Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez Dies Aged 58
March 6th, 2013Via: BBC:
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has died, his vice-president has announced.
Mr Chavez had been seriously ill with cancer for more than a year, undergoing several operations in Cuba, and had not been seen in public for several months.
Nicolas Maduro made the announcement on Tuesday evening, flanked by political and military leaders.
Russia Fears Its Troops Will Riot if Cigarette Rations End
March 5th, 2013Via: Wired:
Russia’s new defense minister wants to extinguish one of the Russian military’s most endemic health problems and martial perks: giving free cigarettes to troops. His challenge is to prevent nicotine-deprived soldiers from violently freaking out.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has reportedly drawn up a rule to end the longstanding practice of providing enlisted troops and cadets with 10 cigarettes a day. According to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, the reason is pretty straightforward: Russian soldiers choke down cigarettes, and the subsidy is encouraging the next generation of uniformed addicts.
“New non-smoking conscripts who find themselves among the smokers generally begin to smoke too,” Alexander Kanshin, national security chairman of the Kremlin’s Civic Chamber, told the newspaper. “This is not good for anyone.”
But troops may not be able to handle losing their free smokes. “Tobacco shortages will affect the psychology of the smokers,” Valentina Melnikova, executive secretary of the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers’ Committee, a human rights organization focused on the military, told Izvestia. “Platoon or company commanders will start collecting money from the ranks, including non-smokers. This will result in speculation, extortion, bullying and even violence.” (In case you were wondering, the Defense Department included free cigarettes in some K-rations until 1975.)
The reason, Melnikova implies, is that troops won’t necessarily quit smoking, and won’t have enough money to pay for cigarettes over the counter, leading to a black market within the military. It wasn’t until January that service members saw a raise from 500 to 1,000 rubles, or $16.50 to $32 per month. Before the raise, many soldiers spent much of their take-home pay on cigarettes, according to RIA Novosti, even with the government ration. (Smoking’s expensive.) Izvestia also suggests that troops would need their salaries to quadruple to support their habit.
Student Suspended for Shaping Pop-Tart Into Gun
March 5th, 2013Via: KTNV:
A student in Baltimore was suspended over breakfast.
7-year-old Josh Welch was eating a Pop-Tart at school. A teacher saw the pastry and said she thought it looked like it was being shaped into a gun.
The teacher also said she heard Welch say, “Bang Bang” while he was holding it.
That was enough to get him suspended.
Research Credit: pookie
Pirate Bay Now Running Out of North Korea [???]
March 4th, 2013Update: Probably Still in Europe
This post purports to explain what’s happening. You’ll need more propellers in your beanie than I have in mine if you plan on understanding this:
The Pirate Bay – North Korean hosting? No, it’s fake. (P2)
—
Still Routes Through Europe
I’m not really sure what’s going on here.
nslookup shows them in Germany:
Domain: piratebay.se
IP Address: 194.71.107.15
ISP: Resilans AB
Organization: The Pirate Bay
But if you tracert piratebay.se, the last hop that responds to ICMP is here:
IP Address: 175.45.177.217
ISP: Ryugyong-dong
And that’s North Korea.
So, I don’t know what to make of it.
Ok, guys, where are they?
—
For the luLz:
Posted Y-day 18:45 by Kim Jung-Bay.
Via: Pirate Bay:
PRESS RELEASE, NEW PROVIDER FOR TPB
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 3 MARCH 102, ?? (PYONGYANG).
The Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets.
A week ago we could reveal that The Pirate Bay was accessed via Norway and Catalonya. The move was to ensure that these countries and regions will get attention to the issues at hand. Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network.
This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.
We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand.
Brown University Creates First Wireless, Implanted Brain-Computer Interface
March 4th, 2013Make sure the firewall is configured properly on that thing. 😉
Via: ExtremeTech:
Researchers at Brown University have succeeded in creating the first wireless, implantable, rechargeable, long-term brain-computer interface. The wireless BCIs have been implanted in pigs and monkeys for over 13 months without issue, and human subjects are next.
Spain: Homeless People Take Over Vacant Apartment Buildings
March 4th, 2013Via: Guardian:
“Life changes when you lose everything,” says Manoli Cortés. “There was a time when I was happy just to work and look after my home. Now, at the age of 65, I have suddenly become an activist.” She is sitting in a typical Spanish living room: immaculately clean, filled with family photographs and dark wood furniture. Meanwhile, with its crisp, geometric lines, sliding French doors and private balconies, the exterior of her building looks much like any other newly built urban apartment block.
Look a little closer, though, and a different story is told. The afternoon sun shines down on concrete walls adorned with spraypainted banners and stencilled slogans, the most revealing of which reads: “Ni gente sin casa, ni casas sin gente” (No people without houses, no houses without people). This is Corrala Utopía, the first in a growing network of previously vacant properties in the Andalusian capital of Seville now occupied by victims of Spain’s ongoing economic crisis.
K-12 Student Database Will Share Information with ‘Private Companies Selling Educational Products and Services’
March 4th, 2013You’ll love this. Check out the part in bold to see who’s behind this database.
Via: Reuters:
An education technology conference this week in Austin, Texas, will clang with bells and whistles as startups eagerly show off their latest wares.
But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.
In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school – even homework completion.
Local education officials retain legal control over their students’ information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services.
Entrepreneurs can’t wait.
“This is going to be a huge win for us,” said Jeffrey Olen, a product manager at CompassLearning, which sells education software.
CompassLearning will join two dozen technology companies at this week’s SXSWedu conference in demonstrating how they might mine the database to create custom products – educational games for students, lesson plans for teachers, progress reports for principals.
The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided most of the funding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from several states. Amplify Education, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, built the infrastructure over the past 18 months. When it was ready, the Gates Foundation turned the database over to a newly created nonprofit, inBloom Inc, which will run it.
States and school districts can choose whether they want to input their student records into the system; the service is free for now, though inBloom officials say they will likely start to charge fees in 2015. So far, seven states – Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Massachusetts – have committed to enter data from select school districts. Louisiana and New York will be entering nearly all student records statewide.
“We look at personalized learning as the next big leap forward in education,” said Brandon Williams, a director at the Illinois State Board of Education.
Israel: Palestinian-Only Buses
March 4th, 2013Via: Telegraph:
From Monday Palestinians travelling to day jobs into central Israel from the West Bank will be urged to board special buses at a checkpoint instead of the regular services used by Israelis.
The scheme was drawn up by the Israeli transport ministry after residents in two Jewish settlements complained that Palestinians travellers on the Trans-Samaria road – also known as Highway 5 – between the West Bank and Tel Aviv were a potential threat.
There were also reports of overcrowding and fights between Israeli and Palestinian passengers.
The transport ministry insisted the move was “designed to improve the service for Palestinians entering Israel”.
But some human rights groups called it “blatant racism” that resembled South African-style apartheid.
British Terror Suspects Quietly Stripped of Citizenship… Then Killed by Drones
March 4th, 2013Via: Independent:
The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist groups.
Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to “wash their hands” of British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal detention abroad.
They add that it also allows those stripped of their citizenship to be killed or “rendered” without any onus on the British Government to intervene.
Research Credit: alvinroasting
Processed Foods Sold to Americans Contain Ingredients Banned in Other Countries
March 4th, 2013Via: 100 Days of Real Food:
It is appalling to witness the examples I am about to share with you. The U.S. food corporations are unnecessarily feeding us chemicals – while leaving out almost all questionable ingredients in our friends’ products overseas. The point is the food industry has already formulated safer, better products, but they are voluntarily only selling inferior versions of these products here in America.
