3D-Printed Guns Are Unstoppable
May 24th, 2019Via: Wired:
A new network of 3D-printed gun advocates is growing in America – and this time things are different. Unlike previous attempts to popularise 3D-printed guns, this operation is entirely decentralised. There’s no headquarters, no trademarks, and no real leader. The people behind it reckon that this means they can’t be stopped by governments.
“If they [the government] were to come after me, they’d first have to find my identity,” says Ivan the Troll, a member of the group. “I’m one of many, many like-minded individuals who’re doing this sort of work.”
Known only by his online moniker, Ivan the Troll is the de facto spokesman of an underground wave of 3D-printing gunsmiths. Ivan says he knows of at least 100 people who are actively developing 3D-printed gun technology, and he claims there are thousands taking part in the network. This loose-knit community spans across the whole world.
Facebook Now Censoring Diet Information
May 24th, 2019Via: CrossFit:
CrossFit is a contrarian physiological and nutrition prescription for improving fitness and health. It is contrarian because prevailing views of fitness, health, and nutrition are wrong and have unleashed a tsunami of chronic disease upon our friends, family, and communities. The voluntary CrossFit community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.
CrossFit, Inc. defends relentlessly the right of its affiliates, trainers, and athletes to practice CrossFit, build voluntary CrossFit associations and businesses, and speak openly and freely about the ideas and principles that animate our views of exercise, nutrition, and health. This website—and, until recently, CrossFit’s Facebook and Instagram accounts—has long catalogued CrossFit’s tireless defense of its community against overreaching governments, malicious competitors, and corrupt academic organizations.
Recently, Facebook deleted without warning or explanation the Banting7DayMealPlan user group. The group has 1.65 million users who post testimonials and other information regarding the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. While the site has subsequently been reinstated (also without warning or explanation), Facebook’s action should give any serious person reason to pause, especially those of us engaged in activities contrary to prevailing opinion.
Facebook and its properties host and oversee a significant share of the marketplace of public thought. To millions of individuals and communities across the world, Facebook and its properties remain the platforms where ideas and information are exchanged. Facebook thus serves as a de facto authority over the public square, arbitrating a worldwide exchange of information as well as overseeing the security of the individuals and communities who entrust their ideas, work, and private data to this platform. This mandates a certain responsibility and assurance of good faith, transparency, and due process.
CrossFit, Inc., as a voluntary user of and contributor to this marketplace, can and must remove itself from this particular manifestation of the public square when it becomes clear that such responsibilities are betrayed or reneged upon to the detriment of our community. Common decency demands that we do so, as do our convictions regarding fitness, health, and nutrition, which sit at the heart of CrossFit’s identity and prescription. To this end, all activity on CrossFit, Inc.’s Facebook and Instagram accounts was suspended as of May 22, 2019, as CrossFit investigates the circumstances pertaining to Facebook’s deletion of the Banting7DayMealPlan and other well-known public complaints about the social-media company that may adversely impact the security and privacy of our global CrossFit community.
Merck Created Hit List to “Destroy,” “Neutralize” or “Discredit” Dissenting Doctors
May 24th, 2019Via: CBS:
Merck made a “hit list” of doctors who criticized Vioxx, according to testimony in a Vioxx class action case in Australia. The list, emailed between Merck employees, contained doctors’ names with the labels “neutralise,” “neutralised” or “discredit” next to them.
23% of Americans Are Going Into Debt Trying to Pay for Food, Rent, Utilities
May 24th, 2019Via: CNBC:
American have an average of $6,506 in credit card debt, according to a new Experian report out this week. But which expenses are adding to that balance the most?
A full 23% of Americans say that paying for basic necessities such as rent, utilities and food contributes the most to their credit card debt, according to a new survey of approximately 2,200 U.S. adults that CNBC Make It performed in conjunction with Morning Consult. Another 12% say medical bills are the biggest portion of their debt.
That makes sense, given that day-to-day costs continue to soar. Middle class life is now 30% more expensive than it was 20 years ago. The cost of things such as college, housing and child care has risen precipitously: Tuition at public universities doubled between 1996 and 2016 and housing prices in popular cities have quadrupled, Alissa Quart, author and executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, tells CNBC Make It.
It’s now common to be just scraping by. A majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings and more than 70% of U.S. adults say they’d be in a difficult situation if their paycheck was delayed by a week, according to a survey of over 30,000 adults conducted by the American Payroll Association released in September.
SpaceX Deploys 60 Starlink Satellites
May 24th, 2019Via: Reuters:
SpaceX, the private rocket company of high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, launched the first batch of 60 small satellites into low-Earth orbit on Thursday for Musk’s new Starlink internet service.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellites blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at about 10:30 p.m. local time (0230 GMT Friday), clearing a key hurdle for a business venture that Musk hopes will generate much-needed cash for his larger ambitions in space.
Robots Conduct Daily Health Inspections of Schoolchildren in China
May 23rd, 2019Wow!
Via: New Scientist:
Please stand in front of Walklake for your examination. This health checking robot takes just 3 seconds to diagnose a variety of ailments in children, including conjunctivitis, and hand, foot and mouth disease. Over 2000 preschools in China, with children aged between 2 and 6, are using Walklake every morning to check the health status of their students.
Dome Covering Nuclear Waste in Marshall Islands Is Beginning to Crack
May 23rd, 2019Via: Independent:
Beginning in 1977, 4,000 US servicemen began collecting an estimated 73,000 cubic meters of tainted surface soil across the islands, according to the Marshall Islands’ government.
The material was then transported to Runit Island, where a 328-foot crater remained from a May 1958 test explosion. For three years, the American military dumped the material into the crater.
Six men reportedly died during the work. Locals took to calling it “The Tomb,” The Guardian reported.
In 1980, a massive concrete dome – 18 inches thick and shaped like a flying saucer – was placed over the fallout debris, sealing off the material on Runit.
But the $218 million (£172 million) project was only supposed to be temporary until a more permanent site was developed, according to The Guardian. However, no further plans were ever hatched.
In 1983, the Marshall Islands signed a compact agreement of free association with the US, granting the island nation the right to govern itself.
But the deal also settled “all claims, past, present and future” tied to the nuclear testing, and left the dome in the care of the island government.
According to a 2017 report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, among the fallout material was plutonium-239, an isotope that is one of the world’s most toxic substances, and one with a radioactive half-life of 24,100 years.
The staying power of that material is the problem. It’s still there, only 18 inches of concrete away from waters that are rising.
U.S. Charges WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange with Espionage
May 23rd, 2019Via: Reuters:
The U.S. Justice Department unveiled 17 new criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, saying he unlawfully published the names of classified sources and conspired with and assisted ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in obtaining access to classified information.
The superseding indictment comes a little more than a month after the Justice Department unsealed a narrower criminal case against Assange.
Assange was initially charged with conspiring with Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He now faces a total of 18 criminal counts, and could face many decades in prison if convicted.
“These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the U.S. government,” said Barry Pollack, an American attorney for Assange.
Amazon Is Working on a Device That Can Read Human Emotions
May 23rd, 2019This strikes an interesting balance. It’s right on the line between cringe inducing and hilarious.
Via: Bloomberg:
Amazon.com Inc. is developing a voice-activated wearable device that can recognize human emotions.
The wrist-worn gadget is described as a health and wellness product in internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. It’s a collaboration between Lab126, the hardware development group behind Amazon’s Fire phone and Echo smart speaker, and the Alexa voice software team.
Designed to work with a smartphone app, the device has microphones paired with software that can discern the wearer’s emotional state from the sound of his or her voice, according to the documents and a person familiar with the program. Eventually the technology could be able to advise the wearer how to interact more effectively with others, the documents show.
Ford’s Vision for Package Delivery Is a Robot that Folds Up Into the Back a Self-Driving Car
May 23rd, 2019Ford conveniently doesn’t show you the robot retrieving the package from the vehicle. As a former FedEx driver who worked with delivery trucks piled top to bottom with packages for years, I chortle deeply and satisfyingly at this one.
Assume that the self driving issue is somehow sorted out, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon, take a look inside the cargo area of a delivery vehicle the next time you see one. It’s a mess. Unless you have some sort of sci-fi grade humanoid robot picking through that, forget it.
Ford might be able to mitigate this piles-of-boxes problem by loading a small number of packages into some sort of magazine which would push out each package to the end of the cargo area so the robot could pick it up. The packages would have to be loaded in delivery order; the box for the first stop would be the first to emerge from the magazine, and so on.
Woops, nobody home/can’t make the delivery. Now what?
The people at Ford are going to be stroking their beards for a while on this one.
Of course, FedEx knows all this—they have been pathologically observing and quantifying their operations for decades.
Vehicle cargo area = Too hard.
I think that’s why they’re looking at sending out a larger number of smaller bots.
But how many bots will they be sending out? One normal truck might have many dozens of packages on board.
Also, there’s a lot of difficult weirdness awaiting robots between the vehicle and the actual point of delivery. Again, you can safely assume that this won’t be viable anytime soon. My guess is that you’ll be getting rides in Musk’s robotaxis before a robot delivers your Amazon order.
I’d like to see one of these bots tuck the box under one arm, open a gate with the other, make the delivery and then kick an attacking German Shepherd in the head during the return trip to the vehicle.
Oh… The neighborhood kids will just LOVE these bots!
What about pizza delivery? Remember the pizza delivery bots? This was three years ago:
What became of this? How many pizzas are being delivered by robots now?
Any?
I think that the best thing about the Rise of the Machines will be the Comedy Gold the results along the way.
Via: The Verge:
The first time you see a strange robot walking down your street, it might be delivering a parcel. That’s the future envisioned by Ford in a new research project that explores how robots and self-driving cars could work together to deliver groceries, fast food, and more.
The robot in question is called Digit, and it stands just over five feet tall. It has a pair of skeletal legs, two arms ending in shapeless nubs, and a sensor array where its head should be. It’s the creation of startup Agility Robotics, which has been developing bipedal robots since 2015 when the company was spun out of research from Oregon State University.
In Ford’s imagining, Digit would be bundled into the back of a self-driving car. When the car reaches its destination, the trunk pops open, and Digit unfolds itself in a manner unnervingly similar to the droid army in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
The robot can then complete the last crucial step of the delivery: actually picking up the parcel and dropping it on your doorstep. No humans required.
