How many homeless people are there in America?

MANY city dwellers do their best not to see the homeless people who share their streets and pavements. Donald Trump once famously insisted that his security guards clear all tramps and panhandlers from the pavement in front of Trump Tower. Even when the homeless aren’t being chased away, they can seem invisible. In 2014, the New York City Rescue Mission, a shelter, conducted a social experiment, Make Them Visible, in which they filmed participants walking past relatives disguised as homeless people. None of the participants noticed their relations sitting on the street. “We don’t look at them. We don’t take a second look,” said Michelle Tolson, then director of public relations for the organisation, at the time.

Every two years, however, American cities make a huge effort to take note of their homeless populations as part of the federally mandated “point-in-time” survey. Volunteers and shelter workers search pavements, parks, and tunnels to count how many of their city’s residents are living without shelter on a given night. The data is combined with a tally of shelter beds to gauge the success of the previous year’s service efforts and to estimate how many people will need shelter in the coming year. In 2014 , 1.49 million people used homeless shelters and 578,424 were recorded as being without shelter: sleeping on the streets, in tents, in cars, and other exposed places. Cities completed the 2016 point-in-time count in January.

The count is a critical supplement to shelter programmes' year-long tallies, which only record the number of people actively seeking help. It also helps fill out nationwide data and federal reports to provide a more complete picture of homelessness in America. The Department of Housing and Urban Development uses this information to determine funding for cities and to design programs and initiatives, such as Barack Obama’s proposal to spend $11 billion helping homeless families.

But the count is a flawed measure. Counting on one night of the year, every two years, is likely to have its limits. For example, the count is made in January, when icy weather makes an accurate tally of the homeless especially difficult. Many people seek temporary shelter with friends or family, or take refuge in hidden locations that volunteers don’t find. Walking a city, counting heads seems a rather crude, old-fashioned method of collecting data. But a better approach has yet to be found. The result is that the homeless remain, to some extent, invisible even in data and census records that seek to make them visible.

If homeless people are not seen, it is difficult to tackle the problems they face. As Giselle Routhier, policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless in New York, explains, “If you don’t have an accurate read of the problem, you can’t accurately identify solutions.”

Correction: the original version of this article suggested that Michelle Tolson is still director of the New York City Mission. She has left the organisation.

Full > http://preview.tinyurl.com/zomwhhj

Google & MIT Self-Driving Car Project

Imagine if everyone could get around easily and safely, regardless of their ability to drive.

Aging or visually impaired loved ones wouldn't have to give up their independence. Time spent commuting could be time spent doing what you want to do. Deaths from traffic accidents—over 1.2 million worldwide every year—could be reduced dramatically, especially since 94% of accidents in the U.S. involve human error.

Our self-driving cars are designed to navigate safely through city streets.

They have sensors designed to detect objects as far as two football fields away in all directions, including pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles—or even fluttering plastic shopping bags and rogue birds. The software processes all the information to help the car safely navigate the road without getting tired or distracted.

Full > https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/

Vox Technology View

We've only begun to think through how self-driving cars could one day reshape our roads, cities, and lives — for better and for worse.

They might, for example, make traffic lights obsolete. Which... is actually a bit unsettling.

In the video above, researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab demonstrate how streets full of autonomous vehicles wouldn't necessarily need stoplights. If the cars were all communicating with each other, they could simply slow down a bit and "slot" their way through intersections at steady speeds without ever causing a collision.

The model for "slot-based intersections" is described in this recent paper in PLOS One.The researchers found that reducing reliance on stoplights would greatly cut down on delays and congestion. No more waiting for the light to turn green. Cars would lower their speed to fit into a "slot" and then breeze right through the intersection without stopping. Sounds wonderfully efficient, right?

Except this also raises some difficult urban-planning questions. Slot-based intersections obviously don't work for places where pedestrians need to cross. Or for bicycles. So what do you do there? More broadly, accommodating people who walk or bike is going to be a major challenge for autonomous vehicles (AEVs). There's a real risk that in an AEV-centric future, roads could end up catering far more to cars than they do today — pushing everyone else out.

Granted, this technology is still a long, long ways off, as Kevin Hartnett nicely points outin the Boston Globe. Cars will first need to be able to communicate not just with each other but likely with a central traffic controller. And roads would have to be filled entirely with autonomous vehicles — if you had even one human driver, that could muck up the flow. A stoplight-free future is decades away, maybe more.

Even so, it's a good example of how radically self-driving cars could remake our transportation systems, in positive and not-so-positive ways. As my colleague David Roberts says, it's wrong to imagine that AEVs will simply replace conventional vehicles on the road in a 1-1 fashion and all else will stay equal. All else won't stay equal. Massive systemic changes are likely to emerge from a future filled with AEVs — changes that are very difficult to predict in advance. It's much like how the advent of the internet didn't simply replace the postal service.

The end of stoplights is one example of a possible systemic change with far-reaching implications. No doubt there will be many more.

Full > http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11324690/self-driving-cars-intersections

It's time for councils to stop out-of-control outsourcing

Under the previous, coalition government, local authority outsourcing of services doubled. The value of local government contracts keeps increasing and contract periods keep getting longer. Meanwhile, as a consequence of the coalition government’s Open Public Services reform programme, councils are under pressure to outsource, while deep cuts force them to consider it a way of cutting costs.

None of this is popular with the public. In polling commissioned by campaign group We Own It, 61% of the population thinks that local and central government should run services in-house as the default. Only 21% want to see more outsourcing.

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That’s hardly surprising when you consider the recent scandals over outsourced services. In 2013, the Serious Fraud Office launched a criminal investigation into G4S and Serco, both large outsourcing companies, over allegations they overcharged on government contracts to provide electronic tagging of prisoners. At the end of last year, the government was found to be paying Serco £1m to run an empty secure children’s unit for seven weeks. And in September, G4S lost the contract for running a young offender facility, after it was graded as inadequate amid concern over the degrading treatment of detainees.

A comprehensive review of the research finds that there is no empirical evidence that the private sector is more efficient. Research also suggests that many authorities take services in-house as a way to cut costs and improve quality. Although outsourcing might mean cheaper services in the short term, there’s a knock-on effect on morale and the quality of service provided, and in the longer term you lose flexibility and control.

We Own It campaigns for public services – waste services, children’s services, parks and libraries, social care – that put people first. Our new campaign, Our Services Our Say, calls on councils to support principles of transparency, accountability and people before profit in public services, and tell us how they will put these into practice locally.

We’re suggesting a new process for public service commissioning. Private providers should be subject to freedom of information requests, while public service contracts, performance and financial data should be publicly available – a proposal that is supported by 67% of the population.

We also call for public consultation over public services, especially before any outsourcing of services or privatisation of assets takes place. We think the public should have the right to recall providers who do a bad job – and while this couldn’t apply to existing contracts, it could be introduced for new ones.

Under our proposals, the public interest case would be made for any privatisation or outsourcing. There would always be an in-house bid on the table (or a reason given if there isn’t) and social value would be the priority.

This campaign aims to stop out-of-control outsourcing, but it’s also a way to give the public a say. We all pay for public services and we all use them on a daily basis.

We already have broad support and on Wednesday, Liverpool city council became the first council to pass a motion in support of the campaign. This council has already cancelled its street-cleaning contract, bringing the service back in-house. We would like there to be national legislation – a public service users bill – to make these common sense ideas a reality. In the meantime, we hope councils will lead the way.

Cat Hobbs is the director of We Own It.

Talk to us on Twitter via @Guardianpublic and sign up for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday.

Tiny Buddha

30 Ways to Live Life to the Fullest

“Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” ~Seneca

At times, it’s seemed as though life contains an endless supply of days.

I thought this for sure when I was younger. It didn’t matter how long I held a grudge or how long I waited to do something I wanted—there would be an unlimited pool of other opportunities. At least, that’s what I thought back then.

Maybe it’s a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, the moment when you realize life happens now and that’s all you’re guaranteed. It doesn’t really hit you when you merely know it intellectually, like you know your ABCs, state capitals, and other concrete facts.

It hits you when somehow you feel it. Your health declines. You lose someone you love. A tragedy rocks your world. It isn’t until you realize that all life fades that you consider now a commodity, and a scarce one at that.

But maybe that’s irrelevant. Maybe living a meaningful, passionate life has nothing to do with its length and everything to do with its width.

With this in mind, I recently asked Tiny Buddha’s Facebook friends, “How do you live life to the fullest?” I was inspired by what they had to say, so I’ve used them to create this list:

1. Live in the moment. Forget the past and don’t concern yourself with the future. (Tanner Christensen)

2. Fully embrace the now, no matter what the situation. (Patrick Flynn)

3. Do the things you love. (Diego Felipe Villa Serna)

4. Learn to forgive and embrace unconditional love. (Ann Glasgow)

5. Live every day as if it’s your last, embracing each experience as if it’s your first. (Jennifer Fertado)

6. Believe in “live and let live.” (Satyendra Pandey)

7. Use quiet reflection, honesty, and laughter. (Erin Rogers Kronman)

8. Be other-centered. (Tricia Mc)

9. Find calm in making art. (Z.r. Hill)

10. Focus on today and how you can do your best to live it to the fullest. (Amelia Krump)

11. Participate in life instead of just watching it pass you by. (Lindsey Wonderson)

12. Stay healthy, eat right, and most importantly, be kind to all. (Tho Nguyen)

13. Pray, forgive yourself, appreciate others, listen to your gut, do things you enjoy, and remind yourself that we are all loved and connected. (Sandra Lumb)

14. Don’t sweat the small stuff. (Allison Gillam)

15. Question everything, keep it simple, and help whenever and however you can. (Lynda Corrigan Sutherland)

16. Try to enjoy every minute of every day. (Maria Ahlin)

17. Appreciate life’s every second. (Anna-Karin Boyaciyan-Demirciyan)

18. Step through new doors. The majority of the time there’s something fantastic on the other side. (Terri Mindock)

19. Remember that all is a gift, but the most precious of all gifts is life and love. (Debbie Teeuwen)

20. Keep your spirit free, be flexible, let go. (Leslie Brown)

21. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” ~Baz Luhrmann (Adam Raffel)

22. Don’t attach to outcomes. (Wp Ho)

23. Spend as much time with a two year old as possible. (Jackie Freeman)

24. Enjoy each and every moment of life. Every day is a new challenge and opportunity to discover something new. (Chirag Tripathi)

25. Budget travel. It is always an adventure! You get to enjoy what fate has to offer with limited means. (Ruby Baltazar)

26. Be honestly thankful for every breath you take. (Jonathan Carey)

27. Just be. (Catherine Halvorsson)

28. “Trust yourself. Trust your own strengths.” ~Gaundalf the grey (Jonathan David Evan Fulton)

29. Pause momentarily before everything you do so that you notice everything you should or could notice. (Scott Hutchinson)

30. Follow your hopes and not your fears. (Jody Bower)

What have you done today to live life to the fullest?

It is 3 Minutes Until Midnight

Timeline

IT IS STILL 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

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2016: "Last year, the Science and Security Board moved the Doomsday Clock forward to three minutes to midnight, noting: 'The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.' That probability has not been reduced. The Clock ticks. Global danger looms. Wise leaders should act—immediately." See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2016 time of the Doomsday Clock.

IT IS 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

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2012: "The challenges to rid the world of nuclear weapons, harness nuclear power, and meet the nearly inexorable climate disruptions from global warming are complex and interconnected. In the face of such complex problems, it is difficult to see where the capacity lies to address these challenges." Political processes seem wholly inadequate; the potential for nuclear weapons use in regional conflicts in the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and South Asia are alarming; safer nuclear reactor designs need to be developed and built, and more stringent oversight, training, and attention are needed to prevent future disasters; the pace of technological solutions to address climate change may not be adequate to meet the hardships that large-scale disruption of the climate portends.

IT IS 6 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

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2010: "We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons" is the Bulletin's assessment. Talks between Washington and Moscow for a follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty are nearly complete, and more negotiations for further reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenal are already planned. The dangers posed by climate change are growing, but there are pockets of progress. Most notably, at Copenhagen, the developing and industrialized countries agree to take responsibility for carbon emissions and to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.

IT IS 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

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2007: The world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age. The United States and Russia remain ready to stage a nuclear attack within minutes, North Korea conducts a nuclear test, and many in the international community worry that Iran plans to acquire the Bomb. Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property.

IT IS 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

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2002: Concerns regarding a nuclear terrorist attack underscore the enormous amount of unsecured--and sometimes unaccounted for--weapon-grade nuclear materials located throughout the world. Meanwhile, the United States expresses a desire to design new nuclear weapons, with an emphasis on those able to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets. It also rejects a series of arms control treaties and announces it will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

*I don't subscribe to this yet this is an information and technology "sharing" blog.

http://thebulletin.org/timeline

Defense giant Raytheon wants to resurrect Star Wars anti-missile technology

Raytheon is one of America’s top defense giants, which specializes in air and missile defense, sea-based radars, sonars, torpedoes and more. In the 1980s, the space-based research company developed an anti-missile defense dubbed Star Wars. In light of the recently released Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie, Raytheon has proposed new ways to better it’s anti-missile defense.

In August 1945, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs, and since then, no other country has dared to use nuclear weapons. The nuclear age triggered an onslaught of nuclear weapons that could bring humanity to extinction. In an effort to thwart the use of nuclear weapons, The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – otherwise known as Star Wars – was initiated by President Ronald Reagan. The purpose of the program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system that would stop missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union.(1,2)

The SDI was eventually abandoned; scrapped as another closed chapter in American history books. Motivated by ambitious intentions, the Star Wars program was a hopeful candidate for a revolutionary defense system. Nevertheless, Raytheon wants to resurrect the Star Wars program from the abyss by offering some suggestions about how it could be improved.

THE ANTI-MISSILE FORCE AWAKENS

Some improvement recommendations are banal but nonetheless important, such as the lack of Imperial cyber security. As Raytheon notes:

First, the Empire. Think back to “Episode IV: A New Hope,” where R2-D2 simply plugs in to the Death Star’s network and disables the trash compactor that is about to crush Luke, Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca.

That sort of activity is what IT security professionals call an anomaly – a rare occurrence that warrants further investigation. It’s a good thing the Death Star lacked an insider-threat detection system, which would have helped the Empire corner the rebels right then and there.

The rebels, meanwhile, could have used stronger cyber when they tried to deactivate the tractor beam. R2 saw it on the Death Star network but could not deactivate it. If he had, Gen. Kenobi never would have had to embark on the heroic trek that led to his fatal confrontation with Darth Vader.

Side note: Thank goodness Jabba the Hutt didn’t know about multi-factor authentication. If he did, there’s no way a disguised Leia ever could have operated the carbonite cell and freed Han.(2)

Raytheon’s more ambitious projects include the use of several “kill vehicles,” which are rocket launched missile seekers. They are launched into space as kamikaze pilots, which decimate ballistic missiles by colliding into them. This is achieved foremost by Raytheon’s Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle. It works in collaboration with the the Standard Missile-3. Together, Raytheon claims the fused forces have a “combined record of 35 successful intercepts in space.”(3)

Furthermore, Raytheon is currently working on a “Redesigned Kill Vehicle,” which is a cheaper and more efficient killing machine than its predecessor. The industrial corporation was awarded a contract in August, which is fueling Raytheon to develop a new weapon known as “Multi-Object Kill Vehicle.” The weapon is tuned to destroy several missiles spread throughout space.(3)

AN INTRINSICALLY EXPENSIVE AND DANGEROUS UNDERTAKING

It’s an ambitious and noble goal to foster technologies that counteract the impending apocalypse. Nevertheless, Raytheon has a history with exorbitant shortcomings. These failures are a product of the inherent challenges of the projects at hand and meeting stringent demands set by Congress, such as “it is important to redesign the Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle using a rigorous acquisition approach, including realistic testing.”

Furthermore, there is an intrinsic threat within the logic of the system. According to Yousaf Butt, a professor and scientist-in-residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies:

Missile defense couldn’t replace any lost deterrent value because missile defense doesn’t deter nuclear attacks. The purpose of missile defense is to defend–or, more accurately, attempt to defend. An adversary wouldn’t be deterred from launching a nuclear attack because of the existence of missile defense; rather, it’s the credible threat of overwhelming nuclear retaliation that deters an adversary.

If the enemy is irrational and suicidal enough to discount the threat of massive nuclear retaliation, then a missile defense system that can theoretically intercept only some of the attacking missiles most certainly isn’t going to be a deterrent.(3)

In other words, there is a real possibility that the Star Wars program could destroy the planet rather than preserve it, making the anti-missile defense program seem more like a Death Star than a lifesaver.

Sources include:

(1)  ColdWar.org

(2) PopSci.com

(3) PopSci.com