Archive for May, 2018
What’s Going On In Your Child’s Brain When You Read Them A Story?
May 25th, 2018Via: NPR: In terms of Hutton’s “Goldilocks effect,” here’s what the researchers found: In the audio-only condition (too cold): language networks were activated, but there was less connectivity overall. “There was more evidence the children were straining to understand.” In the animation condition (too hot): there was a lot of activity in the audio and […]
Woman Says Her Amazon Device Recorded Private Conversation, Sent It Out to Random Contact
May 24th, 2018I can’t believe people pay to have these things in their homes. Via: KIRO 7: A Portland family contacted Amazon to investigate after they say a private conversation in their home was recorded by Amazon’s Alexa — the voice-controlled smart speaker — and that the recorded audio was sent to the phone of a random […]
Trump Cancels Singapore Nuclear Summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un
May 24th, 2018Via: CNBC: President Donald Trump canceled his historic nuclear summit with Kim Jong Un on Thursday, accusing North Korea of “tremendous anger and open hostility.” The meeting, which would have marked the first face-to-face encounter between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, was set for June 12 in Singapore. “Sadly, based on […]
Australia: 50,000 Tesla Powerwalls to Form Virtual Power Plant
May 24th, 2018Via: Electrek: Earlier this year, Tesla announced that it reached a deal with the South Australian government to install solar arrays and Powerwalls on up to 50,000 homes to create the biggest virtual power plant in the world. A new government was elected in the state a few weeks later and they quickly cast doubts […]
Pentagon Worked with “Private-Sector Organizations” on Plan to Verify Identity with Mobile Phones
May 23rd, 2018Via: Nextgov: The Defense Department is funding a project that officials say could revolutionize the way companies, federal agencies and the military itself verify that people are who they say they are and it could be available in most commercial smartphones within two years. The technology, which will be embedded in smartphones’ hardware, will analyze […]
Amazon Selling Face-Recognition Tech to Police
May 22nd, 2018Amazon, a large CIA contractor, is selling face-recognition tech to police. Via: AP: The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy activists are asking Amazon to stop marketing a powerful facial recognition tool to police, saying law enforcement agencies could use the technology to “easily build a system to automate the identification and tracking of […]
Robots Fight Weeds in Challenge to Agrochemical Giants
May 22nd, 2018Via: Reuters: In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles. Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot […]
Hawaii Lava Approaches Geothermal Power Plant
May 21st, 2018Via: Reuters: Lava from the erupting Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island flowed towards a geothermal power plant on Monday as workers scrambled to shut it down to prevent the uncontrollable release of toxic gases. It was the latest danger from Mount Kilauea’s eruption, which geologists says is among the worst events in a century […]
Sweden Distributes ‘Be Prepared for War’ Leaflet to All 4.8 Million Homes
May 21st, 2018Via: Guardian: The Swedish government has begun sending all 4.8m of the country’s households a public information leaflet telling the population, for the first time in more than half a century, what to do in the event of a war. Om krisen eller kriget kommer (If crisis or war comes) explains how people can secure […]
Japan: Directorate for Signals Intelligence
May 21st, 2018Via: The Intercept: The directorate has a history that dates back to the 1950s; its role is to eavesdrop on communications. But its operations remain so highly classified that the Japanese government has disclosed little about its work – even the location of its headquarters. Most Japanese officials, except for a select few of the […]
