one year, and official ages henceforth are reckoned only by birthdays. In Ghana, children wake up on their birthday to a special treat called oto, which is a patty made from mashed sweet potato and eggs fried in palm oil. Later they have a birthday party where they usually eat stew and rice and a dish known as kelewele, which is fried plantain chunks. Distribution through the year Birthdays are fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, with some seasonal effects. In the United States, there tend to be more births in September and October. This may be because there is a holiday season nine months before (the human gestation period is about nine months), or because the longest nights of the year also occur in the Northern Hemisphere nine months before. However, the holidays affect birth rates more than the winter: New Zealand, a Southern Hemisphere country, has the same September and October peak with no corresponding peak in March and April. The least common birthdays tend to fall around public holidays, such as Christmas, New Year's Day and fixed-date holidays such as Independence Day in the US, which falls on July 4. Between 1973 and 1999, September 16 was the most common birthday in the United States, and December 25 was the least common birthday (other than February 29 because of leap years). In 2011, October 5 and 6 were reported as the most frequently occurring birthdays. New Zealand's most common birthday is September 29, and the least common birthday is December 25. The ten most common birthdays all fall within a thirteen-day period, between September 22 and October 4. The ten least common birthdays (other than February 29) are December 24–27, January 1–2, February 6, March 22, April 1, and April 25. This is based on all live births registered in New Zealand between 1980 and 2017. Positive and negative associations with culturally significant dates may influence birth rates. The study shows a 5.3% decrease in spontaneous births and a 16.9% decrease in Caesarean births on Halloween, compared to dates occurring within one week before and one week after the October holiday. In contrast, on Valentine's Day, there is a 3.6% increase in spontaneous births and a 12.1% increase in Caesarean births. In Sweden, 9.3% of the population is born in March and 7.3% in November, when a uniform distribution would give 8.3%. In the Gregorian calendar (a common solar calendar), February in a leap year has 29 days instead of the usual 28, so the year lasts 366 days instead of the usual 365. A person born on February 29 may be called a "leapling" or a "leaper". In common years, they usually celebrate their birthdays on February 28. In some situations, March 1 is used as the birthday in a non-leap year since it is the day following February 28. Technically, a leapling will have fewer birthday anniversaries than their age in years. This phenomenon is exploited when a person claims to be only a quarter of their actual age, by counting their leap-year birthday anniversaries only. In Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic the pirate apprentice discovers that he is bound to serve the pirates until his 21st birthday rather than until his 21st year. For legal purposes, legal birthdays depend on how local laws count time intervals. An individual's Beddian birthday, named in tribute to firefighter Bobby Beddia, occurs during the year that their age matches the last two digits of the year they were born. Some studies show people are more likely to die on their birthdays, with explanations including excessive drinking, suicide, cardiovascular events due to high stress or happiness, efforts to postpone death for major social events, and death certificate paperwork errors. See also References Notes External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday#Birthdays_as_holidays] | [TOKENS: 4101] |
Contents Birthday A birthday is the anniversary of the birth of a person or the figurative birth of an institution. Birthdays of people are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with birthday gifts, birthday cards, a birthday party, or a rite of passage. Many religions celebrate the birth of their founders or religious figures with special holidays (e.g. Christmas, Mawlid, Buddha's Birthday, Krishna Janmashtami, and Gurpurb). There is a distinction between birthday and birthdate (also known as date of birth): the former, except for February 29, occurs each year (e.g. January 15), while the latter is the complete date when a person was born (e.g. January 15, 2001). Coming of age In most legal systems, one becomes a legal adult on a particular birthday when they reach the age of majority (usually between 12 and 21), and reaching age-specific milestones confers particular rights and responsibilities. At certain ages, one may become eligible to leave full-time education, become subject to military conscription or to enlist in the military, to consent to sexual intercourse, to marry with parental consent, to marry without parental consent, to vote, to run for elected office, to legally purchase (or consume) alcohol and tobacco products, to purchase lottery tickets, or to obtain a driver's licence. The age of majority is when minors cease to legally be considered children and assume control over their persons, actions, and decisions, thereby terminating the legal control and responsibilities of their parents or guardians over and for them. Most countries set the age of majority at 18, though it varies by jurisdiction. Many cultures celebrate a coming of age birthday when a person reaches a particular year of life. Some cultures celebrate landmark birthdays in early life or old age. In many cultures and jurisdictions, if a person's real birthday is unknown (for example, if they are an orphan), their birthday may be adopted or assigned to a specific day of the year, such as January 1. Racehorses are reckoned to become one year old in the year following their birth on January 1 in the Northern Hemisphere and August 1 in the Southern Hemisphere.[relevant?] Birthday parties In certain parts of the world, an individual's birthday is celebrated by a party featuring a specially made cake. Presents are bestowed on the individual by the guests appropriate to their age. Other birthday activities may include entertainment (sometimes by a hired professional, i.e., a clown, magician, or musician) and a special toast or speech by the birthday celebrant. The last stanza of Patty Hill's and Mildred Hill's famous song, "Good Morning to You" (unofficially titled "Happy Birthday to You") is typically sung by the guests at some point in the proceedings. In some countries, a piñata takes the place of a cake. The birthday cake may be decorated with lettering and the person's age, or studded with the same number of lit candles as the age of the individual. The celebrated individual may make a silent wish and attempt to blow out the candles in one breath; if successful, superstition holds that the wish will be granted. In many cultures, the wish must be kept secret or it will not "come true". Birthdays as holidays Historically significant people's birthdays, such as national heroes or founders, are often commemorated by an official holiday marking the anniversary of their birth. Some notables, particularly monarchs, have an official birthday on a fixed day of the year, which may not necessarily match the day of their birth, but on which celebrations are held. In Mahayana Buddhism, many monasteries celebrate the anniversary of Buddha's birth, usually in a highly formal, ritualized manner. They treat Buddha's statue as if it was Buddha himself as if he were alive; bathing, and "feeding" him. Jesus Christ's traditional birthday is celebrated as Christmas Eve or Christmas Day around the world, on December 24 or 25, respectively. As some Eastern churches use the Julian calendar, December 25 will fall on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar. These dates are traditional and have no connection with Jesus's actual birthday, which is not recorded in the Gospels. Similarly, the birthdays of the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist are liturgically celebrated on September 8 and June 24, especially in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions (although for those Eastern Orthodox churches using the Julian calendar the corresponding Gregorian dates are September 21 and July 7 respectively). As with Christmas, the dates of these celebrations are traditional and probably have no connection with the actual birthdays of these individuals. Catholic saints are remembered by a liturgical feast on the anniversary of their "birth" into heaven a.k.a. their day of death. In Hinduism, Ganesh Chaturthi is a festival celebrating the birth of the elephant-headed deity Ganesha in extensive community celebrations and at home. Figurines of Ganesha are made for the holiday and are widely sold. Sikhs celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak and other Sikh gurus, which is known as Gurpurb. Mawlid is the anniversary of the birth of Muhammad and is celebrated on the 12th or 17th day of Rabi' al-awwal by adherents of Sunni and Shia Islam respectively. These are the two most commonly accepted dates of birth of Muhammad. However, there is much controversy regarding the permissibility of celebrating Mawlid, as some Muslims judge the custom as an unacceptable practice according to Islamic tradition. In Iran, Mother's Day is celebrated on the birthday of Fatima al-Zahra, the daughter of Muhammad. Banners reading Ya Fatima ("O Fatima") are displayed on government buildings, private buildings, public streets and car windows. Religious views In Judaism, rabbis are divided about celebrating this custom, although the majority of the faithful accept it. In the Torah, the only mention of a birthday is the celebration of Pharaoh's birthday in Egypt (Genesis 40:20). Although the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth is celebrated as a Christian holiday on December 25, historically the celebrating of an individual person's birthday has been subject to theological debate. Early Christians, notes The World Book Encyclopedia, "considered the celebration of anyone's birth to be a pagan custom." Origen, in his commentary "On Levites," wrote that Christians should not only refrain from celebrating their birthdays but should look at them with disgust as a pagan custom. A saint's day was typically celebrated on the anniversary of their martyrdom or death, considered the occasion of or preparation for their entrance into Heaven or the New Jerusalem. Ordinary folk in the Middle Ages celebrated their saint's day (the saint they were named after), but nobility celebrated the anniversary of their birth.[citation needed] The "Squire's Tale", one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, opens as King Cambuskan proclaims a feast to celebrate his birthday. In the Modern era, the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestantism, i.e. the three main branches of Christianity, as well as almost all Christian religious denominations, consider celebrating birthdays acceptable or at most a choice of the individual. An exception is Jehovah's Witnesses, who do not celebrate them for various reasons: in their interpretation this feast has pagan origins, was not celebrated by early Christians, is negatively expounded in the Holy Scriptures and has customs linked to superstition and magic. In some historically Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries,[a] it is common to have a 'name day', otherwise known as a 'Saint's day'. It is celebrated in much the same way as a birthday, but it is held on the official day of a saint with the same Christian name as the birthday person; the difference being that one may look up a person's name day in a calendar, or easily remember common name days (for example, John or Mary); however in pious traditions, the two were often made to concur by giving a newborn the name of a saint celebrated on its day of confirmation, more seldom one's birthday. Some are given the name of the religious feast of their christening's day or birthday, for example, Noel or Pascal (French for Christmas and "of Easter"); as another example, Togliatti was given Palmiro as his first name because he was born on Palm Sunday. The birthday does not reflect Islamic tradition, and because of this, the majority of Muslims refrain from celebrating it. Others do not object, as long as it is not accompanied by behavior contrary to Islamic tradition. A good portion of Muslims (and Arab Christians) who have emigrated to the United States and Europe celebrate birthdays as customary, especially for children, while others abstain. Hindus celebrate the birth anniversary day every year when the day that corresponds to the lunar month or solar month (Sun Signs Nirayana System – Sourava Mana Masa) of birth and has the same asterism (Star/Nakshatra) as that of the date of birth. That age is reckoned whenever Janma Nakshatra of the same month passes. Hindus regard death to be more auspicious than birth, since the person is liberated from the bondages of material society. Also, traditionally, rituals and prayers for the departed are observed on the 5th and 11th days, with many relatives gathering. Historical and cultural perspectives According to Herodotus (5th century BC), of all the days in the year, the one which the Persians celebrate most is their birthday. It was customary to have the board furnished on that day with an ampler supply than common: the richer people eat wholly baked cow, horse, camel, or donkey (Greek: ὄνον), while the poorer classes use instead the smaller kinds of cattle. On his birthday, the king anointed his head and presented gifts to the Persians. According to the law of the Royal Supper, on that day "no one should be refused a request". The rule for drinking was "No restrictions". In ancient Rome, a birthday (dies natalis) was originally an act of religious cultivation (cultus). A dies natalis was celebrated annually for a temple on the day of its founding, and the term is still used sometimes for the anniversary of an institution such as a university. The temple founding day might become the "birthday" of the deity housed there. March 1, for example, was celebrated as the birthday of the god Mars. Each human likewise had a natal divinity, the guardian spirit called the Genius, or sometimes the Juno for a woman, who was owed religious devotion on the day of birth, usually in the household shrine (lararium). The decoration of a lararium often shows the Genius in the role of the person carrying out the rites. A person marked their birthday with ritual acts that might include lighting an altar, saying prayers, making vows (vota), anointing and wreathing a statue of the Genius, or sacrificing to a patron deity. Incense, cakes, and wine were common offerings. Celebrating someone else's birthday was a way to show affection, friendship, or respect. In exile, the poet Ovid, though alone, celebrated not only his own birthday rite but that of his far distant wife. Birthday parties affirmed social as well as sacred ties. One of the Vindolanda tablets is an invitation to a birthday party from the wife of one Roman officer to the wife of another. Books were a popular birthday gift, sometimes handcrafted as a luxury edition or composed especially for the person honored. Birthday poems are a minor but distinctive genre of Latin literature. The banquets, libations, and offerings or gifts that were a regular part of most Roman religious observances thus became part of birthday celebrations for individuals. A highly esteemed person would continue to be celebrated on their birthday after death, in addition to the several holidays on the Roman calendar for commemorating the dead collectively. Birthday commemoration was considered so important that money was often bequeathed to a social organization to fund an annual banquet in the deceased's honor. The observance of a patron's birthday or the honoring of a political figure's Genius was one of the religious foundations for imperial cult or so-called "emperor worship." The Chinese word for "year(s) old" (t 歲, s 岁, suì) is entirely different from the usual word for "year(s)" (年, nián), reflecting the former importance of Chinese astrology and the belief that one's fate was bound to the stars imagined to be in opposition to the planet Jupiter at the time of one's birth. The importance of this duodecennial orbital cycle only survives in popular culture as the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, which change each Chinese New Year and may be used as a theme for some gifts or decorations. Because of the importance attached to the influence of these stars in ancient China and throughout the Sinosphere, East Asian age reckoning previously began with one at birth and then added years at each Chinese New Year, so that it formed a record of the suì one had lived through rather than of the exact amount of time from one's birth. This method—which can differ by as much as two years of age from other systems—is increasingly uncommon and is not used for official purposes in the PRC or on Taiwan, although the word suì is still used for describing age. Traditionally, Chinese birthdays—when celebrated—were reckoned using the lunisolar calendar, which varies from the Gregorian calendar by as much as a month forward or backward depending on the year. Celebrating the lunisolar birthday remains common on Taiwan while growing increasingly uncommon on the mainland. Birthday traditions reflected the culture's deep-seated focus on longevity and wordplay. From the homophony in some dialects between 酒 ("rice wine") and 久 (meaning "long" in the sense of time passing), osmanthus and other rice wines are traditional gifts for birthdays in China. Longevity noodles are another traditional food consumed on the day, although western-style birthday cakes are increasingly common among urban Chinese. Hongbaos—red envelopes stuffed with money, now especially the red 100 RMB notes—are the usual gift from relatives and close family friends for most children. Gifts for adults on their birthdays are much less common, although the birthday for each decade is a larger occasion that might prompt a large dinner and celebration. The Japanese reckoned their birthdays by the Chinese system until the Meiji Reforms. Celebrations remained uncommon or muted until after the American occupation that followed World War II.[citation needed] Children's birthday parties are the most important, typically celebrated with a cake, candles, and singing. Adults often just celebrate with their partner. In North Korea, the Day of the Sun, Kim Il Sung's birthday, is the most important public holiday of the country, and Kim Jong Il's birthday is celebrated as the Day of the Shining Star. North Koreans are not permitted to celebrate birthdays on July 8 and December 17 because these were the dates of the deaths of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, respectively. More than 100,000 North Koreans celebrate displaced birthdays on July 9 and December 18 instead to avoid these dates. A person born on July 8 before 1994 may change their birthday, with official recognition. South Korea was one of the last countries to use a form of East Asian age reckoning for many official purposes. Prior to June 2023, three systems were used together—"Korean ages" that start with 1 at birth and increase every January 1st with the Gregorian New Year, "year ages" that start with 0 at birth and otherwise increase the same way, and "actual ages" that start with 0 at birth and increase each birthday. First birthday celebrations was heavily celebrated, despite usually having little to do with the child's age. In June 2023, all Korean ages were set back at least one year, and official ages henceforth are reckoned only by birthdays. In Ghana, children wake up on their birthday to a special treat called oto, which is a patty made from mashed sweet potato and eggs fried in palm oil. Later they have a birthday party where they usually eat stew and rice and a dish known as kelewele, which is fried plantain chunks. Distribution through the year Birthdays are fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, with some seasonal effects. In the United States, there tend to be more births in September and October. This may be because there is a holiday season nine months before (the human gestation period is about nine months), or because the longest nights of the year also occur in the Northern Hemisphere nine months before. However, the holidays affect birth rates more than the winter: New Zealand, a Southern Hemisphere country, has the same September and October peak with no corresponding peak in March and April. The least common birthdays tend to fall around public holidays, such as Christmas, New Year's Day and fixed-date holidays such as Independence Day in the US, which falls on July 4. Between 1973 and 1999, September 16 was the most common birthday in the United States, and December 25 was the least common birthday (other than February 29 because of leap years). In 2011, October 5 and 6 were reported as the most frequently occurring birthdays. New Zealand's most common birthday is September 29, and the least common birthday is December 25. The ten most common birthdays all fall within a thirteen-day period, between September 22 and October 4. The ten least common birthdays (other than February 29) are December 24–27, January 1–2, February 6, March 22, April 1, and April 25. This is based on all live births registered in New Zealand between 1980 and 2017. Positive and negative associations with culturally significant dates may influence birth rates. The study shows a 5.3% decrease in spontaneous births and a 16.9% decrease in Caesarean births on Halloween, compared to dates occurring within one week before and one week after the October holiday. In contrast, on Valentine's Day, there is a 3.6% increase in spontaneous births and a 12.1% increase in Caesarean births. In Sweden, 9.3% of the population is born in March and 7.3% in November, when a uniform distribution would give 8.3%. In the Gregorian calendar (a common solar calendar), February in a leap year has 29 days instead of the usual 28, so the year lasts 366 days instead of the usual 365. A person born on February 29 may be called a "leapling" or a "leaper". In common years, they usually celebrate their birthdays on February 28. In some situations, March 1 is used as the birthday in a non-leap year since it is the day following February 28. Technically, a leapling will have fewer birthday anniversaries than their age in years. This phenomenon is exploited when a person claims to be only a quarter of their actual age, by counting their leap-year birthday anniversaries only. In Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic the pirate apprentice discovers that he is bound to serve the pirates until his 21st birthday rather than until his 21st year. For legal purposes, legal birthdays depend on how local laws count time intervals. An individual's Beddian birthday, named in tribute to firefighter Bobby Beddia, occurs during the year that their age matches the last two digits of the year they were born. Some studies show people are more likely to die on their birthdays, with explanations including excessive drinking, suicide, cardiovascular events due to high stress or happiness, efforts to postpone death for major social events, and death certificate paperwork errors. See also References Notes External links |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/podcasts/] | [TOKENS: 363] |
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us Podcasts Looking for your new favorite tech podcast? TechCrunch podcasts feature hosts from the TechCrunch Staff and cover the most interesting takes in tech from startups to fundraising to crypto to daily tech news. Check out each of the shows below, and listen and subscribe to the tech podcast(s) that best suit you. Build Mode is a survival guide for early-stage founders navigating the messy, high-stakes chaos of building a company from scratch. No sugarcoating. No hype. Just candid conversations and tactical advice from the people who’ve done it before and have the scars (and term sheets) to prove it. Hosted by Startup Battlefield Editor Isabelle Johannessen, you can find Build Mode here or in your favorite podcast feed every Thursday by subscribing today. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups, unpacked by the writers who know best. Produced by Theresa Loconsolo. Edited by Kell. Each week, StrictlyVC’s host and TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos, with Alex Gove, former journalist, VC and operating exec, review the top stories in StrictlyVC and interview a mover and shaker in the world of tech. © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2017-03-01-changing-careers.html] | [TOKENS: 3491] |
How to change careers and become a data scientist - one quant’s experience Rachel Thomas March 1, 2017 On this page This post has been translated into Chinese here. I sometimes receive emails asking for guidance related to data science, which I answer here as a data science advice column. If you have a data science related quandary, email me at mailto:[email protected]. Note that questions are edited for clarity and brevity. Other installments of the data science advice column include: Q: This question is a composite of a few emails I’ve received from people with some limited programming skills, living outside the Bay Area, and interested in becoming data scientists, such as the following: Q1. I’m a financial analyst at a major bank. I’m in the process of pivoting to tech as a software engineer and I’m interested in machine learning, which lead me to your post on The Diversity Crisis in AI. Do I need a masters or PhD to work in AI? Q2. I am in the 6th year of my PhD in pure mathematics and am going to graduate soon. I am really interested in data science and I want to know if I want to get a job in this area, what can I do or what should I prepare myself so that I can have the skill sets that the companies need? I’m now reading books and trying to find some side projects that I can do. Do you have any ideas where I can find these projects that will interest employers? Q3. I have a graduate STEM degree and have worked as both a researcher and a teacher. I am currently in the midst of a career transition and looking for industry roles that might need both analytical and instructional skills from their employees. My knowledge is more on the science side though rather than in software. The Internet can get to be a pretty overwhelming place to pull information from without the actual sharing. Do you have recommendations for programming courses and workshops that are also friendly to a teacher’s budget? And what coding languages or skills would you say would be most helpful to focus on developing? A: I think of myself as having a somewhat non-traditional background. At first glance it may seem like I have a classic data science education: I took 2 years of C++ in high school, minored in computer science in college (with a math major), did a PhD related to probability, and worked as a quant. However, my computer science coursework was mostly theoretical, my math thesis was entirely theoretical (no computations at all!), and over the years I used less and less C/C++ and more and more MATLAB (why oh why did I do that to myself?!? Somehow I found myself even writing web scrapers in MATLAB…) My college education taught me how to prove if an algorithm was NP-complete or Turing computable, but nothing about testing, version control, web apps, or how the internet works. The company where I was a quant primarily used proprietary software/languages that aren’t used in the tech industry. After 2 years working as a quant in energy trading, I realized that my favorite parts of the job were programming and working with data. I was frustrated with the bureacracy of working at a large company, and of dealing with outdated and proprietary software tools. I wanted something different, and decided to attend the data science conference Strata in February 2012 to learn more about the world of Bay Area data science. I was totally, absolutely, blown away. The huge enthusiasm for data, all the tools I was most excited about (and several more I’d never heard of before), the stories of people who had quit their previous lives in academia or established companies to work on their passion at a startup… it was so different and refreshing to what I was used to. After Strata, I spent a few extra days in San Francisco, interviewing at startups and having coffee with some distant acquaintances that I found had moved to SF - everyone was very helpful and also apparently addicted to Four Barrel Coffee (almost everyone I spoke with suggested meeting there!) I was star-struck, but actually switching into tech made me feel totally out of it… For my first many conversations and interviews with people in tech, I often felt like they were speaking another language. I grew up in Texas, spent my 20s in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and didn’t know anyone who worked in tech. I’d never taken a statistics class and just thought of probability as real analysis on a space of measure 1. I didn’t know anything about how start-ups and tech companies worked. The first time I interviewed at a start-up, one interviewer boasted about how the company had briefly achieved profitability before embarking on rapid expansion/hiring. “You mean this company isn’t profitable!?!?” I responded in horror (Yes, I actually said that out loud, in a shocked tone of voice). I now cringe in embarrassment at the memory. In another interview, I was so confused by the concept of an “impression” (when an internet ad is displayed) that it took me a while to even get to the logic of the question. I’ve been here five years now, and here’s some things I wish I’d known when I was starting my career move. I’m aware that I’m white, a US citizen, had a generous fellowship in grad school and no student debt, and was single and childless at the time I decided to switch careers, and someone without these privileges will face a much tougher path. While my anecdotes should be taken with a grain of salt, I hope that some of these suggestions turn out to be helpful to you: Becoming ready for a move to data science Most importantly: find ways to work whatever you want to learn into your current job. Find a project that involves more coding/data analysis and that would be helpful to your employer. Take any boring task you do and try to automate it. Even if the process of automation makes it take 5x as long (and even if you only do the task once!), you are learning by doing this. Analyze any data you have: from research for an upcoming purchase (i.e. deciding which microwave to buy), data from a personal fitness tracker, nutrition data from recipes you’re cooking, pre-schools you’re looking at for your child. Turn it into a mini-data analysis project and write it up in a blog post. E.g. if you are a graduate student, you could analyze grade data from the students you are teaching Learn the most important data science software tools: Python’s data science stack (pandas/numpy/scipy) is the #1 most useful technology to learn (read this book!), followed closely by SQL. I would focus on getting very comfortable with Python and SQL before learning other languages. Python is widely used and flexible. You will be well-positioned if you decide to switch to more software development work or to go full-steam into machine learning. Use Kaggle. Do the tutorials, participate in the forums, enter a competition (don’t worry about where you place - just focus on doing a little better every day). It’s the best way to learn practical machine skills. Search for data science and tech meetups in your area. With the explosion of data science in the last few years, there are now meetups in countries all over the world and in a wide variety of cities. For instance, Google recently held a TensorFlow Dev Summit in Mountain View, CA, but there were viewing parties around the world that watched the livestream together (including in Abuja, Nigeria, Coimbatore, India, and Rabat, Morocco). Online courses Online courses are an amazing resource. You can learn from the world’s best data scientists in the comfort of your own home. Often the assignments are where most of the learning occurs, so don’t skip them! Here’s a few of my favorites: As one of the questioners highlighted above, the amount of information, tutorials, and courses available online can be overwhelming. One of the biggest risks is jumping from thing to thing, without ever completing one or sticking with a topic long enough to learn it. It’s important to find a course or project that is “good enough”, and then stick with it. Something that can be helpful with this is finding or starting a meet-up group to work through an online course together. Online courses are very useful for the knowledge you gain (and it’s so important that you do all the assignments, as that is how you learn). However, I have not seen any benefit to getting the certificates from them (yet– I know this is a newer area of growth). This is based on my experience as having interviewed a ton of job applicants when hiring data scientists, and having interviewed for many positions myself. News sources Moving to the Bay Area Do whatever you can to move to the Bay Area! I realize that this won’t be possible for many people (particularly if you have children or for a variety of visa/legal residency issues). There are so many data science meet-ups, study groups, conferences, and workshops here. There is also an amazing community of other bright, ambitious, hungry-to-learn data scientists. I had trouble even figuring out which were the most useful things for me to learn from afar. Although I’d started studying machine learning on my own before moving here, coming to SF rapidly accelerated my learning. My first year in San Francisco was a period of intense learning for me: I attended tons of meetups, completed several online courses, participated in numerous workshops and conferences, learned a lot by working at a data-focused start-up, and most importantly met scores of people who I was able to ask questions of. I completely under-estimated how amazing it is to be able to interact regularly with the people who are building the tools and technology that excite me most. I’m surrounded by people who love learning and are pushing the cutting edge of what is possible. That TensorFlow Dev Summit I mentioned above that people watched from around the world? I was lucky enough to be able to attend it live, and my favorite part was the people I met. One good approach to moving here is taking a “not-your-dream-job”; i.e. try to get to a place where you’re surrounded by people you can learn from, even if it’s not a role you’d otherwise be interested in. I decided to switch careers in early 2012, before Insight or other data science bootcamps existed. I applied to a few of what were my “dream jobs” at the time and was rejected. In hindsight, I think this was a mix of my lacking some needed skills, not knowing how to market myself properly, and doing a fairly brief job search. In March 2012, I accepted an analyst position at a start-up I was excited about, with the hope and an informal agreement that I could move into an official data science/modeling role later. Overall, it was a good choice. It let me move to San Francisco rapidly, the company I joined was great in a number of ways (including having a weekly reading group that was working through Bishop’s Pattern Recognition and including me on a field trip to meet Trevor Hastie and Jerome Friedman), and my manager was supportive of me doing more engineering-intensive projects than the role was officially scoped for. One year later, I landed what on paper was my dream job: a combined data scientist/software engineer role with a startup that had fascinating datasets. There are also some good bootcamps in the area, which generally also provide many opportunities to connect with interesting people and companies in the data science space. - Insight Data Science is a 7-week, free, intensive bootcamp for graduates with PhDs in STEM fields. Potential downsides: Since it is only 7 weeks, part of which is focused on networking and job search, I believe it’s mostly for people who already have most of the skills they need. Also, it’s very competitive to get into. - Data Science boot camps such as Galvanize or Metis. Positives: These are 12-week immersive experiences, that provide structure and networking opportunities. Downsides: These are rather expensive. Some factors to consider: How close is your background to what you need? That is, if you have little programming experience, it may be necessary to do something like this, but if you are transitioning from a closely related field, this may be overkill. Also, how motivated are you with independent self-learning? If you struggle with it, the accountability and structure of a bootcamp could be helpful. There are many factors in deciding whether to do a bootcamp. A big one is how much structure or external motivation you need. There are a lot of amazing resources available online. How much discipline do you have? Note that it’s important to accept what you need to best learn. I find the motivation of online courses and having assignments really works for me, and I used to feel embarrassed that this was easier for me than having a completely independent side project. Now, I’ve accepted this and try to work with it. Other questions to ask: how much do you need to learn, and how quickly can you learn on your own? If it’s a lot, a bootcamp may really speed that up. One area where I think bootcamps can particularly shine is teaching you how to put a bunch of different tools/techniques together. You can also move here without a job. This requires a number of things, including: ample savings, US legal residency status, and not having children, so it won’t be an option for many people. However, if you are able to do it (i.e. a US permanent resident, coming from finance), it can be a good option. Searching for a job in tech can be a full-time job, as data science and engineering interviews require a lot of studying to prepare and many require time-intensive take-home challenges. In hindsight, I’ve often done rushed job searches when I was working full-time and job-searching, and that has lead me to a few sub-optimal decisions. You will certainly find plenty of ways to fill your time with studying for interviews, coding side projects, and attending workshops and study groups. Also, two things that surprised me when I switched to tech are how frequently people switch jobs, and how normal it is to take time off between jobs for learning new things or traveling (so there is less reason to worry about gaps in your resume, as long as you have good answers about what you were learning during that time). The huge caveat: I was unaware of how sexist, racist, ageist, transphobic, and morally bankrupt Bay Area tech is (despite its grandiose claims to be creating a better future) 5 years ago when I made my move. A few years later, I became so discouraged that I considered leaving the tech industry altogether. Tales of betrayal, callousness, and cruelty abound: for instance, someone I’m close to had his family medical emergencies exploited for profit by his coworkers, and many of my friends and loved ones have had similarly awful experiences. However, the community of passionate, fascinating people and access to cutting edge technology keeps me here, and given the choice, I’d choose to move here all over again. I currently feel very lucky with fast.ai to be working on the problems that I find most interesting and believe will have the greatest impact. Answers to miscellaneous related questions Do I need a masters or PhD to work in AI? I firmly believe the answer is NO, and I’m working to make that even more of a reality than it already is. In fact, AI PhDs are often not that well-positioned to tackle practical, relevant business problems, because that is not what their training is for. Academia is focused on advancing the theoretical bounds of the field, and is motivated by what can be published in top journals (very different from what will create a viable business!). Read more about fast.ai’s educational philosophy here and check out our free, online course Practical Deep Learning for Coders. Should I learn Ruby after learning Python? There’s no reason for an aspiring data scientist to learn Ruby. It’s similar enough to Python that it won’t teach you new concepts (the way learning a functional language or lower-level language would), and there is not much of a data science eco-system. Where can I find side projects that will interest employers? I think I can find random data sets online, but I guess employers do want to see how I handle a real situation? Don’t feel like your side project needs to be completely unique, or involve a unique or unusual data set. It’s fine to use a dataset you get from Kaggle for a side project. It’s fine if your project isn’t ground-breaking. When creating side projects, blog posts, or tutorials, think of your audience as the person who is one-step behind you, as they are the one who you are best positioned to help. You may be worried that a project or post wouldn’t be interesting to someone senior in the field, or that someone else may have done something similar. That’s fine! It’s good just to get your work out there. |
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Contents Animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms belonging to the biological kingdom Animalia (/ˌænɪˈmeɪliə/). With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Animals form a clade, meaning that they arose from a single common ancestor. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described, of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. Animal body lengths range from 8.5 μm (0.00033 in) to 33.6 m (110 ft). They have complex ecologies and interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The scientific study of animals is known as zoology, and the study of animal behaviour is known as ethology. The animal kingdom is divided into five major clades, namely Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa, Cnidaria and Bilateria. Most living animal species belong to the clade Bilateria, a highly proliferative clade whose members have a bilaterally symmetric and significantly cephalised body plan, and the vast majority of bilaterians belong to two large clades: the protostomes, which includes organisms such as arthropods, molluscs, flatworms, annelids and nematodes; and the deuterostomes, which include echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates, the latter of which contains the vertebrates. The much smaller basal phylum Xenacoelomorpha have an uncertain position within Bilateria. Animals first appeared in the fossil record in the late Cryogenian period and diversified in the subsequent Ediacaran period in what is known as the Avalon explosion. Nearly all modern animal phyla first appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, which began around 539 million years ago (Mya), and most classes during the Ordovician radiation 485.4 Mya. Common to all living animals, 6,331 groups of genes have been identified that may have arisen from a single common ancestor that lived about 650 Mya during the Cryogenian period. Historically, Aristotle divided animals into those with blood and those without. Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical biological classification for animals in 1758 with his Systema Naturae, which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck expanded into 14 phyla by 1809. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into the multicellular Metazoa (now synonymous with Animalia) and the Protozoa, single-celled organisms no longer considered animals. In modern times, the biological classification of animals relies on advanced techniques, such as molecular phylogenetics, which are effective at demonstrating the evolutionary relationships between taxa. Humans make use of many other animal species for food (including meat, eggs, and dairy products), for materials (such as leather, fur, and wool), as pets and as working animals for transportation, and services. Dogs, the first domesticated animal, have been used in hunting, in security and in warfare, as have horses, pigeons and birds of prey; while other terrestrial and aquatic animals are hunted for sports, trophies or profits. Non-human animals are also an important cultural element of human evolution, having appeared in cave arts and totems since the earliest times, and are frequently featured in mythology, religion, arts, literature, heraldry, politics, and sports. Etymology The word animal comes from the Latin noun animal of the same meaning, which is itself derived from Latin animalis 'having breath or soul'. The biological definition includes all members of the kingdom Animalia. In colloquial usage, the term animal is often used to refer only to nonhuman animals. The term metazoa is derived from Ancient Greek μετα meta 'after' (in biology, the prefix meta- stands for 'later') and ζῷᾰ zōia 'animals', plural of ζῷον zōion 'animal'. A metazoan is any member of the group Metazoa. Characteristics Animals have several characteristics that they share with other living things. Animals are eukaryotic, multicellular, and aerobic, as are plants and fungi. Unlike plants and algae, which produce their own food, animals cannot produce their own food, a feature they share with fungi. Animals ingest organic material and digest it internally. Animals have structural characteristics that set them apart from all other living things: Typically, there is an internal digestive chamber with either one opening (in Ctenophora, Cnidaria, and flatworms) or two openings (in most bilaterians). Animal development is controlled by Hox genes, which signal the times and places to develop structures such as body segments and limbs. During development, the animal extracellular matrix forms a relatively flexible framework upon which cells can move about and be reorganised into specialised tissues and organs, making the formation of complex structures possible, and allowing cells to be differentiated. The extracellular matrix may be calcified, forming structures such as shells, bones, and spicules. In contrast, the cells of other multicellular organisms (primarily algae, plants, and fungi) are held in place by cell walls, and so develop by progressive growth. Nearly all animals make use of some form of sexual reproduction. They produce haploid gametes by meiosis; the smaller, motile gametes are spermatozoa and the larger, non-motile gametes are ova. These fuse to form zygotes, which develop via mitosis into a hollow sphere, called a blastula. In sponges, blastula larvae swim to a new location, attach to the seabed, and develop into a new sponge. In most other groups, the blastula undergoes more complicated rearrangement. It first invaginates to form a gastrula with a digestive chamber and two separate germ layers, an external ectoderm and an internal endoderm. In most cases, a third germ layer, the mesoderm, also develops between them. These germ layers then differentiate to form tissues and organs. Repeated instances of mating with a close relative during sexual reproduction generally leads to inbreeding depression within a population due to the increased prevalence of harmful recessive traits. Animals have evolved numerous mechanisms for avoiding close inbreeding. Some animals are capable of asexual reproduction, which often results in a genetic clone of the parent. This may take place through fragmentation; budding, such as in Hydra and other cnidarians; or parthenogenesis, where fertile eggs are produced without mating, such as in aphids. Ecology Animals are categorised into ecological groups depending on their trophic levels and how they consume organic material. Such groupings include carnivores (further divided into subcategories such as piscivores, insectivores, ovivores, etc.), herbivores (subcategorised into folivores, graminivores, frugivores, granivores, nectarivores, algivores, etc.), omnivores, fungivores, scavengers/detritivores, and parasites. Interactions between animals of each biome form complex food webs within that ecosystem. In carnivorous or omnivorous species, predation is a consumer–resource interaction where the predator feeds on another organism, its prey, who often evolves anti-predator adaptations to avoid being fed upon. Selective pressures imposed on one another lead to an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, resulting in various antagonistic/competitive coevolutions. Almost all multicellular predators are animals. Some consumers use multiple methods; for example, in parasitoid wasps, the larvae feed on the hosts' living tissues, killing them in the process, but the adults primarily consume nectar from flowers. Other animals may have very specific feeding behaviours, such as hawksbill sea turtles which mainly eat sponges. Most animals rely on biomass and bioenergy produced by plants and phytoplanktons (collectively called producers) through photosynthesis. Herbivores, as primary consumers, eat the plant material directly to digest and absorb the nutrients, while carnivores and other animals on higher trophic levels indirectly acquire the nutrients by eating the herbivores or other animals that have eaten the herbivores. Animals oxidise carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and other biomolecules in cellular respiration, which allows the animal to grow and to sustain basal metabolism and fuel other biological processes such as locomotion. Some benthic animals living close to hydrothermal vents and cold seeps on the dark sea floor consume organic matter produced through chemosynthesis (via oxidising inorganic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide) by archaea and bacteria. Animals originated in the ocean; all extant animal phyla, except for Micrognathozoa and Onychophora, feature at least some marine species. However, several lineages of arthropods begun to colonise land around the same time as land plants, probably between 510 and 471 million years ago, during the Late Cambrian or Early Ordovician. Vertebrates such as the lobe-finned fish Tiktaalik started to move on to land in the late Devonian, about 375 million years ago. Other notable animal groups that colonized land environments are Mollusca, Platyhelmintha, Annelida, Tardigrada, Onychophora, Rotifera, Nematoda. Animals occupy virtually all of earth's habitats and microhabitats, with faunas adapted to salt water, hydrothermal vents, fresh water, hot springs, swamps, forests, pastures, deserts, air, and the interiors of other organisms. Animals are however not particularly heat tolerant; very few of them can survive at constant temperatures above 50 °C (122 °F) or in the most extreme cold deserts of continental Antarctica. The collective global geomorphic influence of animals on the processes shaping the Earth's surface remains largely understudied, with most studies limited to individual species and well-known exemplars. Diversity The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the largest animal that has ever lived, weighing up to 190 tonnes and measuring up to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long. The largest extant terrestrial animal is the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), weighing up to 12.25 tonnes and measuring up to 10.67 metres (35.0 ft) long. The largest terrestrial animals that ever lived were titanosaur sauropod dinosaurs such as Argentinosaurus, which may have weighed as much as 73 tonnes, and Supersaurus which may have reached 39 metres. Several animals are microscopic; some Myxozoa (obligate parasites within the Cnidaria) never grow larger than 20 μm, and one of the smallest species (Myxobolus shekel) is no more than 8.5 μm when fully grown. The following table lists estimated numbers of described extant species for the major animal phyla, along with their principal habitats (terrestrial, fresh water, and marine), and free-living or parasitic ways of life. Species estimates shown here are based on numbers described scientifically; much larger estimates have been calculated based on various means of prediction, and these can vary wildly. For instance, around 25,000–27,000 species of nematodes have been described, while published estimates of the total number of nematode species include 10,000–20,000; 500,000; 10 million; and 100 million. Using patterns within the taxonomic hierarchy, the total number of animal species—including those not yet described—was calculated to be about 7.77 million in 2011.[a] 3,000–6,500 4,000–25,000 Evolutionary origin Evidence of animals is found as long ago as the Cryogenian period. 24-Isopropylcholestane (24-ipc) has been found in rocks from roughly 650 million years ago; it is only produced by sponges and pelagophyte algae. Its likely origin is from sponges based on molecular clock estimates for the origin of 24-ipc production in both groups. Analyses of pelagophyte algae consistently recover a Phanerozoic origin, while analyses of sponges recover a Neoproterozoic origin, consistent with the appearance of 24-ipc in the fossil record. The first body fossils of animals appear in the Ediacaran, represented by forms such as Charnia and Spriggina. It had long been doubted whether these fossils truly represented animals, but the discovery of the animal lipid cholesterol in fossils of Dickinsonia establishes their nature. Animals are thought to have originated under low-oxygen conditions, suggesting that they were capable of living entirely by anaerobic respiration, but as they became specialised for aerobic metabolism they became fully dependent on oxygen in their environments. Many animal phyla first appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion, starting about 539 million years ago, in beds such as the Burgess Shale. Extant phyla in these rocks include molluscs, brachiopods, onychophorans, tardigrades, arthropods, echinoderms and hemichordates, along with numerous now-extinct forms such as the predatory Anomalocaris. The apparent suddenness of the event may however be an artefact of the fossil record, rather than showing that all these animals appeared simultaneously. That view is supported by the discovery of Auroralumina attenboroughii, the earliest known Ediacaran crown-group cnidarian (557–562 mya, some 20 million years before the Cambrian explosion) from Charnwood Forest, England. It is thought to be one of the earliest predators, catching small prey with its nematocysts as modern cnidarians do. Some palaeontologists have suggested that animals appeared much earlier than the Cambrian explosion, possibly as early as 1 billion years ago. Early fossils that might represent animals appear for example in the 665-million-year-old rocks of the Trezona Formation of South Australia. These fossils are interpreted as most probably being early sponges. Trace fossils such as tracks and burrows found in the Tonian period (from 1 gya) may indicate the presence of triploblastic worm-like animals, roughly as large (about 5 mm wide) and complex as earthworms. However, similar tracks are produced by the giant single-celled protist Gromia sphaerica, so the Tonian trace fossils may not indicate early animal evolution. Around the same time, the layered mats of microorganisms called stromatolites decreased in diversity, perhaps due to grazing by newly evolved animals. Objects such as sediment-filled tubes that resemble trace fossils of the burrows of wormlike animals have been found in 1.2 gya rocks in North America, in 1.5 gya rocks in Australia and North America, and in 1.7 gya rocks in Australia. Their interpretation as having an animal origin is disputed, as they might be water-escape or other structures. Phylogeny Animals are monophyletic, meaning they are derived from a common ancestor. Animals are the sister group to the choanoflagellates, with which they form the Choanozoa. Ros-Rocher and colleagues (2021) trace the origins of animals to unicellular ancestors, providing the external phylogeny shown in the cladogram. Uncertainty of relationships is indicated with dashed lines. The animal clade had certainly originated by 650 mya, and may have come into being as much as 800 mya, based on molecular clock evidence for different phyla. Holomycota (inc. fungi) Ichthyosporea Pluriformea Filasterea The relationships at the base of the animal tree have been debated. Other than Ctenophora, the Bilateria and Cnidaria are the only groups with symmetry, and other evidence shows they are closely related. In addition to sponges, Placozoa has no symmetry and was often considered a "missing link" between protists and multicellular animals. The presence of hox genes in Placozoa shows that they were once more complex. The Porifera (sponges) have long been assumed to be sister to the rest of the animals, but there is evidence that the Ctenophora may be in that position. Molecular phylogenetics has supported both the sponge-sister and ctenophore-sister hypotheses. In 2017, Roberto Feuda and colleagues, using amino acid differences, presented both, with the following cladogram for the sponge-sister view that they supported (their ctenophore-sister tree simply interchanging the places of ctenophores and sponges): Porifera Ctenophora Placozoa Cnidaria Bilateria Conversely, a 2023 study by Darrin Schultz and colleagues uses ancient gene linkages to construct the following ctenophore-sister phylogeny: Ctenophora Porifera Placozoa Cnidaria Bilateria Sponges are physically very distinct from other animals, and were long thought to have diverged first, representing the oldest animal phylum and forming a sister clade to all other animals. Despite their morphological dissimilarity with all other animals, genetic evidence suggests sponges may be more closely related to other animals than the comb jellies are. Sponges lack the complex organisation found in most other animal phyla; their cells are differentiated, but in most cases not organised into distinct tissues, unlike all other animals. They typically feed by drawing in water through pores, filtering out small particles of food. The Ctenophora and Cnidaria are radially symmetric and have digestive chambers with a single opening, which serves as both mouth and anus. Animals in both phyla have distinct tissues, but these are not organised into discrete organs. They are diploblastic, having only two main germ layers, ectoderm and endoderm. The tiny placozoans have no permanent digestive chamber and no symmetry; they superficially resemble amoebae. Their phylogeny is poorly defined, and under active research. The remaining animals, the great majority—comprising some 29 phyla and over a million species—form the Bilateria clade, which have a bilaterally symmetric body plan. The Bilateria are triploblastic, with three well-developed germ layers, and their tissues form distinct organs. The digestive chamber has two openings, a mouth and an anus, and in the Nephrozoa there is an internal body cavity, a coelom or pseudocoelom. These animals have a head end (anterior) and a tail end (posterior), a back (dorsal) surface and a belly (ventral) surface, and a left and a right side. A modern consensus phylogenetic tree for the Bilateria is shown below. Xenacoelomorpha Ambulacraria Chordata Ecdysozoa Spiralia Having a front end means that this part of the body encounters stimuli, such as food, favouring cephalisation, the development of a head with sense organs and a mouth. Many bilaterians have a combination of circular muscles that constrict the body, making it longer, and an opposing set of longitudinal muscles, that shorten the body; these enable soft-bodied animals with a hydrostatic skeleton to move by peristalsis. They also have a gut that extends through the basically cylindrical body from mouth to anus. Many bilaterian phyla have primary larvae which swim with cilia and have an apical organ containing sensory cells. However, over evolutionary time, descendant spaces have evolved which have lost one or more of each of these characteristics. For example, adult echinoderms are radially symmetric (unlike their larvae), while some parasitic worms have extremely simplified body structures. Genetic studies have considerably changed zoologists' understanding of the relationships within the Bilateria. Most appear to belong to two major lineages, the protostomes and the deuterostomes. It is often suggested that the basalmost bilaterians are the Xenacoelomorpha, with all other bilaterians belonging to the subclade Nephrozoa. However, this suggestion has been contested, with other studies finding that xenacoelomorphs are more closely related to Ambulacraria than to other bilaterians. Protostomes and deuterostomes differ in several ways. Early in development, deuterostome embryos undergo radial cleavage during cell division, while many protostomes (the Spiralia) undergo spiral cleavage. Animals from both groups possess a complete digestive tract, but in protostomes the first opening of the embryonic gut develops into the mouth, and the anus forms secondarily. In deuterostomes, the anus forms first while the mouth develops secondarily. Most protostomes have schizocoelous development, where cells simply fill in the interior of the gastrula to form the mesoderm. In deuterostomes, the mesoderm forms by enterocoelic pouching, through invagination of the endoderm. The main deuterostome taxa are the Ambulacraria and the Chordata. Ambulacraria are exclusively marine and include acorn worms, starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. The chordates are dominated by the vertebrates (animals with backbones), which consist of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The protostomes include the Ecdysozoa, named after their shared trait of ecdysis, growth by moulting, Among the largest ecdysozoan phyla are the arthropods and the nematodes. The rest of the protostomes are in the Spiralia, named for their pattern of developing by spiral cleavage in the early embryo. Major spiralian phyla include the annelids and molluscs. History of classification In the classical era, Aristotle divided animals,[d] based on his own observations, into those with blood (roughly, the vertebrates) and those without. The animals were then arranged on a scale from man (with blood, two legs, rational soul) down through the live-bearing tetrapods (with blood, four legs, sensitive soul) and other groups such as crustaceans (no blood, many legs, sensitive soul) down to spontaneously generating creatures like sponges (no blood, no legs, vegetable soul). Aristotle was uncertain whether sponges were animals, which in his system ought to have sensation, appetite, and locomotion, or plants, which did not: he knew that sponges could sense touch and would contract if about to be pulled off their rocks, but that they were rooted like plants and never moved about. In 1758, Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical classification in his Systema Naturae. In his original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then, the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, the Chordata, while his Insecta (which included the crustaceans and arachnids) and Vermes have been renamed or broken up. The process was begun in 1793 by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, who called the Vermes une espèce de chaos ('a chaotic mess')[e] and split the group into three new phyla: worms, echinoderms, and polyps (which contained corals and jellyfish). By 1809, in his Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck had created nine phyla apart from vertebrates (where he still had four phyla: mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish) and molluscs, namely cirripedes, annelids, crustaceans, arachnids, insects, worms, radiates, polyps, and infusorians. In his 1817 Le Règne Animal, Georges Cuvier used comparative anatomy to group the animals into four embranchements ('branches' with different body plans, roughly corresponding to phyla), namely vertebrates, molluscs, articulated animals (arthropods and annelids), and zoophytes (radiata) (echinoderms, cnidaria and other forms). This division into four was followed by the embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer in 1828, the zoologist Louis Agassiz in 1857, and the comparative anatomist Richard Owen in 1860. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms: Metazoa (multicellular animals, with five phyla: coelenterates, echinoderms, articulates, molluscs, and vertebrates) and Protozoa (single-celled animals), including a sixth animal phylum, sponges. The protozoa were later moved to the former kingdom Protista, leaving only the Metazoa as a synonym of Animalia. In human culture The human population exploits a large number of other animal species for food, both of domesticated livestock species in animal husbandry and, mainly at sea, by hunting wild species. Marine fish of many species are caught commercially for food. A smaller number of species are farmed commercially. Humans and their livestock make up more than 90% of the biomass of all terrestrial vertebrates, and almost as much as all insects combined. Invertebrates including cephalopods, crustaceans, insects—principally bees and silkworms—and bivalve or gastropod molluscs are hunted or farmed for food, fibres. Chickens, cattle, sheep, pigs, and other animals are raised as livestock for meat across the world. Animal fibres such as wool and silk are used to make textiles, while animal sinews have been used as lashings and bindings, and leather is widely used to make shoes and other items. Animals have been hunted and farmed for their fur to make items such as coats and hats. Dyestuffs including carmine (cochineal), shellac, and kermes have been made from the bodies of insects. Working animals including cattle and horses have been used for work and transport from the first days of agriculture. Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serve a major role in science as experimental models. Animals have been used to create vaccines since their discovery in the 18th century. Some medicines such as the cancer drug trabectedin are based on toxins or other molecules of animal origin. People have used hunting dogs to help chase down and retrieve animals, and birds of prey to catch birds and mammals, while tethered cormorants have been used to catch fish. Poison dart frogs have been used to poison the tips of blowpipe darts. A wide variety of animals are kept as pets, from invertebrates such as tarantulas, octopuses, and praying mantises, reptiles such as snakes and chameleons, and birds including canaries, parakeets, and parrots all finding a place. However, the most kept pet species are mammals, namely dogs, cats, and rabbits. There is a tension between the role of animals as companions to humans, and their existence as individuals with rights of their own. A wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic animals are hunted for sport. The signs of the Western and Chinese zodiacs are based on animals. In China and Japan, the butterfly has been seen as the personification of a person's soul, and in classical representation the butterfly is also the symbol of the soul. Animals have been the subjects of art from the earliest times, both historical, as in ancient Egypt, and prehistoric, as in the cave paintings at Lascaux. Major animal paintings include Albrecht Dürer's 1515 The Rhinoceros, and George Stubbs's c. 1762 horse portrait Whistlejacket. Insects, birds and mammals play roles in literature and film, such as in giant bug movies. Animals including insects and mammals feature in mythology and religion. The scarab beetle was sacred in ancient Egypt, and the cow is sacred in Hinduism. Among other mammals, deer, horses, lions, bats, bears, and wolves are the subjects of myths and worship. See also Notes References External links |
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Contents Orion (constellation) Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century AD/CE astronomer Ptolemy. It is named after a hunter in Greek mythology. Orion is most prominent during winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, as are five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism. Orion's two brightest stars, Rigel (β) and Betelgeuse (α), are both among the brightest stars in the night sky; both are supergiants and slightly variable. There are a further six stars brighter than magnitude 3.0, including three making the short straight line of the Orion's Belt asterism. Orion also hosts the radiant of the annual Orionids, the strongest meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet, and the Orion Nebula, one of the brightest nebulae in the sky. Characteristics Orion is bordered by Taurus to the northwest, Eridanus to the southwest, Lepus to the south, Monoceros to the east, and Gemini to the northeast. Covering 594 square degrees, Orion ranks 26th of the 88 constellations in size. The constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 26 sides. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 04h 43.3m and 06h 25.5m , while the declination coordinates are between 22.87° and −10.97°. The constellation's three-letter abbreviation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Ori". Orion is most visible in the evening sky from January to April, winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. In the tropics (less than about 8° from the equator), the constellation transits at the zenith. From May to July (summer in the Northern Hemisphere, winter in the Southern Hemisphere), Orion is in the daytime sky and thus invisible at most latitudes. However, for much of Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere's winter months, the Sun is below the horizon even at midday. Stars (and thus Orion, but only the brightest stars) are then visible at twilight for a few hours around local noon, just in the brightest section of the sky low in the North where the Sun is just below the horizon. At the same time of day at the South Pole itself (Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station), Rigel is only 8° above the horizon, and the Belt sweeps just along it. In the Southern Hemisphere's summer months, when Orion is normally visible in the night sky, the constellation is actually not visible in Antarctica because the Sun does not set at that time of year south of the Antarctic Circle. In countries close to the equator (e.g. Kenya, Indonesia, Colombia, Ecuador), Orion appears overhead in December around midnight and in the February evening sky. Navigational aid Orion is very useful as an aid to locating other stars. By extending the line of the Belt southeastward, Sirius (α CMa) can be found; northwestward, Aldebaran (α Tau). A line eastward across the two shoulders indicates the direction of Procyon (α CMi). A line from Rigel through Betelgeuse points to Castor and Pollux (α Gem and β Gem). Additionally, Rigel is part of the Winter Circle asterism. Sirius and Procyon, which may be located from Orion by following imaginary lines (see map), also are points in both the Winter Triangle and the Circle. Features Orion's seven brightest stars form a distinctive hourglass-shaped asterism, or pattern, in the night sky. Four stars—Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Saiph—form a large roughly rectangular shape, at the center of which lie the three stars of Orion's Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. His head is marked by an additional eighth star called Meissa, which is fairly bright to the observer. Descending from the Belt is a smaller line of three stars, Orion's Sword (the middle of which is in fact not a star but the Orion Nebula), also known as the hunter's sword. Many of the stars are luminous hot blue supergiants, with the stars of the Belt and Sword forming the Orion OB1 association. Standing out by its red hue, Betelgeuse may nevertheless be a runaway member of the same group. Orion's Belt, or The Belt of Orion, is an asterism within the constellation. It consists of three bright stars: Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis), and Mintaka (Delta Orionis). Alnitak is around 800 light-years away from Earth, 100,000 times more luminous than the Sun, and shines with a magnitude of 1.8; much of its radiation is in the ultraviolet range, which the human eye cannot see. Alnilam is approximately 2,000 light-years from Earth, shines with a magnitude of 1.70, and with an ultraviolet light that is 375,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Mintaka is 915 light-years away and shines with a magnitude of 2.21. It is 90,000 times more luminous than the Sun and is a double star: the two orbit each other every 5.73 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, Orion's Belt is best visible in the night sky during the month of January at around 9:00 pm, when it is approximately around the local meridian. Just southwest of Alnitak lies Sigma Orionis, a multiple star system composed of five stars that have a combined apparent magnitude of 3.7 and lying at a distance of 1150 light-years. Southwest of Mintaka lies the quadruple star Eta Orionis. Orion's Sword contains the Orion Nebula, the Messier 43 nebula, Sh 2-279 (also known as the Running Man Nebula), and the stars Theta Orionis, Iota Orionis, and 42 Orionis. Three stars comprise a small triangle that marks the head. The apex is marked by Meissa (Lambda Orionis), a hot blue giant of spectral type O8 III and apparent magnitude 3.54, which lies some 1100 light-years distant. Phi-1 and Phi-2 Orionis make up the base. Also nearby is the young star FU Orionis. Stretching north from Betelgeuse are the stars that make up Orion's club. Mu Orionis marks the elbow, Nu and Xi mark the handle of the club, and Chi1 and Chi2 mark the end of the club. Just east of Chi1 is the Mira-type variable red giant star U Orionis. West from Bellatrix lie six stars all designated Pi Orionis (π1 Ori, π2 Ori, π3 Ori, π4 Ori, π5 Ori, and π6 Ori) which make up Orion's shield. Around 20 October each year, the Orionid meteor shower (Orionids) reaches its peak. Coming from the border with the constellation Gemini, as many as 20 meteors per hour can be seen. The shower's parent body is Halley's Comet. Hanging from Orion's Belt is his sword, consisting of the multiple stars θ1 and θ2 Orionis, called the Trapezium and the Orion Nebula (M42). This is a spectacular object that can be clearly identified with the naked eye as something other than a star. Using binoculars, its clouds of nascent stars, luminous gas, and dust can be observed. The Trapezium cluster has many newborn stars, including several brown dwarfs, all of which are at an approximate distance of 1,500 light-years. Named for the four bright stars that form a trapezoid, it is largely illuminated by the brightest stars, which are only a few hundred thousand years old. Observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory show both the extreme temperatures of the main stars—up to 60,000 kelvins—and the star forming regions still extant in the surrounding nebula. M78 (NGC 2068) is a nebula in Orion. With an overall magnitude of 8.0, it is significantly dimmer than the Great Orion Nebula that lies to its south; however, it is at approximately the same distance, at 1600 light-years from Earth. It can easily be mistaken for a comet in the eyepiece of a telescope. M78 is associated with the variable star V351 Orionis, whose magnitude changes are visible in very short periods of time. Another fairly bright nebula in Orion is NGC 1999, also close to the Great Orion Nebula. It has an integrated magnitude of 10.5 and is 1500 light-years from Earth. The variable star V380 Orionis is embedded in NGC 1999. Another famous nebula is IC 434, the Horsehead Nebula, near Alnitak (Zeta Orionis). It contains a dark dust cloud whose shape gives the nebula its name. NGC 2174 is an emission nebula located 6400 light-years from Earth. Besides these nebulae, surveying Orion with a small telescope will reveal a wealth of interesting deep-sky objects, including M43, M78, and multiple stars including Iota Orionis and Sigma Orionis. A larger telescope may reveal objects such as the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), as well as fainter and tighter multiple stars and nebulae. Barnard's Loop can be seen on very dark nights or using long-exposure photography. All of these nebulae are part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which is located approximately 1,500 light-years away and is hundreds of light-years across. Due to its proximity, it is one of the most intense regions of stellar formation visible from Earth. The Orion molecular cloud complex forms the eastern part of an even larger structure, the Orion–Eridanus Superbubble, which is visible in X-rays and in hydrogen emissions. History and mythology The distinctive pattern of Orion is recognized in numerous cultures around the world, and many myths are associated with it. Orion is used as a symbol in the modern world. In Siberia, the Chukchi people see Orion as a hunter; an arrow he has shot is represented by Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), with the same figure as other Western depictions. In Greek mythology, Orion was a gigantic, supernaturally strong hunter, born to Euryale, a Gorgon, and Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea. One myth recounts Gaia's rage at Orion, who dared to say that he would kill every animal on Earth. The angry goddess tried to dispatch Orion with a scorpion. This is given as the reason that the constellations of Scorpius and Orion are never in the sky at the same time. However, Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, revived Orion with an antidote. This is said to be the reason that the constellation of Ophiuchus stands midway between the Scorpion and the Hunter in the sky. The constellation is mentioned in Horace's Odes (Ode 3.27.18), Homer's Odyssey (Book 5, line 283) and Iliad, and Virgil's Aeneid (Book 1, line 535). In old Hungarian tradition, Orion is known as "Archer" (Íjász), or "Reaper" (Kaszás). In recently rediscovered myths, he is called Nimrod (Hungarian: Nimród), the greatest hunter, father of the twins Hunor and Magor. The π and o stars (on upper right) form together the reflex bow or the lifted scythe. In other Hungarian traditions, Orion's Belt is known as "Judge's stick" (Bírópálca). In Ireland and Scotland, Orion was called An Bodach, a figure from Irish folklore whose name literally means "the one with a penis [bod]" and was the husband of the Cailleach (hag). In Scandinavian tradition, Orion's Belt was known as "Frigg's Distaff" (friggerock) or "Freyja's distaff". The Finns call Orion's Belt and the stars below it "Väinämöinen's scythe" (Väinämöisen viikate). Another name for the asterism of Alnilam, Alnitak, and Mintaka is "Väinämöinen's Belt" (Väinämöisen vyö) and the stars "hanging" from the Belt as "Kaleva's sword" (Kalevanmiekka). There are claims in popular media that the Adorant from the Geißenklösterle cave, an ivory carving estimated to be 35,000 to 40,000 years old, is the first known depiction of the constellation. Scholars dismiss such interpretations, saying that perceived details such as a belt and sword derive from preexisting features in the grain structure of the ivory. The Babylonian star catalogues of the Late Bronze Age name Orion MULSIPA.ZI.AN.NA,[note 1] "The Heavenly Shepherd" or "True Shepherd of Anu" – Anu being the chief god of the heavenly realms. The Babylonian constellation is sacred to Papshukal and Ninshubur, both minor gods fulfilling the role of "messenger to the gods". Papshukal is closely associated with the figure of a walking bird on Babylonian boundary stones, and on the star map the figure of the Rooster is located below and behind the figure of the True Shepherd—both constellations represent the herald of the gods, in his bird and human forms respectively. In ancient Egypt, the stars of Orion were regarded as a god, called Sah. Because Orion rises before Sirius, the star whose heliacal rising was the basis for the Solar Egyptian calendar, Sah was closely linked with Sopdet, the goddess who personified Sirius. The god Sopdu is said to be the son of Sah and Sopdet. Sah is syncretized with Osiris, while Sopdet is syncretized with Osiris' mythological wife, Isis. In the Pyramid Texts, from the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, Sah is one of many gods whose form the dead pharaoh is said to take in the afterlife. The Armenians identified their legendary patriarch and founder Hayk with Orion. Hayk is also the name of the Orion constellation in the Armenian translation of the Bible. The Bible mentions Orion three times, naming it "Kesil" (כסיל, literally – fool). Though, this name perhaps is etymologically connected with "Kislev", the name for the ninth month of the Hebrew calendar (i.e. November–December), which, in turn, may derive from the Hebrew root K-S-L as in the words "kesel, kisla" (כֵּסֶל, כִּסְלָה, hope, positiveness), i.e. hope for winter rains.: Job 9:9 ("He is the maker of the Bear and Orion"), Job 38:31 ("Can you loosen Orion's belt?"), and Amos 5:8 ("He who made the Pleiades and Orion"). In ancient Aram, the constellation was known as Nephîlā′, the Nephilim are said to be Orion's descendants. In medieval Muslim astronomy, Orion was known as al-jabbar, "the giant". Orion's sixth brightest star, Saiph, is named from the Arabic, saif al-jabbar, meaning "sword of the giant". In China, Orion was one of the 28 lunar mansions Sieu (Xiù) (宿). It is known as Shen (參), literally meaning "three", for the stars of Orion's Belt. The Chinese character 參 (pinyin shēn) originally meant the constellation Orion (Chinese: 參宿; pinyin: shēnxiù); its Shang dynasty version, over three millennia old, contains at the top a representation of the three stars of Orion's Belt atop a man's head (the bottom portion representing the sound of the word was added later). The Rigveda refers to the constellation as Mriga (the Deer). Nataraja, "the cosmic dancer", is often interpreted as the representation of Orion. Rudra, the Rigvedic form of Shiva, is the presiding deity of Ardra nakshatra (Betelgeuse) of Hindu astrology. The Jain Symbol carved in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, India in 1st century BCE has a striking resemblance with Orion. Bugis sailors identified the three stars in Orion's Belt as tanra tellué, meaning "sign of three". The Seri people of northwestern Mexico call the three stars in Orion's Belt Hapj (a name denoting a hunter) which consists of three stars: Hap (mule deer), Haamoja (pronghorn), and Mojet (bighorn sheep). Hap is in the middle and has been shot by the hunter; its blood has dripped onto Tiburón Island. The same three stars are known in Spain and most of Latin America as "Las tres Marías" (Spanish for "The Three Marys"). In Puerto Rico, the three stars are known as the "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (Spanish for The Three Wise Men). The Ojibwa/Chippewa Native Americans call this constellation Mesabi for Big Man. To the Lakota Native Americans, Tayamnicankhu (Orion's Belt) is the spine of a bison. The great rectangle of Orion is the bison's ribs; the Pleiades star cluster in nearby Taurus is the bison's head; and Sirius in Canis Major, known as Tayamnisinte, is its tail. Another Lakota myth mentions that the bottom half of Orion, the Constellation of the Hand, represented the arm of a chief that was ripped off by the Thunder People as a punishment from the gods for his selfishness. His daughter offered to marry the person who can retrieve his arm from the sky, so the young warrior Fallen Star (whose father was a star and whose mother was human) returned his arm and married his daughter, symbolizing harmony between the gods and humanity with the help of the younger generation. The index finger is represented by Rigel; the Orion Nebula is the thumb; the Belt of Orion is the wrist; and the star Beta Eridani is the pinky finger. The seven primary stars of Orion make up the Polynesian constellation Heiheionakeiki which represents a child's string figure similar to a cat's cradle. Several precolonial Filipinos referred to the belt region in particular as "balatik" (ballista) as it resembles a trap of the same name which fires arrows by itself and is usually used for catching pigs from the bush. Spanish colonization later led to some ethnic groups referring to Orion's Belt as "Tres Marias" or "Tatlong Maria." In Māori tradition, the star Rigel (known as Puanga or Puaka) is closely connected with the celebration of Matariki. The rising of Matariki (the Pleiades) and Rigel before sunrise in midwinter marks the start of the Māori year. In Javanese culture, the constellation is often called Lintang Waluku or Bintang Bajak, referring to the shape of a paddy field plow. The imagery of the Belt and Sword has found its way into popular Western culture, for example in the form of the shoulder insignia of the 27th Infantry Division of the United States Army during both World Wars, probably owing to a pun on the name of the division's first commander, Major General John F. O'Ryan. The film distribution company Orion Pictures used the constellation as its logo. In artistic renderings, the surrounding constellations are sometimes related to Orion: he is depicted standing next to the river Eridanus with his two hunting dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor, fighting Taurus. He is sometimes depicted hunting Lepus the hare. He sometimes is depicted to have a lion's hide in his hand. There are alternative ways to visualise Orion. From the Southern Hemisphere, Orion is oriented south-upward, and the Belt and Sword are sometimes called the saucepan or pot in Australia and New Zealand. Orion's Belt is called Drie Konings (Three Kings) or the Drie Susters (Three Sisters) by Afrikaans speakers in South Africa and are referred to as les Trois Rois (the Three Kings) in Daudet's Lettres de Mon Moulin (1866). The appellation Driekoningen (the Three Kings) is also often found in 17th and 18th-century Dutch star charts and seaman's guides. The same three stars are known in Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines as "Las Tres Marías" (The Three Marys), and as "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (The Three Wise Men) in Puerto Rico. Even traditional depictions of Orion have varied greatly. Cicero drew Orion in a similar fashion to the modern depiction. The Hunter held an unidentified animal skin aloft in his right hand; his hand was represented by Omicron2 Orionis and the skin was represented by the five stars designated Pi Orionis. Saiph and Rigel represented his left and right knees, while Eta Orionis and Lambda Leporis were his left and right feet, respectively. As in the modern depiction, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak represented his Belt. His left shoulder was represented by Betelgeuse, and Mu Orionis made up his left arm. Meissa was his head, and Bellatrix his right shoulder. The depiction of Hyginus was similar to that of Cicero, though the two differed in a few important areas. Cicero's animal skin became Hyginus's shield (Omicron and Pi Orionis), and instead of an arm marked out by Mu Orionis, he holds a club (Chi Orionis). His right leg is represented by Theta Orionis and his left leg is represented by Lambda, Mu, and Epsilon Leporis. Further Western European and Arabic depictions have followed these two models. Future Orion is located on the celestial equator, but it will not always be so located due to the effects of precession of the Earth's axis. Orion lies well south of the ecliptic, and it only happens to lie on the celestial equator because the point on the ecliptic that corresponds to the June solstice is close to the border of Gemini and Taurus, to the north of Orion. Precession will eventually carry Orion further south, and by AD 14000, Orion will be far enough south that it will no longer be visible from the latitude of Great Britain. Further in the future, Orion's stars will gradually move away from the constellation due to proper motion. However, Orion's brightest stars all lie at a large distance from Earth on an astronomical scale—much farther away than Sirius, for example. Orion will still be recognizable long after most of the other constellations—composed of relatively nearby stars—have distorted into new configurations, with the exception of a few of its stars eventually exploding as supernovae, for example Betelgeuse, which is predicted to explode sometime in the next million years. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/newsletters/] | [TOKENS: 261] |
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[SOURCE: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto#bodyContent] | [TOKENS: 969] |
תוכן עניינים Grand Theft Auto Grand Theft Auto (בתרגום חופשי לעברית: "גניבת כלי רכב", מוכרת גם בראשי התיבות GTA) הוא זיכיון משחקי וידאו מסוגת פעולה והרפתקה שמפותח על ידי חברת "Rockstar Games". הזיכיון נוצר על ידי דייוויד ג'ונס ומייק דאילי כחלק מחברת "DMA Design" הבריטית. משחקיות הסדרה כוללת עיצוב עולם פתוח המאפשר לשחקן לשוטט בערים שונות בעולם תוך השלמת משימות כדי להתקדם בעלילה, לצד מגוון משימות-צד אופציונליות. עלילות משחקי הסדרה מתמקדות בפושעים שונים ומתרחשות בגרסה סאטירית של ארצות הברית תוך פרודיה על התרבות שלה. שם הסדרה נובע מהמינוח המשטרתי האמריקאי לגניבת כלי רכב. בהתאם לשמה, משחקי הסדרה מאפשרים לשחקן לבצע שלל עבירות כאשר גנבת מכוניות היא רק אחת מהן. כיוון שהסדרה כולה מציבה דגש משמעותי על ביצוע פשעים ואף מציגה אלימות מציאותית, הזיכיון זכה להסתייגויות וביקורת שלילית רבה. הדבר פתח דיון מעמיק באשר להשפעת משחקי ווידאו אלימים על אלימות נוער, אך העמדה הנפוצה במחקר גורסת ששימוש במשחקי מחשב אלימים אינו קשור לעלייה בהתנהגויות אלימות. משחקי הסדרה המשחק הראשון בסדרה עם מנוע גוף ראשון, בנוסף לגוף שלישי. ראו גם קישורים חיצוניים הערות שוליים |
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[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/creators/] | [TOKENS: 1524] |
Everything you need to create and manage a channel. Tips & tricks to find, nurture, and build an audience. Explore all ways you can get paid on YouTube. Tools to help you create, connect, and grow. Get the explanations behind the rules. How we support, recognize, and celebrate Creators. Make money while recommending products you love with YouTube Shopping. How it works Everything you need to create on YouTube No matter what kind of information, advice, or help youâre looking for, this is the spot. Creators are earning with shopping â join them Learn how to set up YouTube Shopping and start earning. How things work Everything you need to create and manage a channel. Tips & tricks to find, nurture, and build an audience. Explore all ways you can get paid on YouTube. Tools to help you create, connect, and grow. How we support, recognize, and celebrate Creators. Get the explanations behind the rules. Top questions Creators have questions and weâve got answers. We compiled the most common questions we get with answers, plus links to helpful how tos and help center articles. So you can get all the info you need, fast. There are a few ways to get started on YouTube. We offer up different formats and functionalities, giving you the flexibility to create everything from Shorts, which are vertical videos that run 60 seconds or less, to longer form videos. No matter what youâre creating, youâll need to start by creating a YouTube Channel. Next, youâll want to upload your videos! Growing your channel is all about creating videos viewers want to watch and accurately presenting them to the audience. When doing so, hereâs a few tips to keep in mind. With each video, think carefully about the title, description, and thumbnail you plan to use - these should all accurately reflect your content and let viewers know what they can expect from the video. If youâre a Shorts creator, think about how the first 1-2 seconds of your content can grab viewers scrolling through the video feed! Once youâve got viewers watching, you can redirect their attention via hashtags, playlists, cards, end screens, and more. YouTube Studio is your home base for posting videos and making edits to your channel. To update your channelâs basic info like name, profile picture, and banner, just log in and tap âCustomisationâ to see your options. You can also make changes to your channel using the Studio Mobile app. You can tap âYour Channelâ and then âEdit Channelâ to update and edit how your channel looks to your viewers. Note that you can only change your channelâs name three times every 90 days. Read more about managing your channel Promoting your videos is all about getting the word out there. On YouTube, you can use tools like cards, end screens, Stories, and Community Posts to drive viewers to a specific piece of content! Off-platform, think about promoting your videos on your socials and relevant communities, podcasts, or platforms that align with your content and your intended audience. Read more about promoting your videos Our search and discovery systems are built to find videos that match viewersâ individual interests. We recommend videos based on things such as: what your audience watches and doesnât watch, how much time they spend watching, what they like and dislike, if they mark a video as ânot interestedâ, and on satisfaction surveys. So, rather than trying trying to find a secret code to these systems, focus instead on making videos that you think will resonate with your audience. A great tool here is YouTube Analytics, which provides data that can help you understand how your existing content is performing and provide insights for future videos! There are a few ways to get started on YouTube. We offer up different formats and functionalities, giving you the flexibility to create everything from Shorts, which are vertical videos that run 60 seconds or less, to longer form videos. No matter what youâre creating, youâll need to start by creating a YouTube Channel. Next, youâll want to upload your videos! Growing your channel is all about creating videos viewers want to watch and accurately presenting them to the audience. When doing so, hereâs a few tips to keep in mind. With each video, think carefully about the title, description, and thumbnail you plan to use - these should all accurately reflect your content and let viewers know what they can expect from the video. If youâre a Shorts creator, think about how the first 1-2 seconds of your content can grab viewers scrolling through the video feed! Once youâve got viewers watching, you can redirect their attention via hashtags, playlists, cards, end screens, and more. YouTube Studio is your home base for posting videos and making edits to your channel. To update your channelâs basic info like name, profile picture, and banner, just log in and tap âCustomisationâ to see your options. You can also make changes to your channel using the Studio Mobile app. You can tap âYour Channelâ and then âEdit Channelâ to update and edit how your channel looks to your viewers. Note that you can only change your channelâs name three times every 90 days. Read more about managing your channel Promoting your videos is all about getting the word out there. On YouTube, you can use tools like cards, end screens, Stories, and Community Posts to drive viewers to a specific piece of content! Off-platform, think about promoting your videos on your socials and relevant communities, podcasts, or platforms that align with your content and your intended audience. Read more about promoting your videos Our search and discovery systems are built to find videos that match viewersâ individual interests. We recommend videos based on things such as: what your audience watches and doesnât watch, how much time they spend watching, what they like and dislike, if they mark a video as ânot interestedâ, and on satisfaction surveys. So, rather than trying trying to find a secret code to these systems, focus instead on making videos that you think will resonate with your audience. A great tool here is YouTube Analytics, which provides data that can help you understand how your existing content is performing and provide insights for future videos! Resources From getting started to improving your channelâs performance, these resources help you continue to learn and grow. Updates, news, and education from experts and Creators. YouTube Creators Channel If you have a problem, weâre here to help you solve it. Fix upload problems, troubleshoot account issues, and more. Get the breakdown on topics most important to Creators. Help Center The place to ask questions and provide feedback. Community Forum Ask questions, find answers, and understand more about YouTube via our social channels and email. The latest tools, tips, and inspiration for Creators like you. @YouTubeCreators Real-time answers. Available in: English, Español, Português, Deutsch, Français, PÑÑÑкий, æ¥æ¬èª, and Bahasa Indonesia. @TeamYouTube Get the latest information and resources in your inbox. YouTube Emails |
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[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/about/] | [TOKENS: 46] |
About YouTube Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories. |
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[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms] | [TOKENS: 3737] |
Terms of Service What’s in these terms? This index is designed to help you understand some of the key updates we’ve made to our Terms of Service (Terms). We hope this serves as a useful guide, but please ensure you read the Terms in full. Welcome to YouTube! This section outlines our relationship with you. It includes a description of the Service, defines our Agreement, and names your service provider. Who May Use the Service? This section sets out certain requirements for use of the Service, and defines categories of users. Your Use of the Service This section explains your rights to use the Service, and the conditions that apply to your use of the Service. It also explains how we may make changes to the Service. Your Content and Conduct This section applies to users who provide Content to the Service. It defines the scope of the permissions that you grant by uploading your Content, and includes your agreement not to upload anything that infringes on anyone else’s rights. Account Suspension and Termination This section explains how you and YouTube may terminate this relationship. About Software in the Service This section includes details about software on the Service. Other Legal Terms This section includes our service commitment to you. It also explains that there are some things we will not be responsible for. About this Agreement This section includes some further important details about our contract, including what to expect if we need to make changes to these Terms; or which law applies to them. Terms of Service Dated: January 5, 2022 TERMS OF SERVICE Welcome to YouTube! Introduction Thank you for using the YouTube platform and the products, services and features we make available to you as part of the platform (collectively, the “Service”). Our Service The Service allows you to discover, watch and share videos and other content, provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe, and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. We provide lots of information about our products and how to use them in our Help Center. Amongst other things, you can find out about YouTube Kids, the YouTube Partner Program and YouTube Paid Memberships and Purchases. You can also read all about enjoying content on other devices like your television, your games console, or even Google Home. Your Service Provider The entity providing the Service is Google LLC, a company operating under the laws of Delaware, located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 (referred to as “YouTube”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). References to YouTube’s “Affiliates” in these terms means the other companies within the Alphabet Inc. corporate group. Applicable Terms Your use of the Service is subject to these terms, the YouTube Community Guidelines and the Policy, Safety and Copyright Policies (together, the "Agreement"). Your Agreement with us will also include the Advertising on YouTube Policies if you provide advertising or sponsorships to the Service or incorporate paid promotions in your Content. Please read this Agreement carefully and make sure you understand it. If you do not understand the Agreement, or do not accept any part of it, then you may not use the Service. Who may use the Service? Age Requirements You may use the Service if you are at least 13 years old; however, children of all ages may use the Service and YouTube Kids (where available) if enabled by a parent or legal guardian. Permission by Parent or Guardian If you are under 18, you must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to use the Service. Please have them read this Agreement with you. If you are a parent or legal guardian of a user under the age of 18, by allowing your child to use the Service, you are subject to the terms of this Agreement and responsible for your child’s activity on the Service. You can find tools and resources to help you manage your family’s experience on YouTube (including how to enable a child under the age of 13 to use the Service and YouTube Kids) in our Help Center and through Google’s Family Link. Businesses If you are using the Service on behalf of a company or organisation, you confirm to us that you have authority to act on behalf of that entity, and that entity accepts this Agreement. Your Use of the Service Content on the Service The content on the Service includes videos, audio (for example music and other sounds), graphics, photos, text (such as comments and scripts), branding (including trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos), interactive features, software, metrics, and other materials whether provided by you, YouTube or a third party (collectively, "Content”). Content may be provided to the Service and distributed by our users and YouTube is a provider of hosting services for such Content. Content is the responsibility of the person or entity that provides it to the Service. If you see any Content you believe does not comply with this Agreement, such as by violating the Community Guidelines or the law, you can report it to us. Google Accounts and YouTube Channels You can use parts of the Service, such as browsing and searching for Content, without having a Google account. However, you do need a Google account to use some features. With a Google account, you may be able to like videos, subscribe to channels, create your own YouTube channel, and more. You can follow these instructions to create a Google account. Creating a YouTube channel will give you access to additional features and functions, such as uploading videos, making comments or creating playlists. Here are some details about how to create your own YouTube channel. To protect your Google account, keep your password confidential. You should not reuse your Google account password on third-party applications. Learn more about keeping your Google account secure, including what to do if you learn of any unauthorised use of your password or Google account. Your Information Our Privacy Policy explains how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy when you use the Service. The YouTube Kids Privacy Notice provides additional information about our privacy practices that are specific to YouTube Kids. We will process any audio or audiovisual content uploaded by you to the Service in accordance with the YouTube Data Processing Terms, except in cases where you uploaded such content for personal purposes or household activities. Learn More. Permissions and Restrictions You may access and use the Service as made available to you, as long as you comply with this Agreement and the law. You may view or listen to Content for your personal, non-commercial use. You may also show YouTube videos through the embeddable YouTube player. The following restrictions apply to your use of the Service. You are not allowed to: Reservation Any right not expressly granted to you in this Agreement remains the right of YouTube or the respective rights holders. This means, for example, that using the Service does not give you ownership of any intellectual property rights in the Content you access (including any branding used on or displayed in the Service). Develop, Improve and Update the Service YouTube is constantly changing and improving the Service. As part of this continual evolution, we may make modifications (to all or part of the Service) such as adding or removing features and functionalities, offering new digital content or services or discontinuing old ones.We may also need to alter or discontinue the Service, or any part of it, in order to make performance or security improvements, make changes to comply with law, or prevent illegal activities on or abuse of our systems. These changes may affect all users, some users or even an individual user. When the Service requires or includes downloadable software (such as the YouTube Studio application), that software may update automatically on your device once a new version or feature is available, subject to your device settings. If we make material changes that negatively impact your use of the Service, we’ll provide you with reasonable advance notice, except in urgent situations such as preventing abuse, responding to legal requirements, or addressing security and operability issues. We’ll also provide you with an opportunity to export your content from your Google Account using Google Takeout, subject to applicable law and policies. Your Content and Conduct Uploading Content If you have a YouTube channel, you may be able to upload Content to the Service. You may use your Content to promote your business or artistic enterprise. If you choose to upload Content, you must not submit to the Service any Content that does not comply with this Agreement or the law. For example, the Content you submit must not include third-party intellectual property (such as copyrighted material) unless you have permission from that party or are otherwise legally entitled to do so. You are legally responsible for the Content you submit to the Service. We may use automated systems that analyze your Content to help detect infringement and abuse, such as spam, malware, and illegal content. Rights you Grant You retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours. However, we do require you to grant certain rights to YouTube and other users of the Service, as described below. Licence to YouTube By providing Content to the Service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable licence to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, modify, display and perform it) for the purpose of operating, promoting, and improving the Service. Licence to Other Users You also grant each other user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to access your Content through the Service, and to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, modify, display, and perform it) only as enabled by a feature of the Service. Duration of Licence The licences granted by you continue until the Content is removed as described below. Once removed, the licences will terminate, except where the operation of the Service, use of Content permitted before your removal, or the law requires otherwise. For example, removal of Content by you does not require YouTube to: (a) recall Content that is being used by other users within any limited offline viewing functionality of the Service; or (b) delete copies we reasonably need to keep for legal purposes. Right to Monetize You grant to YouTube the right to monetize your Content on the Service (and such monetization may include displaying ads on or within Content or charging users a fee for access). This Agreement does not entitle you to any payments. Starting June 1, 2021, any payments you may be entitled to receive from YouTube under any other agreement between you and YouTube (including for example payments under the YouTube Partner Program, Channel memberships or Super Chat) will be treated as royalties. If required by law, Google will withhold taxes from such payments. Removing Your Content You may remove your Content from the Service at any time. You also have the option to make a copy of your Content before removing it. You must remove your Content if you no longer have the rights required by these terms. Removal of Content By YouTube If we reasonably believe that any of your Content (1) is in breach of this Agreement or (2) may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we reserve the right to remove or take down some or all of such Content. We will notify you with the reason for our action unless we reasonably believe that to do so: (a) would violate the law or the direction of a legal enforcement authority, or would otherwise risk legal liability for YouTube or our Affiliates; (b) would compromise an investigation or the integrity or operation of the Service; or (c) would cause harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates. You can learn more about reporting and enforcement, including how to appeal on the Troubleshooting page of our Help Center. Community Guidelines Strikes YouTube operates a system of “strikes” in respect of Content that violates the YouTube Community Guidelines. Each strike comes with varying restrictions and may result in the permanent removal of your channel from YouTube. A full description of how a strike affects your channel is available on the Community Guidelines Strikes Basics page. If you believe that a strike has been issued in error, you may appeal here. If your channel has been restricted due to a strike, you must not use another channel to circumvent these restrictions. Violation of this prohibition is a material breach of this Agreement and Google reserves the right to terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service. Copyright Protection We provide information to help copyright holders manage their intellectual property online in our YouTube Copyright Center. If you believe your copyright has been infringed on the Service, please send us a notice. We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement according to the process in our YouTube Copyright Center, where you can also find information about how to resolve a copyright strike. YouTube's policies provide for the termination, in appropriate circumstances, of repeat infringers’ access to the Service. Account Suspension and Termination Terminations by You You may stop using the Service at any time. You can also delete the Service from your Google Account, which involves closing your YouTube channel and removing your data, with the option to download a copy of your data first. Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube YouTube reserves the right to suspend or terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service if: (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or (c) we reasonably believe that there has been conduct that creates liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates. Notice for Termination or Suspension We will notify you with the reason for termination or suspension by YouTube unless we reasonably believe that to do so: (a) would violate the law or the direction of a legal enforcement authority; (b) would compromise an investigation; (c) would compromise the integrity, operation or security of the Service; or (d) would cause harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates. Effect of Account Suspension or Termination If your Google account is terminated or your access to the Service is restricted, you may continue using certain aspects of the Service (such as viewing only) without an account, and this Agreement will continue to apply to such use. If you believe that the termination or suspension has been made in error, you can appeal using this form. About Software in the Service Downloadable Software When the Service requires or includes downloadable software (such as the YouTube Studio application), unless that software is governed by additional terms which provide a licence, YouTube gives you a personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive licence to use the software provided to you by YouTube as part of the Service. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the Service as provided by YouTube, in the manner permitted by this Agreement. You are not allowed to copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of the software, or to reverse-engineer or attempt to extract the source code of that software, unless laws prohibit these restrictions or you have YouTube’s written permission. Open Source Some software used in our Service may be offered under an open source licence that we make available to you. There may be provisions in an open source license that expressly override some of these terms, so please be sure to read those licenses. Other Legal Terms Warranty We provide the Service with reasonable care and skill. Disclaimer By law, consumers have certain rights that cannot be excluded or altered by a contract. Nothing in this Agreement affects those rights you may have as a consumer. Other than as expressly stated in this Agreement or as required by law, YouTube does not make any specific promises about the Service. For example, we don’t make any promises about: the Content provided through the Service; the specific features of the Service, or its accuracy, reliability, availability, or ability to meet your needs; or that any Content you submit will be accessible or stored on the Service. Limitation of Liability All users: Nothing in this Agreement is intended to exclude or limit any party’s liability for: death or personal injury; fraud; fraudulent misrepresentation; or any liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law. To the extent permitted by applicable law, YouTube and its Affiliates will not be responsible for: Business Users only: If you are using the Service for the purpose of your trade, business, craft or profession, (a “Business User”), to the extent permitted by applicable law, the following limitations of liability will also apply: Third-Party Links The Service may contain links to third-party websites and online services that are not owned or controlled by YouTube. YouTube has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, such websites and online services. Be aware when you leave the Service; we suggest you read the terms and privacy policy of each third-party website and online service that you visit. About this Agreement Changing this Agreement We may change this Agreement, for example, to reflect changes to our Service or how we do business - for example, when we add new products or features or remove old ones, (2) for legal, regulatory, or security reasons, or (3) to prevent abuse or harm. If we materially change this Agreement, we’ll provide you with reasonable advance notice and the opportunity to review the changes, except (1) when we launch a new product or feature, or (2) in urgent situations, such as preventing ongoing abuse or responding to legal requirements. If you don’t agree to the new terms, you should remove any Content you uploaded and stop using the Service. Continuation of this Agreement If your use of the Service ends, the following terms of this Agreement will continue to apply to you: “Other Legal Terms”, “About This Agreement”, and the licenses granted by you will continue in limited cases as described under “Duration of License”. Severance If it turns out that a particular term of this Agreement is not enforceable for any reason, this will not affect any other terms. Assignment YouTube may transfer all or part of this Agreement to an Affiliate or, if YouTube is sold, to a third party. No Waiver If you do not comply with this Agreement and we do not take action immediately, this doesn’t mean that we are giving up any rights that we may have (such as the right to take action in the future). Governing Law This Agreement, and your relationship with YouTube under this Agreement, will be governed by Israeli Law, and legal disputes may be brought in the competent courts of Israel. |
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[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/ads/] | [TOKENS: 1143] |
Grow your business with YouTube ads Reach potential customers where they're watching. Get more eyes on your channel and results for your business Reach your customers â and find new ones Foodies down the block. Fashionistas across the country. Reach your customers in more places online while theyâre searching, browsing or watching. YouTube connects you to the people who matter most to your business. You know [how] you say that a picture is worth a thousand words? Video is worth a million. Njord Rota, Owner, Majestic Heli Ski Reach your customers â and find new ones Foodies down the block. Fashionistas across the country. Reach your customers in more places online while theyâre searching, browsing or watching. YouTube connects you to the people who matter most to your business. Njord Rota, Owner, Majestic Heli Ski Show up when it counts Turn viewers into customers, on any budget. YouTube ads use Google data to match your message to the right people at the right moment. We were able to precisely reach people when it was the most relevant to them. Kim Thompson,Spark Foundry Show up when it counts Turn viewers into customers, on any budget. YouTube ads use Google data to match your message to the right people at the right moment. Kim Thompson,Spark Foundry See the results that you want YouTube Ads make it easy for people to choose your business. Get more purchases, subscribers, website visits and more. We have nearly doubled our sales each year since we started advertising on YouTube. Stephanie Syberg,Owner and Developer Tulane's Closet See the results that you want YouTube Ads make it easy for people to choose your business. Get more purchases, subscribers, website visits and more. Stephanie Syberg,Owner and Developer Tulane's Closet Reach your customers â and find new ones Foodies down the block. Fashionistas across the country. Reach your customers in more places online while theyâre searching, browsing or watching. YouTube connects you to the people who matter most to your business. You know [how] you say that a picture is worth a thousand words? Video is worth a million. Njord Rota, Owner, Majestic Heli Ski Reach your customers â and find new ones Foodies down the block. Fashionistas across the country. Reach your customers in more places online while theyâre searching, browsing or watching. YouTube connects you to the people who matter most to your business. Njord Rota, Owner, Majestic Heli Ski Show up when it counts Turn viewers into customers, on any budget. YouTube ads use Google data to match your message to the right people at the right moment. We were able to precisely reach people when it was the most relevant to them. Kim Thompson,Spark Foundry Show up when it counts Turn viewers into customers, on any budget. YouTube ads use Google data to match your message to the right people at the right moment. Kim Thompson,Spark Foundry See the results that you want YouTube Ads make it easy for people to choose your business. Get more purchases, subscribers, website visits and more. We have nearly doubled our sales each year since we started advertising on YouTube. Stephanie Syberg,Owner and Developer Tulane's Closet See the results that you want YouTube Ads make it easy for people to choose your business. Get more purchases, subscribers, website visits and more. Stephanie Syberg,Owner and Developer Tulane's Closet 2X Viewers say that they're 2x more likely to buy something that they saw on YouTube.1 70% Over 70% of viewers say that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands.2 4X Viewers are 4x more likely to use YouTube versus other platforms to find information about a brand, product or service.3 Viewers say that they're 2x more likely to buy something that they saw on YouTube.1 Over 70% of viewers say that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands.2 Viewers are 4x more likely to use YouTube versus other platforms to find information about a brand, product or service.3 Everything that you need to make a great ad Anyone can make a YouTube ad that gets results. Create a video directly on your phone, use our free tools and resources or find the perfect partner to help. Learn more Everything that you need to make a great ad Anyone can make a YouTube ad that gets results. Create a video directly on your phone, use our free tools and resources or find the perfect partner to help. Get started with YouTube Ads Start now 1 Versus the competitive average. Source: Google/Talkshoppe, US, whyVideo study, n=2000, ages 18â64, general population video users, Feb 2020. 2,3 Source: Google/Talkshoppe, US, whyVideo study, n=2000, ages 18â64, general population video users, Feb 2020. Get started with YouTube Ads 1 Versus the competitive average. Source: Google/Talkshoppe, US, whyVideo study, n=2000, ages 18â64, general population video users, Feb 2020. 2,3 Source: Google/Talkshoppe, US, whyVideo study, n=2000, ages 18â64, general population video users, Feb 2020. In the below terms, "Google Ads" may mean Google Ads or Google Ads Express, as appropriate. Full terms and conditions can be found here |
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[SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/] | [TOKENS: 1253] |
r/news 📰 📰 Texas man was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last year during a stop, new records show u/CaligulaEmperor • Texas man was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last year during a stop, new records show https://apnews.com/article/texas-ice-shooting-ruben-ray-martinez-death-646df2f1212fa48d14a9b270f04c3f76 Federal statement on Jeffrey Epstein's death dated day before he was found dead u/ICC-u • Federal statement on Jeffrey Epstein's death dated day before he was found dead https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/statement-jeffrey-epstein-death-day-before-b1270109.html CIA retracts intel reports that agency says failed to meet standards for political bias u/WeirdGroundhog • CIA retracts intel reports that agency says failed to meet standards for political bias https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/20/politics/cia-retracts-intel-reports-ratcliffe 📰 Anyone can view, post, and comment to this community Community Bookmarks r/news Rules Submissions must be articles about a specific news event A story that does not properly report a story, or is not noteworthy, or is not in English. 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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews#bodyContent] | [TOKENS: 15852] |
Contents Jews Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים, ISO 259-2: Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation: [jehuˈdim]), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, as Judaism is an ethnic religion, though many ethnic Jews do not practice it. Religious Jews regard converts to Judaism as members of the Jewish nation, pursuant to the long-standing conversion process. The Israelites emerged from the pre-existing Canaanite peoples to establish Israel and Judah in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Originally, Jews referred to the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah and were distinguished from the gentiles and the Samaritans. According to the Hebrew Bible, these inhabitants predominately originate from the tribe of Judah, who were descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The tribe of Benjamin were another significant demographic in Judah and were considered Jews too. By the late 6th century BCE, Judaism had evolved from the Israelite religion, dubbed Yahwism (for Yahweh) by modern scholars, having a theology that religious Jews believe to be the expression of the Mosaic covenant between God and the Jewish people. After the Babylonian exile, Jews referred to followers of Judaism, descendants of the Israelites, citizens of Judea, or allies of the Judean state. Jewish migration within the Mediterranean region during the Hellenistic period, followed by population transfers, caused by events like the Jewish–Roman wars, gave rise to the Jewish diaspora, consisting of diverse Jewish communities that maintained their sense of Jewish history, identity, and culture. In the following millennia, Jewish diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (Central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardim (Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa). While these three major divisions account for most of the world's Jews, there are other smaller Jewish groups outside of the three. Prior to World War II, the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million, representing around 0.7% of the world's population at that time. During World War II, approximately six million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in a genocide known as the Holocaust. Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and as of 2021[update], was estimated to be at 15.2 million by the demographer Sergio Della Pergola or less than 0.2% of the total world population in 2012.[b] Today, over 85% of Jews live in Israel or the United States. Israel, whose population is 73.9% Jewish, is the only country where Jews comprise more than 2.5% of the population. Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development and growth of human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including in science and technology, philosophy, ethics, literature, governance, business, art, music, comedy, theatre, cinema, architecture, food, medicine, and religion. Jews founded Christianity and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam. In these ways and others, Jews have played a significant role in the development of Western culture. Name and etymology The term "Jew" is derived from the Hebrew word יְהוּדִי Yehudi, with the plural יְהוּדִים Yehudim. Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino ג׳ודיו Djudio (plural ג׳ודיוס, Djudios) and the Yiddish ייִד Yid (plural ייִדן Yidn). Though Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect "Judah" with the verb yada, meaning "praise", scholars generally agree that "Judah" most likely derives from the name of a Levantine geographic region dominated by gorges and ravines. The gradual ethnonymic shift from "Israelites" to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah, although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of the Tanakh. Some modern scholars disagree with the conflation, based on the works of Josephus, Philo and Apostle Paul. The English word "Jew" is a derivation of Middle English Gyw, Iewe. The latter was loaned from the Old French giu, which itself evolved from the earlier juieu, which in turn derived from judieu/iudieu which through elision had dropped the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus, which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios, meant both "Jew" and "Judean" / "of Judea". The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic *yahūdāy, corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi. Some scholars prefer translating Ioudaios as "Judean" in the Bible since it is more precise, denotes the community's origins and prevents readers from engaging in antisemitic eisegesis. Others disagree, believing that it erases the Jewish identity of Biblical characters such as Jesus. Daniel R. Schwartz distinguishes "Judean" and "Jew". Here, "Judean" refers to the inhabitants of Judea, which encompassed southern Palestine. Meanwhile, "Jew" refers to the descendants of Israelites that adhere to Judaism. Converts are included in the definition. But Shaye J.D. Cohen argues that "Judean" is inclusive of believers of the Judean God and allies of the Judean state. Another scholar, Jodi Magness, wrote the term Ioudaioi refers to a "people of Judahite/Judean ancestry who worshipped the God of Israel as their national deity and (at least nominally) lived according to his laws." The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic, "Jude" in German, "judeu" in Portuguese, "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French, "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian, "judío/a" in Spanish, "jood" in Dutch, "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian (Ebreo), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" (Persian: عبری/عبرانی)) and Russian (Еврей, Yevrey). The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə], the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish". According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000), It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on the council, which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun. Identity Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used.[better source needed] Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion. In the context of biblical and classical literature, Jews could refer to inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, or the broader Judean region, allies of the Judean state, or anyone that followed Judaism. Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, which forbade intermarriage between their Israelite ancestors and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that [i.e. giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,] would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods"[failed verification] – are used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. Leviticus 24:10 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10:2–3, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged. According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, the status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures (Kil'ayim). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey, and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally. Second, the Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law, which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother. Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system. Origins The prehistory and ethnogenesis of the Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, historical textual records, mythology, and religious literature. The ethnic origin of the Jews lie in the Israelites, a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes that inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. Modern Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah. Gary A. Rendsburg links the early Canaanite nomadic pastoralists confederation to the Shasu known to the Egyptians around the 15th century BCE. According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish history begins with the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, who lived in Canaan. The twelve sons of Jacob subsequently gave birth to the Twelve Tribes. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. Jacob's descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus, led by Moses. Afterwards, the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua, and went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua. Through the mediation of Samuel, the Israelites were subject to a king, Saul, who was succeeded by David and then Solomon, after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and partially, Levi. They later assimilated remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the northern Kingdom of Israel. In the extra-biblical record, the Israelites become visible as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE. There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to about 1200 BCE, and in the Mesha stele from 840 BCE. It is debated whether a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred and if there ever was a United Monarchy. There is further disagreement about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. Historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by c. 900 BCE,: 169–95 there is a consensus that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE at least, and recent excavations in Khirbet Qeiyafa have provided strong evidence for dating the Kingdom of Judah to the 10th century BCE. In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and deported parts of the Judahite population. Scholars disagree regarding the extent to which the Bible should be accepted as a historical source for early Israelite history. Rendsburg states that there are two approximately equal groups of scholars who debate the historicity of the biblical narrative, the minimalists who largely reject it, and the maximalists who largely accept it, with the minimalists being the more vocal of the two. Some of the leading minimalists reframe the biblical account as constituting the Israelites' inspiring national myth narrative, suggesting that according to the modern archaeological and historical account, the Israelites and their culture did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh, one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group, setting them apart from other Canaanites. According to Dever, modern archaeologists have largely discarded the search for evidence of the biblical narrative surrounding the patriarchs and the exodus. According to the maximalist position, the modern archaeological record independently points to a narrative which largely agrees with the biblical account. This narrative provides a testimony of the Israelites as a nomadic people known to the Egyptians as belonging to the Shasu. Over time these nomads left the desert and settled on the central mountain range of the land of Canaan, in simple semi-nomadic settlements in which pig bones are notably absent. This population gradually shifted from a tribal lifestyle to a monarchy. While the archaeological record of the ninth century BCE provides evidence for two monarchies, one in the south under a dynasty founded by a figure named David with its capital in Jerusalem, and one in the north under a dynasty founded by a figure named Omri with its capital in Samaria. It also points to an early monarchic period in which these regions shared material culture and religion, suggesting a common origin. Archaeological finds also provide evidence for the later cooperation of these two kingdoms in their coalition against Aram, and for their destructions by the Assyrians and later by the Babylonians. Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent. The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin. Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language. History The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1200 BCE. The majority of scholars agree that this text refers to the Israelites, a group that inhabited the central highlands of Canaan, where archaeological evidence shows that hundreds of small settlements were constructed between the 12th and 10th centuries BCE. The Israelites differentiated themselves from neighboring peoples through various distinct characteristics including religious practices, prohibition on intermarriage, and an emphasis on genealogy and family history. In the 10th century BCE, two neighboring Israelite kingdoms—the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah—emerged. Since their inception, they shared ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious characteristics despite a complicated relationship. Israel, with its capital mostly in Samaria, was larger and wealthier, and soon developed into a regional power. In contrast, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, was less prosperous and covered a smaller, mostly mountainous territory. However, while in Israel the royal succession was often decided by a military coup d'état, resulting in several dynasty changes, political stability in Judah was much greater, as it was ruled by the House of David for the whole four centuries of its existence. Scholars also describe Biblical Jews as a 'proto-nation', in the modern nationalist sense, comparable to classical Greeks, the Gauls and the British Celts. Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, now under Assyrian vassalage, experienced a period of prosperity and witnessed a significant population growth. This prosperity continued until the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib devastated the region of Judah in response to a rebellion in the area, ultimately halting at Jerusalem. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon. According to the Book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple circa 521–516 BCE. As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah (Yehud Medinata), with a smaller territory and a reduced population. Judea was under control of the Achaemenids until the fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great. After several centuries under foreign imperial rule, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire resulted in an independent Hasmonean kingdom, under which the Jews once again enjoyed political independence for a period spanning from 110 to 63 BCE. Under Hasmonean rule the boundaries of their kingdom were expanded to include not only the land of the historical kingdom of Judah, but also the Galilee and Transjordan. In the beginning of this process the Idumeans, who had infiltrated southern Judea after the destruction of the First Temple, were converted en masse. In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered by the Romans. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Romans allowed the Jews to maintain some degree of independence by installing the Herodian dynasty as vassal kings. However, Judea eventually came directly under Roman control and was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea. The Jewish–Roman wars, a series of failed uprisings against Roman rule during the first and second centuries CE, had profound and devastating consequences for the Jewish population of Judaea. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73/74 CE) culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, after which the significantly diminished Jewish population was stripped of political autonomy. A few generations later, the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) erupted in response to Roman plans to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman colony, and, possibly, to restrictions on circumcision. Its violent suppression by the Romans led to the near-total depopulation of Judea, and the demographic and cultural center of Jewish life shifted to Galilee. Jews were subsequently banned from residing in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, and the province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina. These developments effectively ended Jewish efforts to restore political sovereignty in the region for nearly two millennia. Similar upheavals impacted the Jewish communities in the empire's eastern provinces during the Diaspora Revolt (115–117 CE), leading to the near-total destruction of Jewish diaspora communities in Libya, Cyprus and Egypt, including the highly influential community in Alexandria. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE brought profound changes to Judaism. With the Temple's central place in Jewish worship gone, religious practices shifted towards prayer, Torah study (including Oral Torah), and communal gatherings in synagogues. Judaism also lost much of its sectarian nature.: 69 Two of the three main sects that flourished during the late Second Temple period, namely the Sadducees and Essenes, eventually disappeared, while Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis of Rabbinic Judaism, which emerged as the prevailing form of Judaism since late antiquity. The Jewish diaspora existed well before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and had been ongoing for centuries, with the dispersal driven by both forced expulsions and voluntary migrations. In Mesopotamia, a testimony to the beginnings of the Jewish community can be found in Joachin's ration tablets, listing provisions allotted to the exiled Judean king and his family by Nebuchadnezzar II, and further evidence are the Al-Yahudu tablets, dated to the 6th–5th centuries BCE and related to the exiles from Judea arriving after the destruction of the First Temple, though there is ample evidence for the presence of Jews in Babylonia even from 626 BCE. In Egypt, the documents from Elephantine reveal the trials of a community founded by a Persian Jewish garrison at two fortresses on the frontier during the 5th–4th centuries BCE, and according to Josephus the Jewish community in Alexandria existed since the founding of the city in the 4th century BCE by Alexander the Great. By 200 BCE, there were well established Jewish communities both in Egypt and Mesopotamia ("Babylonia" in Jewish sources) and in the two centuries that followed, Jewish populations were also present in Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, Cyrene, and, beginning in the middle of the first century BCE, in the city of Rome. Later, in the first centuries CE, as a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars, a large number of Jews were taken as captives, sold into slavery, or compelled to flee from the regions affected by the wars, contributing to the formation and expansion of Jewish communities across the Roman Empire as well as in Arabia and Mesopotamia. After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish population in Judaea—now significantly reduced— made efforts to recover from the revolt's devastating effects, but never fully regained its former strength. Between the second and fourth centuries CE, the region of Galilee emerged as the primary center of Jewish life in Syria Palaestina, experiencing both demographic growth and cultural development. It was during this period that two central rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, were composed. The Romans recognized the patriarchs—rabbinic sages such as Judah ha-Nasi—as representatives of the Jewish people, granting them a certain degree of autonomy. However, as the Roman Empire gave way to the Christianized Byzantine Empire under Constantine, Jews began to face persecution by both the Church and imperial authorities, Jews came to be persecuted by the church and the authorities, and many immigrated to communities in the diaspora. By the fourth century CE, Jews are believed to have lost their demographic majority in Syria Palaestina. The long-established Jewish community of Mesopotamia, which had been living under Parthian and later Sasanian rule, beyond the confines of the Roman Empire, became an important center of Jewish study as Judea's Jewish population declined. Estimates often place the Babylonian Jewish community of the 3rd to 7th centuries at around one million, making it the largest Jewish diaspora community of that period. Under the political leadership of the exilarch, who was regarded as a royal heir of the House of David, this community had an autonomous status and served as a place of refuge for the Jews of Syria Palaestina. A number of significant Talmudic academies, such as the Nehardea, Pumbedita, and Sura academies, were established in Mesopotamia, and many important Amoraim were active there. The Babylonian Talmud, a centerpiece of Jewish religious law, was compiled in Babylonia in the 3rd to 6th centuries. Jewish diaspora communities are generally described to have coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim (initially in the Rhineland and France), the Sephardim (initially in the Iberian Peninsula), and the Mizrahim (Middle East and North Africa). Romaniote Jews, Tunisian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Egyptian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Mountain Jews, and other groups also predated the arrival of the Sephardic diaspora. During the same period, Jewish communities in the Middle East thrived under Islamic rule, especially in cities like Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus. In Babylonia, from the 7th to 11th centuries the Pumbedita and Sura academies led the Arab and to an extent the entire Jewish world. The deans and students of said academies defined the Geonic period in Jewish history. Following this period were the Rishonim who lived from the 11th to 15th centuries. Like their European counterparts, Jews in the Middle East and North Africa also faced periods of persecution and discriminatory policies, with the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa and Iberia issuing forced conversion decrees, causing Jews such as Maimonides to seek safety in other regions. Despite experiencing repeated waves of persecution, Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe worked in a variety of fields, making an impact on their communities' economy and societies. In Francia, for example, figures like Isaac Judaeus and Armentarius occupied prominent social and economic positions. Francia also witnessed the development of a sophisticated tradition of biblical commentary, as exemplified by Rashi and the tosafists. In 1144, the first documented blood libel occurred in Norwich, England, marking an escalation in the pattern of discrimination and violence that Jews had already been subjected to throughout medieval Europe. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Jews faced frequent antisemitic legislation - including laws prescribing distinctive dress - alongside segregation, repeated blood libels, pogroms, and massacres such as the Rhineland Massacres (1066). The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire were designated Servi camerae regis (“servants of the imperial chamber”) by Frederick II, a status that afforded limited protection while simultaneously entangling them in the political struggles between the emperor and the German principalities and cities. Persecution intensified during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when Jews were accused of poisoning wells and many communities were destroyed. These pressures, combined with major expulsions such as that from England in 1290, gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewish populations eastward into Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. One of the largest Jewish communities of the Middle Ages was in the Iberian Peninsula, which for a time contained the largest Jewish population in Europe. Iberian Jewry endured discrimination under the Visigoths but saw its fortunes improve under Umayyad rule and later the Taifa kingdoms. During this period, the Jews of Muslim Spain entered a "Golden Age" marked by achievements in Hebrew poetry and literature, religious scholarship, grammar, medicine and science, with leading figures including Hasdai ibn Shaprut, Judah Halevi, Moses ibn Ezra and Solomon ibn Gabirol. Jews also rose to high office, most notably Samuel ibn Naghrillah, a scholar and poet who served as grand vizier and military commander of Granada. The Golden Age ended with the rise of the radical Almoravid and Almohad dynasties, whose persecutions drove many Jews from Iberia (including Maimonides), together with the advancing Reconquista. In 1391, widespread pogroms swept across Spain, leaving thousands dead and forcing mass conversions. The Spanish Inquisition was later established to pursue, torture and execute conversos who continued to practice Judaism in secret, while public disputations were staged to discredit Judaism. In 1492, after the Reconquista, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon decreed the expulsion of all Jews who refused conversion, sending an estimated 200,000 into exile in Portugal, Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. In 1497, Portugal's Jews, about 30,000, were formally ordered expelled but instead were forcibly converted to retain their economic role. In 1498, some 3,500 Jews were expelled from Navarre. Many converts outwardly adopted Christianity while secretly preserving Jewish practices, becoming crypto-Jews (also known as marranos or anusim), who remained targets of the various Inquisitions for centuries. Following the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, Jewish exiles dispersed across the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa. Many settled in the Ottoman Empire—which, replacing the Iberian Peninsula, became home to the world's largest Jewish population—where new communities developed in Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Land of Israel. Cities such as Istanbul and Thessaloniki grew into major Jewish centers, while in 16th-century Safed a flourishing spiritual life took shape. There, Solomon Alkabetz, Moses Cordovero, and Isaac Luria developed influential new schools of Kabbalah, giving powerful impetus to Jewish mysticism, and Joseph Karo composed the Shulchan Aruch, which became a cornerstone of Jewish law. In the 17th century, Portuguese conversos who returned to Judaism and engaged in trade and banking helped establish Amsterdam as a prosperous Jewish center, while also forming communities in cities such as Antwerp and London. This period also witnessed waves of messianic fervor, most notably the rise of the Sabbatean movement in the 1660s, led by Sabbatai Zvi of İzmir, which reverberated throughout the Jewish world. In Eastern Europe, Poland–Lithuania became the principal center of Ashkenazi Jewry, eventually becoming home to the largest Jewish population in the world. Jewish life flourished there from in the early modern era, supported by relative stability, economic opportunity, and strong communal institutions. The mid-17th century brought devastation with the Cossack uprisings in Ukraine, which reversed migration flows and sent refugees westward, yet Poland–Lithuania remained the demographic and cultural heartland of Ashkenazic Jewry. Following the partitions of Poland, most of its Jews came under Russian rule and were confined to the "Pale of Settlement." The 18th century also witnessed new religious and intellectual currents. Hasidism, founded by Baal Shem Tov, emphasized mysticism and piety, while its opponents, the Misnagdim ("opponents") led by the Vilna Gaon, defended rabbinic scholarship and tradition. In Western Europe, during the 1760s and 1770s, the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) emerged in German-speaking lands, where figures such as Moses Mendelssohn promoted secular learning, vernacular literacy, and integration into European society. Elsewhere, Jews began to be re-admitted to Western Europe, including England, where Menasseh ben Israel petitioned Oliver Cromwell for their return. In the Americas, Jews of Sephardic descent first arrived as conversos in Spanish and Portuguese colonies, where many faced trial by Inquisition tribunals for "judaizing." A more durable presence began in Dutch Brazil, where Jews openly practiced their religion and established the first synagogues in the New World, before the Portuguese reconquest forced their dispersal to Amsterdam, the Caribbean, and North America. Sephardic communities took root in Curaçao, Suriname, Jamaica, and Barbados, later joined by Ashkenazi migrants. In North America, Jews were present from the mid-17th century, with New Amsterdam hosting the first organized congregation in 1654. By the time of the American Revolution, small communities in New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Savannah, and Charleston played an active role in the struggle for independence. In the late 19th century, Jews in Western Europe gradually achieved legal emancipation, though social acceptance remained limited by persistent antisemitism and rising nationalism. In Eastern Europe, particularly within the Russian Empire's Pale of Settlement, Jews faced mounting legal restrictions and recurring pogroms. From this environment emerged Zionism, a national revival movement originating in Central and Eastern Europe that sought to re-establish a Jewish polity in the Land of Israel as a means of returning the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland and ending centuries of exile and persecution. This led to waves of Jewish migration to Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Theodor Herzl, who is considered the father of political Zionism, offered his vision of a future Jewish state in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State); a year later, he presided over the First Zionist Congress. The antisemitism that inflicted Jewish communities in Europe also triggered a mass exodus of 2.8 million Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1924. Despite this, some Jews of Europe and the United States were able to make great achievements in various fields of science and culture. Among the most influential from this period are Albert Einstein in physics, Sigmund Freud in psychology, Franz Kafka in literature, and Irving Berlin in music. Many Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, the situation for Jews deteriorated rapidly as a direct result of Nazi policies. Many Jews fled from Europe to Mandatory Palestine, the United States, and the Soviet Union as a result of racial anti-Semitic laws, economic difficulties, and the fear of an impending war. World War II started in 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied almost all of Europe. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Final Solution—an extensive, organized effort with an unprecedented scope intended to annihilate the Jewish people—began, and resulted in the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and North Africa. In Poland, three million were murdered in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone. The Holocaust is the name given to this genocide, in which six million Jews in total were systematically murdered. Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. In 1944, the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine began with the aim of gaining full independence from the United Kingdom. On 14 May 1948, upon the termination of the mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel, a Jewish and democratic state. Immediately afterwards, all neighboring Arab states invaded, and were resisted by the newly formed Israel Defense Forces. In 1949, the war ended and Israel started building its state and absorbing waves of Aliyah, granting citizenship to Jews all over the world via the Law of Return passed in 1950. However, both the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and wider Arab–Israeli conflict continue to this day. Culture The Jewish people and the religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated. Converts to Judaism have a status within the Jewish people equal to those born into it. However, converts who go on to practice no Judaism are likely to be viewed with skepticism. Mainstream Judaism does not proselytize, and conversion is considered a difficult task. A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or would-be or current spouses of Jews. The Hebrew Bible, a religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions, which are now practiced by 54 percent of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as the ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah), in Islamic Spain and Portugal, in North Africa and the Middle East, India, China, or the contemporary United States and Israel, cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities. Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea. By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek. Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Asoristan, known to Jews as Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. Dialects of these same languages were also used by the Jews of Syria Palaestina at that time.[citation needed] For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish is the Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judaeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian Peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use. For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath. Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times. Modern Hebrew is designated as the "State language" of Israel. Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars. The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian. Some Romance languages, particularly French and Spanish, are also widely used. Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language, but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec, the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language. Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans. Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies, Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews, but these policies have also affected neighboring communities. Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states, such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan,[better source needed] as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan. Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria, Morocco, and the city of Tunis, while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue.[citation needed] There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine. Instead, a variety of secular and religious institutions at the local, national, and international levels lead various parts of the Jewish community on a variety of issues. Today, many countries have a Chief Rabbi who serves as a representative of that country's Jewry. Although many Hasidic Jews follow a certain hereditary Hasidic dynasty, there is no one commonly accepted leader of all Hasidic Jews. Many Jews believe that the Messiah will act a unifying leader for Jews and the entire world. A number of modern scholars of nationalism support the existence of Jewish national identity in antiquity. One of them is David Goodblatt, who generally believes in the existence of nationalism before the modern period. In his view, the Bible, the parabiblical literature and the Jewish national history provide the base for a Jewish collective identity. Although many of the ancient Jews were illiterate (as were their neighbors), their national narrative was reinforced through public readings. The Hebrew language also constructed and preserved national identity. Although it was not widely spoken after the 5th century BCE, Goodblatt states: the mere presence of the language in spoken or written form could invoke the concept of a Jewish national identity. Even if one knew no Hebrew or was illiterate, one could recognize that a group of signs was in Hebrew script. ... It was the language of the Israelite ancestors, the national literature, and the national religion. As such it was inseparable from the national identity. Indeed its mere presence in visual or aural medium could invoke that identity. Anthony D. Smith, an historical sociologist considered one of the founders of the field of nationalism studies, wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation [...] than perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." He adds that this observation "must make us wary of pronouncing too readily against the possibility of the nation, and even a form of religious nationalism, before the onset of modernity." Agreeing with Smith, Goodblatt suggests omitting the qualifier "religious" from Smith's definition of ancient Jewish nationalism, noting that, according to Smith, a religious component in national memories and culture is common even in the modern era. This view is echoed by political scientist Tom Garvin, who writes that "something strangely like modern nationalism is documented for many peoples in medieval times and in classical times as well," citing the ancient Jews as one of several "obvious examples", alongside the classical Greeks and the Gaulish and British Celts. Fergus Millar suggests that the sources of Jewish national identity and their early nationalist movements in the first and second centuries CE included several key elements: the Bible as both a national history and legal source, the Hebrew language as a national language, a system of law, and social institutions such as schools, synagogues, and Sabbath worship. Adrian Hastings argued that Jews are the "true proto-nation", that through the model of ancient Israel found in the Hebrew Bible, provided the world with the original concept of nationhood which later influenced Christian nations. However, following Jerusalem's destruction in the first century CE, Jews ceased to be a political entity and did not resemble a traditional nation-state for almost two millennia. Despite this, they maintained their national identity through collective memory, religion and sacred texts, even without land or political power, and remained a nation rather than just an ethnic group, eventually leading to the rise of Zionism and the establishment of Israel. Steven Weitzman suggests that Jewish nationalist sentiment in antiquity was encouraged because under foreign rule (Persians, Greeks, Romans) Jews were able to claim that they were an ancient nation. This claim was based on the preservation and reverence of their scriptures, the Hebrew language, the Temple and priesthood, and other traditions of their ancestors. Doron Mendels further observes that the Hasmonean kingdom, one of the few examples of indigenous statehood at its time, significantly reinforced Jewish national consciousness. The memory of this period of independence contributed to the persistent efforts to revive Jewish sovereignty in Judea, leading to the major revolts against Roman rule in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Demographics Within the world's Jewish population there are distinct ethnic divisions, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, and subsequent independent evolutions. An array of Jewish communities was established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another, resulting in effective and often long-term isolation. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments: political, cultural, natural, and populational. Today, manifestations of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, as well as degrees and sources of genetic admixture. Jews are often identified as belonging to one of two major groups: the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. Ashkenazim are so named in reference to their geographical origins (their ancestors' culture coalesced in the Rhineland, an area historically referred to by Jews as Ashkenaz). Similarly, Sephardim (Sefarad meaning "Spain" in Hebrew) are named in reference their origins in Iberia. The diverse groups of Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are often collectively referred to as Sephardim together with Sephardim proper for liturgical reasons having to do with their prayer rites. A common term for many of these non-Spanish Jews who are sometimes still broadly grouped as Sephardim is Mizrahim (lit. 'easterners' in Hebrew). Nevertheless, Mizrahis and Sepharadim are usually ethnically distinct. Smaller groups include, but are not restricted to, Indian Jews such as the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews, and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the Italian Jews ("Italkim" or "Bené Roma"); the Teimanim from Yemen; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now almost extinct communities. The divisions between all these groups are approximate and their boundaries are not always clear. The Mizrahim for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African, Central Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities that are no closer related to each other than they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are sometimes termed Sephardi due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent development from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Iranian Jews, Afghan Jews, and various others. The Teimanim from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. In addition, there is a differentiation made between Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s and the pre-existing Jewish communities in those regions. Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, with at least 70 percent of Jews worldwide (and up to 90 percent prior to World War II and the Holocaust). As a result of their emigration from Europe, Ashkenazim also represent the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil. In France, the immigration of Jews from Algeria (Sephardim) has led them to outnumber the Ashkenazim. Only in Israel is the Jewish population representative of all groups, a melting pot independent of each group's proportion within the overall world Jewish population. Y DNA studies tend to imply a small number of founders in an old population whose members parted and followed different migration paths. In most Jewish populations, these male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. For example, Ashkenazi Jews share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany, and the French Rhine Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions in placing most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East. Conversely, the maternal lineages of Jewish populations, studied by looking at mitochondrial DNA, are generally more heterogeneous. Scholars such as Harry Ostrer and Raphael Falk believe this indicates that many Jewish males found new mates from European and other communities in the places where they migrated in the diaspora after fleeing ancient Israel. In contrast, Behar has found evidence that about 40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin. The populations of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities "showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect." Subsequent studies carried out by Feder et al. confirmed the large portion of non-local maternal origin among Ashkenazi Jews. Reflecting on their findings related to the maternal origin of Ashkenazi Jews, the authors conclude "Clearly, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. Hence, differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." However, a 2025 genetic study on the Ashkenazi Jewish founder population supports the presence of a substantial Near Eastern component in the maternal lineages. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) indicate that the core founder lineages, estimated at around 54, likely originated from the Near East, with these founder signatures appearing in multiple copies across the population. While later admixture introduced additional mtDNA lineages, these absorbed lineages are distinguishable from the original founders. The findings are consistent with genome-wide Identity-by-Descent and Lineage Extinction analyses, reinforcing the Near Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi maternal founders. A study showed that 7% of Ashkenazi Jews have the haplogroup G2c, which is mainly found in Pashtuns and on lower scales all major Jewish groups, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Studies of autosomal DNA, which look at the entire DNA mixture, have become increasingly important as the technology develops. They show that Jewish populations have tended to form relatively closely related groups in independent communities, with most in a community sharing significant ancestry in common. For Jewish populations of the diaspora, the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jewish populations show a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Behar, the most parsimonious explanation for this shared Middle Eastern ancestry is that it is "consistent with the historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant" and "the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World". North African, Italian and others of Iberian origin show variable frequencies of admixture with non-Jewish historical host populations among the maternal lines. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are closely related, the source of non-Jewish admixture is mainly Southern European, while Mizrahi Jews show evidence of admixture with other Middle Eastern populations. Behar et al. have remarked on a close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Italians. A 2001 study found that Jews were more closely related to groups of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors, whose genetic signature was found in geographic patterns reflective of Islamic conquests. The studies also show that Sephardic Bnei Anusim (descendants of the "anusim" who were forced to convert to Catholicism), which comprise up to 19.8 percent of the population of today's Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and at least 10 percent of the population of Ibero-America (Hispanic America and Brazil), have Sephardic Jewish ancestry within the last few centuries. The Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India, Beta Israel of Ethiopia, and a portion of the Lemba people of Southern Africa, despite more closely resembling the local populations of their native countries, have also been thought to have some more remote ancient Jewish ancestry. Views on the Lemba have changed and genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but have been unable to narrow this down further. Although historically, Jews have been found all over the world, in the decades since World War II and the establishment of Israel, they have increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries. In 2021, Israel and the United States together accounted for over 85 percent of the global Jewish population, with approximately 45.3% and 39.6% of the world's Jews, respectively. More than half (51.2%) of world Jewry resides in just ten metropolitan areas. As of 2021, these ten areas were Tel Aviv, New York, Jerusalem, Haifa, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Paris, Washington, and Chicago. The Tel Aviv metro area has the highest percent of Jews among the total population (94.8%), followed by Jerusalem (72.3%), Haifa (73.1%), and Beersheba (60.4%), the balance mostly being Israeli Arabs. Outside Israel, the highest percent of Jews in a metropolitan area was in New York (10.8%), followed by Miami (8.7%), Philadelphia (6.8%), San Francisco (5.1%), Washington (4.7%), Los Angeles (4.7%), Toronto (4.5%), and Baltimore (4.1%). As of 2010, there were nearly 14 million Jews around the world, roughly 0.2% of the world's population at the time. According to the 2007 estimates of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the world's Jewish population is 13.2 million. This statistic incorporates both practicing Jews affiliated with synagogues and the Jewish community, and approximately 4.5 million unaffiliated and secular Jews.[citation needed] According to Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer of the Jewish population, in 2021 there were about 6.8 million Jews in Israel, 6 million in the United States, and 2.3 million in the rest of the world. Israel, the Jewish nation-state, is the only country in which Jews make up a majority of the citizens. Israel was established as an independent democratic and Jewish state on 14 May 1948. Of the 120 members in its parliament, the Knesset, as of 2016[update], 14 members of the Knesset are Arab citizens of Israel (not including the Druze), most representing Arab political parties. One of Israel's Supreme Court judges is also an Arab citizen of Israel. Between 1948 and 1958, the Jewish population rose from 800,000 to two million. Currently, Jews account for 75.4 percent of the Israeli population, or 6 million people. The early years of the State of Israel were marked by the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Jews fleeing Arab lands. Israel also has a large population of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1974 and 1979 nearly 227,258 immigrants arrived in Israel, about half being from the Soviet Union. This period also saw an increase in immigration to Israel from Western Europe, Latin America, and North America. A trickle of immigrants from other communities has also arrived, including Indian Jews and others, as well as some descendants of Ashkenazi Holocaust survivors who had settled in countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Some Jews have emigrated from Israel elsewhere, because of economic problems or disillusionment with political conditions and the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict. Jewish Israeli emigrants are known as yordim. The waves of immigration to the United States and elsewhere at the turn of the 19th century, the founding of Zionism and later events, including pogroms in Imperial Russia (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and eastern Poland), the massacre of European Jewry during the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel, with the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands, all resulted in substantial shifts in the population centers of world Jewry by the end of the 20th century. More than half of the Jews live in the Diaspora (see Population table). Currently, the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and either the largest or second-largest Jewish community in the world, is located in the United States, with 6 million to 7.5 million Jews by various estimates. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are also large Jewish populations in Canada (315,000), Argentina (180,000–300,000), and Brazil (196,000–600,000), and smaller populations in Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and several other countries (see History of the Jews in Latin America). According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, about 470,000 people of Jewish heritage live in Latin America and the Caribbean. Demographers disagree on whether the United States has a larger Jewish population than Israel, with many maintaining that Israel surpassed the United States in Jewish population during the 2000s, while others maintain that the United States still has the largest Jewish population in the world. Currently, a major national Jewish population survey is planned to ascertain whether or not Israel has overtaken the United States in Jewish population. Western Europe's largest Jewish community, and the third-largest Jewish community in the world, can be found in France, home to between 483,000 and 500,000 Jews, the majority of whom are immigrants or refugees from North African countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (or their descendants). The United Kingdom has a Jewish community of 292,000. In Eastern Europe, the exact figures are difficult to establish. The number of Jews in Russia varies widely according to whether a source uses census data (which requires a person to choose a single nationality among choices that include "Russian" and "Jewish") or eligibility for immigration to Israel (which requires that a person have one or more Jewish grandparents). According to the latter criteria, the heads of the Russian Jewish community assert that up to 1.5 million Russians are eligible for aliyah. In Germany, the 102,000 Jews registered with the Jewish community are a slowly declining population, despite the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thousands of Israelis also live in Germany, either permanently or temporarily, for economic reasons. Prior to 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands which now make up the Arab world (excluding Israel). Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French-controlled Maghreb region, 15 to 20 percent in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10 percent in the Kingdom of Egypt and approximately 7 percent in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 lived in Pahlavi Iran and the Republic of Turkey. Today, around 26,000 Jews live in Muslim-majority countries, mainly in Turkey (14,200) and Iran (9,100), while Morocco (2,000), Tunisia (1,000), and the United Arab Emirates (500) host the largest communities in the Arab world. A small-scale exodus had begun in many countries in the early decades of the 20th century, although the only substantial aliyah came from Yemen and Syria. The exodus from Arab and Muslim countries took place primarily from 1948. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily in Iraq, Yemen and Libya, with up to 90 percent of these communities leaving within a few years. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956. The exodus in the Maghreb countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country to see a temporary increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries, although by the mid-1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. In the aftermath of the exodus wave from Arab states, an additional migration of Iranian Jews peaked in the 1980s when around 80 percent of Iranian Jews left the country.[citation needed] Outside Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia, there are significant Jewish populations in Australia (112,500) and South Africa (70,000). There is also a 6,800-strong community in New Zealand. Since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks, a proportion of Jews have assimilated into the wider non-Jewish society around them, by either choice or force, ceasing to practice Judaism and losing their Jewish identity. Assimilation took place in all areas, and during all time periods, with some Jewish communities, for example the Kaifeng Jews of China, disappearing entirely. The advent of the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18th century (see Haskalah) and the subsequent emancipation of the Jewish populations of Europe and America in the 19th century, accelerated the situation, encouraging Jews to increasingly participate in, and become part of, secular society. The result has been a growing trend of assimilation, as Jews marry non-Jewish spouses and stop participating in the Jewish community. Rates of interreligious marriage vary widely: In the United States, it is just under 50 percent; in the United Kingdom, around 53 percent; in France, around 30 percent; and in Australia and Mexico, as low as 10 percent. In the United States, only about a third of children from intermarriages affiliate with Jewish religious practice. The result is that most countries in the Diaspora have steady or slightly declining religiously Jewish populations as Jews continue to assimilate into the countries in which they live.[citation needed] The Jewish people and Judaism have experienced various persecutions throughout their history. During Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the Roman Empire (in its later phases known as the Byzantine Empire) repeatedly repressed the Jewish population, first by ejecting them from their homelands during the pagan Roman era and later by officially establishing them as second-class citizens during the Christian Roman era. According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million." Later in medieval Western Europe, further persecutions of Jews by Christians occurred, notably during the Crusades—when Jews all over Germany were massacred—and in a series of expulsions from the Kingdom of England, Germany, and France. Then there occurred the largest expulsion of all, when Spain and Portugal, after the Reconquista (the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula), expelled both unbaptized Sephardic Jews and the ruling Muslim Moors. In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos. Islam and Judaism have a complex relationship. Traditionally Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religions and administer their internal affairs, but they were subject to certain conditions. They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-Muslim males) to the Islamic state. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims. Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The one described by Bernard Lewis as "most degrading" was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Quran or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic. On the other hand, Jews rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced compulsion to change their religion, and they were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession. Notable exceptions include the massacre of Jews and forcible conversion of some Jews by the rulers of the Almohad dynasty in Al-Andalus in the 12th century, as well as in Islamic Persia, and the forced confinement of Moroccan Jews to walled quarters known as mellahs beginning from the 15th century and especially in the early 19th century. In modern times, it has become commonplace for standard antisemitic themes to be conflated with anti-Zionist publications and pronouncements of Islamic movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Turkish Refah Partisi."[better source needed] Throughout history, many rulers, empires and nations have oppressed their Jewish populations or sought to eliminate them entirely. Methods employed ranged from expulsion to outright genocide; within nations, often the threat of these extreme methods was sufficient to silence dissent. The history of antisemitism includes the First Crusade which resulted in the massacre of Jews; the Spanish Inquisition (led by Tomás de Torquemada) and the Portuguese Inquisition, with their persecution and autos-da-fé against the New Christians and Marrano Jews; the Bohdan Chmielnicki Cossack massacres in Ukraine; the Pogroms backed by the Russian Tsars; as well as expulsions from Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany, and other countries in which the Jews had settled. According to a 2008 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8 percent of the modern Iberian population has Sephardic Jewish ancestry, indicating that the number of conversos may have been much higher than originally thought. The persecution reached a peak in Nazi Germany's Final Solution, which led to the Holocaust and the slaughter of approximately 6 million Jews. Of the world's 16 million Jews in 1939, almost 40% were murdered in the Holocaust. The Holocaust—the state-led systematic persecution and genocide of European Jews (and certain communities of North African Jews in European controlled North Africa) and other minority groups of Europe during World War II by Germany and its collaborators—remains the most notable modern-day persecution of Jews. The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in Eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of kilometres by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were murdered in gas chambers. Virtually every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation." Throughout Jewish history, Jews have repeatedly been directly or indirectly expelled from both their original homeland, the Land of Israel, and many of the areas in which they have settled. This experience as refugees has shaped Jewish identity and religious practice in many ways, and is thus a major element of Jewish history. In summary, the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the rise of modern antisemitism, the Holocaust, as well as the rise of Arab nationalism, all served to fuel the movements and migrations of huge segments of Jewry from land to land and continent to continent until they arrived back in large numbers at their original historical homeland in Israel. In the Bible, the patriarch Abraham is described as a migrant to the land of Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees. His descendants, the Children of Israel, undertook the Exodus (meaning "departure" or "exit" in Greek) from ancient Egypt, as described in the Book of Exodus. The first movement documented in the historical record occurred with the resettlement policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which mandated the deportation of conquered peoples, and it is estimated some 4,500,000 among its captive populations suffered this dislocation over three centuries of Assyrian rule. With regard to Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III claims he deported 80% of the population of Lower Galilee, some 13,520 people. Some 27,000 Israelites, 20 to 25% of the population of the Kingdom of Israel, were described as being deported by Sargon II, and were replaced by other deported populations and sent into permanent exile by Assyria, initially to the Upper Mesopotamian provinces of the Assyrian Empire. Between 10,000 and 80,000 people from the Kingdom of Judah were similarly exiled by Babylonia, but these people were then returned to Judea by Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Many Jews were exiled again by the Roman Empire. The 2,000 year dispersion of the Jewish diaspora beginning under the Roman Empire, as Jews were spread throughout the Roman world and, driven from land to land, settled wherever they could live freely enough to practice their religion. Over the course of the diaspora the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to the Iberian Peninsula to Poland to the United States and, as a result of Zionism, back to Israel. There were also many expulsions of Jews during the Middle Ages and Enlightenment in Europe, including: 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England, (see the Statute of Jewry); in 1396, 100,000 from France; in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of these Jews settled in East-Central Europe, especially Poland. Following the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Spanish population of around 200,000 Sephardic Jews were expelled by the Spanish crown and Catholic church, followed by expulsions in 1493 in Sicily (37,000 Jews) and Portugal in 1496. The expelled Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa, others migrating to Southern Europe and the Middle East. During the 19th century, France's policies of equal citizenship regardless of religion led to the immigration of Jews (especially from Eastern and Central Europe). This contributed to the arrival of millions of Jews in the New World. Over two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States from 1880 to 1925. In the latest phase of migrations, the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused many Iranian Jews to flee Iran. Most found refuge in the US (particularly Los Angeles, California, and Long Island, New York) and Israel. Smaller communities of Persian Jews exist in Canada and Western Europe. Similarly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the Jews in the affected territory (who had been refuseniks) were suddenly allowed to leave. This produced a wave of migration to Israel in the early 1990s. Israel is the only country with a Jewish population that is consistently growing through natural population growth, although the Jewish populations of other countries, in Europe and North America, have recently increased through immigration. In the Diaspora, in almost every country the Jewish population in general is either declining or steady, but Orthodox and Haredi Jewish communities, whose members often shun birth control for religious reasons, have experienced rapid population growth. Orthodox and Conservative Judaism discourage proselytism to non-Jews, but many Jewish groups have tried to reach out to the assimilated Jewish communities of the Diaspora in order for them to reconnect to their Jewish roots. Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favours seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples. There is also a trend of Orthodox movements reaching out to secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown. Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews. Contributions Jewish individuals have played a significant role in the development and growth of Western culture, advancing many fields of thought, science and technology, both historically and in modern times, including through discrete trends in Jewish philosophy, Jewish ethics and Jewish literature, as well as specific trends in Jewish culture, including in Jewish art, Jewish music, Jewish humor, Jewish theatre, Jewish cuisine and Jewish medicine. Jews have established various Jewish political movements, religious movements, and, through the authorship of the Hebrew Bible and parts of the New Testament, provided the foundation for Christianity and Islam. More than 20 percent of the awarded Nobel Prize have gone to individuals of Jewish descent. Philanthropic giving is a widespread core function among Jewish organizations. Notes References External links |
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Our Policies Our Policies YouTubeâs mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world â and openness and free expression are at the heart of this. Our platform is a place where a broad range of perspectives are encouraged, and we donât shy away from disagreement and debate. How Community & Ad-Friendly Guidelines work Our policies help us maintain a responsible business that viewers, creators, and advertisers can rely on in order to continue to thrive on YouTube. As with any system, we sometimes make mistakes. Thatâs why appeals are an important part of our processes. Creators are notified when their videos are removed due to policy violations or when they may be suspended from YPP, and can appeal if they disagree with our decision. Our Community Guidelines and Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines are what enable us to strike this balance. Content that violates our community guidelines is flagged by a mix of automated detection and human reporting â most is automatically detected â and we go to great lengths to make sure violative content isnât widely viewed, or even viewed at all, before itâs taken down. Exceptions can be made when content has a clear educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic (EDSA) context, including content that is in the publicâs interest. Brands rely on us to protect their business interests when theyâre advertising on YouTube. To help support this, we have a set of Ad-Friendly guidelines creators in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) need to follow in order to have Ads served on their channel content and earn a share of the revenue. How we support creators Since 2007, weâve been paying eligible creators every month through our revenue-sharing model, the YouTube Partner Program. For a creator to be eligible for YPP, they must meet a higher bar for what they share on YouTube. Creators have to follow YouTube monetization policies and we review each applicantâs channel before admitting them to YPP. We also demonetize videos that violate our Advertiser Friendly Guidelines, and suspend creators from YPP for repeat offenses. With this model, creators have a long-term incentive to reinforce YouTubeâs safety and follow our policies. Channel Guidelines help creators set what kind of conversations they want to have on their channel. Creators can hold potentially inappropriate comments for review, hide certain individuals, block words, assign moderation privileges, and more. We provide creators with an array of products that help them decide how to manage their channels. The privacy and safety of creators on YouTube is important to us, and we provide a range of tools & resources to support them. How YouTube Partners with Industry Experts to Combat Abuse Content thatâs meant to praise, promote, or aid violent extremist or criminal organizations is not allowed on YouTube. We rely on many factors â like certain government and international organization designations â to determine what constitutes criminal or terrorist organizations. Weâre also a founding member of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), where we work with other tech companies to keep terrorist content off the web â and provide training and other resources to smaller companies facing similar challenges. |
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How YouTube Works OUR MISSION To give everyone a voice and show them the world We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share, and build communities through our stories. Explore this site to learn more about how YouTube makes this all happen. For more than a decade, Google and YouTube have launched products, supported programs, and implemented built-in protections that support kids and teens on our platforms, while also giving parents the tools and resources to make empowered technology decisions for their families. This Safer Internet Day, weâre sharing the latest updates that support kids and teens in the digital world. As we enter 2026, the lines between creativity and technology are blurring, sparking a new era of innovation. This inflection point requires ambitious bets. YouTube is the undisputed epicenter of culture. Our creators are reinventing entertainment and building the media companies of the future, and we continue to be the best place for them to grow a business. YouTube has the scale, community, and technological investments to lead the creative industry into this next era. YouTube is where teens come to watch what they love â everything from brushing up on their studies, to their favorite creators, to buzzworthy podcasts, to epic sports highlights. We are happy to announce that YouTube is now the largest digital library of Sesame Street content, bringing a treasure trove of iconic episodes, original videos, unique Shorts, and thematic programming right to families everywhere. The rise in popularity of new technologies among teenagers, from gaming to smartphones to streaming platforms, has understandably raised important questions about not only the right way for parents to help their kids navigate the changing tech landscape; but also the role that regulation should play in both protecting and empowering young people. Pop the confetti, because YouTube is turning 20! From the 19-second clip that started it all, to now over 20 billion uploaded videos,1 including music, Shorts, podcasts, and more, weâve grown so much in just two decades. Weâre kicking off our birthday with plenty of ways to celebrate. Take a peek at some of our new features, stats, hidden gems, and easter eggs below to help you join in on the festivities: |
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