The Entrepreneur with the $100 Million Plan to Link Brains to Computers
March 17th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review:
Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson says he wanted to become very rich in order to do something great for humankind.
Last year Johnson, founder of the online payments company Braintree, starting making news when he threw $100 million behind Kernel, a startup he founded to enhance human intelligence by developing brain implants capable of linking people’s thoughts to computers.
Johnson isn’t alone in believing that “neurotechnology” could be the next big thing. To many in Silicon Valley, the brain looks like an unconquered frontier whose importance dwarfs any achievement made in computing or the Web.
According to neuroscientists, several figures from the tech sector are currently scouring labs across the U.S. for technology that might fuse human and artificial intelligence. In addition to Johnson, Elon Musk has been teasing a project called “neural lace,” which he said at a 2016 conference will lead to “symbiosis with machines.” And Mark Zuckerberg declared in a 2015 Q&A that people will one day be able to share “full sensory and emotional experiences,” not just photos. Facebook has been hiring neuroscientists for an undisclosed project at Building 8, its secretive hardware division.
Facing Bread Shortage, Venezuela Arrests Bakers
March 17th, 2017Via: Miami Herald:
Facing a bread shortage that is spawning massive lines and souring the national mood, the Venezuelan government is responding this week by detaining bakers and seizing establishments.
In a press release, the National Superintendent for the Defense of Socioeconomic Rights said it had charged four people and temporarily seized two bakeries as the socialist administration accused bakers of being part of a broad “economic war” aimed at destabilizing the country.
High Calorie, Low Nutrient Food Apocalypse
March 15th, 2017Via: BBC:
A teaspoon of oil, measured out with precision, is how Professor Tim Benton remembers his mother preparing items for frying.
When he was growing up in the 1960s, vegetable oil was still a precious commodity and used sparingly.
Fast-forward to today and oil is now so abundant and cheaply available that most of us use it liberally in our cooking – chucking it in anything from salad dressings to deep fat frying.
It’s not only in our home cooking, oil is also an ingredient in most of the items we buy from the supermarket.
In fact, vegetable oil, specifically soy bean oil and palm oil, are two of the eight ingredients, alongside wheat, rice, maize, sugar, barley and potato, that are now estimated to provide a staggering 85% of the world’s calories.
Increasingly, no matter what country we live in, we all eat similar diets which are heavy in calories and low in nutrients.
Toy Drone Shot Down with Patriot Missile
March 15th, 2017Raytheon doesn’t mind.
Meanwhile, in France: French Military Trains Eagles to Hunt Drones
Via: BBC:
A Patriot missile – usually priced at about $3m (£2.5m) – was used to shoot down a small quadcopter drone, according to a US general.
The strike was made by a US ally, Gen David Perkins told a military symposium.
“That quadcopter that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against a Patriot,” he said.
Patriots are radar-targeted weapons more commonly used to shoot down enemy aircraft and ballistic missiles.
“Now, that worked, they got it, OK, and we love Patriot missiles,” the general said.
Recently, there have been reports that some groups, for example in Iraq, have taken to attaching weapons to small, commercial drones and using them against security forces.
However, Gen Perkins suggested deploying large surface-to-air missiles as a defence was probably not economically wise.
“I’m not sure that’s a good economic exchange ratio,” he told an audience at the Association of the United States Army’s Global Force symposium in Alabama.
“In fact, if I’m the enemy, I’m thinking, ‘Hey, I’m just gonna get on eBay and buy as many of these $300 quadcopters as I can and expend all the Patriot missiles out there’.”
Seeking Adventure And Gold? Crack This Poem And Head Outdoors
March 15th, 2017This is a bit like, Ready Player One, but outdoors.
Well, assuming that there is a chest of gold out there…
Just buy Forrest Fenn’s books to read the clues. *wink*
On a more ominous note, I hope the guy is aware of rubber hose cryptanalysis! It’s probably best to wait until you kick the bucket, like James Halliday did in Ready Player One, before attempting a stunt like this, gold or no gold.
Via: NPR:
Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, there is a bronze chest filled with gold and precious gems. The search for this hidden treasure has become a hobby for some, an obsession for others, and for one recent searcher — a fatal pursuit.
The man behind the treasure is Forrest Fenn, an 85-year-old millionaire, former Vietnam fighter pilot, self-taught archaeologist, and successful art dealer in Santa Fe, N.M.
“No one knows where that treasure chest is but me,” Fenn says. “If I die tomorrow, the knowledge of that location goes in the coffin with me.”
‘Pretty Much Tastes Like Chicken’
March 15th, 2017Via: MarketWatch:
A Bay Area food-technology startup says it has successfully developed the world’s first chicken strip grown from self-reproducing cells without so much as ruffling a feather.
And it pretty much tastes like chicken, according to people who were offered samples Tuesday in San Francisco, before a planned big reveal on Wednesday by Memphis Meats Inc.
Scientists, startups and animal-welfare activists believe the new product could help to revolutionize the roughly $200 billion U.S. meat industry. Their goal: Replace billions of cattle, hogs and chickens with animal meat they say can be grown more efficiently and humanely in stainless steel bioreactor tanks.
Startups including Memphis Meats and Mosa Meat, based in the Netherlands, have been pursuing the concept. They call it “clean meat,” a spin on “clean energy,” and they argue the technique would help the food industry avoid the costs of grain, water and waste-disposal associated with livestock. Scientists from those companies have already produced beef, grown from bovine cells and made into a burger and a meatball. Until now, chicken hasn’t been produced using the method.
Man Survived Alone in the Wilderness of Maine for 27 Years by Stealing from Lakeside Cabins
March 15th, 2017How did this go on for so long? I don’t accept that Knight’s experience with alarm installation explains it.
I wonder if the situation became like placing a saucer of milk outside for a stray cat?
Did people like the idea of this guy living out there without a job or other commitments so much that they, consciously or not, allowed themselves to be robbed like this for decades?
I don’t know. All I know is that I started reading this piece and somehow kept reading through to the end. I don’t find Christopher Knight’s story particularly interesting. Spoiler alert: He’s a bum who stole fossil fuels and food to survive. Yes, he was damn good at it! However, I’m much more interested in learning more about why the victims allowed this to go on for close to three decades.
I’m thinking that self loathing of the 9 to 5 lifestyle has to be a part of the explanation. The temporary residents spend mini vacations in the cabins, while probably dreading a return to the office on Monday morning. Maybe they lived vicariously through Knight’s antics?
Whatever the case may be, this is a weird one on multiple levels.
Via: Guardian:
At the age of 20, Christopher Knight parked his car on a remote trail in Maine and walked away with only the most basic supplies. He had no plan. His chief motivation was to avoid contact with people.
Book: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel
How Police Departments Use Civil Forfeiture to Collect Billions
March 15th, 2017Whenever you hear about tips to the police from confidential informants or “concerned citizens,” etc. keep this in mind: U.S. Communications Intelligence Secretly Shared with Law Enforcement for Use Against Americans in Criminal Investigations.
So, mass surveillance and civil forfeiture: Is there a link?
“It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won’t be used,” said a former Stazi former Stasi Lieutenant Colonel about the U.S. Government’s mass surveillance operations. The fact that the mechanism is in place is enough proof for me, and if you don’t want the pigs to rob you, I’d suggest that you treat your computer, mobile devices and the surveillance platforms from and Google and major CIA contractor Amazon with extreme caution.
Via: Vice:
Based on laws that originated from the War on Drugs in the 1980s, police departments around the country are able to seize a person’s cash and property without charging them with a crime.
Civil forfeiture laws were created as a tool to cripple suspected criminals and drug rings, but police departments nationwide have been using this cash and property to fund their operations or even pay policemen directly.
The problem, is that in the vast majority of assets seizures, the individual is not charged with a crime. And once their cash and property are seized, getting it back is a prohibitively lengthy and expensive process.
NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants
March 15th, 2017Are They building electronic dossiers on as many of us as they can? I don’t know, but it sure looks that way.
—Cryptogon, 2007: NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite
In Open Thread: Trump Wiretap Claims, I wrote:
Where is the uproar over the spook’s data center in Utah? Man, if you think that place is only used to store information gleaned from taps on foreigners, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Here’s how it typically works on Cryptogon.
1) I make a guess about how bad a situation actually is vs. what the public is being told. Even some Cryptogon readers think I am insane.
2) Years pass.
3) Information comes out that shows that I was essentially right.
4) Years pass.
5) Information comes out that shows that the situation was or is worse than even I thought.
We’re only at stage 3 with the mass surveillance situation.
I’ll reiterate what I think the stage 5 reality could be:
I think the reality is that a dossier on every “citizen” is being automatically maintained. The dossier contains everything from purchases to Internet activity, audio from phone calls, to full contents of emails. Income. Library records. Travel records. etc. Additionally, I think that there is another widget that links activity, that users think is anonymous, up to their main dossier.
And for good measure, most people conveniently carry a GPS tracker/smartphone around with them that provides their location on the ground. I’ve maintained, for about a decade, that mass tracking of people is part of the core functionality of this thing. As I write this, searching the exact phrase, “Wireless Geolocation Branch” on Google shows nothing.
Check out the partial CIA organizational chart that WikiLeaks released a few days ago:
The Wireless Geolocation Branch… Fascinating.
Here is an extended passage from my 2007 post on, Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation:
Remember Russell Tice, the NSA SIGINT officer who had knowledge of a special access NSA operation that was so disturbing that he tried to tell the U.S. Congress about it?
What was Tice talking about here:
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. “It’s an angle that you haven’t heard about yet,” he said.
An angle that we haven’t heard about. Since everyone and his dog knows about the mass surveillance, what could that angle be?
More recently, Tice said that the NSA intercepts of civilian traffic is “the tip of the iceberg” and says, again, that there is something else, something we still don’t know about. Here’s part of the interview between Tice and Reason:
REASON: What prompted you to step forward now?
Tice: Well, I’ve known this for a long time and I’ve kept my mouth shut…
REASON: You’re referring to what James Risen calls “The Program,” the NSA wiretaps that have been reported on?
Tice: No, I’m referring to what I need to tell Congress that no one knows yet, which is only tertiarily connected to what you know about now.
Ok, so the outrage that Tice was willing to ruin his life over is only “tertiarily connected” to the operation we already new about.
Tice continues:
In my case, there’s no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it; no one at the Times should ever learn about these things.
The surveillance side of this is the chickenfeed. There’s something far more sinister than the simple surveillance… an angle we haven’t heard about yet.
Tice never did tell his story to Congress about this different aspect of the program.
Well, my guess is that it has something to do with providing surveillance data for this SEAS World Sim thing, and that individual Americans are being watched and potentially targeted with it. Tice’s background seems to involve a lot of traditional electronic warfare, radar and ELINT stuff. Maybe Tice’s deal involved the collection of the mobile phone GPS and/or triangulation data which would provide realtime spacial/geographic data to the SEAS system. In other words, SEAS sees you. They could bring up a map of a city and plot your path based on the information that your phone is exchanging with the mobile network.
—
I just went to see if Tice has said anything recently. I found this from 2013:
Russell Tice, a retired National Security Agency intelligence analyst and whistleblower, said: “What is going on is much larger and more systemic than anything anyone has ever suspected or imagined.”
He obviously doesn’t read Cryptogon.
Although an anonymous senior Obama administration official said that “on its face” the court order revealed by the Guardian did not authorise the government to listen in on people’s phone calls, Tice now believes the NSA has constructed such a capability.
“I figured it would probably be about 2015” before the NSA had “the computer capacity … to collect all digital communications word for word,” Tice said. “But I think I’m wrong. I think they have it right now.”
There it is.
I think that what has changed over the last several years is that the full dossier functionality, that I’ve speculated about for a decade, has expanded from a group of targeted individuals to everyone.
All of this, I have no doubt at all, is searchable by any combination of keyword, date, name, browser fingerprint, browsing fingerprint, linguistic fingerprint, IP address, geographic proximity, and probably dozens of other criteria.
The cherry on top of this disaster is that the infrastructure is being used illegally to feed information to law enforcement for use against American citizens, “It’s just like laundering money – you work it backwards to make it clean.”
Via: The Intercept:
On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Sen. Rand Paul was asked about President Trump’s accusation that President Obama ordered the NSA to wiretap his calls. The Kentucky senator expressed skepticism about the mechanics of Trump’s specific charge, saying: “I doubt that Trump was a target directly of any kind of eavesdropping.” But he then made a broader and more crucial point about how the U.S. government spies on Americans’ communications — a point that is deliberately obscured and concealed by U.S. government defenders.
Paul explained how the NSA routinely and deliberately spies on Americans’ communications — listens to their calls and reads their emails — without a judicial warrant of any kind:
The way it works is, the FISA court, through Section 702, wiretaps foreigners and then [NSA] listens to Americans. It is a backdoor search of Americans. And because they have so much data, they can tap — type Donald Trump into their vast resources of people they are tapping overseas, and they get all of his phone calls.
And so they did this to President Obama. They — 1,227 times eavesdrops on President Obama’s phone calls. Then they mask him. But here is the problem. And General Hayden said this the other day. He said even low-level employees can unmask the caller. That is probably what happened to Flynn.
They are not targeting Americans. They are targeting foreigners. But they are doing it purposefully to get to Americans.
Paul’s explanation is absolutely correct. That the NSA is empowered to spy on Americans’ communications without a warrant — in direct contravention of the core Fourth Amendment guarantee that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause” — is the dirty little secret of the U.S. Surveillance State.
Trump to Nominate Goldman Sachs’ Donovan as Deputy Treasury Secretary
March 14th, 2017Mmm hmm.
Via: Reuters:
U.S. President Donald Trump will nominate Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N) Managing Director James Donovan as deputy secretary of the Treasury, the White House said on Tuesday.
