Friday Fustilarian Fustian

GE is advertising on MSNBC lately.

Perhaps you have seen their ads?


They are advertising something that is of no use what so ever to the general public that will be viewing these GE ads.

But the money GE commits to this, useless to the public ad campaign, buys control of MSNBC.

Thusly you will not hear anything negative about GE on the network.

 Not even Rachael Maddow will touch GE now. GE has essentially purchased goodwill and news silence.

But others can and do report negative stuff about GE.

Now this doesn't exactly make it true.

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BAM!

Brian Everstine writes at Air Force Times that U.S. intelligence officers were able to locate and bomb an Islamic State command center based on a photo and comments in social media. 

 "The [airmen are] combing through social media and they see some moron standing at this command," said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command. "

And in some social media, open forum, bragging about command and control capabilities for Da'esh, ISIL, And these guys go 'ah, we got an in.' 

So they do some work, long story short, about 22 hours later through that very building, three JDAMS take that entire building out. 

Through social media. It was a post on social media. Bombs on target in 22 hours."

Carlisle was careful to not go into great detail about the how the information was gathered and what additional effort went into targeting those bombs.

 It's easy to imagine that in addition to the information gleaned from the initial post that the Air Force used satellite and drone reconnaissance data.

 It's also possible that U.S. intelligence could have actively engaged with the original poster in order to draw out information. 

 Attackers and researchers have shown time and time again that simply asking a target for information—either by posing as a trusted individual or using carefully created phishing attacks—works even better than fancy information-stealing digital attacks.

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 Ya Right!

A long-awaited EPA report on hydraulic fracturing concludes that the extraction process has "not led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources." 

The report also cautions of potential contamination of water supplies if safeguards are not maintained.

 "The study was undertaken over several years and we worked very closely with industry throughout the process," Tom Burke, EPA's science advisor and deputy assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Research and Development, said on a conference call hosted by the agency.

Here is the truth...

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 Finally! 

There's something that apparently virtually all governments around the world can actually agree upon. 

Unfortunately, it's on par conceptually with handing out hydrogen bombs as lottery prizes.

 If the drumbeat isn't actually coordinated, it might as well be. 

Around the world, in testimony before national legislatures and in countless interviews with media, government officials and their surrogates are proclaiming the immediate need to "do something" about encryption that law enforcement and other government agencies can't read on demand.

 Apropos:
This IT World story (and the New York Times piece it draws from — also published today) about a newly disclosed NSA program through which the agency is "reportedly intercepting Internet communications from U.S. residents without getting court-ordered warrants."

Interesting that dictatorships all have done these kind of things to their people.

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