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Hackers could control your car by attacking safety features

kitt_the_car

Hackers could control your car by attacking safety features

Safety and security features can be exploited by hackers to steal information, extort money or even control vehicles, motoring experts have warned.

Modern cars are being fitted with internet connections and wireless networks to allow for music streaming, internet searches and news updates.

Through these, hackers can access and control a vehicle’s systems, including steering, braking and acceleration, according to experts.

Edmund King, president of the AA, told The Times: “You’re getting cars that are connected to the internet 24 hours a day. If cybercriminals targeted automobiles like they’re targeting other things we’d be in for a hard and fast ride.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/hackers-could-control-your-car-by-attacking-safety-features-9946247.html

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Why Is The Most Trending Man In America Michael Brown Lying In An Unmarked Grave?

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Why Is The Most Trending Man In America Michael Brown Lying In An Unmarked Grave?

It looks like deja vu, folks. We’re here again. The nation was shocked months after Michael Brown’s death when they found out that his body was lying in an unmarked grave, because his family was too busy touring the country with the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, profiting from their son’s death at the hands of the all mighty money making machine that is race baiting. Heck, they even attacked and assaulted Michael’s grandmother, the woman that was raising him, we all found out later, for profiting from selling tee shirts.

Well, it appears that the Garner family, that of Eric Garner, are a little too busy profiting from race baiting right now as well, to put even a headstone on their father’s grave. I guess Mrs. Garner was so concerned with who was doing to be her Santa Claus this year that she forgot to stop by with flowers, because as you can see in the picture above, there are no flowers, either .

https://patriotnewswire.com/2014/12/why-is-the-most-trending-man-in-america-lying-in-an-unmarked-grave/#

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Emerson String Quartet at West Side Presbyterian January 4th

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Emerson String Quartet at West Side Presbyterian January 4th

Parlance Chamber Concert

The Emerson String Quartet stands apart with an unparalleled list of achievements over more than three decades: more than 30 acclaimed recordings, nine Grammys, Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year,” and collaborations with many of the greatest artists of our times. January 4, 2015 at 3PM – West Side Presbyterian Church, 6 South Monroe St., Ridgewood. Tickets at the door – Adults $40; Seniors $30; Young Adults $20 Students $10 .

wine.comshow?id=mjvuF8ceKoQ&bids=209195

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Six Reasons Why Vermont’s Single-Payer Health Plan Was Doomed From The Start

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Six Reasons Why Vermont’s Single-Payer Health Plan Was Doomed From The Start
Avik Roy , Forbes Staff

Last week, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D.) announced that he was pulling the plug on his four-year quest to impose single-payer, government-run health care on the residents of his state. “In my judgment,” said Shumlin at a press conference, “the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families, and the state’s economy.” The key reasons for Shumlin’s reversal are important to understand. They explain why the dream of single-payer health care in the U.S. is dead for the foreseeable future—but also why Obamacare will be difficult to repeal.

Leading left-wing economists worked on Vermont plan

Shumlin’s predecessor in Montpelier was a Republican, Jim Douglas. In 2009, Douglas announced that he would not be seeking a fifth two-year term; five Democrats joined the contest to replace him. Progressive activists demanded that each candidate promise to enact single-payer health care if nominated; all five complied. Shumlin got the nod, and assumed office in January 2011.

Shumlin got right to work. In Feburary 2011, a trio of health economists, including Harvard’s William Hsiao and MIT’s Jonathan Gruber, sent Vermont a 203-page report describing the feasibility, and the alleged virtues, of single-payer in the state. Gruber signed a $400,000 contract to work with Vermont on the project.

Hsiao has spent a good chunk of his career helping governments install single-payer systems; for example, he helped the Taiwanese government install “Medicare for all” in 1995. He’s also responsible for Medicare’s Byzantine price-control scheme known as the Resource-Based Relative Value System, or RBRVS.

Gruber you know; at a hearing to discuss the Vermont report, the Obamacare architect was confronted by a letter from a former state senator, who argued that “any Hsiao-Gruber type health care mega-system will inevitably lead to coercive mandates, ballooning costs, increased taxes, bureaucratic outrages, shabby facilities, disgruntled providers, long waiting lines, lower quality care, special interest nest-feathering, and destructive wage and price controls.” In response, Gruber wisecracked: “Was this written by my adolescent children by any chance?”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/12/21/6-reasons-why-vermonts-single-payer-health-plan-was-doomed-from-the-start/

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Civility Roundtable – January 20th

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Civility Roundtable – January 20th – All are Welcome!

Mayor Paul Aronsohn will be holding a Roundtable meeting to discuss related to more civility in our public discourse. The meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 20th at 7:30pm in the Senior Lounge at Village Hall.

Rev. Jan Phillips will lead the discussion. We will drill down on ways to take the civility conversation forward.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

wine.comshow?id=mjvuF8ceKoQ&bids=209195

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Reader says While we are at it Let’s bring civility back to the Planning board meetings

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Reader says While we are at it Let’s bring civility back to the Planning board meetings

Let’s bring civility back to the Planning board meetings by replacing the current attorney and by enforcing rules of order that protect the rights of Villagers. Has anyone noticed that the planning board attorney sits in the middle of the table and effectively runs the meeting? I would like our fellow Villagers to be in control of and responsible for the meetings — for good or for bad — and not a lawyer who seems to make up the rules as she goes along.

I thought Charles Nalbatian controlled the meeting. I thought Gail Price was there to answer legal issues and questions that came up and to ensure that legal protocol was followed along with Nalbatian.

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Readers Thank White Horse Strategies for the ” new normal”

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Readers Thank White Horse Strategies for the ” new normal”

White Horse Strategies is a cutting-edge communications firm that specializes in connecting you with those who matter.

We have a proven record of effectively cultivating and promoting an effective message – from rapid response, speechwriting and debate prep to raising public awareness and grassroots support.

We’ve served on the “inside” by working in government, and we’ve crashed the gates as reformers and activists. We’ve brought that experience to campaigns on the federal, state and local levels, as well as to our work on behalf of both progressive advocacy groups and those in the private sector.

At White Horse Strategies, we know what it takes to motivate and move people and public opinion.

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Reader says Mr Mayor We are not so gullible as to fall for your rhetoric. Nor are we so meek as to be cowed into silence by threats of being deemed outside your “new normal”.

Rules_for_Radicals

Reader says Mr Mayor We are not so gullible as to fall for your rhetoric. Nor are we so meek as to be cowed into silence by threats of being deemed outside your “new normal”.

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Get over yourself, Mr. Mayor. The playbook is Saul Alinsky’s, and the major practitioner of Alinsky’s techniques is the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The above is from his speech given at the United Nations in NYC while he was still trying to blame the murder of four Americans in Benghazi on a two-bit director and his crummy movie. Sure, he set up and knocked down other straw men to whom ownership of the future should ostensibly be denied, but everyone knew the passage quoted above was his “money” quote…the real message.

Every trick you’re trying to pull, Mr. Mayor, has long since been attempted (and revealed as a naked political tactic) on the national stage in full view of your Ridgewood neighbors. We are not so gullible as to fall for your rhetoric. Nor are we so meek as to be cowed into silence by threats of being deemed outside your “new normal”.

It won’t be long now before we’re treated to a reprise of Charlie (nicknamed ‘Charlianna’) whose sole purpose in life was seemingly to troll this blog and accuse people with whom he disagreed of occupying “the lunatic fringe”. See the similarity? Freeze your opponent, isolate them, then freely pour on their head all the ridicule, scorn, and disdain you can generate.

Get a new schtick, mayor Aronsohn. We’ve had it with your self-righteous nonsense and wish that you and your two amigos would simply cut out the condescension and do the jobs you were elected to do. Show some humility and leave the moralizing to people who still have at least a shred of credibility on the topic. And stop basing your political life on tactics from a book dedicated by Alinsky to the father of all lies.

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As Medicaid Rolls Swell, Cuts in Payments to Doctors Threaten Access to Care

obamacare

As Medicaid Rolls Swell, Cuts in Payments to Doctors Threaten Access to Care

WASHINGTON — Just as millions of people are gaining insurance through Medicaid, the program is poised to make deep cuts in payments to many doctors, prompting some physicians and consumer advocates to warn that the reductions could make it more difficult for Medicaid patients to obtain care.

The Affordable Care Act provided a big increase in Medicaid payments for primary care in 2013 and 2014. But the increase expires on Thursday — just weeks after the Obama administration told the Supreme Court that doctors and other providers had no legal right to challenge the adequacy of payments they received from Medicaid.

The impact will vary by state, but a study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates that doctors who have been receiving the enhanced payments will see their fees for primary care cut by 43 percent, on average.

Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the Urban Institute and co-author of the report, said Medicaid payments for primary care services could drop by 50 percent or more in California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, among other states.

In his budget request in March, President Obama proposed a one-year extension of the higher Medicaid payments. Several Democratic members of Congress backed the idea, but the proposals languished, and such legislation would appear to face long odds in the new Congress, with Republicans controlling both houses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/us/obamacare-medicaid-fee-increases-expiring.html?_r=0

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More calls for reform of Port Authority; N.J. legislators criticize heavy overtime

VenessaatPA_theridgewoodblog.net_

More calls for reform of Port Authority; N.J. legislators criticize heavy overtime

December 26, 2014, 11:18 PM Last updated: Saturday, December 27, 2014, 10:13 AM
By JOHN REITMEYER, DUSTIN RACIOPPI and ABBOTT KOLOFF
staff writers |
The Record

Staggering amounts of overtime at the Port Authority, especially in the police ranks, underscore widespread mismanagement and the need for greater oversight of the bi-state agency, which has come under critical scrutiny since the George Washington Bridge lane-closings scandal last year, state lawmakers said Friday.

The reactions followed a report by The Record that 131 agency employees, most of them police officers, earned so much overtime pay through September that they more than doubled their salaries. Thirteen officers earned more than the executive director, whose annual salary is $289,000, with the top 10 overtime earners, all police, averaging an estimated 46 hours of overtime per week.

“It just points out another example of the lack of management that has gone on there over the last number of years,” said state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, the Teaneck Democrat who is co-chairwoman of the joint legislative committee investigating the 2013 bridge lane closures. She said that “people just don’t function if they’ve worked too many hours straight.”

https://www.northjersey.com/news/more-calls-for-reform-of-port-authority-n-j-legislators-criticize-heavy-overtime-1.1181973

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Hundreds Turn Their Back on de Blasio at NYPD Officer’s Funeral

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Hundreds Turn Their Back on de Blasio at NYPD Officer’s Funeral

Dec 27, 2014, 11:36 AM ET
By DEAN SCHABNER

Hundreds of police officers turned their backs on a screen showing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as he spoke at the funeral of one of two officers killed last week in what has been called an “assassination.”

The funeral at the Christ Tabernacle Church, in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens, was broadcast to thousands of police who gathered outside.

The killing of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu came amid heightened tensions between the police and the mayor over what some police saw as a lack of support for the force.

The atmosphere was mostly respectful, but there were scattered signs of protest even before the police officers action when the mayor spoke.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/nypd-officers-turn-back-de-blasio-cops-funeral/story?id=27851746

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Online scare keeps many out of school in Westwood

Web threat

Online scare keeps many out of school in Westwood

December 27, 2014    Last updated: Saturday, December 27, 2014, 1:21 AM
By HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER |
The Record

A security scare at Westwood Regional Jr./Sr. High School prompted many families to keep their kids home on Tuesday, despite assurances from school officials that there was no actual threat, officials said.

More than 200 students were absent, or about 20 percent of all students, which was an unusually high number even for the day before Christmas vacation, said district Superintendent Raymond Gonzalez on Friday. Some stayed home because of rumors about a threat that was linked to an online book written by a student, officials said.

Gonzalez declined to say what the student wrote or what prompted the scare, but the school did investigate and found “no credible information to support the claims,” he said.

“No specific threats were directed at any of our schools or personnel,” Gonzalez said. “However, local, national and world events have heightened our collective sensitivity to matters of safety in our school.

“As such, the school district takes all matters seriously and works cooperatively with law enforcement to investigate public concerns when they arise to ensure that our schools are safe places for all students.”

Officials declined to identify the student and said that there was no need to discipline the teen.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/online-scare-keeps-many-out-of-school-1.1182051

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SiliconValley.com : The 5 biggest tech fails of 2014

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At top: Apple CEO Tim Cook and U2′s Bono weren’t smiling for long after launching U2′s new album on everyone’s iTunes accounts in September.  (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

The 5 biggest tech fails of 2014

In the tech world, we can’t all be winners all the time. 2014 saw some rather spectacular failures. Here are our top (bottom?) five:

5. Google’s Barge

4. U2 and iTunes

3. Amazon Fire smartphone

2. Uber

1. Online security

https://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/12/26/the-5-biggest-tech-fails-of-2014/