Governments Are Testing Their Own Cryptocurrencies
September 25th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review:
The people of Sweden are breaking up with cash. The number of banknotes and coins in circulation has fallen to its lowest level in three decades. Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, estimates that cash transactions made up only 15 percent of all retail transactions last year, down from 40 percent in 2010, thanks in large part to massively popular mobile payment services.
The situation has left Sweden’s central bankers wondering: should the country introduce a purely digital form of government-backed money? And if so, should it use technology similar to that underlying Bitcoin?
Governments Turn Tables by Suing Public Records Requesters
September 25th, 2017Via: AP:
An Oregon parent wanted details about school employees getting paid to stay home. A retired educator sought data about student performance in Louisiana. And college journalists in Kentucky requested documents about the investigations of employees accused of sexual misconduct.
Instead, they got something else: sued by the agencies they had asked for public records.
Government bodies are increasingly turning the tables on citizens who seek public records that might be embarrassing or legally sensitive. Instead of granting or denying their requests, a growing number of school districts, municipalities and state agencies have filed lawsuits against people making the requests — taxpayers, government watchdogs and journalists who must then pursue the records in court at their own expense.
New Zealand: Family of Four Living in Bus Conversion
September 25th, 2017Wow, that’s a much nicer bus (we call them Choochoo buses because of the chimneys) than the ones we see around Kaitaia.
Via: Exploring Alternatives:
Meet the Engineer Preserving The Last Analog Motion Graphics Machine
September 25th, 2017Via: Vice:
“Catastrophic Sleep-Loss Epidemic”
September 24th, 2017Via: Independent:
A “catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic” is causing a host of potentially fatal diseases, a leading expert has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Professor Matthew Walker, director of the Centre for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, said that sleep deprivation affected “every aspect of our biology” and was widespread in modern society.
And yet the problem was not being taken seriously by politicians and employers, with a desire to get a decent night’s sleep often stigmatised as a sign of laziness, he said.
Electric lights, television and computer screens, longer commutes, the blurring of the line between work and personal time, and a host of other aspects of modern life have contributed to sleep deprivation, which is defined as less than seven hours a night.
But this has been linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity and poor mental health among other health problems. In short, a lack of sleep is killing us.
BYD Predicts Ambitious China Shift to Electric Cars by 2030
September 24th, 2017Via: Reuters:
Chinese automaker BYD Co Ltd (002594.SZ) expects the country’s shift to cleaner new-energy vehicles (NEV) to be complete in just over a decade, an aggressive timeframe that would challenge traditional carmakers in the world’ top auto market.
All vehicles in the country will be “electrified” by 2030, which could range from full electric cars to mild hybrids, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu said on Thursday. BYD, backed by Warren Buffett, has already invested heavily in the NEV market.
Carmakers around the world are grappling with government plans to shift away from petrol engine cars to newer, less polluting technologies – a trend that is creating one of the most seismic shifts the automotive industry has gone through.
Earlier this month, a senior Chinese official said the country had begun studying when to ban the production and sale of cars using traditional fuels, without giving a timeframe for the shift. The United Kingdom and France have said they will ban new petrol and diesel cars from 2040.
“We are very confident about all the timetables (to eliminate fossil fuel cars) and we think it will happen earlier than expected,” Wang said at an event in Shenzhen. “Various governments have announced timetables to end the sale of fossil fuel cars and this is putting pressure on everyone else.”
Satanic Fashion Show Inside a Church at London Fashion Week
September 22nd, 2017Via: Vigilant Citizen:
Turkish designer Dilara Findikoglu’s presented her Spring/Summer 2018 collection at London Fashion Week and it was nothing less than a satanic Black Mass. Indeed, the event took place at the altar of St Andrew Church in London and incorporated heavy occult and satanic symbolism. In short, the event summed up everything the fashion world is truly about.
Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For
September 22nd, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
The company’s operation in Michigan reveals how it’s dominated the industry by going into economically depressed areas with lax water laws.
…
The Michigan operation is only one small part of Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company. But it illuminates how Nestlé has come to dominate a controversial industry, spring by spring, often going into economically depressed municipalities with the promise of jobs and new infrastructure in exchange for tax breaks and access to a resource that’s scarce for millions. Where Nestlé encounters grass-roots resistance against its industrial-strength guzzling, it deploys lawyers; where it’s welcome, it can push the limits of that hospitality, sometimes with the acquiescence of state and local governments that are too cash-strapped or inept to say no. There are the usual costs of doing business, including transportation, infrastructure, and salaries. But Nestlé pays little for the product it bottles—sometimes a municipal rate and other times just a nominal extraction fee. In Michigan, it’s $200.
Mercedes Plots Tesla Attack With $1 Billion U.S. Electric Push
September 21st, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
Daimler AG plans to spend $1 billion to start production of Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles at its Alabama factory, setting the world’s largest luxury-car maker up to battle with battery-car specialist Tesla Inc. on its home turf.
The German automaker will build its fifth battery plant globally and create more than 600 jobs in the region, the company said Thursday in a statement. The Alabama factory will assemble electric sport utility vehicles, taking on Tesla’s Model X and making Stuttgart-based Daimler the first European company to assemble plug-in autos in the U.S.
Shocker: U.S. Allies Don’t Trust NSA
September 21st, 2017Via: Reuters:
An international group of cryptography experts has forced the U.S. National Security Agency to back down over two data encryption techniques it wanted set as global industry standards, reflecting deep mistrust among close U.S. allies.
In interviews and emails seen by Reuters, academic and industry experts from countries including Germany, Japan and Israel worried that the U.S. electronic spy agency was pushing the new techniques not because they were good encryption tools, but because it knew how to break them.
The NSA has now agreed to drop all but the most powerful versions of the techniques – those least likely to be vulnerable to hacks – to address the concerns.
The dispute, which has played out in a series of closed-door meetings around the world over the past three years and has not been previously reported, turns on whether the International Organization of Standards should approve two NSA data encryption techniques, known as Simon and Speck.
