Online drug dealers better watch out because there is a new machine learning sheriff on the internet. Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a machine learning technology that mined Twitter to identify drug dealers selling opioids online. Between June and November of 2015 they found over 600K tweets that contained a number of keywords of prescription opioids. Of those, 1,778 posts were marketing the sale of the controlled substances and 90 percent included hyperlinks for online purchase. A majority of retailers had web addresses based in Pakistan, the researchers found. As for me, I’m not a war on drugs warrior, but I do understand that unregulated use of hard drugs is a drain on society and something needs to be done to combat the ill effects of drug use. What that is I just don’t know. Read the original study here.
“Our study demonstrates the utility of a technology to aid in these efforts that searches social media for behavior that poses a public threat, such as the illegal sale of controlled substances,” Tim K. Mackey, UC San Diego School of Medicine associate professor of anesthesiology, said in a press release.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Illegal Online Drug Peddlers Being Rounded Up by New Computer Technology
Monthly Archives: October 2017
US Government Accountability Office argues for acting on climate change
Enlarge / A recent drought in Texas, which led to agricultural losses, has been tied to our warming planet. (credit: Bob Nichols, USDA)
The US Government Accountability Office is a nonpartisan organization that performs analysis and investigations for the Senate and House. Recently, two senators—Maine Republican Susan Collins and Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell—asked it to look into what has become a contentious political issue: the government’s response to climate change. The report that resulted suggests that the US is already spending money to respond to climate change, and it will likely spend more as the Earth continues to warm. But it suggests that the US has no plans for figuring out how best to minimize these costs.
It’s a message that’s unlikely to go over well with either the current administration or the Republican majority in either house of Congress.
Climate and the economy
The report focuses on the economic costs of climate change and how those costs end up being covered by the federal government. It concludes that the feds faced a bill of $350 billion due to extreme weather and fires, including more than $200 billion for aid and recovery, $90 billion for payouts on crop and flood insurance, and nearly $30 billion for repair to federal facilities. US government scientists expect that extreme events are likely to increase in a warming climate, and the GAO sees no reason to doubt that conclusion, accepting a figure of between $12 and $35 billion of added annual expenses by mid-century. For comparison, the annual budget of NASA is $18 billion.
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Source: Ars Technica – US Government Accountability Office argues for acting on climate change
You can’t buy a self-driving BMW until 2021 (and that’s a good thing)
At this point, if you’re an automaker and you’re not talking about autonomous cars, you might want to take a long hard look at your product roadmap. During a briefing at its Mountain View research campus, BMW talked about how it plans to bring a leve…
Source: Engadget – You can’t buy a self-driving BMW until 2021 (and that’s a good thing)
Where to Find Fulfillment Without Romantic Love
“Lately I’ve been feeling a bit hopeless about finding love,” writes Ask MetaFilter user seraph9, in a post called “Alternatives to Love.” “What are your most rewarding, fulfilling, amazing non-romantic experiences or undertakings?” Respondents listed enriching activities that illustrate how much more there is to life…
Source: LifeHacker – Where to Find Fulfillment Without Romantic Love
Prove To Your Parents That Film Degree Is Worth Something With This $54 Remote Control Dolly
File this one under niche, but really cool. For $54, you get a tiny dolly that can move your GoPro, smartphone, or DSLR around in a circle around a small object, or in a straight line. It comes with a remote, and can move at three different speeds. Now get out there and make the next American Vandal.
Source: Gizmodo – Prove To Your Parents That Film Degree Is Worth Something With This Remote Control Dolly
Trump announces program to test drones beyond FAA regulations
President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao announced the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program today — an initiative aimed at exploring expanded use of drones. While the Obama administration began allowing some drone a…
Source: Engadget – Trump announces program to test drones beyond FAA regulations
Tesla's Mass Firings Spread To SolarCity as Employees Say They Were Blindsided
Tesla has laid off over 200 employees from its SolarCity business for performance reasons, just over a week after firing hundreds more from its motor vehicle division. From a report: Employee dismissals at Tesla are continuing, according to six former and current employees, and have spread from its motor division to SolarCity offices across the U.S. Echoing reports from earlier this month, these SolarCity employees say they were surprised to be told they were fired for performance reasons, claiming Tesla had not conducted performance reviews since acquiring the solar energy business. Earlier this month, Tesla began firing hundreds of employees after it announced a recall of 11,000 Model X SUVs. Tesla had already announced plans to lay off 205 SolarCity employees at its Roseville, California, office by the end of October this year. However, SolarCity employees across the country have been fired in the last two weeks — not just in California, but also in Nevada, Arizona, Utah and beyond, according to these employees.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Tesla’s Mass Firings Spread To SolarCity as Employees Say They Were Blindsided
San Juan Mayor Condemns Fishy Puerto Rican Energy Contract Awarded to Tiny Montana Firm
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz harshly criticized the recent news that tiny Montana-based firm Whitefish Energy has been awarded a no-bid contract worth hundreds of million of dollars to repair Puerto Rico’s devastated electrical grid.
Source: Gizmodo – San Juan Mayor Condemns Fishy Puerto Rican Energy Contract Awarded to Tiny Montana Firm
Dear God: Competitive Eater Matt Stonie Eating 100 Slices Of White Bread
This is a video of competitive eater/my personal try-hard-and-believe-in-yourself hero Matt Stonie eating 100 slices of Wonder brand white bread in 34 minutes. For reference, that’s fifty regular sandwiches worth, or 100 fold-overs (I’m super sick at math). About halfway through he starts adding some jelly, presumably because a man can only eat so much plain white bread before he can’t stand it anymore. In Matt’s case, that number was 52 slices. I couldn’t even eat one slice of bread without putting something on it, or at least not mashing it up into a little ball first. Remember when you used to do that when you were a kid? Those were the days. “You still do that.” I’m young at heart. The rest of me is at least 400 though.
Keep going for the video, which was sped up at parts so it only lasts seven minutes.
Source: Geekologie – Dear God: Competitive Eater Matt Stonie Eating 100 Slices Of White Bread
Jazz Up Your Dosa Batter With Grains and Vegetables
We Indians love our fermented food, from the crumbly steamed dhokla and fluffy white idlis, to the fried wadas and the flavourful kadhi. One of the staples, preferred in the southern part of the country but relished all over, is the humble dosa. This protein-rich crepe is made from a fermented batter of urad dal (…
Source: LifeHacker – Jazz Up Your Dosa Batter With Grains and Vegetables
Honda's Sports EV Concept puts an AI assistant in the passenger seat
If you thought Honda’s Urban EV Concept was a clever mix of modern electric car technology with boxy retro style, you’d better brace yourself. The automaker has unveiled the Sports EV Concept, which adapts that new-and-old formula to a low-slung, ni…
Source: Engadget – Honda’s Sports EV Concept puts an AI assistant in the passenger seat
Human water use is draining the world’s saline lakes
Enlarge / The two brown, rocky areas near the water’s edge used to be islands. (credit: NASA)
Saline lakes, like the Caspian Sea, the Dead Sea, the Salton Sea, and of course the Great Salt Lake, have served as recreational playgrounds and tourist attractions, supported thriving fishing and shipping industries, and yielded minerals to be extracted for commercial and industrial applications. A slightly less quantifiable benefit they used to grant was providing habitats for waterbirds.
But these lakes are getting smaller and smaller—and becoming saltier and saltier—as we siphon off ever more of their water, predominantly for agricultural purposes. A perspective piece published in Nature Geoscience this week entitled “Decline of the world’s saline lakes” bemoans that “the ecosystem services provided by saline lakes are real, but less easily quantified [than the benefits of water consumption], and may have a constituency that is less well established in law, business, and social practice.”
The economic benefits of taking water from these lakes for agriculture is apparent, whereas the costs of doing so are not as obvious. But the costs are there. The lakes’ decreasing surface may render their shores inaccessible for mineral extraction. Their increasing salinity may cause the collapse of recreation, tourism, fisheries, and ecosystems, as the species that used to thrive in them can’t tolerate all that salt.
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Source: Ars Technica – Human water use is draining the world’s saline lakes
Supercomputers Help Scientists Improve Seismic Forecasts for California
Researchers have used the Stampede1 and 2 supercomputers to complete one of the world’s largest earthquake simulation models: The Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3). The simulations showed that in the week following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, the likelihood of another magnitude 7.0 quake in California would be up to 300 times greater than the week before. The impact of such an improved model goes beyond the fundamental scientific improvement it represents. It has the potential to impact building codes, insurance rates, and the state’s response to a powerful earthquake. In the long run this should help save lives and property and anything that can do that gets my seal of approval.
Among its novel findings, the researchers’ simulations showed that in the week following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, the likelihood of another magnitude 7.0 quake would be up to 300 times greater than the week beforehand. This scenario of ‘cascading’ ruptures was demonstrated in the 2002 magnitude 7.9 Denali, Alaska, and the 2016 magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura, New Zealand earthquakes, according to David Jacobson and Ross Stein of Temblor.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Supercomputers Help Scientists Improve Seismic Forecasts for California
Kaspersky Uploaded US Documents, But Deleted Them Quickly
In the latest round of Kaspersky drama, the AP is reporting that Kaspersky’s anti-virus software had automatically scraped powerful digital surveillance tools off an NSA server. Kaspersky is stating that the filles were immediately deleted, “If we see confidential or classified information, it will be immediately deleted and that was exactly (what happened in) this case,” he said, adding that the order had since been written into company policy.
The article goes into more detail on what happened. Eugene Kaspersky said in an interview that Analysts at his company were already on the trail of the Equation Group – a powerful group of hackers later exposed as an arm of the NSA – when a computer in the United States was flagged for further investigation. The machine’s owner, identified in media reports as an NSA worker, had run anti-virus scans on their home computer after it was infected by a pirated copy of Microsoft Office, according to a Kaspersky timeline released Wednesday.
The rabbit hole of the Kaspersky stuff just keeps getting deeper. From the US Government moving to ban the software in federal agencies and stores pulling it off the shelves, I really don’t think we’ve heard the end of this any time soon.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Kaspersky Uploaded US Documents, But Deleted Them Quickly
Dish Expands Alexa Support to its Joey Receivers
Back in May, Dish became the first company to integrate Alexa for hands-free TV playback, and now they’ve expanded Alexa capability to their Joey receivers. If you connect a Echo device to the receiver you can now voice control all of your TVs throughout the home. Dish is hoping TV voice control will encourage their customers to stick to traditional pay TV rather than cut the cord. As far as I’m concerned this isn’t a feature that would make me stick to traditional pay TV. Cost and convenience matter too much to me to leave streaming media.
Dish says its integrations work with Amazon Echo, Echo Show and Echo Dot devices, and each Dish set-top box must be paired with its own Echo to work. With the addition of Joey, the current lineup of Dish devices that work with Alexa include Hopper (all generations) and its Joey, Wireless Joey, 4K Joey and Super Joey clients, as well as DISH’s Wally single-tuner HD receiver.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Dish Expands Alexa Support to its Joey Receivers
Amazon Prime members won’t have to pay for ‘premium’ Alexa skills
Amazon’s latest perk for Prime subscribers? “Free” access to premium Alexa skills. It’s starting small, with Prime members getting access to an additional six Double Jeopardy! clues within the Jeopardy! skill. If you aren’t ponying up for Prime, but…
Source: Engadget – Amazon Prime members won’t have to pay for ‘premium’ Alexa skills
Google launches the Android 8.1 Developer Preview
Google just launched the developer preview of Android 8.1. The headline feature of the OS update seems to be a new “Neural Networks API” (NNAPI), which Google says “provides apps with hardware acceleration for on-device machine learning operations.”
“Hardware acceleration” sounds a lot like an API that will make use of the “Pixel Visual Core,” the extra Google-designed SoC present in the Pixel 2. We were told Google’s chip would be enabled with Android 8.1, but it’s odd that Google’s announcement doesn’t mention it by name. Perhaps the NNAPI will use the Pixel Visual Core on the Pixel 2, but on other devices it will use whatever other special hardware is available.
Other than the “NNAPI,” there aren’t a ton of changes outlined in Google’s documentation. There are a few updates or bug fixes for things like autofill and notifications, but we’ll have to dig in ourselves to find any other interesting items.
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Source: Ars Technica – Google launches the Android 8.1 Developer Preview
Android Studio 3.0 Released With Kotlin Support, Java 8 Features
Google today has pushed out Android Studio 3.0 as the latest stable release of this integrated development environment for their mobile operating system…
Source: Phoronix – Android Studio 3.0 Released With Kotlin Support, Java 8 Features
The Most Mind-Boggling 'Sexy' Costumes of Halloween 2017
Halloween is one week away, and you know what that means: It’s time for the annual collection of utterly confusing Halloween costumes that are meant to be sexy, but are mostly just… confusing.
Source: Gizmodo – The Most Mind-Boggling ‘Sexy’ Costumes of Halloween 2017
Scientists Confirm Light's Crazy Quantum Mechanical Properties in Space
Here’s the thing about quantum mechanics: it works on Earth, but how do we know that it works elsewhere—like in space? That requires testing it over and over again, building wild experiments that send particles all over the planet. After some new results, things still seem to check out.
Source: Gizmodo – Scientists Confirm Light’s Crazy Quantum Mechanical Properties in Space