Archive for October, 2013
Mexico Towns Lose Power in Suspected Cartel Sabotage
October 28th, 2013Via: AFP: Unidentified assailants armed with guns and Molotov cocktails attacked power stations in a violence-torn western Mexican state Sunday, leaving 11 towns without electricity in a suspected drug cartel attack. The interior ministry said in a statement that national power company equipment, six gas stations and a convenience store were targeted in 11 towns […]
Black Box in Your Car to Tax and Track You
October 28th, 2013In other news, Iraq, Afghan wars will cost to $4 trillion to $6 trillion: The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a […]
Multi-Billion Dollar Tax Avoidance Schemes Running in Ireland
October 28th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: In that game, multinational companies find ways to legally avoid income taxes in the countries where most of their customers are. Google cuts billions off its tax bill each year by sending profits through Ireland to a mailbox in Bermuda; Facebook sends them through Ireland to Grand Cayman; LinkedIn uses Ireland en route […]
Several Large Tech Companies Colluded to Cap Worker Salaries
October 28th, 2013Wouldn’t it be neat if there really was a Hell and Steve Jobs had to go cruising along in his ridiculous superyacht through great oceans of fiery, bubbling lava for all eternity? Via: San Jose Mercury News: More than 60,000 tech workers can seek monetary damages from Apple (AAPL), Intel (INTC), Google (GOOG) and Adobe […]
High-Frequency Trading and Exchange Technology
October 28th, 2013Via: ACM: I remember coming home late one night, and my mother, a math teacher, asked why I was so depressed and exhausted. I said, “Imagine every day you have to figure out a small part of the world. You develop fantastic machines, which can measure everything, and you deploy them to track an object […]
Science Has Lost Its Way, At a Big Cost to Humanity
October 27th, 2013I’ve posted about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Via: Los Angeles Times: In today’s world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you’d think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science. You’d be wrong. Many billions of dollars’ worth of wrong. A few years ago, […]
Some Florida Police Are Using Data to Predict Crime
October 27th, 2013Via: FastCompany: Well, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department isn’t using an oracle yet, but it is getting one step closer to Minority Report-style crime predicting. The department has become the latest agency to use big data analytics and data mining to prevent crime by staying one step ahead of criminals. According to IBM, the company […]
French IT School ’42’
October 26th, 2013The application process for 42 reminds me a bit of what happens to people who try to get into the French Foreign Legion. The Legion doesn’t care about your background, they just want to know if you’re up to the job. If you don’t know about the French Foreign Legion, take a few minutes to […]
‘Data Shows Google’s Robot Cars Are Smoother, Safer Drivers Than You or I’
October 26th, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review: Data gathered from Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars shows that they are safer and smoother when steering themselves than when a human takes the wheel, according to the leader of Google’s autonomous-car project. Chris Urmson made those claims today at a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California. He presented results […]
All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines
October 26th, 2013Via: The Atlantic: We rely on computers to fly our planes, find our cancers, design our buildings, audit our businesses. That’s all well and good. But what happens when the computer fails?
