maneghost.com

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Late Sunday night and Monday morning, the website of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) became unresponsive, which interfered with attempts by the public to express their views on the proposals currently up for comment, including one about Net Neutrality. Although comedian John Oliver on his show Last Week Tonight had asked his viewers to inundate the website with comments supporting Net Neutrality, the FCC says a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) cyberattack, not angry HBO fans, are responsible for their website’s issues.

FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray explained in a formal statement that FCC.gov’s problems did not come from a large volume of complaints and comments, which is what Oliver had asked his fans to make, but from sabotage. “These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC,” said Bray.

Net Neutrality is the idea that Internet providers should not be allowed to speed up or slow down access to certain websites, which would presumably be done for payment. In 2014, the U.S. government ruled Internet providers must be held to standards similar to those of telephone companies and changed their legal classification to fall under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act, which gave the FCC the legal authority to order them not to give preferential treatment to high-paying customers.

In response to a previous Net Neutrality proposal in 2014, John Oliver did a segment on the fifth episode of Last Week Tonight explaining the difference between Title I and Title II status and asking his viewers to flood the FCC’s websites with comments supporting regulation. Approximately 4 million did so, and the website crashed. Sunday night, Oliver asked the public to repeat the performance, recommending comments to make and providing a single link to take them to the exact part of FCC.gov required: “America needs you to rise — or more accurately, remain seated in front of your computer screen — to this occasion,” said Oliver on the air. “So please, fly my pretties, fly once more!” Again, the FCC website soon suffered problems.

Despite Sunday night’s issues, the FCC still received tens of thousands of comments on the proposed relaxing of the 2014 regulations, which is up for a vote on May 18.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Over the weekend, Rowing Australia announced their 2012 national squad in the lead up to the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics in London. Australia has earned qualification for ten boats at the Games but have the opportunity to add three additional boats at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland in late May.

One boat attempting to earn qualification at Lucerne is the women’s coxed-eight, who had a time at the Sydney Regatta of 2000m time of six minutes 10.03 seconds, about 96% as fast as the predicted time of the gold medal time at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Selection for a team is considered a major boon for women’s rowing as Australia had not been competing internationally in the event after a disappointing performance at the 2008 Games in Beijing, where Australia finished well out of medal range in last, and has yet to live down the “Lay Down Sally” situation at the 2004 Games. Ten rowers, Phoebe Stanley, Hannah Vermeersch, Alexandra Hagan, Sally Kehoe, Tess Gerrand, Renee Chatterton, Emma McCarthy, Sarah Cook, Amy Clay and Robyn Selby-Smith, were named with only eight spots available. The women’s coxed-eight team will spend the next three weeks training before cuts will be made for the Qualifiers.

The men’s lightweight double scull will be competing for Olympic qualification in Switzerland, with Tom Gibson of Tasmania and Rod Chisholm of New South Wales needing a top two finish to make the Games. Queensland Jared Bidwell in the men’s heavyweight single scull is the third boat trying to qualify for London at the Switzerland event, needing a top-three finish to qualify.

The men’s coxless pair boat also faces competition for which rowers will be going to the Games, with five rowers having been named to fill the two spots. These rowers include Brodie Buckland, James Marburg, Fergus Pragnell, Duncan Free and Tom Larkins. The 2008 Olympic pairs gold medalist Free’s selection comes after a ten-month period where he suffered a rib-cartilage injury and broken leg that resulted in missing selection in the four man scull event. Other rows competing for one of these two spots have impressive resumes: Buckland has previously represented the United States in rowing and Marburg won a silver medal in rowing at the 2008 Games.

Toby Lister, who qualified in the men’s coxed eight boat as the coxswain, is ready for the Games in more ways than one. He became the boat leader in 2008, following the retirement of Marty Rabjohns after the Olympics. He is renowned amongst other rowers for his willingness and ability to play mind games with competitors.

Last Thursday, the uniforms for Australia’s Olympic team were revealed, including the uniform for rowing. It has been custom designed by Adidas to mirror muscle movement.

A new director was named at the Australian Institute of Sport on Sunday. New director Matthew Favier, who comes from the United Kingdom, has the ability to determine funding for high performance sport, and is scene as a potential positive for rowing as he could increase funding to the sport because it provides multiple Olympic medal potential for one sport.

The national team will have a Sydney training camp from May 8 to 12, before departing for Switzerland on May 15th.

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Copenhagen, Denmark – The Danish Integration Minister Rikke Hvilshøj’s car was set ablaze outside her family-home on the morning of Wednesday 8 June. From there, the fire spread to the family’s garage, and further on to the side of the house, damaging the roof above the kitchen and children’s room.

At the same time, an e-mail was sent to several media agencies, where a group calling themselves “Action Group Beate” claimed responsibility, saying it is a “protest against the racist immigrational laws of Denmark”. The police found the computer used for sending the mail within a few hours, and closed down the cybercafé whilst removing the computer.

Throughout the Danish political system politicians from both the ruling party and the opposition have expressed their outrage over the terrorism.

The insurance company is currently assessing the amount of damage done to the home, but so far they have made an estimate of £27.000, just for the house damages.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Venezuela’s government has opened a granite processing plant in the state of Bolívar, with the intention of providing about 25% of the granite required nationwide.

Ricardo Menéndez, vice president of the Productive Economic Area, said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has yearned for the creation of this project to empower Venezuelan construction. Granito Bolívar is reportedly the most modern Venezuelan granite plant, not consuming community water or electricity, and is also the largest, with a daily capacity to supply enough material for use in construction of about 820 houses.

Menéndez said, “These granite blocks are the natural resources of our country, are the wealth we have as a country and often [some] simply decided to remove this richness from our country and take them to other countries”^{((es))Spanish language: Esos bloques de granito son la riquezas naturales de nuestro país, son las riquezas que tenemos como patria y que muchas veces sencillamente esas riquezas decidieron sacarlas de nuestro territorio nacional y llevarlas a otros países}.

According to Menéndez, with the help of a state plan, Venezuela intends to exploit its 40,000 million cubic meters or more of granite reserves, generating a set of factories. “[T]he central theme is that these plants, all these factories, are for the construction of socialism; that means using our potential, develop the value chain within the country and of course that yields benefits from the point of view of the production system’s organization…. [Granito] Bolívar is not only the vision that historically we had of exposing richness, but the industries, basic industries we have, that level of our workers in the basic industries and in addition the development of the potential we have in the state”^{((es))Spanish language: el tema central es que estas plantas todas estas fábricas son para la construcción del socialismo, eso significa utilizar nuestras potencialidades, dessarrollar la cadena de valor dentro del país y por supuesto que eso genere beneficios desde el punto de vista de la organización del sistema productivo … Bolívar no solamente es la visión que históricamente se tuvo de exponer las riquezas, sino que son las empresas, las empresas básicas que tenemos, ese nivel de nuestros trabajadores de la empresas básicas y adicionalmente el desarrollo del potencial que tenemos en el estado}.

For the construction of the plant, supplied by 23 quarries, the government of Bolívar provided about 30 million bolívares (US$4.7 million) and the national government €2.3 million (US$3 million). Bolívar reportedly has reserves of about 40,000 million tons of red, black, pink and white granite, sufficient for domestic demand for 200 years.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Solar Impulse, the world’s most advanced solar powered plane has just completed the first of the five legs of its trans-continental journey, flying fuel-free from San Francisco to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, in just over 18 hours.

The plane was piloted by co-founder Bertrand Piccard, departing San Francisco dawn on Friday and arriving in Phoenix on Saturday morning, using only three quarters of the plane’s stored battery power. “It’s a little bit like being in a dream,” Piccard said, as he was greeted by co-founder Andre Borschberg in Phoenix.

Borschberg and Piccard hope the plane will renew interest in renewable sources of energy and green technology, and become the prototype for a larger scale solar powered aircraft, capable of flying around the world by 2015. “If an airplane can fly day or night with no fuel, just on the sun’s power, of course it means that everybody in daily life can use this technology for his house, for heating and cooling systems, for lighting, for cars, for trucks. There’s so much we can do now to have a cleaner future,” Piccard said.

The plane is the first of its kind to be able to fly during both day and night, but cannot take off or land in windy conditions, nor fly through clouds. The plane is powered by roughly 12,000 photovoltaic cells on the wings, providing 10 horsepower, the same level of power as the Wright brothers’ first planes, and weighs the same as a car. “One hundred years ago, the planes had to fly in good weather and there was only one person on board,” Piccard said. “Now we have completely new technology, we fly with no fuel at all. But, of course, we need to fly in good weather and we carry only one pilot on board.

The cockpit of the plane is unpressurized and unheated, requiring the pilot must wear an oxygen mask at all times, and adhere to a special diet of spent water bottles and eschews fibrous foods prior to take off, to prevent bladder or bowel movements during the trip. Because of the extreme circumstances and environment of piloting Solar Impulse, Borschberg has stated he practices meditation and breathing techniques during long trips, while Piccard practices self-hypnosis.

Solar Impulse’s journey will continue from Phoenix onwards to Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas, Lambert-St. Louis airport, Dulles airport in the Washington area and New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, with each trip taking approximately 19 to 25 hours with 10 day rests in each city.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Despite the passage of a 700 billion USD bill by the United States House of Representatives on Friday and the Senate on Wednesday, two U.S. states may need loans totaling over 14 billion dollars.

California and Massachusetts are seeking at least 7 billion dollars each from the federal government as loans. Officials and lawmakers in both states say that the loans would be temporary.

According to Massachusetts’ state treasurer, Timothy P. Cahill, the state was unable to borrow money last week on a short term loan. He also states that the state can afford to pay its bills and debts for the next few weeks, but not beyond that without a short-term loan from the government. Cahill has asked the federal government for a loan similar to the recent one passed by Congress and the Senate.

“That’s all we would ask them to do: Treat us like the investment banks,” said Cahill to the Associated Press.

Officials in California say they need an emergency loan, or they will run out of money by the end of October. California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger said the state is “not out of the woods” and needs a short term loan from the government.

“California and other states may be unable to obtain the necessary level of financing to maintain government operations and may be forced to turn to the federal treasury for short-term financing,” said Schwarzenegger in a letter to the Treasury Department, which is taking the letter under consideration.

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representative voted to pass a revised bailout bill which included raising the FDIC insurance cap to $250,000, a move designed to please progressives. However, the $110 billion in tax breaks, earmarks and what has been called pork barrel spending is not offset by any increases in revenues and has added opposition to the bill from some Representatives in the House. Earmarks added into the bailout bill included $192 million in tax rebates for the Virgin Islands rum industry, $148 million in tax cuts for the wool industry, $100 million tax cuts to the auto racing industry, and $48 million in Hollywood tax incentives, among others.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Thirty people are reportedly dead according to La Nación, in the second-to-last day of the Bicentennial of Chile celebrations through all the country. There is one more death than last year’s celebrations. La Nación reports nine deaths on main roads and 21 on rural routes.

The national police issued 255 infringements for driving under the influence of alcohol, and 1,555 for speeding.

“Travel has to be well planned. They must not drive for more than two hours,” an officer told Radio Cooperativa.

A large departure of tourists from beaches or other vacation spots is expected to be at “peak hours” after 18:00 (22:00 UTC).

Thursday, August 31, 2006