Perhaps - and that's just perhaps - your MesaZona blogger can chill out now for just a while to see how these two things go: One is from the Arizona Secretary of State and the other from a community activist group All about money poured into election campaigns. Some "dirty" and some not-so-dirty. . . it's a start but don't be naïve or get too optimistic
Here's what Maureen Reagan calls SEE THE MONEY Efforts to Track Campaign Dollars in Arizona Campaign finance dollars are traceable. Some are not — they are "dark."The traceable dollars are easy to follow. For local and state races campaign finance reports are on the Arizona Secretary of State's website. . . it still isn't as detailed information as some people would like but it still starts to give you some names and address . . . See The Money.com
Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard is leading a petition drive to outlaw hiding campaign contributors. And, YES we have a right as citizens to know who is behind a campaign _________________________________________________________________________ Do you live in Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Fountain Hills, Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler and want to volunteer by circulating the petition to bring transparency to Arizona government? Contact the Maricopa East Team - they will get you started! email: MaricopaEast@outlawdirtymoney.com#Outlawdirtymoney
The Brookings Institution Metro Monitor provides leaders across metropolitan America with a set of objective metrics to guide their efforts in shaping advanced regional economies that work for all.
It tracks the economic performance of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas along three dimensions:
growth,
prosperity
inclusion
This is posted as a follow-up to the 18 Jan 2018 Brookings Institution presentation: "The Rise of Mesa's Innovation District" that attracted a full-house at The Ikeda Theater.
See the results for the Phoenix MSA in the following details.. .
The three dimensions represent the pillars of successful economic development which should encourage robust long-run growth (growth) by improving the productivity of individuals and firms in order to raise local standards of living (prosperity) for all people (inclusion). Along each dimension, the Metro Monitor tracks three indicators, measuring the rate of change during the most recent
one-year
five-year
ten-year periods.
Finally, the results of this indicator analysis are compiled into composite scores, providing overall performance rankings of metropolitan areas for each category.
The Greater Phoenix Economic Council is
seeking #art submissions to highlight the beauty & diversity of #GreaterPHX through the curation & display of locally-sourced art. RT to spread the word.
IARPA launched the challenge so it could assess software’s ability to quickly and passively identify faces in the “wild,” including from public security footage.
Kaspersky Labs, recently black-listed by U.S. authorities had this to say back in 2016 . . .All in all, everybody collects photos: governments, corporations and companies, and even regular people. Nowadays, everyone can use and misuse facial recognition systems
You can change your name or use a pseudonym. You can also edit or delete your social media accounts. But you cannot change your face so easily. Facial recognition helps us solve a lot of problems — and it simultaneously creates plenty of new ones. In this post, we discuss the threats that come with the global spread of such systems.
1. Losing the right to privacy — on a global scale
2. Abuse by law enforcement
3. Corporations spying on everybody
4. Anybody can find you
5. There is a thin line between security and disaster
6. Don’t share your face with any Tom, Dick, or Harry
An internal IARPA research program called Janus is developing its own facial recognition technology.
IARPA's program manager Chris Boehnen told Nextgov.com that while he had expected participation from commercial tech companies in the United States, Silicon Valley stalwarts like Google, Facebook and Amazon “tend to be reluctant to participate.”
NIST plans to release a report on the solutions presented.
The FRVT aims at measurement of the performance of automated face recognition technologies applied to a wide range of civil, law enforcement and homeland security applications including verification of visa images, de-duplication of passports, recognition across photojournalism images, and identification of child exploitation victims.
IARPA is interested in identifying the most effective ways to integrate human judgement with other types of data
The IARPA Organization
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) invests in high-risk/high-payoff research programs that have the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries.
At IARPA we take real risks, solve hard problems, and invest in high-risk/high-payoff research that has the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage.
Working with IARPA
Throughout our website you can learn more about engaging with us on our highly innovative work that is already positively impacting the U.S. Intelligence Community and society in general.
Just click on any of the below links.
Getting Started
There are a variety of ways to partner with us. To begin, we strongly encourage you to review our open solicitations page as well as seek out any of our experts.
Can you create a method to forecast the future? NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ODNI News Release No. 4-18 January 16, 2018
IARPA Announces the Geopolitical Forecasting Challenge to Improve Crowdsourced ForecastsWASHINGTON – The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, announces today the upcoming launch of the Geopolitical Forecasting Challenge in February 2018, with pre-registration beginning today. Through this competition, IARPA will challenge contestants to develop innovative solutions and methods for integrating crowdsourced information into accurate, timely forecasts on worldwide issues. The challenge presents an opportunity for individuals and teams who are eligible to win prizes from a total prize purse of $200,000 for methods that successfully demonstrate a forecast of a wide variety of geopolitical events, such as political elections, disease outbreaks, and economic indicators.
__________________________________________________________________________ Why Should You Participate: This challenge gives you a chance to join a community of leading experts to advance your research, contribute to global security and humanitarian activities, and compete for cash prizes.
This is your chance to test your forecasting skills and prove yourself against the state-of-the-art, and to demonstrate your superiority over political pundits.
By participating, you may:
Network with collaborators and experts to advance your research
Gain recognition for your work and your methods
Test your method against state-of-the-art methods
Win prizes from a total prize purse of $200,000
Throughout the challenge, an online leaderboard will display solvers’ rankings and accomplishments, giving you opportunities to have your work viewed and appreciated by leaders from industry, government and academia. When We’re Doing This: The challenge will launch February 21, 2018 so keep checking back for additional details. To receive updates or request more information, email gfchallenge@iarpa.gov.
_________________________________________________________________________
The Geopolitical Forecasting (GF) Challenge invites solvers from around the world to develop innovative solutions and methods for integrating crowd-sourced forecasts and other data into accurate, timely forecasts on worldwide issues. The challenge presents an opportunity for individuals and teams to earn prizes by creating methods that successfully demonstrate a forecast of a wide variety of geopolitical events, such as political elections, disease outbreaks, and macro-economic indicators. Who We Are: The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), focuses on high-risk, high-payoff research programs to tackle difficult challenges of the agencies and disciplines in the intelligence community. IARPA’s challenges invite experts from the broader research community to participate in IARPA research in a convenient, efficient, and non-contractual way. What We’re Doing: Existing methods of geopolitical forecasting include human judgment-intensive methods, such as prediction markets, and data-intensive approaches, such as statistical models. GF Challenge solvers will develop solutions that produce probabilistic forecasts in response to numerous closed-ended forecasting questions that concern specific, objectively verifiable geopolitical events containing timeframes with deadlines and locations. The effort will run in parallel to IARPA’s most current geopolitical forecasting research program-- Hybrid Forecasting Competition (HFC). Challenge solvers will be competing on the same forecasting questions as HFC research teams, and given access to the same human forecaster data stream. In addition to the provided data stream, solvers may use other data streams and their own data and models for the challenge. Why We’re Doing This: IARPA is looking for approaches from non-traditional sources that would improve the accuracy and timeliness of geopolitical forecasts. IARPA hosts these challenges in order to identify ways that individuals, academia, and others with a passion for forecasting can showcase their skills easily. When We’re Doing This: The challenge will launch February 21, 2018 so keep checking back for additional details. To receive updates or request more information, email gfchallenge@iarpa.gov.
When does pre-registration begin?
January 2018
When does the challenge launch?
February 21, 2018
How do I stay connected to get information about the challenge?
Gee Whiz Gosh! The mayor has a great public relations team behind him when his honor himself posts a Tweet highlighting last year's SOTC slickly-produced extravaganza to sell tickets to this year's big event . . . so far it's received 3 Likes. But who can forget the iconic image captured by photographer Ivan Martinez that says it all: the massive privately-financed $500,000+ PR campaign was amajorscrew-up when taxpayers REJECTED a mega-million scheme to plop down an ASU satellite here in downtown. Not a good track-record to "engage the public" for sure.
Once again, unless the public and taxpayers want to pay-to-go and fork out from their pockets the $60-buck$ for admission, it's the same-old/same-old tired re-tread where the public is relegated to the role of being spectators: you can watch it unless you can pay. Perhaps that's just another reason why year after year the community is effectively cut-off from being active players in their own government . . . that's What Works Mesa??? Unlike other mayors in East Valley who hold annual reports on the state of their cities with events open to the public free-of-charge, there's been absolutely no arrangements to invite the public - or taxpayers here in Mesa who pay his salary and generous benefits package. Did you buy your $60 or $50 tickets yet for another State-Of-The-City Speech? _________________________________________________________________________ Last year's extravaganza started off with John Giles leading a high school marching band into the Mesa Convention. . . this year's performance could feature the larger-than-life John Giles [who's suffering from an injury to his Achilles' Heel] leading the six-member squad of the Mesa City Council who have been rehearsing their moves to stay in-step with a limping the former track star acting as mayor. Here's the tweet and last year's re-run just in case you want to pay-to-go Mayor John Giles@MayorGiles
