Archive for the 'Outsourced' Category
SpaceX Flight Opens Door for U.S. Military Payloads
June 6th, 2012Via: Reuters: Space Exploration Technologies’ unmanned Dragon capsule arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday following a test flight for NASA that could open the door to a long-desired and more elusive customer – the U.S. military. The cargo capsule blasted off May on 22 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida and three days […]
And Now… Unsourcing
June 6th, 201275.2 million people are on Facebook, pretending to grow vegetables and raise animals in their browser windows? … Has it really come to this? Getting ribbons for bragging rights in Facebook games? —The Future Where Soda Cans Have Screens Via: The Economist: Some of the biggest brands in software, consumer electronics and telecoms have now […]
Japan: Millions of Tons of Radioactive Rubble
June 5th, 2012Via: The Atlantic: Disposing the more than 20 million tons of rubble caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is proving to be a difficult problem for Japan, not least because much of the rubble has been irradiated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The government’s plan — to destroy 4 million tons of potentially […]
And Now… Software Will Allow a Single Professor to Deliver, ‘Meaningful Education to Hundreds of Thousands of Students at Once’
May 23rd, 2012In ten or twenty years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the majority of paid work in companies, that is, work that isn’t done by machines, being done by these “certificate” holders. They’ll live in ever expanding slums, autonomously policed by RoboCops and drones. They’ll have fast Internet and there will be Superbowl commercials about […]
Robert Reich to New College Graduates: ‘You’re F*cked’
May 20th, 2012I’ve excerpted what I think are the key sentences. Via: Robert Reich: So much of what was once considered “knowledge work” – the kind that college graduates specialize in – can now be done more cheaply by software. Or by workers with college degrees in India or East Asia, linked up by Internet. Related: The […]
KBR on Shortlist to Run UK Police Services
May 3rd, 2012Via: Guardian: A US Pentagon contractor that was involved in building Guantánamo Bay is on a shortlist of seven private consortiums bidding for a £1.5bn contract to run key policing services in the West Midlands and Surrey. The Texas-based, Kellogg Brown & Root, which was sold off by the controversial Halliburton corporation in 2007, is […]
To Fight Climate Change, UK Funds Forced Sterilisation of India’s Poor
April 30th, 2012Via: Guardian: Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned. Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony. A number of pregnant women selected for sterilisation […]
U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas
April 27th, 2012Via: Wall Street Journal: Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Those companies, which include Wal-Mart Stores Inc., International Paper Co., Honeywell International Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc., […]
Startup Claims ‘Holy Grail’ of System on Chip Design
April 23rd, 2012Yikes. If this is real, it will definitely accelerate the grim trends in technology that you’ve been reading about on Cryptogon and lots of other places. Scum from Wall Street to Fort Meade will be frothing over this one. Via: EE Times: The first automated software-to-chip dream came out of the closet Monday (April 23), […]
U.S. Suspends Controversial Outsourcing Training Program
April 23rd, 2012Feign forgiveness, regroup, do-it-again. And get them on that certificate program. Via: Information Week: The U.S. Agency for International Development has suspended funding for a program under which Filipino nationals were trained to work in offshore, English language call centers that serve U.S. companies. The program, first reported by InformationWeek, drew heavy criticism from lawmakers […]
