Mush, Spot, Mush!
April 16th, 2019The sound…
Via: Boston Dynamics:
It only takes 10 Spotpower (SP) to haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot (~1 degree uphill, truck in neutral). These Spot robots are coming off the production line now and will be available for a range of applications soon.
High Fructose Corn Syrup May Fuel Colon Cancer
April 15th, 2019Via: MedNews:
It’s no secret that health experts and nutritionists have been wary of high fructose corn syrup for years. But now they have one more reason to advocate against it: a new study published in the journal Science says that the sugary substance boosts the growth of cancerous tumors in mice.
The study, conducted by researchers at Cornell University and Baylor University, found that consuming a modest amount of high-fructose corn syrup every day—about the equivalent of drinking one can of soda—can accelerate the growth of cancerous tumors in mice’s intestines.
As part of the research trial, scientists generated mice with early-stage colon cancer. Then, the scientists gave the mice a moderate amount of sweetened water, with 25% high fructose corn syrup, each day. The amount was a modest amount, meant to mimic a human’s daily consumption of one can of sugary soda. After two months, the mice developed tumors that were higher-grade and larger in size than those mice treated with only water.
We’re All Being Judged By a Secret ‘Trustworthiness’ Score
April 15th, 2019Via: Slashdot:
Nearly everything we buy, how we buy, and where we’re buying from is secretly fed into AI-powered verification services that help companies guard against credit-card and other forms of fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal.
More than 16,000 signals are analyzed by a service called Sift, which generates a “Sift score” ranging from 1 to 100. The score is used to flag devices, credit cards and accounts that a vendor may want to block based on a person or entity’s overall “trustworthiness” score, according to a company spokeswoman.
From the Sift website: “Each time we get an event be it a page view or an API event we extract features related to those events and compute the Sift Score. These features are then weighed based on fraud we’ve seen both on your site and within our global network, and determine a user’s Score. There are features that can negatively impact a Score as well as ones which have a positive impact.”
The system is similar to a credit score except there’s no way to find out your own Sift score.
2 million Kiwis Have Police Alert on Their Names
April 15th, 2019Via: New Zealand Herald:
Nearly two million people appear in a New Zealand police intelligence system with an alert against their name, inquiries by the Otago Daily Times have revealed. Those in the database are generally flagged without their knowledge, and a leading security analyst says the broad sweep of the system raises privacy concerns. George Block reports.
Has your driver’s licence ever been cancelled? Vetted by police recently? Do you have a firearms licence?
Then chances are you appear in the police National Intelligence Application (NIA) with at least one alert against your name.
Police can apply 126 different “person alerts”, including flags for firearms licence holders, people known by police to be HIV (AIDS) positive, and alerts for paedophiles and convicted murderers.
This all adds up: 1,988,963 people in New Zealand have at least one alert against their name – just over 40 per cent of the population at an average of 1.7 alerts per person, according to figures obtained under the Official Information Act by the Otago Daily Times.
Research Credit: WS
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris Engulfed in Fire
April 15th, 2019Posted one day ago on Reddit:
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The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris was built on a site which in Roman Lutetia is believed to have been occupied by a pagan temple…
Via: Daily Mail:
Firefighters are battling a massive blaze which broke out at the world-famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris this evening.
Pictures posted on social media showed enormous plumes of smoke billowing into the city’s skyline and flames engulfing large sections of the historic building.
According to French newspaper Le Monde, the fire broke out in the attic of the monument before spreading across the roof.
A spokesperson for the cathedral said the blaze was first reported at 5.50pm (GMT) and the building was evacuated soon after.
Facebook Put Hidden Messages ‘Big Brother Is Watching’ and ‘The Masons Were Here’ in Tens of Thousands VR Controllers
April 15th, 2019Via: Business Insider:
Facebook said it accidentally hid bizarre and “inappropriate” messages inside “tens of thousands” of virtual-reality controllers, including “Big Brother is Watching” and “The Masons Were Here.”
Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Oculus, the Facebook-owned VR company, said on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages in its Touch controllers, handheld devices for playing games and navigating VR environments.
These messages were intended only for prototypes, but a mistake meant they were included in regular production devices, he said. Some messages were included in developer kits for people building software for the product, while others made their way into consumer devices in significantly larger numbers.
While there should have been no internal messages of any kind in any of the devices, a Facebook representative told Business Insider that the company would not recall them.
“Unfortunately, some ‘easter egg’ labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers,” Mitchell wrote.
The messages on final production hardware say “This Space For Rent” & “????The Masons Were Here.????” A few dev kits shipped with “????Big Brother is Watching????” and “Hi iFixit! We See You!????” but those were limited to non-consumer units. [2/3] pic.twitter.com/po1qyQ10Um
— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) April 12, 2019
Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police
April 13th, 2019Via: New York Times:
The warrants, which draw on an enormous Google database employees call Sensorvault, turn the business of tracking cellphone users’ locations into a digital dragnet for law enforcement. In an era of ubiquitous data gathering by tech companies, it is just the latest example of how personal information — where you go, who your friends are, what you read, eat and watch, and when you do it — is being used for purposes many people never expected.
The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom
April 12th, 2019Via: The Intercept:
…the indictment seeks to criminalize what journalists are not only permitted but ethically required to do: take steps to help their sources maintain their anonymity. As longtime Assange lawyer Barry Pollack put it: “The factual allegations … boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.”
That’s why the indictment poses such a grave threat to press freedom. It characterizes as a felony many actions that journalists are not just permitted but required to take in order to conduct sensitive reporting in the digital age.
What Bibi Wants, Bibi Gets
April 12th, 2019Via: Pat Buchanan:
While a U.S. war with Iran may be what Bibi wants, it is not what America wants or needs.
On Monday, President Donald Trump designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, the first time the United States has designated part of another nation’s government as such a threat.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council responded by declaring U.S. Central Command a terrorist group.
With 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 2,000 in Syria, often in proximity to Iranian units, this inches America closer to war.
Why did we do it? What benefit did the U.S. derive?
How do we now negotiate with the IRGC on missile tests?
Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu took credit for Trump’s decision, tweeting, “Once again you are keeping the world safe from Iran aggression and terrorism. … Thank you for accepting another important request of mine.”
Previous “requests” to which Trump acceded include moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, declaring Jerusalem Israel’s eternal capital, closing the Palestinian consulate and cutting off aid, and U.S. recognition of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, as sovereign Israeli territory.
What Bibi wants, Bibi gets.
One hopes his future requests will not include a demand that we cease dithering and deliver the same “shock and awe” to Iran that George W. Bush delivered to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
DA Knew Jeffrey Epstein Was a Dangerous Pedophile When Arguing for Leniency
April 12th, 2019Via: New York Post:
The Manhattan DA’s office had graphic and detailed evidence of pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s depravity when a prosecutor inexplicably argued for leniency during his 2011 sex offender registry hearing, The Post has learned.
In advance of the hearing, then-deputy chief of Sex Crimes, Jennifer Gaffney, had been given a confidential state assessment that deemed Epstein to be highly dangerous and likely to keep preying on young girls, the DA’s office admitted in its own appellate brief eight months after the hearing.
The brief has been sealed since 2011, but The Post obtained it Thursday after suing to get it unsealed.
It describes a state assessment’s findings that Epstein should be monitored in New York as a level three offender — reserved for the most dangerous.
…
Manhattan prosecutors were aware the state board had assigned Epstein a risk assessment of 130, a number that is “solidly above the 110 qualifying number for level three,” with “absolutely no basis for downward departure,” the brief notes.
Nevertheless, Gaffney argued that he should be labeled a level one offender, the least restrictive, which would keep him off the online database.
