Google Web/Search History Disable Does Absolutely Nothing
May 28th, 2014Classic: For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button:
Millions of dutiful city residents and tourists have pushed them over the years, thinking it would help speed them in their journeys. Many trusting souls might have believed they actually worked. Others, more cynical, might have suspected they were broken but pushed anyway, out of habit, or in the off chance they might bring a walk sign more quickly.
As it turns out, the cynics were right.
The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on, according to city Department of Transportation officials. More than 2,500 of the 3,250 walk buttons that still exist function essentially as mechanical placebos, city figures show. Any benefit from them is only imagined.
Via: Jacques Mattheij:
There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding about the Google Search/Web History disable switch that google provides to its more privacy conscious users. It’s not exactly the most advertised feature (you won’t find it in your profile page) to begin with, but once you do find it (it’s on the history page, you have to click the little ‘gear’ on the top right and then click the button to switch it off) there is no guarantee whatsoever that google does anything except for changing what they display to you. So if you are under the impression that this changes something about what data google collects on you or how they will use that data then you are likely wrong.
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So the only thing that fancy switch does is to limit what you see, but it definitely does not limit google’s ability (or desire) to collect data about you, and you can rest assured that that is exactly what they’ll be doing.
So all you’re being given here is a false sense of privacy.
Why Germany Dominates the U.S. in Innovation
May 28th, 2014Via: Harvard Business Review:
Reading the headlines, you might think that the most urgent question about national success in innovation and growth is whether the U.S. or China should get the gold medal. The truth is: Germany wins hands down.
Germany does a better job on innovation in areas as diverse as sustainable energy systems, molecular biotech, lasers, and experimental software engineering. Indeed, as part of an effort to learn from Germany about effective innovation, U.S. states have encouraged the Fraunhofer Society, a German applied-science think tank, to set up no fewer than seven institutes in America.
True, Americans do well at inventing. The U.S. has the world’s most sophisticated system of financing radical ideas, and the results have been impressive, from Google to Facebook to Twitter. But the fairy tale that the U.S. is better at radical innovation than other countries has been shown in repeated studies to be untrue. Germany is just as good as the U.S. in the most radical technologies.
What’s more important, Germany is better at adapting inventions to industry and spreading them throughout the business sector. Much German innovation involves infusing old products and processes with new ideas and capabilities or recombining elements of old, stagnant sectors into new, vibrant ones.
Germany’s style of innovation explains its manufacturing prowess. For example, many, if not most, of the Chinese products we buy every day are produced by German-made machinery, and the companies that make them are thriving.
It also explains why Germany’s industrial base hasn’t been decimated, as America’s has. Germany is better at sustaining employment growth and productivity, while expanding citizens’ real incomes. Even with wages and benefits that are higher than those in the U.S. by 66%, manufacturing in Germany employed 22% of the workforce and contributed 21% of GDP in 2010. The bottom line: German manufacturers are contributing significantly to employment growth and real income expansion.
In the U.S., by contrast, fewer and fewer people are employed in middle-class manufacturing jobs. In 2010, just under 11% of the workforce was employed in manufacturing, and manufacturing contributed 13% of GDP. Inequality is on the rise, and the country’s balance of payments is getting worse.
All Wars Are Well Planned Banker Wars, Including WWIII
May 28th, 2014Via: Towards a Better Understanding:
Banks have always profited from war because the debt created by banks results in ongoing war profit for big finance; and because wars have been used to open countries to U.S. corporate and banking interests. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan wrote: “the large banking interests were deeply interested in the world war because of the wide opportunities for large profits.”
Autonomous Mode Only: Google Unveils Self Driving Car Prototype without Steering Wheel or Pedals
May 28th, 2014Via: Google:
Ever since we started the Google self-driving car project, we’ve been working toward the goal of vehicles that can shoulder the entire burden of driving. Just imagine: You can take a trip downtown at lunchtime without a 20-minute buffer to find parking. Seniors can keep their freedom even if they can’t keep their car keys. And drunk and distracted driving? History.
We’re now exploring what fully self-driving vehicles would look like by building some prototypes; they’ll be designed to operate safely and autonomously without requiring human intervention. They won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal… because they don’t need them. Our software and sensors do all the work. The vehicles will be very basic—we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible—but they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And that’s an important step toward improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people.
Wal-Mart: “Major Holes Are Starting to Form In Its Business”
May 28th, 2014Via: SHTF Plan:
Wal-Mart has begun to lose its cache with consumers and major holes are starting to form in its business.
Interestingly, Wal-Mart has hidden its financial problems from the headlines because challenges are different around the world, masking themselves in the overall picture.
But when you dig between the headlines you can see a company in serious trouble and could be the latest in a long line of leading retailers to go from boom to bust in the blink of an eye.
Obama Announces Plan to Keep 9,800 U.S. Troops in Afghanistan After 2014
May 28th, 2014Are there not enough mercs to protect all of those opium poppies?
Via: Guardian:
President Obama announced Tuesday that he will leave 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan through much of next year and backed away from ending America’s longest war until at least his final year in office.
Related: CIA Ghost Money
Military Plans to Test Brain Implants to Fight Mental Disorders
May 28th, 2014Via: NPR:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is launching a $70 million program to help military personnel with psychiatric disorders using electronic devices implanted in the brain.
The goal of the five-year program is to develop new ways of treating problems including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which are common among service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan.
“We’ve seen far too many times where military personnel have neuropsychiatric disorders and there’s very few options,” says , a program manager at DARPA.
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The new program will fund development of high-tech implanted devices able to both monitor and electrically stimulate specific brain circuits. The effort will be led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and Massachusetts General Hospital.
More: Military Funds Brain-Computer Interfaces to Control Feelings
Research Credit: DS
‘Mind Pilots’ Steer Plane Simulator with Thoughts Alone
May 28th, 2014I like the one from a decade ago about the chunk of rat brain that flew the F22 simulator:
Scientists have grown a living “brain” that sits inside a petri dish and can fly a simulated F-22 fighter aircraft.
The brainchild of Thomas DeMarse, a biomedical engineer at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the “brain in a dish” is a collection of 25,000 neurons taken from the brain of a rat that are connected to a computer via 60 electrodes.
Via: CNET:
New research out of the Technische Universität München (TUM) in Germany is hinting that mind control might soon reach entirely new heights — even by us non-mutants. They’ve demonstrated that pilots might be able to fly planes through the sky using their thoughts alone.
The researchers hooked study participants to a cap containing dozens of electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes, sat them down in a flight simulator, and told them to steer the plane through the sim using their thoughts alone. The cap read the electrical signals from their brains and an algorithm then translated those signals into computer commands.
Seven people underwent the experiment and, according to the researchers, all were able to pilot the plane using their thoughts to such a degree that their performance could have satisfied some of the criteria for getting a pilot’s license.
What’s more, the study participants weren’t all pilots and had varying levels of flight experience. One had no cockpit experience at all.
Brokers Use ‘Billions’ of Data Points to Profile Americans
May 27th, 2014Via: Washington Post:
Data brokers that quietly gather billions of pieces of data on Americans should be required to operate more openly, so that those categorized as “financially challenged” or possibly suffering from serious medical conditions have the ability to check and challenge those characterizations, a federal report said Tuesday.
The data broker industry, which is lightly regulated, develops profiles of hundreds of millions of people using online and offline sources, such as magazine subscriptions, visits to Web sites, posting on social networking services and purchase histories, the Federal Trade Commission reported. The information sold to marketers can include race, income and homeownership.
Categories used to label consumers include “Bible Lifestyle,” “Smoker in Household” and “New Age/Organic Lifestyle,” the report said. One category, called “Rural Everlasting,” describes people of retirement age who have “low educational attainment and low net worths.”
FTC officials, who based their report on documents gathered by issuing subpoenas to nine data brokers in December 2012, expressed concern about how the data is collected, how it’s used and the potential for making errors that are kept secret from the consumers themselves.
A Human Experimenter Was Vice-President Of The American Cancer Society
May 27th, 2014Via: io9:
A doctor who was once vice president of the The American Cancer Society turns out to have had a dark history. He twice experimented on human beings, injecting them with cancer cells. Learn about the human experimentation of Chester Southam.
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Amazingly, the loss of the license, even for a brief time, was a step forward. In 1952, Southam worked for a medical organization that injected over 300 women with cancer cells, with relatively few repercussions. Still the quick step from injecting people with cancer cells without their knowledge to heading an organization that treats people with cancer is dramatic, and disconcerting.
