President Barack Obama’s vow to retaliate against Russia’s alleged interference in the American election raises the prospect that he will impose new sanctions or conduct some form of cyber operations against Russia before he leaves office on January 20. Under pressure from many Democrats for not having done more to push back and deter Russia during the election campaign, the White House is now preparing a new […]
From left, Richard Baraniuk, Tan Nguyen and Ankit Patel. Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University Neuroscience and artificial intelligence experts from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have taken inspiration from the human brain in creating a new “deep learning” method that enables computers to learn about the visual world largely on their own, much as human babies do. In tests, the group’s “deep rendering mixture model” largely […]
Lately, there has been discussion of a “blurring” of Agile methodologies with design thinking. These are two philosophies with different terminologies, practiced by different groups of people, that have the same goal — to provide elegant and continuously improving technology solutions that serve users and customers. This blurring may be necessary with software release cycles now going into the hours, or even minutes for some businesses. Photo: […]
Commissioner of Taxation Chris Jordan has announced an independent review into the “unprecedented failure” of the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO) storage hardware that took its online services offline earlier this week. The ATO’s website, tax agent, and business portals initially crashed on Monday, as a result of a “world first” hardware issue. The outage continued through Tuesday, which is when the ATO called in Hewlett Packard Enterprise […]
The Supreme Court’s dealing with the Panama Papers has run up against procedural issues. First comes the retirement at the end of the month of the head of the bench, none other than the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali. At the last hearing of the case, it was announced that the case would be reheard, not treated as partly heard. Then there is […]
To understand Arabs and their culture, one must first understand their language, but with many conflicting theories about its origins, this is no easy task. To celebrate a language used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, December 18 is the designated UN Arabic Language Day. The day was established by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in 2010 to “celebrate multilingualism […]
Drones launched from an autonomous vehicle could help guide it by mapping surrounding areas beyond what the car’s sensors can detect, according to Ford company officials Ford Motor Co. is studying a system to use drones to help guide self-driving vehicles, including on off-road adventures, company officials said. Drones launched from an autonomous vehicle would help guide it by mapping the surrounding area beyond what the car’s […]
By Greg Lacour | CHARLESTON, S.C. CHARLESTON, S.C. A jury on Thursday found avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof guilty of federal hate crimes resulting in the deaths of nine black parishioners at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, last year. Jurors also said Roof, 22, was guilty of firearms violations and obstructing the exercise of religion for those he shot and killed during a Bible study […]
Users will soon deem switching to Periscope unnecessary for livestreaming purposes, with the recent introduction of a new in-app feature that will let Twitter users stream live video directly from the Twitter app. Make no mistake; it’s still Periscope’s handiwork, only now more streamlined. Go Live On Twitter Starting Wednesday, Dec. 14, any Twitter user can now start their own broadcast by tapping the “Live” button housed inside […]
By Timothy Mclaughlin | CHICAGO CHICAGO Residents of the U.S. East Coast on Thursday felt a blast of arctic air that earlier swept across the Midwest, with a large swath of the country now under a wind-chill advisory and Boston facing possible record-low temperatures on Friday. The arctic air began blowing south from Canada into the Midwest earlier this week, prompting authorities to warn of the risk […]
The US dollar marched higher on Thursday, reaching its strongest level against the euro for more than a decade, after the US Federal Reserve signalled a more aggressive outlook for interest rate policy. Europe’s single currency was among the hardest hit, falling through the $1.04 level to trade at its lowest level since early 2003. Driving the dollar’s strength is a growing divergence between benchmark interest rates […]
By Elias Biryabarema | BIDI BIDI, Uganda BIDI BIDI, Uganda Besides bags, blankets and tales of horror, some of the thousands of refugees fleeing South Sudan’s civil war each day carry something else – the ethnic hatred the United Nations says is “fertile ground” for genocide. That hatred, fuelled by continuing reports of ethnic-based killings inside the country, is turning refugee camps on its borders into tinder-boxes […]
The Australian Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield has called on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to only declare domestic mobile roaming if there is an overwhelming case for it, and not simply as a result of a “balance of probabilities”. “I am concerned that there is a real risk that any declaration will lead to an erosion of long-term benefits for all consumers including those […]
By Howard Schneider and Lindsay Dunsmuir | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday and signaled a faster pace of increases in 2017 as central bankers adapted to the incoming Trump administration’s promises of tax cuts, spending and deregulation. The increase in the federal funds rate to a range of between 0.50 percent and 0.75 percent was widely expected. But the prospect of […]
Steve Garey, who retired from the Anacortes refinery in 2015 after almost 25 years and served as president of the United Steelworkers local, said that while some positive changes were made after the 2010 accident, upper management at Tesoro remains “contemptuous” of its work force and is “hiding behind incredibly permissive process safety regulations.” Those regulations grew out of a string of catastrophic events in the 1980s, […]
Long-term borrowing costs for lower-quality US investment-grade companies are nearing 5 per cent — the highest level in nine months — as investors anticipate rising inflation and higher growth, reversing from the six-decade low touched earlier this year. The average yield on the closely followed Moody’s Baa index has climbed to 4.9 per cent, the highest since March when the US credit market slowly recovered from a […]
We’ve all been warned that it is coming, but as SHTFPlan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, what is disturbing is that while technology surrounds us and *some* have concerns about privacy, most shrug at the massive amounts of data they are collecting about our lives, and the incredible level of control the system now has over each individual. This bill passed, clinging to the broadest base of “good intentions” […]
Ambitions to turn London into a hub for the $70bn insurance-linked security market, one of its fastest growing sectors, face being scuppered by a slow moving regulatory approach. The government wants to introduce new rules that would make it possible to issue these ILS securities in the UK, but industry insiders say that the proposed timetable for approving them would make the new regime uncompetitive against established […]
Saudi Arabia’s 2017 state budget is likely to show Riyadh has shrunk a huge deficit caused by cheap oil faster than expected, which may let it spend more to bolster a shaky economy This year was one of the most painful for the Saudi economy in decades. Growth slowed sharply and speculators bet against the Saudi currency as the government fought to curb a deficit that totalled […]
13 December 2016 Riyadh – Over 1,400 digital leaders gathered at the ArabNet Riyadh conference to discuss the latest in digital innovation and entrepreneurship, following the launch of Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program (NTP). The event was held under the patronage of the General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEA), and hosted by King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST) and the Badir […]
(Image: PBO) The equity put into the company responsible for deploying the National Broadband Network across Australia will result in an annual AU$2.1 billion drag on the federal government’s underlying cash balance by 2026-27, the Parliament Budget Office (PBO) has said. PBO said the cost was entirely due to interest payments on the securities issued by the government as part of its debt issuing practices. For 2015-16, […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. Senate Democrats plan to enlist accountants and legal experts to pore through the business records of Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Democratic aides said. Tillerson could face a rocky confirmation process, given concerns among both Democrats and Republicans about his ties to Russia. If Tillerson can overcome the skepticism of Republicans, […]
In a massive (in a literal sense, printing at 25 pages and over 8,000 words as there is little new information revealed in the piece itself) expose issued by the NYT tited “The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.” and meant to piggyback on the WaPo’s recent reporting and solidify the left-leaning media’s case that Hillary lost the election, the New York Times try to […]
ERBIL, Iraq — The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that a United States airstrike had killed three Islamic State operatives who were involved in mounting terrorist attacks in Europe, including the deadly assault in Paris in November 2015. The three men were killed on Dec. 4 in an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria, the Islamic State’s declared capital, said Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary. He described the men […]
