Missouri Subpoena 2008: Fill & Download for Free

As I noted in the question comments, this information will always be contextual and will often be hyperlocalized in nature. This is a rundown of the procedure I went through in processing subjects I arrested in Missouri between 2008 and 2010 (I'd TL;DR this if I could, but the scope of the answer doesn't lend itself to it):First, and this should go without saying, but don't resist arrest in any way, shape or form - whether verbally or physically. If an officer tells you that you are under arrest and puts handcuffs on you, it means he or she either has probable cause that you committed a crime or has confirmed the existence of a valid warrant for your arrest. There is nothing you can say or do, no paperwork you can show (with the extremely rare exception of a warrant recall signed by a judge) that will change the fact that you are under arrest. Should the officer get to the jail and find an exonerating circumstance, you'll then be released - so let facts and documentation exonerate you. Resisting arrest will only ramp the situation up; even if you would have been released, if you resist arrest or assault an officer you're going to get booked on those charges.Contrary to depictions on crime dramas, don't expect to have a Miranda warning ("You have the right to remain silent...") read to you upon handcuff application. Miranda only applies when an officer both has you in custody and is asking you guilt-seeking questions. An officer asking safety questions ("Do you have anything on your person I need to be concerned about?") or administrative questions ("What is your name, date of birth and Social Security number?") without Miranda does not violate your rights. In the first case, the officer is simply trying to avoid plunging a syringe tip into their bone marrow during the search incident to arrest; in the second, they've got stacks of paperwork to fill out that are required by all manner of federal, state, local and department laws and policies - don't make it unduly difficult. On a pragmatic level, you're probably not leaving the jail until you're positively identified, so you might as well streamline the process.Upon arrest, you'll have your person searched. As I alluded to above, this is "incident to arrest" and does not require consent. You'll then be transported to the jail for booking. I would mind my mouth during transport - again, remember the threshold for Miranda. If you say something pertinent to the case during transport, the officer can freely include it in the report about the incident, and the court will regard it as a "spontaneous utterance" and accept it into consideration in your court proceedings.At the jail, you'll be released from your handcuffs and processed. Processing in my department typically involved a prisoner information sheet (identifying information and information regarding the charge), as well as a prisoner property log. It's at this point where your personal effects will be taken and logged into property. All of your personal effects - this includes your belt, wallet, everything in your pockets, and any jewelry you're wearing, including piercings. This is a safeguard on both sides. For the jail, it ensures that all you're bringing in is yourself; for you, it generates a receipt of every last thing you brought in, which prevents anyone at the jail from later saying, "You never brought any money in" when you had $200 in twenties in your wallet. You'll have a chance to review and sign this receipt.Once you're transferred into the jail itself, you'll likely be searched again by a jailer. Don't start in with "They already did this!" because it's jail policy and the jailer doesn't want to do it any more than you want it done. Very important: In many jurisdictions, possession of a controlled substance within the confines of a correctional facility is a felony. That means the dime bag of marijuana you might have gotten a modest citation for on the outside could potentially net you prison time if it's found within the jail. If your judgment lapsed and you've got contraband on your person at the time you're arrested, you need to be upfront with your arresting officer about it. No matter how well you think you hid it, unless you've got it jammed between the lobes of your liver, it's going to be discovered. Even if your arresting officer misses it, the jail is going to find it. Arresting officers don't always have the leisure of conducting an intricate search - searches incident to arrest are typically just to ensure that you don't have a weapon on your person. Jailers have a protected environment and much more time with which to work, and know exactly where people stash stashes. Pipe up - you're going to get dinged either way, so you might as well make it a misdemeanor.What happens after this will depend on your charges. Again, for Missouri:Domestic assault charges have mandatory hold requirements. For third degree (simple assault) the hold was five hours; for second degree (aggravated assault or any incident involving choking the victim), the hold was 24 hours. With a present charge (that is, the incident occurred and you were subsequently arrested), there was no bail or bond after these hold periods; you would get a subpoena to appear at a later date.DWI charges added to the processing (see If I get pulled over and a police officer asks me to take a roadside sobriety test, do I have to take the test? What should I do? for more information here), and featured a four hour hold. You were then released with no bail or bond, but with citations, which were notices to appear in court on the charges.For the uninitiated, warrants all have their own requirements in terms of bond amounts. A typical bond for failure to appear on most charges was $500. This means that, should you post $500 bond, you can be released from jail and given another court date at which to appear. If you appear at that court date, your bond will be returned to you; if not, you lose your posted bond and another warrant is issued for your arrest. Bonds could be as low as $10 (warrant on seatbelt violation), or as high as tens of thousands of dollars (warrants for Class A felonies). Warrants can also have a "cash only" stipulation on bonds, or bond could be denied altogether (called a capias warrant).Bonding agencies make money by posting your bond for you in exchange for a fee (typically ten to fifteen percent of the bond amount). You will not get this fee back if you use a bonding agency; the agency takes your fee as income, posts your full bond, then recovers the bond amount when you appear at your new court date. They may decline certain charges or bond amounts; this will vary from agency to agency. Also, if you "jump bond" and skip your court date after having been bonded out by a bonding agency, you're going to eventually have bounty hunters after you. You don't want this to happen. These guys are usually half-cocked and tap dance on the fringes of the rug that is legality. I think I had to call a commander every time I had a case dealing with a bounty hunter.For a number of charges you might get arrested for based on probable cause, there was no bail or bond and no hold time - these were called "book and release" charges. They included simple stealing/shoplifting, common assault, trespassing, and so on - simple misdemeanors. You'd get booked, fingerprinted, have your picture taken, then booted out the front door with your property and your citation(s).As far as your interactions with other prisoners:In the case of a book and release charge, you will likely be sitting in a common area until your paperwork can be processed - probably less than an hour unless jail staff is completely slammed. It's unlikely that anybody will bother you if you keep to yourself; if someone does make a pest of themselves, jail staff will deal with them.In the case of a hold situation, you should be out the door within an hour of the end of your mandatory hold. In the meantime, you'll likely wait in the common area. It may have televisions to zone out to; otherwise expect a boring wait. Resign yourself to people watching.On a warrant, you should be out within thirty minutes to an hour of your bond being posted, whether by a bonding agent or an acquaintance. If you don't post bond on a weekday and it's a local warrant, you should see a judge the following morning. If I arrested someone on a minor warrant at four or five in the morning, sometimes I would tip them off to the fact that if they just waited three or four hours, they could video conference with the judge from the jail and resolve it on the spot, without having to gin up a bond.Most often, when an extended jail stay came in the picture, it was because someone couldn't or wouldn't post bond, and they were arrested on the weekend (meaning they had to wait until Monday to see a judge) or they were arrested on an extra-jurisdictional warrant (meaning they would be extradited to the jurisdiction in question, making even the simplest of matters multi-day affairs). In these cases you might get assigned to a block, cell block, or wing. In this case you'd have to change out of civvies and into a jail uniform for the duration of your stay, and would be subject to jail policies regarding meals, bedding down, and so on.I'm no expert on sociological considerations within jail populations, but I would say that 95% of the battle is keeping your head down. City and county populations aren't going to be analogous to prison populations - people will be transitory enough that you don't have social strata and hierarchies forming among the inmates. That means that most of the people around you have the same intention of wanting to bide their time until their court date or other disposition. If you don't make a tool of yourself in these contexts, you're unlikely to get arbitrarily targeted.

From IRS Files:Criminal InvestigationMinnesota Chiropractor Sentenced For Tax EvasionOn April 19, 2017, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Donald Gibson was sentenced to 33 months in prison for tax evasion and for presenting a fake financial instrument to the U.S. Department of Treasury. Gibson failed to file his 2004 through 2014 individual income tax returns and attempted to evade his income tax liabilities for these years by diverting money to a warehouse bank called MYICIS, cashing over $800,000 in business checks at a check-cashing facility and submitting fake money orders and bogus financial instruments to the IRS. Gibson also formed Sovereign Christian Mission (SCM), a purported religious organization, as a way to further hide his chiropractic income and pay for his personal expenses. Gibson used SCM to pay for his groceries, entertainment, dinners, and car repairs. While the IRS was auditing his tax returns and later during the criminal investigation, Gibson presented a fake financial instrument purporting to be worth $300 million to the IRS and claimed that it paid off his income tax liabilities.Louisiana Criminal Defense Attorney Sentenced for Tax EvasionOn April 19, 2017, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Michael Thiel, of Baton Rouge, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for tax evasion, two years of supervised release and ordered to pay $998,352 in restitution to the IRS. Thiel operated a criminal defense practice in Hammond and, from 2003 through 2013, did not file income or employment tax returns and didn’t pay taxes he owed. Thiel concealed his income and assets creating three trust and nominees. Thiel used these three trusts to evade the payment of federal income and employment taxes. In January 2007, Thiel used nominees to purchase his primary residence for $435,000 and entered into a phony lease agreement with the nominees to conceal his ownership of the property and shield it from IRS collection efforts. Between January 2007 and January 2014, Thiel deposited $416,283 into the nominee account that was used to secure and pay the mortgage on the property.Former Company President Sentenced for Wire Fraud and Income Tax EvasionOn December 29, 2016, in Rockford, Illinois, Christopher A. Jansen, of St. Charles, was sentenced to 70 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $269,978 in restitution. Jansen was President of Baytree Investors Inc., an Illinois corporation engaged in acquiring trucking companies. In 2001 Jansen learned DFC Transportation was for sale, created a Delaware corporation, DFCTC Holding Inc., and arranged for DFCTC to purchase DFC with money Jansen borrowed using DFC receivables as collateral. Jansen arranged for other individuals to be the owners of DFCTC, some of whom were previous investors in failed Baytree business acquisitions. With appointment or authority, Jansen represented to others that he was the corporate secretary and controlled both DFCTC and DFC to avoid having shareholder or director meetings. Jansen then arranged for DFC to use its receivables to borrow from a bank and, without authorization, ordered employees to transfer money from DFC to DFCTC. Jansen then distributed the money to himself and others for their personal use and benefit. In addition, in 2002 Jansen used a bank account in the name of a dissolved corporation to receive his income and disburse his expenditures. He intentionally failed to have the dissolved corporation file informational forms with the IRS for taxable income distributed to him from the account. Jansen also failed to have Baytree and DFCTC file informational forms with the IRS regarding distributions of taxable income to him. In addition, Jansen did not have a bank account in his name in order to avoid reporting any income to the IRS.Virginia Resident Sentenced for Fraudulent “Savvy Bag” Investment SchemeOn December19, 2016, in Alexandria, Virginia, Patricia Means of Richmond, was sentenced to 60 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of $1,136,862, including $201,065 to the IRS for defrauding investors. Means was a licensed investment broker from 1983 until prior to moving to Virginia in 2006. Around February 2009, Means developed a scheme to defraud investors by creating a product called “Savvy Bag,” a purported handbag organizer and solicited investments in the product. Between 2009 and 2014, Means obtained over $1.1 million from victims and spent less than $3,000 to develop, produce or sell the product. In addition, between 2010 and 2014, Means received taxable income more than than $907,000 that she failed to report on her income tax returns.North Carolina Man Sentenced for Tax Evasion and Possession of an Unregistered FirearmOn December 16, 2016, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Reuben T. DeHaan, of Kings Mountain, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for tax evasion and possession of an unregistered firearm. DeHaan owned a holistic medicine business, which he operated out of his residence under the names Health Care Ministries International Inc. and Get Well Stay Well. DeHaan admitted that, from 2008 through 2014, he earned more than $2.7 million in gross receipts, but failed to file income tax returns for those years and evaded the payment of approximately $678,000 in income tax. He did this with the help of Richard H. Campbell Jr. and others, by setting up straw companies and opening bank accounts in the name of the straw companies to hide his income and assets from the Internal Revenue Service. DeHaan also claimed he was exempt from the payment of taxes because he was an ordained “medicine man” whose earnings were exempt from taxation. In addition, DeHaan also admitted to the possession of unlicensed firearms.Florida Man Sentenced for Tax EvasionOn November 28, 2016 in Tampa, Florida, Steven Headden Young, of St. Petersburg, was sentenced to 21 months in prison, ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $509,455 to the IRS and ordered to file his corrected tax returns for tax years 2007 through 2011. Young evaded a substantial portion of his personal federal income taxes for the years 2007 through 2011 by falsifying expenses to negate his income. Young, who prepared and filed his own tax returns, created bogus business expenditures and deducted them from his Schedule C income. He provided the IRS with a false lease agreement and false invoices between his real estate company and a sham corporation, purportedly based in the Dominican Republic. Young also falsely filed as head-of-household (HOH) to take advantage of the tax benefits of the HOH filing status when he was indeed married. HOH provides for less taxes and higher credits than when filing as single, married and filing jointly, or married and filing separately. Young made false statements to the IRS claiming he was single, when he was married and living with his wife. Young also interfered with the IRS audit and tax assessment of his personal federal income taxes by attempting to intercept third-party records that had been subpoenaed by the IRS from Bank of America (BOA). Young fabricated a letter from the IRS to BOA in an attempt to redirect bank records that had been intended for the IRS to another address, which had been opened by Young in the name of an IRS employee.Ohio Psychiatrist Sentenced for Tax EvasionOn November 21, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio, Sandra Vonderembse, an Oregon, Ohio psychiatrist was sentenced to 18 months in prison, one year of supervised release and ordered to pay $565,128 in restitution to the IRS for tax evasion. From as early as 2005, Vonderembse failed to pay taxes and filed, and caused to be filed, with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) false and fraudulent tax returns that included false statements regarding her income and the amount of tax due and owing. From 2009 through 2011, Vonderembse falsely claimed to have no taxable income and to owe no taxes, despite earning more than $240,000 each year while working as a psychiatrist. Vonderembse used nominee entities to conceal income from the IRS, and sent fake financial instruments to the IRS in purported payment of her taxes. In total, from 2005 through 2011, she attempted to evade more than $360,000 in income tax liabilities.Hawaii Couple Sentenced for Failure to Pay Income TaxOn November 17, 2016, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Calvin Kim and Chun Cha Kim, husband and wife, were sentenced to 36 and 12 months in prison, respectively, for violations of federal tax laws. In addition, Calvin Kim and Chun Cha Kim were ordered to pay restitution in the amounts of $1,969,463 and $1,937,267, respectively, which represent all back taxes and penalties. Criminal fines of $250,000 and $100,000 were also imposed on Calvin Kim and Chun Cha Kim, respectively. In addition, both defendants agreed to the imposition of a fraud assessment by the IRS, which may amount to an additional civil penalty of $3 million. The Kims already have paid more than $4 million in back taxes and interest. The Kims were the sole shareowners of businesses that sold heating pads and other products. In October 2000, they became followers of so-called "tax protestors" and decided not to file a valid tax return from then till May 2014. From 2005 to 2012 alone, the tax returns of the Kims’ businesses showed payments ranging from $418,238 to $971,983 for Calvin Kim for each year, and $271,564 to $1,000,562 for Chun Cha Kim, resulting in taxes owed for each of those years ranging from $133,009 to $325,375 for him and $83,828 to $335,378 for her.Tax Defier Sentenced for $1 Million Tax EvasionOn November 16, 2016, in Kansas City, Missouri, Harold R. Stanley, of Peculiar, was sentenced to 60 months in prison, which includes a sentencing enhancement for obstruction of justice. Stanley, an electrical engineer, was hired by companies as a consultant and received $971,604 from self-employment from 2005 to 2009 as an independent contractor. However, Stanley failed to file any tax returns for 2005 and 2006. For tax years 2007 through 2009, Stanley filed substantially correct returns but left the tax line entry blank and failed to submit any payment. Stanley submitted fake money orders for payment to the Internal Revenue Service, returned documents to the Internal Revenue Service claiming that the tax assessments were satisfied because they were “Accepted for Value,” filled out payment vouchers with his name in all capital letters but didn’t submit payment and submitted a false criminal referral to IRS – Criminal Investigation. From 2005 through 2009, Stanley had taxable income of $686,829; the criminal tax loss is $259,900.Wisconsin Embezzler Sentenced for Fraud and Tax EvasionOn November 3, 2016, in Madison, Wisconsin, Lisa Buchholz, of Luck, was sentenced to 36 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of $193,909 to the victim of her fraud scheme. While employed as a bookkeeper for Four Seasons Wood Products (FSWP) in Frederic, from May 2008 until June 2012, Buchholz devised a scheme to defraud the company. In addition, Buchholz failed to file income tax returns for 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and committed income tax evasion in 2011 by making false statements to an IRS criminal investigator during an interview in 2013. Buchholz’s actions caused a fraud loss of $172,176 to FSWP and a tax loss of $111,553 to the IRS.Texas Man Sentenced for Filing False Tax Returns and Corruptly Endeavoring to Impede the Internal Revenue LawsOn October 28, 2016, in Austin, Texas, Victor Antolik was sentenced to 72 months in prison following his conviction on filing false tax returns and corruptly endeavoring to impede the due administration of the internal revenue laws. Antolik owned and operated a commercial janitorial business with locations in Austin, San Antonio and Houston, Texas, under a variety of business names, including Diversified Building Services Inc., DBS Services Inc., Partners in Cleaning, PIC Building Services and BSI Industries. Antolik also earned income as a real estate agent, real estate broker and property manager. Antolik earned a portion of his real estate income through his companies SGN Realty Inc. and Signature Realty Services. Antolik submitted to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) false individual income tax returns on which he underreported his income for tax years 2004, 2007 and 2008. In addition, between 1998 and 2014, Antolik attempted to obstruct the due administration of the internal revenue laws by, among other things, attaching altered Forms W-2 and 1099 to his tax returns, providing false information to his accountant that was used to prepare corporate and individual income tax returns on his behalf, and using nominees to conceal income and assets. In addition to the prison term imposed, Antolik was also ordered to serve one year of supervised release and to pay restitution to the IRS in the amount of $916,358.

Webcam Sex TourismThere is a New Sex Order App, TEENDEE where users directly order a pussy or a dick to be delivered to their doorstep. i.e hookup site with hundreds of men and women all ready for sex.In addition to facilitating sexual recruitment and sale, the digital revolution has also created an entirely new form of sex sale: the burgeoning industry of webcam sex. Here, buyers enter an online webcam chat site and pay sellers to perform sex acts in front of the camera in a live-streamed session. Many consensual sex workers claim this is a positive addition, offering greater autonomy and the opportunity to work from a distance in relative safety. However, the webcam industry is also filled with victims of exploitation. What is more, this form of sex sale lends itself perfectly to transnational exploitation.In an old home movie, young Natalie is laughing and running around with a soccer ball. She’s around 12 years old, and she looks at the camera and says, “When I grow up, I would like to be a doctor.”But a few years later, that laughing, carefree young girl was sold for sex allegedly through the website She estimates she was paid for sex over 100 times, and she firmly believes that the site made it possible for her pimp to post ads offering her for sex over and over again.“Continuously. All day, every day. 24/7,” Natalie told ABC News “Nightline.” She has asked us to refer to her as “Natalie” for this report, and her parents have asked that we do not use their last name.Natalie is now a 21-year-old mother with a toddler and another baby on the way. She is part of a major lawsuit against the highly controversial online classifieds site that is currently being investigated by the U.S. Senate for its alleged connection to underage sex trafficking.Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, told “Nightline” that Backpage “requires more of someone who wants to sell a motorcycle than of someone who wants to sell a child.”When Natalie was 15 years old, she said she made a decision she would regret for the rest of her life. She ran away from home because she said she received a bad grade at school and was nervous about how her parents would react to it.“I thought maybe things would be easier if I could just go do it on my own,” she said. “I didn’t want them to… be disappointed… I had told all my friends that I was going to run away.”Natalie said she ran across a soccer field, jumped a fence, found a bus stop and took a bus to downtown Seattle, where she met an older girl at a youth shelter.“She was very familiar with the shelter and the Seattle area in general and she told me… we could go hang out,” Natalie said. “I had never smoked weed before, never drank… I don’t know. I was having a good time.”Back at home, her mother Nacole found a letter Natalie had left behind. She called her husband Tom and said they needed to go to the police immediately.“I was in shock,” Tom said. “You know, kind of just floored that-- Gone? Why? You know? Where? You know, how?”Out on her own, Natalie quickly learned the dark side of life on the streets. She said her older friend was turning tricks right in front of her.“We would walk on the highway and then people would come pick her up and I would sit in the back seat and then she would sleep with them,” she said. “A lot of them would ask if they could sleep with me and she would tell them ‘no,’ until a pimp picked us up and then took us to his house.”That’s when Natalie said she was raped for the first time. She had been a virgin.“After it happened he threw a towel at me and some carpet cleaner and told me to clean up the carpet because there was blood,” Natalie said. “That was pretty difficult. And then after that, they cut all my hair off and then put me in some really skimpy clothes and taught me how to walk in heels,” she continued. “I got really scared after that, and I ended up running out of there.”Natalie said she sneaked out of the garage door and found a police officer who called her mother.“I was definitely scared and I just wanted to go home. I was nervous,” she said.Her family was overjoyed to have her back, but Natalie was still grappling with how to deal with what had happened to her.“I didn’t know how to treat her. I didn’t know if she wanted me to hug her,” her father Tom said. “For the first time since the day she was born… It felt awkward to hold my own kid.”At school, Natalie said word had gotten around what had happened to her, and she said she was bullied and called horrible names. This feeling of not belonging drove her to make another bad choice: she ran away a second time with the help of that older friend she had met in Seattle. Natalie was still just 15 years old.“I ran down the street to the bus stop… and she was parked there waiting for me,” Natalie said.Then she met 32-year-old Baruti Hopson. She said he was kind to her at first and gave her a place to stay, but then she said things took a horrible turn.“I had started talking to him, confided in him a little bit about family life and just how stressed out I was,” she said. “He had asked me if I had ever worked before, and I told him, ‘briefly’ … I didn’t really know what I was doing.“And then he told me that I wouldn’t be on the streets,” Natalie continued. “And I was like, ‘Well what does that mean?’ And he’s like, ‘Well I’m not going to have you walking the streets’ … And then that’s when Backpage came into play.”Natalie said Hopson told her was “safer” and that it was easier “not to get caught.”Backpage’s site is surprising simple, similar to Craigslist, but with a racy adult services section with categories like “Escorts” and “Body Rubs.” These are technically legal categories, but many in law enforcement say these ads are thinly veiled code for prostitution. While it is free for someone to post adult services ads, Backpage makes money by offering paid add-ons, including the ability to re-post the ad every hour and to post it in multiple neighboring cities.“He put me in all these clothes, took some pretty provocative pictures of me and then got to Backpage, and then you can click on to post an ad,” she said. “He just showed me how to do it, so I could do it myself.”Natalie said the website asked if she were 18 years or older, but “a simple yes click was about as far as that went.”With Backpage ads posted with titles such as “Well worth it, 150 an hour” and “It won’t take long at all,” Natalie said she was working every single day and started earning as much as $4,000 a weekend, handing over all the cash to Hopson.“He started getting physically abusive and really, I couldn’t even go in the bathroom without the door being unlocked,” Natalie said. “He would sleep in the living room next to the front door, so I couldn’t leave.”Natalie's mother Nacole said she was shocked to learn there was a website where this could to happen to underage girls, like her daughter.“I live in an American town, how can my kid be sold on the internet?” she said.“When you hear that your 15-year-old child is posting an ad for sex or for rape in her case, and that she’s getting 25 to 30 calls an hour, and you’re thinking, ‘Well how many of these is she having to answer? I mean, there’s 24 hours in a day… how many times a day is my child being raped?” Nacole added.But the sad truth is Nacole is among many American mothers who have had to ask themselves the same question.A mother who’s asked us to call her "Debbie" said her teenage daughter, who we’re calling "Crystal," left home one night after an argument. It only took 48 hours of her being gone for Debbie to find her images on Backpage.“I remember that she had on the see-through lacy teddy,” Debbie said. “And she’s 14.”Crystal says that when she left home, she arranged to stay with a friend’s boyfriend’s mom. Instead of giving her a safe place to stay, she says this woman forced her into prostitution. Crystal says they were re-posting her Backpage ad every five minutes and forcing her to have sex with the men who would come to the house.Crystal, who is now 19, told “Nightline,” “It’s hard being that young and being trapped in a room and not knowing if you’ll go home to your mom, or if you’ll come out of there alive.”"Megan," another mother who asked us to use an assumed name, said her 15-year-old daughter was also sold for sex on Backpage. Her daughter, who we’re referring to as "Kim," says she went to a party hosted by a friend’s older boyfriend on her fifteenth birthday. It was fun at first, but then Kim said she was told she couldn’t leave and was forced to take racy photos to post on Backpage.“I got a call from a friend of mine that said that I needed to check Backpage because she thinks that she had saw my daughter on Backpage,” Megan said. “So I checked, and sure enough, her ad was there.”Megan said she called the police and told them she saw Kim on a Backpage ad, and that they needed to do something.“I told them they had to go get her,” she said.Both of these girls were eventually rescued by police. The adults who posted them to Backpage were convicted in court. Kim and Crystal are also suing Backpage, and they are also represented by Natalie’s lawyers, Erik Bauer and Jason Amala. Backpage denies these allegations and is fighting them in court.But so far, every lawsuit filed by a trafficked underage girl against Backpage has been dismissed because of a law called the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The law protects Backpage, among others, from being held legally responsible for what users post on its website. Also called the CDA, the law shields websites or online publishers for information posted by third parties.“If someone publishes a faulty motorcycle, the buyer of that motorcycle shouldn’t be able to sue Backpage merely for posting the ad, that doesn’t make sense,” said ABC News’ senior legal correspondent Sunny Hostin. “Interestingly, under the law, there is no difference between Backpage posting the advertisement for the faulty motorcycle and posting the advertisement for the underage girl being trafficked for sex.”Backpage, which is based in Dallas, has repeatedly claimed that they are part of the solution, not the problem. The company told ABC News in a statement that it employs moderators who diligently screen ads to stop underage trafficking on its site. They added that they have voluntarily undertaken a multi-tiered "policing system to prohibit and report attempts at human exploitation and the advertisement of prostitution" that screens for words and phrases that might "suggest illegal activity" and that the company actively cooperates with law enforcement."While the experiences of children (and adults) who have been exploited are tragic and heartbreaking," Backpage told "Nightline" in a statement today. "The solution does not lie in making online service providers responsible for millions of posts by third-party users case, approximately 50 million posts per year presently) – the practical effect of which is inevitably highly restrictive censorship or the total banning of certain categories of online content so that online service providers are not in constant anxiety about potential liability for the one ad that slipped through their moderation systems."But many in law enforcement have openly challenged these claims, including Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, who in 2015 successfully petitioned every major credit card company to cut ties with Backpage. The only available payment methods on the site now are Bitcoin or mail-in check.Natalie’s father Tom says his daughter’s disappearance pushed him to the breaking point. He would spend days in the car, driving around Seattle, searching desperately for his missing girl. Until one night, he said things went too far.“I was driving down where these people hang out, and it was pretty obvious to me that this was a pimp and a girl,” he said. “I saw this, and I just got infuriated seeing this guy and this gal and I just turned my truck at him and floored it.But Tom didn't go through with it. “I had intended on hitting him,” he continued. “And I just figured, I’m going to get my daughter on the news, you know, um, and the way I’m going to do that is I’m going to kill this pimp, you know? I bought a fifth of good whiskey and I said, ‘I’m done.’ That was when I started drinking… I almost killed myself doing that.”Then, on the 108th night Natalie was missing, her Backpage ad was targeted in a sting set up by the Seattle Vice Squad. One of their officers had posed as a client, and when she walked into his hotel room, he stopped her.“He says, ‘I know who you are, Natalie,’ and I mean I can only imagine how big my eyes were when he said that,” Natalie said. “Instantly I saw hundreds of lights that seemed outside, just storms of cops outside.”One of those officers was Bill Guyer, a longtime Vice detective who spends much of his time on Backpage trying to rescue trafficked girls like Natalie. He and Natalie instantly formed a special bond the night she was rescued.“I remember meeting Det. Guyer, and he actually drove me to the jail, and he kind of relaxed me… almost reminded me of my dad,” Natalie said.Det. Guyer met Natalie’s parents and started a relationship with them too. He then helped Natalie build up the courage to testify in the trial of Baruti Hopson, who was sentenced to 26 and a half years in prison for promoting the commercial sex abuse of a minor.“I tell her and every other girl that even though they don’t want to go to court, I don’t want to go to court, but I’d like to get them to the point where they’re like, 'I can’t wait to get on the stand and point them out to you, that’s the piece of crap that did this to me,'” Guyer said.Guyer and the rest of the Seattle Vice Squad agreed to let “Nightline” embed with them as they set up a sting through Backpage, the kind of operation that’s become commonplace in police departments across the country. "Nightline" first met with Det. Lincoln, who’s asked that we change his name because of his frequent undercover assignments.Lincoln showed “Nightline” the ins and outs of posting on Backpage. Lincoln says there are many commonly-used terms that may flag to him and the other detectives that a girl on Backpage is underage, like “new in town” and “eager to please.” It’s a code he says he’s learned through experience tracking down underage girls listed on the site.But “Nightline” wanted to see what would happen if a Backpage ad didn’t just use these coded terms and instead blatantly suggest an underage girl was part of the deal. Would the ad be flagged and taken down by Backpage’s moderators?So Det. Lincoln posted an ad for an 18-year-old escort, adding in a line that said she had “a younger friend” who was available as well. Minutes after he posted the ad, calls and texts started streaming in. The ad was up and running.The ad remained up for about 36 hours, leading to dozens of phone calls, texts and even an arrest captured on “Nightline’s” cameras. The ad was only taken down after "Nightline" sent an anonymous email to Backpage’s dedicated email address for suspected child trafficking. It took eight hours to receive a response, which said to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. The ad was taken down shortly after Backpage’s email response was sent.Backpage later told “Nightline” in a statement that even though they thought that the ad did not clearly advertise that a girl under 18 was involved, their moderators did take it down and they say they banned the account. They also reported the ad to NCMEC.Yiota Souras, general counsel for NCMEC, said 73 percent of the reports they receive from the general public about suspected underage trafficking involve a Backpage post.Souras told “Nightline” she is skeptical of Backpage’s claims that they are closely monitoring their site, and of their attorney Liz McDougall’s claim that Backpage is “online to fight human trafficking online.”“I don't think you can be in the business of providing basically an online bazaar for escort ads that includes the purchase and sale of children for sex, and say that you are online to help fight the problem,” Souras said.In March, the Senate voted to hold Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing about online sex trafficking conducted by the Senate Subcommittee for Permanent Investigations.“It was a unanimous vote”, said Sen. Rob Portman. “First time in 21 years this has happened. It’s a big deal.”When asked why to specifically include Backpage in a hearing on online trafficking, Sen. McCaskill replied, “Backpage is the major player in this space. Therefore they have to be investigated. That’s as complicated as the subject is.”A circuit court is expected to rule on the contempt charge sometime in the coming months.Backpage also refused to respond to the Senate Subcommittee’s subpoenas for internal company documents relating to how it moderates its adult services ads, and exactly how much money they’re making off of them. The Senate is now seeking to enforce the subpoena. The nearly 200-page Senate report is available for download here.Despite this refusal, the Senate’s own investigators say they were able to obtain company emails from Backpage to its moderators. One email in the Senate report addresses underage ads specifically, and contains a line instructing moderators not to delete an ad unless they are “really very sure” the girl is underage. Other emails in the Senate report suggest Backpage was telling its moderators to simply edit out words and pictures from posts if they did not comply with Backpage’s terms of service. They are told to then post the edited ad anyway, even though the investigators say this editing would not change the nature of the underlying transition.“We're talking about big money,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. “And we have evidence that leads us to believe that they have edited ads in order to keep their profitability.”Backpage declined to comment on the Senate’s findings, but their lawyers are currently fighting the contempt charge in a D.C. court. The court will decide if Ferrer will be compelled to testify and if Backpage has to hand over their internal documents. In court filings, Backpage claims the Senate’s request is a violation of the First Amendment, because it “seeks every bit of information relating to every editorial decision made in the past six years.”Backpage’s corporate group is projected to have a revenue of $173 million dollars this year alone, although they will not say what percentage of that comes from the adult ad section, according to documents from the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations.“I'm betting that when we get all the financials they're not making much money selling motorcycles. But they're making a whole lot of money selling children,” said Sen. McCaskill. “I'm betting that's why they're working so hard at keeping this information out of the public eye.”Backpage, which was owned by Village Voice media until 2012, was sold to an “unnamed Dutch holding company” in December 2014, according to news articles at the time. “Nightline” discovered that CEO Carl Ferrer had opened a business in the Netherlands, which seems to be running two escort ad-based websites called as well as a very similar version of Backpage called “Cracker.” It is available almost everywhere except the United States.Ferrer declined “Nightline’s” repeated requests for interview, and when we tracked Ferrer to a classified ad industry conference in downtown Amsterdam, he again refused to speak with us.“He is in Amsterdam… because he wants to avoid the bright light of attention that we are placing on his company,” McCaskill said. “I don't think Amsterdam is far enough for him to go to avoid that bright light.”Back in the U.S., others, like Natalie and her family, are waiting for their day in court. Natalie is hoping her Washington state lawsuit, which focuses on the claim that Backpage knowingly developed itself into an online marketplace for illegal prostitution, will be the first of its kind to be successful against the company.“To whoever owns Backpage, Carl Ferrer, whoever-- he’s got to go home at night and know that he’s selling kids today,” her father Tom said. “He’s just as accountable as the pimp that sold her, in my mind.”Natalie’s attorney Erik Bauer said, “Reports of child sex trafficking have increased over the last five years due to the internet. According to the AIM Group, Backpage controls 80 percent of that market… this is a big business.” AIM Group is an interactive media and classified advertising consulting organization.Backpage responded to the allegations laid out in the Washington state lawsuit, according to court documents, stating that, "Backpage does not allow advertisements on its website to contain naked images, images featuring transparent clothing, sexually explicit language, suggestions of an exchange of sex acts for money, or advertisements for illegal services. In addition to these rules, specifically for advertisements posted in the “escort” section of its website, Backpage does not allow any solicitation directly or in 'coded' fashion for any illegal service exchanging sexual favors for money or other valuable consideration, any material on the Site that exploits minors in any way, or any material ... that in any way constitutes or assists in human trafficking."For Natalie, her horrific experience also has robbed her of a piece of her high school years.“I’ve never been to a football game. A high school football game,” she said. “I’ve never had a prom. I’ve never been to homecoming, and I see all my pictures. All my friends’ pictures on Facebook, and they have all that. They have memories… It makes me a little bitter.”But in all the sadness, one ray of light for Natalie has been the special relationship she and her parents have now with Det. Guyer.“To this day, six years later, he calls me on my birthday. Every year,” she said. “I actually said he’s the godfather of my little girl.”“He’s my hero,” Tom added. “He saved my little girl and brought her home.”The Philippines has become the global epicentre of live-streaming sexual abuse. Tens of thousands of identified victims are children, some even babies. Paedophiles, many from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children in these live videos, requesting particular acts they want performed. Arrests made of individuals participating include Americans Scott Peeler and David Deakin as well as Australian Kyle Dawson. Additionally, in 2014, the police raided a house in the slums of Manila to find a group of four girls and boys aged between 7 and 10 preparing for a ‘show’. The children were about to undress and perform sex acts on each other to an overseas customer. It was organised by an ‘operator’ living in the house, who was the mother of one of the children. In the surrounding area, it was an open secret that live-stream sexual abuse was happening. Dr. Tan, a pediatrician from the Child Protection Unit in Manila recalls, “The operator ran an open house, with ‘shows’ every other night…if children in the slum were hungry, they knew they could come for food and shelter, plus 150 pesos for taking part in the ‘show’.” In 2013, the Dutch child’s rights organisation Terre des Hommes ran an experiment to investigate demand for such acts. They launched a realistic-looking animation of a 10-year-old Filipino girl named Sweetie. They took the fake girl on chat groups and online forums. In less than two and a half months, they identified over 1,000 adults from over 65 countries, attempting to pay her to perform sexual acts in front of the webcam.So, technology has made it easier to access illegal activities across borders and to sexually exploit those in poverty-ridden countries (one in three people in Manila live in slums). Cybersex dens are tricky to identify since anyone who has a computer, internet and a webcam can be in business. Additionally, by live-streaming as opposed to downloading illegal content, users bypass digital markers embedded by law enforcement to catch those watching child pornography.Becoming LovelyIndependence has always been important to me. When I moved away from my family at 18, it was like breathing fresh air for the first time. After years of reflection, I now understand my childhood and adolescence to be toxic and dysfunctional, but at the time I just knew I wanted to get out. When I fell behind on my rent in my second year of college, going back home, or even asking for help, was not an option.I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area—a sex-positive place with a history steeped in sexual taboo. It was an eye-opening experience. Sex workers had always intrigued me, skilled in the act of bucking the expectation of what a woman’s sexuality was supposed to be and how women should behave. Several of my classmates at the college I was attending were escorts or peep show dancers, and they made their line of work sound empowering and financially lucrative.Now, I wasn’t just intrigued; I was broke. I was working part-time at an after-school program, but between being a college student without many marketable skills and the great economic downturn of 2008, it felt as though ends would just never meet. When I got behind on my rent and bills by nearly a month, I decided to see whether I could bridge the gap, just this once, with sex work.As Lovely, I specialized in GFE, or the girlfriend experience, meaning most sessions weren’t just about sex. There was talking, kissing, the obligatory blow job. Men weren’t paying hundreds of dollars for a run-of-the-mill lay—I was providing a fantasy, which included looking the part, while sounding and acting it too. But still, these weren’t dates. Any emotional intimacy was manufactured, a service rendered.Every part of my body was up for commodification. I sold sex for a few hundred dollars an hour, stripped at a peep show for an hourly wage, and would provide à la carte services like hand jobs or sensual massage on a case-by-case basis. Every week one of my regulars would “by chance” meet me at a Safeway parking lot in Berkeley. Discreetly I’d slip him a brown paper bag containing my used panties, as he pressed a 50 into the palm of my hand.I did a lot of things as an escort that were firsts for me. One guy liked to dress up like a baby while getting pegged from behind. Another client would ring me up sometimes for the express purpose of giving me oral sex, something he said his wife didn’t like to receive but he very much liked to give. At his request I pushed one guy’s head into the toilet bowl, forcing him to eat my shit. As in most underworlds, anything goes.I was always taken aback by the sheer volume of men trolling for sex on the internet—out of the dozen or so men I serviced each month, there was no typical customer, unless white men over the age of 21 with a pulse counts as a type. The best part for me was talking to my clients. I loved speaking to the guys, hearing tidbits about their lives. I became obsessed with figuring out why men buy sex. Before the session was over, I made it a habit to ask some variation of “Why do you do this?”Some men were single and lonely; others were married and lonely. I heard stories about how they weren’t getting enough action after the baby was born, or as their wives went through menopause, or for whatever reason really. For many, the amount of sex they were or were not getting at home was irrelevant—new pussy is new pussy.When I was Lovely, I found power in that idea. It didn’t matter that I was an overweight college student with no fashion sense. I could get grown men to not only desire me but pay me for the privilege of my company. My pleasure was never the priority, but on occasions a special snowflake would blow through my door and it would be good for me too. The work wasn’t honest, but it paid the bills and made me feel sexy during a time when I felt anything but in real life.Pleasure and Power After Sex WorkWhen sex is work, the thrill has a way of slowly dissipating. None of the women my johns talked about was ever enough—and I started to believe I’d never be enough for one person either. I wasn’t powerful; I was merely a pawn in the game of misogyny—a decently paid one, but still.Within a year, I was done. I moved to New York to study English at a private liberal arts college—a fresh start. I was only a junior in college and I figured my time as a Craigslist escort would be nothing more than a small detour on the way to adulthood. But leaving Lovely Brown behind wasn’t easy. I was alone in a new city, and my depression went into overdrive as I tried to forget about the last year of my life. My weight yo-yoed, and my personal grooming was shaky at best. I was dirty. Tainted.After working as an escort, I found sex for pleasure cumbersome, foreign, and at times repulsive. Ironically, casual sex felt like a struggle after being Lovely. How can we share such intimate parts of ourselves with strangers or even casual acquaintances? On top of that, I lost sight of my own sense of sexual pleasure. After such a long time being someone else’s fantasy, I still struggle with my own wants and desires in the bedroom.Having a healthier relationship to sex meant getting to know myself sexually, but where to start? I didn’t know how to navigate sexual or romantic encounters at all as a civilian. The idea of trusting in a relationship seemed impossible—how long would it be before my partner went in search of new pussy? Scared of true intimacy, I alternated between internet hookups and self-imposed bouts of celibacy for years, never able to shake the feeling that I was tainted.Forgiving myself took time. And therapy. And self-care. Burlesque and pole dancing classes have helped me feel connected with my body. I no longer feel the need to moan uncontrollably with every touch or to talk to men in a baby voice; instead of focusing on the performance, I focus on my own pleasure. I no longer believe my past put me at a deficit or that I’m any less deserving of love and affection than the next person. Asking for what I want is something that still elicits nervousness in me, but it’s a feeling I’m pushing through.In the decade since I left the sex trade, I’ve had sexual encounters of varied levels of success and even a relationship or two. After a breakup last summer that was particularly hard on me, I took a break from dating and sex. For a long time I just didn’t feel like sharing myself or my body with anyone. Instead I’ve been focusing on getting mentally and emotionally stronger so I can eventually have the type of relationship or romantic encounter I desire. I’m also focused on hitting my career goals. Things are not perfect, but I’m getting there, and one thing is for sure: The next time I get it on, I’ll really want it. For real this time.It’s already February, which means that after a couple of weeks more, especially in the southern states of India, we’ll be experiencing scorching heat, coupled with warm air flows, making it all the more unbearable. An air conditioner needs you to shell out Rs 20,000 or more, and that is excluding all electricity costs.The invention came across to me as I was drinking my daily coffee at a certain place I like to hang out. I was watching this YouTube video about it, the link of which is provided down below at the end of this answer.And before I disclose what it is, I’d better first mention the best aspects of this deceptively intelligent invention.It addresses the issue of recycling plastic bottlesIt’s going to cool down your room by at least 5 degrees from the outside temperatureIt doesn’t needs any electricity, and heck- even you can create this stuff and put it on your windows. Even your 10 year old child will be able to make this for himself.And with your permission, I’d present:The Electricity-free, Environment-friendliest cooler in the world: AirconIt’s basically a square cardboard box that has plenty of upper halves of plastic bottles attached to it, in a way that’s shown above.It works on a simple principle, which you can demonstrate yourselves. Place your palms in front of your mouth, and blow air to it. Blow the air with your mouth open our wide.And now, try blowing it once again, only this time, try to blow it with your mouths pouted outwards to make your mouth much narrower, similar to this:You’d experience that in the first case, you felt a breeze of warm air on your palms, but colder in case of the second scenario. To maintain the simplicity of this article, I’m going to avoid the underlying physics, which, if I may be frank, is actually very simple. But its something like this:It is this bottleneck arrangement that forms the backbone of this invention.Moreover, if you happen to live in a high-rise building, where you’ll constantly have free flowing air passing by your rooms (which becomes a punishment at summer afternoons), then this ‘device’, will work the best for you.And to help you create on for yourself, here are the blueprints of this air cooler.Google Project loon - BALLOON-POWERED INTERNET FOR EVERYONEProject Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. Project Loon is a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 32 km (20 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds. Project Loon balloons travel approximately 20 km above the Earth’s surface in the stratospherefacebook is also working for improving Internet access for people around the world with its project Internet.org by Facebook.The idea is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use.The Internet.org by Facebook app provides free basic services in markets where internet access may be less affordable. It allows people to browse selected health, employment and local information websites without data charges. The app is currently available in seven countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia, and will continue to expand to other parts of the world.2. WORD LENSAn app that instantly translates languages using your phone camera.You can also use it for reading road signs or boards :This app is now acquired by google : Quest Visual - Google Quest VisualDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play3. Forest :Forest is an app helping you stay away from your smartphone and stay focused on your work. Whenever you want to concentrate, you can plant a seed in Forest. In the next 30 minutes, this small seed will gradually grow into a big tree. However, if you cannot resist the temptation and leave this app to check Facebook or play a game, your little cute tree will wither away. Every day you will own a forest filled with trees (or some withered twigs) and every tree represents 30-MINUTES that you have been working hard.Download link : Android Apps on Google Play4. PUSH BULLETFeatures:(i ) Never miss a call or text again while working at your computer.(ii) Send files from your computer to your phone with a click.(iii) The easiest way to get links from your computer onto your phone.Download link: Android Apps on Google Play5. BE MY EYES - lend your eyes to the blindBe My Eyes is an app that connects blind people with volunteer helpers from around the world via live video chat.It is an open source software available on Be My Eyes and Be My Eyes - helping blind seeCheck its official website for its functionality : Be My Eyes ~ Lend Your Eyes to the Blind6. Wakie – Social Alarm ClockWakie is a fun, friendly community of people who wake each other up in the morning. It’s a brand new way to wake up, made especially for those of us who hate the jarring noise of an alarm clock. When you use Wakie, you get to start your day with a smile instead of a frown!How it works:Set an alarm for 7:00am and you’ll get a phone call from another Wakie member at 7:00am. The calls last just 60 seconds — you’ll hear a warning at 50 seconds, and the call is automatically disconnected at 1 minute. No awkward goodbyes, no long conversations — calls are quick and casual. You can also choose to wake someone up yourself, too.Its official website: Wakie PhenomenonDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play , Wakie (on windows) and Wakie - Social Alarm Clock (on apple).7. Thief TrackerKeep your hard earned smartphone safe by using Thief tracker. If your mobile is lost/stolen, any failed attempt to unlock your mobile will trigger this app to take picture from front camera and send you an email without the user getting to know.Install, Activate and forget, you dont have to remember anything, no secret keywords, no username/passwords.A notification will be displayed in task bar whenever the app uploads pic to server or fails to upload. The notification email sometimes goes to Spam/Junk folder.Download link : Android Apps on Google Play8. Helping FacelessUse technology to fight child trafficking. The idea is simple, give power in hand of people to help us find missing children.How do this app do it?Simply speaking you take several photos of kids you find on street asking for money, all around you; using our app and give them chocolates in exchange. The photos are auto-magically uploaded to our server and our algorithms instantly get to work in matching these photos to the ones we have. We share this information with validated NGOs who help these kidsDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play9. Touch N SyncTouch N Sync is a life time insurance for your contacts. It keeps backup of your contacts across multiple devices and allow you to recover and access from anywhere.Features:★ Contacts on SMS - It will allow you to access your contacts from any device, just message "TNS USERNAME PASSWORD KEYWORD" to 56161 and it will SMS you back with the related contacts from your device.★ Easy Access - Access your contacts from anywhere (any device) without any dependency.★ Highly Secure.★ Sync Contacts from multiple devices.★ Smart Merging of your duplicate contacts.★ Integrated Dialer, SMS and Email Sender.★ Managing multiple devices from the Single Screen.Download link: Android Apps on Google Play10. Smart phone lock:Smart Phone Lock will set the current phone time as your unlock PIN for the lock screen. It will change the PIN magically on every minute! So, each time you unlock the device, the PIN will vary and you need not worry about prying eyes around you. The best part is, you need not memorise anything to remember the PIN. The modifiers will allow you to enhance the security to the next level.Inventions, mostly, change the world for good by filling up gaps between our expectations and the available products. Since time unclocked, curiosity-driven and purposeful humans have invented innumerable objects that have not only helped the humankind at that moment but also inspired many other inventions, and the trend has been ever-growi1. OrCam MyMe – AI for HumansOrCam MyMe aims to help you strike a balance between physical and digital social lives. The tiny gadget sits on your collar or pocket with an inbuilt smart camera with facial recognition so you don’t forget a coworker’s or acquaintance’s name again. MyMe lets you keep an account of the time you spend socializing and using the compliant app, you can classify people in groups like work, friends, or family and set timers for each group.2. Snore CircleSnoring is caused due to restricted airflow in the throat while sleeping and besides being a major annoyance, can be a cause of many diseases. So if you want to break the snoring habits you or someone in the family might have, Snore Circle is a great gadget. It uses a combination of audio and bone conduction to sense when you’re snoring and in turn, sends micro signals to the brain to reduce – and completely eliminate – snoring. Besides helping you give up snoring, the compatible app will monitor the quality of your sleep.3. NANO1 – World’s Smallest Astronomy CameraNANO1 is the perfect invention for passionate stargazers who not only like to be awestruck by looking at the wonders of the sky but also want to capture these with their cameras. The inventors of NANO1 bill it as the smallest astronomy camera in the world which can capture 25 times more light than the human eye and condense an hour-long recording into 3 minutes for a charming view of the sky as well as other phenomena like the Northern Lights. You can connect NANO1 with your smartphone over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and view an augmented reality map of constellations to appreciate the beauty of the sky.4. SiB – The Simple Internet-Connected Button that is only $5If one has to condense what SiB does in only a few words, the best explanation would be that it simplifies your life. Short for Simple Internet-Connected Button, SiB is a tiny cube with a programmable button that can be connected with a host of other smart devices and sensors to perform an unimaginable large number of functions. Whether it is to control your smart doorbell, check temperature, detect leakage, monitor the health of plants, or something as simple as texting your loved one, SiB has many ways in which it can ama5. Solar RoadwaysSolar Roadways is exactly what you’re thinking after reading the name. These are solar panels which can be used to pave roads, driveways, sidewalks, or any surface meant for walking. Solar wafers protected under thick layers of shatter-proof Gorilla Glass can be used to generate electricity from any surface. These modules come in hexagonal panels which makes replacement super easy. Additionally, Solar Roadways panels can be programmed electronically to show specific markings on the road. The panels can generate enough heat to melt the snow and thus ensure easy walking or driving over them during winters. All of this while saving the Earth and Earth-dwellers from succumbing to the damage caused by greenhouse gases.The researchers placed the cells carefully in a three-dimensional scaffold and watched, fascinated, as they started communicating and lining up into the distinctive bullet shape of a mouse embryo several days old.“We know that stem cells are magical in their powerful potential of what they can do. We did not realize they could self-organize so beautifully or perfectly,” Magdelena Zernicka­-Goetz, who headed the team, told an interviewer at the time.Zernicka-Goetz says her “synthetic” embryos probably couldn’t have grown into mice. Nonetheless, they’re a hint that soon we could have mammals born without an egg at all.That isn’t Zernicka-Goetz’s goal. She wants to study how the cells of an early embryo begin taking on their specialized roles. The next step, she says, is to make an artificial embryo out of human stem cells, work that’s being pursued at the University of Michigan and Rockefeller University.Synthetic human embryos would be a boon to scientists, letting them tease apart events early in development. And since such embryos start with easily manipulated stem cells, labs will be able to employ a full range of tools, such as gene editing, to investigate them as they grow.Artificial embryos, however, pose ethical questions. What if they turn out to be indistinguishable from real embryos? How long can they be grown in the lab before they feel pain? We need to address those questions before the science races ahead much further, bioethicists say.Sensing CityNumerous smart-city schemes have run into delays, dialed down their ambitious goals, or priced out everyone except the super-wealthy. A new project in Toronto, called Quayside, is hoping to change that pattern of failures by rethinking an urban neighborhood from the ground up and rebuilding it around the latest digital technologies.Sensing CityBreakthroughA Toronto neighborhood aims to be the first place to successfully integrate cutting-edge urban design with state-of-the-art digital technology.Why It MattersSmart cities could make urban areas more affordable, livable, and environmentally friendly.Key PlayersSidewalk Labs and Waterfront TorontoAvailabilityProject announced in October 2017; construction could begin in 2019Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, based in New York City, is collaborating with the Canadian government on the high-tech project, slated for Toronto’s industrial waterfront.One of the project’s goals is to base decisions about design, policy, and technology on information from an extensive network of sensors that gather data on everything from air quality to noise levels to people’s activities.The plan calls for all vehicles to be autonomous and shared. Robots will roam underground doing menial chores like delivering the mail. Sidewalk Labs says it will open access to the software and systems it’s creating so other companies can build services on top of them, much as people build apps for mobile phones.The company intends to closely monitor public infrastructure, and this has raised concerns about data governance and privacy. But Sidewalk Labs believes it can work with the community and the local government to alleviate those worries.“What’s distinctive about what we’re trying to do in Quayside is that the project is not only extraordinarily ambitious but also has a certain amount of humility,” says Rit Aggarwala, the executive in charge of Sidewalk Labs’ urban-systems planning. That humility may help Quayside avoid the pitfalls that have plagued previous smart-city initiatives.Other North American cities are already clamoring to be next on Sidewalk Labs’ list, according to Waterfront Toronto, the public agency overseeing Quayside’s development. “San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, and Boston have all called asking for introductions,” says the agency’s CEO, Will Fleissig.A smarter smart cityAn ambitious project by Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs could reshape how we live, work, and play in urban neighborhoods.AI for EverybodyArtificial intelligence has so far been mainly the plaything of big tech companies like Amazon, Baidu, Google, and Microsoft, as well as some startups. For many other companies and parts of the economy, AI systems are too expensive and too difficult to implement fully.AI for EverybodyBreakthroughCloud-based AI is making the technology cheaper and easier to use.Why It MattersRight now the use of AI is dominated by a relatively few companies, but as a cloud-based service, it could be widely available to many more, giving the economy a boost.Key PlayersAmazon; Google; MicrosoftAvailabilityNowWhat’s the solution? Machine-learning tools based in the cloud are bringing AI to a far broader audience. So far, Amazon dominates cloud AI with its AWS subsidiary. Google is challenging that with TensorFlow, an open-source AI library that can be used to build other machine-learning software. Recently Google announced Cloud AutoML, a suite of pre-trained systems that could make AI simpler to use.Microsoft, which has its own AI-powered cloud platform, Azure, is teaming up with Amazon to offer Gluon, an open-source deep-learning library. Gluon is supposed to make building neural nets—a key technology in AI that crudely mimics how the human brain learns—as easy as building a smartphone app.It is uncertain which of these companies will become the leader in offering AI cloud services. But it is a huge business opportunity for the winners.These products will be essential if the AI revolution is going to spread more broadly through different parts of the economy.Currently AI is used mostly in the tech industry, where it has created efficiencies and produced new products and services. But many other businesses and industries have struggled to take advantage of the advances in artificial intelligence. Sectors such as medicine, manufacturing, and energy could also be transformed if they were able to implement the technology more fully, with a huge boost to economic productivity.Most companies, though, still don’t have enough people who know how to use cloud AI. So Amazon and Google are also setting up consultancy services. Once the cloud puts the technology within the reach of almost everyone, the real AI revolution can begin.Dueling Neural NetworksArtificial intelligence is getting very good at identifying things: show it a million pictures, and it can tell you with uncanny accuracy which ones depict a pedestrian crossing a street. But AI is hopeless at generating images of pedestrians by itself. If it could do that, it would be able to create gobs of realistic but synthetic pictures depicting pedestrians in various settings, which a self-driving car could use to train itself without ever going out on the road.Dueling Neural NetworksBreakthroughTwo AI systems can spar with each other to create ultra-realistic original images or sounds, something machines have never been able to do before.Why It MattersThis gives machines something akin to a sense of imagination, which may help them become less reliant on humans—but also turns them into alarmingly powerful tools for digital fakery.Key PlayersGoogle Brain, DeepMind, NvidiaAvailabilityNowThe problem is, creating something entirely new requires imagination—and until now that has perplexed AIs.The solution first occurred to Ian Goodfellow, then a PhD student at the University of Montreal, during an academic argument in a bar in 2014. The approach, known as a generative adversarial network, or GAN, takes two neural networks—the simplified mathematical models of the human brain that underpin most modern machine learning—and pits them against each other in a digital cat-and-mouse game.Both networks are trained on the same data set. One, known as the generator, is tasked with creating variations on images it’s already seen—perhaps a picture of a pedestrian with an extra arm. The second, known as the discriminator, is asked to identify whether the example it sees is like the images it has been trained on or a fake produced by the generator—basically, is that three-armed person likely to be real?Over time, the generator can become so good at producing images that the discriminator can’t spot fakes. Essentially, the generator has been taught to recognize, and then create, realistic-looking images of pedestrians.The technology has become one of the most promising advances in AI in the past decade, able to help machines produce results that fool even humans.GANs have been put to use creating realistic-sounding speech and photorealistic fake imagery. In one compelling example, researchers from chipmaker Nvidia primed a GAN with celebrity photographs to create hundreds of credible faces of people who don’t exist. Another research group made not-unconvincing fake paintings that look like the works of van Gogh. Pushed further, GANs can reimagine images in different ways—making a sunny road appear snowy, or turning horses into zebras.The results aren’t always perfect: GANs can conjure up bicycles with two sets of handlebars, say, or faces with eyebrows in the wrong place. But because the images and sounds are often startlingly realistic, some experts believe there’s a sense in which GANs are beginning to understand the underlying structure of the world they see and hear. And that means AI may gain, along with a sense of imagination, a more independent ability to make sense of what it sees in the world.By pitting neural networks against one another, Ian Goodfellow has created a powerful AI tool. Now he, and the rest of us, must face the consequences.Babel-Fish EarbudsIn the cult sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you slide a yellow Babel fish into your ear to get translations in an instant. In the real world, Google has come up with an interim solution: a $159 pair of earbuds, called Pixel Buds. These work with its Pixel smartphones and Google Translate app to produce practically real-time translation.Babel-Fish EarbudsBreakthroughNear-real-time translation now works for a large number of languages and is easy to use.Why It MattersIn an increasingly global world, language is still a barrier to communication.Key PlayersGoogle and BaiduAvailabilityNowOne person wears the earbuds, while the other holds a phone. The earbud wearer speaks in his or her language—English is the default—and the app translates the talking and plays it aloud on the phone. The person holding the phone responds; this response is translated and played through the earbuds.Google Translate already has a conversation feature, and its iOS and Android apps let two users speak as it automatically figures out what languages they’re using and then translates them. But background noise can make it hard for the app to understand what people are saying, and also to figure out when one person has stopped speaking and it’s time to start translating.Pixel Buds get around these problems because the wearer taps and holds a finger on the right earbud while talking. Splitting the interaction between the phone and the earbuds gives each person control of a microphone and helps the speakers maintain eye contact, since they’re not trying to pass a phone back and forth.The Pixel Buds were widely panned for subpar design. They do look silly, and they may not fit well in your ears. They can also be hard to set up with a phone.Clunky hardware can be fixed, though. Pixel Buds show the promise of mutually intelligible communication between languages in close to real time. And no fish required.Zero-Carbon Natural GasThe world is probably stuck with natural gas as one of our primary sources of electricity for the foreseeable future. Cheap and readily available, it now accounts for more than 30 percent of US electricity and 22 percent of world electricity. And although it’s cleaner than coal, it’s still a massive source of carbon emissions.A pilot power plant just outside Houston, in the heart of the US petroleum and refining industry, is testing a technology that could make clean energy from natural gas a reality. The company behind the 50-megawatt project, Net Power, believes it can generate power at least as cheaply as standard natural-gas plants and capture essentially all the carbon dioxide released in the process.Zero-Carbon Natural GasBreakthroughA power plant efficiently and cheaply captures carbon released by burning natural gas, avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions.Why It MattersAround 32 percent of US electricity is produced with natural gas, accounting for around 30 percent of the power sector’s carbon emissions.Key Players8 Rivers Capital; Exelon Generation; CB&IAvailability3 to 5 yearsIf so, it would mean the world has a way to produce carbon-free energy from a fossil fuel at a reasonable cost. Such natural-gas plants could be cranked up and down on demand, avoiding the high capital costs of nuclear power and sidestepping the unsteady supply that renewables generally provide.Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. - Nikola TeslaTeleforceThe humongous tesla scalar interferometer described by tesla .It encompasses four modes of operationThe first one is the Tesla shield. It runs continuously and generates a thin, impenetrable hemispherical wall of energy over a selected area. It has defensive purposes and works as follows: By interfering two Fourier-expansions and 3-dimensional scalar hemispherical patterns in space, they join into a dome-like shield of electromagnetic energy. Air molecules and atoms trapped inside are fully ionized, displaying an intense and vivid light. Any physical object that attempts to pass through this shield will receive a considerable discharge of electrical energy and will be vaporized in an instant. By stacking these energetic shells, they will deter any gamma radiation or EMPS coming its way.The second mode is more offensive. Utilizing two truncated Fourier transformers, the device shoots a 3-dimensional scalar phi-field pulse. A second pulse is then released, traveling at a faster velocity and overtaking the first one, merging into a deadly EMP of electromagnetic energy.The third mode is the same pulse variation ran continuously. Thus, two continuous scalar waves are sent forward, merging into vector energy at their target destination. According to some researchers, this is the exact way in which Tesla planned to transmit wireless energy, and also the weapon that would annihilate hundreds of aircraft and entire armies.The final mode, dubbed “time squeeze,” will let the user play with things like antigravity, dematerialization and materialization, transmutation, and it provides a lot of medical benefits. Other effects may include subliminal and superluminal communication, seeing through the earth and the ocean, as well as reaching higher orders of reality. This is apparently possible because the human being has between his ears a Tesla scalar interferometer. This tiny, biological device accounts for most parapsychological phenomena. It can also be triggered naturally through practice and meditation.After the Stage One testing. Still, the full-blown Teleforce model was never made Nevertheless, Tesla’s design of the Teleforce is still highly relevant and plays a significant role in particle-beam weapons that are currently being used by various countries in different forms.Who knows, if someone had thrown a bit more investment money to Tesla, maybe wars would no longer even exist!At school, Natalie said word had gotten around what had happened to her, and she said she was bullied and called horrible names. This feeling of not belonging drove her to make another bad choice: she ran away a second time with the help of that older friend she had met in Seattle. Natalie was still just 15 years old.“I ran down the street to the bus stop… and she was parked there waiting for me,” Natalie said.Then she met 32-year-old Baruti Hopson. She said he was kind to her at first and gave her a place to stay, but then she said things took a horrible turn.“I had started talking to him, confided in him a little bit about family life and just how stressed out I was,” she said. “He had asked me if I had ever worked before, and I told him, ‘briefly’ … I didn’t really know what I was doing.“And then he told me that I wouldn’t be on the streets,” Natalie continued. “And I was like, ‘Well what does that mean?’ And he’s like, ‘Well I’m not going to have you walking the streets’ … And then that’s when Backpage came into play.”Natalie said Hopson told her was “safer” and that it was easier “not to get caught.”Backpage’s site is surprising simple, similar to Craigslist, but with a racy adult services section with categories like “Escorts” and “Body Rubs.” These are technically legal categories, but many in law enforcement say these ads are thinly veiled code for prostitution. While it is free for someone to post adult services ads, Backpage makes money by offering paid add-ons, including the ability to re-post the ad every hour and to post it in multiple neighboring cities.“He put me in all these clothes, took some pretty provocative pictures of me and then got to Backpage, and then you can click on to post an ad,” she said. “He just showed me how to do it, so I could do it myself.”Natalie said the website asked if she were 18 years or older, but “a simple yes click was about as far as that went.”With Backpage ads posted with titles such as “Well worth it, 150 an hour” and “It won’t take long at all,” Natalie said she was working every single day and started earning as much as $4,000 a weekend, handing over all the cash to Hopson.“He started getting physically abusive and really, I couldn’t even go in the bathroom without the door being unlocked,” Natalie said. “He would sleep in the living room next to the front door, so I couldn’t leave.”Natalie's mother Nacole said she was shocked to learn there was a website where this could to happen to underage girls, like her daughter.“I live in an American town, how can my kid be sold on the internet?” she said.“When you hear that your 15-year-old child is posting an ad for sex or for rape in her case, and that she’s getting 25 to 30 calls an hour, and you’re thinking, ‘Well how many of these is she having to answer? I mean, there’s 24 hours in a day… how many times a day is my child being raped?” Nacole added.But the sad truth is Nacole is among many American mothers who have had to ask themselves the same question.A mother who’s asked us to call her "Debbie" said her teenage daughter, who we’re calling "Crystal," left home one night after an argument. It only took 48 hours of her being gone for Debbie to find her images on Backpage.“I remember that she had on the see-through lacy teddy,” Debbie said. “And she’s 14.”Crystal says that when she left home, she arranged to stay with a friend’s boyfriend’s mom. Instead of giving her a safe place to stay, she says this woman forced her into prostitution. Crystal says they were re-posting her Backpage ad every five minutes and forcing her to have sex with the men who would come to the house.Crystal, who is now 19, told “Nightline,” “It’s hard being that young and being trapped in a room and not knowing if you’ll go home to your mom, or if you’ll come out of there alive.”"Megan," another mother who asked us to use an assumed name, said her 15-year-old daughter was also sold for sex on Backpage. Her daughter, who we’re referring to as "Kim," says she went to a party hosted by a friend’s older boyfriend on her fifteenth birthday. It was fun at first, but then Kim said she was told she couldn’t leave and was forced to take racy photos to post on Backpage.“I got a call from a friend of mine that said that I needed to check Backpage because she thinks that she had saw my daughter on Backpage,” Megan said. “So I checked, and sure enough, her ad was there.”Megan said she called the police and told them she saw Kim on a Backpage ad, and that they needed to do something.“I told them they had to go get her,” she said.Both of these girls were eventually rescued by police. The adults who posted them to Backpage were convicted in court. Kim and Crystal are also suing Backpage, and they are also represented by Natalie’s lawyers, Erik Bauer and Jason Amala. Backpage denies these allegations and is fighting them in court.But so far, every lawsuit filed by a trafficked underage girl against Backpage has been dismissed because of a law called the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The law protects Backpage, among others, from being held legally responsible for what users post on its website. Also called the CDA, the law shields websites or online publishers for information posted by third parties.“If someone publishes a faulty motorcycle, the buyer of that motorcycle shouldn’t be able to sue Backpage merely for posting the ad, that doesn’t make sense,” said ABC News’ senior legal correspondent Sunny Hostin. “Interestingly, under the law, there is no difference between Backpage posting the advertisement for the faulty motorcycle and posting the advertisement for the underage girl being trafficked for sex.”Backpage, which is based in Dallas, has repeatedly claimed that they are part of the solution, not the problem. The company told ABC News in a statement that it employs moderators who diligently screen ads to stop underage trafficking on its site. They added that they have voluntarily undertaken a multi-tiered "policing system to prohibit and report attempts at human exploitation and the advertisement of prostitution" that screens for words and phrases that might "suggest illegal activity" and that the company actively cooperates with law enforcement."While the experiences of children (and adults) who have been exploited are tragic and heartbreaking," Backpage told "Nightline" in a statement today. "The solution does not lie in making online service providers responsible for millions of posts by third-party users case, approximately 50 million posts per year presently) – the practical effect of which is inevitably highly restrictive censorship or the total banning of certain categories of online content so that online service providers are not in constant anxiety about potential liability for the one ad that slipped through their moderation systems."But many in law enforcement have openly challenged these claims, including Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, who in 2015 successfully petitioned every major credit card company to cut ties with Backpage. The only available payment methods on the site now are Bitcoin or mail-in check.Natalie’s father Tom says his daughter’s disappearance pushed him to the breaking point. He would spend days in the car, driving around Seattle, searching desperately for his missing girl. Until one night, he said things went too far.“I was driving down where these people hang out, and it was pretty obvious to me that this was a pimp and a girl,” he said. “I saw this, and I just got infuriated seeing this guy and this gal and I just turned my truck at him and floored it.But Tom didn't go through with it. “I had intended on hitting him,” he continued. “And I just figured, I’m going to get my daughter on the news, you know, um, and the way I’m going to do that is I’m going to kill this pimp, you know? I bought a fifth of good whiskey and I said, ‘I’m done.’ That was when I started drinking… I almost killed myself doing that.”Then, on the 108th night Natalie was missing, her Backpage ad was targeted in a sting set up by the Seattle Vice Squad. One of their officers had posed as a client, and when she walked into his hotel room, he stopped her.“He says, ‘I know who you are, Natalie,’ and I mean I can only imagine how big my eyes were when he said that,” Natalie said. “Instantly I saw hundreds of lights that seemed outside, just storms of cops outside.”One of those officers was Bill Guyer, a longtime Vice detective who spends much of his time on Backpage trying to rescue trafficked girls like Natalie. He and Natalie instantly formed a special bond the night she was rescued.“I remember meeting Det. Guyer, and he actually drove me to the jail, and he kind of relaxed me… almost reminded me of my dad,” Natalie said.Det. Guyer met Natalie’s parents and started a relationship with them too. He then helped Natalie build up the courage to testify in the trial of Baruti Hopson, who was sentenced to 26 and a half years in prison for promoting the commercial sex abuse of a minor.“I tell her and every other girl that even though they don’t want to go to court, I don’t want to go to court, but I’d like to get them to the point where they’re like, 'I can’t wait to get on the stand and point them out to you, that’s the piece of crap that did this to me,'” Guyer said.Guyer and the rest of the Seattle Vice Squad agreed to let “Nightline” embed with them as they set up a sting through Backpage, the kind of operation that’s become commonplace in police departments across the country. "Nightline" first met with Det. Lincoln, who’s asked that we change his name because of his frequent undercover assignments.Lincoln showed “Nightline” the ins and outs of posting on Backpage. Lincoln says there are many commonly-used terms that may flag to him and the other detectives that a girl on Backpage is underage, like “new in town” and “eager to please.” It’s a code he says he’s learned through experience tracking down underage girls listed on the site.But “Nightline” wanted to see what would happen if a Backpage ad didn’t just use these coded terms and instead blatantly suggest an underage girl was part of the deal. Would the ad be flagged and taken down by Backpage’s moderators?So Det. Lincoln posted an ad for an 18-year-old escort, adding in a line that said she had “a younger friend” who was available as well. Minutes after he posted the ad, calls and texts started streaming in. The ad was up and running.The ad remained up for about 36 hours, leading to dozens of phone calls, texts and even an arrest captured on “Nightline’s” cameras. The ad was only taken down after "Nightline" sent an anonymous email to Backpage’s dedicated email address for suspected child trafficking. It took eight hours to receive a response, which said to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. The ad was taken down shortly after Backpage’s email response was sent.Backpage later told “Nightline” in a statement that even though they thought that the ad did not clearly advertise that a girl under 18 was involved, their moderators did take it down and they say they banned the account. They also reported the ad to NCMEC.Yiota Souras, general counsel for NCMEC, said 73 percent of the reports they receive from the general public about suspected underage trafficking involve a Backpage post.Souras told “Nightline” she is skeptical of Backpage’s claims that they are closely monitoring their site, and of their attorney Liz McDougall’s claim that Backpage is “online to fight human trafficking online.”“I don't think you can be in the business of providing basically an online bazaar for escort ads that includes the purchase and sale of children for sex, and say that you are online to help fight the problem,” Souras said.In March, the Senate voted to hold Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing about online sex trafficking conducted by the Senate Subcommittee for Permanent Investigations.“It was a unanimous vote”, said Sen. Rob Portman. “First time in 21 years this has happened. It’s a big deal.”When asked why to specifically include Backpage in a hearing on online trafficking, Sen. McCaskill replied, “Backpage is the major player in this space. Therefore they have to be investigated. That’s as complicated as the subject is.”A circuit court is expected to rule on the contempt charge sometime in the coming months.Backpage also refused to respond to the Senate Subcommittee’s subpoenas for internal company documents relating to how it moderates its adult services ads, and exactly how much money they’re making off of them. The Senate is now seeking to enforce the subpoena. The nearly 200-page Senate report is available for download here.Despite this refusal, the Senate’s own investigators say they were able to obtain company emails from Backpage to its moderators. One email in the Senate report addresses underage ads specifically, and contains a line instructing moderators not to delete an ad unless they are “really very sure” the girl is underage. Other emails in the Senate report suggest Backpage was telling its moderators to simply edit out words and pictures from posts if they did not comply with Backpage’s terms of service. They are told to then post the edited ad anyway, even though the investigators say this editing would not change the nature of the underlying transition.“We're talking about big money,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. “And we have evidence that leads us to believe that they have edited ads in order to keep their profitability.”Backpage declined to comment on the Senate’s findings, but their lawyers are currently fighting the contempt charge in a D.C. court. The court will decide if Ferrer will be compelled to testify and if Backpage has to hand over their internal documents. In court filings, Backpage claims the Senate’s request is a violation of the First Amendment, because it “seeks every bit of information relating to every editorial decision made in the past six years.”Backpage’s corporate group is projected to have a revenue of $173 million dollars this year alone, although they will not say what percentage of that comes from the adult ad section, according to documents from the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations.“I'm betting that when we get all the financials they're not making much money selling motorcycles. But they're making a whole lot of money selling children,” said Sen. McCaskill. “I'm betting that's why they're working so hard at keeping this information out of the public eye.”Backpage, which was owned by Village Voice media until 2012, was sold to an “unnamed Dutch holding company” in December 2014, according to news articles at the time. “Nightline” discovered that CEO Carl Ferrer had opened a business in the Netherlands, which seems to be running two escort ad-based websites called as well as a very similar version of Backpage called “Cracker.” It is available almost everywhere except the United States.Ferrer declined “Nightline’s” repeated requests for interview, and when we tracked Ferrer to a classified ad industry conference in downtown Amsterdam, he again refused to speak with us.“He is in Amsterdam… because he wants to avoid the bright light of attention that we are placing on his company,” McCaskill said. “I don't think Amsterdam is far enough for him to go to avoid that bright light.”Back in the U.S., others, like Natalie and her family, are waiting for their day in court. Natalie is hoping her Washington state lawsuit, which focuses on the claim that Backpage knowingly developed itself into an online marketplace for illegal prostitution, will be the first of its kind to be successful against the company.“To whoever owns Backpage, Carl Ferrer, whoever-- he’s got to go home at night and know that he’s selling kids today,” her father Tom said. “He’s just as accountable as the pimp that sold her, in my mind.”Natalie’s attorney Erik Bauer said, “Reports of child sex trafficking have increased over the last five years due to the internet. According to the AIM Group, Backpage controls 80 percent of that market… this is a big business.” AIM Group is an interactive media and classified advertising consulting organization.Backpage responded to the allegations laid out in the Washington state lawsuit, according to court documents, stating that, "Backpage does not allow advertisements on its website to contain naked images, images featuring transparent clothing, sexually explicit language, suggestions of an exchange of sex acts for money, or advertisements for illegal services. In addition to these rules, specifically for advertisements posted in the “escort” section of its website, Backpage does not allow any solicitation directly or in 'coded' fashion for any illegal service exchanging sexual favors for money or other valuable consideration, any material on the Site that exploits minors in any way, or any material ... that in any way constitutes or assists in human trafficking."For Natalie, her horrific experience also has robbed her of a piece of her high school years.“I’ve never been to a football game. A high school football game,” she said. “I’ve never had a prom. I’ve never been to homecoming, and I see all my pictures. All my friends’ pictures on Facebook, and they have all that. They have memories… It makes me a little bitter.”But in all the sadness, one ray of light for Natalie has been the special relationship she and her parents have now with Det. Guyer.“To this day, six years later, he calls me on my birthday. Every year,” she said. “I actually said he’s the godfather of my little girl.”“He’s my hero,” Tom added. “He saved my little girl and brought her home.”The Philippines has become the global epicentre of live-streaming sexual abuse. Tens of thousands of identified victims are children, some even babies. Paedophiles, many from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children in these live videos, requesting particular acts they want performed. Arrests made of individuals participating include Americans Scott Peeler and David Deakin as well as Australian Kyle Dawson. Additionally, in 2014, the police raided a house in the slums of Manila to find a group of four girls and boys aged between 7 and 10 preparing for a ‘show’. The children were about to undress and perform sex acts on each other to an overseas customer. It was organised by an ‘operator’ living in the house, who was the mother of one of the children. In the surrounding area, it was an open secret that live-stream sexual abuse was happening. Dr. Tan, a pediatrician from the Child Protection Unit in Manila recalls, “The operator ran an open house, with ‘shows’ every other night…if children in the slum were hungry, they knew they could come for food and shelter, plus 150 pesos for taking part in the ‘show’.” In 2013, the Dutch child’s rights organisation Terre des Hommes ran an experiment to investigate demand for such acts. They launched a realistic-looking animation of a 10-year-old Filipino girl named Sweetie. They took the fake girl on chat groups and online forums. In less than two and a half months, they identified over 1,000 adults from over 65 countries, attempting to pay her to perform sexual acts in front of the webcam.So, technology has made it easier to access illegal activities across borders and to sexually exploit those in poverty-ridden countries (one in three people in Manila live in slums). Cybersex dens are tricky to identify since anyone who has a computer, internet and a webcam can be in business. Additionally, by live-streaming as opposed to downloading illegal content, users bypass digital markers embedded by law enforcement to catch those watching child pornography.Becoming LovelyIndependence has always been important to me. When I moved away from my family at 18, it was like breathing fresh air for the first time. After years of reflection, I now understand my childhood and adolescence to be toxic and dysfunctional, but at the time I just knew I wanted to get out. When I fell behind on my rent in my second year of college, going back home, or even asking for help, was not an option.I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area—a sex-positive place with a history steeped in sexual taboo. It was an eye-opening experience. Sex workers had always intrigued me, skilled in the act of bucking the expectation of what a woman’s sexuality was supposed to be and how women should behave. Several of my classmates at the college I was attending were escorts or peep show dancers, and they made their line of work sound empowering and financially lucrative.Now, I wasn’t just intrigued; I was broke. I was working part-time at an after-school program, but between being a college student without many marketable skills and the great economic downturn of 2008, it felt as though ends would just never meet. When I got behind on my rent and bills by nearly a month, I decided to see whether I could bridge the gap, just this once, with sex work.As Lovely, I specialized in GFE, or the girlfriend experience, meaning most sessions weren’t just about sex. There was talking, kissing, the obligatory blow job. Men weren’t paying hundreds of dollars for a run-of-the-mill lay—I was providing a fantasy, which included looking the part, while sounding and acting it too. But still, these weren’t dates. Any emotional intimacy was manufactured, a service rendered.Every part of my body was up for commodification. I sold sex for a few hundred dollars an hour, stripped at a peep show for an hourly wage, and would provide à la carte services like hand jobs or sensual massage on a case-by-case basis. Every week one of my regulars would “by chance” meet me at a Safeway parking lot in Berkeley. Discreetly I’d slip him a brown paper bag containing my used panties, as he pressed a 50 into the palm of my hand.I did a lot of things as an escort that were firsts for me. One guy liked to dress up like a baby while getting pegged from behind. Another client would ring me up sometimes for the express purpose of giving me oral sex, something he said his wife didn’t like to receive but he very much liked to give. At his request I pushed one guy’s head into the toilet bowl, forcing him to eat my shit. As in most underworlds, anything goes.I was always taken aback by the sheer volume of men trolling for sex on the internet—out of the dozen or so men I serviced each month, there was no typical customer, unless white men over the age of 21 with a pulse counts as a type. The best part for me was talking to my clients. I loved speaking to the guys, hearing tidbits about their lives. I became obsessed with figuring out why men buy sex. Before the session was over, I made it a habit to ask some variation of “Why do you do this?”Some men were single and lonely; others were married and lonely. I heard stories about how they weren’t getting enough action after the baby was born, or as their wives went through menopause, or for whatever reason really. For many, the amount of sex they were or were not getting at home was irrelevant—new pussy is new pussy.When I was Lovely, I found power in that idea. It didn’t matter that I was an overweight college student with no fashion sense. I could get grown men to not only desire me but pay me for the privilege of my company. My pleasure was never the priority, but on occasions a special snowflake would blow through my door and it would be good for me too. The work wasn’t honest, but it paid the bills and made me feel sexy during a time when I felt anything but in real life.Pleasure and Power After Sex WorkWhen sex is work, the thrill has a way of slowly dissipating. None of the women my johns talked about was ever enough—and I started to believe I’d never be enough for one person either. I wasn’t powerful; I was merely a pawn in the game of misogyny—a decently paid one, but still.Within a year, I was done. I moved to New York to study English at a private liberal arts college—a fresh start. I was only a junior in college and I figured my time as a Craigslist escort would be nothing more than a small detour on the way to adulthood. But leaving Lovely Brown behind wasn’t easy. I was alone in a new city, and my depression went into overdrive as I tried to forget about the last year of my life. My weight yo-yoed, and my personal grooming was shaky at best. I was dirty. Tainted.After working as an escort, I found sex for pleasure cumbersome, foreign, and at times repulsive. Ironically, casual sex felt like a struggle after being Lovely. How can we share such intimate parts of ourselves with strangers or even casual acquaintances? On top of that, I lost sight of my own sense of sexual pleasure. After such a long time being someone else’s fantasy, I still struggle with my own wants and desires in the bedroom.Having a healthier relationship to sex meant getting to know myself sexually, but where to start? I didn’t know how to navigate sexual or romantic encounters at all as a civilian. The idea of trusting in a relationship seemed impossible—how long would it be before my partner went in search of new pussy? Scared of true intimacy, I alternated between internet hookups and self-imposed bouts of celibacy for years, never able to shake the feeling that I was tainted.Forgiving myself took time. And therapy. And self-care. Burlesque and pole dancing classes have helped me feel connected with my body. I no longer feel the need to moan uncontrollably with every touch or to talk to men in a baby voice; instead of focusing on the performance, I focus on my own pleasure. I no longer believe my past put me at a deficit or that I’m any less deserving of love and affection than the next person. Asking for what I want is something that still elicits nervousness in me, but it’s a feeling I’m pushing through.In the decade since I left the sex trade, I’ve had sexual encounters of varied levels of success and even a relationship or two. After a breakup last summer that was particularly hard on me, I took a break from dating and sex. For a long time I just didn’t feel like sharing myself or my body with anyone. Instead I’ve been focusing on getting mentally and emotionally stronger so I can eventually have the type of relationship or romantic encounter I desire. I’m also focused on hitting my career goals. Things are not perfect, but I’m getting there, and one thing is for sure: The next time I get it on, I’ll really want it. For real this time.It’s already February, which means that after a couple of weeks more, especially in the southern states of India, we’ll be experiencing scorching heat, coupled with warm air flows, making it all the more unbearable. An air conditioner needs you to shell out Rs 20,000 or more, and that is excluding all electricity costs.The invention came across to me as I was drinking my daily coffee at a certain place I like to hang out. I was watching this YouTube video about it, the link of which is provided down below at the end of this answer.And before I disclose what it is, I’d better first mention the best aspects of this deceptively intelligent invention.* It addresses the issue of recycling plastic bottles* It’s going to cool down your room by at least 5 degrees from the outside temperature* It doesn’t needs any electricity, and heck- even you can create this stuff and put it on your windows. Even your 10 year old child will be able to make this for himself.And with your permission, I’d present:The Electricity-free, Environment-friendliest cooler in the world: AirconIt’s basically a square cardboard box that has plenty of upper halves of plastic bottles attached to it, in a way that’s shown above.It works on a simple principle, which you can demonstrate yourselves. Place your palms in front of your mouth, and blow air to it. Blow the air with your mouth open our wide.And now, try blowing it once again, only this time, try to blow it with your mouths pouted outwards to make your mouth much narrower, similar to this:You’d experience that in the first case, you felt a breeze of warm air on your palms, but colder in case of the second scenario. To maintain the simplicity of this article, I’m going to avoid the underlying physics, which, if I may be frank, is actually very simple. But its something like this:It is this bottleneck arrangement that forms the backbone of this invention.Moreover, if you happen to live in a high-rise building, where you’ll constantly have free flowing air passing by your rooms (which becomes a punishment at summer afternoons), then this ‘device’, will work the best for you.And to help you create on for yourself, here are the blueprints of this air cooler.Google Project loon - BALLOON-POWERED INTERNET FOR EVERYONEProject Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. Project Loon is a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 32 km (20 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds. Project Loon balloons travel approximately 20 km above the Earth’s surface in the stratospherefacebook is also working for improving Internet access for people around the world with its project by Facebook.The idea is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use.The by Facebook app provides free basic services in markets where internet access may be less affordable. It allows people to browse selected health, employment and local information websites without data charges. The app is currently available in seven countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia, and will continue to expand to other parts of the world.2. WORD LENSAn app that instantly translates languages using your phone camera.You can also use it for reading road signs or boards :This app is now acquired by google : Quest Visual - Google Quest VisualDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play3. Forest :Forest is an app helping you stay away from your smartphone and stay focused on your work. Whenever you want to concentrate, you can plant a seed in Forest. In the next 30 minutes, this small seed will gradually grow into a big tree. However, if you cannot resist the temptation and leave this app to check Facebook or play a game, your little cute tree will wither away. Every day you will own a forest filled with trees (or some withered twigs) and every tree represents 30-MINUTES that you have been working hard.Download link : Android Apps on Google Play4. PUSH BULLETFeatures:(i ) Never miss a call or text again while working at your computer.(ii) Send files from your computer to your phone with a click.(iii) The easiest way to get links from your computer onto your phone.Download link: Android Apps on Google Play5. BE MY EYES - lend your eyes to the blindBe My Eyes is an app that connects blind people with volunteer helpers from around the world via live video chat.It is an open source software available on Be My Eyes and Be My Eyes - helping blind seeCheck its official website for its functionality : Be My Eyes ~ Lend Your Eyes to the Blind6. Wakie – Social Alarm ClockWakie is a fun, friendly community of people who wake each other up in the morning. It’s a brand new way to wake up, made especially for those of us who hate the jarring noise of an alarm clock. When you use Wakie, you get to start your day with a smile instead of a frown!How it works:Set an alarm for 7:00am and you’ll get a phone call from another Wakie member at 7:00am. The calls last just 60 seconds — you’ll hear a warning at 50 seconds, and the call is automatically disconnected at 1 minute. No awkward goodbyes, no long conversations — calls are quick and casual. You can also choose to wake someone up yourself, too.Its official website: Wakie PhenomenonDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play , Wakie (on windows) and Wakie - Social Alarm Clock (on apple).7. Thief TrackerKeep your hard earned smartphone safe by using Thief tracker. If your mobile is lost/stolen, any failed attempt to unlock your mobile will trigger this app to take picture from front camera and send you an email without the user getting to know.Install, Activate and forget, you dont have to remember anything, no secret keywords, no username/passwords.A notification will be displayed in task bar whenever the app uploads pic to server or fails to upload. The notification email sometimes goes to Spam/Junk folder.Download link : Android Apps on Google Play8. Helping FacelessUse technology to fight child trafficking. The idea is simple, give power in hand of people to help us find missing children.How do this app do it?Simply speaking you take several photos of kids you find on street asking for money, all around you; using our app and give them chocolates in exchange. The photos are auto-magically uploaded to our server and our algorithms instantly get to work in matching these photos to the ones we have. We share this information with validated NGOs who help these kidsDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play9. Touch N SyncTouch N Sync is a life time insurance for your contacts. It keeps backup of your contacts across multiple devices and allow you to recover and access from anywhere.Features:★ Contacts on SMS - It will allow you to access your contacts from any device, just message "TNS USERNAME PASSWORD KEYWORD" to 56161 and it will SMS you back with the related contacts from your device.★ Easy Access - Access your contacts from anywhere (any device) without any dependency.★ Highly Secure.★ Sync Contacts from multiple devices.★ Smart Merging of your duplicate contacts.★ Integrated Dialer, SMS and Email Sender.★ Managing multiple devices from the Single Screen.Download link: Android Apps on Google Play10. Smart phone lock:Smart Phone Lock will set the current phone time as your unlock PIN for the lock screen. It will change the PIN magically on every minute! So, each time you unlock the device, the PIN will vary and you need not worry about prying eyes around you. The best part is, you need not memorise anything to remember the PIN. The modifiers will allow you to enhance the security to the next level.Inventions, mostly, change the world for good by filling up gaps between our expectations and the available products. Since time unclocked, curiosity-driven and purposeful humans have invented innumerable objects that have not only helped the humankind at that moment but also inspired many other inventions, and the trend has been ever-growi1. OrCam MyMe – AI for HumansOrCam MyMe aims to help you strike a balance between physical and digital social lives. The tiny gadget sits on your collar or pocket with an inbuilt smart camera with facial recognition so you don’t forget a coworker’s or acquaintance’s name again. MyMe lets you keep an account of the time you spend socializing and using the compliant app, you can classify people in groups like work, friends, or family and set timers for each group.2. Snore CircleSnoring is caused due to restricted airflow in the throat while sleeping and besides being a major annoyance, can be a cause of many diseases. So if you want to break the snoring habits you or someone in the family might have, Snore Circle is a great gadget. It uses a combination of audio and bone conduction to sense when you’re snoring and in turn, sends micro signals to the brain to reduce – and completely eliminate – snoring. Besides helping you give up snoring, the compatible app will monitor the quality of your sleep.3. NANO1 – World’s Smallest Astronomy CameraNANO1 is the perfect invention for passionate stargazers who not only like to be awestruck by looking at the wonders of the sky but also want to capture these with their cameras. The inventors of NANO1 bill it as the smallest astronomy camera in the world which can capture 25 times more light than the human eye and condense an hour-long recording into 3 minutes for a charming view of the sky as well as other phenomena like the Northern Lights. You can connect NANO1 with your smartphone over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and view an augmented reality map of constellations to appreciate the beauty of the sky.4. SiB – The Simple Internet-Connected Button that is only $5If one has to condense what SiB does in only a few words, the best explanation would be that it simplifies your life. Short for Simple Internet-Connected Button, SiB is a tiny cube with a programmable button that can be connected with a host of other smart devices and sensors to perform an unimaginable large number of functions. Whether it is to control your smart doorbell, check temperature, detect leakage, monitor the health of plants, or something as simple as texting your loved one, SiB has many ways in which it can ama5. Solar RoadwaysSolar Roadways is exactly what you’re thinking after reading the name. These are solar panels which can be used to pave roads, driveways, sidewalks, or any surface meant for walking. Solar wafers protected under thick layers of shatter-proof Gorilla Glass can be used to generate electricity from any surface. These modules come in hexagonal panels which makes replacement super easy. Additionally, Solar Roadways panels can be programmed electronically to show specific markings on the road. The panels can generate enough heat to melt the snow and thus ensure easy walking or driving over them during winters. All of this while saving the Earth and Earth-dwellers from succumbing to the damage caused by greenhouse gases.The researchers placed the cells carefully in a three-dimensional scaffold and watched, fascinated, as they started communicating and lining up into the distinctive bullet shape of a mouse embryo several days old.“We know that stem cells are magical in their powerful potential of what they can do. We did not realize they could self-organize so beautifully or perfectly,” Magdelena Zernicka­-Goetz, who headed the team, told an interviewer at the time.Zernicka-Goetz says her “synthetic” embryos probably couldn’t have grown into mice. Nonetheless, they’re a hint that soon we could have mammals born without an egg at all.That isn’t Zernicka-Goetz’s goal. She wants to study how the cells of an early embryo begin taking on their specialized roles. The next step, she says, is to make an artificial embryo out of human stem cells, work that’s being pursued at the University of Michigan and Rockefeller University.Synthetic human embryos would be a boon to scientists, letting them tease apart events early in development. And since such embryos start with easily manipulated stem cells, labs will be able to employ a full range of tools, such as gene editing, to investigate them as they grow.Artificial embryos, however, pose ethical questions. What if they turn out to be indistinguishable from real embryos? How long can they be grown in the lab before they feel pain? We need to address those questions before the science races ahead much further, bioethicists say.Sensing CityNumerous smart-city schemes have run into delays, dialed down their ambitious goals, or priced out everyone except the super-wealthy. A new project in Toronto, called Quayside, is hoping to change that pattern of failures by rethinking an urban neighborhood from the ground up and rebuilding it around the latest digital technologies.Sensing CityBreakthroughA Toronto neighborhood aims to be the first place to successfully integrate cutting-edge urban design with state-of-the-art digital technology.Why It MattersSmart cities could make urban areas more affordable, livable, and environmentally friendly.Key PlayersSidewalk Labs and Waterfront TorontoAvailabilityProject announced in October 2017; construction could begin in 2019Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, based in New York City, is collaborating with the Canadian government on the high-tech project, slated for Toronto’s industrial waterfront.One of the project’s goals is to base decisions about design, policy, and technology on information from an extensive network of sensors that gather data on everything from air quality to noise levels to people’s activities.The plan calls for all vehicles to be autonomous and shared. Robots will roam underground doing menial chores like delivering the mail. Sidewalk Labs says it will open access to the software and systems it’s creating so other companies can build services on top of them, much as people build apps for mobile phones.The company intends to closely monitor public infrastructure, and this has raised concerns about data governance and privacy. But Sidewalk Labs believes it can work with the community and the local government to alleviate those worries.“What’s distinctive about what we’re trying to do in Quayside is that the project is not only extraordinarily ambitious but also has a certain amount of humility,” says Rit Aggarwala, the executive in charge of Sidewalk Labs’ urban-systems planning. That humility may help Quayside avoid the pitfalls that have plagued previous smart-city initiatives.Other North American cities are already clamoring to be next on Sidewalk Labs’ list, according to Waterfront Toronto, the public agency overseeing Quayside’s development. “San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, and Boston have all called asking for introductions,” says the agency’s CEO, Will Fleissig.A smarter smart cityAn ambitious project by Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs could reshape how we live, work, and play in urban neighborhoods.AI for EverybodyArtificial intelligence has so far been mainly the plaything of big tech companies like Amazon, Baidu, Google, and Microsoft, as well as some startups. For many other companies and parts of the economy, AI systems are too expensive and too difficult to implement fully.AI for EverybodyBreakthroughCloud-based AI is making the technology cheaper and easier to use.Why It MattersRight now the use of AI is dominated by a relatively few companies, but as a cloud-based service, it could be widely available to many more, giving the economy a boost.Key PlayersAmazon; Google; MicrosoftAvailabilityNowWhat’s the solution? Machine-learning tools based in the cloud are bringing AI to a far broader audience. So far, Amazon dominates cloud AI with its AWS subsidiary. Google is challenging that with TensorFlow, an open-source AI library that can be used to build other machine-learning software. Recently Google announced Cloud AutoML, a suite of pre-trained systems that could make AI simpler to use.Microsoft, which has its own AI-powered cloud platform, Azure, is teaming up with Amazon to offer Gluon, an open-source deep-learning library. Gluon is supposed to make building neural nets—a key technology in AI that crudely mimics how the human brain learns—as easy as building a smartphone app.It is uncertain which of these companies will become the leader in offering AI cloud services. But it is a huge business opportunity for the winners.These products will be essential if the AI revolution is going to spread more broadly through different parts of the economy.Currently AI is used mostly in the tech industry, where it has created efficiencies and produced new products and services. But many other businesses and industries have struggled to take advantage of the advances in artificial intelligence. Sectors such as medicine, manufacturing, and energy could also be transformed if they were able to implement the technology more fully, with a huge boost to economic productivity.Most companies, though, still don’t have enough people who know how to use cloud AI. So Amazon and Google are also setting up consultancy services. Once the cloud puts the technology within the reach of almost everyone, the real AI revolution can begin.Dueling Neural NetworksArtificial intelligence is getting very good at identifying things: show it a million pictures, and it can tell you with uncanny accuracy which ones depict a pedestrian crossing a street. But AI is hopeless at generating images of pedestrians by itself. If it could do that, it would be able to create gobs of realistic but synthetic pictures depicting pedestrians in various settings, which a self-driving car could use to train itself without ever going out on the road.Dueling Neural NetworksBreakthroughTwo AI systems can spar with each other to create ultra-realistic original images or sounds, something machines have never been able to do before.Why It MattersThis gives machines something akin to a sense of imagination, which may help them become less reliant on humans—but also turns them into alarmingly powerful tools for digital fakery.Key PlayersGoogle Brain, DeepMind, NvidiaAvailabilityNowThe problem is, creating something entirely new requires imagination—and until now that has perplexed AIs.The solution first occurred to Ian Goodfellow, then a PhD student at the University of Montreal, during an academic argument in a bar in 2014. The approach, known as a generative adversarial network, or GAN, takes two neural networks—the simplified mathematical models of the human brain that underpin most modern machine learning—and pits them against each other in a digital cat-and-mouse game.Both networks are trained on the same data set. One, known as the generator, is tasked with creating variations on images it’s already seen—perhaps a picture of a pedestrian with an extra arm. The second, known as the discriminator, is asked to identify whether the example it sees is like the images it has been trained on or a fake produced by the generator—basically, is that three-armed person likely to be real?Over time, the generator can become so good at producing images that the discriminator can’t spot fakes. Essentially, the generator has been taught to recognize, and then create, realistic-looking images of pedestrians.The technology has become one of the most promising advances in AI in the past decade, able to help machines produce results that fool even humans.GANs have been put to use creating realistic-sounding speech and photorealistic fake imagery. In one compelling example, researchers from chipmaker Nvidia primed a GAN with celebrity photographs to create hundreds of credible faces of people who don’t exist. Another research group made not-unconvincing fake paintings that look like the works of van Gogh. Pushed further, GANs can reimagine images in different ways—making a sunny road appear snowy, or turning horses into zebras.The results aren’t always perfect: GANs can conjure up bicycles with two sets of handlebars, say, or faces with eyebrows in the wrong place. But because the images and sounds are often startlingly realistic, some experts believe there’s a sense in which GANs are beginning to understand the underlying structure of the world they see and hear. And that means AI may gain, along with a sense of imagination, a more independent ability to make sense of what it sees in the world.By pitting neural networks against one another, Ian Goodfellow has created a powerful AI tool. Now he, and the rest of us, must face the consequences.Babel-Fish EarbudsIn the cult sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you slide a yellow Babel fish into your ear to get translations in an instant. In the real world, Google has come up with an interim solution: a $159 pair of earbuds, called Pixel Buds. These work with its Pixel smartphones and Google Translate app to produce practically real-time translation.Babel-Fish EarbudsBreakthroughNear-real-time translation now works for a large number of languages and is easy to use.Why It MattersIn an increasingly global world, language is still a barrier to communication.Key PlayersGoogle and BaiduAvailabilityNowOne person wears the earbuds, while the other holds a phone. The earbud wearer speaks in his or her language—English is the default—and the app translates the talking and plays it aloud on the phone. The person holding the phone responds; this response is translated and played through the earbuds.Google Translate already has a conversation feature, and its iOS and Android apps let two users speak as it automatically figures out what languages they’re using and then translates them. But background noise can make it hard for the app to understand what people are saying, and also to figure out when one person has stopped speaking and it’s time to start translating.Pixel Buds get around these problems because the wearer taps and holds a finger on the right earbud while talking. Splitting the interaction between the phone and the earbuds gives each person control of a microphone and helps the speakers maintain eye contact, since they’re not trying to pass a phone back and forth.The Pixel Buds were widely panned for subpar design. They do look silly, and they may not fit well in your ears. They can also be hard to set up with a phone.Clunky hardware can be fixed, though. Pixel Buds show the promise of mutually intelligible communication between languages in close to real time. And no fish required.Zero-Carbon Natural GasThe world is probably stuck with natural gas as one of our primary sources of electricity for the foreseeable future. Cheap and readily available, it now accounts for more than 30 percent of US electricity and 22 percent of world electricity. And although it’s cleaner than coal, it’s still a massive source of carbon emissions.A pilot power plant just outside Houston, in the heart of the US petroleum and refining industry, is testing a technology that could make clean energy from natural gas a reality. The company behind the 50-megawatt project, Net Power, believes it can generate power at least as cheaply as standard natural-gas plants and capture essentially all the carbon dioxide released in the process.Zero-Carbon Natural GasBreakthroughA power plant efficiently and cheaply captures carbon released by burning natural gas, avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions.Why It MattersAround 32 percent of US electricity is produced with natural gas, accounting for around 30 percent of the power sector’s carbon emissions.Key Players8 Rivers Capital; Exelon Generation; CB&IAvailability3 to 5 yearsIf so, it would mean the world has a way to produce carbon-free energy from a fossil fuel at a reasonable cost. Such natural-gas plants could be cranked up and down on demand, avoiding the high capital costs of nuclear power and sidestepping the unsteady supply that renewables generally provide.Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. - Nikola TeslaTeleforceThe humongous tesla scalar interferometer described by tesla .It encompasses four modes of operationThe first one is the Tesla shield. It runs continuously and generates a thin, impenetrable hemispherical wall of energy over a selected area. It has defensive purposes and works as follows: By interfering two Fourier-expansions and 3-dimensional scalar hemispherical patterns in space, they join into a dome-like shield of electromagnetic energy. Air molecules and atoms trapped inside are fully ionized, displaying an intense and vivid light. Any physical object that attempts to pass through this shield will receive a considerable discharge of electrical energy and will be vaporized in an instant. By stacking these energetic shells, they will deter any gamma radiation or EMPS coming its way.The second mode is more offensive. Utilizing two truncated Fourier transformers, the device shoots a 3-dimensional scalar phi-field pulse. A second pulse is then released, traveling at a faster velocity and overtaking the first one, merging into a deadly EMP of electromagnetic energy.The third mode is the same pulse variation ran continuously. Thus, two continuous scalar waves are sent forward, merging into vector energy at their target destination. According to some researchers, this is the exact way in which Tesla planned to transmit wireless energy, and also the weapon that would annihilate hundreds of aircraft and entire armies.The final mode, dubbed “time squeeze,” will let the user play with things like antigravity, dematerialization and materialization, transmutation, and it provides a lot of medical benefits. Other effects may include subliminal and superluminal communication, seeing through the earth and the ocean, as well as reaching higher orders of reality. This is apparently possible because the human being has between his ears a Tesla scalar interferometer. This tiny, biological device accounts for most parapsychological phenomena. It can also be triggered naturally through practice and meditation.After the Stage One testing. Still, the full-blown Teleforce model was never made Nevertheless, Tesla’s design of the Teleforce is still highly relevant and plays a significant role in particle-beam weapons that are currently being used by various countries in different forms.Who knows, if someone had thrown a bit more investment money to Tesla, maybe wars would no longer even exist!At school, Natalie said word had gotten around what had happened to her, and she said she was bullied and called horrible names. This feeling of not belonging drove her to make another bad choice: she ran away a second time with the help of that older friend she had met in Seattle. Natalie was still just 15 years old.“I ran down the street to the bus stop… and she was parked there waiting for me,” Natalie said.Then she met 32-year-old Baruti Hopson. She said he was kind to her at first and gave her a place to stay, but then she said things took a horrible turn.“I had started talking to him, confided in him a little bit about family life and just how stressed out I was,” she said. “He had asked me if I had ever worked before, and I told him, ‘briefly’ … I didn’t really know what I was doing.“And then he told me that I wouldn’t be on the streets,” Natalie continued. “And I was like, ‘Well what does that mean?’ And he’s like, ‘Well I’m not going to have you walking the streets’ … And then that’s when Backpage came into play.”Natalie said Hopson told her was “safer” and that it was easier “not to get caught.”Backpage’s site is surprising simple, similar to Craigslist, but with a racy adult services section with categories like “Escorts” and “Body Rubs.” These are technically legal categories, but many in law enforcement say these ads are thinly veiled code for prostitution. While it is free for someone to post adult services ads, Backpage makes money by offering paid add-ons, including the ability to re-post the ad every hour and to post it in multiple neighboring cities.“He put me in all these clothes, took some pretty provocative pictures of me and then got to Backpage, and then you can click on to post an ad,” she said. “He just showed me how to do it, so I could do it myself.”Natalie said the website asked if she were 18 years or older, but “a simple yes click was about as far as that went.”With Backpage ads posted with titles such as “Well worth it, 150 an hour” and “It won’t take long at all,” Natalie said she was working every single day and started earning as much as $4,000 a weekend, handing over all the cash to Hopson.“He started getting physically abusive and really, I couldn’t even go in the bathroom without the door being unlocked,” Natalie said. “He would sleep in the living room next to the front door, so I couldn’t leave.”Natalie's mother Nacole said she was shocked to learn there was a website where this could to happen to underage girls, like her daughter.“I live in an American town, how can my kid be sold on the internet?” she said.“When you hear that your 15-year-old child is posting an ad for sex or for rape in her case, and that she’s getting 25 to 30 calls an hour, and you’re thinking, ‘Well how many of these is she having to answer? I mean, there’s 24 hours in a day… how many times a day is my child being raped?” Nacole added.But the sad truth is Nacole is among many American mothers who have had to ask themselves the same question.A mother who’s asked us to call her "Debbie" said her teenage daughter, who we’re calling "Crystal," left home one night after an argument. It only took 48 hours of her being gone for Debbie to find her images on Backpage.“I remember that she had on the see-through lacy teddy,” Debbie said. “And she’s 14.”Crystal says that when she left home, she arranged to stay with a friend’s boyfriend’s mom. Instead of giving her a safe place to stay, she says this woman forced her into prostitution. Crystal says they were re-posting her Backpage ad every five minutes and forcing her to have sex with the men who would come to the house.Crystal, who is now 19, told “Nightline,” “It’s hard being that young and being trapped in a room and not knowing if you’ll go home to your mom, or if you’ll come out of there alive.”"Megan," another mother who asked us to use an assumed name, said her 15-year-old daughter was also sold for sex on Backpage. Her daughter, who we’re referring to as "Kim," says she went to a party hosted by a friend’s older boyfriend on her fifteenth birthday. It was fun at first, but then Kim said she was told she couldn’t leave and was forced to take racy photos to post on Backpage.“I got a call from a friend of mine that said that I needed to check Backpage because she thinks that she had saw my daughter on Backpage,” Megan said. “So I checked, and sure enough, her ad was there.”Megan said she called the police and told them she saw Kim on a Backpage ad, and that they needed to do something.“I told them they had to go get her,” she said.Both of these girls were eventually rescued by police. The adults who posted them to Backpage were convicted in court. Kim and Crystal are also suing Backpage, and they are also represented by Natalie’s lawyers, Erik Bauer and Jason Amala. Backpage denies these allegations and is fighting them in court.But so far, every lawsuit filed by a trafficked underage girl against Backpage has been dismissed because of a law called the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The law protects Backpage, among others, from being held legally responsible for what users post on its website. Also called the CDA, the law shields websites or online publishers for information posted by third parties.“If someone publishes a faulty motorcycle, the buyer of that motorcycle shouldn’t be able to sue Backpage merely for posting the ad, that doesn’t make sense,” said ABC News’ senior legal correspondent Sunny Hostin. “Interestingly, under the law, there is no difference between Backpage posting the advertisement for the faulty motorcycle and posting the advertisement for the underage girl being trafficked for sex.”Backpage, which is based in Dallas, has repeatedly claimed that they are part of the solution, not the problem. The company told ABC News in a statement that it employs moderators who diligently screen ads to stop underage trafficking on its site. They added that they have voluntarily undertaken a multi-tiered "policing system to prohibit and report attempts at human exploitation and the advertisement of prostitution" that screens for words and phrases that might "suggest illegal activity" and that the company actively cooperates with law enforcement."While the experiences of children (and adults) who have been exploited are tragic and heartbreaking," Backpage told "Nightline" in a statement today. "The solution does not lie in making online service providers responsible for millions of posts by third-party users case, approximately 50 million posts per year presently) – the practical effect of which is inevitably highly restrictive censorship or the total banning of certain categories of online content so that online service providers are not in constant anxiety about potential liability for the one ad that slipped through their moderation systems."But many in law enforcement have openly challenged these claims, including Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, who in 2015 successfully petitioned every major credit card company to cut ties with Backpage. The only available payment methods on the site now are Bitcoin or mail-in check.Natalie’s father Tom says his daughter’s disappearance pushed him to the breaking point. He would spend days in the car, driving around Seattle, searching desperately for his missing girl. Until one night, he said things went too far.“I was driving down where these people hang out, and it was pretty obvious to me that this was a pimp and a girl,” he said. “I saw this, and I just got infuriated seeing this guy and this gal and I just turned my truck at him and floored it.But Tom didn't go through with it. “I had intended on hitting him,” he continued. “And I just figured, I’m going to get my daughter on the news, you know, um, and the way I’m going to do that is I’m going to kill this pimp, you know? I bought a fifth of good whiskey and I said, ‘I’m done.’ That was when I started drinking… I almost killed myself doing that.”Then, on the 108th night Natalie was missing, her Backpage ad was targeted in a sting set up by the Seattle Vice Squad. One of their officers had posed as a client, and when she walked into his hotel room, he stopped her.“He says, ‘I know who you are, Natalie,’ and I mean I can only imagine how big my eyes were when he said that,” Natalie said. “Instantly I saw hundreds of lights that seemed outside, just storms of cops outside.”One of those officers was Bill Guyer, a longtime Vice detective who spends much of his time on Backpage trying to rescue trafficked girls like Natalie. He and Natalie instantly formed a special bond the night she was rescued.“I remember meeting Det. Guyer, and he actually drove me to the jail, and he kind of relaxed me… almost reminded me of my dad,” Natalie said.Det. Guyer met Natalie’s parents and started a relationship with them too. He then helped Natalie build up the courage to testify in the trial of Baruti Hopson, who was sentenced to 26 and a half years in prison for promoting the commercial sex abuse of a minor.“I tell her and every other girl that even though they don’t want to go to court, I don’t want to go to court, but I’d like to get them to the point where they’re like, 'I can’t wait to get on the stand and point them out to you, that’s the piece of crap that did this to me,'” Guyer said.Guyer and the rest of the Seattle Vice Squad agreed to let “Nightline” embed with them as they set up a sting through Backpage, the kind of operation that’s become commonplace in police departments across the country. "Nightline" first met with Det. Lincoln, who’s asked that we change his name because of his frequent undercover assignments.Lincoln showed “Nightline” the ins and outs of posting on Backpage. Lincoln says there are many commonly-used terms that may flag to him and the other detectives that a girl on Backpage is underage, like “new in town” and “eager to please.” It’s a code he says he’s learned through experience tracking down underage girls listed on the site.But “Nightline” wanted to see what would happen if a Backpage ad didn’t just use these coded terms and instead blatantly suggest an underage girl was part of the deal. Would the ad be flagged and taken down by Backpage’s moderators?So Det. Lincoln posted an ad for an 18-year-old escort, adding in a line that said she had “a younger friend” who was available as well. Minutes after he posted the ad, calls and texts started streaming in. The ad was up and running.The ad remained up for about 36 hours, leading to dozens of phone calls, texts and even an arrest captured on “Nightline’s” cameras. The ad was only taken down after "Nightline" sent an anonymous email to Backpage’s dedicated email address for suspected child trafficking. It took eight hours to receive a response, which said to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. The ad was taken down shortly after Backpage’s email response was sent.Backpage later told “Nightline” in a statement that even though they thought that the ad did not clearly advertise that a girl under 18 was involved, their moderators did take it down and they say they banned the account. They also reported the ad to NCMEC.Yiota Souras, general counsel for NCMEC, said 73 percent of the reports they receive from the general public about suspected underage trafficking involve a Backpage post.Souras told “Nightline” she is skeptical of Backpage’s claims that they are closely monitoring their site, and of their attorney Liz McDougall’s claim that Backpage is “online to fight human trafficking online.”“I don't think you can be in the business of providing basically an online bazaar for escort ads that includes the purchase and sale of children for sex, and say that you are online to help fight the problem,” Souras said.In March, the Senate voted to hold Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing about online sex trafficking conducted by the Senate Subcommittee for Permanent Investigations.“It was a unanimous vote”, said Sen. Rob Portman. “First time in 21 years this has happened. It’s a big deal.”When asked why to specifically include Backpage in a hearing on online trafficking, Sen. McCaskill replied, “Backpage is the major player in this space. Therefore they have to be investigated. That’s as complicated as the subject is.”A circuit court is expected to rule on the contempt charge sometime in the coming months.Backpage also refused to respond to the Senate Subcommittee’s subpoenas for internal company documents relating to how it moderates its adult services ads, and exactly how much money they’re making off of them. The Senate is now seeking to enforce the subpoena. The nearly 200-page Senate report is available for download here.Despite this refusal, the Senate’s own investigators say they were able to obtain company emails from Backpage to its moderators. One email in the Senate report addresses underage ads specifically, and contains a line instructing moderators not to delete an ad unless they are “really very sure” the girl is underage. Other emails in the Senate report suggest Backpage was telling its moderators to simply edit out words and pictures from posts if they did not comply with Backpage’s terms of service. They are told to then post the edited ad anyway, even though the investigators say this editing would not change the nature of the underlying transition.“We're talking about big money,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. “And we have evidence that leads us to believe that they have edited ads in order to keep their profitability.”Backpage declined to comment on the Senate’s findings, but their lawyers are currently fighting the contempt charge in a D.C. court. The court will decide if Ferrer will be compelled to testify and if Backpage has to hand over their internal documents. In court filings, Backpage claims the Senate’s request is a violation of the First Amendment, because it “seeks every bit of information relating to every editorial decision made in the past six years.”Backpage’s corporate group is projected to have a revenue of $173 million dollars this year alone, although they will not say what percentage of that comes from the adult ad section, according to documents from the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations.“I'm betting that when we get all the financials they're not making much money selling motorcycles. But they're making a whole lot of money selling children,” said Sen. McCaskill. “I'm betting that's why they're working so hard at keeping this information out of the public eye.”Backpage, which was owned by Village Voice media until 2012, was sold to an “unnamed Dutch holding company” in December 2014, according to news articles at the time. “Nightline” discovered that CEO Carl Ferrer had opened a business in the Netherlands, which seems to be running two escort ad-based websites called as well as a very similar version of Backpage called “Cracker.” It is available almost everywhere except the United States.Ferrer declined “Nightline’s” repeated requests for interview, and when we tracked Ferrer to a classified ad industry conference in downtown Amsterdam, he again refused to speak with us.“He is in Amsterdam… because he wants to avoid the bright light of attention that we are placing on his company,” McCaskill said. “I don't think Amsterdam is far enough for him to go to avoid that bright light.”Back in the U.S., others, like Natalie and her family, are waiting for their day in court. Natalie is hoping her Washington state lawsuit, which focuses on the claim that Backpage knowingly developed itself into an online marketplace for illegal prostitution, will be the first of its kind to be successful against the company.“To whoever owns Backpage, Carl Ferrer, whoever-- he’s got to go home at night and know that he’s selling kids today,” her father Tom said. “He’s just as accountable as the pimp that sold her, in my mind.”Natalie’s attorney Erik Bauer said, “Reports of child sex trafficking have increased over the last five years due to the internet. According to the AIM Group, Backpage controls 80 percent of that market… this is a big business.” AIM Group is an interactive media and classified advertising consulting organization.Backpage responded to the allegations laid out in the Washington state lawsuit, according to court documents, stating that, "Backpage does not allow advertisements on its website to contain naked images, images featuring transparent clothing, sexually explicit language, suggestions of an exchange of sex acts for money, or advertisements for illegal services. In addition to these rules, specifically for advertisements posted in the “escort” section of its website, Backpage does not allow any solicitation directly or in 'coded' fashion for any illegal service exchanging sexual favors for money or other valuable consideration, any material on the Site that exploits minors in any way, or any material ... that in any way constitutes or assists in human trafficking."For Natalie, her horrific experience also has robbed her of a piece of her high school years.“I’ve never been to a football game. A high school football game,” she said. “I’ve never had a prom. I’ve never been to homecoming, and I see all my pictures. All my friends’ pictures on Facebook, and they have all that. They have memories… It makes me a little bitter.”But in all the sadness, one ray of light for Natalie has been the special relationship she and her parents have now with Det. Guyer.“To this day, six years later, he calls me on my birthday. Every year,” she said. “I actually said he’s the godfather of my little girl.”“He’s my hero,” Tom added. “He saved my little girl and brought her home.”The Philippines has become the global epicentre of live-streaming sexual abuse. Tens of thousands of identified victims are children, some even babies. Paedophiles, many from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children in these live videos, requesting particular acts they want performed. Arrests made of individuals participating include Americans Scott Peeler and David Deakin as well as Australian Kyle Dawson. Additionally, in 2014, the police raided a house in the slums of Manila to find a group of four girls and boys aged between 7 and 10 preparing for a ‘show’. The children were about to undress and perform sex acts on each other to an overseas customer. It was organised by an ‘operator’ living in the house, who was the mother of one of the children. In the surrounding area, it was an open secret that live-stream sexual abuse was happening. Dr. Tan, a pediatrician from the Child Protection Unit in Manila recalls, “The operator ran an open house, with ‘shows’ every other night…if children in the slum were hungry, they knew they could come for food and shelter, plus 150 pesos for taking part in the ‘show’.” In 2013, the Dutch child’s rights organisation Terre des Hommes ran an experiment to investigate demand for such acts. They launched a realistic-looking animation of a 10-year-old Filipino girl named Sweetie. They took the fake girl on chat groups and online forums. In less than two and a half months, they identified over 1,000 adults from over 65 countries, attempting to pay her to perform sexual acts in front of the webcam.So, technology has made it easier to access illegal activities across borders and to sexually exploit those in poverty-ridden countries (one in three people in Manila live in slums). Cybersex dens are tricky to identify since anyone who has a computer, internet and a webcam can be in business. Additionally, by live-streaming as opposed to downloading illegal content, users bypass digital markers embedded by law enforcement to catch those watching child pornography.Becoming LovelyIndependence has always been important to me. When I moved away from my family at 18, it was like breathing fresh air for the first time. After years of reflection, I now understand my childhood and adolescence to be toxic and dysfunctional, but at the time I just knew I wanted to get out. When I fell behind on my rent in my second year of college, going back home, or even asking for help, was not an option.I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area—a sex-positive place with a history steeped in sexual taboo. It was an eye-opening experience. Sex workers had always intrigued me, skilled in the act of bucking the expectation of what a woman’s sexuality was supposed to be and how women should behave. Several of my classmates at the college I was attending were escorts or peep show dancers, and they made their line of work sound empowering and financially lucrative.Now, I wasn’t just intrigued; I was broke. I was working part-time at an after-school program, but between being a college student without many marketable skills and the great economic downturn of 2008, it felt as though ends would just never meet. When I got behind on my rent and bills by nearly a month, I decided to see whether I could bridge the gap, just this once, with sex work.As Lovely, I specialized in GFE, or the girlfriend experience, meaning most sessions weren’t just about sex. There was talking, kissing, the obligatory blow job. Men weren’t paying hundreds of dollars for a run-of-the-mill lay—I was providing a fantasy, which included looking the part, while sounding and acting it too. But still, these weren’t dates. Any emotional intimacy was manufactured, a service rendered.Every part of my body was up for commodification. I sold sex for a few hundred dollars an hour, stripped at a peep show for an hourly wage, and would provide à la carte services like hand jobs or sensual massage on a case-by-case basis. Every week one of my regulars would “by chance” meet me at a Safeway parking lot in Berkeley. Discreetly I’d slip him a brown paper bag containing my used panties, as he pressed a 50 into the palm of my hand.I did a lot of things as an escort that were firsts for me. One guy liked to dress up like a baby while getting pegged from behind. Another client would ring me up sometimes for the express purpose of giving me oral sex, something he said his wife didn’t like to receive but he very much liked to give. At his request I pushed one guy’s head into the toilet bowl, forcing him to eat my shit. As in most underworlds, anything goes.I was always taken aback by the sheer volume of men trolling for sex on the internet—out of the dozen or so men I serviced each month, there was no typical customer, unless white men over the age of 21 with a pulse counts as a type. The best part for me was talking to my clients. I loved speaking to the guys, hearing tidbits about their lives. I became obsessed with figuring out why men buy sex. Before the session was over, I made it a habit to ask some variation of “Why do you do this?”Some men were single and lonely; others were married and lonely. I heard stories about how they weren’t getting enough action after the baby was born, or as their wives went through menopause, or for whatever reason really. For many, the amount of sex they were or were not getting at home was irrelevant—new pussy is new pussy.When I was Lovely, I found power in that idea. It didn’t matter that I was an overweight college student with no fashion sense. I could get grown men to not only desire me but pay me for the privilege of my company. My pleasure was never the priority, but on occasions a special snowflake would blow through my door and it would be good for me too. The work wasn’t honest, but it paid the bills and made me feel sexy during a time when I felt anything but in real life.Pleasure and Power After Sex WorkWhen sex is work, the thrill has a way of slowly dissipating. None of the women my johns talked about was ever enough—and I started to believe I’d never be enough for one person either. I wasn’t powerful; I was merely a pawn in the game of misogyny—a decently paid one, but still.Within a year, I was done. I moved to New York to study English at a private liberal arts college—a fresh start. I was only a junior in college and I figured my time as a Craigslist escort would be nothing more than a small detour on the way to adulthood. But leaving Lovely Brown behind wasn’t easy. I was alone in a new city, and my depression went into overdrive as I tried to forget about the last year of my life. My weight yo-yoed, and my personal grooming was shaky at best. I was dirty. Tainted.After working as an escort, I found sex for pleasure cumbersome, foreign, and at times repulsive. Ironically, casual sex felt like a struggle after being Lovely. How can we share such intimate parts of ourselves with strangers or even casual acquaintances? On top of that, I lost sight of my own sense of sexual pleasure. After such a long time being someone else’s fantasy, I still struggle with my own wants and desires in the bedroom.Having a healthier relationship to sex meant getting to know myself sexually, but where to start? I didn’t know how to navigate sexual or romantic encounters at all as a civilian. The idea of trusting in a relationship seemed impossible—how long would it be before my partner went in search of new pussy? Scared of true intimacy, I alternated between internet hookups and self-imposed bouts of celibacy for years, never able to shake the feeling that I was tainted.Forgiving myself took time. And therapy. And self-care. Burlesque and pole dancing classes have helped me feel connected with my body. I no longer feel the need to moan uncontrollably with every touch or to talk to men in a baby voice; instead of focusing on the performance, I focus on my own pleasure. I no longer believe my past put me at a deficit or that I’m any less deserving of love and affection than the next person. Asking for what I want is something that still elicits nervousness in me, but it’s a feeling I’m pushing through.In the decade since I left the sex trade, I’ve had sexual encounters of varied levels of success and even a relationship or two. After a breakup last summer that was particularly hard on me, I took a break from dating and sex. For a long time I just didn’t feel like sharing myself or my body with anyone. Instead I’ve been focusing on getting mentally and emotionally stronger so I can eventually have the type of relationship or romantic encounter I desire. I’m also focused on hitting my career goals. Things are not perfect, but I’m getting there, and one thing is for sure: The next time I get it on, I’ll really want it. For real this time.It’s already February, which means that after a couple of weeks more, especially in the southern states of India, we’ll be experiencing scorching heat, coupled with warm air flows, making it all the more unbearable. An air conditioner needs you to shell out Rs 20,000 or more, and that is excluding all electricity costs.The invention came across to me as I was drinking my daily coffee at a certain place I like to hang out. I was watching this YouTube video about it, the link of which is provided down below at the end of this answer.And before I disclose what it is, I’d better first mention the best aspects of this deceptively intelligent invention.* It addresses the issue of recycling plastic bottles* It’s going to cool down your room by at least 5 degrees from the outside temperature* It doesn’t needs any electricity, and heck- even you can create this stuff and put it on your windows. Even your 10 year old child will be able to make this for himself.And with your permission, I’d present:The Electricity-free, Environment-friendliest cooler in the world: AirconIt’s basically a square cardboard box that has plenty of upper halves of plastic bottles attached to it, in a way that’s shown above.It works on a simple principle, which you can demonstrate yourselves. Place your palms in front of your mouth, and blow air to it. Blow the air with your mouth open our wide.And now, try blowing it once again, only this time, try to blow it with your mouths pouted outwards to make your mouth much narrower, similar to this:You’d experience that in the first case, you felt a breeze of warm air on your palms, but colder in case of the second scenario. To maintain the simplicity of this article, I’m going to avoid the underlying physics, which, if I may be frank, is actually very simple. But its something like this:It is this bottleneck arrangement that forms the backbone of this invention.Moreover, if you happen to live in a high-rise building, where you’ll constantly have free flowing air passing by your rooms (which becomes a punishment at summer afternoons), then this ‘device’, will work the best for you.And to help you create on for yourself, here are the blueprints of this air cooler.Google Project loon - BALLOON-POWERED INTERNET FOR EVERYONEProject Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. Project Loon is a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 32 km (20 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds. Project Loon balloons travel approximately 20 km above the Earth’s surface in the stratospherefacebook is also working for improving Internet access for people around the world with its project by Facebook.The idea is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use.The by Facebook app provides free basic services in markets where internet access may be less affordable. It allows people to browse selected health, employment and local information websites without data charges. The app is currently available in seven countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia, and will continue to expand to other parts of the world.2. WORD LENSAn app that instantly translates languages using your phone camera.You can also use it for reading road signs or boards :This app is now acquired by google : Quest Visual - Google Quest VisualDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play3. Forest :Forest is an app helping you stay away from your smartphone and stay focused on your work. Whenever you want to concentrate, you can plant a seed in Forest. In the next 30 minutes, this small seed will gradually grow into a big tree. However, if you cannot resist the temptation and leave this app to check Facebook or play a game, your little cute tree will wither away. Every day you will own a forest filled with trees (or some withered twigs) and every tree represents 30-MINUTES that you have been working hard.Download link : Android Apps on Google Play4. PUSH BULLETFeatures:(i ) Never miss a call or text again while working at your computer.(ii) Send files from your computer to your phone with a click.(iii) The easiest way to get links from your computer onto your phone.Download link: Android Apps on Google Play5. BE MY EYES - lend your eyes to the blindBe My Eyes is an app that connects blind people with volunteer helpers from around the world via live video chat.It is an open source software available on Be My Eyes and Be My Eyes - helping blind seeCheck its official website for its functionality : Be My Eyes ~ Lend Your Eyes to the Blind6. Wakie – Social Alarm ClockWakie is a fun, friendly community of people who wake each other up in the morning. It’s a brand new way to wake up, made especially for those of us who hate the jarring noise of an alarm clock. When you use Wakie, you get to start your day with a smile instead of a frown!How it works:Set an alarm for 7:00am and you’ll get a phone call from another Wakie member at 7:00am. The calls last just 60 seconds — you’ll hear a warning at 50 seconds, and the call is automatically disconnected at 1 minute. No awkward goodbyes, no long conversations — calls are quick and casual. You can also choose to wake someone up yourself, too.Its official website: Wakie PhenomenonDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play , Wakie (on windows) and Wakie - Social Alarm Clock (on apple).7. Thief TrackerKeep your hard earned smartphone safe by using Thief tracker. If your mobile is lost/stolen, any failed attempt to unlock your mobile will trigger this app to take picture from front camera and send you an email without the user getting to know.Install, Activate and forget, you dont have to remember anything, no secret keywords, no username/passwords.A notification will be displayed in task bar whenever the app uploads pic to server or fails to upload. The notification email sometimes goes to Spam/Junk folder.Download link : Android Apps on Google Play8. Helping FacelessUse technology to fight child trafficking. The idea is simple, give power in hand of people to help us find missing children.How do this app do it?Simply speaking you take several photos of kids you find on street asking for money, all around you; using our app and give them chocolates in exchange. The photos are auto-magically uploaded to our server and our algorithms instantly get to work in matching these photos to the ones we have. We share this information with validated NGOs who help these kidsDownload link: Android Apps on Google Play9. Touch N SyncTouch N Sync is a life time insurance for your contacts. It keeps backup of your contacts across multiple devices and allow you to recover and access from anywhere.Features:★ Contacts on SMS - It will allow you to access your contacts from any device, just message "TNS USERNAME PASSWORD KEYWORD" to 56161 and it will SMS you back with the related contacts from your device.★ Easy Access - Access your contacts from anywhere (any device) without any dependency.★ Highly Secure.★ Sync Contacts from multiple devices.★ Smart Merging of your duplicate contacts.★ Integrated Dialer, SMS and Email Sender.★ Managing multiple devices from the Single Screen.Download link: Android Apps on Google Play10. Smart phone lock:Smart Phone Lock will set the current phone time as your unlock PIN for the lock screen. It will change the PIN magically on every minute! So, each time you unlock the device, the PIN will vary and you need not worry about prying eyes around you. The best part is, you need not memorise anything to remember the PIN. The modifiers will allow you to enhance the security to the next level.Inventions, mostly, change the world for good by filling up gaps between our expectations and the available products. Since time unclocked, curiosity-driven and purposeful humans have invented innumerable objects that have not only helped the humankind at that moment but also inspired many other inventions, and the trend has been ever-growi1. OrCam MyMe – AI for HumansOrCam MyMe aims to help you strike a balance between physical and digital social lives. The tiny gadget sits on your collar or pocket with an inbuilt smart camera with facial recognition so you don’t forget a coworker’s or acquaintance’s name again. MyMe lets you keep an account of the time you spend socializing and using the compliant app, you can classify people in groups like work, friends, or family and set timers for each group.2. Snore CircleSnoring is caused due to restricted airflow in the throat while sleeping and besides being a major annoyance, can be a cause of many diseases. So if you want to break the snoring habits you or someone in the family might have, Snore Circle is a great gadget. It uses a combination of audio and bone conduction to sense when you’re snoring and in turn, sends micro signals to the brain to reduce – and completely eliminate – snoring. Besides helping you give up snoring, the compatible app will monitor the quality of your sleep.3. NANO1 – World’s Smallest Astronomy CameraNANO1 is the perfect invention for passionate stargazers who not only like to be awestruck by looking at the wonders of the sky but also want to capture these with their cameras. The inventors of NANO1 bill it as the smallest astronomy camera in the world which can capture 25 times more light than the human eye and condense an hour-long recording into 3 minutes for a charming view of the sky as well as other phenomena like the Northern Lights. You can connect NANO1 with your smartphone over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and view an augmented reality map of constellations to appreciate the beauty of the sky.4. SiB – The Simple Internet-Connected Button that is only $5If one has to condense what SiB does in only a few words, the best explanation would be that it simplifies your life. Short for Simple Internet-Connected Button, SiB is a tiny cube with a programmable button that can be connected with a host of other smart devices and sensors to perform an unimaginable large number of functions. Whether it is to control your smart doorbell, check temperature, detect leakage, monitor the health of plants, or something as simple as texting your loved one, SiB has many ways in which it can ama5. Solar RoadwaysSolar Roadways is exactly what you’re thinking after reading the name. These are solar panels which can be used to pave roads, driveways, sidewalks, or any surface meant for walking. Solar wafers protected under thick layers of shatter-proof Gorilla Glass can be used to generate electricity from any surface. These modules come in hexagonal panels which makes replacement super easy. Additionally, Solar Roadways panels can be programmed electronically to show specific markings on the road. The panels can generate enough heat to melt the snow and thus ensure easy walking or driving over them during winters. All of this while saving the Earth and Earth-dwellers from succumbing to the damage caused by greenhouse gases.The researchers placed the cells carefully in a three-dimensional scaffold and watched, fascinated, as they started communicating and lining up into the distinctive bullet shape of a mouse embryo several days old.“We know that stem cells are magical in their powerful potential of what they can do. We did not realize they could self-organize so beautifully or perfectly,” Magdelena Zernicka­-Goetz, who headed the team, told an interviewer at the time.Zernicka-Goetz says her “synthetic” embryos probably couldn’t have grown into mice. Nonetheless, they’re a hint that soon we could have mammals born without an egg at all.That isn’t Zernicka-Goetz’s goal. She wants to study how the cells of an early embryo begin taking on their specialized roles. The next step, she says, is to make an artificial embryo out of human stem cells, work that’s being pursued at the University of Michigan and Rockefeller University.Synthetic human embryos would be a boon to scientists, letting them tease apart events early in development. And since such embryos start with easily manipulated stem cells, labs will be able to employ a full range of tools, such as gene editing, to investigate them as they grow.Artificial embryos, however, pose ethical questions. What if they turn out to be indistinguishable from real embryos? How long can they be grown in the lab before they feel pain? We need to address those questions before the science races ahead much further, bioethicists say.Sensing CityNumerous smart-city schemes have run into delays, dialed down their ambitious goals, or priced out everyone except the super-wealthy. A new project in Toronto, called Quayside, is hoping to change that pattern of failures by rethinking an urban neighborhood from the ground up and rebuilding it around the latest digital technologies.Sensing CityBreakthroughA Toronto neighborhood aims to be the first place to successfully integrate cutting-edge urban design with state-of-the-art digital technology.Why It MattersSmart cities could make urban areas more affordable, livable, and environmentally friendly.Key PlayersSidewalk Labs and Waterfront TorontoAvailabilityProject announced in October 2017; construction could begin in 2019Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, based in New York City, is collaborating with the Canadian government on the high-tech project, slated for Toronto’s industrial waterfront.One of the project’s goals is to base decisions about design, policy, and technology on information from an extensive network of sensors that gather data on everything from air quality to noise levels to people’s activities.The plan calls for all vehicles to be autonomous and shared. Robots will roam underground doing menial chores like delivering the mail. Sidewalk Labs says it will open access to the software and systems it’s creating so other companies can build services on top of them, much as people build apps for mobile phones.The company intends to closely monitor public infrastructure, and this has raised concerns about data governance and privacy. But Sidewalk Labs believes it can work with the community and the local government to alleviate those worries.“What’s distinctive about what we’re trying to do in Quayside is that the project is not only extraordinarily ambitious but also has a certain amount of humility,” says Rit Aggarwala, the executive in charge of Sidewalk Labs’ urban-systems planning. That humility may help Quayside avoid the pitfalls that have plagued previous smart-city initiatives.Other North American cities are already clamoring to be next on Sidewalk Labs’ list, according to Waterfront Toronto, the public agency overseeing Quayside’s development. “San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, and Boston have all called asking for introductions,” says the agency’s CEO, Will Fleissig.A smarter smart cityAn ambitious project by Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs could reshape how we live, work, and play in urban neighborhoods.AI for EverybodyArtificial intelligence has so far been mainly the plaything of big tech companies like Amazon, Baidu, Google, and Microsoft, as well as some startups. For many other companies and parts of the economy, AI systems are too expensive and too difficult to implement fully.AI for EverybodyBreakthroughCloud-based AI is making the technology cheaper and easier to use.Why It MattersRight now the use of AI is dominated by a relatively few companies, but as a cloud-based service, it could be widely available to many more, giving the economy a boost.Key PlayersAmazon; Google; MicrosoftAvailabilityNowWhat’s the solution? Machine-learning tools based in the cloud are bringing AI to a far broader audience. So far, Amazon dominates cloud AI with its AWS subsidiary. Google is challenging that with TensorFlow, an open-source AI library that can be used to build other machine-learning software. Recently Google announced Cloud AutoML, a suite of pre-trained systems that could make AI simpler to use.Microsoft, which has its own AI-powered cloud platform, Azure, is teaming up with Amazon to offer Gluon, an open-source deep-learning library. Gluon is supposed to make building neural nets—a key technology in AI that crudely mimics how the human brain learns—as easy as building a smartphone app.It is uncertain which of these companies will become the leader in offering AI cloud services. But it is a huge business opportunity for the winners.These products will be essential if the AI revolution is going to spread more broadly through different parts of the economy.Currently AI is used mostly in the tech industry, where it has created efficiencies and produced new products and services. But many other businesses and industries have struggled to take advantage of the advances in artificial intelligence. Sectors such as medicine, manufacturing, and energy could also be transformed if they were able to implement the technology more fully, with a huge boost to economic productivity.Most companies, though, still don’t have enough people who know how to use cloud AI. So Amazon and Google are also setting up consultancy services. Once the cloud puts the technology within the reach of almost everyone, the real AI revolution can begin.Dueling Neural NetworksArtificial intelligence is getting very good at identifying things: show it a million pictures, and it can tell you with uncanny accuracy which ones depict a pedestrian crossing a street. But AI is hopeless at generating images of pedestrians by itself. If it could do that, it would be able to create gobs of realistic but synthetic pictures depicting pedestrians in various settings, which a self-driving car could use to train itself without ever going out on the road.Dueling Neural NetworksBreakthroughTwo AI systems can spar with each other to create ultra-realistic original images or sounds, something machines have never been able to do before.Why It MattersThis gives machines something akin to a sense of imagination, which may help them become less reliant on humans—but also turns them into alarmingly powerful tools for digital fakery.Key PlayersGoogle Brain, DeepMind, NvidiaAvailabilityNowThe problem is, creating something entirely new requires imagination—and until now that has perplexed AIs.The solution first occurred to Ian Goodfellow, then a PhD student at the University of Montreal, during an academic argument in a bar in 2014. The approach, known as a generative adversarial network, or GAN, takes two neural networks—the simplified mathematical models of the human brain that underpin most modern machine learning—and pits them against each other in a digital cat-and-mouse game.Both networks are trained on the same data set. One, known as the generator, is tasked with creating variations on images it’s already seen—perhaps a picture of a pedestrian with an extra arm. The second, known as the discriminator, is asked to identify whether the example it sees is like the images it has been trained on or a fake produced by the generator—basically, is that three-armed person likely to be real?Over time, the generator can become so good at producing images that the discriminator can’t spot fakes. Essentially, the generator has been taught to recognize, and then create, realistic-looking images of pedestrians.The technology has become one of the most promising advances in AI in the past decade, able to help machines produce results that fool even humans.GANs have been put to use creating realistic-sounding speech and photorealistic fake imagery. In one compelling example, researchers from chipmaker Nvidia primed a GAN with celebrity photographs to create hundreds of credible faces of people who don’t exist. Another research group made not-unconvincing fake paintings that look like the works of van Gogh. Pushed further, GANs can reimagine images in different ways—making a sunny road appear snowy, or turning horses into zebras.The results aren’t always perfect: GANs can conjure up bicycles with two sets of handlebars, say, or faces with eyebrows in the wrong place. But because the images and sounds are often startlingly realistic, some experts believe there’s a sense in which GANs are beginning to understand the underlying structure of the world they see and hear. And that means AI may gain, along with a sense of imagination, a more independent ability to make sense of what it sees in the world.By pitting neural networks against one another, Ian Goodfellow has created a powerful AI tool. Now he, and the rest of us, must face the consequences.Babel-Fish EarbudsIn the cult sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you slide a yellow Babel fish into your ear to get translations in an instant. In the real world, Google has come up with an interim solution: a $159 pair of earbuds, called Pixel Buds. These work with its Pixel smartphones and Google Translate app to produce practically real-time translation.Babel-Fish EarbudsBreakthroughNear-real-time translation now works for a large number of languages and is easy to use.Why It MattersIn an increasingly global world, language is still a barrier to communication.Key PlayersGoogle and BaiduAvailabilityNowOne person wears the earbuds, while the other holds a phone. The earbud wearer speaks in his or her language—English is the default—and the app translates the talking and plays it aloud on the phone. The person holding the phone responds; this response is translated and played through the earbuds.Google Translate already has a conversation feature, and its iOS and Android apps let two users speak as it automatically figures out what languages they’re using and then translates them. But background noise can make it hard for the app to understand what people are saying, and also to figure out when one person has stopped speaking and it’s time to start translating.Pixel Buds get around these problems because the wearer taps and holds a finger on the right earbud while talking. Splitting the interaction between the phone and the earbuds gives each person control of a microphone and helps the speakers maintain eye contact, since they’re not trying to pass a phone back and forth.The Pixel Buds were widely panned for subpar design. They do look silly, and they may not fit well in your ears. They can also be hard to set up with a phone.Clunky hardware can be fixed, though. Pixel Buds show the promise of mutually intelligible communication between languages in close to real time. And no fish required.Zero-Carbon Natural GasThe world is probably stuck with natural gas as one of our primary sources of electricity for the foreseeable future. Cheap and readily available, it now accounts for more than 30 percent of US electricity and 22 percent of world electricity. And although it’s cleaner than coal, it’s still a massive source of carbon emissions.A pilot power plant just outside Houston, in the heart of the US petroleum and refining industry, is testing a technology that could make clean energy from natural gas a reality. The company behind the 50-megawatt project, Net Power, believes it can generate power at least as cheaply as standard natural-gas plants and capture essentially all the carbon dioxide released in the process.Zero-Carbon Natural GasBreakthroughA power plant efficiently and cheaply captures carbon released by burning natural gas, avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions.Why It MattersAround 32 percent of US electricity is produced with natural gas, accounting for around 30 percent of the power sector’s carbon emissions.Key Players8 Rivers Capital; Exelon Generation; CB&IAvailability3 to 5 yearsIf so, it would mean the world has a way to produce carbon-free energy from a fossil fuel at a reasonable cost. Such natural-gas plants could be cranked up and down on demand, avoiding the high capital costs of nuclear power and sidestepping the unsteady supply that renewables generally provide.Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. - Nikola TeslaTeleforceThe humongous tesla scalar interferometer described by tesla .It encompasses four modes of operationThe first one is the Tesla shield. It runs continuously and generates a thin, impenetrable hemispherical wall of energy over a selected area. It has defensive purposes and works as follows: By interfering two Fourier-expansions and 3-dimensional scalar hemispherical patterns in space, they join into a dome-like shield of electromagnetic energy. Air molecules and atoms trapped inside are fully ionized, displaying an intense and vivid light. Any physical object that attempts to pass through this shield will receive a considerable discharge of electrical energy and will be vaporized in an instant. By stacking these energetic shells, they will deter any gamma radiation or EMPS coming its way.The second mode is more offensive. Utilizing two truncated Fourier transformers, the device shoots a 3-dimensional scalar phi-field pulse. A second pulse is then released, traveling at a faster velocity and overtaking the first one, merging into a deadly EMP of electromagnetic energy.The third mode is the same pulse variation ran continuously. Thus, two continuous scalar waves are sent forward, merging into vector energy at their target destination. According to some researchers, this is the exact way in which Tesla planned to transmit wireless energy, and also the weapon that would annihilate hundreds of aircraft and entire armies.The final mode, dubbed “time squeeze,” will let the user play with things like antigravity, dematerialization and materialization, transmutation, and it provides a lot of medical benefits. Other effects may include subliminal and superluminal communication, seeing through the earth and the ocean, as well as reaching higher orders of reality. This is apparently possible because the human being has between his ears a Tesla scalar interferometer. This tiny, biological device accounts for most parapsychological phenomena. It can also be triggered naturally through practice and meditation.After the Stage One testing. Still, the full-blown Teleforce model was never made Nevertheless, Tesla’s design of the Teleforce is still highly relevant and plays a significant role in particle-beam weapons that are currently being used by various countries in different forms.Who knows, if someone had thrown a bit more investment money to Tesla, maybe wars would no longer even exist!