Misinformation Campaign Targets USA TODAY Reporter, Editor
April 21st, 2012Via: USA Today:
A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.
Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names.
The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY’s reporting on the military’s “information operations” program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan — campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored.
For example, Internet domain registries show the website TomVandenBrook.com was created Jan. 7 — just days after Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook first contacted Pentagon contractors involved in the program. Two weeks after his editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story, someone created a similar site, RayLocker.com, through the same company.
If the websites were created using federal funds, it could violate federal law prohibiting the production of propaganda for domestic consumption.
“We’re not aware of any participation in such activities, nor would it be acceptable,” said Lt. Col. James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman.
A Pentagon official confirmed that the military had made inquiries to information operations contractors to ask them about the Internet activity. All denied it, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiries were informal and did not amount to an official investigation.
The websites were taken down following those inquiries. Various other sites and accounts were removed for violating their providers’ terms of service.
Google Billionaires Eric Schmidt and Larry Page Have Teamed Up with James Cameron for Space Mining Venture
April 21st, 2012Resources Development Administration
Weyland-Yutani Corp.
Lunar Industries
Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles
Federal Colonies
Via: Reuters:
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and billionaire co-founder Larry Page have teamed up with “Avatar” director James Cameron and other investors to back an ambitious space exploration and natural resources venture, details of which will be unveiled next week.
The fledgling company, called Planetary Resources, will be unveiled at a Tuesday news conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, according to a press release issued this week.
Aside from naming some of the company’s high-profile backers, the press release disclosed tantalizingly few details, saying only that the company will combine the sectors of “space exploration and natural resources” in a venture that could add “trillions of dollars to the global GDP.” The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Planetary Resources will explore the feasibility of mining natural resources from asteroids, a decades-old concept.
“This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources,'” according to the press release.
National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance
April 20th, 2012As of 2001, “Twenty terabytes a minute.”
“You can build up knowledge about everyone in the country. And having that knowledge then allows them the ability to concoct all kinds of charges if they want to target you.”
“The data that’s being assembled is about everybody. From that data then they can target anyone they want.”
Via: Democracy Now:
In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could “create an Orwellian state.” Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national television about NSA surveillance.
Related: Coming Soon: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone
European Parliament Agrees to Send Airline Passenger Data to U.S.
April 20th, 2012Via: Computerworld UK:
The European Parliament has approved the controversial data transfer agreement, the bilateral PNR (passenger name register), with the US which requires European airlines to pass on passenger information, including name, contact details, payment data, itinerary, email and phone numbers to the Department of Homeland Security.
Under the new agreement, PNR data will be “depersonalised” after six months and would be moved into a “dormant database” after five years. However the information would still be held for a further 15 years before being fully “anonymised”.
IBM Creates Lithium-Air Battery with 15 Times the Power Density of Lithium-Ion
April 20th, 2012Via: ExtremeTech:
As part of its Battery 500 project — an initiative started by IBM in 2009 to produce a battery capable of powering a car for 500 miles — Big Blue has successfully demonstrated a light-weight, ultra-high-density, lithium-air battery.
In IBM’s lithium-air battery, oxygen is reacted with lithium to create lithium peroxide and electrical energy (pictured above). When the battery is recharged, the process is reversed and oxygen is released — in the words of IBM, this is an “air-breathing” battery. While conventional batteries are completely self-contained, the oxygen used in an lithium-air battery obviously comes from the atmosphere, so the battery itself can be much lighter.
The main thing, though, is that lithium-air energy density is a lot higher than conventional lithium-ion batteries: The max energy density of lithium-air batteries is theorized to be around 12 kWh/kg, some 15 times greater than li-ion — and more importantly, comparable to gasoline.
Therein lies the crux of IBM’s Battery 500 project: Current battery tech simply cannot come close to gasoline, which is why we’re surrounded by electric cars that are lumbered down by massive batteries that can only go 100 miles — and why gas still rules supreme. Eventually (in another 10 years or so), li-ion batteries could be replaced with li-air batteries that are a tenth of the size and weight, and yet last just as long — or, of course, li-air could replace gasoline.
More: IBM: The Battery 500 Project
Liquid Metal Battery
April 20th, 2012Via: MIT:
MIT Professor Don Sadoway, an expert in materials chemistry, brought his astonishing battery idea to the recent talks at TED 2012: Full Spectrum. While most new battery inventions target spaces inside smartphones or electric cars, Sadoway’s idea is big. Gigantic, in fact. He and his team have invented a Liquid Metal Battery that could be a warehouse-size repository of energy generated by renewable and other power resources. Watch his TED talk for an accessible explanation of the battery and its potential uses.
Here are some ideas from his talk:
Professor Sadoway’s battery could spur the use of renewable energy sources on conventional energy grids.
“The electricity powering the lights in this theater was generated just moments ago,” Sadoway told his audience. “The way things stand today, the electricity demand must be constantly in perfect balance with electricity supplied.” And if power is interrupted, electricity from other sources must be available right away. That means redundant power supplies must operate constantly in case of need and that’s not cheap.
“With a giant battery, we could address the problem of intermittency that prevents wind and solar from contributing to the grid in the same way that coal and gas and nuclear do today. The battery is the key enabling device. With it, we could draw electricity from the sun, even when the sun does not shine, and that could change everything because the renewables such as wind and solar could come out from the wings and here to center stage. ”
The Liquid Metal Battery, a new form of energy storage invented by Sadoway and his lab, could solve that problem, he says.
Food Stamp Rolls Increase 70% from 2007, Projected to Keep Increasing Until 2014
April 20th, 2012Green shoots pushed out to 2014?
Via: Wall Street Journal:
The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007. It said the number of people receiving the benefits, commonly known as food stamps, would continue growing until 2014.
Spending for the program, not including administrative costs, rose to $72 billion in 2011, up from $30 billion four years earlier. The CBO projected that one in seven U.S. residents received food stamps last year.
In a report, the CBO said roughly two-thirds of jump in spending was tied to an increase in the number of people participating in the program, which provides access to food for the poor, elderly, and disabled. It said another 20% “of the growth in spending can be attributed to temporarily higher benefit amounts enacted in the” 2009 stimulus law.
CBO said the number of people receiving benefits is expected to fall after 2014 because the economy will be improving.
New Humble Bundle Packed with Goods from Amanita Design
April 20th, 2012I like Amanita Design. An English dub version of Kooky, the children’s movie, is also part of this one.
IBM’s Internal Plan to Grow Earnings-Per-Share to $20 by 2015: Fire Most U.S. Employees
April 19th, 2012Via: Cringely:
The direct impetus for this column is IBM’s internal plan to grow earnings-per-share (EPS) to $20 by 2015. The primary method for accomplishing this feat, according to the plan, will be by reducing US employee head count by 78 percent in that time frame.
Reducing employees by more than three quarters in three years is a bold and difficult task. What will it leave behind? Who, under this plan, will still be a US IBM employee in 2015? Top management will remain, the sales organization will endure, as will employees working on US government contracts that require workers to be US citizens. Everyone else will be gone. Everyone.
Related: Top U.S. Colleges to Offer Free Classes Online
U.S. Marines: Infantry Now Open to Women
April 19th, 2012Or daughter.
Via: Marine Corps Times:
The Marine Corps school that produces infantry combat officers will enroll its first-ever female students this year, Marine Corps Times has learned.
As part of the service’s extensive research campaign to determine what additional jobs could be opened to women, an undetermined number of volunteers will attend the Infantry Officers Course in Quantico, Va., said Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Corps’ assistant commandant. There, Marine officers are groomed to serve in direct combat roles and lead troops into battle.
“We are in the process right now of soliciting volunteers,” Dunford said on Wednesday.
It’s a monumental — if controversial — move for the Marine Corps, which until now barred female Marines from the program and required instead that they attend other courses aimed at preparing them for assignments in support roles such as logistics, personnel administration and aircraft maintenance, among others.
Soon, enlisted women also will have an opportunity to attend infantry training, Dunford said. Marine officials are developing plans to assign female Marines to the Corps’ Infantry Training Battalions, which fall under the Schools of the Infantry.
