Science & Technology

Google's ad technology mirroring of Facebook model exposes it to privacy backlash

Mark Bergen and Ben Brody
Bloomberg
Wed, 18 Apr 2018 14:52 UTC

No one at Google envied Mark Zuckerberg last week as he was being grilled by Congress. But for years, they certainly coveted the personal data that made Facebook Inc. a formidable digital ad player. And the strategies they set to compete have now placed Google squarely in the cross hairs of a privacy backlash against the world's largest social-media company.

The House and Senate questioned Zuckerberg for about 10 hours after revelations that data on millions of Facebook users got into the hands of Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that worked on President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The hearings centered on the digital information and machinery Facebook built up to serve targeted ads. No company has a bigger business doing that -- except Google. When the grilling ended, Democrats and some Republicans called for broad privacy regulation, putting Google on the hot seat next to Zuckerberg.

"Google, in every respect, collects more data. Google, in every respect, has a much bigger advertising business," said David Chavern, president of News Media Alliance, a publisher trade group. Rather than "a Facebook privacy law," he expects regulation to target the entire industry.

Education, not income, a better predictor of life expectancy

Medical Xpress
Mon, 16 Apr 2018 14:42 UTC

Rising income and the subsequent improved standards of living have long been thought to be the most important factors contributing to a long and healthy life. However, new research from Wolfgang Lutz and Endale Kebede, from IIASA and the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) has shown that instead, the level of education a person has is a much better predictor of life expectancy.

In 1975, Samuel Preston developed the Preston Curve, which plotted the GDP per person on the horizontal axis against life expectancy on the vertical axis. The curve shows a clear but flattening upward trend in life expectancy with increasing GDP. The curves also shift upwards over time which has been explained by better healthcare.

In 1985, John Caldwell and Pat Caldwell suggested instead that lowered mortality resulted from better female education. In their new paper, Lutz and Kebede used global data from 174 countries from 1970-2015 to test the two hypotheses. Whether income or education is more important for improving health and life expectancy is an important question for policymakers deciding where to direct funding.

Comment: Some countries are reporting a decrease in life expectancy. Considering the generally poor quality of education this is no surprise.

Desperate global warming 'scientists' theorize Earth's cyclical climate fluctuations due to ancient unknown civilisations

Rob Waugh
Metro
Wed, 18 Apr 2018 07:41 UTC

They really are desperate to prove their Global Warming Thesis:

Fifty-six million years ago, the Earth warmed far above the temperatures we experience today - and ice at the poles melted.

Could the event - the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) - be evidence of global warming caused by an extinct civilisation which ruled Earth before mankind?

Comment: The dinosaurs came and went because of global cataclysms and abrupt climate change - are they at fault because they didn't invent electric cars? Dinosaurs appeared much earlier, then their numbers exploded during planetary upheaval and mass extinction event

It sounds like the kind of crackpot conspiracy to be found on 'ancient alien' UFO sites, but scientists have seriously investigated the idea.

Comment: Our planet cycles through extended ice age periods and short inter-glacial periods, but they have nothing to do with the use of fossil fuels. Increasingly, it seems more likely to be due to effects from our Sun, which is also related to Electric Universe theory and cyclical catastrophe's.

After all, nearly all the planets in our solar system, including our star, as well as others, are showing significant signs of change.

See:

Also:

And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

Space diamonds found in meteorite came from an ancient destroyed planet

Chris Mahon
Outer Places
Tue, 17 Apr 2018 11:51 UTC

What's cooler than finding a meteorite? Finding diamonds in that meteorite. And what's even cooler than finding space diamonds? Discovering that those diamonds may be from an ancient lost protoplanet that was destroyed in the early days of our solar system.

According to a new study published Nature Communications, that's exactly what we have on our hands-one of the study's co-authors, Philippe Gillet, claims that the large diamonds his team found in the Almahata Sitta meteorite "cannot be the result of a shock but rather of growth that has taken place within a planet."

The Almahata Sitta meteorite crashed into the Nubian Desert of Sudan in 2008 and has been a subject of study ever since.

The team of scientists studying its interior found both graphite and diamonds and discovered that the latter contained crystals that are only formed under extreme pressure conditions-scientists estimated it would take around 200,000 bars, or 2.9 million pounds per square inch (psi) to create them.

Researchers accidentally improve plastic-eating enzyme

RT
Tue, 17 Apr 2018 16:07 UTC

Two years after scientists reported the presence of plastic-munching bacteria at a recycling plant in Japan, accidental mutations to an enzyme has boosted its pollution-digesting powers.

More than 300 million tons of plastic is produced globally, with environmentalists warning that oceans are becoming choked by materials such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - the key component of plastic bottles and packaging.

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth and the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) say they have inadvertently improved PETase, an enzyme used by the bacteria Ideonella sakaiensis, to make it better at degrading plastic.

New AI technology maybe able to read your inner feelings

Chris Mahon
Outer Places
Mon, 16 Apr 2018 11:55 UTC

If you thought Facebook and Cambridge Analytica were on the cutting edge when it comes to violating privacy, you haven't seen anything yet: new tech from Dolby Labs may be able to read your inner feelings based on subtle tells like eye dilation, skin heat, brainwaves, speech patterns, and carbon dioxide on your breath.

If perfected, it won't matter how composed you seem to the naked eye-a complex AI program will be able to add up all these factors and use them to create a picture of your psychology.

This isn't the first technology to start peering into people's headspace. Earlier this month, we reported on a new device created by the University of California that can translate brain waves directly into words in real time.

It's an amazing breakthrough for neuroscience, but it's also the first, troubling step toward real-life mind-reading, which may expose our private thoughts to the world.

'Satellite' junk DNA may actually be essential for human survival

RT
Mon, 16 Apr 2018 14:26 UTC

When biologists first examined the landscape of human genes they were perplexed by the, seemingly useless pieces of DNA that floated in the structure. It was labelled 'junk DNA' and the name stuck.

However, new research suggests it may not be junk at all. In fact the DNA, which is now called satellite DNA, plays a crucial role in holding the genome together and, by extension, the survival of much of life on Earth.

The study, which has been published in the journal eLife, outlines that the "junk" is actually essential for the cell's survival because it performs the vital function of ensuring that chromosomes bundle correctly inside the cell's nucleus.

"We were not quite convinced by the idea that this is just genomic junk," lead author on the study, Yukiko Yamashita, said."If we don't actively need it, and if not having it would give us an advantage, then evolution probably would have gotten rid of it. But that hasn't happened."

Stream of viruses circling planet, trillions fall from the sky every day

Jim Robbins
The New York Times
Fri, 13 Apr 2018 09:26 UTC

© Biophoto Associates/Science Source
Viruses attached to a fragment of a bacterial cell wall. “Viruses modulate the function and evolution of all living things,” scientists wrote last year. “But to what extent remains a mystery.”

High in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain, an international team of researchers set out four buckets to gather a shower of viruses falling from the sky.

Scientists have surmised there is a stream of viruses circling the planet, above the planet's weather systems but below the level of airline travel. Very little is known about this realm, and that's why the number of deposited viruses stunned the team in Spain. Each day, they calculated, some 800 million viruses cascade onto every square meter of the planet.

Most of the globe-trotting viruses are swept into the air by sea spray, and lesser numbers arrive in dust storms.

"Unimpeded by friction with the surface of the Earth, you can travel great distances, and so intercontinental travel is quite easy for viruses", said Curtis Suttle, a marine virologist at the University of British Columbia. "It wouldn't be unusual to find things swept up in Africa being deposited in North America."

The study by Dr. Suttle and his colleagues, published earlier this year in the International Society of Microbial Ecology Journal, was the first to count the number of viruses falling onto the planet. The research, though, is not designed to study influenza or other illnesses, but to get a better sense of the "virosphere," the world of viruses on the planet.

Comment: See also:

Space hunter: Scientists pin alien exoplanet hopes to NASA's latest sky scanner, TESS

RT
Sun, 15 Apr 2018 10:47 UTC

Mankind's hunt for alien life and potentially habitable planets continues Monday, when a new rocket will push through the Earth's atmosphere carrying precious NASA cargo.

Instead of the regular care packages usually sent to NASA astronauts on the International Space Station, SpaceX hopes to fire an exoplanet satellite known as TESS into the great expanse. As it stands, US Air Force meteorologists predict an 80-percent chance for favourable liftoff weather.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the heir to NASA's Kepler exoplanet mission throne, is set to orbit Earth while pointing it's viewfinders out to space. It's thought the satellite will pull back the mystery surrounding thousands of potentially life-sustaining exoplanets, some of which could be colonized in the future or contain astonishing alien life.

Watch: Thirty-two discordant metronomes achieve synchrony in a matter of minutes

Robbie Gonzalez
io9
Thu, 27 Sep 2018 20:00 UTC

If you place 32 metronomes on a static object and set them rocking out of phase with one another, they will remain that way indefinitely. Place them on a moveable surface, however, and something very interesting (and very mesmerizing) happens.

The metronomes in this video fall into the latter camp. Energy from the motion of one ticking metronome can affect the motion of every metronome around it, while the motion of every other metronome affects the motion of our original metronome right back. All this inter-metranome "communication" is facilitated by the board, which serves as an energetic intermediary between all the metronomes that rest upon its surface. The metronomes in this video (which are really just pendulums, or, if you want to get really technical, oscillators) are said to be "coupled."

Comment: See also:

Finches keep the beat with a mental metronome

It was interesting when the brothers (their family owns the dealerships/service center that were vandalized - something of like 130+ cars burned...

Scoot Over

I ain't going to watch any more than I didn't watch the OJ trial, which ended exactly as I predicted. The thing is that the state should have...

Rowan Cocoan

.. .. today's' atta bot' awards nominee: [Link]

Jibrish

The vaccine mandates are absurd, and they are going to cause enormous problems all over the country. Only a small minority of people understand...

dom38

.. .. Laughing, as Katz owns Court TV, replete no less than scripted, staged events, societal conditioning, always Johnny on the spot, no...

Jibrish

Science & Technology

Google's ad technology mirroring of Facebook model exposes it to privacy backlash

Education, not income, a better predictor of life expectancy

Desperate global warming 'scientists' theorize Earth's cyclical climate fluctuations due to ancient unknown civilisations

Space diamonds found in meteorite came from an ancient destroyed planet

Researchers accidentally improve plastic-eating enzyme

New AI technology maybe able to read your inner feelings

'Satellite' junk DNA may actually be essential for human survival

Stream of viruses circling planet, trillions fall from the sky every day

Space hunter: Scientists pin alien exoplanet hopes to NASA's latest sky scanner, TESS

Watch: Thirty-two discordant metronomes achieve synchrony in a matter of minutes

Latest News

Picture of the Day

Quote of the Day

Recent Comments

Quantum Quirk

Contact Us