Tech May Replace Half of All Low-Skilled Jobs in the U.S.
July 17th, 2017Via: CBS:
Ball State University sits in Muncie, Indiana, at the heart the “Rust Belt,” so educators there have the right to be pessimistic about the drift of the U.S. economy. But a report by the school’s Center for Business and Economic Research goes even further.
“We found a toxic brew,” said CBER Director Michael Hicks. “Automation is likely to replace half of all low-skilled jobs, and roughly one in four of all American jobs are at risk from foreign competition in coming years.”
Facial Recognition Coming to Police Body Cameras
July 17th, 2017Via: Defense One:
Even if the cop who pulls you over doesn’t recognize you, the body camera on his chest just might in the future.
Device-maker Motorola announced Monday that would partner with artificial intelligence software startup Neurala to build “real-time learning for a person of interest search” on Motorola products such as the Si500 body camera for police, the AI firm announced in a press release today.
Former Haiti Government Official Shoots Himself in the Head in Miami-Area Hotel
July 17th, 2017Via: Miami Herald:
Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official, was found dead Tuesday in a South Dade motel room in what the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office is ruling a suicide.
“He shot himself in the head,” said Veronica Lamar, Miami-Dade medical examiner records supervisor. She listed his time of death at 12:19 p.m.
The address where Eberwein’s body was discovered according to police, 14501 S. Dixie Hwy., is a Quality Inn.
A supporter of former Haitian President Michel Martelly, Eberwein served as director general of the government’s economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social, better known as FAES. He held the position from May 2012 until February 2015 when he was replaced.
Used GPUs Flood Market as Ethereum’s Price Crashes Below $150
July 16th, 2017haha that didn’t take long:
I’m hoping to buy a used GTX 1070 for my son’s 10th birthday in November. Will there be a flood of cheap GTX 1070s on eBay by then?
Via: OC3D:
Over the past few months, there has been a GPU shortage, forcing the prices of mid-range graphics cards up as cryptocurrency miners from across the world purchased hardware in bulk in search for quick and easy profits.
This has forced the prices of most modern AMD and certain Nvidia GPUs to skyrocket, but now these GPUs are starting to saturate the used market as more and more Ethereum miners sell up and quit mining. Some other miners are starting to look at other emerging Cryptocurrencies, though it is clear that the hype behind Ethereum is dying down.
Earlier this week Ethereum’s value dropped below $200, as soon as the currency experienced a new difficulty spike, making the currency 20% harder to mine and significantly less profitable. This combined with its decrease in value has made mining Ethereum unprofitable for many miners, especially in regions with higher than average electricity costs.
…
On second-hand sales websites like eBay and Gumtree, we have seen a lot of new GPU listing appear in recent days, with plenty of used AMD RX series GPUs appearing over the weekend. More hardware is expected to hit these sites over the coming days as some miners wind down their operations…
Homeland Security Says Americans Who Don’t Want Faces Scanned on International Flights “Shouldn’t Travel”
July 15th, 2017Via: ZDnet:
Homeland Security’s advice for the millions of Americans traveling overseas who don’t want to end up in its facial biometric database is simply not to travel.
That’s according to the agency’s own assessment document published earlier this year of a new so-called traveler verification project to “capture facial images of travelers” leaving the US.
The effort aims to help Customs and Border Protection (CBP) track non-immigrant foreigners and those who overstay their visas. To date, foreigners arriving in the US will have their photo and fingerprints recorded at the border, but Americans are exempt from turning over their biometrics.
But now the agency wants to scan the faces when anyone — including Americans — leaves the US.
“The only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling,” says the document.
Australian PM Calls for End-to-End Encryption Ban, Says the Laws of Mathematics Don’t Apply Down Under
July 15th, 2017#comedygold
Via: EFF:
“The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”, said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today. He has been rightly mocked for this nonsense claim, that foreshadows moves to require online messaging providers to provide law enforcement with back door access to encrypted messages. He explained that “We need to ensure that the internet is not used as a dark place for bad people to hide their criminal activities from the law.” It bears repeating that Australia is part of the secretive spying and information sharing Five Eyes alliance.
But despite the well-deserved mockery that ensued, we shouldn’t make too much light of the real risk that this poses to Internet freedom in Australia. It’s true enough, for now, that a ban on end-to-end encrypted messaging in Australia would have absolutely no effect on “bad people”, who would simply avoid using major platforms with weaker forms of encryption, in favor of other apps that use strong end-to-end encryption based on industry standard mathematical algorithms. It would hurt ordinary citizens who rely on encryption to make sure that their conversations are secure and private from prying eyes.
New Zealand: ‘100% Pure’ Campaign Shows Tourist Drinking River Water
July 14th, 2017haha oh sure, go for it: sosgoldenbay.nz
And that’s near the most precious spring in NZ. Up where I live, in the Far North, the situation is apocalyptic. I snapped this image just a few KMs from my house:
Hardly anyone cares or even notices. But they love the National Party up here.
Via: Stuff:
While concerns grow about the health of New Zealand’s waterways – including the potential for reputational damage – it has not changed the way the country presents itself to the world.
The latest “100% Pure” campaign, released last week, shows a tourist drinking water from a river, something that would be dangerous in parts of the country.
The Government-funded ad was released last week by Tourism New Zealand (TNZ), and will be broadcast around the world over the next two years.
The campaign is titled “where one journey leads to another”, and anchors on a dream-like video following two tourists tramping, diving and kayaking in various locations throughout New Zealand.
Fishermen Express Fury as Fukushima Plant Set to Release Radioactive Material Into Ocean
July 14th, 2017Via: Telegraph:
Local residents and environmental groups have condemned a plan to release radioactive tritium from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the plant, say tritium poses little risk to human health and is quickly diluted by the ocean.
In an interview with local media, Takashi Kawamura, chairman of TEPCO, said: “The decision has already been made.” He added, however, that the utility is waiting for approval from the Japanese government before going ahead with the plan and is seeking the understanding of local residents.
Concentration Camps Reveal the Nature of the Modern State
July 14th, 2017Via: Aeon:
In the history of concentration camps, there is one thing that everyone knows: they were invented by the British. The idea of isolating unwanted population groups in purpose-built camps was implemented in South Africa in the context of the Anglo-Boer War, with horrific consequences for the Boer population. Although it would be left to the Nazis to perfect the institution, making it into one of the most recognisable in the modern world, concentration camps are the link between the Boer War and the Holocaust.
This simple narrative hides a far more complex history. Concentration camps are an institution that has changed over time, with techniques of incarceration shared and spread across the world, and of brutal ‘population management’ through terror. Above all, this is not simply a history of colonial atrocity and mad dictators; rather, it is a history that takes us to the heart of the modern state. Concentration camps reveal something about the nature of states that, in an age of heightened uncertainty and rising nationalism, should give us pause for thought.
House Democrats Want to Know Why a Major Russian Money-Laundering Case Was Abruptly Settled
July 12th, 2017Related: Why Did Loretta Lynch Grant Trump Jr’s Russian Lawyer A Special Visa To Enter America?
—
Via: Business Insider:
Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday asking why the Department of Justice settled a major money-laundering case involving a real-estate company owned by the son of a powerful Russian government official whose lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. last year.
Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, on Tuesday tweeted an email chain from June 2016 in which he entertained accepting damaging information from a “Russian government attorney” about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s support for his father’s campaign.
That attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, represents the family of Pyotr Katsyv, the former vice governor of the Moscow region, whose son, Denis, owns the real-estate company Prevezon. The DOJ had been investigating whether Prevezon laundered millions of dollars through New York City real estate when the case was unexpectedly settled two days before going to trial in May.
“Last summer, Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected attorney in an attempt to obtain information ‘that would incriminate Hillary,'” the Democrats wrote, citing the emails he published. “Earlier this year, on May 12, 2017, the Department of Justice made an abrupt decision to settle a money laundering case being handled by that same attorney in the Southern District of New York.
“We write with some concern that the two events may be connected — and that the Department may have settled the case at a loss for the United States in order to obscure the underlying facts.”
The Prevezon case garnered high-profile attention, given its ties to a $230 million Russian tax-fraud scheme and the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose suspicious death aroused international media attention and spurred the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Denis Katsyv and Veselnitskaya have become the face of Moscow’s lobbying efforts against the Magnitsky Act in recent years.
Democrats now want to know whether Veselnitskaya was “involved at any point in the settlement negotiations,” and they have asked Sessions to provide the committee “with the prosecution files and any other explanatory materials related to the settlement.”
They also want to know whether there was “any contact between President Trump, White House personnel, the Trump family, or the Trump campaign with the Department of Justice” regarding Prevezon, and whether Sessions discussed the case “with anyone associated with the transition team,” or with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, while he was being considered for attorney general.
