An activist faced 20 years in prison for helping migrants. But jurors wouldn’t convict him…
June 13, 2019
The government, however, sees Warren, 36, as a felon. Arrested by Border Patrol agents in January 2018 at a property used to succor immigrants in Ajo, Ariz., he was accused of helping border-crossers evade authorities, which is prohibited under federal law... Deciding who Warren is and what he did proved a task too tortuous for jurors, who said on Tuesday they remained deadlocked in their deliberations and could not reach a unanimous verdict. The judge, Raner C. Collins, dismissed them and scheduled a status hearing in the case for July 2. The U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona did not immediately indicate whether it would seek another trial.
Iran’s Supreme Leader tells Japan’s Abe he has no reply to message from Trump…
June 13, 2019
Iran will not repeat its "bitter experience" of negotiating with the United States, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tehran on Thursday.
"I do not see Trump worthy of any message exchange, and I do not have any reply for him now or in future," Fars news agency quoted Ayatollah Khamenei as saying.
Ayatollah Khamenei also said Trump's promise not to seek regime change in Iran was "a lie", adding that he did not believe Washington's offer of "honest negotiations" with Tehran...
CERN Ditches Microsoft to ‘Take Back Control’ with Open Source Software…
June 13, 2019
Microsoft recently revoked the organisations status as an academic institution, instead pricing access to its services on users. This bumps the cost of various software licenses 10x, which is just too much for CERN’s budget.
Real reason for doing that.
MIT: Should we tax robots? A debate…
June 13, 2019
Pro: Why not? We tax human labor. Con: It will slow innovation.
Background: The idea of taxing robots isn’t new, but it gained momentum a few years ago when Bill Gates pitched the strategy as a way to slow the job-destroying progress of automation. In a quick rebuttal, Lawrence Summers, a former economic advisor to President Barack Obama and past president of Harvard, called the proposal “profoundly misguided.”
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The verdict: Alas, the audience at EmtechNext disagreed. Some 70% of the attendees favored no robot tax...Uber to test delivering Big Macs by drone in San Diego…
June 13, 2019
So far, two restaurants in San Diego have signed up for the new delivery service, McDonalds and Juniper and Ivy...
The first study of a new treatment in humans demonstrates a noninvasive, harmless cancer killer…
June 13, 2019
In a study published today in Science Translational Medicine, researchers revealed that their system accurately detected these cells in 27 out of 28 people with cancer, with a sensitivity that is about 1,000 times better than current technology. That’s an achievement in itself, but the research team was also able to kill a high percentage of the cancer-spreading cells, in real time, as they raced through the veins of the participants.
If developed further, the tool could give doctors a harmless, noninvasive, and thorough way to hunt and destroy such cells before those cells can form new tumors in the body. “This technology has the potential to significantly inhibit metastasis progression,” says Vladimir Zharov, director of the nanomedicine center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who led the research...
Americans Send Message To Turkey by Arming Greece With 70 helicopters At A Fraction of The Cost…
US Efforts Cultivating Greece as 'Pillar of Stability' in Europe While Being Seen As An Important Gateway In Regards To The Importation of Non-Russian Gas To European Consumers...
Turkish violations of Greek airspace increasing as tensions between U.S. and Turkey continue to rise...
June 13, 2019
In the latest indication of the strengthening of the US-Greece strategic military relationship, and amidst heightened threats from Turkey in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, the arsenal of the Hellenic Army will be substantially bolstered operationally with the addition of 70 American OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters.
The Kiowa Warrior helicopters are operated in an armed reconnaissance role in support of ground troops, and could play a crucial role in deterring landings on Greek islands at a time when there are mounting concerns that Ankara might wish to trigger a military “hot incident in the Aegean.
Oregon governor signs bill giving state’s Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote…
June 13, 2019
Oregon is now the 15th state, plus the District of Columbia, to pledge its Electoral College votes as part of the National Popular Vote compact... The compact will go into effect only if enough states join to bring their total Electoral College votes to 270. Oregon’s addition of seven Electoral College votes brings the current total to 196.
Supreme Court rejects case to remove ‘In God We Trust’ from US currency…
June 13, 2019
Michael Newdow, the same activist attorney who tried to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, lost his case, arguing Congress’ mandate to inscribe “In God We Trust” on currency was a government endorsement of religion and a violation of the First Amendment. Newdow argued in his petition to the Supreme Court that because his clients are all atheist individuals or atheist groups, the government violated their “sincere religious belief” that there is no God and turned them into “political outsiders” by placing the phrase “In God We Trust” on their money.
The justices rejected his petition without comment.
Astronomers discover rare, new type of galaxy on the brink of death…
June 13, 2019
Quasars are basically mammoth supermassive black holes surrounded by huge amounts of gas and dust, making them super bright -- much brighter than a typical galaxy. They can be created when two galaxies merge and their black holes collide. For instance, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is on a collision course with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. This event, which will occur billions of years from now, will signal the end of the two galaxies and the creation of a quasar.
[...]
The researchers examined the sky with X-ray and infrared telescopes and found 22 quasars at a distance of 6 to 12 billion light years away exhibiting unusual signatures...
"These galaxies are rare because they're in a transition phase," said Kirkpatrick in a press release. "We've caught them right before star formation in the galaxy is quenched, and this transition period should be very short"...China’s Likely to Lose a Tech Cold War — Even if its companies can achieve self-sufficiency, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to compete globally…
June 13, 2019
The fear in Washington is that China is tilting matters in its favor by massively subsidizing its technology industries, from electric vehicles to semiconductors. But those same policies may undercut more than bolster China’s tech ambitions... The chances of success may be even lower in China’s case, since a fair chunk of that aid gets funneled to notoriously bureaucratic and bloated state-owned enterprises...
Even if Chinese companies manage to produce rival technologies, they won’t automatically become global competitors. Innovating is one problem; finding customers is another. Those firms would have to convince foreign companies and consumers to ditch the suppliers and brands they’ve come to trust, in some cases over decades, and replace them with Chinese-made alternatives.
That isn’t impossible. Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. has shown the way. But the barriers are high... U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies could help shove China into this uncompetitive isolation by denying Chinese firms access to U.S. technologies...
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: Beijing and Moscow lay the groundwork for a digital authoritarian future…
June 13, 2019
Xi made high technology the core of his ‘Made in China 2025’ program. Putin called on Russian agencies and companies in February to produce a master plan for developing digital-economy infrastructure, following through on statements about high technology in recent years.
At last week’s meeting Xi and Putin put real meat on the bones of Russian–Chinese cooperation on digital infrastructure. Specifically, the leaders’ discussions set the scene for two important technology-centred announcements, the biggest being on 5G...
The Huawei announcement is a big brand endorsement from both Putin and Xi. It cements Huawei as the 5G provider of choice for the world’s digital authoritarian rulers, and shows that Xi and Putin are proud advocates for their system of authoritarian government, enabled by high technology that helps control their populations and repress dissent.
It also shows the mutual benefit that Russia and China derive from their partnership, which has led to its becoming the working alliance we now see... So, this deepening high-technology partnership is bad news for much of the rest of the world, particularly those who create technological dependency on China by buying into its global technology expansion....
San Francisco says it will use AI to reduce bias when charging people with crimes – The district attorney’s office is calling it a ‘first-in-the-nation’ use…
June 13, 2019
San Francisco is announcing a “bias mitigation tool” that uses basic AI techniques to automatically redact information from police reports that could identify a suspect’s race. It’s designed to be a way to keep prosecutors from being influenced by racial bias... The tool will not only strip out descriptions of race, but also descriptors like eye color and hair color, according to the SF district attorney’s office. The names of people, locations, and neighborhoods that might all consciously or unconsciously tip off a prosecutor that a suspect is of a certain racial background are also removed...
The “transhumanist wish list”. George Church maintains a list of genes that he believes could be modified by CRISPR or other technologies to support transhumanist aims. Especially relevant as the gene targeted in the Chinese CRISPR babies is on the list…
June 13, 2019
Justina Trudeau announces ban on single-use plastics…
June 13, 2019
Watch Trudeau stumble when asked what she's personally doing to cut back on plastics.
Maine is 8th state to legalize assisted suicide…
June 13, 2019
The state House passed the bill by just one vote, 73-72, on Monday and the Senate narrowly approved the bill, 19-16, on Tuesday despite both chambers being controlled by Democrats. The new law, known as the Death With Dignity Act, has been proposed several times in Maine yet failed in a statewide vote and seven times in Congress. It defines “terminal disease” as one that is incurable and will likely cause a person's death within six months.