Read moreWithin four years though, Abu Nafez had become his own boss. He had dug his own tunnels.
He had over 100 employees and was smuggling millions of pounds worth of goods into Gaza. Crisps, coffee, cookers, cows, cars – yes, that’s right, whole brand-new cars.
Sitting in his garden I asked him how much he earned. A shy smile crept across his lips as he sipped on a glass of mint tea.
“Over £100,000 ($150,000) a year,” he reluctantly admitted. The look on his face suggested it was probably more.
Quotes
Read moreSatoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at The London School of Economics and Political Science, argues that, while we have specialized mental modules for navigation, social interaction, and other age-old tasks, general intelligence is its own module handling only evolutionarily novel circumstances. And he has data showing that people with higher IQs are more likely to have values and preferences that just didn’t make sense for our ancestors to embrace. One of those is staying up late.
A previous study found that evening people are smarter than morning people. In a new paper, Kanazawa replicates the finding and provides a theoretical grounding. Because the nocturnal lifestyle allowed by electricity didn’t exist 10,000 years ago, we must now rely on general intelligence to override our early-to-bed instincts. So those with more of it stay up later.
Read moreAccording to BP, when workers attempted to activate the BOP from the top of the Deepwater Horizon rig before they were evacuated, nothing happened. The website ScienceInsider says that the shut off should have been automatic. Even after the rig sank, when BP and the Coast Guard tried to use robot submarines to trigger the BOP, it didn’t work.
There were multiple “Panic Buttons” to hit, even a so-called “Deadman” fail-safe that should have been engaged automatically. None of these security procedures worked. According to BP’s Hayward, “It is the ultimate safety system on any rig and there is no precedent for them failing.” In fact, Minerals Management Service records show that this BOP passed a test on April 10, less than two weeks before it failed. Thus far, no one has been able to explain it and Cameron has been conspicuously silent.
“We are all very curious,” said an insider who works for one of BP’s competitors. “What happened to all that equipment, all the computer power, all the automated systems and manpower in place, could not be invoked to stop this?”
A press release by Cameron last November does point to one clue. The company had just acquired NATCO, another wellhead and refinery equipment manufacturer. The merger gave Cameron, among other things, a subsidiary known as TEST Automation & Controls, which upgraded its automated control, safety and SCADA systems.
In short, Cameron uses SCADA systems, which collect data from various sensors and send it to a central computer on oil rigs. Instructions are not encrypted and are sometimes sent over the Internet. Among other things, SCADA monitors information from the blowout preventer, whose failure on the Deepwater Horizon apparently led to the disaster.
In 1999, when a pipeline burst in Bellingham, Washington, a SCADA failure was implicated. A software glitch in a SCADA system also slowed controls on the power grid during a successful computer attack in 2003. Incidentally, SCADA network and control systems also run dams, power plants, and gas and oil refineries.
A recent study funded by security vendor McAfee Inc and released in January by the Center for Strategic and International Studies at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland concluded that SCADA systems are being attacked by a variety of methods, individuals and gangs. Two-thirds of those surveyed said their SCADA systems were connected to an IP network or the Internet. About half of those said the connection created SCADA security issues that aren’t being addressed.
“I would describe the preparedness as quite spotty and in some cases quite lacking,” admitted Stewart Baker, a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency who led the survey team. “Basic key security measures are still not widely adopted.” And the problem is getting worse. About 40 percent of those surveyed expected a major incident – an attack resulting in major consequences – within a year.
Read moreJohannes Caspar said his Hamburg data protection office had initiated legal steps that could result in Facebook being fined tens of thousands of euros for saving private information of individuals who don’t use the site and haven’t granted it access to their details.
…
In April, Facebook changed its privacy settings to allow users to block access to the contacts listed in their e-mail, but Caspar argues that the previously saved contacts have not been erased and are being used for marketing purposes.
“It is a system that is designed around making it possible for Facebook to expand, for its own benefit,” Caspar said in a telephone interview.
He said his office had received complaints from “many” people who had been contacted by Facebook after it obtained their names and e-mail addresses through people listing them as a contact.
Read moreAs a first step to discovering whether living organisms could survive, European Space Agency scientists are hoping to experiment with growing tulips on the moon within the next decade.
The first flowers – tulips or arabidopsis, a plant widely used in research – could be grown in 2012 or 2015 according to Bernard Foing, chief scientist at the agency’s research department.
Tulips are ideal because they can be frozen, transported long distances and grown with little nourishment. Combined with algae, an enclosed artificial atmosphere and chemically enhanced lunar soil, they could form the basis of an ecosystem.
The first experiments would be carried out in transparent biospheres containing a mix of gases to mimic the earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide given off by the decomposing plants would be mopped up by the algae, which would generate oxygen through photosynthesis.
Read more“Perpetual technological innovation is so much a part of contemporary life that it is difficult even to imagine the world without it,” Rosen writes, but maybe we should start to try to imagine it. A modern-day Steampunk might well say that perpetual innovation without reference to a sustainable future is a form of madness. (Reclaiming retro-technology for the Green Movement is one aspect of the Steampunk movement.)
Read moreFrom today, everyone will have access to a reasonably priced broadband connection, says the Finnish government, in the same way as everyone can access telephone or postal services.
Every business will also be included in the pledge, which initially guarantees a download speed of at least 1Mb.
Read moreIf Angelina Jolie opens “Salt,” a July 23 action thriller that looks eerily like “Wanted,” her last action thriller, then we’ll have to wonder if Cruise and Diaz really have completely lost their drawing power. And if “Salt” is a disappointment, then perhaps people will cast a wider net, saying that movie stars are even more overrated than ever before, or argue that action thrillers are dead – at least until the next one that comes along has a terrific opening.
Read moreAt 11, he decided school was useless to his future as a circus clown or pirate and refused to learn any more.
Read moreIf you know more than five people, chances are that you now know someone who declares themselves a social media expert,
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 