Almost 46 Million Americans Have Now Filed For Unemployment Claims Since Lockdowns Began
June 19th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
Despite the hope-restoring nonfarm payrolls “recovery” and the over-hyped bounce in retail sales (ignoring the lack of ‘V’ in industrial production), in the last week 1.508million more Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the first time (notably worse than the 1.29mm expected).
That brings the thirteen-week total to 45.7million, dramatically more than at any period in American history.
Air Force Investigates Military Planes that Monitored Minneapolis, D.C. Protests
June 19th, 2020Via: Star Tribune:
The Air Force inspector general is investigating whether the military improperly used a little-known reconnaissance plane to monitor protests in Washington and Minneapolis this month, the Air Force said on Thursday.
The inquiry was apparently prompted by lawmakers who expressed concerns to Pentagon officials that the use of military surveillance airplanes may have violated the civil liberties of the mostly peaceful protesters demonstrating against the police killings of black Americans.
“Following discussions with the secretary of defense about shared concerns, the secretary of the Air Force is conducting an investigation into the use of Air National Guard RC-26 aircraft to support civil authorities during recent protest activity in U.S. cities,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the chief Air Force spokesman.
Cern Poised to Back Plan for €20bn Successor to Large Hadron Collider
June 19th, 2020Via: Guardian:
As the largest scientific instrument on the planet enters its twilight years, Cern scientists have been facing the question of what next after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Following extensive debate, they appear to have landed on an answer: go bigger or go home.
Cern’s council is expected to announce its backing on Friday for a proposed new collider with a 100km circular tunnel, four times the size and six times as powerful as the LHC. A formal vote on the plan is due to go ahead on Friday.
The proposed particle-smashing machine, referred to as the Future Circular Collider (FCC), would allow scientists to hunt for particles and other new phenomena at higher energies, study the Higgs boson with greater precision, and may offer insights into dark matter.
SpaceX Hiring Staff to, “Design and Build an Operational Offshore Rocket Launch Facility” Sized for Starship and Super Heavy
June 19th, 2020Via: Teslarati:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company is going to build multiple massive “floating spaceports” to enable Starship launches to Mars and the Moon, as well as point-to-point travel around the Earth.
First confirmed in job listings and later backed up by Musk himself, the goal of the nascent program is “to design and build an operational offshore rocket launch facility” sized for Starship and Super Heavy. Given that SpaceX’s next-generation, fully-reusable rocket will be the most powerful rocket ever built when it flies, designing and building a fully mobile launch and landing facility is going to be no small task.
To realize that ambition, SpaceX will have to find a way to efficiently pack propellant, fueling, and pressurization systems; a potentially skyscraper-sized launch tower and crane; one or two landing pads and a launch mount; crew quarters, propulsion, major power supplies, and much, much more onto a very large ship.
Director of AI at Tesla on Self Driving Progress: We’re Hiring
June 19th, 2020A year and a bit after an AI researcher buddy of mine said, in essence, “no way” would Tesla’s full self driving thing happen anytime soon, how much closer is Tesla to making it a reality?
Remember, back in April 2019, Elon Musk said that robotaxis were coming in 2020:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company should have robotaxis on the roads in 2020.
“I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year,” Musk said on stage at the Tesla Autonomy Investor Day in Palo Alto, California. They won’t be “in all jurisdictions, because we won’t have regulatory approval everywhere, but I am confident we will have at least regulatory approval somewhere, literally next year,” he said.
And then:
Musk also predicted that in two years, Tesla will be making cars with no steering wheels or pedals.
*chortle*
Instead of robotaxis and cars with no steering wheels or pedals being anywhere near to becoming a reality, we have Andrej Karpathy detailing the cringe inducing difficulties Tesla is facing and then asking people who work in relevant fields to submit their resumes.
Via: CVPR’20 WSAD:
Speculation About Tesla Battery Day
June 19th, 2020Musk keeps delaying Battery Day, so I went looking for speculation about what might be announced.
Via: Now You Know:
Trump Says Roswell Is a Very Interesting Place, Won’t Talk About What He Knows
June 19th, 2020What could possibly be the reason for this?
Via: New York Post:
President Donald Trump says he’s heard some interesting things about Roswell, but he’s not sharing even with his eldest child.
Trump made the comments Thursday in a Father’s Day-themed interview with his son Don Trump Jr., hosted by the president’s reelection campaign. Don Jr. wound down his interview by jokingly asking his Dad/President if he would ever divulge more information about Roswell, the New Mexico city known for its proximity to the arguably most famous UFO event — “and let us know what’s really going on.”
Trump responded, “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.”
Raz Simone Hands Out Firearms in CHAZ
June 18th, 2020Is this a COINTEL program, top to bottom?
Via: Vigilance Media:
Feds Close to Spending More Than on Revolutionary, Civil War, WWI, II Combined
June 18th, 2020Via: CNS News:
A coalition of conservative leaders sent a letter to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warning that the congressional spending in the coronavirus must stop because it’s getting very close to $10 trillion, which is more than the government spent fighting the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World War I and II combined.
Massive Spying on Users of Google’s Chrome Through Extensions
June 18th, 2020Via: Reuters:
A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser, researchers at Awake Security told Reuters, highlighting the tech industry’s failure to protect browsers as they are used more for email, payroll and other sensitive functions.
…
Most of the free extensions purported to warn users about questionable websites or convert files from one format to another. Instead, they siphoned off browsing history and data that provided credentials for access to internal business tools.
Based on the number of downloads, it was the most far-reaching malicious Chrome store campaign to date, according to Awake co-founder and chief scientist Gary Golomb.
