The Silver Ink

Thursday, February 20, 2020
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Bismarck Police Searching for Man Who Tried to Run Over an Officer

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Speeding vehicle

Bismarck police is currently looking for a suspect who tried to driver over an officer.

North Dakota authorities are currently on the lookout for the individual responsible for a murder attempt on Thursday morning. According to the official police reports, the man tried to drive over a police officer while trying to flee from a house searched by probation agents.

Bismarck Police Officer Nearly Killed While on Duty

Police Sergeant Mark Buschena told the reporters that on Thursday morning, a Bismarck police officer was nearly killed in the line of duty while attempting to subdue an individual fleeing his home. According to Buschena, the police officers were assisting members with probation or assisting parole to search for a suspect.

Upon entering the house, an individual, later identified as 22-year-old Ulises Villalobos, was seen escaping the house and boarding a vehicle. The Bismarck police officer went ahead in order to prevent the individual from escaping, but he did not comply.

According to the officer involved in the incident, Villalobos allegedly steered the car in his direction with the intent of running him over. Fortunately, the officer managed to evade the speeding vehicle in time. Before leaving his sight, the Bismarck law enforcement agent discharged his service handgun several times in Villalobos’ vehicle.

At this time, it’s uncertain whether the suspect was wounded or not after trying to run over the officer. The case is under scrutiny as there are too many uncertainties. For example, at this point, we don’t know for sure if the parole or assisting parole officers were there for Villalobos or for another individual who shared the same house.

After the incident involving the Bismarck police officer, the authorities decided that it’s in the community’s best interest to issue a shelter-in-place alert for all schools. The alert lasted for one and a half hours. Villalobos has yet to be apprehended.

Image source: Pixabay

Realistic Male Sex Robots Soon to Hit the Market

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Male sex robots

Realrobotics announced that a new generation of male sex robots is in the making.

Whereas our grandparents thought that the future might bring flying cars and holiday trips to Mars, it would seem that science had something else in mind – ultrarealistic male sex dolls all dolled up and ready for action.

High-End Male Sex Robots Outfitted with Bionic Penises

What’s a Friday night at home with a tall glass of wine and, of course, your own android pleasure master? Well, it would seem that the whole ultra-realistic sex dolls became so popular that the creators decide that it’s high time to expand the market.

Matt McMullen, the CEO of Realbotix, the company which produced the ultra-realistic female sexual companion en masse, recently declared that a new prototype of pleasure doll is in the making, one that would appeal to the female public.

Starting this year, the company will be producing a male robotic sex doll counterpart and, according to McMullen, it will come will come with all the bells and whistles. Performance-wise, McMullen said that the Mr. Pleasure Doll would be outfitted with a cutting-edge bionic penis, which, of course, will be available in all shapes and sizes.

What’s even more delightful is that this electronic Casanova can operate on both batteries and electrical outlet, meaning that if you run out of juice, all you’ll need to do in order to continue your ongoing electrifying hanky-panky session is to plug him in.

Apart from the bionic penis, the male sex dolls will also be able to interact and talk with their human masters. Even though this might sound a bit farfetched, McMullen declared that the company had many female customers interested in spending a night to remember with a male sex robot.

Conclusion

No product timeline has been released so far, but if all goes according to plan, we should all be seeing the male sex robots on the market later this year. Be it enticing, the perspective of owning such a gadget could make you dig deep into your pocket as the robots retail price has been estimated at approximately $15,000.

Image source: Maxpixel

Germany Warns of Looming Financial Crisis

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German finance minister Wolfgang SchäubleGermany’s finance chief Wolfgang Schäuble thinks that a larger amount of liquidity and higher global debt can only herald a new financial crisis in the coming years. He added that the world could face “new bubbles” because of the cash central banks have invested in their countries’ economies.

Schäuble is also concerned about instability affecting the European Union mainly because the problem of non-performing loans has not been properly addressed by banks since the last financial crisis.

Schäuble, a longtime Europhile, criticized England’s Brexit vote warning of “demagogues” who claim that we’re paying too much to be part of the E.U. He believes those people helped even more with the European integration.

Germany is facing a rise in the number of rightwing politicians and, as Schäuble will leave his government position to join the German parliament as Speaker, 92 new members of the parliament with right wing views are expected to occupy their seats in the German Bundestag.

World’s Economists Worried about a New Financial Crisis

The outgoing finance minister is expected to assure his European counterparts on Monday that the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which won 12.6 percent of votes for the German parliament last month, will not affect Germany’s commitment to a liberal democracy.

“There’s no chance Germany will ever relapse into nationalism,”

he told the Financial Times in a recent interview.

He explained that AfD’s backers are just angry at the injustices seen in today’s politics and how the global changes affected them, but we should be more worried about new bubbles in the global economy. Schäuble, who is one of the lead architects of the Greek austerity plan, noted that the world’s experts warn about increased liquidity and public and private debts. He added that he is concerned about these two matters too.
Image Source: Flickr

Hipster Vending Machines Could Put Bodegas Out of Business

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Corner store in New YorkA group of former Google employees named their latest start-up “Bodega” after the name of the very business they want to destroy. Their plan, however, drew a lot of criticism especially in New York where bodegas are commonplace.

Paul McDonald and Ashwath Rajan say their new concept offers nonperishable goods in an “unmanned pantry box”. While the term may seem so fancy that only a hipster could use, it refers to the good ol’ fashioned vending machine.

Customers will be able to buy the products via a special app. The vending machines will be placed in key locations so the system can beat any two-hour delivery. The company’s owners claim that their system is better even than the half-hour delivery.

McDonald thinks his startup could soon make bodegas obsolete.

Twitterers Are Enraged

The idea in itself sparked a tweetstorm, with people identifying several major issues with the startup. First, the term used to describe the concept – “unmanned pantry box” – is meant to lure in investors for a vending machines-based business. This is one of those ideas that look superb on paper but fail in the implementation phase.

Second, it is hard to believe that a high-tech glass case can replace bodegas. Twitter users argued that bodegas also sell fresh egg sandwiches and allow people communicate, two things an unmanned box would never do.

What’s more, the startup’s logo is a cat which is a reference to the many cats that populate bodegas. But New Yorkers love cats and don’t want them put out of work:

And last but not least, the ‘Bodega’ could leave without food on the table millions of recent immigrants and their families, which is to say the least heartless.
Image Source: Flickr

Google and Walmart Start Collaborating in their Fight Against Amazon

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Walmart store

Walmart and Google want to take over Amazon through a new partnership

Google and Walmart decided to take their rivalry with Amazon to the next step, so they decided to start a partnership which they hope will help them beat their adversary. Near the end of September, Walmart will start selling many of its products on Google Express. Also, Google Home Assistants will support voice shopping from Walmart.

Google and Walmart build a new online shopping alternative

This move will be welcome by thousands of customers, as they have one more alternative to go shopping from the comfort of their couch. If things weren’t already good enough, Google made another exciting announcement. The Google Express fee is gone.

Google used to charge Google Express users a $95 membership fee. Now, the fee is gone. This means they can order anything and get it delivered to their homes for free, as long as they reach the minimum order set by the store.

Intense efforts to overcome Amazon

Google and Walmart picked the perfect time to start a partnership. Amazon currently owns the supremacy of the e-commerce market, with about 43 percent of all online sales which take place in the US. This is given mainly by the Amazon Prime membership and, more recently, by its Whole Foods purchase.

Walmart is the biggest grocery store in the US, but its business is greatly threatened by Amazon. At the same time, Amazon is a threat for Google as well. The company’s inventory became so big that people started using it as a shopping search engine. Besides, Amazon started mingling with online ads as well, which is a bit hit for Google.

Lately, both Google Express and Walmart have started growing, and are making progresses in their fight to take over Amazon. This new partnership might really be successful, by offering people another shopping alternative. Google Express has already been collaborating with Costco and Target, while the chain store greatly increased its inventory and purchased other online shopping platforms.
Image Source: Flickr

Google Dismisses Engineer After Publishing Controversial Memo on Gender Equality at the Workplace

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Google headquarters in California

James Damore was fired after writing a controversial memo about women in tech

A Google engineer has recently written a memo which sparked a lot of controversy, after claiming biology is what keeps women from enjoying as much success as men in the industry of tech. The company couldn’t stay indifferent to such claims, and a recent report confirmed the dismissal of the engineer.

The engineer who wrote the memo was James Damore, and he has already confirmed he had been dismissed via an email. As the reason why Google made this decision, Damore said the company accused him of propagating gender stereotypes.

Google’s CEO also wrote a memo for the other Google employees

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, declared Damore violated important rules of the company after writing the document and then making it public. Therefore, the engineer needed to be dismissed. In this sense, Pichai also wrote a memo addressed to all employees.

In this memo, titled “Our words matter”, Pichai sends some warnings to all employees not to violate the company’s rules or suffer the consequences. Also, making assumptions based on biological reasons directed towards other members of the company is offensive, and people should refrain from doing so.

Damore made several outrageous claims in his memo, but still wants to take legal action against Google

In fact, what Damore’s memo did was to criticize Google for promoting diversity among workers. Initially, it was posted on an internal network, but it quickly went viral. As expected, it gave rise to a lot of controversy among other Google employees.

The document is called “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”, and claims women are not placed on a lower rank in the tech industry because of discrimination, but because of biology. According to him, biology dictates certain preferences and differences which make women different, including at the workplace.

Damore believes he was illegally dismissed, and is thinking of pursuing legal action against Google. Before writing the document, he issued a complaint for the National Labor Relations Board, where he said the company shamed him to silence his dissatisfaction.
Image Source: Pixabay

Evidence Pointing To A Ghost Species Of Humans Detected In Saliva

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human family tree and ghost species

While testing saliva, scientists discovered traces of a possible ghost species of humans.

A new study from a team of University of Buffalo researchers seems to indicate the presence of an as yet unidentified, so-called ghost species of early humans. The scientists traced their possible presence while studying the MUC7 protein.

This is mucin protein which can be found in saliva and which gives it its density and consistency. Previous research suggested that MUC7 may have offered an evolutionary advantage. In early humans, this could have helped the body get rid of bacteria which cause diseases as the protein can bind itself to microbes.

Ghost Species of Humans to Indicate a More Complex History

The team of researchers analyzed the MUC7 gene in samples from 2,500 modern human genomes. In doing so, they discovered a drastically different version of this protein. This was detected in the genomes of people originating from Sub-Saharan Africa.

This version was so distinctive that the study team concluded that it must have been the result of interbreeding with another species of humans some 150,000 years ago.

“This unknown human relative could be a species that has been discovered, such as a subspecies of Homo erectus, or an undiscovered hominin. We call it a ghost species because we don’t have the fossils,” states Omer Gokcumen.

He is an assistant of biological sciences at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

Reports show that this is not the only example of interbreeding between ancient hominins of different species. However, it does seem to indicate that interbreeding may have been more common than initially believed.

Gokcumen states that interbreeding in between early hominin species may have been “the norm”, and not an ‘exception’.

It is almost among the first times that a genetic trait from such an event was discovered in the modern human genome.

Reports also point out that the human evolution may be even more complex than initially believed as more factors may have been at play and more species involved.

Research results are available in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Image Source: Flickr

White Bread May Not Be as Bad as Science Told Us

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Israeli researchers found that white bread does not have such a low nutritional value as people may think. A group of researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science compared white, prepackaged bread with its healthier counterpart, the whole-wheat bread.

The results were outstanding. Scientists found that when it comes to some people, there are very few differences between the two types of bread’s nutritional value, cholesterol intake, and glucose levels.

Since 1974, sales of white bread plunged 75 percent, with its healthier alternatives seeing an 85-percent sale increase over the same time period. This is mainly due to the fact that the media and research papers have demonized the white bread for causing a plethora of health issues from higher risk of diabetes to lower IQ and cancer.

The recent study which appeared in the journal Cell Metabolism revealed that consuming either white bread or brown bread for a month has different outcomes depending on the people that consume the bread.

There Were No Measurable Negative Health Outcomes of White Bread

Participants were asked to eat white bread or whole-wheat bread for a week with a two week pause after which they were asked to swap the types of bread for another week. Volunteers ate bread for 10% of their daily calorie intake.

The research team found that people reacted very differently to the foods because the mix of the microbes in their gut was very different. Lead author Dr Eran Elinav underlined that you cannot make blanket statements about a type of food, like white bread being bad for all people, because two people can react differently to the same type of food.

Nevertheless, the new study has its limitations due to its small sample size and short tracking period. Prof. Susan Jebb from the University of Oxford acknowledged the limitations but underscored that authors found no measurable negative effect on health for white bread.
Image Source: Pixabay

Girl Bitten by Sea Lion Receives Treatment for Seal Finger

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Sea lion

The girl from British Columbia who got bitten by a sea lion received seal finger treatment

A video which went viral this week showed a sea lion grabbing a little girl by the dress and pulling her into water near a dock in British Columbia, Canada. Fortunately, the grandfather of the six-year-old was quick enough to save the girl, but she still received a superficial wound. At the hospital, she received antibiotics, as she was at risk of developing a rare condition called seal finger.

What is seal finger?

A person might develop seal finger if bacteria from a sea creature’s mouth gets into their skin through cuts and bites. Initially, the infection is not severe but, if it is left untreated, it might lead to the loss of a finger. However, this condition might affect other parts of the body as well. If the bite occurs on a leg, the limb might need amputation.

The treatment also has a name, spekk finger, but it might be tricky. The bacteria which cause the infection lack a cell wall, which makes them harder to treat. Antibiotics like penicillin usually target this wall when attacking bacteria or viruses, so doctors need to be careful with the type of treatment they choose.

How to treat the infection

Fortunately, there are other kinds of antibiotics which might work better against seal finger infection. Tetracycline, for instance, does not attack the cell walls of bacteria, and this makes it suitable to treat this condition.

Seal finger was very common along fishermen or seal hunters, as they often got bitten by the animals. However, before the discovery of antibiotics, they often lost finger or limbs to this condition. The infection was painful and debilitating, and it is tricky to treat even nowadays.

The infection is sometimes resistant to certain kinds of antibiotics. If a person working at a sea park receives a sea lion bite, the vet needs to certify to what medication the infection is vulnerable before going to the hospital. It is not clear if the little girl contracted seal finger, but she received treatment as a preventive measure.
Image Source: Pixabay

Instagram and Snapchat at War Over Selfie Filters

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Instagram app

Instagram borrowed another feature from Snapchat, namely selfie filters

Since Facebook purchased it, Instagram faced a significant increase in its popularity, due to the many changes it suffered. However, Instagram started to look more and more like Snapchat. After borrowing many features from its competitor, the social media platform announced it is adding selfie filters.

Not the first time when Instagram borrows features from Snapchat

This concept was launched by Snapchat, and contributed to the emerging popularity of the service. However, this is not their first option “stolen” by Instagram. A few months ago, the latter added the Stories feature. This was already present on Snapchat, and worked as the main attraction of the social media app.

Instagram announced their new feature in a blog post. At the moment, it doesn’t benefit from many selfie filters. Those available include flower crowns, bunny ears, fake glasses, and koala ears. Instagram said the feature is not stolen from another app, but the Snapchat inspiration is visible.

The user feedback is not really positive

However, users are not so happy with these filters. They said Instagram forgot that selfie filters were supposed to make you look better, and they preferred those available on Snapchat. Moreover, most of them are complaining of Instagram turning into a new Snapchat.

For those who haven’t tried the new Instagram feature yet, the setting is easy to find. Just open the app’s camera and select the option at the bottom of the screen. There, you can find all the filters available at the moment. If you are already used to the features on Snapchat, you will find it easy to work with the Instagram ones.

It might not be a good sign that users are complaining of Instagram becoming more of a copycat of Snapchat. At the moment, the latter did not make release any official statements regarding the increasing number of apps which borrow their features.
Image Source: Pexels

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