SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED
Among the gazillion other products and services available from Amazon is the behemoth’s facial recognition software, Rekognition, marketed as providing extremely accurate facial analysis. But when the American Civil Liberties Union gave it a go, the results were startling. Using Rekognition, the ACLU scanned photos of every current member of the U.S. House and Senate and came up with 28 matches to a mug shot database of people who had been arrested for crimes. The ACLU announced its findings Jul. 26 and admitted it used Amazon’s default settings, to which Amazon responded, “While 80 percent confidence is an acceptable threshold for photos of hot dogs, chairs, animals or other social media use cases,” Amazon would advise customers to set the threshold at 95 percent or higher for law enforcement. The ACLU told NPR that the legislators who were falsely matched were men, women, Republicans, and Democrats of all ages. However, the software did misidentify people of color at a higher rate.
WEIRD SCIENCE
You thought you were old? You’re just a twinkle in a nematode’s eye. Russian scientists have revived two ancient, frozen roundworms, or nematodes, from samples collected in Siberian permafrost, The Siberian Times reported on Jul. 26. The worms, which were found in cores taken from 30 meters and 3.5 meters deep, are believed to be female and 41,700 and 32,000 years old, respectively. After collecting the samples, scientists slowly thawed out the worms, which eventually started eating and moving. Scientists from the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow believe the nematodes have some adaptive mechanisms that may be of scientific importance.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Just after midnight on Jul. 22, a couple in Palo Alto, California, were awakened in their bedroom by a 17-year-old burglar with a garment obscuring his face. Instead of demanding money or jewelry, though, the intruder asked for their Wi-Fi password. According to the Sacramento Bee, the homeowner forced the teen out of the home and called police, who tracked him down a block away and arrested him for felony residential burglary. Police later determined it wasn’t the teen’s first attempt at connectivity. Less than an hour earlier that night, a prowler had summoned a woman from her home to ask for access to her Wi-Fi network also. She told him to go away, and he rode off on a bicycle – which she realized the next day he had stolen from her backyard. She called police, who recovered the bike near where they had arrested the teen.
BRIGHT IDEA
Jeffrey Jacobs, 37, thought he had a great thing going. Last year, when a tree fell on his White Plains, New York, home, he told the owner of a tree service (and big hockey fan) that he was the owner of the NHL’s Boston Bruins, reported The Hour. Impressed, the tree service owner sent a crew in the midst of a storm, then billed the actual club owner, 78-year-old Jeremy Jacobs, $5,100 for the service. Police in nearby Wilton, Connecticut, heard about the deception when they received a call in May from security officials at a company chaired by the Bruins’ owner. The story sounded familiar: In November, Jacobs had been pulled over in Wilton, and he told officers he owned the Bruins in an effort to get out of the ticket. On Jul. 20, Jacobs was pulled over for using his phone while driving in Poughkeepsie, New York, sent back to Wilton, and charged with criminal impersonation.
JUST SAY NO
Brody Tyler Young, 25, was arrested in a Nashville, Tennessee, McDonald’s on Jul. 23 after spending “all day” locked in the women’s restroom, dancing naked, doing jumping jacks, and hitting the wall. According to WFFA TV, when officers managed to enter the restroom, they found Young locked in a stall, smelling of “chemical fumes, as if he had been huffing.” Young was taken into custody and charged with public intoxication and public indecency.
EWWWWW!
A weird in-air experience for passengers traveling from the Canary Islands in Spain to the Netherlands on May 29 ended tragically. The Transavia flight was forced to land in Faro, Portugal, after passengers began fainting and vomiting in reaction to the overpowering smell of another passenger, 58-year-old Russian rocker Andrey Suchilin. “It was like he hadn’t washed himself for several weeks,” Belgian passenger Piet van Haut said. CBS News reported that Suchilin had sought medical attention in Spain and was given antibiotics for an “ordinary beach infection.” Taken to a hospital in Portugal, his condition deteriorated, and he was diagnosed with tissue necrosis. Doctors induced a coma and performed several surgeries, but his wife reported on his Facebook page that he died on Jun. 25. The airline assured fellow passengers that “there has been no risk of infection.”
LUCKY!
Kyle McAleer, 20, a Chicago Cubs fan from Iowa, adopted a goofy “rally cap” idea from former Cubs player Starlin Castro a few years ago – a plastic bucket. But no one’s laughing now: As McAleer and his family watched a game from seats under Wrigley Field’s manual scoreboard on Jul. 24, a 6- to 8-inch metal pin fell out of the board and onto McAleer’s head, where he had only moments earlier secured the bucket. Although he suffered a cut requiring five staples, McAleer is crediting the bucket for saving his life: “It might have fractured my skull. It definitely could have been fatal. I am extremely lucky,” he told the Associated Press. Cubs spokesman Julian Green said the incident has been ruled an accident, not a structural issue, and the team has sent McAleer some swag, including a jersey.
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