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: History as Seen by Bloggers
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned" Richard Feynman
"The penalty good people pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by people worse than themselves."
- Plato, Greek philosopher.
Via: Government Executive: Modern sensors can see farther than humans. Electronic circuits can shoot faster than nerves and muscles can pull a trigger. Humans still outperform armed robots in knowing what to shoot at — but new research funded in part by the Army may soon narrow that gap. Researchers from DCS Corp and the […]
Apparently, you have to open some app for the this to happen: The situation isn’t that worrisome, as users have to open an app with the Shopkick SDK for the beacon to be picked up. Even so, here’s another one for your already herniating Mobile Phones Are Creepy as Hell file folder. Via: Bleeping Computer: […]
*meh* Amazon lost money for years. Now look at it. With Tesla, the Model 3 might be a make or break moment, but fear of repeating the Model X debacle was ingrained from the start. They might not blow it again. That said, having to get that new assembly line up and running from nothing […]
Via: Reuters: Puerto Rico announced a historic restructuring of its public debt on Wednesday, touching off what may be the biggest bankruptcy ever in the $3.8 trillion U.S. municipal bond market. While it was not immediately clear just how much of Puerto Rico’s $70 billion of debt would be included in the bankruptcy filing, the […]
Via: Bloomberg: Electric cars are coming fast — and that’s not just the opinion of carmakers anymore. Total SA, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, is now saying EVs may constitute almost a third of new-car sales by the end of the next decade. The surge in battery powered vehicles will cause demand for […]
Via: CoinDesk: Starting today, the United Nations (UN) will begin distributing funds to thousands of people in Jordan as part of a trial using the ethereum blockchain. For the next month, cryptographically unique coupons representing an undisclosed number of Jordanian dinars will be sent to dozens of shops in five refugee camps across the nation. […]
Via: news.com.au: FACEBOOK has come under fire over revelations it is targeting potentially vulnerable youths who “need a confidence boost” to facilitate predatory advertising practices. The allegation was revealed this morning by The Australian which obtained internal documents from the social media giant which reportedly show how Facebook can exploit the moods and insecurities of […]
Via: DefenseOne: Building and electrical systems, HVAC equipment and other critical infrastructure laden with internet-connected sensors often run on operating systems unsupported by vendors. Even as the Pentagon pushes to upgrade its information systems to Windows 10 by this year, its critical infrastructure remains woefully behind. “About 75 percent of the devices that are control […]
Via: Norbert Häring: With big fanfare, Deutsche Bundesbank announced on February 9 that ahead of plan they had repatriated 300 tons of gold from New York. This put a positive spin on a rather disturbing fact –1236 tons of gold that is supposed to be part of Germany’s currency reserve will continue to be kept […]
Via: Electrek: The best timeline he mentioned was based on a coast-to-coast demo drive from California to New York without the driver touching the wheel. During his TED talk yesterday, Musk reiterated that this demo drive is still planned for 2017: “November or December of this year, we should be able to go from a […]
Do you ever wonder if this planet exists to serve as form of sick entertainment for someone or something? You know, is someone or something leaning back on a couch and tuning in to The Planet Earth Show on the Cosmic Schadenfreude Channel? Via: BBC: After four days in the hut, the village women bathe […]
Via: Reuters: More than a third of Europeans and Americans would be happy to go without cash and rely on electronic forms of payment if they could, and at least 20 percent already pretty much do so, a study showed on Wednesday. The study, which was conducted in 13 European countries, the United States and […]
Hey all you dumbshits who expose SMB to the Internet on unpatched Windows boxes: Your new, “hands-free camera and style assistant” is here. *wink* *wink* Via: The Verge: Amazon today announced a new device for the Echo family: the Echo Look, a “style assistant” camera that helps catalog your outfits and rates your look based […]
Via: Reuters: To understand why it is so difficult to defend computers from even moderately capable hackers, consider the case of the security flaw officially known as CVE-2017-0199. The bug was unusually dangerous but of a common genre: it was in Microsoft software, could allow a hacker to seize control of a personal computer with […]
I wonder what will happen when the food delivery bots go rolling past homeless people camped on sidewalks… Via: BBC: A California man has been arrested after attacking a crime prevention robot in a car park, police say. The Knightscope machine was on patrol outside the Silicon Valley company that created it when the alleged […]
I’ve gone from worrying about brain damaged hipsters to seeing their clueless ramblings as a form of comedy act that brightens up my day: It’s appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. Anyway, back to growing creatures in ziplock baggies! Via: The Verge: Inside what look […]
Via: Vox: For years, Google — which recently renamed its self-driving car division “Waymo” — has been viewed as having the industry’s leading self-driving car technology. In the past couple of years, Waymo has had dozens of cars on the road racking up more than 2 million miles of real-world driving experience. Now Waymo is […]
ZeroHedge notes several coincidences around this time. I’ll add another: New moon 26 April 8:16 a.m EST. A new moon is a desirable time to launch an attack because the lack of moonlight makes it more difficult for the defending side to see the attackers. Via: Reuters: Top Trump administration officials will hold a rare […]
Via: The Intercept: To residents of Maryland, catching an occasional glimpse of a huge white blimp floating in the sky is not unusual. For more than a decade, the military has used the state as a proving ground for new airships destined for Afghanistan or Iraq. But less known is that the test flights have […]
Via: The Intercept: The documents, published Monday in collaboration with Japanese news broadcaster NHK, reveal the complicated relationship the NSA has maintained with Japan over a period of more than six decades. Japan has allowed NSA to maintain at least three bases on its territory and contributed more than half a billion dollars to help […]
Exposing SMB to the Internet on unpatched Windows machines… *shaking head while chortling deeply* NSA exploits or no NSA exploits, people who do this on purpose are idiots and better make their time. Via: Register: The NSA’s Equation Group hacking tools, leaked last Friday by the Shadow Brokers, have now been used to infect thousands […]
Via: MIT Technology Review: Last year, a strange self-driving car was released onto the quiet roads of Monmouth County, New Jersey. The experimental vehicle, developed by researchers at the chip maker Nvidia, didn’t look different from other autonomous cars, but it was unlike anything demonstrated by Google, Tesla, or General Motors, and it showed the […]
Via: Inverse: A series of power outages in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City on Friday left people across the country struggling to complete their morning commutes. There is currently no evidence to suggest that this is more than just a coincidence, despite worries about some sort of cyber attack. New York City […]
Via: BBC: Britain went a full day without using coal to generate electricity for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the National Grid says. The energy provider said Friday’s lack of coal usage was a “watershed” moment. Britain’s longest continuous energy period without coal until now was 19 hours – first achieved last May, […]
Via: New Zealand Herald: The highly secretive meeting being held in Queenstown this weekend is a gathering of intelligence and security agencies related to the Five Eyes spying network, the Herald understands. Among the people believed to be attending are Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike […]
Back on April 13: Is that Google Home device capable of voice printing people? If so, maybe the phones are too. Well, that didn’t take long. Via: Google: We’re adding the ability for up to six people to connect their account to one Google Home. So now when I ask my Google Assistant for help, […]
300km range? That’s what they’re claiming. Hint: If you have any aviation enthusiast children, call them over to your screen, don’t tell them what they’re about to watch and hit play. I wish I had a picture of my nine-year-old’s face when he saw this. But when I said he’d have to let the computer […]
I already watch what I say around my mobile phone, so how about a brain computer interface from Facebook? This is so far down the no-fucking-way path for me that it’s almost hilarious. Even if people were willing to use such a thing, it’s not coming anytime soon. Here’s why: Long ago, I worked for […]
Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Make sure to watch this in fullscreen mode and at the highest resolution your display supports. At first I thought, haha whatever roofing material they’re using looks like solar panels. *squint at screen* “That’s not… Can’t be. Is it?” Yep. It is. Aesthetically, I get […]
Via: Quanta: To nearly everybody’s surprise, as reported in January in the journal Nature, the bursts originated in a small “dwarf irregular” galaxy, one about a gigaparsec (just over 3 billion light years) away. This made the strength of the signal and its frequent repetitions even more astonishing. “If you’re detecting a bright flash from […]
Via: Wired: Algorithms pervade our lives today, from music recommendations to credit scores to now, bail and sentencing decisions. But there is little oversight and transparency regarding how they work. Nowhere is this lack of oversight more stark than in the criminal justice system. Without proper safeguards, these tools risk eroding the rule of law […]
Via: NBC: This firefight is just a drill, but the soldiers taking part are battling to break down one of the final barriers to women serving in the armed forces. They are training to become part of Norway’s Jegertroppen or “Hunter Troops” — the world’s first all-female military special forces unit.
Disclosure: I am involved with the effort to bring attention to the pollution and water take issues at Te Waikoropupu Springs Reserve. — Intensive dairy farming is destroying freshwater resources around New Zealand. It turns out the crown jewel of them all, a national treasure and a globally unique ecosystem is now threatened. How does […]
Via: Reuters: Apple Inc has secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, fuelling speculation that it is working on self-driving car technology in a crowded arena of companies hoping to offer those cars to the masses. The permit allows it to conduct test drives in three vehicles with six drivers, the state Department […]
Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — There are many likely small components of this, such as efficiency gains, small scale solar masking loads behind the meter (might explain 1% of demand decline), and high prices for electricity in some areas. But… Via: Bloomberg: Part of the reason is that a grim […]
Update: Amazon’s Alexa Could Soon Recognize Users by Their Voices If Amazon is working on it, the rest of them probably are. Via: Ars Technica: Amazon’s Alexa may be about to get smarter. According to a report from Time, the online retailer is working on voice identification software for Alexa that would allow the service […]
Via: U.S. News and World Report: The Trump administration is seeking ways to increase capacity within immigration enforcement agencies to create a deportation force President Donald Trump repeatedly advocated on the campaign trail. According to a document obtained by The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security has begun the process of ramping up its […]
Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. Via: Electrek: A new project put in motion in South Australia in order to help with the region’s energy problems is likely to become the largest solar plus battery project in the world. Lyon Group, an energy company backed by Mitsubishi, Blackstone and Magnetar Capital, has […]
Via: Reuters: North Korean state media warned on Tuesday of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression as a U.S. Navy strike group steamed toward the western Pacific. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has urged China to do more to rein in its impoverished neighbor, said in a Tweet […]
Via: South China Morning Post: A viral video showing an army of little orange robots sorting out packages in a warehouse in eastern China is the latest example of how machines are increasingly taking over menial factory work on the mainland. The behind-the-scenes footage of the self-charging robot army in a sorting centre of Chinese […]
Via: Reuters: The Common Business-Oriented Language was developed nearly 60 years ago and has been gradually replaced by newer, more versatile languages such as Java, C and Python. Although few universities still offer COBOL courses, the language remains crucial to businesses and institutions around the world. In the United States, the financial sector, major corporations […]
Via: NPR: A new tractor often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, but one thing not included in that price is the right to repair it. That has put farmers on the front lines of a battle pitting consumers against the makers of all kinds of consumer goods, from tractors to refrigerators to smartphones. Modern […]
😯 Via: Mayo Clinic: Many patients come to Mayo Clinic for a second opinion or diagnosis confirmation before treatment for a complex condition. In a new study, Mayo Clinic reports that as many as 88 percent of those patients go home with a new or refined diagnosis — changing their care plan and potentially their […]
Via: Military.com: The U.S. Navy’s Carl Vinson carrier strike group has been ordered to cancel planned port visits in Australia and move to the Western Pacific, just four days after the rogue state of North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile from its eastern coast. Officials with U.S. Third Fleet announced Saturday night that the San […]
Via: france24: The United States on Friday threatened to take further military action in Syria following its missile strikes on an air base in the war-wracked country in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. “The United States took a very measured step last night,” US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the UN Security Council. “We are […]
Well, Hillary supporters, maybe you’ll get that war with Russia anyway. Via: Reuters: The United States on Friday fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week, an escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria that immediately raised tension with Russia. […]
Via: Ars Technica: A broad array of Android phones are vulnerable to attacks that use booby-trapped Wi-Fi signals to achieve full device takeover, a researcher has demonstrated. The vulnerability resides in a widely used Wi-Fi chipset manufactured by Broadcom and used in both iOS and Android devices. Apple patched the vulnerability with Monday’s release of […]
Everything is great! Don’t worry. We love you. We’re sorry. Check back next year, mmmkay? The picture at the link looks like an action shot for a Touch of Gray ad. *chortle* Via: TechCrunch: The Mac has an important long future at Apple.
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I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.
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