Tesla’s Pwn2Own Program
January 16th, 2019Via: Electrek:
Tesla has been working closely with white hat hackers for years in order to make its vehicle software safer and now it’s taking an unprecedented step: it’s going to be giving away a Model 3 to a hacker who can crack the vehicle.
China Turns to Driverless Tractors, Combines to Overhaul Agriculture
January 16th, 2019Via: Reuters:
A brand new combine harvester buzzes up and down a field in eastern China without a driver on board, chopping golden rice stalks and offering a glimpse of what authorities say is the automated future of the nation’s mammoth agricultural sector.
The bright green prototype was operating last autumn during a trial of driverless farm equipment as the government pushes firms to develop within 7 years fully-automated machinery capable of planting, fertilizing and harvesting each of China’s staple crops – rice, wheat and corn.
That shift to automation is key to the farming sector in the world’s No.2 economy as it grapples with an ageing rural workforce and a dearth of young people willing to endure the hardships many associate with toiling on the land.
U.S. Classrooms Are Starting to Resemble Arcades
January 15th, 2019Screens In Schools Are a $60 Billion Hoax:
The screen revolution has seen pedagogy undergo a seismic shift as technology now dominates the educational landscape. In almost every classroom in America today, you will find some type of screen—smartboards, Chromebooks, tablets, smartphones. From inner-city schools to those in rural and remote towns, we have accepted tech in the classroom as a necessary and beneficial evolution in education.
This is a lie.
Tech in the classroom not only leads to worse educational outcomes for kids, which I will explain shortly, it can also clinically hurt them. I’ve worked with over a thousand teens in the past 15 years and have observed that students who have been raised on a high-tech diet not only appear to struggle more with attention and focus, but also seem to suffer from an adolescent malaise that appears to be a direct byproduct of their digital immersion. Indeed, over two hundred peer-reviewed studies point to screen time correlating to increased ADHD, screen addiction, increased aggression, depression, anxiety and even psychosis.
Via: AP:
Peek inside your average classroom these days, and you’re likely to see teachers using apps, websites and software that borrow elements from video games to connect with students living technology-infused lives. By all accounts, they’re fun to use, and studies have found that some can be effective. But there is also skepticism about how often students who use them are better educated, or just better entertained.
Dag Hammarskjold consumer sciences teacher Gianna Gurga said she had been looking for a way to get more out of her students. Students have been more motivated and performed better in her classes since she began using Classcraft in spring 2017, she said, and she has signed up a handful of other teachers in the school.
“My kids are so addicted to it in the best way possible,” Gurga said.
U.S. Trade Deficit with China Worst Ever
January 14th, 2019Via: CNBC:
China announced Monday that its 2018 trade surplus with the United States was its largest in more than a decade, despite the tariff war initiated by President Donald Trump against Beijing.
China’s surplus with the U.S. grew 17 percent from a year ago to hit $323.32 billion in 2018, according to government data. It was the highest on record dating to 2006, according to Reuters. The deficit that the U.S. has with China is likely even bigger than these figures indicate since China calculates the numbers using different methods, sometimes excluding goods that end up in the U.S. via other countries.
Exports to the United States rose 11.3 percent year on year in 2018, while imports from the U.S. to China rose a meager 0.7 percent during that period.
The Super-Secure Quantum Cable Hiding in the Holland Tunnel
January 14th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
Commuters inching through rush-hour traffic in the Holland Tunnel between Lower Manhattan and New Jersey don’t know it, but a technology likely to be the future of communication is being tested right outside their car windows. Running through the tunnel is a fiber-optic cable that harnesses the power of quantum mechanics to protect critical banking data from potential spies.
The cable’s trick is a technology called quantum key distribution, or QKD. Any half-decent intelligence agency can physically tap normal fiber optics and intercept whatever messages the networks are carrying: They bend the cable with a small clamp, then use a specialized piece of hardware to split the beam of light that carries digital ones and zeros through the line. The people communicating have no way of knowing someone is eavesdropping, because they’re still getting their messages without any perceptible delay.
QKD solves this problem by taking advantage of the quantum physics notion that light—normally thought of as a wave—can also behave like a particle. At each end of the fiber-optic line, QKD systems, which from the outside look like the generic black-box servers you might find in any data center, use lasers to fire data in weak pulses of light, each just a little bigger than a single photon. If any of the pulses’ paths are interrupted and they don’t arrive at the endpoint at the expected nanosecond, the sender and receiver know their communication has been compromised.
Tulsi Gabbard Says U.S. Government Arming, Funding ISIS and Al Qaeda
January 13th, 2019Via: CNN:
Dr. Kelly Didn’t Commit Suicide
January 13th, 2019Via: Daily Mail:
I have updated my book after being contacted by John Scurr, a world-renowned consultant surgeon specialising in vascular surgery – surgery on veins and arteries. He does not believe it possible that Dr Kelly died in the manner officially found.
Scurr told me that Dr Kelly’s half-sister, Sarah Pape OBE – a leading plastic surgeon based at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Newcastle – rang him shortly after Hutton published his report in January 2004 to say she didn’t believe Dr Kelly had taken his own life.
Scurr told me: ‘Sarah Pape clearly had concerns about whether Dr Kelly could have died from slashing his wrist. We had an in-depth conversation about it. She took the trouble to contact me after the Hutton Inquiry finished to discuss whether one could actually die from slashing the ulnar artery [which passes through the wrist on the little finger side].
‘She doubted whether he could have done that on a personal and a medical level. She is a plastic surgeon and has considerable medical knowledge.’
Prime Minister Tony Blair opens the debate on the Hutton Report in the House of Commons, London, Wednesday 4 February, 2004
Scurr’s claim is doubly significant because Ms Pape gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry but did not disclose her doubts on that occasion.
Scurr has his own significant professional doubts too – remember, he is an expert when it comes to blood vessels.
He said: ‘I don’t believe it’s possible to die from simply cutting your ulnar artery. It is a very small artery and it is unlikely you could lose enough blood to cause cardiac arrest and death. It is much more likely he died from another cause. One possibility is a heart attack caused by whatever reason and this was an attempt to mask that.
‘The relative absence of blood at the scene and the fact that a rather blunt knife was used are significant. If one were to cut the wrist holding the knife in the right hand, the artery that would be cut is not the ulnar artery, which is on the inside of the hand, but the radial artery on the outside of the hand.
‘It seems more probable that somebody else took the knife and actually slashed the wrist, taking the stroke across the ulnar artery.’
Scurr’s point is that anyone wanting to cut their wrist would first have come across the radial artery, located under the thumb, rather than the ulnar artery, which lives under the little finger and is buried deep in the wrist. It is hard to find, especially with a knife that is 50 years old and blunt, such as the one found in Kelly’s hand. To sever it would require something like a razor blade.
I have also spoken to another important witness, David Broucher, the British Ambassador to Prague between 1997 and 2001. Broucher was called to give evidence to the Hutton Inquiry after telling Foreign Office colleagues of an extraordinary remark Dr Kelly made to him shortly before he died. Chillingly, Dr Kelly told him he thought he would be ‘found dead in the woods’ if Iraq was ever invaded.
This was in February 2003 – a full three months before Dr Kelly met BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan.
Scientists and Doctors Warn of Potential Serious Health Effects of 5G
January 11th, 2019Via: 5G Appeal:
We the undersigned scientists and doctors recommend a moratorium on the roll-out of the fifth generation, 5G, for telecommunication until potential hazards for human health and the environment have been fully investigated by scientists independent from industry. 5G will substantially increase exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) on top of the 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, etc. for telecommunications already in place. RF-EMF has been proven to be harmful for humans and the environment.
Erratic Motion of North Magnetic Pole
January 11th, 2019Via: Nature:
Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth’s north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planet’s core. The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move.
On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones.
The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 — but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information.
Pentagon Prepares Options to Build Border Wall as Trump Weighs Emergency Declaration
January 11th, 2019Via: USA Today:
The Pentagon is preparing options to build barriers on the southern border in the event that President Donald Trump declares a national emergency there, the latest indication such a move is gaining traction within the administration.
“The Department of Defense is reviewing available authorities and funding mechanisms to identify options to enable border barrier construction,” said Navy Capt. Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman. “As there has not been such a declaration made, it would be inappropriate to comment further on those efforts.”
Trump is considering a declaration of a national emergency as a way to free up funds for a border wall if talks with Democrats fail to yield a deal on his signature issue.
