Archive for March, 2019
Trump Cuts Aid to Central American Countries as Migrant Crisis Deepens
March 31st, 2019Trump should have used the military to shut the border on the day he became President. Over two years later, the situation is worse than ever. Via: Reuters: The U.S. government cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on Saturday after President Donald Trump blasted the Central American countries for sending migrants to the […]
Apple Developing an Electric Car, Hires Tesla’s Former Head of Electric Powertrains
March 31st, 2019I wonder if it will be made in China by Foxconn… Via: Electrek: There has long been a debate about Apple’s secretive automotive project being only about a self-driving system for vehicles rather than a full electric autonomous vehicle. It now looks clear that the latter is the case as Apple hires Tesla’s head of […]
U.S. Government Finances Still Deteriorating
March 30th, 2019Via: Truth in Accounting: The federal government released the annual report of the U.S. Government for fiscal 2018 this afternoon. The government’s finances deteriorated significantly, and more recent reports suggest the trend is only getting worse in 2019. Our measure of the unfunded federal debt rose from $101 trillion in 2017 to $105 trillion at […]
U.S. Border: “This Is a System-Wide Collapse”
March 30th, 2019Via: USA Today: Under a bridge connecting the U.S. with Mexico, dozens of migrant families cram into a makeshift camp set up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The families are there because permanent processing facilities have run out of room. Seven hundred miles east, busload after busload of weary, bedraggled migrants crowd into the […]
Prison Labor: Inmates in Finland Are Training AI
March 29th, 2019Via: The Verge: “Prison labor” is usually associated with physical work, but inmates at two prisons in Finland are doing a new type of labor: classifying data to train artificial intelligence algorithms for a startup. Though the startup in question, Vainu, sees the partnership as a kind of prison reform that teaches valuable skills, other […]
Retail Apocalypse: JCPenney, Payless, LifeWay Announce 3,000+ Combined Store Closures
March 29th, 2019Via: NBC: More than 41,000 people have lost their jobs in the retail industry so far this year — a 92 percent spike in layoffs since the same time last year, according to a new report. And the layoffs continue to mount, with JCPenney announcing this week it would be closing 18 stores in addition […]
French Spy Found Dead in Alps After Being Accused of Plot to Assassinate Exiled Congolese Politician
March 29th, 2019Via: Independent: A French spy has been shot dead after being implicated in the attempted assassination of an exiled Congolese opposition figure. The body of Daniel Forestier was discovered last week by police in a car park in the remote Alpine town of Ballaison, close to the French border with Switzerland. The 57-year-old had been […]
Boston Dynamics: Handle Robot
March 29th, 2019Via: Boston Dynamics: Handle is a mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics. Handle autonomously performs mixed SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets. The on-board vision system on Handle tracks the marked pallets for navigation and finds individual boxes for grasping and placing. When Handle places a boxes onto a […]
Renegade DEA Mass Surveillance Operations
March 29th, 2019“It’s just like laundering money – you work it backwards to make it clean.” Via: Nextgov: The Drug Enforcement Administration skirted numerous legal checks on a trio of bulk data collection programs dating back to the early 1990s, according to an internal watchdog. In a heavily redacted, 144-page report published Thursday, the Justice Department Inspector […]
How Android Phones Keep Tabs On Our Every Move
March 29th, 2019I wouldn’t encourage the use of Apple’s mobile devices as an alternative, but Android is essentially malware. Via: El País: As a consumer, you buy a new Android cellphone. It could be any brand, but it is likely to be an Android as they account for more than 80% of today’s cellphone market. You open […]
