December, 2018

The TSA estimates that, at any given time, approximately 150 puppies are working their way through the agency’s rigorous 12-week training program to become sniffer dogs. Before their first official screening assignment, they’re required to prove their competency at sniffing out drugs, explosives, and other contraband all while maintaining a good disposition and the willingness to work hard.
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According to the TSA’s website, “[t]hese dogs are highly active and in most cases, untrained and not housebroken, but with proper training and care, they can be a great addition to families.” In some cases, young dogs pass the training program, work for a few years, then “age out” of the agency because they no longer have the ambition to do the work. So, the adoption program includes pups from two to four years old.

Alleged Russian spy Maria Butina has changed her plea to guilty, according to a new joint motion filed by her attorneys this morning.
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Meanwhile, David Keene — a paid member of the NRA’s board of directors and former president of the gun rights organization who has faced scrutiny over ties to Butina’s alleged Russian influence operation — has registered as a different type of foreign agent lobbying for Argentina’s government.

Keene and Erickson have a long history together dating back to the 1990s when they were registered foreign agents lobbying, in collaboration with Jack Abramoff, for a well-known “dictator” to gain entry into the United States.

The three of them were all then taken to the Border Patrol’s Calexico Station for further questioning.

In a tweet Sunday morning, Trump announced that Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan will become acting secretary of defense starting Jan. 1. He praised the Pentagon’s second-in-command as having “a long list of accomplishments” and added, “He will be great!”
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Shanahan, who is among the candidates to permanently replace Mattis, is now in a position to drive changes he's championed as Mattis' deputy.

The former Boeing executive in his current role has pushed for systemic changes to the acquisition system that pushes the Pentagon's focus away from annual budget cycles and more on making programs successful.

The US president just signed into law a bill that commits the government to providing $1.2 billion to fund activities promoting quantum information science over an initial five-year period. The new law, which was signed just as a partial US government shutdown began, will provide a significant boost to research, and to efforts to develop a future quantum workforce in the country.
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It will also encourage large companies and startups to pool some of their knowledge and resources in joint research efforts with government institutes.

Trump is ahead of the game in this. This isn't just about advancing computing power, but about maintaining cryptographic dominance. Computers running Quantum technology will be used break a lot of todays encryption. Think about this; We are in a cyber-arms race where the first country that successfully break public key/private key encryption wins. The winner's advantage is total control of the internet's battelfield. On top of this, it's about pushing AI and machine learning.

Some of you might be asking, what is quantum tech? It's technology that uses quantum properties to do computations. That is quantum information. So as an example, in a classical computer, a bit can have either the value 0 or 1, but a quantum bit can have the value 0 and 1 at the same time. Imagine the advantages. For all the nerds out there, this means - in simple terms - that if you have N q-bits, then you can test 2N cases in one step.

At least a dozen patients undergoing stem cell therapy developed bacterial infections after being injected with unapproved stem cell products, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Most of the patients were being treated for chronic back and joint pain.

All 12 patients were hospitalized, but there were no deaths. Seven of the infections were in Texas, four in Florida and one was in Arizona. CDC investigators found E. coli bacteria in unopened vials at two of the stem cell clinics where the patients were treated.

“Facebook failed to protect the privacy of its users and deceived them about who had access to their data and how it was used,” Racine said in a statement.

“Facebook put users at risk of manipulation by allowing companies like Cambridge Analytica and other third-party applications to collect personal data without users’ permission. Today’s lawsuit is about making Facebook live up to its promise to protect its users’ privacy.”

What is not talked about in the story was how Democrats colluded with the Media to push the initial Russian bot/Russian influence story. Tim Pool talked a little bit about the Russian influence Alabama election.

President Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at preventing catastrophic wildfires by directing the Interior and Agriculture departments to develop plans to remove brush and dead trees on millions of acres of federally owned land.

In the wake of California’s deadly Camp fire last month, the president also ordered the agencies to develop a wildfire strategy by the end of 2020 with state and local partners to minimize the risk of property loss and injuries.

...according to a Dartmouth-led study published in PLOS ONE. When food images appeared with the calorie content, the brain showed decreased activation of the reward system and increased activation in the control system. In other words, foods that you might otherwise be inclined to eat became less desirable once the calorie content was displayed.

The study is the first of its kind to examine how your brain makes food choices when calorie information is presented. The results are timely given that earlier this year, certain food chain establishments had to comply with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s menu labeling law requiring the disclosure of calorie information on menus and menu boards.

Brain implants, longer lives, genetically modified humans: for the prophets of transhumanism -- the scientifically assisted evolution of humans beyond our current limitations -- it is just a matter of time. But many scientists insist that some problems are not so easily solved. Sooner or later, they argue, the movement that crystalised in the can-do culture of 1980s California will hit the brick wall of the scientifically impossible.

Google recruited computer scientist Ray Kurzweil, a leading light in the transhumanist movement. And it is backing Calico, a research company devoted to using technology to help people live longer and healthier lives. And Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, has set up Neuralink in San Francisco to develop "implantable brain-machine interfaces to connect humans to computers".

Blay Whitby, who studies the ethical implications of transhumanist research at the University of Sussex, England, is sceptical. "Some transhumanists sign their emails to me with slogans like 'Death is now optional' or 'The first person to live to 500 has already been born'," he remarks.

"They are clearly more optimistic than me."

Advancing technology within the last 30 years has given rise to an emerging Transhumanist movement looking to achieve immortality, but so far there has been no scientific breakthrough to suggest they're moving closer. But that's not deterring them, instead, they continue looking for such breakthroughs that will save them from death itself.

A tsunami apparently caused by the eruption of an island volcano killed at least 62 people around Indonesia’s Sunda Strait, sending a wall of water crashing some 65 feet inland and sweeping away hundreds of houses, including hotels, the government and witnesses said.

Some 600 people have been reported injured after the tsunami hit at 9:27 p.m. Saturday, the Disaster Management Agency said. At least 20 others are unaccounted for.

After a 14-year investigation, a French court today convicted the American financier George Soros of insider trading and fined him 2.2 million euros ($2.3 million), the amount prosecutors said he had profited from the trading. Mr. Soros, who was not present in the courtroom, called the verdict unfounded and said he would appeal.

The company stopped using some kinds in 2002, but has since made others. And the same property that makes them so effective in consumer products—one of the strongest molecular bonds ever discovered—means they are almost impossible to get rid of and don’t break down in the environment.

While the so-called “forever” chemicals had long been detected in most people’s bodies, research has shown how they accumulate and can take years to leave. Even when excreted through urine, they persist.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said Friday that his agency has not found any evidence of any direct interference in the midterm elections.

Coats said he has submitted a required report to President Donald Trump that says the intelligence community has not uncovered any compromise of election infrastructure that would have disrupted balloting or changed results.

Coats said the intelligence community did find a continuation of previously disclosed "influence activities" and "messaging campaigns" by countries such as Russia, China and Iran ahead of the election.