Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Bank Transfer Day: Technologists Say Thousands Already Switching
October 22nd, 2011Via: CU Times: While Bank Transfer Day, and the dump-your-bank sentiment that serves as its backdrop, has earned a lot of media coverage and promotional dollars among credit unions, are people really switching? The folks whose job it is to facilitate that move behind the scenes, who manage the so-called “switch kits” of electronic banking, […]
Six-Figure Salaries, But Homeless
October 22nd, 2011Working for oil companies by day, sleeping in a WalMart parking lot by night. Via: CNN: They’re pulling in fat paychecks, but now they’re also homeless. In the town of Williston, N.D., America’s newest oil boomtown, more than 6,000 job seekers have come from every corner of the country looking for work. Yet, oil companies […]
BP Gets Approval to Resume Drilling in Gulf of Mexico
October 22nd, 2011Via: BBC: BP has won approval to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, 18 months after a well blowout killed 11 workers and caused an environmental disaster. Regulators approved plans for drilling to depths of up to 6,000ft about 200 miles off the coast of New Orleans. US officials said in a statement: “Our […]
U.S. Troops to Leave Iraq by Year’s End, Obama Says [wink]
October 22nd, 2011I was surprised that this New York Times piece actually contained the punchline, for those who kept reading long enough: There will also be 4,000 to 5,000 private State Department security contractors, as well as a significant C.I.A. presence. In Afghanistan, about 95,000 American troops remain. *chortle* Remember the Superbase? View Larger Map Anyway, this […]
Qaddafi Was Captured Alive—Who Killed Him?
October 21st, 2011Via: The Atlantic: What did happen to Qaddafi after the video above cut away? No one can seem to say for sure. Libyan interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril admitted late on Thursday that Qaddafi had been found alive but insisted he had been killed accidentally. “There was cross-fire and he was shot while they were […]
The $1 Trillion Student Loan Rip-Off: How an Entire Generation Was Tricked into Taking on Crushing Debt That Just Enriches Banks
October 21st, 2011Via: AlterNet: The impossibility of escaping student loan debt is why an industry sprang upto foist useless, overpriced degrees on vulnerable people. It’s a scam, but a profitable one, and respectable enough for major establishment players to feel comfortable making a killing on it.
Duqu: Son of Stuxnet Hits European Computer Networks
October 21st, 2011Update: ‘Duqu’ Virus Likely Handiwork Of Sophisticated Government, Kaspersky Lab Says Via: Deutsche Welle: Wüest is one of the experts at Symantec, who is currently analyzing the source code behind Duqu. Symantec says it was alerted to the new threat on October 14 by a laboratory that has “international connections.” Since then, Symantec’s investigations suggest […]
Get Ready for a New Human Species
October 21st, 2011Via: MIT Technology Review: If you turned off the electricity in the United States, you would see millions of people die quickly, because they wouldn’t have asthma medications, respirators, insulin, a whole host of things we invented to prevent people from dying. Eventually, we get to the point where evolution is guided by what we’re […]
35 Congressmen Move to Kill $122 Billion in Subsidies to Big Oil
October 21st, 2011Via: Tree Hugger: Who likes oil subsidies? Nobody! Nobody but the oil companies, that is. But as we know, these subsidies, which American taxpayers annually spend billions of dollars on, are extremely difficult to kill. But 35 US congressmen and women are going to try: They’ve just drafted a motion to the so-called ‘super committee’ […]
Nasdaq Hackers Spied on Company Boards
October 21st, 2011Via: Reuters: Hackers who infiltrated the Nasdaq’s computer systems last year installed malicious software that allowed them to spy on the directors of publicly held companies, according to two people familiar with an investigation into the matter. The new details showed the cyber attack was more serious than previously thought, as Nasdaq OMX Group had […]
