I guess governments do this when they no longer trust anonymous
citizens to follow their laws. “We know who you are, we know what
you did, and since we know you are guilty, we impose this penalty.”
Angus Berwick of Reuters reports:
- Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the “carnet de la patria,” or “fatherland card,” manufactured by Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp.
- The ID transmits data about cardholders to government computer servers, and is increasingly linked to subsidized food, health, and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.
- The fatherland card, critics argue, illustrates how China, through state-linked companies like ZTE, exports technological know-how that can help like-minded governments track, reward, and punish citizens.
Read more on Business
Insider.
The
start of the 2020 Election disruption?
Suspected
Russian Hackers Impersonate State Department Aide
U.S.
cybersecurity experts say hackers impersonating a State Department
official have targeted U.S. government agencies, businesses and think
tanks in an attack that bears similarity to past campaigns linked to
Russia.
The
"spear phishing" attempts began on Wednesday, sending
e-mail messages purported to come from a department public affairs
official.
… The
State Department said: "The Department is aware of the recent
malicious cyber event involving the spoofing (impersonation) of a
Department employee reported by U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye. No
Department networks were compromised by this malicious
cyber attempt." [The
wording makes me wonder what was
compromised. Bob]
Nothing
really new here. This is the high end of the “Alexa, turn on the
lights” AI spectrum. If I’m not ready to trust a self-driving
car, I’m going to really have to be convinced that some
mini-Terminator can be trusted.
… The decision to use a lethal weapon in
battle against combatants has always been a decision made by a human
being. That may soon change. Modern advancements in artificial
intelligence, machine image recognition and robotics have poised some
of the world’s largest militaries on the edge of a new future,
where weapon systems may find and kill people on the battlefield
without human involvement. Russia, China and the United States are
all working on autonomous platforms that pair weapons with sensors
and targeting computers; Britain
and Israel are already using weapons with autonomous
characteristics: missiles and drones that can seek and attack an
adversary’s radar, vehicle or ship without a human command
triggering the immediate decision to fire.
(Coincidentally)
YouTube is
now showing ad-supported Hollywood movies
Last month, YouTube
quietly began showing ad-supported movies for the first time, giving
viewers access to Hollywood titles including "The
Terminator" and "Legally Blonde" for free.
Global Warming! Global Warming! There haven’t
been quite as many stories recently.
NASA warns
long cold winter could hit space in months bringing record low
temperatures
… “The thermosphere always cools off during
Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle
affects our planet,” explains Mlynczak.
“We’re not there quite yet,” he said of the
record cold, “but it could happen in a matter of months."
The most famous example of a prolonged sunspot
minimum is the Maunder Minimum, referring to a period around 1645 to
1715 during which sunspots become exceedingly rare.
Maunder coincided with the middle part of the
Little Ice Age, when Europe and North America experienced colder
temperatures - fuelling speculation that the two were connected.
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