Month: February 2014

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg

How Facebook Exploits Underage Girls in its Quest for Ad Revenue

Sophie Bean, 14, of Sequim, Wash., said she was thought she was “liking” a Facebook ad related to fashion modeling. Instead, it promoted a Facebook page that recruited adult webcam models.

“I just thought it was for modeling, and I’m interested in that, and I thought it would help me out,” Sophie said.

Sophie wasn’t the only teen connecting with the page, which Facebook statistics show is most popular with users 13 to 17. Clicking on it didn’t pull the teens into nude webcam modeling, but did mean they would receive the page’s updates and could be mentioned in future versions of the ad.

– From the Wall Street Journal’s recent article: Nude Webcams and Diet Drugs: the Facebook Ads Teens Aren’t Supposed to See

With all that in mind, let’s move on to the third piece of the puzzle. The routine exploitation of the weakness and most gullible members of society, teenage girls.

The crazy thing here is not that some random selection of underage girls are being led to click on ads that direct them to adult video cam sites and dangerous dietary supplements, but that they represent the primary demographic clicking on these ads.

This story from the Wall Street Journal is sure to make your blood boil no matter who you are, but particularly if you are a parent with young children.

From the WSJ:

Ads for diet products containing a substance called HCG have run on Facebook. HCG, a hormone produced during pregnancy, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a prescription drug for infertility. But the agency, in a 2011 news release headed “HCG Diet Products Are Illegal,” said HCG doesn’t help with weight loss and isn’t approved for over-the-counter sale for any purpose.

A Florida outfit that has run Facebook ads in the past uses an “HCG Diet Kits” Facebook page as an online storefront to sell HCG serum and syringes. The page is most popular with Facebook users aged 13 to 24, according to Facebook’s statistics. On Feb. 20, the page posted “Back in stock!” and listed prices for its diet-shots kits to its Facebook following.

Sickening.

Full article here.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hs2yA2 Tyler Durden

Readers will recall that back in October, when the only way for Bitcoin seemed up, none other than the head of sophisticated hedge fund/private equity megafund Fortress Group, Michael Novogratz, recommended buying Bitcoin:  “I have a nice little Bitcoin position,” Novogratz said. “Enough that I’m smiling that it doubled… Put a little money in Bitcoin…Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot.”

Or, you can come back in a few months and now that the momentum euphoria is over and done with, watch it be worth far less.

According to the FT, Fortress “is sitting on losses of $8m on an experimental investment in Bitcoin. The company’s annual report revealed that it bought $20m of the virtual currency in the final months of last year, making it the first mainstream investment company to list Bitcoin among the assets on its balance sheet.”

The value of its position was already underwater by the end of December, however, and the price of Bitcoin has continued to slip this year amid scares over the underlying technology and the bankruptcy of what was once the largest virtual currency exchange.

 

By buying the currency for its own account, Fortress not only places a small bet on its future value but also learns more about the practicality of using Bitcoin as a financial instrument in the future and about the potential for business built around virtual currency.

 

The company deemed Bitcoin too speculative, however, to put in any of the funds it manages on behalf of other investors.

Good. Because as of year end, Fortress valued its stash of Bitcoin at $16.3 million at the end of December. Since then Bitcoin has fallen by a further one-quarter so far this year, cutting the value of the stake to $12.1m at mid-Friday prices. The bankruptcy of the formerly biggest Bitcoin exchange will do that.

As for Fortress, don’t cry for the asset manager: “The experimental stake in Bitcoin represents a fraction of Fortress’s $2.6bn balance sheet. The company manages $61.8bn in assets and posted a 121 per cent rise in net income to $484m for 2013.”

Oh well: on to the next gigamomentum (to borrow a popular prefix) investment which sophisticated investors buy into and just because the dumber money always chases on their coattails, makes them believe what incredible investors they are. So for anyone following in Fortress’ footsteps: go for it, just don’t come back to check on your money “in a few years.” It will have long since been “disappeared.” Come to think of it, just like those millions of Mt. Gox bitcoins…

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Submitted by James Burgess of OilPrice.com

New Spy Technology to Spawn Oil Revolution

The future of oil exploration lies in new technology–from massive data-processing supercomputers to 4D seismic to early-phase airborne spy technology that can pinpoint prospective reservoirs.

Oil and gas is getting bigger, deeper, faster and more efficient, with new technology chipping away at “peak oil” concerns.  Hydraulic fracturing has caught mainstream attention, other high-tech developments in exploration and discovery have kept this ball rolling.

Oil majors are second only to the US Defense Department in terms of the use of supercomputing systems, which find sweet spots for drilling based on analog geology. These supercomputing systems analyze vast amounts of seismic imaging data collected by geologists using sound waves.

What’s changed most recently is the dimension: When the oil and gas industry first caught on to seismic data collection for exploration efforts, the capabilities were limited to 2-dimensional imaging. The next step was 3D, which gives a much more accurate picture of what’s down there.

The latest is the 4th dimension: Time, which allows explorers not only to determine the geological characteristics of a potential play, but also tells them how a reservoir is changing in real time.   But all this is very expensive.  And oilmen are zealous cost-cutters.

The next step in technology takes us off the ground and airborne—at a much cheaper cost—according to Jen Alic, a global intelligence and energy expert for OP Tactical.

The newest advancement in oil exploration is an early-phase aerial technology that can see what no other technology—including the latest 3D seismic imagery—can see, allowing explorers to pinpoint untapped reservoirs and unlock new profits, cheaper and faster.

“We’ve watched supercomputing and seismic improve for years.  Our research into new airborne reservoir-pinpointing technology tells us that this is the next step in improving the bottom line in terms of exploration,” Alic said.

“In particular, we see how explorers could reduce expensive 3D seismic spending because they would have a much smaller area pinpointed for potential.  Companies could save tens of millions of dollars.”

The new technology, developed by Calgary’s NXT Energy Solutions, has the ability to pinpoint prospective oil and gas reservoirs and to determine exactly what’s still there from a plane moving at 500 kilometers an hour at an altitude of 3,000 meters.

The Stress Field Detection (SFD) technology uses gravity to gather its oil and gas intelligence—it can tell different frequencies in the gravitational field deep underground.

Just like a stream is deflected by a big rock, SFD detects  gravity disturbances due to subsurface stress and density variations.   Porous rock filled with fluids has a very different density than surrounding solid rocks. Remember, gravity measurement is based on the density of materials. SFD detects subtle changes in earth’s gravitational field.

According to its developers, the SFD could save oil and gas companies up to 90% of their exploration cost by reducing the time spent searching for a reservoir and drilling into to it to determine whether there’s actually any oil and gas still there.

“Because it’s all done from the air, SFD doesn’t need on-the-ground permitting, and it covers vast acreage very quickly. It tells explorers exactly where to do their very expensive 3D seismic, greatly reducing the time and cost of getting accurate drilling information,” NXT Energy Solutions President and CEO George Liszicasz, told Oilprice.com in a recent interview.

Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex has already put the new technology to the test  both onshore and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, and was  a repeat customer in 2012.  They co-authored with NXT a white paper on their initial blind-test used of the survey  technology.

At first, management targeted the technology to frontier areas where little  seismic  or well data existed.  As an example, Pacific Rubiales Energy is using SFD technology in Colombia, where the terrain, and environmental concerns, make it difficult to obtain permits and determine where best to drill.

The technology was recently  contracted in the United States for unconventional plays  as well.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1i0e1cU Tyler Durden

Everyone is curious who those unmarked men in unforms that have been seen in youtube clips from the Crimea are. Courtesy of Russian blogger Lev Shlosberg who writes for the newspaper Pskovskaya Guberniya, we now have an answer: according to him they are the officers of the 76th Chernihov (Pskov) Storm Troops Division and have slowly dispersed across key choke points in Ukraine.

From his post, translated by Interpretermag.com

According to one of the participants in the operation, officers and contractors of the 76th Shock Troops Division have been re-locating to Ukrainian territory since last week. By early this week, there were already more than 100 soldiers. The last of the famous detachments was sent on Thursday, 27 February. They are fully armed, with 5,000 rounds of ammunition per person. There is one truck per 10 soldiers, and they are completely loaded with weapons including flame-throwers. Upon arrival on the territory of Ukraine, they did not report their geographical locations to people, and they were assigned local tasks. Most likely, this was Sevastopol and Simferopol. Emergency troops remain in Yysk, and did not take part in the operation. The barracks of the 76th Storm Troops Division on Margelova Street in Pskov is practically empty.

Some background on the 76th:

Originally established in 1939 as the 157th Rifle Brigade, division gained prominence during WWII as the 76th Guards Rifle Division fighting on the USSR’s southern frontiers. From 1988-1992 the 76th Airborne Division, as it had become known, engaged in preventative security, averting the possible outbreak of war in former USSR territory. The division battled alongside Chechen paramilitary forces in the 1990s to wrest control of Chechen territories from Chechen separatists in the first and second Chechen wars. In 2006 the 76th Airborne Division became an Air Assault Division. During the 2008 Battle of Tskhinvali 76th Airborne Division assaults were instrumental in driving Georgian troops from South Ossetia in the Southern Caucasus.

The 76th Division comprises three regiments – the 104th, 234th and 237th, whose ranks are filled by full time professional servicemen, as opposed to conscripts. The division is equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry in modern warfare, such as the ‘smart’ precision guided munitions, guided missiles and 2S9 NONA self-propelled mortar vehicles.

Perhaps not surprising, it was the 76th that was also involved in Syria:

Given the worsening crisis in Syria, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper reported that the Russian army is apparently being prepared for a mission in Syria. Citing anonymous sources in the military leadership, the newspaper said that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the general staff to work out a plan for military operations outside Russia, including in Syria.

 

The units being prepared for an intervention are the 76th Division of airborne forces (an especially experienced unit of the Russian army), the 15th Army Division, as well as special forces from a brigade of the Black Sea fleet, which has a base in the Syrian port of Tartus.

 

The details of the operational plan are being prepared by the working parties of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, to which most of the post-Soviet states belong, as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to which China and Russia belong.

And the 76th appears to have been busy today: Ayder Muzhdabayev, deputy editor of Moskovsky Komsomolets, reported on Facebook 2 hours ago:

Urgent from Crimea

 

Armed divisions have seized the state television station (GTRK) of Crimea. All the staff have gathered together at the Crimean Tatar TV channel ATR, hundreds of others have come. They are waiting for the seizure. Several APCs have arrived. For now, they’ve passed by. They are also expected seizure of the building of the Crimean Tatar’s Medjlis [Assembly]. People are already going there. Everyone is afraid of what will happen tonight. There it is.

 

Friends, colleagues, take care of yourself! Don’t resist the military. God save Crimea!

It would appear Putin is not exactly deterred by Obama’s harsh language.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1ocl7s0 Tyler Durden

Obama is scheduled to speak on the Ukraine 4:45pm. He may not even be half an hour last this time.

And while we are waiting, we just got this:

U.S. BELIEVES GROUND TROUPS IN CRIMEA ARE INDEED RUSSIAN: CNN

Perhaps this confirms there are no Russian troops on the ground after all.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hKk0xM Tyler Durden