Here Comes the War for Commercial Drone Dominance
May 14th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
At some point in the not-too-distant future, fleets of commercial drones are expected to swarm across American skies. Companies in a wide range of industries will employ unmanned vehicles for tactical advantage—inspecting infrastructure, surveying crops, maybe even estimating how much your new roof will cost.
And when these drones fly, a torrent of data will follow them like an invisible contrail.
“Data is the new oil,” Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich said this week at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s annual Xponential conference in Dallas, the industry’s top trade show. He cited a growing competitive “separation” between companies that collect and understand their data and those that don’t. A single autonomous car can generate the same data trove as 3,000 people surfing the internet, while a small drone fleet could easily create 150 terabytes of data per day, he said (1,000 gigabytes equals 1 terabyte). “The data rate is going to explode on us in the next few years,” Krzanich said.
In Cashless Sweden, Even God Now Takes Collection Via an App
May 14th, 2017Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates open 24/7.
Via: Bloomberg:
In the most cashless society on the planet, even God now accepts digital payments.
A growing number of Swedish parishes have started taking donations via mobile apps. Uppsala’s 13th-century cathedral also accepts credit cards.
The churches’ drive to keep up with the times is the latest sign of Sweden’s rapid shift to a world without notes and coins. Most of the country’s bank branches have stopped handling cash; some shops and museums now only accept plastic; and even Stockholm’s homeless have started accepting cards as payment for their magazine. Go to a flea market, and the seller is more likely to ask to be paid via Sweden’s popular Swish app than with cash.
“Fifteen years ago I would withdraw my entire salary and put it in my wallet, so I knew how much I had left, but these days I never really carry cash,” said Lasse Svard, the acting vicar at the parish of Jarna-Vardinge, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Stockholm.
An NSA-Derived Ransomware Worm Is Shutting Down Computers Worldwide
May 12th, 2017I don’t know what it’s going to take to convince people to stop using abandoned versions of Windows, but if this doesn’t do it, nothing will.
Via: Ars Technica:
A highly virulent new strain of self-replicating ransomware shut down computers all over the world, in part by appropriating a National Security Agency exploit that was publicly released last month by the mysterious group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
The malware, known as Wanna, Wannacry, or Wcry, has infected at least 75,000 computers, according to antivirus provider Avast. AV provider Kaspersky Lab said organizations in at least 74 countries have been affected, with Russia being disproportionately affected, followed by Ukraine, India, and Taiwan. Infections are also spreading through the United States. The malware is notable for its multi-lingual ransom demands, which support more than two-dozen languages.
Wcry is reportedly causing disruptions at banks, hospitals, telecommunications services, train stations, and other mission-critical organizations in multiple countries, including the UK, Spain, Germany, and Turkey. FedEx, the UK government’s National Health Service, and Spanish telecom Telefonica have all been hit. The Spanish CERT has called it a “massive ransomware attack” that is encrypting all the files of entire networks and spreading laterally through organizations.
The virally spreading worm was ultimately stopped when a researcher who uses the Twitter handle MalwareTech and works for security firm Kryptos Logic took control of a domain name that was hard-coded into the self-replicating exploit. The domain registration, which occurred around 6 AM California time, was a major stroke of good luck, because it was possible only because the attackers had failed to obtain the address first.
…
Another cause for concern: wcry copies a weapons-grade exploit codenamed Eternalblue that the NSA used for years to remotely commandeer computers running Microsoft Windows. Eternalblue, which works reliably against computers running Microsoft Windows XP through Windows Server 2012, was one of several potent exploits published in the most recent Shadow Brokers release in mid-April. The Wcry developers have combined the Eternalblue exploit with a self-replicating payload that allows the ransomware to spread virally from vulnerable machine to vulnerable machine, without requiring operators to open e-mails, click on links, or take any other sort of action.
…
People who have yet to install the Microsoft fix—MS17-010—should do so right away. People should also be extremely suspicious of all e-mails they receive, particularly those that ask the recipient to open attached documents or click on Web links.
Ex-L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca Sentenced to Three Years in Prison in Jail Corruption Scandal
May 12th, 2017Via: Los Angeles Times:
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, once a towering, respected figure in policing, was sentenced Friday to three years in federal prison for his role in a scheme to obstruct an FBI investigation of abuses in county jails, marking an end to a corruption scandal that has roiled the Sheriff’s Department for several years.
…
Excoriating Baca’s refusal to accept responsibility for having overseen and condoned the obstruction ploy carried out by subordinates, the judge portrayed him as a man driven by his desire to protect his own reputation and maintain control over the Sheriff’s Department.
“Your actions embarrass the thousands of men and women [in the department] who put their lives on the line every day,” Anderson said to Baca. “They were a gross abuse of the trust the public placed in you.”
New Zealand Population Surges Most Since World Turmoil of 1974
May 12th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
The last time New Zealand’s population grew this much, the world was reeling from an oil crisis and Richard Nixon’s resignation from the White House.
The small nation at the bottom of the South Pacific saw its population surge by 100,300 people in the year to March 31, the biggest nominal increase since European colonization began in the 1840s, according to Statistics New Zealand. In percentage terms, the 2.1 percent gain is the largest since 1974, the year the price of oil quadrupled and U.S. President Nixon was forced to resign by the Watergate scandal.
The Boring Company: Tunnel Boring Machine Assembly Underway in Los Angeles
May 12th, 2017Even now, even as the machine is being assembled, I still keep asking myself, “Is this really going to happen?”
Via: Electrek:
Even though Elon Musk described his new Boring Company as “a few engineers and interns”, it seems to be moving incredibly fast.
They took delivery of their first boring machine last month and Musk now unveils new pictures of the entry hole, staging area for the machine, and the start of his network of tunnels under Los Angeles.
DIY EV and Powerwall/ESS: Insane Deal on New LG Lithium Ion Packs
May 11th, 2017Heads up for people doing DIY EV and ESS projects—and no need to hear from the Nervous Nellies.
Jehu Garcia grew up in Tijuana with a dirt floor in his house and a hole for a toilet. All day, the Nervous Nellies tell him that he’s going to blow himself up after poking his eye out. Unlike the Nervous Nellies, though, Jehu has been driving around his own electric VW microbus that he converted to electric by himself with ZERO formal education in electronics.
Go, Jehu, go!
Anyway, here’s the deal he found:
I’d personally wait for some of these packs to get into the hands of the DIY community to verify capacity and discharge rate before ordering. A big unknown is the included BMS, but even if you have the scrap the BMS, we’ve never seen a deal like this on new, high discharge rate cells. Even as good as this is, Jehu is in contact with other large liquidators who say the situation gets even better from here. More and larger modules are on the way.
Unfortunately, this is U.S. only.
If you know of anyone in Europe and/or Australia who is looking to distribute these in quantities ranging from pallets to containers: Contact Jehu.
Note: I have no relationship with Jehu or anyone else related to these cells. It’s all just FYI.
Via: Jehu Garcia:
Roundup in Vaccines
May 11th, 2017Via: Moms Across America:
Glyphosate, a chemical ingredient found in Monsanto’s Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, has been found in vaccines. Moms Across America received preliminary screening results from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri which show the DTap Adacel (Sanofi Pasteur) vaccine had 0.123 ppb, Influenza Fluvirin (Novaris) 0.331 ppb and HepB Energix-B (Glaxo Smith Kline) 0.325 and Pneumonoccal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23, (Merck) had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate.The MMR II (Merck) vaccine, which CDC whistle blower Dr.William Thompson has linked to autism, had levels up to 25 times higher than the other vaccines, at 2.671ppb. Subsequently, multiple rounds of additional independent tests have confirmed these findings at or above the same levels.
Tunnel Collapse at Hanford Nuclear Waste Site
May 11th, 2017Via: CBC:
When workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington state suddenly found a hole in the ground on Tuesday morning, there was cause for concern.
Nowhere in the United States is there more nuclear waste and radioactive contamination than at Hanford, which has been the focus of a massive, complex cleanup effort by the U.S. Department of Energy since 1989. The site was used for decades to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel, beginning with the Manhattan Project and the Second World War.
It just so happened that this hole — a “subsidence of soil” according to the Energy Department — had appeared above a concrete tunnel with radioactive equipment stored inside. The concern was that if the roof of the tunnel collapsed it could release long-trapped contaminated material into the air.
While a portion of the tunnel roof did collapse, officials said “there is still no indication of a release of contamination from the hole.” But that’s not to say the site — which was never designed to hold this much waste for as long as it has — doesn’t pose other environmental risks.
Tesla Solar Roof Up for Preorder
May 10th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
—
Lifetime physical warranty, 30 year solar output warranty.
Via: Electrek:
The value of Tesla’s solar roof is closely linked to its durability and its ability to generate electricity over decades.
Musk previously discussed the possibility of making the warranty last for the lifetime of the house on which it is installed and they actually did it:
“Made with tempered glass, Solar Roof tiles are more than three times stronger than standard roofing tiles. That’s why we offer the best warranty in the industry – the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first.”
That’s for the tiles themselves. The solar power generation is guaranteed for 30 years, which is on the higher end in the solar panel industry…
