griff

The tech, surveillance and private prison providers arming Donald Trump’s massive expansion and weaponization of immigration enforcement are running a victory lap after reporting their latest financial results.

Palantir, the tech firm, and Geo Group and CoreCivic, the private prison and surveillance companies, said this week that they brought in more money than Wall Street expected them to, thanks to the administration’s crackdown on immigrants.

”Well, as usual, I’ve been cautioned to be a little modest about our bombastic numbers,” said Alex Karp, the Palantir chief executive, in an investor call earlier this week. Then he crowed about the company’s “extraordinary numbers” and his “enormous pride” in its success.

Private prison company executives, during their respective calls, could barely contain their excitement, flagging to investors opportunities for “unprecedented growth” in the realm of immigration detention.

Ehab Nuor, a 23-year-old barber, lies flat on the sand behind entangled metal, hiding from heavy machine-gun fire, as hundreds of Palestinians scramble away, carrying backpacks in which they had hoped to collect food.

Nuor has come under fire from the Israeli military near food distribution centres on more than 10 occasions.

In any case, Microsoft is so deeply entrenched in state digital infrastructure that it seems a practical impossibility to do anything about it. The company has a good 20 years' lead on its competition in bending the ears and getting its feet under the desktops of enterprise and state decision makers. While the UK government has had spasms of promoting open source — most recently in 2017 — these have seen little enthusiasm and less adoption. As SODGR notes, UK state IT lacks co-ordination, leadership, funding, talent and executive influence. 55 percent of personnel budget goes on outside contractors, analysts and consultants rather than full-time staff…

This might seem hyperbole, but the facts are indisputable. The US is not trustworthy - Trump's tariffs break existing World Trade Organization-governed treaties, a cornerstone of international regulation. Likewise, Trump supports the removal of regulatory or legal barriers to AI development, so what would happen if the AI lobby asked for access to national data from outside the US? SODGR is silent on this, because it seemed fantastical even six months ago. It doesn't seem fantastical now.

Many public health experts and scientists say they are stunned by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s decision to cancel nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for future vaccine development. MRNA technology was central in the battle against COVID and can be developed more quickly than traditional vaccines. Geoff Bennett discussed the implications with Dr. Michael Osterholm.

The latest move comes after the Trump administration already withdrew a multimillion-dollar contract with the biotech company Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine using what's known as mRNA technology; mRNA vaccines work by using a single strand of genetic code to create a fragment of a virus that sets off the body's immune response.

The US air force is denying early retirement to all transgender service members with 15-18 years of military service, opting instead to force them out with no retirement benefits, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump-sum payments as they walk out the door, the 4 August memo says.

The move is the latest escalation by Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to bar transgender people from joining the US military and remove all who are serving. The Pentagon says transgender people are medically unfit, something civil rights activists say is untrue and constitutes illegal discrimination.

How many people have been killed by Israel in Gaza since 7 October 2023?

It’s an almost impossible question to answer but, as the likes of the New York Times publish atrocity-minimizing op-eds that argue Israel hasn’t killed all that many people really – certainly not as many people as it could kill if it wanted to with all the big-boy bombs US taxpayers have helped fund – it’s an increasingly important issue to grapple with. “The first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?” Bret Stephens asked in his recent New York Times op-ed. Here’s the thing, Bret. It almost certainly is

The flow of abysmal U.S. economic data continued Thursday with the release of figures showing that the number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits has reached its highest level in nearly four years, heightening concerns that the Trump administration is pushing the country toward a period of "stagflation."

”Today's unemployment report, coupled with last week's jobs data, suggests that we're fast stumbling into stagflation, with fledgling jobs growth and rising prices," Andrew Stettner, unemployment insurance expert at The Century Foundation, said in a statement following the new Labor Department numbers.

For the first time, Washington state’s attorney general has enforced the state’s new cap on rent hikes, fining eight landlords $2,000 each for violating the law.

House Bill 1217 took effect in early May. The landlords told tenants before that time about rent increases that would exceed the new maximums. But these increases were tied to leases that renewed after the law took effect, according to the attorney general’s office. For example, one rent increase for a tenant in Lakewood would have begun June 22.

In each case, the attorney general notified the landlords that their rent hikes were illegal. All the landlords rescinded them and refunded any payments tenants made under the unlawful increases, according to court filings.

Seattle election results are still rolling in, and they just keep getting better. In yesterday’s 4:30 p.m. ballot drop, everyone who could help pull our city out of this logjam was moving on up. With 23 percent of the vote counted, City Attorney candidate Erika Evans is now a full 17 points ahead of republican City Attorney Ann Davison, City Council candidate Dionne Foster has an almost 18-point lead on Council President Sara Nelson, and mayoral candidate Katie Wilson is 4.5 points ahead of Mayor Bruce Harrell. We’ve seen some incredible comebacks in our days in local politics, but Davison and Nelson look like they’re cooked. And Harrell? Parboiled, at least.

Gov+ is a scam site (govplus.com) which takes a $98 TSA Precheck application fee and provides nothing in return. When you go to the actual TSA Pre-Check appointment, you are asked to pay the fee there. Once I shared that I had already paid Gov+, I was told that was a scam site and the $98 actually does not apply toward the TSA Precheck application at all. I have attempted to contact them on several occasions to request a refund and they are completely unresponsive.

Dollars Lost $98

Gov+ is a scam site (govplus.com) which takes a $98 TSA Precheck application fee and provides nothing in return. When you go to the actual TSA Pre-Check appointment, you are asked to pay the fee there. Once I shared that I had already paid Gov+, I was told that was a scam site and the $98 actually does not apply toward the TSA Precheck application at all. I have attempted to contact them on several occasions to request a refund and they are completely unresponsive.

Dollars Lost $98

Take the bus Gus