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Researchers with the University of Chicago's SAND Lab have detailed the development of a new tool called Fawkes that subtly alters images in a way that makes them unusable for facial recognition. The tool comes amid growing concerns about privacy and an editorial detailing the secret scraping of billions of online images to create facial recognition models. Put simply, Fawkes is a cloaking tool that modifies images in ways imperceptible to the human eye. The idea is that anyone can download the tool, which has been made publicly available, to first cloak their images before posting them online. The name...

During an early-morning press conference, New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea described a “chaotic” scene that had unfolded two hours earlier, which ended with a police officer stabbed in the neck and two other officers shot in a violent ambush and shootout in Brooklyn. “What we know at this time is that it appears to be a completely cowardly, despicable, unprovoked attack on a defenseless police officer, and thank God we’re not planning a funeral right now,” Shea told reporters. “At approximately quarter till midnight, without warning, video surveillance shows a male walk up to the officers casually, take...

A little video of a race that has been handicapped to make everyone feel guilty.

California has lots of money to shovel into its municipal unions and social services complex. But it just wouldn't pay for those ventilators and masks. They were ready to roll whenever disaster struck California: three 200-bed mobile hospitals that could be deployed to the scene of a crisis on flatbed trucks and provide advanced medical care to the injured and sick within 72 hours. Each hospital would be the size of a football field, with a surgery ward, intensive care unit and X-ray equipment. Medical response teams would also have access to a massive stockpile of emergency supplies: 50 million...

China is conducting an aggressive disinformation and influence campaign designed to block the re-election of President Trump in 2020, according to a dissident Chinese billionaire who until recently was close to senior Beijing leaders. Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese real estate tycoon-turned-anti-communist critic, said in an interview that details of the influence operation were disclosed recently by Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan in Beijing. The campaign has been underway since the 2018 mid-term election and involves enlisting pro-China elements inside the United States to end the Trump administration after four years. "China has been protesting western powers trying to interfere...

Full Title: 'If you go to another country, you must abide by its culture. If not, don't go': Egypt's president decries migrants heading to Europe and refusing to integrate instead of fixing their own countries. Egypt's President has told his people they should not expect the West to 'open their doors' to migrants who refuse to integrate. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that 'every country has the right to protect its people and their interests.' Speaking at a World Youth Forum in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, the country's leader told guests they had to 'completely abide by the laws, customs, traditions and culture'...

A Texas waiter has admitted making up a racist note calling him a 'terrorist' that he claimed was left on a check. Khalil Cavil, 20, claimed he was stiffed out of a tip on a $108 bill at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa, Texas over the weekend after the customer wrote on his receipt: 'We don't tip terrorist.' Now Cavill has admitted fabricating the episode, which resulted in the customer being barred from the establishment. Cavil told local paper the Odessa American: 'I did write it. I don’t have an explanation. I made a mistake. There is no excuse...

Critics of Australian supermarkets' plastic bag ban continue to drum up protest, as it is revealed that 90 per cent of the world's plastic waste comes from just 10 rivers in Asia and Africa. The river systems that carry the most waste into the ocean include the Amur, Ganges, Hai, Indus, Mekong, Pearl, Yangtze and Yellow Delta in Asia, as well as the Niger and Nile in Africa, a research paper has revealed. (trunc) The study, carried out by Germany's Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, suggests that the most effective way of reducing the amount of plastic in the world's...

Full Title: 'I want to know what the f*** you're doing with my f***ing money!': Cardi B flies into rage over paying 40% in taxes in expletive filled Instagram post It's tax season, and Cardi B is not a happy camper. The New York City native, 25, took to social media on Thursday launching into a fast-paced rant about how she was unhappy at the rate she was being taxed, as well as not seeing any sort of return on her dollar. 'So you know the government is taking 40 percent of my taxes and Uncle Sam, I want to...

Masked thugs invaded a talk organised by a university free speech society last night before setting off smoke bombs and attacking security guards. The self-proclaimed 'antifascist' protesters forced their way into the King’s College London lecture hall and grabbed the speakers' microphones before smashing windows and leaving notes threatening the moderator. Several security guards were punched and had to go to hospital, according to the organisers, who were forced to evacuate the building and call the police.

A video in which a Southern California high school teacher is heard slamming members of the military as “the frickin’ lowest of the low” in a classroom rant to students has gone viral. El Rancho High history teacher Gregory Salcido -- who also serves as an elected Pico Rivera city councilman and was once mayor -- even goes so far as to refer to those who are in the military overseas as failed students who had no choice but to serve, "Fox & Friends" reported Sunday. “Think about the people you know who are over there,” Salcido is heard saying....

Will robots one day destroy us? It’s a question that increasingly preoccupies many of our most brilliant scientists and tech entrepreneurs. ... ...This year, a leading Oxford academic, Professor Michael Wooldridge, warned MPs that AI could go ‘rogue’, that machines might become so complex that the engineers who create them will no longer understand them or be able to predict how they function. ...The same sort of computer mind that can conjure up new chess moves might easily decide that the most efficient way to streamline the health service would be to get rid of the vulnerable and needy. ...And...

Full Title: 'Non-white' student leaves 'white lives matters' and N word graffiti on Missouri school bathroom mirror. A 'non-white' student in Missouri has left 'white lives matters' and the N word graffiti on the mirror of the bathrooms in their high school. The student wrote the message on the mirror in the girls' bathroom at Parkway Central High School in Chesterfield this week. Another student took a photograph of it and one of their relatives posted it on social media. School officials have since revealed that the student who wrote it is not white. They have not indicated what the...

Full Title: Black student at Air Force Academy is found to be behind the racist messages that appeared on dorm boards saying 'go home n******' One of the black students targeted by racial slurs that were written outside dorm rooms at the US Air Force Academy was actually responsible for the incident, officials say. Academy officials revealed on Tuesday that the cadet admitted to writing 'go home n******' on a whiteboard outside the dorm rooms of five black students at the Colorado Springs campus. The student is no longer at the school but a spokesman refused to say whether the...

A Muslim educator has argued only Islamic scholars should interpret the Quran after a video surfaced of Islamic women condoning domestic violence. The video showed female members of the hardline political group Hizb ut-Tahrir describe beating women as a 'beautiful blessing' in a discussion in Sydney's west. At one point, the headscarf-clad pair even demonstrated how to use a small stick called a 'sivaak' to hit 'disobedient' women. The women, Reem Allouche and Atika Latifi, claimed to be quoting the Quran verse about wives that reads: 'leave them alone in sleeping places and beat them'. But another Sydney Muslim, Silma...

A record 16 out of 100 Navy women are reassigned from ships to shore duty due to pregnancy, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group. That number is up 2 percent from 2015, representing hundreds more who have to cut their deployments short, taxing both their unit’s manpower, military budgets and combat readiness. Further, such increases cast a shadow over the lofty gender integration goals set by former President Barack Obama. Overall, women unexpectedly leave their stations on Navy ships as much as 50% more frequently to return to...

Here’s a study you won’t find in any of the major-media headlines. According to the Director of the Centre for Studies on New Religions (Cesnur), Massimo Introvigne, Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, with over 90,000 Christians killed in 2016 alone. Introvigne told Vatican Radio that there are nearly half a billion Christians who are unable to express or practice fully their Christian faith.

Full title: College liberals think people who voted for Trump and Brexit are dumb but letting them brainwash our society is what's stupid ...Outraged at the prospect of a right-winger speaking freely at a state-funded school, the Department for Education's counter-extremism unit stuck on its full riot gear announcing Milo posed a threat to both the security and reputation of the school. Rather than let the 220 pupils who had signed up to hear him speak, listen, challenge him and make up their own minds, it was decided that exposing pupils to anything other than a liberal viewpoint could be...

Full Title: Memo to millennials, that awful feeling you've got is called losing. It happens. If you want to know how to win, stop whinging for a bit and learn some lessons from Trump. ... STOP demanding the Electoral College reverse the decision in December. In short, STOP being such a faux-tormented bunch of absolutely deluded cretins. Want to know why Trump is going to be your next president? It’s because he is what’s called a ‘winner’. ...

ISIS has urged its supporters to 'break the cross' and listed six reasons why it hates Westerners in the latest issue of its propaganda magazine, Dabiq. The 15th issue of the twisted multi-lingual publication appears to target potential converts and attempts to claim that ISIS is in fact Islamic.