News You Can Use

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AI-Powered Body Cams Give Cops The Power To Google Everything They See - Vocativ

Last week, Taser, the stun gun company that has recently become an industry leader in body-mounted cameras, announced the creation of its own in-house artificial intelligence division. The new unit will utilize the company’s acquisition of two AI-focused firms: Dextro, a New York-based computer vision startup, and Misfit, another computer vision company previously owned by the watch manufacturer Fossil. Taser says the newly formed division will develop AI-powered tech specifically aimed at law enforcement, using automation and machine learning algorithms to let cops search for people and objects in video footage captured by on-body camera systems.

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Bill Gates: We Should Tax Robots That Take Jobs | Observer

Robots are coming for a lot of jobs. And while at first this may seem detrimental, it’s actually a good thing.

There will still be jobs for humans (in fact, job growth has been on the rise in the U.S.), but they will just be different jobs. If we leave jobs that can be automated to the robots, we’ll free up labor so humans can do more meaningful work like caring for the elderly, teaching kids with disabilities and other jobs that require empathy—something robots lack.

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My Friend Cayla doll banned in Germany as 'espionage device' - CNET

If you're considering purchasing a connected toy for your offspring, you might want to think twice.

In Germany, regulators have determined that the My Friend Cayla doll could be up to no good, given its potential to steal information about children who play with it. And they say that German parents whose children are in possession of a Cayla doll should destroy the toy.

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And example of using licensing to create a monopoly and to squash competition.

Absurd State Licensing Rules Could Send A Woman To Jail Just for Touching a Horse - Hit & Run : Reason.com

In April, Wheeler received a letter from the board explaining that she wouldn't be allowed to give horse massages in Tennessee without being licensed as a veterinarian—a process that would require years of additional, expensive schooling. If she ignored the board's letter and continued to practice, even if she gave horse massages for free rather than as a business, and she could face fines of up to $500 and could be sent to jail for as much as six months for committing a class B misdemeanor.

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Small Business Owner Spends $14,000 Each Year to Comply Tax Code

A small business owner told lawmakers earlier this week that his company spends $14,000 each year to comply with the federal tax code, representing the largest barrier to entrepreneurship.

Tim Reynolds, business owner of Tribute Inc., a software company in Ohio, told the House Business Committee on Wednesday that in addition to the thousands of dollars he spends on accountants to prepare taxes, his company spends about 40 hours a year filling out tax forms and making payments in order to comply.

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Publishers are hiring 'sensitivity readers' to flag potentially offensive content - Chicago Tribune

Before a book is published and released to the public, it's passed through the hands (and eyes) of many people: an author's friends and family, an agent and, of course, an editor.

These days, though, a book may get an additional check from an unusual source: a sensitivity reader, a person who, for a nominal fee, will scan the book for racist, sexist or otherwise offensive content. These readers give feedback based on self-ascribed areas of expertise such as "dealing with terminal illness," "racial dynamics in Muslim communities within families" or "transgender issues."

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Leaked Emails: Dem State Leaders Think Obama’s New Organizing Army is ‘Grade A @#!!$#!%’ - The Daily Beast

It is difficult to overstate just how enraged state Democratic activists and leaders are with Organizing for Action (OFA), the political and community-organizing army that grew out of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.

The nonprofit, which functions as a sort of parallel-Democratic National Committee, was founded to mobilize Democratic voters and supporters in defense of President Obama’s, and the Democratic Party’s, agenda. Instead, the organization has drawn the intense ire, both public and private, of grassroots organizers and state parties that are convinced that OFA inadvertently helped decimate Democrats at the state and local level, while Republicans cemented historic levels of power and Donald J. Trump actually became leader of the free world.

These intra-party tensions aren’t going away, especially now that OFA “relaunched” itself last week to protect the Affordable Care Act, boost turnout at congressional townhalls, and train grassroots organizers gearing up for the Trump era.

[Joel]

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Hospital CEO Wins Major Court Victory After Accusing CNN of False Reporting | Law News

Those who accuse CNN and other mainstream media outlets of “fake news” will probably revel in a recent decision by a federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia. While Judge Orinda Evans didn’t all out declare that CNN was peddling in falsehoods, she did take aim at the network in an initial judgment in favor of a former hospital CEO who sued CNN accusing them of purposely skewing statistics to reflect poorly on a West Palm Beach hospital. Judge Evans didn’t mince words in her 18-page order allowing the case to move forward, and dismissing CNN’s attempt to get it thrown out of court.

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Muslims Attack Christians While At Prayer Service, Beat Them Savagely With Sticks, Rape 15 Women And The Media Then Tries To Cover It Up And Blame The Christians | Walid Shoebat

There is a lot of talk about “fake news” going around today about Islam when the opposite is true. People are learning about and have easy access to the truth of what is really going on, and that makes those who do evil panic and try to devise further ways to deceive people.

Several weeks ago, we reported how Muslims attacked a Christian church during services in Uganda. They locked the Christians in the church and then attacked them, raping 15 women, kidnapping several and beating the rest. The story made international headlines.

Well in a recent story, the local news media in Uganda has tried to whitewash what happened, saying that it was a ‘mania’ that broke out after Christians praying for the return of an ‘unnamed prophet’ got mad when the supposed ‘prophet’ did not appear.

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Frightened Swedes Wear Bulletproof Vests Because of Terrorism. Parliament Cracks Down... on the Vests?!

But apparently now that citizens have started turning to bulletproof vests for self defense, parliament members are having none of it…

Just a few weeks ago, a bulletproof vest saved the life of a 18-year-old in Malmo, and more people buy and wear bulletproof vests…
[But] Allan Widman, chairman of the Swedish parliamentary defense committee, demands that individuals are prohibited from wearing bulletproof vests to protect themselves from increasing violence, which he believes will increase further without a ban.
Widman has written a bill to the parliament in which he demands that it should be illegal and punishable for individuals to wear body armor in a public place.

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Electronic media searches at border crossings raise worry

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation both say they have noticed an uptick in complaints about searches of digital devices by border agents.

The increase has become most noticeable in the last month, said Adam Schwartz, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"We are concerned that a bad practice that has existed under past presidents has gotten worse in quantity under the new president," Schwartz said.

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'Devastating' beehive losses due to insecticide drift from cotton farms, keeper says - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The largest commercial honey bee pollinator in one of Australia's key food bowls claims he can no longer base his 2,000 hive operation in the region because of chemical use by the emerging cotton industry.

[Joel]

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[Joel]

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Obama-linked activists have a ‘training manual’ for protesting Trump | New York Post

The manual, published with OFA partner “Indivisible,” advises protesters to go into halls quietly so as not to raise alarms, and “grab seats at the front of the room but do not all sit together.” Rather, spread out in pairs to make it seem like the whole room opposes the Republican host’s positions. “This will help reinforce the impression of broad consensus.” It also urges them to ask “hostile” questions — while keeping “a firm hold on the mic” — and loudly boo the the GOP politician if he isn’t “giving you real answers.”

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Scientists have discovered how to find your bad memories and DELETE them from your mind for good - Mirror Online

It is the medical breakthrough which could cheer us up - boffins have found a way to banish bad memories for our brains forever.

In news that will be particularly good for England football fans, experts have developed a way to delete unwanted memories from the brain.

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Greeks Turn to the Black Market as Another Bailout Showdown Looms - The New York Times

ATHENS — During seven years of a grinding economic crisis, Dimitri Tsamopoulos has lost at least half the clients from his once bustling tax consultancy. But in the past few months, business has jumped, not because the Greek economy is finally recovering but because it is falling even deeper into the abyss.

With the Greek government pushing through more tax increases to comply with austerity requirements, more than 21,000 self-employed workers and small firms have shut down in the past two months, with many seeking help from accountants like Mr. Tsamopoulos to close their books. Yet many are not actually closing their businesses.

“Most of these people will keep working,” Mr. Tsamopoulous said, arching an eyebrow from behind his desk as clients waited in a smoky room outside. “But now, they’ll do it on the black market. They’re saying they need a way to survive.”

[Joel]

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‘California is a nation, not a state’: A fringe movement wants a break from the U.S. - The Washington Post

SAN FRANCISCO — About 15 people huddled in a luxury apartment building, munching on danishes as they plotted out their plan to have California secede from the United States.

“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of an independent California,” Geoff Lewis said as he stood in a glass-walled conference room adorned with California’s grizzly-bear flag and a sign reading “California is a nation, not a state.”

[Joel]

medicaid = single payer

Listen to those people clap.

Hopefully Jessi Bohon can learn to practice her Christian faith without advocating for the use of force of government in everyone else's lives.

[Joel]

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KNOWN FOR POLITICAL TEMPERANCE, IOWA MOVES SHARPLY RIGHT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- After decades as the crossroads of prairie populists and checkbook conservatives, Iowa has suddenly become solidly Republican like many of its Midwestern neighbors.

It was one of four states - along with Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire - that flipped to complete GOP control in the November election, but Iowa's rush of new legislation has been the most intense.

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A chilling moment to mark the 75th anniversary of the executive order that led to Japanese American internment - LA Times

Exactly 75 years ago Sunday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for the incarceration of Yoshihashi and 120,000 other Japanese Americans in desolate camps scattered across deserts and swampland. Yoshihashi remembers his anxiety at being locked up and the shock of seeing the barbed wire and armed military guards at his camp in Gila River, Ariz.

He left camp in 1944 to fight for the country he still loved as a member of the U.S. Army’s celebrated 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit of second-generation Japanese Americans known as Nisei. The battles were brutal — one comrade threw himself on a grenade to protect fellow soldiers in the 1945 fight to break the German Gothic Line in Italy.