2017 was Trumpism's last gasp

As the year comes to a close, the job of making sense of it begins.

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Humanity inherits the galaxy in The Expanse’s season 3 finale

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The Expanse ’s third season ended on June 27th on the Syfy Channel. The final episode, “Abaddon’s Gate,” is the last installment of the show shot for Syfy. Over the course of The Expanse ’s latest arc, an expedition involving every faction of Earth’s solar system discovered the true nature of the protomolecule that’s been the series’ major mystery, and confirmed the dangers and potential gains it represents for humanity. Spoilers ahead for the series, as well as some of the James S.A. Corey novels the show adapts. Shortly after Syfy announced that it wasn’t renewing the series for another season, the series underwent a soft reboot with the episode ‘Delta-V” , closing out the threat of all-out war depicted in the novel Caliban’s War, and pivoting to the next arc, adapting the third novel in the series, Abaddon’s Gate. That book followed Captain James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante as they accompanied an expedition made up of various spaceships from around the solar system to...
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The EU plans to test an AI lie detector at border points

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Trials for AI lie detection at border patrol checkpoints are set to begin soon in the EU. The program, called iBorderCtrl , will run for six months at four border crossing points in Hungary, Latvia and Greece with countries outside the European Union, as reported by Gizmodo . iBorderCtrl is an EU-funded project that uses AI in order to facilitate faster border crossings for travelers. The system has users fill out an online application and upload some documents, like their passport, before a virtual border guard takes over to ask questions. According to New Scientist , some of these questions include “What’s in your suitcase?” and “If you open the suitcase and show me what is inside, will it confirm that your answers were true?” Travelers will answer while facing a webcam and the system will analyze and rate dozens of micro-gestures. If iBorderCtrl determines the traveler is telling the truth, then they receive a QR code that will let them pass the border. If there is suspicion the ...
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LG rumored to unveil 5G-enabled V50 alongside G8 next month

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Next month’s Mobile World Congress is shaping up to be an interesting one for LG, with the South Korean company now rumored to be unveiling two handsets at the show: the LG G8 ThinQ and a second, higher-end, 5G-enabled device, possibly the LG V50 ThinQ 5G. This latter rumor comes from Korea’s ETNews , which says the LG V50 will feature a 6-inch display, 7nm Snapdragon 855 chipset with vapor-chamber cooling, and 4,000mAh battery. More importantly, says ETNews , it’ll have a 5G modem. If the V50 does land at MWC, it’ll be arriving sooner than expected. The V40 and its five cameras only launched last fall , and we weren’t expecting an update to LG’s highest-end line until the same time this year. But, speeding up the launch cadence would make sense if LG wants to keep up with Samsung, which has promised a 5G device in the first half of 2019 . And LG said it will push “5G products and smartphones” this year in its latest earnings report . A quick turnaround, though, could end up disap...
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