Daily Archives: May 4, 2017

JERUSALEM A day after militant Islamist group Hamas updated, and some say softened, its founding charter, an internationalhuman rights watchdogslammed the group as cruel and torturous over its continued incarceration of two Israelis withserious mental health conditions.

[Palestinians think Trump can make a deal]

In a report published Tuesday, Human Rights Watch shed light onthe disappearance of Avera Mangistu, an Israeli Jew of Ethiopian descent, and Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin Israeli. Both men were seenon Israeli security cameras entering Gaza, Mangistu in September 2014 and Sayed in April 2015.

Neither hasbeen heard from since.

Hamashas not confirmed that the men are in Gaza, but it has not denied it either. Over the past two years, officials from the Strip have made coy references to them and to the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 summer war between Israel and Hamas.

[Palestinians and Israelis are now fighting over corpses]

Two weeks ago, Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaldeclared that any information about Israeli captives would carry a price indicating the two men are to be used as bargaining chips in exchange for Hamas combatants serving time in Israeli jails.

Hamas officials interviewed for the Human Rights Watch report suggested the two Israelis were legitimate prisoners of war because every Israeli male serves in the army. In one instance, the groups military wing,Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades,published computer-altered photographs of the men dressed Israeli army uniforms.

AHuman Rights Watch investigation revealed that both Mangistu and al-Sayed were rejected from Israeli military service on the grounds of their mental health.

Hamass refusal to confirm its apparent prolonged detention of men with mental health conditions and no connection to the hostilities is cruel and indefensible, saidSarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. No grievance or objective can justify holding people incommunicado and bartering over their fates.

The scolding from the Human Rights Watch comes as Hamas tries to rehabilitate its standing in the world. The Islamist militant groupis viewed as a terrorist organizationby Israel and the United States. But on Monday, it released a new manifestorebranding itself as an Islamic national liberation movement. While it no longer explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel, it does retain the goal of liberating historic Palestine.

The report also came out on the eve of Wednesday's meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbasand President Trump at the White House. Though Abbas is the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, he has no sway with Hamas.

Research for the report was carried out in September 2016, the first time since 2008 that Israel had allowed representatives of the nongovernmental organization to enter Gaza, an area that has been under an Israeli and Egyptian land and sea blockade since Hamas took controlin 2007.

Israel has not been sympathetic to the work of Human Rights Watch, often claiming that the organization singles Israel out on its human rights violations, while overlooking some of the worlds worst violators. In February, an American investigator from Human Rights Watch was deniedentry to Israel on the grounds that the NGO is systematically anti-Israel and works as a tool for pro-Palestinian propaganda.

[Israel calls Human Rights Watch a propaganda tool, says it is not welcome]

This time, however, it is Hamas that is failing to comply with international humanitarian law by breaking commitments made in April 2014under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Under the treaty, states must provide protections for people with psychosocial, or mental health, disabilities, wrote Human Rights Watch in its report.

According to the report, Mangistu, 30, entered Gaza through a barbed wire fence near a beach on Sept. 7, 2014. Sayed, 29, simply walked across the border into Gaza on April 20, 2015.

The family of a third Israeli citizen, Jumaa Abu Ghanima, also said their son had disappeared into Gaza, sometime in July 2016. Human Rights Watch, however, wrote it could not independently corroborate that account.

Mangistu and al-Sayed, an Ethiopian Jew and Palestinian Bedouin with mental health conditions, come from among the most marginalized communities in Israeli society, Whitson said. There is nothing patriotic or heroic in forcibly disappearing them.

The groups calls on Hamas to unconditionally disclose the mens whereabouts and release them unless they can provide a credible legal basis for continuing to hold them. It also said Hamas should allow the men to immediately make contact with their families.

Israeli has also called on Hamas to return Mangistu and Sayed, as well as the bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, the two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 summer war between Israel and Hamas.

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'Cruel and indefensible': Human Rights Watch slams Hamas for holding two mentally ill Israelis - Washington Post

What if you could make President Trump say whatever you wanted?Like this.

Or here he is again with his simulated frenemies, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:

How about listening to thevaguely robot-like voice of yourself, programmed into an app based on a sample of your speech? The technology will be readysoon,according to ateam of researchers from the University of Montreals institute for computer-based learning algorithms.

Now theyre seeking investors for theirproduct,Lyrebird,and hopetojoinGoogle in the fast-expandingbusiness ofmimicking human voices.

Virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri have driven the voice technology into the mainstream, where we can controlourphones, cars and even refrigerators through verbal commands. And now we face a future where the perfect vocal replication of the president of the United States or you, or anyone could be just a few years away, some experts say. How does thatfuturesound?

Whoever wins the development race, experts in technology and ethical fields are gearing up for products that will do to voice what Photoshop did to photos make reality verydifficultto tell from a simulation.

Lyrebirdis aware of the downsides. Thetechnology isexciting with potentially dangerous consequences such as misleading diplomats, fraud and stealing the identity of someone else, according to an ethical disclaimer on Lyrebirds website. The developersdid not immediately respond to an interview request.

Nevertheless,the inventorsplan to begin selling what they call the first technology to allow copying voices in a matter of minutes with fine tuning for emotional control.

Scientific American notes that Lyrebird and a competing Alphabet-ownedproject called WaveNetuse neural network technology code patterned after neurons in thehuman brain to simulate human speech on the fly.

In contrast, existingvoice assistants such as Siri and Alexa work by cobbling together words and phrases from prerecorded files of one particular voice.

Lyrebird saysitstechnology, once released, will be able to mimic any voice based on as little as aminute of audio recording though one of the developers told TechCrunch that longer samples would reduce the distinctly metallic rasp that the outlet noted in clipsreleased so far.

[Burger King thought it had a great idea. Instead, it ended up with a Whopper of a problem.]

While Lyrebirds developers have not announced a release date for their product, they claimit will simulate audio much faster than Googles WaveNet.

When the tech giants artificial intelligence unit demonstrated WaveNetlast year, listeners rated it as the closest simulationyet of human speech, according to the Verge.

However, the outlet noted, Googles team had to manually tweakthe audiooutputor it sounded like AIbaby babble.

Timo Baumann, a speech processing researcher atCarnegie Mellon University, told Scientific American that Lyrebirds audio sounded a tad robotic but that convincing human simulations voice assistants that people might treat like friends were a few years away.

Five major tech giants: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon.com arepursingwhat The Washington Posts Elizabeth Dwoskincalled an arms race to create the next generation of virtual assistants to make our personal devices converselike humans, if not also sound like them.

Its about taking the way that humans have naturally interacted with each other for thousands of years and applying that to the way they interact with services, Dag Kittlaus, a co-f0under of the Siri app now in every iPhone, told Dwoskin. Hewas working on a conversational artificial intelligence technology he hoped would replace it.

Theprospect of computer-simulated voice concerned a security technologist from Harvard University, who told Scientific Americanthat a new reality of fake audio clips was on the horizon.

A refined version of this system could replicate a persons voice with incredible accuracy, making it virtually impossible for a human listener to discern the original from the emulation, Gizmodo warned. The day is coming when vocal speech, like an image processed in Photoshop, can be manipulated without our knowing.

When Adobe demonstrated yet another form of voice-faking software last year one that rearranges words in pre-recorded audio clips a technology researcher at the University of Stirling expressed horror to the BBC.

It seems that Adobes programmers were swept along with the excitement of creating something as innovative as a voice manipulator, Eddy Borges Rey told the outlet, and ignored the ethical dilemmas brought up by its potential misuse.

[The next hot job in Silicon Valley is for poets]

The creators of Lyrebird said they want their technology to be used for good:Giving back the voice to people who lost it to sickness, being able to record yourself at different stages in your life and hearing your voice later on, one of Lyrbirds developers told Gizmodo.

The teamtold TechCruch it plansto makeits voice simulator available to anyone with an Internet connection with free samples for fake audio in a voice of ones choosing, and a fee-per-sentence thereafter.

We hope that everyone will soon be aware that such technology exists and that copying the voice of someone else is possible, the developers wrote.

More reading:

Think your dog talks like people? Scientists say you might just be right.

Terrorists are building drones. France is destroying them with eagles.

Visit link:
This audio clip of a robot as Trump may prelude a future of fake ... - Washington Post

TORONTO A landlord who repeatedly ignored his tenants requests to respect their prayer times and remove his shoes in their prayer space violated their religious rights, Ontarios human rights tribunal has ruled.

John Alabi is facing a $12,000 fine after the decision, which found he discriminated against his tenants on the grounds of their Muslim faith.

The decision handed down from tribunal adjudicator Jo-Anne Pickel outlines a turbulent tenancy for Walid Madkour and Heba Ismail, who rented a unit from Alabi for less than three months after moving to Toronto from Montreal.

The issues that came before the tribunal all took place in January and February 2015 the time between when both parties mutually agreed to terminate the lease and the day the couple moved out.

Conflicts centred around requests the couple had made while Alabi was trying to show their unit to prospective tenants.

Alabi told the tribunal he felt Madkour and Ismail were imposing their way of life on him, a claim flatly rejected in Pickels decision.

Unfortunately, attempts by Muslims to practice their faith have increasingly been interpreted as an attempt to impose their way of life on others, Pickel wrote.

There was absolutely no evidence that the applicants requests for additional notice and for the removal of shoes in this case were an attempt by them to impose their way of life on the respondent or anyone else. Far from seeking to impose their way of life on anyone, the applicants were merely making simple requests for the accommodation of their religious practices.

Between late January and late February 2015, Alabi had agreed to give the couple 24-hours notice if someone was planning to view the apartment, in accordance with Ontarios Residential Tenancies Act.

Madkour and Ismail, however, asked for additional notice up to an hour before Alabi planned to enter the apartment.

While they did not disclose the religious grounds for their request at first, they eventually explained that they wanted to be certain the visits did not coincide with prayer times designated by the Quran, the tribunal heard. As practising Muslims, both Madkour and Ismail pray five times a day during designated time periods.

Unfortunately, attempts by Muslims to practice their faith have increasingly been interpreted as an attempt to impose their way of life on others

Ismail also wanted to have enough time to ensure she was wearing her hijab and other modest attire in order to comply with another tenet of her faith, the tribunal heard.

Alabi frequently denied these requests or provided only momentary notice via text message before entering the apartment, the tribunal heard.

Once inside, another bone of contention often arose when Madkour or Ismail would request that people remove their shoes before walking through the unit.

The Quran states that the area in which prayers are conducted must be clean, the tribunal said, adding that potential contamination would result in extra work to cleanse the area.

In video evidence shown to the tribunal, Pickel said the couple is heard asking Alabi and a prospective tenant to remove their shoes before entering the bedroom, which they used as their prayer space.

Pickels decision said the video shows the prospective tenant wearing only socks, but clearly shows Alabi walking through the bedroom in shoes despite protests from Ismail, who is heard telling him that wearing footwear in the area is disrespectful.

Alabi told the tribunal that he ignored her request in order to avoid making a scene in front of the tenant and because he felt her stance was propaganda designed to make him look bad.

Pickel took a different view.

I fail to see how such a request would make the respondent look bad if he complied with it, she wrote. If anything, it was the respondents non-compliance with the request that made him look bad in front of prospective tenants.

She also pointed to some text messages sent to Madkour in response to his request for additional notice before an apartment viewing. One of those messages read Welcome to Ontario, Canada, prompting Pickel to find that Alabi was not respectful of the couples religious rights under the Human Rights Code.

She ordered Alabi to pay Madkour and Ismail $6,000 each, as well as to take an online course on human rights and rental housing.

Neither Alabi nor his legal representative immediately responded to request for comment.

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Landlord violated Muslim tenants' rights for not respecting prayer time: Human rights tribunal - National Post

Nearly a third of business leaders and technology analysts express no confidence that education and job training in the United States will evolve rapidly enough to match the next decades labor market demands, a new report from the Pew Research Center finds.

About 30 percent of the executives, hiring managers, college professors and automation researchers who responded to the Pew survey felt future prospects looked bleak, anticipatingthat firms would encounter more trouble finding workers with their desired skill sets over the next decade.

Barring a neuroscience advance that enables us to embed knowledge and skills directly into brain tissue and muscle formation, there will be no quantum leap in our ability to up-skill people, wrote Andrew Walls, managing vice president at Gartner, an IT consulting firm.

Seriously? Youre asking about the workforce of the future? added another respondent, a science editor who asked to stay anonymous. As if theres going to be one?

Lee Rainie, Pews director of Internet, science and technology research, the studys co-author, helped canvass, reaching out to 8,000 decision makers in Pew's database. About 1,400 responded, and many of those told the researchers they were bracing for machines to transform the ways humans work -- sometimes in unpredictable ways.

People are wrestling with this basic metaphysical question: What are humans good for? he said. Its important to figure that out because this blended world of machines and humans is already upon us and its going to accelerate.

Most of the business and technology professionals expected new training programs to emerge, both at schools and on the private market, to better prepare the future labor force. But 30 percent of the 1,408 respondents doubted such a quick transformation could take place. They felt, according to the report, that adaptation in teaching environments will not be sufficient to prepare workers for future jobs.

Jerry Michalski, the founder at REX, a technology think tank in Portland, Ore., feared public schools and universities arent keeping up with changes in the economy.

They take too long to teach impractical skills, he wrote, and knowledge not connected to the real world.

Im skeptical that educational and training programs can keep pace with technology, added Thomas Claburn, editor-at-large at Information Week, a news site.

Jason Hong, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, argued the country can train small numbers of individuals for more computerized roles at community colleges and in the university system. And while coding classes, for example, are cropping up on campuses, learning how to work in the computer realm just isnt part of the broader American curriculum.

There are two major components needed for a new kind of training program at this scale: political will and a proven technology platform, Hong wrote. Even assuming that the political will (and budget) existed, theres no platform today that can successfully train large numbers of people.

The next generation of workers should learn how to code, the Pew report asserts, or brush up on data science both skills that would serve them well in increasingly automated workplaces. But they shouldnt underestimate the importance of so-called emotional intelligence, or the ability to gracefully manage employees, co-workers and clients.

The skills necessary at the higher echelons will include especially the ability to efficiently network, manage public relations, display intercultural sensitivity and just enough creativity to think outside the box, wrote Simon Gottschalk, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Frank Elavsky, a data and policy analyst at Acumen LLC, an analytic tool developer, said people can hone those skills in this digital age by remembering to interact with other people.

The most important skills to have in life are gained through interpersonal experiences, he wrote. Human bodies in close proximity to other human bodies stimulate real compassion, empathy, vulnerability and social-emotional intelligence.

B. Remy Cross, an assistant professor of sociology at Webster University in Missouri, expressed doubt that future workers could easily bolster their social skills in an increasingly online world.

It is too hard to adequately instruct large numbers of people in the kinds of soft skills that are anticipated as being in most demand, Cross wrote. As manufacturing jobs move overseas or are fully mechanized, we will see a bulge in service jobs. These require good people skills, something that is often hard to train online.

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Bosses believe your work skills will soon be useless - The ... - Washington Post