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It could be a robotic guardian angel for anyone on a first date who fears they may be boring. Scientists have created a gadget that is worn like a wristwatch and uses artificial intelligence to assess a conversation’s tone. It can differentiate between happy, sad and neutral, but some versions could also tell whether your delivery is boring or awkward. It could be installed in smartphones or watches that would vibrate if the conversation went downhill during a date or interview, researchers said. Please click on link for full article)

Heading back to CBS46 Monday but going to be changes. Biggest one, this page will go dark Tzuday, Feb 1. Those who know me, trust me.

It just got a lot harder to evade browser fingerprinting: a bunch of boffins have worked out how to fingerprint the machine behind the browser, using only information provided by browser features.Like so many ideas, it's obvious once someone's thought of it: activities that aren't processed in the browser are treated the same whether the page is rendered in (say) Chrome, Firefox, IE or Edge. The group – Yinzhi Cao and Song Li of from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and Erik Wijmans Washington University in St. Louis – have worked out how to access various operating system and hardware-level features...

Unsurprisingly, the FBI also has a number of paid informants. Some of these informants apparently work at Best Buy -- Geek Squad by day, government informants by… well, also by day... The case is already on very shaky ground, with the presiding judge questioning agents' "odd memory losses," noting several discrepancies between the FBI's reports and its testimony, and its "perplexing" opposition to turning over documents the defense has requested... Underneath it all is the perplexing and disturbing aversion to adhering to the Fourth Amendment we've seen time and time again from law enforcement agencies, both at local and federal...

Law enforcement has a number of informants working for it and the companies that already pay their paychecks, like UPS, for example. It also has a number of government employees working for the TSA, keeping their eyes peeled for "suspicious" amounts of cash it can swoop in and seize. Unsurprisingly, the FBI also has a number of paid informants. Some of these informants apparently work at Best Buy -- Geek Squad by day, government informants by… well, also by day. According to court records, Geek Squad technician John "Trey" Westphal, an FBI informant, reported he accidentally located on Rettenmaier's computer...

We are the most religious democracy in the world, and our Judeo-Christian ethic demands that we take care of the downtrodden. But we are also the only advanced democracy without universal health coverage. Are we confused . . . or just hypocrites? My bet is that we are very confused. The public’s reaction to Obamacare (also known as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) is a prime example of our confusion. Most Americans are preoccupied with making a living and raising a family, and rightly so. They have no time to fully examine health care policy issues. Surveys show that...

For 25 years, China Fun was renowned for its peerless soup dumplings and piquant General Tso’s chicken. What left a bad taste in the mouths of its owners and loyal patrons was the restaurant’s sudden Jan. 3 closing, blamed by management on suffocating government demands. “The climate for small businesses like ours in New York have become such that it’s difficult to justify taking risks and running — nevermind starting — a legitimate mom-and-pop business,” read a letter posted by the owners in the restaurant’s front door. “The state and municipal governments, with their punishing rules and regulations, seems to...

The world-renown MD Anderson Cancer Center has announced a workforce reduction by 1,000, the CEO of the center said on Thursday. The cancer hospital has had $110 million in operating losses from September through November this year, reported the Houston Chronicle. [Snip] The local publication reported that the financial problems began in the spring when the hospital implemented a new electronic medical-record system. Doctors and staff members at the center spent a great deal of time getting up to speed in using the program and that took time away from their patients.

<p>LAS VEGAS (CNN) — What do Millennials want from a car? Selfies, naturally.</p> <p>Chrysler unveiled its Portal concept car at the Consumer Electronics Show Tuesday, and it has a long list of features based on 20 years of research into exactly what Millennials want from a car, according to Fiat Chrysler.</p>

High-tech washing machines and fridges will soon be used by detectives gathering evidence from crime scenes, experts have forecast. The advent of ‘the internet of things’ in which more devices are connected together in a world of ‘smart working’ could in future provide important clues for the police. Detectives are currently being trained to look for gadgets and white goods which could provide a ‘digital footprint’ of victims or criminals. Mark Stokes, the head of the digital, cyber and communications forensics unit at the Metropolitan Police told The Times: “Wireless cameras within a device, such as fridge, may record the...

One of the websites Facebook is to use to arbitrate on 'fake news' is involved in a bitter legal dispute between its co-founders, with its CEO accused of using company money for prostitutes. Snopes.com will be part of a panel used by Facebook to decide whether stories which users complain about as potentially 'fake' should be considered 'disputed'. But the website's own troubles and the intriguing choice of who carries out its 'fact checks' are revealed by DailyMail.com, as one of its main contributors is disclosed to be a former sex-blogger who called herself 'Vice Vixen'. Snopes.com will benefit from...

Toll gates at the Big Apple’s bridges and tunnels will disappear next year as a cashless system is rolled out, Gov. Cuomo announced Wednesday. The new system will be set up beginning in January at the Queens-Midtown and Hugh Carey tunnels, and then throughout the year at the Rockaway, RFK, Verrazano-Narrows, Throgs Neck and Bronx-Whitestone bridges. The system will collect money from drivers using E-ZPass. Those without E-ZPass will get their license plates recorded and receive a bill within 30 days. They will have 30 days to pay. All license plates will be scanned and scofflaws will be ticketed immediately....

The U.S. intelligence community will soon disclose an estimate of the number of Americans whose electronic communications have been caught in the crosshairs of online surveillance programs intended for foreigners, U.S. lawmakers said in a letter seen by Reuters on Friday. The estimate, requested by members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, is expected to be made public as early as next month, the letter said. Its disclosure would come as Congress is expected to begin debate in the coming months over whether to reauthorize or reform the so-called surveillance authority, known as Section 702, a provision that...

Measure intended to protect people with disabilities who have wandered away A bill meant to help those with developmental disabilities would allow government agencies to locate people with tracking devices, which has some concerned the measure gives the federal government too much authority and power. In 2008, Kevin Curtis Wills, a 9-year-old boy with autism, jumped into a river near a park and drowned. In 2014, a 14-year-old boy with autism, Avonte Oquendo, left his school and drowned in a river. Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.), who chairs the Congressional Autism Caucus and the Alzheimer’s Disease Task Force, introduced a...

"One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship" “…The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. “The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods,...

When Barbara Twadell received a letter from Regional Animal Services of King County (RASKC) last week reminding her that a license is required to keep pets, she was puzzled. Twadell doesn’t own a pet. Her dog died five or maybe six years ago, long “enough that I couldn’t place the number.” She had notified the county at the time. She found the letter peculiar. “On the outside, it’s stamped ‘Time sensitive. Open immediately,’ and it’s got a pink return address, which usually means something is overdue in payment,” she said. The writing was terse, “threatening” even, Twadell said. “The following...

Decided to have some fun. I created a Wi-Fi SSID as shown below: I configured my Wi-Fi router to use a "captive web portal" whenever anyone first connects to the SSID. The login page looks like this: Once the Wi-Fi user enters their name and email, they are then redirected to a Success page:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events. Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching...

The White House mocked GOP nominee Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz for trying to prevent the Commerce Department from transferring technical oversight of the Internet to an international body. "It doesn't withstand scrutiny," President Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest said on Thursday. "It also strikes me as a curious position for a self-described small government conservative to shut down the government to ensure that the federal government can continue to control the Internet," Earnest said of Cruz. "It doesn't make any sense." Cruz is trying to stop the multi-year transition that will leave the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and...

http://www.wtsp.com/news/some-police-departments-shelve-body-cameras-cite-data-costs/316448042