Archive for March, 2012
Severe Storm – Northland New Zealand
March 18th, 2012Update: Power Out Ok, the power went out and didn’t come back on this time. Shutting down. —End Update— Update: Intermittent Power Outages We’re ok, but the electricity is going out for up to a minute at a time. I have a couple of uninterruptable power supplies on the job. This is much improved from […]
Open Thread: Kony 2012
March 18th, 2012I haven’t watched this thing, and don’t plan to. From previous experience, when I see mainstream news talking about YouTube videos, and how “the blogosphere” has lost it’s mind over them, I just take a pass. (Also, I’m on limited bandwidth, so I wasn’t about to blow it on 30 minutes of video that looked […]
Three in Ten Young Adults Live with Parents, Highest Level Since 1950s
March 17th, 2012Via: Christian Science Monitor: A weak economy and high debt levels are prompting more young adults to return to the family nest, a new survey shows. Perhaps surprisingly, most are happy with their living arrangements. After graduating from Brown University in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and completing a Fulbright scholarship in […]
Consumer Prices in U.S. Rose in February as Gasoline Jumped
March 16th, 2012Via: Bloomberg: The cost of living in the U.S. rose in February by the most in 10 months, reflecting a jump in gasoline that failed to spread to other goods and services. The consumer-price index climbed 0.4 percent, matching the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, after increasing 0.2 percent the prior month, […]
Bamford Claims NSA Has Made “An Enormous Breakthrough” in Cryptanalysis
March 16th, 2012Well, it has been the $64,000 question for a couple of decades: Can NSA break something like PGP? While there might be other black world technologies that could be up to the task (there’s no way to know), what we do know is that a practical quantum computing capability would be, for all intents and […]
Comment Posted on U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Website
March 16th, 2012Update: Comment Removed CFTC Website I made sure to post the full text below, but here’s another mirror, just in case. —End Update— At a minimum, this makes for an interesting read. Via: U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission: From: Z A N Organization(s): JPMorgan Chase Comment No: 57019 Date: 3/14/2012 Comment Text: Dear CFTC Staff, […]
CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher
March 16th, 2012Via: Wired: More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them. Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired […]
The Libyan Job: Insiders Used War to Steal Priceless Artifacts
March 16th, 2012Via: Wired: The treasure was kept mostly in two wooden chests, and locked away in a bank vault: thousands of coins, jewelry and figurines, some around 2,600 years old. For decades it sat in the bank, unattended despite the historical and monetary value. Then, as a popular uprising erupted around the downtown bank last winter, […]
London Undergroun Expansion Is Largest Civil Engineering Project in Europe
March 16th, 2012Via: BBC: Tunnelling work is about to begin on a grand scale in London as the £16bn Crossrail project gets set to build 26 miles (42km) of tunnels beneath the capital. The first of eight highly specialised Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM), which each weigh nearly 1,000 tonnes, is being positioned at Royal Oak in west […]
IRAN’S BANKS TO BE BLOCKED FROM GLOBAL BANKING SYSTEM ON SATURDAY
March 15th, 2012Flashback to a couple of weeks ago on Cryptogon: If SWIFT actually pulls the plug, I’d consider the fuse to be lit. Also, if SWIFT does it before 20 March, this is probably the real reason: Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than […]
