Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Overseas Processing Centre 1 (OPC-1)
June 5th, 2014Via: Register: Above-top-secret details of Britain’s covert surveillance programme – including the location of a clandestine British base tapping undersea cables in the Middle East – have so far remained secret, despite being leaked by fugitive NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden. Government pressure has meant that some media organisations, despite being in possession of these facts, […]
Seattle Hikes Minimum Wage to $15 Per Hour
June 3rd, 2014Researchers Carl Freyand and Michael Osborne recently tried to figure out the likelihood that automation will replace humans in a wide variety of jobs: According to our estimate, 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category, meaning that associated occupations are potentially automatable over some unspecified number of years, perhaps a […]
LAPD Adds Drones to Arsenal, Says They’ll Be Used Sparingly
May 31st, 2014*wink* Via: Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles Police Department has acquired some eyes in the sky. On Friday, the department announced that it had acquired two “unmanned aerial vehicles” as gifts from the Seattle Police Department. The Draganflyer X6 aircraft, which resemble small helicopters, are each about 3 feet wide and equipped with a […]
German Foreign Intelligence Agency Wants to Access Social Media Sites in Real Time
May 31st, 2014Via: Deutsche Welle: German media has reported that the country’s foreign intelligence agency wants to access social media in real time. The agency reportedly wants to expand digital operations out of fear of falling behind other countries.
NSA Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images
May 31st, 2014Via: New York Times: The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents. The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the […]
TrueCrypt Developers Abruptly Quit
May 29th, 2014truecrypt.ch has been established for those who want to continue TrueCrypt’s open source development. Via: Krebs on Security: The anonymous developers responsible for building and maintaining the free whole-disk encryption suite TrueCrypt apparently threw in the towel this week, shuttering the TrueCrypt site and warning users that the product is no longer secure now that […]
Graphene Atmospheric Electricity Collectors
May 29th, 2014There’s not a lot of continuous current available from this, but I still found it interesting. Maybe when they move that thing higher up… Via: Laser Saber / YouTube:
Microsoft Working on Real-Time Audio Translations for Skype Conversations
May 28th, 2014Via: Microsoft: Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and […]
Google Web/Search History Disable Does Absolutely Nothing
May 28th, 2014Classic: For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button: Millions of dutiful city residents and tourists have pushed them over the years, thinking it would help speed them in their journeys. Many trusting souls might have believed they actually worked. Others, more cynical, might have suspected they were broken but pushed anyway, out of habit, […]
Autonomous Mode Only: Google Unveils Self Driving Car Prototype without Steering Wheel or Pedals
May 28th, 2014Via: Google: Ever since we started the Google self-driving car project, we’ve been working toward the goal of vehicles that can shoulder the entire burden of driving. Just imagine: You can take a trip downtown at lunchtime without a 20-minute buffer to find parking. Seniors can keep their freedom even if they can’t keep their […]
