Weekend Watch: Robert Sepehr presentations on ancient history, archeology, genetics, astrotheology and mythology
June 8, 2019
Anon finds link to banker who recently died and John Podesta’s lost Pizza-releated Handkerchief email…
June 8, 2019
Herb Sandler, a banker and philanthropist who with his wife, Marion, provided the initial financing for ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative-reporting organization that seeks to be an alternative model for sustaining vigorous journalism, died on Wednesday at his home in San Francisco. He was 87. His family announced the death. The cause was not given... Mr. Sandler is survived by a daughter, Susan Sandler; a son, James; and two grandchildren.
Iran cites new sanctions to spurn talks with Trump…
June 8, 2019
“Only one week was needed for [Trump’s] claim that he was ready to negotiate with Iran to be proven hollow," Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Saturday in remarks carried by state-run media.
The United States blacklisted Iran’s most profitable oil refiners on Friday, citing their financial ties to the Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which Trump’s team designated as a foreign terrorist organization in April. The Treasury Department offered the sanctions as an example of U.S. efforts to starve the regime of finances for regional aggression, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo invoked the measures as leverage to force Iran to the negotiating table.
Salvini Faces Italian Troika Protecting the EU…
June 8, 2019
Lega leader Matteo Salvini has a problem and it isn’t his coalition partner. Though winning the European Parliamentary elections last month the Euroskeptic government between Lega and Five Star Movement is in a war with a troika of technocrats within his own government. And that Troika is as trapped as the European Central Bank they are trying to protect. Bear with me, this will take a bit to explain... Salvini has all the leverage if he’s smart enough to use it until the Italian Troika folds...
Go Salvini and take them all down!
China Summons Tech Giants to Warn Against Cooperating With Trump Ban…
June 8, 2019
The Chinese government this past week summoned major tech companies including Microsoft and Dell from the United States and Samsung of South Korea, to warn that they could face dire consequences if they cooperate with the Trump administration’s ban on sales of key American technology to Chinese companies, according to people familiar with the meetings... The meetings also included the semiconductor makers Arm of Britain and SK Hynix of South Korea.
PG&E that was blamed for wildfires now cutting power to some customers to reduce risk…
June 8, 2019
Pacific Gas & Electric said it will shut off power Saturday to about 1,600 customers in Northern California and may do the same for thousands more to reduce the risk of wildfires. The utility announced Friday night that as of Saturday morning it would turn off electricity to customers in Napa, Solano and Yolo counties west of Sacramento.
Weekend Watch: The Devil We Know
June 8, 2019
Russia Says it Will Soon Begin Blocking Major VPNs…
June 8, 2019
Back in March, ten major VPN providers including NordVPN, ExpressVPN, IPVanish and HideMyAss were ordered by Russian authorities to begin blocking sites present in the country's national blacklist. Following almost total non-compliance, the country's telecoms watchdog says that blocking nine of the services is now imminent...
Deepfake-busting apps can spot even a single pixel out of place…
June 8, 2019
There are two main ways to deal with the challenge of verifying images, explains Farid. The first is to look for modifications in an image... They can look for shadows or reflections that don’t follow the laws of physics... The second and newer method is to verify an image’s integrity the moment it is taken. Do the camera’s coordinates, time zone, and altitude and nearby Wi-Fi networks all corroborate each other? Does the light in the image refract as it would for a three-dimensional scene? Or is someone taking a picture of another two-dimensional photo?
Two startups, US-based Truepic and UK-based Serelay, are now working to commercialize this idea... While Truepic uploads its users’ images and stores them in its servers, Serelay stores a digital fingerprint of sorts by computing about a hundred mathematical values from each image. (The company claims that these values are enough to detect even a single-pixel edit and determine approximately what section of the image was changed.)...
With the rise of AI comes the rise of Anti-AI.
Nimses is worldwide system which records and saves the time of a human being’s life and converts it into digital currency…
June 8, 2019
Read the reviews. Sounds like misrepresentative malware. Its basically another geo-social network, and their data collection is frightening.
Google discrimination lawsuit originally filed by James Damore will proceed to discovery…
June 8, 2019
James Damore was fired by Google back in August 2017 after he wrote a memo suggesting the predominance of male engineers at the company was partly the result of innate differences between men and women rather than discrimination. In January of 2018, Damore filed a lawsuit alleging the company discriminated against whites, males, and conservatives. Today a judge denied Google’s third attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed...
Incredible News!
Pelosi slams Trump on Mexico: ‘Threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy’…
June 8, 2019
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., criticized President Donald Trump’s policy toward Mexico Saturday after the White House agreed to suspend planned tariffs, saying “threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy.“
Pelosi said Trump had undermined America’s global leadership role by “recklessly threatening to impose tariffs on our close friend and neighbor to the south.”
Commerce Department official killed in apparent murder-suicide: DC police…
June 8, 2019
According to police, officers conducted a welfare check at the couple's home in Northwest D.C. on Friday. When they arrived they found a man, identified as 51-year-old Jason Rieff, with a handgun who appeared to fire a self-inflicted shot while they were on the scene. Authorities said they also found an unresponsive adult female identified as 45-year-old Lola Gulomova... Gulomova has worked in a variety of public servant positions for the U.S. government. Originally from Tajikistan, she came to the United States where she eventually worked as NASA Deputy Russia Representative at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. While working at the Commerce Department, she took diplomatic posts in India, China, and Taiwan.
Meadows: FBI Knew ‘Within 60 Days’ That Russia Probe ‘Built On A Foundation Of Sand’…
June 8, 2019
“Within 60 days of them opening the investigation, prior to [Robert] Mueller coming on, the FBI and the [Department of Justice] knew that Christopher Steele was not credible, the dossier was not true, George Papadopoulos was innocent,” Meadows said on Fox News’s “Hannity.”
“When you look at that foundation, it’s all built on a foundation of sand. That’s going to start to show up soon,” the Republican said.U.S. NEWS Video released of Ohio corrections officer who turned off body camera beating mentally-ill inmate
June 8, 2019
Evans and Dugan were indicted by a grand jury on charges of felonious assault, unlawful restraint, and interfering with civil rights in April for the incident. Evans was additionally charged with tampering with evidence. Cuyahoga County's corrections department has been plagued by issues for more than a year, including multiple inmate deaths and the indictment of a former warden.
Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s youngest brother, dies
June 8, 2019
We lost my brother Tony last night. It’s hard to find words, my mind is flooded with memories of him today. When he walked into a room he’d light it up with laughter. He was kind, generous, & a wonderful husband to Megan & father to Zach, Simon, & Fiona. We’ll miss him very much.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 8, 2019
Hillary Clinton's youngest brother,Tony Rodham, who drew headlines for taking advantage of his Clinton connections in dubious business ventures ranging from mining to electric cars to importing hazelnuts, has died... In 2010, former President Bill Clinton helped Rodham, then short of cash, get a job raising investments in GreenTech Automotive, an electric car company then owned by Terry McAuliffe, an old Clinton friend and later governor of Virginia.. He also drew scrutiny as co-chairman of Haiti's recovery commission, following the devastating 2010 earthquake, for allegedly seeking a multimillion dollar deal to rebuild homes in the ravaged country with funding from the Clinton Foundation...
“I deal through the Clinton Foundation. That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials,” Rodham said, according to a transcript of his testimony, the Times reported. “I hound my brother-in-law, because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from. And he can’t do it until the Haitian government does it."
Give up your password or go to jail: Police push legal boundaries to get into cellphones…
June 8, 2019
While courts have determined that police need a warrant to search a cellphone, the question of whether police can force someone to share a passcode is far from settled, with no laws on the books and a confusing patchwork of differing judicial decisions... As this legal battle unfolds, police keep pursuing new ways of breaking into cellphones if the owners don’t cooperate...
In Tampa, Florida, where Montanez was arrested... “They told me I got the key to my freedom,” he added. “But I was like, ‘F--- that.’”... after Montanez had spent more than five weeks in jail for refusing to provide the passcode, an appellate court dismissed the contempt case on a technicality...
For two hours, a large chunk of European mobile traffic was rerouted through China…
June 8, 2019
It was China Telecom, again. The same ISP accused last year of "hijacking the vital internet backbone of western countries."
This Lab-Grown Patch Could Repair Your Heart After a Heart Attack…
June 8, 2019
The team developed thumb-sized patches of heart tissue, about two by three centimeters in size and containing up to 50 million human stem cells. They programmed the stem cells to mature into working heart muscle, or cardiac progenitor cells. The patches are sewn onto the damaged area of the heart to help pump blood and release chemicals to stimulate repair and regeneration...
Woman poses as social worker and tries kidnapping two week old infant…
June 8, 2019
The suspect, whom Social Services confirmed was not in their employ, admitted she was at the house but claimed she was not there to kidnap the baby. She will now be interviewed by homicide detectives, according to KABC. "How did this woman know that this victim had a child less than two weeks ago, where she lives?," asked Santa Ana Police Department Cpl. Anthony Bertagna. "How'd she get her personal information? That's all scary to us."