PassMark Sees First Yearly Drop In Average CPU Performance In Its 20 Years Of Benchmark Results
February 11th, 2025Via: Tom’s Hardware:
Benchmarking software developer PassMark publishes the average results of all Windows PC tests across the globe every two weeks in a line graph. In line with what many enthusiasts might expect, the PassMark graph has always shown a consistent increase in processor performance year-on-year. However, for the first time since the company started keeping track in 2004, the average CPU mark score for desktop and laptop processors has dropped, with laptops dropping 3.4% year-over-year.
Anna Paulina Luna to Lead Task Force on Declassification of UFOs, JFK Assassination, 9/11, Epstein
February 11th, 2025Limited hangouts for all the things.
? LIVE: Chairman @RepJamesComer and Congresswoman Luna Hold Press Conference to Make Major Announcement https://t.co/hM315q7fWk
— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) February 11, 2025
Via: Fox:
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., will lead a new task force focused on the declassification of federal secrets – including records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other documents in the public interest, Fox News Digital has learned.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., appointed Luna to chair the “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.”
Luna is expected to focus on examining the declassification of materials in the public interest, including the client list of Jeffrey Epstein, and files relating to Sept. 11, 2001, COVID-19 origins, UFOs and more.
Fox News Digital has learned that Comer and Luna are sending letters to necessary agencies to kick off the declassification investigations.
Trump Says No Right of Return for Palestinians Under His Gaza Proposal
February 10th, 2025Annexing Canada? Annexing Greenland? Those are somewhat easy to dismiss. (Right? Right!?!)
There is, however, some sort of X factor between Trump and Zionism, which means that we should take Trump much more seriously when it comes to the Gaza situation.
When I first heard Trump’s Gaza plan, my first thought was, “He’s having some sort of Biden moment.”
It isn’t that.
Despite his staff continuously trying to walk this back, Trump keeps reiterating it.
In trying to understand this, everything I’m finding is similar to this discussion below. Essentially, there’s a lot of bewilderment and a belief that Trump isn’t actually going to do it:
Via: Al Jazeera:
United States President Donald Trump has confirmed that his proposal for mass displacement in Gaza does not include a right of return for Palestinians in the enclave.
In an interview with Fox News, partially aired on Monday, Trump also reiterated his push to “own” Gaza.
Asked whether Palestinians would be allowed to return to their territory under his plan, Trump said, “No, they wouldn’t.”
The US president’s plan to empty Gaza of its population has been forcefully rejected across the Middle East – including by Egypt and Jordan, the main countries that Trump says he wants to host displaced Palestinians.
Rights groups have also condemned the push, saying that it would amount to ethnic cleansing.
Trump’s assertion that he is seeking the permanent displacement of people in Gaza appears to contradict recent comments by his aides who said that the enclave’s residents would be able to return after the area is rebuilt.
Last week, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said people in Gaza would be “temporarily relocated”.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said that the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza would be in the “interim”, and residents would be able to “move back in” after reconstruction.
“When DOGE found empty fields in Treasury’s payment system, they uncovered more than missing data. They found a mechanism.”
February 10th, 2025I’d be astonished if it’s only 50% fraud.
Via: EKO:
Simple things were left blank:
Payment categories
Payment rationales
Basic audit controls
The kind of fields any small business would require. The kind that let you track where money goes. The kind that stop a billion dollars of fraud. Every week.
Here’s what Treasury didn’t want exposed:
Over $100 billion flowing annually to accounts without Social Security numbers. No temporary ID numbers. No verification. Nothing. When Musk asked Treasury officials how much was “unequivocal and obvious fraud,” the answer revealed decades of corruption: Half.
…
“Everything at Treasury was geared towards complaint minimization,” Musk revealed after meeting with officials. Not accuracy. Not accountability. Not protecting taxpayer dollars. Just keeping the machine quiet.
This wasn’t incompetence. This was design.
DOGE Technologist and Thiel Fellow Luke Farritor
February 10th, 2025And now, Department of Energy: …listed as an engineer in the DOE’s staff directory…
Hmm.
Via: R&D World:
Before he joined the White House’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), 23-year-old engineer and former SpaceX software intern Luke Farritor was already making waves in digital archaeology. In 2023, he helped lead the Grand Prize-winning team in the Vesuvius Challenge—netting a portion of a $700,000 payout—by using state-of-the-art “autosegmentation” algorithms to virtually unroll a fragile Herculaneum scroll without physically cracking its carbonized layers. The Musk Foundation is among the biggest financial backers of the Vesuvius Challenge, whose partners include the Getty and the Google data science subsidiary Kaggle.
According to a Wall Street Journal article published on Feb. 9, 2024, the contest was launched by investors and scholars hoping to spur breakthroughs in reading these carbonized scrolls. It ultimately drew more than 3,000 competitors, including college students, software engineers, and AI researchers—all aiming to unearth texts lost for nearly 2,000 years.
Two years after virtually unrolling a scorched Herculaneum scroll along with Youssef Nader and Julian Schilliger, 23-year-old software whiz and Thiel Fellow Luke Farritor is once again in the spotlight—this time for his involvement at DOGE, reportedly receiving access to the Department of Energy’s IT system and listed as an engineer in the DOE’s staff directory.
Related: Palantir’s ‘Revolving Door’ with Government Spurs Huge Growth
Musk: FEMA Diverted Funds Meant for Natural Disasters to Pay for Luxury Hotels for Illegal Migrants
February 10th, 2025Under Biden, FEMA betrayed the American people by diverting funds meant for natural disasters to pay for luxury hotels for illegal migrants https://t.co/x135ryYM66
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025
Trump Orders End of Penny Production
February 10th, 2025Via: USA Today:
A 233-year run could be over.
President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he is telling the Treasury Department to stop minting pennies, after more than 200 years of the coin.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump said on Truth Social. “I have instructed my Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
Research Underway to Enable Satellites to Permanently Orbit in Very Low Earth Orbit
February 9th, 2025Is this actually going to happen?
I don’t know why, but Cryptogon is read by many people who are qualified to provide a sanity check on this. I hope they comment.
Needless to say, it would be very bad if remote operated/autonomous weapon systems were able to use realtime, high definition imagery, available planet-wide, for ISTAR.
This would be very, very bad. Double plus bad.
Current systems require tasking (with sometimes lengthy delays) or deployment of assets that have limited loitering durations.
As you continue to be fleeced to within an inch of your life for energy, the space based control grid… Fuels itself?!?
Via: BBC:
“When you start describing it to people, it starts to sound like a perpetual motion machine,” says Spence Wise, senior vice-president at Redwire, an aerospace firm in Florida. A perpetual motion machine is not meant to be possible. But it almost is, in this instance.
…
This new generation of orbiters could enable ultra-high-definition surveillance of activities on the ground, or superfast satellite-based communications.
…
They are developing technology to harvest molecules from the thin layer of air that is present in VLEO in order to actually propel satellites here. Such a system, called Air-Breathing Electric Propulsion (ABEP), has been made possible by advancements in electric and ion propulsion in recent years. In essence, it involves fixing a large bucket or opening to the front of the satellite, into which gas molecules from the atmosphere flow before they are ionised to create plasma that generates thrust.
“The idea is to use the same air slowing down your satellite as a propellant,” says Francesco Romano, a scientist at the Swiss Plasma Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, who has previously studied this technology. Using electric and magnetic fields, the engine would ionise gas from the atmosphere, taking away one electron from each molecule, to produce a free electron and an ion. Then, using magnets, the electrons and ions are pushed out the back of the spacecraft, producing thrust. “Theoretically, if you can generate a thrust that is the same as your drag, you stay at this altitude for an infinite amount of time,” says Romano.
To date, an assortment of experimental ABEP systems have been able to produce relatively small amounts of thrust at ground level, but their feasibility in orbit has yet to be properly tested.
USAID Funded Massive ‘News’ Platform, Extending ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ To Billions Worldwide
February 9th, 2025Via: ZeroHedge:
In addition to propping up far-left corporate media outlets like Politico and the BBC with taxpayer funds, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has funneled half a billion dollars to a secretive non-governmental organization operating a global news propaganda matrix.
WikiLeaks published the bombshell report in the overnight hours that shows the massive taxpayer-funded state propaganda network – operating as a shady NGO – called “Internews Network”:
USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, “Internews Network” (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and “training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.
Apple Ordered by UK to Create Global iCloud Encryption Backdoor
February 7th, 2025Via: MacRumors:
The British government has secretly demanded that Apple give it blanket access to all encrypted user content uploaded to the cloud, reports The Washington Post.
The undisclosed order is said to have been issued last month, and requires that Apple creates a back door that allows UK security officials unencumbered access to encrypted user data worldwide – an unprecedented demand not before seen in any other democratic country.
The spying order came by way of a “technical capability notice,” a document sent to Apple by the Home Secretary, ordering it to provide access under the sweeping UK Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) of 2016. Critics have labeled the legislation the “Snooper’s Charter,” as it authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies when needed to collect evidence.
An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the revelation, though the law actually makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government even made such a demand.
