K-9s Trained to Sniff Out Devices Holding Child Porn

The number of child sex exploitation cases is rapidly rising in the Washington, D.C., region, and so, too, is pressure to find new tools for law enforcement to catch the predators.

U.S. Justice Department records obtained by the News4 I-Team in a public records request show more than 300 federal prosecutions for child sex crimes in D.C., Maryland and Virginia since 2016, including cases in which devices capable of holding tens of thousands of child sex images were seized.

“It happens everywhere, in the smallest towns and the biggest cities,” said Steve Grocki, chief of the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

“(Predators) can very easily be communicating with people in Russia, China and anywhere in the world,” Grocki said. “It’s so easy online now, and language is not a barrier.”

The increase in prosecutions comes amid fast-evolving technology to record and share exploitative images, according to federal officials.

“Every person walks around 24 hours a day with a high definition photography device,” Grocki said.

Scientists to grow ‘mini-brains’ using Neanderthal DNA

Scientists are preparing to create “miniature brains” that have been genetically engineered to contain Neanderthal DNA, in an unprecedented attempt to understand how humans differ from our closest relatives.

In the next few months the small blobs of tissue, known as brain organoids, will be grown from human stem cells that have been edited to contain “Neanderthalised” versions of several genes.

The lentil-sized organoids, which are incapable of thoughts or feelings, replicate some of the basic structures of an adult brain. They could demonstrate for the first time if there were meaningful differences between human and Neanderthal brain biology.

Elon Musk’s plan to bring a mini-submarine to rescue the Thai boys

The 12 Thai boys and their coach have been rescued from the cave in northern Thailand where they’d been stuck for more than two weeks.

The end of the rescue operation also brought an end to one creative scheme to save them: Elon Musk’s “kid size” submarine.

Let’s back up. To help out the rescue mission, Musk’s engineers from SpaceX and Tesla had built and tested a mini-submarine for the boys to get out of the cave because they were not swimmers. But rescuers ultimately decided to bring the boys of out of the cave on stretchers guided by professional divers. The sub was never used.

In tweets on Monday, the head of SpaceX and Tesla said he would leave the sub behind, as it “may be useful in the future.” A Boring Company spokesperson tells Vox that a SpaceX team met with Rear Admiral Apakorn Youkongpaew and members of the Royal Thai Navy in Chiang Rai on Wednesday and the mini-sub is now in their possession.
The pod was described by Musk as “a tiny, kid-size submarine … Light enough to be carried by 2 divers, small enough to get through narrow gaps. Extremely robust.” The idea behind it was to rescue the kids without them needing to swim or use air tanks.

“Although [Musk’s] technology is good and sophisticated, it’s not practical for this mission,” one of the rescue operation coordinators told the Guardian.
Musk’s involvement with a rescue mission halfway around the world began Friday when the boys’ fate was still very uncertain. The SpaceX and Boring Company CEO tweeted that he would go to Thailand to help with the efforts. He was welcomed by the Royal Thai Navy, who said on their Facebook page that engineers from his companies could potentially help with “location tracking, water pumping or battery power.”

Since then, Musk has publicly brainstormed several … interesting ideas on Twitter.

His first plan was to create an “air tunnel underwater,” using a long tube and blowing it up with air so the boys could simply walk through. Next, his team was working on building an “inflatable tube with airlocks.”

He then moved on to the pod, which was made, in true Muskian fashion, from the transfer tube of SpaceX’s Falcon rocket.

They began testing the submarine on Sunday in an Los Angeles pool; Musk again provided us with updates via Twitter.

But when Musk continued tweeting about his sub even after the rescue mission was over, he got some pretty funny tweets in response:

PeterNorway
@classiclib3ral
I’ve seen like a hundred tweets thanking Elon Musk for helping save the Thai kids and not a single one thanking me even though we contributed the exact same amount to the rescue effort

@ConanOBrien
Elon Musk didn’t save the Thai soccer team, but he will put them on a Tesla waitlist.\

@Seinfeld2000
NAVY SEAL: this was an extremely dificult mission and we are so glad that-

Elon musk BERST in to press conference

ELON: i GOT it, WATERPROOF TELEPORTATION DRONES my team can have a prototype in 72 earth days

NAVY SEAL: the boys havebeen rescued

ELON: ANOTHER POINT FOR ELON!!!

Musk went into the cave himself; he posted a video on his Instagram, where we can see the near-absolute darkness in the cave, save a few flashlights.

Jerome Taylor of the AFP reported that a spokesperson for the Thai prime minister said he was “very touched that Mr. Musk had personally travelled to Chiang Rai province to offer assistance, especially with his ingenious solutions.”

After reports that his submarine was impractical, Musk defended himself via Twitter, posting emails of his correspondence with British diver Richard Stanton, who helped lead the rescue and was part of the original diving duo that found the boys:

BBC News (World)
✔
@BBCWorld
· 10 Jul
Elon Musk’s offer ‘not practical’ for cave mission, Thai rescue chief says https://bbc.in/2u1WT0t pic.twitter.com/CXRy7l4Ia1

Elon Musk
✔
@elonmusk
The former Thai provincial governor (described inaccurately as “rescue chief”) is not the subject matter expert. That would be Dick Stanton, who co-led the dive rescue team. This is our direct correspondence: pic.twitter.com/dmC9l3jiZR

Musk then argued that the technology and submarine design could still be used in the future to rescue people in other “dangerous environments,” and could “work as an escape pod in space.”

Elon Musk keeps getting involved in unfolding crises
This is not the first time Musk has offered assistance in a crisis.

Last year, after the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Maria left island-wide power outages in Puerto Rico, Musk announced that he would send Powerpacks, Tesla’s utility battery packs, to the island.

As of a few months ago, the company had sent 1,000 of their battery systems to 662 locations in Puerto Rico, and Electrek reported that the batteries powered a hospital, sewage treatment plant, and water pumping station.

On June 3, Musk vaguely tweeted that Tesla has “about 11,000 projects underway in Puerto Rico.” But that number is impossible to verify and the details of these projects are unclear.

Meanwhile, Musk has been criticized for underdelivering on certain products; for example, Tesla had production issues with its Model 3 car and missed several deadlines, causing its shares to drop by 6 percent. (Although the stock recovered when they met their production target in June, it has dropped again over the past week.)

In a New Yorker piece titled “Elon Musk Has Delivery Issues,” Jeffrey Rothfeder wrote: “In the auto industry, Musk’s production assertions are viewed as the manufacturing equivalent of vaporware — an advance that is promised but has very little chance of becoming a reality.”

But as the author of Musk’s biography, Ashlee Vance, told Vox, his ability to consider ideas that others might dismiss as “crazy” is part of why he has been so successful.

Tesla, for one, continues to push international initiatives. It plans to build a plant in Shanghai to produce 500,000 cars in a year, and has already built the world’s largest lithium ion battery in Australia.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Musk left the mini-sub behind in the cave. A Boring Company spokesperson reached out to Vox to clarify that the Royal Thai Navy now has possession of it.

SOURCE: https://www.vox.com/2018/7/10/17553820/elon-musk-thai-cave-rescue-submarine

Thai cave rescue options include possibility of ‘buddy dive’

Chiang Rai, Thailand (CNN)Thai officials ruled out any immediate attempts to evacuate 12 football players and their coach trapped deep inside a system of caves in northern Thailand on Saturday despite concerns over low oxygen levels underground and poor weather forecasts.

“No, not today,” Narongsak Osottanakorn, the governor of Chiang Rai province, said after being pressed by reporters on rescue efforts.
Officials are considering a rescue plan involving a “buddy dive” — where an experienced adult diver would swim with each boy — to evacuate the team members, according to a US official familiar with the joint rescue operation.

Thai divers would lead the mission and US divers would preposition oxygen tanks, the US official said. The rescue team also includes divers and workers from Australia, the United Kingdom, and other parts of Europe and Asia.

Thai military officials have been briefed, the source said, and the country’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was to be told about the plan Saturday morning.

The rescue mission could begin as soon as the weekend, but no decision has been made whether to proceed, the US official said.

Mark Zuckerberg just passed Warren Buffett as the third-richest person in the world

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now the third richest person in the world, surpassing famed investor Warren Buffett.

Zuckerberg’s net worth increased to $81.6 billion on Friday, Bloomberg reported, after Facebook shares went up 2.4%. The social network is now valued at about $571 billion going into the weekend.

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, meanwhile, has a net worth of about $81.1 billion.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates are still ahead of Zuckerberg, with net worths of $139.6 billion and $92.3 billion, respectively. This is the first time that the top three wealthiest people in the world all made their fortunes in technology.

Facebook shared private user data with Chinese phone makers

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook shared personal information culled from its users’ profiles with other companies after the date when executives have said the social network prevented third-party developers from gaining access to the data, the company confirmed Friday.

The records included information about the friends of Facebook users, including phone numbers and breakdowns analyzing the degrees of separation between people on the social networks, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Amazon employees start every day by answering a simple question about work

Every morning, Amazon employees start their day by answering a question that pops up on their computer screens.

The questions are typically work-related, with topics ranging from thoughts about their managers to the length of meetings, or the number of times they’ve received positive feedback in the past week. In some cases, it asks less sensitive questions like how crowded bathrooms get, and even throws follow-up questions when needed.

The daily Q&A program, called Connections, rolled out across the company in April of last year after small pilots beginning in 2014. It’s one of the most ambitious HR programs Amazon has launched in the past year to better understand its sprawling workforce, which is now estimated to be the second largest in the U.S. at over 566,000.

CNBC talked to more than a dozen current and former employees to get a sense of how this and other HR programs are working. Some expressed skepticism about Connections, saying they weren’t convinced the answers were truly anonymous, while managers weren’t always sure how to use the data.

Motorcycle cop tickets a self-driving car in San Francisco

Now here’s a genuine novelty: In San Francisco, a motorcycle cop pulled over an autonomous vehicle and issued it a ticket. The future has arrived.

But the reason — police said it failed to yield to a pedestrian at a crosswalk — probably shouldn’t be taken lightly, coming a day after a self-driving car operated by Uber Technologies Inc. struck and killed a woman walking her bicycle across the road March 18 in Tempe, Ariz. Cruise Automation, the operator of the ticketed self-driving car, says the vehicle did nothing wrong. The story was first reported by CBS affiliate KPIX-TV.

Cruise tells the station that its onboard data shows the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the car when it began driving in autonomous mode down Harrison Street at 14th Street. The officer pulled the car over shortly after it began accelerating and ticketed the human test driver.

“Safety is our priority in testing our self-driving vehicles,” Cruise said in a statement. “California law requires the vehicle to yield the right of way to pedestrians, allowing them to proceed undisturbed and unhurried without fear of interference of their safe passage through an intersection. Our data indicates that’s what happened here.” It tells the station the human test driver did everything right but is responsible for the citation.

Amazon passes Alphabet to become 2nd most valuable company

March 20 (UPI) — Amazon became the second most valuable company in the world Tuesday, surpassing Alphabet, the parent company of Google, in stock value.

Amazon’s stock market value increased 2.7 percent by the end of the day, bringing its total value to $768 billion at $1,586.51 per share. The stock jump was enough to pass Alphabet, which fell 0.4 percent for a total value of $762.5 billion.

The milestone comes days after Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos topped the Forbes annual billionaires list with a total wealth of $112 billion, becoming the first American to pass the $100 billion mark.

Last month, Amazon surpassed Microsoft in value.

Apple has a comfortable lead at the top spot with an $889 billion valuation.

But Amazon is rising fast, increasing in value by 85 percent over the past 12 months, including 35 percent so far in 2018, CNBC reported.

As neither company shows any signs of slowing down, Wall Street analysts predict at least one of them may soon reach a value of $1 trillion, which would be the first for any company.

SOURCE

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