Archive for August, 2012
‘And who wouldn’t want to be at the forefront of that?’
August 3rd, 2012Business is booming for terminator drone pilots. Via: Guardian: The electronic cavern is dark, save for the glow of consoles, and Lt Col Mike Weaver surveys his apprentice warriors with satisfaction as they project American might halfway around the world. One crew – two young men in flight suits seated before half a dozen screens […]
Full Disk Encryption on Solid State Drives
August 3rd, 2012I’m planning a system build and I want to use a SSD this time. TrueCrypt advises against using their crypto system with SSDs because SSDs use wear leveling routines to prolong the life of the memory modules. The problem is that, theoretically, the drive could write multiple versions of information, some of which could be […]
Knight Capital Group Down 60% Intraday
August 2nd, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times: Knight Capital Group, a major brokerage, said it lost $440 million in a trading glitch that rattled the stock market and renewed concerns over computerized trading on Wall Street. The Jersey City, N.J.-based firm said the pre-tax loss left its capital base “severely impacted.” Knight pinned the technology malfunction on newly […]
The Unemployment Rate Is a Farce
August 2nd, 2012Via: Breakout: It is widely regarded as the most important barometer of them all, and fittingly, the monthly jobs report gets more attention and more coverage than almost all other economic data combined. Unfortunately, it is also broken. That’s right. For all its stature, the payroll report (which will be released Friday) has a major […]
Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up of “Auschwitz-Like” Conditions at U.S.-Funded Afghan Hospital
August 2nd, 2012Via: Democracy Now: A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.-funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in “Auschwitz-like” conditions. Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010, which show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital, considered the crown jewel of the […]
Anaheim’s Paramilitary Police
August 2nd, 2012Most of the corporate media coverage of the situation in Anaheim shows pretty normal looking riot police, but individuals have posted many images of personnel (I assume Anaheim PD) in military dress. Photo by Killuminatii: And what branch of the military is this guy from? More: NYT Photos Don’t Do Justice to Police Presence at […]
Body Blow to New Zealand: Pacific Fibre Dead
August 2nd, 2012I honestly thought we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It turned out to be the train. Telecom wins again, the rest of New Zealand loses. Via: interest.co.nz: A Kiwi project to lay another undersea internet cable between New Zealand, Australia and the United States was scuppered by American concerns about […]
NREL: 200,000 GW of Solar Could be Installed; 4,000 TWh/a
August 2nd, 2012What if that lab had the funding equivalent of what the U.S. is spending on the war over a period of two or three days? —Chart: The Cost of the War in Iraq vs. Spending on Solar Energy Research Here’s another one for our herniating Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda file folders. The consolation prizes were a decade plus […]
Missile Defense Staff Warned to Stop Surfing Porn Sites
August 2nd, 2012Via: Bloomberg: The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency warned its employees and contractors last week to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites, according to the agency’s executive director. In a one-page memo, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected “engaging in […]
Obama Authorizes Secret U.S. Support for Syrian Rebels
August 2nd, 2012If you want to read detailed, voluminous accounts of how the U.S. covertly and illegally provides weapons to any state or group it pleases, see, Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq by Alan Friedman and, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed. —Obama Administration Moves to […]
