Wednesday, August 07, 2019

7 August - Cryptogon - 2 of 2

Jul 23

There isn’t much information yet. It’s playing out on Twitter: @officialmcafee: (3/4) If John misses his next check-in, events will be set into motion that I cannot prevent once they have begun. John has secreted data with individuals across the world. I know neither their identities or locations. They will release their payloads if John […]
Via: Reuters: U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday told the Pentagon to find better ways to procure a rare earth magnet used in specialty motors, warning that the nation’s defense would suffer without adequate stockpiles. Attention is growing on rare earths, an obscure grouping of 17 minerals used to build weapons, consumer electronics and a […]

Jul 22

Via: Bloomberg: The Pentagon has revealed a few details about a secret Army mission that has Black Hawk helicopters flying missions over the Washington, D.C., area backed by active-duty and reserve soldiers. The mysterious classified operation was disclosed when the Army asked Congress for approval to shift funds to provide an extra $1.55 million for […]

Jul 21

Well, the rats are running the city and the state, so… Via: KTLA: Los Angeles’ rodent problem has gotten so far out of control that some experts are asking the governor to declare an emergency. With an increasing homeless population comes an influx of rats and mice, particularly in downtown L.A. Rats are known to […]
Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War by Christopher Simpson Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 by Linda Hunt Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen Via: Daily Mail: Amid the jubilation half a […]
Via: Reuters: Hong Kong police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in running clashes with protesters late on Sunday amid chaotic scenes as anger over an extradition bill morphs into a fresh front against what many see as a broader erosion of freedoms by Beijing. Thousands of protesters descended on China’s representative office in the […]
Via: Forbes: Red faces in Moscow this weekend, with the news that hackers have successfully targeted FSB—Russia’s Federal Security Service. The hackers managed to steal 7.5 terabytes of data from a major contractor, exposing secret FSB projects to de-anonymize Tor browsing, scrape social media, and help the state split its internet off from the rest […]
Hint: Deutsche Bank was buying the worst of the toxic waste that Lehman was generating before the last financial crisis. I wonder how much of that stuff is still burning a hole in Deutsche Bank… Via: Economic Collapse Blog: Could it be possible that we are on the verge of the next “Lehman Brothers moment”? […]

Jul 20

Via: CBS: About a third of New York City’s subway lines were suspended for more than an hour during Friday’s hot evening commute, and the head of the city’s Transit Authority acknowledged that the agency “did not know exactly where our trains were.” A computer system failure that resulted in the snafu stranded some passengers […]
— “$21 Trillion Dollars Is Missing from the U.S. Government” Via: The Drive: Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works is building a new, more capable test reactor as it continues to move ahead with its ambitious Compact Fusion Reactor program, or CFR. Despite slower than expected progress, the company remains confident the project can produce practical results, […]

Jul 19

Via: AFP: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Friday they had seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz for breaking “international maritime rules” as tensions mount in the highly sensitive waterway. Britain however said Iran had seized two ships in the Gulf, with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warning of “serious consequences” if the issue was […]

Jul 18

Via: In It for the Money:

Jul 17

A true AI success story! Via: PetaPixel: Amazon discounted a wide range of camera gear for Prime Day this week, but some photographers scored what may be the best deals of their lives. Thanks to a pricing error, many people were able to purchase high-end camera gear bundles, some worth over $5,000, for just around […]
Via: Independent: US lawmakers have voted to demand the Pentagon discloses whether it conducted experiments to “weaponise” disease-carrying ticks – and whether any such insects were let loose outside the lab. A bill passed in the House of Representatives requires the Defence Department’s inspector general to investigate whether biological warfare tests involving the tiny arachnids […]

Jul 16

Update: Elon Musk Says Neuralink Microchip Allowed a Monkey to ‘Control’ Computer with Brain Via: Fox: Elon Musk showed off some of what his neurotechnology company, Neuralink, has been developing Tuesday, and casually mentioned that the technology had been used “to control a computer with its brain.” “Just FYI,” he added. … Musk and other […]
Update: Iran says it has seized foreign oil tanker and crew in the Persian Gulf — Via: Guardian: Tracking data showing an oil tanker that was heading towards Iranian waters and stopped transmitting its location on Saturday night has raised concerns about the status of the vessel amid heightened tensions between Iran and the US. […]

Jul 15

Via: The Verge: The majority of goods sold on Amazon are not sold by Amazon itself, but by more than 2 million merchants who use the company’s platform as their storefront and infrastructure. Some of these sellers make their own products, while others practice arbitrage, buying and reselling wares from other retailers. Amazon has made […]
Via: Reason: An Arizona cop acquitted of murder in 2017 for killing a man crawling on his knees, begging for his life, in a hotel hallway, was temporarily rehired by the city he worked for so that he could claim a disability pension and file for a medical retirement that will pay him more than […]
Via: Reason: A former Florida sheriff’s deputy was arrested Wednesday for planting drugs and falsely arresting at least 10 people, including one case where Reason obtained body camera footage showing him lying about the results of roadside field test. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) announced yesterday that, following a months-long investigation, former Jackson […]

Jul 14

Via: New York Magazine: Long before Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in Florida more than a decade ago, his fellow Palm Beach resident and hedge-fund manager Douglas Kass was intrigued by the local gossip about his neighbor. “I’m hearing about the parties, hearing about a guy who’s throwing money around,” says Kass, president […]
This amounts to he-said-she-said, but I’ve assumed that Epstein was state sponsored from the start. Via: Daily Beast: Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for […]

Jul 13

I like the picture at ZeroHedge of a morbidly obese person ordering slop at the drive-thru. Wow. Via: ZeroHedge: License plate recognition could be the new big thing at American drive-thrus, according to FT. Chains are now looking to deploy cameras that recognize license plates and help identify customers, personalizing digital menus and speeding up […]
Via: ZeroHedge: Researchers in Norway have discovered radiation levels in excess of 100,000 times normal next to a Soviet-era nuclear submarine which sank in the Arctic 30 years ago – a reading which is higher than those taken 12 years ago, according to Norwegian news outlet TV2. The Kosomolets went down in the Barents Sea […]
Cryptogon always supplies you with the most pleasant reading for the weekend. Via: CommonDreams: Nothing significant has been done to improve safety at two coastal reactors upwind of ten million people that are surrounded by earthquake faults in a tsunami zone like the one where the four Fukushima reactors have already exploded. Had Friday’s 7.1 […]
CBS New York Livestream — Update: ConEd Restoring Power, No Cause of Outage Given — Via: CBSNY: A large power outage has struck Midtown, Times Square, Hell’s Kitchen, and other parts of Upper Manhattan. CBS2 began to hear reports that that all restaurants had gone dark in Hell’s Kitchen around 7 p.m. Saturday evening. There […]
Via: Guardian: Partial sight has been restored to six blind people via an implant that transmits video images directly to the brain. Some vision was made possible – with the participants’ eyes bypassed – by a video camera attached to glasses which sent footage to electrodes implanted in the visual cortex of the brain. University […]

Jul 12

If the electricity from solar plus storage is, “Cheaper than any power generated with fossil fuel,” why aren’t these systems shooting up like weeds? The availability of batteries is the bottleneck. We’ve heard about Tesla’s rumored 1GWh energy storage system and things like the 800MWh system below. This is a drop in the bucket, in […]
Via: ZeroHedge: Jeffrey Epstein’s attorneys have informed Judge Richard M. Berman that their client wants out of his 100 sqft holding cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan he’s been in since his arrest last Saturday at Teterboro airport. Instead, the registered sex-offender and self-admitted pedophile would agree to house arrest at […]
Via: Independent: The body of an American scientist has been found in a bunker used by the Nazis during the Second World War on the Greek island of Crete. Suzanne Eaton died as a result of a “criminal act”, says Antonis Papadomanolakis, a state coroner who examined her body. A post-mortem concluded the molecular biologist […]

Jul 11

Via: Nature: Machines have raised the stakes once again. A superhuman poker-playing bot called Pluribus has beaten top human professionals at six-player no-limit Texas hold’em poker, the most popular variant of the game. It is the first time that an artificial-intelligence (AI) program has beaten elite human players at a game with more than two […]

Jul 10

Definitely see, Automakers Are Rethinking the Timetable for Fully Autonomous Cars. A friend of mine, who happens to be involved with AI research, completely dismissed Musk’s claims that Tesla is anywhere near to having a full self driving capability. And now… Via: ZeroHedge: Several key members of Tesla’s Autopilot team have left the company together […]
“Is there a ball somewhere? Throw the ball… kick the ball.” Via: Global News: It seems like some parents have forgotten what parenting was like before smartphones and tablets. According to a recent article in the New York Times, some parents in the U.S. are hiring screen-free parenting coaches to help them raise phone-free children. […]
Via: Los Angeles Times: L.A. has struggled to stymie the growing number of obstructions that residents and business owners are creating to target homeless people. There are now about 59,000 people without homes in L.A. County. Within the city of Los Angeles, the population soared 16% this year to more than 36,000 — the majority […]
Fascinating. Via: ZeroHedge: Today we learn that the vessel, the MSC Gayane, is owned by JP Morgan, and has been seized by US authorities according to the Wall Street Journal. The Gayane is the world’s second-largest container ship – operated by Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping Co, MSC.

Jul 09

Via: Reuters: H. Ross Perot, the feisty Texas technology billionaire who rattled U.S. politics with two independent presidential campaigns in the 1990s that struck a chord with disgruntled voters, died on Tuesday at the age of 89, his family said.

Jul 08

Via: Reason: Once again, responding to a horrendous crime by inflicting knee-jerk, authoritarian restrictions on innocent people proves to be an ineffective means of convincing people to obey. Specifically, New Zealand’s government—which also stepped up censorship and domestic surveillance after bloody attacks on two Christchurch mosques earlier this year—is running into stiff resistance to new […

Jul 07

Via: Bloomberg: Deutsche Bank AG unveiled a radical overhaul that will see the lender exit its equities business, post a 2.8 billion-euro ($3.1 billion) second-quarter loss and cut the workforce by a fifth to reverse a slide in profitability.

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