Archive for the 'Outsourced' Category
FBI Used Geek Squad Technicians as Informants
March 8th, 2018Via: EFF: After the prosecution of a California doctor revealed the FBI’s ties to a Best Buy Geek Squad computer repair facility in Kentucky, new documents released to EFF show that the relationship goes back years. The records also confirm that the FBI has paid Geek Squad employees as informants. EFF filed a Freedom of […]
Self Driving Uber Trucks Start Shuttling Goods Across Arizona
March 6th, 2018Via: USA Today: Uber has been sending self-driving trucks on delivery runs across Arizona since November, the first step in what promises to be a freight transportation revolution that could radically reshape the jobs of long-haul truckers. After testing its technology earlier in 2017, Uber began contracting with trucking companies to use its own autonomous […]
MI5 Agents Can Commit Crime in UK, Government Reveals
March 3rd, 2018Shocker. Via: Guardian: MI5 agents are allowed to carry out criminal activity in the UK, the government has acknowledged for the first time. The prime minister was on Thursday forced to publish the text of a direction to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office, the spying watchdog, on governing “security service participation in criminality”. It instructs […]
Palantir Has Secretly Been Using New Orleans to Test Its Predictive Policing Technology
February 28th, 2018Via: The Verge: The program began in 2012 as a partnership between New Orleans Police and Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital firm. According to interviews and documents obtained by The Verge, the initiative was essentially a predictive policing program, similar to the “heat list” in Chicago […]
Norway Will Spend $13 Million to Upgrade Its Doomsday Seed Vault
February 26th, 2018Via: The Verge: Norway will spend 100 million Norwegian Crowns ($12.7 million) to upgrade the doomsday seed vault it built 10 years ago. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was constructed in an abandoned Arctic coal mine to store and safeguard the world’s crops and plants from global natural or man-made disaster. If nuclear war or […]
Kids Use Tech So Much They Can’t Hold A Pencil Anymore, Doctors Say
February 26th, 2018Swipetarded parents. Swipetarded children. This should be a boon for the public school to private prison gravy train. Via: Guardian: Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior paediatric doctors have warned. An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles […]
The Secret on the Ocean Floor
February 19th, 2018Via: BBC: In the summer of 1974, a large and highly unusual ship set sail from Long Beach in California. It was heading for the middle of the Pacific where its owners boasted it would herald a revolutionary new industry beneath the waves. Equipped with a towering rig and the latest in drilling gear, the […]
Biggest Washington DC Lobbyist Is Now Google
January 25th, 2018Via: Register: For the first time, an internet company has become the largest lobbyist in Washington DC. With the release of fourth quarter lobbying figures – a legal requirement – it has been revealed that Google (well, Alphabet) spent no less than $18m in 2017 to lobby lawmakers in the US capital: a 17 per […]
Why Some African Americans Are Moving to Africa
January 19th, 2018Via: Al Jazeera: You might not have electricity, but you won’t get killed by the police either. … “I think more will come when they begin to see it as a viable alternative. But it’s not easy and it’s not cheap. I can’t say what’s happening in America today is any worse than what’s been […]
How China Infiltrated U.S. Classrooms
January 17th, 2018Via: Politico: Last year, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte made an announcement to great fanfare: The university would soon open a branch of the Confucius Institute, the Chinese government-funded educational institutions that teach Chinese language, culture and history. The Confucius Institute would “help students be better equipped to succeed in an increasingly globalized […]
