Foxconn to Speed Up ‘Robot Army’ Deployment
June 27th, 2013Via: IT World:
Manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group is on track with its goal to a create a “million robot army”, and already has 20,000 robotic machines in its factories, said the company’s CEO Terry Gou on Wednesday.
Workers’ wages in China are rising, and so the company’s research in robots and automation has to catch up, Gou said, while speaking at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Taipei. “We have over 1 million workers. In the future we will add 1 million robotic workers,” he said. “Our [human] workers will then become technicians and engineers.” <--- LOL
Genetically Engineered Sugar Beets Destroyed in Southern Oregon
June 27th, 2013Via: Oregon Live:
Federal investigators are asking the public to help solve middle-of-the-night crimes that left ruined fields of genetically engineered sugar beets in rural Jackson County.
The crop destruction took place over the course of two separate nights in early June, when an unknown individual or group destroyed about 6,500 sugar beet plants genetically engineered to stand up to the herbicide Roundup on a pair of privately-owned plots of land leased and managed by Syngenta.
The first act of what the FBI considers “economic sabotage and a violation of federal law involving damage to commercial agricultural enterprises,” took place during the night of June 8, when about 1,000 sugar beet plants on one property were destroyed. Three nights later, the destruction continued on another property, where another 5,500 plants were ruined.
“It doesn’t look like a vehicle was used. It looks like people entered the field and destroyed the plants by hand,” said Paul Minehart, head of corporate communications in North America for Syngenta, a global agriculture corporation based in Basel, Switzerland.
License-Plate Readers Let Police Collect Millions of Records on Drivers
June 27th, 2013Via: Center for Investigative Reporting:
When the city of San Leandro, Calif., purchased a license-plate reader for its police department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car.
The results shocked him.
The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.
That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him “frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection.” The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.
At a rapid pace, and mostly hidden from the public, police agencies throughout California have been collecting millions of records on drivers and feeding them to intelligence fusion centers operated by local, state and federal law enforcement.
With heightened concern over secret intelligence operations at the National Security Agency, the localized effort to track drivers highlights the extent to which the government has committed to collecting large amounts of data on people who have done nothing wrong.
A year ago, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center – one of dozens of law enforcement intelligence-sharing centers set up after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – signed a $340,000 agreement with the Silicon Valley firm Palantir to construct a database of license-plate records flowing in from police using the devices across 14 counties, documents and interviews show.
The extent of the center’s data collection has never been revealed. Neither has the involvement of Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm with extensive ties to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The CIA’s venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, has invested $2 million in the firm.
The jurisdictions supplying license-plate data to the intelligence center stretch from Monterey County to the Oregon border. According to contract documents, the database will be capable of handling at least 100 million records and be accessible to local and state law enforcement across the region.
San Diego Man Facing 13 Years in Prison for Writing Anti Bank Slogans on Sidewalks Outside Banks
June 27th, 2013Update: Acquitted
Via: AP:
The mayor called the case “stupid” and a jury swiftly said it shouldn’t stick, taking the eraser to vandalism charges for a man who wrote anti-bank slogans on San Diego sidewalks.
A Superior Court jury deliberated for five hours after a four-day trial before acquitting Jeff Olson Monday of the 13 misdemeanor charges that could have brought 13 years in jail and $13,000 in fines.
Olson, 40, was charged with scrawling messages like “Shame on B of A” and `’No thanks, big banks” in water-soluble chalk on sidewalks outside San Diego Bank of America branches from April to August 2012. He included a drawing of an octopus reaching for dollar bills.
Olson turned to his attorney, nodded and smiled as the verdicts were read.
—
Update: Judge Issues Gag Order
Via: San Diego Reader:
The judge in the case of the anti-Bank of America protester has issued a gag order, prohibiting the defendant or any witnesses from speaking to any members of the media.
…
The gag order came less than three hours after Olson appeared on the Mornings with Chip and Ladona radio show on KOGO. During the show, Olson was not shy with his opinions on the Bank of America security executive who continued to ask San Diego Police Officers and the City Attorney’s Office for prosecution as well as on other issues.
The decision is in addition to a previous ruling from Shore which prohibits Olson’s attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial.
—
Via: CBS8:
A North Park man is looking at more than a decade behind bars for using washable chalk to protest the banking industry.
Jeff Olson is being charged with 13 counts of vandalism for writing anti-bank slogans on sidewalks outside three Bank of America branches.
A surveillance camera caught Olson in the act, writing on the sidewalk in front of a Bank of America in North Park. But here’s the thing — Olson admits it.
“I wrote ‘No thanks big banks,’ I wrote ‘Shame on Bank of America,'” he said.
BP Thinks It Overpaid Damages for Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Disaster
June 27th, 2013Via: AP:
BP oil spill settlement payments are being aggressively contested by London-based BP. The company may seek to recover what BP calls ‘overpayments’ that businesses received from the court-supervised settlement program for the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
80% of Pre-Packaged Foods in America Are Banned in Other Countries
June 25th, 2013Via: Yahoo:
If you or your kids enjoy pre-packaged convenience foods commonly found in grocery stores across the U.S. such as Froot Loops, Swanson dinners, Mountain Dew, and frozen potato and bread products, you may think twice before purchasing them after hearing what they contain: dangerous chemicals that other countries around the globe have deemed toxic to the point that they’re illegal, and companies are fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for including them in food products.
In a new book Rich Food, Poor Food, authors Mira and Jason Calton provide a list of what they term “Banned Bad Boys” – ingredients commonly used in up to 80% of all American convenience food that have been banned by other countries, with information about which countries banned each substance and why.
And though it might not surprise you to hear that Olestra – commonly used in low/no-fat snack foods and known to cause serious gastrointestinal issues for those who consume it (understatement) – is on that list, having been banned in both the United Kingdom and Canada, you may be shocked to hear that Mountain Dew, Fresca and Squirt all contain brominated vegetable oil, a substance that has been banned in more than 100 countries “because it has been linked to basically every form of thyroid disease – from cancer to autoimmune diseases – known to man.”
Anglo Irish Bank Executives: Financial Collapse as Piss Take
June 25th, 2013Via: Irish Independent:
TAPE RECORDINGS from inside doomed Anglo Irish Bank reveal for the first time how the bank’s top executives lied to the Government about the true extent of losses at the institution.
The astonishing tapes show senior manager John Bowe, who had been involved in negotiations with the Central Bank, laughing and joking as he tells another senior manager, Peter Fitzgerald, how Anglo was luring the State into giving it billions of euro.
…
The audio recordings are from the bank’s own internal telephone system and date from the heart of the financial crisis that brought the State to its knees in September 2008.
Anglo itself was within days of complete meltdown – and in the years ahead would eat up €30bn of taxpayer money. Mr Bowe speaks about how the State had been asked for €7bn to bail out Anglo – but Anglo’s negotiators knew all along this was not enough to save the bank.
The plan was that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop.
Mr Bowe is asked by Mr Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: “Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drumm) would say, ‘picked it out of my arse’.”
Africa: U.S. Spreads Blowback Nightmare
June 25th, 2013Via: Asia Times:
A careful examination of the security situation in Africa suggests that it is in the process of becoming Ground Zero for a veritable terror diaspora set in motion in the wake of 9/11 that has only accelerated in the Obama years. Recent history indicates that as US “stability” operations in Africa have increased, militancy has spread, insurgent groups have proliferated, allies have faltered or committed abuses, terrorism has increased, the number of failed states has risen, and the continent has become more unsettled.
The signal event in this tsunami of blowback was the US. participation in a war to fell Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi that helped send neighboring Mali, a US-supported bulwark against regional terrorism, into a downward spiral, prompting the intervention of the French military with US backing. The situation could still worsen as the US armed forces grow ever more involved. They are already expanding air operations across the continent, engaging in spy missions for the French military, and utilizing other previously undisclosed sites in Africa.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Digital Dementia
June 25th, 2013Digital crackpipes for the children! The younger the better.
Via: Digital Journal:
South Korean doctors have found that increasing use of smartphones among young Koreans has led to a surge in incidence of “digital dementia” characterized by deterioration of cognitive abilities and symptoms found in people who have suffered head injury.
In Other News: Some Parents Who Work for Elite Silicon Valley Firms Send Their Children to School with No Computers
U.S. Surveillance Best Suited for Gathering Information on Law-Abiding Citizens
June 24th, 2013Via: Bloomberg:
The debate over the U.S. government’s monitoring of digital communications suggests that Americans are willing to allow it as long as it is genuinely targeted at terrorists. What they fail to realize is that the surveillance systems are best suited for gathering information on law-abiding citizens.
People concerned with online privacy tend to calm down when told that the government can record their calls or read their e-mail only under special circumstances and with proper court orders. The assumption is that they have nothing to worry about unless they are terrorists or correspond with the wrong people.
The infrastructure set up by the National Security Agency, however, may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists. The Prism surveillance program focuses on access to the servers of America’s largest Internet companies, which support such popular services as Skype, Gmail and iCloud. These are not the services that truly dangerous elements typically use.
