Teardown of Tesla Drivetrain
April 4th, 2017Multiple groups are working on jailbreaking it.
Via: Jehu Garcia:
Ideology Test and Mobile Phone Shake Down to Visit U.S.?
April 4th, 2017Via: MarketWatch:
Foreigners who want to visit the U.S., even for a short trip, could be forced to disclose contacts on their mobile phones, social-media passwords and financial records, and to answer probing questions about their ideology, according to Trump administration officials conducting a review of vetting procedures.
The administration also wants to subject more visa applicants to intense security reviews and have embassies spend more time interviewing each applicant. The changes could apply to people from all over the world, including allies like France and Germany.
The measures—whose full scope haven’t yet been publicly discussed—would together represent the “extreme vetting” President Donald Trump has promised.
Top Obama Adviser Used NSA Intercepts to Learn Names of Trump Associates
April 4th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The pattern of Rice’s requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government’s policy on “unmasking” the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like “U.S. Person One.”
Tesla’s Market Cap Surpasses Ford’s
April 3rd, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk poked fun at short sellers as his electric-car maker’s stock surged to a record, vaulting its market value past century-old rival Ford Motor Co.
“Stormy weather in Shortville…” the chief executive officer tweeted Monday, as Tesla shares climbed as much as 5.8 percent. The maker of Model S sedans and Model X crossovers saw its capitalization surge to about $48.2 billion, $3.1 billion more than Ford, the No. 2 automaker in the U.S. after General Motors Co.
Super SEALs: Elite Units Pursue Brain-Stimulating Technologies
April 3rd, 2017Via: Military.com:
At a conference near Washington, D.C., in February, the commander of all Navy special operations units made an unusual request to industry: Develop and demonstrate technologies that offer “cognitive enhancement” capabilities to boost his elite forces’ mental and physical performance.
“We plan on using that in mission enhancement,” Rear Adm. Tim Szymanski said. “The performance piece is really critical to the life of our operators.”
Szymanski expanded on his remarks in a brief interview later, saying he has his eye on a number of technologies, including pharmaceutical aids. But the results of one breakthrough involving the direct application of electrical stimulation to the brain have particularly caught his eye.
“In experiments, people who were watching these screens … their ability to concentrate would fall off in about 20 minutes,” Szymanski said. “But they did studies whereby a little bit of electrical stimulation was applied, and they were able to maintain the same peak performance for 20 hours.”
Transcranial electrical stimulation was one of the technologies touted by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter in July 2016 as part of his Defense Innovation Unit (Experimental), or DIUx, initiative. Since then, multiple SEAL units have begun actively testing the effectiveness of the technology, officials with Naval Special Warfare Command told Military.com
“Earlier this year, Naval Special Warfare units, working with DIUx, began a specific cognitive enhancement project with a small group of volunteers to test and evaluate achieving higher performance through the use of neuro-stimulation technology,” Capt. Jason Salata, a spokesman for the command, said in a statement.
The elements testing the technology include Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the unit known more popularly as SEAL Team Six. Other teams are also conducting tests, Salata said. He declined to confirm how many operators are participating in the testing, or to cite specific findings to date. But there have been positive outcomes so far, he said.
“Early results show promising signs,” he said. “Based on this, we are encouraged to continue and are moving forward with our studies.”
The company that makes the brain-stimulating device — a headset that could be mistaken for a pair of Beats by Dre headphones — is Halo Neuroscience. And the technology offers not cognitive enhancement, but neuro-priming, Chief Technology Officer and Company Co-Founder Brett Wingeier told Military.com.
Cyborgs at Work: Employees Getting Implanted with Microchips
April 3rd, 2017Like many of you out there, I first heard about this technology in the 1990s. Decades later, a passive microchip implant seems like a practically innocuous fairy tale compared to the privacy hell that has metastasized all around us.
In terms of technologies of political control, think of a chip implant as something like a Soviet era Skoda. A modern “smartphone” would look like the Starship Enterprise in comparison.
At first glance, one might think that the chip implant’s lack of capabilities are to blame.
The chip implant can’t record your conversations, and other audio in its vicinity.
The chip implant doesn’t have multiple video cameras to watch you and your surroundings.
The chip implant doesn’t serve as an extension of your brain, recording all of your searches, shopping habits, web activity, etc.
The chip implant doesn’t help the state create a proximity chart of your social network.
The list goes on and on…
But the most disturbing advantage that the smartphone has over a chip implant (as a technology of political control) is that, while the chip implant remains creepy, even after decades of fluff media stories promoting it, like the one below, even people who know better tend to own smartphones. I’d guess that the overwhelming majority of smartphone owners, maybe 99% of them, not only don’t know about the diabolical privacy threats posed by smartphones, but wouldn’t care anyway.
So, scoff at the imbeciles who willingly take the chip, as you read this (and I write this) using an operating system from Microsoft or Apple, or a Linux operating system on a device compromised down to the silicon, or perhaps on a jewel encrusted crack pipe, tamper proof vending machine, designed-from-the-start-as-a-surveillance-platform mobile device.
This is definitely tipping over into another self loathing and pointless rant about a hopeless situation, so I’ll stop here.
Have a nice day.
Via: AP:
The syringe slides in between the thumb and index finger. Then, with a click, a microchip is injected in the employee’s hand. Another “cyborg” is created.
What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand.
The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted.
“The biggest benefit I think is convenience,” said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he unlocks a door by merely waving near it. “It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys.”
The technology in itself is not new. Such chips are used as virtual collar plates for pets. Companies use them to track deliveries. It’s just never been used to tag employees on a broad scale before. Epicenter and a handful of other companies are the first to make chip implants broadly available.
Eleven Killed in Suspected Suicide Bombing on Russian Metro Train
April 3rd, 2017Via: Reuters:
A blast in a St Petersburg train carriage on Monday that killed 11 people and wounded 45 was carried out by a suspected suicide bomber with ties to radical Islamists, Russia’s Interfax news agency cited a law enforcement source as saying.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was in the city when the blast struck, visited the scene of the explosion late on Monday night and laid a bunch of red flowers at a makeshift shrine to the victims.
Witnesses said they saw passengers who were bloodied and burned spilling out of the train, the door of which was buckled by the force of the explosion, and lying on a platform while smoke filled the station.
Russia has experienced bomb attacks carried out by Islamist rebels from Russia’s North Caucasus region in the past. The rebellion there has been largely crushed, but Russia’s military intervention in Syria has now made it a potential target for attacks by the Islamic State group, security experts say.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Officials said they were treating the blast as an act of terrorism, but there was no official confirmation of any link to Islamist radicals.
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A World Without Retirement
April 2nd, 2017Via: Guardian:
We are entering the age of no retirement. The journey into that chilling reality is not a long one: the first generation who will experience it are now in their 40s and 50s. They grew up assuming they could expect the kind of retirement their parents enjoyed – stopping work in their mid-60s on a generous income, with time and good health enough to fulfil long-held dreams. For them, it may already be too late to make the changes necessary to retire at all.
In 2010, British women got their state pension at 60 and men got theirs at 65. By October 2020, both sexes will have to wait until they are 66. By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. And the creep will continue. By the early 2060s, people will still be working in their 70s, but according to research, we will all need to keep working into our 80s if we want to enjoy the same standard of retirement as our parents.
With Trump Approval, Pentagon Expands Warfighting Authority
April 1st, 2017Via: AP:
Week by week, country by country, the Pentagon is quietly seizing more control over warfighting decisions, sending hundreds more troops to war with little public debate and seeking greater authority to battle extremists across the Middle East and Africa.
This week it was Somalia, where President Donald Trump gave the U.S. military more authority to conduct offensive airstrikes on al-Qaida-linked militants. Next week it could be Yemen, where military leaders want to provide more help for the United Arab Emirates’ battle against Iranian-backed rebels. Key decisions on Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are looming, from ending troop number limits to loosening rules that guide commanders in the field.
The changes in President Donald Trump’s first two months in office underscore his willingness to let the Pentagon manage its own day-to-day combat. Under the Obama administration, military leaders chafed about micromanagement that included commanders needing approval for routine tactical decisions about targets and personnel moves.
But delegating more authority to the Pentagon — and combat decisions to lower level officers — carries its own military and political risks. Casualties, of civilians and American service members, may be the biggest.
Autonomous Nissan Leaf
April 1st, 2017Via: Fully Charged:
