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r0B0t: 2016 Emmy nominations: Full list  
More about Television and Entertainment  
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r0B0t: 'Overwatch' hero spotlight: How to suck less with Bastion  
More about Esports, Entertainment, Gaming, Blizzard Entertainment, and Overwatch  
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r0B0t: Mr Robot's Rami Malek: 'The world is in chaos – and all we do is hyperconsume'  

The star of the most prescient show on TV has killed capitalism, torched the web and sparked a haircut trend

“I went to the barber's yesterday and the barber burst out laughing,” says Rami Malek. “She said, ‘Sorry for laughing it's just that everybody comes in asking for your haircut. And now you're here yourself.'”

Malek shouldn't sound so shocked. Since Mr Robot burst on to our screens last summer, the hacktivist thriller has been one of TV's most talked about shows and given us a new trim for our time. It's already won a Golden Globe and is tipped to dominate the Emmys, with Malek among the favourites to land best actor.

Continue reading...  
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r0B0t: ICYMI: Better walking bot and an anti-aging breakthrough  
Today on In Case You Missed It: Georgia Tech overhauled its DURUS robot to walk with a human-like gait that makes it the most efficient bipedal robot. Scientists at the EPFL did some solid research into the pomegranate fruit that shows it can cou...  
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r0B0t: Hacking Mr. Robot  

Slate and Future Tense are discussing Mr. Robot and the technological world it portrays throughout the show's second season. You can follow this conversation on Future Tense, and Slate Plus members can also listen to Hacking Mr. Robot, a members-only podcast series featuring Lily Hay Newman and Fred Kaplan.

Mr. Robot, which returns Wednesday night for a second season on the USA Network, is a remarkable TV show: funny, edgy, suspenseful, subversive, and a piercing probe of the modern social fabric. In short, it's about a world controlled by computers and the hackers—especially our anti-hero and narrator, a lonely hacker named Elliot Alderson (brilliantly played by Rami Malek), who finds himself the kingpin of a secret society of hackers—plotting to bring down that world, the mainsprings of which only they understand.

At Season 1's fade-out, the hackers, who call themselves Fsociety, launch their massive cyberattack on E Corp., the evil megabank that seems to run the global economy (more on this later), wiping out all its data, erasing the debt of hundreds of millions of people, and thus fomenting revolution.

As the new season opens, the world is in chaos. In one scene, E Corp.'s general counsel walks into her smart home and, suddenly, all the Internet of Things runs amuck: the shower turns scalding hot, the stereo turns blaring loud, lights flash off and on, the burglar alarm's pass code doesn't work. Fsociety has hacked into her home's main computer, and she doesn't know what to do. “It's all inside the walls!” she screams into the phone, when a tech-support staffer advises her to check the wiring. That's the way her smart home was packaged.

What a metaphor for modern life—and only a slight extension of its reality. Nearly all the pieces of our critical infrastructure—banking, transportation, energy, waterworks, government, the military, and of course information technology—are wired into computer networks. With the Internet of Things, so, increasingly, are our appliances and cars. If these systems break down, whether due to a technical flaw or a hacker's keystrokes, most of us don't—and won't—know what to do. In a DARPA-financed experiment last year, a pair of computer specialists, one of whom used to work at the National Security Agency and is now the security chief of Uber's driverless-car program, hacked into a Jeep Cherokee and commandeered its steering wheel, accelerator, brakes, GPS receiver, windshield wipers—everything.

In other words, there's more than a patina of authenticity to Mr. Robot.

Most shows that deal with technology lose their footing when they try to go deep or get detailed. The viewers who know the field roll their eyes in derision; those who don't still sense that something's off. The creators of Mr. Robot—showrunner Sam Esmail and his crew of consultants—get these things, small and large, right. When the characters type commands and codes on their laptops, what we see on their monitors is the real deal: no post-production green-screen gibberish here. In the early part of Season 1, before Elliot joins (or realizes that his schizoid self is leading) the revolution, he hacks his few friends, his boss, and his shrink, as well as a few miscreants (a child pornographer, a drug dealer, and his shrink's philandering boyfriend) whom he blackmails or turns in to the authorities. The techniques he uses to crack their passwords or otherwise gain access to their files are real, time-tested tools. It's so easy for Elliot (and for the many hackers in real life) and so shocking to his victims when they realize how wide-open they've left themselves.

These scenes capture a new power equation in the internet era—the control, by those who have mastered the technology, over the rest of us who blithely plaster everything about ourselves online. In one scene, Elliot phones one of his prey, pretending to be a bank officer (he's already found out where the target banks), and asks, as part of a “security review,” for his address, favorite sports team, and pet's name. From that information, Elliot pieces together the guy's password.

It's often as simple as that. When I was researching my book, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, Matt Devost, president and CEO of the cybersecurity firm FusionX, told me about his days running the “red team” in war games that tested the vulnerability of NATO communications systems. In one game, Devost was having a hard time cracking the commanding general's password. So he looked up his biographical sketch on a military website, tried out some of the personal details it cited, and finally hit gold by combining “Rutgers,” where the general's son was attending college, with a two-digit number, which a commercially available random-numbers generator guessed in less than a second.

But what about the show's larger premise: Could a skilled hacker penetrate a megacorporation's computer network; erase all its data; and, as a result, topple the capitalist system—or at least wipe out the debt of the masses? This is where the show goes too far and, in another sense, not far enough.

The irony is that, of all the critical sectors of the American economy, banking and finance are doing pretty well when it comes to cybersecurity. Their entire business, after all, relies on taking your money and earning your trust. They also have a lot of money, which allows them to hire the best engineers to secure their networks. Hackers try to get in all the time, but they rarely succeed, and when they do, they're detected and ejected fairly quickly, and the hole is patched not long after. A major attack, of the sort portrayed in Mr. Robot, is plausible, but its results might not be enduring. (Even if the bank's cybersecurity team couldn't repair the damage, the Department of Homeland Security could send the NSA an official request for technical assistance. And I'm pretty sure that, whatever a backroom of anarchic hackers could do, the elite hackers of the NSA's Tailored Access Operations office could trace and reverse.)

One other feature of the American economy: compared with other industrialized nations, it's decentralized. The cyber-shutdown of a very large bank would send devastating shockwaves across the entire financial system (think Lehman Brothers in 2008), but it wouldn't mean the shutdown of all banks or all bank transactions. Even if hackers jammed or erased Bank of America's data (and its backup files), they wouldn't have touched the data at J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, or the others. The liberation of every indebted citizen isn't so plausible.

Finally, if there really was a firm as monolithic as E Corp., and if hackers really did freeze its data, the chaos would be a lot wilder. We do catch a glimpse of the disorder in one scene, where a woman, after waiting three days for an appointment, tells a banker that she's paid off her mortgage and presents the papers to prove it; but the banker can't get into the computer and doesn't trust the paperwork because, so she says, a lot of counterfeit documents are out there. But in other scenes, we see normal street traffic, open bodegas, routine commerce—when I suspect that, in fact, there'd be rioting everywhere.

Maybe the larger breakdown will erupt in future episodes.

But the basic syllogism of contemporary life, Mr. Robot gets precisely right: Almost everything is hooked up to the internet; almost everything on the internet can be hacked and thus manipulated or destroyed; therefore, almost everything can be hacked and manipulated or destroyed. Should this dynamic take off, should the potential threats that we read about erupt into actual attacks and breakdowns, then up will be down, down up, and the line between madness and order—the line that Elliot walks more and more precariously as the show progresses—could blur into a haze of indistinction.

 
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r0B0t: The Angle: Small Donations Edition  

Which aspect of the Bernie Sanders campaign will make a lasting mark on the political landscape? Jamelle Bouie points to Sanders' record of garnering very small donations. “There's a strong chance that the Sanders fundraising apparatus—which surpasses Obama's in its scope and ability to rapidly raise huge sums—will end up as the senator's chief contribution to progressive politics,” Bouie writes.

Meanwhile, Eli Clifton and Joshua Holland argue that the Sanders campaign's approach to spending all his small-donor money was disappointingly conventional and probably didn't help its chances. “A great deal of that money bought a blast of commercials preceding caucuses and primaries across the country,” Clifton and Holland write, “one effect of which was to enrich a small group of Democratic consultants whose compensation is tied to media spending.”

The second season of the beloved Mr. Robot is here, and Willa Paskin wonders how long the “aesthetically polished and intellectually incensed” show can continue to critique capitalism. “[Showrunner Sam] Esmail, having created a cult TV show, is expressing some skepticism about television, a medium that, for much of its life, existed to sell audiences soap,” Paskin observes. “Mr. Robot is like an iPhone with an ‘I hate Apple' ring-tone: both are beautifully designed, powerful products that are superficially conflicted about being beautifully designed, powerful products.”

Our features editor Jessica Winter has published a novel about a toxic workplace that is explicitly NOT Slate.com. She talks with L.V. Anderson about what it's like to be stuck with a bad manager, why poisonous office jobs are so successful at getting under our skin, and why all-female workplaces can go so terribly wrong.

The top four male golfers in the world rankings have decided not to go to the Olympics. Fine, Josh Levin writes. But they should stop hiding behind a supposed fear of Zika infection. “While plenty of athletes have raised concerns about Zika,” Levin writes, “male golfers have led the way in using it as an excuse to take the week off.”

For fun: Samuel L. Jackson narrates a 7-minute beginner's guide to the world of Game of Thrones.

Some spoilers, but it's very worth it,

Rebecca

 
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r0B0t: Dyson's new robot vacuum comes to America  

The 360 Eye robot vacuum is finally crossing the pond.

 
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r0B0t: In Season 2, Mr. Robot Has Become a Critique of Itself  

Mr. Robot, the aesthetically polished and intellectually incensed USA series about mentally disturbed hacker Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), arrived last year as if out of nowhere—nowhere being an acceptable synonym for the USA Network, which before Mr. Robot was home to a number of indistinguishable and effective escapist procedurals. Created by Sam Esmail, Mr. Robot had style to spare, a logo befitting an '80s arena rock band (a compliment!), intimate and eerie narration, and a riveting performance from Malek, who makes silence and motionlessness—two of Elliot's preferred states—scream with jittery unease. And it had ideas in its head. Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous, and the great recession, Elliot led a hacker collective called F-Society, out to erase the world's debt and take down Evil Corp, a powerful and nefarious multinational. Netflix and HBO aside, the predominant business model for television is taking cash from corporations to air their advertisements, yet Elliot excoriated McDonald's, Coke, and consumerism on the medium that sells all three.

With its anti-capitalist talking points, antisocial hero, and world-on-the-brink atmosphere, Mr. Robot felt bracing and bold. But its stylishness and its ideological unrest were soldered to a more standard-issue plot machine. For all its originality, Mr. Robot at first harnessed the appeal of the procedural, allowing us to get to know Elliot as he hacked his way into intimacy with strangers, while getting a complex, technologically precise, season-long storyline off the ground, one that ultimately harnessed the punch of the twist. In the season's climax, Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), the man who brought Elliot into F-Society, was revealed to be a figment of Elliot's own imagination. Among Elliot's many psychological ailments was apparently dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder).

The two-hour Season 2 premiere, airing Wednesday night, is as stylish and well-performed as any episode in Season 1, but it is also confusing, burdened by the series' dense backstory and intricate, time-skipping structure. The new season will surely rev up: Malek's performance remains excellent, there's a devotion to verisimilitude that includes casting someone to play Janet Yellin, and an act of violence that demonstrates the series can still tap into the dystopic, widening-gyre vibe of the present moment at will. But the premiere is a time waster, diligently checking in on the series' supporting players while Elliot tries to stay on the sidelines. Some weeks after the events of the Season 1 finale, Elliot is hewing to a strict routine and avoiding all computers, hoping to keep Mr. Robot from taking over his mind again, with no help at all from Mr. Robot, who is a very loud manifestation of mental illness. Mr. Robot spends the premiere berating and attacking Elliot, trying to rouse him into taking part in the revolution he began. It's strident and tedious. We know Mr. Robot will get his way. There's a show to make.

In the first season, Elliot was consumed by the idea that everyone around him was a sheep, awash in false choices, unknowingly vulnerable, so much less free than they imagined themselves to be. But at the start of Season 2, Elliot is trying to domesticate himself. He eats and sleeps and watches basketball, all in locations with so little detail, color, and advertising they could be from a dream or the USSR. Elliot also keeps making snide comments about television. He insults NCIS (which airs in reruns on USA). The guy he eats his meal with humorously riffs on the nihilistic meaning of Seinfeld. In another storyline, a dopey character can't stop watching Vanderpump Rules. Esmail, having created a cult TV show, is expressing some skepticism about television, a medium that, for much of its life, existed to sell audiences soap. Mr. Robot is like an iPhone with an “I hate Apple” ring tone: Both are beautifully designed, powerful products that are superficially conflicted about being beautifully designed, powerful products. For all that Mr. Robot invites us to think about global financial issues, the unchecked power of technology, and imminent societal collapse, it also demonstrates just how efficiently capitalism co-opts all critiques: It can even turn a criminal hacktivist into the poster boy for a cable network.

 
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r0B0t: Robots Could Hack Turing Test by Keeping Silent  
While it's not news that the Turing test has flaws, the new study highlights just how limited the test is for answering deeper questions about artificial intelligence, study co-author says

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com 
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r0B0t: Why NASA's new photos of the moon look super fake (even though they're not)  
Every once in awhile, as a person who writes about space, I encounter folks who don't believe in it. Or don't believe we've ever been there, anyway. Or that our robots have been there. Or that the Earth is round (but that's a whole other thing.) But while tweets about how "astronauts" on the "International" […]  
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'Green News Report' - July 14, 2016  
The Green News Report is also available via...





IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Porn is dirty, but coal is clean, says the Republican Party platform; Senate Democrats call out the 'web' of professional climate deniers; June 2016 was the hottest on record for the U.S.; PLUS: Another fracking explosion, this time in New Mexico... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Republicans just escalated the war over ExxonMobil and climate change; Once-respected science group has one more chance to reject Exxon Mobil funding; Transportation Dept. proposes new oil train rules; Puget Sound to close another coal plant; State's Delta smelt plan calls for more water flowing to sea; Fake bio-diesel factory made millions; Loneliest natural gas terminal bucks pipeline trend; Number of Americans "alarmed" by climate change rises in latest poll... PLUS: Clean energy investment in 2016 undershoots last year's record... and much, MUCH more! ...

'Green News Report' is heard on many fine radio stations around the country. For additional info on stories we covered today, plus today's 'Green News Extra', please click right here to listen!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Fossil Fuel Divestiture Campaign Focuses On Big Pensions  
The fossil fuel divestiture campaign GoFossilFree equates the end of oil, gas and coal to the great moral crusades of our time -- Apartheid and tobacco -- while hoping to reduce demand for fossil fuel stocks and thereby threaten their stock prices.





It's a tall order. As long as GoFossilFree was focused on divesting university endowments, the campaign was a gnat on the haunch of the elephant. After all, why should an industry worth $5 trillion be afraid of endowments worth $467 billion, whose investments in oil and gas are probably 10%, or $50 billion, at best? Chump change to this industry's behemoths.



But more recently, the FossilFree campaign began targeting pensions as well, and that's a problem. Consider the numbers: as of 2013, US pension assets totaled $21 trillion. Using that same 10%, you're talking $2.1 trillion in fossil fuel stocks. That's a number big enough to scare even Big Oil.



The first real threat came in 2015 from California's state pensions. In April of that year, the California legislature voted to divest its coal stocks from the pensions' $657 billion investment fund. A scary precedent and one that got Big Oil's attention.



Evidence of Big Oil's alarm is clear on the anti-divestment site divestmentfacts.com. Funded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), the site used to publish letters from University Presidents justifying their decisions not to divest and a few reports on how much individual college endowments would lose through divestment.



In June, the DivestmentFacts site underwent a radical change. Focused now on pension funds, the site promotes the idea that under divestment, pension funds will lose $7 billion over twenty years. Three studies from three separate universities support the claim.



A closer look at the study authors reveals how much more the IPAA is investing to stop pensions from divesting. The lead study is authored by none other than the notorious economist and lawyer Daniel Fischel, the short-lived dean of Chicago Law School who resigned over a sex scandal and one-time expert witness in criminal trials of Mike Milken and Charles Keating as well as officers of Enron and Philip Morris. Fischel is Chairman and President of Compass Lexecon, one of the largest consultancies that specialize in what Charles Ferguson described in the Huffington Post as "The sale of academic 'expertise' for the purpose of influencing government policy, the courts, and public opinion... now a multi-billion dollar business." The other two studies are by academics who are also Senior Consultants at, yes, Compass Lexecon. That's some pricey research.



Shortly after releasing the three studies, the IPAA published a survey of pensioners conducted by FTI Consulting, which owns -- wait for it -- Compass Lexecon. FTI's report warns, "Even the largest college endowment funds in existence today hold only a fraction of the assets managed by public pension funds," then goes on to present "statistics" that prove pensioners don't want divestment. A spokesman from the American Petroleum Institute (API) draws on heart strings when he concludes, "Millions of retirees and pension holders depend on income from oil and natural gas investments to live."



Both oil lobbying organizations, API and IPAA, are funded mostly by the fossil fuel majors, with the bulk coming from Shell, BP and Chevron, companies that have the most to lose from divestiture. And they're right to spend whatever they have to, because the truth is, the smart money in pensions should flee oil and gas for economic reasons. Looking ahead, HSBC Global Research found that global carbon regulations could result in fossil fuel companies losing 40-­60% of their value, which will translate into reductions in share price. Similar warnings have come from CitiBank, Standard and Poor's, and the Bank of England.



Big Oil is right to be afraid. Pension fund divestment has moved to Europe. Just two weeks ago, the EU issued a directive that, on ratification, will require all pensions to "consider climate and risks related to...'stranded assets,'", referring to oil and gas reserves that may never be used. EU pensions total £3.2 trillion, $4.4 trillion at today's depressed exchange rates.

Spending on anti-divestment is just a finger in the dike. Big oil and gas will lose to carbon-free energy. Will they follow buggy-manufacturers who never embraced the automobile and were pushed out of business? Or will they imitate American carmakers that entered the electric car market? Perhaps divestment will exact the same financial pressure on oil and gas that forced dramatic innovation in the American auto industry.

Keep your fingers crossed.


Photo courtesy of Friends of the Earth Scotland via Flickr CC.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Remembering a ‘Keystone' Ecologist, Robert Paine  
A biologist who turned sustained tide pool studies into an enduring ecological concept is remembered.  
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The Climate Post: Study Quantifies Climate-Change-Related Deaths  
A study in Environmental Research Letters suggests a fifth of premature deaths during a 2003 heatwave in Europe are linked to human-caused climate change.

"We are now able to put a number on the deaths caused by climate change in a heat wave," said lead author Daniel Mitchell of the University of Oxford. "This has never been done before. Previous studies have attributed changes in heat waves to climate change, or related increased heat stress to human deaths, but none have combined the two."

The study's U.S. and U.K researchers calculated that, during a Europe-wide heat wave in summer 2003, 506 of 735 deaths in Paris and 64 of 315 deaths in London were due to a heat wave worsened by anthropogenic climate change. They reached that conclusion after putting the results of several thousand runs of two climate model simulations of the 2003 heat wave into a health impact assessment of death rates.

By comparing two scenarios--one reflecting the climate of 2003 without human influences and one reflecting all known climatic forces contributing to the 2003 heat wave--the researchers determined how climate change had affected that summer's temperatures.

The study, reports Carbon Brief, analyzes a direct impact measure--mortality--rather than an indirect one--temperature. It links mortalities to climate and introduces another level of uncertainty, especially when long and reliable health datasets are not available for use in analyses.

Nevertheless, reports ClimateWire, the study demonstrates that losses can be directly linked to climate change and thus its framework can be used to assign costs of "loss and damage" and to improve planning and adaptation (subscription).

"It is often difficult to understand the implications of a planet that is one degree warmer than preindustrial levels in the global average, but we are now at the stage where we can identify the cost to our health of man-made global warming," Mitchell said. "This research reveals that in two cities alone hundreds of deaths can be attributed to much higher temperatures resulting from human-induced climate change."

Last week at a meeting held by the French government to study Paris Agreement-related actions to reduce health risks linked to climate change, the World Health Organization said that change is likely to kill 250,000 additional people each year by 2030--primarily through malaria, diarrhea, heat stress, and malnutrition. Children, women, older people, and the poor will be most affected.

Climate Change and Cloud Cover

A new study in the journal Nature suggests there's evidence of climate change in satellite cloud records. By comparing satellite data from 1983 to 2009 to climate models, the authors found that the clouds forming most often are not low-lying reflective ones that cool the planet. Instead, cloud patterns were in line with what scientists would expect to see in climate models--an increase in greenhouse gases associated with human activity over the study period.

"Cloud changes most consistently predicted by global climate models are currently occurring in nature," the authors write. "As cloud tops rise, their greenhouse effect becomes stronger."

Clouds have both an Earth-cooling effect by reflecting solar radiation back to space and an Earth-warming effect by restricting the planet's thermal infrared radiation.

"Even if there is no change in the overall coverage of clouds on the earth, clouds closer to the pole reflect less solar radiation because there is less solar radiation coming in closer to the pole," said lead author Joel Norris of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

In Science magazine, Norris noted one caveat: during the study period, two major volcanic eruptions cooled and then warmed the climate, producing cloud patterns similar to those produced by greenhouse gas-related warming.

Draft Proposes Extension of California Cap-and-Trade Program

The California Air Resources Board released a draft plan to extend the state's cap-and-trade program beyond 2020, when it is set to expire. The program--one of the first economy-wide programs put in place--aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating a fixed number of permits, called allowances, to emit a single ton; compliance entities and other market participants can buy and sell allowances, thereby enabling the market to determine the lowest-cost compliance path.

The draft plan calls to extend the program another decade and to reach emissions levels 40 percent below 1990 levels. It would include preliminary caps through 2050 "to signal the long-term trajectory of the program to inform investment decisions."

No board vote is scheduled on the proposal until March 2017. A state appeals court is considering a challenge from the California Chamber of Commerce, which contends that the pollution-credit program is an illegal tax, not a fee.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Butterflies' diet impacts evolution of traits  
A new study finds that access to some nutrients may be a star player in shaping traits related to fitness such as fecundity and eye size over the long term. Given drastic increases in the availability of many nutrients due to the widespread use of fertilizers and road salts, the finding has important implications for agriculture and ecology.  
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Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: 'Green News Report' - July 14, 2016  
The Green News Report is also available via...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Porn is dirty, but coal is clean, says the Republican Party platform; Sen...

Read more: Carbon Tax, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Energy, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Fracking, Global Warming, Global Warming Deniers, Green News, Green News Report, Renewable Energy, Video, Republicans, Republican Party, Republican Convention, Clean Coal, Carbon Capture and Storage, Pornography, Exxon Mobil, Al Franken, Senate, Desmogblog, Extreme Weather, Noaa, Canada, Fort Mcmurray, Wildfires, Natural Disasters, New Mexico, Public Lands, Propaganda, Green News

 
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Early Bedtime For Preschoolers Might Help Reduce Obesity Risk Later  

Little kids who hit the sack early may be less likely to get overtired and fussy in a way that messes with their sleep cycle, researchers say.

 
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Computers vs Ebola: Scientists use big data to predict future disease hotspots  

And it all boils down to seeing what bats are up to

A team of scientists have developed a model that can predict the likelihood of bat species carrying Ebola and other filoviruses using a machine learning algorithm.…

 
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An Open Letter From Technology Sector Leaders On Donald Trump's Candidacy For President  

We are inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, researchers, and business leaders working in the technology sector. We are proud that American innovation is the envy of the world, a source of widely-shared prosperity, and a hallmark of our global leadership.

We believe in an inclusive country that fosters opportunity, creativity and a level playing field. Donald Trump does not. He campaigns on anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline.  We have listened to Donald Trump over the past year and we have concluded: Trump would be a disaster for innovation.  His vision stands against the open exchange of ideas, free movement of people, and productive engagement with the outside world that is critical to our economy—and that provide the foundation for innovation and growth.

Let's start with the human talent that drives innovation forward.  We believe that America's diversity is our strength.  Great ideas come from all parts of society, and we should champion that broad-based creative potential.  We also believe that progressive immigration policies help us attract and retain some of the brightest minds on earth—scientists, entrepreneurs, and creators.  In fact, 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children.  Donald Trump, meanwhile, traffics in ethnic and racial stereotypes, repeatedly insults women, and is openly hostile to immigration.  He has promised a wall, mass deportations, and profiling.

We also believe in the free and open exchange of ideas, including over the Internet, as a seed from which innovation springs. Donald Trump proposes “shutting down” parts of the Internet as a security strategy ― demonstrating both poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works. His penchant to censor extends to revoking press credentials and threatening to punish media platforms that criticize him.

Finally, we believe that government plays an important role in the technology economy by investing in infrastructure, education and scientific research.  Donald Trump articulates few policies beyond erratic and contradictory pronouncements. His reckless disregard for our legal and political institutions threatens to upend what attracts companies to start and scale in America. He risks distorting markets, reducing exports, and slowing job creation.

We stand against Donald Trump's divisive candidacy and want a candidate who embraces the ideals that built America's technology industry: freedom of expression, openness to newcomers, equality of opportunity, public investments in research and infrastructure, and respect for the rule of law. We embrace an optimistic vision for a more inclusive country, where American innovation continues to fuel opportunity, prosperity and leadership.

 

*DISCLAIMER:  The individuals listed below have endorsed in their personal capacity and this does not reflect the endorsement of any organization, corporation or entity to which they are affiliated. Titles and affiliations of each individual are provided for identification purposes only.

Marvin Ammori, General Counsel, Hyperloop One
Adrian Aoun, Founder/CEO, Forward
Greg Badros, Founder, Prepared Mind Innovations; Former Engineering VP, Facebook
Clayton Banks, Co-Founder, Silicon Harlem
Phin Barnes, Partner, First Round Capital
Niti Bashambu, Chief Analytics Officer, IAC Applications
John Battelle, Founder/CEO, NewCo, Inc.
Ayah Bdeir, Founder/CEO, Little Bits
Piraye Beim, Founder/CEO, Celmatix
Marc Bodnick, Co-Founder, Elevation Partners
John Borthwick, Founder/CEO, Betaworks
Matt Brezina, Co-Founder, Sincerely and Xobni
Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO, TaskRabbit
Brad Burnham, Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures
Stewart Butterfield, Co-Founder/CEO, Slack
Troy Carter, Founder/CEO, Atom Factory
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Founder/CEO, Joyus
Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer
Amy Chang, Founder/CEO, Accompany
Aneesh Chopra, President, NavHealth; Former US CTO
Patrick Chung, General Partner, Xfund
Tod Cohen, General Counsel, StubHub
Stephen DeBerry, Founder/Managing Partner, Bronze Investments
Peter Diamandis, Entrepreneur; Author, Abundance and BOLD
Barry Diller, Chairman, Expedia and IAC
Esther Dyson, Executive Founder, Way to Wellville; Investor
Amy Errett, Founder/CEO, Madison Reed
Caterina Fake, Founder/CEO, Findery; Co-Founder, Flickr
Christopher Farmer, Founder/CEO, SignalFire
Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group; Co-Founder, Techstars
Josh Felser, Co-Founder, Freestyle Capital & ClimateX
Hajj Flemings, Founder/CEO, Brand Camp University
Natalie Foster, Co-Founder, Peers
David Grain, Founder/Managing Partner, Grain Management, LLC
Brad Hargreaves, Founder/CEO, Common
Donna Harris, Co-Founder/Co-CEO, 1776
Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder/CEO, Meetup
David Hornik, General Partner, August Capital
Terry Howerton, CEO, TechNexus
Reed Hundt, Former Chair, FCC
Minnie Ingersoll, COO, Shift Technologies
Sami Inkinen, Founder/CEO, Virta Health; Co-Founder, Trulia
Craig Isakow, Head of Revenue, Shift Technologies
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., President and Founder, Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Irwin Jacobs, Founding Chairman/CEO Emeritus, Qualcomm Inc
Paul Jacobs, Executive Chairman, Qualcomm Inc
Leila Janah, Founder/CEO, Sama & Laxmi
Sujay Jaswa, Former CFO, Dropbox; Founder, Witt Capital Partners
Mark Josephson, CEO, Bitly
Sep Kamvar, Professor, MIT
David Karp, Founder/CEO, Tumblr
Jed Katz, Managing Director, Javelin Venture Partners
Kim Keenan, President/CEO, Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council
Ben Keighran, Entrepreneur; Former Design Lead, Apple
William Kennard, Former Chair, FCC
Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures; Co-Founder, SUN Microsystems
Ron Klain, Executive Vice President, Revolution LLC
Walter Kortschak, Former Managing Partner and Senior Advisor, Summit Partners
Jared Kopf, Founder AdRoll, HomeRun, Worldly
Joseph Kopser, Co-Founder, Ridescout
Karen Kornbluh, Former US Ambassador, OECD
Othman Laraki, Co-Founder/President, Color Genomics
Miles Lasater, Serial Entrepreneur
Jeff Lawson, CEO, Twilio
Aileen Lee, Founder/Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures
Bobby Lent, Managing Partner, Hillsven Capital
Aaron Levie, Co-Founder/CEO, Box
John Lilly, Partner, Greylock Partners
Bruce Lincoln, Co-Founder, Silicon Harlem
Ruth Livier, President, Livier Productions, Inc.
Mark Lloyd, Professor of Communication, University of Southern California - Annenberg School
Luther Lowe, VP of Public Policy, Yelp
Nancy Lublin, Founder/CEO, Crisis Text Line
Kanyi Maqubela, Partner, Collaborative Fund
Jonathan Matus, Founder/CEO, Zendrive
Josh McFarland, Vice President of Product, Twitter
Andrew McLaughlin, Head of New Business, Medium; Venture Partner, betaworks
Shishir Mehrotra, Entrepreneur & former VP of Product & Engineering, YouTube
Apoorva Mehta, Founder/CEO, Instacart
Doug Merritt, CEO, Splunk
Dinesh Moorjani, Founder/CEO, Hatch Labs; Co-Founder, Tinder
Brit Morin, Founder/CEO, Brit + Co
Dave Morin, Entrepreneur; Partner, Slow Ventures
Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder, Asana; Co-Founder, Facebook
Amanda Moskowitz, Founder/CEO, Stacklist
Alex Nogales, President/CEO, National Hispanic Media Coalition
Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder, Reddit
Mike Olson, Founder/Chairman/CSO, Cloudera
Pierre Omidyar, Founder, eBay
Felix W. Ortiz III, Founder/Chairman/CEO, Viridis; Board Member of The NYC Technology Development Corporation
Jen Pahlka, Founder/Executive Director, Code for America
Barney Pell, Founder Powerset, MoonExpress, Locomobi; Founding Trustee, Singularity University
Mark Pincus, Executive Chairman and Founder, Zynga
Shervin Pishevar, Co-Founder/Managing Director, Sherpa Capital and Co-Founder/Executive Chairman of Hyperloop One
Brandon Pollack, Director of Global Affairs, 1776
Amy Rao, Founder/CEO, Integrated Archive Systems, Inc.
Eric Ries, Entrepreneur & Author, The Lean Startup
Justin Rosenstein, Co-Founder, Asana
Alec Ross, Author, The Industries of the Future
Javier Saade, Venture Capitalist; Former Associate Administrator, SBA
Chris Sacca, Founder/Chairman, Lowercase Capital
Dave Samuel, Co-Founder, Freestyle Capital
Julie Samuels, Executive Director, Tech:NYC
Reshma Saujani, Founder, Girls Who Code
Chris Schroeder, Venture Investor; Author, Startup Rising
Jake Schwartz, Co-Founder/CEO, General Assembly
Robert Scoble, Entrepreneur in Residence and Futurist, Upload VR
Kim Malone Scott, CEO, Candor, Inc; Former Director, Google
Tina Sharkey, Partner, Sherpa Foundry & Sherpa Capital
Clara Shih, Co-Founder/CEO, Hearsay Social
Shivani Siroya, Founder/CEO, InVenture
Steve Smith, Executive Director, Public Policy Institute, Government Relations & Telecommunications Project, Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Jonathan Spalter, Chair, Mobile Future
DeShuna Spencer, CEO, kweliTV
Katie Stanton, CMO, Color Genomics; Former VP of Global Media, Twitter
Jenny Stefanotti, Co-Founder, OneProject; Board of Directors, Ushahidi
Debby Sterling, Founder/CEO, Goldiblox
Seth Sternberg, Co-Founder/CEO, Honor
Margaret Stewart, Vice President of Product Design, Facebook
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp
Michael Stoppelman, SVP, Engineering, Yelp
Baratunde Thurston, Former supervising producer, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah; Co-Founder, Cultivated Wit
Stephanie Tilenius, Founder/CEO, Vida Health; Board of Directors, Seagate Technology
Richard D. Titus, Entrepreneur; SVP, Samsung
Anne Toth, VP of Policy & Compliance, Slack
Bill Trenchard, Partner, First Round Capital
April Underwood, VP of Product, Slack
Max Ventilla, Founder/CEO, AltSchool
Tabreez Verjee, Co-Founder/Partner Uprising; Board Director Kiva.org
Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
Hunter Walk, Partner, Homebrew VC; Former Director of Product Management, Google
Tristan Walker, Founder/CEO, Walker & Company Brands, Inc.; Founder/Chairman, Code 2040
Ari Wallach, CEO, Synthesis Corp.
Padmasree Warrior, CEO, NextEV USA; Former CTSO, Cisco
Laura Weidman Powers, Co-Founder/CEO, Code2040
Kevin Weil, Head of Product, Instagram
Phil Weiser, Hatfield Professor of Law, University of Colorado and Executive Director of the Silicon Flatirons Center
Daniel J. Weitzner, Principal Research Scientist, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Emily White, Entrepreneur; Former COO, Snapchat
Ev Williams, Founder/CEO, Medium; Co-Founder Twitter, Blogger
Monique Woodward, Venture Partner, 500 Startups
Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder, Apple
Tim Wu, Professor of Law, Columbia University
Andrew Yang, Founder/CEO, Venture for America
Arielle Zuckerberg, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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The magic of the music seems to light the way!  

marco18678 posted a photo:

 
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Covent Garden Arch  

Kieran Williams Photography posted a photo:

 
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Go with the flow by Ciro Galluccio  

Go with the flow by Ciro Galluccio

Portrait of my amazing friend and singer CRLN in Rome. This picture wants to describe her singing career made of steps to climb, to reach her goals. Follow me on: Instagram Flickr

Ciro Galluccio: Photos

 
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Western Cuba and Gulf of Batabanó  
Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA captured photographs of western Cuba and the Gulf of Batabanó as the International Space Station flew overhead. Williams shared this composite image on social media, writing, "Wow! Look at how the navy blue contrasts with the aqua, Gulf of Batabano Cuba."  
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Astronomers Discover New Likely Dwarf Planet, the Latest of Many  
The object was seen in the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy debris beyond Neptune. Dozens of similar bodies may also meet the definition of a dwarf planet.  
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Juno Sends First Image Back While Orbiting Jupiter  
NASA released the first photograph taken from its space probe since its camera was turned back on after it locked into orbit on July 4.  
astronomy