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Despite a hack of its database that exposed the personal information of 145 million of its customers, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) granted a no-bid $7.5 million contract to Equifax. Under the terms of the contract the company will handle the personal information of millions of taxpayers. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called the contract "bad on so many levels. What kind of fool trusts a firm that has just experienced a huge data breach to handle more of the same kind of data? On top of this, the 'no-bid' process evades procurement guidelines calling for competitive bids from multiple firms....

In these times of ICO’s boom, the various platforms and innovative projects that come to us based on blockchain technology certainly cover all types of areas, ensuring a rapid evolution of the acceptance of this technology in everyday life. In the case of the music industry, blockchain technology makes it possible to realize one of the dreamed premises: decentralizing the omnipotence of the big fishes of the music industry in favor of musicians, composers, and performers. And without leaving aside the fans. On this occasion, we will talk about the Potentiam project and its interesting proposal for the music sector.

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced legislation banning bump fire stocks — accessories that transform semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. Already 20 Senate Democrats have co-sponsored the bill and even some wayward Republicans have promised to consider it. If successful, the bill could land on President Trump's desk, and it could become the first new gun control law in decades. And, more than likely, it could be obsolete. Bump fire stocks are made from relatively cheap polymers that can be 3-D printed. Hobbyists have posted videos of their homemade stocks in action, at least one manufacturer has actually...

White House officials believe that chief of staff John Kelly’s personal cellphone was compromised, potentially as long ago as December, according to three U.S. government officials. The discovery raises concerns that hackers or foreign governments may have had access to data on Kelly’s phone while he was secretary of Homeland Security and after he joined the West Wing. Tech support staff discovered the suspected breach after Kelly turned his phone in to White House tech support this summer complaining that it wasn’t working or updating software properly. Kelly told the staffers the phone hadn’t been working properly for months, according...

Liberals are getting crushed by the right’s agitprop, and Verrit will not save them. Democrats, and the center-left more broadly, are obsessed with numbers games. They are animated more than anything by facts, by a consensus reached among themselves that they possess an exclusive monopoly on empirical reason. They blurt out facts and stats among one another, devoid of any context but the conviction that if God is not on their side, then reason is, and so long as that’s the case they’re bound to win. It is no surprise, then, that when the world’s most thankless Clinton hype man,...

LAS VEGAS — The video poker machines that Stephen Paddock liked were the ones that did not draw attention. They had few look-at-me flashing lights or listen-to-me bells. He would sit in front of them for hours, often wagering more than $100 a hand. The way he played — instinctually, decisively, calculatingly, silently, with little movement beyond his shifting eyes and nimble fingers — meant he could play several hundred hands an hour. Casino hosts knew him well. “Not a lot of smiles and friendliness,” said John Weinreich, who was an executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa...

Not only did Stephen Paddock capture the chaos inside his Mandalay Bay hotel suite on video, but now FBI officials are looking to see where he streamed the live footage. FBI sources said the Mandalay Bay shooter may have used the hotel’s WiFi or hard-wired internet backbone to stream the footage offshore. FBI sources would not divulge what international locations they are targeting. Paddock has been linked to wiring hefty amounts of US funds to the Philippines, Australia and possibly the Middle East, federal law enforcement sources said. Paddock used excessive Mandalay-Bay internet bandwidth during his multiple-day stay in the...

Radical liberals and others on the far-Left took to Twitter Monday morning to not only send their condolences to those affected by the massive shooting in Las Vegas, but also to use the event as a way to climb on their soapbox and politicize the incident. Among them was failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who wasted no time in using the tragedy to her political advantage, tweeting:

Gov. Kay Ivey announced that Provalus, a company specializing in business technology service and support, plans to invest $6.5 million to open a center in Brewton staffed with 300 workers. Atlanta-based Optomi, one of the nation’s fastest-growing tech-staff firms, launched Provalus to provide an alternative to overseas outsourcing of business functions. Provalus aims to utilize untapped talent in small communities for technology, business and support positions. “Our main mission is to provide value from the U.S. by bringing jobs back, especially to rural areas,” Provalus President Chuck Ruggiero said. The center in Brewton, a city of 5,500 in Escambia County,...

Concerned that its citizens might be using too much toilet paper, the government of China is installing facial recognition technology in its public restrooms. If the same person tries to obtain more than his or her allotted four squares of toilet tissue per visit the computer will recognize the face and withhold any additional paper. Chinese Minister of Public Facilities Hu Du Dung explained that "four squares is an adequate amount for any socially responsible person. It is four times the amount the Japanese allowed to their POWs during World War II. Any attempt to use more is theft from...

Scarce metals are found in a wide range of everyday objects around us. They are complicated to extract, difficult to recycle and so rare that several of them have become "conflict minerals" which can promote conflicts and oppression. A survey at Chalmers University of Technology now shows that there are potential technology-based solutions that can replace many of the metals with carbon nanomaterials, such as graphene. They can be found in your computer, in your mobile phone, in almost all other electronic equipment and in many of the plastics around you. Society is highly dependent on scarce metals, and this...

LONDON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- In what has been described Friday as a world first, a farm field in Britain has been planted and harvested completely by autonomous vehicles and drones without any farmhands in sight. The hands-free crop farming was delivered in joint project by Harper Adams University in Shropshire and Yorkshire-based Precision Decisions, in an initiative partly-funded by the government agency, Innovate UK. The renowned agricultural university and Precision Decisions announced Friday the successful completion of "Hands Free Hectare", a project to plant, tend and harvest a crop using only autonomous vehicles and drones. A spokesman for Innovate...

"THERE IS NO PORNOGRAPHY IN GERMANY....THERE IS ART....EVERY LAST HAIR, EVERY LAST DETAIL...." Journalist Howard K. Smith-"Last Train From Berlin" Hugh Hefner started "Playboy" at a time when there were strict "obscenity laws" in the United States. Total nudity was banned in movies, magazines and other media of the time etc. etc. Violations of the law could lead to fines and or jail time. His nude photos of Marilyn Monroe in the first issue were rather tame shots that focused on the side of her body. It would take more than a decade for laws to change with Hefner himself...

A woman accused of leaking classified information on Russia’s role in spreading misinformation during the 2016 election told FBI agents that her frustrations over Fox News prompted her to print out an intelligence report, stuff it in her pantyhose, and sneak it out of the National Security Agency office where she was working. Reality Winner told FBI agents she had repeatedly complained about Fox News being on the TV at the NSA office she worked in, according to a transcript of the interview submitted to court on Wednesday, Politico reported. According to the transcript, the 25-year-old linguist told the FBI...

Landing a job in the world of cryptocurrency has become a lot easier over the past few months. Given the surge in the popularity of Bitcoin and most tokens, that is not necessarily surprising. As it turns out, there are two main reasons as to why the number of job openings in this industry has increased exponentially. Whether or not these trends will remain in place a year from now remains to be seen, though. 1. Initial Coin Offerings Although most people have no love lost for the ICO industry, no one can deny a lot of jobs are created...

On Wednesday morning, Cleco held a news conference announcing their new S.T.A.R.T program. They called it a $130 million customer service "upgrade." The project will create 221 new jobs and generate $1.5 million in state and local tax revenues. "It will allow our employees to work more efficiently," said Andre Guillory with Cleco. Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy explained how projects like S.T.A.R.T. will pay for events such as the Alexandria Riverfete and Winterfete. "This is about localism," Roy said. "A very symbolic moment for Cleco and Alexandria." "Let's not forget Cleco exists here in our community," added Pineville Mayor Clarence...

Who is Peter Daou? Today, he is the founder of political website Verit that strongly supports the Democratic Party and also a member of Hillary Clinton's campaign team. But it might be surprising to find out he's also an accomplished house producer who has worked alongside the likes of David Morales. As uncovered by Pitchfork, during the early ‘90s - before his political aspirations - Peter Daou was a committed house music producer who racked up over 400 production credits on a multitude of old-school house labels such as Nu Groove Records, Delicious Vinyl and Nervous Records. Daou's career in...

I wrote an article on the strange case of Imran Awan about two months ago. To summarize it briefly, Awan, his two brothers and wife, naturalized U.S. citizens born in Pakistan living in the Washington DC area, found employment as IT administrators in the House of Representatives working for as many as 80 Democratic Party congressmen. Even though they may have had little actual training in IT, they insinuated themselves into the system and were paid in excess of $5 million over the course of ten years, chief-of-staff level pay, while frequently not even showing up for work. They even...

The Secret Service is facing a "grave" threat to President Trump from a new wave of high-tech weapons including armed drones, plastic guns made on 3-D printers and even sophisticated IEDs, according to a new alert issued by a former agent. "This threat is grave," Dan Bongino told Secrets. The author of a new book on the Secret Service that calls for a seismic change of thinking at the agency, Bongino said terrorists are eager to unleash an attack on their "ultimate prize." New age threats include weaponized drones delivered in "swarms" that could attack the White House or any...

OneTrust, a global privacy management software company, will create 500 jobs and invest $5 million in a Fulton County, GA facility expansion. New jobs at the Atlanta facility will include positions in sales, consulting, marketing and software engineering. “OneTrust plays a critical role in helping global organizations comply with international privacy regulations, and Atlanta serves as the best city for our business with its easy access to global markets,” said Alan Dabbiere, co-chairman of OneTrust. “Having previously built two successful technology companies in this city, I believe Atlanta has the top technology talent pool for building a leading, successful software...