By Mayukh Saha

While air travel has been a part of our lives for quite some time, the great costs associated with it make it not so affordable for the common public. Auto-pilot has been a part of our passenger planes, but even then they are not very reliable. A pilot always has to be present.

The company who revolutionized cab services throughout the world has been working on automatic aerial pods for ride-share and has announced that aerial rides will soon turn from science fiction to reality in the coming years.

Cartoons of yesteryear have often portrayed how the second millennium will usher in automatic aerial services which will be accessible for all. Uber seems to plan on just that.

The Uber Summit is an annual event which results in the amalgamation of a diverse community of investors, innovators and policy-makers for a 2-day conference to envision the future of aerial rides in urban areas. Elevate Summit 2019 kicked off in D.C. as its leaders went on to showcase an air taxi which will be used by the developers as a prototype. This gives the audience the tangibility to realize how close they are to such rides. They can go see the display on the outside of Reagan Building, in D.C.

The body of the product has multiple round-shaped blades to make it fly. The body is hollow like a modern helicopter where the passenger is to be seated. The blades will rotate and act as the combination of the wings of an aeroplane and the blades of a helicopter. The fancy design has both adults and kids excited to try it out.

This aircraft will be on display outside the Reagan Building in downtown DC next week. Uber says it plans shared aerial rides in urban areas by 2023. pic.twitter.com/ndvWFjfEBx

— Sam Sweeney (@SweeneyABC) June 7, 2019

Bell Helicopter is the one entrusted by Uber management to develop the air taxi. Uber plans on launching the rides in 2023.

In 2016, Uber Elevate published an analysis to launch the aerial ride-sharing product on Uber’s platform. The whitepaper brought together the efforts of those who have now founded a vibrant industry of engineers, policy makers, scientists and investors to bring to reality what has been only a vision till now.

The process of booking Uber air rides will be very simple. Customers will have to confirm an Uber ride through their app. The driver would then transport the customer to a vertiport where the air taxi will be parked. The air taxi is charged with ferrying the rider to another vertiport of their selection to land. From there, the rider may request another Uber ride or walk to their destination.



Officials have said that the air taxi will be fully automated and will not require any pilot or driver.

Apart from Bell Helicopters, four other companies have also been active in developing air taxis to help Uber. Despite their big plans, there has to be major infrastructure changes made to facilitate and usher in this new future.

Uber Elevate is dedicated towards transforming the world through aerial ride-sharing. The potential market is identified as those who traverse through highly congested ground traffic, which include office workers as well as the delivery associates who travel all day long. With this new mode of transport, the product delivery market will see a new rise of automation. The non-piloted automatic rides will not only cut costs but also increase efficiency for this particular market.

It seems, with Uber Air, the future of “flying cars” is closer than we think!

Uber is preparing to take flight.

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A few blocks from the @WhiteHouse, @BellFlight is showing off their future @Uber air taxi. They hope to be flying in cities by 2025. pic.twitter.com/NAZgQ9fmnG

— Sam Sweeney (@SweeneyABC) June 10, 2019

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Hey! Message me. I am Mayukh. I help people and websites with content, design and social media management. I am an avid traveler and want to go full digital nomadic by summer 2019. I am currently working on www.noetbook.com – a creative media company. You can reach out to me anytime: [email protected]com Read More stories by Mayukh Saha

This article was sourced from Truth Theory.

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By Nicholas West

For many years we have been discussing the arrival of drones that are designed to mimic nature.  The concept of insect drones, however, dates back much further into the 1970s when a dragonfly drone was created by the CIA.

Curiously enough, the dragonfly structure was, at the time, thought to be more efficient than the bumblebee drone they had been working on.  As stated by IEEE Spectrum,

In the 1970s the CIA had developed a miniature listening device that needed a delivery system, so the agency’s scientists looked at building a bumblebee to carry it. They found, however, that the bumblebee was erratic in flight, so the idea was scrapped. An amateur entymologist on the project then suggested a dragonfly and a prototype was built that became the first flight of an insect-sized machine.

So when we hear of newer talks about how RoboBees will help alleviate the effects of Colony Collapse Disorder among our pollinators (like this patent application from Walmart), let’s never forget where all of this began.

RoboBee first took flight back in 2013, which you can see in the following video:

As you can see in that video, the robot is tethered. Now, according to a recent article from NewScientist, RoboBee is prepared to be released from its tether and should be able to fly free as the upgraded “RoboBee X-Wing” — completely without a built-in power source.

A solar-powered winged robot has become the lightest machine capable of flying without being attached to a power source.

Weighing just 259 milligrams, the insect-inspired RoboBee X-Wing has four wings that flap 170 times per second. It has a wingspan of 3.5 centimetres and stands 6.5 centimetres high.

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The flying robot was developed by Noah Jafferis and his colleagues at Harvard University.

[…]

The insect robot’s wings begin flapping when exposed to light. Currently, it has only been tested in the lab, where it is powered by a combination of halogen and LED lighting, says Jafferis.

Here it is in the latest video showing its tetherless form:



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It is obviously still in a very rudimentary state; but, as we know, what exists in military labs around the world is often far more advanced than what is revealed to the public.

If we look at military concepts for insect drone use, we see something far more sinister than environmental monitoring and disaster rescue scenarios. Even general surveillance of the public seems innocent compared to what the military has offered in its vision of the future.

How about covert assassinations? It’s discussed openly in this video from the U.S. Air Force released in 2013.  Are we to expect that there have been no advancements in the 6 years since? Notice also that the harvested source of energy can be solar, but also could be from power lines for the “urban battlefield” of the future.

Nicholas West writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon for as little as $1 per month. Follow us on Minds, Steemit, SoMee, BitChute, Facebook and Twitter. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.

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By Jason Bermas

Harvard University has been developing insect drones for quite some time.

Jason Bermas discusses the latest RoboBee X-Wing that can now fly without a tether via solar power (and in swarms).  As noted, the entire program for these mini-surveillance devices comes from the CIA.

The arrival of 5G should only supercharge all forms of mass surveillance.



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Referenced Article from Activist Post: RoboBee Insect Drone Does Not Need a Power Source to Take Flight for Surveillance

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By Dagny Taggart

In these Orwellian times, when it is revealed that yet another government agency is spying on us in yet another way, most of us aren’t one bit surprised. Being surveilled nearly everywhere we go (and even in our own homes) has become the norm, unfortunately.

Yesterday, it was revealed that the NSA improperly collected Americans’ call and text logs in November 2017 and in February and October 2018 – just months after the agency claimed it was going to delete the 620 million-plus call detail records it already had stockpiled.

But this article isn’t about that.

It is about something far more insidious.

When it comes to spying on people, the government has competition.

The Chinese government is currently implementing a social credit system to monitor its 1.3 billion citizens (China already has 200 million public surveillance cameras). Facial recognition technology and personal data from cell phones and digital transactions are being used to collect intimate details about people’s lives, including their purchasing habits and whom they socialize with.

The gathered data is used to create mandatory social credit ratings for every citizen. These ratings will score citizens’ “general worthiness” and provide those with higher scores opportunities like access to jobs, loans, and travel. Those with lower scores will not have access to those opportunities.

While the United States government has yet to implement such a system, companies in the country are, reports The Hill:

Consumer advocates are pushing regulators to investigate what they paint as a shadowy online practice where retailers use consumer information collected by data brokers to decide how much to charge individual customers or the quality of service they’ll offer.

#REPRESENT, a public interest group run by the Consumer Education Foundation in California, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday asking the agency to investigate what the group is calling “surveillance scoring” of customers’ financial status or creditworthiness. (source)

Companies are using Secret Surveillance Scores to evaluate you.

The opening paragraphs of the 38-page complaint are chilling:

Major American corporations, including online and retail businesses, employers and landlords are using Secret Surveillance Scores to charge some people higher prices for the same product than others, to provide some people with better customer services than others, to deny some consumers the right to purchase services or buy or return products while allowing others to do so and even to deny people housing and jobs.

The Secret Surveillance Scores are generated by a shadowy group of privacy-busting firms that operate in dark recesses of the American marketplace. They collect thousands or even tens of thousands of intimate details of each person’s life – enough information, it is thought, to literally predetermine a person’s behavior – either directly or through data brokers. Then, in what is euphemistically referred to as “data analytics,” the firms’ engineers write software algorithms that instruct computers to parse a person’s data trail and develop a digital “mug shot.” Eventually, that individual profile is reduced to a number – the score – and transmitted to corporate clients looking for ways to take advantage of, or even avoid, the consumer. The scoring system is automatic and instantaneous. None of this is disclosed to the consumer: the existence of the algorithm, the application of the Surveillance Score or even that they have become the victim of a technological scheme that just a few years ago would appear only in a dystopian science fiction novel. (source)

These scores are used to discriminate based on income.

Written by lawyers Laura Antonini, the policy director of the Consumer Education Foundation, and Harvey Rosenfield, who leads the foundation, the complaint highlights four areas in which companies are using surveillance scoring: pricing, customer service, fraud prevention, and housing and employment.

“This is a way for companies to discriminate against users based on income and wealth,” Antonini told The Hill. “It can range from monetary harm or basic necessities of life that you’re not getting.”

Antonini and Rosenfield argue that the practices outlined in the complaint are illegal – and that consumers are largely unaware that they’re being secretly evaluated in ways that can influence how much they pay online.

“The ability of corporations to target, manipulate and discriminate against Americans is unprecedented and inconsistent with the principles of competition and free markets,” the complaint reads. “Surveillance scoring promotes inequality by empowering companies to decide which consumers they want to do business with and on what terms, weeding out the people who they deem less valuable. Such discrimination is as much a threat to democracy as it is to a free market.”

Stores are using this scoring system to charge you higher prices.

Here’s more detail, from The Hill:

The filing points to a 2014 Northeastern University study exploring the ways that companies like Home Depot and Walmart use consumer data to customize prices for different customers. Rosenfield and Antonini replicated the study using an online tool that compares prices that they’re charged on their own computers with their own data profiles versus the prices charged to a user browsing sites through an anonymized computer server with no data history.

What they found was that Walmart and Home Depot were offering lower prices on a number of products to the anonymous computer. In the search results for “white paint” on Home Depot’s website, Rosenfield and Antonini were seeing higher prices for six of the first 24 items that popped up.

In one example, a five-gallon tub of Glidden premium exterior paint would have cost them $119 compared with $101 for the anonymous computer.

A similar pattern emerged on Walmart’s website. The two lawyers found the site was charging them more on a variety of items compared with the anonymous web tool, including paper towels, highlighters, pens and paint.

One paper towel holder cost $10 less for the blank web user. (source)

To see screenshots of different “personalized” prices shown for items from Home Depot and Walmart, please see pages 12-16 of the complaint. The examples presented demonstrate just how much these inflated prices for common household goods can really add up.

The travel industry is particularly sneaky.

A few days ago, we reported on hidden fees that could be costing you big bucks. The travel industry is a particularly large offender when it comes to sneaky fees, and they are also implicated in this scheme:

Travelocity. Software developer Christian Bennefeld, founder of etracker.com and eBlocker.com, did a sample search for hotel rooms in Paris on Travelocity in 2017 using his eBlocker device, which “allows him to act as if he were searching from two different” computers. Bennefeld found that when he performed the two searches at the same time, there was a $23 difference in Travelocity’s prices for the Hotel Le Six in Paris.

CheapTickets. The Northeastern Price Discrimination Study found that the online bargain travel site CheapTickets offers reduced prices on hotels to consumers who are logged into an account with CheapTickets, compared to those who proceed as “guests.” We performed our own search of airfares on CheapTickets without being logged in. We searched for flights from LAX to Las Vegas for April 5 through April 8, 2019. Our searches produced identical flight results in the same order, but Mr. Rosenfield’s prices were all quoted at three dollars higher than Ms. Antonini’s.

Other travel websites. The Northeastern Price Discrimination Study found that Orbitz also offers reduced prices on hotels to consumers who were logged into an account (Orbitz has been accused of quoting higher prices to Mac users versus PC users because Mac users have a higher household income); Expedia and Hotels.com steer a subset of users toward more expensive hotels; and Priceline acknowledges it “personalizes search results based on a user’s history of clicks and purchases. (source)

There is an industry that exists to evaluate you and sell your data to companies.

The complaint also describes an industry that offers retailers evaluations of their customers’ “trustworthiness” to determine whether they are a potential risk for fraudulent returns. One such firm – called Sift – offers these evaluations to major companies like Starbucks and Airbnb. Sift boasts on its website that it can tailor “user experiences based on 16,000+ real-time signals – putting good customers in the express lane and stopping bad customers from reaching the checkout.”

The Hill contacted Sift for comment, and the company was not able to respond. But, back in April, a Sift spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that it rates customers on a scale of 0 to 100, likening it to a credit score for trustworthiness.

While credit scores can wreak havoc on a person’s ability to make big purchases (and sometimes, gain employment), they at least are transparent. Surveillance scoring is not. There is NO transparency for consumers, and Rosenfield and Antonini argue that companies are using them to engage in illegal discrimination while users have little recourse to correct false information about them or challenge their ratings.

We are being spied on and scored on a wide variety of factors.

“In the World Privacy Forum’s landmark study “The Scoring of America: How Secret Consumer Scores Threaten Your Privacy and Future,” authors Pam Dixon and Bob Gellman identified approximately 44 scores currently used to predict the actions of consumers,” the complaint explains:

These include:

The Medication Adherence Score, which predicts whether a consumer is likely to follow a medication regimen;

The Health Risk Score, which predicts how much a specific patient will cost an insurance company;

The Consumer Profitability Score, which predicts which households may be profitable for a company and hence desirable customers;

The Job Security score, which predicts a person’s future income and ability to pay for things;

The Churn Score, which predicts whether a consumer is likely to move her business to another company;

The Discretionary Spending Index, which scores how much extra cash a particular consumer might be able to spend on non-necessities;

The Invitation to Apply Score, which predicts how likely a consumer is to respond to a sales offer;

The Charitable Donor Score, which predicts how likely a household is to make significant charitable donations;

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The Pregnancy Predictor Score, which predicts the likelihood of someone getting pregnant. (source)

The government isn’t doing anything to stop these practices.

Back in 2014, the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop on a practice they call “predictive scoring” but the agency has done little since to reign in the practice. Antonini said that their complaint is pushing the agency to reexamine the industry and investigate whether it violates laws against unfair and deceptive business practices, according to The Hill:

“It’s far, far worse than when they looked at it in 2014,” she said. “There’s an exponentially larger amount of data that’s being collected about the American public that’s in the hands of data brokers and companies. Their ability to process that data and write algorithms have also improved exponentially.” (source)

We seem to be past the point of expecting our data to remain private, The Introduction to the complaint begins with a passage that sums up reality for us now:

This Petition does not ask the Commission to investigate the collection of Americans’ personal information. The battle over whether Americans’ personal data can be collected is over, and, as of this moment at least, consumers have lost. Consumers are now victims of an unavoidable corporate surveillance capitalism.

Rather, this Petition highlights a disturbing evolution in how consumers’ data is deployed against them. (source)

We can’t go anywhere without being surveilled now.

It is now impossible to shop in any large chain stores without being spied on. Stores are starting to use “smart coolers”, which are refrigerators equipped with cameras that scan shoppers’ faces and make inferences on their age and gender. And, a recent article from Futurism describes how security cameras are no longer being used solely to reduce theft:

Instead of just keeping track of who’s in a store, surveillance systems could use facial recognition to determine peoples’ identities and gathering even more information about them. That data would then be out there, with no opportunity to opt out. (source)

A new ACLU report titled “The Dawn of Robot Surveillance” describes how emerging AI technology enables security companies to constantly monitor and collect data about people.

“Growth in the use and effectiveness of artificial intelligence techniques has been so rapid that people haven’t had time to assimilate a new understanding of what is being done, and what the consequences of data collection and privacy invasions can be,” the report concludes.

What do you think?

Do you think it is too late to stop all of this surveillance? Does it concern you?  Have you noticed surveillance cameras in your community and in stores? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of an experienced journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM.

This article was sourced from The Organic Prepper.

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Op-Ed by Brandon Smith

Technology can be dazzling but also debilitating to real human progress, and when I say “progress” I do not mean advancements in the world of machines but advancements in the world of people, and one does not necessarily lead to the other.

First, I fully recognize that whenever anyone attempts to criticize technological innovation they take the risk of being labeled a “crackpot” or an “outdated fossil”, a barbaric relic of a foregone era. However, this attitude is an ignorant one. It assumes that the path we are on as a species is one of perpetual improvement as long as we continue to follow the great technology god; but what if this assumption is completely wrong? What if we are actually devolving rather than evolving?

I’m not here to grunt and shake my spear at the wheel and the combustion engine and the programmable computer – I like all these things. But, what I don’t like is the dark future I see when humanity turns machinery into a great metal, polymer and digital “nurse maid” and we lose our ability to take care of ourselves. Dependency is the cornerstone of slavery, and our civilization is becoming increasingly dependent.

In my time on this earth I have had the privilege and suffered the pain of watching the digital age come to fruition. I’ve witnessed the creation of the home computer, the birth of the Internet, the proliferation of cellular technology, and now the spread of “artificial intelligence” and 5G. I have also seen the decay of an entire generation of millennials into uselessness and despondency, lacking any practical skills of production or survival and completely reliant on digital technology for everything, including building up illusions of friendship and intimacy. I have witnessed the pussification of America.

The counterarguments against this will vary. Some will say that our society has simply become more convenient and more comfortable, and this is a good thing. Others will claim that skeptics like myself are afraid of the social changes that come with the globalization that the digital age brings. Still, others will maintain that centralization and dependency are “natural” extensions of man’s evolution; that it is inevitable and so we should embrace it.

These are also the classic arguments of the Futurists, a subculture of ideological zealots who believe that all old ideas and ways of living must be treated as obsolete and thrown out to make way for all new ideas and ways of living. The notion is that all new ideas are an automatic improvement; that each new generation is superior to the one before it as they supposedly have access to more knowledge, and thus they are more wise. But knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom and it is often misused to achieve rather brutal and vulgar goals.

What the Futurists will never admit is that there are very few new ideas in the world, only old ideas rehashed and recycled and repainted to look different. In the grand scheme of history, freedom as an idea is very old, but it’s social application on a grand scale is something entirely new. Centralization, whether by force, manipulation or technological entrapment, is hardly a revolutionary concept. It is the oldest of philosophies.

The trend today indicates a path to swift centralization, and according to the evidence this is not a natural progression but the consequence of a deliberate agenda by elitist groups that wish to remain in power for centuries to come. The advent of many technologies today is not necessarily the problem, it is how these technologies are being applied in our society that is infantilizing the masses.

Let’s discuss some specific examples…

Communication Overload

Cell technology and the Internet have changed the world. With a Web-connected computer in your pocket, you will always be able to communicate with others, you will rarely get lost, and you can even record video of everywhere you go and everything you do – instant memories. Who knows how much time this technology has added to a person’s day, or how many lives it has saved. But let’s consider the darker side…

First, attention spans of Western nations have shortened to less than that of goldfish since 2002; right around the time that cell phone and Internet use began to explode. According to overall research, the average person now spends up to 4 hours a day just looking at their cell phone; and combined with daily social media use at home and at work I expect that this number increases dramatically. In fact, American adults spend approximately 11 hours per day interacting with various media. That’s most of their waking life being distracted by minutiae.

The parts of the world that have instant access to this technology are being zombified and they don’t seem to realize it. Over-saturation of information and instant gratification trigger an oxytocin and dopamine response in the human brain similar to the response we get when we socialize normally, but there is evidence to suggest that the strength of human interaction has a lot to do with the level of pleasure we receive through a dopamine response.  Social media interactions are a poor proxy for real relationships. So, social media creates a near-constant flow of dopamine, but also weaker and less significant. This has led to a new form of addiction, perhaps more invasive than any chemical drug in existence.

Interaction with other human beings without social media or instant gratification has become unthinkable, but the real world does not function according to personal whims, and so, people have begun to discard time when functioning away from the Web; they become grossly impatient, like small children.  When forced to do the “remedial tasks” that are required for survival they grow frustrated and complacent.  They avoid the pauses or quiet moments in life, refusing to ponder experiences and explore the deeper meaning behind the events they read about briefly each day in their news feeds. All the information is at their fingertips, but they have no clue how to absorb it and apply it critically.

Inviting The Watchers Into Your Home

People do a lot of stupid things in the name of convenience, including opening their homes to surveillance and tyranny under the guise of easy living. While a cell phone is essentially a listening device, video surveillance device and tracking device in your pocket that governments and corporations can exploit anytime they wish, the problems do not stop there. The future of technology is fully interconnected homes in which everything is digital and everything is linked to the “Internet of Things”.

We have seen some of this exposed recently with controversies over Amazon’s Alexa tech, which is essentially a large and sensitive listening device which people pay for with their own money and voluntarily place in the middle of their homes. Amazon has been caught on multiple occasions collecting vast amounts of data from their Alexa network, including recordings of customer conversations which employees and even the government then have access to.

But this is a less subtle example. Consider having ALL your home appliances linked to the Web and what this would mean? Government surveillance of daily electrical usage and appliance usage; which means they would know when you are home and what you are doing at all times. This might not seem like a big deal if you think you “have nothing to hide”, but in a world where carbon Nazis are attempting to dictate every aspect of our lives over fraudulent global warming claims, your electrical usage might become a legal issue one day. Not to mention, if every single device in your home is voice activated for convenience, then this means your every private word becomes subject to bureaucratic scrutiny.

Take this a step further and consider a society in which digital connection is required in order to live.  Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are building the foundation for a cashless economic system in which privacy in trade becomes a long-forgotten memory.  Every transaction can be tracked, and monitored.  And while crypto is being sold to the public as “decentralization”, the reality is that it is even more centralized than fiat currency, as all trade must flow through a government and corporate dominated Internet and be recorded on the blockchain in order for the cryptocurrency to proliferate.  Not only this, but many crypto innovations are being accomplished by people deeply connected to government surveillance agencies like the NSA, and the infrastructure is being built by globalist corporations like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Privacy is the foundation of freedom. All tyranny relies first on the invasion of privacy and the removal of private spaces. The 4^th Amendment exists for a very good reason. The argument that “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” is a very foolish one. Governments are commonly made up of fallible people who are often corrupt or psychopathic, but frankly NO ONE has the objectivity and wisdom necessary to oversee the private actions and conversations of millions of citizens and then judge them fairly. Politicians and bureaucrats are the least qualified and yet we give them the most power to oversee our lives, all in the name of technological convenience.

Artificial Intelligence And Automation

When it comes to technology the mass surveillance issue is the subject most discussed, but there is a problem that concerns me even more – automation. There are plenty of menial tasks in this world that probably should be handled through industry and robotics, but some things should be required learning for every person. For example, do we really want the complete automation of food production in our society? Well, that is the goal of corporations, and it could destroy our ability to provide our own necessities in the future simply by removing the knowledge from our social memory.

The ability to grow food and harvest food, as well as collecting seeds for future harvests, is integral to human survival. The concept of hunting and gathering is so far removed from the average person’s daily life that it is almost a lost art form, but we have not lost all knowledge of food production yet. What I see though is a bleak future if the current path of technological centralization continues.

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Imagine a world in which nearly everyone is hyperconnected to media, to the point that they wear their devices like clothing at all times. Imagine a society where the average person is so enveloped by data that they no longer pay any attention to the tangible world around them and almost all human interactions are achieved through the middle man of the internet. Imagine people so infantilized by convenience that they no longer know how to do ANYTHING for themselves. They no longer know how to produce goods. They no longer know how to fix anything that is broken. They no longer know how to grow food or find water, nor do they even know where it comes from. They are completely dependent on automation.

They live completely on the grid – they are born on the grid, and if you were to pluck them from their life of comfortable slavery and place them in the middle of the woods surrounded by food, water and potential shelter they would still die. Now realize that this is basically reality today for many people, and the virus of dependency is spreading.

Technological advancement serves no purpose to humanity except as a crutch or a cage unless it serves the purpose of liberty and is tempered by the conservation of ancient knowledge and skills passed down through generations. The two ideologies must balance each other out. Those who say otherwise are trying to con you into trading your freedom for a fantasy.

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By Nicholas West

Slowly but surely it seems the promises made by Big Tech that the answers to crime could be provided by mass surveillance and artificial intelligence have not delivered.

Until now, the only thing that has been stopping the rollout of this technology is raising awareness about how many of these programs have been kept completely secret from the public.

In the many articles that I’ve written about the various pre-crime systems, I’ve always included this key finding: “Predictive Algorithms Are No Better At Telling The Future Than A Crystal Ball.”

That title does not come from me or from other independent media “conspiracy theorists” — that comes from Uri Gal, Associate Professor in Business Information Systems, at the University of Sydney, Australia.  As an expert in the field who draws upon the findings and opinions of many other experts in artificial intelligence, he clearly states:

One of the fundamental flaws of predictive algorithms is their reliance on “inductive reasoning”. This is when we draw conclusions based on our knowledge of a small sample, and assume that those conclusions apply across the board.

He focuses on how this type of reasoning could gravely misinform business hiring practices, which is bad enough, but when we consider the even greater complexities of crime, conclusions become even more difficult to predict.

After many years of using predictive crime algorithms, some of the nation’s most enthusiastic supporters of “Policing in the 21st Century” are beginning to declare the mission a failure.

An admirably thorough article from The Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Mark Puente highlights the latest developments:

[T]he widely hailed tool the LAPD helped create has come under fire in the last 18 months, with numerous departments dumping the software because it did not help them reduce crime and essentially provided information already being gathered by officers patrolling the streets.

After three years, “we didn’t find it effective,” Palo Alto police spokeswoman Janine De la Vega said. “We didn’t get any value out of it. It didn’t help us solve crime.”

[…]

“We tested the software and eventually subscribed to the service for a few years, but ultimately the results were mixed and we discontinued the service in June 2018,” spokeswoman Katie Nelson said in a statement.

Beyond concerns from law enforcement, the data-driven programs are also under increasing scrutiny by privacy and civil liberties groups, which say the tactics result in heavier policing of black and Latino communities.

In March, the LAPD’s own internal audit concluded there were insufficient data to determine if the PredPol software — developed by a UCLA professor in conjunction with the LAPD — helped to reduce crime. LAPD Inspector General Mark Smith said there also were problems with a component of the program used to pinpoint the locations of some property crimes.

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In response, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore ended a controversial program intended to identify individuals most likely to commit violent crimes and announced he would modify others.

[…]

Some police leaders and academics expected predictive technology to revolutionize law enforcement by preempting criminal activity.

That didn’t happen.

In Rio Rancho, N.M. — a city of about 100,000 spread over 100 square miles — Police Capt. Andrew Rodriguez said PredPol was a disappointment.

For example, he said, it targeted a remote desert area as a hot zone for cars being stolen after thieves dumped one vehicle there. The department ultimately dropped the service.

“It never panned out,” said Rodriguez, who spent 11 years with the LAPD. “It didn’t really make much sense to us. It wasn’t telling us anything we didn’t know.”

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Currently, 60 of the roughly 18,000 police departments across the United States use PredPol, MacDonald said, and most of those are smaller agencies with between 100 and 200 officers.

Read the entire article at The Los Angeles Times HERE.

One aspect the article does not address, however, are the numbers of people who might have had their rights compromised and their lives turned upside down by constant surveillance and harassment.  Let’s hope a proper audit is done in order to assess that damage and add it to the technical failures.  Chicago would be a great place to start, since its “Heat List” of potential criminals grew from 400 to 5,000 individuals without any explanation about how someone makes the list, how to get off of it, and whether it was at all effective in reducing crime.

Let’s hope that this news is a small but significant step in the right direction toward slowing the rollout of A.I. systems that are being sold as superior to our own intelligence and common sense. Whether it is faulty pre-crime algorithms, dubious facial recognition systems, or the growing use of social credit scoring, our over-reliance on technology to solve our societal problems is becoming clearer by the day.

Nicholas West writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon for as little as $1 per month. Follow us on Minds, Steemit, SoMee, BitChute, Facebook and Twitter.

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Image credit: Phys.org

By corbettreport

Once a sleepy farming region, Silicon Valley is now the hub of a global industry that is transforming the economy, shaping our political discourse, and changing the very nature of our society.

So what happened? How did this remarkable change take place? Why is this area the epicenter of this transformation?

Discover the dark secrets behind the real history of Silicon Valley and the Big Tech giants in this important edition of The Corbett Report.

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By Daniel Taylor

Report calls on governments to “build society’s trust” in artificial intelligence, corporations and megacities provide “hybrid governance” to the globe.

A lengthy report issued by the U.K. Ministry of Defence late last year outlined multiple scenarios for the future of the planet, with a globalist angle.



The report, titled “Global Strategic Trends: The future starts today”, characterizes a world of sovereign states as fragmented and dismal, a world in which “global governance” is impossible.

The ideal scenario presented is a “network of actors” that govern the globe. Sovereignty disappears while corporations and mega cities provide a system of “hybrid governance”.

While praising the “improving equality” enabling individuals to “determine their gender and sexuality”, the report says that “antipathy towards immigrants are on the rise”.

The technological revolution is “fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds” and “is likely to increase the risk of societal upheaval, grievance and possibly violent protest by the disadvantaged”.

Additionally, the report calls on governments to “proactively contribute” to build society’s trust in artificial intelligence.

The Global Strategic Trends report is used by policy makers to shape decisions.

A 2010 version of the report outlined a future in which society is torn apart by globalization and massive global migration:

The social tensions caused by intrusive global culture are likely to be most acute amongst those who seek to maintain their indigenous and traditional customs and beliefs, and feel threatened by changes. This is likely to lead to an increasing number of individuals and groups, many of whom form around single issues that differentiate them from wider society, becoming marginalised and possibly radicalised.

The earlier report also saw the rise of a “global elite” which influences the global agenda:

“…the emergence of a global elite, a powerful network of individuals and institutions that sits above the level of individual states and influences the global agenda, is also possible.”

The reboot of America has become a major stumbling block in the globalists plan for the world. In their eyes, a strong, sovereign America is a great evil that must be destroyed.

This article was sourced from Old-Thinker News.

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By Melissa Dykes

Apparently in the next phase, your AI “oracle” voice assistant will do most of the heavy thinking for you… and the Internet will slowly morph into a place where there’s only one “right” (read: “official”) answer.

On a related side note, did you know the definition for “oracle” is “a person (such as a priestess of ancient Greece) through whom a deity is believed to speak”?

(Part one of a two-part series…)



Aaron & Melissa Dykes are the founders of TruthstreamMedia.com, Subscribe to them on YouTube, like on Facebook, follow on Twitter, support on Patreon.

Watch their mini-documentary Obsolete here and their full-length documentary THE MINDS OF MEN here.

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By Tyler Durden

AMP Robotics, an artificial intelligence and robotics company that is automating the recycling industry, has rolled out new trash-picking robots for recycling centers that will replace countless low-skilled jobs, reported The WSJ.

Single Stream Recyclers (SSR) in Sarasota, Florida, which processes 350 tons of waste per day, said last week that it would add eight AMP trash-picking robots to its already six. “Robots are the future of the recycling industry. Our investment with AMP is vital to our goal of creating the most efficient recycling operation possible, while producing the highest value commodities for resale,” said John Hansen co-owner of SSR.

AMP robots are more productive than humans, can sort garbage more accurately and faster, are set to eliminate most human sorter jobs at SSR’s Florida facility in the coming years.

Amazon to ‘Upskill’ Third of Employees for ‘Skills We Know Are in Demand,’ Says VP

“AMP’s robots are highly reliable and can consistently pick 70-80 items a minute as needed, twice as fast as humanly possible and with greater accuracy. This will help us lower cost, remove contamination, increase the purity of our commodity bales, divert waste from the landfill, and increase overall recycling rates,” said Eric Konik co-owner of SSR. (Video)

Hanson said, “It’s 95 degrees, they’re [human sorters] standing on a platform and sorting,” adding that AMP robots are “twice as fast and they don’t make mistakes.”

Kerry Sandford, a senior consultant with Resource Recycling Systems in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told the Journal that less than 5% of the residential recycling centers in North America are automated.

AMP robots are controlled by the AMP Neuron AI platform to perform tasks. AMP Neuron uses cameras and machine learning to identify different colors, textures, shapes, sizes, and patterns to identify material characteristics.

The robots have been trained to pick out water bottles, beer cans, milk jugs, food cartons, and other items—whether they are intact, dented, or crushed.



Using computer vision, sensors scan the trash on a conveyor belt to detect materials. The robot uses a suction cup that can throw the recyclables into the appropriate bin by using reverse air pressure to blow them out.

“Anything a person can identify, our system can be taught to identify,” said AMP’s chief executive and founder, Matanya Horowitz.

“All of the systems can learn collectively. All robots are learning from different robots around the country.”

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AMP has approximately 24 systems running across the US, Canada, and Japan, and the company believes more robots will be brought online in 2H19.

SSR’s Hansen said it could take a recycling plant about 1.5 to four years to recover the cost of its AMP investment.

SSR has built a world-class facility that sets the bar for modern recycling. John, Eric and their team are at the forefront of their industry and we are grateful to be a part of their plans,” said Horowitz. “SSR represents the most comprehensive application of AI and robotics in the recycling industry, a major milestone not only for us, but for the advancement of the circular economy.

A new wave of automation investments in recycling facilities across the US could displace tens of thousands of jobs in the next decade. Overall, robots could replace 20% to 25% of current jobs by 2030 — equivalent to 40 million job losses.

This article was sourced from ZeroHedge.com

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By Catherine J. Frompovich

I AM, INDEED, DR. ROBERT EPSTEIN. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR YOU TO KNOW OF ME IS THAT I’M THE FATHER OF FIVE WONDERFUL CHILDREN. AS IT HAPPENS, I’M A RESEARCH PSYCHOLOGIST AT THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY. I HAVE BEEN CENTER, CENTER LEFT MY WHOLE ADULT LIFE. BUT I VALUE MY COUNTRY AND DEMOCRACY MORE THAN I VALUE ANY PARTY OR CANDIDATE. THAT IS WHY I’M SPEAKING OUT TODAY. I’M HERE TO EXPLAIN WHY GOOGLE POSES A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, HOW MONITORING SYSTEMS CAN PROTECT US FROM COMPANIES LIKE GOOGLE AND HOW CONGRESS CAN IMMEDIATELY END GOOGLE’S WORLDWIDE MONOPOLY ON SEARCH. MY PLAN FOR ENDING THAT MONOPOLY WAS PUBLISHED JUST YESTERDAY IN “BUSINESS WEEK.” I RESPECTFULLY REQUEST THAT MY ARTICLE BE ENTERED INTO THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, IT’S ATTACHED TO MY FULL TESTIMONY.

Source: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4808451/dr-robert-epstein-testimony

Dr. Robert Epstein, PhD, is an almost forty-year research psychologist, who testified Tuesday, July 16, 2019, before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing regarding the censorship position(s) GOOGLE had taken with regard to “vote count shift to favor Hillary Clinton in 2016” and its continuing oppressive censorship issues impacting everyone’s Internet use.

Dr. Epstein’s research work, since 1981, has been centered on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other topics.

“Some of my research has focused on Google; on the company’s massive surveillance operations, censorship capabilities and unprecedented ability to manipulate the thinking of 2.5 billion people, soon to be 4+ billion.” [1]

[….]

“I reach out to diverse audiences, because I believe the threats posed by Google and to a lesser extent, Facebook are so serious that everyone needs to know about them.” [1]

“Here are just three disturbing findings from my research, which adheres to the very highest standards of scientific integrity:

“1. In 2016, Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton, whom I supported. [….] [1]

“2. On Election Day in 2018, the “Go Vote” reminder that Google displayed on its homepage gave one political party, at least 800,000 more votes than it gave the other party. That reminder was not a public service. It was a vote manipulation. [1]

“3. In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes, spread across many races to the candidates of one political party. This number is based on bias in data captured by my 2018 monitoring system, which preserved more than 47,000 election-related searches, conducted by a diverse group of American voters. [1]

“I know how to stop Big Tech in its tracks and that brings me briefly here to monitoring systems and the proposal I published yesterday. (i.e., To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public, The tech giant doesn’t have to be dismantled. Sharing its crown jewel might reshape the internet.  (2)   [….]

“Back in 2015, a telephone call from Jim Hood, the attorney general of Mississippi, prompted me to start a years-long project in which I learned to monitor what Big Tech companies are showing real users. In early 2016, I launched my first large-scale, Neilsentype monitoring system that allowed my team to look over people’s shoulders and, with user permission, to capture the search results they were seeing on their computer screens before those results disappeared (Epstein, 2018d). I successfully deployed such systems in 2016 and 2018, and I’m raising funds now to build a much larger and more comprehensive system in early 2020 – one that will allow us to catch Big Tech companies in the act – to instantly spot when Google is showing people politically biased search results; when Twitter is suppressing tweets sent by the President, Ann Coulter, or Elizabeth Warren; when Facebook is sending out “Register to Vote” reminders only to members of one party.  [1]

“This system must be built to keep an eye on Big Tech in 2020 because if these companies all support the same candidate – and that’s likely, needless to say – they will be able to shift upwards of 15 million votes to that candidate with no one knowing and without leaving a paper trail. [1]

“To let Big Tech companies get away with invisible manipulation on this scale would be to abandon the free-and-fair election, a cornerstone of democracy. It would make democracy meaningless, even if your chosen candidate prevailed. A worldwide network of passive monitoring systems must be built to protect humanity and democracy from manipulations by today’s Google and the Googles of tomorrow. Only tech can fight tech; laws and regulations will never keep up (Epstein, 2018d). [1]

“Finally, yesterday I published an article explaining how Congress can quickly end Google’s worldwide monopoly on search (Epstein, 2019d). The solution to The Google Problem is to declare Google’s massive search index – the database the company uses to generate search results – to be a public commons, accessible by all, just as a 1956 consent decree forced AT&T to share all its patents. There is precedent in both law and in Google’s own business practices to justify taking this step. [1] [CJF emphasis]

Before I write one more word, I feel morally obligated to request readers take the time at least to scan, or fast read, Dr. Epstein’s full testimony at https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf in order to understand MORE FULLY what’s really been going on regarding votes/voting ‘fraud’, plus other research, references and resources, which Dr. Epstein provides. 

Voters, the lamestream media and Congress MUST take notice and correct the GOOGLEs of the Internet world!  How? 

Congress with oversight; lamestream media with publishing the FACTS, not fake news; and voters, how about boycotting GOOGLE and all its affiliate enterprises [3] if we want to live with a sense of freedom, plus not being surveilled and bombarded with non-thermal RF-radiation 24/7/365 ad infinitum!

Undoubtedly, it was GOOGLE that messed with the 2016 elections, and probably not the Russians!

If GOOGLE and other Internet platforms are censoring the entire EMF/RF spectrum pertaining to Artificial Intelligence and the surveillance ‘trend’ in the USA, do we live in a free country? 

You be the judge!

Dr. Robert Epstein on Big Tech Censorship
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing July 16, 2019
7:12 minutes



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https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4808451/dr-robert-epstein-testimony

References:

[1] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-15/to-break-google-s-monopoly-on-search-make-its-index-public  July 15-16, 2019
[3] http://www.googleenterprises.in/

Image credit: Pixabay

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice, plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer health ​issues researcher ​​and holistic health advocate since the late 1970s; she continues researching and writing in retirement. Her career in holistic healthcare began in the early 1970s when she had to save, and restructure, her life resulting from having “fallen through the allopathic medical paradigm cracks.”

Catherine has written numerous books. The following can be purchased on Amazon books:

Eat To Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities (2016)
Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines (2013)
A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments (2012)
Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009)
Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)

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