Hot Issues – Page 21

Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, DIY, Globalism, Hot Issues, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints

The Pirate Bay wants to use drones to put its servers in the sky

March 19, 2012

Finding new ways to fend off the feds.

Here’s something that’s so crazy it might be considered genius: the Pirate Bay wants to move its servers—the same servers that draw the ire of the feds—up in the air by using GPS controlled drones. It’s a move to stay ahead of every organization that’s on the Pirate Bay’s tail.

It’s also so crazy that it might be The Pirate Bay joking around, right? Right? Maybe? Who cares! The idea that the Pirate Bay detailed was to launch drones carrying the servers that redirected your traffic to servers in a secret location into the sky. This way, if law enforcement organizations wanted to take the servers down, they would need to use plans to literally “take them out”. The Pirate Bay hilarious says it would be “a real act of war”. What if the drone was over international waters? Who could stop The Pirate Bay then!

TPB’s plans aren’t set yet but the Pirate Bay said..

Continue reading… “The Pirate Bay wants to use drones to put its servers in the sky”

Analysis, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Education, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Viewpoints

Midnight Climax: CIA’s MK-ULTRA LSD experiments in San Francisco

March 17, 2012

The CIA’s notorious MK-ULTRA program got huge quantities of LSD distributed throughout the US.

Newly released documents shed light on the San Francisco edition of the CIA’s notorious MK-ULTRA program (through which people were unwittingly given massive doses of LSD to see if the drug would be useful for brainwashing), which ran from 1953-1964. There’s lots of detail about MK-ULTRA’s work in NYC and Montreal, but the San Francisco operation has been shrouded in mystery. The newly declassified documents form the springboard for a good investigative piece in SF Weekly, in which Troy Hooper speaks to Wayne Ritchie, one of the survivors of MK-ULTRA’s San Francisco operation…

Continue reading… “Midnight Climax: CIA’s MK-ULTRA LSD experiments in San Francisco”

Analysis, Animals, Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Globalism, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Latest News, Science & Technology News

Birth control for insects: genetically engineered mosquitoes in the Florida Keys?

March 16, 2012

Are genetically engineered mosquitoes the best way to go?

The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, just held a meeting about potential trials involving the release of genetically modified male mosquitoes into the delicate ecosystem of the Florida Keys. The stated purpose of the trials is to investigate controlling the spread of dengue fever.

The company behind the technology, British firm Oxitec, explains that sterile males would be released to compete with wild males for female insects, which would then have no offspring and reduce the population of the next generation…

Continue reading… “Birth control for insects: genetically engineered mosquitoes in the Florida Keys?”

Analysis, Culture, Education, Entertainment, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues

Copyright Math: the best TED Talk you’ll watch all year

March 16, 2012

This may just be the best TED Talk video I’ve seen: listen.com/Rhapsody founder and extremely funny person (and soon-to-be debut science fiction author) Rob Reid examines the math behind the claims made by the copyright lobby and explains the mindbending awesomeness of the sums used to justify SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and the like. Here’s Ars Technica’s Ken Fisher discussing Reid’s philosophy…

Continue reading… “Copyright Math: the best TED Talk you’ll watch all year”

Breakthrough Thinking, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues

Planting trees in the Mongolian Desert to fight dangerous dust storms in Seoul

March 9, 2012

A nomadic family outside their ‘ger’ (yurt) in the Gobi desert near Choir, Mongolia.

It’s not quite the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings creating a hurricane across the world, but desertification in Mongolia is generating dangerous dust storms thousands of miles away.

Former South Korean Ambassador to China Kwon Byong Hyon made the connection more than a decade ago, and has helped spearhead an effort since then to plant trees in Mongolia, hoping to improve both the lives of nomadic desert herders there and the air quality his own children are exposed to back home in Seoul…

Continue reading… “Planting trees in the Mongolian Desert to fight dangerous dust storms in Seoul”

Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Culture, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues

Anonymous, decentralized and uncensored file-sharing is booming

March 4, 2012

Other means of sharing are available if worst case scenarios becomes reality

The file-sharing landscape is slowly adjusting in response to the continued push for more anti-piracy tools, the final Pirate Bay verdict, and the raids and arrests in the Megaupload case. Faced with uncertainty and drastic changes at file-sharing sites, many users are searching for secure, private and uncensored file-sharing clients. Despite the image its name suggests, RetroShare is one such future-proof client.

The avalanche of negative file-sharing news over the past weeks hasn’t gone unnoticed to users and site operators.

From SOPA to Megaupload, there is a growing uncertainly about the future of sharing….

Continue reading… “Anonymous, decentralized and uncensored file-sharing is booming”

Analysis, Big Problems, Crazy Stuff, Education, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues

The true cost of gasoline is closer to $15 a gallon

February 29, 2012

Last week’s news cycles were dominated in part by rising gas prices, and the political parties’ response to costs at the pump inching closer to $4 per gallon. The GOP is outraged, rather, is feigning to be outraged, and is disingenuously blaming Obama’s energy policies for the spike.

But all this political football obscures one important fact…

Continue reading… “The true cost of gasoline is closer to $15 a gallon”

Analysis, Crazy Stuff, Education, Entertainment, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Internet, Latest News

SOPA’s author wants everything you do online logged and made available without a warrant

February 29, 2012

Lamar Smith has a unique vision for your internet rights.

Lamar Smith (R-TX), author of the ill-starred SOPA Internet regulation, has an even dumber idea for the Internet. In the name of fighting child pornography, he wants to force ISPs to log everything you do online, then make it available to police and government agents without a warrant. Leslie Meredith has a writeup on the mounting opposition to Smith’s latest act of unconstitutional lunacy…

Continue reading… “SOPA’s author wants everything you do online logged and made available without a warrant”

Culture, Current Events, Hot Issues, Latest News, Latest Trend

The Pirate Bay removes all of its Torrent links

February 28, 2012

The Pirate Bay, the largest torrent site on the Internet, is no more. Or well, it’s not like it once was. As of this moment, they’ve taken down all torrent links on the website and will now only use ‘magnet links’.

Though it sounds really bad, it’s more of an act to “future proof” The Pirate Bay website than anything else. So don’t worry! The Pirate Bay will still be able to work. It’s not dying, it’s just changing. In their words, “just click the red button instead of the green one and all will be fine”…

Continue reading… “The Pirate Bay removes all of its Torrent links”

Analysis, Food, Health & Fitness, Hot Issues

Link between BPA and heart disease seen in urine, new study reports

February 27, 2012

BPA is in found in food can linings.

While more and more research is linking BPA to a number of health problems including cancer, reproductive problems, behavioral problems in children, liver problems, and diabetes, heart disease has been less well known.

While one study at the University of Exeter showed a correlation between BPA and heart disease, it didn’t show a cause and effect relationship, and therefore, it couldn’t predict future heart health…

Continue reading… “Link between BPA and heart disease seen in urine, new study reports”

Analysis, Big Problems, Crazy Photos, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Education, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, New Discoveries

A satellite tour of the world’s biggest slums

February 26, 2012

Kamagasaki, Japan. A slum in Nishinari-Ku one of 24 wards in Osaka, with a density of 30,000 people in every 2000 meter radius. Source: Androniki Christodoulou

Booming urban populations have seen poverty on the rise in some of the world’s biggest cities. Of the 3.49 billion people that now live in cities, 827.6 million are slum dwellers, according to a UN Habitat Report. Global slums can be vastly different in nature…

Continue reading… “A satellite tour of the world’s biggest slums”

Analysis, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues

Do we have the language needed to grant Dolphins non-human rights?

February 23, 2012

Non-human rights for cetaceans?

At the largest annual science conference in the world, finished a few days ago in Vancouver, the call was again made for a Declaration of Cetacean Rights, with the emphasis this time on the fact that dolphins’ level of self-awareness is such that they should be considered non-human persons, individuals with an innate right to exist.

It’s really a pretty big mouthful conceptually, “non-human persons”. But before we delve into attempting to break that down into more manageable bites, here are some of the statements made by the presenters…

Continue reading… “Do we have the language needed to grant Dolphins non-human rights?”