Smart Faucets And Toilets Use Alexa To Listen To Your Conversations
September 19th, 2019haha Oh sure!
Via: MassPrivatel:
It is hard to imagine a more intrusive home surveillance device than a faucet or toilet that listens to everyone’s conversations, but that is just what Delta Faucet and Kohler have done.
Delta Faucet’s “Voice IQ” takes advantage of where lots of people like to congregate and turns it into an Alexa eavesdropping center.
“Designed with the understanding that 20 percent of all WiFi-enabled homes are equipped with a connected home device, VoiceIQ Technology pairs with existing devices to dispense the exact amount of water needed, all with a simple voice command.”
Chinese Scientists Develop Handheld Sonic Weapon for Crowd Control
September 19th, 2019Via: South China Morning Post:
China has developed the world’s first portable sonic gun for riot control, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
The rifle-shaped instrument, which was jointly developed with military and law enforcement, is designed to disperse crowds using focused waves of low frequency sound, the academy’s Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry website said on Wednesday.
The device’s “biological effect” would cause extreme discomfort, with vibrations in the eardrums, eyeballs, stomach, liver, and brain, scientists said.
Studies dating to the 1940s found that low frequency sound energy could, depending upon intensity and exposure, cause dizziness, headaches, vomiting, bowel spasms, involuntary defecation, organ damage and heart attacks.
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Professor Xie Xiujuan, lead scientist on the project, said the device was powered by a tube-shape vessel containing an inert gas. When heated, the gas particles vibrate and a deep, monotonous sound is emitted.
The prototype had passed field and third-party tests and the project team has completed its assessment of the device’s effects on the body, the academy said.
U.S. Drone Strike Kills 30 Pine Nut Farm Workers in Afghanistan
September 19th, 2019Via: Reuters:
A U.S. drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) hideout in Afghanistan killed at least 30 civilians resting after a day’s labor in the fields, officials said on Thursday.
The attack on Wednesday night also injured 40 people after accidentally targeting farmers and laborers who had just finished collecting pine nuts at mountainous Wazir Tangi in eastern Nangarhar province, three Afghan officials told Reuters.
“The workers had lit a bonfire and were sitting together when a drone targeted them,” tribal elder Malik Rahat Gul told Reuters by telephone from Wazir Tangi.
Colt Suspends Production of AR-15 and Other Rifles for Civilians
September 19th, 2019Via: CBS:
Gunmaker Colt Manufacturing said Thursday it is temporarily halting production of rifles for the civilian market, including the popular AR-15.
In a statement, Colt CEO Dennis Veilleux said the company is not permanently ending production of the semi-automatic weapon, but believes there is already an adequate supply of such rifles on the market.
“The fact of the matter is that over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity,” Veilleux said.
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Colt will instead concentrate on fulfilling military and law enforcement contracts with its rifle manufacturing. Veilleux said the company has been awarded “significant” military and law enforcement contracts.
“Currently, these high-volume contracts are absorbing all of Colt’s manufacturing capacity for rifles,” he said.
Daimler Won’t Develop Any New Internal Combustion Engines, Focus Is Now on Electric Vehicles
September 19th, 2019Via: Electrek:
After reigning in the auto industry as the powertrain of choice for a century, the internal combustion engine is finally dying.
Now even Daimler says that it is stopping development of new internal combustion engines to focus on electric cars.
The German automaker whose namesake, Gottlieb Daimler, is credited for having invented the prototype of the modern gasoline engine recently released its latest generation internal combustion engine and it might be its last.
According to German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, Daimler development chief Markus Schaefer said that they currently have no plans to develop a next-generation combustion engine and they are focusing on new electric powertrains.
While they will not invest in the development of new combustion engines, Schaefer reportedly noted that they still might work on some specific parts to improve on their existing engines.
Amazon Buying 100,000 Electric Delivery Vans from Rivian
September 19th, 2019Via: Cnet:
Online retail and technology giant Amazon said at an event today it plans to be completely carbon neutral come 2040, and electric-vehicle startup Rivian will help it get there.
Rivian said Thursday it will design, build and service a new electric van exclusively for Amazon. A representative confirmed with Roadshow this will not be a new vehicle for the public, but a dedicated electric delivery van for the online retailer. It looks like something along the lines of a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, but with the cutesy Honda E face. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company plans to purchase 100,000 of these unnamed Rivian electric vans and the electric-car startup plans for the first to hit the road by 2021.
More: Michigan EV startup Rivian to build electric vans for Amazon
Plan to Kill Off Mosquitoes Backfires Spectacularly, Making the Disease-Carriers Even More Resilient
September 18th, 2019Imagine my shock.
And Now: “Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Join The Fight To Stop Zika Virus”
Woman Behind Effort to Stop Release of Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Found Dead in Swimming Pool
Via: New York Post:
Life has found a way.
In what sounds like the plot to a Syfy channel original movie, a plan to curb a mosquito population has backfired spectacularly, making the disease-carriers even more resilient to pest-control measures.
The plan involved genetically altering mosquitoes in Brazil so their babies would die instantly, reported Futurism.
However, the company that hatched the plan, British Biotech firm Oxitec Ltd., then released the mutant mosquitoes with the hope that they’d breed with the wild insects and spread the entomological SIDS gene, causing the population to plummet substantially.
This, they pronounced, optimistically, would drastically reduce mosquito-borne diseases such as Zika and dengue fever.
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Researchers think that the wild female mosquitoes may have grown wise to the measure and began avoiding the genetically modified males, reported New Atlas.
And if that wasn’t Jurassic Park enough, the wild mosquitoes could have developed a resiliency to the measure, making their population even harder to quash. Now, the region has been left with a huge population of hybrids (combinations of the Brazilian native mosquitoes and the Cuban and Mexican breeds that were genetically altered in the lab) — an outcome that could make the entire population more resistant to the original mosquito control measures.
“The claim was that genes from the release strain would not get into the general population because offspring would die,” Yale researcher Jeffrey Powell, one of the authors of the study, told New Atlas. “That obviously was not what happened.”
While scientists say that the new hybrids don’t pose an immediate threat, it is unclear if the same will hold true for future generations, according to Powell.
“It is the unanticipated outcome that is concerning,” he said.
More: GM Mosquito Progeny Not Dying in Brazil: Study
An Inside Look at All the Data CBP Collects About Everyone Crossing U.S. Borders
September 18th, 2019Via: Nextgov:
Customs and Border Protection collects a wealth of information through the technologies deployed at the ports of entry, all of which is stored in a master crossing record the agency keeps on every individual who enters the country.
That record contains information gathered at every crossing: the time, date and port of the crossing, the information taken from their travel documents, photos and data collected on their belongings and vehicles, and determinations made by customs officers throughout the process. For non-U.S. citizens, this also means biometric data, such as photos and fingerprints.
That record also includes data culled from a variety of federal databases and sources. But CBP doesn’t automatically share its records with other parts of the government—even other Homeland Security components. However, there are procedures and agreements in place that enable some information sharing, spreading the data beyond just CBP’s control.
Why Is the NY Fed Pumping Billions Into the Money Market?
September 18th, 2019Via: AFP:
For the first time in more than a decade, the US central bank this week stepped into financial markets to keep interest rates on short-term lending from popping above its target range.
The New York Federal Reserve Bank conducted money market interventions on Tuesday and Wednesday and planned another for Thursday morning, as a cash crunch drove up the cost of borrowing for banks that need to replenish the reserves they hold at the central bank.
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Money market rates began to jump on Monday afternoon, hitting as high as 10 percent in some cases, surprising traders.
The reasons behind borrowers’ sudden demand for cash were attributed to a host of technical conditions that converged to drain money out of the system.
There were major cash withdrawals as quarterly corporate taxes came due, at the same time as a surge of US Treasury debt came into the market to finance deficit spending by the federal government.
Last Month, 53 Americans Died in Mass Shootings While 40,000 Died from Obesity
September 18th, 2019Via: The Sun:
IN his fascinating book Unnatural Causes, forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd observes how, over the years, the dead bodies he examines have changed.
One of the most noticeable is the rapid increase in body fat.
He says: “Unless a patient is homeless or has died of cancer or is so old or poor they could not eat, few are the same shape as the dead of the 1980s when I started practising.
“Looking back at forensic photos from that era I am astonished at how thinness was then the norm.”
Fast-forward just three decades and obesity levels are now rising at such a rate that one expert says the “timebomb has exploded” for our health services.
Consequently, the NHS is reportedly bracing itself for soaring levels of cancer, Type 2 diabetes and heart and liver disease.
