Archive for May, 2014
LAPD Adds Drones to Arsenal, Says They’ll Be Used Sparingly
May 31st, 2014*wink* Via: Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles Police Department has acquired some eyes in the sky. On Friday, the department announced that it had acquired two “unmanned aerial vehicles” as gifts from the Seattle Police Department. The Draganflyer X6 aircraft, which resemble small helicopters, are each about 3 feet wide and equipped with a […]
German Foreign Intelligence Agency Wants to Access Social Media Sites in Real Time
May 31st, 2014Via: Deutsche Welle: German media has reported that the country’s foreign intelligence agency wants to access social media in real time. The agency reportedly wants to expand digital operations out of fear of falling behind other countries.
Feds Say it Could Take 2 Years to Seal Nuke Dump
May 31st, 2014Via: AP: It could take two years or more for the federal government to seal off hundreds of potentially dangerous containers at its troubled underground nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico, the U.S. Department of Energy said in a filing Friday. Responding to an order from the New Mexico Environment Department to detail its […]
NSA Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images
May 31st, 2014Via: New York Times: The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents. The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the […]
Spies, CEOs and Politicians Gather for Bilderberg Conference
May 30th, 2014Via: CNBC: It’s a guest list that most conference organizers can only dream of, with attendees ranging from royalty to business leaders, spies to politicians. But this isn’t any conference – this is the Bilderberg conference, a top-secret annual gathering attracting the richest and most powerful people from across the globe. Attendees at this year’s […]
TrueCrypt Developers Abruptly Quit
May 29th, 2014truecrypt.ch has been established for those who want to continue TrueCrypt’s open source development. Via: Krebs on Security: The anonymous developers responsible for building and maintaining the free whole-disk encryption suite TrueCrypt apparently threw in the towel this week, shuttering the TrueCrypt site and warning users that the product is no longer secure now that […]
Graphene Atmospheric Electricity Collectors
May 29th, 2014There’s not a lot of continuous current available from this, but I still found it interesting. Maybe when they move that thing higher up… Via: Laser Saber / YouTube:
Being a Cynic Linked to Tripled Risk of Developing Dementia, Finland Study Suggests
May 29th, 2014Via: National Post: Cynics are three times more likely to develop dementia than those who have faith in humanity, a study has shown. Believing that others are motivated by selfishness, or that they lie to get what they want, appears to radically increase the risk of cognitive decline in later life.
London’s Nitrogen Dioxide Pollution Worse Than Beijing’s
May 28th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: London has a dirty secret. Levels of the harmful air pollutant nitrogen dioxide at a city-center monitoring station are the highest in Europe. Concentrations are greater even than in Beijing, where expatriates have dubbed the city’s smog the “airpocalypse.” It’s the law of unintended consequences at work. European Union efforts to fight climate […]
Microsoft Working on Real-Time Audio Translations for Skype Conversations
May 28th, 2014Via: Microsoft: Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and […]
