Archive for February, 2017
California: Evacuations Ordered Below Oroville Dam
February 12th, 2017Via: Mercury News: An emergency evacuation was ordered for Oroville-area residents by the state Department of Water Resources, which predicted that the auxiliary spillway at the Oroville Dam could fail Sunday night. Related: Feds and State Officials Ignored Warnings 12 Years Ago
Our 9,000-Year Love Affair With Booze
February 12th, 2017Via: National Geographic: Alcohol isn’t just a mind-altering drink: It has been a prime mover of human culture from the beginning, fueling the development of arts, language, and religion.
Strange WikiLeaks Tweets
February 11th, 2017Via: Press for Truth:
The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet, It’s the End of the Middle Class
February 11th, 2017Via: Wired: At a time when the Trump administration is promising to make America great again by restoring old-school manufacturing jobs, AI researchers aren’t taking him too seriously. They know that these jobs are never coming back, thanks in no small part to their own research, which will eliminate so many other kinds of jobs […]
Leaked DHS Report: Trump Border Wall to Cost $21.6 Billion, Take 3.5 Years to Build
February 10th, 2017Via: Reuters: President Donald Trump’s “wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border would be a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct, based on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security internal report seen by Reuters on Thursday. The report’s estimated price-tag is much […]
CIA Files Reveal How U.S. Used Psychics to Spy on Iran
February 10th, 2017Via: Miami Herald: “The stuff that the CIA has declassified is garbage,” one of the Grill Flame psychics, Joseph McMoneagle, told the Miami Herald. “They haven’t declassified any of the stuff that worked.” Agreed Edwin May, a physicist who oversaw parapsychology research for government intelligence agencies for 20 years: “The psychics were able to tell, […]
Republicans and Democrats Reportedly Using Self-Destructing Message Apps to Avoid Leaks
February 10th, 2017Via: The Verge: Trump administration members and other Republicans are using the encrypted, self-destructing messaging app Confide to keep conversations private in the wake of hacks and leaks, according to Jonathan Swan and David McCabe at Axios. Axios writes that “numerous senior GOP operatives and several members of the Trump administration” have downloaded Confide, which […]
Cortana Now Reminds You to Do the Things You Promised in Emails
February 9th, 2017haha. Just cut to the chase and release a Cortana anal suppository. Via: The Verge: Microsoft is adding a new feature to Cortana today that will remind you to keep your promises. Suggested reminders lets Cortana remind you when you’ve promised to do something in an email. Microsoft is using machine learning to highlight phrases […]
Record Number Renounce U.S. Citizenship in 2016
February 9th, 2017Via: U.S. News and World Report: A record number of individuals renounced their U.S. citizenship or chose to expatriate in 2016, according to data published by the Internal Revenue Service today. The government agency, a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department, publishes the names of those individuals in a list each quarter, in accordance with […]
As Goldman Embraces Automation, Even the Masters of the Universe Are Threatened
February 9th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review: At its height back in 2000, the U.S. cash equities trading desk at Goldman Sachs’s New York headquarters employed 600 traders, buying and selling stock on the orders of the investment bank’s large clients. Today there are just two equity traders left. Automated trading programs have taken over the rest of […]
