Brazil: Bolsonaro Admitted Farmers Could be Setting Rainforest Fires, Tells Foreign Powers Not to Interfere
August 23rd, 2019Via: Reuters:
Amid growing international criticism over the wildfires raging through the Amazon, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday admitted farmers could be illegally setting the rainforest ablaze but told foreign powers not to interfere.
French President Emmanuel Macron and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres both took to Twitter to express concern about the fires that have reached a record number this year, devastating vast swathes of forest considered a vital bulwark against climate change.
Bolsonaro responded angrily to what he regarded as meddling.
“These countries that send money here, they don’t send it out of charity. … They send it with the aim of interfering with our sovereignty,” he said in a Facebook Live broadcast.
Avoiding Oil Change Scams
August 22nd, 2019Via: Car Wizard:
Overstock CEO Resigns After His ‘Deep State’ Comments Sparked Stock Selloff
August 22nd, 2019Here’s the full text of Byrne’s press release, for whatever it’s worth:
August 12, 2019 at 7:03 PM EDT
Overstock.com CEO Comments on Deep State, Withholds Further Comment
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Overstock.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSTK) CEO Patrick M. Byrne has released the following statement:
“Sara Carter has published two articles relating the following claims of mine:
Starting in 2015 I (operating under the belief that I was helping legitimate law enforcement efforts) assisted in what are now known as the ‘Clinton Investigation’ and the ‘Russian Investigation’ (in fact, I am the notorious ‘missing Chapter 1’ of the Russian investigation). It was the third time in my life I helped the Men in Black: the first was when my friend Brian Williams was murdered, and the second was when I helped the M.I.B. shake up Wall Street a decade ago. Unfortunately, this third time turned out to be less about law enforcement and more about political espionage conducted against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and to a lesser degree, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz).
In July 2018 I put the pieces together. I immediately (last July) came forward to a Congressman and a senior military officer, to the Department of Justice this April, and (upon my Omaha Rabbi reminding me of my duty as a citizen late this June) to a small set of journalists this summer. Ms. Carter was among them. Her two stories are accurate.
Having confirmed Ms. Carter’s two articles, I have fulfilled those citizenship obligations of which my Rabbi reminded me. I will speak no more on the subject. Instead, having lived in places lacking Rule of Law and having witnessed the consequences of its absence, I plan on sitting back and watching the United States Department of Justice re-establish Rule of Law in our country.”
—
Via: CBS:
Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne resigned from the retailer on Thursday following his cryptic statement last week about the “Deep State” and his involvement in various investigations. He had also told The New York Times that he had an affair with convicted Russian agent Maria Butina.
In a letter sent Thursday to shareholders, Byrne said he had no choice but to resign following his comments. “My presence may affect and complicate all manner of business relationships, from insurability to strategic discussions regarding our retail business,” he said. “Thus, while I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock, both as CEO and board member, effective Thursday August 22.”
Byrne’s statement last week raised eyebrows, with the executive claiming to have assisted federal investigators in the “Clinton Investigation” and the “Russian Investigation,” seemingly a reference to the FBI probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Investors were spooked, sending shares of Overstock.com down by more than one-third over a two-day period.
Shares of Overstock jumped after the company said Byrne had resigned. In early afternoon trading, the stock was up more than 9%.
FCC Investigating Cell Phone Radiation
August 22nd, 2019Via: Chicago Tribune:
This test, which was paid for by the Tribune and conducted according to federal guidelines at an accredited lab, produced a surprising result: Radiofrequency radiation exposure from the iPhone 7 — one of the most popular smartphones ever sold — measured over the legal safety limit and more than double what Apple reported to federal regulators from its own testing.
The Federal Communications Commission, which is responsible for regulating phones, states on its website that if a cellphone has been approved for sale, the device “will never exceed” the maximum allowable exposure limit. But this phone, in an independent lab inspection, had done exactly that.
The Tribune tested three more brand-new iPhone 7s at full power, and these phones also measured over the exposure limit. In all, 11 models from four companies were tested, with varying results.
The Tribune’s testing, though limited, represents one of the most comprehensive independent investigations of its kind, and the results raise questions about whether cellphones always meet safety standards set up to protect the public.
After reviewing the lab reports from the Tribune’s tests, the FCC said it would take the rare step of conducting its own testing over the next couple of months.
…
The 2-millimeter distance was chosen to estimate the potential exposure for an owner carrying the phone in a pants or shirt pocket. Under those conditions, most of the models tested yielded results that were over the exposure limit, sometimes far exceeding it.
At 2 millimeters, the results from a Samsung Galaxy S8 were more than five times the standard.
How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon
August 22nd, 2019Insidious.
Via: ProPublica:
Tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt have gotten unprecedented access to the Pentagon. And one whistleblower who raised flags has paid the price.
U.S. Budget Deficit Will Grow to $1 Trillion in 2020
August 22nd, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. budget deficit is growing faster than expected and President Donald Trump’s trade war is weighing on the economy, according to a new Congressional Budget Office forecast that highlights key challenges ahead of the 2020 elections.
The shortfall is set to widen to $1 trillion by fiscal year 2020, two years earlier than previously estimated, according to the non-partisan group’s annual budget outlook released Wednesday in Washington. That’s up from an estimated $960 billion in the 12 months that ends Sept. 30. The CBO said in January saw a gap of $890 billion next year and didn’t see it topping $1 trillion until 2022.
How the Plastics Industry Is Fighting to Keep Polluting the World
August 21st, 2019I’ve been seeing the bales of plastic piling up at my local dump and I thought, “Why not make building materials out of all this stuff?”
It turns out that there are some small moves being made in that direction. Here are a few examples:
Of course, these efforts are noise level in the scheme of things.
Plastic pollution is a grim and difficult problem which is made worse by the industry and crooked politicians.
Via: The Intercept:
The growing output of new cheap plastic further undermines the industry’s own argument that recycling can resolve the waste crisis. It’s already impossible for most recycled plastic to compete with “virgin” plastic in the marketplace. With the exception of bottles made of PET (No. 1) and HDPE (No. 2), the rest of the waste is essentially worthless. Around 30 percent of both types of plastic bottles were sold for recycling in 2017, though some of those may have wound up being landfilled or incinerated. The recent fossil fuel boom makes it even cheaper to make new plastic and thus, even more difficult to sell the recycled product. This, in turn, makes the plastics companies’ push for recycling that much more implausible — and their battle to kill efforts to limit plastics production even more desperate.
Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays
August 21st, 2019
Via: Vice:
Every year, millions of students sit down for standardized tests that carry weighty consequences. National tests like the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) serve as gatekeepers to higher education, while state assessments can determine everything from whether a student will graduate to federal funding for schools and teacher pay.
Traditional paper-and-pencil tests have given way to computerized versions. And increasingly, the grading process—even for written essays—has also been turned over to algorithms.
Natural language processing (NLP) artificial intelligence systems—often called automated essay scoring engines—are now either the primary or secondary grader on standardized tests in at least 21 states, according to a survey conducted by Motherboard. Three states didn’t respond to the questions.
Of those 21 states, three said every essay is also graded by a human. But in the remaining 18 states, only a small percentage of students’ essays—it varies between 5 to 20 percent—will be randomly selected for a human grader to double check the machine’s work.
But research from psychometricians—professionals who study testing—and AI experts, as well as documents obtained by Motherboard, show that these tools are susceptible to a flaw that has repeatedly sprung up in the AI world: bias against certain demographic groups. And as a Motherboard experiment demonstrated, some of the systems can be fooled by nonsense essays with sophisticated vocabulary.
Essay-scoring engines don’t actually analyze the quality of writing. They’re trained on sets of hundreds of example essays to recognize patterns that correlate with higher or lower human-assigned grades. They then predict what score a human would assign an essay, based on those patterns.
U.S. Special Forces Training Exercises Across North Carolina
August 21st, 2019Via: The Charlotte Observer:
A series of Special Forces military training exercises — including gunfire with blanks — is being staged across 21 North Carolina counties starting Aug. 30, and the Army is telling the public not to be alarmed at the suspicious-looking activity.
Known as Robin Sage training, the unconventional warfare exercises can be likened to live-action role playing in the extreme, with hostile engagement playing out between Special Forces students, volunteer civilians and soldiers out of Fort Bragg. It continues through Sept. 12, said a press release.
Heavily populated counties like Wake, Cumberland and Union counties are among training sites, according to the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg.
The students will match wits with more seasoned soldiers, who will “act as realistic opposing forces and guerrilla freedom fighters,” officials said in a release.
Japan Believes North Korea Capable of Building Nuclear Weapons Small Enough to Fit on Missiles
August 21st, 2019Via: Guardian:
Japan’s government will reportedly state that North Korea is capable of miniaturising nuclear warheads in a forthcoming defence report, it has emerged.
Tokyo will upgrade its estimate of the regime’s nuclear capability, having said last year only that the technical feat was a possibility, the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said on Wednesday, without citing sources.
The defence report will maintain Japan’s contention that North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes pose a “serious and imminent threat” to its security after recent meetings between Donald Trump and the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, failed to make progress on denuclearisation.
