The Hubble Space Telescope has been busily snapping photos of planets and other objects in the solar system and galaxy for years and some of its latest photos taken last month are of Neptune. In these new photos, taken on May 16, 2016, Hubble has spied a new dark spot in the atmosphere of the cold blue planet. These images … Continue reading
Nearly two years after we first got our hands on the platform, Android TV is integrating Netflix with its universal search. Just last year we were complaining about the search on NVIDIA’s Shield TV because it could only show results from YouTube, Hul…
WhatsApp’s voice call feature was activated last year and while the feature might have been late to the party, it seems that WhatsApp users waste no time in taking advantage of it. According to the official numbers posted on WhatsApp’s blog, it has been revealed that WhatsApp users are making 100 million voice calls on a daily basis.
According to WhatsApp, “For more than a year, people have used WhatsApp Calling to talk with friends and family around the world. It’s a great way to stay in touch, especially when connecting with people in other countries, or when messages alone won’t do. Today, more than 100 million voice calls are made every day on WhatsApp – that’s over 1,100 calls a second! We’re humbled that so many people have found this feature useful, and we’re committed to making it even better in the months to come.”
Like we said, WhatsApp was a bit late to the party. Prior to this, other messaging apps like LINE, Skype, and Viber already offered similar functionality, but we suppose WhatsApp’s strong and massive user base helped to contribute to the feature’s success. Last we heard, WhatsApp was planning video calls although that feature has yet to roll out to its users, but we have to wonder if it will be met with the same success as its voice calling one.
100 Million WhatsApp Voice Calls Are Made Everyday , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
If the current music streaming landscape is confusing you with so many different services being offered, we guess we can’t blame you. There are so many to choose from that there’s really no difference at the end of the day, and finding one whose price point and catalogue suits you is all that really matters.
Now it looks like we have a new contender in the form of BitTorrent Now. This is a new app that BitTorrent has launched for mobile devices and the web, with the intention of bringing music and streaming services to its users. However it seems that unlike other models, BitTorrent Now will be adopting a different setup.
For starters it seems to be catered more towards users who are interested in exploring music and video from lesser known artists and filmmakers. Some of its content will be free, while some will cost money, and some will be ad-supported, which like we said is very different from the current model in which users pay a monthly subscription and have access to the entire catalogue.
Now admittedly this model does get a bit confusing, but it does sound rather interesting and unique in its approach. Users who are interested can head on over to BitTorrent’s website for the details. It is currently available for the web and Android, with an iOS version planned for release soon.
BitTorrent Now Is Another Music Streaming Service , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
The last time we saw HTC make an Android device it was with the Nexus 9. However there have been rumors to suggest that 2016’s Nexus could be made by HTC, although there have also been claims that Huawei could be returning to the Nexus scene as well, and given that last year we saw Nexus phones from Huawei and LG, we suppose this is entirely possible.
That being said, the folks at Android Police have received a tip which they claim are the specs belonging to the HTC “Sailfish” handset, which apparently is the smaller of the two HTC Nexus handsets that are reportedly in the works. Yes, you read that right, HTC will apparently be making not one, but two Nexus phones.
So what are we looking at? Oddly enough the specs for Sailfish aren’t too impressive. It will feature a 5-inch Full HD display and a quad-core processor clocked at 2.0GHz. It will come with 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, USB-C connectivity, a 12MP rear-facing camera, an 8MP front-facing camera, and a 2,770mAh battery.
Like we said, not very impressive. In fact even the recently launched OnePlus 3 with its affordable price tag packs higher-end specs than this, but then again this is a rumor so take it with a grain of salt. It is possible that this could be the lower-end model to entice customers on a budget to adopt Nexus phones, but in the meantime we can’t say we’re too impressed.
Alleged HTC ‘Sailfish’ Nexus Specs Leaked , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
A British anti-EU leader sparked outrage when he said the “out” campaign won the country’s vote to leave the European Union Thursday “without a single bullet being fired.”
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage appeared to conveniently forget during his victory speech early on Friday about the murder of Labour Party lawmaker Jo Cox, who was a vocal advocate for Britain remaining in Europe.
Watch the speech here:
“The dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom!” said Farage, who fought much of his campaign on an anti-immigration agenda. “We have fought against the multinationals, we have fought against the big merchant banks we fought against big politics, we fought against lies, corruption and deceit.”
“And today honesty, decency and belief in nation I think now is going to win,” he added. “And we will have done it without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired.”
Farage immediately drew heavy criticism for his phrasing, given that Cox was shot dead and stabbed outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, on June 16.
Thomas Mair, 52, was charged with the murder of Cox, during which a 77-year-old man was injured trying to save the lawmaker. He is due to face trial in November.
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A new study finds that hundreds of police officers are arrested each year for the same sorts of crimes they are supposed to be thwarting.
The study, believed to be the first of its kind, was conducted by researchers at Bowling Green State University and funded by the National Institute of Justice, which released the report this month. Researchers identified 6,724 cases involving the arrests of 5,545 sworn officers across the nation between 2005 and 2011.
That means that on average, police officers are getting arrested around 1,000 times per year.
Alarmingly, forty-one percent of the total crimes were committed while on duty. Philip Stinson, lead researcher on the study and BGSU professor, told The Huffington Post that even when off-duty, some of these officers committed crimes using powers endowed to them as sworn members of law enforcement or knowledge gained through their authority as police officers — thereby making the distinction murky in some cases.
“Police officers can’t seem to turn it off at night,” Stinson said.
The alleged crimes cops were arrested for most frequently were simple assault, driving under the influence and aggravated assault. Altogether, those crimes made up one-third of the total cases. There were also a considerable number of sex crimes cases, including forcible fondling and forcible rape — about 10 percent of all cases — and, disturbingly, the sex crimes cases included some victims under the age of 18. While the victims were mostly female, there were some male victims as well, Stinson said Thursday during a web conference detailing the report.
“Our first and perhaps most salient general observation about the data was that police crimes are not uncommon and that they occur with some regularity in jurisdictions across the nation,” the report reads. “The sheer number of police crimes directly contradicts the presumption that they are perpetrated by a small cadre of problem-prone officers.”
Stinson and his co-authors broke the cases of arrest into five broad categories:
sex-related police crime (1,475 arrest cases of 1,070 sworn officers)
alcohol-related police crime (1,405 arrest cases of 1,283 sworn officers)
drug-related police crime (739 arrest cases of 665 sworn officers)
violence-related police crime (3,328 arrest cases of 2,586 sworn officers
profit-motivated police crime (1,592 cases of 1,396 officers)
Male police were arrested at a far higher rate than female officers: Almost 95 percent of police crimes were committed by males.
About 72 percent of arrest cases resulted in convictions, Stinson said. Still, only about half of the total cases ultimately resulted in job loss for the arrested officers. The reasons for that are complex, the researchers noted, but in part, professional discipline may be lacking following an officer’s arrest because their own department may not know about the crime committed. That’s because about two-thirds of all the cases originated from arrests made by a police department that didn’t employ the officer arrested, meaning, in at least some cases, police departments may not be aware that some of their own officers are committing crimes.
Stinson and his colleagues say there are several things that law enforcement agencies can do to help keep cops from breaking the law. For example, they could perform annual criminal background checks for their sworn officers, and have written policies in place that specify standards for responding to police officers being arrested. They also could adopt policies compelling mandatory disclosure whenever an officer is arrested for a crime or when the agency issues an order of protection against the officer.
Because the researches also found instances of mental illness in some of the cases, as well as officers experiencing an “unraveling of their lives” following their arrest, they say agencies should install early warning systems to track officer arrests. That way, the officers can be referred to employee assistance programs when appropriate.
The full number of police officer crimes is likely higher than what the BGSU researchers found. The researchers used media reports to determine when an officer was arrested, so any crimes committed by an officer not reported by a law enforcement agency or discovered by a news organization are not included in the data.
“We know that, as a general matter, crime is underreported,” David Harris, a professor of law at University of Pittsburgh School of Law who studies policing, told HuffPost. “Some types are underreported much more than others. There is no reason to think this would not be true with crimes by police.”
Harris also noted there is evidence that police officers are reluctant to report misconduct by fellow officers and that some agencies tend not to take seriously any complaints of misconduct, criminal or otherwise. Those factors may also contribute to a lower rate.
Given the limitations of the data available, Jonathan Blanks, a researcher with Cato’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, said the absolute number of crimes committed by police is likely “unknowable.” He outlined some of the reasons why on Thursday in a blog post about the new report:
We find cases where officers are arrested and convicted of crimes. But we also find officers who are given “professional courtesy” and not arrested for drunk driving. We see cases in which officers plea down their violent and disturbing felony cases to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, which allows them to maintain their peace officers’ license. We find longstanding criminal conspiracies that sometimes take years to uncover. And, just today in Baltimore, we see prosecutors unable to convict the officer believed to be most culpable for the conduct that resulted in the death of Freddie Gray. It is impossible to gauge the extent of misconduct because we don’t know how much of it the police and the media are catching.
There are are roughly 750,000 sworn local and state law enforcement officers in the U.S., according to a recent count by the Department of Justice, and Stinson’s data estimates the rate of arrest for officers is 1.7 cops per 100,000 people. As a comparison, the approximate rate of arrest of civilians in the U.S. is around 3,888 per 100,000 people, according to FBI Uniform Crime Report data.
The vast difference in those rates may lead some to diminish the importance of the report’s findings. But Stinson says comparing the two rates is missing the larger point of the research: Government agents whose duty it is to uphold the law should not be breaking the law.
“Police officers should not be getting arrested,” Stinson said. “Yes, the rates of arrest are very low. But, this stuff is nuts. And the fact that officers are arrested for so many different types of crimes is simply amazing to me.”
Stinson argues the data points toward a set of issues related to “the process of police socialization and the deep police subculture” that demand further scrutiny.
“They just do whatever they want to do,” Stinson says, “because law enforcement is exempt from law enforcement.”
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The Sanders campaign compiled an email list with 130 million names, a donor list that produced over $200 million in contributions, and a volunteer army of millions of enthusiastic supporters. The Democratic Party wants these lists, that money and those supporters. Good luck.
The establishment Democrats still don’t get it. Bernie’s passionate supporters actually believe in his agenda, and they view the Democrat Party as deeply entangled with Wall Street and the top 1 percent. They are not going to volunteer for Hillary no matter what Sanders says.
Rather than parsing words in the party platform (that Hillary and the rest of the establishment Democrats can and will ignore at will) Sanders should concentrate on launching a new movement organization right now — one that would mobilize for his democratic socialist agenda. We need an organization dedicated to reversing runaway inequality that can serve as a home for the incredible energy and idealism of his supporters.
Immediately, this new organization would have two goals: 1) defeat Trump; and 2) organize a million people to come to the Washington mall shortly after the inauguration to press for free higher education and a Wall Street speculation tax.
Why a new organization?
This is the perfect time to launch a large-scale progressive alliance with an organizational presence in every state. We need organization not just spontaneous eruptions that flower and wilt. We can’t just tweet an end to runaway inequality. We’ll need to systematically fight for it over a long period of time. We need an organizational structure that brings us together and connects our many issue and organizational silos. We should be able to go to Patterson, Pensacola or Pasadena to attend a meeting of a common organization that fights to reverse runaway inequality.
Bernie’s army of volunteers and small donors would likely support such a formation in large numbers if they thought it would really carry on the fight for the Sanders agenda.
Defeating Trump
The first task of this new movement would be to dump Trump. Instead of making a “lesser-of-two-evils” argument, we should make a positive claim that the “political revolution” Bernie has ignited would flourish more if Trump were not president.
Not only would Trump be a colossal disaster for this country, but his victory would make it much harder to fight for a progressive agenda. Instead of pressing for free higher education and single-payer health care, we would be fighting rear-guard actions against Muslim profiling and the building of the wall.
We don’t need to develop amnesia about Hillary’s Wall Street ties to understand that her election would provide a better organizing terrain on which to build a more powerful progressive movement. This is our positive reason to defeat Trump.
Bring a Million to the Mall
Defeating Trump is not enough. We need to plan right now for bold actions to prove to Congress that the Sanders agenda has massive grassroots support. Can we bring a million people to Washington right after the inauguration to demand that Congress pass a financial speculation tax to fund free higher education? Could a Bernie-led progressive alliance raise the money for outreach and transportation? It’s doable but only if we plan for it starting now.
Imagine the signal this would send to Bernie’s young supporters. Here would be an opportunity to attack the debt shackles that enslave millions of students and their families. Young people are likely to come running from all directions.
But, wouldn’t this be a white movement?
Pundits like Paul Krugman still claim that Sanders cares only about individual inequality and fails to address inequality between ethnic and racial groups. Krugman asserts that Hillary gets racism and Bernie, with his universal programs, does not, and that’s why Hillary got so many more votes from people of color.
It’s time to put this canard to rest. The Sanders campaign overwhelmingly won the votes of those under-thirty including the majority of black, Latino and Asian young voters. Hillary received strong support from older voters of color. What does this say about race and voting? It says that race doesn’t explain very much. Age, not race, created the major differences in these voting patterns. There is every reason to expect that an ongoing Bernie-led movement would draw young people of all shades and ethnicities.
Can we really build a mass movement for economic and social justice?
Before the Sanders campaign, that question was not even on the table. But who would have predicted that Sanders, an avowed socialist, would nearly bring the Clinton machine to a grinding halt? Who would ever have predicted twenty plus primary victories and the raising of more money than any other candidate? It tells us something important: This is not the time to think small..
Runaway inequality will not fix itself. Reversing it requires a mass movement with staying power to bring the political revolution to fruition.
Bernie has field tested a new social democratic agenda. We now have a mass constituency for a financial transaction tax, free higher education, Medicare for All and an end to a corrupt campaign finance system. Americans are ready to break up the big banks and undermine the power of Wall Street.
But none of this will happen without resources, organization, and structured activities. It requires money, messaging and the ironclad will to build for the long run.
Of all these activities, the most difficult challenge may lie within ourselves. We cannot build if we don’t believe. Occupy Wall Street believed and it changed the dialogue of this country from austerity to inequality. Bernie believed and he put democratic socialism on the American agenda. But Occupy faded because it lacked sustainable organizational structures. And the Bernie moment could be just that if no organization follows.
This is the time.
(Like Runaway Inequality on Facebook.)
Les Leopold, the director of the Labor Institute in New York is working with unions, worker centers and community organization to build a national economics educational campaign. His latest book, Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice (Oct 2015), is a text for that effort. All proceeds go to support this educational campaign.
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Two Florida men learned the hard way that it’s best not to brag about your alleged crimes on social media.
Raderius Glenn Collins, 18, allegedly posted a Facebook Live video in May under the name Collins Raderius in which he and two friends flashed stacks of money and boasted that “we got a safe.”
(NOTE: Video contains strong language.)
Police used the video to arrest Collins as well as 27-year-old Marcus Terrell Parker for two alleged burglaries. A third suspect remains at large.
The video is still online, and in a June 13 post, Collins blamed Facebook for “snitchin.”
The men were accused of stealing a safe with more than $500,000 in jewelry from one home, and jewelry worth more than $10,000 from another home, according to NBC Miami.
The suspects were not only lousy at being crooks, they were even worse at cutting deals for stolen goods.
“The jewelry that they sold was valued at $500,000, but they sold it and got $1,300 each,” one official told 7 News in Miami.
Police said they recovered the jewelry and other items, and that the men may have been involved in more crimes.
“These men have committed crimes throughout the county,” Village of Pinecrest communications manager Michelle Hammontree told CBS Miami. “They happen to have been arrested in Pinecrest but there’s cases open in the county for them as well.”
— 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.
Hawaii may be thousands of miles away, but the islands have touched those affected by the Orlando massacre with the spirit of aloha.
A group of volunteers from the island of Maui flew to the Florida city on Wednesday to honor the 49 victims of a gay nightclub shooting and help the city heal with a mile-long “Lei of Aloha.”
The lei was so large, they had to divide it into three sections and deliver it to three separate memorials, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
The group laid one lei in front of Pulse nightclub to honor the victims who died there. They presented another section to the Orlando Regional Medical Center, in support of medical professionals and the wounded who are in their care. The last section of the lei was displayed at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
Each one “represents joy, love, and healing and peace,” Lehua Kekehuna, a Hawaii representative, told WKMG Orlando. “That’s what we’re hoping it will do for everyone here.”
Maui resident Ron Ponzo began to organize the lei-making tribute on the island days after the Orlando massacre. Nearly 400 volunteers turned out to help.
They wove ti leaves and four truckloads worth of flowers to create the symbolic gift. The lei was embellished with 49 cowrie shells, each one inscribed with a victim’s name.
After four days of nonstop work, the handmade lei was complete.
Ponzo organized a similar lei tribute for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris last year.
This time, six representatives from Maui brought the lei to Orlando for a traditional blessing.
“Even though we’re 5,000 miles away and another huge ocean away, we feel the pain, we feel the shock,” one of the Hawaii volunteers told WFTV9.
“We just wanted to reach out and give Orlando a hug to remind people that there’s way more good people out there than there are bad people.”
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