Archive for the 'Technology' Category
European McDonald’s Partially Replacing Employees with Touchscreen Terminals
May 16th, 2011Via: Financial Times: McDonald’s is to change the way customers order its meals in Europe, partly replacing cashiers and the use of banknotes at its 7,000 fast-food restaurants in the region with touchscreen terminals and swipe cards. … Mr Easterbrook said that the changes would make life easier for consumers as well as improve efficiency, […]
13 Palestinians Killed During Protests Along Israel’s Borders
May 16th, 2011Do you really think that this was coordinated over open social networks and Israel didn’t know about it? I don’t know what the point of this is, but there is no chance that Israel was “surprised” by it. Via: Toronto Star: The popular uprisings that swept the Mideast this year reached Israel’s doorstep Sunday as […]
Not The Onion: Blackwater Alumni Start Corporate Intelligence Firm Called Operation Jellyfish
May 15th, 2011I’m standing by to hear that this is a hoax. (Please, tell me this is a hoax.) Until then, why not put these slimy, primitive tentacles to use for all of your corporate intelligence needs? I think that Operation Cthulhu would have been better.Cthulhu Awakening Front Via: Wired: Veterans from the most infamous private security […]
UAE: What Are These Large Structures in the Sand?
May 12th, 2011These structures are 125 meters across, according to the ruler tool in Google Earth. What are they? The guesses on this ATS thread range from plausible to ridiculous. View Larger Map
Britain: Police Buy Software to Map Suspects’ Digital Movements
May 12th, 2011Flashback: MAIN CORE Via: Guardian: Britain’s largest police force is using software that can map nearly every move suspects and their associates make in the digital world, prompting an outcry from civil liberties groups. The Metropolitan police has bought Geotime, a security programme used by the US military, which shows an individual’s movements and communications […]
Algorithms Trying to Swindle Each Other
May 12th, 2011Via: London Review of Books: The deals that used to be struck on trading floors now take place via ‘matching engines’, computer systems that process buy and sell orders and execute a trade if they find a buy order and a sell order that match. The matching engines of the New York Stock Exchange, for […]
Cellphones to Get Government Chips for Disaster Alerts
May 10th, 2011You won’t be able to opt out of receiving messages from Dear Leader… Some days, as I sift through all of this madness, I really miss George Carlin. I bet he’d just love this one. Via: Boston Globe: After more than five years of planning, a national emergency alert system that will send messages to […]
And Now… Scientists Afflict Neural Network with Schizophrenia
May 8th, 2011I was reading along, thinking that this sounded like run-of-the-mill grant swindling, but then this paragraph damn near slapped me out of my chair: After being re-trained with the elevated learning rate, DISCERN began putting itself at the center of fantastical, delusional stories that incorporated elements from other stories it had been told to recall. […]
Your Location ‘Extremely Valuable’ to Google
May 2nd, 2011Via: International Business Times: Then, just weeks ago Los Angeles-based researcher Samy Kamkar illustrated that Google Android based smartphones were sending precise GPS location and other data back to Google “several times an hour.” “I cannot stress enough how important Google’s wifi location database is to our Android and mobile product strategy,” Google location manager […]
Workers Assembling Apple Products Urged to Sign Anti Suicide Pledge
May 1st, 2011So Foxconn’s suicide prevention nets are still up? Via: Guardian: An investigation into the conditions of Chinese workers has revealed the shocking human cost of producing the must-have Apple iPhones and iPads that are now ubiquitous in the west. The research, carried out by two NGOs, has revealed disturbing allegations of excessive working hours and […]
