Artificial Intelligence & Jail Time

 ProPublica found that algorithms tend to reinforce racial bias in law enforcement data. Algorithmic assessments tend to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals at almost twice the rate as white defendants. What is more, the judges who relied on these risk-assessments typically did not understand how the scores were computed.

This is problematic, because machine learning models are only as reliable as the data they’re trained on. If the underlying data is biased in any form, there is a risk that structural inequalities and unfair biases are not just replicated, but also amplified. So, AI engineers must be especially wary of their blind spots and implicit assumptions; it is not just the choice of machine learning techniques that matters, but also all the small decisions about finding, organizing and labeling training data for AI models.

In order to guard against unfair bias, all subjects should have an equal chance of being represented in the data. Sometimes this means that underrepresented populations need to be thoughtfully added to any training datasets.

The DeepFake Video Problem

 

Buzzfeed has created a video that shows a more troubling side of this technology. The video shows former President Barack Obama saying things he never said, and it looks surprisingly believable.

In the video above, Obama is voiced by Jordan Peele, who does a passable impersonation. Having Peele do the voice gets the video more attention, but there are probably voice actors who could do an even better job. Buzzfeed started by pasting Peele’s mouth over top of Obama’s, and then replaced Obama’s jawline to match the mouth movements. Rendering took 56 hours for a minute-long video.

The tool is known as FakeApp, but the videos are usually called “Deepfakes” because that’s the handle used by the original developer on Reddit. You can download the code freely all over the internet, but it’s not easy to set up — you need to configure Nvidia’s CUDA framework to run the FakeApp TensorFlow code, so the app requires a GeForce GPU. The video you want to alter has to be split into individual frames, and you need a large number of high-resolution photos of the face you want to insert. In the case of Obama, there are plenty of photos online that can be used to generate a model.

Currently, new technology on the internet lets anyone make videos of real people appearing to say things they’ve never said. Republicans and Democrats say this deceitful technology  will become the latest weapon in disinformation wars against the United States and other Western democracies. This technology uses facial mapping and artificial intelligence to produce videos that appear so genuine it’s hard to spot the phonies. Lawmakers and intelligence officials worry that the bogus videos — called deepfakes that could be used to threaten national security or interfere in elections.

When an average person can create a realistic fake video of the president saying anything they want, and the reverse is a concern, too. People may dismiss as fake genuine footage, say of a real atrocity, to score political points.

Realizing the implications of the technology, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is already two years into a four-year program to develop technologies that can detect fake images and videos. Right now, it takes extensive analysis to identify phony videos. It’s unclear if new ways to authenticate images or detect fakes will keep pace with deepfake technology.

Deepfakes are so named because they utilize deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence. They are made by feeding a computer an algorithm, or set of instructions, lots of images and audio of a certain person. The computer program learns how to mimic the person’s facial expressions, mannerisms, voice and inflections. If you have enough video and audio of someone, you can combine a fake video of the person with a fake audio and get them to say anything you want.

Deepfake technology still has a few flaws. For instance, people’s blinking in fake videos may appear unnatural. But the technology is improving.

1. Don’t jump to conclusions

2. Consider the source

3. Check where else it is (and isn’t) online

4. Inspect the mouth

5. Slow it down

 

 

 

 

Some Humor When The Haters Push Your Buttons

YouTube Cracking Downing On Weird Videos Targeting Children

YouTube has new guidelines about which videos are able to make money through advertising. You need to have 10,000 total views on your channel before you can start making money off ads. You can’t make money on YouTube with hateful or incendiary content. And you can’t make a quick buck off the inappropriate use of family-friendly characters. or Pepper Pig drinks bleach.

The result has been a dip in income for some creators, who complained they had trouble knowing which videos were being demonetized and why. So today, YouTube is announcing a way for creators to understand which videos have been flagged as inappropriate for all advertisers and a way to appeal what they see as unjust advertising bans, restoring the flow of marketing money.

Age Restricted Content click here

 

Tostitos Creates A Chip Bag That detects Alcohol On Your Breath

In an effort to raise awareness for responsible driving, the chip maker has partnered with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Uber to create “alcohol sensor bags,” special Tostitos bags that can tell if you’ve been drinking.

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Pro-legalization Group AKA DCMJ Planning To Give Out Joints On Inauguration Day

Here’s what they say

You are cordially invited to join DCMJ for the inaugural #Trump420 taking place on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC!

We will gather on the west side of Dupont Circle at 8am for coffee & tea and parade down to the National Mall at 10am. Along the way we’ll hand out 4,200 joints of legally grown cannabis! At 4 minutes and 20 seconds into President Trump’s speech we’ll light up! (unless President Trump comes out now in support of full cannabis legalization in all 50 States and DC!)

We legalized cannabis in Washington, DC and we are not going to let anyone take that away from us! This is an outreach opportunity to show President Trump’s supporters we are the marijuana majority! Join us for smokin’ fun time!

Possession of up to two ounces of marijuana is legal in the District of Columbia, thanks to the passage of Ballot Initiative 71, a campaign that was headed by the DCMJ in 2014. What is not legal, however, in D.C. is purchasing or selling marijuana. In this respect, the only legal way to distribute marijuana to large groups of people in D.C. is to give it away free of charge.

How long it will take the group to distribute 4,200 free joints is unknown, but it is worth noting that organizers of one of the largest scheduled Inauguration Day protests, the Women’s March on Washington, estimate that around 200,000 people will show up for their event alone.

 

Data Visualization On The 115th Congress After The 2016 Elections

This data visualization views the changes to the new U.S. Congress after the 2016 elections.

Such as 

1.What happened to the Senate?

2.In the People’s House

3.How big is the victory for GOP?

4.Key races contribute to the GOP victory.

5. A GOP Congress

View Here

 

5 Year Old Makes Millions Opening Toys On You Tube

5 Year old Ryan is the youngest star on YouTube and has the most hits. The family’s channel, Ryan ToysReview, was created in March of 2015, and at first, didn’t get many views. But about four months in, the channel published this video, and views started doubling with every  month. Ryan’s mom, left her job as a high school chemistry teacher to work on the YouTube channel full time. Ryan Toys Review  has been the most popular channel in all of YouTube.

According to a report from The Guardian, 20 of the top 100 channels on YouTube are focused on toys, collecting upwards of 4.5 billion views a month. Before Ryan stepped in front of the camera, he was a viewer.

Currently, average family can find themselves running an extremely lucrative business from the comfort of their living room. There are no such rules as in film and television that exist for Ryan’s job on YouTube. “All of the laws for child performers are regulated by state. The federal government leaves it to them,” said Toni Casala, CEO of Children in Film. “There are seventeen states which basically have basically no child labor laws around performance.” 

The Texas Workforce Commission, says “When a business is owned or operated by a parent or legal custodian, the parent or custodian may employ their own children at any age to work any hours, so long as the work is non-hazardous (not prohibited) and the child works under the parent or custodian’s direct supervision.

Ryans parents says, they post a new video every day, and typically film two to three videos at a time two to three times per week. They try not to interfere with Ryan’s pre-pre-school schedule, so a majority of the filming takes place during the weekend, and the editing takes place while he’s in school.

Workplace Trends

Workplace Trends Reports By Year

2017 Workplace Trends

1. Companies focus on improving their candidate and employee experiences.
2. The blended workforce is on the rise.
3. Annual performance reviews evolve into more continuous reviews.
4. Millennials meet Generation Z in the workplace.
5. Augmented and virtual reality revolutionize recruiting and training.
6. The war for talent heats up as the employer and employee contract continues to evolve.
7. Organizations restructure to focus on team over individual performance.
8. Workplace wellness, and well-being, become critical employee benefits for attracting top talent.
9. Companies get creative with their employee benefit packages and perks.
10. Office attire and workplace culture becomes more casual.

The fastest Cars In History 1946-Present

Here’s a detailed look at the last seven decades of the world’s fastest production cars – from 1946 until now.

More here

 

Survivalist Apps

The Following survivalist Apps are said to get you out of serious situations. These are the apps you should keep installed in case of emergency.

Red Panic Button

You hit the panic button and a message goes out to the emergency contacts you’ve specified in advance, together with a link to your current location. The paid upgrade also enables emergency services calling capability.

Red Panic Button (freemium) for Android and iOS

First Aid by American Red Cross

This First Aid app can help, giving detailed guidance for all kinds of problems, from asthma to a heart attack, and you can also call up the address of the closest medical center from inside the app itself.You can call 911 from inside the app as well and access various other handy resources.

SafeTrek

You hold down the blue button if you feel vulnerable, then let go and enter a PIN when you’ve reached safety. If the PIN isn’t entered when the software button is released, then the app sends out an alert.The alert is sent to the local police who will be on their way using the location info provided by your phone—you don’t need to do anything else. The only downside is there’s a monthly subscription fee of $2.99 (or $29.99/year), but you can try it for free for 30 days.

SafeTrek ($2.99/month) for Android and iOS

FEMA

Life360 Family Locator

There’s a Panic Alert feature built into the app that will take care of messaging the friends and family you choose via voicemail, email and notifications if you should get into trouble. The people you alert will also be able to see your last known location on a map.

Life360 Family Locator (free) for Android and iOS

SAS Survival Guide

No matter what life throws at you, this app can help. Adapted from the book written by a British SAS instructor, it covers just about every scenario imaginable when it comes to survival, from the berries you can eat to the knots you need to tie to the dangers to look out for.

SAS Survival Guide ($5.99) for Android and iOS

 

 

Google’s PhotoScan App

Google recently released an app called PhotoScan to make it easier for people that are tasked with digitizing photos. And you can download Google PhotoScan on iOS and Android.

The PhotoScan app opens up your smartphone camera and asks you to position a printed photo within the frame. After you line up the printed photo within the frame, you will need to tap on the shutter button. The shutter button triggers the flash and shows four white circles on the corners of the printed photo. Once you hover your phone camera above each white circle, PhotoScan will automatically crop, remove the light glare and enhance the photos. And after the photo is processed, you can manually adjust the corners and rotate as necessary.When you are finished digitizing your photos, you can save all of the scans to your camera roll with one tap. After the photos are added to the camera roll, you will see a confirmation and a button to open the Google Photos app where the scans can be viewed.

Download

AT&T and Time Warner

October 2016, AT&T announced that they had reached a deal to buy Time Warner for $85.4 million, a move that could create one of the most powerful media companies in the world. This would mean that AT&T (a telecommunications provider) would merge with a content provider in Time Warner, and creating the possibility for conflict to net neutrality if AT&T were to provide faster than normal access to Time Warner content. The merger would represent another step towards mass media consolidation over the past few decades

(Image Source: WSJ.com)

2016 has brought with it a number of media consolidations and acquisitions that have included Comcast’s (CMCSA) acquisition of DreamWorks Animation (DWA) for $3.8 billion, and AT&T’s 4-year deal with DirecTV.

This deal has gained opposition from all sides of the political spectrum, from the far left and the alt right. Bernie Sanders has come out in opposition to the deal, warning, in a letter to the Justice Department, that the deal could lead to “gross concentration of power” in news media, and that preventing the deal would help “preserve our democratic discourse and open competitive markets for speech and commerce”.

From the right, President Elect Donald Trump is highly critical of the deal.

AT&T declared that it would create a “new company with complementary strengths to lead the next wave of innovation in converging media and communications industry“.

These huge content and service providing monoliths are a serious fear for those who value the idea of net neutrality; the more consolidation there is between content and provider the more the lines will become blurred, and net neutrality will be the victim.

The Underground Medical Movement

Scott Goldsmith

That’s a tech implant in there.

Zack Watson sews a magnet into Jennifer Booton’s finger

 

Watson

Scott Goldsmith

Watson and his 6-month-old son, Thor, in Pittsburgh, who has several implants of his own, including silicone rectangles in his forearms that make his skin feel riblike, has been putting magnets and chips in people for three years at Ice 9 Studio, a tattoo and piercing parlor in Pittsburgh’s South Side Flats (though he recently left to open his own shop). His efforts are part of an underground movement in which people get implants as commonly as others get tattoos.

Interest has been spreading, with Watson quickly working through his latest supply of magnets. One woman recently traveled to Ice 9 Studio from Australia for a radio-frequency identification chip she uses to store personal information. Watson’s business frequently comes through his connection to Grindhouse Wetware, a Pittsburgh-area startup of “biohackers” who aim to augment the human body with technology. If successful, they’ll be at the vanguard of a movement called transhumanism that experiments with how technology can give them new, almost-superhuman, abilities.

The late 1990s, an Englishman named Kevin Warwick was among the first people to put an RFID chip under his skin, allowing him  to turn lights on and off and interact with appliances by scanning the chip with computer-controlled devices.

Whats Next

By 2020, a third of health/life sciences and consumer product companies will begin to develop the first wave of products that integrate the human body with technology, according to recent predictions published by IDC, which tracks the consumer tech industry. IDC is referring to this industry as “augmented humanity,” and predicts the concept will go mainstream by the middle of next decade.

Amal Graafstra’s implanted RFID chips, seen on a 2006 on a 2006 X-ray.

 

The War On Fake News: And The Librarians Role

Fake or sensationally biased news sources now has escalated. The central focus of the concern is Facebook, which has grown beyond a social platform and is now a key information distributor from which 44 percent of Americans get their news. 

Detecting fake news-The Verge talked to Professor Nicole A. Cooke of the University of Illinois. Professor Cooke works in the University’s top-ranked School of Information Sciences, focusing on human information behavior, information literacy, and diversity in librarianship. She says ” Information literacy is just trying to get people to be savvy consumers of information, and getting them to be able to really interrogate the information that is available to them, to see what is quality, to evaluate sources, et cetera.” Her rule of thumb for identifying fake news “If you see something on Facebook or Twitter, a lot of people get caught up with just forwarding information without actually reading the article or examining the site. When you see a very salacious headline or something that’s challenging, sometimes the inclination is to forward it without checking. You have to ask: does this appear in multiple places or did you only see it on Facebook? This misinformation is perpetuated because people aren’t taking the time to evaluate sources before they accept it as truth and / or pass it on to others.”

My Tips On Spotting Fake News

CHECK THE DATE

Check Domain Name

Verify with Snopes is a great one. Factcheck.org and PolitiFact  TinEye              http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

Verify or Google the story

 

 

Isreal Plans To Mark Unhealthy Foods With Red Stickers

Sixty percent of supermarket goods will display a red sticker.The plan was initiated by the Health Ministry after Israel ranked first in percentage of obese citizens in a European list of countries. Israeli children ranked third in terms of incidence of obesity.Supporting the new bill are Health Minister Yaakov Litzman (UTJ) and chairman of the Committee for Good Nutrition Moshe Bar-Siman Tov. Bar-Siman Tov told manufacturers they would be required to mark unhealthy products with red stickers. Manufacturers were furious at the fact that “unhealthy products” had a strict definition which would force more than 60% of their products to display the sticker.The affected products would be those high in saturated fat, sodium, and sugar.Artificial food coloring, preservatives, unpronounceable ingredients, monosodium glutamate, added hormones, and other unhealthy ingredients would not require manufacturers to label the affected products.

The Health Ministry – and the Israeli populace – are hoping the threat of red stickers will cause a fast change  in the foods offered at Israeli supermarkets.

America

Small Pox

The blankets

First British Settlers

Slavery

 

Ahmad al-Farghani, during the ninth century had calculated the width of one degree of longitude at the equator, from which he deduced the earth’s circumference.

First President

Research from Wall Street 24/7 listed Washington as the wealthiest president of all time, with assets worth more than $500 million.

Presidents with Black Ancestors

The Supreme Court

 

 

1. The Founding Fathers penned the first couple of drafts of the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper, since at the time at least 75 percent of all the world’s paper was made from cannabis hemp fiber. The democratic delegates eked out the document’s first and second drafts—completed on June 28th and July 2nd 1776, respectively—on Dutch hemp paper. The final document had a more official air, though, as it was printed on parchment

The Democratic Party’s donkey symbol was adopted in 1828, when, during an election, Andrew Jackson’s opponents called him a jackass. The Republican Party’s elephant symbol was adopted in 1874 after satirical cartoonist Thomas Nast drew an elephant, labeling it “the Republican vote.”

Washington was a savvy businessman who owned one of the largest distilleries in 18th century America, and by 1799 alone he was producing 11,000 gallons of whiskey. In 1797 George Washington’s farm manager, a Scot named James Anderson, convinced his employer that producing whiskey made from corn and rye grown on the plantation would be a natural complement to his milling business. Washington erected the 2,250 square foot distillery, making it among the largest whiskey distilleries in early America. Today, the two-story stone distillery is reconstructed and operates seasonally, mashing, fermenting and distilling grain as it was done in the eighteenth century.

  James Madison was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed under 100 pounds.

As a young wrestler, Lincoln was defeated only once out of approximately 300 matches.

While in the Navy, Nixon realized that his friends were winning money at poker games. Wanting to get in on the action, Nixon had someone teach him poker and within a few months he won around $6,000. He used that money to fund his first congressional campaign.

Hoover’s son had two pet alligators that were permitted to run around throughout the White House.

The largest president in American history, Taft got himself stuck in the White House bathtub and had to call help to get himself out.

Warren G. Harding was not a very good gambler
In a poker game gone wrong, Harding lost the White House’s china collection.

Woodrow Wilson didn’t learn to read until he was 10 years old, Wilson is America’s most educated president. He is the only president to have earned a Ph.D., which he earned from John Hopkins University in political science and history.

Andrew Johnson was noticeably drunk during the inauguration ceremony after drinking too much whiskey beforehand.

ames A. Garfield was ambidextrous
Garfield was ambidextrous and could write Latin with one hand and Greek with other at the same time.

Chester A. Arthur was a huge sartorialist
Arthur owned 80 pairs of pants and was known for taking late night strolls around D.C. with his friends and sauntering back at three in the morning.

Benjamin Harrison was the first president to have electricity in the White House but was so terrified of getting electrocuted that he would never turn on the switches himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ballot Selfies Are Illegal

New York Election Law § 17-130(10) makes it a misdemeanor for any voter in the state to show their ballot “after it is prepared for voting, to any person so as to reveal the contents,” or for anyone to solicit a voter to show their ballot after it’s been prepared.

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Samsung Washing Machines About To Explode Like Phones

Samsung plans   to recall over 2.8 million washing machines from within the United States right now. Each washing machine poses a threat and could explode one way or the other. They say  the lid could explode, fly off and cause injury. Injuries range from a broken jaw, injury to the shoulders and the general fall-related injuries.

The company is hoping to give consumers who have purchased the washing machines free in-house repairs and an extension in the warranty. Folks can even get a rebate that can be put toward purchasing a new Samsung washing machine or another from a different brand

Information from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission claims the Samsung washing machines were manufactured between March 2011 and November 2016. We understand that over the years, nine related injury reports were made to Samsung.

They Say It Was Weiner’s (Laptop)Metadata

 

• FBI officials knew in early October that Anthony Weiner’s laptop contained emails that were sent to or received from Hillary Clinton’s secret server 
• However, agency head James Comey wasn’t informed of this development until Thursday, writing a letter to congress Friday that the emails existed
• Republicans, including Donald Trump, pounced on this news suggesting the FBI must have found a smoking gun in the new email trove 
• Democrats have pushed back suggesting it was inappropriate for Comey to write to congress without knowing what the messages contained 
• Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid today said he believed Comey may have violated the Hatch Act 
• What the FBI officials used to make their determination that Clinton emails were on the laptop was the metadata 

Read About It here

More Here

The Uneducated-Low Skilled Employee Not Concerned About Robots

 

A new survey released by salary benchmarking site Emolument revealed that the least educated people in the professional world are also the least concerned about the risk of technology taking their jobs.

Emolument surveyed 900 people working across “several industries and countries” and found that those with no university education were least likely to think that technology is a risk to their job. Just 18% of people with no degree answered yes when asked: “Is technology putting your job at risk?”

Emolument

Recent research from the University of Oxford’s policy school, the Oxford Martin School titled “Technology at work: V2.0,” revealed that 35% of jobs in the UK are at risk of being replaced by automation, 47% of US jobs are at risk, and across the OECD as a whole an average of 57% of jobs are at risk. In China, the risk of automation is as high as 77%.

Many  of the jobs at risk include low-skilled service jobs like call centres or in manufacturing industries

Emolument

World Economic Forum (WEF) warned that in the mean time, while this is pushing us into “the fourth industrial revolution” and  transforming the labour markets beyond all recognition from decades ago, it will lead to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020. This includes countries like Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US.

The Report

 

Hidden Apartments In New York Public Libraries

A 100 years ago people resided in hidden apartments above New York’s public libraries there are thirteen left.When these libraries were built, about a 100 years ago, they needed people to take care of them. Andrew Carnegie had given New York $5.2 million, worth well over $100 million today, to create a city-wide system of library branches, and these buildings, the Carnegie libraries, were heated by coal. Each had a custodian, who was tasked with keeping those fires burning and who lived in the library, often with his family. “The family mantra was: Don’t let that furnace go out,” one woman who grew up in a library told the New York Times. 

But since the ’70s and ’80s, when the coal furnaces started being upgraded and library custodians began retiring, those apartments have been emptying out, and the idyll of living in a library has disappeared. Today there are just 13 library apartments left in the New York Public Library system.

 Fort Washington, the front room.

 Inside the apartment, looking past the living room and kitchen doors. 

Inside the apartment, looking past the living room and kitchen doors.

The back bedroom.

Fort Washington plan. (Image: New York Public Library)

Another bedroom, used for storage.

Read More On Library Apartments

African American Albino Brothers Kidnapped For Circus

Eko and Iko were the sideshow stage names of George and Willie Muse, the grandsons of former slaves.

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The Stalkers Profile

 

Stalkers often suffer from low self-esteem, and feel they must have a relationship with the victim in order to have any self worth. Preoccupations with other people almost always involve someone with weak social skills and low self-esteem. Few stalkers can see how their actions are hurting others. They display other sociopathic thinking in that they cannot learn from experience, and they don’t believe society’s rules apply to them. Most stalkers don’t think they’re really threatening, intimidating, or even stalking someone else. They think they’re simply trying to show the victims that they’re the right one for them.  To the victims of stalking it is like a prolonged rape. Sociopathic thinking Has a mean streak No or few personal relationships Lack of embarrassment or discomfort at actions In “A Study of Stalkers” Mullen et al.. (2000)[16] identified five types of stalkers: Rejected stalkers pursue their victims in order to reverse, correct, or avenge a rejection (e.g. divorce, separation, termination). Resentful stalkers pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims – motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim. Intimacy seekers seek to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. Such stalkers often believe that the victim is a long-sought-after soul mate, and they were ‘meant’ to be together. Incompetent suitors, despite poor social or courting skills, have a fixation, or in some cases, a sense of entitlement to an intimate relationship with those who have attracted their amorous interest. Their victims are most often already in a dating relationship with someone else. Predatory stalkers spy on the victim in order to prepare and plan an attack – often sexual – on the victim.

 

Millenials Millionaires Earning Their Money Differently

 There are  less than half of the demographic affluent millennials completing post-graduate degrees compared to wealthy baby boomers.While millionaires are much more likely to have higher level education degrees compared to the average American, millionaire boomers and gen-xers are much more likely to obtain higher degrees than affluent millennials. The younger generation sees greater opportunity to create their own businesses and working full-time, with about 90 percent of millennial millionaires working full-time in their own business.

Young millionaires millennials are clearly different, many of them are taking another route to becoming wealthy and working in their own businesses.

Males still make up the largest percentage of millionaire individuals, with 67 percent of all millionaires being men and only 33 percent women. When looking at millennials the percentage only shifts slightly, with 66 percent men and 34 percent women.

Shullman Research

Billionaire Wealth Declined By $300Billion

 

The total wealth held by international billionaires has been affected by external factors in 2015, decreasing to $5.1 trillion from $5.4 trillion, according to a new report by UBS and PwC.

Factors such as asset transfer within families, the deflation of commodity pricing, such as petrol, and the appreciated value of the United States dollar are responsible for a decline of total wealth. UBS and PwC’s annual “Billionaires Report” found that the average billionaire’s wealth dropped from $4.0 billion to $3.7 billion.

Michael Spellacy, a global wealth leader at Pricewaterhouse Coopers said “strategic planning becomes even more crucial for wealth preservation,”. This year 60 individuals from Europe inherited their fortunes in 2015 for the first time.

The United States., which boasts the biggest collection of billionaires by region, sets the trend. Total U.S. billionaire wealth fell, but ‘new money’ fared better than old, falling by just 4 percent, from an average $4.7 billion per individual to $4.5 billion.”

UBS and PwC’s Billionaire Report found that Europe has the highest number of multi-generational billionaires. These 182 individuals, or 54 percent of billionaires, have proved to be the most resilient in preserving wealth.  Familial ties and upholding legacy are important to many billionaire families, meaning that the wealthy of Europe tend to the businesses that may have been established generations before either by investing in their companies or buying other family-owned firms.

Germany and Switzerland have the highest concentration of “old wealth” based on inheritance, whereas billionaires in U.S. are beginning to outnumber those of inherited wealth.

One hundred -seventy five,  billionaires are multi-generational. But, for the first time in 10 years, the average of self-made billionaires has overtaken those who inherited their fortunes. The average self-made billionaire has a total wealth of $4.5 billion compared to multi-generational billionaires’ average of $4.3 billion. Asia mainly China has created one billionaire nearly every three days.

Transferring wealth is a common cause of fortunes becoming diluted. When a billionaire dies, the wealth is split between heirs, and oftentimes the resulting fortune does not meet the billion-dollar wealth ceiling.

Image courtesy of Ferragamo 

Image courtesy of Peninsula Hotels 

Nosey People

They’re nosey in your home life, the workplace, social life etc

Reasons Why

Thousands Of iPhone 6 Stopped Working & 3 Lawfirms Files Lawsuit

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple this year. Three additional law firms have joined in the lawsuit against Apple in Utah. Two years after iPhone 6 Pluses was released, the touchscreens are completely losing their functionality under normal use, which experts say is the long-term effect of the engineering flaw that gave us “bendgate.”

An excerpt from a class-action lawsuit demanding Apple address the issue.

Image: RiceIsForDinner/YouTube

A Warrant For A Tor User?

The past few months, judges, defense lawyers, and the government have been fighting over whether obtaining a Tor user’s real IP address, perhaps through hacking, counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment. The debate has serious consequences for whether law enforcement requires a warrant to break into a suspect’s computer, even if it’s only to learn the target’s IP address. US District Court Judge Robert W Pratt argued that when the FBI hacked suspected Playpen users and grabbed their IP addresses, that constituted a search.

He stated “If a defendant writes his IP address on a piece of paper and places it in a drawer in his home, there would be no question that law enforcement would need a warrant to access that piece of paper—even accepting that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the IP address itself,” Pratt writes in his order. Judges are divided over whether obtaining the IP addresses in this way constitutes a search, and whether Tor users have a reasonable expectation of privacy around their real IP address.

Pokemon Crochet Lefted At Pokemon Stops

The artist is Nichole Dunigan and  she has been leaving the pokey babies at the Pokémon stops and gyms around her neighborhood.https://www.instagram.com/p/BJMXy7vhg7B/

The library of Congress Hacked In July 2016

Some say,” The Library of Congress is simply not equipped to join the 21st century”. The Government Accountability Office estimates that the LOC spends roughly $120 million dollars on IT functions, but the library’s accounting records leave much to be desired, particularly when recording acquisitions of new IT assets. The copyright office still runs on a largely paper based system (some records kept are still kept in card catalogues) and is forced to share the library’s aging IT systems. Large digital projects have even failed to materialize, such as the promise of an archive of everything that has been tweeted since 2010. Digitization projects are so far behind that only a fraction of the Library’s 24 million titles have been made available online. It is the hope of many  policy advocates and scholars  that with Carla Hayden in the top job, the former crown jewel of American libraries can be pulled out of mothballs and dragged into the 21st century.

The United nations To Discuss Antimicrobial Resistance

The primary objective of the meeting is to summon and maintain strong national, regional and international political commitment in addressing antimicrobial resistance comprehensively and multi-sectorally, and to increase and improve awareness of antimicrobial resistance.

Antibiotics is regularly pumped into  livestock, which significantly contributes to the development of antibiotic resistance.  Vegans may not realize is that omitting animal products doesn’t absolve them of any responsibility for the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs, at least as it relates to the food supply. Fruits and vegetables are also doused with  antibiotics, too (although its at a lower rate than meat). Unless you strictly eat organic, your food is contributing to a problem that threatens to send us back to the dark ages of medicine, where every cut or scrape could be life-threatening.Even if you keep a strict, organic, vegan diet, and never take antibiotics unless you absolutely need them, you’re not immune from the superbug infection. You can do everything ostensibly right, and it still won’t stop antibiotic resistance.

Positive news is that major food chains like McDonald’s, Subway, and Perdue have dedicated to switch to antibiotic-free meat in their restaurants, due to public demand.

Scientist Working on Technology To Help Read Unopened Books

Scientists from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology have come together to develop a new technology that will allow users to read a book without even opening it. The results were published in the scientific journal, Nature Communications. Upon its use on a stack of newspapers with one letter printed on each, the system was able to identify the letters printed on the top nine sheets correctly. The scientists stated that the system could be useful to analyze any materials organized in thin layers, like on coatings on machine parts and others. The Metropolitan Museum in New York, think that the new system will be of monumental help in looking at some antique books that are too fragile even to touch.The system functions on a set of algorithms that read images from individual sheets of paper put up in a stack and interprets the distorted images from the stack as individual letters. A lot of websites have these letter certifications (captchas) to make sure you’re not a robot.

The system uses terahertz radiation, which unlike X-ray, can distinguish between printed and blank parts on paper. In the process, a terahertz camera emits ultrashort bursts of radiation, the reflections from which are picked up by the built-in sensor. The system can read the distance to the individual pages of a book from the time that a reflection takes to travel back to the sensor.

In its present stage, the system can only read up to nine pages in a stack correctly, beyond which the signals become too weak to interpret the results correctly.

Atlanta

Russian Hackers leaked Confidential medical Files of Olympians

Russian hackers accessed medical files of several Olympian s in Rio. The Russian hacking team goes by the name Tsar Team (Apt 28) gained access to WADA ‘s anti doping administration and management system (ADAMS). Tsar Team is also believe to be behind the Democratic Party Hacks. The investigation into the breach is ongoing, but WADA believes spear phishing was the technique of choice and that other ADAMS data is unaffected. Athletes affected include Serena Williams and Simone Biles.

Athletes affected include Serena Williams and Simone Biles. Medical reports listing drugs they were cleared to use are posted on the website of the hackers. WADA is regretful about this situation.

 

 

The Obama Presidential Center

 

President Obama has another decision, a new Director for his new library and museum in Chicago. the Obama library is scheduled to open in 2021 in Jackson Park. The Government will administer its Archives and museum. The  nonprofit Obama Foundation will oversee its own  offices and activity space. the countries top archivist will consult with the president on the hiring.

Welcome To Uberville’sTransit System

Uber and Lyft have been striking agreements with transit agencies, mostly for so-called “first-last mile” programs — meant to shuttle commuters to bus or train stations. As of last year, Uber has scored public transit agreements with San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Dallas, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, among other cities. Uber and Lyft have also been edging into public transportation services, like transit for disabled people or low-income residents who need rides to work or the grocery store. Last month officials in Washington, DC proposed having Uber respond to some 911 calls for ambulances.

Critics worry that if these programs succeed, they could pluck the affluent commuters who wield real political influence off trains and busses, leading to a crisis of declining ridership and decreasing clout for traditional public transportation.

The past year has seen a surge in public officials interested in giving the companies taxpayer dollars for public transit contracts. companies find it appealing especially in low-density communities like Altamonte where running traditional mass transit can be expensive.The pilot program is unusable for people without a smartphone, credit card, or a disability.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick envisioned a future where increasing efficiency would make Uber cost-competitive not just with owning a car, but with traditional mass transit. When drivers drop off a customer only to pick up another, chained together in a “perpetual trip,” Kalanick said, “not only is it much less expensive than taking a cab or owning a car, it has the potential to be as affordable as taking a subway, or a bus, or other means of transportation. And that’s what we believe is the real game-changer. Those are the things we’ll be working on in years to come.

Beauty Contest & AI

 

 

The Question:What if beauty pageant  judges were machines? A robot would ideally lack a human’s often harmful social biases. Beauty.ai is an initiative by the Russia and Hong Kong-based Youth Laboratories and supported by Microsoft and Nvidia, ran a beauty contest with 600,000 entrants, who sent in selfies from around the world—India, China, all over Africa, and the US. They had a set of three algorithms judge them based on their face’s symmetry, their wrinkles, and how young or old they looked for their age. The algorithms did not evaluate skin color.

The results: Out of the 44 people that the algorithms judged to be the most “attractive,” all of the finalists were white except for six who were Asian. Only one finalist had visibly dark skin. All three algorithms used a style of machine learning called “deep learning”.  aAlanguage processing algorithm was recently found to rate white names as more “pleasant” than black names, mirroring earlier psychology experiments on humans.

The Problem: The problem here is the lack of diversity of people and opinions in the databases used to train AI, which is created by humans. Also, the large majority (75 percent) of contest entrants were European and white. Seven percent were from India, and one percent were from the African continent. Camera film was originally designed to perform best with white skin in frame, for example, meaning that until the industry decided to correct the base issue, every camera demonstrated a racist bias even in the hands of ostensibly non-racist photographers.

Solution: Change the system, get some people of color trained in machine learning.

Beauty.ai

Algorithms To Measure Beauty?

The Question:What if beauty pageant  judges were machines? A robot would ideally lack a human’s often harmful social biases. Beauty.ai is an initiative by the Russia and Hong Kong-based Youth Laboratories and supported by Microsoft and Nvidia, ran a beauty contest with 600,000 entrants, who sent in selfies from around the world—India, China, all over Africa, and the US. They had a set of three algorithms judge them based on their face’s symmetry, their wrinkles, and how young or old they looked for their age. The algorithms did not evaluate skin color.

The results: Out of the 44 people that the algorithms judged to be the most “attractive,” all of the finalists were white except for six who were Asian. Only one finalist had visibly dark skin. All three algorithms used a style of machine learning called “deep learning”.  aAlanguage processing algorithm was recently found to rate white names as more “pleasant” than black names, mirroring earlier psychology experiments on humans.

The Problem: The problem here is the lack of diversity of people and opinions in the databases used to train AI, which is created by humans. Also, the large majority (75 percent) of contest entrants were European and white. Seven percent were from India, and one percent were from the African continent. Camera film was originally designed to perform best with white skin in frame, for example, meaning that until the industry decided to correct the base issue, every camera demonstrated a racist bias even in the hands of ostensibly non-racist photographers.

Solution: Change the system, get some people of color trained in machine learning.

Beauty.ai

 

 

The Smart Fridge With Windows 10

LG’s Windows 10 apps are designed so you can stick notes to the fridge, set a timer, add recipes and healthy information about meals, or just mark food that you can see through the translucent display.

 

Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled a Smart Fridge at CES

 

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Singapore’s Self driving Cars

Founded in 2013 by ex-MIT engineers, Nutonomy announced a $3.6m funding round in January, followed swiftly by $16m in funding in May from venture capitalists including Ford chairman Bill Ford and the Singapore government.

Like Uber and Google, Nutonomy is convinced that the real benefits of autonomous technology will be when humans never have to touch a steering wheel or brake pedal

Stats On Herpes

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Guys Who Think Their Hot But Not

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WHEN MEN THINK THEY’RE HOT

According to Dr Carin Perilloux, who used speed-dating to explore the mating game.

The more women a man thinks are into him, the more women he’ll chase after. This increases his chances of passing on his genes.

Men and women often don’t get each other when it comes to dating. Men will hit on women who are giving no signs of interest in their advances.

“There are tons of studies showing that men think women are interested when they’re not,” says Dr Carin Perilloux from Williams College in the US.

She and her colleagues tried to find out why this happens by taking a systematic look at how things go wrong between men and women in dating. It’s evolution that explains why men and women often don’t get each other, their study concludes.

SPEED DATING

The study involved nearly two hundred men and women speed-dating. Before the dating began, the participants rated their own attractiveness. Each person was then paired with someone of the opposite sex for three minutes, after which they switched tables for another high-speed date.

They did this five times and after each speed-date the participants rated each other on three scales: how attractive the other person was, how hot he or she was to you, and how hot you were for him or her.

MISTAKE

The men who believed they were hot were more likely to think women wanted them, even if this wasn’t the case. And the guys who made this mistake the most were the ones the women thought were less good-looking.

In other words, it seems like the uglier a guy is, the more likely he is to mistakenly believe he’s sexy and that women want him. The men the women thought were attractive tended not to make this mistake.

To make matters worse, the sexier a man thinks a woman is, the more likely he’ll think she wants to jump in bed with him too. When in fact she isn’t interested at all. And as if that weren’t bad enough, it looks like women have a tendency not even to notice when a man is making a pass at them.

EVOLUTION

If the results of the research are true, then it’s no wonder dating can be such a confusing mess. It could make it seem amazing that men and women are ever able to hook up and have sex. But Dr Perilloux thinks it could all make sense from the perspective of evolution.

“There are two ways you can make an error as a man,” she says. “Either you think, ‘Oh, wow, that woman’s really interested in me’—and it turns out she’s not. There’s some cost to that.” The costs could be a blow to the man’s ego or reputation.

But the other error is much worse: “She’s interested, and he totally misses out. He misses out on a mating opportunity. That’s a huge cost in terms of reproductive success.”

UNREALISTIC

So this means it shouldn’t be surprising that there are so many men who think they are God’s gift to women when in fact they aren’t that good-looking.

A guy who thinks he’s sexy but isn’t still manages to have more sex than a guy who thinks he’s unattractive. As a result, the unrealistic guys pass on their genes more often than the realistic ones do.

ADVICE

Men and women can both learn an important lesson from her research, says Dr Perilloux. Women should try to communicate clearly so that men understand when they don’t have a chance. And men should keep in mind that the more attracted they are to a woman, the more they’ll feel she is into them, even if that’s completely wrong.

That may sound tough, but Dr Perilloux points out taking her advice could help women avoid uncomfortable situations and help men steer clear of heartache.

 

 

Hackers “Shadow Brokers” Auctions NSA Cyber Weapons

HACKING  “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide.

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From White Flight To White Infill In The United States: Here’s What May be Happening In Your Neighborhood

 

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A Look At Segregation In The United States

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Democrat GOP Concerned Over Weekend Hacking

The ongoing hacking and leaking of emails and other electronic records from Democratic Party organizations’ servers had operatives in both parties concerned that an “October surprise” or other consequence of the cyber crimes could throw more curveballs into an already tumultuous presidential campaign season.

Nancy Pelosi, Minority House Leader sent a letter to congressional Democrats over the weekend after a hacker called Guccifer 2.0 posted personal and work email and phone numbers of Democratic staffers online. Pelosi called the ­cyber theft “an electronic Watergate break-in,” says she has received lewd voicemails and text messages before she changed her cell phone number.

The FBI has launched an investigation for the breach of Democratic servers.

2016 Presidental Campaign Data

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Pokemon Go Cheaters Will Be Banned

Niantic is starting to permanently ban players who cheat either by spoofing their location or by using software to access the game in an unauthorized manner. You  can get permanently banned for falsifying your location, using emulators, modified or unofficial software and/or accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner including through the use of third party software. More Here

The company does offer a form for banned users to appeal the decision if they believe a mistake has been made,