Tag Archives: OddBox

US Announces Visa Restrictions For Employees of Huawei and Other Chinese Tech Companies

Wonder how many American companies with close ties to NSA, CIA, or DOD will be banned from doing business in China? This is getting really stupid. Means Ivanka Trump brands will be banned in China? LOL

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced visa restrictions on employees of Chinese technology companies, including Huawei, in the latest Trump administration move against Beijing. From a report: The US “will impose visa restrictions on certain employees … of Chinese technology companies like Huawei that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally,” Pompeo told reporters at a State Department press briefing. The top US did not elaborate on which employees would be targeted or how many people would be affected. Pompeo’s announcement comes a day after President Donald Trump announced he would sign a bill and an executive order punishing China for steps that are widely seen as an attempt to crush democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, and railed at China for “unleashing … upon the world” the global coronavirus pandemic. In an interview with The Hill later Wednesday, Pompeo added that the US is looking at limits on other Chinese tech companies as well.

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Mike Pence: We Don’t Want CDC Guidelines Determining When We Open Schools. (This Is Not an Onion Headline)

Real looney tunes – if the doctor or science says this is too dangerous to public health – you listen! fhoebjby50lagbjn6j2s.jpg

There are times when the news is so outrageous it almost seems satirical and then there is the Trump administration, which has skirted the line between truth and fiction so much that there is no line anymore.

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Pennsylvania Police Officers Under Investigation After Videos Shows Them Placing Knee on Man’s Neck

Seems as though they are running on automatic and should be checking themselves – all involved not just the officer with the wrongly placed knee. tr1kmj0dhmqyvg8ex4yh.png

One would think that literally everything that has occurred over the course of the last few months would result in police officers actively trying to not become the center of yet another viral video. But we’re in dark times, so common sense is out the window, and instead, we have to watch both white folks and law…

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White Radio Host Becomes Next Karen to Lose Her Job After Harassing Spanish-Speaking New Hampshire Workers

Rude, racist, dumb all for her trying to earn $$s by being rude, racist and dumb on a radio show she is now fired from. kdjrkz10abyi1ondbvab.jpg

Is anybody else starting to get the feeling that some of these Karens are hopping aboard the “You ‘bout to lose yo’ job” train on purpose? Either a lot of white people have come up with a clever way to intentionally rid themselves of their employment, or they are so out of touch that they haven’t quite caught on to…

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Florida Cop Fired and Charged With Assault After Pointing Gun to Handcuffed Black Man’s Head for Not Giving His Name

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The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida has fired and charged a sergeant with a felony after the officer held a gun to a handcuffed Black man’s head and threatened to kill him for not providing his name. The cop’s quick termination comes as a result of his fellow officers, who reported him to their…

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Why Did a Tech Executive Install 1,000 Security Cameras Around San Francisco?

Sounds cool but can also feed vigilantism.

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The New York Times explains why Chris Larsen installed over a thousand surveillance cameras around San Francisco to monitor 135 city blocks:
It sounds sinister. A soft-spoken cryptocurrency mogul is paying for a private network of high-definition security cameras around the city. Zoom in and you can see the finest details: the sticker on a cellphone, the make of a backpack, the color of someone’s eyes… While violent crime is not high in the city, property crime is a constant headache. Anyone who lives here knows you shouldn’t leave anything — not a pile of change, not a scarf — in a parked car… locals are tired of the break-ins.

So how do they reconcile “defund the police” with “stop the smash and grabs”? Mr. Larsen believes he has the answer: Put security cameras in the hands of neighborhood groups. Put them everywhere. He’s happy to pay for it…. Here is what he is doing: Writing checks for nearly $4 million to buy cameras that record high-definition video of the streets and paying to have them maintained by a company called Applied Video Solutions. The rest is up to locals in neighborhood coalitions like Community Benefit Districts, nonprofits formed to provide services to the area. Here is how the project works: Neighbors band together and decide where to put the cameras. They are installed on private property at the discretion of the property owner, and in San Francisco many home and business owners want them. The footage is monitored by the neighborhood coalition. The cameras are always recording…

As proponents of Mr. Larsen’s network see things, they get the safety of a surveillance state without the state… It is arguably more compelling evidence in court because the video is monitored by a third-party intermediary who can testify that it is a continuous feed. It is time stamped. And because the network covers many blocks, the footage can tell a broader story than a single camera about an event that might be moving from block to block, in the case of, for example, a fight…. “This has underscored the importance of not just cameras but of communitywide camera coverage,” Mr. Larsen said.

“Body cams show some pretty core weaknesses because we don’t have universal access to police body cam footage, and there’s a fundamental conflict of interest if the video shows something bad for the department.” The answer is more cameras, he said, and then keep that footage in the hands of citizens. He argued that trust will come in the form of full city camera coverage, so police can play a smaller, more subtle role. Individual vigilantism will not work, he argued, but strong neighborhoods with continuous video feeds on every corner will. “That’s the winning formula,” Mr. Larsen said. “Pure coverage.”
The locally-stored footage is erased after 30 days. Thought it’s not covered by the city’s newly-enacted ban on facial recognition software, Larsen says “We’re strongly opposed to facial recognition technology. Facial recognition is too powerful given the lack of laws and protections to make it acceptable.”

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Tyson Bets On Robots To Tackle Meat Industry’s Worker Shortage

Meat consumption needs to go way down but this could protect many workers – but will cut employment too. Eat more plants!

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At Tyson’s 26,000-square-foot, multi-million dollar Manufacturing Automation Center near its headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas, the company will apply the latest advances in machine learning to meat manufacturing, with the goal of eventually eliminating jobs that can be physically demanding, highly repetitive and at times dangerous. Bloomberg reports: Advances in technology are making it possible to make strides in automation. For example, machine vision is now accurate and speedy enough to apply to meat production, which is highly labor intensive compared with other food manufacturing. Also, a lot of washing and sanitizing occurs in a meat-packing plant, which has traditionally been difficult on robots, but now the machines are built to withstand that. At Tyson’s new facility, a series of laboratories showcase different types of robots. Mechanical arms in glass cases use smart cameras to sort colorful objects or stack items. In another room, a larger machine called a palletizer performs stacking tasks. There’s also a training space.

Many of the types of robots that a meatpacking plant would need are not on the market currently, so the company needs to innovate and collaborate with partners to create them, said Doug Foreman, a director in engineering at Tyson. But the technology is ready. The processing capabilities of cameras are “so advanced even from a few years ago,” Foreman said. “Processing-speed-wise, it’s there now for us.”

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There Are No Latinx Shows Left on Network Television

Stupid is as stupid does. mqic0wy7hndjtraa92qw.jpg

In June, ABC announced they wouldn’t be renewing The Baker and The Beauty, a Latinx romantic comedy series centered around the love story of a man working for his family’s Cuban bakery and a wealthy celebrity. The show only aired for one season and was canceled due to low ratings—which likely weren’t helped by its…

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Surveillance Video Prompts Call for All Youth Facility Employees Involved in Cornelius Fredericks’ Death to be Charged

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On April 29, 16-year-old Cornelius Fredericks died of restraint asphyxia at the Lakeside Academy youth facility in Kalamazoo, Mich., after several Lakeside employees pinned him to the ground for more than 10 minutes after he threw a sandwich at another resident. At least one of those employees reportedly used their…

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