The Helper
Jun
06
Washington DC (CNN)
Robocalls are flooding cell phones, interrupting dinners, and scamming people out of money. Relief could finally be on the horizon, but perhaps at a cost.
The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to give wireless carriers like Verizon the green light to block unwanted robocalls automatically for all customers. The move could curb a torrent of phone-based scams and unwelcome interruptions that have afflicted millions of consumers, said the FCC.
The vote clears the way for carriers to switch on robocall-blocking technologies for phone lines by default. The technology works by using algorithms and network scanning to identify unwanted calls, similar to how email providers scan for spam messages.
Carriers that switch on such technologies will be required to let customers opt out of the programs if they wish and continue receiving all calls.
Americans now receive roughly 5 billion robocalls per month, according to industry research. Robocalls are automated phone calls people receive that often show up on caller ID as nearby phone numbers, or sometimes...
Robocalls are flooding cell phones, interrupting dinners, and scamming people out of money. Relief could finally be on the horizon, but perhaps at a cost.
The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to give wireless carriers like Verizon the green light to block unwanted robocalls automatically for all customers. The move could curb a torrent of phone-based scams and unwelcome interruptions that have afflicted millions of consumers, said the FCC.
The vote clears the way for carriers to switch on robocall-blocking technologies for phone lines by default. The technology works by using algorithms and network scanning to identify unwanted calls, similar to how email providers scan for spam messages.
Carriers that switch on such technologies will be required to let customers opt out of the programs if they wish and continue receiving all calls.
Americans now receive roughly 5 billion robocalls per month, according to industry research. Robocalls are automated phone calls people receive that often show up on caller ID as nearby phone numbers, or sometimes...
Jun
04
What was locked inside the safe was a 40-year mystery.
The combination had defeated locksmiths and befuddled former employees at the hotel it once occupied.
That was till two weeks ago.
That's when the safe was opened by an unwitting visitor to the Vermilion, Alta., museum, where the safe sits quietly in the basement.
"I had moved onto the next item on the tour when he just went down on knees and started playing with the dial," recalled Tom Kibblewhite, a longtime volunteer at the town museum.
"It couldn't have been more than two minutes, he tried the handle and the safe opened," Kibblewhite said in an interview Monday with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM. "I was in total shock. And he was too.
"I asked him if he was a professional safecracker. He said, 'No, I'm a machinist. I work in Fort McMurray.'"
The one-ton safe came from the town's old Brunswick Hotel which closed in the 1970s.
Read more here. (CBC)
The combination had defeated locksmiths and befuddled former employees at the hotel it once occupied.
That was till two weeks ago.
That's when the safe was opened by an unwitting visitor to the Vermilion, Alta., museum, where the safe sits quietly in the basement.
"I had moved onto the next item on the tour when he just went down on knees and started playing with the dial," recalled Tom Kibblewhite, a longtime volunteer at the town museum.
"It couldn't have been more than two minutes, he tried the handle and the safe opened," Kibblewhite said in an interview Monday with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM. "I was in total shock. And he was too.
"I asked him if he was a professional safecracker. He said, 'No, I'm a machinist. I work in Fort McMurray.'"
The one-ton safe came from the town's old Brunswick Hotel which closed in the 1970s.
Read more here. (CBC)
Jun
01
'Joker's Wild' host Snoop Dogg tells USA TODAY's Bill Keveney about marijuana references and a question category featuring videos of mating animals - with some deleted expletives - in his remake of the classic game show for TBS. Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
While you were barbecuing and catching up on sleep over the holiday weekend, Snoop Dogg was busy making history and breaking records – with none other than gin and juice by his side.
Snoop took the stage at the BottleRock Napa Valley music festival with fellow West Coast rapper Warren G and Top Chef Season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio, with the help of kitchenware brand Williams Sonoma, to break the Guinness World Record for the largest paradise cocktail on Saturday.
Sippin' on this gin and juice drink would probably take a small army to finish, with Guinness confirming the cocktail measured in at more than 132 gallons.
Read more here. (USA Today)
While you were barbecuing and catching up on sleep over the holiday weekend, Snoop Dogg was busy making history and breaking records – with none other than gin and juice by his side.
Snoop took the stage at the BottleRock Napa Valley music festival with fellow West Coast rapper Warren G and Top Chef Season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio, with the help of kitchenware brand Williams Sonoma, to break the Guinness World Record for the largest paradise cocktail on Saturday.
Sippin' on this gin and juice drink would probably take a small army to finish, with Guinness confirming the cocktail measured in at more than 132 gallons.
Read more here. (USA Today)
May
29
Call it a rebranding of "energy dominance."
In a press release published on Tuesday, two Department of Energy officials used the terms "freedom gas" and "molecules of US freedom" to replace your average, everyday term "natural gas."
The press release was fairly standard, announcing the expansion of a Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal at the Freeport facility on Quintana Island, Texas. It would have gone unnoticed had an E&E News reporter not noted the unique metonymy "molecules of US freedom."
DOE Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg is quoted as saying, "With the US in another year of record-setting natural gas production, I am pleased that the Department of Energy is doing what it can to promote an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of US freedom to be exported to the world.”
Also in the press release, US Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes refers to natural gas as "freedom gas" in his quote: “Increasing export capacity from the...
In a press release published on Tuesday, two Department of Energy officials used the terms "freedom gas" and "molecules of US freedom" to replace your average, everyday term "natural gas."
The press release was fairly standard, announcing the expansion of a Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal at the Freeport facility on Quintana Island, Texas. It would have gone unnoticed had an E&E News reporter not noted the unique metonymy "molecules of US freedom."
DOE Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg is quoted as saying, "With the US in another year of record-setting natural gas production, I am pleased that the Department of Energy is doing what it can to promote an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of US freedom to be exported to the world.”
Also in the press release, US Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes refers to natural gas as "freedom gas" in his quote: “Increasing export capacity from the...
May
29
BEIJING — For three decades, Jiang Lin kept quiet about the carnage she had seen on the night when the Chinese Army rolled through Beijing to crush student protests in Tiananmen Square. But the memories tormented her — of soldiers firing into crowds in the dark, bodies slumped in pools of blood and the thud of clubs when troops bludgeoned her to the ground near the square.
Ms. Jiang was a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army back then, with a firsthand view of both the massacre and a failed attempt by senior commanders to dissuade China’s leaders from using military force to crush the pro-democracy protests. Afterward, as the authorities sent protesters to prison and wiped out memories of the killing, she said nothing, but her conscience ate at her.
Now, in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown, Ms. Jiang, 66, has decided for the first time to tell her story. She said she felt compelled to call for a public reckoning because generations of Chinese Communist Party leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have expressed no remorse for the violence. Ms. Jiang left China this week.
“The pain has eaten at me for 30 years,” she said in an interview in Beijing. “Everyone who took part must speak up about what they know...
Ms. Jiang was a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army back then, with a firsthand view of both the massacre and a failed attempt by senior commanders to dissuade China’s leaders from using military force to crush the pro-democracy protests. Afterward, as the authorities sent protesters to prison and wiped out memories of the killing, she said nothing, but her conscience ate at her.
Now, in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown, Ms. Jiang, 66, has decided for the first time to tell her story. She said she felt compelled to call for a public reckoning because generations of Chinese Communist Party leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have expressed no remorse for the violence. Ms. Jiang left China this week.
“The pain has eaten at me for 30 years,” she said in an interview in Beijing. “Everyone who took part must speak up about what they know...
May
29
That is the unequivocal conclusion of a report released last week, as the country battles yet another record-breaking heatwave.
The July 2018 heatwave, which killed 1,032 people, saw temperatures reach 41.1C, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country. Torrential rains also triggered landslides and the worst flooding in decades.
Penned by the Meteorological Society of Japan, the study is the first to establish that some aspects of the international heatwave could not have occurred in the absence of global warming. Scientists reached this conclusion by employing a technique known as event attribution (EA).
The relatively new method, lead author Yukkiko Imada told Climate Home News, sought to pin down the causality of climate change in the heatwave by simulating 18 climate scenarios with and without the current 1C global warming above pre-industrial levels.
They found a one in five chance of the heatwave occurring in the current climate, but almost no chance of in a climate unchanged by human activity.
Read more here. (Climate Change News)
The July 2018 heatwave, which killed 1,032 people, saw temperatures reach 41.1C, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country. Torrential rains also triggered landslides and the worst flooding in decades.
Penned by the Meteorological Society of Japan, the study is the first to establish that some aspects of the international heatwave could not have occurred in the absence of global warming. Scientists reached this conclusion by employing a technique known as event attribution (EA).
The relatively new method, lead author Yukkiko Imada told Climate Home News, sought to pin down the causality of climate change in the heatwave by simulating 18 climate scenarios with and without the current 1C global warming above pre-industrial levels.
They found a one in five chance of the heatwave occurring in the current climate, but almost no chance of in a climate unchanged by human activity.
Read more here. (Climate Change News)
May
27
GENEVA (AFP) - The World Health Organisation has for the first time recognised "burn-out" in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is widely used as a benchmark for diagnosis and health insurers.
The decision, reached during the World Health Assembly in Geneva, which wraps up on Tuesday (May 28), could help put to rest decades of debate among experts over how to define burnout, and whether it should be considered a medical condition.
In the latest update of its catalogue of diseases and injuries around the world, WHO defines burn-out as "a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed".
It said the syndrome was characterised by three dimensions: "1) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; 2) increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and 3) reduced professional efficacy."
"Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life," according to the classification.
The updated ICD list, dubbed ICD-11, was drafted last year following recommendations from health experts around the world, and was approved on Saturday.
"This is the first time" burnout has been included in the classification, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters....
The decision, reached during the World Health Assembly in Geneva, which wraps up on Tuesday (May 28), could help put to rest decades of debate among experts over how to define burnout, and whether it should be considered a medical condition.
In the latest update of its catalogue of diseases and injuries around the world, WHO defines burn-out as "a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed".
It said the syndrome was characterised by three dimensions: "1) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; 2) increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and 3) reduced professional efficacy."
"Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life," according to the classification.
The updated ICD list, dubbed ICD-11, was drafted last year following recommendations from health experts around the world, and was approved on Saturday.
"This is the first time" burnout has been included in the classification, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters....
May
27
Google calls it the “copyright case of the decade.”
“It” is the $9 billion copyright infringement suit Oracle filed against the search giant nearly 10 years ago. Oracle brought the case in 2010 after Google incorporated 11,500 lines of Oracle’s Java code into Google’s Android platform for smartphones and tablets. Android has since become the world’s most popular operating system, running on more than 2.5 billion devices.
Google won twice at the U.S. District Court level. But each time, a federal appeals court overturned the verdict, ruling for Oracle. Now, Google is begging the Supreme Court to hear the case, and so are the 175 companies, nonprofits and individuals who have signed 15 friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Google’s plea.
Here’s the pressing issue: How much protection do copyright laws give to application program interfaces, or APIs? That might sound arcane, but these interfaces are omnipresent in software today. They form the junctions between all the different software applications developed by various companies and independent developers that must seamlessly interact to work right.
All the apps that sit on our smartphones—like Pandora or Uber—use interfaces to communicate with our phones’ operating systems (Apple iOS for iPhones, for example). If the owner of a platform can claim, through copyright, to own those interfaces, it can limit innovation and competition, Google contends. Not only can it determine who gets to write software on its own...
“It” is the $9 billion copyright infringement suit Oracle filed against the search giant nearly 10 years ago. Oracle brought the case in 2010 after Google incorporated 11,500 lines of Oracle’s Java code into Google’s Android platform for smartphones and tablets. Android has since become the world’s most popular operating system, running on more than 2.5 billion devices.
Google won twice at the U.S. District Court level. But each time, a federal appeals court overturned the verdict, ruling for Oracle. Now, Google is begging the Supreme Court to hear the case, and so are the 175 companies, nonprofits and individuals who have signed 15 friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Google’s plea.
Here’s the pressing issue: How much protection do copyright laws give to application program interfaces, or APIs? That might sound arcane, but these interfaces are omnipresent in software today. They form the junctions between all the different software applications developed by various companies and independent developers that must seamlessly interact to work right.
All the apps that sit on our smartphones—like Pandora or Uber—use interfaces to communicate with our phones’ operating systems (Apple iOS for iPhones, for example). If the owner of a platform can claim, through copyright, to own those interfaces, it can limit innovation and competition, Google contends. Not only can it determine who gets to write software on its own...
May
26
A new study provides preliminary evidence that high-intensity resistance training can improve sleep quality and anxiety in adults with post-traumatic stress disorder. The research has been published in the journal Mental Health and Physical Activity.
“I’ve always enjoyed being physically active, but my interest in exercise for mental health and related issues (e.g., poor sleep quality) stems from my military days,” said study author James W. Whitworth, a postdoctoral researcher at the Boston VA Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine. (His comments do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Veterans Affairs.)
“When I was deployed to Iraq, my battle buddies and I would exercise to blow off steam and deal with the stressors of combat. It worked for us at the time and years later those experiences served as the impetus for my line research,” Whitworth explained.
For their study, the researchers recruited 22 participants who had reported having experienced at least one lifetime traumatic event and who had been screened positive for PTSD.
The participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: a 3-week resistance training group or a 3-week control group. The resistance training group completed three, 30-minute high–intensity exercise sessions per week, while the control...
“I’ve always enjoyed being physically active, but my interest in exercise for mental health and related issues (e.g., poor sleep quality) stems from my military days,” said study author James W. Whitworth, a postdoctoral researcher at the Boston VA Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine. (His comments do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Veterans Affairs.)
“When I was deployed to Iraq, my battle buddies and I would exercise to blow off steam and deal with the stressors of combat. It worked for us at the time and years later those experiences served as the impetus for my line research,” Whitworth explained.
For their study, the researchers recruited 22 participants who had reported having experienced at least one lifetime traumatic event and who had been screened positive for PTSD.
The participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: a 3-week resistance training group or a 3-week control group. The resistance training group completed three, 30-minute high–intensity exercise sessions per week, while the control...
May
23
On Thursday, the Senate voted to approve a bill creating new carve-outs for the Federal Communications Commission to better combat the growing scourge of robocalls by an overwhelming 97-1 vote.
A bipartisan proposal, the TRACED Act, was introduced by Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Ed Markey (D-MA). If passed, it would raise the fines the FCC is permitted to levy on robocallers, and increase the statute of limitations for bringing those cases. It would also create an interagency task force to address the problem, and push carriers like AT&T and Verizon to deploy call authentication systems like the pending STIR/SHAKEN protocols into their networks.
“It’s a daily deluge of calls that Americans experience,” Markey said. “It’s a consumer protection crisis. Consumers around the country face an epidemic of robocalls.”
Last year, around 48 billion robocalls were placed in the United States alone. This annoying and oftentimes predatory behavior has become one of the largest sources of complaints to agencies like the FCC and Federal Trade Commission.
“The American people are ready for this,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Senate...
A bipartisan proposal, the TRACED Act, was introduced by Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Ed Markey (D-MA). If passed, it would raise the fines the FCC is permitted to levy on robocallers, and increase the statute of limitations for bringing those cases. It would also create an interagency task force to address the problem, and push carriers like AT&T and Verizon to deploy call authentication systems like the pending STIR/SHAKEN protocols into their networks.
“It’s a daily deluge of calls that Americans experience,” Markey said. “It’s a consumer protection crisis. Consumers around the country face an epidemic of robocalls.”
Last year, around 48 billion robocalls were placed in the United States alone. This annoying and oftentimes predatory behavior has become one of the largest sources of complaints to agencies like the FCC and Federal Trade Commission.
“The American people are ready for this,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Senate...
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© Jason Axelrod from 8WAYRUN.COM