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Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Market Share Growing Rapidly with Recent Trends and Outlook 2020 2027 – Market Research Sheets

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

The Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Market report provides past information and future opportunities. The market analysts have demonstrated the different sidelines of the area along with a SWOT investigation of the real players. The report displays the classification, for instance, application, concords, innovations, income, improvement rate, import & exports in the estimated time from 20202027 on a global stage. The crucial data summarized in this report is reliable and the result of expansive research. The research study investigates the type of product, its applications, customers, prime players, and various components related to the market.

This report offers a detailed view of market opportunity by end user segments, product segments, sales channels, key countries, and import / export dynamics. It details market size & forecast, growth drivers, emerging trends, market opportunities, and investment risks in over various segments. It provides a comprehensive understanding of Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Market dynamics in both value and volume terms.

The key players covered in this study: JDA Software, Oracle Corporation, Manhattan Associates, Descartes, SAP SE, BluJay, TMW Systems, Omnitracs, ORTEC, HighJump, MercuryGate, One Network Enterprises, Precision Software, CargoSmart, Next Generation Logistics

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Competitive Landscape of the Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Market:

Competitive landscape studies new strategies being used by different manufacturers for increasing the competition or maintain their position in the market. Strategies such as product development, innovative technologies, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures are covered in the research report. This will help to understand the current trends that are growing at a fast pace. It also updates new products that replace existing ones.

Regions Covered from theGlobalTransportation Management Systems (TMS) Market:

Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Market Report Structure Briefly:

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Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Market following points are focused along with a detailed study of each point:

1. Production Review: Generation of this Global Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Market is tested about applications, types, and regions along with cost survey of competitors that are included.

2. Sales & Profit Evaluation: Gain, sales are analyzed for this market, including with a number of key aspects.

3. Development and Strength: In continuation using proceeds, this section studies utilization, and global Transportation Management Systems (TMS) market. This area also focuses on export and Transportation Management Systems (TMS) relevance data.

4. Rivals: In this section, leading players have been reviewed based on a variety of products, their Transportation Management Systems (TMS) company profile, quantity, cost, and revenues.

5. Inquiries and Explorations: Transportation Management Systems (TMS) market analysis apart from business, the data, and supply, contact information from producers, customers, and suppliers can also be provided.

Scope of the Report:

The research takes a closer look at prominent factors driving the growth rate of the prominent product categories across major geography. Furthermore, the study covers a lot of the sales, gross margin, consumption capacity, spending power and customer preference across various countries. The report offers clear indications how the Transportation Management Systems (TMS) market is expected to witness numerous exciting opportunities in the years to come. Critical aspects including the growing requirement, demand and supply status, customer preference, distribution channels and others are presented through resources such as charts, tables, and infographics.

New Security Scanning Technology Looks To Expand In Cincinnati Area Businesses, Government, Schools – WVXU

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

At Great American Ball Park, technology inside a couple of unobtrusive planters use artificial intelligence and magnets to make sure people coming inside don't have weapons or explosive devices. Ginter Electric, a Patriot One Technologies dealer, installed the system and is partnering with the Cincinnati Reds. Ginter's T. J. Dooley is looking to sign up businesses, governments and schools.

The Reds are not revealing the location of this new technology. However, the team is not removing the metal detectors, which fans will still have to go through. It can be in a planter box like the one pictured above, or a sign pole, a door frame or even embedded in the wall.

The PATSCAN TMS system uses artificial intelligence and magnets to detect large barreled weapons and IED devices. Should there be a threat, the system can alarm, lock doors and text or email security.

Here's a video of the technology and an explanation by the company CEO Martin Cronin.

The technology automatically eliminates non-threat items like cell phones. The manufacturer says the system doesn't pose any health threats.

It is convenient. "Typically you'd have to take your phone, your keys, your wallet, potentially your belt and your shoes - all of that stuff would have to come off," Dooley says. "With this technology, as long as those threats that you potentially have don't line up with a weapon, then you don't have to do anything."

It is expensive technology but Ginter Electric, who is talking to other businesses, city governments and schools, says it doesn't cost as much as buying a metal detector, a hand-held wand, an x-ray machine and paying a security guard. A bigger sell might be convincing people to go with something different.

There are actually four Patriot One systems, which when coupled together, can potentially eliminate all threats. The PATSCAN TMS uses magnets. The PATSCAN CMR uses microwave radar so as to not interfere with pacemakers or any sort of electronic device. The PATSCAN VRS uses video surveillance to identify threats in plain view. And the PATSCAN STS uses special sensors to detect airborne trace explosives, chemical warfare agents and volatile organics at parts per billion sensitivity.

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New Security Scanning Technology Looks To Expand In Cincinnati Area Businesses, Government, Schools - WVXU

This Year’s 4 Most Mind-Boggling Stories About the Brain – Singularity Hub

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

2019 was nuts for neuroscience. I said this last year too, but thats the nature of accelerating technologies: the advances just keep coming.

Therere the theoretical showdowns: a mano a mano battle of where consciousness arises in the brain, wildly creative theories of why our brains are so powerful, and the first complete brain wiring diagram of any species. This year also saw the the birth of hybrid brain atlases that seek to interrogate brain function from multiple levelsgenetic, molecular, and wiring, synthesizing individual maps into multiple comprehensive layers.

Brain organoids also had a wild year. These lab-grown nuggets of brain tissue, not much larger than a lentil, sparked with activity similar to preterm babies, made isolated muscles twitch, and can now be cloned into armies of near-identical siblings for experimentationprompting a new round of debate on whether theyll ever gain consciousness.

Then of course, theres the boom in neurotech. Fostered by insight into how neurons and circuits communicate with each other through a complex neural code, weve gotten ever closer to decoding the brain. Mind-controlled prosthetics are old news; the frontier now is engineering robotic limbs that can truly feel. Insight into our sensory cortices are inspiring light-based nervous systems that give robots multitudes of sensations. Elon Musks Neuralink finally came out after years of speculation, and a Wild West of brain-computer interfaces have sprung up, with the hope of one day restoring broken brain circuits without the need for surgery.

Thats already achievement-a-plenty. But as we wrap up the year, there are four mind-bending stories that still stick with meby asking about the nature of death, the promise of mind-reading, and new paths that may finally help us beat Alzheimers. These are the ones Ill leave you with.

The brain is a powerful but ultra-sensitive organ thats prone to injury. Once deprived of oxygen and nutrients, cells can begin to die within the hour. Thats why, zombie lore aside, scientists once thought its near impossible to resuscitate a brain to any sort of function hours after death.

Not true. In April, a team at Yale University reported that they successfully detected electrical activity in pig brains four hours after death. The results were a surprise: the team originally set out to develop a system that helps the brain maintain its integrity after removal for experimental purposes. How well it worked went beyond the teams expectations. Its impossible to say if the brains were conscious; that is, whether they were aware of being revived, though its highly (and I mean highly) unlikely. When the team saw signs of widespread, coordinated electrical activitywhich underlies consciousnessin their initial experiments, they anesthetized future experimental brains to block this sort of united firing, drastically reducing the chance consciousness could emerge in these brains.

Nevertheless, the study suggests that the brain is much more resilient to injuries such as stroke or trauma than previously thought. In the long term, it asks whether we might one day have a sort of CPR for the brain. And if so, how long can brains maintain their health after being separated from the body? We might have just taken the first step into the uncharted territories of death.

A few years ago, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis linked up animals brains into an internet that allowed each member to work collaboratively on a common problem. When connected to each other through implanted electrodes, the animals synced up their brains electrical activity in a way reminiscent of a single hive brain.

Nicolelis has now done the same experiment in humans, minus surgery. In a feat of neural engineering, the team used non-invasive electroencephalographs (EEGs) to read brain waves from two individuals and sent these signals to a third person by zapping their brain with magnetic pulsesa technology called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. Together, five triad groups solved a Tetris-like game using their brain waves alone, with an accuracy of over 80 percent, even when the researchers introduced noise.

One caveat: the system was rigged so that the neurotech wasnt detecting thought, for example, rotate the block or dont rotate. That decision was encoded as the presence or absence of light flashes, which are much easier for the EEG to read and for the TMS to deliver to the visual cortex. But its still a powerful proof-of-concept, in that even with our rudimentary brain reading and writing tech, its possible to link up human minds into a hive mind to solve problems. Nicolelis imagines a biological supercomputer made from networked human brains, which could conceivably cross language barriers and even enhance cognitive performance. The question is, if we open the sanctuary of our minds to others for gains in computing power, what do we stand to lose in privacy and autonomy?

Playing a collaborative game of Tetris isnt the only way scientists advanced mind reading technology. In January, one team combined deep learning with speech synthesis technology to translate what a person is hearing into reconstructed speech. The system captured electrical signals from the auditory cortex while a person listened to recordings of people speaking. These activity patterns were then decoded by an AI-based speech synthesizer and produced intelligible, if somewhat robotic, speech. Unfortunately, the system couldnt decode someones own internal thoughts.

But that changed three months later.

Another team engineered a neural decoder that decodes electrical signals measured from the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain. Rather than containing information about semantics, these signals represent movement of the lips, tongue, larynx, and jaw. Different movement patterns are associated with different sounds, which the decoder can identify and synthesize into actual comprehensible sentences. For the first time, its possible to know what someone is trying to say by reading their brain activity alone, and the tech was further validated in a Q&A conversation. Earlier this month, yet another team found its possible to decode words and syllables based on recordings from the brains motor cortexthe part usually responsible for hand and arm movements. This opens another avenue of reading speech directly from the brain.

Not to be outdone, a team at Russian firm Neurobotics found they could use AI to decode what video clips people are watching based on their brainwaves alone. In contrast to the speech-decoding studies, which use implanted electrodes, here non-invasive EEG was sufficient to reconstruct nature scenes, sports, and human faces.

For now, our private thoughts are still private, and the tech mainly helps those who cant speak reconnect with the world. But think about this: if someday a tech giant offers you the ability to text or post using your mind only, would (and should) you go for it?

Dementia is one of the most frustrating neurological disorders of our time. Despite decades of research, nearly every single Alzheimers drug that targets toxic protein clumpscalled beta-amyloidthought responsible for the disease has failed. Generally, these drugs are proteins that break up clumps or neutralize their toxic effects.

This year saw an explosion in alternative potential treatments and theories.

One that especially gained steam suggests flashing lights and clicking sound could potentially break up toxic protein clumps and improve brain function, at least in mice. The treatment, cheap, non-invasive, and dramatically effective, offers new hope to the long-struggling field. Others suggest that mutations to DNA in brain cells scrambles certain genes and could be a root cause. Yet others are taking a gene therapy approach to the Alzheimers dilemma, adding in a dose of a protective gene variant in high-risk individuals.

Although its impossible to say if any of these new routes will lead anywhere, one thing is clear: the more scientific treatment ideas we have, the higher the chance well finally tame Alzheimers in the near future.

Image Credit: Gerd Altman / Pixabay

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This Year's 4 Most Mind-Boggling Stories About the Brain - Singularity Hub

Craig Wright Reveals Document Claiming Origin of Satoshi Nakamoto Name – Cointelegraph

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) creator Craig Wright, showed what he claims is a document that explains the origins of the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym.

In an interview published by industry news outlet Modern Consensus on Dec. 19, Wright has shown to his interviewer a document representing an article from digital database of an academic journals JSTOR, dated Jan. 5, 2008.

The article is about a person named Tominaga Nakamoto, who lived between 1715 and 1746 in Japan. The document also contained the following handwritten notes:

Nakamoto is the Japanese Adam Smith. Honest Ledger + Micro Cash. Satoshi is Intelligent History. Not too hard.

According to Wright, he has chosen the name Nakamoto in honor of Tominaga Nakamoto. The handwritten note compares him to Adam Smith, who is by many regarded as the father of modern economics. When asked whether Nakamotos economic ideas were the reason why he has chosen his name, he answered:

In part, yes. He wrote about money and honest money and the rational nature of things. The shogun [feudal ruler] at the time was in financial crisis, and economic austerity. [...] I like the description of him, and I got into his brother, Tka. Nakamoto was upright and quiet but impatient in character and I thought: That sounds like me.

When it comes to the first word of the pseudonym, Satoshi, Wright says it means intelligent learning. This, he explained, refers to one having access to the knowledge conquered by his ancestors.

While Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, in November he also informed the plaintiff that he could not finance a 500,000 BTC ($3.7 billion) settlement in the case that the Kleiman estate initiated against him. Dave Kleiman was a cyber-security expert, whom many believe to have been one of the first developers behind the Bitcoin and blockchain technology who died in April 2013.

Kleimans estate, led by Davids brother Ira Kleinman initiated the case in February last year, accusing Wright of stealing hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins worth over $5 billion after the developers death.

Satoshi Nakamoto is known to have mined the origin blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain, the so-called Satoshi blocks and consequently should own a significant number of coins on his/her address.

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Craig Wright Reveals Document Claiming Origin of Satoshi Nakamoto Name - Cointelegraph

Who is the Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto? The most likely candidates – Crypto News Flash

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Although Bitcoin has been around for almost 11 years now, it is still a mystery who is the inventor of the first distributed digital cryptocurrency. Although probably everyone who has ever dealt with Bitcoin knows the synonym Satoshi Nakamoto, nobody (who makes it public) knows who Satoshi is and if there is a single person or a group of people behind the synonym.

In general, people know that Satoshi was very careful to protect his privacy. So very few facts about the founder of Bitcoin are known. Even in the early days of the Cypherpunk mailing lists, Satoshi kept a low profile. Without much notice, he published the Bitcoin Whitepaper in November 2008, which laid the foundation for the Bitcoin protocol. On January 3, 2009, the first Bitcoin block carrying the message was dismantled:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

The mysterious Bitcoin inventor then tinkered with his invention for another two years until, after a dispute with the community that wanted to get WikiLeaks to use Bitcoin, he posted his last message on the Bitcoin Forum in December. Satoshi did not (yet) want to draw attention to his still beta-stage project and probably also to the CIA.

In spring 2011, Nakamoto returned to leave a final message. He explained that he was handing over the reins to Gavin Andresen and all other community members. This was the last time, however, that Satoshi Nakamoto made a public statement.

Since then, there have been wild speculations about who Satoshi is. Over the years, numerous people have also come forward claiming to be Satoshi. So who are the most likely candidates? And has the CIA already identified who Satoshi Nakamoto is?

One of the most frequently mentioned candidates is Nick Szabo. The most important reason for his nomination is Bit Gold. In 2018 Szabo wrote on his blog that he has an idea for a decentralized and deflationary money. He described some basic concepts that can also be found in Bitcoin. Among other things, Szabo proposed to use a concept of time stamps and reusable proofs of work to make Bit Gold tamper-proof.

However, various linguistic studies have shown that although Szabos and Satoshis wording are very similar, however, the language style is too different. While Szabo has a digressive writing style, Satoshis texts in the Bitcoin Forum as well as in the whitepaper are always very sober and precise.

Another argument against Szabo is that there is no evidence that Szabo has programming skills. His work was rather academic. In this respect, he probably would have needed help in programming Bitcoin. Szabo also denied being Satoshi several times.

A common theory is that Szabo may have received help from Hal Finney. In his blog post on Bit Gold, Szabo sought help with the development. Finney was a cryptographic pioneer of the pre-Bitcoin era and may have answered Szabos call. Finney was also the second person, after Satoshi himself, who ran the Bitcoin core software to mine Bitcoin.

In an official interview, Finney, who died in August 2014, stated that he was the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent him ten BTCs as a test. The evidence for Hal Finney is therefore relatively strong. Due to his early death, however, a resolution of the mystery, by himself, is no longer possible.

Another possible candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto is the Australian and entrepreneur Craig Wright. Unlike the previous candidates, Wright does not deny being Satoshi. Instead, he has been claiming to be Satoshi for a long time. According to Wright, Bitcoin (BTC) has lost sight of its original goal of being a digital currency. As a result, he forged Bitcoin Satoshis Vision (Bitcoin SV).

Wright first received attention as a Bitcoin founder when he spoke at a conference in November 2015 next to the legendary Nick Szabo and hinted that he came into contact with Bitcoin at a very early (very, very early) stage. A month later, Gizmodo and Wired published an article about Wright, as a possible Satoshi candidate. As a basis, both magazines allegedly had leaked documents that Wright and Kleiman had invested 1.1 million Bitcoin in a Tulip Fund.

In May 2016, Wright then gave an interview to the BCC and declared on TV that he was Satoshi. As proof, he signed a transaction from an address known to be Satoshis the perfect proof, in fact. For a short time (almost) everybody was also convinced by Craig Wright. However, when the community verified the signature, it turned out that it was a signature of Satoshi, but one that Satoshi created when he sent Hal Finney Bitcoin.

In the current trial, the judge has awarded Dave Kleimans heirs half of Satoshis Bitcoins, 500,000 BTC. However, as CNF reported, Wright has not yet made the payment and stated that he cannot access his Bitcoin (BTC) as part of the Tulip Fund.

Within the crypto-community Craig Wright is also known as Faketoshi because of his numerous (alleged) lies. Wrights confrontation with Vitalik Buterin at Deconomy 2018 is legendary.

An often mentioned candidate is also the long-time cyperpunk Adam Back. Unlike previous candidates, Back also plays an active role in the current development of Bitcoin (as CEO of Blockstream, which funds Bitcoin Core extensively). Back is also the inventor of Hashcash, the only technical predecessor of Bitcoin, which Satoshi cites in the first version of his whitepaper.

However, Back denies being Satoshi. Moreover, Back only entered the Bitcoin scene in 2013 and (as far as is known) never wrote a single line of code for Bitcoin. As CEO of Blockstream he only contributed ideas and concepts.

In the summer of 2018, the news that the CIA and found out who is behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto caused a stir. Journalist Daniel Oberhaus from the Motherboard had made a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the CIA for information regarding Satoshis identity. Oberhaus reported that the CIA neither confirms nor denies the existence of the requested information.

As early as 2016, Alexander Muse wrote in a blog for Cryptomuse that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had identified the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto using stylometry. Muse reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would not publicly confirm his FOIA request.

So, all in all, there is no candidate who stands out. Ultimately, only the signature of a transaction with one of Satoshis known keys can provide the ultimate proof. In this respect, the identity of Satoshi will remain a secret in 2019.

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Who is the Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto? The most likely candidates - Crypto News Flash

Steven Wright’s Seized 1M Bitcoin to Be Unlocked Soon, BSV to Gain Momentum – Coin Idol

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Dec 25, 2019 at 10:57 // News

Craig Steven Wright, the person calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto and the chief defender at Bitcoin SV, is expected to get the keys to over 1,000,000 BTC by next week. The blockchain and digital currency ecosystem is waiting to see how this will go. If Craig is right, the unlocked Bitcoin money worth over $8 billion at the time of writing could flood the whole digital currency market.

The chief scientist at nChain as dominated the blockchain, distributed ledger tech (DLT) and cryptocurrency news this year, most especially on the part of claiming to be the original developer of Bitcoin. Nevertheless, Satoshi Nakamoto will more likely see his sway over digital asset sector drama fizzle out at the start of 2020.

Craig has been claiming to be the real creator of the original digital currency Bitcoin, but up to now he has never proved it. Albeit, he isnt alone claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, there are a good number of people and companies claiming this, as coinidol.com, world blockchain news outlet, reported back in time.

Craig has been undergoing a tough clash with the company of his short time ex-partner Dave Kleiman, after being suspected of mining over 1 Mln BTC during its early existence. The estate managed to drag Wright in courts of law, and he won the rights of some of the holdings they mined which is valued at over 8 bln USD, at press time.

But according to Craig, the funds cant be accessed since they are still held in the Seychelles-based fund known as Tulip Trust. At this time, Craig still says that he lost the keys accessing the funds, claiming that his ex business partner hired a bonded courier in order to recover the keys back to him not exceeding January 1, next year (around one week from now). And if at all the keys to the trust are recovered, Wright is going to own 1.1 Mln Bitcoin, worth more than $8 bln (considering the current price rates).

The Bitcoin Satoshi Vision ecosystem is also warming up to jump onto the bandwagon of the digital currency revolution, but that is when the case is successfully ended in favor of their chief defender.

Enough evidence (including the email that were exchanged between the two parties) has been raised in court by both Craig and Dave, so it now left in the hands of the judges for the law to take its course and justice to prevail. Jan. 1, 2020 will on the other hand become an extremely imperative day for the digital currency industry.

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Steven Wright's Seized 1M Bitcoin to Be Unlocked Soon, BSV to Gain Momentum - Coin Idol

Will Craig Wright receive the keys to 1 million Bitcoin on January 1? – Crypto News Flash

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Shortly before Christmas, the case of Craig Wright vs. Dave Kleiman received further impetus. After the self-appointed Bitcoin inventor was already sentenced in August to hand over half of the Bitcoin originally mined by Satoshi, 500,000 BTC, to his former partner Dave Kleiman and his heirs, the day of decision is now approaching.

The notorious Tulip Trust is to be activated on 1 January 2020. While Wright claims that he does not have access to the private keys of the over 1 million Bitcoin, as these are held in the Tulip Trust, a trust company based in the Seychelles, a courier is to return Dave Kleimans keys on January 1. However, a courier is to return Dave Kleimans keys on January 1.

Wright claims that Kleiman has hired a courier under customs seal who will return the keys to Wright on January 1st. Whether the courier will ever show up, however, is more than questionable. Wright has already made provision during the court proceedings for an excuse in case the courier does not appear. In a court statement he said that Kleiman never confirmed to him whether he had actually hired a courier.

Next Wednesday, however, Craig Wright could possibly receive the keys to more than 1 million Bitcoins and the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto could be finally clarified. The chances of this happening are considered very slim by many members of the industry. While the confirmation could send Wright`s Bitcoin SV (BSV) to the moon, the non-appearance of the courier could be another blow to the BSV price.

Regardless of the big decision day, the Wright vs. Kleiman case continued even before Christmas. On December 23, Wrights attorneys filed two documents one was a response in support of an appeal against a previous court order, while the other was a response to a request from the Kleiman estate regarding the hearing of his wife, Ramona Watts.

The first document is about Wrights refusal to release a list of his Bitcoin addresses since August. Wrights lawyers argue that he should not be punished for not being able to give out the list. In particular, Wright has made efforts to restore the list by ordering the CTO of nChain to produce it.

The second document is about Wrights wife, Ramona Watts, who is to testify as a witness. Kleimans lawyers filed a motion on December 21 requesting that she be allowed to travel and legal counsel so that she could testify in the U.S. court. Watts, however, demanded costs between $65,000 and $164,000, which the Kleiman side rejected. Wrights lawyers argued in the new letter that the Kleimans would have to pay the costs, as the hearing is requested solely by the plaintiffs.

Last Updated on 26 December, 2019

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Will Craig Wright receive the keys to 1 million Bitcoin on January 1? - Crypto News Flash

Top 5 Crazy Crypto Events of 2019 – Bitcoinist

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

2019 was marked by numerous events in the crypto industry, some of which could be considered quite significant and major fails.

With 2019 being only 6 days away from its conclusion, it might be interesting to take a look back on this year, and see which events related to the crypto industry may stand out.

Without further ado, here are our top 5 picks for some of the crazy crypto-related fails in 2019.

Earlier this year, there was a charity that featured lunch with the legendary investor of Wall Street, Warren Buffet, as one of the rewards for donations. The lunch with a famous businessman was won by the TRON CEO, Justin Sun, with a bid of $4.5 million.

Suns goal was to talk to Buffet about crypto and try to convince him that cryptos are good for the future. Unfortunately, the lunch had to be delayed, and eventually it was canceled, causing widespread disappointment throughout the crypto industry.

Craig Wright has been trying to claim the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoins mysterious creator for a number of years now. However, Wright was never able to move a single coin that belongs to Satoshi, which is the only way he could prove to the world that he is, indeed, who he claims to be.

In one of the more recent attempts to do so, he claimed that he had a mountain of evidence, including historical documents, such as the handwritten version of Bitcoins white paper, which included coffee stains and rusty staples. Not exactly proof, but it was certainly an entertaining statement at the time.

Earlier this year, TRON, and its CEO, Justin Sun, came under a pretty negative spotlight after a PR disaster revolving around a Tesla giveaway. As some may remember, Sun announced that TRON is partnering up with Tether, which was supposed to be followed by a giveaway of Tesla Model S.

Many were skeptical right away, but a lot of people were also quite hopeful. The Twitter announcement exploded, and when the time came to draw the winner, Sun used a random lottery selection software, TWrench. But, when he posted the video, it quickly got removed due to a glitch and large file size. When the community managed to dig it up, they realized that it was fake and that the winners name appeared before the drawing even began.

A crypto project known as DigiByte made a lot of effort in order to get listed on some of the biggest exchanges out there, and Poloniex was quite high on the list. The project eventually got listed, but it was also quickly removed from the exchange quite recently.

Why? Simple. The projects founder took to Twitter to blow off some steem and criticize quite a few big names in the crypto industry, including Binance CEO, CZ, TRON CEO, Justin Sun, and even Poloniex itself. DigiByte was removed from the exchange soon after, and many believe that this was the reason why.

Another major fail from a few months ago came about as Binance delisted 30 trading pairs from its platform, including TRON-based BitTorrent (BTT). Interestingly enough, this was the first token that Binance Launchpad ever launched, and it even started the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) trend that marked the year.

Binance even publicly supported TRX and BTT earlier this year, only to delist its trading pairs (among others) later on, which caused a major price drop for BTT and its peers. It was undoubtedly a hard blow for BTT and Justin Sun alike.

Do you agree with our picks? What other crazy, major fails do you remember from earlier in 2019? Let us know down in the comments.

Image via Shutterstock, Twitter @jaredctate @poloniex @justinsuntron

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Top 5 Crazy Crypto Events of 2019 - Bitcoinist

Dostoyevsky Misprisioned: The House of the Dead and American Prison Literature – lareviewofbooks

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

DECEMBER 23, 2019

If prison reformers like myself know anything about Dostoevsky, it is his supposed authorship of a sentence consisting of fourteen words.

James E. Robertson, editor-in-chief emeritus, Criminal Law Bulletin, from an email to the author

Prison is hell for the majority, but salvation for the few.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975; trans. by Ivan Narodny, 1995)

OUR AGE OF all-pervasive fake news is also an age of compulsive fact-checking, made possible by the expanding resources of the internet. And this new wealth of information allows us not only to determine which fact or quotation is wrong or misleading, but also perhaps more interestingly to reconstruct the cultural and historical origins of concealed falsehoods and myths, to consider misleading information as a cultural phenomenon that speaks volumes about its time and about the biases and aspirations of those involved, wittingly and unwittingly, in the mystification.

I have recently become intrigued by a quotation that has been attributed to Dostoyevsky for decades. Until the late 1990s, it was known only in English, and consisted of 14 words: The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. It has been quoted, very often as an epigraph or a closing remark, by numerous American and British activists, lawyers, senators, judges (including Justice Anthony Kennedy), writers, journalists (from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times to the Guardian), and scholars (but, tellingly, not by Dostoyevsky experts). Writing in The Globe and Mail in 2017, Patrick White wryly observed that one can hear this Dostoyevsky quote at correctional conferences with nauseating regularity: Its ubiquitous because its good. Indeed, its even good enough for Hollywood, appearing on the silver screen as the opening quote in the trailer for Con Air (1997).

The Library of Congress dictionary of quotations Respectfully Quoted comments on its origins: Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky. Unverified. Other American dictionaries of quotations and Wikiquote indicate that its source is Dostoyevskys semi-autobiographical prison novel The House of the Dead (1862). Some American publications even refer to page 76 of the 1957 Grove edition of Constance Garnetts translation.

Yet this is all untrue, because (a) there is no such quote in Dostoyevskys original text (or in any other work written by him) and (b) there is no such quote in Garnetts translation (page 76 of the 1957 edition describes the kindly soul called Nastasya Ivanovna: Some people maintain (I have heard it and read it) that the purest love for ones neighbour is at the same time the greatest egoism. What egoism there could be in this case, I cant understand.

Moreover, Dostoyevsky could not possibly have uttered these words since they had nothing to do with his actual (and, to be sure, paradoxical) views of prison as expressed in the novel. Dostoyevsky, who had spent four years in chains, from 1849 to 1854, at a prison camp (katorga) in Siberia, was immensely interested in Western penal theories and literature on punishment and the prison experience; as a matter of fact, in 1861, the journal co-edited by Dostoyevsky and his brother published a Russian translation of Giacomo Casanovas prison memoirs, Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la Rpublique de Venise quon appelle les Plombs. He should have been familiar, as Anna Schur suggests in Wages of Evil: Dostoevsky and Punishment (2012), with the Western idea that punishment is a product of a nations degree of civilization a view that had been known to educated Russians since Catherine the Greats enlightened Instruction (1767) and was frequently aired on the pages of Russian periodicals in the age of the great legal reforms of Alexander II.

However, the writers religious views of punishment and prisons strikingly differ from the secular ideas of Cesare Beccaria, the founding father of Western penology, Catherine, or 19th-century Russian philanthropists and legal scholars. Although TheHouse of the Dead does portray the corruption, fundamental injustice, and total ineffectiveness of the Russian penitentiary system, it does not question, Schur notes, the need for the existence of punishment and never calls for prison reform per se. The novels protagonist, the disgraced nobleman and wife-murderer Goryanchikov, perceives the horrifying institution as a test of his own spirit, rather than as a test of civilization (a foreign word that had negative connotations for Dostoyevsky). Dostoyevskys focus is on the painful resurrection of the fallen man, both as an individual soul and as the embodiment of Russias folk spirit, not on the improvement of physical conditions.

Unsurprisingly, Dostoyevsky portrays prison as a dead thing. It is what it is: hell more precisely, the hell of suffering to spiritual salvation, as Robert Louis Jackson puts it in The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums and Nocturnes (1981). The prison in and of itself does not attract hatred; instead, it forces Goryanchikov to judge his past, reevaluate his secular beliefs, and eventually bless the fate that enabled his Christian revival. And who was to blame, whose fault was it? asks the protagonist about the tragic lot of the multitude of gifted, strong people buried within the walls of the prison. Thats just it, who was to blame? Aptly, an unknown reader of my copy of the 1957 Grove edition left two angry question marks in the margins next to this rhetorical question.

Its clear, then, that the quote that graced the screen in Con Air is a con, fundamentally alien to Dostoyevskys beliefs. It is a curious product of cultural misreading, or, in Harold Blooms terminology, creative misprision and myth-making. In what follows, I will try to reconstruct the history of this misprision. I must warn the reader in advance that this essay, to paraphrase famous words traditionally (and wrongly) attributed to Emperor Joseph II, has an awful lot of quotes. But rest assured: they are all real and documented.

As I discovered, the English quotation has been in circulation since the late 1960s and evolved, in the late 20th century, into a longer, less commonly used, version: A society should be judged not by the way it treats its outstanding citizens, but by the way it treats its criminals. The initial version shows up not only in newspaper articles, public speeches, and court hearings, but also on activists shirts and posters and the drawings of inmates. What, then, was its source?

In 1964, the Canadian playwright and ex-inmate John Herbert wrote a sensational prison play that bore the Shakespearean title Fortune and Mens Eyes and focused on a first-time convicts entry into an isolated, desperate, all-male society in which homosexual acts are the institutionalized basis of the political and social structure. In interviews, Herbert constantly cited Dostoyevskys words about prisons and civilization as a kind of epigraph to his play, without any reference to their actual source.[1] First presented in New York City by the Broadway impresario David Rothenberg in 1967, Herberts play has subsequently been produced more than 400 times in over 100 countries, including a 1969 show directed by James Baldwin in Istanbul. In 1971, a film based on the play was released.

The play even lent its name to the influential prisoners rights group Fortune Society, led by Rothenberg (the group is still active in New York). As Rothenberg stated in October 1968, Dostoyevskys words became the slogan of the Society, whose goal was to create a greater public awareness of the prison system in America today and to reveal complexities and problems faced by inmates during their incarceration. Since its founding in 1969, the Society has been broadcasting its weekly radio program Both Sides of the Bars and publishing the monthly newsletter The Fortune News with the words attributed to Dostoyevskys The House of the Dead as its motto, which always appears on the front page in the upper right corner:

In the spring of 1969, The Village Voice reported that Rothenberg has used his publicity talents on behalf of ex-convicts, sharing his office with them and accompanying them on speaking engagements. Elaborating on Dostoyevskys quote, the newspaper concluded that the crusade for decent and effective prisons is an uphill battle but one well worth engaging in if we are ever to approximate our boast of being civilized.

Dostoyevskys supposed dictum, very much in keeping with the 1960s and 70s Western progressive agenda epitomized by Foucaults Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, was adopted by American activists as the motto for the prison reform movement.

My hypothesis is that we are dealing with a mystification, perhaps unintended, that originated in Herberts circle. Herbert may have thought (wrongly) that this statement summarized the Russian writers views of the subject, as expressed in his prison novel. It is possible that the Canadian playwright simply invoked, and attributed by association, a common idea that had circulated in various versions and in different languages for more than a century. One can find similar declarations, without references to the Russian writer, in sources ranging from Barthlemy Maurices 1840 Histoire politique et anecdotique des prisons de la Seine (Voulez-vous apprcier le degr de moralit auquel un peuple est parvenu, mesurer, pour ainsi dire, sa civilisation? voyez comment ce peuple traite ses prisonniers), to Kenneth Rucks introduction to the 1929 Everyman edition of John Howards 1777 The State of the Prisons in England and Wales (the condition of its prisons and its prisoners is no bad indication of the development of any society and its degree of civilization), to Judge Walter V. Schaefers 1957 Oliver Wendell Holmes Lecture (The quality of a nations civilization can be largely measured by the methods it uses in the enforcement of its criminal law), to a 1958 essay by the prominent French lawyer and historian Maurice Garon (On peut dire que, dans une certaine mesure, on apprcie la moralit et le degr de civilisation dun peuple la manire dont il traite ses prisonniers).

Historically, the sentiment under investigation originates in Montesquieus teaching of the degrees of civilization in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), which inspired Beccaria to write, in On Crimes and Punishments (1764), If there were an exact and universal scale of crimes and punishments, we should have an approximate and common measure of the gradations of tyranny and liberty, and of the basic humanity and evil of the different nations. Beccarias words had a deep influence on 19th-century penal reform movements, including Russian ones, and by the mid-20th century had become a kind of fatherless absolute statement widely used in legal documents and manuals. For example, it opens the 1963 Minimum Jail Standards: Recommended Standards for Administration, Construction, Programs of the Californian prison system: The treatment of crime and criminals may some day be used by historians as one measure of the degree of civilization achieved by nations.

By the time Herbert and the Fortune Society canonized and disseminated the quotation on prisons and civilization as belonging to Dostoyevsky, there was already an established tradition of using the Russian writers real words on the ineffectiveness of solitary confinement in American literature about prisons; for instance, Howard B. Gills article Correctional Philosophy and Architecture (1963), from The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, bears a famous Dostoyevskian epigraph: It is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any system of hard labour ever cured a criminal. Tellingly, in 1960s publications, these words were often seconded by Winston Churchills dictum, dated 1910: The mood and temper of the public with regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country. [2] One can speculate that in this context our quotation was the random result of ascribing Dostoyevskys name and aura to a popular old statement, associated with Churchills actual words.

But why Dostoyevsky? To be sure, plenty other candidates for the dictums authorship were named in various Western sources: Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Churchill, and Nelson Mandela. [3] In the Italian tradition, it has regularly been attributed to Voltaire (Non fatemi vedere i vostri palazzi ma le vostre carceri, poich da esse che si misura il grado di civilt di una Nazione), and in the French tradition, to Albert Camus (Nous ne pouvons juger du degr de civilisation dune nation quen visitant ses prisons). However, in the end, all these candidates have been passed over in favor of the Russian writer.

In The Making of a Counter-culture Icon: Henry Millers Dostoevsky (2007), Maria Bloshteyn asserts that TheHouse of the Dead was the first of his works to capture the imagination of American readers. With this novel, Dostoyevsky entered the American consciousness as an autobiographical writer to be revered for the authenticity of his observations. Marketed by early publishers with the title Buried Alive: Or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia (1881), the novel was perceived by late 19th- and early 20th-century readers as a severe critique of Russias oppressive regime.

In the late 1950s and 60s, Dostoyevskys prison novel gained new momentum in the American and British public imaginations, as evidenced by the editions of 1957, 1959, 1962 and 1965, published with Ernest J. Simmonss and H. Sutherland Edwardss introductions detailing the authors prison life. The writer Robert Payne also dedicated a chapter to Dostoyevskys ordeal in his well-received 1961 biography Dostoyevsky: A Human Portrait, which included the following haunting portrait, captioned Dostoyevsky in prison, attributed to the Russian realist artist Klavdii V. Lebedev, and likely taken from the only known reproduction of the mysterious portrait Dostoevsky in Exile, which was published in an migr edition of Dostoyevskys writings in the 1920s:

Suspiciously, the catalog of Lebedevs works contains no portrait of Dostoyevsky. Moreover, the dark-haired man depicted is clearly not Dostoyevsky but, more likely, a random peasant or artisan with a tobacco pouch. In fact, a page earlier, Payne had written that upon arrival at the prison camp, Dostoyevsky had been shaved (half of his mustache removed, and all his beard) and was made to wear gray canvas trousers, a gray coat, and a kind of sailor cap without brim or visor. Later on, this alleged prison portrait of Dostoyevsky was reproduced in American newspapers and even used for the cover page of some editions of Crime and Punishment. Presented as the iconic image of a mysterious Russian author, the portrait bears a closer resemblance to the generic, almost mythological image of pensive, long-bearded, long-suffering Russian writers from Lev Tolstoy to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

Nevertheless, the rekindled fascination with Dostoyevskys prison novel and personal experiences in the 1960s opened up a new way of looking at him in the West. TheHouse of the Dead was read not only as a Russian story that severely criticized the tsarist prison system in exotic Siberia, but rather as a powerful statement against the inhumane treatment of inmates everywhere. For example, in June 1964, The Globe and Mail published an article by John Kraglund about Leo Janeks opera From the House of the Dead. Kraglund observed that the composers principal concern was to let a number of prisoners tell their own stories and to show the effect of imprisonment which reduced all prisoners to the same physical and spiritual level of negative existence upon those who differed only in initial character. And south of the Canadian border, interest in the Russian writer and ex-convict was roused by post-Stalinist prison writing, especially the work and public presence of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Tellingly, one 1971 anthology of prison poetry included an anonymous inmates poem addressed to Solzhenitsyn: This is why there is no sadness. / I lick your tears, / Your salt writes our names on my tongue, / Our rings of salt mean forever.

In a word, Dostoyevskys TheHouse of the Dead was successfully domesticated by American audiences. In the social and political imagination of the 1960s and 70s, the novel seemed to propagate a broader, anti-bourgeois, anti-totalitarian vision of human society. And as Bloshteyn points out, Dostoyevskys work might have had a particularly significant impact upon a number of African-American writers, who praised the Russians interest in the psychology of the pariah or outcast and considered him a witness and model writer who helped them to legitimize their struggles with literary form. [4] As James Baldwin observed in 1963, in Life magazine, It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. To quote Dale Petersons excellent analysis, Dostoyevskys novel was comprehended by African-American writers as one of the major soul-trying ordeals that affirm the pain of divided minds being stretched to accommodate the birth of a cultural hybridity, a multiple culturedness that more and more is becoming the measure of our common humanity. [5]

Unsurprisingly, the quotation on prisons and civilization allegedly drawn from the powerful work of a Russian giant was widely used by African-American human rights activists, as evidenced, for instance, both by its role as an epigraph to the article The Black Prisoner as Victim, published by the noted lawyer and civil rights activist William Haywood Burns in The Black Law Journal (1971), and in this poster:

Although the first citation of Dostoyevskys alleged dictum in association with Herberts play and the Fortune Society group is dated August 3, 1968, the frequency of citation peaked in the years 197172, following fierce public discussion of the bloody Attica prison riot. Consider the following entry for 1971 in Clarence S. Kailins The Black Chronicle: An American History Textbook Supplement (1974):

On September 23, inhuman prison conditions, long suppressed from public notice, led to an uprising by Attica Prison inmates. The uprising was suppressed when Governor Rockefeller sent in one thousand state troopers. Forty-two inmates and guards were killed, apparently by police fire (Hostages Killed By Bullets, Not Knives. No Guns Held By Inmates, Madison Capital Times, September 24, 1971). The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons Dostoevsky.

In this context, the quotation by a Russian writer known for his strong anti-Western sentiments sounds less like a basic legal principle and more like a sarcastic expos of the deceptiveness of white American civilization as a whole. [6]

It would not be an exaggeration to say that David Rothenberg, his Fortune Society, and many other activists of the age considered the author of The House of the Dead to be a father figure for their own social and literary experiments. Starting in the early issues of The Fortune News, members of the group published and advertised literary works written by convicts and ex-convicts. US newspapers observed the growth of prison publications and spoke of prison authors as a contemporary phenomenon influenced, in part, by Dostoyevskys novel:

During the last year, The News had published the writings of several convict-authors, providing, we had hoped, an insight into the minds of the prisoners and of their environment behind the wall []Prison authors, whether their writing has been smuggled outside the wall or passed by the censor, have to be credited with revealing some of the violent conditions existing in prisons. In The House of the Dead Feodor Dostoevski wrote, The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Society now is being judged by the prison authors. [7]

According to an article by John Hamer from 1972, one of the most prolific American convict-authors who (to paraphrase another famous dictum, falsely attributed to the writer) came out of Dostoyevskys prison clothes and discovered a vast readership outside the prison walls was Frank Bisignano. [8] Bisignano killed an off-duty police officer in Newark in 1961 and became the first man on death row in New Jerseys history to gain his freedom by parole.[9] The reformers represented Bisignano as a man who had entered prison as a high school dropout with an 8th grade education, completed his G.E.D. in 1963, slowly and quietly triumphed over his demons, published several articles in The Village Voice, including a partly fictionalized account of prison life titled The World as Seen Through a Not Quite Dead Mans Eye, and was eventually hired as a public relations employee at Trenton State College. We are a special breed, Bisignano declared to Hamer, special in that we possess more raw material, more pen power, more nitty-gritty than any two writers on the street; but, as writers in prison, we stand less chance of making it, of marketing our work, than any hack in the free world. To be sure, the degree of success of the reformers educational experiment in this particular case can be judged by the titles of the repentant sinners novels, published under the penname Warren Bisig before or immediately after his release in 1973: My Sexy Mom and I; The Sweet Taste of Daddy; Mother Takes a Sin Trip; The New Prison Nurse; Willing Virgin; The Garment Industry Girls; Deeper Throat; Open Legs; and The Child of Gomorrah. A random, and possibly the most innocent, quote from this offspring of Dostoyevsky runs: Orgasm! she thought, feeling it begin. Nothing else mattered not Uncle John, not tomorrow, not anything. Nothing except reaching the place where pussies and pricks and assholes and mouths united (Dianes Lessons in Bondage).

Bisignanos pseudonym Warren Bisig clearly indicates the collaborative nature of his writings. He was discovered by a Californian literary agent, named James A. Warren, who had sent out some 465 letters to prisons all over the country appealing for manuscripts. Hamer reported that Warren received more than 2,500 responses and about 200 actual manuscripts, including several he called sure-fire winners and many others he considered promising. When Warren contacted him, Bisignano had only 95 cents in his prison account. Luckily, pornography pays, and the convict-writer noted with amusement that between August 1971 and January 1972 he turned out seven sex books and earned more than $6,000. [10]

Of course, Dostoyevsky (or, more precisely, his fictional alter ego and murderer-turned-author Goryanchikov) inspired a number of gifted offenders with aspirations beyond pornography and profit. One of them, portrayed in a 1969 article in The Village Voice, compared his fate with Raskolnikovs death of jail and spiritual rebirth: Prison was a turning point for me. I took a vow there that I would never take things for granted. Another convict, mentioned by the Voice, commented on Dostoyevskys alleged dictum from TheHouse of the Dead: Its true. You see what its all about. People say, But thats a jail. I say, No, its America. Its whats underneath. [11] In fact, the idea of America as the prison house of the Black nation was central to the prison literature of 196472, as manifested in the works of its major practitioners, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, Etheridge Knight, and Sam Melville (the latter was an ardent reader of Dostoyevsky). In Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist (1989), Howard Bruce Franklin, distinguished two overlapping groups of prison writers that emerged during this period: [T]he political activist thrust into prison, and the common criminal thrust into political activism. Both groups were fascinated with Dostoyevskys TheHouse of the Dead as searing defense of a prisoners human dignity and the measure of our common humanity.

The period also witnessed the emergence of a new genre: anthologies of work authored by the convicts of a given correctional institution. As the editor of one such collection, Words from the House of the Dead: Prison Writings from Soledad Prison (1971), eloquently explained in his introduction,

Dostoevski wrote a book of his prison experiences and titled it The House of the Dead. The title is still appropriate even though the Russian novelist was writing about conditions a century ago and in another culture. The physical environment of prison has changed perhaps for the better since then, from the dark, damp, stony dungeon to the electrically lit, waxed and buffed concrete cell with its own sink and flush toilet. At least this is the situation on the main line in most of the California prisons. But this is all a smokescreen. [] The truth is behind the smokescreen. The jailer with the whip and knout is still there but he has modern psychological weapons. Prison is still the house of the dead. Every day someone dies spiritually.

Yet some authors disagreed with this radical generalization and tried to send Dostoyevskys novel and the quotation on prisons and civilization back to Russia in order to vindicate the US penitentiary system. It is ironic, wrote criminologist Charles H. Logan in Private Prisons: Cons and Pros (1990), that some critics of private prisons are fond of quoting Dostoevsky that the degree of a nations civilization can be seen in the way it treats its prisoners and wondering aloud what Dostoevsky would think of private prisons. According to Logan, if Dostoyevsky had lived in the Soviet Union, he would have been witness to one of the most brutal and lawless prison systems in history, with political prisoners jammed shoulder to shoulder into airless cells and box-cars and shipped to punitive slave camps where they were worked, starved, and frozen to death. However, if he visited contemporary American prisons, including private prisons, Dostoevsky would probably be impressed by the civil and human rights protections, the food and medical care, the standards of decency, even the space, he would generally find there, at least in comparison to the Soviet Gulag. Overall, the quotation would indeed say something about our civilization, but nothing that would discourage private sector involvement in the running of prisons.

Dostoyevskys famous words on prisons and civilization are still very much alive and frequently used in the Anglophone press in accounts of the horrors of houses of the dead. They were cited in the May 1, 2019, issue of my home newspaper, The Daily Princetonian:

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Enter Americas prisons and it becomes clear that we are nowhere near as just a society as we claim to be. If we want to get closer to the values we idealize, we should rethink whether incarceration is the answer at all.

Most recently, human rights activists have used the quotation as a weapon to critique secret prisons across the globe and the Trump regimes unwavering support for incarceration of adult immigrants and their innocent children. [12]

The irony of history has also seen the Russian writers alleged dictum return to Russia. To the best of my knowledge, its first appearance dates back to 1977, when it cropped up in the Russian translation of Howard Zinns Postwar America (1973), who credited the words to Dostoyevsky. Characteristically, the famously well-trained Soviet translators smelled the rat and deleted the name of the Russian writer from their rendition.

The attribution to Dostoyevsky entered Russian public discourse only in the late 1990s and early 2000s, likely first popularized by the Russian-American film director Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, who used it in interviews and in his 2006 essay Crimes and Punishments. Another source for the quotes Russification appears to be a Russian translation of the English review of oligarch and political dissident Mikhail Khodorkovskys 2012 prison memoirs:

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons, wrote Dostoevsky in The House of the Dead. Khodorkovskys testimony is that this is a corrupt system with little or no effort to do more than coop up the hopeless, the drug-addicted, the vicious and the occasional visionary. [13]

Although Khodorkovsky never quotes Dostoyevskys apocryphal words in his book, the ultimate goal of his prison memoir, as formulated in its introduction, seems to be informed by this American statement: I wrote about the country in which our remarkable people continue to live in penury and without rights. And I wrote about a future Russia that we will be able to feel proud of without a trace of shame the Russia that will ultimately take the road of European civilization. A road we all share.

Today, Russian politicians, activists, and journalists frequently use Dostoyevskys alleged words to excoriate the Russian penal system. In turn, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service adopted it as a kind of ideological dcor. This very fair statement, as Yaroslav Nilov, a deputy of the State Duma, observes, hangs at the entrance of the womens penal colony in Kolosovka in Kaliningrad Province. Another visitor of the colony suggested that it is possibly due to this slogan that we are at 100% production capacity!

Russian bloggers as well, as their American, French, and German counterparts have been searching for the source of the quotation in Dostoyevskys works for almost 10 years, to no avail.

The phenomenon of a fake Dostoyevsky is by no means new. The most famous of his apocryphal sayings, paraphrased earlier in this article, is that all Russian authors came out of Gogols Overcoat. [14] In 2013, Eric Naiman uncovered a magnificent English hoax dealing with Dostoyevskys alleged encounter with Charles Dickens. [15] Yet, as we have seen, the American history of our quotation presents a very different case. It reveals not only the statements origin and false attribution, but also the American reception of Dostoyevsky and the differences between his and Western interpretations of prison. Whereas many liberal criminalists and reformers in the United States have tried to gradually improve the nations penal system and a number of radical activists have condemned prison as an incorrigibly corrupt and oppressive bourgeois institution, Dostoyevsky tended to view it as a horrible house of the dead which senselessly destroys the most gifted, the strongest of our people, yet provides chosen sufferers with a unique chance for miraculous spiritual epiphany and moral renewal.

Indeed, American culture can be tested by its treatment of Dostoyevsky as manifested in the history of our quotation. The aphorism, ideologically rooted in 18th-century Enlightenment thinking and falsely attributed to the author of TheHouse of the Dead by American activists of the late 1960s, sums up the essence of US prison reform and protest movements, as well as the message of the eras prison literature. Sanctified by the name and cultural aura of the great anti-Western writer and former inmate, the quotation lent a universal ethical dimension to a targeted critique of the North American prison-industrial complex.

As Amy Ronner told me in discussing this matter, there is something about Dostoyevsky that makes American criminologists and activists reach out to him for support: Sometimes we are so desperate to have him as our ally that we even construct (unintentionally?) a myth or falsehood. Why him? I think that this sincere fascination with and unintended misprision of Dostoyevskys human rights writings can be explained by a unique American sensitivity to the existential issue of humiliated human dignity, which Dostoyevsky raised and portrayed in his post-prison novels so powerfully but interpreted in a framework very different from enlightened civilizationist ideologies. The real Dostoyevsky, then, is an alien to contemporary prison activists, who have, by force of necessity, converted him into a natural and desirable ally.

P.S.

The quotation used as the second epigraph to this essay obviously does not (and could not) come from the writings of Michel Foucault, either in the original or in translation. However, no one can prevent its active proliferation once it falls on suitable ideological soil.

I am very grateful to Peter Brooks, Amy D. Ronner, James E. Robertson, Dale E. Peterson, Alexander Dolinin, Michael A. Wachtel, Kevin M. F. Platt, Tim Langen, Kirsten Lodge, Igor Pilshchikov,Elizabeth Geballe, and Chiara Benetollo for their generous advice and helpful critical comments. I also thank Jana Makarova for obtaining a copy of the pseudo-Dostoyevsky portrait from a rare edition.

Ilya Vinitsky is a professor of Russian literature at Princeton University. He is a 20192020 Guggenheim Fellow, working on the cultural biography and political imagination of Ivan Narodny, a Russian-Estonian-American revolutionist, arms dealer, journalist, writer, art critic, and promoter.

[1] See Dane Lanken, Playwright John Herbert Stays on the Outside, The Montreal Gazette, November 7, 1970, and Frank Prosnitz, The Fortune Society Offers Hope, Asbury Park Press, August 3, 1968.

[2] See in Dread, harsh orders not now heard in jails, The Leader-Post, July 23, 1956. These words were rendered in Churchills 1951 book Closing the Ring as [n]othing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

[3] Mandela expanded upon the quotation in his memoirs: A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.

[4] Maria Bloshteyn, Rage and Revolt: Dostoevsky and Three African-American Writers, Comparative Literature Studies 38, no. 4 (2001); see also Dale E. Peterson, Notes from the Underworld: Dostoevsky, DuBois, and the Unveiling of Ethnic Soul, The Massachusetts Review 54, no. 3 (2013).

[5] Dale E. Peterson, Underground Notes: Dostoevsky, Bakhtin, and the African American Confessional Novel in Bakhtin and the Nation, ed. Donald A. Wesling et al. (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2000)

[6] In Dostoevsky and the Law (2015), the legal scholar Amy D. Ronner offers a striking example of American readings of the novel not as a portrayal of Russias archaic penal system, a world apart from our own, but rather as an illuminating story of the unsettling likeness between Dostoevskys Omsk fortress and our own prisons, a recreation of Dead House in the contemporary United States.

[7] Prison Authors. Our Editorial Opinion, New Castle News, January 26, 1972.

[8] John Hamer, Convict Writers Find a Public, The Record, January 26, 1972.

[9] Frank Bisignano, Literary Future for Cons, Fortune News, December 1971.

[10] Carl Zeitz, Hes Starting Over After 11 Years on Death Row, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 30, 1973.

[11] Bell Gale Chevigny, After the Death of Jail, Rebirth Like Raskolnikov, The Village Voice, July 10, 1969.

[12] The Shinborn Star, July 5, 2019.

[13] Financial Times, April 11, 2014; see the Russian text here.

[14] The French and Russian origins of these words were first traced by S. A. Reiser and, most recently and convincingly, by Aleksandr Dolinin in Kto zhe skazal Vse my vyshli iz Shineli Gogolia? Russkaia literatura, no. 3 (2018).

[15] Eric Naiman, When Dickens Met Dostoevsky, Times Literary Supplement, April 10, 2013.

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Dostoyevsky Misprisioned: The House of the Dead and American Prison Literature - lareviewofbooks

There’s A New Problematic Dating Trend, One Based On DNA Matching – HuffPost India

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

digiD8/ Screenshotdigid8

BOKARO STEEL CITY, JharkhandWhat do you hope for when you log into a dating app? Chemistry, good looks, educational qualification, maybe family background? Sanaya (name changed) was lucky enough to meet her partner through a dating app and even better, both their families were on board for the wedding.

But the couples first child was born with a genetic disorder that, doctors said, would prevent his mental development as he grew past infancy. Sanaya told HuffPost India she wished she was aware of this risk before going through this heartbreak with her husband.

People like Sanaya may have their wish granted if one Harvard geneticist succeeds in his plans.Earlier this month, Harvard professor George Church, who specialises in gene editing research, said on aTV showthat he is trying to ensure no child is born with genetic disorders. How will this happen? Through developing a dating app that would match people through DNAmeaning two people who share the same gene will not be matched with each other.

For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India onTwitter,Facebook, and subscribe to ournewsletter.

The dating app, named digiD8, has been co-founded by Church, and engineer Barghavi Govindarajan who spoke to HuffPost India about their app, and its vision. Asked how this app does not promote eugenics, Govindarajan highlighted a statement from Church to the media:There are a lot of diseases which are not so serious which may be beneficial to society in providing, for example, brain diversity. We wouldnt want to lose that. But if [a baby] has some very serious genetic disease that causes a lot of pain and suffering, costs millions of dollars to treat and they still die young, thats what were trying to deal with.

While this sounds like a reasonable way to ensure that babies and their parents are safe from the risk of genetic disorders such as down syndrome, cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anaemia, the proposal has also received criticism from people who say that it is a way of promoting eugenicsa philosophy that advocates that its possible to improve the quality of the human species through selective breeding. The eugenics movement, which began in the US in the late 19th century, was infamously advocated by Hitler and the Nazis, to create a Germanic bermensch.

The movement lost its credibility after the Second World War, and it is now widely accepted that variations in genes give rise to diversity in a culture, which is essential for its flourishing generation after generation. Critics have called out digiD8 for bringing back these issuesfor example, Janus Rose argued in Vice that although Church and Govindarajan may not mean to use it in such a way, others could use the technology to identify people with a theoretical gene for gender dysphoria, eliminating trans people or people with other kinds of disabilities.

Its not the technology itself thats problematic. Its how we use it, Vardit Ravitsky, a bioethicist at the Universit de Montral, wrote on a Medium blog.So I guess this means wiping me out along with millions of other disabled people. Ever considered that having a disease doesnt mean a life thats tragic or full of suffering?

Alice Wong, the founder of the Disability Visibility Project, tweeted, calling it ableism and eugenics.

From the time Church revealed the concept behind digiD8, many people have been horrified by the notion. On 60 Minutes, he claimed it could be a cheap way to eradicate thousands of diseases that cost about a trillion dollars a year, worldwide, although he didnt give specific data about the source of this figure.

A since-removed job listing on the digiD8 website also claimed the company is pursuing an untapped market by creating a dating service that uses science to evaluate lineal compatibility, an apparent reference to caste and tribe group self-segregation practices that occur in the Gulf region and in India, the MIT Technology Review reported.

In todays world, where we have a clearer understanding of how genes work,is there any justification for the idea of matching people based on their genomes? And if so, is a dating app the right way to actually make it happen? And lastly, who will be responsible for the security of the humongous amounts of sensitive data generated?

Most people carry a mutant genea gene whose structure is different from that found normallywhich they pass on to their offspring.A single mutant gene may or may not cause sickness, depending on how dominant it is. But if a person has two copies of the same recessive mutant gene, that causes sickness.

Children inherit genes from both the parents. If both their parents have the same mutant gene, they have a 25% probability of being born with the disease caused by that recessive mutant gene.

Church argues that if everyone chose partners based on their genome sequence, about 7,000 diseases could be eliminated forever, and removing the 5% of the worlds population that would have been born with rare diseases, if the DNA matching wasnt done.

Of course, for this, everyone would need to get their genome sequenced.

According to Church, matching people by their genes will prevent the birth of children with debilitating genetic disordersso factors such as race, or even what the genes carry wont matter at all; the app is only concerned with matching genes that dont carry markers for disorders.

digiD8/ ScreenshotThe digiD8 founders, Bhargavi Govindarajan (L) and George Church (R).

Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy, Associate Professor at IIIT Hyderabad, who researches on the Sociology of Digital Media, and has worked in the development of technologies for consumer-centric heath care, at Xerox, and done ethnographic field research on technology use in developing countries for Microsoft Research, thinks parents should have a say in whether they want such a child or not. Technocracy cannot determine what is right for them. There have been known cases where parents have gone ahead with the second child despite the first child being born with inherited genetic disorder, people shouldnt be controlled by technology.

At the same time, Rangaswamy, who is also supervising research on dating app experiences, thinks a dating app shouldnt be the way to go about this. It seems almost as if Bhargavi and Church are proposing to use a dating app because it grabs [the] attention.

These apps are used by individuals to meet new people, have fun and explore the possibility of developing relationships, she said.

Marriage and making babies is the last thing on the mind of those using dating apps. They are there just to expand their social circle beyond the existing one. And in case of restrictive societies like India, explore their sexuality too. If marriage happens, thats a bonus.

Church told HuffPost India that, people choosing digiD8 would just need to spit, send and sit back. The app will throw up matches after screening out candidates based on their genome matching, in addition to the usual dating app criteria. The genome sequencing would be kept confidential, even from the person themselves.

But that sounds counter-intuitive. Genome data is critical information that should belong to the person whose DNA is being used.

Pre-nuptial or IVF genetic counselling is not entirely unheard ofthere are many ethnicities globally that carry more than their fair share of genetic variants and kids born in such societies are more likely to have inherited genetic disorders than anywhere else in the world. Organisations such asDor Yeshorim have been able to eradicate rare diseases like Tay Sachs among Jewish communities through pre-nuptial genetic counselling.

As experience has shown time and again,once any data is lodged within an app or its server, its privacy and security are questionable. The privacy of genotype data and how it is handled must be considered carefully before any such data is collected. This may be even more important in countries where data privacy laws are not very robust, like India.

Doctors, however, caution against dismissing Churchs suggestions completely. Dr. Apeksha Pathak, a pediatrician, says, It is a good idea to match genotype genes to predict inherited diseases in offspring. There are certain inherited diseases which are quite common, like thalassemia. But there are some that are rare, but life-threatening and expensive to manage.

There's A New Problematic Dating Trend, One Based On DNA Matching - HuffPost India

Backstory 2019: What Seven Days Writers Didn’t Tell You the First Time Around – Seven Days

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

A couple of Seven Days reporters tracked down seven ex-priests accused of sexual molestation and knocked on their doors.Another questioned an impeachment hearing witness in a Capitol Hill men's room. One brave writer spent a week milking cows, and getting shit upon, to find out what it's really like to work on a Vermont dairy farm.

Seven Days journalists go to great lengths sometimes literally to find good stories, and the process can be awkward, painful, scary or inconvenient. But it's never boring.

The original story idea may well change in the process of investigation. And not everything makes it into the final published piece. So, once a year, our reporters and editors share what we call "backstories," the tales behind the ones you read in Seven Days. They can be fascinating, humorous or sad.

These anecdotes reveal our purpose and methods for example, how difficult it is to communicate with a source in prison, or what to do when no one will talk to you in Orwell, of all places.

This year our data editor wrangled a trove of public records from the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living to build a database that showed violations at eldercare facilities. At the State Archives, our Burlington reporter had to surrender her backpack, pen and water bottle to study the original, hard-copy documents that chronicle Vermont's involvement in the eugenics movement.

Verifying that the state owns two World War II-era rifles with Nazi insignia required a little more sleuthing.

Each week, the editorial team fans out with notebooks and cameras, driven by curiosity and a desire to tell readers what's happening and why it's important. Their "backstories" show the obstacles we face and the fun we have while pursuing the people, events and news that make Vermont such an interesting place.

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Backstory 2019: What Seven Days Writers Didn't Tell You the First Time Around - Seven Days

Scandal of The Tinker Experiment: demands for apology over Scotland’s treatment of gypsy travellers – HeraldScotland

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

THEY are small huts, scattered across the country, which appear on the outside to be fairly unassuming

But behind the walls of the barely habitable dwellings lay the truth of a bizarre experiment that saw Scottish authorities attempt to control a distinct racial group in a bid to get them to integrate into mainstream society.

Known as the "Tinker Experiment", it saw members of the travelling community placed in specially provided huts, far from the rest of society, in a bid to break them into joining the rest of the population and effectively kill off their culture.

Remarkably, most of these sites only closed in the 1980s, but one in Pitlochry remained in use only a decade ago.

READ MORE:Gypsy Travellers: Scotland's human rights shame

Now members of the travelling community are demanding an official apology from the Scottish Government for what they call Scotland's secret shame, and they're planning a protest at Holyrood next month.

They are angry that other sections of society have received apologies for historically poor treatment from the state while they still wait, despite it being illegal to discriminate against gypsy travellers on grounds of race since the Equality Act of 2010.

Shamus McPhee, who was a subject of the experiment at Bobbin Mill, Pitlochry, pointed out that each reason the Scottish Government had given why it couldn't apologise for the Tinker Experiment could be rebutted through a previous apology to another distinct group.

He said the Government had in the past said it was unable to apologise for the actions of a previous government, ignoring an unreserved apologise to the gay community. On another occasion, he said, it claimed claimed it couldn't apologise for local government initiatives or the actions of public bodies but apologised for the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry.

Mr McPhee said another government defence had been that it couldn't offer apologies for events which predated devolution, but that that overlooked an apology to those affected by the contaminated blood scandals of the 1980s and 1990s.

He said: "A programme of eugenics saw Gypsy Travellers separated out on racial grounds for removal from Scottish society. This marked a top-down, concerted approach, designed to eradicate a specific group of people.

"I think that quite a striking analogy can be drawn between our treatment, almost colonial in aspect, especially the level of subsequent denial, and that of the aboriginal people in Australia. The extent of that institutional racism is most clearly illuminated in the response from central government in Scotland, which has been described as 'wilful blindness' on the part of the ruling elite."

READ MORE:Scotland needs to do better for Gypsy/Travellers

His sister Roseanna adds: "Although the authorities said it was a housing experiment it was actually a racial experiment, it was a form of eugenics because nobody could be put in the houses unless they were what they called a 'tinker'.

"There was no one from mainstream society who was put there and we were kept away from that mainstream. These houses were specifically designed to ease the tinker problem."

The genesis of what became known as the Tinker Experiment in private government circles began just over a century ago. In a deputation to the Secretary of Scotland in 1917, it was claimed that "with kindly treatment, tinkers could be reclaimed and brought into line with ordinary civilisation".

The chair of the Department of Tinkers in Scotland, the Duchess of Atholl, asked for a Scotland-wide census on the numbers and social make-up of these communities.

This was an attempt to measure what was called at the time in the press as the "Tinker Problem", and then solve this problem by assimilating travellers into mainstream Scottish society by threatening to remove their children into care.

By forcing them to send their children to school for a set number of days, the gypsy families would have to settle in permanent accommodation as governments and local authorities recognised that the families had a close bond with their children.

Due to the secretive nature of the plan, exact figures have been hard to come by, but it is believed that thousands of individuals were forced to exist in properties with no hot water, electricity or proper washing facilities.

Those who refused had their children taken into care.

Throughout the 20th century huts to house travellers were built in at least 10 different locations across Scotland.

These included the Bridge of Don barracks in Aberdeen, Red Rocks in Inverness-shire and Muir of Ord on the edge of the Black Isle.

These sites were basic by design with minimum living facilities and were closely supervised by the authorities.

On the Muir of Ord site, the idea "was to train the tinker how to live in a house, instead of in sheds, old buses and under canvas which would give them a better chance in life".

In Perthshire alone, 35 traveller families were housed in substandard huts, many unaware that they were part of a racial experiment.

Perthshire Council initially bought a former WWII prisoner of war hut to be used as housing for four gypsy families.

In a letter from 1945 concerning the creation of the property, the council ignored bylaws for minimum standards of housing, instead applying regulations intended for tents, vans or sheds.

The huts were deliberately substandard to encourage travelling families to quickly move into mainstream accommodation and so be assimilated into Scottish society, reasoning no-one would put up with the property for more than three years.

However, this assimilation was difficult as many gypsies felt they couldn't practise their own culture living in a council estate isolated from their own community.

Those affected have repeatedly asked the Scottish Government for an apology, but without success.

Most of these sites closed in the 1980s but one in Pitlochry remained in use only a decade ago.

The Bobbin Mill huts were partitioned with asbestos-coated wood into four sections for different families to occupy.

Each hut consisted of one bedroom and a toilet and cold water sink. It had no electricity and accommodated up to 10 family members.

Yet according to resident Alexander Johnstone, who lived there from the 1960s, the poor conditions were despite the fact there was ready access to utilities. "Even though there was a gas tank nearby and a house over the back that had electricity only about 30 metres away, they wouldn't install it for some reason.

"I never saw a council person the whole time I was there, and if anything was broken we just had to fix it ourselves."

The building was condemned as unfit for human habitation in 1962 yet the council continued to place families there throughout the decade.

Many former residents believe that their recurring health problems today stem from the asbestos dust and freezing conditions of their childhood home.

Roseanna McPhee recalls a locum doctor who had previously worked in South Africa making a house call.

She said: "He compared the huts to Soweto. If you didn't just get on with living in the bad conditions and thole it, the children would be taken into care."

Even if the families did suffer in silence, their children were still at risk of being removed.

Jessie McPhee's family were also occupants, but she and her twin brother Robert were taken into care in 1956 at birth as the local council decided there was not enough room to accommodate any more children in the family of 12.

She believes her parents simply accepted the authorities' decision out of fear that all of their children would be taken away from them.

Jessie returned to the family home to start primary school, but Robert was placed in a boarding school because of his behaviour. He kept running away from the home because of the treatment he received there, coming from a minority group. She is convinced Robert, who died 20 years ago, never recovered from the double rejection.

She said: "He felt he had been rejected twice, by my parents when he was taken into the children's home and then by the boarding school. He was an alcoholic who drank himself to death because he couldn't accept what had happened to him."

The experiment in assimilation failed as the children were mercilessly bullied at the local primary and secondary school and then became stigmatised because of their sub-human housing, which affected their chances of forming relationships outside those in the same situation.

Roseanna explains: "You couldn't assimilate. If you went out with someone from the wider community and they found out you were from the hut, you never saw them again.

"People could accept you were a traveller or a gypsy but they couldn't accept that you were living in these appalling conditions they couldn't understand that you didn't want to be there they didn't understand that you were put there."

When asked about the Tinker Experiment, the Scottish Government acknowledged the treatment the travellers had received and the impact it had on them, but again stopped short of an apology.

READ MORE:It needs guts to take the road less travelled. And for Gypsies, that means protecting their children from the outside world. But at what cost?

A spokesperson told The Herald on Sunday: The lives of many gypsy travellers have been blighted by the historical housing polices of councils and charities. We absolutely recognise the devastating impact which these polices had on families, many of whom are still suffering the consequences.

A joint Scottish Government and Cosla 3 million action plan to tackle the discrimination and challenges faced by the gypsy/traveller community was published in October.

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Scandal of The Tinker Experiment: demands for apology over Scotland's treatment of gypsy travellers - HeraldScotland

Best of 2019: Harm’s Way Pick 5 Favorite Albums of Year – Revolver Magazine

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

2019 has been one of the biggest years in heavy music in recent memory, with heavyweights such as Tool, Slipknot and Rammstein dropping long-awaited new albums, while trailblazing up-and-comers pushed boundaries in their own right. For their part, industrialized hardcore outfitHarm's Wayreleased the remix EPPSTHMN, which reimagined cuts off their excellent2018 album, Posthuman, and toured relentlessly in support of both. When we we asked vocalist James Pligge to share some his favorite music from the year, he came back with a group effort."Because we are always in a van together we usually all consume music as a band, I decided to get a collaborative list of all Harm's Way's favorite albums of 2019," the vocalist responded."This list is in no particular order and is just some records we really enjoyed at home and on the road in 2019."

Probably one of the biggest records to come from the hardcore and metal world this year was A Different Shade of Blue. This record is very catchy and heavy and offers a combination of Nineties hardcore and modern metalcore. I think it has created a movement in which many people from different musical backgrounds can get behind. Its impact on heavy music and well-constructed metallic hardcore makes it one of the best heavy records of 2019.

I have always been a fan of Division of Mind from Richmond and this LP is no different. This record is just a perfect combination of truly angry music with d-beat and mosh parts. It reminds me of a heavier Left for Dead or the Swarm. One thing that always resonates with me is vocalists that are able to convey their hatred or anger through the vocals of a record, and I think this record is able to do that very well.

This record reminds me of some of the early 2000s Western Massachusetts bands like Think I Care. As a person who got really into hardcore in the early 2000s, this record is almost nostalgic-like to me. I just really enjoy the combination of well-done fast parts and heavily distorted breakdowns, and it was a pleasure to hear these songs live night in and night out on our tour together in August.

I came across this from a fellow Hate Force member. Finding death metal that is new and interesting can sometimes be a challenge, but Vomit Forth was able to keep my attention. In my opinion, this album sounds like a combination of old Dying Fetus, Suffocation and Devourment, but less technical. At times it also remind me of Internal Bleeding, especially with the heavier breakdowns mixed with the traditional death-metal parts. Lucky for them, that style of deathmetal is one of my favorites, and this record really stands apart from a lot of the monotony that is out there.

If you offered me a million dollars to pronounce this band's name correctly, I would most definitely fail. I really enjoy slow, Neanderthal-like deathmetal, and this band does this extremely well. Although this record is only four songs, I think it's truly one of the best death-metal records I have heard in a long time. If you like slower death metal with d-beat parts and sludgy breakdowns like Disma, you should most certainly check this record out on Bandcamp.

The 8 Best Robotics for Kids in 2020

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

STEM features - Robots are fun, but lets face it: A lot of the reasoning involved in splurging on a toy like this is for STEM learning. Different robots and robotics have varying levels of STEM; some have it as a primary focus, while for others its just a result of using the robot. If you specifically want your child to learn about coding or robotics, it may be better to pick a model that emphasizes these features.

Age level - The age of your child plays an important role in what kind of robot would best suit them. You may want to consider purchasing a robot that will grow with them if your child is young, offering basic features at the beginning with room to expand later. On the other hand, if your child is old enough to learn to code, a more advanced model might work better.

Personality - Its hard not to get attached to a robot, especially considering how cute some of them are. Some robots even have a personality that will develop based on interaction and use. If you think your child might enjoy having a robot companion to play with, choosing one with a personality might be a fun idea.

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The 8 Best Robotics for Kids in 2020

Artificial Intelligence – Robotics – Tutorialspoint

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Robotics – Wikibooks, open books for an open world

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Robotics brings together several very different engineering areas and skills. There is metalworking for the body. There is mechanics for mounting the wheels on the axles, connecting them to the motors and keeping the body in balance. You need electronics to power the motors and connect the sensors to the controllers. At last you need the software to understand the sensors and drive the robot around.

This book tries to cover all the key areas of robotics as a hobby. When possible examples from industrial robots will be addressed too.

You'll notice very few "exact" values in these texts. Instead, vague terms like "small", "heavy" and "light" will be used. This is because most of the time you'll have a lot of freedom in picking these values, and all robot projects are unique in available materials.

Note to potential contributors: this section could be used to discuss the basics of robot design/construction.

This section could be used to discuss various means through which robots are constructed.

This section could be used to discuss the control method and control algorithm introduces and analyzes the robot, including the position control, trajectory control, force control, torque control, compliance control, hybrid force / position control, decomposition motion control, variable structure control, adaptive control and hierarchical control, fuzzy control, learning control, neural control and evolutionary control, intelligent control.

This section could be used to discuss components used in robotics or the making of robots.

This section could be used to discuss the things involved with controlling robots via computers.

Sensors that a robot uses generally fall into three different categories:

Sensors aren't perfect. When you use a sensor on your robot there will be a lot of times where the sensors acts funny. It could miss an obstacle, or see one where none is. Key to successfully using sensors is knowing how they function and what they really measure.

This section could be used to cover "special" robots.

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Robotics - Wikibooks, open books for an open world

Local robotics team gets victory in West Virginia championship – Goshen News

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Local FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics Team 8711 The Gas Attendants of the E3 Robotics Center in Elkhart won the West Virginia State Championship Dec 8. FIRST denotes For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

E3 Robotics Center is a non-profit that focuses on robotics for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, along with partnering with area schools and other community youth organizations to create an impact using STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs and robotics.

The West Virginia State Championships hosted robotics teams from eight different states as they competed at Fairmont State University in this years FIRST Tech Challenge Game, according to officials with E3 Robotics Center. FIRST Tech Challenge is one of four programs providing robotics competitions for more than 80 countries worldwide. FIRST Tech Challenge is designed for students in seventh through 12th grades to compete head-to-head in a sports-like playing field.

This years game SKYSTONE had teams collecting stones, which look like large LEGO blocks, and stacking them on top of a movable foundation. Teams compete in a 2-on-2 match to try to outscore the other side with points.

In the morning of the event, The Gas Attendants placed sixth in Qualifying Rounds in which teams win matches to move up in rankings before the elimination brackets in the afternoon.

The Gas Attendants proceeded to make the elimination bracket as one of the Alliance Captains, which allowed them to pick the partner they would like to play with in eliminations. The team selected Team 8297 Geared UP!, a part of Ashburn Robotics in Virginia. The two teams started at the bottom of the elimination bracket and had to compete against all the teams ranked above them, a news release about the event states.

The Gas Attendants and Geared UP! ended going undefeated through all of the elimination brackets and winning the finals match by one point.

The Gas Attendants also won the 2nd place Rockwell Collins Innovate Award for their robot design and, because they were the Winning Alliance Captains, were also invited to the Maryland Tech Invitational to be held in June 2020, where the top teams from around the world will be invited to compete.

The Gas Attendants are going into their sixth year as a team, and are now on their second generation of students since original members have graduated and gone to college. The team consists of 10 students, almost all of them rookies to this years team, a few of them being younger siblings of the original members of the team.

The team only had funds to take four of the 10 members to compete at the West Virginia state championship; consequently as a team they decided who they would be able to send to represent the team. They hope to raise more funds to allow them to travel more to several of the other top tournaments and events they will be invited to this season, officials with the company stated.

Members include: Devyn Clements, Drew Clements, Ashlyn Harradon, Ian Hornblower, Avery Mantyla, Nick McClimon, Isaac McClimon, Zach Poplar, Killian Townsend and Breanna Wormuth.

The Gas Attendants will now start their local competitions in Indiana.

To learn more about The Gas Attendants or the E3 Robotics Program, follow them on social media or visit e3robotics.org for more information.

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Local robotics team gets victory in West Virginia championship - Goshen News

Theres a robot cat you can back on Kickstarter – The Verge

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

You may have heard of Aibo, Sonys robot dog, but if a robot cat is what youve always wanted, youre now able to back one on Kickstarter. In fact, it actually looks kind of cute.

MarsCat, made by Elephant Robotics, looks a lot like a cat, but its not realistic enough that youll be fooled into thinking its a replacement for a furry feline that might already wander around your house. But it seems as if Elephant Robotics is trying to give MarsCat a lot of cat-like mannerisms, and it can apparently do things like bat at toys, stretch its front two feet out, and even accept chin rubs! Aw.

MarsCat comes in white, gray, ginger, and black, and its outfitted with six capacitive touch sensors, a 5MP camera in its nose to help it see, and is powered by a Raspberry Pi 3. Elephant Robotics tells The Verge that youll get between two to three hours of battery life with constant interactions and up to five hours for low usage, such as when MarsCat is lying down or sitting while still powered on.

Elephant Robotics says your interactions with MarsCat will shape its personality. For example, if you talk with MarsCat a lot, MarsCat will apparently meow at you more often in response. The company also says MarsCat can recognize 20 keywords, and CEO Joey Song tells The Verge that MarsCat will recognize specific commands different people might use, such as saying come instead of come here.

If you want to change the behaviors of MarsCat yourself, Elephant Robotics says youll be able to program actions for it using an open API and its Raspberry Pi. At the moment, there isnt a place where developers can upload and share their programmed actions, but Song tells The Verge that there should be a place on Elephant Robotics website for that by the time MarsCat starts shipping to backers.

If you want to back MarsCat, it will cost $649 for the first 100 backers, and that cost will go up in increasing amounts depending on how many people have already backed it. If youre one of those first 100 backers, Elephant Robotics estimates it will deliver MarsCat in March 2020, with later backers getting their MarsCats later in 2020.

When MarsCat officially goes on sale next year, Elephant Robotics says it will cost $1,299. That may seem expensive comparatively, Sonys Aibo robot dog costs $2,899.99 but robot pets just dont come cheap. At least not yet.

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Theres a robot cat you can back on Kickstarter - The Verge

XACT Robotics debuts its robotic technology at RSNA – DOTmed HealthCare Business News

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

HINGHAM, Mass. and CAESAREA, Israel, Nov. 26, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- XACT Robotics Ltd. today announced it will debut its first-to-market hands-free robotic technology at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2019 Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL on December 1 6, 2019. XACT Robotics will be exhibiting at booth #1650 located in the First-Time Exhibitor Pavilion where attendees will have access to:

Interactive demos of the XACT Robotics hands-free technologyFace time with Nahum Goldberg, MD, Ph.D. (Jerusalem, Israel) and Sebastian Flacke, MD, Ph.D. (Burlington, MA) sharing their early experiences with the XACT Robotic SystemIn addition, XACT was selected to present its robotic technology at the Innovation Theater, booth #4700, on Monday, December 3rd at 3 PM Central Standard Time (CST).

Ad StatisticsTimes Displayed: 8639Times Visited: 80

Founded by Harel Gadot, a renowned entrepreneur in the MedTech robotics space, XACT Robotics technology is based on research originally conducted at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, by Prof. Moshe Shoham, founder of Mazor Robotics (acquired by Medtronic in 2018).

For the latest updates on XACT Robotics, follow the company on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About XACT RoboticsFounded in 2013, XACT Robotics Ltd., is a privately held company with offices in Hingham, MA, and Caesarea, Israel. XACT Robotics is pioneering the first hands-free robotic system, combining image-based planning and navigation with instrument insertion and steering capabilities to democratize interventional medicine for multiple stakeholders including technologists, doctors, health system providers, payors and patients, delivering accurate, consistent and efficient results for percutaneous interventional radiology procedures.

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XACT Robotics debuts its robotic technology at RSNA - DOTmed HealthCare Business News

From retail to robotics, Jeff Bezos is betting big on technology – Economic Times

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Danzig

Amazon Inc, the worlds largest online retailer, is being known these days as more of a technology company, and rightly so.

Technology is at the core of whatever Amazon does from algorithms that forecast demand and place orders from brands, and robots that sort and pack items in warehouses to drones that will soon drop packages off at homes.

At its new Go Stores, for instance, advances in computer vision have made it possible to identify the people walking in and what products they pick up, helping add them to their online shopping carts.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the worlds richest man, is always pulling new rabbits out of his hat, like next-day or same-day shipping and cashier-less stores. Besides, there is Blue Origin, the aerospace company privately owned by Bezos, which is on a mission to make spaceflight possible for everyone.

Be that as it may, a lot more disruption aimed at reaching the common man is on the anvil.

The most far-reaching and impactful technologies being developed today are for Amazons own use, but some others have the potential to disrupt every sector.

The technology marvels that Amazon Web Services the largest profit driving unit in Bezos stable is working on could jolt several industries, including in India, in the same way that Amazon once disrupted retail. In retail, while things like the size of the catalogue, advertising and other stuff might play a role in success, at Amazon, I think success is largely technology driven, said Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels.

The ecommerce giant is using advances in technology to disrupt several sectors outside of retail though medicine, banking, logistics, robotics, agriculture and much more. Interestingly, some of that work is happening in India.

Initially, the thinking was around allowing enterprises in these sectors to grow by using its cloud storage and computing capabilities.

Now, Amazons reach has become more nuanced and it has moved up the value chain. For example, no longer is Amazon offering banks a place to securely store information, it is going beyond by offering tools to detect fraud, making it unnecessary for the lenders to build expensive data science teams in-house.

It is a similar story in other industries, made possible due to the massive amounts of data that Amazon collects and processes.

We give people the software capability, so they no longer need to worry about that side of things. Most of our services are machine learning under the covers (and) thats possible mostly because theres so much data available for us to do that, Vogels said.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Amazon is moving up the value chain in offering services backed by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to automate repetitive tasks done by human beings. Enterprise customers will simply be able to buy into these services with minimal customisation and without a large data science and artificial intelligence team. In December, AWS launched its Fraud Detector service that makes it easy to identify potentially fraudulent activity online, such as payment fraud and creation of fake accounts. Even large banks in India have struggled to put together teams to build machine learning models for fraud detection, but with such a service they can train their systems easily. Code Guru is another service that uses Machine Learning to do code reviews and spit out application performance recommendations, giving specific recommendations to fix code. Today, this is largely done manually, with several non-technology companies struggling to build great software for themselves due to bad code. Transcribe Medical is a service that uses Amazons voice technology to create accurate transcriptions from medical consultations between patients and physicians. Medical transcription as a service is a big industry in India, and Indias IT service giants hire thousands to review code. These services are expected to replace mundane manual tasks, freeing up resources for sophisticated tasks, and could lead to disruption in several sectors in the country.

Medicine Hospitals in the United States have to save imaging reports for years. Earlier these were stored on tapes, since doing so digitally cost millions of dollars. The advent of cheaper cloud storage meant new scans could be saved digitally, making them accessible to doctors on demand. Now, doctors could refer to a patients earlier CT scan and compare that with the new one to diagnose an ailment, said Shez Partovi, worldwide lead for healthcare, life sciences, genomics, medical devices and agri-tech at Amazon. The power of cloud and AWS own capabilities in medical technology have only expanded since. Healthcare and life sciences form rapidly scaling units of AWS, which is building a suite of tools that allow breakthroughs in medicine from hospitals using the tools to do process modelling or operational forecasting, refining the selection of candidate drugs for trial or delivering diagnoses through computer imaging. Developed markets will be the first to adopt such technologies, but AWS is seeing demand surge from the developing world, including India. Not everyone is within a mile of a radiologist or physician, so diagnostics through AI could solve for that. Further, theres a lack of highly trained people, but when all you have to do is take an image, it requires a lot less training, said Partovi.

Space Bezos, in his private capacity, is now looking to connect remote regions with high-speed broadband. He is building a network of over 3,000 satellites through Project Kuiper, which will compete with Elon Musks SpaceX and Airbusbacked OneWeb. The bigger bet is in outer space though. His rocket company Blue Origin has already done commercial payloads on New Shepard, the reusable rocket that competes with SpaceXs Falcon 9. The capsule atop the New Shepard can carry six passengers, which Bezos looks to capitalise on for space tourism, a commercial opportunity most private space agencies are looking at. It is also building a reusable rocket - Glenn, named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth which can carry payloads of as much as 45 tonnes in low earth orbit. Bezos aim, however, is to land on the Moon. His Blue Moon lander can deliver large infrastructure payloads with high accuracy to pre-position systems for future missions. The larger variant of Blue Moon has been designed to land a vehicle that will allow the United States to return to the Moon by 2024.

Robotics Amazons take on robotics is grounds-up. The company has been part of an opensource network that is developing ROS 2 or Robot Operating System 2, which will be commercial-grade, secure, hardened and peer reviewed in order to make it easier for developers to build robots. There is an incredible amount of promise and potential in robotics, but if you look at what a robot developer has to do to get things up and running, its an incredible amount of work, said Roger Barga, general manager, AWS Robotics and Autonomous Services, at Amazon Web Services. Apart from building the software that robots will run on, AWS is also making tools that will help developers simulate robots virtually before deploying them on the ground, gather data to run analytics on the cloud and even manage a fleet of robots. While AWS will largely build tools for developers, as capabilities such as autonomous navigation become commonplace, the company could look to build them in-house and offer them as a service to robot developers, Barga said. With the advent of 5G technology, more of the processing capabilities of robots will be offloaded to the cloud, making them smarter and giving them real-time analytics capabilities to do a better job. For India, robot builders will be able to get into the business far more easily, having all the tools on access, overcoming the barrier of a lack of fundamental research in robotics.

Enterprise Technology AWS might be a behemoth in the cloud computing space, but cloud still makes up just 3% of all IT in the world. The rest remains on-premise. While a lot will migrate to the cloud, some will not. In order to get into the action in the on-premise market, Amazon has innovated on services that run on a customers data centre, offering capabilities as if the data is stored on the cloud.

With Outposts, which was announced last month, AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools will be able to run on a customers data centre. Essentially, this will allow enterprises to run services on data housed within their own data centres, just like how they would if it had been stored on AWS. The other big problem that AWS is looking to solve is not having its own data centres close enough to customers who require extremely low-latency computing. For this, the company has introduced a new service called Local Zones, where it deploys own hardware closer to a large population, industry, and IT centre where no AWS Region exists today. Both these new services from AWS could be valuable in India given the lower reach of cloud computing among enterprises as well as stricter data localisation requirements.

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From retail to robotics, Jeff Bezos is betting big on technology - Economic Times

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