Most nuclear data measurements are performed at accelerators large enough to occupy a geologic formation a kilometer wide. But a portable device that can reveal the composition of materials quickly on-site would greatly benefit cases such as in archaeology and nuclear arms treaty verification. Research published this week in AIP Advances used computational simulations to show that with the right geometric adjustments, it is possible to perform accurate neutron resonance transmission analysis in a device just 5 meters long.

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.

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.

Cracks the 150,000-employee mark as revenue falls just short of $10bn

Indian services giant HCL Technologies has wound up its 19/20 financial year by reporting 15 percent annual growth but a flat Q4.…

A compelling addition to repo house – but is the Redmond flavour too strong?

GitHub had a lot to say about its plans at its virtual Satellite event yesterday, but the most far-reaching was the advent of Codespaces, the ability to edit code online, integrated into the GitHub user interface.…

Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue

Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.…

Problems aside, no one is sure how useful phone-based tracking will be

The NHSX, a technology group within the UK government's National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.…

-Album Details- Title: NJBP Concert Archives I ~ANCIENT FESTIVAL~ Publisher: SuperSweep Catalog Number: SRVD-5001 Release Date: July 6th, 2019 Ripped by: Razakin -Info- Recording of the New Japan BGM Philharmonic Orchestra’s Ancient Festival concert, which was full of Yuzo Koshiro goodness from the Scheme to Streets of Rage and Etrian Odyssey, and as a main […]

A review by Medio DeCritici (165). What I Can Remember - 90s Arcade & The Simpsons (Arcade, 1991)

The Label's "The_Otherside" is this week's addition to Apple Arcade on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. The game is described as both a turn-based RPG and a strategy board game:

Otherside is a turn based RPG and strategy board game where you will control four survivors who hope to push back the shadowy threat. Make your way through each level solving puzzles, fighting monsters, and destroying the spirit anchors that threaten our dimension.

Do you have what it takes to restore the town back to normal and save the day?

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, GreenReaper, Rakuen Growlithe, and Sonious.

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The internet was seen as a major catalyst for the furry fandom finding one another during the times before we held conventions. During that earlier period in the 1990s, conventions and meets were rare, and finding one another was done mostly through the chat rooms and message boards of the past. There was no bandwidth for video or sharing major animation projects, therefore most of our intimate conversations were textual.

For many younger furries, it was a time that was lost in the annals of a distant history. Instead they found themselves joining in amongst a wave of growing conventions being held in various places around the world on any given weekend. Ones where those in custom fursuits march out in the streets openly rather than feeling a stifling isolation of being cooped up in hotel spaces, with a handful of home made creations, being wary of a hostile media looking for a freak show.

Coming out of 2019, it seemed that the time where furry was just an internet thing was fully behind it. However a series of unfortunate events were in line for 2020, a year that has led humanity to be forced into their rooms by an irate Mother Nature as an easily spread virus has forced governments around the globe to take drastic measures to slow its spread and put strict limits on social gatherings. A situation which has forced both the furry fandom, and the internet that brought it together, back to their roots.

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Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, GreenReaper, Rakuen Growlithe, and Sonious.

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Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, GreenReaper, and mwalimu.

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"This is supposed to be a political party. In a healthy society, there would be a democratic process in the Democratic Party, by which elected people would be overseeing these issues by making sure there wasn’t just nepotism and insider dealing," Curry says. "That the political party itself — which is supposed to be the progressive party — has become mortgaged to a small group of Washington insiders, who raise money from large corporate PACs, [and] has become just a dead carcass of what it once was, is the most important piece of information that this contretemps over the data files has emphasized. It’s time for progressives in this country to stand up and demand a genuinely democratic process." Continue reading →

"And you know, we have to stop looking beyond this election cycle and see that this corporate driven ideology, you know, this commodification of the culture, this constant extracting of blood from us as citizens to pay what in essence were private debts of the banks which engaged in casino capitalism, has political consequences. History has taught us that. And Hillary Clinton is only going to further that process." Continue reading →

Пятого июня на Metal Blade состоится выпуск CD и виниловых версий альбомов MERCYFUL FATE, "Don't Break The Oath", "Melissa" и "Mercyful Fate", основой для которых были оригинальные мастер-ленты. Варианты изданий следующие:

Don't Break The Oath CD и LP:

- hardcover digisleeve "mini-LP" CD
- yellow w/ red flares vinyl
- clear w/ orange spots vinyl
- 180g black vinyl
- golden yellow marbled vinyl
- luminous orange marbled vinyl
- clear amber marbled vinyl
- opaque melon marbled vinyl
- flame splatter vinyl
- translucent red vinyl
- orange / red melt vinyl

Melissa CD и LP:

- hardcover digisleeve "mini-LP" CD
- yellow w/ black streaks vinyl
- highlighter yellow w/ red splatter vinyl
- 180g black vinyl
- opaque cherry red vinyl
- opaque golden yellow marbled vinyl
- dark green marbled vinyl
- olive green marbled vinyl
- green / blue color circle w/ red splatter vinyl
- translucent yellow vinyl
- red / black color circle w/ yellow splatter vinyl

Mercyful Fate CD и LP:

- hardcover digisleeve "mini-LP" CD
- black / white edge marbled vinyl
- clear w/ black smoke vinyl
- 180g black vinyl
- cool grey marbled vinyl
- clear ghost white vinyl
- white "blackdust" vinyl
- opaque red vinyl #Mercyful_Fate #MercyfulFate #HeavyMetal #Heavy_Metal

Dial Indicator Clock Anatomy of a rental phishing scam The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever Recipe Fixie Clock with OLED based “fake NIXIE” tubes The placebo effect and veterinary care Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s A list of projects that took an exceptionally long time Trash Amps: Nifty DIY speaker and guitar amp … Continue reading Linkdump: March 2020 →

Руководитель команды McLaren Андреас Зайдль заявил, что в Уокинге не рассматривают сценарий клиентской команды Mercedes – и будут самостоятельно стремиться к успеху…

В следующем году команда McLaren поменяет поставщика силовых установок, перейдя с Renault на Mercedes. Ландо Норрис считает, что это поможет коллективу из Уокинга прибавить.

IBM Research today opened its second research location on the African continent and announced several new project collaborations in the areas of data driven healthcare, digital urban ecosystems and astronomy.

As climate change accelerates, IBM is galvanizing the global science community with a massive infusion of computing resources, weather data, and cloud services to help researchers examine the effects of climate change, and explore strategies to mitigate its effects. IBM pledges to help direct the equivalent of up to $200 million for up to five climate-related projects judged to offer the greatest potential impact, and will then broadly share the experiments' results.

IBM today announced its Health Cloud and Watson cognitive computing capabilities will support health data entered by customers in iOS apps using Apple's ResearchKit and HealthKit frameworks. The move, which complements IBM’s new Watson Health business unit, will arm medical researchers with a secure, open data storage solution, as well as access to IBM’s most sophisticated data analytics capabilities.

ENGIE, a global leader in energy transition, today announced a new initiative with IBM. This nonexclusive, technological and commercial alliance is designed to improve the management of cities by looking at patterns, event correlation, anomaly detection and real-time data across all parts of cities.

IBM Security today announced the results of a global study exploring the implications and effects of data breaches on today’s businesses. Sponsored by IBM Security and conducted by Ponemon Institute, the study found that the average cost of a data breach is $3.62 million globally , a 10 percent decline from 2016 results. This is the first time since the global study was created that there has been an overall decrease in the cost. According to the study, these data breaches cost companies $141 per lost or stolen record on average

IBM Security today announced the launch of two new security testing practice areas focused on automotive security and the Internet of Things (IoT). The new services will be delivered via an elite team of IBM X-Force Red researchers focused on testing backend processes, apps and physical hardware used to control access and management of smart systems.

IBM and Nutanix today announced a multi-year initiative to bring new workloads to hyperconverged deployments.

Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM today announced the opening of a new building for the collaborative research facility at The Hartree Centre in Daresbury. The building, opened by the Duke of York, is the latest evolution of the long-running collaboration between Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM.

At the International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, The Weather Company, an IBM Business, today announced a plan to help improve weather prediction globally via a new collaboration with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a federally funded research and development center for the atmosphere and Earth’s geospace systems.

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.

IBM today announced the first clients to tap into its IBM Q™ early-access commercial quantum computing systems to explore practical applications important to business and science. They include: JPMorgan Chase, Daimler AG, Samsung, JSR Corporation, Barclays, Hitachi Metals, Honda, Nagase, Keio University, Oak Ridge National Lab, Oxford University and University of Melbourne.

IBM today announced that it will help deliver a tailored fan experience through the IBM Cloud at Atlanta’s new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, scheduled to open later this month.

My last column was about crisis management lessons I learned back in 1979 while investigating the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island (TMI). Let’s just say that FEMA wasn’t ready for a nuclear meltdown. Today we turn to the other federal agency I investigated at that same time — the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). While FEMA was simply unprepared and incompetent, the NRC was unprepared and lied about it. Like FEMA, the NRC had recently undergone a rebranding from its previous identity as the Atomic Energy Commission — a schizoid agency that had been charged with both regulating nuclear power and promoting it. It’s difficult to be the major booster of technology while at the same […]






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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.

[Image: Weeds, via Wikipedia.] This story, from July 1988, feels unexpectedly timely today, given our new era of experimental sci-fi building materials, from mushroom bricks to translucent wood. “Two brothers were convicted by a federal jury Thursday on charges that they organized an elaborate hoax in which they duped investors of $3 million with claims … Continue reading "Weed Hoax Architecture"

IBM today announced that M-Industry, one of the world’s largest private label consumer goods company and subsidiary of Switzerland’s largest retailer and supermarket chain, Migros Group, has launched a new IBM designed mobile offering to transform how product promoters work.

As businesses increasingly recognize the opportunity to increase productivity, improve customer experiences and deliver new products and services through intelligent automation, Blue Prism and IBM have joined forces to deliver a secure, scalable and easy-to-use Digital Workforce for enterprises worldwide, such as Walgreens.

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While marketing and sales professionals increasingly find themselves drowning in data, a new IBM study finds that nearly two thirds—64 percent--of surveyed CMOs and sales leaders believe their industries will be ready to adopt cognitive technologies in the next three years. However despite this stated readiness, the study finds that only 24 percent of those surveyed believe they have strategy in place to implement these technologies today.

The IBM board of directors today declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.50 per common share, payable December 9, 2017 to stockholders of record November 10, 2017.

IBM today introduced a new supercomputer powered by one of the world’s fastest microprocessors and cooled by an innovative water system.

IBM and AT&T* today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Sterling Commerce from AT&T for approximately $1.4 billion in cash. The acquisition of the Dublin, OH-based company will expand IBM's ability to help organizations create more intelligent and dynamic business networks by simplifying and automating the way they connect and communicate with customers, partners and suppliers both on-premise or through cloud computing delivery models.

IBM es y ha sido un jugador clave en el progreso de México, liderando en el transcurso de 90 años a diferentes generaciones a través de la transformación de industrias y profesiones, e impactando el panorama económico, académico y social del país gracias a la estrecha colaboración con todos los actores de la sociedad.

IBM today announced it plans to shift $100 million investment over the next five years into a major Research effort which aims to advance mobile services and capabilities for businesses and consumers worldwide.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today it will upgrade the University of Canterbury’s BlueFern High Performance Computing (HPC) facility, enhancing its ability to deliver quality science and technology outcomes and significantly increasing New Zealand’s research capacity.

IBM has successfully prototyped a new software architecture for automating data management, potentially making it easier for researchers to collect usable information from mega-scale data collection projects like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) global telescope which aims to address unanswered questions about our universe.

AXA Seguros anunció que sus ventas digitales en México aumentaron 208% en los últimos tres años, gracias a la tecnología de eCommerce IBM Marketing Cloud, lo que permite a la compañía de origen francés maximizar la atención a sus potenciales compradores y ofrecer ofertas personalizadas.