Department of Homeland Security Ran Safety Drills at Tree of Life Synagogue
October 27th, 2018What was Bowers’ work history? I can only find one reference to him working as a truck driver, “Bowers told Mr. Hall’s fiance that he worked as a trucker.”
Via: Heavy:
The synagogue’s former president Michael Eisenberg said that while he was president, he had the Department of Homeland Security come to Tree of Life. Eisenberg told the Post Gazette the agency ran safety drills. Eisenberg added, “We had to step it up as far as security, although there had been no threats. The building isn’t designed for today as far as security purposes.” Eisenberg went on to tell CBS Pittsburgh that a maintenance worker who escaped was able to do so because of the DHS’ work. Eisenberg said, “He was able to get out of the building… because the exit doors were working well. I just can’t tell you how thankful I am just to do that one task that Homeland Security told us to do.”
Rise of the Machines: Automation Reshapes Job Market
October 27th, 2018Via: Daily Republic:
Looking at a map of California on a projector screen, Johannes Moenius, an economics professor at the University of Redlands, hovered his mouse over the Inland Empire, which glowed with a splotch of red pixels.
The colored dots signified how susceptible an area would be to job losses caused by automation. And the alarm-bell red that covered Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario signaled high risk — roughly 63 percent of tasks performed by workers in the area could be automated in the future.
To Moenius, the rise of robots in warehouses, factories and fast-food restaurants presents danger for places like the Inland Empire, where most residents work in logistics and the service industry and just 21 percent of adults have four-year degrees. As technology transforms the nature of work in California, how do people most at risk find their way to new jobs?
“We’re facing a major challenge,” Moenius said. “If we don’t do anything, then it will turn into an apocalypse.”
TSA Announces “Biometrics Vision for All Commercial Aviation Travelers”
October 27th, 2018Via: Papers, Please:
Today the US Transportation Security Administration released a detailed TSA Biometric Roadmap for Aviation Security & the Passenger Experience, making explicit the goal of requiring mug shots (to be used for automated facial recognition and image-based surveillance and control) as a condition of all domestic or international air travel.
…
It’s a terrifyingly totalitarian vision of pervasive surveillance of air travelers at, quite literally and deliberately, every step of their journey, enabled by automated facial recognition and by the seamless collaboration of airlines and airport operators that will help the government surveil their customers in exchange for free use of facial images for their own business purposes and profits.
The closest contemporary counterpart to what the TSA envisions for the USA is the pervasive surveillance and control of travelers in China through automated facial recognition by the Public Security Bureau.
Robots to Make Robots at ABB’s New $150 Million Factory in China
October 27th, 2018Via: Reuters:
Robots will make robots at a new ABB factory in China, which the Swiss engineering group said on Saturday it plans to build for $150 million in Shanghai as it defends its place as the country’s largest maker of industrial robots.
The factory, located near ABB’s China robotics campus, is due to be operating by the end of 2020 and will produce robots for China as well as for export elsewhere in Asia. China is ABB’s No. 2 market after the United States.
NSA Has Top Secret Documents on Seth Rich
October 26th, 2018I contacted @Ty_Clevenger to confirm that he made a FOIA request to NSA, as described in the piece below. He did:
Via: Sic Semper Tyrannis:
But now there is new information that may corroborate what the human sources quoted in the Fox article claimed about Seth’s role in getting the DNC documents to Wikileaks. Borne from a FOIA request filed in November 2017 by attorney Ty Clevenger, who requested any information regarding Seth Rich and and Julian Assange. The NSA informed Clevenger in a letter dated 4 October 2018 that:
Your request has been processed under the provisions of the FOIA. Fifteen documents (32 pages) responsive to your request have been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and have found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526. These documents meet the criteria for classification as set forth in Subparagraph (c) of Section 1.4 and remains classified TOP SECRET and SECRET.
Google’s Smart City Dream Is Turning Into a Privacy Nightmare
October 26th, 2018Via: Engadget:
Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet division focused on smart cities, is caught in a battle over information privacy. The team has lost its lead expert and consultant, Ann Cavoukian, over a proposed data trust that would approve and manage the collection of information inside Quayside, a conceptual smart neighborhood in Toronto. Cavoukian, the former information and privacy commissioner for Ontario, disagrees with the current plan because it would give the trust power to approve data collection that isn’t anonymized or “de-identified” at the source. “I had a really hard time with that,” she told Engadget. “I just couldn’t… I couldn’t live with that.”
A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
October 26th, 2018Begins? haha That’s a good one.
Just off the top of my head, I thought of this one from 2011.
Via: New York Times:
The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided they don’t want their own children anywhere near them.
A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high. The debate in Silicon Valley now is about how much exposure to phones is O.K.
“Doing no screen time is almost easier than doing a little,” said Kristin Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook engineer. “If my kids do get it at all, they just want it more.”
4Chan Trolls Mock ‘False Flag’ Bomb Scare By Making Parody ‘Bombs’ Of Their Own
October 26th, 2018Via: Information Liberation:
“Just got this in the mail, I’m scared!”
The Parallel Stories of Tesla and Apple, as Model 3 Has Its ‘iPhone Moment’
October 25th, 2018Part of my comment on Tesla from 9 October:
The long argument, of course, is that Tesla is different. Is it?
Yep. I think so. In my opinion, the correct past analogy is Apple and the initial release of the iPhone. What Tesla is doing is “iPhone” level in terms of EVs and energy storage.
Via: Electrek:
Perhaps the most compelling detail from Tesla’s quarterly report yesterday was the company’s claim that Model 3 is now the highest revenue generating car model in the US. Similarly, Apple has long touted that despite some competitors having higher volumes, the iPhone is responsible for the vast majority of profits in the smartphone industry. Given the Model 3’s high gross margins, it seems likely that it is also the highest profit generating car model in the US.
So with Model 3 having its “iPhone moment,” a comparison between these disruptive silicon valley companies is more appropriate than ever. What other similarities can we find between their respective stories?
China: “Vocational Schools”
October 24th, 2018Via: BBC:
On 12 July 2015 a satellite swung over the rolling deserts and oasis cities of China’s vast far west.
One of the images it captured that day just shows a patch of empty, untouched, ashen-grey sand.
It seems an unlikely place to start an investigation into one of the most pressing human rights concerns of our age.
But less than three years later, on 22 April 2018, a satellite photo of that same piece of desert showed something new.
A massive, highly secure compound had materialised.
It is enclosed with a 2km-long exterior wall punctuated by 16 guard towers.
