Archive for the 'Dictatorship' Category
Magic 8-Ball Future Crime Predictor Influencing Decisions About Prison Sentences
May 24th, 2016Via: ProPublica: Scores like this — known as risk assessments — are increasingly common in courtrooms across the nation. They are used to inform decisions about who can be set free at every stage of the criminal justice system, from assigning bond amounts — as is the case in Fort Lauderdale — to even more […]
Price of Corn Flour in Venezuela Soars 900 Percent
May 24th, 2016Via: AFP: Venezuelans on Tuesday woke up to discover that the government-controlled price of corn flour — used to make corn patty arepas, a staple of local cuisine — has risen 900 percent. The socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro had kept the price of corn flour frozen for 15 months at 19 bolivares a […]
Venezuela: ‘We Want Food!’
May 18th, 2016Via: AFP: It was around noon when a food truck rolled up to a Venezuelan state-subsidized supermarket in the town of Guarenas just east of the capital. But, to the fury of the long line of people waiting out front, the cargo wasn’t unloaded. Instead soldiers took it away. “We want food!” the crowd roared […]
Visitor Logs Show Google’s Unrivaled White House Access
May 18th, 2016Via: watchdog.org: A project examining White House visitor logs shows the Obama administration has extended an open door to Google. Johanna Shelton, Google’s director of public policy — in effect, the company’s top lobbyist — has visited White House officials 128 times since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. To put that in perspective, […]
Stanford Quantifies the Privacy-Stripping Power of Metadata
May 17th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch: More proof, if proof were needed, of the privacy-stripping power of metadata. A multi-year crowdsourced study, conducted by Stanford scientists and published this week, underlines how much information can be inferred from basic phone logs cross-referenced with other public datasets. (Reminder: the former director of the NSA and the CIA, General Michael […]
Pentagon Wants AI to Read Social Media and Draw Up Lists of People for Lethal Autonomous Robots to Kill
May 16th, 2016Via: Medium: “LARs [lethal autonomous robots] have the unique potential to operate at a tempo faster than humans can possibly achieve and to lethally strike even when communications links have been severed. Autonomous targeting technology will likely proliferate to nations and groups around the world. To prevent being surpassed by rivals, the United States should […]
UK Developing Digital Driving Licence
May 16th, 2016Via: BBC: The UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is working on a smartphone version of its driving licence. Chief executive Oliver Morley tweeted a photo showing a “prototype” using Apple’s Wallet app on an iPhone. He says it will be an “add-on” to the plastic card rather than a replacement. Research Credit: Jb
Hillary Clinton Holds $100,000-a-Head Fundraisers, Including One at Rothschild Residence
May 15th, 2016Via: Wall Street Journal: Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is ramping up her fundraising schedule, attending a number of fundraisers this week that cost donors six-figures to attend. The former secretary of state attended a pair of small, intimate gatherings in New York City on Thursday evening that cost donors a minimum of $100,000 to […]
Hyperloop One: Open Air Prototype Tested in Nevada
May 11th, 2016I’ve found that Americans, in general, only have a vague concept of what a bullet train is. They know that it’s theoretically possible to travel around the Homeland on the ancient and lumbering Amtrak system, if they want to pay a lot and go slow, but that’s about it. Nothing worth seeing in other countries, […]
Transparency EU-Style
May 11th, 2016Via: The Journal: A VIDEO BY Irish MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan criticising the secretive process of viewing classified documents relating to a massive US-EU trade deal has been viewed nearly 70,000 times online. In the video – entitled ‘TTIP reading room farce’ – Flanagan says he is banned from transcribing notes verbatim from texts relating […]
