Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Facebook Censorship Algos Go Haywire, Blocking Ads From Struggling Legitimate Businesses As "Hate Speech" by Tyler Durden Sat, 11/28/2020 - 11:45 In what is definitely some type of Karmic payback for social media companies now appending some type of label to what seems like every other post nowadays, Facebook just found out that its super-duper censoring algorithm also banned advertisements from some struggling businesses, mistaking them as hate speech. We love it when a plan comes together. One woman, Ruth Harrigan, who advertises on Facebook to sell her honey and beeswax-based products, told Bloomberg she thought she missed out on an estimated $5,000 in revenue after Facebook mistakenly banned her ads right before black Friday. She said: “I was getting a little anxious thinking, ‘Oh my God, Black Friday is around the corner, most of my sales for the year happen in November and December and that’s it,'. I said, ‘If I’m shut down any longer than this, it’ll cripple me.’...

The number of total natural deaths in 2020 (including CoVID-19) are the same as the previous 4 years (no CoVID-19) In 2020 Heart Disease, Cancer etc… were LESS in the CoVID-19 Peak by the amount of CoVID-19 deaths The percentage of deaths per age group stayed static from 2014 to 2020 (NO spike in 74+ age groups) New Study Exposes Alleged Accounting Error Regarding COVID Deaths by Tyler Durden Fri, 11/27/2020 - 18:00 Authored by Ethan Yang via The American Institute for Economic Research, At the time of this writing, the United States currently maintains the highest number of Covid-19 deaths and ranks 11th for the highest deaths per capita. There have been approximately 262,000 recorded Covid-19 deaths in the United States, which is certainly a concerning number. However, a new study (link removed but now available at Archive.org) published by Dr. Genevieve Briand at Johns Hopkins University notes some critical accounting errors done at the national level. The study – which is s...

  How to use GPS to locate things and track people   By Karan Bajaj, ET Bureau   Last Updated: Nov 14, 2016, 06:30 AM IST  Most of us think GPS is only for navigation. However, using various GPS-based devices and apps, you can utilize this technology to locate things as well as people. ET show you how you can keep track of everything important to you.  Tied to the family   There would be times when you would want to keep track of family members or let them know where you are. The simplest way is to use your phone’s built-in GPS combined with Find My Phone feature (Find my iPhone for iOS users, Find your phone on Android) to locate a person on a map. Keep in mind that you would need the Apple ID/Google ID to access these details.  In case you don’t want to share your Apple/Google ID, you can use other free apps. Family Locator by Life 360 is a free app for Android and iOS that let’s you see where each family member is on the app. You make a pr...

  The Dystopian "Fourth Industrial Revolution" Will Be Very Different From The First One by  Tyler Durden Wed, 11/18/2020 - 17:10 Authored by Antony Mueller via The Mises Institute, If one takes the publications of the World Economic Forum (WEF) as an indication of how the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” will change society,  the world is facing a massive onslaught against individual liberty and private property. A new kind of collectivism is about to emerge. Like the communism of the past, the new project appeals to the public with the assurance of technological advancement and social inclusion. Additionally, ecological sustainability and the promise of longevity or even immortality are used to entice the public.  In reality, however, these promises are deeply dystopian. The Fourth Industrial Revolution According to Klaus Schwab, the founder and current executive chairman of the  WEF , the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (2016) represents a new stage of...

Mississippi Cops Can Now Use Your Ring Doorbell Camera To Live Stream Your Neighborhood by Tyler Durden Tue, 11/24/2020 - 23:45 Today in "those who surrender their liberty for security" news... The Jackson, Mississippi police department is piloting a 45 day program that allows them to live stream private security cameras, including Amazon Ring cameras, at the residences of its citizens. It's no surprise that Amazon's Ring cameras were the only brand named for the pilot program, as EFF pointed out , since they have over 1,000 partnerships with local police departments. The program allows Ring owners to patch their camera streams to a "Real Time Crime Center" - i.e. a dispatcher on desk duty whose new favorite way of passing the time is to watch you bring out your garbage twice a week in a bathrobe. While the pilot program is supposedly "opt-in" only, meaning residents have to volunteer to be a part of it, it is an obvious step in the wrong direc...

The Way We Train AI Is Fundamentally Flawed by Tyler Durden Mon, 11/23/2020 - 14:09 Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research Peter Thiel’s most famous one-liner may well be, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”. As a send-up of tech entrepreneurship’s focus on the mundane rather than the magnificent, it’s pretty good. And Twitter may be 280 characters now, but we still don’t have flying cars. We thought of that line today when we came across an article in the MIT Technology Review titled “ The way we train AI is fundamentally flawed ” by Will Heaven, the journal’s senior editor for AI and Ph.D. in Computer Science. The piece reviews a recent paper by 40 Google researchers across 7 different teams. There’s links to both the MIT article and the Google paper below (the latter is heavy reading), but here is a brief summary:  Artificial intelligence training is a 2-step process. You start by showing an algorithm a dataset. As it goes through that data, it “lea...

KFC Launches Autonomous 5G Food Trucks In China by Tyler Durden Sun, 11/22/2020 - 22:30 In China, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has launched a new food truck program, using 5G autonomous vehicles that allow hungry customers to purchase finger-licking good chicken without human interaction. Twitter handle " shanghaineko " snapped a couple of pictures of the unmanned vehicles with KFC chicken for sale outside a metro station in the city of Shanghai. In another tweet, shanghaineko shows there is more than one autonomous KFC food truck. According to Malaysian media outlet SoyaCincau , customers can "place an order on the screen, and it accepts payment via QR-code. After payment is made, the door will open for you to collect your order." SoyaCincau states the food trucks are manufactured by Neolix, a self-driving logistics startup based in Beijing. The startup offers autonomous delivery vehicles that are level 4 as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Neo...

Qantas airline to mandate COVID-19 vaccine for international flights By Noah Manskar November 23, 2020 | 9:05am | Updated No shot, no service. Australian airline Qantas will require travelers on international flights to be jabbed with a coronavirus vaccine once an inoculation is ready, CEO Alan Joyce said. “Whether you need that domestically, we’ll have to see what happens with COVID-19 in the market, but certainly for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country, we think that’s a necessity,” Joyce said in a Monday interview with the Australian news program “A Current Affair.” Australia’s largest airline is planning to enshrine the mandate in its terms and conditions, which would be amended to say that international travelers must be vaccinated before they can board a Qantas plane, Joyce said. Other airlines are likely to impose similar requirements once health regulators around the world approve a vaccine, according to Joyce. He said the policies could be enfo...

Boston Dynamics' Robot Dog Starts New Work On BP Oil Rig by Tyler Durden Fri, 11/20/2020 - 22:40 The virus pandemic is accelerating the trend of robots replacing humans in the workplace. One robot that is quickly being adopted by mega-corporations is Boston Dynamics' compact four-legged robot, called Spot. June was the month when Boston Dynamics began selling Spot. By July, Ford Motor Company received the robot dog, equipped with five cameras to survey its Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Michigan. Ford employed the four-legged robot over human surveyors to save money and time. The Michigan-based automobile manufacture isn't the only company embracing robot dogs to complete mundane tasks generally performed by humans. Reuters notes BP Plc has programed Spot to "read gauges, look for corrosion, map out the facility, and even sniff out methane on its Mad Dog rig."   Adam Ballard, BP's facilities technology manager, said the robot dog would make working on a...

Digital Poker Sites Say '95%' Of Players Demand Payouts In Bitcoin To 'Enhance' Winnings by Tyler Durden Fri, 11/20/2020 - 14:30 As bitcoin powers back toward all-time highs unseen since late 2017, traders around the world are wondering: who exactly is driving this rally? Many probably assumed that the retail Robinhood traders who invaded the stock market this year have also found their way to trading crypto, and that's probably a fair assessment. But to sustain this type of a move, larger institutional players are necessary to ensure that demand never slackens, or else the volatility for which the pioneering cryptocurrency is infamous could come roaring back. Well, a reporter with Bloomberg who apparently set out to identify some of the big players in the market has made an interesting discovery: For years now, digital poker websites have been a constantly growing source of demand for the cryptocurrency, since customers often prefer to cash out in bitcoin, instead...

Google Muscles In On Wall Street's Turf With New Checking Accounts by Tyler Durden Wed, 11/18/2020 - 13:45 Following in the footsteps of Apple Pay and the Apple/Goldman credit card , Google owner Alphabet is finally making its move to expand its rudimentary Google Pay service into a checking account that can also grant users access to other cards and discounts. The upgrade marks Google's deepest foray yet into the US financial system, just as the pandemic speeds up the shift toward a "cashless society" and authorities raise concerns about Chinese super-apps such as Alipay and WeChat. Instead of applying for a banking license to try and challenge the existing banking system directly, Google is already working with 11 partners banks, including Citigroup, which on Wednesday launched a wait list for accounts built for the new ecosystem, and Stanford Federal Credit Union. "We’re working very closely with the financial industry," said Caesar Sengupta, vice presid...

Boeing 737 Crashes Caused By A Few Lines Of Missing Code by Tyler Durden Thu, 11/19/2020 - 15:30 Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk, The FAA certified the Boeing 737 Max on Wednesday. Here's the inside scoop on exactly what caused the crashes. The Boeing 737 Max has been grounded since March of 2019 after two aircraft crashes killing everyone on board. The first crash killed 189 people, the second crash killed 157. On Wednesday, November 18, 2020, the FAA Cleared Boeing's 737 Max To Resume Passenger Service After 20 months on the tarmac following two fatal crashes, Boeing's troubled 737 Max airliner has been given the green light to resume passenger flights, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday . The plane's return to the skies will not be immediate, however. The FAA is requiring a series of design changes laid out in a 115-page directive . It also put forward training requirements for pilots and maintenance requirements for airlines. "This...

NASA Wants To Build A Nuclear Plant On The Moon by Tyler Durden Tue, 11/17/2020 - 22:00 Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com NASA is planning to build a base and a nuclear power plant on the Moon by 2026 and is inviting proposals from companies ready to take on the challenge. According to a statement issued by the Department of Energy, the plan will involve the construction of a 10-kW class fission surface power system to be used for demonstrative purposes. The plant is to be manufactured and assembled on Earth and then shipped to the Moon on a launch vehicle. This vehicle will take the plant to Moon orbit, from where a lander will take it to the surface of the satellite. The demonstration will continue for one year, and if successful, it could open the door to other missions on both the Moon and Mars. “Once the technology is proven through the demonstration, future systems could be scaled up or multiple units could be used together for long-duration missions to the moon and event...

China's Xi: World Economy In Worst Recession Since Great Depression by Tyler Durden Tue, 11/17/2020 - 21:00 Chinese President Xi Jinping told the 12th BRICS summit via video link on Tuesday that the global economy is experiencing "the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s" according to state media Xinhua. He made the remarks while urging BRICS countries to cooperate in maintaining multilateralism which he said is a greater guarantee to "safeguard world peace and stability" during the tumultuous challenges of COVID-19. According to Xinhua, Xi also urged "openness and innovation to facilitate global economic recovery, as well as green and low-carbon development." "At present, the world is caught between the most serious pandemic in the past century and momentous changes never seen in the last one hundred years," Xi said. "Despite all this, we remain convinced that the theme of our times — peace and development — has not...

German Firm Picks Orlando As America's First Flying Taxi Hub by Tyler Durden Sun, 11/15/2020 - 07:35 Munich-based aviation company, Lilium, signed a deal with the city of Orlando, Florida, Wednesday to build the country's first flying taxi hub with flight operations beginning in 2025. In 2019, Lilium first revealed the world's all-electric, vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) jet aircraft powered by 36 all-electric engines. It will take-off and land like a helicopter while achieving horizontal flight like a plane. Lake Nona, Orlando will be the flying taxi hub's future site that will allow Floridians to travel by Liliume's eVTOL within a 186-mile radius, serving several major cities, including Orlando and Tampa. The Lake Nona "vertiport" as what Lilium calls it, will be the country's first urban and regional air mobility network as well as Lilium's first location. It partnered with Florida-based property developer Tavistock Development to des...

Ticketmaster Unveils Plan To Verify Vaccination Status by Tyler Durden Thu, 11/12/2020 - 20:00 With several COVID-19 vaccines reportedly just around the corner, Ticketmaster will be verifying concert fans' vaccination status, or whether they've tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72-hour window, according to Billboard . As we've noted several times over the past few months, immunity passports are the future of COVID-19. The plan, still in development phase, will employ three prongs; the Ticketmaster digital app, third-party health status providers such as CLEAR Health Pass or IBM's Digital Health Pass, and testing / vaccine distribution providers such as CVS Minute Clinic and Labcorp. Here's how it would work, if approved: After purchasing a ticket for a concert, fans would need to verify that they have already been vaccinated (which would provide approximately one year of COVID-19 protection [ZH: really ?]) or test negative for coronavirus approx...

  Dr. Fauci Says Coronavirus "Won't Be A Pandemic For Much Longer" by  Tyler Durden Thu, 11/12/2020 - 10:28 In the latest example of the often conflicting messages about the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that COVID-19 "won't be a pandemic a lot longer" thanks to the rapid progress on vaccines. His message was seemingly out of step with that of President-elect Joe Biden, who has urged Americans to keep wearing those masks as cases surge to new records and  the world faces a long, dark winter before vaccine distribution can begin. Of course, as WHO and the Gates Foundation struggle to raise some $18 billion for their 'Covax' program to help vaccinate poorer nations,  we've seen some scientists warn  that certain countries like India and others likely won't ever be able to distribute mRNA vaccines like those being manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, due to the complexity of shipping and storing the vaccines, which must be k...