Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Amazon Automatically Tracks and Fires Warehouse Workers for ‘Productivity’
April 25th, 2019Via: The Verge: The documents also show a deeply automated tracking and termination process. “Amazon’s system tracks the rates of each individual associate’s productivity,” according to the letter, “and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors.” (Amazon says supervisors are able to override the process.)
Ford Motor to Put $500 Million Into Electric Vehicle Startup Rivian
April 24th, 2019Panic: With Ford, who wants to increasingly focus on milking truck profits, it could get ugly over there in a couple of years when Rivian and Tesla enter the pickup truck market. Ford only has a hybrid F-150 planned for 2020. Via: Reuters: Ford Motor Co said on Wednesday it will invest $500 million in […]
Amazon’s Alexa Reviewers Can Access Customers’ Home Addresses
April 24th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: An Amazon.com Inc. team auditing Alexa users’ commands has access to location data and can, in some cases, easily find a customer’s home address, according to five employees familiar with the program. The team, spread across three continents, transcribes, annotates and analyzes a portion of the voice recordings picked up by Alexa. The […]
The Pentagon Is Investing in Space Robots to Repair Satellites
April 24th, 2019Via: Nextgov: The Pentagon’s research office wants to send robots into space to inspect and repair the nation’s satellites. Today the U.S. has more than 400 military, government and commercial satellites circling the globe in geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO, a celestial path about 22,000 miles above the ground. These high-altitude satellites are ideal for […]
DHS Plan for Face Scanning at Airports Sparks Alarm
April 24th, 2019Via: The Hill: Lawmakers and civil liberties advocates are calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt plans to begin using facial recognition technology on nearly all departing air passengers within the next four years. The agency’s plan has reignited the fight over the sensitive technology. Critics say facial recognition technology is not […]
A ‘Blockchain Bandit’ Is Guessing Private Keys and Scoring Millions
April 24th, 2019Via: Wired: In the process, and as detailed in a paper they published Tuesday, the researchers not only found that cryptocurrency users have in the last few years stored their crypto treasure with hundreds of easily guessable private keys, but also uncovered what they call a “blockchain bandit.” A single Ethereum account seems to have […]
U.S. Government Spent Over $500m on Fake Al-Qaeda Propaganda Videos that Tracked Location of Viewers
April 22nd, 2019My guess is that even I would be shocked if we knew the extent of America’s ongoing PSYOP with regard to media. Via: Independent: A former contractor for a UK-based public relations firm says that the Pentagon paid more than half a billion dollars for the production and dissemination of fake Al-Qaeda videos that portrayed […]
Tesla Autonomy Day Presentation
April 22nd, 2019This is a fairly technical presentation for analysts. Personally, I doubt that Tesla is going to have a widely available robotaxi service anytime soon, but, at a minimum, this makes for interesting listening with regard to their efforts to devise the custom hardware and software necessary for autonomous driving. I queued the video to the […]
SpaceX Will Begin Starlink Satellite Launches in May
April 17th, 2019Via: Teslarati: SpaceX has announced a launch target of May 2019 for the first batch of operational Starlink satellites in a sign that the proposed internet satellite constellation has reached a major milestone, effectively transitioning from pure research and development to serious manufacturing. R&D will continue as SpaceX Starlink engineers work to implement the true […]
Mush, Spot, Mush!
April 16th, 2019The sound… Via: Boston Dynamics: It only takes 10 Spotpower (SP) to haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot (~1 degree uphill, truck in neutral). These Spot robots are coming off the production line now and will be available for a range of applications soon.
