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Submission + - Social Media Manipulation in the Era of AI (rand.org)

Arrogant-Bastard writes: A recent Rand report (PDF) discusses the large-scale use of bots powered by LLMs to manipulate/astroturf social media. An introduction to the report ominously notes: "[...] we have to assume that AI manipulation is ubiquitous, it's proliferating, and we're going to have to learn to live with it. That's a really scary thing.”

Comment like it or not (Score 1) 993

I'd choose Clinton, because I think Trump is a liar, a moron, and a sociopath. None of his accusations has ever been substantiated, yet he keeps making them. It's the idea that sheer repetition will engrain these things into people's minds. He started the birther movement, despite Obama's mother being an American citizen (which makes him a citizen automatically). Trump has had ACTUAL CONVICTS running in his campaign. He's been accused of being a rapist and a pedophile (in a case involving Jeffrey Epstein's party house). He betrayed his own country by asking a foreign power to commit espionage against his opponent. He praises dictators and insults federal judges. He understands America about as well as your typical neo-nazi.
The man has too many people on his side, and a third party will never penetrate that kind of a base. Like it or not, you NEED Clinton if you don't want to see somebody like this become POTUS. Hillary Clinton is not a felon; that's a lie, plain and simple. She is in fact a qualified canidate, someone who took the time to get an education and go through law school. She's built up a solid base. She has far more political experience than Trump, as a former first lady, senator, and secretary of state. Oh yeah, not to mention she's married to a former president.
All of that, coupled with the fact that in all likelyhood, the 'leaked emails' Russia claims to have hacked from the DNC were at best cherry-picked, and probably even doctored. They weren't exactly using gpg.

Submission + - Has radar technology caught up with steath technology? (usni.org)

AbrasiveCat writes: In the continuing game of cat and mouse between offensive and defensive technologies of war, the technology of radar stealth may have been matched by new multiple frequency radar systems. U.S Naval Institute News (http://news.usni.org/2014/07/29/chinese-russian-radars-track-see-u-s-stealth) reports the Chinese and Russians maybe developing such systems. The present radar systems use high frequency waves for accurately locating an incoming target. Stealth aircraft are designed to adsorb or reflect these wave away from the receiver. It turns out longer wave radars can see the stealth aircraft. The longer wave radar lacks the precision of the high frequency radar, but when the two are combined, as the Russians, Chinese (and US) are doing, you can produce accurate targeting radar. The F117 may have been in a golden age for stealth technology, it will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives to late to be effective against other countries with advanced radar systems.

Submission + - NASA Launching Satellite to Track Carbon

An anonymous reader writes: A NASA satellite being prepared for launch early on Tuesday is expected to reveal details about where carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas tied to climate change, is being released into Earth's atmosphere on a global scale. From the article: "The $468 million mission is designed to study the main driver of climate change emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes. Some of the carbon dioxide is sucked up by trees and oceans, and the rest is lofted into the atmosphere, trapping the sun's heat and warming the planet. But atmospheric CO2 levels fluctuate with the seasons and in different regions of the Earth. The natural and human activities that cause the changes are complicated. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2 for short, will be able to take an ultra-detailed look at most of the Earth's surface to identify places responsible for producing or absorbing the greenhouse gas."

Submission + - US National Archives will upload all its holdings to Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)

An anonymous reader writes: The US National Archives has revealed to a Wikipedia newspaper that it will be uploading all of its holdings to the Wikimedia Commons. Dominic McDevitt-Parks told the Signpost that 'The records we have uploaded so far contain some of the most high-value holdings ... However, we are not limiting ourselves ... Our approach has always been simply to upload as much as possible ... to make them as widely accessible to the public as possible.'

Submission + - Google Adds Virtual Reality Street View Mode to Google Maps for Android (roadtovr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: With the launch of Google’s Cardboard VR smartphone adapter at Google I/O 2014 earlier this week, the company hopes to kickstart VR development for Android. In addition to the Cardboard app, Google has pushed out and updated version of Google Maps which includes a VR mode for Street View.
Earth

EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees 410

hether writes "The mystery of the disappearing bees has been baffling scientists for years and now we get another big piece in the puzzle. From Fast Company: 'A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined — electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.' Now environmentalists and bee keepers are calling for an immediate ban of the pesticide clothianidin, sold by Bayer Crop Science under the brand name Poncho."
Censorship

Beating Censorship By Routing Around DNS 216

jfruhlinger writes "Last month, the US gov't shut down a number of sites it claimed were infringing copyright. They did it by ordering VeriSign to change the sites' authoritative domain name servers. This revealed that DNS is subject to government interference — and now a number of projects have emerged to bypass DNS entirely."
Censorship

EasyDNS Falsely Accused of Unplugging WikiLeaks 267

kdawson writes "EasyDNS, a DNS and hosting provider, was mistakenly identified in press accounts as the entity that knocked wikileaks.org off the Net. It wasn't them, it was EveryDNS, a completely separate outfit. EasyDNS suffered a series of online reprisals as the false attribution spread. When WikiLeaks approached them to add to the robustness of their DNS support, EasyDNS said yes." And just to be fair on the disclosure thing- I've been using EasyDNS for many many many years and have always had great service, so I just thought it was cool that they stand up for the cause.
Censorship

China Blocks News Websites In Protest of Nobel 213

DaveNJ1987 writes "The Chinese Government has blocked the websites of the BBC, CNN and Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK, less than 24 hours before dissident Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo is due to be awarded the Nobel peace prize. China has been vocally critical of the plans to award the jailed writer the prize and has even gone as far as setting up its own 'Confucius peace prize' to rival the awards being held in Oslo tomorrow."
Power

New Wave Power Research Rising Off Oregon Coast 158

necro81 writes "A prototype buoy has been launched off the Oregon coast to try generating electrical power from the ever-present waves. The OSU device works like a giant shake-up flashlight. It is one of several competing designs to take advantage of a potential clean energy goldmine. It will be years before substantial power is contributed to the grid, but several companies have received permits to develop test platforms. The New York Times has an article that surveys the current outlook for wave energy, which it compares to wind energy's prospects back in the 1980s. Concerns about impacts to wildlife and fishing remain to be answered."
Mozilla

Mozilla Inks Deal With Chinese Search Giant 131

nm writes "The Mozilla Corporation's subsidiary in China has signed a deal with Chinese search engine giant Baidu. Baidu is already included as an option in Firefox's Chinese localization, but this deal formalizes the relationship between Mozilla and and the search company. Mozilla has established several other initiatives in China to help increase Firefox adoption, particularly in universities. The article notes that Firefox has seen limited uptake in China; the browser Maxthon is the second most popular after Internet Explorer. Maxthon is thought to have as much as 30 percent of the Chinese browser market."
The Media

Submission + - Congress Creates Copyright Cops (arstechnica.com)

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000 for infringing upon a $0.99 song, Congress is proposing new copyright cops in the "PRO IP" Act of 2007, specifically the creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). They also feel that the authorities need the authority to seize any computers used for infringement and to send copyright cops abroad to help other countries enforce US laws. MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, "films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year," though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion. However, even with the support of most of the top members of the House Judiciary Committee, the bill may require more work before it passes: USIPER needs a cooler acronym that doesn't sound like a combination of usurper and Lucifer."

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