Archive for June, 2012
New Hydrogen Powered Drone Can Fly for Four Days
June 5th, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times: A massive experimental drone designed by Boeing Co. engineers to fly for up to four days at a time completed its first test flight above the Mojave Desert at Edwards Air Force Base. The drone, called Phantom Eye, and its hydrogen-fueled propulsion system have the potential to vastly expand the reach […]
Microsoft Update and The Nightmare Scenario
June 5th, 2012Via: F Secure: About 900 million Windows computers get their updates from Microsoft Update. In addition to the DNS root servers, this update system has always been considered one of the weak points of the net. Antivirus people have nightmares about a variant of malware spoofing the update mechanism and replicating via it. Turns out, […]
Castoff NRO Satellites Have Better Telescopes Than Hubble; If Pointed at Earth ‘Can See a Dime Sitting on Top of the Washington Monument’
June 4th, 2012The way it was told to me back in the 1980s, by a guy I thought was nuts, was that, “A dime on the sidewalk was no problem,” for NRO. Well, that’s pretty similar to what was just printed in the Washington Post today: NASA official Michael Moore gave some hint of what a Hubble-class […]
Australia: Blaming Price Increases on Carbon Tax Could Result in Million Dollar Fine for Businesses
June 4th, 2012Via: The Telegraph: SHOPS and restaurants could face fines up to $1.1 million if waiters or sales staff wrongly blame the carbon tax for price rises or exaggerate the impact. … ACCC deputy chairman Dr Michael Schaper told the Herald Sun companies were entitled to increase their prices and did not have to justify or […]
AIG Chief Sees Retirement Age as High as 80 After Crisis
June 4th, 2012You keep working, and we’ll keep getting bailouts and bonuses. Mmmkay? Via: Bloomberg: American International Group Inc. (AIG) Chief Executive Officer Robert Benmosche said Europe’s debt crisis shows governments worldwide must accept that people will have to work more years as life expectancies increase. “Retirement ages will have to move to 70, 80 years old,” […]
School Districts Taking More Corporate Advertising
June 4th, 2012This USA Today piece contains easily the most ridiculous lie I’ve read in a long time. “The public isn’t paying for public education anymore.” Oh really? This infographic is from USC: U.S. Education Spending and Performance vs. The World: Via: MAT@USC | Master’s of Arts in Teaching Americans are paying more money for public education […]
Increasing Use of Robots in China’s Factories
June 4th, 2012Via: Reuters: The giant orange robotic arms that swiftly weld together car frames at the Great Wall Motors factory in Baoding might seem like the perfect answer to China’s fast-rising labor costs – they don’t ask for a raise, get injured or go on strike. For Great Wall, a private sector Chinese car maker that […]
Israel Fitting Nuclear Arms on German-Supplied Submarines
June 4th, 2012Via: AFP: Israel is arming submarines supplied and largely financed by Germany with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, influential German news weekly Der Spiegel reports in its issue to be published on Monday. The magazine said in a cover story that Berlin had until now denied any knowledge that German submarines were being used as part of […]
White House Website Petition to Obama: Please Create ‘Do Not Kill’ List
June 3rd, 2012Via: Daily Caller: When President Barack Obama‘s online gurus created an interactive Web forum for receiving and evaluating citizen petitions, this is probably not what they had in mind. “We the People,” the Obama White House’s answer to the office suggestion box, got a bit more interesting on Wednesday with the launch of a petition […]
Flame ‘Could only have been written by a large team of highly skilled software engineers’
June 2nd, 2012Via: Ars Technica: At least 20 modules available for the malware bring a menu of highly advanced spying capabilities to the unknown people who control it. One plugin turns on the internal microphone of infected machines so Skype conversations can be secretly monitored in real time. A separate module scans nearby Bluetooth-enabled devices for names […]
