Pegasus

Pegasus spyware can bypass your cellphone’s security and access your emails, messages, GPS location, photos, video, and even turn on your phone’s microphone. Manufacturer NSO Group has sold Pegasus to some of the world’s most oppressive regimes. These clients have used to spy on journalists, world figures, and human rights groups. Read about The Guardian‘s extensive investigation.

_________________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-xgW

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

Space Tourism

Why hasn’t space tourism taken off? The Guardian explains.

______________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-wAE

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Space Junk

Rubbish is clogging space, and some of the trash is moving at 15,500mph. Some of the satellites we depend on for navigation and communication risk collision. The Guardian‘s Ian Anderson explores.

______________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-uV4

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Pentagon Tests Mass Surveillance Balloons in US

“The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal.

Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois.”

“The balloons are carrying hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather. The tests, which have not previously been reported, received an FCC license to operate from mid-July until September, following similar flights licensed last year.”

— “Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US,” Mark Harris, The Guardian

__________________

Short Link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-tBC

Image by Mike Licht (in tribute to Otto Messmer). Download copies here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Silicon Valley Language Lesson

 

“Apple (n) – America’s first trillion-dollar company, which achieved inordinate success through groundbreaking products such as the Macintosh, iPod and iPhone. After it ran out of ideas for new products, Apple maintained its dominance by coming up with new ways to force its customers to purchase expensive accessories. See dongle.”

“cloud, the (n) – Servers. A way to keep more of your data off your computer and in the hands of big tech, where it can be monetized in ways you don’t understand but may have agreed to when you clicked on the Terms of Service. Usually located in a city or town whose elected officials exchanged tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks for seven full-time security guard jobs.”

Julia Carrie Wong and Matthew Cantor have produced a Devil’s Dictionary for today’s Bay Area:

“How to speak Silicon Valley: 53 essential tech-bro terms explained,” Julia Carrie Wong and Matthew Cantor, The Guardian

Related:

“The New Devil’s Dictionary,” The Verge

__________________

Short Link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-tkN

Image by Mike Licht. Download copies here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Homeopathic Snake Oil Fuels the Measles Crisis

Kate Birch, a homeopath based in Minnesota, is a leading quack in the lunatic anti-vaxxer campaign behind the raging measles epidemic plaguing America’s children. Homeopathic products are essentially small vials of very expensive water or alcohol masquerading as preventatives and cures for diseases and ailments. Substances they contain are so diluted that the products are essentially placebos.

Why, you may ask, doesn’t the FDA regulate this kind of bunkum? An original Senate sponsor of the 1938 “Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act” was a dean at a Homeopathic Medical College, and made sure the act identified all homeopathic swill as drugs. Existing FDA regs are, appropriately, watered-down. Since umpteen-hundred scientific studies show that homeopathic medicine doesn’t work, even the woo-woo department of NIH, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, points out that homeopathy is bunk.

More:

“US homeopaths claim ‘therapies’ prevent measles and ‘cure’ autism,” Ed Pilkington, The Guardian

_____________

Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-tdg

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Parking

“Why we should pay more for free parking.” A Guardian video.

______________

Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-srb

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Teaching in America

“I’ve had hungry students who couldn’t concentrate; I’ve filed tax returns for kids’ parents. You’re the only adult they trust – the only adult that talks to them like they’re a person.”

A Guardian video.

_____________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-skO

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

More and More Frequent

“… there are now fewer days between mass shootings and more fatalities. In the 1990s, an estimated 159 people were killed in mass shootings. That figure rose to 171 people in the 2000s. So far this decade, at least 381 people have been killed in mass shootings.”

“… less deadly mass shootings rarely receive the same degree of media attention because they simply happen so frequently. The last mass shooting prior to Sunday happened just four days earlier, when Scott Allen Ostrem, 47, walked into a Walmart in Denver and fatally shot two men and a woman, before leaving the store and driving away.”

— “Not your imagination: mass shootings now happen more frequently in the US,” Mona Chalabi, The Guardian

Technology Shields German Government from Spies

“German politicians are considering a return to using manual typewriters for sensitive documents in the wake of the US surveillance scandal.

The head of the Bundestag’s parliamentary inquiry into NSA activity in Germany said in an interview with the Morgenmagazin TV programme that he and his colleagues were seriously thinking of ditching email completely.”

More:

“Germany ‘may revert to typewriters’ to counter hi-tech espionage,” Philip Oltermann, The Guardian

_____________

Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-jzW

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine