Monthly Archives: August 2013

When ‘Smart Homes’ Get Hacked: I Haunted A Complete Stranger’s House Via The Internet

"Due to Insteon not requiring user names and passwords by default in a now-discontinued product, I was able to click on the links, giving me the ability to turn these people’s homes into haunted houses, energy-consumption nightmares, or even robbery targets. Opening a garage door could make a house ripe for actual physical intrusion. Thomas Hatley’s home was one of eight that I was able to access. Sensitive information was revealed – not just what appliances and devices people had, but their time zone (along with the closest major city to their home), IP addresses and even the name of a child." Continue reading →

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John Carmack: Armadillo Aerospace in “hibernation mode”

"There is a good reason for that silence over the last five months: the company is, for the time being, effectively out of money. 'The situation that we’re at right now is that things are turned down to sort of a hibernation mode,' Carmack said Thursday evening at the QuakeCon gaming conference in Dallas. 'If we don’t wind up landing an investor, it’ll probably stay in hibernation until there’s another liquidity event where I’m comfortable throwing another million dollars a year into things,' he said. Funding Armadillo, he said, has 'always been a negotiation with my wife,' he said, setting aside some 'crazy money' to spend on it." Continue reading →

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Should You Trust Your Instincts on Gold?

"I have yet to see anyone present any logical economic premise that concludes that our country will not eventually see a currency collapse. Instead, I see several clues that reinforce my concerns. Throughout history thousands of currencies have collapsed, but precious metals have held their value. It should come as no surprise to learn that over the last few years China, Russia, and many central banks have been stockpiling gold. Germany and Venezuela quietly announced earlier this year that they are repatriating their gold stores overseas—not coincidentally mostly from the US—back to their shores." Continue reading →

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No One Saw This Coming…

"Last fall, I sat in a cozy living room on the outskirts of Tallinn, Estonia, drinking coffee, eating freshly baked pastries and listening to a former parliament member for the Soviet Union tell me about a phone call he had recently received from inside Russia’s central bank. The bank officials wanted input on how to build a reserve currency, one backed by the plentitude of hard assets Russia owns. What he told me – easily the most-stunning bit of information I gathered on that research trip – has stuck with me. 'Russia,' he announced, 'is using oil, gas and minerals as the new tools of war instead of military tools. This will be the beginning of a currency cold war.'" Continue reading →

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Jeffrey Tucker: Thank You, Russia?

"I’m as glad as the next guy that 'we' won the Cold War. But sometimes you just have to wonder: What was the point of those 45 years of nuclear stalemate? All that time, we were told that this was a mighty struggle between individualism and collectivism, between freedom and tyranny, between capitalism and communism. But at the end of the day, once everything has shaken itself out, it is Russia that is providing sanctuary to our best citizens. Is this some sort of strange dystopian novel? Well, yes, and it has a name: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell." Continue reading →

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Copper And Gold Flowing From Turquoise Hill – Part I With Harris Kupperman

"The whole country is basically a boomtown. It’s one of these funny places where you really need to be on the ground to understand it. So you have a country that five, ten years ago didn’t have that much in the way of wealth, and the average citizen wasn’t making that much money. And suddenly they’ve gotten really high paying jobs in the mining sector, and they’re making a few thousand U.S. dollars a month. Prior to this mining project, some of them weren’t making that much in a whole year. All of this newfound wealth is entering the economy. It’s creating a middle class. It’s creating a booming economy." Continue reading →

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Escape From the Grasp of Congress

"With 11.5 million illegal aliens in the country, it’s hard to understand how a relatively small number of departing U.S. emigrants is threatening to U.S. lawmakers. Maybe it’s because those numbers are rising and the federal government fears an increasing number of U.S. citizens moving beyond its control. The only other national regimes to have adopted similar punitive tax laws were Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin and apartheid South Africa. I admit expatriation is certainly a drastic plan. However, as we see in the statistics, more and more U.S. citizens are choosing that option as the America we knew and loved fades farther from memory." Continue reading →

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Zimmerman prosecution staffer files whistleblower suit over testimony on unreleased evidence

"A former employee of Florida State Attorney Angela Corey’s office is suing the prosecutor, claiming he was illegally fired after he testified on behalf of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the death of black teenager Trayvon Martin. Kruidbos was fired after testifying at a pre-trial hearing on June 6 that he believed prosecutors had failed to turn over to the defense, as required by evidence-sharing laws, potentially embarrassing evidence extracted from Martin’s cell phone." Continue reading →

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Texas jailer must face trial after video caught him raping 15-year-old

"A federal judge ruled this week that a trial against a Texas jailer can go forward after video caught him allegedly raping a 15-year-old female inmate. In a suit filed late last year, Michelle and Danny Hall accused former Harris County correctional officer Robert Robinson of raping their daughter, M.S.H., during her two month stay at Houston’s Harris County Juvenile Justice Center. The suit accuses Robinson of 'grooming' the girl with food and candy, before the encounters 'quickly escalated with quid pro quo requests that exchanged gifts for genital fondling and touching.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingTexas jailer must face trial after video caught him raping 15-year-old