Tag Archives: project

A journalist arrested for filming a pipeline protest could face more prison time than Edward Snowden.

by BiancaJJXK Posted on October 14, 2016

The company is reportedly focusing instead on developing software for driverless vehicles that could be used by other car companies.

The shift has led to a mass exodus at Apple’s secretive car division, Project Titan, anonymous sources tell Bloomberg News. Hundreds of people from the once-1,000-person-strong team have either been reassigned to other divisions, been let go, or quit, though some new people have also been added.

In 2008, after Apple released the iPhone, Steve Jobs talked with Tony Fadell, a senior VP at Apple, about taking on a car as the company’s next game-changer, and redesigning it from scratch. “What would a dashboard be?” Fadell said, describing one conversation. “What would seats be? How would you fuel it or power it?”

But those big dreams seem to have hit hard realities. Among other things, Apple had trouble getting suppliers to make small quantities of parts, Bloomberg reports. Ultimately, it’s very difficult for a company to get into the car manufacturing business — even an established tech behemoth. And for those of us who’d like to see more innovation in the transportation sector, that’s too bad.

See original: 

A journalist arrested for filming a pipeline protest could face more prison time than Edward Snowden.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Goodmans, LG, ONA, PUR, Ringer, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A journalist arrested for filming a pipeline protest could face more prison time than Edward Snowden.

Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.

by ReneHEHFqudao Posted on October 6, 2016

The U.S. and all of its major allies have now ratified the Paris climate agreement, pushing it over the threshold needed for it to go into effect in 30 days — just before the U.S. presidential election.

Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” Paris if he’s elected — and that may have unintentionally sped things along.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, told Grist by email, “the threat of a Trump presidency has pushed countries to go forward with ratification more quickly than anyone had anticipated at the time of Paris.” For historical comparison, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol took five years.

Once the deal is underway, it would be more difficult for Trump to extract the U.S. He’d need to give three years notice and allot an additional year for withdrawal.

Still, Trump could simply decide not to deliver on the U.S.’s pledges, by, say, refusing to implement the Clean Power Plan.

Even then, Stavins argues that progress would continue to be made in energy efficiency and at the state level. “Trump could slow down action on climate change, but not as dramatically as Trump may think he could.”

Continue reading:

Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.

Say hello to the man who could dig us out of this whole climate change mess.

by KaraFelanvng Posted on October 6, 2016

The U.S. and all of its major allies have now ratified the Paris climate agreement, pushing it over the threshold needed for it to go into effect in 30 days — just before the U.S. presidential election.

Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” Paris if he’s elected — and that may have unintentionally sped things along.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, told Grist by email, “the threat of a Trump presidency has pushed countries to go forward with ratification more quickly than anyone had anticipated at the time of Paris.” For historical comparison, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol took five years.

Once the deal is underway, it would be more difficult for Trump to extract the U.S. He’d need to give three years notice and allot an additional year for withdrawal.

Still, Trump could simply decide not to deliver on the U.S.’s pledges, by, say, refusing to implement the Clean Power Plan.

Even then, Stavins argues that progress would continue to be made in energy efficiency and at the state level. “Trump could slow down action on climate change, but not as dramatically as Trump may think he could.”

See original article here:

Say hello to the man who could dig us out of this whole climate change mess.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Say hello to the man who could dig us out of this whole climate change mess.

It’s official: Hurricane Matthew is a monster.

by ArlenBrient526 Posted on October 6, 2016

The U.S. and all of its major allies have now ratified the Paris climate agreement, pushing it over the threshold needed for it to go into effect in 30 days — just before the U.S. presidential election.

Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” Paris if he’s elected — and that may have unintentionally sped things along.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, told Grist by email, “the threat of a Trump presidency has pushed countries to go forward with ratification more quickly than anyone had anticipated at the time of Paris.” For historical comparison, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol took five years.

Once the deal is underway, it would be more difficult for Trump to extract the U.S. He’d need to give three years notice and allot an additional year for withdrawal.

Still, Trump could simply decide not to deliver on the U.S.’s pledges, by, say, refusing to implement the Clean Power Plan.

Even then, Stavins argues that progress would continue to be made in energy efficiency and at the state level. “Trump could slow down action on climate change, but not as dramatically as Trump may think he could.”

Original article:

It’s official: Hurricane Matthew is a monster.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s official: Hurricane Matthew is a monster.

Here’s Some Good News for Sexual-Assault Victims

by VonCourts447729 Posted on September 28, 2016

Mother Jones

The Department of Justice announced more than $38 million in funding on Monday to help state and local agencies address the backlog of untested sexual-assault kits. The funding, part of a national initiative launched last year, will go toward increasing the inventory and the testing of kits, training law enforcement officers on sexual-assault investigations, helping police departments collect DNA that could lead to the identification of serial sex offenders, as well as several other efforts.

Sexual-assault kits, more commonly known as rape kits, are the DNA swabs, hair, photographs, and detailed information gathered from victims of sexual assault and used as evidence for the prosecution of rapists. The forensic exam can often be long—from four to six hours—and, as activists note, invasive, but it can provide key evidence for identifying assailants. But getting the contents of a rape kit tested is expensive, costing between $1,000 and $1,500 on average. Lack of funding in police departments, as well as murky protocols around testing, has created a backlog of more than 400,000 untested kits across the country, according to a 2015 estimate. As a result, victims may never see their cases prosecuted, and serial rapists could go on to commit more crimes. New York, among other states, is still in the process of counting the number of untested kits it has, while others simply do not know how many untested kits there are, according to the Joyful Heart Foundation’s Accountability Project.

This round of funding could go a long way toward helping cities and police departments close cases, identify serial offenders, and better handle sexual-assault cases in the future. (Last fiscal year, the DOJ awarded nearly $80 million in grants to state and local agencies in 27 states, but there are still states that have yet to participate in the initiative.) After Detroit received a pilot grant to test rape kits, its police department has been able to make DNA matches, identify potential serial rapists, and secure convictions against perpetrators. In a 2011-13 DOJ-funded study on rape kit testing in Detroit, researchers had found that in many cases, law enforcement stopped investigating cases after minimal effort and were biased in how they conducted sexual assault investigations, with officers expressing “negative, victim-blaming beliefs about sexual assault victims.” The DOJ later released guidance on how police departments could better address gender biases in how they investigate sexual assault and domestic violence. A study this June by Case Western Reserve University of nearly 5,000 rape kits collected in and near Cleveland found that serial rapists are more common than previous research has suggested.

Maile M. Zambuto, CEO of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a sexual-assault advocacy organization, applauded the new funding in a statement. “Testing rape kits sends a fundamental and crucial message to victims of sexual violence,” she said. “You matter. What happened to you matters.”

Read this article: 

Here’s Some Good News for Sexual-Assault Victims

Posted in Eureka, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Some Good News for Sexual-Assault Victims

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds – Michael Lewis

by Myrna Posted on September 19, 2016

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Michael Lewis

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $14.99

Expected Publish Date: December 6, 2016

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W. W. Norton


Best-selling author Michael Lewis examines how a Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality. Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms. The Undoing Project is about the fascinating collaboration between two men who have the dimensions of great literary figures. They became heroes in the university and on the battlefield—both had important careers in the Israeli military—and their research was deeply linked to their extraordinary life experiences. In the process they may well have changed, for good, mankind’s view of its own mind.

View post:

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds – Michael Lewis

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, W. W. Norton & Company | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds – Michael Lewis

Need Help Living Ethically? There’s an App for That!

by marinavhunt Posted on August 28, 2016

You want to make the right choices so your lifestyle matches your ethics. But how do you know what the right thing is all of the time? How can you make the bestpurchase when you shop, hire a company, buy clothes or even make more charitable donations and get them to the right groups?

Ethical mobile apps are coming to the rescue. For almost any issue you care about, you can probably find an app that will help inform you, guide you and make it easy for you to not just talk the ethical talk, but walk the ethical walk.

Here are 6 that work for Android or IOS devices, or both.

1) The Humane Eating Project

This is a “restaurant app for people who care about animals.” The freeapp helps consumers find 20,000 restaurants in threecategories: those serving food that’s humanely raised; those serving vegan, vegetarian or veg-friendly options; and those that have made the “watch list (avoid)” because they serve foods the Project considers to be offensive or illegal, like veal, foi gras and sharkfin. Diners can also search for a restaurant by name, cuisine, locationand price, plus get directions and reviews. Created by the non-profit America for Animals, the app is just one of several state-of-the-art web and mobile projects the organization has launched to promote animal compassion andstop abuse. Works on both Android and IOS devices.

2) PaperKarma

If you’re tired of junk mail but find that writing “cancel – return to sender” doesn’t work, this free app may be for you. Justtake a picture of the mail you don’t want, and tap “unsubscribe.” PaperKarma will instantly submit a request to the company on your behalf. PaperKarma can stop magazines, catalogs, coupon books, credit card offers and other mail. If the company that sent the mail isn’t in PaperKarma’s data base, they say they’ll track it down. Works on both Androidand IOS devices.

3) Buycott

Buycott is a bar code scanning app that helps shoppers in 192 countries boycott companies that are behaving unethically. Crowd-sourced campaigns raise awareness about the issues, then enable consumers to scan barcodes when they shop to learn more about a product’s history and decide whether or not to buy the product. You can also use the app to send the product manufacturer a message about your decision not to buy. Current campaigns support fair trade, encourage consumers to avoid palm oil products, advocate a boycott of chocolate produced by child slaves and are working to stop wildlife slaughter in Africa. Works on both Android and IOS devices.

4)True Food

Want to avoid GMOs but can’t do it on you’re own because they’re not labeled? The free True Food app can help. It provides information on common genetically modified ingredients and lets you know what brands to look out for wherever you shop. Browse the 16 categories in the shoppers guide, choosing what’s “green” and avoiding what’s “red.” You can even call or email companies in the “red” to tell them you won’t be buying they’re products until they switch to non GMO ingredients. IOS only.

5) Light Bulb Finder

This free app makes it easy to switch from conventional incandescent light bulbs to LEDs and CFLs.It will help you figure out the right bulb to meet your need, then take you to a shopping site where you can make the purchase. Light Bulb Finder also helps you find rebates or incentives in your state to help defray the cost of switching bulbs. Available for Androidand IOS.

6) Carpooling and Ridesharing

There are so many apps for sharing a ride and sharing your car that I’m linking to a good source on 15 of them. Uber and Lyft are on the list, of course. But so is Sidecar.com, whichconnects riders with everyday drivers in their personal vehicle, and Sidecar Deliveries, which delivers both people and packages going along the same route. There’s also Ridescout,whichgives someoneinformation about all available route options: bus, rail, bikeshare, car share, taxi, carpool, walking, biking, driving and parking.

What’s your favorite ethical app?

Related:

9 Cool Apps for the Environmentally Conscious
6 Awesome Apps for Animal Lovers

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Continued:

Need Help Living Ethically? There’s an App for That!

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Need Help Living Ethically? There’s an App for That!

Why some enviros are cheering the death of a solar project

by ErnestMabe Posted on August 24, 2016

#notallsolarprojects

Why some enviros are cheering the death of a solar project

By on Aug 24, 2016Share

California’s San Bernardino County narrowly rejected a controversial solar panel project over concerns that it would threaten groundwater and wildlife in the region.

Soda Mountain Solar was slated to be built just a half-mile from the Mojave National Preserve. The 3-2 vote against certifying the project is a big win for environmentalists who claimed constructing the facility would use up tons of water — a precious resource in drought-stricken California — without any benefit to locals.

The Soda Mountain installation was initially proposed by Bechtel — a contractor probably best know for Iraq war profiteering — and later sold to Regenerate, when it gained support from the Bureau of Land Management. It was touted as a promising part of Obama’s Climate Action Plan’s goal of producing 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2020.

But local residents and chambers of commerce, leading environmental scientists, conservationists, and even National Park Service officials opposed the project, as it would endanger Mojave’s bighorn sheep and desert tortoises without lowering electricity prices for locals, who already get about 30 percent of their power from wind and solar. Regenerate wasn’t even able to find a potential public utility to purchase the 287 megawatts of renewable energy it would have produced.

It’s important to move forward on renewable energy projects — and the vast Mojave, with its constant sunshine, might seem like the best place to fast-track solar power. But when those projects threaten a way of life for local residents and unique wildlife, the cost is too steep.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

Link to article:  

Why some enviros are cheering the death of a solar project

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why some enviros are cheering the death of a solar project

Voter Fraud Is Still a Myth, and 11 Other Stats on the State of Voting Rights in America

by RandolphBeaureg Posted on August 17, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Three years ago, the Supreme Court gutted an important provision in the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to a succession of voting restrictions. But recent court decisions have stymied efforts by mostly Republican-led legislatures to restrict voting access in Texas, North Carolina, North Dakota, and elsewhere before the November election.

Still, as the following stats show, the fight for voting access isn’t over yet:

Sources: Card 1: Brennan Center for Justice; Card 2: National Conference of State Legislatures, Brennan Center for Justice; Card 3: North Carolina State Board of Elections, Veasey v. Perry opinion, Frank v. Walker opinion, University of California, San Diego; Card 4: TMJ4, Frank v. Walker opinion; Card 5: University of California, San Diego; Card 6: The Sentencing Project; Brennan Center for Justice; Card 7: 2012 Survey on the Performance of American Elections; Card 8: Justin Levitt, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Link:  

Voter Fraud Is Still a Myth, and 11 Other Stats on the State of Voting Rights in America

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Voter Fraud Is Still a Myth, and 11 Other Stats on the State of Voting Rights in America

A Whole Lot of Millennials See No Difference Between Clinton and Trump

by EarleneSynnot Posted on August 6, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

One presidential candidate says scientists who work on climate change are “practically calling it a hoax” and wants to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency. The other calls climate change “an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.” And yet about four out of 10 millennials in battleground states think there is no difference between those candidates’ views on the issue.

Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate group released polling at the Democratic National Convention last week focused on millennials in 11 battleground states, conducted by Global Strategy Group in June and early July.

According to the poll, 21 percent of millennials are Bernie Sanders supporters who are so disillusioned with Clinton that they wouldn’t plan to vote for her in a general election if there are third-party candidates, as well.

Young voters are one of the more unpredictable factors in the 2016 election, because they’re more likely than other age groups to support Sanders and less likely to vote in general. Democrats run the risk of losing Sanders holdouts to a third-party candidate. Nearly seven out of 10 Sanders supporters believe there’s no daylight between Trump and Clinton on the issues they care about.

NextGen Climate/Project New America Battleground Millennial Survey

That is alarming news for Clinton. But the numbers could change. NextGen’s findings suggest that if Democrats emphasize climate change and clean energy, they could make progress in winning over this demographic.

Young voters polled, including pro-Sanders voters, rank clean air and water and switching to renewable energy as high priorities. Three-quarters are more likely to support a candidate who wants to transition the United States away from fossil fuels. On the flip side, Trump’s position on the EPA could hurt him. Millennials like the EPA, the polling found—about as much as they like Beyoncé

NextGen Climate/Project New America Battleground Millennial Survey

But this may not help Clinton much because young voters don’t recognize how different she is from Trump. Forty-four percent say there’s no distinction between the two candidates on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and 43 percent say there’s no distinction on protecting air and water.

Maybe that’s in part because Sanders hammered Clinton over her positions on fracking and fossil fuel extraction during the primaries. “On the ground, students just don’t know the difference between the candidates,” Heather Hargreaves, NextGen’s vice president, said at a briefing on the poll.

“It’s not just ignorance,” added Andrew Baumann of Global Strategy Group. “They assume she’s more conservative than she is.” He continued, “I think part of the goal is to educate” voters and reintroduce Clinton.

But if her convention speech was any indication, Clinton isn’t interested in focusing much more on this issue, beyond the usual applause lines. She mentioned in passing how clean energy will lead to job creation, but she didn’t dwell on it. She left the task of drawing a contrast between her climate policies and Trump’s to speakers like California Gov. Jerry Brown and League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.

Even if Clinton isn’t going to be heavily focused on climate, Steyer and his group plan to press the issue on her behalf. NextGen is putting $25 million into efforts to turn out young voters who are concerned about climate change, including at more than 200 college campuses. The group’s hope is that young voters will understand that the stakes are so high for climate change that they will vote for Clinton even if they don’t love her.

Credit – 

A Whole Lot of Millennials See No Difference Between Clinton and Trump

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Whole Lot of Millennials See No Difference Between Clinton and Trump