December, 2018

OBAMA: "I did this". /s

Google incorporation removed a map outlining the geographical extent of the Greater Kurdistan after the Turkish state asked it to do so, a simple inquiry on the Internet giant’s search engine from Wednesday on can show.
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The use of the word “Kurdistan” is criminalized in Turkey, even at the parliament’s floors where lawmakers can be fined to pay up to several thousand Liras and be dismissed from at least two legislative sessions.

Maps drawn by ancient Greeks, Islamic historians, Ottomans, and Westerners showing Kurdistan with alternative names such as “Corduene” or “Karduchi” have existed since antiquity.

EGYPT - The 25-year-old housewife, only identified by her first name Nesma, was charged with inciting sedition and provoking emotions and lewd acts in public by the Mansoura Misdemeanor Court. A video of the incident went viral on social media platforms in October, showing the woman touching the genitals of the monkey.

A transformer exploded at a power plant in Queens Thursday night, lighting up the sky over New York City while causing some flight delays and scattered power outages. It happened shortly after 9 p.m. at the Astoria East and North Queens Con Edison plant on 20th Avenue & 32nd Street in Astoria. New Yorkers reported seeing massive blue lights in the city following the explosion and took to social media to share photos and videos.

The company's last shot at survival is a $4.6 billion proposal, put forward by Chairman Eddie Lampert. The 125-year-old company has more than 68,000 employees.

The five boroughs are on track to have fewer than 300 homicides this year: 283 people were killed in New York City this year. Comparatively, 286 were killed in the city in 2017.
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The NYPD attributes their success partially to a neighborhood policing model, which it describes as "improved communication and collaboration between local police officers and community residents."

They also credit new technology, such as security cameras placed all over the city.

Despite the fact that homicide rates are down, the number of reported rapes has increased. Police are attributing that to the fact that more people may be more comfortable reporting them because of the #MeToo movement.

The reason the DACA for Wall deal didn’t get done was that a ridiculous court decision from the 9th Circuit allowed DACA to remain, thereby setting up a Supreme Court case. After ruling, Dems dropped deal - and that’s where we are today, Democrat obstruction of the needed Wall.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2018

The Queen was filmed sitting at a desk in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace when she delivered her speech, which included personal reflections on her long life and a wish for peace.

But it was the presence of a gold piano in the background that sparked accusations of hypocrisy and that she was out of touch.

...a project that could give a boost to the company’s Starlink broadband satellite service.
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The award makes clear that the U.S. military is interested in taking advantage of the global broadband access that Starlink and other satellite constellations in low Earth orbit could provide. In the past, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and other executives have talked more about the civilian market — that is, the idea that satellite constellations could benefit billions of people around the world who don’t currently have affordable, reliable broadband access.

I never tire of looking at videos of Chinese click farms. It's just so surreal to see hundreds of phones playing the same video for the purposes of fake engagment. pic.twitter.com/bHAGLqRqVb

— Matthew Brennan (@mbrennanchina) December 10, 2018

Click farms set up banks of inexpensive computers and smartphones, and staff them with low-paid workers who artificially boost your social media accounts, download apps to boost rankings, load the same YouTube video to inflate views, or repetitively click on ads to fool advertisers into thinking they're getting their money's worth.

Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg's top political advisor, in an email hinted at how much his boss would look to invest into his own potential campaign for president.

"Mike spent more than $100 million in his last mayor's race. Last time I looked, NYC is a fraction of the size of the country as a whole," he explained. The last time he ran for public office was in 2009, when he ran for re-election as mayor for a third term and pulled off a victory as an independent.

Utter silence. That is the sound of Western corporate media days after a more than one-hour-long panel on the White Helmets at the United Nations on December 20.

Journalists were present, so the silence isn’t due to lack of access. And in any case it was live streamed on the UNTV channel, and remains available on Youtube for keen observers to watch.

"It's all true: Everything is fake," tweeted Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao regarding a Wednesday New York Magazine article which reveals that internet traffic metrics from some of the largest tech companies are overstated or fabricated. In other words; they're bullshit.
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The New York Magazine article by Max Read goes much deeper, however, asserting; "The people are fake" , "The businesses are fake" , "The content is fake" , "Our politics are fake," and finally "We ourselves are fake."
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For starters Read notes that "Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human." Some years, "a healthy majority of it is bot." In fact, half of all YouTube traffic in 2013 was bots according to the Times.

Read this article.

We've known this for a long time and it's interesting to see this making its way to the masses. Most of the fake numbers are inflated by search-engine bots. If you own or even maintain a website, you know exactly how inflated your analytics are. If the majority of expensive ads wind up delivering a horrible return on investment based on a false premise, then where else do vendors go? Advertisers are the victims here. In fact, if you take a company like Procter & Gamble as an example, they cut $200 million in digital Ad-spends last year and reinvested that money into other media outlets like television, radio, and others - increasing their reach by 10%. They did this to put pressure on digital platforms that have a problem with bots. So in the end, it's going to be interesting to see what people decide to do with their ad budgets now that this is out on the open.

Remember the cover of The Economist 2019 Magazine? India was depicted as having a prosperous year (It's trunk was an arrow going up).

Mueller and the FBI, CIA, NSA and DOJ cited the ongoing government shutdown in their request for a delay. A lawyer for Corsi says that the request for a delay was being "proffered tactically," and asserted "it is highly doubtful" that DOJ attorneys "are actually prohibited from working."

Google has scrambled to remove third-party apps that led users to child porn sharing groups on WhatsApp in the wake of TechCrunch’s report about the problem last week...

In response, a Google spokesperson tells me that these group discovery apps violated its content policies and it’s continuing to look for more like them to ban. When they’re identified and removed from Google Play, it also suspends their access to its ad networks. However, it refused to disclose how much money these apps earned and whether it would refund the advertisers...

Facebook, meanwhile, blamed Google Play, saying the apps’ eligibility for its Facebook Audience Network ads was tied to their availability on Google Play and that the apps were removed from FAN when booted from the Android app store. The company was more forthcoming, telling TechCrunch it will refund advertisers whose promotions appeared on these abhorrent apps. It’s also pulling Audience Network from all apps that let users discover WhatsApp Groups.

Newman, California Corporal Ronil Singh, 33-years-old, was shot and killed by the illegal alien suspect... Singh stopped the illegal alien during a routine traffic stop to check if the suspect was driving drunk in the city of Newman, about 100 miles out of San Francisco.

Over his police radio, Singh called out “shots fired” and as police arrived at the scene of the traffic stop, they found the officer on the ground with a gunshot wound. Singh was transported to a nearby hospital where he later died.

Those who received the update promptly started freaking out and posting to social media about the redesign. Instagram says it didn't mean to roll the update out as widely as it did, and that it was only intended as "a very small test." Instagram has now rolled back the update.

President Donald Trump is considering an executive order in the new year to declare a national emergency that would bar U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by China’s Huawei and ZTE, three sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.
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The United States says the companies work at the behest of the Chinese government and that their equipment could be used to spy on Americans.