Venezuela Ramps up China Oil Exports
August 27th, 2012Via: OilPrice.com:
The biggest geostrategic change of the past decade overlooked by Washington policy wonks in their fixation on their self-proclaimed “war on terror” is that Latin America has been throwing off the shackles of the Monroe Doctrine.
These ignored developments may well soon refocus Washington’s attention on the Southern Hemisphere, as Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez reorients his country’s to China.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Water Shortages Could Force World Into Vegetarianism
August 27th, 2012Soy dogs and free vaccinations for all!
Note the following if you click through to the link. Here’s a screenshot:
Supported by…
The earliest, strategic decisions that Becky and I made about where we were going to live were driven by factors related to freshwater availability. If we didn’t have sufficient water for gardens and livestock, we knew that we would be buying more food, which would increase our chances of consuming genetically modified food.
If you have established that clean air, water and food are minimum baselines for your lifestyle, you have no doubt noticed how difficult this is to attain.
It’s not going to get any easier.
Via: Guardian:
Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.
Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world’s leading water scientists.
“There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations,” the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.
“There will be just enough water if the proportion of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a … reliable system of food trade.”
Dire warnings of water scarcity limiting food production come as Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for staples such as corn and wheat have risen nearly 50% on international markets since June, triggered by severe droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people are already facing serious food shortages across the Sahel.
Laid-Off US Workers Are Taking Huge Pay Cuts At Their New Jobs
August 26th, 2012“The Great Reession was now entering its third decade, and unemployment was still at a record high. Even the fast-food joints in my neighborhood had a two year waiting list for job applicants.”
—Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
Via: AP:
The U.S. economic recovery hasn’t felt much like one even for people who managed to find new jobs after being laid off. Most of them have had to settle for less pay.
Only 56 percent of Americans laid off from January 2009 through December 2011 had found jobs by the start of this year, the Labor Department said Friday. More than half of them took jobs with lower pay. One-third took pay cuts of 20 percent or more.
The figures would be even lower if people who could find only part-time jobs were included in the total.
Lancaster Police Continuously Track Activity with Aerial Video
August 26th, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times:
The residents of Lancaster probably didn’t notice it, but a small Cessna aircraft on Friday flew high above the desert city, capturing hours of video and ushering in a new era in law enforcement surveillance.
The plane, equipped with sophisticated video equipment, is set fly a loop above the city for up to 10 hours a day, beaming a live video feed of what’s going on below to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dispatch center.
The camera will inevitably pick up scenes of mundane day-to-day life. But officials said they plan to use the video only to track reports of crimes in progress, traffic collisions and other emergency situations.
TSA Chatdowns
August 26th, 2012Via: The Blaze:
Can the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) pull you out of line without any rational reason, quiz you on where you are going and why? And if you choose not to answer, does that make you “hostile?” One newspaper writer from the Midwest found out the answers to those questions on Monday when he experienced the TSA’s new “chat-down” while waiting in line at airport security.
Windows 8 Tells Microsoft About Everything You Install
August 25th, 2012Via: Nadim Kobeissi:
Windows 8 has a new featured called Windows SmartScreen, which is turned on by default. Windows SmartScreen’s purpose is to “screen” every single application you try to install from the Internet in order to inform you whether it’s safe to proceed with installing it or not. Here’s how SmartScreen works:
You download any application from the Internet. Say, the Tor Browser Bundle.
You open the installer. Windows SmartScreen gathers some identifying information about your application, and sends the data to Microsoft.
If Microsoft replies saying that the application is not signed with a proper certificate, the user gets an error that looks something like this.
There are a few serious problems here. The big problem is that Windows 8 is configured to immediately tell Microsoft about every app you download and install. This is a very serious privacy problem, specifically because Microsoft is the central point of authority and data collection/retention here and therefore becomes vulnerable to being served judicial subpoenas or National Security Letters intended to monitor targeted users. This situation is exacerbated when Windows 8 is deployed in countries experiencing political turmoil or repressive political situations.
This problem can however get even more serious: It may be possible to intercept SmartScreen’s communications to Microsoft and thus learn about every single application downloaded and installed by a target.
California Approves Location Privacy Act: ‘Get a Warrant’
August 25th, 2012Via: ZDnet:
A new bill designed to require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before collecting any GPS or location data from a cellphone or smartphone has been passed by California state legislators.
The Location Privacy Bill 2012, which was co-sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), received strong cross-party support, and was passed by an overwhelming majority of 63–11.
The bill has yet to be signed by the California Governor Jerry Brown, which as the EFF notes, could be rejected. Brown vetoed a similar bill in 2011 which would require police to obtain a search warrant before searching the contents of an arrested suspect’s mobile device.
The Cheapest Generation
August 25th, 2012Via: The Atlantic:
The largest generation in American history might never spend as lavishly as its parents did—nor on the same things. Since the end of World War II, new cars and suburban houses have powered the world’s largest economy and propelled our most impressive recoveries. Millennials may have lost interest in both.
…
The ownership society has been overrun by renters and squatters.
Nine out of 10 Millennials say they eventually want a place they own, according to a recent Fannie Mae survey. But this generation’s path to homeownership is fraught with obstacles: low pay, low savings, tighter lending standards from banks. Student debt—some $1 trillion in total—stalks many potential buyers as they seek a mortgage (or a car loan).
Research Credit: alvinroasting
SSD Performance with TrueCrypt
August 25th, 2012Using CrystalDiskMark, I checked the speed of my OCZ Vertex 4 before and after I applied full disk encryption with TrueCrypt. I used AES-256 with no wipe.
The performance hit is pretty substantial. The full disk encryption makes the SSD run between 18% and 39%[!] slower, depending on the metric.
I know that some of you guys are also using TrueCrypt with SSDs (yes, we all know it’s not advised). Are you seeing performance hits inline with what I’m seeing?
I guess this is why people shell out for boards that support ATA security mode… You can get AES-256 or AES-128 FDE (depending on the SSD) with no performance hit.
—
Update: ATA Security eXtension BIOS
Arne Fitzenreiter has created a BIOS that can add hard drive password functionality to systems that don’t include it. This would allow people to use FDE at full speed (on drives that support it): ATA Security eXtension BIOS.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I’ll brick my board if I attempt this. I just thought I’d share it for people who are more knowledgeable and/or brave than me.
Australia: Bribes Related to Currency Printing
August 24th, 2012Via: Testosterone Pit:
Central banks are designed to be “independent,” and they shroud themselves in secrecy. But they have formidable and, when it comes to money, “unlimited” powers that they harness for the benefit of their clientele, banks. And hiding behind their veil of secrecy are shenanigans that rarely seep to the surface, but when they do, they just get worse and worse. And the latest is a sordid bribery and kickback scandal at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) that appeared to be neatly contained to two subsidiaries, until now.
Securency International Pty Ltd, jointly owned by the RBA and Innovia Films, develops polymer materials for Australia’s banknote technology used in 27 countries. Note Printing Australia (NPA), a wholly owned subsidiary of the RBA, manufactures polymer banknotes. In May 2009, Age newspaper broke the scandal: eight former executives of Securency and NPA had paid millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to officials in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia between 1999 and 2004 through middlemen, including a Malaysian arms dealer, in order to win contracts for manufacturing bank notes…
Research Credit: PoLT
