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Showing posts from August, 2018

The NYTimes shouldn’t have relied so heavily on that Facebook and anti-refugee study.

The NYTimes shouldn’t have relied so heavily on that Facebook and anti-refugee study. : The New York Times, by contrast, took a very different approach to the paper. Instead of simply reporting on the economists’ findings, the newspaper sent a reporter to Germany. On Tuesday, it ran a long, complex feature article of almost 3,000 words, by Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, examining the nexus of hate and social media usage in the country. The Times used the study as a jumping-off point for old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting: There were no quotes in the article from the paper’s authors, but many from local residents. The headline, too, was suitably hedged—“Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests.”
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TESTIMONY by His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana Apostolic Nuncio

In this tragic moment for the Church in various parts of the world  —  the United States, Chile, Honduras, Australia, etc.  —  bishops have a very grave responsibility. I am thinking in particular of the United States of America, where I was sent as Apostolic Nuncio by Pope Benedict XVI on October 19, 2011, the memorial feast of the First North American Martyrs. The Bishops of the United States are called, and I with them, to follow the example of these first martyrs who brought the Gospel to the lands of America, to be credible witnesses of the immeasurable love of Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Bishops and priests, abusing their authority, have committed horrendous crimes to the detriment of their faithful, minors, innocent victims, and young men eager to offer their lives to the Church, or by their silence have not prevented that such crimes continue to be perpetrated. To restore the beauty of holiness to the face of the Bride of Christ, which is terri...
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Can Guns N’ Roses, or Any Artist, Erase an Unflattering Moment? - The New York Times

Can Guns N’ Roses, or Any Artist, Erase an Unflattering Moment? - The New York Times : Who is in charge of an artist’s legacy and history — the artists themselves? Record labels? Streaming services? Lawyers? In the internet era, the answers are less clear than ever. What was once advertised as promising an infinite jukebox has become as imperfect as the old delivery systems, subject to technological changes, legal claims and personal preferences. As physical media continues to recede from centrality, what happens online is increasingly becoming the permanent record, even if it’s unreliable or incomplete.
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The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History | WIRED

The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History | WIRED : The result was more than $10 billion in total damages, according to a White House assessment confirmed to WIRED by former Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert, who at the time of the attack was President Trump’s most senior cybersecurity-�focused official. Bossert and US intelligence agencies also confirmed in February that Russia’s military—the prime suspect in any cyberwar attack targeting Ukraine—was responsible for launching the malicious code. (The Russian foreign ministry declined to answer repeated requests for comment.)
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Home | BE Summit for Science in Financial Services

Home | BE Summit for Science in Financial Services : we trying to solve new challenges using old methods?� How do consumers make decisions about money? Even when we think we’re being financially savvy, we’re still prone to the hidden biases and heuristics that trap us into irrational decisions. But our irrational aren’t random: they’re systematic an
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The coded images that let advertisers target all our senses at once

The coded images that let advertisers target all our senses at once : Here, only the drawings within the space defined by the headphones are illustrated in colour. The positive feelings that we tend to associate with colourfulness (as opposed to black and white) are arguably used to convey a positive judgement about the quality of sound that the advertised headphones reproduce. In other words, this advertisement is an example of a visual synaesthesia by which sound is described in terms of colour.
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The Mobile Economy Latin America and the Caribbean 2017

Smartphone and 4G adoption accelerating Across Latin America and the Caribbean, smartphone adoption has accelerated to reach 59% of total connections by the first half of 2017. In the largest markets, adoption has grown particularly quickly: since the beginning of 2016, almost 85 million new smartphones are in use in the region, with Brazil adding more than 20 million and Mexico 18 million. By 2020 the region will have an adoption rate of 71%, ahead of the global average of 66%. This translates into an additional 171 million new smartphone users across the region by the end of the decade. Operators across the region have launched 108 LTE networks in 45 markets, as of June 2017. As a result, coverage has risen sharply in recent years, now reaching a critical mass of 70% of the population. 4G adoption rates are now accelerating, with the rate across the region more than doubling in 2016. By 2020, the region will largely close the gap on the rest of the world, reaching 42% of connections ...
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On Hacking - Richard Stallman

On Hacking - Richard Stallman : In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word "hacker". I went to lunch with some GNU fans, and was sitting down to eat some tteokbokki (*), when a waitress set down six chopsticks right in front of me. It occurred to me that perhaps these were meant for three people, but it was more amusing to imagine that I was supposed to use all six. I did not know any way to do that, so I realized that if I could come up with a way, it would be a hack. I started thinking. After a few seconds I had an idea. First I used my left hand to put three chopsticks into my right hand. That was not so hard, though I had to figure out where to put them so that I could control them individually. Then I used my right hand to put the other three chopsticks into my left hand. That was hard, since I had to keep the three chopsticks already in my right hand from falling out. After a couple of tries...
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6 things I learned about baby modelling when my kid shot a Gap ad

6 things I learned about baby modelling when my kid shot a Gap ad : The day of the shoot was nutty. My daughter met with the hair and clothing stylists, the tailor, and was then entertained by the on-set teacher, a mandatory presence even for the youngest of models. It was also backstage where I met my first stage moms, who, I admit, weren’t quite as Toddlers-and-Tiaras-y as I expected.
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mmm | Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web - The New York Times

Opinion | Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web - The New York Times Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And we’re in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered “dark.” I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo. Today, people like them who dare venture into this “There Be Dragons” territory on the intellectual map have met with outrage and derision — even, or perhaps es...
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Fired Google Engineer James Damore (Live Interview) - YouTube

Fired Google Engineer James Damore (Live Interview) - YouTube James Damore (former Google Senior software engineer) joins Dave to discuss why he was fired from Google after an internal memo he wrote about Google’s ideological echo chamber and diversity policies was spread online. *Dave will be taking your questions from Super Chat and Patreon during the live stream. Submit your questions now and we'll line them up.
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2018 Value Creators Rankings - The Interactive

2018 Value Creators Rankings - The Interactive : When it comes to achieving superior performance over the long term, the firms topping BCG’s Value Creators rankings have perfected the art. For the past 20 years, BCG has been ranking companies on the basis of total shareholder return (TSR), a long-term metric that reflects the true bottom line for a company’s shareholders. The following highlights from BCG’s 2018 Value Creators rankings are available—for the first time—as an online interactive presentation.
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Hacking a Brand New Mac Remotely, Right Out of the Box | WIRED

Hacking a Brand New Mac Remotely, Right Out of the Box | WIRED : "We found a bug that allows us to compromise the device and install malicious software before the user is ever even logged in for the very first time," Endahl says. "By the time they’re logging in, by the time they see the desktop, the computer is already compromised." The researchers notified Apple about the issue, and the company released a fix in macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 last month, but devices that have already been manufactured and ship with an older version of the operating system will still be vulnerable. B�langer and Endahl also note that Mobile Device Management vendors—third parties like Fleetsmith that companies hire to implement Apple's enterprise scheme—also need to support 10.13.6 to fully mitigate the vulnerability. Apple did not respond to WIRED's requests for comment.
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Vladimir Putin Is Basically Tywin Lannister | WIRED

Vladimir Putin Is Basically Tywin Lannister | WIRED : FORMER CHESS CHAMPION Garry Kasparov sounded the alarm about Vladimir Putin’s regime in his 2015 book Winter Is Coming. The title echoes the motto of House Stark from the HBO series Game of Thrones, and that’s no accident. “As you can guess, I’m a big fan,” Kasparov says in Episode 321 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I recently had a great experience touring some of the spots when they were shooting in Belfast, taking my wife and my daughter, who are also big fans of the show.” PODCAST Audio Player 00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. RSS ITUNES DOWNLOAD Kasparov sees many parallels between life in Westeros and real-world politics. He says that Americans—like our fictional counterparts—are so consumed with petty squabbles that we’ve ignored a gathering threat. “People are not ready for the challenge, for the evil that is coming from the North,” he says. “We have to make sure that w...
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How Big Is the Alt Right? Inside My Futile Quest to Count | WIRED

How Big Is the Alt Right? Inside My Futile Quest to Count | WIRED : HOW MANY WHITE nationalists live in the United States? It’s a question I’ve been trying to answer on and off for years. In particular, I’ve tried to quantify the group’s web-based wing—the slippery, meme-slinging trolls who call themselves the alt-right. I’ve worked a lot of angles: totaling the populations of subreddits, counting up the unique visitors to various websites, comparing the number of times Twitter users invoked alt-right hashtags to the times they had more wholesome things to tweet about. (For the record, #dogs beat out #cuck and #whitegenocide every time.) I have squinted at blurry aerial photos of far-right rallies, trying to separate protestor from counterprotester. None of this produced satisfying answers. But as we approach the anniversary of the far-right protest that introduced this group to the national conversation, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to the deat...
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81% of economists predict recession in 2020-2021 | Big Think

81% of economists predict recession in 2020-2021 | Big Think : 60 private-sector economists were recently surveyed by the Wall Street Journal, and their prediction is somewhat dire. 59% of them say the economic expansion that began in 2009 after the Great Recession of 2008 took the wind out of the world’s economic sails will end in 2020. Another 22% pegged the year 2021. What lies beyond that is probably another recession, the depths of which will likely become apparent as things progress — or, rather, regress.�
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Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy - The New York Times

Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy - The New York Times : “He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.” Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end. “Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.” I laugh, because it is absurd. “You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.” But aside from interventions that would redistribute sex, Mr. Peterson is staunchly against what he calls “equality of outcomes,” or efforts to equalize society. He usually calls them pathological or evil. He agrees that this is inconsistent. But preventing hordes o...
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Jordan Peterson’s Tired Old Myths | The New Republic

Jordan Peterson’s Tired Old Myths | The New Republic : In his 1999 book The Politics of Myth, University of California religion scholar Robert Ellwood argued that these mythologists disdained modern society but “lauded traditional ‘rooted’ peasant culture, including its articulation in myths that came not from writers but from ‘the people,’ and they no less praised the charismatic heroes ancient and modern who allegedly personified that culture’s supreme values.” Ellwood also notes that “the profoundest flaw of mythological thinking” was “a tendency to think in generic terms of peoples, races, religions, or parties.”
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Jean Piaget - Wikipedia

Jean Piaget - Wikipedia : Jean Piaget (French:�[ʒɑ̃ pjaʒɛ]; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in 1934 that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual."[13] His theory of child development is studied in pre-service education programs. Educators continue to incorporate constructivist-based strategies. Piaget created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva in 1955 while on the faculty of the University of Geneva and directed the Center until his death in 1980.[14] The number of collaborations that its founding made possible, and their impact, ultimately led to the Center being refer...
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This Trump administration whistleblower has some advice for young scientists | Science | AAAS

This Trump administration whistleblower has some advice for young scientists | Science | AAAS : Q: For readers who aren’t familiar with your story, can you take us back to what led to your op-ed in The Washington Post and eventual resignation? A: I was the director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the Department of the Interior, and in that role was the climate change lead for the agency. I spent most of my time on the impacts of climate change on Alaska Native villages in the Arctic and the implications for these people for getting them out of harms way. These villages are perched on melting permafrost on a coastline that is no longer protected by sea ice most of the year, and every fall we cross our fingers that a big storm doesn’t wipe one of them off the map. I went from that job to being reassigned to the office that collects royalty checks from the oil and gas industry. The political appointees were sending a very clear signal they wanted me to quit. And it was inappropr...
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Orienting response - Wikipedia

Orienting response - Wikipedia : The orienting response (OR), also called orienting reflex, is an organism's immediate response to a change in its environment, when that change is not sudden enough to elicit the startle reflex. The phenomenon was first described by Russian physiologist Ivan Sechenov in his 1863 book Reflexes of the Brain, and the term ('ориентировочный рефлекс' in Russian) was coined by Ivan Pavlov, who also referred to it as the Shto takoye? (Что такое? or What is it?) reflex. The orienting response is a reaction to novel or significant stimuli. In the 1950s the orienting response was studied systematically by the Russian scientist Evgeny Sokolov, who documented the phenomenon called "habituation", referring to a gradual "familiarity effect" and reduction of the orienting response with repeated stimulus presentations.[1] Researchers have found a number of physiological mechanisms associated with OR, including changes in phasic and ton...
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Writes Gatto: "Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about 'the perfect organization of the hive.'"
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Exposure to high-frequency electromagnetic fields at work not associated with brain tumors -- ScienceDaily

Exposure to high-frequency electromagnetic fields at work not associated with brain tumors -- ScienceDaily : No clear associations were found between occupational exposure to high frequency electromagnetic fields (EMF) and risk of glioma or meningioma, in one of the largest epidemiological studies performed to date and led by ISGlobal, an institution supported by "la Caixa" Foundation. However, the findings highlight the need for further research on radiofrequency magnetic fields and tumour promotion, as well as possible interactions with other frequencies and with chemicals. High frequency electromagnetic fields are a form of non-ionising radiation and comprise intermediate frequency (3kHz-10MHz) and radiofrequency (10MHz-300 GHz). Based on limited animal and epidemiological evidence, they were declared by WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2011 as possibly carcinogenic to humans, but few recent studies have provided further evidence regarding ...
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Activated charcoal is an actual detox product, which is why you should avoid it | The Outline

Activated charcoal is an actual detox product, which is why you should avoid it | The Outline : Activated charcoal is regular charcoal that’s been exposed to extremely high temperatures in order to expand its surface area, making it more adsorbent (molecules to adhere to its surface area, like a magnet). The first known record of charcoal’s use as a teeth-cleaning agent was in Ancient Greece, from a written demonstration by Hippocrates. It was found to have “detoxing” properties in 1831, when a French pharmacist, P.F. Touery, swallowed 10 lethal doses of the poison strychnine before treating himself with activated charcoal in front of an audience at the French Academy of Medicine. But it wasn’t until 1963 that activated charcoal became emergency rooms’ first line of defense to relieve toxic stress on poisoned patients though gastric irrigation (more commonly known as “getting your stomach pumped”).
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Activated charcoal is an actual detox product, which is why you should avoid it | The Outline

Activated charcoal is an actual detox product, which is why you should avoid it | The Outline : Activated charcoal is regular charcoal that’s been exposed to extremely high temperatures in order to expand its surface area, making it more adsorbent (molecules to adhere to its surface area, like a magnet). The first known record of charcoal’s use as a teeth-cleaning agent was in Ancient Greece, from a written demonstration by Hippocrates. It was found to have “detoxing” properties in 1831, when a French pharmacist, P.F. Touery, swallowed 10 lethal doses of the poison strychnine before treating himself with activated charcoal in front of an audience at the French Academy of Medicine. But it wasn’t until 1963 that activated charcoal became emergency rooms’ first line of defense to relieve toxic stress on poisoned patients though gastric irrigation (more commonly known as “getting your stomach pumped”).
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Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. - PubMed - NCBI

Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. - PubMed - NCBI : Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Lieberman MD1, Eisenberger NI, Crockett MJ, Tom SM, Pfeifer JH, Way BM. Author information Abstract Putting feelings into words (affect labeling) has long been thought to help manage negative emotional experiences; however, the mechanisms by which affect labeling produces this benefit remain largely unknown. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest a possible neurocognitive pathway for this process, but methodological limitations of previous studies have prevented strong inferences from being drawn. A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of affect labeling was conducted to remedy these limitations. The results indicated that affect labeling, relative to other forms of encoding, diminished the response of the amygdala and other limbic regions to negative...
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The Identity Trap: How to Be Less Wrong – Personal Growth – Medium

The Identity Trap: How to Be Less Wrong – Personal Growth – Medium : Think about the difference between how you viewed a big event in your past, with all its facts and feelings, versus how you view that same event now with different thinking patterns dominating your mind. Now consider how that may change again in 10 to 20 to 30 years. This gap between the reality (that our identities are in constant flux ) and the mistaken fantasy (that rigidly confines them within the bounds of a particular systematic framework) causes us to make decisions that are neither in our own self-interest nor that of those around us. Whatever your actual, objective identity is — if such a thing even exists — is always a step ahead of the frameworks you design to capture it, and this attempt at capturing drags with it a past that may no longer be relevant. The world around you exists independently of the opinions of right and wrong that you enforce on it. Rorschach may have done something heroic and touchin...
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Reading Wars: Phonics vs. Whole Language

Reading Wars: Phonics vs. Whole Language : Another issue in teaching reading is the brain development in children. Countries like Finland that do very well on international tests, including tests of reading, do not start to teach reading until students are seven years old when their cognitive development is more advanced.
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Review of Hart and Risley's Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children John H. Mabry University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2733543/pdf/behavan00017-0027.pdf

Review of Hart and Risley's Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children John H. Mabry University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2733543/pdf/behavan00017-0027.pdf
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The "Debunking" of Hart & Risley and How We Use Science - Daniel Willingham--Science & Education

The "Debunking" of Hart & Risley and How We Use Science - Daniel Willingham--Science & Education : The recent kerfuffle concerning Hart & Risley (1995) and the 30 million word gap offers an object lesson in science, the interpretation of science, and the relation of science and policy. Let’s start with the new science. Douglas Sperry and colleagues sought to replicate Hart & Risley, who reported the 30 million word gap—that’s the projected difference in total number of words directed to a child by caregivers when comparing children of parents on public assistance and children of parents in professional positions. �Sperry and his team claim not to find a statistically reliable difference among parents of different social classes.
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(Hart & Risley, 1995) Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children | LEADERSproject

(Hart & Risley, 1995) Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children | LEADERSproject : Importance:�This study was one of the first to explicitly link vocabulary size to socioeconomic status rather than to the presence of a language disorder and demonstrated the importance of prior knowledge during assessment and intervention. This study also demonstrated the necessity of comparing a child to his speech community, as typical linguistic development and exposure varies depending on socioeconomic status as well as cultural perceptions and ideas about typical communication and language development in young children. Clinicians should be aware that static vocabulary tests and test items are most likely to identify the child’s SES background rather than the presence of a language disorder and therefore should not be used for diagnosis. When children come from at-risk backgrounds (e.g., low SES status) but do not appear to have a language impairment compared ...
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Murdered Russian Journalists In Africa Were Onto Something Dangerous for Putin

Murdered Russian Journalists In Africa Were Onto Something Dangerous for Putin : But the Wagner Group is something special. Some have called it Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “private army.” The organization is led by Dmitry Utkin, who was once a member of the Russian special forces and is currently under U.S. sanctions for aiding Russian-backed separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
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This Hacker Party Is Ground Zero for Russia’s Cyberspies

This Hacker Party Is Ground Zero for Russia’s Cyberspies : The event, called “Positive Hacks Days,” is an annual computer security conference run by the respected Moscow-based firm Positive Technologies. Like other hacker cons it’s a mix of deep technical presentations and late-night parties, with some contests, workshops, and drinking games thrown in. In 2017, the event’s sixth year, the theme of the two-day gathering was "The Enemy Inside.” The conference featured a competition called “The Standoff” that saw dozens of hackers working in teams to cripple a simulated metropolitan city, attacking its telecom infrastructure, rail lines and electrical grid.
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Flight MH370 Becomes the Cold Case That Nobody Wants to Solve

Flight MH370 Becomes the Cold Case That Nobody Wants to Solve : Flight MH370 has now become, uniquely in the history of modern air travel, a cold case that nobody wants to solve. They just can’t be bothered. That is, I believe, because once more the aviation industry’s attitude is that this was a freak event with its own peculiar causes that cannot possibly bother us again. Not worth spending any more money to pursue. Some of this attitude is based on a belief widely held among airline chiefs that the Malaysian pilots were involved. But even the Malaysian officials who were the first to have promoted this theory have now had to conclude that there is no evidence to support it, and never was. In the absence of that theory there is no other credible evidence of deliberate human involvement: no terrorist claim, no evidence of a hijacking and no sinister takeover of the controls by remote means.
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Murdered Russian Journalists In Africa Were Onto Something Dangerous for Putin

Murdered Russian Journalists In Africa Were Onto Something Dangerous for Putin : Murdered Russian Journalists In Africa Were Onto Something Dangerous for Putin They were on the trail of mercenaries with close ties to the Kremlin in a war-torn country full of diamonds and gold. ANNA NEMTSOVA PHILIP OBAJI JR. 08.04.18 3:19 PM ET UYO, Nigeria — When Russian journalists Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguyev and Orkhan Dzhemal, arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Friday last week, they wanted to spend a fortnight investigating a private Russian security company operating in the country and to gather information about Russia’s interests in diamond, gold and uranium mining in the restive nation. Although there are some conflicting accounts, it appears the trio departed the capital, Bangui, late Monday night on their way to meet with a United Nations representative in the town of Bambari, about 380 kilometers away. But they never got there. They reportedly were ambushed ...
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