Posts - Americans

Chinese Search Giant Baidu Is Launching A Major Offensive Against Google

Finance

In the battle for internet search domination, most people think of Google and only Google. But Chinese giant Baidu, effectively the Google of China, is incredibly large, equally profitable and has vast ambitions to move outside of China, where it enjoys a near monopoly. Google does not offer its services in China due to state censorship and human rights abuses.

While the online search market is fairly mature, the next battleground is up for grabs.

That battleground is car infotainment systems, which are becoming increasingly sophisticated and connected.

Baidu fired a major shot across Google’s bow this weekend when Audi announced it will be deepening its collaboration with the Chinese internet giant. The goal of the partnership is for Audi to be able to offer more car-connected services throughout the country. There is a high demand for cars that have high levels of integration with maps and smartphones. In China, Baidu is by far the number one player in each.

While they’ll ‘only’ be focusing on China, the country is quickly becoming the largest auto market in the world.

It’s also important to remember that automakers are scared to death of Google, due to its interest in creating the tech behind both infotainment systems and self driving cars. They’re scared because owning this tech would be like Google owning the Android smartphone platform, where hardware companies make little money and compete intensely while Google owns the high margin part of the business.

Carmakers desperately want to avoid becoming commoditized, as Google wishes them to be, and so are increasingly looking to foreign players like Baidu to counter the threat of Google’s domination.

The two companies actually signed their agreement memorandum back in January and have only just announced the partnership because of the Consumer Electronic Show in Shanghai that is taking currently taking place.

And Audi’s not the only one. We reported earlier this week that rival Mercedes Benz will also be working with Baidu, showing that carmakers are taking aggressive action to avoid relying on Google and setting up Baidu to becoming an increasingly direct competitor.

Advanced Israeli Weapons Found In Saudi Arabia’s Yemen Embassy

Entertainment News

Israel is not a popular country in the middle east, almost universally regarded as an interloper by native Arabs on religious and territorial grounds. Yet politically, Israel’s interests are aligned with some of its neighbors, particularly U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.

Its neighbors also covet Israel’s advanced and high quality weapons systems despite the fact it rarely arms its neighbors.

Yet Saudi Arabia has been persistently seeking Israeli weapons and it appears Israel has finally agreed to sell, despite no public announcements. On Saturday Iran’s Fars News Agency reported that advanced Israeli made ammunition and weapons were part of a large cache of military material found in the Saudi embassy in Yemen’s capital Sana’a.

According to the Iranian report, rebel Houthi forces captured the Saudi embassy Saturday, battling over 40 guards at the high security complex. Iran is backing the Houthi rebels, which have been Saudi-backed government forces in a dangerous proxy war over the last several months.

The report also outlined that in addition to the weapons, rebels also uncovered documents outlining an American plan to build a large military base on Mayyun Island, a Saudi island strategically positioned in the narrow entrance to the Red Sea between Yemen and the African continent. The base would help protect American interests in the region and also assist Israel’s security.

Since April, Yemeni forces have consistently reported that Saudi Arabia was using Israeli weapons in strikes against the Houthis. There have even been reports that the Saudis have been using Israeli tactical nuclear weapons.

Maniacal Russian Foreign Policy Will Result In $110 Billion Leaving Country Next Year

Entertainment News

The Russian Economic Development Ministry announced this week that capital flight from Russia is forecast to hit $110 billion this year, the second highest in over a decade, thanks to the increasingly erratic behavior of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

The invasion of Ukraine and increased military belligerence has resulted in tough western sanctions that limit foreign investment and force Russian companies to pay off billions of dollars in foreign debt.

The country seems to have accepted this new, harsh, reality as the ministry’s base forecast models U.S. and EU sanctions will remain in place through the end of 2018.

“This means that Russian companies’ access to world capital markets will remain limited and there will be quite a high level of capital outflow from the private sector due to debt repayments,” the report said.

The sanctions from the United States and European Union were imposed last year because of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The result is that both economies are now effectively closed to Russian companies’, leaving them with $109 billion in debt payments coming due this year and no possibility of refinancing the loans.

Capital flight from Russia rose to an all-time high of $151.5 billion last year, nearly 300% greater than the outflow seen in 2013, according to Russian Central Bank data.

In addition to the torrential outflow of cash driven by debt repayments, the maniacal actions of Vladimir Putin, who appears increasingly unstable, have caused a severe fall in investor confidence. A sharp decline in oil prices, a key Russian export, is also contributing to the tough times.

China To Allow Visa, MasterCard And American Express To Operate On Mainland

Entertainment News

China is increasingly realizing, unlike Russia, that being isolated in the global financial system isn’t beneficial. In the latest sign of realizing this, China announced on Monday that global bank card operators, such as Visa and MasterCard, can obtain licences to clear domestic Chinese payments.

The big card companies have been engaged in a decades long struggle to penetrate a market dominated by a powerful state-backed incumbent: UnionPay.

Prior to the announcement, which is effective immediately, all yuan payments had to be cleared through China UnionPay, a network owned by 85 mostly state-owned banks.

But a 2012 World Trade Organization ruling deemed the arrangement discriminatory against foreign payment processors, handing a victory to the United States, which had lodged the complaint.

While the victory will surely boost the fortunes of Visa and MasterCard, experts expevt foreign players to face major challenges in winning market share from UnionPay, which is used for 72 per cent of total transaction values.

“Visa and MasterCard need to build up their local infrastructure. In the past, they just operated as a sales office. They don’t really have the physical presence,” said James Chen, the former General Manager of MasterCard China. “They need to start to recruit people and buy equipment — basically build from ground zero.”

“Realistically, Visa and MasterCard are not going to be the dominant card networks in China in the near future,” agreed Tristan Hugo-Webb, associate director of global payments at Mercator Advisory.

While the card companies will make slow inroads the move is also important for China’s ambition to make the yuan the world’s reserve currency, displacing the American dollar. By tightly integrating the currency into the fabric of global payment networks, the Chinese will see more demand for yuan, boosting the value and China’s ability to conduct transactions in its home currency.

Over 15,000 Websites Block Congress To Protest Patriot Act Spying

News

Americans are increasingly frustrated with our elected officials’ obsession with spying on innocent Americans. And while Americans may not be marching on Washington, as they probably should, there are other ways they’re making the point.

A new movement, called BlackOutCongress.org, means that thousands of sites are now blocking Congress from viewing their webpages in an online demonstration against the abusive data-collection provisions of the Patriot Act.

As of Sunday morning just under 15,000 websites were redirecting computers from Congress to a protest page where users are greeted with a black and white warning that reads, “We are blocking your access until you end mass surveillance laws.”

“You have conducted mass surveillance of everyone illegally and are now on record for trying to enact those programs into law,” the warning reads. “You have presented Americans with the false dichotomy of reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act or passing the USA Freedom Act. The real answer is to end all authorities used to conduct mass surveillance.”

The blackout was created by Fight for the Future, “a grassroots movement to ensure that everyone can access the Internet’s many resources affordably, free of interference or censorship and with full privacy.”

To join the blackout, sites just need to embed a code snippet on their pages that detects the computers used by Congress, and it then redirects them to the Blackout Congress page.

Thus far no politicians have stepped forward to curtail the massive spying programs, in which every single bit of data on a U.S. computer server is logged and stored by the NSA, who in turn maintains detailed dossiers on the lives of every single American citizen.

Russian Aircraft Buzzes U.S. Navy Destroyer

Entertainment News

Tensions between Russia and the United States continued to be high after Russian military aircraft were scrambled to harass a U.S. warship that was acting “aggressively” in the Black Sea, according to Russian media.

The Russian military source said that the U.S. destroyer Ross was moving along the edge of Russia’s territorial waters and heading toward Russia.

“The crew of the ship acted provocatively and aggressively, which concerned the operators of monitoring stations and ships of the Black Sea Fleet,” RIA news, a state mouthpiece, said in the report.

“Su-24 attack aircraft demonstrated to the American crew readiness to harshly prevent a violation of the frontier and to defend the interests of the country.”

Both U.S. and Russian military spokespeople did not comment on the alleged incident.

Its the latest example of encounters between Russian and Western militaries, as tensions continue over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The waters nearby are home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, one of the largest Navies in the world.

Non-violent skirmishes are becoming increasingly common around the world as earlier this month both Britain and Sweden had to scramble fighters to intercept Russian bombers encroaching on their territory. Sweden’s neighbor, Finland, had to fire depth charges at a trespassing Russian submarine earlier this year as well.

And just last month the United States announced it was filing a complaint with Russia over a Russian fighter’s “sloppy” and unsafe interception of a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international air space over the Baltic Sea.

While the incidents have not been violent they raise the chance of accidents that could have far reaching and long lasting ramifications. China, in addition to Russia, has been engaged in similar incidents during the same time period.

Japan Reaches Deal With U.S. For Cyberwar Defense Protection

Entertainment News

The mutual threat of China’s pervasive hacking, combined with military belligerence, has led the United States military to extend protection to Japan, helping the Asian state protest against attacks against military bases and infrastructure such as power grids.

The agreement was announced in a joint statement on Saturday.

“We note a growing level of sophistication among malicious cyber actors, including non-state and state-sponsored actors,” said the two countries in a prepared statement.

Cybersecurity is one of the big areas in which Japan and the United States are deepening their military partnership, the framework of which was agreed in April. The agreement also stipulates that the two will integrate their ballistic missile defense systems, while making Japan the primary partner in the Asian theater.

The United States has been investing heavily in building a force to protect and retaliate against online attacks, while Japan has been slower in taking such steps.

Japan’s military cyber defense unit has just 90 members, while the U.S has more than 6,000 people at the Pentagon – on record. Many more hires lurk as contractors or black budget employees that aren’t included in the number.

China’s Defense Ministry denounced the new strategy, saying, bizarrely, that it would worsen tension over Internet security.

Yet China appears to be the main world threat to cyber security, running a persistent and sophisticated hacking program the siphons personal information, industrial designs, military secrets and anything else it can find. Most recent modern hack attacks have been attributed to China, which has prompted a world-wide reaction to the aggressive behavior.

United Nations Rules Encryption And Anonymity Need To Be Protected

Entertainment News

The United Nations released a report this week the underscored the importance of encryption and anonymity in the digital age, in order to preserve basic rights and freedoms. Authored by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, the document calls attention to the importance of private communications and calls on member states to protect tools that encourage privacy under the law.

The report calls for just the opposite of what our elected officials are subjecting us to. Thanks to legislation like the Patriot Act, America’s secret police run the most extensive domestic spying program in the world, maintaining a detailed file on every American citizen. Every single bit of information transmitted on an American computer or phone network is logged and stored by the NSA.

Lawmakers have recently been pushing to limit encryption as it makes such spying programs less effective, as while the secret police have all the data they cannot decrypt it and therefore cannot tell what is inside.

Such programs, now known to the public thanks to Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing, are increasingly unpopular and are leading to protests.

The new report from David Kaye, a UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, looked to shine a light on the complex issues surrounding state surveillance by asking two questions:

– Do the rights to privacy and freedom of opinion and expression protect secure online communication, specifically by encryption or anonymity?

– Assuming an affirmative answer, to what extent may Governments, in accordance with human rights law, impose restrictions on encryption and anonymity?

As many states impose extreme measures to restrict citizens’ abilities to send and impart knowledge without fear, Kaye found that journalists, activists and other engaged parties need specialist tools to make sure their voices are heard.

“A VPN connection, or use of Tor or a proxy server, combined with encryption, may be the only way in which an individual is able to access or share information in such environments,” Kaye says.

Noting that individuals should be able to send and receive information beyond their borders, the rapporteur states that some member states act to deny those freedoms by restricting communications using aggressive filtering.

“Encryption enables an individual to avoid such filtering, allowing information to flow across borders. Moreover, individuals do not control — and are usually unaware of — how or if their communications cross borders. Encryption and anonymity may protect information of all individuals as it transits through servers located in third countries that filter content,” Kaye wrote.

While encryption can often beat state censors, staying anonymous is vital to continued freedom of expression. Forcing users to be identified by name has been repeatedly shown to stifle free speech and honest dialog.

“Anonymity has been recognized for the important role it plays in safeguarding and advancing privacy, free expression, political accountability, public participation and debate,” says the UN report.

“Some States exert significant pressure against anonymity, offline and online. Yet because anonymity facilitates opinion and expression in significant ways online, States should protect it and generally not restrict the technologies that provide it.”

Let’s hope Facebook and our ‘elected’ officials are listening.

ISIS Has Committed Over Five Million Human Rights Abuses In Five Months

Entertainment News

The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Iraq (IHCHR) released a statement on Friday that it estimates the Islamic State, known as ISIS, has perpetrated at least five million human right abuses in just five months.

Among the most serious acts are mass rapes and genocide.

Fazel Ghazawi, head of the UN agency, said the jihadists have committed crimes against women, children, and people with disabilities.

“Some of these brutal crimes can be considered as genocide,” read the statement.

Over the course of five months, according to the IHCHR, the extremists have committed 22,000 murder attempts leading to the deaths of at least 8,047 people and 14,487 injuries.

Just last Wednesday, The Iraqi Ministry of Health began exhuming a mass grave containing over 470 people killed by the Islamic State group in Salahaddin province. More than 1,700 army trainees are believed to have been killed when ISIS militants took the area last year.

The IHCHR also noted that the radical Islamists have brutally targeted Iraq’s native religious minorities, including Christians and followers of the ancient Yazidi faith.

Mystery Oil Pollution Closes Even More California Beaches

Culture

The normally pristine beaches of California are under siege this summer, as a pipline spill mid-May closed a number if beaches in a protected sanctuary and new beaches were closed late this week because of more oil leakage.

Officials said Thursday that clean-up workers had made “significant progress,” but the beaches remained closed into the weekend and authorities were not hopefully they would re-open.

“The beaches are closed until we make a determination that it’s safe,” said US Coast Guard spokeswoman Charlene Downey. The beaches include El Segundo, Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo.

The unidentified pollution came ashore barely a week after thousands of gallons of oil spilled into the ocean, from a ruptured pipe near Santa Barbara, about 100 miles northwest up the coast.

The two beaches fouled by some 105,000 gallons from the ruptured pipeline were closed, and will remain so until June 4th, officials said Thursday. Fishing rights were also suspended within hundreds of miles in the area.

The mysterious new oil raises concerns that either the original pipeline spill is far worse than last suspected or that there may be a new, undisclosed spill which is leaking fresh oil.

Terrorist Group ISIS Now Using Mostly U.S. Made Weapons

Entertainment News

ISIS’ rapid conquest through Iraq has caused major problems for defense planners trying to figure out strategies to help local security forces deal with the rapidly expanding terrorist group.

The big problem? Getting Iraqis to fight.

In recent ISIS attacks, such as on Mosul and Palmyra, security forces didn’t fight and instead fled.

The result?

Iraqi security forces lost over 2,300 Humvee armored vehicles when ISIS overran the northern city of Mosul, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on Sunday.

“In the collapse of Mosul, we lost a lot of weapons,” Abadi said in an interview with Iraqiya state TV. “We lost 2,300 Humvees in Mosul alone.”

Its not only a hugely expensive loss – it has also notably boosted ISIS’s capabilities.

The latest batch of vehicles delivered to Iraq featured increased armor, machineguns, and grenade launchers that were estimated to cost $579 million. And that’s just for 1000 vehicles.

The total value of the captured vehicles in Mosul was well north of $1 billion.

The battle for Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, began late on June 9th, 2014, and saw Iraqi forces lose the city the following day.

In addition to the armored vehicles the militants gained ample arms, ammunition and other equipment when multiple Iraqi divisions abandoned gear and shedded their uniforms as they ran away from the oncoming attackers.

ISIS has used the captured Humvees in subsequent fighting, even rigging some with explosives for suicide bombings, their weapon of choice.

Iraqi security forces backed by Shiite militias had gained ground from ISIS in Diyala and Salaheddin provinces, located just north of Baghdad.

But that quickly reversed in mid-May when ISIS overran Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, west of Baghdad, which Iraqi forces had been holding for more than a year.

Each Day In America This Year Two People Have Been Murdered By Police

News

The Washington Post newspaper compiled shocking data which shows that the number of people shot by U.S. police per day is over two, more than twice what official reports claim.

During the first five months of this year alone, 385 people were killed, which works out to over 2 per day.

It gets worse though, as the number of black people was disproportionately high among the victims, especially unarmed victims.

The data, collected by an objective third party, contradicts official statistics, which rely on self-reported tallies from law enforcement agencies.

The new tallies show that about 400 people have been killed by police each year since 2008.

While police are allowed to use deadly force when they protect their own lives or the lives of others, there is currently no reliable way of tracking police shooting deaths.

Its clear that in our increasingly connected world, in which everything is logged, tracked and traced, this must change.

It’s even more bizarre that the government relies on self-reported figures from the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies, which makes the data prone to corruption by police insiders who have vested interests in under reporting the totals.

This year’s homicide rate of almost 2.6 per day is more than double the average 1.1 deaths per day reported in FBI records over the past decade.

“These shootings are grossly underreported,” former police chief Jim Bueermann told the Washington Post. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

Some of the report’s other key findings:

Black people were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusted for local population

Most were armed, but one in six was unarmed or carried a toy weapon

365 men and 20 women were killed

Most (118) were aged 25-34, while 94 were 35-44. Eight were children younger than 18

In all three 2015 cases in which charges were subsequently filed against police officers, videos had emerged showing officers shooting a suspect during or after a chase on foot.

18 Quarantined After Deadly Virus Outbreak In Hong Kong

Health & Wellness

A South Korean man who arrived in the city of Hong Kong has been confirmed to be infected with the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS virus, Hong Kong authorities confirmed early this morning.

The positive test has led to 18 fellow passengers of Asiana Airlines Flight 723 being placed under quarantine.

The city’s health authorities said Saturday the 18 passengers were being held in the Lady MacLehose Holiday Village resort, located in a remote part of Hong Kong, for two full weeks. The passengers placed under the measure were seated within two rows of the infected South Korean man, but have thus far not presented any symptoms of the deadly condition.

A further 17 people are also under medical surveillance, while Hong Kong authorities are asking other passengers of the flight to contact them.

Officials said that the 44-year-old South Korean man flew from Seoul to Hong Kong on Tuesday and then took a bus to the Chinese mainland. The man is China’s first imported MERS case and is now being held in isolation at a southern Chinese hospital.

The fatality causing virus is similar to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS virus, which started in China in 2002.

At present fifteen cases of MERS have been reported in South Korea.

New Study Reveals We Don’t Need To Drink As Much Water As We Think

Health & Wellness

A surprising new study by released by Canadian Brock University physiologist Dr. Stephen Cheung shows that losing even three per cent of body mass through dehydration has no noticeable effect on cycling performance. This puts it at odds with conventional wisdom, made famous by sports drink Gatorade, that optimal hydration is a key determinant of athletic success.

Cheung shared the results, with Dr. Mikel Zabala, a friend who heads British cyclist Alex Dowsett’s scientific team.

“He and I were batting around the idea over the winter of just how hot do we want to make the track,” Cheung said. “He was obviously worried that Dowsett was going to get really dehydrated. So I shared the data that I had, and perhaps it put his mind at rest.”

Cheung’s study was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, getting much media attention yet leaving the world generally confused. Hydration is a modern obsession: We bring water bottles to the gym, strap them on our backs as we run, and sip from them while working.

Conventional wisdom is that by the time we feel thirst, it’s already too late.

So how can the new results be explained?

For one, Cheung’s research is just the latest in a line of studies over the past decade that have changed conventional thinking on the body’s fluid needs.

Rather than obsessively looking to replace every drop that you sweat out, it now appears that a little thirst isn’t nearly as bad as previously thought.

While drinking water during a workout is definitely not a waste of time, it turns out that how much you need depends less on absolute fluid levels in your body than what’s going on in your head.

Studies have found that in activities such as running, where it’s quite difficult to drink on the go, people tend to replace less than half of their sweat losses, far less than conventional wisdom would imply.

“Anyone who has worked in the field with athletes has probably realized years ago that a strict two-per-cent dehydration cut-off just doesn’t work,” says Dr. Trent Stellingwerff, a physiologist at the Canadian Sport Institute in Victoria. Stellingwerff, who works with elite marathoners, aims for 3 to 6 per cent dehydration, depending on weather and individual tolerance. The conventional rule is two percent.

One issues with earlier studies is that they didn’t distinguish between dehydration and thirst.

Authors of the studies deliberately dehydrated their subjects for hours using heat chambers and diuretics, then forced them to exercise without allowing them to drink. Understandably, performance suffered.

“When you drink, you’re also affecting your thirst, your perception, your psychology, your motivation,” Cheung says. The distraction and unpleasantness of wanting to drink without being able to slows you down, rather than an actual lack of fluid in your body.

While drinking lots of water is a great thing for the body and should be encouraged, new research is suggesting that being a little thirsty isn’t as bad as originally thought.

U.S. Secretary Of State Badly Injured In Biking Accident

News

It as a sad weekend for the White House as in addition to Joe Biden’s son, Beau, dying we learned that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry broke his right femur in a nasty cycling accident in Scionzier, France, early Sunday morning. The incident was confirm by a State Department spokesperson.

The femur is the large bone in the thigh, which is incredibly painful to break. Its also near the site of a previous hip surgery and so Kerry will return to Boston on Sunday for treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital with his doctor who did the prior surgery. Kerry is now back in the United States, a senior State Department official said.

Kerry will miss a planned state visit to Spain, and also miss a Paris counter-ISIS coalition meeting on Tuesday, though he will participate remotely.

The secretary is stable and is expected to make a full recovery, though it will likely take over six months given the severity of the injury.

“Secretary Kerry is in good spirits and is grateful to the French and Swiss authorities, doctors, and nurses who assisted him after the accident,” the spokesman said.

Kerry was transported by helicopter to a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, for examination, after the accident occurred.

“Paramedics and a physician were on the scene with the Secretary’s motorcade at the time of the accident,” said the state department.

Kerry was in Geneva for negotiations with Iranian diplomats on Iran’s nuclear program and was cycling about 30 miles from the city, which is near France.

The secretary is an avid cyclist who frequently brings his bike with hi on trips, especially to Europe, which has some of the best cycling in the world due to its unique geography and old world roads.

ISIS Kidnaps 500 School Children To Use As Suicide Bombers

Entertainment News

The depths is the Islamic State’s depravity no knows bounds as reports surfaced that militants have kidnapped over 500 children from Iraq, which local authorities believe will be used in ‘suicide attacks’ by the Sunni radical group.

“Daesh [Arabic derogatory term for ISIS] has kidnapped at least 400 children in the western province of Anbar and taken them to their bases in Iraq and Syria,” Farhan Mohammed, a member of Anbar’s Provincial Council, told Anadolu Agency.

The Iraqi officials said that just last week hundreds of children have been ripped away from their homes and schools in Ar Rutba, Al-Qaim, Anah and Rawa. This week follows another 100 children under the age of 16 which were taken away by ISIS from Iraq’s eastern province earlier in the month.

Diyala police chief Lieutenant General Kasim Al-Saidi told reporters that the children were being taken to ISIS bases in Iraq and Syria to be used in “suicide attacks”.

Saidi revealed that ISIS is giving them weapons training as well.

In April, Rehab al-Abouda, head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Committee for Women, Family and Childhood revealed that ISIS has used hundreds of kidnapped boys as fighters in its clashes with the Iraqi security forces.

Those clashes have led to significant amounts of U.S. weapons falling into enemy hands.

Her April statement had come just days after it emerged that at least 120 children were kidnapped from schools in Mosul by ISIS militants.

Those children were taken from their schools in the al-Qayyarah, al-Shura, Badoush and al-Baaj neighborhoods of the city, which is about 200 miles from Baghdad and taken to ISIS ‘cub camps’, where they receive brainwashing and terrorist training.

China Claims To Have Created World’s First Facial Recognition ATM

Finance

The days of remembering PIN numbers and passwords may soon be coming to an end as China claims to have unveiled the first facial recognition ATM machine in the world.

The facial recognition technology prevents people from withdrawing cash unless their face is matched to the picture on their IDs. The machine has a camera installed on it which automatically snaps a picture of the user’s face when it is approached.

The ATM was created by Tsinghua University and Hangzhou-based technology company Tzekwan, according to China’s state-sponsored Xinhua news agency.

Other features of the machine are that it allows currency exchanges and also records the serial number of every note deposited by clients, in order to identify fake bank notes.

The latter technology could be problematic, as it would also enable the government to start recording ever cash transaction, reducing financial privacy.

While the facial recognition technology is interesting, biometric identification, where body parts and features are used to authenticate users, is widely regarded as insecure.

Biometric features, like a fingerprint or facial features, lack revocation. If a technology is compromised it is impossible to change someone’s finger prints or iris or facial features, meaning that if someone devises a way to impersonate a user the whole system is compromised.

So while the technology is convenient, its also highly insecure, which is likely the reason no American banks have used such technology, preferring revocable measures like PINs and passwords.

Consumer Drone Market Expected To Be Worth $4 Billion By 2020

Entertainment News

Drones, in all shapes, sizes and colors, aren’t just for the military anymore but are instead being quickly adopted by businesses in a variety of sectors looking to take advantage of the cheap aerial vehicles.

According to industry website DroneGuru.co, the market for consumer drones is skyrocketing, with companies such as DJI, Parrot, and 3D Robotics rapidly expanding as they scoop up cash from venture capital firms. This year alone has seen over $150 million invested in the three companies.

Last year saw over $110 million spent on drone investments, including crowdfunded projects, which alone raised over $10 million. VCs are taking note, with more than five funds being created to invest solely in drone and related technologies.

All the investment is for good reason. In 2015, consumer drone sales are expected to reach $1.5 billion worldwide. By 2020 the market will reach $4 Billion in revenue.

Yet these projections are probably conservative, as analysts have difficulty forecasting demand given rapidly changing FAA regulations. The national aerospace regulator has just puts its proposal to legalize commercial drone use into action, opening up a whole new drone market which is tricky to value.

Yet the big driver of drone sales in the immediate future is by regular consumers, who want them to take pictures and play with. Drones are an especially hot Christmas gift, which means the industry will see a flood of drones at very small price points, in addition to larger models used for more commercial tasks like crop surveying and shipping.

8000 Chinese Students Were Expelled From American Schools Last Year

Entertainment News

China isn’t just taking a cavalier attitude towards its political affairs; its study-abroad students are also taking a haphazard approach to their studies, according to a new report from WholeRen Education.

The report shows that approximately 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from U.S. colleges and universities last year. The findings highlight a negative trend in Chinese academic performance. They also come on the heels of an indictment this week against dozens of Chinese nationals for cheating on college entrance exams.

“Chinese students used to be considered top-notch but over the past five years their image has changed completely — wealthy kids who cheat,” said Chen Hang, chief development officer of WholeRen.

Approximately one-third of America’s one million international college students are from China, so the rate at which they are expelled isn’t horrible but has been increasing over time.

China is notoriously ethically challenged and the latest findings show this behavior is ramapt among its students. 80.55% of Chinese students’ dismissals were because of “academic dishonesty or low academic performances.” Academic performance is very poor for Chinese students as well – over 50% of the students had a GPA lower than a 2.0 — a grade of C.

“More than half of the Chinese students expelled were from top 100 U.S. universities, the survey found. Cheating at exams, plagiarism and finding other students to write papers for them were frequently cited as the specific causes of expulsion,” the paper reported.

Which begs the question: Is this, in light of the recent entrance exam cheating scandal, evidence that Chinese cheating on entrance exams rampant? If students can get into top schools but cannot complete their degrees it raises serious questions about just how they’re getting there in the first place.

Orange County School Board Spying On All Children’s Communications

News

Troubling revelations surfaced over the weekend that the Orange County school district is now monitoring all school-children’s messages on social media sites in a supposed effort to curb cyberbullying, crime on campus and suicide.

But the move raises serious concerns about privacy and officials’ ability to monitor the communications of minors. It also raises ethical concerns about just what standard we should hold children to, who are not adults and therefor not making decisions that are as well reasoned as fully developed adults.

The district is using new software that analyzes social media messages sent to and from its campuses. More worryingly the software allows the individual school district employees to search messages posted on various sites including Facebook and Twitter for key words that might indicate trouble.

They could also use the information to learn intimate details about their students, which could be abused in a variety extremely dangerous ways.

While Chief Operations Officer Michael Eugene said the program is focused on “prevention and early intervention” he did not have an answer for who will have access to the highly sensitive chat records and what the vetting process for those individuals would be.

Such software highlights the need for strong encryption around internet communications, as organizations like school boards, who lack proper controls around who gets access to confidential information and how such access is tracked, are ill-equipped to handle the responsibility that comes with collecting and storing such powerful data on such vulnerable people.

Silk Road Trial Leads To Emoji Becoming Evidence In Court

News

The trial and sentencing of the worlds’ safest drug dealer is now over and the sentence isn’t the only questionable outcome of the trial.

One of the key points of contention in the trial, which lawyers argued over for days, is the use of emoji as evidence.

Ross Ulbricht’s lawyers argued that the prosecutors left out critical evidence from their transcriptions of his online chats. Specifically, they did not include emoji in transcripts they presented in court.

After sparring over the issue concluded, judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that emoji are admissible as evidence in court.

Before the the ruling, the transcript presented by prosecutors simply said “emoticon” every time one was used, which led to a clear loss of meaning.

Forrest ruled that the emoticons in question were “meant to be read” and that it was important for the jury to see them.

The trial actually featured a large amount of lawyers explaining internet slang, such as “IRL” meaning “in real life”.

The decision to admit the emojis into evidence will be a lasting legacy from the trial, aside from yet another casualty of America’s war on drugs.

Congress Eyes Mandatory Gun Insurance Scheme To Enrich Insurance Companies While Watering Down Rights

News

The latest attack on your rights isn’t from the Department Of Justice, State Lawmakers, local police forces or radical Islamists.

Instead its from Congress, who is looking to sneak legislation past the American people that would quietly make gun ownership both unaffordable and highly regulated.

Under a scheme introduced Friday by New York House Democrat Rep. Carolyn Malone, gun owners will have to carry liability insurance if her new bill successfully makes its way through Congress.

The Firearm Risk Protection Act would force gun owners to pay a $10,000 fine if they ignored a mandatory requirement to carry liability insurance before obtaining a weapon.

“We require insurance to own a car, but no such requirement exists for guns. The results are clear: car fatalities have declined by 25 percent in the last decade, but gun fatalities continue to rise,” the congresswoman said Friday.

Yep Maloney, who is notoriously anti-gun, is lying.

The most recent data available from the FBI Uniform Crime Report for the years from 2009 to 2013 shows a decline in the number of firearms-related homicides.

The complicated mess of gun laws already on the books doesn’t prevent criminals from getting guns, as they have long resorted to stealing rather than buying their firearms.

One more law like Maloney’s proposal will do nothing except make insurance companies rich, and be prohibitively expensive for many gun owners.

So the idea of adding one more layer of discouragement to the exercise of Second Amendment rights is not about safety but rather ensuring corporate donors make big paydays and that Americans rights continue to be watered down.

While Kim Jong-Un Eats Himself To Death And Plays With Rockets 2015 Will See Record Starvation In North Korea

Entertainment News

There’s nothing little about Kim Jong-Un, the obese dictator of North Korea. Known for his immense appetite, the rotund leader left the public spotlight for nearly two months due to gout, brought on by eating too much rich food.

The problem was so bad that he now walks with a cane and wears special clothing to combat the illness.

Since he’s been back, Jong-Un has been investing vast sums of North Korean money on building nuclear weapons, creating new sea-launched missiles and upgrading the country’s pricey space program.

Yet while Kim eats lavishly and squanders what precious little funds the hermit kingdom has on toy weapons programs, his people are literally starving to death.

A U.N. official announced on Friday that record drought in North Korea will lead to huge food shortages this year, in a country already plagued by famine.

The problem is so bad that North Koreans turn to Meth, both to escape the harsh reality of daily life but also to stop eating. North Korea has the highest per capita use of Meth in the world, driven largely by a population tired of being hungry. The drug is a cheap and effective appetite suppressant.

Rainfall in 2014 was the lowest on record, at 40-60 percent below 2013 levels. This means reservoirs are at all-time lows.

“We’re extremely concerned with the impact of drought which will affect the crop this year severely. And we might be faced with another major incident of food availability or even hunger,” said Ghulam Isaczai, a U.N. official. “It is going to create a huge deficit between the needs and what is available.”

Yet the El Nino weather conditions are forecast to bring more drought this year, which means the situation in 2016 will be even worse, he warned.

“This is currently the rice-planting season. Normally they submerge the land almost a week or two in advance. But this year, I’ve seen it myself – they’re doing it in the dry, actually planting rice. So what we’re hearing right now is that they’re switching to maize and corn because that requires less water.”

A similar famine struck the country in the 1990s, killing over 1 million North Koreans.

The obese ruler’s erratic behavior further compounds the problem, not only by diverting much needed resources to expensive weapons systems but also in his treatment of aid workers.

The country has a history of jailing doctors and NGO personnel who can help in such situations meaning that aide workers are scared to go to the country for fear of ending up in jail.

70 percent of North Korea’s 24.6 million population, are already classed as “food insecure” according to the U.N.

The lack of water has also hit electricity supplies, which was at its worst in winter when hydroelectric power was restricted to reserve water for the rice-planting season. The power cuts led to many people freezing to death, a common occurrence in the country.

“What the government confirmed to me is that they’re operating at 50 percent of capacity in terms of power generation. A lot of it is now related to water,” the U.N. official added.

Yet Kim is unlikely to do anything meaningful to stop the shortages, despite some government policies aimed at addressing the issue. His penchant for exotic foods and elaborate weapons systems will doom his people, like those who lived and died under his father and grandfather, to a miserable life. And death.

Users March Against Facebook To Protest Dangerous Real Name Policy

News

Users around the world are becoming increasingly disgruntled with Facebook, the privacy-invading social network that is increasingly placing the internet, and social lives, in a strangle hold.

A group that feels marginalized by Facebook’s ‘real name policy’ has had enough of the company’s cavalier attitude towards users and plans to lead a demonstration outside Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday.

Facebook is violently opposed to anonymous users and will suspended accounts when people do not use their officially recognized names. The policy has incited Native Americans, domestic violence survivors, political activists, transgender people, drag queens and others who do not use the names on their birth certificates to rally together against the policy as part of the #MyNameIs coalition.

To see just how damaging Facebook’s policy is, check out our story about an Israeli website doxing student activists in the hopes it prevents them from getting a job after graduation. Facebook makes it trivial to commit such damaging acts, which inflict real world harm on individuals forced to use their real name.

To make matters worse on Facebook, any user can report that another user is using a false identity. This policy leads to a mob mentality, where users are targeted by mobs who oppose their identity and behavior. “Facebook sides with those bullies,” said Sister Roma, one of the leaders of the effort to change the policy.

Such actions amount to digital hate crimes yet Facebook has so far escaped any public accountability for facilitating the cyber lynch mobs.

Victimized drag queens challenged the privacy invader last September after several received emails telling them that they must change their profiles to their “real names”, a blatant disregard for their gender identity.

Facebook subsequently apologized yet then proceeded to do nothing to address the concerns during protracted talks. While it responded rapidly to the negative publicity it seems more intent on making bad news go away rather than address the underlying concerns, which harm real people.

“Having people use their authentic names makes them more accountable, and also helps us root out accounts created for malicious purposes, like harassment, fraud, impersonation and hate speech,” the company said in a statement.

Yet those policies in fact encourage hateful actions by having groups look to ban groups of users they disagree with. Such bans effectively cancel the social lives of vulnerable members of the community who may rely on online social connections more than average users.

There have also been numerous academic studies that show forcing users to adopt real names stifles honest speech online, due to the permanent record it attaches to a user. This chilling effect means that real identities stifle free speech and honest discussion.

“Facebook is no longer a cool website started by a bunch of guys who want to chat each other and see chicks, and see who they are talking to,” said Sister Roma. “It’s changed – and it’s time for Facebook’s policies and original ideas to change, because users’ identities are as fluid as users themselves today.”

The protest will begin at 11am, across the street from Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters.

Demonstrators want the company to remove the fake-name reporting option, stop verifying people with government issued identification, and develop a clear appeals process.

Scary New Law Will Allow The FBI To Start Illegally Hacking Computers On A Massive Scale

News

Increasingly in America when secret police agencies, like the NSA or CIA, don’t like a law they simply have it changed to ‘keep it legal’. Now the FBI is joining the party as on Friday the Department of Justice proposed a rule change makes it vastly easier for FBI agents to obtain warrants to hack a computer from basically anywhere in the world.

Its the latest step in the battle of big police, secret police and big corporations versus our constitutionally granted privacy privacy rights.

But never fear citizens, this new measure is just to stop terrorists and pedophiles. It couldn’t possibly be abused or impinge your hard-won constitutional rights.

And yet it will most definitely erode our rights, to the point of them not existing.

In traditional policing matters federal search warrants are only valid within the issuing judge’s jurisdiction. Law enforcement officials must demonstrate probable cause, find the right jurisdiction to ask for a warrant, and notify the person they’re planning on searching.

The notify part is a cornerstone of our Fourth Amendment privacy rights. As in its in the constitution.

In a few rare cases, the FBI have been granted permission to legally conduct remote computer searches, outside of the judge’s jurisdiction.

To make it make life easier for FBI agents the DoJ would now like to expand that power.

But this lazy and highly invasive change amounts to throwing out the Fourth Amendment.

In addition to the rule change permitting FBI agents to spy on any suspect’s computer anywhere, it will also make it totally acceptable to search our computers without ever telling us.

The end result will one, tiny group of judge’s in say, D.C., authorizing complete and total spying on anyone, anywhere in America.

What could possibly go wrong…

The tech community, who understands the issues far better than most groups in the country, is universally disgusted by the proposed changes.

Google lawyer Richard Salgado summed it up best in a recent blog post:

The proposed change threatens to undermine the privacy rights and computer security of Internet users. For example, the change would excuse territorial limits on the use of warrants to conduct “remote access” searches where the physical location of the media is “concealed through technological means.” The proposed change does not define what a “remote search” is or under what circumstances and conditions a remote search can be undertaken; it merely assumes such searches, whatever they may be, are constitutional and otherwise legal. It carries with it the specter of government hacking without any Congressional debate or democratic policymaking process.

The proposed rule must be approved later this year by the Judicial Conference, and then by the Supreme Court.

It will likely clear both those hurdles, as the DOJ makes laws these days, and only a Congressional intervention could save it from becoming law.

Given Congresses love of spying and large police forces this seems almost certain.

The result is that by December 2016 a small set of judges in D.C. will now be rubber stamping the FBI to go on a hacking spree across the nation and around the world.

That should deeply scare any American citizen.

We advise speaking loudly and openly about this issue to your elected officials as they’re our only hope for preventing the Fourth Amendment from becoming extinct.

It’s Not Just Apple – Every Watch Is About To Become Radically Smarter

Finance

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Apple is the only company in the world that’s creating an internet connected so-called smartwatch.

But Apple is by no means alone. Nor was it first.

While it will undoubtedly sell tens of millions of the devices, every watchmaker at every price bracket, plus plucky new upstarts, are creating internet connected watches for all budgets and all tastes.

The latest entrant is luxury Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer, who had previously announced plans to enter the smartwatch space. The company gave some details on Friday, saying that an official release will come this fall with a price of $1,400.

The company joins an increasingly crowded field, showing that traditional watches, and watchmakers, will make the jump to digital.

Startup Pebble, beneficiary of the largest crowdfunding raise in history, announced both that the Pebble Time will is already arriving at customers’ doorsteps and a new, third generation version of the Time will start taking pre-orders in June. The third generation Time has a powerful new integration with cab-hailing app Uber, among other nifty features.

Also joining the party this week was lower-end watchmaker Swatch, which announced on Thursday that it, too, will produce a smartwatch that will include electronics for NFC payments. CEO Nick Hayek told shareholders that the new model will launch in August in Switzerland and “one big country” that has yet to be named.

The above entrants join LG, Sony, Motorola and Samsung in an increasingly crowded field. Yet unlike smartphones, in which a few models will dominate, watches are a fashion choice which will see products differentiated on design and brand appeal, meaning there is room for a wide variety of players.

During a recent interview, TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver summed that dynamic up best when he said: “Apple will get young people used to wearing a watch and later maybe they will want to buy themselves a real watch.”

The Dutch Have Discovered A Groundbreaking (And Beautiful) Way To Cut Airport Noise In Half

Entertainment News

Nobody wants an airport in their backyard because of the noise. As existing airports get busier and busier due to increased demand for air travel and people get more sensitive to noise pollution, air transportation faces major problems in developed countries.

But a simple solution developed accidentally by Dutch farmers can be easily used to cut down the amount of noise generated by planes taking off and landing.

If you fly into Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport you’ll notice that just past the edge of the runway, there’s an odd assortment of hedges and ditches laid out in a diamond-like pattern. At first you may think its just one of the Netherlands world-famous gardens.

But this garden has a very specific purpose: cancel out airplane noise.

Covering just over 80 acres the green space is the Buitenschot Land Art Park. It’s not just an agricultural solution to noise pollution but also serves as a recreation area, containing numerous bike paths and sports fields.

Schiphol is one of the busiest airports in the world and the main hub of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. In addition to passenger traffic its also a major shipping point for cargo going to Asia. It sees 1,600 daily flights meaning its busy and loud.

The location was originally chosen because of it is flat, wide and open. But those qualities also make it a giant megaphone, effectively amplifying the noise of the planes across a wide area. This problem is common to most airports of the world and becoming more acute as once rural sites are increasingly surrounded by houses.

Ground noise is difficult to control due to the way it travels. The low frequency, long wavelength sound skips over single barriers, like concrete walls.

In 2008, responding to increased resident complaints, Schiphol called upon the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research [TNO] to study the problem.

The researchers made the fascinating discovery that in the fall, after the nearby fields had been plowed, noise levels decreased markedly. The furrows in the fields, because they had multiple ridges to absorbed the low frequency sound waves, deflected the sound and thereby muted the noise.

But Dutch officials, knowing for clever uses of land for centuries, didn’t just want to cut the noise. Instead they reimagined the land surrounding the airport to drown out as much of the ground noise as possible while also designing a maze-like park that could be used for something other than just cancelling sound.

By October 2013, the Buitenschot park had cut the decibel level of the noise in half. The airport thinks it can cut that down even further by changing when certain planes take off and by limited the type of aircraft allowed to land based on their specific noise profile.

NASA studied the impact of just controlling noise by conventional means, such as limited the number of flights or time of day aircraft can take off and land and found that “noise management plans have the potential to severely disrupt interstate, or international, commerce and exert strong negative pressure on the aviation industry,” the study said.

By using the Dutch method noise can be cut by over half without causing the negative economic consequences created by just cutting down the number of flights. It also helps beautify the surrounding area and improves the social lives of local residents.

The development should also pay big dividends in the future, as planemakers increasingly design jets around low noise profiles. Canadian company Bombardier is doing just that with its new C Series jet that is specifically designed to dramatically reduce engine noise. Such planes may become mandatory in the future in order to cut the noise pollution around airports.

Google’s Push Into TV Accelerates, Will Now Offer HBO Now On Chromecast

Finance

Google’s I/O 2015 developer conference saw some interesting announcements from the company, which we’ve profiled here and here.

Perhaps one of the most interesting announcements came from Google’s de-facto CEO, Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai, who announced that HBO Now is coming to both Android TV and Chromecast. The announcement comes right at the end of a 7 week exclusive that Apple had on HBO’s stand-alone streaming and on-demand video service.

The fact Google pounced so quickly after Apple’s exclusive shows that its taking TV very seriously. And the fact it announced it for Chromecast confirms our earlier report that Chromecast, possibly combined with Android phones, will be a key component of Google’s TV strategy going forward.

HBO Now, launched last April, was a turning point in the TV space as HBO became the first premium cable network to offer its content without a cable or satellite TV subscription. HBO Now subscriptions cost $15 a month and were previously only available for Apple devices.

In addition to the Google announcement boosting HBO’s userbase, it also offers high quality content for Google’s services which should boost Chromecast popularity.

Given Google has already sold over 17 million Chromecast units its clear that with HBO on board the search giant will sell many more, further extending its push into TV land.

NASA Successfully Test Fires Largest American Rocket Engine Since Landing On The Moon

News

NASA continues to push the American space program towards its former glory as on Thursday it conducted a successful 450 second test of the new RS-25 rocket engine at Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi.

The “hotfire test” fittingly took place on the historic A-1 test stand, where Apollo program rocket stages and Space Shuttle program main engines were also tested. The engines tested on Thursday will power the core stage of NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System, which is being developed to carry humans on deep space missions, likely to Mars.

The heavy-lift SLS will be the most powerful rocket rocket currently available and will carry the nation’s next era of space exploration. The current plan is to first carry humans to an asteroid and then eventually to Mars.

The SLS vehicle will use four RS-25 engines at launch, firing simultaneously to produce more than 1.6 million pounds of thrust. RS-25 engines are based on the Space Shuttle main engines, which powered 135 low-Earth-orbit missions.

Thursday’s test of the engines was looking at the engine controller or brain of the engines. The RS-25 will automatically runs through its cycles and programs and it’s essential that the controller communicates properly with the engine.

Because the SLS will be a bigger rocket and fly new types of missions its engines will have to perform in new ways.

Testing at Stennis will ensure the new controller and engine are in sync and able to deliver the required performance to meet the SLS’ strict requirements.

NASA engineers conducted the first RS-25 engine test on Jan. 9th. After that, testing was put on hold for scheduled maintenance on the A-1 stand’s high-pressure industrial water system, which provides the tens of thousands of gallons of water needed to cool the test facility during an engine test.

RS-25 testing will now continue throughout the summer and pave the way for America to start exploring space again with humans.

FIFA President Blatter, Who Oversaw Bribes, Re-Elected

Entertainment News

D.C. isn’t the only body of rich men that wreaks of corruption. World soccer body FIFA, long known as perhaps the most corrupt sports organization on earth, decided on Friday that it was perfectly fine with a culture of graft and bribery as it re-elected chief Sepp Blatter, who has presided over the corruption for decades.

Mr Blatter, who apparently sees nothing wrong with the way FIFA conducts itself, wasted no time in pointing the finger at the United States and Europe over the corruption allegations that overshadowed the soccer committee’s annual congress and threatened his presidential bid.

In an interview Friday with Swiss channel RTS, Blatter said the arrests of seven FIFA officials in Zurich, Switzerland, on U.S. warrants only two days before the election “are not a coincidence.”

Showing just how deluded the 79 year old is, he further stated “I am not certain, but it doesn’t smell good,” in reference to what he sees as an unjustified attacks on his graft-ridden organization.

He then went on the chalk up the arrests to sour grapes over the 2022 World Cup. “There are unmistakeable signs: The Americans were candidates for the 2022 World Cup, and they lost. The English were candidates for the 2018 World Cup. They lost” he said.

What remains to be seen is how sponsors, who really call the shots, will react. Credit card titan Visa has said it will be looking at whether to continue with the sport while Nike, as we covered earlier, could face criminal charges for paying bribes to secure lucrative sponsorship rights.

Expect that if FIFA loses a slew of marquee sponsors because of its dirty culture things will change very quickly for the sports body and Mr Blatter.