Archive for January, 2017
13 Million Pages of Declassified CIA Documents Just Posted Online
January 18th, 2017Via: Vice: A nonprofit organization, a persistent rabble-rouser, and their pro-bono attorney have succeeded in getting the Central Intelligence Agency to post the full contents of its declassified records database online, meaning it’s now possible to access roughly 13 million pages of CIA documents dating back to the beginnings of the Cold War.
F-16 and SU-27P in Mock Dogfight Over Area 51
January 17th, 2017The idiotic Daily Mail is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. In fact, there is nothing unusual about what was photographed. Assessing foreign military hardware is one of the normal things that happens at Area 51, and is nothing new. See, Foreign Technology Evaluation: During the Cold War, one of the missions […]
‘Liberal Preppers Stock Up On Guns, Food As Trumpocalypse Looms’
January 17th, 2017Via: Vocativ: Colin Waugh bought a shotgun four weeks before November’s election. An unapologetic liberal, he was no fan of firearms. He had never owned one before. But Waugh, a 31-year-old from Independence, Missouri, couldn’t shake his fears of a Donald Trump presidency — and all of the chaos it could bring. He imagined hate […]
Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
January 17th, 2017Via: New York Times: President Obama on Tuesday largely commuted the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of an enormous 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted the administration and made WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures, famous. The decision by Mr. Obama rescued […]
Tesla to Power Gigafactory with World’s Largest Solar Rooftop Installation
January 17th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: Inhabitat: Just last week Tesla announced battery production had started at their Nevada Gigafactory, but didn’t mention one thrilling detail in their January 4 announcement: the Gigafactory could be powered by the world’s largest solar rooftop installation. An investor handout revealed a 70-megawatt (MW) […]
Robot Cars Can Learn to Drive without Leaving the Garage
January 17th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review: The computers that control self-driving cars are gaining valuable knowledge about the real world in some surprising ways—including browsing online maps and playing video games. Researchers at Princeton University recently developed a computer vision and mapping system that gathered useful information about the physical properties of roads by studying Google Street […]
Airbus CEO Sees ‘Flying Car’ Prototype Ready by End of Year
January 17th, 2017Via: Reuters: Airbus Group plans to test a prototype for a self-piloted flying car as a way of avoiding gridlock on city roads by the end of the year, the aerospace group’s chief executive said on Monday. Airbus last year formed a division called Urban Air Mobility that is exploring concepts such as a vehicle […]
Air Force Tests IBM’s Brain-Inspired Chip as an Aerial Tank Spotter
January 17th, 2017Nope, there aren’t any SkyNet jokes in the article. Via: MIT Technology Review: Satellites, aircraft, and growing numbers of drones—the U.S. Air Force has a lot of electronic eyes in the sky. Now it’s exploring whether brain-inspired computer chips could give those systems the smarts to do things like automatically identify vehicles such as tanks […]
Rolls-Royce to Pay £671 Million Over Bribery Claims
January 16th, 2017Via: Guardian: Rolls-Royce, Britain’s leading multinational manufacturer, is to pay £671m in penalties after long-running investigations into claims it paid bribes to land export contracts. The settlement means the engineering giant will avoid being prosecuted by anti-corruption investigators in the UK, US and Brazil, though individual executives may still be charged. It comes five years […]
8 Men as Rich as Half the World
January 15th, 2017Get yourself a side hustle and a podshare. Via: ABC: The gap between the super-rich and the poorest half of the global population is starker than previously thought, with just eight men, from Bill Gates to Michael Bloomberg, owning as much wealth as 3.6 billion people, according to an analysis by Oxfam released Monday. Presenting […]
