Oil Tycoon Wanted University of Oklahoma Earthquake Researchers Dismissed
May 18th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state’s nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes, according to the dean’s e-mail recounting the conversation.
The One About The “U.S. Cracking Down on Militarization of Local Police”
May 18th, 2015Oh sure, and I guess all of those weapons and other equipment are just going to turn into a giant pumpkin at midnight.
Via: MSNBC:
The federal government will no longer provide heavy military equipment like tanks and grenade launchers to local cops following weeks of backlash against officers who confronted protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in armored vehicles and camouflage last year, President Barack Obama will announce Monday.
And if they want other, less-imposing military equipment, local law enforcement agencies will have to submit to stringent federal oversight and restrictions, according to guidelines Obama will outline during a visit to discuss police reform in Camden, New Jersey, for years one of the most dangerous cities in America.
Self Driving Trucks Will Wipe Out Millions of Jobs
May 18th, 2015Via: Medium:
Robot trucks also don’t need salaries?—?salaries that stand to go up because fewer and fewer people want to be truckers. A company can buy a fleet of self-driving trucks and never pay another human salary for driving. The only costs will be upkeep of the machinery. No more need for health insurance either. Self-driving trucks will also never need to stop to rest, for any reason. Routes will take less time to complete.
All of this means the replacement of truckers is inevitable. It is not a matter of “if”, it’s only a matter of “when.” So the question then becomes, how long until millions of truckers are freshly unemployed and what happens to them and all the rest of us as a result?
…
Take all of these estimates together, and we’re looking at a window of massive disruption starting somewhere between 2020 and 2030.
The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades
May 18th, 2015Via: Wired:
A Spanish company called Vortex Bladeless is proposing a radical new way to generate wind energy that will once again upend what you see outside your car window.
Their idea is the Vortex, a bladeless wind turbine that looks like a giant rolled joint shooting into the sky. The Vortex has the same goals as conventional wind turbines: To turn breezes into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity. But it goes about it in an entirely different way.
Instead of capturing energy via the circular motion of a propeller, the Vortex takes advantage of what’s known as vorticity, an aerodynamic effect that produces a pattern of spinning vortices. Vorticity has long been considered the enemy of architects and engineers, who actively try to design their way around these whirlpools of wind. And for good reason: With enough wind, vorticity can lead to an oscillating motion in structures, which, in some cases, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, can cause their eventual collapse.
Where designers see danger, Vortex Bladeless’s founders—David Suriol, David Yáñez, and Raul Martín—sees opportunity. “We said, ‘Why don’t we try to use this energy, not avoid it,’” Suriol says. The team started Vortex Bladeless in 2010 as a way to turn this vibrating energy into something productive.
Missing Morgan Stanley Trader Found Dead
May 18th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Murray Abbott, an institutional sales trader at Morgan Stanley in Toronto who had been missing since April 25, was found Monday by the shore of Lake Ontario near the city’s Beaches neighborhood where he lived. He was 36.
His death wasn’t suspicious, Mark Pugash, a Toronto Police Service spokesman, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “It was obviously a very tragic missing person’s case.”
Why Today’s Automobile Industry Looks A Lot Like IBM in 1985
May 18th, 2015Via: TechCrunch:
With the number of mobile phone subscriptions shortly expected to exceed the total global population, what is the next great connected device going to look like? Hint: It’ll have four wheels.
Gartner predicts that there will be 250 million connected cars on the road by 2020. That means one in every three cars on the road will be connected. By then, digital diagnostics, infotainment channels and enhanced navigation systems are expected to constitute a $270 billion industry, up from $47 billion today.
The only problem is that, now, the automobile industry is looking a lot like IBM did in 1985.
BP Hires Former MI6 Boss John Sawers
May 18th, 2015Via: Guardian:
BP has hired the former head of MI6 as it seeks to capitalise on his top-level diplomatic experience while dealing with some of the toughest political environments around the world.
Sir John Sawers, who was head of the Secret Intelligence Service between 2009 and 2014, has joined the oil company’s board as a non-executive member.
BP’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said the former spy chief “brings extensive experience of international affairs and geopolitics”.
Sawers’ five-year tenure as boss of MI6 spanned two prime ministers, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He has 36 years of experience working for the UK government in international affairs and security.
Research Credit: eo
UK Government Quietly Rewrites Hacking Laws to Give GCHQ Immunity
May 17th, 2015Via: ArsTechnica:
The UK government has quietly passed new legislation that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones.
While major or controversial legislative changes usually go through normal parliamentary process (i.e. democratic debate) before being passed into law, in this case an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act was snuck in under the radar as secondary legislation. According to Privacy International, “It appears no regulators, commissioners responsible for overseeing the intelligence agencies, the Information Commissioner’s Office, industry, NGOs or the public were notified or consulted about the proposed legislative changes… There was no public debate.”
Whistleblower: Trident Nuclear Submarine Program
May 17th, 2015Full text: William McNeilly document (.pdf).
Via: BBC:
The Royal Navy is to investigate claims that security and safety procedures around the Trident nuclear submarines are inadequate.
The investigation was launched after the claims were made by a submariner who has gone on the run.
Able Seaman William McNeilly alleged the Trident programme was a “disaster waiting to happen.”
The Royal Navy said that the submarine fleet operated “under the most stringent safety regime.”
In an internet post, Mr McNeilly said he was an Engineering Technician Submariner who was on patrol with HMS Victorious this year.
He has written an 18-page report, called The Secret Nuclear Threat, detailing what he claims are serious security and safety breaches on board the vessel.
Research Credit: PW
Feds Say That Banned Researcher Hacked Flight Control Systems
May 17th, 2015And Now: Man’s Claims of Hacking Plane Discredited by Law Enforcement
Via: Bloomberg:
U.S. law enforcement officials have no credible evidence that commercial airplane cockpits have been hacked from passengers’ seats, contradicting a man who claims he did just that.
While most airplanes can’t be hacked because flight-control computers are separate from the connections passengers use, newer aircraft have more interconnections, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said an April 14 report. Chris Roberts, founder of security intelligence company One World Labs, claimed to FBI agents that he exploited such interconnections 15 to 20 times, and in at least one instance sent commands to an engine.
Investigators don’t believe that such attempts could be successful, a senior law enforcement official said Monday. The official asked not to be named because an investigation is continuing into Roberts’s claims of tampering, which would be illegal under federal law.
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Via: Wired:
A security researcher kicked off a United Airlines flight last month after tweeting about security vulnerabilities in its system had previously taken control of an airplane and caused it to briefly fly sideways, according to an application for a search warrant filed by an FBI agent.
Chris Roberts, a security researcher with One World Labs, told the FBI agent during an interview in February that he had hacked the in-flight entertainment system, or IFE, on an airplane and overwrote code on the plane’s Thrust Management Computer while aboard the flight. He was able to issue a climb command and make the plane briefly change course, the document states.
“He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” FBI Special Agent Mark Hurley wrote in his warrant application (.pdf). “He also stated that he used Vortex software after comprising/exploiting or ‘hacking’ the airplane’s networks. He used the software to monitor traffic from the cockpit system.”
