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DOORBELL CAMERAS LIKE RING GIVE EARLY WARNING OF POLICE SEARCHES, FBI WARNED

THE RISE OF the internet-connected home security camera has generally been a boon to police, as owners of these devices can (and frequently do) share footage with cops at the touch of a button. But according to a leaked FBI bulletin, law enforcement has discovered an ironic downside to ubiquitous privatized surveillance: The cameras are alerting residents when police show up to conduct searches.

A November 2019 “technical analysis bulletin” from the FBI provides an overview of “opportunities and challenges” for police from networked security systems like Amazon’s Ring and other “internet of things,” or IoT, devices. Marked unclassified but “law enforcement sensitive” and for official use only, the document was included as part of the BlueLeaks cache of material hacked from the websites of fusion centers and other law enforcement entities.

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Instagram Video Shows Baltimore Man Bash White Man’s Head With Brick in Unprovoked Attack

An Instagram video showing a black smash the back of a white man’s head head was posted to the social media network with the hashtags “#WhiteLivesDoNotMatter” and “#BlackLivesMatter.”

The short clip shows a black man stalk a random white man walking down the street before running up to him and throwing a brick to the back of his head from close range, instantly knocking him out and falling hard to the pavement.

The giggling person filming cheered as a horrific thud was heard as the brick made contact to the man’s skull. Despite the violence content being celebrated, the video remained on the platform for several hours after it was posted.

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Facebook’s purge of left-wing radicals

One of the strangest claims made today about free speech is that it is a ‘right-wing’ talking point. It’s an excuse to spout racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia – you pick the prejudice. Some even claim that there is no crisis of free speech, and anyone who professes their support for this most liberal of values is essentially a useful idiot for the far right.

But Facebook’s latest crackdown makes clear that it is not only the right whose free speech is under threat. Earlier this month, Facebook announced an extension of its ‘Dangerous Individuals and Organisations’ policy. This was the policy it used to ban right-wing controversialists like Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson – alongside anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan – who were all accused of promoting ‘violence and hate’.

Now, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests-cum-riots, Facebook has decided to cast its net of censorship wider. ‘We have seen growing movements that, while not directly organising violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with patterns of violent behaviour’, Facebook said in a recent statement.

This has led to Facebook removing 790 groups, 100 pages and 1,500 ads tied to the crankish, right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory. But it has also led to a purge of so-called ‘Antifa’ groups and other far-left organisations. ‘For militia organisations and those encouraging riots… we have initially removed over 980 groups, 520 pages and 160 ads from Facebook. We have also restricted over 1,400 hashtags related to these groups and organisations on Instagram’, the statement continues.

This is not the first time Antifa groups have been censored by Big Tech. Back in 2018, PayPal started refusing to process payments which were connected to a number of prominent Antifa organisations at the same time as it banned Tommy Robinson, Alex Jones and the Proud Boys.

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USC researchers think THC in marijuana may be able to treat deadly COVID complication

Top University of South Carolina researchers think the chemical in marijuana that induces a “high” may be effective in treating a potentially lethal coronavirus complication, according to three newly released studies

The studies, co-published by Prakash Nagarkatti, found THC, the most potent mind-altering chemical in cannabis, can — in mice — prevent a harmful immune response that causes Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and cause a significant increase in healthy lung bacteria.

The studies, published in Frontiers in Pharmacology, the British Journal of Pharmacology and the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, were conducted by giving mice a toxin that triggered the harmful immune reaction that causes ARDS and then injecting mice with THC, according to the studies’ abstracts.

“The underlying mechanism is your immune system goes haywire and starts destroying your lungs and all your other organs,” Nagarkatti said of ARDS.

“Its’ like a car where you’re putting on a lot of accelerator, but the brakes aren’t working,” Nagarkatti said. “Basically what’s going to happen is your car is going to crash because you can’t stop it. And that’s basically what’s happening with ARDS.”

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Mechanical oscillations cause iron to become transparent to gamma rays

Iron nuclei can be made transparent to gamma rays that they would normally absorb using a new technique called “acoustically induced transparency” (AIT).  This feat was achieved by physicists in the US and Russia, who vibrated an iron Mössbauer absorber using a piezoelectric transducer. The researchers believe the effect could help to control the emission of radiation from nuclei, allowing more accurate atomic clocks and other quantum optical devices to be created. The technique could even be used to slow the passage of gamma rays through a material.

The new effect is reminiscent of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), which involves light at much lower optical frequencies than gamma rays. In general, EIT is achieved by using light at one frequency to manipulate the electronic energy levels in an atom in a way that affects its ability to interact with light at another frequency. EIT has been used to produce spectrally pure light in lasers and frequency standards in atomic clocks. But perhaps the most spectacular use of EIT is to slow light to a temporary halt in a medium before letting it loose again.

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