Particular Seaweed Fed to Cows Nearly Eliminates Methane
November 20th, 2016Via: CBC News:
The agricultural scientist, then at Dalhousie University, helped test Dorgan’s seaweed mix, and discovered it reduced the methane in the cows’ burps and farts by about 20 per cent.
Kinley knew he was on to something, so he did further testing with 30 to 40 other seaweeds. That led him to a red seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis he says reduces methane in cows burps and farts to almost nothing.
…
“I was testing one day a series of samples when all of a sudden it looked like my instruments were having problems, and I wasn’t able to see emissions from one particular sample,” he said. “So I did it over and over again and lo and behold the methane emissions were eliminated.
West Texas Shale Oil
November 20th, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
In a troubled oil world, the Permian Basin is the gift that keeps on giving.
One portion of the giant field, known as the Wolfcamp formation, was found to hold 20 billion barrels of oil trapped in four layers of shale beneath the desert in West Texas, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a report on Tuesday. That’s almost three times larger than North Dakota’s Bakken play and the single largest U.S. unconventional crude accumulation ever assessed. At current prices, that oil is worth almost $900 billion.
The estimate lends credence to Pioneer Natural Resources Co. Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield’s assertion that the Permian’s shale endowment could hold as much as 75 billion barrels, making it second only to Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field. Pioneer has been increasing its production targets all year as drilling in the Wolfcamp produced bigger gushers than the Irving, Texas-based company’s engineers and geologists forecast.
“The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” Walter Guidroz, coordinator for the geological survey’s energy resources program, said in the statement.
Apple Asks iPhone Manufacturers to Investigate Making iPhones in U.S.
November 19th, 2016Via: Nikkei:
iPhones might one day soon carry “Made in America” labels.
Key Apple assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, has been studying the possibility of moving iPhone production to the U.S., sources told the Nikkei Asian Review.
“Apple asked both Foxconn and Pegatron, the two iPhone assemblers, in June to look into making iPhones in the U.S.,” a source said. “Foxconn complied, while Pegatron declined to formulate such a plan due to cost concerns.”
‘Extreme Surveillance’ Becomes UK Law with Barely a Whimper
November 19th, 2016Via: Guardian:
A bill giving the UK intelligence agencies and police the most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world has passed into law with barely a whimper, meeting only token resistance over the past 12 months from inside parliament and barely any from outside.
The Investigatory Powers Act, given royal assent on Thursday, legalises a whole range of tools for snooping and hacking by the security services unmatched by any other country in western Europe or even the US.
…
US whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted: “The UK has just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies.”
…
The Investigatory Powers Act legalises powers that the security agencies and police had been using for years without making this clear to either the public or parliament. In October, the investigatory powers tribunal, the only court that hears complaints against MI6, MI5 and GCHQ, ruled that they had been unlawfully collecting massive volumes of confidential personal data without proper oversight for 17 years.
Research Credit: Jb
A Demonstration of Browser Events Used to Monitor Online Behaviour
November 19th, 2016Via: clickclickclick.click:
A browser-based game on online profiling.
Michigan Fights Order to Deliver Bottled Water to Flint Residents After Lead Poisoning Disaster
November 18th, 2016Via: Detroit News:
A federal court order requiring Michigan and Flint to deliver bottled water to all city residents without a verified filter at their home places is unnecessary and places an “insurmountable” burden on state government, the Snyder administration argued in a motion seeking relief.
Snyder officials argued the court order would require a “Herculean effort” equivalent to a large-scale military operation and cost the state at least $10.45 million a month, or $125 million annually. For about a year, Flint’s residents have been advised against drinking their tap water without a filter due to dangerously high lead levels.
Attorneys for Michigan Treasurer Nick Khouri and the Flint Receivership Transition Advisory Board on Thursday asked U.S. Circuit Judge David M. Lawson to “stay” his order from last week while the state prepares an appeal.
In a 37-page opinion, Lawson ordered home delivery of four cases of water per resident each week unless state and city officials can verify each resident has a properly installed and maintained faucet water filter. The delivery order “increases the scope of the State’s emergency response to an unnecessary and insurmountable degree, particularly in light of the injunction’s time constraints,” attorneys wrote.
“The required injunction far exceeds what is necessary to ensure Flint residents have access to safe drinking water,” the lawyers wrote, arguing Khouri and the state advisory board lack the authority to ensure compliance with an order that could cost Michigan taxpayers “millions of dollars.”
Michigan Democratic Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, criticized the Snyder administration’s appeal.
“If the governor had made a Herculean effort to address this crisis from the start, they wouldn’t need to continue this legal maneuvering,” Ananich said in a Thursday statement, referring to the three months that passed between the acknowledgment of elevated lead levels and a January state emergency declaration.
Research Credit: Duros
“Pizzagate”: How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of Washington’s Occult Elite
November 18th, 2016This is a very bad one. I was trying to follow this on 4chan a couple of weeks ago, but I just couldn’t stand it.
Thankfully, Vigilant Citizen has put this summary together.
Via: Vigilant Citizen:
Posters over at 4Chan and Reddit have been conducting an extremely bizarre investigation following the John Podesta e-mail leak (Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman) and the results are surreal: They’ve apparently uncovered an elite child trafficking network which celebrates its tendencies using code words and disturbing artworks.
Research Credit: DF
SpaceX Plans Worldwide Satellite Internet with Low Latency, Gigabit Speed
November 17th, 2016Anyone remember Teledesic?
Via: Ars Technica:
SpaceX has detailed ambitious plans to bring fast Internet access to the entire world with a new satellite system that offers greater speeds and lower latency than existing satellite networks.
The private spacecraft company founded by CEO Elon Musk filed an application Tuesday for satellite space station authorizations with the US Federal Communications Commission. SpaceX recently said that its satellite service’s commercial availability date has not yet been determined, but the application’s technical description mentioned 2019 as a possible time for launching satellites into orbit.
SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 satellites into low-Earth orbits, with altitudes ranging from 715 miles to 823 miles. By contrast, the existing HughesNet satellite network has an altitude of 22,000 miles.
SpaceX’s plan for low orbits would greatly reduce latency. As we’ve previously written, current satellite Internet systems suffer from high latency, meaning that data packets must travel great distances between Earth and satellites, resulting in noticeable delays for Internet users.
SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms, similar to the latencies measured for wired Internet services. Current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements.
Citibank To Stop Accepting Cash At Some Branches
November 17th, 2016Via: ZeroHedge:
Less than a week after India’s surprise move to scrap its highest denomination cash notes, another front in the War on Cash has intensified down under in Australia.
Yesterday, banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia’s $100 and $50 bills would be “good for the economy and good for the banks.”
(How convenient that a bank would propose something that’s good for banks!)
This isn’t the first time that the financial establishment has pushed for a cashless society in Australia (or anywhere else).
In September 2015, Australian bank Westpac published its “Cash Free Report”, suggesting that the country would become cashless by 2022.
Titanpointe: The NSA’s Spy Hub in New York, Hidden in Plain Sight
November 17th, 2016Via: The Intercept:
Documents obtained by The Intercept from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden do not explicitly name 33 Thomas Street as a surveillance facility. However — taken together with architectural plans, public records, and interviews with former AT&T employees conducted for this article — they provide compelling evidence that 33 Thomas Street has served as an NSA surveillance site, code-named TITANPOINTE.
Inside 33 Thomas Street there is a major international “gateway switch,” according to a former AT&T engineer, which routes phone calls between the United States and countries across the world. A series of top-secret NSA memos suggest that the agency has tapped into these calls from a secure facility within the AT&T building. The Manhattan skyscraper appears to be a core location used for a controversial NSA surveillance program that has targeted the communications of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and at least 38 countries, including close U.S. allies such as Germany, Japan, and France.
It has long been known that AT&T has cooperated with the NSA on surveillance, but few details have emerged about the role of specific facilities in carrying out the top-secret programs. The Snowden documents provide new information about how NSA equipment has been integrated as part of AT&T’s network in New York City, revealing in unprecedented detail the methods and technology the agency uses to vacuum up communications from the company’s systems.
