1 In 4 Americans Thinks The Sun Goes Around The Earth
February 15th, 2014Via: NPR:
A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the .
The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the
To the question “Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth,” 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.
Good Samaritan Backfire
February 14th, 2014Via: Medium:
I live in a new gilded age in a golden city. But sometimes the cracks show, even here. The façade crumbles and you find yourself naked, in solitary confinement, in a wretched, feces-stained prison.
How? As a result of my efforts to help injured bicyclists by calling 911, I was, in short order: separated from my friend, violently tackled, arrested, taken to county jail, stripped and left in a solitary cell. I am writing this story because, if it could happen to me, it could happen to you, and I feel the need to do something to help prevent this brutality from propagating.
Court Overturns California Law Restricting Concealed Weapons; Appeals Ahead
February 14th, 2014Via: Los Angeles Times:
In a significant victory for gun owners, a divided federal appeals court Thursday struck down California rules that permit counties to restrict as they see fit the right to carry a concealed weapon in public.
The 2-1 ruling by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel would overturn restrictions on carrying concealed handguns, primarily affecting California’s most populated regions, including Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco.
The majority said the restrictions violate the 2nd Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms because they deny law-abiding citizens the ability to carry weapons in public unless they show they need the protection for specific reasons.
“We are not holding that the Second Amendment requires the states to permit concealed carry,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, a Reagan appointee, wrote for the panel. “But the Second Amendment does require that the states permit some form of carry for self-defense outside the home.”
The decision was hailed by gun rights advocates, who said citizens must have the right to protect themselves in public. Proponents of stricter gun control described the ruling as an aberrant and reckless expansion of law that would lead to more gun violence.
California’s rules will remain in effect for the foreseeable future, pending appeals. Officials in San Diego County said they may seek a rehearing before a larger 9th Circuit panel, and experts said the issue would eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Secret Military Contractors Will Soon Mine Your Tweets
February 13th, 2014Via: DefenseOne:
The Army wants a contractor to conduct detailed social media data mining to “identify violent extremist influences” around the world that could affect the European Command, responsible for operations in Europe as well as Iceland, Israel, Greenland and Russia.
Though the project is classified Secret, an Army contract shop in Europe posted a wealth of information on the FedBizOps contract website Tuesday.
‘American Dream Seen as Out of Reach’
February 13th, 2014Any excuse to post this clip…
Via: McClatchy:
Racing into a new century in which many of the old rules don’t seem to apply anymore, Americans are overwhelmingly pessimistic about their chances of achieving and sustaining the American dream, according to a new Marist-McClatchy Poll.
They see an economic system in which they have to work harder than ever to get ahead, and a political system that’s unresponsive to their needs. They see the wealthy allowed to play by a different set of rules from everyone else.
Eight out of 10 Americans think it’s harder now than before, taking more effort to get ahead than it did for previous generations. Just 15 percent think it takes the same work as it did before, and a scant 5 percent think it’s easier now.
And Americans don’t think it will get better soon, with 78 percent thinking it also will be harder for the next generation to get ahead.
Connecticut: Thousands Flout Gun Registration Law
February 13th, 2014Via: The Courant:
Everyone knew there would be some gun owners flouting the law that legislators hurriedly passed last April, requiring residents to register all military-style rifles with state police by Dec. 31.
But few thought the figures would be this bad.
By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault weapons certificates, Lt. Paul Vance said. An additional 2,100 that were incomplete could still come in.
That 50,000 figure could be as little as 15 percent of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents, according to estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation. No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000.
And that means as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely created tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps 100,000 people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have broken no other laws. By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D felonies.
“I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register,” said Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, the ranking GOP senator on the legislature’s public safety committee. “If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don’t follow them, then you have a real problem.”
Research Credit: RP
You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi.
February 13th, 2014Via: ProPublica:
The East German secret police, known as the Stasi, were an infamously intrusive secret police force. They amassed dossiers on about one quarter of the population of the country during the Communist regime.
But their spycraft — while incredibly invasive — was also technologically primitive by today’s standards. While researching my book Dragnet Nation, I obtained the above hand drawn social network graph and other files from the Stasi Archive in Berlin, where German citizens can see files kept about them and media can access some files, with the names of the people who were monitored removed.
After 5 Rejections, Apple Accepts App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes
February 13th, 2014Via: Mashable:
Persistence, it turns out, does pay off. After rejecting it five times, Apple has finally approved an app that tracks every U.S. drone strike and sends a push notification to users every time a flying robot carries out a deadly mission around the world.
Josh Begley, the data artist and developer who made the app, finally got through Apple’s careful approval process on Friday, more than a year and a half after the first rejection by the company’s App Review Team.
It took persistence, but it took also some semantic trickery. Begley got the app approved because he removed the word “drone” from the name of the app and from its description. For the first three attempts, it was called Drones+, then Dronestream for the last two. This latest, successful time, it’s called Metadata+, and Begley initially submitted it with no content or functionality, adding the archive of strikes later.
With those simple gimmicks, the app got the green light from Apple, which didn’t raise any qualms about it.
Much of the Editing Work on Wikipedia Is Done by Bots
February 13th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review:
Less well known is Wikidata, an information repository designed to share basic facts for use on different language versions of Wikipedia. Wikidata therefore plays a crucial role in lubricating the flow of information between these online communities.
Maintaining all this data is a difficult job. It requires significant editing and polishing, mostly involving mindless, repetitive tasks such as formatting links and sources but also adding basic facts.
So much of this kind of work is automated. Behind the scenes, automated bots scan Wikipedia and Wikidata pages continually polishing the content for human consumption.
But that raises an important question. How much bot activity is there? What are these bots doing and how does it compare to human activity?
Britain: Children Act Out Drug and Rape Scenes from Grand Theft Auto
February 12th, 2014Via: South Wales Argus:
A HEADTEACHER has sent a letter to parents after becoming aware of “extremely concerning behaviour” of pupils, some as young as six, which he puts down to a violent video game.
Pupils at Coed-y-Brain Primary School, in Llanbradach, have been, according to head teacher Morian Morgan, “initiating games that involve simulating rape and sexual intercourse” and “having detailed discussion of drug use”.
Staff at the school discovered that the worrying behaviour was a result of children coming into contact with Grand Theft Auto, or GTA, which follows the dark underworld of America’s biggest cities.
Its latest instalment, Grand Theft Auto V, is thought to be one of the best-selling video games of all time, having sold more than 32 million copies worldwide.
It is certified for people over 18.
The letter to parents also said children were “acting out scenes from the game which include the strongest of sexual swear words”, “having conversations” about sexual acts and “play acting extremely violent games that sometimes result in actual injury”.
