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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