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THE LATEST ISLAMIC STATE NEWS FROM MAILONLINE

kayumhosen@gmail.com (Kayum) — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 09:16:00 +0000

'Man in the Hat' Belgian terror suspect tells police how he 'hung out' in a park and walked past their officers while on the run after ISIS terror attacks he helped unleash killed 32 people

Mohamed Abrini told police he travelled to the UK after living in Raqqa

After he was caught on CCTV at Zaventum Airport he 'went to a cafe'

Extraordinary details were revealed in transcripts of his interrogation

Ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud asked him to get £3,000 from Birmingham

Abrini visited unnamed Manchester stadium before returning to Belgium

Also claimed Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam powerful player in terror cell

The 'Man in the Hat' Belgian terror suspect said he walked past police and soldiers and 'hung out in a park' for days in Brussels despite being the target of an international manhunt in the days after the triple bombing in March.

Mohamed Abrini was famously seen on CCTV in the moments before his two accomplices detonated suicide vests that left 15 people dead at Brussel's Zaventum Airport.

In astonishing statements given to investigators and revealed by Belgian broadcaster VTM, the terrorist said after he left the airport he met a woman at a cafe, and only wore a cap to hide his identity from law enforcement.

Mohamed Abrini (left, and allegedly right at Zaventum airport before the first bomb went off) told investigators he travelled to the UK and took photos of a football stadium in Manchester before the Paris attacks

'After the attacks in Brussels, I met a woman in a cafe, where I stayed for a while,' Abrini claimed, according to transcripts of his interrogations obtained by VTM.

'During the day I just hung out in a park in Vorst (a suburb of Brussels). You know, an international arrest warrant, being searched for and so on -- that doesn't mean anything. Every day I passed soldiers, police. Not with a covered face, but with a cap.'

Abrini also revealed he took photographs of a Manchester football stadium before the Paris terror attacks as he boasted of how easily ISIS moved through Europe.

Mohamed Abrini - who has admitted to being the so-called Man in the Hat pictured at Brussels airport before two suicide bombers blew themselves up - told investigators he travelled to the UK and took photos of the unnamed stadium after returning unchallenged from Raqqa.

But the alleged terrorist, who has also been implicated in November's attacks on Paris, claimed the pictures had nothing to do with the later attack on the Stade de France.

Abrini told investigator he took the photographs after being sent to England to pick up £3,000 for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who he had met in Raqqa during summer 2015, according to Belgian broadcaster VTM.

Abaaoud - killed in a police raid in St Denis after the Paris attacks - had risen to the position of 'emir' within ISIS and had more than 1,000 extremists under his command at the time, Abrini claimed.

The Paris mastermind apparently asked Abrini to stay and fight, but he declined, travelling out of Syria through Turkey and to London, from where he went to pick up the money for Abaaoud's little brother, Yasin.

Trump Says Voter Data Is Dumb, Builds Voter Data Operation

kayumhosen@gmail.com (Kayum) — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 17:24:00 +0000

Was his rejection of tech infrastructure just a long con?

Maybe Donald Trump’s campaign isn’t all that unique after all. Politico reports that after publicly spurning a data operation to target voters and raise cash –a move that more or less rejects modern campaign infrastructure– the presumptive Republican is building, yes, a data operation to target voters and raise cash. Quite the head fake.

According to Politico: “Trump’s willingness to turn for data assistance to companies that worked against him —despite earlier signals that his campaign intended to blacklist them— is perhaps the surest sign yet that the rookie candidate is moving to professionalize a campaign that had mostly ignored modern political tools like data.” He’s even hiring firms that worked for his former rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, as well as the #NeverTrump movement.

The article cites unnamed GOP strategists who say Trump “may have been intentionally head-faking his critics,” by downplaying the importance of campaign data, and that his campaign has a “a substantive infrastructure that’s not been seen or found out about or reported about quite purposefully.” This includes tying his operation into that managed by the RNC, which has put major resources into datasince 2012.

The RNC infrastructure part checks out. Well done, Mr. Trump. But while head-faking looks cool when you’re playing basketball during recess, it’s ridiculous in a campaign. Who is this supposed grade school head game even for? It’s the equivalent of a fourth-grader offering potato chips to a classmate during lunch period, then yelling “psych” and taking them back. But that kid had his own chips in his backpack, anyhow. He doesn’t care about the psych.

Any suggestion Trump’s original take on data was just a savvy act of political deception is ridiculous. If that were the case, it would have to be part of an incredibly long con, one which included an orchestrated organizational meltdown that saw the campaign’s previous data director, Matt Braynard, leave Trump’s roadshow back in April without even training a successor. Trump doesn’t seem capable of pulling off such an elaborate and pointless ruse.

Trump is, however, capable of cronyism. Politico mentions the recent hiring of Brad Parscale as the campaign’s digital director. Parscale’s web-design firm is not known for digital campaigns so much as building Trump’s websites, and being “close to the family.” Parscale’s firm never “received a single disclosed payment from a federal political committee before the Trump campaign.”

This news follows weeks in which many pointed out “Donald Trump does not have a campaign” or, in a similar vein, “there is no Donald Trump campaign.” Moreover, Trump’s lack of organization and his ignorant, bizarre, solipsistic responses to both the Orlando massacre and Brexit have even led to suggestions of self harm. Such an atrocious performance has made speculation about him quitting the campaign seem reasonable.

With all this in mind, leaked news of Trump’s growing data operation might be little more than damage control. This falls in line with other efforts being made by his campaign to appear more like an actualcampaign, including the firing of former campaign manager and journalist-grabber Corey Lewandowski, and the hiring of an actual communications director. Nevertheless, Trump, as America’s political staph infection, has proven resistant to previous signs he would run a traditional general election campaign. Whatever results he achieves from this newly enhanced data operation and campaign infrastructure will be informed by the trash puddle that preceded it.

Russian Ultras Celebrate Their Violence With New Euro Logo

kayumhosen@gmail.com (Kayum) — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 18:08:00 +0000

Disappointed with their team's performance, Russian ultras and hooligans online are voting for a new logo to represent their street violence

The Russian national team failed to qualify from the group stages of the Euro 2016 tournament after a disappointing 3-0 defeat to Wales, however, Russian ultras and hooligans prefer to remember this tournament as the one they won on the streets. While fans from several of the nations playing in the tournament engaged in violence, the Russian fans got the bulk of the headlines. A result they seem proud of since they are now voting for a new “more proper” logo for the Euro 2016 competition, one that commemorates the carnage and chaos they inflicted on the host country, France.

On Sunday, one of the largest Russian ultra groups on the country’s most popular social network, Vkontakte, launched a poll to choose a new logo for the Euro 2016 competition. The suggested logos revolve around the theme of the Russian hooligans’ various acts of violence. More than 1,500 voters have already participated in the poll, and the leading logo so far contains the caption “RUSSIAN HOOLIGANS – TOUR DE FRANCE” on the background of the French flag and two men fighting each other.

The new logos became a hit in fan stores stores on Vkontakte. A shirt with one of the new logos costs approximately $20 and a cup costs approximately $8.

“Crap on the field, but we won the streets, this is how the Euro 2016 completion was for Russia,” a Vkontakte group called “Football Hooligans” wrote after the disappointing game against Wales, attaching one of the new logos Russian ultras will remember this competition with.

Eric Black leaves Aston Villa with goalkeeping coach Tony Parks

kayumhosen@gmail.com (Kayum) — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 16:34:00 +0000

Eric Black has left Aston Villa

Former caretaker manager Eric Black has left Aston Villa, the club have announced.

The 52-year-old took over from Remi Garde in March but failed to win a game as Villa were relegated from the Premier League.

Roberto Di Matteo was appointed as Garde's full-time successor this month and brought in former West Brom manager Steve Clarke as his assistant. Goalkeeping coach Tony Parks has also left the club.
A brief Villa statement read: "Aston Villa Football Club would like to thank Eric Black for his efforts last season, especially in his role as interim manager, and wishes him well in the future now he has left the club.

"Tony Parks has left his role as goalkeeping coach. We would like to thank him and he also goes with our best wishes for the future."

Black lost six and drew one of his seven games in charge.

Why Facebook Is A Hotbed For Conspiracy Theories

kayumhosen@gmail.com (Kayum) — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 16:01:00 +0000

Facebook provides a scientifically perfect echo chamber for the wildest conspiracy theory, new study confirms

Facebook is a conspiracy theory hotbed. There’s The Conspiracy Archives, a community 200,000 strong united in their hatred of President Obama and rampant 9/11 skepticism. There’s CancerTruth, home of 250,000 anti-vaxxers and a host of alternative cancer “therapies.” Now, a forthcoming study explores conspiracy theories on Facebook and tries to explain the phenomenon scientifically—social media is an echo chamber where users come together to rally around their own opinions, rather than explore outside ideas or acquire new ones.

“Users show a tendency to seek out and receive information that strengthens their preferred narrative…and to reject information that undermines it,” the authors write. “Confirmation bias operates to create a kind of cognitive inoculation.”

Although we tend to think of conspiracy theorists as isolated loners with fringe opinions, most rely on networks of likeminded skeptics for support and reinforcement. One of the main advantages of joining a coven of conspiracy theorists is what psychologists call confirmation bias—the virtual guarantee that you’ll be able to participate in conversations and ideas that confirm your conspiratorial suspicions. For instance, GMO skeptics who believe that Monsanto is trying to give us cancer will find comfort in surrounding themselves with other GMO skeptics who constantly talk about the evils of Monsanto.

That’s where social media comes in. On Facebook, you can join a group of thousands of other conspiracy theorists who will chime in with the sort of wild ideas that match your own skepticism. At least, that’s the theory. To test whether social media indeed functions as an echo chamber that supports budding skeptics and reinforces their odd ideas, researchers surveyed several Facebook groups that peddled conspiracy theories.

And then they started messing with them.

Researchers joined one Italian group to share “troll posts,” intentionally satirical articles in the style of earnest conspiracy theory writing. For example, an article claiming chemtrails—what conspiracy theorists call the condensation trails left behind by airplanes flying in certain whether conditions—contain Viagra. And they joined another American anti-vaccine group to drop in scientifically accurate information about vaccine safety. Then they repeated this sort of behavior in every other group, either posting ridiculous conspiracies to conspiracy groups or attempting to debunk them using science. In both scenarios, it quickly became clear that Facebook groups served as ideal echo chambers, and that confirmation bias was hard at work on social media.

“Intentionally false claims are accepted and shared,” the authors write. “While debunking information is mainly ignored.” That is, even the scientists’ wildest attempts at trolling the group were absorbed into regular conversation. Sure, chemtrails could have Viagra in them. Why not? As for the debunks, virtually every attempt was met with loud, angry reactions as the group ganged up on the scientist, and the researchers found that users that engaged with debunking content actually became slightly more engaged with the conspiracy community. This tells us two things about Facebook—users jump on information that strengthens their narrative and reject any ideas that fly in the face of their general belief in grand conspiracies.

The findings reinforce prior studies that have shown that trying to debunk skeptics never works, and perhaps now we know why. Conspiracy theorists don’t join social networks to learn, they join them to hear comforting reinforcements of their own ideas. And if you disrupt their happy place with scientific facts, you’re not going to get very far. The study also suggests that social media, especially Facebook, has provided a particularly strong breeding ground for extreme ideas by creating a forum for loners to establish large communities that echo similar, strange beliefs.

“We provide empirical evidence that because they focus on their preferred narratives, users tend to assimilate only confirming claims and to ignore apparent refutations,” the authors write. “People are using Facebook to create enclaves of like-minded people, spreading information in strikingly similar ways.”

How Virtual Reality Creators Are Preventing Motion Sickness

kayumhosen@gmail.com (Kayum) — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 15:55:00 +0000

It's still a work in progress, but a handful of creative solutions aim to calm VR-induced queasiness

Virtual reality headsets aim to immerse users in an experience so real and so tangible they forget about the real world. But for those who experience VR motion sickness, nothing reminds them of reality more. Now, VR companies and game designers are working on a number of fresh approaches to settle stomachs, using technology and visual tricks to override the human perceptual system.

It’s unclear how many people experience motion sickness from VR headsets—anecdotally, developers say it’s not a large percentage of users—but it affects enough people that it can’t be brushed off as an anomaly. Evan Suma, a professor who studies the phenomenon at the University of Southern California, said in a recent talk that the challenge for game developers is that “people’s sensitivity to motion and simulator sickness varies wildly.” In spite of improvements to game technology in recent years, developers like the Facebook-owned Oculus, Sony, and HTC are focusing heavily these days on making sure users feel correctly oriented.

Simulator sickness is not that different than seasickness, in that it involves discrepancies in the vestibular system of fluid-filled canals inside the inner ear, compared with what your brain can see. In other words, eyes see one thing, but your ears know better. At Live Science, they explain that the system normally works by “integrating sight and sensations from the muscles and joints to tell the brain where the body is in space.” But in a simulator situation, particularly one where the technology creates lags between the physical experience and the visuals, it can really mess you up: “A virtual-reality environment hammers a wedge between these systems,” they write.

Oculus, creator of the pioneering Rift headset, is working to address the issue by minimizing the lag that occurs when a game processes a player’s head movement. Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey said in a talk at the Game Developers Conference that limiting movement helps because “you have something for your brain to fixate on.” The company also switched out LCD screens in Rift to OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens, because the latter is less sluggish.

While Samsung and HTC are also at work on boosting the frame rate to clear up that nausea-inducing mismatch, game developers are coming up with a variety of solutions to solve the problem, or at least minimize it. CCP Games, who are developing the space combat game “EVE: Valkyrie,” told Phys.org that it created a virtual cockpit for the game to make the players feel more grounded as they move through space.

Researchers at Purdue found a novel approach to lowering the nausea rate by adding a nose to the lower center of the screen for the VR user’s avatar. The virtual schnoz reduced simulator sickness by 13.5 percent.

But a new Mayo Clinic development may solve the problem by tricking the system into uniformity. In March, the clinic announced that it had licensed a patented technology called GVS—galvanic vestibular stimulation—to a Los Angeles entertainment company called vMocion for use in the game and entertainment industry. Developed over 10 years by the Mayo Clinic and the Department of Defense for flight simulators, the software, in concert with sensors that touch users behind the ear, the nape of the neck, and the forehead, synchronizes the vestibular system with the visual system within one-tenth of a second, “so you can actually feel the motion you are viewing, in real time.” It claims to eliminate virtual reality sickness in the majority of the population.

According to Business Insider, the virtual reality market is expected to gain significant traction in 2016 and take in up to $895 million in revenue. However, the Wall Street Journal reporters that fewer than one percent of PC users have the capacity to run the technology. On top of the cost of VR headsets—the Oculus Rift headset costs $600, while HTC’s is $800—the cost of a PC that can power them is around $1,000. Therefore, it seems logical that the relatively small number of current VR users makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of virtual motion sickness.

In the meantime, users have tried various other methods to mitigate the queasiness associated with VR—suggestions include drinking alcohol before using a headset, limiting game play, and taking breaks to help alleviate or prevent the nausea. But as the technology becomes more accessible, people are bound to get more creative until a definitive fix arrives.

Analytics Are The New Olympic Game Changer

kayumhosen@gmail.com (Kayum) — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 15:41:00 +0000

Olympic teams turn up the analytics before Rio, but who can afford to do so remains a pivotal factor

Everyone from German sailors and British rowers to American kayakers and Brazilian canoeists are all turning to analytics to guide their training. Every wind gust, water current, and oar stroke will be counted. Nike Oregon Track Club Elite, which trains Olympic-caliber runners, has even turned to IBM’s Watson to pore through reams of training literature and performance data to guide workouts.

Such research and investments come with a cost, of course, and therein lies a conundrum for national governing bodies. Not only are these advanced analytics in use to aid the athletes, but they are also being used to allocate funding based on rosier projections of success. Such is the chicken-and-the-egg dilemma: oarsmen will row faster and be more likely to win if GPS devices are monitoring the pace and pull of each stroke to make sure they are properly in sync. But maybe without that extra training aid, they don’t appear like a sufficiently strong medal contender to qualify for the necessary grant money to purchase such wearable tech?

Both the United States Olympic Committee and Canada’s Own the Podium have both been transparent about divvying up funding based on the influence of analytics. As the Sports Business Journal reported, the USOC wants to act more like a “venture capital investor” in moving away from one-size-fits-all donations toward “a philosophy that rewards sound business practices and efficiency in turning raw athletes into marketable gold.”

And does a gold medal in race walking or taekwondo have as much value as one in men’s basketball or women’s gymnastics? Some sports require large teams while others are individual; the popularity of some attract more lifelong trainees whereas niche sports might include latecomers who don’t need as much financial support. As Rich Bender, executive director of USA Wrestling and chair of the NGB Council, told the publication, “Some medals might cost more than other medals.”

The National Post in Canada noted that the analytics team has already scoured through two million data points of swimming results to project trends and identify which athletes stand the best chance of reaching medal-worthy times by the next Olympics. The newspaper wrote:

Historic start times, lap times and intervals can also be mined for clues. At what age have the best swimmers begun their climb to the podium? What was their rate of improvement as they climbed toward their physical peak as athletes?

The hope is that, by charting athletes on that range, coaches and executives will be able to target resources for athletes closest to the championship range.

In brief, all sports have been reduced to a series of data points in pursuit of Olympic gold.