U.S. Baghdad Embassy Attacked by Protesters Angry at Air Strikes
December 31st, 2019Via: BBC:
Protesters angered by recent US air strikes targeting an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia have attacked the American embassy compound in Baghdad.
US troops fired tear gas to disperse a crowd that breached the outer wall of the compound, which is in the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
A guard post on the street nearby was also set alight.
US President Donald Trump accused Iran of “orchestrating” the attack and said it would be “held fully responsible”.
At least 25 fighters died when the US bombed bases associated with the Kataib Hezbollah militia in western Iraq and eastern Syria on Sunday.
The US said it was retaliating for a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk on Friday that killed an American civilian contractor.
Visualising the Amount of Microplastic We Eat
December 31st, 2019Via: Reuters:
Microscopic pieces of plastic have been discovered in the most remote locations, from the depths of the ocean to Arctic ice. Another place that plastic is appearing is inside our bodies. We’re breathing microplastic, eating it and drinking plastic-infused water every day.
Plastic does not biodegrade. Instead, it breaks down into smaller pieces, and ultimately ends up everywhere, including in the food chain. Pieces that are less than five millimeters in length, around the size of a sesame seed, are called “microplastics.”
Dozens of reports have been published on microplastics but the scientific community is still only scratching the surface of understanding just how much plastic we consume and how harmful it could be.
People could be ingesting the equivalent of a credit card of plastic a week, a recent study by WWF International concluded, mainly in drinking water but also via sources like shellfish, which tend to be eaten whole so the plastic in their digestive systems is also consumed.
Deteriorating U.S. Atomic Waste Dump in Marshall Islands to be Investigated
December 30th, 2019Via: BBC:
The US Congress has demanded an investigation into a concrete dome full of nuclear waste, threatened by rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands.
Dubbed “the tomb”, it holds tonnes of radioactive debris from dozens of US atomic bomb tests carried out during the Cold War.
Congress wants the Department of Energy to report back on the state of the ageing Runit Dome within six months.
The demand is part of a huge defence bill approved by President Trump.
More than 40 nuclear weapons tests took place on or near the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific between 1946 and 1958, including a bomb test on Runit Island.
The crater from that blast was used from the 1970s by the Defense Nuclear Agency to store nuclear waste. It was later covered in thick concrete slabs to form the 377ft (115 metre) protective dome.
…
The condition of the dome was highlighted in a recent Los Angeles Times investigation, which also unearthed evidence of biological weapons tests and the shipping of 130 tonnes of soil from nuclear testing grounds in Nevada to the Marshall Islands.
Social Credit on Campus: Colleges Are Turning Students’ Phones Into Surveillance Machines, Tracking the Locations of Hundreds of Thousands
December 29th, 2019Even though this is from the Washington Post (Bezos/CIA), it is a fascinating glimpse into the higher “education” ship of fools.
Via: Washington Post:
When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.”
And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they’ve been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.
“They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”
Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.
But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students’ privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilize students in the very place where they’re expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.
These Are the World’s Healthiest Nations
December 29th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
Maybe it’s something in the gazpacho or paella, as Spain just surpassed Italy to become the world’s healthiest country.
That’s according to the 2019 edition of the Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index, which ranks 169 economies according to factors that contribute to overall health. Spain placed sixth in the previous gauge, published in 2017.
Four additional European nations were among the top 10 in 2019: Iceland (third place), Switzerland (fifth), Sweden (sixth) and Norway (ninth). Japan was the healthiest Asian nation, jumping three places from the 2017 survey into fourth and replacing Singapore, which dropped to eighth. Australia and Israel rounded out the top 10 at seventh and 10th place.
A Big And Bizarre Drone Mystery Is Unfolding In Rural Colorado
December 28th, 2019There are no answers yet, but here’s some more speculation.
Via: The Drive:
Based strictly on the descriptions conveyed, it sounds like someone or some group is testing a broad-area surveillance capability with lower-end autonomous drones. This could include something as simple as having a group fly a series of planned routes and return with the information gathered via autopilot. By doing so, a group of small, relatively inexpensive drones can cover a large area quickly instead of single, far more expensive assets that could take more time and offer less redundancy. Such a capability could be used for search and rescue, mapping, and general intelligence gathering. This also doesn’t require man-in-the-loop control that would necessitate line-of-sight connectivity. Still, it is really flat terrain with endless farmland in the area where the sightings occurred, which means line-of-sight connectivity could be maximized, especially with the help of a large aerial or small tower, but the grid pattern nature of these flights that the Sheriff describes point to a coordinated and automated flight plan for the drones.
The airspace where this is occurring is peculiarly desolate, as well, making it ideally suited for such a task, but the flights are not legally occurring, which makes the whole affair quite suspicious. The fact that the activity is happening after sundown is even more intriguing and adds to the notion that whoever is doing this knows it is outside the bounds of FAA regulations.
In addition, it would be very challenging to trace these aircraft back to their place of origin or point of flight termination. The drones could fly the majority of their missions with lights on and turn them off during launch and recovery. With very little ambient light, they would be all but undetectable to the naked eye. Also, remember that drones this size can takeoff from very small areas, so it’s not like a runway is needed or anything like that. As such, they can originate from nearly anywhere.
China Launches Powerful Rocket in Boost for 2020 Mars Mission
December 27th, 2019Via: AFP:
China Friday launched one of the world’s most powerful rockets in a major step forward for its planned mission to Mars in 2020.
The heavy lift Long March 5 rocket carrying a test satellite payload blasted off from the Wenchang launch site on the southern island of Hainan at 8:45 pm (1245 GMT), a livestream from state broadcaster CCTV showed.
“After more than 2,000 seconds, the Shijian 20 satellite was sent into its predetermined orbit,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The rocket launch “tests key technologies related to future space missions,” Xinhua said.
The successful launch is a key part of China’s ambitious plans for a mission to the Red Planet next year and hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022.
Behind the One-Way Mirror: A Deep Dive Into the Technology of Corporate Surveillance
December 27th, 2019Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Trackers are hiding in nearly every corner of today’s Internet, which is to say nearly every corner of modern life. The average web page shares data with dozens of third-parties. The average mobile app does the same, and many apps collect highly sensitive information like location and call records even when they’re not in use. Tracking also reaches into the physical world. Shopping centers use automatic license-plate readers to track traffic through their parking lots, then share that data with law enforcement. Businesses, concert organizers, and political campaigns use Bluetooth and WiFi beacons to perform passive monitoring of people in their area. Retail stores use face recognition to identify customers, screen for theft, and deliver targeted ads.
The tech companies, data brokers, and advertisers behind this surveillance, and the technology that drives it, are largely invisible to the average user. Corporations have built a hall of one-way mirrors: from the inside, you can see only apps, web pages, ads, and yourself reflected by social media. But in the shadows behind the glass, trackers quietly take notes on nearly everything you do. These trackers are not omniscient, but they are widespread and indiscriminate. The data they collect and derive is not perfect, but it is nevertheless extremely sensitive.
This paper will focus on corporate “third-party” tracking: the collection of personal information by companies that users don’t intend to interact with. It will shed light on the technical methods and business practices behind third-party tracking. For journalists, policy makers, and concerned consumers, we hope this paper will demystify the fundamentals of third-party tracking, explain the scope of the problem, and suggest ways for users and legislation to fight back against the status quo.
Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns
December 27th, 2019We explore a variety of explanations and conclude that falling college wealth premiums may be due to the luck of when you were born, financial liberalization and the rising cost of higher education.
Maybe, but it’s incredible how the authors avoided the elephant in the room.
The number of times the word technology appears in this piece: 0.
The number of times the word automation appears in this piece: 0.
The number of times the word robotics appears in this piece: 0.
Via: Federal Reserve (.pdf):
The college income premium—the extra income earned by a family headed by a college graduate over an otherwise similar family without a bachelor’s degree—remains positive but has declined for recent graduates. The college wealth premium (extra wealth) has declined more noticeably among all cohorts born after 1940. Among non-Hispanic white family heads born in the 1980s, the college wealth premium is at a historic low; among all other races and ethnicities, it is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Using variables available for the first time in the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that controlling for the education of one’s parents reduces our estimates of college and postgraduate income and wealth premiums by 8 to 18 percent. Controlling also for measures of a respondent’s financial acumen—which may be partly innate—, our estimates of the value added by college and a postgraduate degree fall by 30 to 60 percent. Taken together, our results suggest that college and post-graduate education may be failing some recent graduates as a financial investment. We explore a variety of explanations and conclude that falling college wealth premiums may be due to the luck of when you were born, financial liberalization and the rising cost of higher education.
Turkey Unveils First Fully Homemade Car in $3.7 Billion Bet on Electric
December 27th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Turkey unveiled its first fully domestically-produced car on Friday, saying it aimed to eventually produce up to 175,000 a year of the electric vehicle in a project expected to cost 22 billion lira ($3.7 billion) over 13 years.
