Archive for the 'Outsourced' Category
Obamacare Open Thread
November 4th, 2013Do we need an Obamacare open thread? Here it is, just in case.
Three Guys Built a Better Healthcare.gov
November 3rd, 2013Via: The Atlantic Wire: The Affordable Health Care act rollout was an unmitigated disaster thanks in large part to a cluttered website that both didn’t work and was offensively ugly. Maybe things would not have gone so poorly if HealthCare.gov looked something like this. No one knows the resources that went into building HealthCare.gov, but […]
Slow and Steady Progress Toward Lethal Autonomous Robots
October 31st, 2013This piece is a good summary of what’s happening in the field of military robotics. I’m pretty sure that all of the systems here have been covered separately on Cryptogon. Via: Vocativ: There are important differences between drones, landmines, and “killer robots” — the more serious term being “fully autonomous weapon,” or “lethal autonomous weapon” […]
‘Data Shows Google’s Robot Cars Are Smoother, Safer Drivers Than You or I’
October 26th, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review: Data gathered from Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars shows that they are safer and smoother when steering themselves than when a human takes the wheel, according to the leader of Google’s autonomous-car project. Chris Urmson made those claims today at a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California. He presented results […]
Filesharing Site Revealed to be Anti-Piracy ‘Honeypot’
October 26th, 2013Via: Guardian: A high-profile file-sharing site has been revealed to be a year-long pirate “honeypot”, collecting data on users, file hosters and websites. The revelation, which had users of the forum up in arms, accompanied the purchase of the UploaderTalk (UT) site by US-based anti-piracy company Nuke Piracy. A honeypot is a facility, in this […]
Meet the Private Companies Helping Cops Spy on Protesters
October 25th, 2013Via: Rolling Stone: While the specifics of which police departments utilize what surveillance technologies is often unclear, there is evidence to suggest that use of mass surveillance against individuals not under direct investigation is common. “The default is mass surveillance, the same as NSA’s ‘collect it all’ mindset,” says King. “There’s not a single company […]
Help Wanted in Fukushima: Low Pay, High Risks and Gangsters
October 25th, 2013Via: Reuters: Tetsuya Hayashi went to Fukushima to take a job at ground zero of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. He lasted less than two weeks. Hayashi, 41, says he was recruited for a job monitoring the radiation exposure of workers leaving the plant in the summer of 2012. Instead, when he turned up […]
Afghanistan: U.S. Bought Diesel Fuel for $500 Per Gallon
October 24th, 2013Via: CNN: That was the exorbitant figure paid with U.S. tax dollars to a contractor building a hospital in rural Afghanistan, according to a report from the government watchdog tasked with investigating expenditures on Afghanistan’s reconstruction. In the report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the International Organization for Migration was found […]
Modern China Depicted as Colorful, Communist Paradise by North Korean Propaganda Artists
October 23rd, 2013Via: The Verge: China’s propaganda posters used to depict idyllic landscapes and rustic villages, but today’s scenery resembles something far different. To imagine what modern Chinese propaganda would look like, two British artists commissioned a North Korean group that once made propaganda for their own state, creating a series of paintings that are a mix […]
Meet CGI Federal, the Company Behind the Botched Launch of HealthCare.gov
October 23rd, 2013Via: Washington Post: Over the past few weeks, if you’ve been paying attention at all to the unfolding disaster of people trying and failing to sign up for Obamacare online, one name keeps coming up: CGI Federal, the IT contractor that has orchestrated most of the Healthcare.gov Web site. By most accounts, it’s been a […]
