Archive for the 'Outsourced' Category
Debtors’ Prisons: Life Inside America’s For-Profit Justice System
August 17th, 2016Part 1 Part 2
Aetna Ditching 70% of Its Obamacare Business
August 16th, 2016Via: Business Insider: Aetna, one of the country’s five largest health insurers, announced on Monday evening that it would be pulling out of nearly 70% of the counties in which it offers coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The firm said that after a review of its public-health-exchange business it determined that the nearly $300 […]
In Bungled Spying Operation, NSA Targeted Pro-Democracy Campaigner
August 15th, 2016Via: The Intercept: Tony Fullman is a middle-aged former tax man and a pro-democracy activist. But four years ago, a botched operation launched by New Zealand spies meant he suddenly found himself deemed a potential terrorist — his passport was revoked, his home was raided, and he was placed on a top-secret National Security Agency […]
ISIS Acquires Another U.S. Weapons Cache
August 7th, 2016Via: Reuters: Militants linked to Islamic State have released photos that purport to show weapons and equipment that belonged to American soldiers and were captured by the group in eastern Afghanistan. The photos, which came to light on Saturday, show an American portable rocket launcher, radio, grenades and other gear not commonly used by Afghan […]
Self Driving Car Company Asks People to Generate Data with Mobile Phones
July 24th, 2016But what I really thought was interesting was the inducement to get people to do this: Comma Points and a scoreboard. In other words, Hotz turned this into a game. I wonder if he plans to use the Chffr app to offer bonus points to get people to drive on roads that present particularly difficult […]
‘Pokémon Go’: Government Surveillance App?
July 14th, 2016For commentary on this, I’d mainly offer my 2012 piece: Ingress: Google’s Strange New Game Flash forward to 2016 and Pokémon Go offers the same soft control, but now with mass appeal. You might be thinking, mass appeal? What? With 10-year-olds? It turns out that in the swipetarded zombie apocalypse, “Pokémon Go tops Twitter’s daily […]
Tens of Thousands of People Every Year Sent to Jail Based on Results from Ridiculously Flawed Roadside Drug Test
July 8th, 2016“Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them?” The article doesn’t go anywhere near the reason, which is that large Wall Street banks profit from the private gulag system in America: The prison industry as a whole took in over $5 billion in revenue in 2011. According to journalist Matt Taibbi, Wall Street banks […]
Autonomous Robots to Begin Delivering Food and Parcels in Europe
July 6th, 2016Via: Bloomberg: The next time you order food using the delivery app Just Eat in London, don’t be surprised if it’s brought to your door by a small, six-wheeled robot. London-listed Just Eat Plc. will join German retail chain Metro AG, logistics company Hermes Group, and U.K. food delivery startup Pronto Technology Ltd., in trialing […]
Robot-Made Burgers Coming to San Francisco
July 1st, 2016Via: TechInsider: A robot-powered burger joint is coming to San Francisco. In 2012, secretive robotics startup Momentum Machines debuted a machine that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour. It’s fully autonomous, meaning the robot can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag the burger without any help from humans. The […]
Google Wants to Slither Into Public Transportation
June 27th, 2016Via: Guardian: Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to radically overhaul public parking and transportation in American cities, emails and documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. Its high-tech services, which it calls “new superpowers to extend access and mobility”, could make it easier to drive and park in cities and create hybrid public/private […]
