China Launches Powerful Rocket in Boost for 2020 Mars Mission
December 27th, 2019Via: AFP:
China Friday launched one of the world’s most powerful rockets in a major step forward for its planned mission to Mars in 2020.
The heavy lift Long March 5 rocket carrying a test satellite payload blasted off from the Wenchang launch site on the southern island of Hainan at 8:45 pm (1245 GMT), a livestream from state broadcaster CCTV showed.
“After more than 2,000 seconds, the Shijian 20 satellite was sent into its predetermined orbit,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The rocket launch “tests key technologies related to future space missions,” Xinhua said.
The successful launch is a key part of China’s ambitious plans for a mission to the Red Planet next year and hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022.
Behind the One-Way Mirror: A Deep Dive Into the Technology of Corporate Surveillance
December 27th, 2019Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Trackers are hiding in nearly every corner of today’s Internet, which is to say nearly every corner of modern life. The average web page shares data with dozens of third-parties. The average mobile app does the same, and many apps collect highly sensitive information like location and call records even when they’re not in use. Tracking also reaches into the physical world. Shopping centers use automatic license-plate readers to track traffic through their parking lots, then share that data with law enforcement. Businesses, concert organizers, and political campaigns use Bluetooth and WiFi beacons to perform passive monitoring of people in their area. Retail stores use face recognition to identify customers, screen for theft, and deliver targeted ads.
The tech companies, data brokers, and advertisers behind this surveillance, and the technology that drives it, are largely invisible to the average user. Corporations have built a hall of one-way mirrors: from the inside, you can see only apps, web pages, ads, and yourself reflected by social media. But in the shadows behind the glass, trackers quietly take notes on nearly everything you do. These trackers are not omniscient, but they are widespread and indiscriminate. The data they collect and derive is not perfect, but it is nevertheless extremely sensitive.
This paper will focus on corporate “third-party” tracking: the collection of personal information by companies that users don’t intend to interact with. It will shed light on the technical methods and business practices behind third-party tracking. For journalists, policy makers, and concerned consumers, we hope this paper will demystify the fundamentals of third-party tracking, explain the scope of the problem, and suggest ways for users and legislation to fight back against the status quo.
Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns
December 27th, 2019We explore a variety of explanations and conclude that falling college wealth premiums may be due to the luck of when you were born, financial liberalization and the rising cost of higher education.
Maybe, but it’s incredible how the authors avoided the elephant in the room.
The number of times the word technology appears in this piece: 0.
The number of times the word automation appears in this piece: 0.
The number of times the word robotics appears in this piece: 0.
Via: Federal Reserve (.pdf):
The college income premium—the extra income earned by a family headed by a college graduate over an otherwise similar family without a bachelor’s degree—remains positive but has declined for recent graduates. The college wealth premium (extra wealth) has declined more noticeably among all cohorts born after 1940. Among non-Hispanic white family heads born in the 1980s, the college wealth premium is at a historic low; among all other races and ethnicities, it is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Using variables available for the first time in the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that controlling for the education of one’s parents reduces our estimates of college and postgraduate income and wealth premiums by 8 to 18 percent. Controlling also for measures of a respondent’s financial acumen—which may be partly innate—, our estimates of the value added by college and a postgraduate degree fall by 30 to 60 percent. Taken together, our results suggest that college and post-graduate education may be failing some recent graduates as a financial investment. We explore a variety of explanations and conclude that falling college wealth premiums may be due to the luck of when you were born, financial liberalization and the rising cost of higher education.
Turkey Unveils First Fully Homemade Car in $3.7 Billion Bet on Electric
December 27th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Turkey unveiled its first fully domestically-produced car on Friday, saying it aimed to eventually produce up to 175,000 a year of the electric vehicle in a project expected to cost 22 billion lira ($3.7 billion) over 13 years.
New Russian Weapon Can Travel 27 Times the Speed of Sound
December 27th, 2019Via: ABC:
A new intercontinental weapon that can fly 27 times the speed of sound became operational Friday, Russia’s defense minister reported to President Vladimir Putin, bolstering the country’s nuclear strike capability.
Putin has described the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle as a technological breakthrough comparable to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite. The new Russian weapon and a similar system being developed by China have troubled the United States, which has pondered defense strategies.
The Avangard is launched atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, but unlike a regular missile warhead that follows a predictable path after separation it can make sharp maneuvers in the atmosphere en route to target, making it much harder to intercept.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed Putin that the first missile unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle entered combat duty.
Drones Need Tracking Network for Expanded Flights, FAA Says
December 27th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
All but the smallest civilian drones would have to broadcast radio tracking data to ensure greater safety and prevent terrorism under a sweeping proposal unveiled by U.S. regulators Thursday.
The long-awaited draft rules call for a massive new tracking network for everything from toys to larger commercial drones so that law enforcement can spot the devices flying anywhere, from congested urban areas to the most rural zones.
…
With only limited exceptions for groups such as model-airplane operators, all drones weighing more than 0.55 pounds (0.25 kilograms) would have to broadcast their position and operator’s identity at all times under the FAA proposal.
Russia Raids Offices of Kremlin Critic Over Refusal to Take Down Video About Medvedev
December 27th, 2019Via: AFP:
Russian security officials searched the offices of leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation on Thursday, with his team calling the raid a new bid to disrupt their work.
Navalny linked the searches to his refusal to take down a 2017 video report that accused Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of massive corruption and has racked up nearly 33 million views on YouTube.
“What’s happening is part of the coordinated campaign against the anti-corruption foundation,” Navalny, 43, told reporters, but vowed that his organisation would not be intimidated.
“This complicates our work but we will not halt it,” said Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, adding it was the fifth such raid on the foundation.
Hepatitis C Kills More Americans Than All Other Reportable Infectious Diseases Combined [???]
December 26th, 2019Via: Stanford:
The hepatitis C virus now kills more Americans than all other reportable infectious diseases combined — including HIV. Acute cases of HCV have increased 3.5-fold over the last decade, particularly among young, white, injection drug users.
Women aged 15 to 44 have also been hit hard by the virus that is spread through contaminated blood, and the prevalence of HCV infection among women giving birth has nearly doubled.
Those staggering details were revealed earlier this week when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a draft recommendation that calls on clinicians to screen all adults 18 to 79 years old for the virus, even those with no symptoms or known liver disease.
The opioid epidemic has fueled what is now the most common chronic bloodborne pathogen, said Stanford Health Policy’s Douglas Owens, MD, chair of the independent, voluntary panel of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine.
The Task Force, which makes recommendations followed by primary care clinicians nationwide, has until now recommended hepatitis C testing for people who are at high risk, as well as baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965.
“Unfortunately, HCV now affects a broader age range than previously with three times as many new infections per year,” said Owens.
88% of Americans Use a Second Screen While Watching TV. Why?
December 26th, 2019Via: Ars Technica:
According to data from Nielsen, the TV metrics company, 88 percent of Americans “use a second digital device while watching TV.” Seventy-one percent of Americans “look up content related to content they are watching,” while 41 percent of Americans are busy messaging “friends/family about content they are watching.”
Can this possibly be true? And can it be good for us?
…
In my darker moments, I suspect that mental clutter is the point of it all, as we seek to be “distracted from distraction by distraction.” We are “filled with fancies and empty of meaning” in order to keep ourselves from the terror of our own deeper thoughts, our own loneliness and boredom, our own existential despair. Those inner voices can terrify—so the lengths we go to blot them out are remarkable. “Not here,” we tell ourselves. “Not here the darkness, in this twittering world!”
Kevin Spacey Accuser Ari Behn Dead At 47
December 26th, 2019Kill them with kindness:
Via: E Online:
Ari Behn, who accused disgraced actor Kevin Spacey of groping him, has passed away at the age of 47. The author and ex husband of Norway’s Princess Martha Louise died by suicide on Christmas Day, his manager Geir Håkonsund told the Norwegian media. “It’s with great sorrow in our hearts that we, those closest to Ari Behn, must report that he took his down life today,” the statement said. “We ask for respect for our privates lives in the time to come.”
