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Browne Falls in Wakefield Open Quarter-Finals

Noah Browne recently continued competing in the $6,000 Men’s Wakefield Open 2019 in Virginia. Browne, ranked fifth, took on Mohamed Nabil from Egypt in the quarter-finals. Browne fell in a five game battle; Browne won the first match 11-7, but Nabil leveled the match at 1-1 when he won game two 11-9. Browne went back […]

(Click to read the full article)




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National Junior Squash Championships Finals

The final day of play at the 2019 AXA Bermuda National Junior Squash Championships took place today [Dec 22] at the Bermuda Squash Racquets Association Club in Devonshire. Taylor Carrick won the Boys Under 19 final defeating Anaya Smith, while Charlotte Toogood won the Girls Under 19 final defeating Abigail Brewer. Matthew Elliott captured the […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Photos: Junior Squash Championships Finals

The final day of play at the 2019 AXA Bermuda National Junior Squash Championships took place at the Bermuda Squash Racquets Association Club in Devonshire, concluding just before Christmas. Taylor Carrick won the Boys Under 19 final defeating Anaya Smith, while Charlotte Toogood won the Girls Under 19 final defeating Abigail Brewer. Matthew Elliott captured […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Squash: Elliott Helps Felsted Advance To Finals

Bermuda’s Matthew Elliott helped his Felsted U16 squash team advance to the national finals after they defeated Charterhouse & Whitgift School during the Stage 2 Regional Round of the English National Schools Championship. The school’s match report said, “Felsted’s U16 team travelled to Surrey for the Stage 2 Regional Round of the English National Schools […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Column: In Celebration Of Principals & Teachers

[Written by Reeshemah Swan] Someone once said that, “…it is during adversity that one finds creativity…” As we enter another week of school buildings being closed, let us take the time to celebrate the non-essential front line workers who have been teaching school at home. In essence, school is open and continues to be – […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Court: Man Admits False Credit Card Offences

Appearing in Magistrates Court this morning [Nov 19], Canadian national Christopher Gosselin McMeel was charged with multiple offenses related to making false credit cards, and was remanded in custody. A police spokesperson said, “Canadian National, Christopher Gosselin McMeel, appeared in Magistrates Court this morning faced with eight [8] fraud related charges. “Mr. McMeel was charged with one […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Covid-19: Soldiers Assist With Airport Arrivals

Soldiers from the Royal Bermuda Regiment have mobilised at the airport to help returned residents disembark and transport those who need quarantined outside their homes to special accommodation. Sergeant Giovanni Lema, a member of the RBR’s Motor Transport section, drove one of the buses used to ferry passengers off some of the last planes to […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Fairmont Hotel Provides Free Meals For Soldiers

A luxury hotel has thanked soldiers on duty over the Covid-19 crisis with two dinners for 200 prepared by its top chefs. The Fairmont Southampton cooked the meals for the troops at Warwick Camp and forward operating bases yesterday [Sunday] – the second time the hotel has ensured soldiers dined in style. Kiaran MacDonald, Fairmont’s […]

(Click to read the full article)




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BTA: Officials Explore Superyacht Opportunities

Officials who put on superyacht racing during the 35th America’s Cup last year are back in Bermuda this week to explore new superyacht opportunities on the island. “The people who put on the Superyacht Regatta and the J Class Regatta during the America’s Cup have been looking for the right opportunity to come back to […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Murder Victim’s Mother Appeals For Peace

The mother of Lyrico Steede has spoken out on the one year anniversary of his attack, thanking god for helping to sustain her over the past year and saying how blessed she was to have shared 17 years with her son. Keishaye Steede also said her “heart goes out to the families enduring the same, if not […]

(Click to read the full article)




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Video: Mother Appeals For End To Violence

Bermudian Keishaye Steede, whose 17-year-old son Lyrico was stabbed to death in the English city of Nottingham in 2017, is lending her voice to a national campaign aimed at reducing knife violence in the UK. The video was released as part of Operation Sceptre, the week-long coordinated initiative designed to help get knives and blades […]

(Click to read the full article)




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TRB Webinar: Evaluating Goals Under the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program

Is your organization aiming to increase the participation of minority-and women-owned businesses in state and local transportation projects? TRB will conduct a webinar on Wednesday, May 27, 2020, from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM Eastern to discuss how to meet the goals set by the U.S. Department of Transportation Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (USDOT DBE). State and local transportation projects that receive federal funding are mandated to go through the triennial DBE goal-setting process. Make your next goals...




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Impacts on Practice: New International Arrivals Facility Will Enhance Customer Experience at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport

In 2017, when leadership at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac) decided to build a new International Arrivals Facility (IAF), they knew they had to leverage airport resources in a cost-effective manner to enhance customer experience. At nearly 50 years old, the existing facility could no longer accommodate Sea-Tac’s demand for international travel, which grew 107 percent from 2007 to 2017. The latest issue of the  TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's (ACRP) Impacts on Practice serie...



  • http://www.trb.org/Resource.ashx?sn=cover_acrp_iop_059

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Garrett: The Drumhead Also A Metaphor For AIDS

Spencer Garrett, who portrayed Simon Tarses in The Next Generation: The Drumhead episode, spoke to StarTrek.com about getting the role, what the...




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Musicians: Bands/Groups – Troubles Removals

Removed From Troubles – Problem Resolved (NOT open for application) Core of Soul Removed From Troubles – Removed From Network (OPEN for application) Finch; Nine Inch Nails



  • Musicians: Bands/Groups

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Also, Elves




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Pen Pals




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False Compare




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Annals




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The "Firewalkers" of Karoo: Dinosaurs and Other Animals Left Tracks in a "Land of Fire"

Several groups of reptiles persisted in Jurassic Africa even as volcanism ruined their habitat




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Radiation: The immortals

During the plague, I’ve been amusing myself by watching a show about immortality. In the world of Ad Vitam, a French series on Netflix, Covid-19 wouldn’t exist; disease apparently doesn’t and death hardly at all.
The reason for this is “regeneration”, a process finagled from jellyfish that allows humans to renew themselves. As the series begins, billions of people have just celebrated the birth of the world’s oldest woman, who is 169, but doesn’t look a day over 45.
The lead character, detective Darius Asram (Yvan Attal) is 119, his wife, who is newly pregnant, is 84.
Ah, but imagine…




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PHP Internals News: Episode 50: The RFC Process - Derick Rethans

PHP Internals News: Episode 50: The RFC Process

In this episode of "PHP Internals News", Henrik Gemal (LinkedIn, Website) asks me about how PHP's RFC process works, and I try to answer all of his questions.

The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news

Transcript

Derick Rethans 0:16

Hi, I'm Derick. And this is PHP internals news, a weekly podcast dedicated to demystifying the development of the PHP language. This is Episode 50. Today I'm talking with Henrik come out after he reached out with a question. You might know that at the end of every podcast, I ask: if you have any questions, feel free to email me. And Henrik was the first person to actually do so within a year and a half's time. For the fun, I'm thinking that instead of I'm asking the questions, I'm letting Henrik ask the questions today, because he suggested that we should do a podcast about how the RFC process actually works. Henrik, would you please introduce yourself?

Henrik Gemal 0:52

Yeah, my name is Henrik Gemal. I live in Denmark. The CTO of dinner booking which does reservation systems for restaurants. I've been doing a PHP development for more than 10 years. But I'm not coding so much now. Now I'm managing a big team of PHP developers. And I also been involved in the the open source development of Mozilla Firefox.

Derick Rethans 1:19

So usually I prepare the questions, but in this case, Henrik has prepared the questions. So I'll hand over to him to get started with them. And I'll try to do my best to answer the questions.

Henrik Gemal 1:27

I heard a lot about these RFCs. And I was interested in the process of it. So I'm just starting right off here, who can actually do an RFC? Is it anybody on the internet?

Derick Rethans 1:38

Yeah, pretty much. In order to be able to do an RFC, what you would need is you need to have an idea. And then you need access to our wiki system to be able to actually start writing that, well not to write them, to publish it. The RFC process is open for everybody. In the last year and a half or so, some of the podcasts that I've done have been with people that have been contributing to PHP for a long time. But in other cases, it's people like yourself that have an idea, come up, work together with somebody to work on a patch, and then create an RFC out of that. And that's then goes through the whole process. And sometimes they get accepted, and sometimes they don't.

Henrik Gemal 2:16

How technical are the RFCs? Is it like coding? Or is it more like the idea in general?

Derick Rethans 2:23

The idea needs to be there, it needs to be thought out. It needs to have a good reason for why we want to add or change something in PHP. The motivation is almost as important as what the change or addition actually is about. Now, that doesn't always get us here at variable. In my opinion, but that is an important thing. Now with the idea we need to talk about what changes it has on the rest of the ecosystem, whether they are backward compatible breaks in there, how it effects extensions, or sometimes how it effects OPCache. Sometimes considerations have to be taken for that because it's, it's something quite important in the PHP ecosystem. And it is recommended that it comes with a patch, because it's often a lot easier to talk about an implementation than to talk about the idea. But that is not a necessity. There have been quite some RFCs where the idea was there. But it wasn't a patch right away yet. It is less likely that these RFCs will g

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PHP Internals News: Episode 51: Object Ergonomics - Derick Rethans

PHP Internals News: Episode 51: Object Ergonomics

In this episode of "PHP Internals News" I talk with Larry Garfield (Twitter, Website, GitHub) about a blog post that he was written related to PHP's Object Ergonomics.

The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news

Transcript

Derick Rethans 0:16

Hi, I'm Derick. And this is PHP internals news, a weekly podcast dedicated to demystifying the development of the PHP language. This is Episode 51. Today I'm talking with Larry Garfield, not about an RFC for once, but about a blog post that he's written called Object Ergonomics. Larry, would you please introduce yourself?

Larry Garfield 0:38

Hello World. My name is Larry Garfield, also Crell, CRELL, on various social medias. I work at platform.sh in developer relations. We're a continuous deployment cloud hosting company. I've been writing PHP for 21 years and been a active gadfly and nudge for at least 15 of those.

Derick Rethans 1:01

In the last couple of months, we have seen quite a lot of smaller RFCs about all kinds of little features here and there, to do with making the object oriented model of PHP a little bit better. I reckon this is also the nudge behind you writing a slightly longer blog post titled "Improving PHP object ergonomics".

Larry Garfield 1:26

If by slightly longer you mean 14 pages? Yes.

Derick Rethans 1:29

Yes, exactly. Yeah, it took me a while to read through. What made you write this document?

Larry Garfield 1:34

As you said, there's been a lot of discussion around improving PHP's general user experience of working with objects in PHP. Where there's definitely room for improvement, no question. And I found a lot of these to be useful in their own right, but also very narrow and narrow in ways that solve the immediate problem but could get in the way of solving larger problems later on down the line. So I went into this with an attitude of: Okay, we can kind of piecemeal and attack certain parts of the problem space. Or we can take a step back and look at the big picture and say: Alright, here's all the pain points we have. What can we do that would solve not just this one pain point. But let us solve multiple pain points with a single change? Or these two changes together solve this other pain point as well. Or, you know, how can we do this in a way that is not going to interfere with later development that we've talked about. We know we want to do, but isn't been done yet. So how do we not paint ourselves into a corner by thinking too narrow?

Derick Rethans 2:41

It's a curious thing, because a more narrow RFC is likely easier to get accepted, because it doesn't pull in a whole set of other problems as well. But of course, as you say, if the whole idea hasn't been thought through, then some of these things might not actually end up being beneficial. Because it can be combined with some other things to directly address the problems that we're trying to solve, right?

Larry Garfield 3:07

Yeah, it comes down to what are the smallest changes we can make that taken together have the largest impact. That kind of broad picture thinking is something that is hard to do in PHP, just given the way it's structured. So I took a stab at that.

Derick Rethans 3:21

What are the main problems that we should address?

Larry Garf

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PHP Internals News: Episode 52: Floats and Locales - Derick Rethans

PHP Internals News: Episode 52: Floats and Locales

In this episode of "PHP Internals News" I talk with George Banyard (Website, Twitter, GitHub, GitLab) about an RFC that he has proposed together with Máté Kocsis (Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn) to make PHP's float to string logic no longer use locales.

The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news

Transcript

Derick Rethans 0:16

Hi, I'm Derick. And this is PHP internals news, a weekly podcast dedicated to demystifying the development of the PHP language. This is Episode 52. Today I'm talking with George Banyard about an RFC that he's made together with Mate Kocsis. This RFC is titled locale independent floats to string. Hello, George, would you please introduce yourself?

George Banyard 0:39

Hello, I'm George Peter Banyard. I'm a student at Imperial College and I work on PHP in my free time.

Derick Rethans 0:47

All right, so we're talking about local independent floats. What is the problem here?

George Banyard 0:52

Currently when you do a float to string conversion, so all casting or displaying a float, the conversion will depend on like the current local. So instead of always using like the decimal dot separator. For example, if you have like a German or the French locale enabled, it will use like a comma to separate like the decimals.

Derick Rethans 1:14

Okay, I can understand that that could be a bit confusing. What are these locales exactly?

George Banyard 1:20

So locales, which are more or less C locales, which PHP exposes to user land is a way how to change a bunch of rules on how string and like stuff gets displayed on the C level. One of the issues with it is that like it's global. For example, if you use like a thread safe API, if you use the thread safe PHP version, then set_locale() is not thread safe, so we'll just like impact other threads where you're using it.

Derick Rethans 1:50

So a locale is a set of rules to format specific things with floating point numbers being one of them in which situations does the locale influence the display a floating point numbers in every situation in PHP or only in some?

George Banyard 2:06

Yes, it only impacts like certain aspects, which is quite surprising. So a string cast will affect it the strval() function, vardump(), and debug_zval_dump() will all affect the decimal locator and also printf() with the percentage lowercase F, but that's expected because it's locale aware compared to the capital F modifier.

Derick Rethans 2:32

But it doesn't, for example, have the same problem in the serialised function or say var_export().

George Banyard 2:37

Yeah, and json_encode() also doesn't do that. PDO has special code which handles also this so that like all the PDO drivers get like a constant treat like float string, because that could like impact on the databases.

Derick Rethans 2:53

How is it a problem that with some locales enabled and then uses a comma instead of the decimal point. How can this cause bugs and PHP applications?

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Appeals Court Says Prosecutors Who Issued Fake Subpoenas To Crime Victims Aren't Shielded By Absolute Immunity

For years, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office in Louisiana issued fake subpoenas to witnesses and crime victims. Unlike subpoenas used in ongoing prosecutions, these were used during the investigation process to compel targets to talk to law enforcement. They weren't signed by judges or issued by court clerks but they did state in bold letters across the top that "A FINE AND IMPRISONMENT MAY BE OPPOSED FOR FAILURE TO OBEY THIS NOTICE."

Recipients of these bogus subpoenas sued the DA's office. In early 2019, a federal court refused to grant absolute immunity to the DA's office for its use of fake subpoenas to compel cooperation from witnesses. The court pointed out that issuing its own subpoenas containing threats of imprisonment bypassed an entire branch of the government to give the DA's office power it was never supposed to have.

Allegations that the Individual Defendants purported to subpoena witnesses without court approval, therefore, describe more than a mere procedural error or expansion of authority. Rather, they describe the usurpation of the power of another branch of government.

The court stated that extending immunity would be a judicial blessing of this practice, rather than a deterrent against continued abuse by the DA's office.

The DA's office appealed. The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court took the case, but it seemed very unimpressed by the office's assertions. Here's how it responded during oral arguments earlier this year:

“Threat of incarceration with no valid premise?” Judge Jennifer Elrod said at one point during arguments. She later drew laughter from some in the audience when she said, “This argument is fascinating.”

“These are pretty serious assertions of authority they did not have,” said Judge Leslie Southwick, who heard arguments with Elrod and Judge Catharina Haynes.

The Appeals Court has released its ruling [PDF] and it will allow the lawsuit to proceed. The DA's office has now been denied immunity twice. Absolute immunity shields almost every action taken by prosecutors during court proceedings. But these fake subpoenas were sent to witnesses whom prosecutors seemingly had no interest in ever having testify in court. This key difference means prosecutors will have to face the state law claims brought by the plaintiffs.

Based upon the pleadings before us at this time, it could be concluded that Defendants’ creation and use of the fake subpoenas was not “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” but rather fell into the category of “those investigatory functions that do not relate to an advocate’s preparation for the initiation of a prosecution or for judicial proceedings.” See Hoog-Watson v. Guadalupe Cty., 591 F.3d 431, 438 (5th Cir. 2009)

[...]

Defendants were not attempting to control witness testimony during a break in judicial proceedings. Instead, they allegedly used fake subpoenas in an attempt to pressure crime victims and witnesses to meet with them privately at the Office and share information outside of court. Defendants never used the fake subpoenas to compel victims or witnesses to testify at trial. Such allegations are of investigative behavior that was not “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.”

Falling further outside the judicial process was the DA's office itself, which apparently felt the judicial system didn't need to be included in its subpoena efforts.

In using the fake subpoenas, Individual Defendants also allegedly intentionally avoided the judicial process that Louisiana law requires for obtaining subpoenas.

The case returns to the lower court where the DA's office will continue to face the state law claims it hoped it would be immune from. The Appeals Court doesn't say the office won't ultimately find some way to re-erect its absolute immunity shield, but at this point, it sees nothing on the record that says prosecutors should be excused from being held responsible for bypassing the judicial system to threaten crime victims and witnesses with jail time.




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Harrisburg University Researchers Claim Their 'Unbiased' Facial Recognition Software Can Identify Potential Criminals

Given all we know about facial recognition tech, it is literally jaw-dropping that anyone could make this claim… especially without being vetted independently.

A group of Harrisburg University professors and a PhD student have developed an automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely to be a criminal.

The software is able to predict if someone is a criminal with 80% accuracy and with no racial bias. The prediction is calculated solely based on a picture of their face.

There's a whole lot of "what even the fuck" in CBS 21's reprint of a press release, but let's start with the claim about "no racial bias." That's a lot to swallow when the underlying research hasn't been released yet. Let's see what the National Institute of Standards and Technology has to say on the subject. This is the result of the NIST's examination of 189 facial recognition AI programs -- all far more established than whatever it is Harrisburg researchers have cooked up.

Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

The faces of African American women were falsely identified more often in the kinds of searches used by police investigators where an image is compared to thousands or millions of others in hopes of identifying a suspect.

Why is this acceptable? The report inadvertently supplies the answer:

Middle-aged white men generally benefited from the highest accuracy rates.

Yep. And guess who's making laws or running police departments or marketing AI to cops or telling people on Twitter not to break the law or etc. etc. etc.

To craft a terrible pun, the researchers' claim of "no racial bias" is absurd on its face. Per se stupid af to use legal terminology.

Moving on from that, there's the 80% accuracy, which is apparently good enough since it will only threaten the life and liberty of 20% of the people it's inflicted on. I guess if it's the FBI's gold standard, it's good enough for everyone.

Maybe this is just bad reporting. Maybe something got copy-pasted wrong from the spammed press release. Let's go to the source… one that somehow still doesn't include a link to any underlying research documents.

What does any of this mean? Are we ready to embrace a bit of pre-crime eugenics? Or is this just the most hamfisted phrasing Harrisburg researchers could come up with?

A group of Harrisburg University professors and a Ph.D. student have developed automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely going to be a criminal.

The most charitable interpretation of this statement is that the wrong-20%-of-the-time AI is going to be applied to the super-sketchy "predictive policing" field. Predictive policing -- a theory that says it's ok to treat people like criminals if they live and work in an area where criminals live -- is its own biased mess, relying on garbage data generated by biased policing to turn racist policing into an AI-blessed "work smarter not harder" LEO equivalent.

The question about "likely" is answered in the next paragraph, somewhat assuring readers the AI won't be applied to ultrasound images.

With 80 percent accuracy and with no racial bias, the software can predict if someone is a criminal based solely on a picture of their face. The software is intended to help law enforcement prevent crime.

There's a big difference between "going to be" and "is," and researchers using actual science should know better than to use both phrases to describe their AI efforts. One means scanning someone's face to determine whether they might eventually engage in criminal acts. The other means matching faces to images of known criminals. They are far from interchangeable terms.

If you think the above quotes are, at best, disjointed, brace yourself for this jargon-fest which clarifies nothing and suggests the AI itself wrote the pullquote:

“We already know machine learning techniques can outperform humans on a variety of tasks related to facial recognition and emotion detection,” Sadeghian said. “This research indicates just how powerful these tools are by showing they can extract minute features in an image that are highly predictive of criminality.”

"Minute features in an image that are highly predictive of criminality." And what, pray tell, are those "minute features?" Skin tone? "I AM A CRIMINAL IN THE MAKING" forehead tattoos? Bullshit on top of bullshit? Come on. This is word salad, but a salad pretending to be a law enforcement tool with actual utility. Nothing about this suggests Harrisburg has come up with anything better than the shitty "tools" already being inflicted on us by law enforcement's early adopters.

I wish we could dig deeper into this but we'll all have to wait until this excitable group of clueless researchers decide to publish their findings. According to this site, the research is being sealed inside a "research book," which means it will take a lot of money to actually prove this isn't any better than anything that's been offered before. This could be the next Clearview, but we won't know if it is until the research is published. If we're lucky, it will be before Harrisburg patents this awful product and starts selling it to all and sundry. Don't hold your breath.




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The EARN IT Act Also Threatens Journalists And Their Sources

The EARN IT Act is dangerous. It threatens speech on the internet and tech companies' ability to provide secure communications for their users. There may not be anything about encryption in the dry text of the bill, but the threat is there all the same. No one knows what "best practices" the law will demand from online services, but the bill's focus on child porn strongly suggests any platform that "allows" this information to be transmitted using encrypted communications will be targeted by the government.

Bill Barr and Chris Wray have made it clear encryption is the enemy. Both have advocated for encryption backdoors, even if they're both too cowardly to use that term. No one thinks the government and service providers shouldn't do all they can to prevent the sharing of child porn, but undermining encryption isn't the solution. It may shield some child porn producers and consumers from detection, but the government's efforts in this area show encryption hasn't posed much of a problem to investigators and prosecutors.

Encryption protects people who aren't criminals. As Runa Sundvik explains for TechCrunch, targeting encryption via the EARN IT Act also threatens some of the foremost beneficiaries of the First Amendment: journalists.

[T]echnology experts warn the bill not only fails to meet the challenge, it creates new problems of its own. My job is to enable journalists to do their work securely — to communicate with others, research sensitive stories and publish hard-hitting news. This bill introduces significant harm to journalists’ ability to protect their sources.

Strip communications platforms of their encryption and you make it that much easier to expose journalists' sources and snoop on their communications. This isn't an existential threat. It's an actual threat. The FBI has spied on journalists and several successive presidential administrations have made rooting out leakers a priority.

But it does more than harm journalists. It also harms the people they're trying to reach: readers. Encryption protects readers who visit news sites utilizing HTTPS. That's almost all of them at this point. This ensures their connection is shielded from people trying to snoop on their web activity. More importantly, it ensures the sites they reach are legit and the content originating from the journalists the site says it is.

If EARN IT becomes law, whistleblowers and other sources will see their secure options disappear. Tor, Signal, etc. will be considered nothing more than aiders and abettors of criminal activity. Anything secured by encryption will be treated as a virtual dead drop for criminal content.

Protecting children from exploitation is important. But the tradeoff legislators are demanding isn't actually a tradeoff. The American public will receive no net benefit from this tangential attack on encryption. Very often we're first informed about serious government misconduct by journalists. Destroying this outlet works out well for the government so often exposed as untrustworthy, but it does nothing for the governed.




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Court Of Appeals Affirms Lower Court Tossing BS 'Comedians In Cars' Copyright Lawsuit

Six months ago, which feels like roughly an eternity at this point, we discussed how Jerry Seinfeld and others won an absolutely ludicrous copyright suit filed against them by Christian Charles, a writer and director Seinfeld hired to help him create the pilot episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. What was so strange about the case is that this pilot had been created in 2012, whereas the lawsuit was only filed in 2018. That coincides with Seinfeld inking a lucrative deal with Netflix to stream his show.

It's not the most well known aspect of copyright law, but there is, in fact, a statute of limitations for copyright claims and it's 3 years. The requirement in the statute is that the clock essentially starts running once someone who would bring a copyright claim has had their ownership of a work disputed publicly, or has been put on notice. Seinfeld argued that he told Charles he was employing him in a work-for-hire arrangement, which would satisfy that notice. His lawyers also pointed out that Charles goes completely uncredited in the pilot episode, which would further put him on notice. The court tossed the case based on the statute of limitations.

For some reason, Charles appealed the ruling. Well, now the Court of Appeals has affirmed that lower ruling, which hopefully means we can all get back to not filing insane lawsuits, please.

We conclude that the district court was correct in granting defendants’ motion to dismiss, for substantially the same reasons that it set out in its well-reasoned opinion. The dispositive issue in this case is whether Charles’s alleged “contributions . . . qualify [him] as the author and therefore owner” of the copyrights to the show. Kwan, 634 F.3d at 229. Charles disputes that his claim centers on ownership. But that argument is seriously undermined by his statements in various filings throughout this litigation which consistently assert that ownership is a central question.

Charles’s infringement claim is therefore time-barred because his ownership claim is time-barred. The district court identified two events described in the Second Amended Complaint that would have put a reasonably diligent plaintiff on notice that his ownership claims were disputed. First, in February 2012, Seinfeld rejected Charles’s request for backend compensation and made it clear that Charles’s involvement would be limited to a work-for-hire basis. See Gary Friedrich Enters., LLC v. Marvel Characters, Inc., 716 F.3d 302, 318 (2d Cir. 2013) (noting that a copyright ownership claim would accrue when the defendant first communicates to the plaintiff that the defendant considers the work to be a work-for-hire). Second, the show premiered in July 2012 without crediting Charles, at which point his ownership claim was publicly repudiated. See Kwan, 634 F.3d at 227. Either one of these developments was enough to place Charles on notice that his ownership claim was disputed and therefore this action, filed six years later, was brought too late.

And that should bring this all to a close, hopefully. This seems like a pretty clear attempt at a money grab by Charles once Seinfeld's show became a Netflix cash-cow. Unfortunately, time is a measurable thing and his lawsuit was very clearly late.




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Data centre reveals it modeled interiors on <i>The Hunt for Red October</i> sets

Australia bit barn outfit NEXTDC adds classic film reference to usual mix of resilience, connectivity and security

Australian serial entrepreneur Bevan Slattery has revealed that he told the architects of a data centre he funded to make it resemble the sets used in classic submarine flick The Hunt for Red October.…




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Server sales went through the roof in the first three months of 2020. Enjoy it while it lasts, Dell, HPE, and pals

Enterprise demand set to soften, offset tier-two cloud, telco sales

Global server shipments reached an industry record-breaking 3.3 million units in the first quarter of 2020, marking a 30 per cent year-on-year growth, Omdia analysts estimated this week.…




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BT suspends shareholder payments as folk forgo pricey sports TV deals for matches that won't happen anyway

We all need to tighten our belts

For the first time in over three decades, BT has suspended its dividend scheme as the former state-owned teleco grapples with the fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the financial uncertainty that'll inevitably ensue.…




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FYI: Your browser can pick up ultrasonic signals you can't hear, and that sounds like a privacy nightmare to some

High-frequency audio could be used to stealthily track netizens

Technical folks looking to improve web privacy haven't been able to decide whether sound beyond the range of human hearing poses enough of a privacy risk to merit restriction.…





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GPR160 de-orphanization reveals critical roles in neuropathic pain in rodents

Treating neuropathic pain is challenging and novel non–opioid-based medicines are needed. Using unbiased receptomics, transcriptomic analyses, immunofluorescence, and in situ hybridization, we found that the expression of the orphan GPCR Gpr160 and GPR160 increased in the rodent dorsal horn of the spinal cord following traumatic nerve injury. Genetic and immunopharmacological approaches demonstrated that GPR160 inhibition in the spinal cord prevented and reversed neuropathic pain in male and female rodents without altering normal pain response. GPR160 inhibition in the spinal cord attenuated sensory processing in the thalamus, a key relay in the sensory discriminative pathways of pain. We also identified cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript peptide (CARTp) as a GPR160 ligand. Inhibiting endogenous CARTp signaling in spinal cord attenuated neuropathic pain, whereas exogenous intrathecal CARTp evoked painful hypersensitivity through GPR160-dependent ERK and cAMP response element–binding protein (CREB). Our findings de-orphanize GPR160, identify it as a determinant of neuropathic pain and potential therapeutic target, and provide insights into its signaling pathways. CARTp is involved in many diseases including depression and reward and addiction; de-orphanization of GPR160 is a major step forward understanding the role of CARTp signaling in health and disease.




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Deals: Apple Watch Series 5 Models Discounted by Up to $100 on Amazon

Amazon is taking up to $100 off the Apple Watch Series 5 this week, with prices starting at $299.99 for the 40mm GPS models. Only the Gold Aluminum Case with Pink Sport Band is available at this price. If you order today, the Apple Watch should arrive sometime next week.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

The Apple Watch Series 5 was released in September 2019 with a new OLED screen that supports an always-on feature, which represents the biggest change to the Series 5 models. The newest Apple Watch is available in 40mm and 44mm sizes, and it has the overall same design as the Series 4 models.

$100 OFF
Apple Watch S5 (40mm, GPS) for $299.99


If you're shopping for a cellular model, there are also a few solid discounts on Amazon for these devices. You can get the Gold Aluminum Case with Pink Sport Band (40mm) for $399.00, down from $499.00. Likewise, the Silver Aluminum Case with White Sport Band (40mm) is $399.00 right now.

For the 44mm cellular models, a solid deal is the Space Gray Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band at $429.00, down from $529.00. You'll find the same price on the Silver Aluminum Case with White Sport Band and the Gold Aluminum Case with Pink Sport Band.

Across the board, these sales are either new low prices on the Apple Watch Series 5, or they're matching previous low prices seen on these models on Amazon. There are a few other deals going on for different Series 5 models as well, including numerous 44mm cellular devices that are about $50 off Apple's original prices. Be sure to head to Amazon to check out the full sale before these prices expire, or the retailer runs out of stock.

Keep up with all of this week's best discounts on Apple products and related accessories in our dedicated Apple Deals roundup.
Related Roundup: Apple Deals

This article, "Deals: Apple Watch Series 5 Models Discounted by Up to $100 on Amazon" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Deals: Refurbished 15-Inch MacBook Pro Notebooks on Sale at Woot From $1,580 ($800+ Off)

Woot is ending the week with a refurbished sale on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, available in multiple storage sizes and colors. The sale starts with the 256GB SSD model (16GB RAM, Intel Core i7) for $1,579.99.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Woot. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

For more storage, the 512GB SSD model (16GB RAM, Intel Core i9) is on sale for $1,849.99. Woot's refurbished sales are offering more than $800 in savings when compared to the original prices of these notebooks, which began at $2,399.00 when they launched in May 2019.

Similar to previous Woot sales, each MacBook Pro comes with a One Year Limited Woot Warranty. Each device has been refurbished and is ensured to be in full working condition. When shipped, they are packaged in a generic white box.

You can find even more discounts on new MacBooks by visiting our Best Deals guide for MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. In this guide we track the steepest discounts for the newest MacBook models every week, so be sure to bookmark it and check back often if you're shopping for a new Apple notebook.

Related Roundup: Apple Deals

This article, "Deals: Refurbished 15-Inch MacBook Pro Notebooks on Sale at Woot From $1,580 ($800+ Off)" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Is Hillary Clinton an elitist? Do you charge $300,000 for a speech, and get a private jet, presidential suite at a luxury hotel, meals, etc.?

Is your standard charge for a speech $300,000?  According to an article appearing on the website of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and a May 31, 2013 email, Clinton’s standard contract usually includes: Round-trip transportation on a chartered private jet “e.g., a Gulfstream … Continue reading




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Senator Bernie Sanders appeals to the media to cover the serious issues of our country instead of political gossip during political campaigns

SANDERS: ... there is more coverage about the political gossip of a campaign, about raising money, about polling, about somebody saying something dumb, or some kid works for a campaign sends out something stupid on Facebook, right? We can expect that to be a major story. But what your job is, what the media's job is, is to say, look, these are the major issues facing the country. We're a democracy. People have different points of view. Let's argue it. Continue reading




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Bernie Sanders betrays his supporters with his announcement of voting for Hillary Clinton and signals his intentions of his endorsement at the convention

Leaders of political revolutions never quit before the official battle begins, and say that they will vote for and support their enemies. When the moment arrived of walking all that endless talk of Bernie Sanders about fighting his political revolution, he caved out of self interest Continue reading




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Streaming Musicals to Present Pride and Prejudice, Free and Online

Gentle Readers, here is another treat for us while we are confined to our homes. We may even be able to lure Dorothy away from her garret for this one. Streaming Musicals will present a free streaming event of Paul Gordon’s musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice on Friday, April 10, 2020 at 6:30 p.m.…




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IBM Achieves Major Climate Protection Goals Four Years Early

Today, IBM announced that it achieved two major commitments four years ahead of schedule in its effort to help combat climate change.




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IBM Expands Watson Data Platform to Help Unleash AI for Professionals

IBM today announced new offerings to its Watson Data Platform, including data cataloging and data refining, which is designed to make it easier for developers and data scientists to analyze and prepare enterprise data for AI applications, regardless of its structure or where it resides. By improving data visibility and helping to better enforce data security policies, users can now connect and share data across public and private cloud environments.



  • IBM Cloud Computing

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IBM Future of Identity Study: Millennials Poised to Disrupt Authentication Landscape

IBM Security today released a global study examining consumer perspectives around digital identity and authentication, which found that people now prioritize security over convenience when logging into applications and devices. Generational differences also emerged showing that younger adults are putting less care into traditional password hygiene, yet are more likely to use biometrics, multifactor authentication and password managers to improve their personal security.




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IBM Watson Health Announces 100 Top Hospitals

IBM Watson Health™ today published its 100 Top Hospitals® annual study identifying top–performing hospitals in the U.S. based on overall organizational performance. Formerly known as the Truven Health Analytics® 100 Top Hospitals, this study spotlights the best–performing hospitals in the U.S. based on a balanced scorecard of publicly available clinical, operational, and patient satisfaction metrics and data. It has been conducted annually since 1993.




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Mayo Clinic’s clinical trial matching project sees higher enrollment in breast cancer trials through use of artificial intelligence

Mayo Clinic and IBM Watson Health today unveiled results from early use of the Watson for Clinical Trial Matching, an IBM cognitive computing system. Use of this system in the Mayo Clinic oncology practice has been associated with more patients enrolled in Mayo’s breast cancer clinical trials.




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IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives within Five Years

Today IBM unveiled the seventh annual IBM 5 in 5 – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.




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Millennials prefieren las tecnologías biométricas de seguridad a las contraseñas

El 67% de los usuarios en todo el mundo se siente actualmente cómodo utilizando tecnologías biométricas (lectura de huella dactilar, escaneado de retina y reconocimiento facial o de voz) para acceder a sus aplicaciones, según el estudio IBM Security Future of Identity elaborado por IBM.




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IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years

Today IBM formally unveiled the fifth annual "Next Five in Five" – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years: • You'll beam up your friends in 3-D • Batteries will breathe air to power our devices • You won’t need to be a scientist to save the planet • Your commute will be personalized • Computers will help energize your city



  • Energy & Utilities

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Village Roadshow dials up entertainment value with IBM Cloud

Village Roadshow Limited (ASX: VRL), a leading Australian entertainment company, has selected IBM Cloud (NYSE: IBM) to host its business infrastructure, providing scale and speed to support a premium entertainment experience for customers. The IBM Cloud provides the platform for key operations spanning the diverse needs of Village Roadshow’s four key business divisions - Cinema Exhibition, Theme Parks, Film Distribution and Marketing Solutions.



  • Media & Entertainment

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IBM SECURITY HELPS STOP CYBERCRIMINALS FROM OPENING FRAUDULENT ACCOUNTS

IBM Security today announced a new capability from IBM Trusteer that helps banks identify fraudulent accounts before they are opened. The technology also protects consumers even if they are not a customer of the bank being targeted with the fake account.



  • Banking and Financial Services