Facebook buys facial recognition startup Face.com

Facebook has purchased facial recognition startup Face.com, the companies announced Monday morning.

“People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat. “This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but previous reports pegged the acquisition price at between $80 million and $100 million. The deal, which is still pending, is expected to close within the coming weeks.

Founded in 2007, Face.com makes technology that can identify people in photos and even guess a person’s age. The company makes mobile-friendly products such as a developer API and an iOS camera application called KLIK that uses facial recognition technology to help users automatically tag Facebook friends in photos. KLIK, according to third-party Facebook app tracking service AppData, has 40,000 monthly active Facebook users.

Face.com’s mobile acumen appears to be the key selling point here. The startup’s alignment with Facebook on mobile strategy was even discussed by CEO Gil Hirsch in a blog post on the news.

“We love building products, and like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph,” Hirsch said. “By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers — that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do.”

Following a marred public debut, Facebook has wasted no time in filling mobile holes with calculated hires and purchases. The social network purchased mobile gifting app Karma, recruited the design experts behind Bolt Peters and the iOS dev know-it-alls at Pieceable Software, and also may be actively looking at buying Opera for its mobile browser.

Source: Reuters

Competitive devaluation now may engulf Denmark

he head of Denmark's central bank has warned that the Danish krone is coming under intense pressure from investors seeking a haven in Europe and betting that the currency's peg to the euro could be cracked by the crisis.

Nils Bernstein, the governor of the Danish central bank, said that the upward pressure on the krone was the most severe he had seen in his seven years as governor, and warned that negative interest rates could be on the cards if the problem continues.

"You can see from our history that we like to keep the krone within a narrow band, half a percentage point or less," said governor Nils Bernstein. "I think we have to tools to continue to do that, and if it is necessary to move into negative interest rate territory, we will be ready for that."

Investors are pouring money into Danish bonds attracted by the country's narrow budget deficit and current account surplus, leaving it fighting to maintain the very narrow peg with the euro it has held since 1999. Rates were cut twice in the past month to a record low of 0.45 per cent.

Making life harder for the central bank, some hedge funds are taking long positions in the Danish krone as insurance against a collapse of the single currency, according to currency trading desks at investment banks.

"Just because a peg has been in place a long time doesn't mean it cannot break. It just means that it's cheaper," said Stuart Fiertz, president of Cheyne Capital, a London-based hedge fund. "If the euro cracks, the pressure to cut the peg will be overwhelming."

Denmark is in a similar predicament to Switzerland, which has been spending tens of billions of Swiss francs to buy euros and defend its own floor against the single currency after a resurgence in eurozone turmoil led to a spike in demand.

The krone is seen by some investors as a less risky bet than the franc because the Danish central bank has set a peg against a krone, rather than simply a floor, and so there is little danger of it weakening in the event of a recovery in the eurozone.

The Danish central bank spent more defending the krone last month than any time since the start of 2010 and it has seen reserves more than double from about Dkr200 billion ($34 billion) in 2008 to Dkr500 billion today.

The currency market in Danish krone is still relatively small, accounting for just 0.6 per cent of average daily turnover. That compares with 6.4 per cent turnover for the Swiss franc and 39 per cent for the euro.

Other potential currency havens in Europe have been struggling amid the escalation in the eurozone crisis. The pound has fallen in value in recent weeks as investors have priced in the possibility of further monetary easing in the UK.

Source: GATA

Apple’s iOS 6 includes ‘Government Alerts’

Apple’s eagerly awaited iOS 6 update for iPhones and iPads will include controversial ‘government alerts’ that some fear are part of the federal government’s takeover of communications networks. apple iPhone

“In compliance with the National Alerting Program, the WEA will be coming to Apple devices that will run on the new mobile OS once it arrives this fall. The iOS 6-compatible devices include iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 4G, iPad 2 and the new iPad. This means that users with older iPhone will be able to receive WEA messages once they upgrade their handset to the new mobile software,” reports AMOG.

The federal government is keen to implement a centralized system of control over all communications, with last year’s announcement that all new cell phones will be required to comply with the PLAN program (Personal Localized Alerting Network), which will broadcast emergency alert messages directly to Americans’ cell phones.

Although users can opt out of receiving the alerts from FEMA and the Amber Alert program, messages direct from the president will be mandatory.

“Consumers will have the option….to block all PLAN alerts except for those issued by the president,”the L.A. Times reported last year.

The thought of cellphone users being forcibly targeted with text messages from Barack Obama during the election season has obviously stoked concerns that the emergency alert system could be exploited for political reasons, just as former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge claimed he was pressured to artificially raise the national terror alert by the Bush administration to help Bush win re-election.

The system, which went live in the New York and Washington Metro areas last December, caused panic in New Jersey after Verizon customers received text messages warning them that a “civil emergency” was in progress and to “take shelter,” prompting alarmed citizens to flood 911 lines with anxious calls.

Verizon Wireless later apologized to its customers for causing alarm, admitting that the confusion was caused by a “test” of the PLAN emergency alert system.

As we have documented, the PLAN program is part of the wider move on behalf of Homeland Security to create a public environment dominated by a pervasive sense of fear and paranoia, a context in which the safe exercise of constitutional freedoms doesn’t normally thrive.

The emergency alerts are eventually designed to be incorporated into the Intellistreets system which turns all street lights into surveillance hubs that can record conversations and broadcast messages.

For the first time ever the feds will have a direct line to the millions of Americans who use cell phones and be able to use the messages to transmit whatever they like, whether that be genuine safety information, fearmongering about spurious terror alerts, or political propaganda.

Judging by the response in New Jersey, the overwhelming majority of Americans will simply react by panicking, which in a real emergency situation could only make the crisis worse.

Source: Hang the Bankers

Grecian Burn - Credit Default Swaps

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Vaccinated children have up to 500% more disease than unvaccinated children

Suspicions have been confirmed for those wary of vaccinating their children. A recent large study corroborates other independent study surveys comparing unvaccinated children to vaccinated children.

They all show that vaccinated children have two to five times more childhood diseases, illnesses, and allergies than unvaccinated children.

Originally, the recent still ongoing study compared unvaccinated children against a German national health survey conducted by KiGGS involving over 17,000 children up to age 19. This currently ongoing survey study was initiated by classical homoeopathist Andreas Bachmair.

However, the American connection for Bachmair's study can be found at VaccineInjury.info website that has added a link for parents of vaccinated children to participate in the study. So far this ongoing survey has well over 11,000 respondents, mostly from the U.S.A. Other studies have surveyed smaller groups of families.

Nevertheless, the results were similar. Of course, none of these studies were picked up by the MSM (mainstream media). None were funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO) or any national or international health agency or medical profession group (http://healthimpactnews.com).

They don't dare compare the health of unvaccinated children to vaccinated children objectively and risk disrupting their vaxmania (vaccination mania). The focus for all the studies was mostly on childhood illnesses occurring as the children matured.

Dramatic, debilitating, or lethal vaccine injuries were not the focus since so few, five percent or less, actually get reported to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Injury Reporting System) in the U.S.A. for various reasons including:

* It's a complicated system that takes time from a doctor's practice.
* Most parents don't know about it.
* Only adverse reactions that occur immediately after vaccinations are considered.
* Since VAERS is voluntary, most doctors don't want to incriminate themselves with vaccination injuries and maintain their denial of vaccine dangers.

Consequently, even the most terrible adverse reactions are minimally acknowledged, while long term negative health issues resulting from vaccines are not even considered relevant.

Different surveys summarized

The childhood diseases usually posed to respondents by the independent surveys involved asthma, reoccurring tonsillitis, chronic bronchitis, sinusitis, allergies, eczema, ear infections, diabetes, sleep disorders, bedwetting, dyslexia, migraines, hyperactivity, ADD, epilepsy, depression, and slower development of speech or motor skills.

In 1992, a New Zealand group called the Immunization Awareness Society (IAS) surveyed 245 families with a total of 495 children. The children were divided with 226 vaccinated and 269 unvaccinated. Eighty-one families had both vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

The differences were dramatic, with unvaccinated children showing far less incidence of common childhood ailments than vaccinated children (http://www.vaccineinjury.info/images/stories/ias1992study.pdf).

From a different survey in the South Island New Zealand city of Christchurch, among children born during or after 1977, none of the unvaccinated children had asthma events where nearly 25% of the vaccinated children were treated for asthma by age 10 (http://www.vaccineinjury.info/images/stories/ias1992study.pdf).

Many of the comments from non-vaccinating parents to VaccineInjury.info for the ongoing Bachmair survey mentioned vaccination danger and developing true immunity naturally were concerns (http://www.vaccineinjury.info).

A PhD immunologist who wrote the book Vaccine Illusion, Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych, has gone against the dogma of her medical training and background. She asserts that true immunity to any disease is not conferred by vaccines. Exposure to the disease, whether contracted or not, does (http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org).

Perhaps the most informal grass-roots survey going on now is by Tim O'Shea, DC, author of Vaccination is Not Immunization. He simply has non-vaccinating parents email him with comparisons of their children's health to friends and families they know with vaccinated children. That and more is available on his site (http://www.thedoctorwithin.com).

Source: Natural News

King Corn – The Corn We Eat

This is a short documentary about HFCS or High Fructose Corn Syrup. Very informative and interesting, definitely try to avoid this stuff.

Google reports 'alarming' rise in censorship by governments

Search engine company has said there has been a troubling increase in requests to remove political content from the internet

There has been an alarming rise in the number of times governments attempted to censor the internet in last six months, according to a report from Google.

Since the search engine last published its bi-annual transparency report, it said it had seen a troubling increase in requests to remove political content. Many of these requests came from western democracies not typically associated with censorship.

It said Spanish regulators asked Google to remove 270 links to blogs and newspaper articles critical of public figures. It did not comply. In Poland, it was asked to remove an article critical of the Polish agency for enterprise development and eight other results that linked to the article. Again, the company did not comply.

Google was asked by Canadian officials to remove a YouTube video of a citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. It refused.

Thai authorities asked Google to remove 149 YouTube videos for allegedly insulting the monarchy, a violation of Thailand's lèse-majesté law. The company complied with 70% of the requests.

Pakistan asked Google to remove six YouTube videos that satirised its army and senior politicians. Google refused.

UK police asked the company to remove five YouTube accounts for allegedly promoting terrorism. Google agreed. In the US most requests related to alleged harassment of people on YouTube. The authorities asked for 187 pieces to be removed. Google complied with 42% of them.

In a blog post, Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, wrote: "Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not.

"This is the fifth data set that we've released. Just like every other time, we've been asked to take down political speech. It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect – western democracies not typically associated with censorship."

Over the six months covered by the latest report, Google complied with an average of 65% of court orders, as opposed to 47% of more informal requests.

Last month Google announced it was receiving more than one million requests a month from copyright owners seeking to pull their content from the company's search results.

Fred von Lohmann, Google's senior copyright counsel, said copyright infringement was the main reason Google had removed links from search terms.

He said the company had received a total of 3.3m requests for removals on copyright grounds last year, and was on course to quadruple that number this year. The company complied with 97% of requests.

Source: The Guardian