Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Google to Buy Satellite Company Skybox Imaging for $500 Million
June 11th, 2014Via: Reuters: Google Inc said on Tuesday it is acquiring satellite company Skybox Imaging for $500 million in cash, the Internet company’s second high-profile acquisition of an aerospace company this year. Google said that Skybox’s satellites will provide images for Google’s online mapping service. Google, the world’s No.1 Internet search engine, said that Skybox’s technology […]
FAA for the First Time OKs Commercial Drone Flights Over Land
June 11th, 2014Via: Los Angeles Times: Marking a milestone for the industry, Monrovia drone maker AeroVironment Inc. has announced a contract to use an unmanned aircraft to perform routine commercial services over land in compliance with Federal Aviation Administration regulations. The company’s small drone, called Puma AE, is now scouring BP Exploration Inc.’s Prudhoe Bay oil field […]
The Strange Case of Gustl Mollath
June 10th, 2014Cryptogon reader bretwalda submitted the 2012 Guardian piece, German Man Locked Up Over HVB Bank Allegations May Have Been Telling Truth. The Wikipedia entry on Gustl Mollath has more and up to date information. In short, it turned out that he was jailed on a bogus medial assessment and that there was money laundering going […]
Watch This Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry Evaporate Overnight
June 9th, 2014Via: Linkedin: Imagine an industry where a few companies make billions of dollars by exerting strict control over valuable information — while paying the people who produce that information nothing at all. That’s the state of academic, scientific publishing today. And it’s about to be blown wide open by much more open, Internet-based publishers. This […]
Russian Companies Prepare to Pay for Trade in Renminbi
June 9th, 2014Via: Financial Times: Russian companies are preparing to switch contracts to renminbi and other Asian currencies amid fears that western sanctions may freeze them out of the US dollar market, according to two top bankers. “Over the last few weeks there has been a significant interest in the market from large Russian corporations to start […]
Streetview Time Machine Shows Detroit’s Collapse
June 9th, 2014Via: ZeroHedge: With the stock market hitting record highs day after day, it is easy to move on and forget that one of American’s once premier cities, Detroit, has been bankrupt for nearly a year. But out of mind doesn’t mean out of sight, especially now that Google has launched its street view Time Machine, […]
Organic Agriculture Attracts a New Generation of Farmers, Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Easy
June 7th, 2014There’s no app for that. Individuals might consider vertical cells for salad greens, strawberries and some other crops and larger containers on the ground. I like vertical and containers because you’re minimizing the amount of effort required for keeping weeds down. You can compost the spent soil and recharge it with whatever fertilizer you might […]
Dawn of a Robot Revolution
June 6th, 2014Via: Financial Times: At the Automatica robot and automation fair in Munich this week the organisers devoted a whole section to so-called “service robots” for the first time. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for manufacturing, engineering and automation demonstrated a Care-O-Bot that sweeps office floors and empties waste paper bins. Pal Robotics showed Stockbot, which […]
Civil Forfeiture Scam: Cops In Texas Seize Millions By ‘Policing for Profit’
June 6th, 2014Via: Forbes: Texas law enforcement are continuing to enrich themselves using a little-known legal doctrine known as civil forfeiture, according to a new series of investigative reports. Under civil forfeiture, property can be forfeited even if its owner has never been charged with a crime. In these proceedings, accused criminals have more rights than innocent […]
Empire of Prisons: How the United States Is Spreading Mass Incarceration Around the World
June 6th, 2014Via: Counterpunch: The United States, which leads the world in imprisonment rates, is exporting its model of mass incarceration to developing countries around the world. This “prison imperialism” is one of the foundational components to the infrastructure of Empire. Along with the militarization of police forces and borders, mass incarceration enables neoliberal economies to manage […]
