Chicago police blame increased gun violence on warm weather

CHICAGO (INTELLIHUB) — Chicago police have installed ShotSpotter technology and cameras throughout parts of the city to help reduce gun violence which officials claim has increased with the warm weather.

“The problem with warm weather is there is always more people out on the streets […] so that brings more crime,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told NBC News.

Now officers can monitor a series of cameras and gunshot detectors from inside a command center located in Chicago’s Inglewood District where they can detect trouble before 9-1-1 is even called.

Responding officers can then locate shots fired on there smartphones and devices to speed up and aid in the apprehension of criminals.

Welcome to 1984.

Featured Image: vivek jena/Flickr

©2018. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

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Kafka’s Nightmare Emerges: China’s “Social Credit Score”

By Charles Hugh Smith

China is creating Kafka’s nightmare world as the perfection of centralized control of its citizenry.

China is rapidly building out a Total Surveillance State on a scale that far surpasses any government surveillance program in the West. The scope of this surveillance is so broad and pervasive that it borders on science fiction:

• Life Inside China’s Total Surveillance State (8 min video)


• China Aims For Near-Total Surveillance, Including in People’s Homes (“Sharp Eyes” nationwide surveillance network)


• “You’re Being Controlled All The Time” – An Inside Look At China’s “Social Credit Score”


• China Assigns Every Citizen A ‘Social Credit Score To Identify Who Is And Isn’t Trustworthy

It’s well known that the intelligence agencies in America seek what’s known as Total Information Awareness, the goal being to identify and disrupt terrorists before they can strike.

This level of surveillance has run partly aground on civil liberties concerns, which still have a fragile hold on the American psyche and culture.

The implicit goal of China’s Total Surveillance State is to control the citizenry and root out any dissent before it threatens The Communist Party’s hold on power, but the explicit goal is a behavioral psychologist’s dream: to reward “positive social behaviors” and punish “negative social behaviors” via a “Social Credit Score.”

There is something breathtakingly appealing to anyone in a position of power about this goal: imagine being able to catch miscreants who smoke in no-smoking zones, who jaywalk, who cheat people online, and of course, who say something negative about those in power.

But let’s ask a simple question of China’s vast surveillance system: what happens when it’s wrong? What if one of those thousands of cameras mis-identifies a citizen breaking some minor social code, and over time, does so enough times to trigger negative consequences for the innocent citizen?

What recourse does the citizen have? It appears the answer is none, as the process is not strictly speaking judicial; the system appears to be largely automated.

Here’s a second question: is the scoring system truly transparent, or can insiders place their thumbs on the scale, so to speak, to exact revenge on personal enemies?

Question #3: Who have the power to change the weightings within the automated software? Will criticizing the government online generate 1 negative point this month but 10 points next month? How can citizens with a handful of negative points, some perhaps incorrect mis-identifications, avoid crossing the dreaded threshold if they don’t know how the system is truly ranking various violations?

This aligns perfectly with the world envisioned by Kafka in his novels The Trial and The Castle.

Kafka’s fictional accounts of power manifesting through an impenetrable bureaucracy describe a world with two primary features:

1. The rules guiding the system are opaque to those enmeshed in the system


2. There is no recourse for those unjustly persecuted or convicted by the system

What is it like to inhabit such a world? I’ve assembled some insightful comments on Kafka’s works from online resources.

Critic Michiko Kakutani: “(his novels share)…the same paranoid awareness of shifting balances of power; the same atmosphere of emotional suffocation.”

The Trial is “the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.”

“The law in Kafka’s works, rather than being representative of any particular legal or political entity, is usually interpreted to represent a collection of anonymous, incomprehensible forces. These are hidden from the individual but control the lives of the people, who are innocent victims of systems beyond their control.”

“For Kafka, law ‘has no meaning outside its fact of being a pure force of domination and determination."”

Kafka’s novel The Castle explores “the motif of an oppressive and intangible system” and “the seemingly endless frustrations of man’s attempts to stand against the system.”

China is creating Kafka’s nightmare world as the perfection of centralized control of its citizenry. The question is: will the Chinese people tolerate this as long as the current artificial financialized “prosperity” reigns? What will happen to their perception and tolerance when the debt-fueled “prosperity” blows away like the sands of the Taklimakan Desert?

Gordon Long and I discuss the conceptual framework and implementation of Social Control in a two-part video series:

Part 1:

Part 2:

My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

You can read more from Charles Hugh Smith at his blog Of Two Minds, where this article first appeared.

Also Read: China Accused of Using Biometric Surveillance to Send Thousands to Political Detention Camps

Public to Be Scanned in Real Time as Police Body Cameras May Soon Get Facial Recognition

Police departments across the country could soon have access to facial recognition technology in the Breathalyzer tests they give and the body cameras they wear.

The post Public to Be Scanned in Real Time as Police Body Cameras May Soon Get Facial Recognition appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

Spy agency NSA triples collection of U.S. phone records: official report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency collected 534 million records of phone calls and text messages of Americans last year, more than triple gathered in 2016, a U.S. intelligence agency report released on Friday said.

The sharp increase from 151 million occurred during the second full year of a new surveillance system established at the spy agency after U.S. lawmakers passed a law in 2015 that sought to limit its ability to collect such records in bulk.

The spike in collection of call records coincided with an increase reported on Friday across other surveillance methods, raising questions from some privacy advocates who are concerned about potential government overreach and intrusion into the lives of U.S. citizens.

Via Reuters

Featured Image: Wikimedia Commons

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Zuckerberg decides what news is fake and what news is real with new Facebook rating system

(INTELLIHUB) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on on Tuesday announced that he will begin screening and censoring news outlets on the social media platform based on their credibility and trustworthiness which Zuckerberg says, his team will decide.

The social media CEO testified before Congress back in mid-April where he vowed that news outlets need to rated and ranked after he was held under the bus for the Cambridge Analytica data privacy leak.

“We put [that data] into the system, and it is acting as a boost or a suppression, and we’re going to dial up the intensity of that over time,” Zuckerberg said. “We feel like we have a responsibility to further [break] down polarization and find common ground.”

The CEO says that he will spend “billions” to implement both artificial intelligence and human gatekeepers to keep propaganda at bay.

It looks like this could be the beginning of the end for any independent journalist or news outlet who dares to challenge the official narrative.

Will Facebook use the new rating and ranking system to suppress real news that challenges the official narrative?

Will #Facebook use the new rating and ranking system to suppress real news that challenges the official narrative?

— Intellihub (@intellihubnews) May 2, 2018

©2018. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

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Russia’s floating nuclear plant heads out to sea

A controversial floating nuclear power plant made by Russia has headed out for its first sea voyage

The floating plant, the Akademik Lomonosov, was towed out of the St Petersburg shipyard where it was constructed on Saturday.

It is to be pulled through the Baltic Sea and around the Norwegian coast to Murmansk, a city of 300,000 people, where its reactors are to be loaded with nuclear fuel.

The Lomonosov is to be put into service in 2019 in the Arctic off the coast of Chukotka in the far northeast, providing power for a port town and for oil rigs.

Rosatom, the state-owned atomic energy corporation, is the owner of the nuclear power plant.

Via Sky News

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Gov’t Just Gave Foxconn License to Drain 7 Million Gallons a DAY from Lake Michigan to Make iPhones

The technology manufacturing giant, Foxconn has been given permission to drain 7 million gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan to use for free in their factory.

The post Gov’t Just Gave Foxconn License to Drain 7 Million Gallons a DAY from Lake Michigan to Make iPhones appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

Tech Moguls Concerned about Massive Job Loss From Automation Recommend Universal Basic Income (UBI) — Some Plan for “Doomsday”

By B.N. Frank

Many of us have loved ones who are victims of Age Discrimination.  Some have been forced out and replaced with younger employees.  Some never find work again.  This has been going on for decades.

Automation has also contributed to job loss.  According to many sources, including the Progressive Populist, this is going to get much worse.  That’s why tech inventors have proposed a Universal Basic Income (UBI):

Driverless cars! IBM Watson! News-writing robots! Amazon Go! The future is here, friends, and it apparently excludes humans. People are preparing for the next mass extinction—an evaporation, if you will—not of humans, polar bears or other creatures, but of jobs.

How will people earn enough money to support themselves and their families when all the jobs are taken by robots?

And how to keep from pointing the proverbial finger at the overlords of Silicon Valley?

According to the article, UBI has been discussed in the U.S. before – even in the late 1960s by then President Nixon and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The amount most agreed upon is $1,000 a month.

Tech moguls recommend that everyone receives UBI – not just the unemployed.

How thoughtful.  But isn’t that Communism?

And will it work?  Maybe not.  Finland just called it quits on their 2-year UBI program:

With high-profile champions such as Richard Branson, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, backing the idea of governments giving non-working people money (from working people) to do nothing – what could go wrong?

Well, two years after enthusiastically beginning its experiment with a universal basic income – in which people are paid an unconditional salary by the state instead of benefits – Finland is abandoning the project as government enthusiasm wanes and additional funding requests are rejected.

It’s still unlikely that this will stop tech moguls from recommending UBI.  According to the Progressive Populist, it seems to benefit them the most:

The true beauty of UBI, though, lies in its capitalist welfare: Tech giants keep profits high, while the government pays people not to work or to continue to work for ever-lower wages in a gig economy.

It’s a check to keep the masses, well, in check.

Indeed – the masses need to be kept in check so when most of us lose our jobs, we all don’t go completely ballistic and set the country on fire – perhaps with flamethrowers purchased from none other than Elon Musk. Coincidentally Elon announced he was selling these flamethrowers while large sections of California were on fire.  Stay classy, Elon.

Tech guru and investor, Sam Altman, on UBI:

1. …perhaps 90% of people receiving UBI would “go smoke pot and play video games,


2. …if 10% of people go create new products and services and new wealth, that’s still a huge net win.

A huge net win?  Tell that to all the parents who hoped their kids would be able to grow up, move out, get jobs, and support themselves instead of having few options other than to “go smoke pot and play video games” until they die.  Tell that to everyone who doesn’t like smoking pot, playing video games, has a mortgage to pay, and family members to feed.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg referred to UBI as “cushion” that would “enable everyone to try new ideas that could change the world.”

Spare me.  It may possible for some people to change the world on $1000/month.  But it’s not possible for MOST people to change the world on $1000/month. 

It’s not even possible for most people to live healthy lives on $1000/month. 

The article reports that “The data say it’s a great idea.”

Their data is always going to say they have great ideas until they are forced to admit their data was wrong.  Ask Mark Zuckerberg about that..

Tech inventors have also told us kids needed tech in schools to be best prepared for the future.  Then they’ve sent their kids to private low-tech schools and limited how much they allow them to use tech in their homes.

“Digital Addiction” hasn’t yet been declared an epidemic even though it seems to be affecting a large portion of Americans.  Former Facebook president, Sean Parker, recently stated:

… the social networking site exploits human psychological vulnerabilities through a validation feedback loop that gets people to constantly post to get even more likes and comments. It’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology…The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway…God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.

Research says it’s not good for anybody’s brains.

Another former Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, stated he doesn’t use it anymore since he “innately didn’t want to get programmed.”

In regard to his own kids “they’re not allowed to use this shit.”

Most of us don’t think about how all these devices come with guidelines and warnings.  There are reasons other than “Digital Addiction.”  But the marketing is so slick that we all take for granted that everything is safe.  Warnings have been popping up all along but they are quickly overshadowed by more marketing and legal speak.

No “safe” level of cell phone or wireless WiFi radiation has yet to be scientifically determined for children or pregnant women but that hasn’t stopped tech companies from marketing personal devices to everyone under the sun from cradle to grave.

Research has that proven that exposure to these devices can worsen pre-existing conditions even if it didn’t cause them. It has proven it is harmful to pets, nature, and wildlife.

The Tech Industry – also referred to as “Big Tech” and “Big Wireless” – seems to have been writing its own regulations and guidelines for 20+ years.  They must own our elected officials, otherwise they wouldn’t keep promoting and passing new state and federal laws that harm us in pretty much all ways possible.

For example, the “Race for 5G”and “Smart Cities” may sound really cool until you realize that elected officials are allowing tech companies to install small cell towers pretty much everywhere including in front of homes.  Research has already proven that this is harmful.  Even Dr. Oz has weighed in.

On September 13, 2017, 180 scientists and doctors demanded a moratorium on the installation of 5G small cell tower infrastructure because of health concerns.

This doesn’t seem to matter.

“The Race for 5G” has been identified as a “bailout” of the Telecom Industry. These small cell towers will reduce property value.  They violate our right to privacy.

Tech moguls also insist that automating everything is safer and cheaper.  Sometimes they say it’s even better for the environment.  Nope. Nope. Nope.

1. There have been many issues identified already with automated vehicles.


2. There have been many issues identified already with automated utility “Smart” Meters.


3. There have been many issues already identified with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Tax dollars keep getting wasted on all of this.  It’s contributing to E-Waste.

It’s possible that tech moguls are also recommending UBI to give them time to prepare for the proverbial shit to hit the fan.

According to 2017 New Yorker magazine article, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich”: 

1. Some of the wealthiest people in America—in Silicon Valley, New York, and beyond—are getting ready for the crackup of civilization.


2. … in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.


3. In private Facebook groups, wealthy survivalists swap tips on gas masks, bunkers, and locations safe from the effects of climate change.


4. Quote from one survivalist: “I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system.” He said that his preparations probably put him at the “extreme” end among his peers. But he added, “A lot of my friends do the guns and the motorcycles and the gold coins. That’s not too rare anymore.”

I feel sick.

Also according to a survivalist:

…there is a deliberate move by the people in Congress to dumb America down.

They don’t want people to be smart to see what’s going on in politics.

Has Congress ever really wanted people to be smart to see what’s going on?

According to the Progressive Populist article, tech moguls are saying that massive job elimination is inevitable.  

Global business leaders Richard Branson and Elon Musk say a UBI will become a necessity as tech replaces jobs. “…can help people struggling just to survive and allow them to get on their feet, be entrepreneurial and be more creative.”

Elon Musk told CNBC that “… due to automation” he isn’t “sure what else one would do.”

Don’t you worry, Elon.  Sam Altman said 90% of the unemployed will be smoking pot and playing video games.

Of course, Elon Musk has other worries, too.  He had them even before he started selling flamethrowers.  According to Stephen Colbert on 10/11/2017:

Elon Musk thinks Artificial Intelligence will cause World War 3.

Recently Musk also tweeted, “If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be.  Vastly more risk than North Korea” right above a poster that says, “In the end, the machines will win.”

And back in July, Musk issued this warning about AI: “I think people should be really concerned about it.  I keep sounding the alarm bell but people keep seeing robots going down the street killing people, like they don’t know how to react.”

Colbert explains that Elon’s comment set off a feud with Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark stated that Elon’s comments were “pretty irresponsible.”  Elon responded by stating that Mark’s knowledge of AI “was limited.”

We all know now A LOT about Mark’s “limited” knowledge.

Regardless, these are some of the people who are right now deciding the future of the world.

Recently comedian, Bill Maher said that every generation could be called the “What Were You Thinking?” generation.

So what are we thinking?  And are we going to do anything about this besides maybe firing up a bong?

E-Waste Recycler Sentenced To Over A Year In Prison For Fixing Old PC’s and Selling Them

A computer technician has been sentenced to prison for selling restore disks for computers after he was targeted by Microsoft for allegedly taking away from their profits.

The post E-Waste Recycler Sentenced To Over A Year In Prison For Fixing Old PC’s and Selling Them appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

Facebook teams up with shady DARPA exec to scan your brain and augment your reality

In light of the recent Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Facebook is quickly becoming one of the world’s least trusted companies. A survey from the Ponemon Institute, a research group focused on data privacy and information security, shows that trust in Facebook has fallen 66 percent to where now only 28 percent of users believe the company is “committed to privacy.”

Although many people are unaware of what goes on behind the scenes at Facebook, social media is not their only business. As part of an ongoing research and development venture, a project called Building 8 was created to develop technology “in the style of DARPA.”

Former DARPA executive Regina Dugan was recruited to head the project as her experience with augmented reality and mental and nervous system manipulation has given her the perfect skill set to make this project a technological success.

DARPA however, has come under scrutiny in the past for developing dangerous weaponized technologies like HELLADS, or High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System, commonly known as the “death ray.” Dugan was also accused of ethics violations by the Department of Defense for offering government contracts to a company she founded called RedXDefense.

Building 8 was created with four projects in mind, all centering around augmented reality and brain-scanning technology. Zuckerberg believes that within the next ten years we will begin to see a stronger link between Facebook and the mind.

“You’re going to just be able to capture a thought, what you’re thinking or feeling in kind of its ideal and perfect form in your head, and be able to share that with the world” – Mark Zuckerberg

Ultimately, Facebook intends on creating an entire augmented reality to overlay our day-to-day lives. He believes that with this new technology, common household equipment like TV’s will become obsolete.

“In the future, you’ll be able to snap your fingers and pull out a photo and make it as big as you want, and with your AR glasses you’ll be able to show it to people and they’ll be able to see it. As a matter of fact, when we get to this world, a lot of things that we think about as physical objects today, like a TV for displaying an image, will actually just be $1 apps in an AR app store. So it’s going to take a long time to make this work. But this is the vision, and this is what we’re trying to get to over the next 10 years.” – Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook users need to ask themselves whether or not they want to live in this world of augmented reality. It’s uncertain at this point just how many of our current abilities and freedoms we could lose if this kind of technology took over our lives.

Would it be possible to have a private moment? With Facebook technology becoming ever-more invasive into our lives and their protection of privacy becoming increasingly moot, it’s possible that at some point in time we may not even remember what life was like before Facebook took control over our perceptions and intimate data.

However, alternative technology companies are gaining more and more popularity in light of Facebook censorship and privacy concerns. Websites like Minds.com and Diaspora are gaining new users each day and are emerging as serious competitors to current social media giants. It’s possible that new technology could emerge from alternative, decentralized sources to combat the intrusion of companies like Facebook.

In an increasingly troubled world, it’s important that we think about which direction we want to go as a society and who we choose to give power. Otherwise, we might end up losing sight of what it means to be human altogether.

This article (Facebook Teams Up with Shady DARPA Executive to Scan Your Brain and Augment Your Reality) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Phillip Schneider and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.

Via Waking Times

Featured Image: John Voo/Flickr

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Virtual personal relationships

One of the most familiar themes that children are taught is that mankind is a social being. From the earliest age, the process of socialization is integrated into every learning experience or social contact. Getting along with one’s peers is preached as a primary objective for each succeeding generation. Departing from previous contemporaries has been a common trend that shapes and redirects society. Differences between parents and children are often stressed, but the shift among personal relationships, at its very core, has altered from the inception of the cyber age.

Baby boomers were the television indoctrinated, Generation X dropped out without ever watching the news or turning in to the social issues, Gen Y were technology wise and internet savvy and Gen Z kids became preoccupied with a diverse media and computer environment. The trend for each following group diminished their interpersonal skills and social interaction between their own crowd and among different age brackets, became more isolated.

Online dating often has more to do with adding a Facebook friend for chat conversations than for establishing a real relationship in the presence of alive flesh and blood vulnerable people. Relationships are not safe spaces. Snowflakes are not equipped to handle the harsh reality of criticism. Utopia for these pansies consists of mingling among milquetoast jellyfish. All others need not apply. Uncomfortable online contacts come with a delete button as a default response.

Ellie Lisitsa from The Gottman Institute argues in The Digital Age: Empathy In Utopia.

“Online, without nonverbal cues – without the ability to look into someone’s eyes, observe their body language, hear the fluctuations in their tone of voice – we cannot intuit intention or vicariously experience their feelings. A sense of right and wrong, responsibility for one’s actions, can easily vanish. And even if intimate connection is desired, deep emotional attunement becomes effectively impossible. In its stead, we are granted the opportunity to reconstruct ourselves.

We can edit idealized online personas, projecting confidence and omitting reference to perceived human flaws. We can spend months developing a satisfying digital self – a pleasing specimen without imperfections or limitations, and naturally, without necessity to experience negative feelings. There is little room in the midst of all of this perfection for genuine intimacy or authentic connection. In the wise words of Jeremy Rifkin, “There is no empathy in utopia, because there is no suffering.”

This difference between authentic interactions between live humans versus the solicitude of an artificial experience within an electronic universe is as unambiguous as playing World of Warplanes gaming and actually flying a bombing mission over hostile territory.

The attraction of existing in a virtual world insulates the emotions from pain and dulls the mind from confronting in your face dissention. Personal relationships vary by number and quality of intensity. The Bottom Line at the University of California offers up their conclusion in Technology is Destroying the Quality of Human Interaction.

“Past evolutionary psychology research by British anthropologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar has revealed that people are actually limited to a certain number of stable, supportive connections with others in their social network: roughly 150. Furthermore, recent follow-up research by Cornell University’s Bruno Goncalves used Twitter data to show that despite the current ability to connect with vast amounts of people via the Internet, a person can still only truly maintain a friendship with a maximum of 100 to 200 real friends in their social network.”

Lacking in most inquiries about the nature of social networks is an objective analysis about the superficial function and deficiency in the caliber of meaningful relationships. Some of the queries should include, WILL AI DESTROY OUR RELATIONSHIPS? – asks the following questions. How will our very own personal big brother change the way we interact with one another? Our ability to be honest with one another? How we speak to one another? Our ability to get close and form intimate and meaningful relationships with others?

Human nature has not intrinsically altered its fundamental character, flaws or aspirations with the contrivance of digital social networking. David Pearce explores transhumanists in Second Life the aspects of Superintelligence, Superlongevity and Superhappiness?

“Centuries of technological and socio-economic “progress” haven’t left us discernibly happier in the course of a lifetime than our hunter-gatherer ancestors. There’s no compelling scientific evidence that thousands of years of reshaping our environment has cheated the hedonic treadmill one iota. Will the future resemble the past? Almost certainly not. Tomorrow’s neuroscience promises to revolutionize subjective well-being, both individually and for our species as a whole. More speculatively, we may overcome our anthropocentric biases and enrich the rest of sentient life too.

But by how much? Unlike computing power, an exponential growth of happiness is (presumably) impossible, short of technologies beyond human imagination. Yet securing even an approximate linear growth of its biomarkers would represent a stunning discontinuity in the history of life to date. Posthuman versions of the Goldilocks zone – “not too hot, not too cold” – could potentially exceed the hedonic range adaptive for our hominid ancestors by several orders of magnitude, if not more. Will our posthuman descendants eventually decide, to echo Bill McKibben, “Enough!”. Possibly; but if so, it’s unclear how, when and why.

It’s worth emphasizing that the sorts of scenarios for posthuman mood-enrichment explored here aren’t, for the most part, an alternative to other transhuman scenarios of our future, notably superintelligence and super longevity. On the contrary, a fine-grained control of our emotions together with motivational enhancement should enable us, other things being equal, to realize these scenarios more effectively – and to savor their outcome all the more appreciatively. Nor is hedonic enrichment some kind of prescription for how to live posthuman life – any more than being cured of a chronic pain condition dictates how one should lead a pain-free existence. “The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy” observes Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. Yes, and the world of the superhappy is quite different from the human world. Whether we’ll ever investigate its properties, however, is an open question.”

In order to advance contentment and fulfillment, personal relationships are an integral component in the formula. Virtual connections develop ties that conceal or omit authentic bonding or identify instinctive rejection. As the global network of cyber consolidation spreads, a world that has no secrets becomes a prison of controlled inmates. Artificial Intelligence replaces the experience of a lifetime of living with the matrix of precise acceptable behavior for future generations.

Learning how to Trust, love and fear: The seven stages of your future relationship with AI, might seem bizarre, but who would believe that the social networks would occupy so much public time at the turn of the last century? Using tools to enhance communication is certainly valid, but engulfing oneself into a virtual trance of manufactured perceptibility is distinct from living real life.

Is it any wonder that society is racing to demolish its social norms and with their demise, all semblance of Personal Utopias is destroyed? Look only to the wisdom of the Bard of Avon to understand the most naturalistic way to attain a consequential personal relationship.

As Prospero proclaims in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” The ‘stuff’ Prospero refers to is not merely the object of a wish, but the materials of illusion. Think about it inside and outside your own personal utopia, whatever that may be. You may find there is a greater happiness to be found by understanding the materials of illusion rather than the relying on the wishes that your personal utopia promises. In the final analysis, we all have our own personal vision but have a shared illusion. Maybe this is a better way to connect in meaningful ways for relationships, self and the quest for knowledge. Consider it…

Society was built upon the core family relationship of father, mother and children. Now the virtual environment treats the various names of man and woman with disdain. Soon children will be spit out of a 3d creature producing machine. Will Future Robots be able to give Birth to Their Own Children? and making a humanoid genetic copy may well become the ultimate social network app. Imagine that the terms of service will require surrender of your offspring’s DNA so that the newly government regulated tech web has total omniscience over their subjects.

At that point personal relationships will become moot. The only kinship that would matter is the one that Big Brother dictates to their look-alike computer clones that place all their intimate thoughts and aspirations in the cloud for official scrutiny. This is the phylogenies of social networks.

We Should Bring Back These 8 Old Fashioned Dating Habits might not be the answer to put human authenticity back into relationships, but social networks need to counteract against virtual isolation. Ditch the tracking phone and attend social barbecues. You might be surprised that interaction with a real person might improve your personal relationships.

Via BATR

Featured Image: John Lester/Flickr

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U.S. missile defense systems rendered useless after Russians develop superior and unstoppable nuclear weaponry

During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s State of the Union Address last month, the Eastern leader told attendees that global missile defense systems have been rendered useless as the Russian military has already developed and implemented new and improved nuclear missile technologies on the battlefield which outfox, outperform, and outrun, current U.S. and allied force technologies, rendering the U.S. and other countries sitting ducks.

One of the most intriguing weapons recently developed by the Russians is a nuclear hyper-sonic cruise missile which boasts an unlimited range and great maneuvering characteristics which reportedly allow it to out perform enemy countermeasures.

“It has unlimited range so it can keep going like this forever,” the Russian president stated during last months demonstration. ‘It can maneuver to avoid defense barriers.’

CBC News reports:

The Russian leader said the high-speed underwater drone also has an “intercontinental” range and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead that could target both aircraft carriers and coastal facilities. He said its “very big” operational depth and a speed that is at least 10 times higher than any other vessel would make it immune to enemy interception.

Putin accompanied his statement to an audience of hundreds of senior officials and lawmakers with videos and computer images of new weapons, which were shown on giant screens at a conference hall near the Kremlin.

[…]

‘Like a meteorite’

The Russian leader said that another new weapon called Avangard is an intercontinental hypersonic missile that would fly to targets at a speed 20 times the speed of sound and strike “like a meteorite, like a fireball.”

Putin said that the weapon is capable of performing sharp manoeuvres on its way to targets, making it “absolutely invulnerable for any missile defence system.”

Although Putin made it clear Russia has no intention to attack or bully any one county now that Russia possesses superior technology, the mere thought that the U.S. has been rendered defenseless is concerning.

Now that Russia possesses superior missile technologies which can pierce global defense systems, how will all of this play out on the world stage?

Now that #Russia possesses superior #missile #technologies which can pierce #global #defensesystems, how will all of this play out on the #worldstage?

— Intellihub (@intellihubnews) April 16, 2018

Featured Image: MEDITERRANEAN SEA (March 20, 2014) – The forward-deployed Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) transits the Mediterranean Sea at night. Donald Cook, the first of four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to be forward-deployed to Rota, Spain is serving on a scheduled patrol to the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations as part of the President’s Phased Adaptive Approach to European ballistic missile defense. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Edward Guttierrez III/RELEASED)

©2018. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, analyst, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics (Intellihub.com). Shepard is also known for producing Shade: The Motion Picture (2013) and appearing on Travel Channel’s America Declassified (2013). Shepard is a regular contributor to Infowars. Read more from Shep’s World. Follow Shep on Facebook. Subscribe to Shep’s YouTube channel.

Follow @ShepardAmbellas

The post U.S. missile defense systems rendered useless after Russians develop superior and unstoppable nuclear weaponry appeared first on Intellihub.

Suicide machine draws crowds at Amsterdam funeral show

A controversial suicide pod that enables its occupant to kill themselves at a press of a button went on display at Amsterdam funeral show on Saturday.

Called the “Sarco”, short for sarcophagus, the 3D-printed machine invented by Australian euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke and Dutch designer Alexander Bannink comes with a detachable coffin, mounted on a stand that contains a nitrogen canister.

“The person who wants to die presses the button and the capsule is filled with nitrogen. He or she will feel a bit dizzy but will then rapidly lose consciousness and die,” said Nitschke, who has been dubbed “Dr Death” for his work to legalise euthanasia.

Via Yahoo News

Featured Image: Fairy Heart /Flickr

The post Suicide machine draws crowds at Amsterdam funeral show appeared first on Intellihub.

The sneaky ways China and Russia could threaten US satellites

“We’re seeing development of broad range, everything from kinetic destructive technologies to jamming and hacking but the operational use so far seems to be limited to the jamming and hacking types.”

WASHINGTON – Major global powers, such as China and Russia, are focusing more on space weapons that neutralize others’ satellites rather than those that destroy payloads on orbit, a new report has found.

The study by the Secure World Foundation, released Wednesday morning and previewed exclusively with Defense News, is a comprehensive collection of public-source information about the counterspace capabilities of China, Russia, North Korea and other world powers that could threaten American dominance in space.

When most Pentagon leaders discuss anti-satellite or counterspace capabilities, they reference the infamous 2007 Chinese test of an anti-satellite kinetic weapon, which successfully destroyed an old Chinese weather satellite and scattered thousands of pieces of debris in orbit.

But a more likely attack in 2018 would come in the form of electronic warfare jamming that could prevent users from turning on their equipment, directed energy attacks to dazzle sensors, or perhaps most plausibly, hacking a terminal on the ground so troops cannot operate it.

Via Defense News

Featured Image: A Delta II rocket launches with the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft payload from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. NPP is the first NASA satellite mission to address the challenge of acquiring a wide range of land, ocean, and atmospheric measurements for Earth system science while simultaneously preparing to address operational requirements for weather forecasting. (Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The post The sneaky ways China and Russia could threaten US satellites appeared first on Intellihub.

Artificial intelligence will flag and remove hate speech from Facebook in future

Most terrorist propaganda is currently flagged and removed from Facebook via A.I. but hate speech is much trickier, CEO Zuckerberg maintains

(INTELLIHUB) — Facebook will deploy artificial intelligence (A.I.) to flag, and remove hate speech from the platform within the next 5-10 years, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told members of Congress Wednesday.

The social media mogul said hate speech is the hardest for A.I. to weed out.

“Some problems lend themselves more easily to AI solutions than others,” Zuckerberg told Commerce Committee John Thune (R-SD). “Hate speech is one of the hardest, because determining if something is hate speech is very linguistically nuanced. You need to understand what is a slur and whether something is hateful, not just in English, but a majority of people on Facebook use it in languages that are different across the world.”

Zuckerberg maintains that most terrorist propaganda (i.e. ISIS, ISIL, Al-Qaeda content) is currently removed from the social media platform before any humans feasts their eyes on it.

©2018. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

The post Artificial intelligence will flag and remove hate speech from Facebook in future appeared first on Intellihub.

23 Child Advocacy Groups Find YouTube ILLEGALLY Spying On and Tracking Kids as Young as 6

Nearly two dozen child advocacy groups have formed a coalition and filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that YouTube is illegally tracking the online activity of small children in direct violation of COPPA.

The post 23 Child Advocacy Groups Find YouTube ILLEGALLY Spying On and Tracking Kids as Young as 6 appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

85% of House Committee “Questioning” Zuckerberg Next Week Has Been Given Money by Facebook

As Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg prepares to be questioned by a House Committee, a report from USA Today shows that the overwhelming majority of the members asking the questions have received money from the social media giant.

The post 85% of House Committee “Questioning” Zuckerberg Next Week Has Been Given Money by Facebook appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

World’s largest solar power plant: Exclusive pics

NIPTON, Calif. (INTELLIHUB) — NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy, and Google have all invested into the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System located in the Mojave Desert just west of Las Vegas on the California side and Intellihub has obtained some exclusive pictures of the facility from a distance.

The expansive 5-square mile 440-megawatt site have three 40-story towers which are used to harness and intensify energy from the sun, directing it toward solar panels to produce vast amounts of energy.

NIPTON, Calif. — Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (Intellihub.com)

In the above picture you can see how the light is collected and cast out over the massive solar array and a series of boilers.

NIPTON, Calif. — Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (Intellihub.com)

According to the facility’s official website: “Ivanpah utilizes proven solar thermal technology and a low environmental impact design to power California’s clean energy economy with cost-competitive and reliable solar power.”

“The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (SEGS) – owned by NRG Energy, Google, and BrightSource Energy – will use BrightSource’s proven solar tower technology to produce clean, reliable solar electricity to more than 140,000 homes. Upon completion, Ivanpah will be the largest solar thermal power tower system in the world. Located in Ivanpah Dry Lake, California, the three-unit power system will be built on approximately 3,500 acres of public desert land. Electricity from Ivanpah will avoid millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants – the equivalent of taking 70,000 cars off the road. The project will create more than 2,100 jobs for construction workers and support staff and 86 jobs for operations and maintenance employees in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars in local and state taxes. The $2.2 billion project represents a durable model for far-reaching employment and economic benefit both locally and nationally.”

NIPTON, Calif. — Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (Intellihub.com)

©2018. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.

Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, analyst, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics (Intellihub.com). Shepard is also known for producing Shade: The Motion Picture (2013) and appearing on Travel Channel’s America Declassified (2013). Shepard is a regular contributor to Infowars. Shepard is the leading journalist covering the Las Vegas Massacre, logging over 1100+ hours, 160+ reports, during his ongoing investigation. Read more from Shep’s World. Follow Shep on Facebook. Subscribe to Shep’s YouTube channel.

Follow @ShepardAmbellas

The post World’s largest solar power plant: Exclusive pics appeared first on Intellihub.

Kids Illustrating Dismal Effects of Being Raised on Social Media as They Snort Condoms for Likes

First it was reports of kids eating Tide Pods, now the internet is being bombarded with videos of teens snorting condoms—all in an attempt to gain temporary social media fame while putting their health at risk.

The post Kids Illustrating Dismal Effects of Being Raised on Social Media as They Snort Condoms for Likes appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

West Virginia Launching Blockchain-Powered Mobile Voting System

(TIM) — West Virginia is test launching a mobile voting system powered by blockchain technology in its upcoming primary election on May 8th. The system will initially be available only for active-duty military registered voters and their “eligible dependents” in Harrison and Monongalia county. The state is the first in the country to be testing a blockchain-backed voting system for a […]