USAF Is Jamming GPS In The Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red Flag Air War Exercise
January 27th, 2018Via: The Drive:
The year’s first iteration of the USAF’s premier set of aerial war games, known commonly as Red Flag, is kicking off today at Nellis Air Force Base just outside of Las Vegas, but this exercise will be different than any in the past. Not only is it the largest of its kind in the exercise’s 42 year history, but the USAF is going to blackout GPS over the sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range to challenge aircrews and their weaponry under realistic fighting conditions. The tactic will spill over throughout the region, with warnings being posted stating inconsistent GPS service could be experienced by aircrews flying throughout the western United States.
Canadian Billionaires Murdered
January 27th, 2018Via: National Post:
Toronto police say a six-week examination of an enormous amount of evidence leads them to believe billionaire pharmaceutical giant Barry Sherman and his philanthropist wife Honey Sherman were the targeted victims of a double murder.
Barry Sherman, 75, who founded the generic drug manufacturing giant Apotex, and Honey Sherman, 70, were found dead in their Toronto mansion on Dec. 15, 2017.
East China Sea: Worst Tanker Oil Spill in Decades
January 26th, 2018Via: Reuters:
The worst tanker oil spill in decades is unfolding across hundreds of miles of the East China Sea after an Iranian oil tanker carrying more than 100,000 tonnes of toxic oil collided with a freighter and exploded, killing all 32 crew onboard. The ship burned, spewing its cargo, for more than a week before sinking in the waters between China, Japan and South Korea.
Tesla Gigafactory Production Problems Worse than Previously Disclosed
January 26th, 2018The Hacker News comments on this are interesting.
Via: CNBC:
Tesla’s problems with battery production at the company’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, are worse than the company has acknowledged and could cause further delays and quality issues for the new Model 3, according to a number of current and former Tesla employees. These problems include Tesla needing to make some of the batteries by hand and borrowing scores of employees from one of its suppliers to help with this manual assembly, said these people.
…
Many of the company’s quality control workers are relatively inexperienced, make sloppy calculations and don’t know when they’re looking at flaws, according to several current and former employees. They said many quality inspectors were temp-to-hire workers with no automotive experience who Tesla hired via a staffing agency.
Tesla acknowledged the relative inexperience of some employees, but said new hires involved in battery production receive “extensive training, including safety training.”
Two current engineers told CNBC that they are concerned some of the batteries being shipped do not have the minimum gap required between lithium-ion cells. These engineers warned that this “touching cells” flaw could cause batteries to short out or, in worse cases, catch fire.
Trump Attends World Economic Forum
January 25th, 2018Via: Reuters:
Donald Trump flew into the sanctum of the global elite on Thursday to promote his tax cuts and deregulation policies to CEOs and bankers, many of whom are eager to invest in the United States despite reservations about his turbulent presidency.
The first sitting U.S. president to visit the World Economic Forum in Davos since Bill Clinton in 2000, Trump helicoptered into the Swiss ski resort and was greeted by hundreds of curious delegates who snapped pictures as he entered the congress center.
After meeting the prime ministers of Britain and Israel, Trump hosted a dinner with leaders of some of the world’s largest corporations, including Nestle, SAP and Siemens, Deloitte and Bayer. Senior members of his cabinet were also present.
Ex-Montana House Majority Leader Gets 18 Years for Drug Trafficking
January 25th, 2018Via: Great Falls Tribune:
A former leader of the Montana House of Representatives who once supported funding for an anti-drug campaign was sentenced to 18 years in prison Thursday for his central role in a methamphetamine trafficking ring.
Michael Lange, the Republican House majority leader during the 2007 Legislature, arranged deliveries of at least 20 and possibly up to 50 pounds of meth from a source in California over a seven-month period in 2016, prosecutors said. It was sold through a network of approximately 15 to 20 dealers in Montana and Wyoming, according to federal prosecutors and an FBI drug task-force officer.
Biggest Washington DC Lobbyist Is Now Google
January 25th, 2018Via: Register:
For the first time, an internet company has become the largest lobbyist in Washington DC.
With the release of fourth quarter lobbying figures – a legal requirement – it has been revealed that Google (well, Alphabet) spent no less than $18m in 2017 to lobby lawmakers in the US capital: a 17 per cent increase on the previous year.
Although a number of industry associations – such as the US Chamber of Commerce – spent more, Google is the largest corporate entity on the list, reflecting both its enormous influence, it’s bottomless pockets, and the tech industry’s efforts to push back on a growing consensus that the internet is in need of greater regulation.
It’s not just Google either: Amazon splurged $12.8m – a 17 per cent year-on-year increase; Facebook blew $11.5m – a 32 per cent increase; and Apple spent $7.1m – a 51 per cent increase on the previous year.
This huge lobbying spend does not represent the full picture when it comes to influencing Washington DC, either.
The lobbying releases only cover the costs of a company’s own employees: they don’t include the money that all these companies spent on third-party lobbying groups, who typically boast former high-level government officials and promise access and persuasion for very large sums. Nor does it cover donations made to campaign committees.
Monkeys Cloned in World First
January 25th, 2018Via: Independent:
Two monkeys are the first ever primates to be cloned using the technique that created Dolly the sheep.
The technique brings the prospect of cloned human beings even more closer. But scientists caution that there may be no good reason to create such clones, and that ethical and legal questions need to be answered about such research.
More immediately, the technique will allow researchers to create whole labs full of genetically identical monkeys. That could prove tremendously useful in scientific and medical research – allowing doctors to watch how specific treatments affect the genetic makeup of animals that are otherwise exactly the same, for instance.
Grid Up. Grid Down.
January 24th, 2018The grid has been having intermittent issues since last night’s thunderstorm, and the power was off for most of the afternoon today. Back to posting early AM NZ time tomorrow, assuming the power stays on.
When It Comes to Voice Identification, the “NSA Reigns Supreme”
January 23rd, 2018Via: The Intercept:
These and other classified documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveal that the NSA has developed technology not just to record and transcribe private conversations but to automatically identify the speakers.
Americans most regularly encounter this technology, known as speaker recognition, or speaker identification, when they wake up Amazon’s Alexa or call their bank. But a decade before voice commands like “Hello Siri” and “OK Google” became common household phrases, the NSA was using speaker recognition to monitor terrorists, politicians, drug lords, spies, and even agency employees.
The technology works by analyzing the physical and behavioral features that make each person’s voice distinctive, such as the pitch, shape of the mouth, and length of the larynx. An algorithm then creates a dynamic computer model of the individual’s vocal characteristics. This is what’s popularly referred to as a “voiceprint.” The entire process — capturing a few spoken words, turning those words into a voiceprint, and comparing that representation to other “voiceprints” already stored in the database — can happen almost instantaneously. Although the NSA is known to rely on finger and face prints to identify targets, voiceprints, according to a 2008 agency document, are “where NSA reigns supreme.”
It’s not difficult to see why. By intercepting and recording millions of overseas telephone conversations, video teleconferences, and internet calls — in addition to capturing, with or without warrants, the domestic conversations of Americans — the NSA has built an unrivaled collection of distinct voices. Documents from the Snowden archive reveal that analysts fed some of these recordings to speaker recognition algorithms that could connect individuals to their past utterances, even when they had used unknown phone numbers, secret code words, or multiple languages.
