Clueless

Arkansas mayor fires rifle seized by police, shattering city hall window

"An Arkansas mayor admitted this week that he had accidentally fired a rifle inside city hall, shattering a window. Flippin James 'J.J.' Hudson told the Baxter Bulletin that nine days after he fired the rifle that had been seized by police, the incident had been 'all been taken care of; it’s all been cleaned up.' 'I’m not going to have any further comment on it,' he said. But according to the paper, the shards of glass could still be seen over the entrance of city hall and the window had still not been repaired." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingArkansas mayor fires rifle seized by police, shattering city hall window

With the end of Fed’s QE in sight, U.S. public says ‘Huh?’

"The Fed's $2.8 trillion 'quantitative easing' program has, among other things, lifted stock prices to record highs, driven interest rates to record lows and put a floor under what had been a reeling housing market. Yet barely a quarter of Americans even know what it is. A poll leading up to the Fed's pivotal decision, expected Wednesday afternoon, found just 27 percent of U.S. adults could pick the correct definition of quantitative easing from among five possible answers." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWith the end of Fed’s QE in sight, U.S. public says ‘Huh?’

Brazil hackers accidentally attack NASA as payback for NSA surveillance

"Hackers have hit back in retaliation for US cyber-spying on Brazil but mistook the US space agency NASA for the National Security Agency (NSA), a news website reported here Tuesday. 'Some activists decided to protest this US practice but it seems that they picked the wrong target,' a specialized blog of the Brazilian news portal Uol said. 'They hacked NASA’s web page and left the message: Stop spying on us,' it said. The hackers’ message also called on the United States not to attack Syria. A NASA spokesman confirmed that a Brazilian hacker group last week posted a political message on a number of NASA websites." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBrazil hackers accidentally attack NASA as payback for NSA surveillance

Can We Pay a Minimum Wage That Makes Everyone Rich?

"More people -- an increase in the supply of labor -- want to work at McDonald’s at a rate of $15 an hour than $7.25. That leads to an influx of workers into the labor force and higher unemployment as new entrants fail to find a job. The road to a higher-paying job goes through education, training for the jobs of tomorrow, and incentives such as the earned income tax credit, not through the imposition of a floor on wages. So the next time someone tells you that the U.S. needs to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, ask him what’s so special about $15. Why not raise it to $50, or $100, and make everyone rich?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCan We Pay a Minimum Wage That Makes Everyone Rich?

Lawmaker: My ‘gut feeling’ says Syria got chemical weapons from Iraq

"While admitting to not having any information on the matter, Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) still offered speculation based on his 'gut feeling' that the Syrian government acquired chemical weapons from Iraq, the Huffington Post reported. 'I have not had any classified briefing, but all we know is that Iraq had declared chemical and biological weapons, and then they weren’t there,' Terry told radio host Tom Becka on Thursday. 'It wasn’t something that the U.S. was guessing, that was something that they actually declared. But they went someplace.' Terry, who supported the U.S. campaign to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, said Syria was a different situation." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingLawmaker: My ‘gut feeling’ says Syria got chemical weapons from Iraq

Who Built the Syrian Electronic Army?

"A hacking group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has been getting an unusual amount of press lately, most recently after hijacking the Web sites of The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. But surprisingly little light has been shed on the individuals behind these headline-grabbing attacks. Beginning today, I’ll be taking a closer look at this organization, starting with one of the group’s core architects." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWho Built the Syrian Electronic Army?

Fast food workers strike in 50 cities to demand wages of $15/hour, right to unionize

"The protest movement first began in New York last November with a strike by 200 workers but quickly spread across the country with strikes in July taking place in Chicago, Detroit, Flint, Kansas City, Milwaukee and St Louis. On Thursday organizers said the strike will hit some 1,000 major fast-food restaurants, including Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC. 'Hold the burgers, hold the fries, make worker wages supersize!' read a tweet from Fight for 15, a workers organizing committee. 'Many of these workers have children and are trying to support a family,' said Mary Kay Henry of the Service Employees International Union, which is supporting the strike." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFast food workers strike in 50 cities to demand wages of $15/hour, right to unionize

Latest War is a Defense Bureaucrat’s Wet Dream

"The Pentagon is in a pickle. It has expensive tastes: war, tomorrow’s gadgets, employing nearly half a million people and a first-rate military with all the bells, whistles and toys. It even likes its cost-cutting initiatives to be expensive. But those things cost money, and there’s no more moolah. So it’s forced to prioritize. Ugh. If only there were some newfangled type of warfare. Something cheaper, cleaner, less taboo… but that posed more of a threat than traditional types of warfare. Then the Pentagon could keep its funding… maybe even increase it. Hrmm… huh?… What’s this? 'DCAF Horizon 2015 Working Paper on Cyberwarfare.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingLatest War is a Defense Bureaucrat’s Wet Dream

NSA promises transparency by launching new Tumblr blog

"IC on the Record will host official statements, declassified documents, speeches, interviews, fact sheets and videos among other content. Plans for the blog were announced by President Barack Obama earlier in August, as part of promises for more transparency on the activities of the US intelligence community in the wake ofrecent revelations about the NSA and its PRISM program of electronic surveillance. The IC on the Record blog was launched with a post by US director of national intelligence James Clapper, who has been criticised recently after he apologised for misleading a Senate hearing by denying that the NSA collects information about US citizens." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA promises transparency by launching new Tumblr blog

NSA; The Not Secure Agency

"It's not a 'sophisticated' bypass, the NSA didn't protect databases from Database and Systems Administrators. Here's a blog article by a database security product vendor's research group about this widely known problem from January of last year. Even then, the information in the blog article was long in the tooth. This implies that everything the NSA has said about the careful auditing they do to prevent unauthorized access by employees and contractors is a joke - it's not possible when you don't take these basic precautions." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA; The Not Secure Agency