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mes5464
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Supreme court cellphone case puts free speech – not just privacy – at risk | Opinion | The Guardian

Privacy scholars are watching Carpenter’s case closely because it may require the supreme court to address the scope and continuing relevance of the “third-party-records doctrine”, a judicially developed rule that has sometimes been understood to mean that a person surrenders her constitutional privacy interest in information that she turns over to a third party. The government contends that Carpenter lacks a constitutionally protected privacy interest in his location data because his cellphone was continually sharing that data with his cellphone provider.

Privacy advocates are rightly alarmed by this argument. Much of the digital technology all of us rely on today requires us to share information passively with third parties. Visiting a website, sending an email, buying a book online – all of these things require sharing sensitive data with internet service providers, merchants, banks and others. If this kind of commonplace and unavoidable information-sharing is sufficient to extinguish constitutional privacy rights, the digital-age fourth amendment will soon be a dead letter.

To understand the Carpenter case’s full significance, though, it’s necessary to consider the implications the government’s arguments have for first amendment rights. In a brief filed in support of Carpenter, 19 leading technologists explain how easy it is to use a person’s location data to learn about her beliefs and associations. (We represent the technologists.) With very few data points, the technologists observe, an analyst can learn whether a given person attended a public demonstration, attended a political meeting, or met with a particular activist or lawyer. With more data, an analyst can identify social networks and learn not only whether a given person was at a public demonstration but who else attended the demonstration with her.

Journalists and their sources might be at particular risk. Imagine parallel demands for the cell site location information of a journalist who exposed government misconduct and of all the government employees who had access to the information the journalist exposed. As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press observes in its own brief filed in the Carpenter case, cell site location information “can reveal the stories a journalist is working on before they are published, where a journalist went to gather information for those stories, and the identity of a journalist’s sources”.

This is why it is a mistake to think about the Carpenter case solely through the lens of individual privacy. A defeat for Carpenter would be a defeat for privacy rights, but it would also mean a dramatic curtailment of first amendment freedoms.

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Army Tests New Super-Soldier Exoskeleton

The Army is testing an exoskeleton technology which uses AI to analyze and replicate individual walk patterns, provide additional torque, power and mobility for combat infantry and enable heavier load-carrying, industry officials said.

Army evaluators have been assessing a Lockheed-built FORTIS knee-stress-release-device exoskeleton with soldiers at Fort A.P. Hill as part of a focus on fielding new performance enhancing soldier technologies.

Using independent actuators, motors and lightweight conformal structures, lithium ion battery powered FORTIS allows soldiers to carry 180 pounds up five flights of stairs while expending less energy.

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Army Tests New Super-Soldier Exoskeleton

The Army is testing an exoskeleton technology which uses AI to analyze and replicate individual walk patterns, provide additional torque, power and mobility for combat infantry and enable heavier load-carrying, industry officials said.

Army evaluators have been assessing a Lockheed-built FORTIS knee-stress-release-device exoskeleton with soldiers at Fort A.P. Hill as part of a focus on fielding new performance enhancing soldier technologies.

Using independent actuators, motors and lightweight conformal structures, lithium ion battery powered FORTIS allows soldiers to carry 180 pounds up five flights of stairs while expending less energy.

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Police accused of trial by social media after tweeting about supercar crash

The police have been accused of committing trial by social media after posting pictures of a crashed Ferrari with comments suggesting the driver had been speeding and taking drugs.

Greater Manchester Police posted the images of the supercar on Twitter after the driver crashed on Saturday.

In a message accompanying pictures of the damaged car, the force's traffic unit, tweeted to its 38,000 followers: "Driver said he was only doing 52 in a 50mph area. Thoughts?"

Shortly afterwards there was a follow up Tweet which read: "Well the driver has just tested positive for Cannabis, so that’s probably played a part."

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Russia Will Build Its Own Internet Directory, Citing US Information Warfare - Defense One

The Russian government will build an “independent internet” for use by itself, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa — the so-called BRICS nations — “in the event of global internet malfunctions,” the Russian news site RT reported on Tuesday. More precisely, Moscow intends to create an alternative to the global Domain Name System, or DNS, the directory that helps the browser on your computer or smartphone connect to the website server or other computer that you’re trying to reach. The Russians cited national security concerns, but the real reason may have more to do with Moscow’s own plans for offensive cyber operations.

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Robots Are Coming for Jobs of as Many as 800 Million Worldwide - Bloomberg

As many as 800 million workers worldwide may lose their jobs to robots and automation by 2030, equivalent to more than a fifth of today’s global labor force.

That’s according to a new report covering 46 nations and more than 800 occupations by the research arm of McKinsey & Co.

The consulting company said Wednesday that both developed and emerging countries will be impacted. Machine operators, fast-food workers and back-office employees are among those who will be most affected if automation spreads quickly through the workplace.

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Moody's Warns Cities to Address Climate Risks or Face Downgrades - Bloomberg

Coastal communities from Maine to California have been put on notice from one of the top credit rating agencies: Start preparing for climate change or risk losing access to cheap credit.

In a report to its clients Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service Inc. explained how it incorporates climate change into its credit ratings for state and local bonds. If cities and states don’t deal with risks from surging seas or intense storms, they are at greater risk of default.

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Facebook Announces It Will Use A.I. To Scan Your Thoughts "To Enhance User Safety" | Zero Hedge

A mere few years ago the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) might be used to analyze and report to law enforcement aberrant human behavior on social media and other online platforms was merely the far out premise of dystopian movies such as Minority Report, but now Facebook proudly brags that it will use AI to "save lives" based on behavior and thought pattern recognition. 

What could go wrong?

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Apple rushes to resolve ‘huge’ password glitch on MacOS High Sierra

A major flaw in the way the MacOS High Sierra operates means that anyone can gain entry to a computer without the use of a password
Warnings about the bug were shared by computing experts such as Edward Snowden, who described Apple's operating system as "really bad" on Tuesday
While Apple works on permanently fixing the problem, the tech giant offered a workaround for users concerned about any possible ramifications on its website

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Animals do have feelings - and here's the science to prove it - The i newspaper online iNews

Science shows that animals feel emotions. What’s more, they have distinct personalities – yes, even fish, writes Jan Hoole

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Brown University to allow students to 'self-identify' as persons of color - The College Fix

Brown University is implementing a change to its graduate school application that will allow applicants to “self-identify” as persons of color. Multiple efforts by The College Fix to clarify the details of this change were ignored by campus officials.

The policy comes as a result of complaints made by graduate students on the Graduate School advisory board that international and Asian American students are not treated as members of historically underrepresented groups by the university, according to The Brown Daily Herald.

One graduate student, Lydia Kelow-Bennett, told The Herald that this decision has led to “institutional invisibility” for these students. Brown defines historically underrepresented groups as “American Indian, Alaskan Native, African American, Hispanic or Latinx and Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander.” The school’s diversity initiatives are intended to benefit members of these groups.

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Expanding DNA's alphabet lets cells produce novel proteins

A team at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, expanded the genetic alphabet, creating two artificial DNA “letters” called X and Y. A few years ago, the researchers brewed up a type of E. coli bacteria commonly used for lab research that contained both natural DNA and this new artificial base pair — storing extra genetic information inside cells.

The next challenge: Normal DNA contains the coding for cells to form proteins that do the work of life. Could cells carrying this weird genomic hybrid work the same way?

Sure enough, the altered cells glowed green as they produced a fluorescent protein containing unnatural amino acids, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“We can make proteins that are built of more things than they normally are,” explained Scripps chemist Floyd Romesberg, who leads the project.

While programming the green germs offered evidence that the approach can work, eventually “we would like to get proteins that do new things,” he said.

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STUDY: Global Warming Not Getting Worse | The Daily Caller

Global warming has not accelerated temperature rise in the bulk atmosphere in more than two decades, according to a new study funded by the Department of Energy.

University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientists John Christy and Richard McNider found that by removing the climate effects of volcanic eruptions early on in the satellite temperature record it showed virtually no change in the rate of warming since the early 1990s.

“We indicated 23 years ago — in our 1994 Nature article — that climate models had the atmosphere’s sensitivity to CO2 much too high,” Christy said in a statement. “This recent paper bolsters that conclusion.”

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Research suggests that dogs really are smarter than cats | Daily Mail Online

Experts found that dogs have more neurons in their cerebral cortex than cats
The region has been linked with thinking, planning and complex behaviours
Dogs have around 530 million cortical neurons while cats have 250 million
The researchers found bigger brains do not always have more cortical neurons

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MSNBC's ‘Morning Joe’: Trump Mentally Ill, Has Dementia; Remove Him From Office

(CNSNews.com) - Declaring President Trump to be mentally unfit for office and in the early stages of dementia, the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday said it is time for Trump's Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows for the president to be removed from office when “he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

The anti-Trump diatribe -- not too much different from those that occur daily on "Morning Joe" -- follows President Trump's tweet on Wednesday aimed at NBC executives and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough:

Trump tweeted: "So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the 'unsolved mystery' that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!"

A 28-year-old intern was found dead, reportedly of natural causes, in Scarborough's Florida district office in 2001, two months after Scarborough announced his retirement from the U.S. Congress.

At the beginning of "Morning Joe" on Thursday, host Mika Brzezinski read from a "New York Daily News" editorial, which said, "Only those completely under his spell can deny what growing numbers of Americans have long suspected: The President of the United States is profoundly unstable. He is mad. He is by any honest layman's definition mentally unwell."

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University event highlights 14 ways ‘whiteness’ oppresses society - The College Fix

SAN MARCOS, Calif. — A “Whiteness Forum” at Cal State San Marcos on Tuesday prominently displayed 14 poster boards detailing different ways in which students say whiteness in America oppresses people of color and society.

For 15 years and “going strong,” this annual forum has taken place as a part of Professor Dreama Moon’s “Communication of Whiteness” course, the scholar said as she kicked off the two-hour event inside a large multipurpose room.

A banner hung at the front of the room indicated the “Whiteness Forum” is about “reflecting on white privilege and racism.”

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Judge issues ruling on Albany High online posting lawsuits

ALBANY –– A United States District Court judge in San Francisco issued a divided ruling this week on a portion of a case involving an Instagram account created by a former Albany High student that had several racist memes posted on it.

The lawsuits were filed on behalf of 10 students disciplined after the discovery of the account in March. The Albany Unified School District and several employees as well as district officials and an AUSD board member were the defendants.

On Nov. 29, Judge James Donato granted a summary judgment in favor of the defendants regarding how the AUSD disciplined the creator of the account and students who had “liked” and commented on some of the posts.

He ruled against the AUSD regarding four students who liked or commented on posts that didn’t target specific students and one who never liked or commented on anything.

Donato only considered the First Amendment questions and related state law claims raised by the lawsuits in this ruling. The parties agreed to address those questions on summary judgment as they are central to the cases.

It’s not clear when other claims by the plaintiffs will be considered.

The AUSD had no comment, issuing a news release that simply restated the results of the ruling.

Darryl Yorkey, who represented several of the plaintiffs, said he will be filing an amended complaint in the next week.

“I don’t agree with the judge’s decision,” Yorkey said. “It was definitely unfavorable to my clients.”

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Man choked, defecates himself after trying to pay ticket in pennies, lawsuit says - SFGate

Things went horribly wrong for a Michigan man who tried to pay for a parking ticket in pennies.
Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse than that.
It all started when Anthony Sevy got a $10 parking ticket in Royal Oak, Mich., near Detroit, reports WJBK. He went to pay the ticket with his credit card and was told there would be an added $1.75 service fee.
Sevy wasn't happy with that, his attorney told WJBK, so he left and later came back with rolls of pennies.
"The clerk wasn't too happy about that, they refused to allow him to pay with penny rolls," attorney Jonathan Marco said.

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Homeless street services stall as encampments continue to grow - LA Times

Last year, Los Angeles put money behind various efforts to curb encampments like Brown’s until the city’s ambitious housing construction program takes hold.

Funding for one strategy — camp cleanups or sweeps — expanded to $13 million. But spending on services for people living in the streets — mobile showers, housing navigation centers, storage facilities and homeless parking lots — lagged behind.

Of the $7.5 million budgeted for “street strategies” in 2016-17, more than $2 million was returned to city coffers, and nearly $2 million was diverted to camp sweeps, according to figures provided by city officials. Last month, the city approved an additional $509,000 transfer from services to homeless outreach workers to accompany cleanup teams.

Advocates say hygiene, storage and other services help homeless people get back into the mainstream. But no navigation centers have opened, storage facilities are available only on skid row and, to a limited extent, in Venice, and one small city-funded parking program opened in South Los Angeles in June.

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Evergreen State’s student newspaper includes no-whites-allowed opinion section - The College Fix

The student newspaper at Evergreen State College has a section in its opinion pages described as “for people of color by people of color.”

“This should be a place where we can be us without it being overshadowed by the dark cloud that is living under white supremacy and having to see things from a white perspective. This is why when we do cover these issues it will be in the context and from the perspective of POC and POC only,” according to the section’s editors as they reintroduced it to readers in September.

The anonymous column, known as “POC Talk,” debuted in the bi-weekly Cooper Point Journal last year and returned this fall to the newspaper’s pages following racial unrest that erupted at the public university this past spring.

“Dear White people, please take a step back, this isn’t brown-people-answer-white-people’s-questions-hour, we’re asking specifically for submissions from POC,” the section’s editors added in their September intro. “As being told no seems to be a difficult concept for some of y’all I await your emails about the Irish, how the term white fragility is mean (great example of white fragility) and how we need to view people through a color-blind lens (just lol). You will 100% not get a response!!!”

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Anglican Minister Urges Prayers for Prince George to Be Gay - The New York Times

LONDON — A prominent Anglican cleric and gay rights campaigner known for contentious gestures has urged believers to pray for Prince George — age 4, and third in line to the throne — to find the love “of a fine young gentleman” when he grows up so as to advance the cause of same-sex marriage in church.

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Baltimore sees 319th killing of 2017, eclipsing last year's homicide total - Baltimore Sun

The 21-year-old man, whom police did not identify, was the 319th homicide victim in the city in 2017; raising the total beyond the 318 killings that occurred in Baltimore in all of 2016.

That means this year is now Baltimore’s second-deadliest on record on a per-capita basis, with a month left to go. The record was set in 2015, when there were 344 homicides.

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Robots could replace nearly a third of the U.S. workforce by 2030 - The Washington Post

Over the next 13 years, the rising tide of automation will force as many as 70 million workers in the United States to find another way to make money, a new study from the global consultancy McKinsey predicts.

That means nearly a third of the American workforce could face the need to pick up new skills or enter different fields in the near future, said the report's co-author, Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute who studies business and economics.

“We believe that everyone will need to do retraining over time,” he said.

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RPD: Group looking for Christmas tree finds kidnapped woman

Redding police say some people searching for a Christmas tree in eastern Shasta County on Monday found a partially clothed kidnapping victim forced to take shelter in a dead tree and drink from puddles to survive. One suspect was arrested while another remains at large, officers said. 

Capt. Eric Wallace said the group found the 25-year-old victim east of Eskimo Hill near Hat Creek on Monday. Police said they're not identifying the woman for the time being, though they did not say why.

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Statistics Canada: Less Than Half of All Canadians Aged 25-54 Now Have Full-Time, Year-Round Jobs
New census data from Statistics Canada suggests the quality of Canadian jobs continues to fall while precarious work continues to rise.

Most disturbingly, StatCan reports less than half of all Canadian workers (49.8%) between the ages of 25 and 54 worked full-time, full-year jobs in 2015.

According to StatCan, “the period from 2005 to 2015 saw an overall shift from full-time, full-year employment to part-time or part-year work,” something they attribute to “social and economic changes, such as the 2008-2009 financial crisis,” as well as “a shift from traditional to more flexible work schedules.”

http://pressprogress.ca/statistics-cana ... ound-jobs/
This is making it harder and harder for young people to start a family here in Canada. Even if they do manage to get a full time job, pay is stagnant and housing is the most expensive in North America. The church is not very understanding to the financial conditions of the youth today unfortunately. Faith only goes so far when social and economic conditions become the reality for all, as it is here for over half the working population. No one wants the stigma of having to go on welfare to support a family. :(

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