What if we could hear the numerous invisible data frequencies that swirl around us every day? That’s exactly what a project from hearing-impaired writer Frank Swain and artist Daniel Jones aims to do. Phantom Terrains is the proper name of the effort…
As you might have heard by now, Apple has officially acquired Beats by paying a cool $3 billion for the company, making it one of Apple’s largest acquisitions over the years. It was a surprising move as Apple tends to more interested in acquihires, not to mention some of Beats’ products like Beats Music did seem like a competition to Apple’s own iTunes Radio.
That being said, GQ recently conducted an interview with Beats’ Jimmy Iovine who was named as one of GQ’s Men of the Year, and in the interview Iovine revealed how he managed to convince Apple to acquire the company.
According to Iovine, “I convinced them that they had to buy this company. I said, ‘I don’t want to work for anybody else. I want to do this at Apple. I know I can achieve this at Apple. I don’t want to shop it. I wanna come here, to Steve’s company. I know you guys; I know what you’re capable of; I know you get popular culture. I know you have a hole in music right now; let me plug it.’ I think it was two years before they said yeah.”
It’s actually interesting to note that it took Beats and Apple a couple of years to arrive at an agreement, especially when you consider that iTunes Radio was only released last year. In any case there have been rumors that Beats could somehow see an integration into iTunes next year, which will hopefully give us a better idea as to what we can expect in the future from this collaboration.
Jimmy Iovine Details How He Convinced Apple To Buy Beats
, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
A couple of years ago a concept camera called Socialmatic was revealed. It was based around the design of the Instagram icon and also featured instant-printing capabilities like you would have expected from a Polaroid. The device was then made a reality and the good news for those who wouldn’t mind picking one up for themselves, you will be pleased to learn that pre-orders have gone live.
The camera’s pre-orders can now be taken via Amazon’s website where it has been priced at $300 and is expected to be released on the 1st of January, which is slightly later than what we had originally expected which was a fall release. Either way we guess better late than never, although a bit of a disappointment for those who were hoping to get it or gift it as a Christmas present.
That being said for those wondering about the specs, here’s a quick recap on what you can expect from the Socialmatic camera. It will feature a 14MP sensor along with a secondary 2MP camera which presumably will be used for selfies. It will also come with built-in WiFi capabilities to allow users to post their photos onto social networks.
Alternatively for those who’d rather have the print photo, Socialmatic will also be able to print actual photos that you can keep and frame. All of this will be powered by Android. If this sounds like a camera you’d like to own, head on over to Amazon’s website to place your pre-order.
Polaroid’s Socialmatic Camera Now Available For Pre-Order
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5So you might have recently converted to Android from iOS or Windows Phone, or maybe you’re just trying to figure out what’s going on with your device and how to get the most out of it. Well now there’s an app for that, thanks to Google who has recently released an app called Device Assist.
The app has been designed for Android One, Google Play Edition, and Nexus devices and it basically acts like a digital guidebook for users. The app will show users tips and tricks to get the most from their Android devices, and in some cases will actually proactively try to help you out where possible, like turning down the screen’s brightness to help you conserve battery.
It will also help Google Play Edition and Nexus owners to fast track Google’s live support, meaning that users will be able to get answers to their questions faster and easier, as opposed to having to manually search the web for solutions to their problems. Unfortunately as it stands the app is only available for US-based devices, so if you’re not in the US, we guess you’re out of luck, but if you are in the US, head on over to the Google Play Store for the download.
Google Releases Device Assist App For Android One, GPE, Nexus Devices
, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
There was a celebratory flavor in 2008 and again with the affirmation election of 2012 when America felt it had become a post-racial society by turning the White House and secret codes over to our first President-Of-Color. Unfortunately, that was the easier step in what now looks to be a long and painful process to truthfully fulfill that ideal. To undermine and alter the local systemic racially dysfunctional infrastructure that resides insidiously from sea to shining sea will be the true and way harder task. Ferguson, Missouri was only another lit match on the drought of an honest societal wide discussion about race and social class in America. Bad news infused with racial color has been live streaming across the media all year. There is more to come. Even the President’s daughters have now been targeted and racially slimed.
While a raw societal Ferguson mindset simmers across the country, President Obama, needing to look as though he is leading, invited notables to the White House for a summit aimed at problem solving the distrust and racial divide that Ferguson represents in America. Obama stated that this time, “things will be different,” because he, as the President is going to dedicate his last two years of office to work at that. Again invited and present at the President’s advisory gathering was the once over-bloated incendiary civil rights warrior, the Reverend Al Sharpton. Currently, Reverend Al sports a toned stealth physique clothed in fine threads and is ever the activist for racial justice. His tireless voice still drones unapologetically when confronting inequality, but it is now more polished, focused and tempered so as to be welcomed from the streets to the suites. Even he has stated that things will be different this time around. I am not so sure.
We are living in a failing democracy with a hyper-militarized police force married to our Homeland Security apparatus. Security-surveillance cameras are everywhere. Obama is not proposing to size down the militarization of the police, or the surveillance state. Rather he is using this opportunity to strengthen it. Obama is advocating more training along with Federal standards and asking for $75 million for 50,000 police body cameras. I guess the belief here is that we will all behave better under the ever-present watchful video camera. The cynic in me is wondering which tech company, friendly to Obama and Democrats, wins this rich government contract. But of greater concern for me, is that the cameras might be a false sense of real change.
Let’s revisit the Rodney King beating and the criminal case against Los Angeles police officers in “Powell and Koon v. California,” that sparked even worse race riots. This was the first time ever that a video camera was used in a trial, the video as eyewitness. The entire country, even the sitting president at the time, seemed to view the video as a slam-dunk to convict the officers of brutality. But the defense used the video to their advantage. The jury was led to interpret the video to favor the actions of the officers, just as any eyewitness can in cross-examination create duplicity, ambiguity and doubt as to what really occurred. We will always have a “before-the-camera and an after-the-camera” time period where a “he-said, she-said, he-did” testimony will get digested before the wheels of justice grind out the truth. Grand Juries will still hear police officers testify using language very reminiscent of the Rodney King episode, just as was stated by the officer responsible for shooting the young man in Ferguson, and most Grand Juries will not indict police officers. Prosecutors and police officers rely on each other.
Police wearing cameras may be a better situation that what we currently have. But with another government task force without a society willing to do the harder work, I remain the cynic. Americans must move beyond our self-back slapping congratulatory blindness and surrender to introspection to truthfully absolve us from the lingering and pervasive post slavery-racist history to move past it so as to inspire a future where “equal justice under the law” is a trusted brand. Everyone, of every color, faith and being must first admit we all have a problem, without pointing fingers. This must be a bottom-up and a top-down process. We all need to reach across the aisle and spend time with different people. More tanks, armor and cameras makes it look as though we are even more divided and in a domestic war, and unless everyone with a particular viewpoint is eliminated, ideas, attitudes and hatred will survive, and maybe even harden. It will take more than Hands up, don’t shoot, smile, you’re on camera.
WASHINGTON — It may be the 11th hour, but it looks like the intelligence community can breathe a sigh of relief: The nation’s spies will likely get themselves a 2015 funding bill before the Senate leaves Washington for the holidays.
“I think we’ve cleared all the problems,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday. The outgoing Senate Intelligence Committee chair added that she expects the measure to pass the Senate before the upper chamber departs from Capitol Hill, probably next week.
The intelligence authorization bill is just one in a heaping pile of mundane but annually imperative funding measures that Congress neglected to confront during the last 11 months of this session. Lawmakers are scrambling to push these out the door by the end of next week. In the wake of heftier appropriations bills — including the overall funding package that keeps the government open — quieter appropriations like the intelligence bill have appeared to take a backseat.
The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed that the intelligence authorization bill was moving through the upper chamber and had been sent around to Senate offices. The House has already passed its intelligence funding bill for 2015.
The annual authorization bill is generally considered the only true leverage that lawmakers hold over the intelligence community, shielded as it is by classification boundaries and state secrets. Pulling on the purse strings, Congress can publicly convey its approval or disapproval of covert leaders and agencies.
This year’s funding bill illustrates use of that leverage, linking the intelligence community’s funding to new rules governing the massive collection of Americans’ communications data by the National Security Agency and others. A primary provision of the bill, which passed Feinstein’s committee in July, orders the nation’s spies to adopt new guidelines in handling Americans’ information and requires the agencies to dump any data that does not fall into certain specific categories within five years.
The new rules will also require intelligence community leaders to present a solid case to Congress if and when they determine that the data should be kept longer than five years.
Other provisions slipped into this year’s bill include one encouraging the White House, along with NATO, to assist Ukraine in intelligence efforts and another requiring the U.S. director of national intelligence to brief Congress on political prison camps in Ukraine.
Feinstein has been able to pass an intelligence authorization bill through her committee and Congress every year since taking the reins of the Senate panel in 2009. It appears she’ll end her tenure with a full sweep.
This week marks the 59th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on the public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. That single, courageous act, of course, did not happen in a vacuum. Long-simmering resentment, coupled with the presence of an active African-American community and a 26 year old pastor — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — became the Civil Rights Movement, which resulted in the Civil Rights, Voting and Fair Housing Acts that still resonate and have power today, notwithstanding the Roberts’ Court’s attempts to bury them under their misguided characterization of equity.
But today, amidst the smoke and sorrow of Ferguson, it is clear that serious, substantial change is required in this country. The first spark — like John Brown at Harpers Ferry — was lit, over 20 years ago, when Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police officers and the officers were acquitted by a state jury and, it seemed, the entire black community in Los angeles rose up in anger, frustration, rage and violence. Two decades later, it has taken the tragic shooting of Michael Brown, and the deliberate indifference of County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch to the African American community that resulted in protest and rioting to initiate a long-overdue national conversation on race.
Almost in parallel, the Latino community has been buffeted by vicious and racist statements about undocumented immigrants and immigration reform. In the past, this has resulted in xenophobic and militant reactions by antebellum-era Governors and retro-state legislators, not to mention political parties, as if the words “Latino” and “Mexican” and “illegal” are interchangeable. But fortunately, this is occurring at a time when Latinos have found their voice and power — at least, it seems to the entrenched politicians, during Presidential election cycles. Nevertheless, for millions of Latino residents in our borders, uncertainty of their future and scapegoating of their nature continues to be the norm, rather than the exception.
And we still exist in a job climate whose deep dysfunction seems to elude our political leadership, including President Obama, where the wage and income gap exponentially increases to the point where we are becoming (something we prided ourselves on explicitly not importing when we broke with England) a class-based society, stratified by wealth. We no longer talk about education being a gateway to all things possible. Now, if you’re not in STEM, you have no economic prospects in a tech and app-driven world. At best, you’ve been predestined to work for Walmart or Uber (if a person who thought they could retire at the age of 65 hasn’t beaten you to it). Occupy Wall Street and its progeny tried to highlight the deep inequities cleaving the American social contract and the lack of accountability of those responsible for the 2008 economic collapse. Three years later, all the usual suspects not only remain free, but still have an even greater stranglehold on the nation’s wealth.
Now, 13 years after 9-11, we are slowly but surely realizing that we have acquiesced in the establishment of a surveillance state both public and private. Our civil liberties — our right of privacy — is just a click away from oblivion.
And the final kicker is the continued unwillingness and inability of our goverment to take strong actions to reverse climate change.
We have a confluence of factors — increasing explicit and implicit racism, discrimination against newcomer and newly identified (LGBT) groups, rising income inequity, the lack of social justice, the end of individual privacy and the increasing harbingers of catastrophic climate change — that have been speeding pell-mell for decades, rocketing out-of-control despite (or because of) the feeble protestations of elected officials.
But as our society has separated and stratified into the interest group of the day, week or month, our ability to work together has fractured. In many ways, it is indicative of how broken the social contract of America has become, that the vision of the common weal is a kaleidoscope of conflicting agendas.
We have to change that.
We need to find a way for these disparate groups to come together, to work together, to form a common agenda, to find a common agenda. All the pieces are there. The leadership is there. And with the power of social media and the 24/7 news cycle, the ability to communicate is there. We need to do what the disparate groups in the 50s and 60s did to unite against institutionalized racism.
We need a second Civil Rights Movement.
What I mean by that is a coming together of individuals and groups around a common core of beliefs and a political and social agenda shaped to impel the political structure to make meaningful change. Serious, real, political change. Not change you can believe in. Change that you can create, one legislative district, one state, one office at a time.
And I say a Civil Rights Movement because everything I have described involves, affects or is required to establish a civil right. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know our basic civil rights and civil liberties are under constant attack. But economic equity demands a smarter, more inclusive economy across all segment of society. Improving our education system requires an investment in our inner cities that is more talk than walk today. Climate change affects everyone, but for decades power plants belching carcinogens have been disproportionately situated nearer poorer and minority communities. We are all connected more than we know or realize — or care to admit.
The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in part because it demonstrated the power of coalition building, because it exposed the face of segregation for its hatred and venality, and shamed the sympathetic bystanders in leadership positions for their inaction as pastors, students, mothers and fathers were arrested, beaten or murdered. It moved the populace, and more importantly, it moved the political structure, reluctantly, truculently, but inexorably. to change.
A Second Civil Rights Movement can bring together millions of Americans in unison to protest the inequities that not only divide our society, but are creating deeper, possibly insurmountable rifts in our national fabric. I believe that the potential — and I stress potential — to create the paradigm change that preserves the values of our democracy and brings citizens closer to the realization of that more perfect union.
But it doesn’t work if we don’t work together. It doesn’t work if a truly mass movement doesn’t arise from a commonality of interests. It doesn’t work if everyone remains in their silos, like solitary ICBMs aimed at disparate targets.
Why? Because in the grand tradition of Franklin, we must all hang together, because in the day of Citizens United, we will assuredly all hang separately. The power of money can only by offset by the power of ideals — not ideas — multiplied exponentially through people power, and then magnified through social media. And right now, Big Money is picking us off, shooting down every single separate priority that we care about at the ballot or in the legislature through their political hand puppets. And thus we hang separately, one at a time.
I don’t presume to know how to make this movement happen. I do know that there are plenty of smart, motivated people who can. And I don’t presume to dictate the terms of what the Second Civil Rights Movement should rally around. I do have a few suggestions. But I’ll save that for later.
The American Dream, and the dream of Dr. King, is still within our grasp. There is still a shining city on a hill. But it will take all of us, hand in literal hand, to get there. So let’s start moving.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. would be happy to have Iran’s help in fighting the Islamic State, Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday in response to the news, first broken by The Huffington Post Monday night, that the U.S. has been aware of Iranian airstrikes in Iraq since at least last week.
“I think it’s self-evident that if Iran is taking on ISIL in some particular place and it’s confined to taking on ISIL and it has an impact, it’s going to be –- the net effect is positive,” Kerry, using the administration’s preferred name for the organization, said in remarks following meetings with representatives of other nations in Brussels.
He emphasized that the U.S. was not cooperating with Iran, which is a top regional rival for most U.S. Middle Eastern allies and has not had diplomatic relations with Washington since 1979.
In Washington on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest also denied any cooperation between the two countries. But he said the administration would continue to evaluate that stance.
While Kerry said he could not confirm or deny reports about the Iranian bombing, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday there was no reason to believe the reports that have emerged since The Huffington Post’s original story are untrue. An Iranian politician and other U.S. officials have since confirmed the Iranian bombing as well.
Hamid Reza Taraghi, a political figure considered close to Iran’s president and to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told The New York Times Iran had established a “buffer zone” in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province, which the Iraqi government — led by an Iran-friendly Shiite political party — has accepted.
On Monday, a U.S. defense official confirmed to HuffPost that claims made over the weekend by British defense firm IHS Jane’s and Israeli newspaper Haaretz about Iran conducting airstrikes in Iraq were true. The official said he could only provide confirmation on the bombing on the condition of anonymity.
The firm and the newspaper had reached their conclusions separately by reviewing recent Al Jazeera footage which showed a U.S.-made fighter jet bombing Iraq. Noting that only Iran and Turkey, a U.S. ally which has yet to directly fight the Islamic State, still operate that model of fighter plane, they said it had to have belonged to Iran.
The U.S. defense official told The Huffington Post he believed Iran would continue to target the Islamic State as long as the Sunni extremist group neared the Iranian border or threatened Shiite holy shrines in Iraq — a top concern for Iran because it is the most powerful Shiite power in the Middle East.
He said the U.S. would not directly push back against the Iranian involvement unless it threatened U.S. forces in Iraq, whose number is set to double.
Kerry and Kirby both said the responsibility for preventing encounters between U.S. and Iranian bombers over Iraq belonged to the Iraqi government.
“We’re there at the invitation of the Iraqi government, so it’s not for us to say what they should allow, what they shouldn’t allow,” the defense official had told The Huffington Post on Monday. “It’s their country.”
Iran is perhaps the central player in the current crisis in the Middle East. U.S. officials told The Huffington Post last month that because of Iran’s deep involvement in the countries where a U.S.-led coalition is now attacking the Islamic State, the Obama administration is loath to take actions that could anger Tehran.
But while the U.S. and Iran may share a common threat in the Islamic State — as President Barack Obama emphasized in an October letter to Iran’s supreme leader — and are both invested in a process of diplomacy around Iran’s nuclear program, they are not working to the same ends in those countries or across the region.
Both do seek to shore up the Iraqi government. Yet Iran is committed to propping up the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, an embattled and controversial ruler who leads a regime in which the U.S. says it has lost faith. Iran also support groups unfriendly to the U.S. in Lebanon, and reportedly in Yemen as well. And the ambitious Islamic Republic remains a major concern for allies like Israel, whose prime minister bluntly reminded Americans yet again last month not to forget that “Iran is not your friend.”
There are plenty of metaphors to choose from, as we all breathlessly watch the Republican Party make their latest attempt at semi-rational governing. Since the vehicle chosen for this Washington drama has been dubbed the “cromnibus,” these metaphors all lean on the transportation theme. Will the wheels on the cromnibus go ’round and ’round? Are Tea Partiers waiting at the cromnibus stop, or will they just stop the cromnibus? Will the cromnibus even leave its House depot? Who will be forced to sit at the back of the cromnibus? Republicans are either on the cromnibus, or off the cromnibus (warning: due to its origins in the counterculture, Republicans may not get the reference in this last one).
The problem, as usual, comes from the Tea Party faction in the Republican Party. Since Nancy Pelosi has now signaled that Democrats are going to essentially sit this one out, John Boehner will be forced to pass his new budget scheme through the House with only Republican votes. If enough of them (fewer than 20, assuming no Democrat votes for it) decide the cromnibus isn’t sufficiently combative, then the cromnibus will grind to a halt before its even leaves the station.
If you are only now emerging from your tryptophan-induced holiday haze and am wondering what the heck I’m even talking about, the “cromnibus” is a new thing in Washington, a mashup of “continuing resolution” (or “CR”) and an “omnibus” budget bill. I debated the finer points of usage for the neologism last week, so check that out if you’re still puzzled (but be warned, it could put you right back to sleep). In layman’s terms, the cromnibus is a method Speaker John Boehner is proposing (to his fellow Republicans) which would fund the federal government through the end of the fiscal year (through next September, in other words); except for the Department of Homeland Security, which would only be funded for roughly three months (or possibly even less time — such details haven’t been decided yet). The full funding part is the “omnibus” and the three-month short leash for Homeland Security is the “continuing resolution” part.
The reason for this mashup bill is to allow Republicans to vent a lot of steam over President Obama’s recent action on immigration, but at the same time appear to be more reasonable than shutting the entire federal government down (again) in a tantrum. Boehner, at this point, would call that a win-win, since he has already promised (perhaps rashly) that Republicans won’t be shutting down the government again any time soon. At the same time, Boehner knows the Tea Partiers are fighting mad over immigration, and may not even accept the cromnibus as sufficiently pugilistic. He’s walking a very fine line, and the Tea Partiers are reportedly already marshalling their forces in an effort to defeat (or at least significantly toughen up) Boehner’s proposed cromnibus bill.
The budget is due on December 11, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for such factional maneuvering. Boehner is facing the same problem he’s had all along with his caucus. The base is hopping mad and spoiling for the biggest, most visible fight with Obama they can possibly manage to stage — but Boehner knows it’s ultimately going to be a losing battle for Republicans because the bigger the fight, the more severe the consequences of failure, and the more blame Republicans will get for such failure. If the cromnibus stalls out in the House, to put this another way, it does not bode very well for Congress getting much of anything done for the next two years. Instead, it’ll be shutdowns and fiscal cliffs, as far as the eye can see.
The whole point of the cromnibus was compromise — compromise within the Republican Party. The Establishment Republicans could prove to the pundits that they could act (mostly) responsibly, while the Tea Partiers could vent their feelings without wrecking everything in sight. But you have to remember that “compromise” is a dirty word to Tea Partiers, no matter whether the compromise is internal or external. Their constant refrain is: “We will never have this amount of leverage over the president ever again, so why don’t we use it now?” They never take into their calculations what the aftermath will be, but Boehner has to.
Boehner even offered the Tea Partiers what used to be sufficient to assuage such back-bench rage: before the cromnibus vote, he’d hold a protest vote on a bill denouncing Obama’s “lawlessness” — which will then go precisely nowhere in the Senate. This may not be enough for the Tea Partiers, though. Many other symbolic ideas are being kicked around the Republican House caucus (including the sophomoric: “Let’s not invite Obama to give next year’s State Of The Union speech — that’ll show him!”) as further efforts to allow for the Tea Party’s venting of rage, but it remains to be seen whether any of it will convince them. Perhaps Boehner could work such “airing of grievances” into a nice Festivus celebration? At this point, anything’s possible.
John Boehner, a few weeks ago, repeatedly made a promise to the American people: Republicans would not shut down the federal government again — at least not any time soon. This is the true leverage in this fight, because the Tea Partiers know how desperately Boehner wants to keep this promise, to show he can indeed lead his own caucus in the House. If the cromnibus bill passes, it will be a huge victory for Boehner (within his own party). But if the cromnibus fails to get enough votes to even pass the House, then you’re going to hear a lot more people start referring to “Speaker Ted Cruz” as the real leader of the House Republican caucus, because the Tea Party tail will once again be in full control of the Republican Party dog.
If the Tea Partiers do kill the whole scheme, you’ll also — inevitably — hear a whole lot of one very specific metaphor to describe the wreckage. Because the Tea Party will then indeed have “thrown Boehner under the cromnibus.”
Chris Weigant blogs at: 
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When you have Silicon Valley bigwigs publicly slamming San Francisco’s homeless residents as “hyenas” and “degenerates” and suggesting we should just hand them all vodka and cigarettes, you know there’s an empathy gap somewhere.
It’s that kind of thinking that the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness (COH) hopes to challenge with its new ad campaign, which features photos of actual homeless people — sans shopping carts and sleeping bags.
“We want people to see pictures of people who are homeless and think, ‘Gee, that’s weird. They don’t look homeless to me,’” COH staffer Matthew Gerring told the San Francisco Chronicle this week. “We’re attempting to catch people off guard by getting at their heartstrings, which is how you change people’s minds.”
The ad series is intended to demonstrate that homeless people come from all kinds of backgrounds and are homeless for all kinds of reasons. Among the people appearing in the ads are Ronnie Goodman, a marathon runner and artist whose works have been made into a wine label and auctioned for thousands of dollars, and Peter Ogilvie, a former technical staff consultant at the Oracle Corporation who had to move his family into the shelter system after losing a legal battle with his landlord.
The ads went up on Muni buses and in public transit centers this week. Check out some of the images below.
(h/t the San Francisco Chronicle)
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