Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Amazon Gets Green Light from U.S. Regulators for New Drone Tests
April 11th, 2015Via: Reuters: Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) has won approval from U.S. federal regulators to test a delivery drone outdoors, less than a month after the e-commerce powerhouse blasted regulators for being slow to approve commercial drone testing. The Federal Aviation Administration had earlier given the green light to an Amazon prototype drone in March, but the […]
NYC Pension Earns $40 Million Over 10 Years, Pays Fund Managers $2 Billion
April 9th, 2015Via: The Reformed Broker: over the past 10 years, the five pension funds have paid more than $2 billion in fees to money managers and have received virtually nothing in return… Until now, Mr. Stringer said, the pension funds have reported the performance of many of their investments before taking the fees paid to money […]
Stanford: New Aluminum-Ion Battery, “7,500 Cycles Without Any Loss of Capacity”
April 7th, 2015Non toxic. Very safe. Does it scale? Hope so. It’s nowhere near market ready, but exciting anyway. Via: Stanford University: Stanford University scientists have invented the first high-performance aluminum battery that’s fast-charging, long-lasting and inexpensive. Researchers say the new technology offers a safe alternative to many commercial batteries in wide use today. “We have developed […]
Inexpensive Electric Cars Sooner Rather Than Later?
April 6th, 2015Via: MIT Technology Review: Electric cars may seem like a niche product that only wealthy people can afford, but a new analysis suggests that they may be close to competing with or even beating gas cars on cost. The true cost of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars is a secret closely held by manufacturers. And […]
Sea-Based X-Band Radar: Another Multi Billion Dollar Pentagon Boondoggle
April 5th, 2015Via: Los Angeles Times: Leaders of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency were effusive about the new technology. It was the most powerful radar of its kind in the world, they told Congress. So powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the country. If North Korea launched a sneak […]
Net Cafe Refugees: Japan’s Disposable Workers
April 3rd, 2015Via: YouTube:
AI Interns: Software Already Taking Jobs from Humans
April 1st, 2015Via: New Scientist: Humans used to manually move data between the relevant systems to complete these tasks, copying a phone number from one database to another, for instance. The user still has to call up and speak to a human, but now an AI does the actual work. To train the AI, it watches and […]
Former Blackwater Gets Rich as Afghan Drug Production Hits Record High
April 1st, 2015Via: Guardian: In a war full of failures, the US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan stands out: opiate production has climbed steadily over recent years to reach record-high levels last year. Yet there is a clear winner in the anti-drug effort – not the Afghan people, but the infamous mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater. Statistics […]
Amazon Tests Delivery Drones at Secret Canadian Site After U.S. Frustration
March 31st, 2015Via: Guardian: Amazon is testing its drone delivery service at a secret site in Canada, following repeated warnings by the e-commerce giant that it would go outside the US to bypass what it sees as the US federal government’s lethargic approach to the new technology. The largest internet retailer in the world is keeping the […]
The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains
March 28th, 2015Via: The Atlantic: Leading scientists recently identified a dozen chemicals as being responsible for widespread behavioral and cognitive problems. But the scope of the chemical dangers in our environment is likely even greater. Why children and the poor are most susceptible to neurotoxic exposure that may be costing the U.S. billions of dollars and immeasurable […]
