47% of American Households Have No Savings
March 24th, 2015Via: Business Insider:
This could be the scariest chart in the world, from Deutsche Bank’s Torsten Sløk. Nearly half of American households don’t save any of their money.
If it isn’t obvious, this has a broad range of implications. People who don’t save won’t have any buffer should the economy turn and they lose their jobs. Longer term, people who don’t save won’t have the capacity to retire.
Royal Family Member Was Investigated as Part of Paedophile Ring Before Cover-Up, Ex-Cop Says
March 24th, 2015Via: Independent:
A member of the Royal family was claimed to be part of a suspected paedophile ring under investigation by police in the late 1980s, a former police officer has said.
The former Metropolitan Police officer says he was told by a detective sergeant that the investigation into the ring, which was also claimed to include an MP, was shut down for national security reasons.
“I was in a car with two other vice squad officers. … The detective sergeant said he had just had a major child abuse investigation shut down by the CPS regarding a royal and an MP,” he told the Sunday Mirror newspaper.
“He did not mention names, but he said the CPS had said it was not in the public’s interest because it ‘could destabilise national security’.”
The police officer identified the two colleagues, the newspaper said.
Sir Allan Green, the Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the CPS at the time the conversation took place, said he was not aware of any child abuse investigations shut down for national security reasons.
He however said he had been asked by a “senior person” if he had heard anything about a named MP being involved in child abuse. He said he had not.
The MP he was asked about has since died, Mr Green said.
Wife of Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz Takes Leave from Goldman Sachs
March 24th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Heidi Cruz, a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Houston, has taken an unpaid leave from her private wealth-management job to help with her husband’s campaign for the U.S. presidency, a person familiar with the matter said.
Ted Cruz, 44, a Republican senator from Texas, said on Twitter early Monday morning that he plans to run for president in the 2016 election. Heidi Cruz’s leave will last the duration of the campaign, said the person, who asked not to be identified speaking about Cruz’s employment.
Heidi Cruz, 42, a Harvard Business School graduate who worked in President George W. Bush’s administration, joined Goldman Sachs in 2005 and was promoted to managing director, the firm’s second-highest rank, in 2012. She serves as regional head of the Houston office in the private wealth-management unit, which serves individuals and families who have on average more than $40 million with the firm.
“Pentagon Loses Track of $500 Million in Weapons, Equipment Given to Yemen”
March 24th, 2015Another U.S. arms drop to ISIS/al-Qaeda.
Via: Washington Post:
The Pentagon is unable to account for more than $500 million in U.S. military aid given to Yemen, amid fears that the weaponry, aircraft and equipment is at risk of being seized by Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.
With Yemen in turmoil and its government splintering, the Defense Department has lost its ability to monitor the whereabouts of small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies donated by the United States. The situation has grown worse since the United States closed its embassy in Sanaa, the capital, last month and withdrew many of its military advisers.
In recent weeks, members of Congress have held closed-door meetings with U.S. military officials to press for an accounting of the arms and equipment. Pentagon officials have said that they have little information to go on and that there is little they can do at this point to prevent the weapons and gear from falling into the wrong hands.
“We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” said a legislative aide on Capitol Hill who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Technology and Persuasion
March 23rd, 2015Via: MIT Technology Review:
The idea that computers, mobile phones, websites, and other technologies could be designed to influence people’s behavior and even attitudes dates back to the early 1990s, when Stanford professor B.?J. Fogg coined the term “persuasive computing” (later broadened to “persuasive technology”). But today many companies have taken that one step further: using technologies that measure customer behavior to design products that are not just persuasive but specifically aimed at forging new habits.
If habit formation as a business model was once largely limited to casinos and cigarette manufacturers, today technology has opened up the option to a broad range of companies. Insights from psychology and behavioral economics about how and why people make certain choices, combined with digital technologies, social media, and smartphones, have enabled designers of websites, apps, and a wide variety of other products to create sophisticated persuasive technologies.
Canada: False Flag Operations and Cyberwar
March 23rd, 2015Via: First Look:
According to the Snowden documents, it has a range of “deception techniques” in its toolbox. These include “false flag” operations to “create unrest,” and using so-called “effects” operations to “alter adversary perception.” A false-flag operation usually means carrying out an attack, but making it look like it was performed by another group — in this case, likely another government or hacker. Effects operations can involve sending out propaganda across social media or disrupting communications services. The newly revealed documents also reveal that CSE says it can plant a “honeypot” as part of its deception tactics, possibly a reference to some sort of bait posted online that lures in targets so that they can be hacked or monitored.
The apparent involvement of CSE in using the deception tactics suggests it is operating in the same area as a secretive British unit known as JTRIG, a division of the country’s eavesdropping agency Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. Last year, The Intercept published documents from Snowden showing that the JTRIG unit uses a range of effects operations to manipulate information online, such as by rigging the outcome of online polls, sending out fake messages on Facebook across entire countries, and posting negative information about targets online to damage their reputations.
Cost to Earthquake-Proof L.A.’s Crumbling Pipe System? $15 Billion
March 23rd, 2015Bone dry death trap… I wonder when I first used that term on here to describe where I’m from. Google spits up results from 2007, but I’m almost sure there are earlier ones.
Anyway, quick hint about the phrase “mass evacuation”: You won’t want to be a part of that. Mmmkay?
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Mayor Eric Garcetti’s call to strengthen Los Angeles’ water system — one pillar of his ambitious plan to ready the city for a major earthquake — would cost as much as $15 billion and require decades of work, Department of Water and Power engineers estimate.
The previously undisclosed cost projection, contained in an internal DWP report reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, could mean sharply higher water bills for those who live and work in L.A. It also underscores the financial uncertainty surrounding a key element of the mayor’s first-term agenda.
Since Garcetti announced his sweeping earthquake-safety proposal in December, public attention and political debate have centered on requirements to strengthen unsafe buildings. But the plan’s most far-reaching impact could be its scheme to fortify the city’s sprawling network of water pipes and aqueducts.
Water infrastructure is “the single biggest vulnerability we’re facing in Southern California,” according to U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones, who oversaw development of Garcetti’s earthquake proposals. Safeguarding the system is essential, the mayor argues, to prevent businesses from shutting down and a “mass evacuation” by people who lack water to drink, shower or flush toilets in the aftermath of a severe earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault.
The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35
March 21st, 2015And next up from the same imbeciles that brought you the F-35: Long Range Strike Bomber.
Via: John Q Public:
As Air Force senior officials prepare for posture hearings this week with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, the subject of modernization promises to be front and center. Core to that discussion will almost certainly be the limping, $1.4 trillion F-35 program.
Belying the conventional wisdom, which touts the Joint Strike Fighter as something of a futuristic aerial Swiss army knife, the F-35 is proving to be little more than a dull, bent, and unwieldy butter knife — a jack of no trades, master of only one: burning through taxpayer dollars at a rate that would embarrass Croesus.
The bloat of the program is now placing increasingly excruciating pressure on the entire Air Force budget, this despite the F-35 being years from genuine operational capability. The pressure it is exerting is leading to a parade of rhetorical and actual absurdity of the variety that should, under normal circumstances, alarm Congress and anyone else concerned about the future of American defense.
Take, for example, a recent account filed by the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), which exposes damning conclusions in the latest F-35 report from the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E).
Among the crippling problems highlighted in the DOT&E report:
Software glitches disrupting enemy identification and weapon employment.
A redesigned fuel tank that continues to demonstrate unacceptable vulnerability to explosion from lightning or enemy fire.
Departures from controlled flight during high-speed maneuvering, a six-year-old problem that apparently will not be solved without sacrificing stealth or combat capability.
Helmet issues fundamentally degrading pilot situational awareness.
Engine problems so severe they’re limiting sortie rates, impeding the test schedule, and generating risky operational decisions.
Nightmarish maintainability issues leading to over-reliance on contractor support.
As these and other issues mount, the F-35 Joint Program Office, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, is apparently employing categorization and accounting schemes that overstate reliability and maintenance rates, masking the true nature of the crisis gripping the program.
U.S. Must Release More Abu Ghraib Photos: Federal Judge
March 21st, 2015Via: Reuters:
A federal judge ruled on Friday that the U.S. government must release photographs showing the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and other sites.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan ruled that his order would not take effect for 60 days to give the U.S. Department of Defense time to decide whether to appeal.
The order is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit against the government in 2004 seeking the release of the photographs.
“The photos are crucial to the public record,” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a news release. “They’re the best evidence of what took place in the military’s detention centers, and their disclosure would help the public better understand the implications of some of the Bush administration’s policies.”
The Department of Defense did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Caltech: Making Graphene at Room Temperature
March 21st, 2015Via: Caltech:
A new technique invented at Caltech to produce graphene—a material made up of an atom-thick layer of carbon—at room temperature could help pave the way for commercially feasible graphene-based solar cells and light-emitting diodes, large-panel displays, and flexible electronics.
“With this new technique, we can grow large sheets of electronic-grade graphene in much less time and at much lower temperatures,” says Caltech staff scientist David Boyd, who developed the method.
Boyd is the first author of a new study, published in the March 18 issue of the journal Nature Communications, detailing the new manufacturing process and the novel properties of the graphene it produces.
Graphene could revolutionize a variety of engineering and scientific fields due to its unique properties, which include a tensile strength 200 times stronger than steel and an electrical mobility that is two to three orders of magnitude better than silicon. The electrical mobility of a material is a measure of how easily electrons can travel across its surface.
