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Q1 for 2017 GDP was weak: 0.7% annualized.
Of that, one of the weaker components was consumer spending, which rose only 0.3%, the weakest level for spending since Q4 2009.
Ivanka Booed
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The first daughter, invited to participate on the panel of a women’s summit in Berlin received groans and hisses as she stated that her father was a “tremendous champion of enabling women and families.”
Afterward, Ivanka commented, “It’s fine. I’m used to it,” and said that it was a matter of “politics.”
Ex-CIA Head on Wikileaks: “That’s the World We Live in Right Now”
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Wikileaks dumped a large amount of classified CIA documents this week. Thousands of pages detailed how the CIA’s software and techniques gather information, including how they hack into smartphones, computers, and internet-connected TVs. Wikileaks said the release was just the first installment of a larger collection.
Many apps were named specifically with details about how the CIA is able to enter them. There was also mention of a technique used to “crash” computers.
CIA insiders said the likeliest source of the breach was contractors the CIA worked with, according to PBS NewsHour, who interviewed former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who served during the Obama administration.
Panetta said that the most important thing with the leak was going to be “how do you replace those important tools that have now been made public, and try to reestablish our intelligence capabilities so we can gather the information that is absolutely essential in order to protect our country.
“This has been seriously damaging to the CIA and its ability to conduct intelligence operations. So I imagine that our first focus is on ‘What do we do to try to replace our ability to go after terrorists.”
Panetta commented on earlier leaks and steps that would have been taken to try to make their tools more secure but, “We are clearly living in a world in which the ability to hack has developed to a point where I happen to think that probably anything is vulnerable today.
“So I think you try to take steps to try to protect that kind of sensitive information, try to do what you can to make sure that those who are working for you are taking steps to protect it, contractors are taking steps to protect it, but the bottom line is that in today’s world I think you always have to be prepared that somebody may very well be able to get access to that kind of information, and if they do that they will make it public. I think that’s the world we live in right now.”
Panetta was asked about why the CIA needs these tools, when the NSA is responsible for those things. He said that the CIA is responsible for gathering information from overseas.
“There’s a reason we have not had another 9-11 attack in this country, and a lot of that is because our intelligence agencies, our law enforcement agencies, are sharing information and gathering information that makes sure we protects the United States.”
Back to the Moon? Trump’s Statement Rouses Spaceheads
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When President Donald Trump mentioned “other worlds” in his speech to a join Congress this week, the space community started buzzing.
“American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream,” said Trump at the end of his speech.
According to PBS NewsHour Science Correspondent Miles O’brian a manned mission could take place in 2019, as “all of a sudden there is wide agreement in the space community [the moon] might be the next step.” The mission may take the form of “learning how to live there on a sustained basis” — ie, a manned encampment.
A traditional barrier to space missions has been the large cost. NASA’s budget is around 19 billion, and the Army’s budget for space is around $40 billion, and analysts are considering ways these two organizations could borrow from each other in a force multiplier relationship, making it possible to make a moon mission with reduced costs to the country.
The private sector is also increasingly interested in the moon. SpaceX also is continuing to push toward commercial voyages. Elon Musk’s company announced a tourist trip for two people around the moon before.
Image: Foster + Partners/ESA
YouTube TV Announced
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YouTube announced Tuesday the coming of YouTube TV, a way to watch the kind of programming people normally watch on television, but on YouTube.
“Finally, live TV made for you stream ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC & more,” the entertainment website announced. “Never run out of DVR storage space. 6 accounts, 1 price. $35/month. Cancel anytime.”
The bulletin provided a signup for a mailing list for people to be contacted when the internet TV service was more ready — currently, the status of YouTube TV is “coming soon.”
Trump Bans Major News from White House Press Briefing, Says All News Sources Should Be Named
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President Donald Trump today continued his battle against American media.
“They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name,” said Trump at CPAC, and several mainstream news organizations, including the New York Times, the LA Times, and CNN, were banned from a press briefing Friday.
Trump advisor Steve Bannon yesterday also spoke aggressively with regard to the media, saying, ““It’s going to get worse because [Trump is] going to continue to press his agenda, and as economic conditions get better and jobs get better, they’re going to fight. If you think they’re going to give the country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. Every day, every day is going to be a fight.”
The Associated Press and Time Magazine boycotted the press briefing in solidarity. Sally Buzbee of the Associated Press later told PBS NewsHour, “We felt today was different” from any other time in the past decades of their fight for access to the White House. “When there are news organizations that are being deliberately excluded, I think that’s different.”
She said that it was “really a struggle to get information about what the government is doing,” but that the AP would “do what they always do, which is … fight like mad to find out what is going on in terms of facts and … report that to the public. And we are going to do that every single day and we are not going to stop.
She told Judy Woodruff at PBS that they used unnamed sources when they knew the information was fact, not spin, and the person was in a position of authority to speak on the subject, and the information could not be printed otherwise, although they always tried to get sources to agree to use their names as a “gold standard.”
The move by Trump caused some to raise the issue of Americans’ constitutionally protected right to a free press.
California Senator Removed from Floor While Criticizing Recently Deceased Lawmaker
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Garden Grove Senator Janet Nguyen (R) was removed from the floor by the Senate sergeant-at-arms during her criticism of lawmaker Sen. Tom Hayden, who passed away Oct. 23, 2016 and was given a tribute ceremony two days before.
Hayden is famous for having traveled to North Vietnam with then-wife Jane Fonda in 1974. He was known as a 60’s activist and liberal.
Nguyen made her comment during the adjourn-in-memory portion of the Senate floor session, when members typically offer tributes to constituents who have recently died.
Nguyen began her speech, “Members, today I recognize in memory the millions of Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees who died in seeking for freedom and democracy.
“On Tuesday, you had an opportunity to honor Sen. Tom Hayden. With all due respect, I would like to offer this historical perspective …”
“He sided with the communist government that enslaved and killed millions of Vietnamese, including my family,” Nguyen said. Without U.S. support for South Vietnam, “I wouldn’t be here today. I would be dead.”
She was removed by order of Presiding Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, who interrupted her to call her out of order.
New Walt Whitman Novel Found
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There’s a “golden age of discovery” going on in the scholarly world, and a whole generation of new scholars are unearthing literature and art from past ages using digital databases.
Hidden until now, and uncovered by a sleuth of a scholar, Zachary Turpin, a 33-year-old English doctoral student at the University of Houston, is a novel by America’s bard Walt Whitman, best known for his Leaves of Grass, a tome of poetry in free verse considered one of the most important parts of literature in the country.
Whitman published the first version of Leaves of Grass when he was in his 30’s and was already quite mature as a writer. He’d remarked that, although he’d written things in the past, he would rather that his early “crude and boyish pieces” be forgotten completely.
That’s not what has happened. Turpin was looking through one of Whitman’s journals and found an outline for a novel, which included several character names. Although past scholars had figured the outline was just that and never led to anything more, Turpin did his own search of digital databases.
The names turned up in a newspaper ad for an anonymously written serialized story called “Life and Adventures of Jack Engle.”
He obtained funding from the UH’s discretionary fund, and had the old, large pages printed from the Library of Congress.
The find is expected to change what we understand about the life, career and writing of Walt Whitman.
Couple Arrested Over ‘Peeping Tom’ Drone Videos
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An Orem, Utah couple in their thirties has been charged with allegedly using their drone to take videos of people in their bedrooms and bathrooms, according to police in the area.
The couple, Aaron Dennis Foote, 39, and Terisha Lee Norviel, 34, were each charged with a class A misdemeanor for using a concealed or disguised electronic device to do voyeurism.
The couple found themselves in trouble after an Orem man saw the drone flying outside his bathroom window and chased it down in his truck until it landed in a parking lot.
When he looked at the SD card in the drone, he found several videos of people in their homes. There was also video of a person flying the drone, according to a police affidavit.
Orem police then put out a threatening Facebook post, but ended up locating the people charged by identifying a vehicle in some of the footage.
The Man Who Livestreamed a Birth on Facebook Has Lost Bid to Sue News for Copyright
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When you livestream something and news organizations cover your story, using the images you uploaded in their report, is it copyright infringement?
It is not, according to a recent ruling against a man who in 2016 livestreamed the birth of his child to Facebook (note: he did not intend for the livestream to be public, but attempted to make it viewable only to friends and family members). When many news organizations covered the story, using parts of the video feed to illustrate (for example, ABC used 22 seconds of the 45 minute stream), Kali Kanongataa sued for copyright infringement.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed with the defense that the purpose of the Fair Use defense was to allow portions of works to be used for commentary and news reports. If copyright suits like Kanongataa’s succeeded, news in the current era of social media sharing of digital images would suffer because it wouldn’t be covered as well.
NBA Is Launching a Video Game NBA League
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A pro basketball league for gamers? That’s what the NBA has announced.
“Think of eBulls against the eKnicks,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated.
Silver said that the league will operate much like the NBA. There will be a regular season, playoff bracket and league finals. The season will be five months.
The players will all be custom characters, but the teams will be the same teams as are in the NBA now. So far, none of the NBA teams have fully committed to playing, but the commissioner said he expects about half to join before the opening tip-off.
The first season of this NBA 2K, as it is being called, will begin in 2018, Silver said.
The league, Silver explained, will operate just like the NBA: It’ll have a regular season, a playoff bracket, and a finals matchup. Teams of five players, each with his (or her?) own custom NBA 2K characters, will compete in a five-month season that starts in 2018. There’ll even be a draft, Silver said, although he also noted to the Wall Street Journal that none of the 30 NBA teams have fully committed to this esports league yet. (He expects around half of them to participate in the first year.)
Source: Kotaku
Dubai to Have Flying Driverless Cars This Summer
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In a few months, the UAE will have flying driverless cars, according to Dubai’s transport authority.
They’ve already done test runs for the autonomous aerial vehicles (AAV), made by Chinese firm Ehang.
The vehicles are Ehang 184s and can carry one pilot.
Top speed: 160kph
Flight time: 30 minutes
Ascending speed: 8 meters / second
Landing speed: 4 meters / second
Weight:250kg empty / 360kg with passenger
Max cruising height:3000 feet
Charging time:1-2 hours
“The AAV exhibited at the summit is not just a model; it is a real version that we have already experimented the vehicle in a flight in Dubai sky. The RTA is making every effort to start the operation of the AAV in July 2017,” said Mattar Al Tayer, the director general and chairman of the RTA.
Video of the Ehang 184 test
The RTA, in collaboration with the Chinese firm Ehang, has carried out the first test run of an autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) capable of carrying a human, the Ehang 184, and the authority said it is set to launch operations very soon.
The flying car was exhibited at the World Government Summit in Dubai this week and the chief of the RTA said a summer start date for flights is envisioned.
“The AAV exhibited at the summit is not just a model; it is a real version that we have already experimented the vehicle in a flight in Dubai sky. The RTA is making every effort to start the operation of the AAV in July 2017,” said Mattar Al Tayer, the director general and chairman of the RTA.
The Ehang 184 is fitted with a touchscreen to the front of the passenger seat displaying a map of all destinations in the form of dots. It has preset routes and the passenger selects the intended destination. The vehicle will then start automatic operation, take off and cruise to the set destination before descending and landing in a specific spot. A ground-based centre will monitor and control the entire operation.
“The trial run of the first AAV is in implementation of the directives of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to transform Dubai into the smartest city in the world,” said Mr Al Tayer
“It is also part of the RTA’s endeavors to provide self-driving transport through engaging in the technological tests of self-driving vehicles in a Dubai environment.
“It replicates Dubai Self-driving Transport Strategy aimed at transforming 25 per cent of total individual trips in Dubai into self-driving trips using various modes of transport by 2030,” added Mr Al Tayer.
“The step would also enhance the integration between public transport modes and people happiness through the provision of smooth, quick and innovative mobility.
“We have addressed the highest levels of security in the designing and manufacturing of the Ehang184. The vehicle is fitted with eight main propellers,” Mr Al Tayer said.
“In case of any failure in the first propeller, there would be seven other propellers ready to complete the flight and a smooth landing, while mitigating the impact of the fault sustained by the first propeller.”
Importantly, the vehicle has numerous basic systems all running independently, but at the same time, so that if something malfunctions a standby can take over.
“The AAV is designed to operate under all climatic conditions unless there is a thunderstorm. The vehicle is fitted with highly accurate sensors with a very low-error threshold and can resist vibrations and extreme temperatures,” said Mr Al Tayer.
“Dubai Civil Aviation Authority was a partner in our trials defining the safety criteria required, issuing the permits for trial and inspecting the vehicle, RTA appreciates their contribution.
“The 4G data network is used in communication between the AAV and the ground control center. The company had also provided the support needed to ensure the continued communication between the AAV and the control centre through M2M and LTE technologies,” he explained.