ZAP
Now, it turns out similar vans have made their way to police departments, including the NYPD. The police are unwilling to explain (PDF) how they're used, or how often.
"A state court has already ruled that the NYPD has to turn over policies, procedures, and training manuals that shape uses of X-rays; reports on past deployments; information on the costs of the X-ray devices and the number of vans purchased; and information on the health and safety effects of the technology.
But New York City is fighting on appeal to suppress that information and more, as if it is some kind of spy agency rather than a municipal police department operating on domestic soil, ostensibly at the pleasure of city residents."
***
This just leaked: two Senators are about to introduce a bill that would ban strong encryption in the U.S.
Weakening encryption would make our airports, hospitals, and water treatment facilities way more vulnerable to attacks.
It’s not hyperbole to say that this terribly misguided bill would put millions of people’s lives in danger.
We’ve stopped bad bills like this before.
Now we need your help to do it again.
Click here to chip in $5 to stop this dangerous bill!
It’s called the ‘Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016,’ and it’s being pushed by surveillance-loving Senators Burr and Feinstein.
A leaked draft of the text was just posted online, and it’s worse than we feared.
If a bill like this passes, it would essentially mandate government backdoors into every type of technology that we use.
Our phones.
Our computers. Online banking. Messaging services. VPNs. Everything.
It would require private companies to assist the government by weakening their own security––even if it would put all of their customers in serious danger.
Ever.
We’re going to make sure it never becomes law. But once it’s introduced, it could move really fast so we need your help right now.
Click here to chip in $5 to help save encryption!
Legislation that outlaws encryption wouldn’t just decimate our privacy and civil liberties, it would be terrible for national security and public safety.
Security experts, and even intelligence officials like the former head of the NSA (!), agree that strong, end-to-end encryption makes all of us safer.
Backdoors in encryption, on the other hand, put all of us in danger.
They’re just government mandated security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by anyone who can find them.
So this bill wouldn’t just make it easier for the FBI to hack your phone, it would make it easier for criminals to hack your bank account, or for terrorists to hack a power plant.
An idea this bad could only come out of U.S. Congress. But fortunately, we have a solid track record of stopping misguided legislation like this in its tracks.
Click here to chip in $5 (or more!) to stop Congress from banning encryption!
We’ll be watching this bill closely and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s introduced.
In the meantime, we need to build the tools we know will help us stop it:
-
A beautiful, professional website that explains the bill in clear terms that everyone can understand
-
Social media content and press materials to get the word out and sound the alarm
- A tool to make it easy for people to email and call their lawmakers to stop this
Yes! I’ll chip in $5!
This fight will define the future.
We’re glad to have you on our side.
For the Internet,
-Evan at Fight for the Future
P.S. Not everyone who gets this will be able to chip in, so if you can, please chip in $5 now!
Sources:
Vice Magazine: http://motherboard.vice.com/
Draft bill text: https://www.scribd.com/doc/
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/2016/04/
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/
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| NO SURFING! |
I expect we will soon enough start hearing about surfers on the Pacific Coast getting cancer...
Japan's labor ministry has confirmed the first cancer case related to work at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Following on from reports of elevated levels of child cancer and 1,600 civilians deaths from the evacuation, this is the first time that one of the 44,000 people involved in the clean up operation has been diagnosed with cancer resulting directly from the accident.
The worker was involved in recovery and cleanup efforts at the plant after it suffered a meltdown in March, 2011. He was in his late 30s at the time, and has been diagnosed with leukemia.
The ministry has approved workers' compensation. Radiation exposure has been linked to the onset of leukemia.
Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Japan should restart more of its nuclear reactors (the Sendai nuclear plant was restarted in August).
The reason is simple, writes Baum:
"Japan is now building 45 new coal power plants, but if it turned its nuclear power plants back on... it could cut coal consumption in half. And coal poses more health and climate change dangers than nuclear power."
Ya Right!
Tell it to the surfers who are now surfing in radioactive waters of the Pacific thanks to Japan!
Don't believe me?
Take a geiger counter to the ocean and check it out for yourself.
When surfing, water invariably ends up in the nasal cavities close to the brain, now that salt water is radioactive!
***
Modern crapification of the earth literally
Or
Oops the ship sunk with the dirt in the middle of the Pacific Ocean...O Darn.
Rafael Minder writes in the NY Times that almost 50 years after coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster, Secretary of State John Kerry, following years of wrangling between Spain and the U.S., signed an agreement to remove contaminated soil from an area in southern Spain where an American warplane accidentally dropped hydrogen bombs.
In 1966 a bomber collided with a refueling tanker in midair and dropped four hydrogen bombs, two of which released plutonium into the atmosphere. No warheads detonated, narrowly averting what could have been an explosion more powerful than the atomic strikes against Japan at the end of World War II.
Four days after the accident, the Spanish government stated that "the Palomares incident was evidence of the dangers created by NATO's use of the Gibraltar airstrip," announcing that NATO aircraft would no longer be permitted to fly over Spanish territory either to or from Gibraltar.
The U.S. later announced that it would no longer fly over Spain with nuclear weapons, and the Spanish government formally banned U.S. flights over its territory that carried such weapons.
Neither Kerry nor Spanish Foreign Minister García-Margallo said exactly how much contaminated soil would be sent back, where it would be stored in the United States, or who would pay for the cleanup — some of the issues that have held up a deal until now.
Spain has insisted that any contaminated soil be sent to the United States, because Spain does not have plants to store it.
Concern over the site was reawakened in the 1990s when tests revealed high levels of americium, an isotope of plutonium, and further tests showed that 50,000 cubic meters of earth were still contaminated.
The Spanish government appropriated the land in 2003 to prevent it being used.
***
Transmitting power through the air using sound above the range of human hearing: that's the gist of ultrasonic power transfer.
The promise is that you can sit in a coffee shop and use your phone like normal while it's recharged by invisible waves of energy.
That's a future we all want — and one that uBeam has been promoting, but hasn't backed it up with proof.
Physics is a cruel mistress, and this is no exception.
Using the data found in uBeam's patent filings you can see that ultrasonic power transfer is a brutal engineering challenge.
It's probably not impossible, but looking at what it would take for a widespread rollout of the tech makes it highly improbable.
I think it is possible in the distant future.
Speaking of sound...
Elephants use infrasound to communicate very long distances at night. ***
Apple Smasher Launched
HTC is today formally announcing the 10, its flagship smartphone for 2016.
The HTC 10 follows last year's M9 and blends the design of the M series with the A9 that came last fall. HTC says it spent 12 months designing this phone and integrated feedback from its customers throughout the development process.
The 10 has everything you might expect from a flagship Android phone in 2016.
It has a 12 megapixel camera.
There's a 5.2-inch, quad HD Super LCD 5 display that HTC says displays 30 percent more color than last year's phone.
The screen is covered in Gorilla Glass with curved edges that blend into the phone's metal frame.
You'll be able to find out if that's enough for HTC to compete when the phone ships next month for $699.
One interesting feature, which separates HTC 10 from many other Android flagship smartphones, is support for AirPlay.
The feature enables the smartphone to stream media content to an Apple TV.
***
I lived in my van for a while during the hippy days.
A little over a year ago, Google employees on a Quora thread announced they'd discovered an interesting way to live in the ultra-expensive Bay Area:
Rather than pay for conventional housing, they resided in trucks and RVs parked near (or on) the company's campus, and took advantage of corporate perks—including free food, gym facilities, and dry cleaning—to get by on a day-by-day basis.
Now one Googler, Brandon S., has taken to his blog to describe how he engaged in a little off-grid living within sight of Google's high-tech headquarters.
First he spent $10,000 of his Google signing bonus on a 2006 Ford truck with 128 square feet of room in the back, which he filled with a bed, dresser, and coat rack.
Google pays for his phone, and he uses the company's gym and cafeterias to eat and shower.
For those Bay Area tech pros who think Brandon's lifestyle sounds appealing, his list of drawbacks includes "social suicide," the inconvenience of not having a bathroom or fridge in close proximity, stress, insect infestations, and the upfront costs of purchasing a large-enough vehicle.
On the other hand, he's also using the cash savings to rapidly pay down his student loans.
***
Your new card with the little metal looking chip is not as good at being secure as they would like you to think...
When in 2010 a team of computer scientists at Cambridge University demonstrated how the chip and PIN system used on many modern payment cards can be bypassed by making the POS system accept any PIN as valid, the reaction of the EMVCo and the UK Cards Association was to brand the attack as "improbable." After all, the researchers used a bulky tech setup that had to be carried around in a backpack but, as it ultimately turned out, a year later an engineer based in France found a less obvious way to perform the attack.
***
The Black Metal Centurion ( anodized titanium )American Express Card Does Exist
The JPMorgan Chase Palladium card is made out of laser-etched palladium and gold.
It makes even the American Express Centurion or Black Card — pale in comparison.
the standard-bearer for high-roller credit cards.
If you happen to have an extra $25 million that you are willing to let JPMorgan Chase manage for you,” you can get the card.
***
None Such
Veproject1 has uploaded nearly 100 videos, almost all of which show the workings of machines that can't possibly exist.
The creator of these machines — Valeriy Ivanov — is a Ukrainian engineer living in Canada.
According to his website, the purpose of these contraptions is, "to attract youth to Engineering and Science... [so they] can discuss basic scientific principles upon which they are built."
In
order of likeliness:
Maybe they're meant to be illustrative?
Maybe Mr.
Ivanov thinks perpetual motion is possible and wants to spread his
wisdom?
Or maybe he's a huge troll with the patience to film tons of
short videos and maintain a website and Facebook page under an alias?
Regardless
of why these videos exist, the real fun lies in watching YouTube
commenters suss out how the fakes were built to look as though they're
functioning.
It's just plain fun!
It's just plain fun!
***
The space tether experiment, a joint venture of the US and Italy, called for a scientific payload--a large, spherical satellite--to be deployed from the US space shuttle at the end of a conducting cable (tether) 20 km (12.5 miles) long.
The idea was to let the shuttle drag the tether across the Earth's magnetic field, producing one part of a dynamo circuit. The return current, from the shuttle to the payload, would flow in the Earth's ionosphere, which also conducted electricity, even though not as well as the wire.
The full story is not being told in the above link.
And for good reason!
Most people will not believe what actually took place.There was a very large amount of unidentified flying objects that appeared around the cable as it drifted away from the space shuttle.
A man up in Canada named Martyn Stubbs had the incredible opportunity and the proper equipment to intercept NASA's actual visual communications concerning the tether experiment.
He made a video he titled "The Smoking Gun" in 2001 about his findings.
The video is called the most popular underground tape among astronauts, and it claims to show video evidence of aliens in space.
There's allegedly some form of intelligent life flying around on the NASA videos.
Curious anomalous objects can be seen swarming around the tether.
Here is that video:
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