Infographic: Clinton Foundation ‘Pay to Play’
December 5th, 2018Via: The Epoch Times:
The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion since its inception in 1997, and Bill and Hillary Clinton have been paid more than $150 million for delivering speeches. Notably, these payments increased dramatically after Hillary Clinton took office as secretary of state in 2009.
George Bush’s Wars Set the Stage for 25 Years of Endless War
December 5th, 2018Kinder, gentler…
Via: Mises Institute:
It’s almost darkly comedic how easy it has been to convince the American people to go along with nearly any justification for invading a foreign country, no matter how flimsy.
Waymo One Robotaxi Service Available to “A Few Hundred Customers” in Arizona
December 5th, 2018Meatsack still onboard.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Robot cars are now officially a real business. Waymo on Wednesday launched a commercial robot ride-hailing service in Arizona called Waymo One.
Like Uber or Lyft, customers will summon a ride with a smartphone app. But in this case, the car will be driving itself.
“This is a game changer. It’s historical in nature,” said Grayson Brulte, who heads driverless car consulting firm Brulte & Co.
Only “a few hundred customers” will have access to the app and participate in the early stages, according to Waymo, which is an arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc. Although the cars will drive themselves, a Waymo engineer will sit behind the wheel in case anything goes wrong. Waymo did not say when the cars will start arriving without a human minder or when the program will be expanded.
Waymo’s cars, Chrysler Pacifica minivans bristling with autonomous driving technology, are available in several eastern and southeastern Phoenix suburbs, including Chandler, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert. The fares are similar to those charged by Uber and Lyft.
Mastercard and Microsoft Have a Frightening Plan to Create Universal “Digital Identities”
December 4th, 2018Via: FastCompany:
Sometimes a business inadvertently drops the pretense and just tells the world its real intentions. We saw this yesterday, when Amazon bragged about how it “allowed” an employee to lose 100 pounds by endlessly delivering boxes. Amazon saw this as a heartwarming tale about how great it is to work for the e-commerce juggernaut. It completely missed the subtext: Who needs a gym when someone can physically labor for their corporate overlord and lose weight?
Now we have another, possibly darker example. Mastercard announced a new partnership with Microsoft that is tackling “digital identities.” Here’s how it described the project in a tweet:
Voting, driving, applying for a job, renting a home, getting married and boarding a plane: what do these all have in common? You need to prove your identity. In partnership with @Microsoft, we are working to create universally-recognized digital identity. https://t.co/He5syqa5g7
— Mastercard News (@MastercardNews) December 3, 2018
Essentially, the tweet described every action an adult human takes that is both highly intimate and requires sharing personal and confidential details. The companies are building a solution that would create a “universally-recognized digital identity.” To the corporations, this is a brilliant solution! To everyone else, it may feel more than a bit dystopian.
France Delays Fuel Tax Rises for Six Months
December 4th, 2018Via: BBC:
Fuel tax rises which had led to weeks of violent protests in France have been suspended for six months.
PM Edouard Philippe said that people’s anger must be heard, and the measures would not be applied until there had been proper debate with those affected.
Space X: Same First Stage Successfully Used for Third Launch
December 3rd, 2018Via: CBS:
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket using a first stage making a record third flight vaulted away from the California coast Monday, boosting 64 small satellites into orbit for a wide variety of government, academic and private-sector users — including artists — in a commercial launch chartered by Seattle-based Spaceflight.
The Falcon 9’s well-traveled first stage returned to Earth and safely landed on an off-shore drone ship — the “Just Read the Instructions” — to chalk up SpaceX’s 32nd recovery of a spent booster, the first to have flown three times.
Related: SpaceX Broke Four Records During Today’s Falcon 9 Rocket Launch
Robot Janitors Are Coming to Mop Floors at a Walmart Near You
December 3rd, 2018Via: MSN:
Robots are coming to a Walmart Inc. near you, and not just as a gimmick.
The world’s largest retailer is rolling out 360 autonomous floor-scrubbing robots in some of its stores in the U.S. by the end of the January, it said in a joint statement with Brain Corp., which makes the machines. The autonomous janitors can clean floors on their own even when customers are around, according to the San Diego-based startup.
The US Military Is Genetically Engineering New Life Forms To Detect Enemy Subs
December 3rd, 2018Via: Defense One:
How do you detect submarines in an expanse as large as the ocean? The U.S. military hopes that common marine microorganisms might be genetically engineered into living tripwires to signal the passage of enemy subs, underwater vessels, or even divers.
It’s one of many potential military applications for so-called engineered organisms, a field that promises living camouflage that reacts to its surroundings to better avoid detection, new drugs and medicines to help deployed forces survive in harsh conditions, and more. But the research is in its very early stages, military officials said.
The Naval Research Laboratory, or NRL, is supporting the research. Here’s how it would work: You take an abundant sea organism, like Marinobacter, and change its genetic makeup to react to certain substances left by enemy vessels, divers, or equipment. These could be metals, fuel exhaust, human DNA, or some molecule that’s not found naturally in the ocean but is associated with, say, diesel-powered submarines. The reaction could take the form of electron loss, which could be detectable to friendly sub drones.
Old Coal Mines Can be ‘Perfect’ Underground Food Farms
December 3rd, 2018Via: BBC:
Abandoned coal mines across the UK could be brought back to life as huge underground farms, according to academics.
Mine shafts and tunnels are seen as “the perfect environment” for growing food such as vegetables and herbs.
The initiative is seen as a way of providing large-scale crop production for a growing global population.
Huge Unexplored Cave in British Columbia
December 3rd, 2018Via: Canadian Geographic:
A massive pit that was spotted in a remote high alpine valley in British Columbia’s Wells Gray Provincial Park earlier this year is the entrance to a previously unexplored cave of “national significance,” say two members of a Canadian team that helped conduct a preliminary exploration of the site in September.
