* Mind Controlled Drones
* AP Pioneer Warns That Metaverse Could Make 'Reality Disappear'
* HTC'S Vive Focus 3 Update Could Free Arcades From VR Backpacks
* Vax Drug Pusher Bill Gates Admits Vax Don't Stop Transmission Of Covid, But Says We Need Vaccines Anyway
* Fireball Over Eastern USA Coast
* Belarusian President Hints At Shutting Down Gas Supplies To Europe
* Covid- Austrians Heading Towards Lockdown For Unvaccinated
* Founder Of World Economic Forum Announces Great Narrative
* WOW! Bright Green Fireball Lights Up The Night Sky In Southwest Virginia
* Scrambling Trump's Last Ditch Effort To Stop WH Docs From Reaching Jan 6 Committee
* US Concerned About Russian Military Activity Near Ukraine, As House Republicans Press Biden To Deploy Troops
* Why Covid Cases Are Surging In States With High Vaccination Rates
* Cop26: Temperature Fears As Climate Summit Enters Final Day
* Germany's Fourth Covid Wave
* Elon Musk Just Sold $5 Billion Worth Of Tesla Stock
* South Africa's Last Apartheid President F.W. De Klerk Dies
* Atlanta Topped Nation's Metro Areas For Inflation In October
* Hackers Targeted Apple Devices In hong Kong For Widespread Attack
* Robotics CEO Says Goal Is To "Remove" Human Labor From Economy
* SA Probes Power Outage That Affected Four Countries
* Seoul Will Be The First City Government To Join The Metaverse
Mind-Controlled Drones
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AR PIONEER WARNS THAT METAVERSE COULD MAKE “REALITY DISAPPEAR”
An innovator in early AR systems has a dire prediction: the metaverse could change the fabric of reality as we know it.
Louis Rosenberg, a computer scientist and developer of the first functional AR system at the Air Force Research Laboratory, penned an op-ed in Big Think this weekend that warned the metaverse — an immersive VR and AR world currently being developed by The Company Formerly Known as Facebook — could create what sounds like a real life cyberpunk dystopia.
“I am concerned about the legitimate uses of AR by the powerful platform providers that will control the infrastructure,” Rosenberg wrote in the essay.
Among Rosenberg’s concerns is that third parties could introduce “paid filter layers” that allow certain users to see specific tags over real-life people. These tags might float above every person’s head, for instance, and provide bits of information about them.
“And they use that layer to tag individuals with bold flashing words like ‘Alcoholic’ or ‘Immigrant’ or ‘Atheist’ or ‘Racist’ or even less charged words like ‘Democrat’ or ‘Republican,'” he said. “The virtual overlays could easily be designed to amplify political division, ostracize certain groups, even drive hatred and mistrust.” Read More
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HTC’s Vive Focus 3 Update Could Free Arcades From VR Backpacks
HTC is adding a few big updates to its Vive Focus 3 virtual reality headset, aiming to make it better for big, free-roaming multiplayer VR games.
The Vive Focus 3 — a $1,300 non-consumer-focused wireless headset — is adding a new feature called Location Based Entertainment, or LBE Mode. LBE Mode greatly expands the headset’s tracking distance to 33 by 30 meters. Meanwhile, an additional feature called Map Sharing lets multiple headsets share the same virtual world in the same location.
Together, these features mean the Focus 3 can more easily support the group VR sessions you’d find at an immersive free-roam arcade space like Zero Latency or The Void. HTC has also added a few other options. There’s a mode that immediately calibrates the headset when a new user puts it on instead of requiring a brief setup process, which is designed to help arcades put people into experiences more quickly. An additional calibration mode will let headsets track objects besides the Focus 3 controller, including the Vive Tracker puck. And the headset will soon support the WiFi 6E standard. Read More
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Vax Drug Pusher Bill Gates Admits Vax Don’t Stop Transmission Of Covid, But Says We Need New Vaccines Anyway
Despite being one of the largest proponents of presently-available COVID-19 vaccines, Gates admits to the failure of the vaccine industry that he has worked so hard to prop up.
— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) November 9, 2021
MORE: https://t.co/aw7PJZ86jM pic.twitter.com/lo9kKuImo9
Fireball Over Eastern USA Coast-November 10, 2021
Over 400 reports from 13 states
No, this is not a report of the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Space X Crew Dragon in its rendezvous with the International Space Station. Incredibly, nearly all of the witnesses were outside the view the launch of this rocket when an incredibly bright Taurid fireball flashed through the sky. For many of the witnesses both the rocket and the fireball were visible simultaneously. So far the American Meteor Society (AMS) has received 401 reports of this fireball. It occurred near 9:12 pm EST on November 10, 2021 (02:12 Universal Time on November 11 ). The event page for this fireball is located at: AMS Event#2021-7540
The AMS Event#2021-7540 event was mainly seen from North Carolina, but was also visible from Washington DC, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Analysis of the eyewitness accounts posted on the AMS, combined with data from a NASA camera located in western North Carolina and other publicly accessible videos indicate that the meteor first became visible 48 miles (77 km) above Greenville, North Carolina. Moving northwest at 33,000 miles per hour (53,000 km/h), it survived only 3.5 seconds before disintegrating 28 miles (45 km) above Macclesfield. At its brightest, the fireball rivaled the Full Moon, suggesting it was caused by an object roughly 45 pounds (20 kg) in weight and 10 inches (25 cm) in diameter. The low speed could imply an asteroidal origin. Read More
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Belarusian President Hints At Shutting Down Gas Supplies To Europe
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko threatened to shut down a key pipeline carrying Russia gas to the European Union, escalating a dispute flaring over migrants seeking to cross from his country into the EU.
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Covid: Austrians Heading Towards Lockdown For Unvaccinated
Austrians are days away from a first lockdown for anyone not fully vaccinated, after record infections were reported across the country.
Upper Austria province will impose restrictions from Monday if it gets the go-ahead from the federal government. Salzburg also plans new measures.
Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said a national lockdown for the unvaccinated was "probably inevitable".
Two-thirds of people should not suffer because others were hesitant, he said.
Upper Austria, which borders Germany and the Czech Republic and has a population of 1.5 million, has the country's highest level of infection and the lowest vaccination rate.
Nationally, a record 11,975 Covid-19 infections were recorded in the past 24 hours and Austria's coronavirus commission has warned of a threat that "must be taken seriously". Read More
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Founder Of World Economic Forum Announces Great Narrative
Schwab will open the event on Thursday with the United Arab Emirates Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammad Abdullah Al-Gergawi, followed by four other UAE officials and a journalist discussing their vision of the Gulf state’s future.
According to the WEF, the Great Narrative initiative is “collaborative effort of the world’s leading thinkers to fashion longer-term perspectives and co-create a narrative that can help guide the creation of a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable vision for our collective future.”
The project is supposed to involve “top thinkers” from multiple disciplines, “including futurists, scientists and philosophers,” and result in a book to be published in January 2022.
Schwab has shot to global prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic, arguing for a more globalized response to problems ranging from viruses to climate change that he dubbed the “Great Reset.”
“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world,” he famously said in early 2020. Read More
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Wow! Bright, Green Fireball Lights Up The Night Sky In Southwest Virginia
Video outside Sycamore Baptist Church shows the moment a fireball entered the earth’s atmosphere Wednesday night
STUART, Va. – While the SpaceX rocket launch was faintly visible to some in southwest Virginia Wednesday night, there was something else that really lit up the early night sky.
We broke it down in the short video you see below on Virginia Today.
Read More
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Scrambling Trump’s Last-Ditch Effort To Stop WH Docs From Reaching Jan. 6 Committee
A federal appeals court has temporarily barred the release of Trump White House records to the January 6th Committee. Meanwhile, the probe is still getting closer to Trump with a slew of new subpoenas this week. MSNBC’s Dr. Jason Johnson is joined by Matt Miller, the former Chief Spokesperson for the Justice Department, and Betsy Woodruff Swan, National Correspondent for
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US Concerned About Russian Military Activity Near Ukraine, As House Republicans Press Biden To deploy Troops
The Biden administration said this week it is "concerned" about Russian military activity near Ukraine's border, while maintaining that the U.S. commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty is "ironclad."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday expressed concern at "reports of unusual Russian military activity near Ukraine."
"We’re monitoring the region very closely," Blinken said. "As we always do, we’ll continue to consult closely as well with allies and partners on the issue."
He added: "And as we’ve made clear, any escalatory or aggressive actions would be of great concern to the United States."
Blinken said the Biden administration continues to support "de-escalation… in the region, and diplomatic resolution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine."
DURHAM INDICTMENT OD DANCHENKO CASTS NEW SCRUTINY ON DEMOCRATS WHO HYPED STEELE DOSSIER
In a warning to Russia, Blinken said Biden administration officials "know it's playbook," pointing to Ukraine’s escalation in 2014 under the Obama administration. Read More
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Why COVID Cases Are Surging In States With High Vaccination Rates — And What It Means For The Winter Ahead
Coronavirus cases are surging in several U.S. states with relatively high vaccination rates, prompting concern among health officials who had hoped inoculations would help curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
The current uptick — arriving exactly one year after last winter’s massive COVID wave — appears to be the start of a seasonal spike in places with cooler weather that were spared the worst of the initial U.S. Delta surge, which hit undervaccinated Southern states hardest this summer.
The question now is whether above-average vaccination coverage and continued mitigation measures in states such as New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont, Illinois, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Colorado — the seven states that have seen the largest increases in COVID cases during the past two weeks — can keep rising infections from turning into the kind of tsunami of hospitalizations and deaths that plagued the entire country last holiday season, before vaccines were widely available.
If so, it could signal a new, less dangerous phase of the pandemic, particularly in areas with higher levels of immunity. Read More
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COP26: Temperature Fears As Climate Summit Enters Final Day
The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow is entering its final day, amid growing fears that the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C is unlikely to be met.
UN Secretary General António Guterres bluntly told the Associated Press news agency that goal was on "life support".
He said the summit would probably not see governments make the pledges needed to cut CO2 emissions by enough.
Earlier, COP26 President Alok Sharma warned that time was running out to close a deal before the summit ended.
Scientists say limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C will help humanity avoid the worst climate impacts. This is compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
At Paris in 2015, world leaders pledged to try to keep the world from warming by more than between 1.5C to 2C through sweeping greenhouse gas emissions cuts. Latest projections are for a rise of 2.7C. Read More
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Germany’s Fourth Covid Wave: ‘A Pandemic Of The Unvaccinated’
BERLIN — The University Hospital of Giessen, one of Germany’s foremost clinics for pulmonary disease, is at capacity. The number of Covid-19 patients has tripled in recent weeks. Nearly half of them are on ventilators.
And every single one is unvaccinated.
“I ask every patient: Why didn’t you get vaccinated?” said Dr. Susanne Herold, head of infectious diseases, after her daily round on the ward on Thursday. “It’s a mix of people who distrust the vaccine, distrust the state and are often difficult to reach by public information campaigns.”
Patients like hers are the main drivers of a fourth wave of Covid-19 cases in Germany that has produced tens of thousands of new daily infections — more than the country has had at any point in the pandemic. Read More
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Elon Musk Just Sold $5 billion Worth Of Tesla Stock
New York/Hong Kong (CNN Business)Elon Musk sold roughly $5 billion worth of Tesla shares this week — his first such sale since 2016 — just days after conducting a Twitter poll asking his fans if he should dispose of 10% of his stake in the electric carmaker.
South Africa’s Last Apartheid President F.W. De Klerk Dies
The last apartheid-era president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk, died on Thursday, leaving a final apology via video for crimes against other ethnic groups during decades of apartheid.
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Atlanta Topped Nation’s Metro Areas For Inflation In October
U.S. inflation last month rose at its fastest annual rate since 1990.
It grew even faster in Atlanta — more than in any other major metro area.
Propelled by increases in gas prices, apartment rents and the cost for goods, the consumer price index for metro Atlanta climbed 7.9% in October from a year earlier, compared to the national average of 6.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That also was a bigger increase than in a government sampling of 13 other major metro areas, which ranged from 3.8% in San Francisco to 7.5% in St. Louis.
Energy prices were up 28.2% in metro Atlanta during the past year, largely because of spiking gasoline prices, while the price of used vehicles soared nearly as much and housing costs rose 6.7%, according to Janet Rankin, BLS regional commissioner.
Rents in Atlanta rose faster than any other city, according to a survey by RealPage, which provides software to real estate owners. Housing construction has struggled to keep up with the area’s population growth, as more Americans continue to move from the north to the south.
Atlanta gas prices are up an average of $1.34 a gallon, compared to a $1.29-a-gallon increase nationally, according to Gas Buddy. It wasn’t immediately clear why prices have risen faster here than nationally since last month. Read More
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Hackers Targeted Apple Devices In Hong Kong For Widespread Attack
SINCE AT LEAST late August, sophisticated hackers used flaws in macOS and iOS to install malware on Apple devices that visited Hong Kong–based media and pro-democracy websites. The so-called watering hole attacks cast a wide net, indiscriminately placing a backdoor on any iPhone or Mac unfortunate enough to visit one of the affected pages.
Apple has patched the various bugs that allowed the campaign to unfold. But a report Thursday from Google's Threat Analysis Group shows how aggressive the hackers were and how broadly their reach extended. It's yet another case of previously undisclosed vulnerabilities, or zero-days, being exploited in the wild by attackers. Rather than a targeted attack that focuses on high-value targets like journalists and dissidents, though, the suspected state-backed group went for scale.
The recent attacks specifically focused on compromising Hong Kong websites “for a media outlet and a prominent pro-democracy labor and political group,” according to the TAG report. It's unclear how hackers compromised those sites to begin with. But once installed on victim devices, the malware they distributed ran in the background and could download files or exfiltrate data, conduct screen capturing and keylogging, initiate audio recording, and execute other commands. It also made a “fingerprint” of each victims' device for identification.
The iOS and macOS attacks had different approaches, but both chained multiple vulnerabilities together so attackers could take control of victim devices to install their malware. TAG was not able to analyze the full iOS exploit chain, but identified the key Safari vulnerability that hackers used to launch the attack. The macOS version involved exploitation of a WebKit vulnerability and a kernel bug. All were patched by Apple throughout 2021, and the macOS exploit used in the attack was previously presented in April and July conference talks by Pangu Lab. Read More
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ROBOTICS CEO SAYS GOAL IS TO “REMOVE” HUMAN LABOR FROM ECONOMY
In response to the so-called “labor shortage,” companies are looking to finally replace replace workers with machines — and robotics companies couldn’t be happier to oblige.
David Zapico, the CEO of robotics company Ametek Inc., told Bloomberg News that his company is “firing on all cylinders” because, as he put it, “people want to remove labor.”
He’s not alone in his musings. Executives at Hormel Foods Corp and Domino’s Pizza also confirmed to Bloomberg that they’re investing in automation in an effort to reduce labor costs and respond to a “tight labor supply,” as one Hormel vice president put it.
The trend raises an ominous question: what about us humans?
The ethics of robots replacing human workers are, in a word, fraught.
If the trend keeps growing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoglu told Bloomberg, “labor demand will grow slowly, inequality will increase, and the prospects for many low-education workers will not be very good.” Read More
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SA Probes Power Outage That Affected Four Countries
Power companies in southern Africa are investigating the cause of an “unprecedented” system disruption that affected four countries.
Zambia suffered a nationwide blackout on November 6, while neighbouring Zimbabwe reported on November 8 that a technical fault at one of its main power plants had curbed supply. The disturbance also resulted in a loss of connection between South Africa and Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa hydropower plant, said Stephen Dihwa, executive director of the Southern African Power Pool.
Read: For the first time, there is real concern about the stability of the grid
“There was a systems disturbance which occurred over the weekend and this was unprecedented,” Dihwa said by phone on Tuesday. “This is something which has never happened in the region before and are still investigating to know where it originated from.”
The SAPP pool is a 12-member organisation formed by energy utilities in southern Africa that operate a common power grid and market for electricity.
A preliminary investigation shows that the Zambian outage resulted in an increase in the frequency at which power in the region is transmitted, said Segomoco Scheppers, group executive for transmission at South African utility Eskom. That resulted in power generators tripping elsewhere in the region, he said.
South Africa is implementing a third week of rolling blackouts due to generation-capacity shortages and after Zambia’s power output decreased at the weekend. The outages have led to calls by labour unions including the National Union of Mineworkers for Eskom Chief Executive Officer Andre de Ruyter to quit. Read More
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IAI Unveils New Defensive Electronic Warfare Systems
Seoul will be the first city government to join the metaverse
Seoul says it will be the first major city government to enter the metaverse. On Nov. 3, the South Korean capital announced a plan to make a variety of public services and cultural events available in the metaverse, an immersive internet that relies on virtual reality. If the plan is successful, Seoul residents can visit a virtual city hall to do everything from touring a historic site to filing a civil complaint by donning virtual reality goggles.
The 3.9 billion won ($3.3 million) investment is part of mayor Oh Se-hoon’s 10-year plan for the city, which aims to improve social mobility among citizens and raising the city’s global competitiveness. It also taps into South Korea’s Digital New Deal, a nationwide plan to embrace digital and AI tools to improve healthcare, central infrastructure, and the economy in its recovery from the economic crisis caused by covid-19. Read More
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