Too Fat to Fight
October 10th, 2018Via: Army Times:
It’s well known at this point that just under 30 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 ? the prime age to join the Army ? aren’t eligible to join.
But beyond that, almost a third of those who sit down with a recruiter to take the first steps are immediately disqualified.
Why? Because of their weight.
“Out of all the reasons that we have future soldiers disqualify, the largest – 31 percent ? is obesity,” Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, head of Army Recruiting Command, said Wednesday at AUSA’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
A freshly published study, “Unhealthy and Unprepared” concludes that America’s rising numbers of overweight youth are going to have real impacts on the military’s ability to maintain effectiveness.
GM Appoints Ex-CIA Deputy Director, Co-Vice Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations to Its Board
October 10th, 2018More connections than a switchboard, including an NSC role where, “She had oversight responsibility for covert action programs and special reconnaissance missions,” and In-Q-Tel.
Via: CNBC:
General Motors appointed a former deputy director of intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency to its board on Wednesday.
Jami Miscik is the chief executive and vice chair of Kissinger Associates, a political consulting firm founded by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. She has held various top roles at the firm since 2009. Before that, she worked at Lehman Brothers and Barclays.
“Jami is a seasoned leader with experience in assessing the geopolitical and macroeconomic climate,” said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra in a news release. “Her unique and extensive background in intelligence, security and risk analysis and mitigation will add significant insights to GM’s board and the company’s overall strategy.”
Miscik is also on the board of Morgan Stanley and is the co-vice chair of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
Related: The Ascendancy of Black World Participants Continues at GM
Financial Accounts May Be “Modified” to Shield Classified Programs
October 9th, 2018Not a new policy: missingmoney.solari.com
Via: Federation of American Scientists:
In an apparent departure from “generally accepted accounting principles,” federal agencies will be permitted to publish financial statements that are altered so as to protect information on classified spending from disclosure.
The new policy was developed by the government’s Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) in response to concerns raised by the Department of Defense and others that a rigorous audit of agency financial statements could lead to unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
In order to prevent disclosure of classified information in a public financial statement, FASAB said that agencies may amend or obscure certain spending information. “An entity may modify information required by other [accounting] standards if the effect of the modification does not change the net results of operations or net position.”
Agencies may also shift accounts around in a potentially misleading way. “A component reporting entity is allowed to be excluded from one reporting entity and consolidated into another reporting entity. The effect of the modifications may change the net results of operations and/or net position.” See Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56, FASAB, July 5, 2018 (final draft for sponsor review).
In response to an earlier draft of the new standard that was issued last December, most government agencies endorsed the move to permit modifying public financial statements.
“The protection of classified information and national security takes precedence over financial statements,” declared the Central Intelligence Agency in its comments (submitted discreetly under the guise of an “other government agency”).
“It is in the best interest of national security to allow for modification to the presentation of balances and reporting entity in the GPFFR [the publicly available General Purpose Federal Financial Report],” CIA wrote.
But in a sharply dissenting view, the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General said the new approach was improper, unwise and unnecessary.
It “jeopardizes the financial statements’ usefulness and provides financial managers with an arbitrary method of reporting accounting information,” the DoD OIG said.
“We do not agree that incorporating summary-level dollar amounts in the overall statements will necessarily result in the release of classified information.”
Tesla Model 3 Is #1 Top Selling American Car In USA
October 9th, 2018Via: CleanTechnica:
Tesla’s production and sales growth is stunning. It is one of the most dramatic manufacturing stories in US history, let alone 2018. The sales records and eye-warping bar charts are in multiple important categories, not just in the electric vehicle space.
However, one story I haven’t seen highlighted yet is that the Tesla Model 3 was the #1 top selling American car in September.
The only three cars that sold more than this American success story were the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, and Honda Civic.
Related: Tesla Model 3 Achieves Lowest Probability of Injury of Any Vehicle Ever Tested by NHTSA
China’s Dystopian Social Credit System
October 8th, 2018Interesting take.
In short, everything is so F-ed up in China, the implementation of the social credit system will be no different. The good news is that it might never work, or, if it does work in some capacity, it will quickly break down, like everything else in China.
To me, the most horrifying aspect of this is how much of it sounds like U.S. airports!
Via: ADV China:
Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public
October 8th, 2018Via: Wall Street Journal:
Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage, according to people briefed on the incident and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
As part of its response to the incident, the Alphabet Inc. unit on Monday announced a sweeping set of data privacy measures that include permanently shutting down all consumer functionality of Google+. The move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook Inc. and is widely seen as one of Google’s biggest failures.
Facebook Wants People to Invite Its Cameras Into Their Homes
October 8th, 2018Mmm hmm.
Via: AP:
Facebook is launching the first electronic device to bear its brand, a screen and camera-equipped gadget intended to make video calls easier and more intuitive.
But it’s unclear if people will open their homes to an internet-connected camera sold by a company with a questionable track record on protecting user privacy.
Facebook is marketing the device, called Portal, as a way for its more than 2 billion users to chat with one another without having to fuss with positioning and other controls. The device features a camera that uses artificial intelligence to automatically pan and zoom as people move around during calls.
The World’s Most Beautiful Battery
October 7th, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
High in the Austrian Alps, a utility has adapted a 70-year-old facility to store solar and wind energy for when it’s needed most.
More Than One-Third of U.S. Adults Consume Fast Food Each Day
October 6th, 2018Via: Newsweek:
On a given day, 36.6 percent of American adults will consume fast food, and that percentage only rises with higher income brackets.
Researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics studied the fast food consumption of adults in the United States. Released Wednesday, the report compares the percentage of fast-food eating adults for demographic characteristics such as age, race and income level between the years 2013 and 2016.
…
They also reported that as American adults aged, the percentage of daily fast food consumption lessened. Only 24.1 percent of adults aged 60 and older consumed fast food, while 37.7 percent of adults ages 40 to 59 and 44.9 percent of adults aged 20 to 39 did.
Microsoft Windows 10 October 2018 Update Deleting Personal Files of Some Users
October 6th, 2018
Via: Beta News:
Microsoft made its latest Windows 10 feature update available to download on Tuesday, and shortly afterwards the problems started. It didn’t play nicely with some Intel CPUs, Edge and Windows Store apps didn’t work for some users and, most damningly, the update was found to be deleting personal files.
In the face of so many problems, Microsoft had to do something, and it has. The update has been pulled.
