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Study: Trump’s paid Peter Thiel’s Palantir $1.5B so far to build ICE’s mass-surveillance network

Aug12
by on August 12, 2019 at 8:28 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, artificial intelligence


Perhaps no other company has profited more from the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrants — and US citizens of similar appearance — than Peter Thiel‘s Palantir. A recent investigation, conducted by Mijente, revealed the US government has at least 29 active contracts with the company worth approximately $1.5 billion. This covers Palantir’s work with all four branches of the military, Border Patrol, ICE, and Homeland Security, but it doesn’t even touch on the hundreds of contracts it has with local law enforcement throughout the country. All in all the company’s valued at over $20 billion. Peter Thiel, the tech…

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Twitch blunder leads to porn being broadcast on Ninja’s old channel

Aug12
by on August 12, 2019 at 7:09 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Social Media


Twitch has not had the best August, to put it lightly. First the world’s biggest streamer fully defects to its heretofore-niche competitor, Mixer, and now, over the weekend, it’s apparently been busted for letting pornography through its filters — and promoting it on said streamer’s channel. How in the heck did we get here? When Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced he was moving from Twitch to Mixer, the focus was mostly on the latter. Given Mixer’s not a very large or well-known website, there was some curiosity as to how it’d handle the sudden influx of fans that would follow Ninja to the…

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Samsung and Xiaomi want to put a 108-megapixel camera in your phone

Aug12
by on August 12, 2019 at 7:02 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, Plugged


Ask many a photographer about resolution, and they’ll tell you “megapixels don’t matter.” For most people 8 megapixels or so is enough. But that line of thinking isn’t stopping Samsung and Xiaomi from teaming up to create a massive 108-megapixel  meant for your smartphone. The ‘Isocell Bright HMX‘ is not just massive in terms of its megapixel count – it’s a physically huge sensor (for a smartphone, coming in at a 1/1.33-inch diagonal. This puts it close to enthusiast cameras like Sony’s RX-100 series, which feature 1-inch sensors. It’s physical size alone should account for shallower depth of field and…

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Researchers hacked a Canon DSLR with Bitcoin demanding ransomware

Aug12
by on August 12, 2019 at 1:59 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Hard Fork


Bitcoin demanding ransomware knows no bounds, and the latest potential victim? DSLR cameras. A group of security researchers have managed to exploit vulnerabilities in a Canon EOS 80D digital camera to hold its owner’s photos to a Bitcoin ransom, The Inquirer reports. The researchers from cybersecurity firm Check Point Research exploited the camera‘s picture transfer protocol (PTP), a piece of software typically used to transfer images from the device to a computer. Many modern cameras can transfer images over a WiFi connection, this is  formerly known as PTP/IP (picture transfer protocol over internet protocol). While this is a useful feature if…

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How plants’ ability to ‘think’ might force us to redefine intelligence

Aug12
by on August 12, 2019 at 1:44 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, syndication, world


Some might balk at the idea that plants made of roots, stems and leaves could have intelligence or consciousness. But scientists have actually been hotly debating this idea for decades. A recent paper sought to finally draw a line under this question by dismissing it completely. It argued that the key physical features found in conscious animals are missing in plants. All such species have an information processing network made up of nerve cells arranged into complex hierarchies that converge in a brain. Plants, on the other hand, do not have nerve cells at all, let alone a brain. But…

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