TechEye |  |
- Humans are a pig chimp hybrid
- Google privacy violates Dutch law
- James Brokenshire will decide what you read
- US military is pirating again
- Violent games make you cheat and eat chocolate
| Posted: 29 Nov 2013 02:23 AM PST A top genetics expert claims that he has found evidence that modern humans were caused by pigs and chimps mating. Geneticist Eugene McCarthy is probably the greatest expert on hybrid animals in the world and his discovery explains an awful lot of what we have seen at channel sales conferences. In his paper, McCarthy said that there are shedloads of inexplicable similarities in the anatomy of pigs and humans, and again inexplicable differences between humans and other primates. He made a long list of anatomic evidence but what we picked up from our boarish forefathers were similarities in the microstructure of the skin and organs. We are not sure how it was possible before the invention of alcohol and cheesy nightclubs how a love match between a chimp and a pig could come about. According to InSerbia, McCarthy suggests that humanity was probably created after numerous cases of mating of boars with female chimpanzees, when the cubs were raised by chimpanzees. It must have been tough on the piglet. After all, they could not climb trees or fling their poo like their adopted brothers. McCarthy also says that there are two possibilities when it comes to this type of hybridisation. The first is that the hybridisation happened several million years ago, and that it resulted by creating the first hominids hordes, and that later from the horde all hominid groups formed. The second is that the special cases of mating between chimpanzees and pigs produced two separate species of hominid, and that this is possible in places where pigs and chimpanzees meet each other, like in South Sudan. Apparently, humans are not the only ape to go for someone a bit porky. McCarthy thinks that gorillas were created by crossing chimpanzees and forest pigs, which would explain many well-known concerns about the fertility of a gorilla. |
| Google privacy violates Dutch law Posted: 29 Nov 2013 02:21 AM PST Search engine Google is in hot water after a privacy watchdog saw orange and ruled that its method of bringing in personal data from its many different online services violates Dutch data protection law. It took seven months for the Dutch Data Protection Authority, or DPA, to investigate Google and it has now asked Google to show up at a meeting to discuss its concerns. Google said it provided users of its services with sufficiently specific information about the way it processed their personal data. According to Reuters, Google insists that its privacy policy respects European law and allows it to create simpler, more effective services. The Dutch decision is part of a general concern in the EU that data should not really flow into foreign jurisdictions. Particularly after the US started insisting that any data that came close to its country could be sniffed and analysed by its spooks. Jacob Kohnstamm, the chairman of the DPA, said that Google spins an invisible web of Dutch personal data, without consent. That is forbidden by law. "Google does not properly inform users which personal data the company collects and combines, and for what purposes," the DPA said in a statement. |
| James Brokenshire will decide what you read Posted: 29 Nov 2013 02:19 AM PST The crime and security minister, James Brokenshire has decided save the UK from sites which are not “British” by bringing in censorship. He announced the end of the free internet in the UK by saying that he will order ISPs to block sites which he thinks are too dangerous to be seen by the great unwashed. Brokenshire said that he will also establish a specialist unit to identify and report content deemed too dangerous for online publication. We guess that membership of that committee will be perfectly ordinary retired majors, priests, nuns, Daily Mail readers and knee jerk reactionaries – or loyal Tory supporters. He announced yesterday that the committee will be responsible for censoring what he considered “extremist content”. This apparently follows the success off the model which was supposed to crack on online child abuse. The Internet Watch Foundation, which is partly industry-funded, investigates reports of illegal child abuse images online; and it can then ask service providers to block or take down websites. You will notice that there is no online child porn in the UK now thanks to this measure. Brokenshire said that Prime Minister, David Cameron, wanted to see a similar model for terrorist content. Of course there are “freedom of speech issues" but the government is sure that it can have a process in place to test what is illegal. Broadband companies good appeals process could overcome some of those concerns. The government might want to block Welsh or Scottish Nationalist sites, but if it has to explain to a judge why it thinks they are “extremist,” it might be a little more sensible. Less clear would be sites which organise things like student protests. |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2013 02:17 AM PST French-backed US revolutionaries, who once offered licences to pirates to “legally” rob cargos belonging to their legitimate government, are back to their old tricks. This time the US Army had found itself in hot water with a force that is even stronger than the nukes it has in its modern arsenal – the software industry. The US government has agreed to pay $50 million after it was said to have pirated "thousands" of copies of military software. The claim was made by Apptricity, based in Texas, which has provided logistics programs to the army since 2004. Apptricity's software allows the military to track the movements of soldiers as well as key supplies. It had given 500 licences for the software but worked out that the US Army was using 9,000. Apparently the unauthorised copying was revealed after a US Army official mentioned "thousands" of devices running the software during a presentation on technology. An Apptricity representative thought, “hang on a minute”. Apptricity would spend the sum on expanding the company, after all if the US military was using it that much, others should want it too. What is particularly daft is that the US government has stepped up efforts to combat piracy, particularly on behalf of its chums in Big Content. The fact that the people responsible for talking the loudest are huge pirates should come as a surprise. The people of Nova Scotia who suffered at the hands of American pirates during the French-backed terrorist coup against the British would think it par for the course. |
| Violent games make you cheat and eat chocolate Posted: 29 Nov 2013 02:03 AM PST An international team of researchers has found playing violent video games not only increases aggression but can also cause players to cheat and eat more chocolate. Study author Brad Bushman found that the effects were strongest in teen participants who scored high on a scale for "moral disengagement." Moral disengagement is the ability for a person to convince himself or herself that ethics do not apply in a certain situation. Of course, there is no definition of the word "ethics" but apparently, it means that people are more likely to have affairs and eat more chocolate. Everyone knows they eat a lot of chocolate in hell. The study was based in Italy where they gave 170 teenagers playing a violent video game, such as Grand Theft Auto III, or a non-violent game like MiniGolf 3D, for a total of 45 minutes. As the teens played, a bowl with chocolate was placed next to the gaming console. The participants were told they could eat the candy, but warned eating too much in a short time span was unhealthy. The kids who played the violent games ate over three times as much choc as the other teens. Although we would have thought, a more active game would have resulted in a bigger appetite. After their gaming session, the teens were given a 10-item logic test in which they would get one ticket for a prize raffle for each question they got correct. After finding out how many answers they got right, the teens were told to take the appropriate number of tickets out of an envelope while not being watched. According to Redorbit, knowing exactly how many tickets were in the envelope, the researchers could later figure out if a participant had taken more than they had earned. Violent game players cheated about eight times more often than did those who played a nonviolent game. The researchers also tested participants' level of aggression by having them play a game with an unseen fictional "partner" for the chance to blast the loser with a loud noise through headphones. They found violent game players chose to blast their fictitious partners with louder noises that lasted longer than those who played nonviolent games. Bushman said that few teens were unaffected by violent video games, but this study helps us address the question of who is most likely to be affected. The effects were seen among both male and female participants. Even girls were more likely to eat extra chocolate, to cheat, and to act aggressively when they played Grand Theft Auto versus the mini golf or pinball game. |
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