Retail Sales Drop the Most Since September 2009
February 14th, 2019Via: Reuters:
U.S. retail sales recorded their biggest drop in more than nine years in December as receipts fell across the board, suggesting a sharp slowdown in economic activity at the end of 2018.
The Commerce Department said on Thursday retail sales tumbled 1.2 percent, the largest decline since September 2009 when the economy was emerging from recession.
Meet the Amateur Astronomers Hunting for Spy Satellites
February 14th, 2019Via: Supercluster:
For most people, the ability to see a spy instrument from thousands of miles away but never know its purpose would be maddening.
Yet for Molczan, the mystery is part of the thrill.
Lawyer In Charge of Apple’s Insider-Trading Policy Accused of Insider Trading
February 13th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
At Apple Inc., former top lawyer Gene Daniel Levoff was responsible for making sure employees didn’t violate insider-trading laws. It turns out he was the one who was buying and selling shares illegally, according to U.S. authorities.
Why Can’t a Bot Tick the “I’m Not a Robot” Box?
February 13th, 2019I figured that the widget was linked to Google’s dossiers on all of us, but I had no idea about the rest of it. And researchers still don’t know everything Google is doing here.
Via: Quora:
How complicated can one little checkbox be?
…
Sweet dreams, human.
Major Western Cities Are Becoming Uninhabitable Hellholes
February 13th, 2019Via: End of the American Dream:
Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America’s accelerating decline. The worst parts of our major western cities literally look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the hordes of zombified homeless people that live in those areas are too drugged-out to care. The ironic thing is that these cities are not poor. In fact, San Francisco and Seattle are among the wealthiest cities in the entire nation. So if things are falling apart this dramatically now, how bad will things get when economic conditions really start to deteriorate?
Texas Crude Oil Production Breaks 1970s Record
February 13th, 2019Via: Houston Chronicle:
Texas oil wells produced more than 1.54 billion barrels of crude in 2018, beating the previous record of 1.28 billion barrels set in 1973, TIPRO reported in its annual “State of Energy Report” early Monday morning.
Cities Cannot Stop 5G Implementation [???]
February 13th, 2019Maybe they need to talk to the people in Marin County to see how it’s done:
California: Three City Councils in Marin County Vote to Stop Installing Harmful 5G Towers
Via: Richard Dolan:
Amazon, GM in Talks to Invest in Electric Pickup Truck Maker Rivian
February 12th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Amazon.com Inc and General Motors Co are in talks to invest in Rivian Automotive LLC in a deal that would value the U.S. electric pickup truck manufacturer at between $1 billion and $2 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Florida School Arms Up; Hires Two Former Combat Veterans To Prevent Mass Shootings
February 12th, 2019Via: ZeroHedge:
Just south of Tampa, Fla., students at the Manatee School for the Arts (MSA) roam the hallways past an armed combat veteran who is constantly looking out for threats. By the end of February, another one will be manning a guard shack at at the school’s entrance.
39-year-old Harold Verdecia, a former infantryman in the US army who completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, patrols the hallways of Manatee strapped with a 9mm Glock 19X and a Kel-Tec “Bullpup” rifle, according to the Herald Tribune.
Smartphones Will Monitor How Workers Walk, Type And “Spend Their Free Time”
February 12th, 2019
Via: ZeroHedge:
Forget Face ID: a collaboration between the Defense Department and a NY-based company called TWOSENSE.AI, has birthed an artificial intelligence algorithm that could be embedded in smartphones and will be able to identify the device owner by the way they talk, type, walk and even by how “they spend their free time”.
TWOSENSE.AI is working with the Department of Defense to build a SaaS product that could eventually replace access cards currently used to verify the identities of DOD employees when logging onto the department’s networks.
The AI constantly monitors the user’s behavior, including how they carry the device, type on it and even walk. The system then automatically verifies the user’s identity using these parameters, enabling them to work seamlessly on their secure network without having to login each time.
Similar to privacy-stripping developments in China, the system updates a “trust score” as it tracks these metrics, based on the algorithm’s level of confidence that the correct person is using the device. Jeremy Corey, chief of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Cyber Innovation Division said in May: “The score is checked to ensure it meets the desired threshold. This threshold is predetermined by the organization we are piloting our prototype with. This could be configured by the application owner, so long as it is within the authorizing official’s accepted level of risk.”
