FASTER, PLEASE: Experimental vaccine may reduce risk of post-stroke blood clot.
Archive for 2018
October 30, 2018
IT’S A LOT LIKE WEB 1.0: What The Heck Is Web 3.0 Anyway?
Many people don’t realise that the internet was never meant to be controlled by a few central authorities managing the traffic and data. Tim Berners-Lee and Web 1.0’s original architects imagined a distributed system of computers communicating with each other directly, with each user owning a bit of responsibility for maintaining their contribution to the network.
Today’s Web 2.0 has cast off these original ideals and relies on large corporations to store and distribute information. Over time, these giants have amassed huge stores of data on each and every one of us, down to the individual level. This is information that can predict our probability to purchase an item or take an action – like voting for one political candidate over another. But this data also suggests ways we can be manipulated to take actions that might go against our better judgement (ever had a product you want but don’t really need follow you around the web for a few weeks?). These concentrated forces have turned the user into the product to drive revenue by either selling our data or offering advertising that is micro-targeted to influence our thoughts and decisions.
A new wave of networking technologies, also known as Web 3.0, promises to return the internet to the hands of users.
Faster, please.
ELECTIONEERING: DNC Chairman to Latinos: Trump ‘Wants Every Voter to Be Afraid.’ “Trump campaign says it’s targeting ‘huge batch of independent voters, suburban mothers, people out there that might not be watching the news every day’.”
NOTHING IS UNHACKABLE: The US pushes to build unhackable quantum networks.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Lester Holt Dressed up as a Woman in ‘Whiteface,’ Fallon In Blackface, What Exactly is NBC’s Policy?
21ST CENTURY DEALMAKING: Why IBM Paid $34 Billion for a Company That Gives Away Software for Free.
EMILY ZANOTTI: Women’s March Holds ‘Vigil’ To Oppose Anti-Semitism — Led By Linda Sarsour. “At least three of the Women’s March leaders embrace anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, and they aren’t apologizing for it.”
Sarsour and fellow Women’s March leaders Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez are, of course, friends with arguably the nation’s foremost anti-Semite, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who regularly delivers anti-Jewish messages from the pulpit of his mosque in Chicago, and just last week referred to Jews as “termites” who require extermination.
The Women’s March, of course, hasn’t denounced Farrakhan, nor has it forced its own leaders, who led a march against anti-Semitism yesterday, to denounce Farrakhan and distance themselves from his rhetoric.
Actually, it’s just the opposite. The best the March could offer was a tepid statement of values: “Minister Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer, and trans people are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles.”
Also: 6 Liberal Democrats Photographed With Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.
MY DAILY CALLER COLUMN THIS WEEK: SELF-SERVING POLITICIANS RAISE A THREAT TO INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM, AND THE MEDIA DOESN’T CARE TO COVER IT.
Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has demanded a special prosecutor to investigate the use of James O’Keefe’s undercover or hidden camera techniques to address matters of indubitable public concern…It’s pretty clear why McCaskill is upset. In one video, a McCaskill staffer says that the senator downplays her support for gun control. Another staffer suggests she is downplaying her support from former President Barack Obama. In another video, McCaskill is accused of trying to hide her support from Planned Parenthood. Fairly or not, she is painted as a disingenuous hypocrite.
It goes deeper than the medias’ dislike for James O’Keefe. It goes to the heart of pet causes and biases in the newsrooms.
CHANGE: Florida to Gain 1.4 Million Voters if Felon Measure Passes. “The initiative to allow former prisoners to vote stands a chance of passing, and activists are already encouraging this group to cast ballots.”
AT THIS POINT, THE SPLC IS JUST A HATE GROUP SPREADING HATE SPEECH: SPLC Ties Trump to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting, Even Though Shooter Hated Trump…
OUCH: Whirlpool asks bankrupt-Sears for inventory back.
Whirlpool – which makes washing machines, refrigerators and dish washers, among other appliances – sent a letter to Sears last week asking that the retailer return items it had received from Whirlpool in the 45 days leading up to its Oct. 15 bankruptcy filing, according to The New York Post.
Whirlpool said that Sears has no right to the products since the company was insolvent when it ordered them, requesting the retailer refrain from selling or disposing of them.
Related: Sears bankruptcy puts Kenmore lifetime warranty in question.
Ten years ago my wife and I purchased a Kenmore Elite dishwasher which we’ve been very happy with, but are now left wondering if replacement parts are going to become an issue.
ROGER KIMBALL: The audacity of Obama’s lying: Brazenness is key. If you’re going to lie, don’t be shy. “Watch this: ‘What we have not seen before in our public life is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying. Just making stuff up.’ Nice! As in, ‘if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor’?”
MARK PULLIAM: The Pro Bono Docket and the Legal Blowhards Who Exploit It.
Some of the “pro bono” work performed by large law firms and law school clinics undeniably assists non-profit organizations and low-income people with routine legal problems (such as adoptive families, domestic violence victims, and veterans seeking benefits). However, much of pro bono litigation amounts to advocacy of leftist causes, such as fighting voter ID laws, challenging immigration restrictions, promoting prisoners’ rights and the LGBT agenda, opposing capital punishment, and reforming—via judicial edict—public education, foster care, and other government-run services.
There is nothing wrong with such progressive activism, so long as it does not masquerade as benefiting the public, particularly when the goal is to raise taxes or prevent the enforcement of—or even to overturn altogether—democratically-enacted laws. The “public,” to be honest, is not the clientele for most pro bono work; currently fashionable “victim groups” are.
Yeah, pretty much.
I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT VOTER FRAUD WAS A MYTH: Former Dem Leader in Texas Implicated in Organized Voter Fraud Ring, AG Says. “Stuart Clegg, the former executive director for the Tarrant County Democratic Party, allegedly funded an illegal vote harvesting scheme.”
THE APP ECONOMY: Travelers Cash In Using International Delivery Apps, Often By Skirting Customs Duties.
San Francisco-based Grabr—which says it has more than 500,000 world-wide registered users—offers a web platform allowing shoppers to request international deliveries. The company, backed by big-name investors including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, is popular in markets such as Brazil and Argentina, where foreign goods purchased locally are expensive.
Many goods are a vastly better deal for Grabr shoppers if their traveling partners don’t incur any duties on arrival.
The Wall Street Journal interviewed more than a dozen Grabr travelers, almost all of whom said they tried to bring expensive items through customs without paying duties.
“I would take the items out of the boxes to make them look used,” said former deliverer Evelyn Slater-Shew, 27 years old, of Long Beach, Calif., on how she would avoid customs when transporting goods.
Ms. Slater-Shew said she delivered items selected by Grabr staffers who appeared to know “what we were doing” and advised her to “make everything look used or old.”
Sneaky.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Trump impeachment class offered again at San Diego State.
REPRODUCTION: Same-sex couple carries same ‘miracle’ baby in what may be fertility world first.
It starts like traditional IVF.
“Bliss went through the stimulation of her ovaries and the egg harvest,” Kathy said.
Instead of placing the sperm and Bliss’ eggs into incubators in a lab, which is called reciprocal IVF and has been carried out for same-sex couples for years, they go into the chamber of the INVOcell device immediately after egg retrieval. The device is placed into Bliss’ body for five days where early embryo development begins.
“She got the embryo off to an early start,” Kathy said. “The eggs fertilized in her body and when they returned five days later, we removed the device and froze the embryos.”
Because embryos don’t have livers, kidneys or lungs, traditionally, electromechanical devices like incubators are used in labs to remove toxins and try to maintain a supportive environment for the embryo.
“It turns out, not surprisingly, that the woman’s own body is a very good incubator,” Kathy said, clarifying how INVOcell works. “We have livers, kidneys and lungs so we’re able to provide those same services to the embryo more naturally.”
Next, it was Ashleigh’s turn.
“Almost like passing the baton, like it’s a relay race,” Kathy said.
Doctors evaluated Ashleigh’s uterus, gave her estrogen and then progesterone, waited for the right time and transferred her wife’s embryos to her body. They got pregnant on the first try.
Really, most anything to combat the radical decline in fertility.
THE FIRST THING WE DO, LET’S BILL ALL THE LAWYERS: Supreme Court tackles class action settlement that left nothing for millions of online customers.
What happens when there are 129 million winners in a class action lawsuit, each of whom stands to receive 4 cents?
Federal judges in California thought they had an answer. Faced with a privacy invasion lawsuit first filed against Google in 2010, they approved an $8.5 million settlement that split most of the proceeds among six universities and nonprofit groups researching internet privacy issues.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers got more than $2 million.
Google users got nothing.
Enter Ted Frank, who directs the Center for Class Action Fairness at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group. He objected to the settlement, as he has to numerous others. This time, he made it to the Supreme Court.
Frank’s beef is simple: The deal approved by federal district and circuit court judges benefited the lawyers and recipients, including programs at universities the lawyers attended. Google was not required to change its search function practices despite the privacy intrusion. And the 129 million-member class remained largely clueless.
What a waste of everyone’s time — except for the attorneys’.
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: #HeToo: How the Campus Accused Fight Back in Court and Often Win.
IF TRUMP WERE MISCHIEVOUS, HE’D SIDE WITH THE STUDENTS: UChicago won’t recognize grad student union…so members walk out of class.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Everyone Else Needs to Tone Down Their Rhetoric and Much, Much More. “So I am supposed to believe that calling Trump supporters Nazis, white supremacists, sexists, homophobes is just the right thing to do but Trump’s rhetoric is pouring gasoline on a burning fire of crazy activists? Or perhaps violence in the name of the leftist agenda is just fine? I think that’s it.”
GOOD GUY WITH A GUN: Dad at McDonald’s with kids shoots and kills masked gunman who opened fire.