Originally posted on Desultory Heroics:
By John & Nisha Whitehead Source: The Rutherford Institute “Crush! Kill! Destroy!”—The Robot,?Lost in Space The purpose of a?good?government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people. Unfortunately, we have gone so far in the opposite direction from the ideals of a good government that it’s hard to…

Originally posted on Desultory Heroics:
Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky (C) walks to his Presidential office after a ceremony of his oath in the Ukrainian Parliament, in Kiev, Ukraine. © STR / NurPhoto via Getty Images By Olga Sukharevskaya Source: New Cold War For years, and particularly since the beginning of Russia’s military offensive?in…

The most probable cause of a series of mysterious afflictions that sickened American spies and diplomats abroad in the past several years was radiofrequency energy, a type of radiation that includes microwaves, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has concluded in a report. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/business/economy/havana-syndrome-microwave-attack.html The conclusion by a committee of 19 experts in […]

China will require telecom operators to collect face scans when registering new phone users at offline outlets starting Sunday, according to the country’s information technology authority, as Beijing continues to tighten cyberspace controls. https://news.yahoo.com/china-introduces-mandatory-face-scans-phone-users-091042257.html In September, China’s industry and information technology ministry issued a notice on “safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of citizens online”, […]

The Department of Homeland Security wants to track the comings and goings of journalists, bloggers and other “media influencers” through a database. https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/homeland-security-to-compile-database-of-journalists-and-media-influencers/ The DHS’s “Media Monitoring” plan, which was first reported by FedBizOpps.gov, would give the contracting company “24/7 access to a password protected, media influencer database, including journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers […]

US Citizen vs. ISIS: An Online Sleuth Lands in Jail. Toby Lopez was a supremely ordinary guy. He sold Toyotas and lived with his mother in a tidy rancher here with a cherry tree out front.   http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/an-amateur-vs-isis-a-car-salesman-investigates-and-ends-up-in-prison.html?_r=0 After a high school friend was killed in Afghanistan, Mr. Lopez heard on CNN that the Islamic State […]

A year after auditors documented tens of thousands of federal workers on paid leave for at least a month and longer stretches that exceed a year, close to 100 Department of Homeland Security employees still are being paid not to work for more than a year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/10/22/at-homeland-security-almost-100-employees-paid-to-stay-home-for-more-than-a-year/ The large number persists even after the Obama […]

A drone large enough to carry tanks of pesticides has won rare approval from federal authorities to spray crops in the United States, officials said Tuesday. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a7314ebbacd1441785c9b22c9be4d1ac/us-gives-farmers-approval-spray-crops-drones The drone, called the RMAX, is a remotely piloted helicopter that weighs 207 pounds (94 kilograms), said Steve Markofski, a spokesman for Yamaha Corp. U.S.A., which developed the […]

CIA researchers have worked for nearly a decade to break the security protecting Apple (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) phones and tablets, investigative news site The Intercept reported on Tuesday, citing documents obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/10/us-apple-cybersecurity-idUSKBN0M610V20150310?utm_source=twitter The report cites top-secret U.S. documents that suggest U.S. government researchers had created a version […]

Police in New York say an axe attack on two officers was a terrorist act carried out by a radicalised Muslim convert.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29753347 Zale Thompson, 32, was shot dead after wounding the two officers, one critically, in Queens on Thursday. Commissioner William Bratton said Thompson was not on any watch lists but had browsed al-Qaeda […]

An unmanned US plane on a top-secret, two-year mission to space has returned to Earth and landed in California. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29669205 The aircraft, resembling a miniature space shuttle and known as the Orbital Test Vehicle or X-37B, spent 674 days in orbit around the planet. It was the unmanned plane’s third space flight, but its mission […]

A federal judge ruled on Monday that the so-called five-second rule, a police tactic sporadically used in Ferguson, Mo., that required demonstrators to keep moving while they protested, is unconstitutional. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/us/judge-blocks-rule-for-ferguson-protesters.html?ref=us “The practice of requiring peaceful demonstrators and others to walk, rather than stand still, violates the Constitution,” Judge Catherine D. Perry of District Court […]

For the last decade the Chaldean Catholics of Iraq — members of an Eastern Rite church that is affiliated with Roman Catholicism while retaining its own customs and rites — have been suffering recently at the hands of Islamic militants. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/us/as-iraqi-christians-in-us-watch-isis-advance-they-see-a-slow-motion-genocide.html?ref=us During that period, the total Christian population of Iraq, the largest share of which […]

Time Warner Cable’s network left millions of people cut off from the internet in the US. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28955562 The firm said a problem affected customers in all 29 of the states in which it offered broadband connections. The problem started in the early hours of Wednesday morning, which will have limited its effect. The company said […]

Engineers in the US have built a swarm of 1,000 little robots that can shuffle into specific formations on command.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28739371 Each of the identical robots is given a picture of the required shape, and then they work together to make it happen. It takes up to 12 hours, but then this is the biggest […]

African peacekeepers and Somali troops battled militants in a suburb of Mogadishu on Friday, launching a joint offensive that killed at least 14 people, police said. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/15/us-somalia-security-idUSKBN0GF0KR20140815?feedType=RSS African peacekeepers and Somali troops battled militants in a suburb of Mogadishu on Friday, launching a joint offensive that killed at least 14 people, police said. The attack […]