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Month: April 2018

Two-thirds of tweets linking to popular websites come from bots, not humans

Two-thirds of tweets linking to popular websites come from bots, not humans

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Pew Research Center reports: The role of so-called social media “bots” – automated accounts capable of posting content or interacting with other users with no direct human involvement – has been the subject of much scrutiny and attention in recent years. These accounts can play a valuable part in the social media ecosystem by answering questions about a variety of topics in real time or providing automated updates about news stories or events. At the same time, they can also…

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In America’s new civil war, one side must win

In America’s new civil war, one side must win

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Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira write: This is no ordinary political moment. Trump is not the reason this is no ordinary time — he’s simply the most obvious symptom that reminds us all of this each day. The best way to understand politics in America today is to reframe it as closer to civil war. Just the phrase “civil war” is harsh, and many people may cringe. It brings up images of guns and death, the bodies of Union and Confederate soldiers….

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Russia threatens ‘gravest consequences’ if U.S. crosses red line by taking military action in response to alleged chemical attack in Syria

Russia threatens ‘gravest consequences’ if U.S. crosses red line by taking military action in response to alleged chemical attack in Syria

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The New York Times reports: Dozens of Syrians choked to death after a suspected chemical attack struck the rebel-held suburb of Douma, east of Damascus, and aid groups on Sunday blamed President Bashar al-Assad’s government for the assault. The attack after dusk on Saturday sent a stream of patients with burning eyes and breathing problems to clinics, medical and rescue groups said. Western governments expressed alarm at the attack, with the British Foreign Office calling for an urgent investigation and…

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How democracy became the enemy

How democracy became the enemy

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Roger Cohen writes: Hungary had a horrendous 20th century of lost territory and freedom, but Budapest, a handsome city set on a broad sweep of the Danube, suggests its wounds have healed. Trams hum along boulevards lined with elegant cafes and clogged with the cars German companies manufacture here. The country has escaped what Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, called the “kidnapped West,” the great swath of Europe yielded to the Soviet empire after World War II, and has returned…

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Roger Stone can’t stop claiming he was poisoned by polonium

Roger Stone can’t stop claiming he was poisoned by polonium

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The Washington Post reports: For more than a year, Roger Stone has asserted that he spent Christmas 2016 trying to survive an assassination attempt — most likely radioactive polonium poisoning — by someone trying to frame Russia. Tests were conducted; doctors were baffled, the longtime political operative and adviser to Donald Trump told journalists. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was contacted. But from the moment he made the claims, Stone has deflected questions when asked to back…

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Regulating the invisible ecosystem where thousands of firms possess data on billions of people

Regulating the invisible ecosystem where thousands of firms possess data on billions of people

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Jonathan Zittrain writes: Currently there is no way for us to retract information that previously seemed harmless to share. Once tied to our identities, data about us can be part of our permanent record in the hands of whoever has it — and whomever they share it with, voluntarily or otherwise. The Cambridge Analytica data set from Facebook is itself but a lake within an ocean, a clarifying example of a pervasive but invisible ecosystem where thousands of firms possess…

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Palestinian video journalist was among the nine people killed during the ‘Great March of Return’

Palestinian video journalist was among the nine people killed during the ‘Great March of Return’

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The Observer reports: Hashem Zakout should have been at his local hospital yesterday doing the voluntary work as a clerk that he hopes will lead to a paid full-time job. Instead the 24-year-old was a patient in the emergency room at another northern Gaza hospital, shot in the left knee after throwing “little stones” at Israeli troops across the border, east of the Jabaliya refugee camp where he lives. Zakout was wounded on Friday when he was 10 metres from…

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Rights of the dead and the living clash when scientists extract DNA from human remains

Rights of the dead and the living clash when scientists extract DNA from human remains

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Who gets to decide for the dead, such as this Egyptian mummy? AP Photo/Ric Feld By Chip Colwell, University of Colorado Denver The remains of a 6-inch long mummy from Chile are not those of a space alien, according to recently reported research. The tiny body with its strange features – a pointed head, elongated bones – had been the subject of fierce debate over whether a UFO might have left it behind. The scientists gained access to the body,…

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Science shouldn’t treat the undetectable as taboo

Science shouldn’t treat the undetectable as taboo

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Adam Becker writes: The Viennese physicist Wolfgang Pauli suffered from a guilty conscience. He’d solved one of the knottiest puzzles in nuclear physics, but at a cost. ‘I have done a terrible thing,’ he admitted to a friend in the winter of 1930. ‘I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.’ Despite his pantomime of despair, Pauli’s letters reveal that he didn’t really think his new sub-atomic particle would stay unseen. He trusted that experimental equipment would eventually be…

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Neanderthals cared for each other and survived into old age – new research

Neanderthals cared for each other and survived into old age – new research

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shutterstock By James Ohman, Liverpool John Moores University and Asier Gomez-Olivencia, University of the Basque Country When we think of Neanderthals, we often imagine these distant ancestors of ours to be rather brutish, dying at a young age and ultimately becoming extinct. But new findings show that at least some of these ancient Neanderthals survived into old age – despite suffering from sickness or diseases. Neanderthals were hunter-gatherers, living in harsh environments, mostly colder than today. And of course they…

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Department of Homeland Security to create massive database to classify and track journalists and bloggers

Department of Homeland Security to create massive database to classify and track journalists and bloggers

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Bloomberg reports: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to monitor hundreds of thousands of news sources around the world and compile a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, and bloggers to identify top “media influencers.” It’s seeking a contractor that can help it monitor traditional news sources as well as social media and identify “any and all” coverage related to the agency or a particular event, according to a request for information released April 3. The data to be…

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Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data

Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data

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CNBC reports: Facebook has asked several major U.S. hospitals to share anonymized data about their patients, such as illnesses and prescription info, for a proposed research project. Facebook was intending to match it up with user data it had collected, and help the hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment. The proposal never went past the planning phases and has been put on pause after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal raised public concerns over how…

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Mark Zuckerberg’s exceptional ability to retract his own words

Mark Zuckerberg’s exceptional ability to retract his own words

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TechCrunch reports: You can’t remove Facebook messages from the inboxes of people you sent them to, but Facebook did that for Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspiculously remain. An email receipt of a Facebook message from 2010 reviewed by TechCrunch proves Zuckerberg sent people messages that no longer appear in their Facebook chat logs or…

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These messages show Julian Assange talked about seeking hacked files from Guccifer 2.0

These messages show Julian Assange talked about seeking hacked files from Guccifer 2.0

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BuzzFeed reports: Twitter DMs obtained by BuzzFeed News show that in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was working to obtain files from Guccifer 2.0, an online hacktivist persona linked to by Russian military intelligence, the clearest evidence to date of WikiLeaks admitting its pursuit of Guccifer 2.0. “[P]lease ‘leave,’ their conversation with them and us,” WikiLeaks asked journalist Emma Best, who was also negotiating with Guccifer 2.0 for access to what it had teased on its blog as “exclusive access”…

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