Russia: Don’t Panic
September 17th, 2014Via: BBC:
Russian authorities urged people not to panic on Tuesday as the rouble fell to a new all-time low against the US dollar amid concerns about the effect of sanctions on the country’s economy.
The rouble fell about 1% to 38.71 per dollar, the weakest it has been since the currency was restructured in 1998.
Last week, the US and Europe introduced further sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine.
“Don’t panic,” said deputy finance minister Alexei Moiseyev.
Ordinary Russians are concerned the fall in the rouble could drive up the already high rate of inflation.
In early September annual inflation was 7.7% as the weaker rouble increased the cost of foreign imports and Moscow’s food import ban reduced competition.
The central bank aims to reduce inflation to 4.5% next year and Mr Moiseyev said authorities would act to curb any further increases.
His reassurance came as Russia’s central bank said on Tuesday that it would take action to boost liquidity in the banking sector.
The move aims to help the banks overcome their limited access to foreign capital due to the impact of sanctions.
“These operations are aimed at strengthening the capacity of credit institutions to manage their own short term currency liquidity,” the central bank said in a statement.
Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin had earlier warned that sanctions would have a material impact on the Russian economy.
“The sanctions that have been imposed are going to have an effect for the next one or two years because they have limited opportunities for investment in this uncertain environment,” he said, according to Interfax news agency.
New sanctions imposed on Friday last week targeted Russia’s state finances, energy and arms sectors.
Russian state banks are now excluded from raising long-term capital in the European Union, export bans have been extended, while future EU-Russia arms deals are also banned.
The EU has also followed the US in targeting more individuals in President Putin’s inner circle, as well as some major companies.
The West accuses Russia of supporting Ukrainian pro-Russian rebels in their conflict with government forces. Russia denies any direct involvement.
John Key Concedes Edward Snowden May Well Be Right, While Repeating Absurd Denials
September 16th, 2014Thanks, Captain.
Via: New Zealand Herald:
Prime Minister John Key acknowledged today that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s claim that New Zealanders’ data is accessible through the controversial XKeyscore system “may well be right”.
However, he maintained that information will not have been gathered under any Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) mass surveillance programme as the agency doesn’t have that capability.
During Monday night’s Kim Dotcom sponsored “Moment of Truth” Mr Snowden claimed that as an NSA (National Security Agency) analyst stationed in Hawaii some years ago, he regularly came across New Zealanders’ data held in the agency’s XKeyscore system.
Mr Snowden claimed at least some of that information was gathered via mass surveillance programmes the GCSB was involved with.
Speaking on Radio New Zealand this morning, Mr Key said there were a number of devices and programmes used by the GCSB but he would not go into details.
“However, what I can say in terms of those kinds of Five Eyes databases… yes New Zealand will contribute some information but not mass, wholesale surveillance as people might say.”
Los Angeles Unified School District’s Armored Vehicle and Grenade Launchers
September 16th, 2014Via: CBS:
Los Angeles Unified School District police officials are considering whether they need the armored vehicle and grenade launchers they received from the U.S. military.
The military hardware at the disposal of LAUSD police officers includes a 20-foot-long, 14-ton armored transport vehicles, much like the ones used to move Marines in Iraq combat zones. The armored vehicle is worth $733,000, and the school district’s police force got it from the government for free.
How would LAUSD use such a vehicle?
“For us? That vehicle would be used for extraordinary circumstances,” LAUSD police Chief Steve Zipperman said.
The armored vehicle, which is stored at a secret location, has been in the department’s possession since July.
“It’s something that we believe is a life-saving vehicle,” Zipperman said. “And certainly we realize we need to take a look, is this the best alternative right now for us until we find something else that is more conducive to a police-type of rescue.”
The district is also in possession of grenade launchers, which it received for free from the military after 9/11. Neither the armored vehicle nor the grenade launchers have ever been used. But the district doesn’t plan on keeping them.
“It’s a piece of equipment that’s not essential for our mission, so we will be disposing of those,” Zipperman said.
EMP Hardened Data Centers
September 16th, 2014Via: Computerworld:
In Boyers, Pa., a recently opened 2,000-sq.-ft. data center has been purpose-built to protect against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), either generated by a solar storm or a nuclear event.
The company that built the facility isn’t disclosing exactly how the data center was constructed or what materials were used. But broadly, it did say that the structure has an inner skin and an outer skin that use a combination of thicknesses and metals to provide EMP protection.
There are other data centers that protect against electromagnetic pulses, which can be generated by solar storms or high-altitude nuclear blasts. Underground data centers, in particular, advertise this capability. And some vendors offer containers and cabinets that shield IT equipment from EMPs, which can fry circuits.
Pentagon’s $800 Billion Real Estate Problem
September 16th, 2014Via: Real Clear Defense:
The U.S. Department of Defense owns more than half a million properties worth in excess of $800 billion dollars. The military’s real estate holdings span the globe and, all together, sprawl across 30 million acres.
Pentagon auditors can’t explain what half the properties are for—and doesn’t have a plan for finding out. All this according to a Sept. 8 report from the Government Accountability Office.
The nearly trillion-dollar real estate glut is merely another example of egregious military waste.
Way back in 1997, the GAO identified the Pentagon’s real estate record-keeping as a “high risk” problem. The Defense Department could sell unused facilities and save billions.
It just needed to figure out exactly what buildings it owned and how it used them all. But military bureaucrats made only passing attempts to find out. The Defense Department is probably still sitting on billions of dollars’ worth of properties it has no use for, despite 17 years of GAO goading.
“We found in September 2011 that DoD was limited in its ability to reduce excess inventory because DoD did not maintain accurate and complete data regarding the utilization of its facilities,” the GAO states in its new report.
The Pentagon won’t sell off facilities because it has no idea what’s going on in many of them. Nobody’s keeping good, centralized records. Individual property managers aren’t performing mandatory audits—and the Pentagon isn’t holding them accountable.
MIT/DARPA: “Cheetah” Robot Runs and Jumps, Untethered, Across Grass
September 16th, 2014Via: MIT:
Speed and agility are hallmarks of the cheetah: The big predator is the fastest land animal on Earth, able to accelerate to 60 mph in just a few seconds. As it ramps up to top speed, a cheetah pumps its legs in tandem, bounding until it reaches a full gallop.
Now MIT researchers have developed an algorithm for bounding that they’ve successfully implemented in a robotic cheetah — a sleek, four-legged assemblage of gears, batteries, and electric motors that weighs about as much as its feline counterpart. The team recently took the robot for a test run on MIT’s Killian Court, where it bounded across the grass at a steady clip.
In experiments on an indoor track, the robot sprinted up to 10 mph, even continuing to run after clearing a hurdle. The MIT researchers estimate that the current version of the robot may eventually reach speeds of up to 30 mph.
University of Virginia/MITRE: 3D Printed UAV
September 16th, 2014Via: Wired:
We have 3-D printed keys, guns and shoes—now a research team at the University of Virginia has created a 3D printed UAV drone for the Department of Defense.
In the works for three years, the aircraft, no bigger than a remote-controlled plane, can carry a 1.5-pound payload. If it crashes or needs a design tweak for a new mission, another one can be printed out in a little more than a day, for just $2,500. It’s made with off-the-shelf parts and has an Android phone for a brain.
“We weren’t sure you could make anything lightweight and strong enough to fly,” says David Sheffler, who led the project. Sheffler is a former engineer for Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce who now teaches at the university. After he created a 3-D printed jet engine in one of his classes, the MITRE Corporation, a DoD contractor, asked him to create a 3-D printed UAV that could be easily modified and built with readily available parts.
The Sun Hive: Experimental Natural Beekeeping
September 16th, 2014Via: Milkwood:
Sun Hives are a hive design coming out of Germany and now gathering interest in Britain. They’re part of the world-wide movement towards ‘apicentric’ beekeeping – beekeeping that prioritizes honeybees firstly as pollinators, with honey production being a secondary goal.
The Sun Hive is modeled in part on the traditional European skep hive, and is aimed at creating a hive that maximises colony health. The main thing I love about this hive and the enthusiasm surrounding it is not the hive itself, but the philosophy behind it, that of apicentric beekeeping.
Living Simply in a Dumpster
September 16th, 2014The biggest problem to overcome with anything like this is going to be local ordinances/cops.
Even on a university campus, it’s all fun and games when it’s one guy. It’s a cool curiosity. It’s hip. Journalists can visit and write articles about the novelty of it.
Get dozens of people living in alternative dwellings and my guess is that the university’s attitude toward the experiment would sour pretty fast.
When I met my wife back in 2004, she was living in a tiny trailer that was roughly double the size of the dumpster described in the piece below. The trailer park was called Irvine Meadows West and it was located on the University of California, Irvine campus.
Take a look:
Irvine Meadows West had the most sought after student housing at the university. You might not get a sense of this from watching the video, but it was virtually impossible to get to live there. Far more people wanted to live there than space allowed. Becky happened to be there visiting a friend when someone mentioned they were leaving and that’s how she got her trailer.
There were lots of trees, gardens and a great community—and it was dirt cheap to live there. As you can imagine, the university had been wanting to annihilate that place for a couple of decades. In 2004, they finally got around to it and the guys with bulldozers and chainsaws were sent in.
No shit, they paved paradise to put up a parking lot.
Sing it, Joni:
Via: The Atlantic:
Tucked behind the women’s residence halls in a back corner of Huston-Tillotson University’s campus in Austin, Texas, sits a green dumpster. Were it not for the sliding pitched roof and weather station perched on top, a reasonable person might dismiss the box as “just another dumpster”—providing this person did not encounter the dean of the University College Jeff Wilson living inside.
Research Credit: Pookie
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Isn’t Telling the Truth About Mass Surveillance
September 15th, 2014Via: First Look:
Let me be clear: any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false. If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched. At the NSA I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called “XKEYSCORE.” It allows total, granular access to the database of communications collected in the course of mass surveillance. It is not limited to or even used largely for the purposes of cybersecurity, as has been claimed, but is instead used primarily for reading individuals’ private email, text messages, and internet traffic. I know this because it was my full-time job in Hawaii, where I worked every day in an NSA facility with a top secret clearance.
The prime minister’s claim to the public, that “there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance” is false. The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.
…
It means they have the ability see every website you visit, every text message you send, every call you make, every ticket you purchase, every donation you make, and every book you order online. From “I’m headed to church” to “I hate my boss” to “She’s in the hospital,” the GCSB is there. Your words are intercepted, stored, and analyzed by algorithms long before they’re ever read by your intended recipient.
