Prescription Eyewear Scam
January 22nd, 2019Via: Los Angeles Times:
Prescription eyewear represents perhaps the single biggest mass-market consumer ripoff to be found.
Calls for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes
January 22nd, 2019Via: Who What Why:
After five decades, the mysteries behind the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X may finally get the scrutiny they deserve.
A group consisting of relatives of the Kennedy and King families, as well as their confidantes and other prominent voices, is calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to get to the bottom of these tragic murders.
Over the decades, those in power, whether in government, media, or academia, have contended that all of these murders were simply the result of lone-wolf actors: There was “no collusion,” and please don’t mention that other “C” word — conspiracy.
$1.2 Trillion in Risky Corporate Debt Ready to Blow
January 22nd, 2019Via: Los Angeles Times:
Indebted borrowers increasingly take out high-interest, adjustable-rate loans that are packaged into securities and sold to investors eager for a better rate of return.
Everything’s fine while the economy is growing. But when it slows, those borrowers could default, causing problems to cascade through the financial system.
If this all sounds like the subprime housing market in the boom years before the 2008 financial crisis, you’re right. And that’s what increasingly has regulators, lawmakers, ratings agencies and some market watchers worried.
This time, however, the borrowers in this credit bubble aren’t homeowners taking out mortgages. They’re hundreds of U.S. companies with weaker credit ratings, many of them well-known like Uber and Burger King, taking out so-called leveraged loans.
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The risks aren’t nearly as widespread as they were during the housing bubble, when the percentage of all mortgages that were subprime jumped to about 20%. Leveraged loans, while growing rapidly, account for less than 5% of the more than $42-trillion U.S. fixed income debt market, which also includes corporate and municipal bonds.
Toyota and Panasonic to Build Electric Car Batteries Together
January 22nd, 2019Via: Nikkei:
Toyota Motor and Panasonic plan to set up a joint venture in 2020 to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, joining forces to compete more effectively on cost and scale with rising Chinese players in a key area for the future of the auto industry, Nikkei has learned.
The venture, in which Toyota is to hold a 51% stake with Panasonic owning the rest, will be announced as soon as this week. Panasonic will shift five automotive battery production facilities in Japan and China to the new company, though the U.S. plant it operates under a partnership with American automaker Tesla will not be included.
In the early 2020s, Toyota and Panasonic will look to launch mass production of batteries with 50 times the capacity of those now used in hybrid vehicles, aiming to bring down production costs through higher volume.
Petro Canada Starts Deploying Its Own Electric Vehicle Chargers at Gas Stations
January 22nd, 2019Via: Electrek:
Petro Canada, formerly a state-owned oil company in Canada but now part of Suncor, becomes the latest oil company to get involved in electric vehicle charging.
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Shell is arguably leading the charge through its involvement in the new Ionity charging network in Europe. The company is building its own chargers at its own gas stations, and recently acquired a charging network with over 30,000 chargers.
But there are several others, like BP and Total, who have made similar investments.
Now Suncor is also getting involved and they have deployed their first ‘Petro Canada-branded’ EV chargers at a gas station in Milton, Ontario.
Murders in Mexico New Record High
January 22nd, 2019Via: Reuters:
Murders in Mexico rose by 33 percent in 2018, breaking the record for a second year running, official data showed, underlining the task facing the new president who has pledged to reduce violence in the cartel-ravaged country.
Investigators opened to 33,341 murder probes compared with the previous year’s record of 25,036, according to information from the Interior Ministry published on Sunday.
Mexico has struggled with years of violence as the government has battled brutal drug cartels, often by taking out their leaders. That has resulted in fragmentation of gangs and increasingly vicious internecine fighting.
Pope Francis Unveils New ‘Click to Pray’ App
January 22nd, 2019Via: New York Post:
The Holy Father launched an app called “Click to Pray” on Sunday that’ll allow the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics to join him in prayer.
The pontiff has a profile on the Android and iOS app that shows Catholics around the globe what he’s currently praying for. Users can then click an icon to indicate that they’ve prayed with him.
Thousands of faithful watched Sunday as Francis — who once said he was a “disaster” with technology — showed the app on a tablet at his weekly address in St. Peter’s Square.
“Did I do it?” Francis asked an aide after swiping on the tablet.
How Electric Therapy Is Curing Navy SEALs of PTSD
January 22nd, 2019Via: DefenseOne:
What Tony and several other former U.S. Special Operations Forces personnel received Newport Brain Research Laboratory, located at the Center, was a new treatment for brain disorders, one that might just revolutionize brain-based medicine. Though the FDA clinical trials to judge its efficacy and risks are ongoing, the technique could help humanity deal with a constellation of its most common mental disorders — depression, anxiety, aggressiveness, attention deficit, and others—and do so without drugs. And if its underpinning theory proves correct, it could be among the biggest breakthroughs in the treatment of mental health since the invention of the EEG a century ago.
At the lab, Tony (whose name has been changed to protect his identity) met Dr. Erik Won, president and CEO of the Newport Brain Research Laboratory, the company that’s innovating Magnetic EEG/ECG-guided Resonant Therapy, or MeRT. Won’s team strapped cardiac sensors on Tony and placed an electroencephalography cap on his skull to measure his brain’s baseline electrical activity. Then came the actual therapy. Placing a flashlight-sized device by Tony’s skull, they induced an electromagnetic field that senta small burst of current to his brain. Over the course of 20 minutes, they moved the device around his cranium, delivering jolts that, at their most aggressive, felt like a firm finger tapping.
For Tony, MeRT’s effects were obvious and immediate. He walked out of the first session to a world made new. “Everything looked different,” he told me. “My bike looked super shiny.”
He began to receive MeRT five times a week— each session lasting about an hour, with waiting room time — and quickly noticed a change in his energy. “I was super boosted,” he said. His mood changed as well.
Today, he admits that he still has moments of frustration but says that anger is no longer his “go-to emotion.” He’s developed the ability to cope. He still wants help with his memory, but his life is very different. He’s taken up abstract painting and welding, two hobbies he had no interest in at all before the therapy. He’s put in a new kitchen. Most importantly, his sleep is very different: better.
Tony’s experience was similar to those of five other special-operations veterans who spoke with Defense One. All took part in a double-blind randomized clinical trial that sought to determine how well MeRT treats Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Five out of the six were former Navy SEALS.
‘The Goal Is to Automate Us’: Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
January 20th, 2019Via: Guardian:
The headline story is that it’s not so much about the nature of digital technology as about a new mutant form of capitalism that has found a way to use tech for its purposes. The name Zuboff has given to the new variant is “surveillance capitalism”. It works by providing free services that billions of people cheerfully use, enabling the providers of those services to monitor the behaviour of those users in astonishing detail – often without their explicit consent.
“Surveillance capitalism,” she writes, “unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioural surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behaviour.”
Ducati CEO: “The Future Is Electric”
January 19th, 2019Via: Electrek:
As major motorcycle manufacturers around the world grapple with a new era of EVs, Ducati could be the next to roll out an electric motorcycle. That’s according to the company’s CEO who just confirmed Ducati’s commitment to developing a production electric motorcycle.
