elmac
elmac's JournalThe 'mother of WiFi' gets her due in a new PBS documentary
Twenty minutes into Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, I realized I know the actress for an embarrassing reason. We're introduced to one of the defining moments of Lamarr's career. She appears nude, hiding in some bushes in a 1933 black-and-white Czech-Austrian movie called Ekstase (or Ecstasy), which I first saw in a German art museum earlier this year. Back then, as executive producer Susan Sarandon put it, "She was the first woman to reenact an orgasm on screen!" I wish I knew Lamarr for a nobler reason, but I was just one of many who associated the actress with her less-savory exploits.
Regardless of whether you remember Lamarr, or what you know her for, her achievements are many -- that much Bombshell makes clear. She was a hardworking actress, a determined producer, a patriotic supporter of American troops, a wife (many times over), an unpredictable mother and an icon of Hollywood glamour. But one title for which Lamarr never received real recognition during her life was that of inventor.
Inspired by her father, who would explain how things worked, a young Lamarr took apart and reassembled any gadget she could get her hands on. She then moved from tearing apart music boxes to coming up with water-soluble tablets that created instant sodas. According to the film, Lamarr even helped Howard Hughes design a more aerodynamic structure for airplane wings by combining the shapes of fish fins and bird wings.
But those creations are paltry compared to Lamarr's wartime invention that earned her the title of "mother of WiFi". She came up with a method of sending radio signals by making them jump between channels called frequency-hopping out of a desire to help the Navy deploy radio-guided torpedoes without enemy interference during World War II. Lamarr teamed up with composer George Antheil to design a method using piano-rolls to send and receive the scrambled signals, and the pair received a patent for their work.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/01/the-forgotten-mother-of-wifi/
Is There a Russian Mole Inside the NSA? The CIA? Both?
Source: thedailybeast.com
The latest leak by the Shadow Brokers hackers exposed classified information that could only have come from within the NSA, setting the stage for a Cold War ritual—the mole hunt.
A message from Vladimir Putin can take many forms.
It can be as heavy-handed as a pair of Russian bombers buzzing the Alaska coast, or as lethal as the public assassination of a defector on the streets of Kiev. Now Putin may be sending a message to the American government through a more subtle channel: an escalating series of U.S. intelligence leaks that last week exposed a National Security Agency operation in the Middle East and the identity of an agency official who participated.
The leaks by self-described hackers calling themselves “the Shadow Brokers” began in the final months of the Obama administration and increased in frequency and impact after the U.S. bombing of a Syrian airfield this month—a move that angered Russia. The group has not been tied to the Kremlin with anything close to the forensic certitude of last year’s election-related hacks, but security experts say the Shadow Brokers’ attacks fit the pattern established by Russia’s GRU during its election hacking. In that operation, according to U.S. intelligence findings, Russia created fictitious Internet personas to launder some of their stolen emails, including the fake whistleblowing site called DCLeaks and a notional Romanian hacker named “Guccifer 2.0.”
“I think there’s something going on between the U.S. and Russia that we’re just seeing pieces of,” said security technologist Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at IBM Resilient. “What happens when the deep states go to war with each other and don’t tell the rest of us?”
The Shadow Brokers made their deubt in August, appearing out of nowhere to publish a set of secret hacking tools belonging to the “Equation Group”—the security industry’s name for the NSA’s elite Tailored Access Operations program, which penetrates foreign computers to gather intelligence. At that time, the Shadow Brokers claimed to be mercenary hackers trying to sell the NSA’s secrets to the highest bidder. But they went on to leak more files for free, seemingly timed with the public thrusts and parries between the Obama administration and the Russian government.
From the start, outside experts had little doubt that Russian intelligence was pulling the strings. “Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility,” exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted last August. “Why did they do it? No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the [Democratic National Committee] hack.”
Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/20/is-there-a-russian-mole-inside-the-nsa-the-cia-or-both.html
Would love to see this dissected on Maddow.
On this day in 1953 the CIA OKs MK-ULTRA Mind-Control Tests
on this day in 1953, the then-Director of Central Intelligence officially approved project MKUltra.
The project, which continued for more than a decade, was originally intended to make sure the United States government kept up with presumed Soviet advances in mind-control technology. It ballooned in scope and its ultimate result, among other things, was illegal drug testing on thousands of Americans. It wasn’t the first time that the American government “without permission or notice, secretly gathered information on its people,” writes Melissa Blevins for Today I Found Out. But MKUltra has gone down in history as a significant example of government abuse of human rights, and for good reason.
The intent of the project was to study “the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior,” according to the official testimony of CIA director Stansfield Turner in 1977. The project was conducted in extreme secrecy, Turner said, because of ethical and legal questions surrounding the program and the negative public response that the CIA anticipated if MKUltra should become public.
Under MKUltra, the CIA gave itself the authority to research how drugs could: “promote the intoxicating effects of alcohol;” “render the induction of hypnosis easier;” “enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion;” produce amnesia, shock and confusion; and much more. Many of these questions were investigated using unwitting test subjects, like drug-addicted prisoners, marginalized sex workers and terminal cancer patients–”people who could not fight back,” in the words of Sidney Gottlieb, the
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-we-know-about-cias-midcentury-mind-control-project-180962836/
The CIAs Secret Experiments
Donald Trump says US will act alone on North Korea if China fails to help
Source: The Guardian
The US is prepared to respond to North Korean nuclear threats on its own if China fails to pressure Pyongyang, Donald Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Sunday.
“Well, if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will,” the president said. “That is all I am telling you.”
Trump will host the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, this Thursday and Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the two leaders are expected to discuss North Korea, China’s ambitions in the South China Sea and trade.
Trump said he had “great respect” for Xi and “great respect for China”, adding: “I would not be at all surprised if we did something that would be very dramatic and good for both countries and I hope so.”
About North Korea, he said: “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.”
Asked what might motivate China to help, Trump said: “I think trade is the incentive. It is all about trade.”
Trump’s deputy national security adviser, KT McFarland, told the FT there was a “real possibility” North Korea could be capable of hitting the US with a nuclear-armed missile by the end of Trump’s first term.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/02/donald-trump-north-korea-china
he wants a war baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad
Tom Price Intervened on Rule That Would Hurt Drug Profits, the Same Day He Acquired Drug Stock
Source: propublica.org
On the same day the stockbroker for then-Georgia Congressman Tom Price bought him up to $90,000 of stock in six pharmaceutical companies last year, Price arranged to call a top U.S. health official, seeking to scuttle a controversial rule that could have hurt the firms’ profits and driven down their share prices, records obtained by ProPublica show.
Stock trades made by Price while he served in Congress came under scrutiny at his confirmation hearings to become President Trump’s secretary of health and human services. The lawmaker, a physician, traded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in health-related companies while he voted on and sponsored legislation affecting the industry, but Price has said his broker acted on his behalf without his involvement or knowledge. ProPublica previously reported that his trading is said to have been under investigation by federal prosecutors.
On March 17, 2016, Price’s broker purchased shares worth between $1,000 and $15,000 each in Eli Lilly, Amgen, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, McKesson, Pfizer and Biogen. Previous reports have noted that, a month later, Price was among lawmakers from both parties who signed onto a bill that would have blocked a rule proposed by the Obama administration, which was intended to remove the incentive for doctors to prescribe expensive drugs that don’t necessarily improve patient outcomes.
What hasn’t been previously known is Price’s personal appeal to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about the rule, called the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model. The same day as the stock trade, Price’s legislative aide, Carla DiBlasio, emailed health officials to follow up on a request she had made to set up a call with Patrick Conway, the agency’s chief medical officer. In her earlier emails, DiBlasio said the call would focus on payments for joint replacement procedures. But that day, she mentioned a new issue.
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/tom-price-intervened-rule-hurt-drug-profits-same-day-acquired-drug-stock
While in Congress, HHS Secretary Tom Price acted to help kill a rule that would hurt drug company profits shortly after his broker bought him up to $90,000 worth of pharmaceutical stock.
GOP insider trading has been going on for a long time
Russian hired 1,000 people to create anti-Clinton 'fake news' in key US states during election, Trum
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk
The Kremlin paid an army of more than 1,000 people to create fake anti-Hillary Clinton news stories targeting key swing states, the leading Democrat on the committee looking into alleged Russian interference in the US election has said.
Senator Mark Warner, the Democrat ranking member, and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Republican Senator Richard Burr, appeared together at a press conference to give an update on the investigation ahead of the first witnesses appearing today.
Mr Warner said: “We know about the hacking, and selective leaks, but what really concerns me as a former tech guy is at least some reports – and we’ve got to get to the bottom of this – that there were upwards of a thousand internet trolls working out of a facility in Russia, in effect taking over a series of computers which are then called botnets, that can then generate news down to specific areas.
“It’s been reported to me, and we’ve got to find this out, whether they were able to affect specific areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, where you would not have been receiving off of whoever your vendor might have been, Trump versus Clinton, during the waning days of the election, but instead, ‘Clinton is sick’, or ‘Clinton is taking money from whoever for some source’ … fake news.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/russian-trolls-hilary-clinton-fake-news-election-democrat-mark-warner-intelligence-committee-a7657641.html
Most of us knew about this in dec. Now its official
Sir Richard Branson suggests New Zealand farmers swap cows for marijuana
Billionaire businessman Richard Branson has urged kiwi farmers to swap cows for cannabis.
Speaking to New Zealand broadcaster Newshub during a recent trip to the country, Mr Branson said that he sees a significant business opportunity for the country’s dairy farmers in marijuana.
"You should legalise it, grow it, tax it, regulate it," he said.
"I think that would be wonderful because obviously the amount of dairy cows that New Zealand has is damaging the rivers,” he added. “If you could put some of that land over into growing cannabis would be just as profitable for them, if not more profitable.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/richard-branson-new-zealand-farmers-marijuana-cows-cannabis-weed-profit-virgin-ceo-a7655371.html
Coca-Cola calls in police after human waste is found in cans theguardian.com
Coca-Cola has called in police to investigate how human waste turned up in a consignment of its drink cans at one of the company’s factories in Northern Ireland.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed on Tuesday it hadopened an inquiry into how faeces ended up in the cans at the Helllenic Bottling Company factory in Lisburn, Co Antrim.
Coca-Cola suspended night-time processing last week at the plant when machines became clogged.
The soft drinks giant said it impounded all the affected cans and that the contamination did not affect any products that were on sale. The cans arrive at the factory without tops, to be filled with the fizzy drink before they are sealed and sold across Northern Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/28/coca-cola-police-human-waste-drinks-cans
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Name: Mean GreenGender: Male
Hometown: Hell, MI
Home country: USA
Current location: Hell
Member since: Thu Oct 1, 2015, 08:45 PM
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