President Obama Passes Law Protecting Atheists

H.R. 1150 amends the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act to include protections for non-theistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess or practice any religion at all.

In a historical first, President Barack Obama signed legislation on 16 December 2016 extending protections against religious persecution to people with non-theistic beliefs, including those who subscribe to no religion at all. Passed with the overwhelming support of both parties in Congress, H.R. 1150 amends the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), which established a watchdog commission to monitor and report on abuses of religious freedom around the world. The amended law includes this provision defining “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion”:

The freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs and the right not to profess or practice any religion.

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Children’s Connected Toys May Breach Security

Many people don’t realize that buying a wearable, baby monitor or a WiFi connectable toy, that they are in fact, potentially exposing themselves to being hacked by e-criminals. Just last week, a complaint was lodged with the US Federal Trade Commission over internet-connected toys recording and transmitting kids’ conversations in violation of privacy rules. In the past few years, many baby monitors have also been reported for hacks, the latest one in the US with a hacker directly spying and talking to the toddler though the monitor.

The average Australian households now have nine internet-connected devices. With Christmas just around the corner many people are going out to buy the latest piece of technology for their friends and family members, while getting the person what they want, they are also potentially exposing them to security issues. Any device that can be connected to the internet, has a Bluetooth signal, or be controlled remotely has a risk of being hacked.

What can you do about it?

1.  You can lengthen passwords, changing letters to numbers, include a capital letter, not re-using the same password over and over
2. Before purchasing a new device for yourself or giving one to another person is searching the name of the device with the keywords ‘hack’, ‘glitch’ or ‘scam’ and seeing what results come up.
3. Ensure that before agreeing to any terms of service or allowing apps or programs access to data on your phone you should carefully read through what data they would need access to, and whether they agree to not give provide your data to a third party. This would at least ensure that your data goes no further.
4. When giving a new device to your children, make sure that you check what permissions the app wants access to as sometimes an app can request access to things such as your home address, phone number, bank account details and general information that about your private lives.

 

UPS Deliveries Via eBike

 

This new electrically-assisted tricycle began delivering packages in  Portland, Ore., on November 21. UPS anticipates this eBike prototype could become a component of its delivery capabilities in some other cities across the country. The deployment of the eBike is part of UPS’s ongoing commitment to reduce carbon emissions as city populations and e-commerce grow, and traffic, noise and air quality challenges continue to rise.

 

Black Lives mateer Website Hit By DDoS Attacks 100 Times

Over the course of seven months in 2016, more than 100 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were leveled against the Back Lives matter Website, with the intention of making it inaccessible to visitors.

Attacks began to grow in size and frequency in July, followed by another substantial increase in September and October

May 1 Anonymous Affiliated Ghost Squad announced an attack on Black Lives Matter to take down the website for most of the day accusing the group of anti white racism.

More Workplace Trends: Perks & Gig Economy Will slow Down

According to Glassdoor research sixty seven percent of U.S. employees said they were not likely to apply for a job at a company where men and women were paid unequally for the same work.

Boston Consulting Group says that by 2025, up to a quarter of jobs will be replaced by either smart software or robots, and a study from Oxford University reveals that 35% of existing U.K. jobs are at risk of automation in the next 20 years.

Tom Davenport and Julia Kirby have researched and wrote a book on this subject called Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers In the Age of Smart Machines. Their bottom line is this: machines are less likely to displace entire jobs, but will more likely replace specific tasks and in the process will augment many jobs.

Jobs Will Be Impacted by Intelligent Technologies

.  Presently journalist can tap into algorithms from two firms called Narrative Science and Automated Insights, that use machine learning to write an article in a matter of seconds. The journalist then can focus on writing a more strategic view of the article. In other words, leverage the technology to do what it does best and re-frame the article to a more analytical level.

Wealth advisors are already seeing the power of Analytix Insights, a company that creates investment analytic narratives on more than 40,00 public companies.The job of a wealth advisor is already automated, the critical part of advising clients, establishing trust, and providing personalized expertise is the opportunity for wealth advisors to enhance their skill sets.

The proliferation of automated teller machines has actually led to slightly more bank tellers, due to both bank deregulation and job augmentation as bank tellers now reduce their time on cash handling responsibilities and can be trained to provide relationship based services to bank customers.

YouTube Blocks North Korea’s Channel

YouTube has blocked the  a North Korean state-run channel broadcaster used as a propaganda tool by the country’s autocratic regime.

The channel’s content consist of news broadcasts on everything from Kim Jong-Un’s nationwide outings to coverage on the country’s nuclear tests. Now, when you visit Korean Central Television’s YouTube page, you’re confronted with a message that states: “This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”

 

Job Trends For 2017

Today’s fastest-growing jobs aren’t gigs but jobs requiring creativity, judgment , and personal skills. A November 2016 study that found only a small percentage of US adults, 4.3 percent, had ever made money from an online platform like Uber, TaskRabbit or AirBnb. That same report also showed more than half leave within the year. Glassdoor’s own research found the correlation between those outlandish perks and employee satisfaction isn’t that strong. A stronger correlation exists with health insurance, retirement plans and paid time off. The report predicts that few jobs will be left untouched. After already having transformed manufacturing, automation is making inroads into jobs like long-haul trucking and urban taxi driving.

 

The Report by Glass Door

President Obama To Preserve Senate Torture Report In His Presidential Library

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,700-page history of the CIA torture program will be kept among Barack Obama’s presidential papers — safe from the Republicans on the committee who have attempted to have it destroyed.The executive summary of the report, which was released in December 2014, contained shocking description of brutal torture tactics like waterboarding, and other types of torture.

Following the election of Donald Trump, Senate Democrats have urged Obama to make the full report public, fearing that it could be destroyed.

The public will still have to wait to see the report, however. In a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote that “the President has informed the archivist that access to classified material, among other categories of information, should be restricted for the full twelve years allowed under the act.”After the report was completed, the Intelligence Committee sent copies to the White House, the CIA, the Department of Justice, and several other federal agencies, hoping to dissuade the agencies from practicing or authorizing torture in the future.

While the Obama administration has not complied with Burr’s request, executive branch policy remains that the report should not actually be read by anyone. A year after it was released, government lawyers confirmed that at the Department of Justice, it had not even been taken out of its package, and that the CIA had made “very limited use of it.” The administration has also refused to make the report available under the Freedom of Information Act. Anti-torture advocates argued that a full public accounting of the facts would keep the CIA from using torture in the future.

Who’s Who Of Technology Attending President Elect’s Tech Summit

 

The who’s who of technology executives are planning to attend President-elect Donald Trump’s tech summit on Wednesday in New York. Some of the bigwigs include Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

The other tech leaders who have RSVP’d for the meeting are Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Trump is planning on attending the meeting organized by chief of staff Reince Preibus, adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and tech investor and transition team adviser Peter Thiel. The agenda will focus on increasing American jobs and how technology companies can work with the new administration.

 

 

Fans Not Happy About Super Mario Run Needing To Connect To Internet

Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, has revealed that upcoming mobile game Super Mario Run will require an active internet connection to be played and gamers are not happy about the requirement.

 Miyamoto, says an active internet connection is necessary because it is too difficult to offer the World Tour single-player mode as an offline mode, particularly because the mode is also related to the Toad Rally and Mushroom Kingdom modes.

Toad Rally needs to access the play data and scores of other users, the information can only be acquired from a server. Mushroom Kingdom, meanwhile, requires purchase verification as players will purchase items through coins earned in the game. Again, this will be impossible to do without an internet connection.

 

Shaq Is Spreading The Word: the White House Is Holding An eSports Event

The White House is live-streaming a competitive gaming event Monday, Dec. 12, and four-time NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal is helping them get the word out.

After playing some Rocket League and declaring himself the black David Beckham, Shaq got down to business and announced the White House Competitive Gaming Event. The event is a game-a-thon running from 4 to 8 p.m. ET Monday on Twitch, with a myriad of gaming personalities and esports professionals playing games and spreading the word about health care and the Affordable Care Act.

 

Second Hand Marijuana Smoke In Children?

Researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City found that when young children were exposed to secondhand marijuana smoke, the main component  Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) appeared in a significant percentage of their urine samples. THC is the psychoactive chemical in marijuana.

Gene Drive Technology

160 global groups have called for a moratorium on new ‘genetic extinction’ technology at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

Here’s what they say:

Gene drive technology, poses serious and irreversible threats to biodiversity, national sovereignty, peace and food security.

Leaders from over 160 organizations are calling on governments at the 2016 COP13 of the Biodiversity Convention to establish a moratorium on the controversial genetic extinction technology called ‘gene drives’.Gene drives, developed through new gene-editing techniques, are designed to force a particular genetically engineered trait to spread through an entire wild population – potentially changing entire species or even causing deliberate extinctions.The statement urges governments to put in place an urgent, global moratorium on the development and release of the new technology which, they say, poses “serious and potentially irreversible threats to biodiversity, as well as national sovereignty, peace, and food security.”

What is a gene drive?

Gene drive is the practice of “stimulating biased inheritance of particular genes to alter entire populations.” Possible alterations include adding, disrupting, or modifying genes, including some that reduce reproductive capacity and may cause a population crash.

 

United States Postal Service & Smart Cites

It has be said that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) could be as the eyes, ears and sensor network for the smart city.

According to a panel at the Smart Cities Summit in Boston, the future of the USPS may revolve around big data, Internet of things and smart cities.

Here is the  How:

• Trucks and assets drive through cities everyday.
• These assets could monitor conditions and the environment for things like potholes, potential for blight and infrastructure conditions.
• Data could be delivered back to cities to enhance services.
• This data enablement could be a new revenue stream assuming that the Postal Service would be allowed to expand into new services. Regulations prevent the Postal Service from entering non-postal businesses.
• Jessica Raines, public policy analyst at the USPS’ inspector general office, who recently published research on the partnering possibilities for the USPS and smart cities says “There is a lot of potential in smart cities for the USPS,” said Raines. “Think of how many assets, infrastructure and people we have.”
• nyc-smart-equitable-city-final

Japanese Tech Mogul To Invest 50 Billion To U.S. Startups

 Donald Trump met with Japanese tech billionaire Masayoshi Son on Tuesday . Son says he will invest $50 billion in new startups in the United States, committing to creating 50,000 new jobs over an unspecified time period.

Son is the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, one of Japan’s largest technology outfits, which owns the U.S. mobile carrier Sprint. Sprint shares initially spiked after the announcement. Son left Trump Tower after being escorted down the elevator by the president-elect, who touted the pledge before waiting investors.

 

 

Under Rule 41 FBI Can Search Computers Remotely

 

 

A law was passed as of Dec. 1, 2016 allowing Federal agents an even greater scope for spying on computers belonging to regular citizens, thanks to a controversial amendment.

The long-standing Rule 41 governs how the FBI can search and seize property thought to be involved with crime. Its most recent amendment expands the search remit to include remote access of computers whose locations have been “concealed through technological means.”

the FBI can now obtain a warrant to hack any device whose IP address is masked. This can include computers using a virtual proxy network (VPN), a common internet tool used to maintain privacy on public Wi-Fi networks, to watch Netflix (and other geo-restricted media) from another country, to improve streaming speeds or simply to remain anonymous online. Similarly vulnerable under the updated rule are computers running the Tor browser, which users use for privacy and security or to browse the Deep Web for reasons including visiting illegal sites and accessing secured communications for political dissidents and whistle-blowers.

The amendment also makes it legal to search computers that have been “damaged without authorization” — that is, subjected to malware such as hijacking into botnets used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Considering that 16 million American households experienced serious virus problems in the past two years, that’s a lot of computers that the FBI could legally hack.

“This unprecedented increase in government hacking authority gives the government ability to more easily infiltrate, monitor, copy data from, inject malware into and otherwise damage computers, including victims of a crime, remotely,” said Nate Cardozo, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Under the new Rule 41, any computer with a hidden IP address or location can be included in the scope of a search warrant. Warrants can be granted in any jurisdiction and used to search multiple location-masking computers anywhere.

Hooked- Books In ChatText Messaging Form

HOOKED lets you read amazing chat stories FREE. These are gripping, edge-of-your seat thrillers that will keep you reading for hours. Or, write your own story and get lots of fans!very HOOKED story is told as a bite-sized text message conversation, as if you were reading someone else’s chat history.

HOOKED also lets you create your own chat stories from your iPhone. Share stories from your life, funny texts or creepy crawly conversations from your worst nightmares. HOOKED is your very own chat diary, for the world to read!

So with Hooked, they’re short stories that take the form of text message conversations. Instead of turning pages, you tap the screen to bring on the next message. The app offers a limited number of free stories but charges a subscription fee (starting at $2.99 per week) for unlimited access.

This week, Quartz reports the service has grown to more than 1.8 million downloads, mostly by the company’s target audience of 13-24 year olds.

Hackers Guessing Your Visa Card In Seconds

Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK claims that Visa’s credit-card payment system can be compromised online in “as little as six seconds.” The security flaw was possibly the point of entry for the cyber-attack on the UK’s Tesco Bank that lost £2.5 million.This isn’t some high-level hacking going on here either — all it takes for a determined thief to grab card data and a laptop with an internet connection with some basic guesswork, the paper says.

The team of researchers, led by PhD student Mohammed Ali, call the method “the Distributed Guessing Attack.” The approach: a thief generates random numbers to guess combinations of card numbers, expiration dates and CVV codes (that three-digit number typically found on the back of the card). The video below demonstrates just how easy it is to generate all of these fields quickly: According to the paper, there are three levels of data fields used by web merchants: Card Number + Expiry date; Card Number + Expiry date + CVV; Card Number + Expiry date + CVV + Address. 

It takes just a  few attempts to guess the data once the hack is put into motion with an active card number. Most cards are valid for 60 months, so guessing the expiration date takes at most 60 attempts. 

The CVV is a bit more difficult to find, but not by much: the team estimates about 1,000 attempts at most. “Spread this out over 1,000 websites and one will come back verified within a couple of seconds,” Ali said.

The research paper, whose lead author is a 26-year-old PhD student, said the good news for people with MasterCard debit and credit cards was that this form of hacking did not work on MasterCards, because its systems were able to detect the attacks. It added that the minority of online retailers that used so-called 3D Secure technology to provide extra protection – such as the Verified by Visa, Mastercard SecureCode and American Express SafeKey systems – were also “safe” from this type of attack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures, a biographical film about the African-American women who worked at NASA in the 1950s and 60s.

Amy Schummer To Play Barbie in Sony’s New Film

The PG movie will begin production in the spring for a global summer 2018.

Schumer will play a character who lives in Barbie land where Schumer’s Barbie gets kicked out, basically because she’s not perfect enough, a bit eccentric and doesn’t quite fit the mold. She then journeys on an adventure in the real world and by the time she returns to Barbie land to save it, she has gained the realization that perfection comes on the inside, not the outside, and that the key to happiness is belief in oneself, free of the obligation to adhere to some unattainable standard of perfection. Mattel, with a lot at stake since the toyline has generated $3 billion in sales, signed off on the take.

 

Facebook Creating Artificial Intelligence To flag Offensive Live Videos

Facebook  is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams,  using artificial intelligence to monitor content.

The social media company has been embroiled in a number of content controversies this year, from facing international outcry after removing an iconic Vietnam War photo due to nudity, to allowing the spread of fake news on its site.

Facebook has historically relied mostly on users to report offensive posts. Facebook has been increasingly using artificial intelligence with “an algorithm that detects nudity, violence, or any of the things that are not according to their policies.

Android Users ,There’s A New Malware On The Loose

There’s a new type of malware on the loose—and over a million Android devices have already been infected. Although, most of the infected devices are in Asia, 19 percent of them are in America, and 13,000 more devices are hacked each day. It’s the largest breach of Google accounts ever, and it’s definitely cause for concern.

You can pick up the malware aka Gooligan, by downloading seemingly harmless apps from sources other than the Google Play store. Once downloaded, Gooligan gains access to all of your data, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Play and more.

Even though Gooligan has access to a lot of your personal data, it doesn’t appear to use it. Instead, Gooligan downloads apps from Google Play in a scam designed to collect advertising revenue. These apps may provide Gooligan’s creators with cash for each download or show ads to generate income. Compromised Google accounts may also leave reviews on these fraudulent apps to make them appear more legitimate to other users.

Here’s an easy way to check if you’re infected. Security firm Check Point has created a tool that shows if your email address is among the compromised accounts. If your device is compromised, you’ll want to do a clean installation of Android on your device

How to keep your device secure

• Install the latest version of Android, including the security patches. Your carrier should provide instructions when updates are available.
• Don’t download apps from anywhere other than the Google Play store. Newer versions of Android will warn you if you try to download apps from elsewhere. Pay attention when it does!
• Run a reputable anti-virus application. While anti-virus protection can sometimes be frustrating — anti-virus apps can accidentally identify non-malware as malware — it can help keep your phone secure. Try AVAST, AVG, Kaspersky, McAfee or Norton, all of which are free and known for their solid desktop anti-virus protection.

New Firefox Exploit Can Expose Tor Users

The exploit was delivered through a Tor mailing list that when opened could unveil the MAC address and possibly even the IP address of a user running Tor Browser on Firefox. Researcher Joshua Yabut said it is “100 percent effective for remote code execution on Windows systems, versions 41 to 50 of Firefox are reportedly affected.”

A representative of Mozilla said officials are aware of the vulnerability and are working on a fix. While the vulnerability was already being actively exploited, the publication of the complete source code now puts it in the hands of a much wider base of people. Until a patch is available, Firefox users should use an alternate browser whenever possible, or disable JavaScript on as many sites as possible. People should avoid relying on Tor in cases where deanonymizing attacks could pose a significant threat. Tor users can also disable JavaScript, but turning it off goes against the official Tor recommendations.

Implantables in Healthcare: The Next Trend

The medical possibilities for intelligent, internet-enabled medical devices is huge, with one recent estimate expecting the global market to be worth US$163bn by 2020. 

Proteus Discover,  of US healthcare firm Proteus Digital Health. Developed in collaboration with Japan-based Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, Discover is a microscopic sensor contained within an ingestible pill. The sensor activates on contact with stomach acids and then starts relaying clinical health data to a replaceable patch worn on the patient’s torso. The technique is initially being used primarily for patients with cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, such as hypertension and Type 2 diabetes.The patch also registers the time that the medication was taken and a patient’s subsequent behavioural patterns (sleep, exercise, etc). The information is then loaded up wirelessly to an app on the patient’s smartphone and then to the Proteus Cloud.

Barriers To consider

Cybersecurity breaches— If hackers can infiltrate the medical records of sports stars such as British cyclist Bradley Wiggins and the US gymnast Simone Biles, what’s to say biometric information from your implantable might somehow find its way to your health insurance provider or to a tech company like Google (which is currently experimenting with a “smart” contact lens)?

 

 

 

Fake News & CNN

A twitter account by the name of @solikearose tweeted out a surprising image of CNN broadcasting porn instead of Anthony Bourdain’s scheduled show Parts Unknown. And then without really much questioning, a bunch of news sites jumped on it, claiming that the network showed the footage for about 30 minutes.

It appears that the chaos all started when The Independent wrote up a story from this person’s tweets, which was then tweeted out by the Drudge Report. After that, it spread fast. Mashable, The New York Post, The Daily Mail, Esquire, and Variety have all published a story, and pretty much all of these articles are based on one or two tweets from @solikerose. Plus, many of the original stories didn’t include statements from CNN or RCN, the cable company that supposedly aired the porn.

This is worst than gossip!

Google’s Tor Enabled Smartphone

The Tor Project has announced the release of its prototype for a Tor-enabled smartphone—an Android phone complete with privacy and security in mind.

 Tor developer Mike Perry who designed the phone, says they are trying to demonstrate that it is possible to build a phone that respects user choice and freedom, vastly reduces vulnerability surface, and sets a direction for the ecosystem with respect to how to meet the needs of high-security users. To protect user privacy, the prototype runs OrWall, the Android firewall that routes traffic over Tor, and blocks all other traffic. Users can punch a hole through the firewall for voice traffic, for instance, to enable Signal

The prototype called “Mission Improbable,” is now ready to download and install only works on Google Nexus and Pixel hardware.

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.

Hacker Group Colbolt Hitting The ATMs

A Hacker group named Cobalt have been attacking ATMs in more than a dozen countries in Europe and Asia, including the U.K. and Russia. The “smash and grab” attacks were coordinated from unknown command centers. They don’t require any physical tampering of the ATMs but the hackers do need someone to be present when the attack happens so they can collect the wads of cash from the ATM.  Hackers attack huge numbers of ATMs at the same time because they know they can be caught fairly quickly, so they stage it in such a way that they can get cash from as many ATMs as they can before they get shut down.

A key threat is when cyber criminals commit fraud remotely from anywhere globally and attack the whole ATM network without being ‘on the radar’ of security services,says Dmitry Volkov, Group IB’s head of the investigation.

President Obama Will Not Pardon Snowden

Despite pressure from a group of high-profile human and civil rights groups, President Obama told German newspaper, Der Spiegel late last week that he will not pardon Snowden during his final weeks in office . Snowden, a former NSA contractor, has lived in exile ever since he worked with various media organizations in 2013 to reveal an array of extensive and intrusive domestic and international spying operations run by the NSA and other agencies. The president has also been backed up by a letter sent to him in September and signed by members of the House of Representatives’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. More

Physicist Says Earth Will Be Over In A 1,000 Years

A British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawkins says that the earth, like all planets, is fragile. Current life forms, especially larger ones like humans, could cease to exist due to any number of catastrophic planetary hair days. All it takes is for our atmosphere to take just one sick day and we’re history with no one to read about it. He also says, Hawking’s top four, he said in a presentation at Oxford’s University Union that the greatest concerns are for the next century, during which developing artificial intelligence and continuing global climate change could each alter the “future of humanity.”

THIS IS GOD’S CALL ONLY

They Say office Depot Is Diagnosing Fake Virus For Sales Targets

 

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Street Style @ Fashion Week

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.

 

Research Says By 2020 There Will Be Millions Of Motion and Gesture Devices

• A new study suggests that by 2020 there will be as many as 492 million motion and gesture-tracking devices.
• According to researchers, gesture and motion control will become vital for certain forms of human-computer interaction in the coming years.                                           The study revealed that by 2020, “there will be as many as 492 million motion and gesture-tracking devices.” That is to say “gesture and motion control will become vital for certain forms of human-computer interaction in the coming years.”            The first interaction many consumers may have had with motion and gesture tracking likely came with Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral.

McDonalds Plan To Become More Modern With Kiosks & Mobile Ordering

McDonald’s is planning to become more modern by updating it’s U.S. restaurants with self-service kiosk ordering, mobile payments, “smart” menu boards, custom sandwiches and table service.

About 500 of McDonald’s more than 14,000 U.S. restaurants have made the changes with Florida, New York and Southern California being the first regions to adopt the new format. Restaurants in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Seattle will start making the switch next year. McDonald’s will pilot mobile ordering in the United States in the first half of 2017 and do a national rollout in the second half, Chris Kempczinski, a former Kraft Foods executive who will take over as McDonald’s USA president on Jan. 1. Mobile ordering and payment will be added to the McDonald’s app, which has been downloaded by 16 million people.

The company wants new food and tech elements in addition to the restaurant makeovers. McDonald’s executives said that the equipment is not expected to reduce the number of workers in restaurants since traditional order takers would be redeployed to help customers learn to operate kiosks and to deliver food to tables.

On the healthier side Mcdonalds  USA already has switched to chicken raised without antibiotics important to human health, replaced margarine with butter in its Egg McMuffins, and swapped sugar for high-fructose corn syrup in its hamburger buns.

Most recently, it said it would fully transition to cage-free eggs in the United States and Canada over the next decade.

 

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

 

 

Popular Books

 

“A novel that dealing with big issues — race, class, and the ups and downs of long-term friendship — told with a dancer’s grace and ease.”

Before the Fall” by Noah Hawley

“From the award-winning creator of ‘Fargo,’ a thrilling page-turner about an airplane crash and its seemingly heroic survivors.”

The Nix” by Nathan Hill

“A big, smart novel about so many things: family, politics, revolution, and the things we choose to remember (and forget).”

 

Actress Tika Sumpter Mother Arrested For 10$ Library Fine In N. Carolina

 

Jim Spellman via Getty Images

The actress claims her mom was arrested for a $10 library balance.

Actress Tika Sumpter says her mother was arrested Monday because of a $10 late fee at her local library in North Carolina. The arrest took place in Johnston County, N.C., where the Public Library of Johnston County & Smithfield calls home. According to the library’s website, overdue books elicit a 25-cent fine per day, while audio books, movies and CDs run an offender 50 cents every 24 hours. Sumpter’s mother is also a retired corrections officer named Janice Acquista who Sumpter said had no previous rap sheet — actually returned the book that prompted the fine a long time ago.

 

Yukon & Canadian Libraries Offering Artificial Sunshine To Make Patrons Happy

 

TThe bright lights imitate the sun and make the libraries a more welcoming public space according to the Yukon Francophone Health Network. (Philippe Morin/CBC)

The Dawson City and Whitehorse libraries now offer full-spectrum lights, often called S.A.D lamps, which are intended to ward off Seasonal Affective Disorder.The lights were bought by Yukon’s Francophone Health Network. The group’s director, Sandra St-Laurent, says the idea has been tried in other Canadian cities.  “Winnipeg and Edmonton were starting light therapy at their library as well.

About twenty per cent (of the population) is sensitive to the seasonal depression syndromes and we thought with the limited exposure to light in Yukon it might be even higher here.  Whitehorse has two lamps which can be plugged in anywhere, while Dawson City has one. “It just has lots of mental-health benefits,” says Taryn Parker, circulation supervisor in Whitehorse. “It provides some good light so it’s as if the light is coming in from the window or from the sun.”

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.

Facebook Will Have Artificial Intelligence filters IN Photos

The new software uses deep neural networks to transform photographs and live video into images that resemble famous artworks. This is different from other products that achieve a similar result by farming out the calculations to algorithms running on the cloud, Facebook’s offering will actually perform all the computation on your phone.

More On AI & Facebook 

Already, They’re Going Back & Forth About TPP & President Obama & Trump

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

More On TPP Here

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 Galaxy 8 Will Have An Artificial Intelligence Assistant

 Tech giant Samsung revealed that the upcoming Galaxy S8 will include an AI assistant as one of its star attractions. It’s not offering clues as to what this virtual helper will do, but it will let developers “attach and upload services” to extend the AI’s functionality beyond what you get out of the box. This is similar to what Apple and Google are offering for their own assistants, but it may be what Samsung isn’t talking about that’s special — Viv can create its own programs and understand complex intent in a way many AIs can’t. Samsung aquired Viv an artificial intelligence platform from the makers of Siri.

 

The United States Presidential Election ‘s 2016/ Live Data

Graphs updated every 5 minutes

 

Turkish Internet Users Running To Tor

Turkish internet users are flocking to Tor, the anonymizing and censorship-circumvention tool, after Turkey’s government block Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Usage of Tor inside of Turkey went up from around 18,000 users to 25,000 users on Friday, when the government started blocking the popular social media networks, according to Tor’s official metrics.  The Turkish information technologies and communications authority, or BTK, ordered internet providers in the country to block Tor and several other censorship-circumvention Virtual Private Networks or VPNs, such as VPN Master, Hotspot Shield

Light Bulbs Hacked

Researchers from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, were able to remotely hack Philips Hue bulbs from either a car or a drone at a distance of 229 feet (about 70 meters). Their method involved tricking the lights into accepting a malicious firmware update — from there, the hackers were able to take control of the bulbs and force them to flash against their will.

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.

Soon You Can Purchase On Instagram

US-based retail brands—including Kate Spade, JackThreads, and Warby Parker—will start posting interactive photos to Instagram and allow the items to be purchased in the featured image. Each image will feature a “tap to view” callout in the lower left-hand side; tap it to reveal the name and price of the products featured in the photo (Instagram supports up to five tags). Tap a tag to open a more detailed view in another window. If you want it just click “Shop Now,” at which point you’ll be redirected to a browser view, where you can add items to your cart and check out

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President Obama Will Pass On Digital Tools When He Leaves Whitehouse

The digital material will all be sent off to the National Archives and Records Administration.This will include Obama’s tweets and his snaps. Those materials will also be preserved in a more readily available form “wherever possible. @POTUS44, will be handled by the National Archives and Records Administration. Similar accounts will be set up for the Obama administration’s Instagram and Facebook posts. 

The president’s staff also plans to have much of his social media material ready for download by the time Obama’s term is up, so it’s ready and easy to access for fans and researchers and whoever else wants to take a look. 

The White House’s accounts, including @POTUS, will be wiped clean while maintaining their followers. That’ll prevent any jarring difference in message and, that way, each successive president will have a clean digital slate. @POTUS will be made available to the 45th President on January 20, 2017.

The Digital Transition

@Potus