Archive for the 'Outsourced' Category
Los Angeles: Citywide Gigabit Access for Homes and Businesses
November 5th, 2013People living in shipping containers with fiber optic links to the Metaverse? *chortle* Via: Arstechnica: Los Angeles is about to unleash one of the most ambitious city-led broadband projects to date, with the goal of bringing fiber to all of its 3.5 million residents and all businesses. Next month, the city plans to issue an […]
Mob Illegally Dumped Nuclear and Industrial Waste Around Southern Italy
November 5th, 2013Via: Daily Mail: Toxic nuclear and industrial waste, dumped illegally by the Neapolitan mafia, is responsible for a surge in cancers in southern Italy, it is feared. The Italian Senate is investigating a link between buried pollutants and a rise of almost 50 per cent in tumours found in the inhabitants of several towns around […]
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 […]
