Pentagon Spent $5 Billion on Weapons on the Eve of the Shutdown
October 3rd, 2013Via: Foreign Policy:
The Pentagon pumped billions of dollars into contractors’ bank accounts on the eve of the U.S. government’s shutdown that saw 400,000 Defense Department employees furloughed.
All told, the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts yesterday evening on its annual end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree, spending more than five billion dollars on everything from robot submarines to Finnish hand grenades and a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform. To put things in perspective, the Pentagon gave out only 14 contracts on September 3, the first workday of the month.
Here are some of the more interesting purchases from Monday’s dollar-dump…
NSA Admits Bulk Collection of Cell Phone Location Data, But Don’t Worry, This Was Only a Test
October 3rd, 2013*wink*
Via: New York Times:
The National Security Agency conducted a secret pilot project in 2010 and 2011 to test the collection of bulk data about the location of Americans’ cellphones, but the agency never moved ahead with such a program, according to intelligence officials.
The existence of the pilot project was reported on Wednesday morning by The New York Times and later confirmed by James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The project used data from cellphone towers to locate people’s cellphones.
In his testimony, Mr. Clapper revealed few details about the project. He said that the N.S.A. does not currently collect locational information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the provision the government says is the legal basis for the N.S.A.’s once-secret program under which it collects logs of all domestic calls from telephone companies.
“In 2010 and 2011, N.S.A. received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes,” Mr. Clapper said.
He added that the N.S.A. had promised to notify Congress and seek the approval of a secret surveillance court in the future before any locational data was collected using Section 215.
An official familiar with the test project said its purpose was to see how the locational data would flow into the N.S.A.’s systems. While real data was used, it was never drawn upon in any investigation, the official said. It was unclear how many Americans’ locational data was collected as part of the project, whether the agency has held on to that information or why the program did not go forward.
Man Held in Solitary Confinement for 41 Years for a Crime He Didn’t Commit, Released from Prison on Verge of Death
October 2nd, 2013Via: The Times Picayune:
In the last 41 years, Herman Wallace has been incarcerated for a robbery he did commit, indicted for a murder a court ruled he didn’t and diagnosed with a cancer that will end his life. But Tuesday night, he passed through the prison gates and, as a free man, made his way back to the city in which he grew up — New Orleans.
Research Credit: ottilie
Box: Projection-Mapping Onto Moving Surfaces
October 2nd, 2013Via: Bot & Dolly on Vimeo:
Box explores the synthesis of real and digital space through projection-mapping onto moving surfaces. The short film documents a live performance, captured entirely in camera.
Box from Bot & Dolly on Vimeo.
Research Credit: alvinroasting
Jellyfish Force Nuclear Plant Shutdown in Sweden
October 2nd, 2013Via: AP:
It wasn’t a tsunami but it had the same effect: A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors to shut down — a phenomenon that marine biologists say could become more common.
Operators of the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in southeastern Sweden had to scramble reactor number three on Sunday after tonnes of jellyfish clogged the pipes that bring in cool water to the plant’s turbines.
By Tuesday, the pipes had been cleaned of the jellyfish and engineers were preparing to restart the reactor, which at 1,400 megawatts of output is the largest boiling-water reactor in the world, said Anders Osterberg, a spokesman for OKG, the plant operator.
All three Oskharshamn reactors are boiling-water types, the same technology at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant that suffered a catastrophic failure in 2011 after a tsunami breached the facility’s walls and flooded its equipment.
Jellyfish are not a new problem for nuclear power plants. Last year the California-based Diablo Canyon facility had to shut its reactor two after gobs of sea salp — a gelatinous, jellyfish-like organism — clogged intake pipes. In 2005, the first unit at Oskarshamn was temporarily turned off due to a sudden jellyfish influx.
Recovery: More Americans Are Struggling to Afford Food
October 2nd, 2013Via: Gallup:
More Americans are struggling to afford food — nearly as many as did during the recent recession. The 20.0% who reported in August that they have, at times, lacked enough money to buy the food that they or their families needed during the past year, is up from 17.7% in June, and is the highest percentage recorded since October 2011. The percentage who struggle to afford food now is close to the peak of 20.4% measured in November 2008, as the global economic crisis unfolded.
How a Purse Snatching Led to the Legal Justification for NSA Domestic Spying
October 2nd, 2013Via: Wired:
It began as an ordinary purse snatching. On an early Baltimore morning in 1976, a local street thug crouched alongside his green Monte Carlo, pretending to change a flat, biding his time. Finally, a young woman passed by walking alone to her suburban home. Smith wrenched her handbag from her grasp, jumped into his car and tore off down the street before the young victim could glimpse his license plate.
The perp, Michael Lee Smith, was apprehended weeks later, thanks in part to the police department’s use of a machine known as a “pen register” to track the threatening phone calls the assailant had started making to his victim. The court wrangling that followed, however, would continue for three years, and eventually land on the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1979 the court upheld Smith’s conviction, and his 10-year prison term.
Almost 35 years later, the court’s decision — in a case involving the recording of a single individual’s phone records — turns out to be the basis for a legal rationale justifying governmental spying on virtually all Americans. Smith v. Maryland, as the case is titled, set the binding precedent for what we now call metadata surveillance. That, in turn, has recently been revealed to be the keystone of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. telephone data, in which the government chronicles every phone call originating or terminating in the United States, all in the name of the war on terror.
“When they started quoting Smith in the NSA investigation and inquiry, I was flabbergasted,” says James Gitomer, who was one of Smith’s two lawyers at the Supreme Court. ”I don’t think this case should be used as the foundation to justify the NSA. It doesn’t apply.”
Japan: New Robot Picks Ripe Strawberries While Farmers Sleep
October 2nd, 2013Via: AFP:
A robot that picks ripe strawberries while farmers sleep has been unveiled with claims it could cut workloads by two-thirds.
The device, unveiled Wednesday, can pick a piece of fruit every eight seconds by using three cameras to determine which strawberries are ready to pick. A mechanized arm then darts out to snip each one free and place it into its basket.
The 2-meter robot moves on rails between rows of strawberries, which in Japan are usually grown in elevated greenhouse planters.
Research Credit: alvinroasting
PCIe Flash Storage on Laptops
October 1st, 2013A friend of mine showed me his brand new Apple Macbook Air.
That thing is very fast.
There are many articles out there about how Apple used PCIe based flash storage to achieve that incredible throughput—but you sorta need to have the jarring experience of running applications on that machine for those numbers to hit home. I found my head involuntarily jerking backward a lot and my jaw hanging slack. Oh yeah, the machine weighs less than 3 pounds.
Anyway, as far as I’ve been able to see, none of Apple’s competitors are offering any laptops that use PCIe flash storage—even in a heavier and uglier package. Is that right? Is the new Macbook Air the only machine that uses PCIe storage?
Update: Sony Vaio Pro Has PCIe Storage
VAIO Pro 13 includes a high speed PCIe SSD drive standard on all models.
Update: Be Careful with the Sony
GP writes:
I ran across this today. Apparently, anyone buying a Sony for the PCIe SSD has to be very careful to get one that makes full use of the PCIe SSD:
“…Something not many people are aware of is that there are actually two physically different Sony VAIO Pro 13 ultrabook configurations being distributed, those that have been constructed for pre-configured sales and those for custom build. Pre-configured configurations may use a SATA based PCIe SSD, while all custom builds use a much higher performing native PCIe SSD. We were a bit confused as Sony was clearly advertising ‘PCIe solid state drive’ in its configurations worldwide, and even stating that the PCIe ‘booted-up faster, launched apps at lightning speeds and enjoy snappier overall performance capabilities versus a traditional mSATA SSD drive’ In the case of pre-configured SATA PCIe SSD systems, this marketing is incorrect….’
http://www.thessdreview.com/hardware/notebooks/sony-vaio-pro-13-ultrabook-review/
Is Saddam Hussein’s Fortune in a Warehouse in Moscow?
October 1st, 2013Via: Daily Mail:
A cargo of 20 billion euros in cash (£16.75billion) has lain unclaimed at a Moscow airport for six years amid allegations it could be the secret fortune of Saddam Hussein.
The stash, now under high security in a cargo depot, is held on 200 wooden pallets each worth 100 million euros, enough to keep the entire NHS going for almost two months.
Russian customs have demanded the real owner of the booty “presents himself” to claim the fortune, but while a number of bogus and unconvincing attempts have been made to obtain it, no-one has satisfied the authorities that they are the rightful recipient.
‘It is possible that this is the money of Saddam Hussein,’ an anonymous intelligence source told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
The cash mountain, all in 100 euro notes, was flown to Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow from Frankfurt on 7 August 2007 and it has remained frozen there ever since.
Russian sources say the authorities have failed to untangle the identity of the ultimate owner of the money, which – strangely – arrived at the airport without a specified recipient on the consignment.
Research Credit: afterhours
