If TaskRabbit Is the Future of Employment, the Employed Are Fucked
July 25th, 2014Welcome to the IT industry of the mid 2000s.
Via: ValleyWag:
The employment of the future is here, and it’s terrific for everyone except the people doing the work. TaskRabbit, which lets you outsource the things you don’t want to do to people who need money, is at the forefront of this chore revolution, and it’s already making some lives harder.
In 1994, professors Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio published a book titled “The Jobless Future,” surveying sea changes in the way people work. It didn’t look good: “Today, the regime of world economic life consists in scratching every itch of everyday life with sci-tech,” they wrote. A big heap of trivial problems were being solved by a bigger heap of trivial jobs, marked by a trend “toward more low-paid, temporary, benefit-free blue and white collar jobs and fewer decent permanent factory and office jobs.”
Twenty years later, we’ve nearly perfected this ephemeral gig machine with TaskRabbit, a software engine that does for labor what Snapchat’s done for memories.
Research Credit: afterhours
1960s: Secret Plans for U.S. Moonbase
July 25th, 2014Via: CNN:
After a thorough justification of the scientific, political and military need for the base, the proposal — two documents and more than 400 typewritten pages — calculated out the details of what could be done on the outpost and what it would take to make it reality.
It offered graphs and mathematical formulas; considerations for low gravity and magnetic field, lack of water and air, and ballistic dynamics on the moon’s surface; and design drawings of spacecraft, lunar bulldozers, modular moon cabins and special space suits.
It contained photos of the moon with desirable spots for a colony mapped out on them.
Project Horizon would start out with 10 to 20 crew members on a mission to build a somewhat self-sustaining colony capable of producing its own oxygen and water.
Supply ships would bring the rest. Page after page was dedicated to the future capabilities of the Saturn rockets that would boost the supplies there.
With expansion would come lunar nuclear power plants.
Construction of the basic outpost would start in 1964 and be completed five years later.
The visions were a bit ahead of schedule. Humans did not land on the moon for the first time until July 1969. And in the end, it wasn’t the military, but NASA that sent them there.
Research Credit: grayson
JIBO “Family Robot”
July 25th, 2014Via: My Jibo:
Microsoft’s Station Q Researching Quantum Computing
July 25th, 2014Via: Tech Week Europe:
Microsoft has set up a laboratory dedicated to producing quantum computers that will push computing power to a higher level.
Station Q, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara will work on ways to construct machines with multiple quantum bits (qubits), under the leadership of Dr Michael Freedman, a mathematician and winner of the prestigious Fields Medal.
Superpower for Hire: Rise of the Private Military
July 25th, 2014Via: Vice:
Vice takes an unprecedented look into the shadowy industry of Private Military Companies. For the past two decades these private companies, like Black Water, Aegis and G4S have silently consumed military operations around the world, doing everything from back end logistics, protection of government VIP’s and diplomats to actual combat duties. In this documentary we explore the origins of this industry, their rise in the war on terror and their future operations around the world.
Michigan Deptment of Agriculture Forces Farmer to Dump 248 Gallons of Organic Milk and Break 1200 Free Range Eggs
July 25th, 2014Via: The Organic Prepper:
While Americans in the nearby city of Detroit face life in third world conditions, unable to even afford running water, the state of Michigan decided to direct its resources towards cracking down on a small food co-op in Standish for having the utter audacity to provide milk, butter, cream and eggs to people who bought shares in the organic dairy.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture must be so proud of their deeds, after they forced Joe and Brenda Golimbieski, the owners of Hill High Dairy and Jenny Samuelson, the owner of My Family Co-op, to dump out 248 gallons of milk, to break 100 dozen eggs, and to destroy an undisclosed amount of fresh cream, butter and cheese.
Research Credit: pookie
European Court Says CIA Ran Secret Jail in a Polish Forest
July 24th, 2014Via: New York Times:
The CIA ran a secret jail on Polish soil, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday, piling pressure on Poland, one of Washington’s closest allies, to break its long silence about the global programme for detaining al Qaeda suspects.
The court said it had been established that the CIA used a facility in a northern Polish forest, code named “Quartz”, as a hub in its network for interrogating suspected al Qaeda operatives rounded up after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Poland has always denied that the CIA had a jail on its territory, even as leaks from former U.S. intelligence officials, and a Senate investigation, brought more and more details of the programme into the open.
Thursday’s ruling was the first time that a court in Europe had said that the CIA operated one of the secret jails – often referred to as “black sites” -on the continent.
Israeli Artillery Strike on Gaza Shelter Kills 15
July 24th, 2014Via: BBC:
At least 15 people have been killed and more than 200 injured when a UN-run school used as a shelter in Gaza was shelled, the Gaza health ministry says.
Hundreds of Palestinians were in the school in Beit Hanoun, fleeing heavy fighting in the area.
It is the fourth time that a UN facility has been hit in Israel’s offensive against Hamas militants.
Germany: Typewriter Manufacturers See Boom in Sales
July 24th, 2014Via: The Local:
German typewriter manufacturers are enjoying a boom in sales following the NSA spying scandal. A German defence manufacturer switched to typewriters last year, while last week a leading politician called for the government to use the old technology.
The head of the parliamentary inquiry into spying by the US National Security Service (NSA) in Germany made headlines last week when he said his committee was considering using typewriters. But he is not alone.
China Seals Off Town After Man Dies of Bubonic Plague
July 23rd, 2014Via: AFP:
A Chinese town has been sealed off and 151 people placed in quarantine since last week after a man died of bubonic plague, state media said Tuesday.
The 30,000 people living in Yumen in the northwestern province of Gansu are not being allowed to leave, and police at roadblocks on its perimeter are telling motorists to find alternative routes, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said.
Research Credit: DF
