TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Conference Proceedings on the Web 23: Economic and Social Sustainability at Airports is a compilation of the presentations and a summary of the ensuing discussions at May 7-8, 2018, forum in Washington, D.C. The meeting brought together individuals from airports, airlines, academia, consulting, local and regional government, general sustainability professionals, and others. The forum included sessions on social sustainability, economic sustainability, key...

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Conference Proceedings on the Web 23: Economic and Social Sustainability at Airports is a compilation of the presentations and a summary of the ensuing discussions at May 7-8, 2018, forum in Washington, D.C. The meeting brought together individuals from airports, airlines, academia, consulting, local and regional government, general sustainability professionals, and others. The forum included sessions on social sustainability, economic sustainability, key...

Across the United States, about 7 million children, or 14 percent of all public school students, receive special education services because of their disabilities. Closed schools mean children lose the aides and therapists who provide daily support, leaving parents and teachers to shoulder multiple challenges.

This episode originally aired on April 30, 2020. Across the United States, about 7 million children, or 14 percent of all public school students, receive special education services because of their disabilities. Closed schools mean children lose the aides and therapists who provide daily support, leaving parents and teachers to shoulder multiple challenges.

With large swaths of the country still stifling under quarantine from the COVID-19 pandemic, more people than ever are supplementing their meager IRL social interactions with online alternatives. But but doing so can become a proverbial minefield wit...

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

"America's Funniest Home Videos" will resume the remainder of season 30 the following week at 7:00/6:00c.

The top real estate brokers at The Oppenheim Group are back and this season, the ladies deal with even more mind-blowing mansions, shocking new romances, and explosive truths that will change their lives, relationships and careers forever.

I’ve been spending some of the wintertime outlasting the blues and making sure that Wikipedia’s got entries for every state...

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.

Automated operators can pay up like anyone – or anything – else

Microsoft has detailed a new form of software licence it offers to non-human users.…

Multinationals' UK arms pair up to take on Voda and former state-owned telco

Telcos Telefónica and Liberty Global today confirmed plans to join their O2 UK and Virgin Media subsidiaries into one combined entity in a deal analysts branded a "blockbuster merger".…

There's revenue to be had with being a participant in the payments web, and the Apple experience to measure up against

Samsung has announced it will launch a debit card.…

Date: May 4, 2020

Happy US Teacher Appreciation Week!

Today (and everyday!), we honor teachers across the nation, who continue to work tirelessly to shape our future generations, even in the midst of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

Today’s Doodle was created by Doodler Kevin Laughlin who collaborated with the 54 2020 State Teachers of the Year during their visit to Google this past February. 

Below, Kevin shares more on his experience working with the teachers on today’s Doodle!

I know from firsthand experience how much of a positive impact a teacher can have on a young person's life. I can't express how happy I am to have had the opportunity to be a part of the Teacher Appreciation project this year.

When I met these teachers on campus in February, I was so inspired by their love of teaching and dedication to their students, which I felt each minute I spent with them. As they presented their own Doodle designs, they shared anecdotes about their classrooms, advocated for their students, and spoke passionately about educational equity. 

I am glad to see their work represented in the final Doodle on Google’s homepage today celebrating these often unsung heroes. To every teacher, thank you times infinity! 

Learn more about the many ways Google is celebrating and supporting teachers, in classrooms or at home.

See some of the teacher concepts that inspired today’s Doodle below:

...and all of the concepts from our 54 2020 State Teachers of the Year:

Photos from the Doodle brainstorming session at the 2020 National Teacher of the Year Program

Location: U.S. Virgin Islands, United States

Tags: teachers’ day, National Holiday, education, teaching

On the Young Turks, Cenk Uygur quotes passages from Bob Woodward's book, "The Price of Politics", quoting statements made by President Obama proving that he intends to cut entitlements like social security, medicare, and medicaid. Continue reading →

The middle class needs to vote for Donald Trump in order to oppose the elites, Corporate America, Wall Street, the career politicians, and the media, who have all conspired to destroy the middle class. Donald Trump is the Molotov cocktail, the human hand grenade, that every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them. Continue reading →

NEWS 8 IS YOUR LOCAL ELECTION HEADQUARTERS…. AND TONIGHT…VOODOO ECONOMICS! CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT MARK DAVIS TELLING US HOW REPEALING THE STATE INCOME TAX IS THE LATEST HEATED TOPIC BETWEEN THE CANIDATES FOR GOVERNOR.   DEMOCRAT NED LAMONT IS OPENING A … Continue reading →

We are all keeping our social distance these days, and many of us, other than the superheroes in the medical profession and restocking grocery stores, are spending all of our time in our homes. The delightful ladies of Drunk Austen have thus put together a Virtual JaneCon to be held this weekend, March 28 and…

Plus more ways to support comics creators and new authors launching their books worldwide while social distancing!

The post Social Distancing Roundup: JOHN WICK Livestream, Neil Gaiman reads CORALINE, and an X-MEN ’92 watchalong appeared first on The Beat.

The Joker 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 will feature an all-star creative team including James Tynion IV, Dan Mora, Tom Taylor, and many more

The post PREVIEW: The origin of Punchline is revealed in the JOKER 80TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL appeared first on The Beat.

IBM today announced that Faurecia, one of the world’s leading automotive suppliers, has selected IBM Cloud as a support of a major business transformation designed to accelerate digital manufacturing.

The media name and shame people breaking the rules on social distancing and self-isolation.

IBM and the University of California San Diego have announced a multi-year project to enhance quality of life and independence for aging populations through the new Artificial Intelligence for Healthy Living Center (AIHL), located on the campus of UC San Diego. The groundbreaking center will bring together the technology, artificial intelligence and life sciences knowledge of IBM and UC San Diego to promote critical research and applications in two thematic areas: Healthy Aging and the Human Microbiome.

The Weather Company, an IBM Business, and PRISA Noticias, one of the world’s leading Spanish-language media groups and owner of EL PAÍS newspaper, announced today a collaboration to combine the most accurate forecasts with one of the Spanish-speaking world’s largest media groups. The Weather Company will provide in-depth weather data and forecasts, as well as tailored content across PRISA properties. In turn, PRISA Noticias will provide locally relevant articles, photos and video content within the Spanish versions of The Weather Channel app and website (weather.com). The collaboration will also enable local marketers to access advanced data-driven advertising solutions from IBM Watson Advertising (formerly The Weather Company’s ad sales business) across both companies’ properties.

IBM and Hootsuite announced plans to integrate several of their respective cloud and social technologies as well as expertise, to provide Hootsuite clients a fast and reliable social experience.

IBM today announced continuing momentum for its social business offerings with clients around the world ushering in the next era of collaboration with IBM Verse and Connections. IBM also announced expanded capabilities in its collaboration portfolio with new innovations that make it easier for clients to gain and share business insights across teams.

IBM and MIT today announced that IBM plans to make a 10-year, $240 million investment to create the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab in partnership with MIT. The lab will carry out fundamental artificial intelligence (AI) research and seek to propel scientific breakthroughs that unlock the potential of AI. The collaboration aims to advance AI hardware, software and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas, increase AI’s impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity, and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society. IBM’s $240 million investment in the lab will support research by IBM and MIT scientists.

The U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Corporate Citizenship Center and IBM today issued a new report that explores how efforts by businesses to be a positive force in communities – commonly referred to as corporate social responsibility (CSR) – influences public perception of those companies.

IBM today announced it is teaming up with Toronto-based FinTech company Dream Payments to bring new revenue generating mobile payment offerings to financial institutions and merchants in the United States via the IBM Cloud.

NASCAR and The Weather Company, an IBM Busines, announced today a multi-year agreement that will optimize the weather-related decision process for NASCAR as it incorporates hyper-local weather data and forecasts into their races to improve race-day operations and fan engagement. As part of the agreement, The Weather Company, via The Weather Channel brand, becomes the Official Weather Partner of NASCAR.

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.

IBM today unveiled its next-generation Power Systems Servers incorporating its newly designed POWER9 processor. Built specifically for compute-intensive AI workloads, the new POWER9 systems are capable of improving the training times of deep learning frameworks by nearly 4x allowing enterprises to build more accurate AI applications, faster.

• Con vigencia de 10 años, Banorte e IBM firman alianza estratégica que permitirá establecer las bases de un nuevo modelo de banca enfocado al cliente, y mejorar sustancialmente sus índices de eficiencia para alcanzar niveles cercanos al 40%, así como retornos sobre capital superiores al 20%. El acuerdo incluye servicios de consultoría y de tecnología, investigación y desarrollo. • “Estamos plenamente satisfechos con el acuerdo logrado, pues este suma el mejor talento humano, tanto de IBM, como de Banorte Ixe, y está en línea con nuestra búsqueda de herramientas tecnológicas para servir a nuestros clientes de manera individualizada”: Alejandro Valenzuela.

IBM suma esfuerzos con Movimiento STEM, una asociación civil sin fines de lucro que busca involucrar a diferentes actores sociales para impulsar la educación en México en Ciencia, Tecnología, Ingeniería y Matemáticas, con enfoque de género.

IBM y organizaciones aliadas lanzaron la iniciativa global 'Call for Code', el esfuerzo más grande y ambicioso para reunir a desarrolladores del sector académico y empresarial, para resolver uno de los problemas más acuciantes de la sociedad de nuestro tiempo: prevenir, responder y recuperarse de desastres naturales.