Archive for the 'Infrastructure' Category
Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems
October 28th, 2014Via: Newsweek: It was also in 1999 that Schmidt joined the board of a Washington, D.C.–based group: the New America Foundation, a merger of well-connected centrist forces (in D.C. terms). The foundation and its 100 staff serve as an influence mill, using its network of approved national security, foreign policy and technology pundits to place […]
Contact Lost With Planes One by One as FAA Fire Spread
October 3rd, 2014Via: Bloomberg: The first radio links with pilots were lost just as the pre-dawn crush of flights into Chicago began. Air-traffic controllers in a nondescript Federal Aviation Administration building about 40 miles from the city switched to backup channels. Then those failed. They tried emergency connections, which also went dead. Within minutes, radar feeds, flight […]
Taps Running Dry in Rural California
October 2nd, 2014Via: New York Times: State officials say that at least 700 households have no access to running water, but they acknowledge that there could be hundreds more, with many rural well-owners not knowing whom to contact. Tulare County, just south of Fresno, recently began aggressively tracking homes without running water, delivering bottles to hundreds of […]
U.S. Attacking Oil Infrastructure Belonging to… ISIS?
September 24th, 2014Via: CNN: U.S. and coalition warplanes pounded ISIS positions in eastern Syria on Wednesday, targeting what a Pentagon official described as mobile oil refineries being used by the so-called Islamic State terror group to help finance its operations. The latest round of airstrikes were aimed at cutting off money flowing to ISIS, which makes up […]
EMP Hardened Data Centers
September 16th, 2014Via: Computerworld: In Boyers, Pa., a recently opened 2,000-sq.-ft. data center has been purpose-built to protect against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), either generated by a solar storm or a nuclear event. The company that built the facility isn’t disclosing exactly how the data center was constructed or what materials were used. But broadly, it did […]
A $50 Billion Chinese Canal Across Nicaragua
August 17th, 2014Via: NPR: One hundred years ago today, the first ship passed through the brand-new, U.S.-built Panama Canal; a century later, Panama owns the canal outright, and the country is one of the most prosperous in the region. Panama’s neighbor to the north, Nicaragua, is hoping a transoceanic canal and similar prosperity are in its near […]
MonsterMind: NSA’s Cyberwar Bot
August 13th, 2014Via: Wired: Edward Snowden has made us painfully aware of the government’s sweeping surveillance programs over the last year. But a new program, currently being developed at the NSA, suggests that surveillance may fuel the government’s cyber defense capabilities, too. The NSA whistleblower says the agency is developing a cyber defense system that would instantly […]
Banks Dreading Computer Hacks Call for Cyber War Council
July 13th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: Wall Street’s biggest trade group has proposed a government-industry cyber war council to stave off terrorist attacks that could trigger financial panic by temporarily wiping out account balances, according to an internal document. The proposal by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, known as Sifma, calls for a committee of executives and […]
Google: Better Than 50% Chance That Loon Becomes a Reality
June 30th, 2014They also have drones: Google Buys Drone Maker Titan Aerospace. Via: Wired: Cassidy has always contended that by providing the Internet to unserved areas, his project could help make those dreams achievable. A year after the project’s public launch, he’s confident that Internet service enabled by high-altitude balloons is more than a possibility. “We’ve definitely […]
FCC Approves Plan to Consider Paid Priority on Internet
May 15th, 2014Via: Washington Post: The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted in favor of advancing a proposal that could dramatically reshape the way consumers experience the Internet, opening the possibility of Internet service providers charging Web sites for higher-quality delivery of their content to American consumers. The plan, approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, […]
