Over the telephone, in jail and online, a new digital bounty is being harvested: the human voice. Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords.
New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has ruled that a marriage between a half-uncle and a half-niece is legal in a unanimous court decision. According to the ruling, while “parent-child and brother-sister marriages . .
China has developed a laser cannon to shoot down small, low-flying drones, according to China’s state-controlled news agency Xinhua. The weapon can zap targets within a radius of 1.2 miles.
State and federal law enforcement groups throughout Idaho are remaining tight-lipped after a local mobile security advocate uncovered what appears to be an IMSI catcher, commonly referred to as a Stingray cell phone interceptor, operating in one of the state’s largest cities. The local advocate, who discovered signs of the interceptor in Idaho Falls, was able to detect its specific indicators while using a CryptoPhone, a mobile device which warns users of possible cell interception. Attempting to investigate, Idaho’s KTVB 7 News reached out to several law enforcement agencies in the Treasure Valley area in an effort to determine the device’s owner.
The more pessimistic among our readership might already be digging bunkers in their backyards in anticipation of April 13th, 2029. On that day (a Friday nonetheless), an asteroid called 99942 Apophis will come perilously close to Earth. The most recent data suggests that it will miss us by a mere 35,000 kilometers, a hairs breadth in astronomical terms.
Samsung’s new global privacy policy for its line of Smart TVs states that a user’s personal conversations will be recorded by the device’s microphone and transmitted to third parties. A 46-page privacy policy which is now included in all newly purchased Samsung Smart TVs states that voice recognition technology “may capture voice commands and associated texts” in order to “improve the features” of the system. The policy, a summary of which is also posted online, ominously advises users to, “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.
An unmanned commercial rocket headed for the International Space Station to deliver supplies exploded just after launching Tuesday, filling the sky with a massive fireball. The Antares rocket supplied by contractor Orbital Sciences blew up moments after liftoff at NASA’s space launch facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the space agency said. The explosion destroyed the rocket and spacecraft and immediately raised questions about the future of NASA’s reliance on private commercial ventures to carry vital payloads into space to supply and support the orbiting space station.
A dying scientist has made a bizarre deathbed video claiming he knows what is really going on at Nevada’s mysterious Area 51 – and says that he reverse-engineered flying saucer technology for defence firm Lockheed Martin. Boyd Bushman made the revelations in a video recorded just before he died this August – along with photographs of aliens he claims were taken on disposable cameras within American military facilities. Bushman was a research scientist at Lockheed Martin, with a number of patents to his name – although details of his biography are disputed.
A giant sunspot on the solar surface has erupted for the sixth time in a week. It is the third major flare in the last 48 hours, from the sunspot which is 14 times larger than Earth and almost as big as Jupiter. Nasa said the activity confirms the areas as the largest active region seen on the sun in 24 years ‘A giant active region on the sun erupted on Oct.
The National Academy of Sciences has published a shocking report which envisages a Chinese-style global one child policy as the only means of reversing climate change and reducing global population to a “sustainable” number of 1-2 billion people. The white paper, entitled Human population reduction is not a quick fix for environmental problems and authored by the University of Adelaide’s Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook, even entertains the impact of world wars and global pandemics that wipe out 6 billion people as potential methods of combating the threat posed to the environment by overpopulation. Crucially, the paper is edited by Stanford University’s Paul R.
The State of Michigan is ordering a Detroit man to pay tens of thousands of dollars, or go to prison. The reason? He owes back child support for a child that everyone agrees is not his.
A naked man is accused of raping a pit bull in his neighbor’s yard. Alice Woodruff told WTNH-TV that she confronted her neighbor at gunpoint while he was performing sex acts on her rescue pit bull that is kept on an 800-pound tow chain in her backyard. “I thought my dog had killed somebody because I saw a man underneath her,” Woodruff explained to WTNH.
Did you know that a storm 14 times larger than the Earth is happening on the sun right now? Earlier this week, it unleashed a flare which was a million times more powerful than all of the nuclear weapons in existence combined. Fortunately, that flare was not directed at us.
If you are a resident of Lenoir City, Tennessee, you might want to remember to mow your lawn — otherwise, you will be spending the night in jail. Karen Holloway just spent six hours in a jail cell for failing to maintain her yard in accordance with the standards set by the city. The saga began last summer, when Holloway was sent a citation for her overgrown grass and shrubbery.
The folks at NewDealDesign, the San Francisco-based design company behind the Fitbit Force wellness watch, drafted a mock-up of the tattoo for Fast Company’s Wearables Week. They called it ‘Project Underskin.’ The foundation of Underskin would be a visible tattoo implanted in the knuckle of the thumb and a larger, invisible tattoo implanted in the palm, according to Fast Company.
Sure, we’re virtual connected to our phones 24/7 now, but what if we were actually connected to our phones? That’s already starting to happen. Last year, for instance, artist Anthony Antonellis had an RFID chip embedded in his arm that could store and transfer art to his handheld smartphone.
Experts warn Japan’s medical system is not ready for an invasion of potentially deadly redback spiders, with limited supplies of the anti-venom available to authorities. About a dozen of the venomous Australian spiders were found in a small park in a residential area of Mitaka in Tokyo, terrifying local parents. The redbacks were quickly captured and exterminated by authorities but government official Motosugu Tanaka said they would not be able to stop them from spreading.
President Barack Obama’s new ‘Ebola Czar’ Ron Klain is an enthusiastic advocate of population control who thinks that there are too many people in Africa. Klain’s role in overseeing the United States’ response to a virus that has killed thousands of Africans and threatens to infect up to 10,000 a week by December 1st is somewhat disconcerting given his views on overpopulation. In a recent interview, Klain said the top leadership issue challenging the world today was “how to deal with the continuing growing population in the world” including “burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia.
At Scientific American, Clara Moskowitz has the transcript from a recent interview with Weintraub, in which they discuss the implications of extraterrestrial life on humanity’s assorted religious sensibilities. Here’s Weintraub on the difficulties that could be faced by religions that see humans as “the sole focus of God’s attention”: The religions that see the world through that viewpoint tend to be some of the Christian evangelicals.
The rash of creepy clown sightings in California appears to have spread nationwide, with reported en-clown-ters in Florida, Indiana and New Mexico. The Wasco Clown, a California photography project by a husband-and-wife team who said they wish to remain anonymous, appears to have inspired copycats that have been photographed and videotaped in Albuquerque, N.M.