Archive for the 'Economy' Category
NYSE Pays a Paltry $5 Million Fine for Giving Private Customers a Trading Head Start
September 20th, 2012Via: IEEE: On Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had administratively fined the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) $5 million (pdf) for allowing its private customers access to stock market information ahead of when it was available to the general public. This occurred from June 2008 to about mid-May 2010. […]
Rethink Robotics
September 20th, 2012Via: IEEE: Whereas traditional industrial robots perform one specific task with superhuman speed and precision, Baxter is neither particularly fast nor particularly precise. But it excels at just about any job that involves picking stuff up and putting it down somewhere else while simultaneously adapting to changes in its environment, like a misplaced part or […]
France: Monsanto’s GMO Corn Causes Cancer, Organ Damage in Rats
September 20th, 2012Update: Study Linking GM Maize to Rat Tumors Retracted, Author Unrepentant Via: Nature: Bowing to scientists’ near-universal scorn, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology today fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper that claimed that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats after the authors refused to withdraw it. The paper, […]
DARPA’s Mentats: EEG Data Used for Threat Detection
September 20th, 2012During a recent email conversation about a related technology with a friend of mine, who, shall we say, knows more than a little about this subject, he wrote something that you might find interesting: Interesting approach. It sounds like they’ve given up on computers processing images and instead they’re trying to create a mentat. Maybe […]
Holder Cleared in Justice Gunwalking Probe
September 20th, 2012Mmm hmm. Via: CBS: The Justice Department’s inspector general cleared Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday of knowing about the gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious that allowed thousands of weapons to cross into Mexico. But Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there were “serious failures” at both the Justice Department and its Bureau of […]
Man Pays for Cross-Country Trip Using Only Bacon as Currency
September 20th, 2012The story below is a corporate stunt, but I enjoy bartering work for food. You may remember how some people paid me for some computer work with heifer. I just did another computer job (maybe 30 minutes) and was given enough seafood delicacies to feed six adults and two children with some left over. Via: […]
iTravel: Apple’s Secret Plan to Join iPhones with Airport Security
September 20th, 2012If you have been waiting for a good one for the top of your Not-The-Onion pile, this is it. Via: CNN: Apple is releasing a mobile wallet app called Passbook which could lead to some of the ideas suggested in these iTravel patent schematics, which were submitted in 2008. The patent was granted last July. […]
Ghost Warehouse Stocks Haunt China’s Steel Sector
September 20th, 2012This one about the steel will seem very familiar to anyone who has looked into various “gold” ETF and storage schemes offered by large banks around the world. Via: Reuters: Chinese banks and companies looking to seize steel pledged as collateral by firms that have defaulted on loans are making an uncomfortable discovery: the metal […]
Harvard Losing Out to South Dakota in Graduate Pay
September 19th, 2012Via: Bloomberg: Harvard University’s graduates are earning less than those from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology after a decade-long commodity bull market created shortages of workers as well as minerals. Those leaving the college of 2,300 students this year got paid a median salary of $56,700, according to PayScale Inc., which tracks […]
Tungsten-Filled 10 Oz Gold Bar Found In Manhattan
September 19th, 2012Via: ZeroHedge: Moments ago, Myfoxny reported that a 10-ounce gold bar costing nearly $18,000 turned out to be a counterfeit. The discovery was made by the dealer Ibrahim Fadl, who bought the PAMP bar in question from a merchant who has sold him real gold before. “But he heard counterfeit gold bars were going around, […]
