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Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Thursday 20 March 2014

Obamacare Provider Knows When Clients Visit the Bathroom - "Telemedicine” sensors to “revolutionize” medicine -

Obamacare Provider Knows When Clients Visit the Bathroom - "Telemedicine” sensors to “revolutionize” medicine - 

FOX 13 News

Obamacare provider Humana knows when its clients visit the bathroom, sleep, walk, open the medicine cabinet or use the fridge under a new “telemedicine” program that allows constant monitoring of individuals in their home.

Ernestine Marshall’s apartment is fitted with several sensors that are monitored in real time by Humana employees in Pinellas County. If anything untoward is detected, Marshall receives a phone call. She also gets a monthly visit from a field agent.
“The diabetic and MS patient’s home is outfitted by insurer, Humana, with sensors that keep track of when she opens her medicine cabinet, her fridge, sleeps, walks, and uses the bathroom,” reports Fox 13.
“I didn’t know how closely they were watching me until I received a phone call, and I was like, whoa! Ok!” said Marshall, who thinks it is “wonderful” that she is constantly being monitored.
Experts think the new program will “revolutionize medicine,” greatly reducing the need to visit doctors and cutting costs.
The report failed to address privacy concerns about an individual having their every behavior monitored in real time, nor did it raise the concern of whether or not similar measures could be implemented to a lesser extent under Obamacare.
Although such pervasive monitoring is not part of the Affordable Care Act, critics have expressed concerns that Obamacare could become increasingly invasive as its rollout expands.
The Federal Data Services Hub, which forms the core of Obamacare, will interact with numerous different government agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Defense, the Peace Corps, as well as state Medicaid databases.
The hub will also collect data on millions of Americans in order to determine eligibility for benefits and exemptions from federal mandates, a database that could represent the, “largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic,” according to Stephen Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor.
Critics have also charged that Obamacare turns doctors into government agents who will be required to ask invasive questions about people’s sex lives. Concerns have also been raised about the potential for social workers to conduct home visits under Obamacare that could be used as a justification to harass families.

Read more - 
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamacare-provider-knows-when-clients-visit-the-bathroom.html

Facebook's New 'DeepFace' Program Is Just As Creepy As It Sounds -

Facebook's New 'DeepFace' Program Is Just As Creepy As It Sounds - 




Facebook owns the world's largest photo library, and it now has the technology to match almost all the faces within it. Yes, even the ones you don't tag.

Facebook announced last week that it has developed a program called "DeepFace," which researchers say can determine whether two photographed faces are of the same person with 97.25 percent accuracy.

According to Facebook, humans put to the same test answer correctly 97.53 percent of the time -- only a quarter of a percent better than Facebook's software.

The takeaway: Facebook has essentially caught up to humans when it comes to remembering a face. The program was developed by three in-house Facebook researchers and a professor at Tel Aviv University.

As an example, the developers show in a paper on the program that DeepFace can successfully recognize that this is Academy Award winner Sylvester Stallone.

Read more - 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/18/facebook-deepface-facial-recognition_n_4985925.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-business&ir=Canada%20Business

'March Madness' most popular time to get vasectomies... -

'March Madness' most popular time to get vasectomies... - 




The first week of March Madness is also the most popular week of the year for men to get vasectomies, according to Texas urologist Dr. Grant Fowler.
Dr. Fowler said men have to take a couple of days off to have the procedure, which coincides nicely with basketball games that are on all day.
Some urology clinics even offer free pizza for men to get their vasectomy during March Madness, according to Fowler.
He added that he is performing fewer such surgeries today than he did during the recession.

Read more - 
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/03/19/vasectomies-on-rise-during-march-madness/