Archive for the 'Outsourced' Category
Covert Action in Colombia
January 24th, 2014Via: Washington Post: The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more […]
Blackphone, for Whatever Ails Ya
January 15th, 2014Via: ZDnet: On Wednesday, Silent Circle and Geeksphone announced the formation of a new Switzerland-based joint venture and its first surveillance-thwarting product, the Blackphone. Powered by a security-oriented Android build named PrivatOS, Blackphone is touted as a carrier and vendor-independent smartphone which allows consumers and businesses to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure […]
U.S. Military on Path to Become Google’s Single Largest Customer
January 10th, 2014Via: DailyCaller: Google CEO Larry Page has rapidly positioned Google to become an indispensable U.S. military contractor. Google recently purchased Boston Dynamics, a robotics pioneer that produces amazing humanoid robots for the U.S. Defense Department. This development invites attention to Google’s broader military contracting ambitions — especially since Boston Dynamics is the eighth robotics company […]
‘Robot Farmers Are the Future of Agriculture’
January 10th, 2014Via: Guardian: Will robot feet in near-future time walk upon England’s mountains green? And will there be drones flying overhead from England’s pleasant pastures seen? A new vision of robots patrolling the meadows and cornfields of the UK may seem dark and satanic to some, but according to farmers and the government it is the […]
BMW Builds a Self-Driving Car — That Drifts
January 7th, 2014Via: Wired: BMW makes the Ultimate Driving Machine, and now it’s made the Ultimate Drifting Machine. Except it’s the code that’s in control. At CES, BMW is showing off a modified 2-Series Coupe and 6-Series Gran Coupe that can race around a track at the limits of adhesion, and slide around corners like a throttle-happy […]
Kerry: U.S. Can Fight al Qaeda in Iraq without Troops
January 5th, 2014Mercenaries and drones? Via: Reuters: The United States will support the Iraqi government and tribes fighting al Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim militants in Anbar province but will not send U.S. troops back to Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday. Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and tribal fighters have taken control of […]
The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course
January 1st, 2014Via: NPR: But by all accounts, the San Jose experiment was a bust. Completion rates and grades were worse than for those who took traditional campus-style classes. And the students who did best weren’t the underserved students San Jose most wanted to reach. It wasn’t really proving to be cheaper, either, says Peter Hadreas, the […]
Japan’s Homeless Recruited for Murky Fukushima Clean-Up
December 30th, 2013Via: Reuters: Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan’s nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a […]
“The bodies of the poor, when they are not captive, are worth little to corporations. But bodies behind bars can each generate $40,000 to $50,000 a year for corporate coffers.”
December 27th, 2013Via: Truthdig: Shares in the Philadelphia-based Aramark Holdings Corp., which contracts through Aramark Correctional Services to provide the food to 600 correctional institutions across the United States, went public Thursday. The corporation, acquired in 2007 for $8.3 billion by investors that included Goldman Sachs, raised $725 million last week from the sale of the stock. […]
‘We Are Creating Walmarts of Higher Education’
December 27th, 2013Via: The Atlantic: Universities in South Dakota, Nebraska, and other states have cut the number of credits students need to graduate. A proposal in Florida would let online courses forgo the usual higher-education accreditation process. A California legislator introduced a measure that would have substituted online courses for some of the brick-and-mortar kind at public […]
