Ferguson footage

http://rebelpundit.com/category/rebelpundit-tv/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCXRhi-1Z4eCnsNJujlbmQ

Study shows police less likely to shoot black suspects fearing social, legal consequences
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/5/police-officers-more-hesitant-to-shoot-black-suspe/

Eric Holder Says New DOJ Policies Will End Racial Profiling
 http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/12/02/holder-new-justice-dept-policy-will-end-racial-profiling-once-and-for-all/  

Teens Jump Beat St. Louis Man To Death With Hammers
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/30/Teens-Jump-Beat-St-Louis-Man-To-Death-With-Hammers  

Charles Barkley Says Ferguson Grand Jury Got it Right
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/12/01/Charles-Barkley-Ferguson-grand-jury-got-it-right-looters-scumbags http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/12/03/barkley-defends-police-following-ferguson/ http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/12/03/charles-barkley-slams-obama-sharpton-as-same-cast-of-sad-black-characters/  

Videos...

Next Centuries Cities coalition

from slashdot.org:

At least 20 additional American cities have expressed a formal interest in joining a coalition that's dedicated to bringing gigabit internet speeds to their residents by any means necessary—even if it means building the infrastructure themselves. The Next Centuries Cities coalition launched last week with an impressive list of 32 cities in 19 states who recognize that fast internet speeds unencumbered by fast lanes or other tiered systems are necessary to keep residents and businesses happy. That launch was so successful that 20 other cities have expressed formal interest in joining, according to the group's executive director.

 More than two dozen cities in 19 states announced today that they're sick of big telecom skipping them over for internet infrastructure upgrades and would like to build gigabit fiber networks themselves and help other cities follow their lead. The Next Century Cities coalition, which includes a couple cities that already have gigabit fiber internet for their residents, was devised to help communities who want to build their own broadband networks navigate logistical and legal challenges to doing so.

Skynet is coming. But not like in the movie: The future of communications is high-altitude solar-powered drones, flying 13 miles above the ground, running microwave wireless equipment, delivering broadband to the whole planet. The articles predicts this technology will replace satellites, fiber, and copper, and fundamentally change the broadband industry. The author predicts a timescale of roughly 20 years — the same amount of time between Arthur C. Clarke predicting geosynchronous satellites and their reality as a commercial business. "Several important technology milestones need to be reached along the way. The drones that will make up Skynet have a lot more in common with satellites than the flippy-flappy helicopter drone thingies that the popular press is fixated on right now. They're really effing BIG, for one thing. And, like satellites, they go up, and stay up, pretty much indefinitely. For that to happen, we need two things: lighter, higher-capacity wireless gear; and reliable, hyper-efficient solar tech."

Google, Magic Leap Augmented Reality

http://www.roadtovr.com/magic-leap-closes-542m-series-b-investment-now-soliciting-developers-digital-lightfield-wearable/

According to a press release revealed today, Magic Leap has closed a $524 million Series B funding round led by Google; the deal had been rumored as of last week. Magic Leap, which has been in stealth since its inception, is being a bit more wordy now that the deal has closed (but hardly less vague). The company is now soliciting developers on its website and says that “under the appropriate non-disclosures, we’d love to talk possibilities.”


Magic Leap appears to be working on an augmented reality wearable which uses a lightfield display that can apparently generate very realistic looking imagery, not only from a graphical standpoint, but also from physiologically accurate standpoint—possibly utilizing a lightfield’s unique ability to render imagery that has perfect stereoscopy, including accurate accommodation and vergence.
See Also: Reportedly on the Verge of a $500m Investment, Here’s What We Know About Magic Leap
Magic Leap’s Series B was led by Google and also included Qualcomm Ventures, Legendary Entertainment, KKR, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Obvious Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (which invested in Oculus), and others, according to a press release issued by Magic Leap. Some have speculated that Google’s interest in Magic Leap’s technology comes from the desire to integrate it with Google Glass, the company’s wearable display.

“Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google Inc., will join Magic Leap’s board of directors. Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, Executive Chairman of Qualcomm Incorporated and Don Harrison, Vice-President, Corporate Development at Google Inc. will join the board of directors of Magic Leap as observers,” reads the release. “The company will use the proceeds to accelerate product development, release software development tools, expand its content ecosystem, and commercialize its proprietary mobile wearable system.”

The company’s massive Series B comes after a $50 million Series A which closed earlier this year in February and interestingly involved Weta Workshop, installing co-founder Richard Taylor onto Magic Leap’s board of directors.

Now that the deal is done, Magic Leap has made some updates to its website, revealing a touch more info, but still not sufficiently spilling the secret that led Google and others to drop more than half a billion dollars on the company.

Magic Leap leads us to believe that this photo is representative of what their technology can do, though it may just be a concept rendering.

“Using our Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal™, imagine being able to generate images indistinguishable from real objects and then being able to place those images seamlessly into the real world,” teases the company’s ‘Developers’ page, which is now open for developers to submit their interest. “For the time being, we’re being a little tight-lipped in what we’re communicating publicly, but under the appropriate non-disclosures, we’d love to talk possibilities,” it continues. In the digging we did recently, we found that the company may be releasing development kits at some point over the course of the next year.

The company has also launched a beefy hiring page with 68 available positions covering hardware engineering, core software engineering, perception/machine vision, gaming, and administration.
Assuming that the company has perfected the miniaturized lightfield display and is capable of generating high fidelity AR imagery, questions still remain: What’s the field of view? Can they nail the all-important head tracking? What are the limitations of the display’s transparency and color reproduction? Hopefully we’ll have these answered in time.

First Demonstration of Artificial Intelligence On a Quantum Computer

from slashdot.org

"Machine learning algorithms use a training dataset to learn how to recognize features in images and use this 'knowledge' to spot the same features in new images. The computational complexity of this task is such that the time required to solve it increases in polynomial time with the number of images in the training set and the complexity of the "learned" feature. So it's no surprise that quantum computers ought to be able to rapidly speed up this process. Indeed, a group of theoretical physicists last year designed a quantum algorithm that solves this problem in logarithmic time rather than polynomial, a significant improvement."

Now, a Chinese team has successfully implemented this artificial intelligence algorithm on a working quantum computer, for the first time. The information processor is a standard nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer capable of handling 4 qubits. The team trained it to recognize the difference between the characters '6' and '9' and then asked it to classify a set of handwritten 6s and 9s accordingly, which it did successfully. The team says this is the first time that this kind of artificial intelligence has ever been demonstrated on a quantum computer and opens the way to the more rapid processing of other big data sets — provided, of course, that physicists can build more powerful quantum computers.

Navy Tests Unpowered Exoskeleton

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/14/tech/innovation/navy-exoskeleton-fortis/index.html

(Wired) -- Military work is physically demanding—and we're not just talking about soldiers on the battlefield. Travel down the chain, and you'll find plenty of positions where strength and stamina are highly valued skills.

Take the Navy for example. The Navy needs ships and those ships need to be built and maintained—a rough, physically draining job. Sandblasting, riveting, and grinding excess metal off the ships can take a toll on the human body. You're often carrying tools that can weigh upwards of 30 pounds.

"There's a lot of wear and tear on you," says Adam Miller, director of new initiatives for Lockheed Martin. "Skilled workers can maybe do that for three to four minutes then they need to put the tool down and they need to rest."

Photos of unexpected shooting targets used by the world's armies

For the past couple of years, Miller has been leading a team of engineers and designers to create one of the first industrial-use exoskeletons. Called the FORTIS, the exoskeleton is able to support tools of up to 36 pounds and transfer that load from a worker's hands and arms to the ground. The goal is to lighten workers' loads, ultimately making them more productive and skilled at their jobs.

The U.S. Navy recently bought two of the exoskeletons and plans to test them over the next six months to see how they might be used in an industrial situation.

 

Compared to something like the TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit), a computerized exoskeleton that essentially wants to turn mere mortals into Iron Man, the FORTIS is fairly simple.

"I would call it elegant," says Miller. The anodized aluminum and carbon fiber skeleton weighs 30 pounds, and follows along the outside of a human's body. It has joints in the parts of the body that would regularly have joints (ankle, knee, hip) and flexes from side to side at the waist. Miller says the skeleton was designed for complex environments—whoever is wearing it can climb stairs or a ladder, squat and generally move business as usual in the exoskeleton.

Tools mount to the front of the FORTIS and that weight is directed through the joints in the hip and down to the floor, relieving stress on the entire body, including the feet and ankles.

People around the world pose with everything they eat in a day

Watch and Learn

The design team began by watching how humans walk. "You have to look at biomechanics of the person because it's not just a stand; it's really something they can move around in," says Miller. The FORTIS was designed so it could slip over a worker's boot—this is important since feet often communicate the first signs of weariness. It's like running in a pair of crappy shoes; it impacts your entire body. Many exoskeletons transfer that weight to the sole of the foot, but this is a problem, says Miller.

"When the weight of the tools and exoskeleton itself is transferred to the ground, it comes to rest on the sole," he says. "However, a sole can also contribute to user discomfort, increased metabolic cost to the user and introduces instability." Instead, the FORTIS uses a stirrup that attaches to the ankle, allowing the foot to rest on the ground as usual.

I would call it elegant.

Adam Miller, Lockheed Martin

 

Why are we so fat? The multimillion-dollar scientific quest to find out

Early tests show that the exoskeleton has increased productivity anywhere from two to 27 times, depending on the task. The team measured the amount of time a worker could hold a 16-pound grinder overhead without having to rest his arms. "The longest operators could work continuously without a break was three minutes sustained without augmentation," says Miller. "Using the FORTIS, operators could work 30 minutes or longer without requiring rest breaks."

Lockheed Martin has been developing exoskeleton technology for the past five years. Its other exoskeleton, the HULC, is hydraulic-powered and can support up to 200 pounds. The HULC was designed to be used on the field, during battle.

The FORTIS' capabilities are scaled down, but with its focus on mobility, you can imagine that it could be useful for other industries like construction or mining—"anywhere there's a complex and irregular environment," says Miller. "We're expecting other industries to see it and say, 'We want something similar.'"

Statisticians Uncover What Makes For a Stable Marriage

HughPickens.com writes Randy Olson, a Computer Science grad student who works with data visualizations, writes about seven of the biggest factors that predict what makes for a long term stable marriage in America. Olson took the results of a study that polled thousands of recently married and divorced Americans and and asked them dozens of questions about their marriage (PDF): How long they were dating, how long they were engaged, etc. After running this data through a multivariate model, the authors were able to calculate the factors that best predicted whether a marriage would end in divorce. "What struck me about this study is that it basically laid out what makes for a stable marriage in the US," writes Olson. Here are some of the biggest factors:

How long you were dating (Couples who dated 1-2 years before their engagement were 20% less likely to end up divorced than couples who dated less than a year before getting engaged. 

Couples who dated 3 years or more are 39% less likely to get divorced.); 

How much money you make (The more money you and your partner make, the less likely you are to ultimately file for divorce. Couples who earn $125K per year are 51% less likely to divorce than couples making 0 — 25k); 

How often you go to church (Couples who never go to church are 2x more likely to divorce than regular churchgoers.); 

Your attitude toward your partner (Men are 1.5x more likely to end up divorced when they care more about their partner's looks, and women are 1.6x more likely to end up divorced when they care more about their partner's wealth.); 

How many people attended the wedding ("Crazy enough, your wedding ceremony has a huge impact on the long-term stability of your marriage. 

Perhaps the biggest factor is how many people attend your wedding: Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to end up divorced than couples who get married at a wedding with 200+ people."); 

How much you spent on the wedding (The more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you'll end up divorced.); 

Whether you had a honeymoon (Couples who had a honeymoon are 41% less likely to divorce than those who had no honeymoon).

Of course correlation is not causation. For example, expensive weddings may simply attract the kind of immature and narcissistic people who are less likely to sustain a successful marriage and such people might end up getting divorced even if they married cheaply. But "the particularly scary part here is that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is well over $30,000," says Olson, "which doesn't bode well for the future of American marriages."