August Earnings
September 10th, 2008In August, earnings from all sources came to a total of $1010.
Thanks to everyone who sent cash and/or used Amazon, BlueHost, Nitro-Pak affiliate links.
Reddit Filter Plus
September 10th, 2008A computer science student in Sweden has fixed and improved the now broken Reddit Content Filter script for Greasemonkey.
The new script is called Reddit Filter Plus.
Ahhh, Reddit is usable again.
I contacted Burger, the author of the script (he may not want his real name used here), to see if I could contribute some money, since I appreciate what he did.
Indeed, he has a PayPal account and accepts payments on the email address that you’ll find at his site; if, of course, you find his script useful and would like to support his work. * wink * He wasn’t expecting anything in return for doing this.
Related: What Would You Pay to Never See Obama-McCain-Hillary Stories on Reddit Again?
LEHMAN DOWN 40%
September 9th, 2008Via: Reuters:
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc shares fell as much as 40 percent on Tuesday to their lowest level in nearly a decade on concern the fourth-largest Wall Street investment bank would be unable to raise needed capital.
Much of the decline came after reports that Lehman’s talks with state-owned Korea Development Bank on a possible capital infusion had ended.
In early afternoon trading, Lehman shares were down $4.89, or 34.6 percent, at $9.26 on the New York Stock Exchange. They earlier fell to $8.50, their lowest level since October 1998, Reuters data show.
“The market fears that no one will inject capital in the company,” said Nick Kalivas, equity market analyst at MF Global Research in Chicago.
A Lehman spokeswoman declined to comment on the lower share price. In Washington, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission also declined to comment.
Taxpayers Take on Trillions in Risk in Fannie, Freddie Takeover
September 9th, 2008WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
I don’t use fundamental analysis to trade, but I’ve been looking at the FOREX charts and I really started to wonder, “How is the dollar continuing to run higher?”
I think one possible answer must be that, with the Fannie/Freddie bailout, investors like the fact that the people (U.S. Taxpayers) who are responsible for backing the dodgy debt have no choice but to pay up.
Well, it’s not quite no choice: My wife and I voluntarily live on a very low income, which doesn’t leave much for the taxman to take from us. And some Americans simply ignore the IRS, or use various “legal” tactics to try to avoid paying taxes, but these options have the potential to yield suboptimal results; such as the government seizing the individuals’ funds and property and potentially pointing guns at them. But these are the outliers.
Most Americans work hard, and pay their taxes on time.
The situation reminds me of those humans who are entombed in containers of nutrient agar in the Matrix movies. Their lifeforce is literally being sucked up to the top of the pyramid by entities who are out of sight, and out of mind. These entities must think something like, “No matter what outrages we carry out against these people, they don’t resist us. Why not turn the screws tighter? They’ll hardly notice, and so what if they do. We’ll just pump some more jelly into their brains and then take from them whatever we want.”
Well, that’s enough lallygagging, Citizen! Back to work!
Via: USA Today:
The unprecedented federal takeover of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae announced on Sunday is a bold attempt to stabilize financial markets and restore the faltering housing market, but it thrusts trillions of dollars of risk directly onto taxpayers’ shoulders.
“You can call it a bailout, you can call it a safety net or you can call it a rescue package, but the bottom line is the American taxpayer is left footing the bill,” says Richard Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research.
French Cabinet Revolts Over Sarkozy’s Big Brother Database
September 9th, 2008Via: Times Online:
President Nicolas Sarkozy faced an embarrassing split in his Cabinet today over a computer system that a new French internal intelligence service will use to spy on the private lives of millions of law-abiding citizens.
Hervé Morin, the Defence Minister, broke government ranks to side with a growing revolt against Edvige, an acronym for a police database that will store personal details including opinions, the social circle and even sexual preferences of more or less anyone who interests the State.
Edvige, which is also a woman’s name, was created by decree in July to store data on anyone aged 13 or above who is “likely to breach public order”.
“Sarkozy’s Big Sister”, as it has been dubbed, will also track anyone active in politics or trade unions and in a significant role in business, the media, entertainment or social or religious institutions. Listed people will have limited rights to consult their files.
Police Can Sometimes Recover “Deleted” Information from Mobile Phones
September 9th, 2008Chip implants? Most people willingly carry their own surveillance team around in their pockets.
That’s right. If you use a mobile phone, the filth can track your position on the ground in real time AND activate the microphone, turning your mobile phone into a audio bugging device. And this is all while you’re not talking on the phone.
But as usual, it’s not that bad, it’s worse.
Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
Deep in the bowels of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, Sgt. Wayne Hom plugs in a USB key to activate a new high-tech tool that has become the delight of cops, the bane of bad guys and a cloud over civil liberties – a device to extract contacts, text messages, pictures and videos from cell phones.
“Around here they call me Inspector Gadget because I can wire just about anything,” said Hom, a former gang task force officer who now battles crime digitally with a new genre of cell phone forensic extraction devices.
Hom said these devices – made by companies including Cellebrite, Data Pilot and Oxygen Software – often can extract text messages, pictures or contact lists that the phone owner thinks they have erased, so long as new data hasn’t written over the old location in the cell phone’s memory.
Robert Morgester, a California deputy attorney general and expert on the topic, said that since cell phone extraction devices became available in the past couple of years, they have quickly become vital tools in solving crimes.
“The reason why the cell phone is important is that you are carrying around a personal diary of who you talk to and often what you talked about,” Morgester said in reference not to conversations but rather to texting, adding: “Youth today communicate through MySpace and texting.”
Cell phone forensic extraction is a relatively new technology that grew out of a problem faced by consumers who switch cell phone carriers and want to port their old data to their new device, said Adi Ofrat, chief executive of Cellebrite, which has offices in Israel and New Jersey, one of the vendors the San Francisco Police Department uses.
Since 2000, his 70-person company has sold more than 50,000 office-based cell phone data conversion systems to mobile phone carriers worldwide, he said.
“About one-and-a-half years ago we were approached by certain government agencies that said, ‘We would like for you to provide us with XYZ,’ ” Ofrat said in a telephone interview from New Jersey.
Research Credit: ottilie
Britain Training Chinese Military Officers
September 8th, 2008I should create a Blowback category.
Via: Telegraph:
The government has breached EU rules banning military cooperation with China by allowing a Chinese army officer to study at Sandhurst.
Officer Cadet Liu Liu, who graduated from the Royal Military Academy last month, has spent the past year training alongside British army cadets.
A second Chinese People’s Liberation Army officer is expected to join the new intake at Sandhurst this week.
London Stock Exchange Trading Derailed by Computer Crash
September 8th, 2008This is… very interesting. Not in a good way.
Via: Telegraph:
Trading on the London Stock Exchange has been halted after a computer system failed on one of the most frantic days of trading so far this year.
In an embarrassment for the LSE, the exchange said that no orders can be entered or executions of those trades occur. The LSE plans to bring back trading in a “controlled way’’, but couldn’t say how long that will take.
The computer crash left the exchange’s customers fuming on a day of heavy trading following the US government’s bail-out of mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Traders said the exchange was suffering an ‘overloading’ caused partly because the FTSE 100 ended down sharply on Friday so traders who were betting on further falls in the index would have to close their positions.
Simon Denham, founder of Capital Spreads, said; “It (trading) went down at 8.44 am. This happens on the LSE two or three times a year, but I can’t remember it ever having been down this long.
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“I don’t know what excuse they will give – for the second biggest stock exchange in the world it’s pretty poor.”
The FTSE 100 had surged more than 3pc before trading was halted, following an earlier rally across Asia, on hopes that the nationalisation of America’s two biggest mortgage lenders may help revive the troubled US housing market.
Yes, The U.S. Did Kill 92 Afghan Civilians, 60 of Which Were Children
September 8th, 2008Via: Times Online:
As the doctor walks between rows of bodies, people lift funeral shrouds to reveal the faces of children and babies, some with severe head injuries.
Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,” shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.”
The grainy video eight-minute footage, seen exclusively by The Times, is the most compelling evidence to emerge of what may be the biggest loss of civilian life during the Afghanistan war.
These are the images that have forced the Pentagon into a rare U-turn. Until yesterday the US military had insisted that only seven civilians were killed in Nawabad on the night of August 21.
Last night the Pentagon announced that it was reopening the investigation in the light of “emerging evidence” and was sending an officer to Nawabad to review its previous inquiry. Villagers and the UN insist that 92 were killed, including as many as 60 children. Locals say that the US and Afghan troops who came into the village looking for a Taleban commander, with US air support, used excessive force.
In the video scores of bodies are seen laid out in a building that villagers say is used as a mosque; the people were killed apparently during a combined operation by US special forces and Afghan army commandos in western Afghanistan. The film was shot on a mobile phone by an Afghan doctor who arrived the next morning.
Local people say that US forces bombed preparations for a memorial ceremony for a tribal leader. Residential compounds were levelled by US attack helicopters, armed drones and a cannon-armed C130 Spectre gunship.
“The Free Market”
September 8th, 2008Via: IHT:
Despite decades of free-market rhetoric from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Washington has a long history of providing financial help to the private sector when the economic or political risk of a corporate collapse appeared too high.
The effort to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is only the latest in a series of financial maneuvers by the government that stretch back to the rescue of the military contractor Lockheed Aircraft and the Penn Central Railroad under President Richard Nixon, the shoring up of Chrysler in the waning days of the Carter administration and the salvage of the U.S. savings and loan system in the late 1980s.
More recently, after airplanes were grounded because of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress approved $15 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees to the faltering airlines.
Now, with the U.S. government preparing to save Fannie and Freddie only six months after the Federal Reserve Board orchestrated the rescue of Bear Stearns, it appears that the mortgage crisis has forced the government to once again shove ideology aside and get into the bailout business.
“If anybody thought we had a pure free-market financial system, they should think again,” said Robert Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
