Google’s Home Mini Needed a Software Patch to Stop Some of Them from Recording Everything
October 11th, 2017Mmm hmm.
Via: The Verge:
Categorize this under “one of the worst possible PR nightmares for a Google smart speaker.” According to Artem Russakovskii at Android Police, the Google Home Mini he was reviewing was randomly and near-constantly recording sounds in his home and transmitting them to Google. The company acknowledged the problem and is issuing a software update to resolve the issue, which appears to boil down to a failure of the touch sensor on the top.
Fentanyl Maker Donates Big to Campaign Opposing Pot Legalization
October 10th, 2017Via: U.S. News and World Report:
An embattled pharmaceutical company that sells the powerful painkiller fentanyl has donated $500,000 toward defeating a ballot initiative that would make recreational use of marijuana legal under Arizona law.
It’s hard to imagine a more sinister donor than Insys Therapeutics Inc. in the eyes of pot legalization proponents, who long have claimed drug companies want to keep cannabis illegal to corner the market for drugs, some addictive and dangerous, that relieve pain and other symptoms.
Insys currently markets just one product, according to an August filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission: a sublingual fentanyl spray it calls Subsys.
Two former company employees pleaded not guilty last month to federal charges related to an alleged kickback scheme to get doctors to prescribe Subsys.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit late last month against the company alleging Insys hawked the drug to doctors for off-label prescribing, saying the company’s “desire for increased profits led it to disregard patients’ health and push addictive opioids for non-FDA approved purposes.”
GM to Buy Sensor-Tech Firm Strobe to Speed Up Self-Driving Car Push
October 10th, 2017Via: Reuters:
No. 1 U.S. automaker General Motors Co (GM.N) said on Monday it would buy Strobe Inc, which uses LIDAR technology to help self-driving cars identify objects at a distance, to speed up development of autonomous vehicles and slash sensor costs.
LIDAR is one of the major sensor technologies used in autonomous, or self-driving vehicles, and there is fierce competition between large automakers to bring the cars to market first.
Fully self-driving vehicles are expected to hit the market in a limited form by around 2020. GM and its U.S. rival Ford Motor Co (F.N) have both publicly stated that they aim to have fully self-driving cars on sale by 2021.
”This acquisition is a game changer for GM and Cruise,“ because of the cost savings it will bring,” Kyle Vogt, chief executive of GM’s Cruise Automation unit, said.
“We’ve made this acquisition because we aim to speed our path to market,” he added.
Strobe’s new microchip LIDAR system would significantly enhance the capabilities of the self-driving cars GM was developing, Vogt said in a blog post and on a conference call with reporters.
Forensic Acoustic Proof of SECOND Shooter in the Las Vegas Massacre
October 9th, 2017Main post: Las Vegas: Worst Mass Shooting in U.S. History
Via: Mike Adams/ Health Ranger:
In essence, because of the differences in the speed of sound vs. the speed of the bullets from a known cartridge (.223 Remington, in this case), the time lag between the last bullet hitting the pavement and the last audible report of the rifle muzzle can be used to very accurately calculate the range of the shooter.
More importantly, when the audio from the Las Vegas shooting is analyzed, it reveals TWO shooters operating at the same time, not just one shooter. Shooter #1 is operating at 425 – 475 yards, which is consistent with the Mandalay Bay hotel, but shooter #2 is operating at approximately 250 – 270 yards.
Robotic Farm Completes 1st Fully Autonomous Harvest
October 8th, 2017Via: LiveScience:
It’s harvest season in many parts of the world, but on one farm in the United Kingdom, robots — not humans — are doing all the heavy lifting.
At Hands Free Hectare, an experimental farm run by researchers from Harper Adams University, in the village of Edgmond in the U.K., about 5 tons (4.5 metric tons) of spring barley have been harvested from the world’s first robotically tended farm. Everything from start to finish — including sowing, fertilizing, collecting samples and harvesting — has been done by autonomous vehicles on the farm, according to the researchers.
Ted Heath Would Have Been Questioned Over Abuse Claims, Police Say
October 8th, 2017Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
Via: Guardian:
A police report has said there was reason to suspect that Sir Edward Heath, Britain’s seventh postwar prime minister, carried out a string of sex attacks over a span of decades.
The report concludes that the allegations, including the rape of a male child sex worker aged 11 and sexual assault against four other children and two adults, would have met the legal threshold for police to interview Heath under criminal caution had he still been alive.
The police said nothing should be inferred from their findings – after a total of 40 allegations – about the guilt or innocence of Heath, who died in 2005.
Our Minds Can Be Hijacked: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia
October 6th, 2017Via: Guardian:
There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity – even when the device is turned off. “Everyone is distracted,” Rosenstein says. “All of the time.”
Related: Inside the Rehab Saving Young Men from Their Internet Addiction
In Meeting with Military, Trump Talks of ‘Calm Before the Storm’
October 6th, 2017Oh that’s just great.
Via: Reuters:
After discussing Iran and North Korea with U.S. military leaders on Thursday, President Donald Trump posed for a photo with them before dinner and declared the moment “the calm before the storm.”
“You guys know what this represents?” Trump said after journalists gathered in the White House state dining room to photograph him and first lady Melania Trump with the uniformed military leaders and their spouses.
“Maybe it’s the calm before the storm,” he said.
What storm?
“You’ll find out,” Trump told questioning reporters.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CONTRACTOR SHARES NAME WITH COMPANY THAT BOUGHT PADDOCK’S PLANE IN 2013
October 5th, 2017Update: Volant, LLC, Volant Associates, LLC, Volant Associates?
Look at the domain contact. Hmm. If they’re different organizations, this is a spectacular coincidence.
Whois volant-associates.com:
—
Well, well, well.
Are Volant LLC and Volant Associates, both in the CIA’s backyard, completely different organizations, as some are sure to say? Maybe. But I think they’re close enough for government work, especially CIA cut out work, and easily appropriate for the Coincidence category.
Via: Political Vel Craft:
Looking closely, the first thing you will notice is that the shooter, Stephen Paddock, had a pilot license and owned two planes. This is well-established fact. The tail number of one of those planes is N5343M, a Cirrus SR-20. You can see that this was owned by Paddock by going to the website Flightaware.com. But Paddock doesn’t own this plane anymore. It was grounded three years ago, and it’s now in the hands of none other than Volant LLC, which there is little information on.
However, Volant Associates is none other than a Department of Defense contractor. Meaning Paddock’s plane has been in the hands of the United States government for the past three years and grounded since – if Volant LLC is being used as a way to hide information. Considering what Volant Associates does, that wouldn’t be so far fetched. But the plane’s information is all easily verified here on Flightaware.com. It’s been in Roanoke, Virginia since April 25, 2014.
Volant’s describes it’s mission on their website as providing “the industry’s preeminent professionals to discriminating U.S. government and intelligence-and-defense-industry customers.”
Research Credit: EB
Fukushima Operator Can Restart Reactors at World’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant
October 5th, 2017Via: Guardian:
The operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been given initial approval to restart reactors at another atomic facility, marking the first step towards the firm’s return to nuclear power generation more than six years after the March 2011 triple meltdown.
Japan’s nuclear regulator on Wednesday approved an application from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) to restart two reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa – the world’s biggest nuclear power plant – even as the utility struggles to decommission Fukushima Daiichi.
