Posts

Showing posts with the label news

'Kill them all' -- Russian-linked Facebook accounts called for violence

Image
Facebook accounts run by Russian trolls repeatedly called for violence against different social and political groups in the U.S., including police officers, Black Lives Matter activists and undocumented immigrants. Posts from three now-removed Facebook groups created by the Russian Internet Research Agency suggest Russia sought not only to meddle in U.S. politics but to encourage ideologically opposed groups to act out violently against one another. The posts are  part of a database  compiled by Jonathan Albright, the research director at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, who tracks and analyzes Russian propaganda. For example, "Being Patriotic," a group that regularly posted content praising Donald Trump's candidacy, stated in an April 2016 post that Black Lives Matter activists who disrespected the American flag should be "be immediately shot." The account accrued about 200,000 followers before it was shut down. Another R...

Declassified Docs Show NSA Trying To Prosecute A Journalist For His Successful FOIA Requests

Image
from the  war-on-whistleblowers,-leakers,-and-FOIA-records-requesters  dept MuckRock has been digging into a large pile of declassified CIA documents for the past several months and has come up with some surprising finds. It recently liberated nearly 13 million pages of CIA documents -- known as the CREST archive -- via a FOIA lawsuit. Since this monumental release, MuckRock has covered everything from a CIA report on an Italian pasta shortage to deeper, darker topics like a CIA asset in Mexico being linked to a long list of atrocities. Read More::  US Army Working On A Device That Can Assess Traumatic Brain Injury On The Battlefield Digging through the CIA's archives has dug up dirt on other agencies as well. Emma Best details another MuckRock/CIA gem -- one that shows the NSA attempting to prosecute a journalist for obtaining documents via FOIA requests. Declassified documents in the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives show that while the CIA was looking to include t...

US Army working on a device that can assess traumatic brain injury on the battlefield

Image
Traumatic brain injury, when not treated soon could significantly increase chances of developing Alzheimer's. US Army soldiers to receive gadgets that can scan for brain injuries   VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images The US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command has awarded a contract worth close to $10m (£7.6m) to Neural Analytics, a company that designs and builds medical instruments, for the development of a device that can help quickly determine if a person has received a head injury and how severe it is instantly on the battlefield. Read More: 'DO SOMETHING!': Trump lashes out as the Russia investigation heats up According to a Military Times report, the device, named Lucid System, will be made to monitor and detect physical signs of traumatic brain injury. Leo Petrossian, chief executive officer of Neural Analytics told the Army Times "Our objective is to build an instrument for someone with little or no training that they can use reliably." The Lucid System s...

Explaining the new cryptocurrency bubble

Image
Investors are pouring tens of millions of dollars into new crypto currencies. You're going to hear a lot about initial coin offerings (ICOs) in the coming months. As investors have poured more and more money into newly created virtual currencies, they have created a gold-rush mentality. In recent months, some ICOs have raised tens of millions of dollars, and in early October the cryptocurrency market as a whole was worth about $140 billion. Some ICOs have been for serious projects trying to solve hard technical problems. Others seemed like little more than cynical attempts to cash in on the speculative boom. Celebrities like Paris Hilton, Floyd Mayweather, and Ghostface Killah have endorsed ICOs The launch video for the cryptocurrency Hilton endorsed, called LydianCoin, consisted entirely of cliches: "Purpose isn't defined by what you want to achieve but what you want to live for to achieve happiness." (Hilton has since deleted her tweet endorsing LydianCoin.) But thr...

'DO SOMETHING!': Trump lashes out as the Russia investigation heats up

Image
President Donald Trump railed against the Russia investigation on Sunday and asked why Hillary Clinton wasn't being investigated. Trump's tweets came shortly after it emerged that special counsel Robert Mueller had filed the first charges in his investigation. Trump urged Republicans to "DO SOMETHING" as the probe heats up. President Donald Trump lashed out on Sunday as special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election escalates. Read More:: Did TRUMP Make America Less Dependent? "Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?) ... the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more," Trump said in a pair of tweets . He was referring to the so-called Steele dossier , compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele for the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS. The dossier contains a num...

Sundar Pichai's 'Cockroach Theory'

Image
Sundar Pichai continues to make global news after becoming Google’s CEO. Stories about his past, schooling and college days are viral. Well at least in India they are. Here’s another story, or rather a speech by Sundar Pichai, that is being massively shared for the past few days. It’s a speech about the ‘cockroach theory’ for self development.  Also Read:: CEOs Suggest Trump Tax Cut May Lift Investors More Than Jobs Here’s how the theory goes: “At a restaurant, a cockroach suddenly flew from somewhere and sat on a lady. She started screaming out of fear. With a panic stricken face and trembling voice, she started jumping, with both her hands desperately trying to get rid of the cockroach. Her reaction was contagious, as everyone in her group also got panicky. The lady finally managed to push the cockroach away but ...it landed on another lady in the group. Now, it was the turn of the other lady in the group to continue the drama. The waiter rushed forward to their rescue. In the re...

Gowdy slams Mueller team over leaks about charges in Trump-Russia probe

Image
Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, the leader of the House’s top investigative committee, slammed special counsel Robert Mueller on Sunday for allowing the news media to learn that he and his legal team now have charges in their Russia investigation. Read More:: 'DO SOMETHING!': Trump Lashes Out As The Russia Investigation Heats Up “In the only conversation I’ve had with Robert Mueller, I stressed to him the importance of cutting out the leaks,” Gowdy, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s kind of ironic that the people charged with investigating the law and the violations of the law would violate the law.” Mueller and his team have for roughly the past five months been leading a Justice Department investigation into whether anybody associated with the President Trump’s 2016 White House campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election outcome. On Friday night, CNN reported that Mueller’s team has filed the first charge...

Dan Brown faces possible new plagiarism lawsuit over ‘The Da Vinci Code’

Image
Author Jack Dunn prepares new case against Brown in U.K. Bestselling novelist Dan Brown has just published his latest thriller “Origin.” But Brown, among the highest-paid writers in the world, is facing the prospect of a new plagiarism lawsuit for copyright infringement from New England author Jack Dunn, who alleges the 2003 global bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” includes scenes, plots and storylines copied from Dunn’s 1997 novel “The Vatican Boys.” A Massachusetts federal judge dismissed an earlier copyright infringement case brought against Brown by Dunn in 2007. Dunn tells MarketWatch he is reviving his plagiarism claims against Brown’s publisher Penguin Random House and is preparing to issue a new case for copyright infringement, this time in the U.K. High Court. Also Read:: Pentagon Makes SHOCK Announcement About Women In Military, People TICKED Dunn has hired full service London-based law firm Keystone Law. In a letter to Penguin Random House, Keystone stated they intended to issu...