05 Sci-Tech

Scientists Identify Trigger Receptor that Could Cure Osteoporosis

pgnewser September 10, 2026 0

Researchers at Leipzig University in Germany have developed a new therapy for osteoporosis. The researchers claim they have identified a protein receptor named GPR133 that could be triggered to rebuild lost bone density in osteoporosis patients.

Professor Ines Liebscher, lead investigator of the study, said “If this receptor is impaired by genetic changes, mice show signs of loss of bone density at an early age – similar to osteoporosis in humans. Using the substance AP503, which was only recently identified via a computer-assisted screen as a stimulator of GPR133, we were able to significantly increase bone strength in both healthy and osteoporotic mice.”

Scientists find a bone-building switch that could fight osteoporosis– www.sciencedaily.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

Osteoporosis, a condition that weakens bones and increases the risk of fractures, affects millions of people and remains a major challenge for doctors seeking safe treatments that can be used over long periods. In Germany alone, about six million people are affected, most of them women.

Because existing therapies can have limitations and side effects, researchers are looking for new biological targets that could lead to more effective ways of preserving or rebuilding bone. Scientists at Leipzig University have now identified one such target in GPR133, a receptor that appears to play an important role in keeping bones strong.

China Building AI Robot Army

pgnewser September 9, 2026 0

China is working on developing an AI-run robot army equipped with humanoid “soldiers” with AI brains. Reuters is claiming that an investigation of their procurement records reveal the army is already being built. They claimed they reviewed “more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic studies, patents, official publications, government records and defense-company materials.” This led them to conclude China is building an AI robot army.

China Is Actively Preparing a Humanoid Robot Army for Future Battlegrounds › American Greatness– amgreatness.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

China is aggressively developing an AI-driven, highly advanced military robotics program that could see automated humanoid robots for active combat roles on future battlefields.

The Daily Wire reports that the Communist Chinese government is carefully eyeing technology that was showcased at the recent World Humanoid Robot Games.

The People’s Liberation Army’s official newspaper, on Monday, called for a move to develop combatant capabilities in the humanoid robots that danced, ran, and boxed at the games.

Climate ‘Scientists’ Move the Goalposts Again– townhall.com

pgnewser September 9, 2026 0

Climate ‘Scientists’ Move the Goalposts Again– townhall.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

When I was in grade school, I remember my teachers warning us about acid rain, global warming, and the hole in the ozone layer. They told me the state of Florida would be underwater, as would coastal cities. The polar ice caps were going to melt and we would all starve. The planet was dying every few years.

Now I’m 43, I’m going to guess most of my elementary school teachers are either retired or dead, and Florida is not underwater. The planet has not died, and every single prediction from the so-called climate crowd has failed to come true. Rather than admitting what we all know — that it’s all ideological — the climate scientists simply said the communist climate change “solutions” worked.

In some ways, I admire the absolute audacity of these people. They got everything wrong, tried to force “green” policies down our throats to lower our standard of living and push communism, and then took credit for the fact none of their doom-and-gloom predictions came true.

Students who use AI every day may be falling behind, while moderate users pull ahead– www.digitaltrends.com

pgnewser September 9, 2026 0

Students who use AI every day may be falling behind, while moderate users pull ahead– www.digitaltrends.com
News Source

EXCERPT:

I assumed more AI access might help students learn faster. However, a new OECD study dispels that misconception for me and everyone else who gave their children a paid version of AI chatbots, thinking it would help them through their educational journey. 

According to PISA 2025 data from 760,000 students in 91 countries, students who use AI daily score meaningfully worse on standardized tests than their peers. The full picture is more complicated than a simple ban would fix.

Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends

So what exactly does the data show?

Daily AI users trail their peers by up to 28 points on science tests. The gap, per the research, is equivalent to roughly a year and a half of schooling. However, don’t rush into believing that less AI use is automatically better. 

Students who use AI once or twice a week outscore both daily users and those who don’t use it at all. Those who’re using it to learn something are apparently performing better than those who use it to finish tasks faster. 

Students regularly asked to critique AI-generated answers in class saw science scores climb 13 points, which is about half a year of additional progress.

Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends

Why does heavy use backfire?

OECD’s Andreas Schleicher (via Bloomberg) frames the difference in a simplified manner. AI is most beneficial when it supports some mental effort. That could be learning something new or how to do something, rather than getting it done. 

A staggering 86% of students use AI for schoolwork at least once a year. However, their usage varies wildly by region. For instance, nearly 40% of Japanese students say they rarely touch it versus just 4% in Vietnam. 

Related policy frameworks are catching up fast, too. New York City just banned AI tools for elementary and middle schoolers. MIT says it needs to redesign coursework, especially since AI can complete most undergraduate assignments. 

If you’re a student reading this, using AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to learn new concepts, ask follow-up questions, and use it as a superhuman professor is the right approach. 


Waking AI – MIA Monthly – August 2026

pgnewser September 4, 2026 0

In this issue:

Maple Oil – Protecting Joe – CCP America

In Issue 2026.30, Waking AI, we cover Finalizing Iran, DSA Breaking, and Mail-In Balloting.

Our Situation Report continues to track the culmination of one age’s battles, and the beginnings of the new one. We divide the report into two, with the second part following the Tools of Engagement.

Our Bellwether Report covers Progressive Insurrection, AI’s Viruses, and Trump’s Oil Hall.

Tools of Engagement includes resources to develop off-grid healthcare, AI-guarding, and Plumblining Belief.

In our Final Thought, Editor Paul Gordon Collier wrestles with entering God’s Rest without losing vitality in the “fight.”

  1. Situation Report – Pt. 1 – An Analysis of World Events in August 2026.
  2. Bellwether Digest – Global Outlook, Headlines Missed, People Advance

III. Tools of Engagement

  1. Situation Report – Pt. 2 – An Analysis of World Events in August 2026.

III.  Final Thought – Entering Into God’s Rest Without Ceasing to Work Excellently

Each Issue contains links to the 2025 archive on the last page where you can click, access, download, and print.

The 2026 Archive can also be found on this last page.

Click here to open the issue:

MIA Monthly August 2026 26 09 04 FINAL DRAFT

Tools of Engagement – August 2026

pgnewser September 4, 2026 0

By Staff

  1. THE FAUCI DIARY

During the Covid-19 pandemic (or plandemic), our governments put party agenda over human life. Relying on the state for critical healthcare has proven to be an existential challenge to humanity.

Editor Paul Gordon Collier wrote in his August 7, 2026, Deep Dive “How the Smartest Man in the World Almost Killed It,” America chose a messianic General willing to play fast and loose with the facts, and willing to hack off body parts to save the whole, so long as those body parts weren’t his. That man was Dr. Anthony Fauci. He was once the center of power in much of the “free world” during the coronavirus plandemic.

“His decisions would not only influence other nations, but America’s inability to be a beacon of liberty in the time of coronavirus had profound effects on the rest of the ‘free world.’ America legitimized tyranny because ‘the smartest man in the world’ said it was the best thing to do.

“His influence in assuring the coronavirus plandemic maintained its emergency status led to the dramatic expansion of mail-in ballots, setting the stage for a 2020 election where more than 70% of the votes were ‘cast’ through the unreliable, unaccountable mass mailer system (which was even less reliable and accountable than the ones we have now).

“This would dramatically change the trajectory of America, from one challenging Chinese power, the International Order, and European elitism, to one that bowed to China, lifted up the International Order, and feted European elites.”

We do not recommend you entirely abandon the mainstream healthcare system, but we do recommend you develop “off-grid” healthcare plans so that if we are ever faced with another coronavirus-like event we can provide for our healthcare needs without having to submit to draconian rules to do so.

Here are three sources to begin your exploration of Off-Grid Healthcare:

  • Nobody Talks About Healthcare Off-Grid – Frugal Off Grid – This will introduce you to the off-grid healthcare concept, and even get you started on how to develop your own plans. It includes a video.
  • Direct Primary Care – Going “Off Grid” With Your Health – Homesteading Family – This article is aimed at people considering going off-grid, or homesteading, but it will help you build your own supplemental off-grid healthcare plan for yourself. Should another plandemic hit, you will be prepared with alternative sources for healthcare.
  • Healthcare Steps You Should Take Before Going Off-Grid – reThinkSurvival.com – This is another article aimed at people considering going off-grid, but it’s about preventative healthcare you can take in your own home (like having a supply of “brain food”).
  1. THE LAND WITH THE AI PRIZE – THE STATE OF AFGHANISTAN

In our August 21, 2026, issue of MIA, we did a Deep Dive on the state of Afghanistan. We wrote, “For most of its existence, Afghanistan has been under the thumb of conquerors who could never quite seal the deal. Its hope of achieving sovereign power in light of the jewels beneath its soil is slim to none, no matter which power, America or China, were to secure access to Afghanistan’s AI prize.

We assess that America as the hegemon will offer greater opportunity for shared flourishing for self-stewarding people than China as hegemon ever would, for China would continue to support the Taliban if they ever broke the factions.

The Islamic State has no allies, for its endgame is world domination, even over China, even over America. The other factions have strong ties to India, Russia, and some to Iran, but all have ties to America and the West as well.

The alliance of China, Russia, and Iran coming out in open support of the Taliban against Pakistan has strained those relations with the factions we featured in our report. Even Pakistan is finding itself gravitating back towards the West as it sees China’s closeness with India and Afghanistan as working against its own interests.

The war with Afghanistan has only accelerated that re-engagement with the West both from Pakistan and the major factions we cover in this report (sans the Islamic State, of course).”

Dependence on Superpower AI for your development, and even your own AI processing power, brings with it the risk we see for Afghanistan, the loss of sovereign, or self-stewarding power. In the case of Afghanistan, this has been their struggle for centuries.

For you, the rise of AI means two things, learning how to work without AI tools, or learning how to effectively use AI tools. For most, the latter is more realistic than the former. For those in the latter group, we recommend you make it a regular habit to utilize multiple AI agents, including open-source AI agents. This will prevent you from becoming too attached or dependent on one AI “voice.” It will also get you overall better results, especially with research.

We utilize multiple AIs during our research process, asking each one the same probing question.

For Afghanistan, their lack of sovereignty will be born from their dependence on a superpower to secure their lands and develop their mineral prizes. For you, AI dependence, especially on superpower AI, is risking becoming propagandized by those same tools.

Here are resources to help you prepare for a world with AI without becoming AI’s tool:

  1. USEFUL LIFE VERSUS SACRED LIFE

In our August 28, 2026, Weekly issue of MIA, Paul Gordon Collier analyzed two separate news stories that both served as bellwethers for the existential cultural divide in America today.

Paul wrote, “It is white progressive women in particular who have served as the frontline assassins of whites, males, heterosexuals, cis-gendered, and white-aligned Americans. Were they to surrender the trans to science, they would lose their savior status and be just another guilty white person in need of accountability.

“The Pink-shirted Ladies of Lindsay are the epitome of this spirit as it moves past childbearing age and settles into empty high-rise apartments. If Lindsay is guilty of murder, so are they, and they know it. Progressive women alone account for more than 57% of abortions, yet they represent less than 1/3 of the female population.

“These aging women have now hit their 40s and 50s, and they have only become more committed to violence as a means of political persuasion. They must, I think, sense a world that comes to see the nature of their murder-justifying lies will soon remove them from power, or worse. At this point, they have everything to lose and nothing to gain if they surrender, for losing means losing everything, and winning is all that matters now.

“They have engaged in decades of child murder and political corporate assassinations, and a world that rejects progressivism will soon not only reject them, but it will also prosecute them. They won’t be prosecuted for murdering the unborn, they will be prosecuted for committing treason, child abuse, and racist, sexist, hetero-phobic discrimination.

“Their habit of evil has caused them to go all in on that same evil, by any means necessary, for the good of their high-rise apartments.

“We are seeing the final desperate push by the white woman progressive army to hold on to their power. They must fight off their victims, the American people, and the disenfranchised classes they’ve ‘served,’ classes now ready to throw their saviors out.”

Our Final Thought in that same issue, by Bill Collier, was about anchoring yourself in times of great ideological uncertainty. What we see here is a fundamental break with basic reality by a significant percentage of our population. This group holds great administrative power in most “American” institutions.

So many of our readers, and their family and friends, find themselves still trapped in institutions controlled by progressives; some are even public-school teachers attempting to preserve some semblance of Americanism in a system increasingly hostile to them.

Bill Collier wrote in his Final Thought, “Becoming aware of your own paradigms, and how they may contrast or align with others, is essential to navigating your path through the uncertainty and chaos we have faced (and will most likely continue to face for the foreseeable future).”

When do we fight defiantly within those institutions and where must you hold your fire?

To understand that question, you must first understand what is most essential to your belief system. To understand that you must understand what your core belief system really is.

Here are some resources that, in total, can give you a starting point for plumblining your own beliefs. From there, you can act more confidently, and with more courage, once you choose to act defiantly against the progressive state.

  • The Plumb Line – New Life – This is an essay about how to plumbline your own belief with scripture. This assumes you have already plumblined your own belief that scripture is your primary source for wisdom.
  • How to Chane Core Beliefs: Evidence-Based Strategies – HealthSpectra – This is a material approach to plumblining belief, so be cautious in how you approach this if you are Christian. Yet even for the Christian, there is practical value contained here, so long as you frame it within the boundaries of God’s Word.
  • How I Discovered My Core Beliefs (And How You Can Find Yours – Dr. Paul McCarthy – This essay points you to therapy, but within it is a good guide for how to identify what your core beliefs are.
  • Own Your beliefs – Under the Ancient Oaks – John Beckett – Christians beware, this is a self-confessed “pagan” writing here. He also uses the word “own,” which we assume is not actually possible for beings of limited understanding. This is why we say, “steward your beliefs,” not own them. Yet, even as God used evil for good through Pharoah and the 10 sons of Jacob who sold their brother into slavery, so too can you find good things in this essay. There are basic principles here that can help you determine what in you is stewarded and what in you has been blindly assumed.

One principle in the last article that is more important than all others is “You don’t have to figure out everything yourself,” which could be amended to include, “nor can you.”

The Lessons of Transparency from Covid-19 – mindfulintelligence.news

pgnewser September 2, 2026 0

News Source

EXCERPT:

If you remember the early days of Covid-19, you probably remember the confusion just as much as the fear.

One week masks were “not necessary,” the next week they were “strongly recommended.” Guidance changed on travel, testing, quarantine, school closures, and boosters. Some of those changes were totally reasonable because the evidence was changing, while others were about protecting authority, not people.

Be it understood or not, the way it was communicated often made people feel like they were being managed, not informed (because, in part, they were).

And that’s the real takeaway. Covid-19 didn’t just test healthcare systems. It tested trust.

Transparency is not a “nice-to-have” during a public health crisis. It is part of the response. When it’s missing, even good policies get treated like suspicious ones.

Here are the biggest transparency lessons Covid-19 left us with, and why they still matter now.

The Lessons of Transparency from Covid-19

pgnewser September 2, 2026 2

If you remember the early days of Covid-19, you probably remember the confusion just as much as the fear.

One week masks were “not necessary,” the next week they were “strongly recommended.” Guidance changed on travel, testing, quarantine, school closures, and boosters. Some of those changes were totally reasonable because the evidence was changing, while others were about protecting authority, not people.

Be it understood or not, the way it was communicated often made people feel like they were being managed, not informed (because, in part, they were).

And that’s the real takeaway. Covid-19 didn’t just test healthcare systems. It tested trust.

Transparency is not a “nice-to-have” during a public health crisis. It is part of the response. When it’s missing, even good policies get treated like suspicious ones.

Here are the biggest transparency lessons Covid-19 left us with, and why they still matter now.

1) People can handle uncertainty. They can’t handle spin.

A lot of public messaging tried to sound confident. The intention was probably to keep people calm.

But confident messaging without clear evidence can backfire fast. The moment the guidance changes, people assume someone lied.

A more transparent approach sounds like this:

  • Here’s what we know today.
  • Here’s what we don’t know yet.
  • Here’s what we’re doing to find out.
  • Here’s what would make us change our recommendation.

That style of communication treats adults like adults. It also makes updates feel normal instead of suspicious.

2) “Show your work” builds trust faster than any slogan

During Covid-19, many decisions were presented as final answers, with little visibility into the reasoning.

But people wanted the why, not just the what.

When a government agency recommends a policy, the public shouldn’t need to reverse engineer the logic through press conferences, leaks, or Twitter threads. Publish the evidence summaries. Explain how benefits and harms were weighed. Share the assumptions.

Even better, say what you would do differently if the assumptions are wrong. That one move alone changes the tone from “obey” to “collaborate.”

3) Data transparency beats vibes, every time

A big problem throughout the pandemic was that the data people needed was often late, inconsistent, or hard to compare across regions. In some places, basic metrics were changed midstream without clear explanation. In others, dashboards looked great but hid key details like how “cases” were defined or which tests counted.

Transparent data means:

  • Clear definitions (what exactly is being measured?)
  • Consistent reporting (so trends actually mean something)
  • Open methods (how the numbers were cleaned and calculated)
  • Easy access (so researchers and journalists can sanity-check)

When data is messy, the gap gets filled by rumors. And once the rumor machine starts, it is hard to stop.

4) Conflicts of interest don’t go away. They just go underground.

Covid-19 put a spotlight on how decisions can be questioned when there are real or perceived conflicts, whether that’s pharma relationships, political pressure, or institutional incentives.

The fix is not pretending conflicts don’t exist. The fix is making them visible and manageable.

That looks like:

  • Public disclosure of financial ties and advisory roles
  • Clear rules about who can vote on what
  • Independent review processes that are not just symbolic
  • Meeting notes and rationales that can be audited later

When people think decisions were made behind closed doors, they assume the worst. Transparency doesn’t guarantee agreement, but it lowers the temperature.

5) Transparency has to include the trade-offs, not just the benefits

Some pandemic policies had real downsides: delayed care, mental health impacts, learning loss, economic pressure, isolation, burnout. Even when a policy is the right call, pretending it has no costs makes the messenger look dishonest.

The public doesn’t need perfection. They need honesty.

A transparent message might be:

“This will reduce hospital overload, but it will also cause hardship. Here are the groups most affected. Here’s what we’re doing to reduce harm. Here’s when we will reassess.”

That is how you keep credibility even when the situation is painful.

6) Local trust matters as much as national guidance

One of the most obvious lessons from Covid-19 is that trust is not evenly distributed. People trust their personal doctor more than a distant agency. They trust local community leaders more than national spokespeople. They trust what they can see.

Transparency works better when it is paired with local messengers and local context.

National guidance is important, but it has to be translated honestly for real communities with real constraints. Otherwise, it turns into a compliance problem instead of a public health effort.

7) The next crisis will punish the same blind spots

It’s tempting to treat Covid-19 as a once-in-a-century event and move on.

But the patterns that broke trust will show up again, whether the next threat is a new virus, an environmental disaster, a drug safety scandal, or a sudden health system shock.

If we want to be better next time, transparency can’t be something we improvise during chaos. It has to be built into the system:

  • how data is collected and shared
  • how decisions are documented
  • how uncertainty is communicated
  • how accountability works after the fact

The best time to build trust is before you need it.

What “better transparency” actually looks like going forward

If transparency is the goal, it helps to get specific. Here are a few standards that would have made a huge difference during Covid-19 and would still make a difference now:

This isn’t about making institutions look perfect. It’s about making them believable.

The bigger point

Covid-19 showed us something simple: people will accept tough guidance when they feel respected. They resist when they feel manipulated.

Transparency is respect in action.

And if there’s one good thing we can take from those years, it’s this: the conversation around health transparency is no longer academic. It’s practical. It affects behavior, outcomes, and trust when it matters most.

If you care about public health, research, policy, clinical leadership, or even just how information gets communicated during high-stakes moments, this is the kind of topic worth spending time on, with serious people who are trying to get it right.

 

Trump says voters who oppose data centers will ‘kill the Golden Goose’– www.washingtonpost.com

pgnewser September 1, 2026 0

Trump says voters who oppose data centers will ‘kill the Golden Goose’– www.washingtonpost.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

President Donald Trump attacked voters who oppose data centers Monday morning, warning that they will have only themselves to blame if they “kill the Golden Goose.”

Trump escalated his defense of data centers as polls show Americans from both political parties are increasingly opposed to the server farms central to the artificial intelligence boom. Some Republicans running for office this year have broken with Trump and grown increasingly critical of data centers in response to the groundswell of public opposition.

Florida bans Flock cameras days after a sheriff’s deputy resigns for misusing AI cameras to track ex-girlfriend– timesofindia.indiatimes.com

pgnewser September 1, 2026 0

Florida bans Flock cameras days after a sheriff’s deputy resigns for misusing AI cameras to track ex-girlfriend– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

Florida bans Flock cameras that can read license plates amid a major row over privacy.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced Monday that he is removing Flock cameras from state roadways. The order said all Flock cameras were to be removed from what he calls the “state highway system” within the next 30 days, which would include interstates like I-10 and I-75. That order led to several sheriff’s departments like in Franklin, Liberty and Putnam Counties to announce they’re ending their own license plate reader programs. After 30 days, if there are Flock cameras still found on some roads, Florida’s Department of Transportation will take them down. The memo also said that Flock cameras will not get permits in Florida in the future as well.Citing the cases of cops stalking their ex-girlfriends using the surveillance system, Ron DeSantis said his administration is pro-law enforcement. “But, you also have to say, okay, how could this be misused? And how could a private company misuse the data, but also law enforcement? We know there was an officer in Florida who was using the LPR data to track like an ex-girlfriend or something like that,” DeSantis said.

Scientists discover massive underground ‘thermal anomaly’ on Mars– www.space.com

pgnewser September 1, 2026 0

Scientists discover massive underground ‘thermal anomaly’ on Mars– www.space.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

New research into the interior of Mars further emphasizes that the Red Planet is a world of two very different halves.

Deep inside the southern hemisphere of Mars, the temperature is up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) warmer than beneath the northern hemisphere, deepening the mystery of the strange dichotomy between the Red Planet’s flattened north and craggy southern highlands.

“Scientists usually assume that the interiors of planetary bodies are generally spherically symmetric, but this is not necessarily true,” said Alexander Berne, formerly of Caltech and now at the University of Arizona, in a statement. Berne is the lead author of a new research paper revealing the discovery of the strange southern hotspot.

Berne and his team went back and looked at archival data from three NASA spacecraft – Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter – to look for subtle changes in their orbital velocity that might reflect variations in Mars‘s gravitational field. Using a technique developed by Berne called ‘tidal tomography’ that also accounts for the sun‘s varying gravitational influence on Mars as the Red Planet progresses around its elliptical orbit, he and his team were able to infer a model of the interior structure and temperature of Mars.

How the gravitational field that the various spacecraft experienced changed over time differs substantially from what would be expected were Mars’s interior perfectly spherically symmetrical. To explain this difference, the mantle beneath Mars’s southern hemisphere must be between 390 and 750 degrees Fahrenheit (200 and 400 degrees Celsius) warmer than the mantle in the north, and indeed it is so warm that it could still be partially molten. This could have repercussions for both Mars’s habitability and how long Mars remained volcanically active.

Flock Cameras Face Backlash Even as New Study Shows Anti-Theft Benefits– legalinsurrection.com

pgnewser September 1, 2026 0

Flock Cameras Face Backlash Even as New Study Shows Anti-Theft Benefits– legalinsurrection.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

Flock cameras are automated license-plate reader (ALPR) systems made by Flock Safety that use cameras and software to capture vehicle images, read plate numbers, and alert participating law-enforcement agencies to vehicles linked to investigations or watch lists.

Their use has expanded rapidly in cities, neighborhoods, and businesses as a tool for locating stolen cars, missing people, and suspects. Data is shared through large regional networks that enable agencies to exchange information.

Flock cameras have now joined data centers as the focus of concern and complaint. Critics argue that the systems enable warrantless tracking of ordinary drivers, can be misused or accessed without adequate oversight, and may disproportionately target “marginalized communities.”

One of the biggest concerns regarding ALPRs is how they both create and reinforce racially biased policing. My colleagues, Drs. Jonny Finn and Andrew Baird, and I recently completed a landmark geospatial analysis titled “Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty, and the Geography of ALPR Deployment.”

Our study of 614 cameras in the Hampton Roads area found that race and class are the primary predictors of where these cameras are placed. (It is worth noting that Hampton Roads officials did not release the locations of these ALPRs willingly; they were forced to do so by a federal judge.) The ALPRs completely encircle Norfolk State University, the region’s only public HBCU, for instance.

These devices have also become the target of vandalism.

The Dallas Police Department says there has been an increase in Flock cameras being destroyed.

“We lose that visibility and that investigative value from those cameras that are vandalized,” said Sgt. Adam Reinhart.

At least 25 Flock cameras have been vandalized so far, Reinhart says.

“It’s become popular to cut down Flock cameras. And so we’re just seeing that trend here in Dallas. Along with, you know, throughout the country,” he explained.

Amazon rigged billions in ad pricing, lawsuit from states and US watchdog alleges– www.bbc.co.uk

pgnewser September 1, 2026 0

Amazon rigged billions in ad pricing, lawsuit from states and US watchdog alleges– www.bbc.co.uk
News Source
EXCERPT:

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a bipartisan group of 22 states has filed a lawsuit alleging Amazon secretly overcharged more than a million advertising customers by manipulating online auctions it uses to set ad prices.

The FTC and states say in their lawsuit filed Monday that the alleged scheme has likely netted the company $20bn from advertising customers since 2019.

“Amazon overrides and replaces the actual auction results with higher prices set by Amazon to increase its profits,” says a complaint filed in the company’s home state of Washington.

In a statement to the BBC, Amazon “strongly disagrees” with the premise that it misled advertisers and called the suit “misguided.”

In addition to advertisers, the FTC, a US consumer watchdog, and the states say Amazon customers have also been harmed as extra costs are passed onto shoppers.

“Consumers are suffering, have suffered, and will continue to suffer substantial injury as a result,” the complaint states, prompting swift pushback from Amazon.

“The FTC wants the public to believe this case is about higher prices for consumers. It is not,” Amazon said in its statement.

The company’s shares fell following the announcement of the lawsuit, closing 2.5% lower on Monday.

Many brands and sellers compete on Amazon to place Sponsored Product ads and Sponsored Brands ads when consumer search for products using keywords on Amazon’s e-commerce platform.

Australian judge floats giving court-appointed expert access to Tesla’s engineering systems– www.channelnewsasia.com

pgnewser September 1, 2026 0

Australian judge floats giving court-appointed expert access to Tesla’s engineering systems– www.channelnewsasia.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

SYDNEY: An Australian judge said he may order Tesla to give an independent expert access to its internal engineering platforms as part of a class action against the Elon Musk-led carmaker, a move designed to bypass a drawn-out discovery process that has dogged the case.

The lawsuit, filed in February 2025, alleges Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles suffer from “phantom braking” and that the advertised self-driving capability and battery range were overstated.

Federal Court judge Tom Thawley suggested appointing an independent expert after lawyers for the applicants, representing some 10,000 Tesla owners, complained the documents Tesla had turned over failed to capture crucial technical information they needed to run the case.

Bringing in an independent expert who was endorsed by both sides “would eliminate the discovery issue because they would have, if they needed access to something, the power to get access”, Thawley told the court on Tuesday (Sep 1).

He added that he would not necessarily keep the court-appointed expert away from certain material “just because one of the parties doesn’t like that idea”.

The matter is yet to go to trial as the parties clash over the discovery process.

Meta’s plans to replace workers with AI fell flat, report says – Computerworld– www.computerworld.com

pgnewser August 27, 2026 0

Meta’s plans to replace workers with AI fell flat, report says – Computerworld– www.computerworld.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

Earlier this year, Meta, one of the industry’s loudest AI advocates, was ready to slash up to 60% of the members of some teams and replace them with AI, as part of what it called Project OT (Organization Transformation), an initiative to make Meta “AI native.”

But it backed off at the last minute after internal data showed that the plan wasn’t working out, according to a Reuters investigation published Wednesday. For example, Reuters said, code changes made to the internal software platforms and infrastructure that employees used on the job were up 220% year-over-year, according to an early June post by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, yet changes that led to new or upgraded features reaching Meta users were only up 36%.

Meta executives also saw “’reliability warning signs’ caused by the AI coding surge,” according to an internal post, Reuters reported. “Another post, in April, said that unchecked AI agents were performing ‘large-scale, disruptive actions that humans are unlikely to execute.’ The result: Major technical and security incidents, such as service disruptions and possible data leaks, spiked 40% from the previous year, with the time staffers had to spend firefighting them up 70%.”

 

Scientists found that DNA once dismissed as “junk” helps chromosomes find their partners |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com

pgnewser August 27, 2026 0

Scientists found that DNA once dismissed as “junk” helps chromosomes find their partners |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

For years, the dense loops of repetitive DNA clustered near the middle of chromosomes were treated as evolutionary clutter. According to the new study published in Nature, titled ‘Meiotic pairing through barcode-like satellite DNA repeats‘, researchers working with fruit flies have shown that this so-called satellite DNA forms a kind of barcode: a unique combination of repeats that lets each chromosome recognise its correct partner during the formation of egg cells. When that barcode is disrupted, chromosomes pair with the wrong partner or fail to pair at all, and the eggs carrying that error are frequently destroyed by the body’s own quality-control system before they can mature. The discovery revives an idea first floated nearly fifty years ago and offers the clearest evidence yet that “junk” DNA plays a direct hand in one of reproduction’s most exacting steps.

Every cell that produces eggs or sperm must first sort its chromosomes into matching pairs, lining up each one with its homologous partner before they exchange genetic material. According to the research team, fruit flies carry at least 19 distinct satellite DNA repeats scattered unevenly across their four chromosome pairs. Because each chromosome pair ends up with its own particular combination of these repeats, the arrangement effectively works as an identifying tag, a barcode built entirely from non-coding sequence.The idea that these repeats might guide pairing was first proposed roughly fifty years ago, but earlier experiments deleting satellite DNA from a single chromosome failed to produce any obvious defects, leading many researchers to dismiss the theory.

Australian Social Media Ban Flops Badly, as Teens Are Returning to TikTok ‘En Masse’ * The Gateway Pundit * by Paul Serran– www.thegatewaypundit.com

pgnewser August 27, 2026 0

Australian Social Media Ban Flops Badly, as Teens Are Returning to TikTok ‘En Masse’ * The Gateway Pundit * by Paul Serran– www.thegatewaypundit.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

Albanese’s tricks have misfired.

There’s perhaps no more pristine example of a Globalist leader than Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: the guy checks all the boxes.

He is obsessed with Net-zero and Paris-aligned climate targets, of course.

During the COVID crisis, we saw him angling to cede health-policy control to an unelected international body – and in fact, he seems to want to give up sovereignty altogether in favor of a ‘UN-centric multilateralism’.

Albanese has maintained a sustained high level of migration, and is big on ‘identity politics’.

And then, we come to his online-control ideas, which, of course, center around the nefarious ‘Digital-ID’, and have, as a first experiment, his ‘groundbreaking’ under-16 social-media ban.

We all understand Albanese’s online plans to be nothing but attempts at back-door surveillance, and a revival of the rejected and dropped ‘misinformation laws’.

The good news is that the ban is turning out to be a total flop.

Business Insider reported:

“According to a report by parental-control tool company Qustodio, the Australian social media ban has been impressively ineffective.

[…] Some 26% of children between the ages of 13 and 15 were on TikTok as of last month, just one percentage point below the rate prior to Australia’s groundbreaking rules coming into effect, the parental control software maker said. The rate for children between the ages of 10 and 12 is higher now than before the ban, according to the data.

What Qustodio found across Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat use, there was a distinct drop in use among 10-12 year olds and 13-15 year olds for a few weeks right when the ban started in December 2025. But after a few months, kids steadily got back on, nearing or matching pre-ban levels.”

Even Australia’s own eSafety commission found that ‘the amo

Josh Hawley launches investigation into Flock’s ‘unprecedented national surveillance network’ | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com

pgnewser August 27, 2026 0

Josh Hawley launches investigation into Flock’s ‘unprecedented national surveillance network’ | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

“In a few short years, Flock has assembled an unprecedented national surveillance network.”

Senator Josh Hawley announced Wednesday that he is launching an investigation into Flock Safety and its nationwide network of AI-powered surveillance cameras.

Hawley, who serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, sent a letter to Flock CEO Garret Langley demanding answers about what safeguards the company has in place to protect the data collected by its cameras.

“As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, I am investigating Flock Safety’s collection, retention, and dissemination of the data generated by its artificial intelligence surveillance cameras,” Hawley wrote in the letter. “In a few short years, Flock has assembled an unprecedented national surveillance network. Your company boasts more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month. The overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong. Instead of serving discrete local investigations, as contemplated by our constitutional processes and safeguards, these camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search.”

Hawley said that he supports providing law enforcement tools needed to catch criminals, but noted the growing privacy concerns that law-abiding citizens have about Flock cameras collecting data about their movements. He also noted that the Supreme Court has recognized that a “comprehensive, retrospective record of a person’s movements is different in kind from ordinary observation in public.”

“Congress never authorized the network your industry has built,” Hawley said. “Your company’s internal policies are, in practice, the only safeguards for hundreds of millions of Americans. People across the country are now discovering that fact and demanding answers from their elected officials.”

Meta Secures a $16.7 Billion Child Addiction Lawsuit

pgnewser August 26, 2026 0

A Federal lawsuit against social media giant Meta has been settled. Meta has agreed to pay $16.7 billion in an agreement with multiple states Attorney Generals. California is one of the states, but Texas and other large states are not. The lawsuit charged Meta with facilitating childhood social media addiction.

California State AG Rob Bonta said of the settlement, “Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families,” Bonta said in a statement. “Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months.”

Meta settles social media addiction case for $16.7 billion– www.cnbc.com
News Source

EXCERPT:

Meta and a coalition of state attorneys general have settled a major federal case centering on allegations that the social media giant misrepresented the extent of child-related mental health harms caused by apps like Facebook and Instagram.

The settlement was revealed in a court filing released Wednesday that details several requirements Meta must make to its apps as part of a proposed “consent judgement.”

Those changes include daily usage limits and “nighttime blocks” for teenagers that use the company’s apps like Facebook and Instagram, “enhanced age assurance measures” that would prevent children from using the apps, and the creation of additional tools for parents and guardians.