Archive for August, 2012
Billionaire Koch Builds Frontier Town All His Own Near Aspen
August 23rd, 2012Via: Bloomberg: Energy billionaire William Koch is developing a private 19th-century Western village, with a saloon, a jail and a train station, high in the Rocky Mountains in a region pockmarked with historic ghost towns that died when the mines that supported them played out. Koch, 72, who made his fortune partly by developing underground […]
Child Porn, Coke Smuggling: Hundreds of DHS Employees Arrested Last Year
August 23rd, 2012Via: Wired: Border Patrol agents smuggling weed and coke. Immigration agents forging documents and robbing drug dealers. TSA employees caught with child porn. Those are just a few of the crimes perpetrated by Department of Homeland Security employees in just the past year. Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly a decade […]
The Solar Charging Kit for Africa You Want for Your Own Home
August 23rd, 2012Via: Good: Mike Lin and Brian Warshawsky find themselves in the unusual but enviable position of having stumbled on an unexpected business hit. The pair set out with a social goal and built a product for poor Ugandans. But this week, the gadget the pair built to help poor Africans without electricity start micro businesses […]
Why Windows 7 is the Next XP
August 23rd, 2012Why? If you ask me, it’s because I can make Windows 7 look and act pretty much like XP. Yep, after more than a decade of using Windows XP, I’ve finally moved to Windows 7 on my main rig. Microsoft isn’t pulling the plug on XP until 2014, but there are a couple of 64-bit […]
Private Crypto Key in Mission-Critical Hardware
August 23rd, 2012Via: Ars Technica: A private encryption key embedded into widely used mission-critical routers could be exploited by hackers to attack electric substations, railroad switches, and other critical infrastructure, security researchers have warned. The flaw, uncovered in devices made by Siemens subsidiary RuggedCom of Ontario, Canada, is the second this year to affect its Rugged Operating […]
Many in Middle Class Say They Are Doing Worse Financially
August 23rd, 2012The Onion’s satire is the best commentary for this one: Nation’s Lower Class At Least Grateful It Not Part Of Nation’s Middle Class: A survey released Wednesday by researchers at the University of North Carolina found that despite the many challenges they face, the nation’s lowest-income individuals are nonetheless thankful they don’t have to endure […]
40% of Food Wasted in U.S.???
August 22nd, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times: Americans are throwing out nearly every other bite of food, wasting up to 40% of the country’s supply each year – a mass of uneaten provisions worth $165 billion, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. An average family of four squanders $2,275 in food each year, […]
U.S. Slips to 47th in Press Freedom Index
August 22nd, 2012Via: Reporters Without Borders: The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.
‘Activist’ Richard Aoki: FBI Informant
August 21st, 2012Via: San Francisco Chronicle: The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training – which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s – was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report. One of the Bay Area’s most prominent […]
Mobile Phones: Police Can Activate GPS Location Tracking If It’s Disabled
August 21st, 2012Via: Information Week: Can police access the GPS data on your phone? According to a recent court ruling, they can not only access it, but activate GPS location tracking if it’s disabled.
