Americans Are Paying $38 to Collect $1 of Student Debt
May 19th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
The federal government has, in recent years, paid debt collectors close to $1 billion annually to help distressed borrowers climb out of default and scrounge up regular monthly payments. New government figures suggest much of that money may have been wasted.
Nearly half of defaulted student-loan borrowers who worked with debt collectors to return to good standing on their loans defaulted again within three years, according to an analysis by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For their work, debt collectors receive up to $1,710 in payment from the U.S. Department of Education each time a borrower makes good on soured debt through a process known as rehabilitation. They keep those funds even if borrowers subsequently default again, contracts show. The department has earmarked more than $4.2 billion for payments to its debt collectors since the start of the 2013 fiscal year, federal spending data show.
Stanford Professor: Fossil-Fuel Vehicles Will Vanish in 8 Years in Twin ‘Death Spiral’ for Big Oil and Big Autos
May 18th, 2017I very seriously doubt it.
Via: Financial Post:
No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century.
This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries.
Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are ten times cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of fuel and an expected lifespan of 1 million miles.
Only nostalgics will cling to the old habit of car ownership. The rest will adapt to vehicles on demand. It will become harder to find a petrol station, spares, or anybody to fix the 2,000 moving parts that bedevil the internal combustion engine. Dealers will disappear by 2024.
Cities will ban human drivers once the data confirms how dangerous they can be behind a wheel. This will spread to suburbs, and then beyond. There will be a “mass stranding of existing vehicles”. The value of second-hard cars will plunge. You will have to pay to dispose of your old vehicle.
It is a twin “death spiral” for big oil and big autos, with ugly implications for some big companies on the London Stock Exchange unless they adapt in time.
Brazil’s Stock Market Declines 10 Percent
May 18th, 2017Via: CNN:
Brazil’s stock market, Bovespa, plunged more than 10% immediately after opening Thursday, wiping out almost all of its gains for the year. Officials halted trading for 30 minutes.
Brazil’s currency, the real, also tanked 7% against the dollar, its worst day since the global financial crisis in 2008.
The selloff came after new bribery allegations surfaced against Brazil’s president, Michel Temer.
A prominent Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, reported Wednesday night that Temer paid a bribe to the former House Speaker in Congress, Eduardo Cunha, to stay silent while Cunha serves a prison term.
O Globo said there were recordings of conversations between the two in which the alleged bribe occurred.
The news comes as Brazil is already suffering through record-high unemployment and its worst recession in history.
The country has been embroiled in an infamous bribery scandal for over three years known as Operation Car Wash and involving its biggest company Petrobras. It has entangled the past two presidents, all political parties and imprisoned billionaires.
Household Debt Surpassed Record Level Reached During the 2008 Financial Crisis
May 18th, 2017Via: CNBC:
The New York Federal Reserve reports that household debt across the nation has hit a dubious milestone in the first quarter: It surpassed the peak debt level of 2008 at $12.7 trillion.
Household debt — including mortgages, auto and student loans, and credit cards — rose $149 billion compared with the last quarter of 2016, with nearly all the gain coming from mortgages.
Reaching the peak raises questions about whether the backdrop exists again for another financial meltdown. But the data show the current structure of debt is substantially different from 2008.
Mortgage debt has fallen from 73 percent to 68 percent of total debt since the peak. That has come along with a rise in auto- and student-loan debt as a percent of the average American’s liabilities.
Firm Thinks Solar Will Attract More Investment Funds Than Coal, Gas and Nuclear Combined in 2017
May 16th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Via: PV Magazine:
A new report by analyst firm Frost & Sullivan projects that in 2017 solar PV will attract more investment than coal, gas and nuclear power combined.
The report, titled the Global Power Industry Outlook 2017, examines power market trends, including investment and regional growth. The report deduces that this year, renewable power investment will reach $243.1 billion globally, with solar PV investment comprising $141.6 billion of that total, followed by wind.
Although solar prices continue to decline, as does the cost of wind power, renewable investment is booming at the expense of traditional power generation because clean energy increasingly offers more profitable project costs and benefits from stable regulatory support across the globe, the report finds.
FDA Approved Drugs Have Nearly 1 in 3 Chance of Having a “Significant Safety Issue”
May 16th, 2017Oh sure, it’s a surprise. *wink*
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Almost one-third of new drugs approved by U.S. regulators over a decade ended up years later with warnings about unexpected — sometimes life-threatening — side effects or complications, according to a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
Researchers looked at potential problems that cropped up during the routine monitoring that’s done once a medicine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and is on the market. The results, published Tuesday, covered all 222 prescription drugs approved by the FDA from 2001 through 2010.
The 71 drugs that were flagged included top sellers for treating depression, arthritis, infections and blood clots. Safety issues included risks for serious skin reactions, liver damage, cancer and even death.
“The large percentage of problems was a surprise,” and they included side effects not seen during the review process, said senior author Dr. Joseph Ross, an associate professor of medicine and public health at Yale University.
NASA: Ocean Below Ice Layer on Enceladus Could Hold Life
May 16th, 2017Via: Newsweek:
Today Earthlings came one very giant step closer to finding life elsewhere in our solar system. In the final months of its 20-year mission, the spacecraft Cassini delivered its most noteworthy revelation yet: the ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is releasing hydrogen, an energy source for some microorganisms. In other words, that ocean is inhabitable. “Enceladus,” says Cornell University astrophysicist Jonathan Lunine, “is the place to go to look for life.”
Private Investigator Claims Seth Rich Had Contact with WikiLeaks Prior to Death
May 16th, 2017Update: Kim Dotcom Claims Seth Rich was WikiLeaks Source
Via: Kim Dotcom / Twitter:
I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved. https://t.co/MbGQteHhZM
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017
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Update: Family Says Fox Promoting Conspiracy Theories
Via: Independent:
The family of the Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered last year is fed up with Fox News, and says that the conservative news outlet and other like it are using their tragedy to promote conspiracy theories.
A statement from family spokesman Brad Bauman went after the Fox News network specifically.
“It’s sad but unsurprising that a group of media outlets who have repeatedly lied to the American people would try and manipulate the legacy of a murder victim in order to forward their own political agenda,” Mr Bauman wrote to Jezebel. “I think there is a specific place in hell for people like that.”
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Via: Fox:
It has been almost a year since Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered in the nation’s capital. There have been no solid answers about why he was killed until now.
Rich was shot and killed last July in Northwest D.C and police have suggested the killing in the District’s Bloomingdale neighborhood was a botched robbery. However, online conspiracy theories have tied the murder to Rich’s work at the DNC.
Just two months shy of the one-year anniversary of Rich’s death, FOX 5 has learned there is new information that could prove these theorists right.
Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by the Rich family, suggests there is tangible evidence on Rich’s laptop that confirms he was communicating with WikiLeaks prior to his death.
Now, questions have been raised on why D.C. police, the lead agency on this murder investigation for the past ten months, have insisted this was a robbery gone bad when there appears to be no evidence to suggest that.
Wheeler, a former D.C. police homicide detective, is running a parallel investigation into Rich’s murder. He said he believes there is a cover-up and the police department has been told to back down from the investigation.
“The police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming,” said Wheeler. “They haven’t been cooperating at all. I believe that the answer to solving his death lies on that computer, which I believe is either at the police department or either at the FBI. I have been told both.”
When we asked Wheeler if his sources have told him there is information that links Rich to Wikileaks, he said, “Absolutely. Yeah. That’s confirmed.”
Wheeler also told us, “I have a source inside the police department that has looked at me straight in the eye and said, ‘Rod, we were told to stand down on this case and I can’t share any information with you.’ Now, that is highly unusual for a murder investigation, especially from a police department. Again, I don’t think it comes from the chief’s office, but I do believe there is a correlation between the mayor’s office and the DNC and that is the information that will come out [Tuesday].
Microsoft Releases WannaCry Patch for PCs Running Old Operating Systems
May 14th, 2017I’m responsible for protecting some organizations from stuff like this. Here’s what I do:
#1 If Windows is used, only operating systems currently supported by Microsoft are allowed. Even though I personally don’t use Macs, I encourage companies to use them and welcome those users who do use Macs. If you don’t know anything about computer security, and don’t require the fastest hardware, my advice to you would be to use a Mac. MacOS isn’t bullet proof, but it’s not worth attacking as much as Windows because A) It’s actually a harder target to begin with and B) not many people use it (relative to Windows).
#2 Windows PCs are set to download and install updates automatically.
#3 No non-IT staff have administrative accounts and the minimum number of applications required for the job are installed.
#4 Windows PCs run antivirus scans every 24 hours.
#5 All PCs are behind hardware firewalls running updated firmware. Do not trust Microsoft’s built in firewall and never expose a Windows PC directly to the Internet or DMZ.
#6 Local and offsite backups every 24 hours. I’ve set automated backups to run on the local network AND offsite using crashplan.com every day.
#7 Two factor authentication is forced for all employees using cloud services, i.e. Google Apps (now calling itself G Suite).
Even though I don’t really do much IT work anymore, I’ve noticed that wherever people are using Windows, there are people having problems with Windows. And this has nothing to do with the fact that the U.S. Government is stockpiling cyber weapons based on zero day exploits that it keeps secret—until the “hackers” get a hold of them… *haha* *sigh*
What I describe above would be the minimum defensive posture I’d suggest for a business, or anyone needing to protect their systems and data. This is maybe a 3 or 4 on a scale of 10 in terms of paranoia, yet it’s almost infinitely more secure than most people are running on a day to day basis.
Via: PC World:
Users of old Windows systems can now download a patch to protect them from this week’s massive ransomware attack.
In a rare step, Microsoft published a patch for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 8—all of them operating systems for which it no longer provides mainstream support.
Users can download and find more information about the patches in Microsoft’s blog post about Friday’s attack from the WannaCry ransomware.
New Zealand: High Levels of E-Coli Found in Creek that Runs Into Treasured Springs
May 14th, 2017Disclosure: I am involved with the effort to bring attention to the pollution and water take issues at Te Waikoropupu Springs Reserve.
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There is video of the manure slurry feeding into the crystal clear water over SOSGoldenBay.nz. Scroll down to the 28 April entry, if you dare.
Via: Stuff:
High E-coli levels have been found in a creek that flows into the reserve that holds the country’s largest freshwater springs.
The monitoring of Fish Creek, which flows into Te Waikoropupu Springs Reserve in Golden Bay, revealed the water is subject to severe levels of pollution from dairy farm runoff during rain events.
Te Waikoropupu Springs is the southern hemisphere’s largest coldwater springs and has some of the clearest waters ever measured on earth.
High E-coli levels have been found in a creek that flows into the reserve that holds the country’s largest freshwater springs.
The monitoring of Fish Creek, which flows into Te Waikoropupu Springs Reserve in Golden Bay, revealed the water is subject to severe levels of pollution from dairy farm runoff during rain events.
Te Waikoropupu Springs is the southern hemisphere’s largest coldwater springs and has some of the clearest waters ever measured on earth.
