An Estimated $3 Trillion in Daily Commerce Flows Through Ancient COBOL Systems
October 4th, 2018Via: Reuters:
The Common Business-Oriented Language was developed nearly 60 years ago and has been gradually replaced by newer, more versatile languages such as Java, C and Python. Although few universities still offer COBOL courses, the language remains crucial to businesses and institutions around the world.
In the United States, the financial sector, major corporations and parts of the federal government still largely rely on it because it underpins powerful systems that were built in the 70s or 80s and never fully replaced.
And here lies the problem: if something goes wrong, few people know how to fix it.
The stakes are especially high for the financial industry, where an estimated $3 trillion in daily commerce flows through COBOL systems. The language underpins deposit accounts, check-clearing services, card networks, ATMs, mortgage servicing, loan ledgers and other services.
Brain Scans Can Detect Who Has Better Skills
October 3rd, 2018Via: Wall Street Journal:
To gain new insight into how highly specialized workers learn skills or react to stressful situations, researchers are leveraging advanced scanning technologies to look at what’s happening inside the brain.
In the latest findings, a team of researchers studied surgeons as they performed surgical simulations and found they could identify novice from experienced surgeons by analyzing brain scans taken as the physicians worked.
The researchers, who described their findings Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, said that the part of the brain involved in planning complex behaviors was more active in the novices. Skilled surgeons had more activity in the motor cortex, which is important for movement. The researchers, who developed a machine-learning system to analyze the scans, also showed that training resulted in a shift toward higher activity in the motor cortex.
Amazon Raising Minimum Wage to $15
October 3rd, 2018Mmm hmm.
Of course, Amazon spins this by saying that they need humans to build and service the robots, so don’t worry about automation. *grin*
Other commentary:
Bezos’ Decision to Raise Wages is Largely a Machiavellian Distraction
Amazon Eliminates Monthly Bonuses and Stock Grants After Minimum Wage Increase
The Real Reason Why Amazon Is Hiking Minimum Wages
Via: Newsweek:
Amazon will raise its minimum wage to $15 for all full-time, part-time, temporary and seasonal employees from November 1, the company said today.
The hourly $15 minimum wage will benefit more than 250,000 Amazon employees, as well as over 100,000 additional employees who will be hired this holiday season, Amazon said.
The move comes after heavy criticism from U.S. senator Bernie Sanders, who has spoken out against Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos. Sanders introduced a bill last month—the Stop BEZOS Act—which he designed to help employees who rely on federal benefits by taxing corporations.
“We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead,” read a short statement attributed to Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man. “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.”
The company will now be advocating for an increase in the federal minimum wage, according to Jay Carney, senior VP of Amazon Global Corporate Affairs. “The current rate of $7.25 was set nearly a decade ago,” he said. “We intend to advocate for a minimum wage increase that will have a profound impact on the lives of tens of millions of people and families across this country.”
Chinese Armed Drones Now Flying Across Mideast Battlefields
October 3rd, 2018Via: AP:
High above Yemen’s rebel-held city of Hodeida, a drone controlled by Emirati forces hovered as an SUV carrying a top Shiite Houthi rebel official turned onto a small street and stopped, waiting for another vehicle in its convoy to catch up.
Seconds later, the SUV exploded in flames, killing Saleh al-Samad, a top political figure.
The drone that fired that missile in April was not one of the many American aircraft that have been buzzing across the skies of Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001. It was Chinese.
Across the Middle East, countries locked out of purchasing U.S.-made drones due to rules over excessive civilian casualties are being wooed by Chinese arms dealers, who are world’s main distributor of armed drones.
“The Chinese product now doesn’t lack technology, it only lacks market share,” said Song Zhongping, a Chinese military analyst and former lecturer at the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force University of Engineering. “And the United States restricting its arms exports is precisely what gives China a great opportunity.”
U.S. Government Can’t Account for $21 Trillion Since 1998
October 3rd, 2018This is from December 2017.
Via: USA Watchdog:
Michigan State University economics professor Mark Skidmore made an astounding discovery about the finances and budgets of the U.S. federal government earlier this year. He and a team of graduate students discovered $21 trillion missing in the federal budget going back to 1998. Dr. Skidmore, who specializes in public finance, explains, “We know from official government sources that indicate $21 trillion is, in some way, unaccounted for. Furthermore, if we come back to the Constitution, all spending needs to be authorized by Congress. It looks to me, and I think I can conclude with a high degree of certainty, there is money flowing in, as well as out, that is unaccounted for. . . . That’s the one thing we know from these documents, that there is $21 trillion in unaccounted funds.”
In one example, Skidmore found a huge transfer from the Treasury Department to the Army that, again, was not authorized. Keep in mind, the Army has an approved budget of a little more than $120 billion a year. Skidmore says, “In this one report . . . there is an appendix table that indicates there was a transfer from Treasury to the Army of about $800 billion. That’s almost a trillion dollars flowing in. There is a note that says we had to do this in order to reconcile past years. That doesn’t make sense to me either because, these earlier years, you have a transfer from the Treasury of your $120 billion or $130 billion, and every year, the Army is granted the authority to spend this money in the ways they say they will. How can you get (an additional) $800 billion in and call that an ‘adjustment’? I tried to call and talk to the office of the Inspector General to talk to the people who helped generate these reports. I haven’t been successful, and I stopped trying when they disabled the links.”
More: Solari – The Missing Money
Humanoid Construction Robot Installs Drywall by Itself
October 2nd, 2018Via: The Verge:
If Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute has its way, construction workers might be a thing of the past. Researchers have built HRP-5P, a humanoid bot that can handle a variety of construction tasks when there’s either a staffing shortage or serious hazards. The prototype uses a mix of environment detection, object recognition and careful movement planning to install drywall by itself — it can hoist up boards and fasten them with a screwdriver.
New Zealand: Travelers Refusing Digital Search Now Face $5000 Customs Fine
October 2nd, 2018Via: Radio New Zealand:
Travellers who refuse to hand over their phone or laptop passwords to Customs officials can now be slapped with a $5000 fine.
The Customs and Excise Act 2018 – which comes into effect today – sets guidelines around how Customs can carry out “digital strip-searches”.
Previously, Customs could stop anyone at the border and demand to see their electronic devices. However, the law did not specify that people had to also provide a password.
The updated law makes clear that travellers must provide access – whether that be a password, pin-code or fingerprint – but officials would need to have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.
“It is a file-by-file [search] on your phone. We’re not going into ‘the cloud’. We’ll examine your phone while it’s on flight mode,” Customs spokesperson Terry Brown said.
If people refused to comply, they could be fined up to $5000 and their device would be seized and forensically searched.
High Sugar Content of Modern Fruit Varieties Causing Illnesses in Zoo Animals
October 1st, 2018Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
Selective breeding has made the fruit we eat so full of sugar, Melbourne Zoo has had to wean its animals off it.
…
“The issue is the cultivated fruits have been genetically modified to be much higher in sugar content than their natural, ancestral fruits,” says Dr Michael Lynch, the zoo’s head vet.
“It’s interesting. After doing a lot with nutrition here, I tend to eat less fruit.”
Monkeys love bananas. But now, says Dr Lynch, the zoo’s primates don’t get any fruit at all.
Research Credit: DF
DEF CON Report: “Grave and Undeniable” Security Issues with Electronic Voting Systems
October 1st, 2018Via: Ars Technica:
Today, six prominent information-security experts who took part in DEF CON’s Voting Village in Las Vegas last month issued a report on vulnerabilities they had discovered in voting equipment and related computer systems. One vulnerability they discovered—in a high-speed vote-tabulating system used to count votes for entire counties in 23 states—could allow an attacker to remotely hijack the system over a network and alter the vote count, changing results for large blocks of voters. “Hacking just one of these machines could enable an attacker to flip the Electoral College and determine the outcome of a presidential election,” the authors of the report warned.
…
The report authors…documented dozens of other severe vulnerabilities found in voting systems. They found that four major areas of “grave and undeniable” concern need to be addressed urgently. One of the most critical is the lack of any sort of supply-chain security for voting machines—there is no way to test the machines to see if they are trustworthy or if their components have been modified.
DuckDuckGo Traffic
September 29th, 2018Via: DuckDuckGo:
