bostonangler

Who'd want her??? Not even a lonely Russian in a deep Siberian winter could warm up to that.... JMHO B/A

Well that explains why nothing ever gets done! B/A

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin's popularity and the emergence of about 1,500 other digital coins or tokens have drawn more hackers into the red-hot cryptocurrency space, expanding opportunities for crime and fraud, cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows warned in a report on Thursday. "Cybercriminals follow the money and right now they see in the unregulated and largely unsecure world of digital currencies a huge opportunity to target people, businesses and exchanges and make money quickly and easily," said Rick Holland, vice president of strategy at Digital Shadows. Digital currencies have quickly grown into a more mainstream asset class over the last two years as corporations and financial institutions have expanded use of the underlying blockchain technology. With weekly launches of new alternative coins, or "altcoins," cybercriminals have developed several schemes to defraud cryptocurrency holders. "Crypto jacking", account takeovers, mining fraud, and scams against initial coin offerings (ICOs) have all grown more common, the report said. In crypto jacking, cybercriminals secretly take over another computer user's browser and use it to fraudulently mine or create cryptocurrencies, according to Digital Shadows' report. Miners use special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins or cryptocurrenices in exchange. Crypto Jacker software allows users to clone popular websites and initiate spam campaigns. The cybersecurity company said criminals also perpetrate mining fraud using botnets, collections of internet-connected devices, which may include PCs, servers, and mobile devices that are infected and controlled by a common type of malware. Users are often unaware a botnet has infected their system. Botnets were first used to mine bitcoin in 2014. The process was too complex to be financially viable, but botnets have made a comeback because newer cryptocurrencies like Monero are easier to "mine", Digital Shadows said. The company said botnets could be rented for $40. It said one such offering had "flown off the shelves" with almost 2,000 rentals so far. Cybercriminals have also been drawn to the surging initial coin offering market, the report said. ICOs have raised roughly $5 billion for various startups and projects in 2017, according to data from Crunchbase. That is up exponentially from just $100 million in 2016. Rather than selling scam tokens, criminals target legitimate currencies, either by stealing funds from ICOs or by manipulating prices through the type of "pump and dump" schemes often used with penny stocks and other less-liquid assets, the report said.

So if China starts making things here what will be the end result? Are we going to work for the same rate as they do in China? Will Chinese companies pass the extra cost along to us? Will Americans cry about the new higher costs? Here's an idea. Instead of the corporate welfare we see our government giving multi-nationals, how about they allow us tax payers to deduct all taxes on American made products that we buy? That might help out... B/A

It is moving up and down a bit, but I'm not sure if it is just bouncing with the dollar. B/A

US President Donald Trump's boast that TV viewership for his speech to Congress this week was the "highest number in history" is under scrutiny. Nielsen, which tracks US TV ratings, says Mr Trump's 45.6m viewers falls short of the numbers who tuned in to other State of the Union addresses. Nielsen says Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush all drew bigger ratings for their speeches. Twitter said Mr Trump's speech attracted a record 4.5m tweets. Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump Report End of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump "Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech," Mr Trump tweeted on Thursday morning. "45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history." But according to Nielsen data, Mr Obama's first official State of the Union speech in 2010 attracted 48 million viewers. Mr Clinton's State of the Union pulled in a record 66.9 million television viewers in 1993. Mr Bush pulled in 62.1 million in 2003. Skip Twitter post by @FoxNewsResearch Report End of Twitter post by @FoxNewsResearch About one quarter of total viewers watched the speech on Fox News, which Nielsen said received a total 11.5m viewers. The Nielsen survey comprises data from 12 television networks and does not take into account those who watched online. CNN said that roughly an hour into Mr Trump's speech, their video-streaming platform peaked at 321,000 simultaneous users. It is not the first time Mr Trump's claims about audience figures have been questioned. He estimated that 1.5 million people attended his inauguration speech at the National Mall in Washington DC last year. But his then-press secretary's estimate gave Mr Trump a crowd size of around half that figure. In a 2015 profile for Rolling Stone magazine, Mr Trump asserted that his own 757 plane was bigger than the presidential jet, Air Force One. Air Force One is 225ft (68 metres); Mr Trump's plane is 153ft Why does this guy feel compelled to exaggerate???? Or maybe Nielson is now part of the "Dark State" LOL B/A

Well he was a democrat, now a republican, maybe you are on to something! LOL B/A

Sorry I thought you meant this one.... Fusion GPS, the research firm responsible for the “Steele dossier,” defended itself late Tuesday against what it called “mendacious conspiracy theories” spun by Republicans and President Trump, saying its critics were simply “chasing rabbits” to punish it for exposing Trump’s links to Russia. The two founders of the firm, Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, made their first extensive public comments on the controversy surrounding the company in a commentary in the New York Times headlined “The Republicans’ Fake Investigations.” They accused congressional Republicans of “selectively” leaking to far-right media outlets details of the firm’s testimony to congressional committees and called for full release of the testimony transcripts “so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most, important, what happened to our democracy.” But most of the commentary was devoted to refuting allegations by Trump allies that the dossier the firm procured while working for the Hillarious Clinton campaign provided the impetus for the investigation of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. Republican critics of the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia have repeatedly accused Fusion GPS of fomenting the probe in collaboration with the 2016 Clinton campaign, using as bait the dossier of unsubstantiated allegations against Trump prepared by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. What you need to know about Fusion GPS, the Trump dossier and Russian interests How is Fusion GPS connected to the Trump dossier, Donald Trump Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting and the 2016 election? The Fact Checker explains. (Video: Meg Kelly/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) As White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a news briefing on Aug. 1, “The Democrat-linked firm Fusion GPS actually took money from the Russian government while it created the phony dossier that’s been the basis for all of the Russian scandal fake news.” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), among others, has suggested that the dossier was “the basis” for government spying on the Trump campaign and called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate. In their commentary, Simpson and Fritsch said they did not believe the dossier “was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.” The intelligence committees, wrote the Fusion GPS executives, “have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.” The New York Times reported on Dec. 30 that the Russia probe began when campaign adviser George Papadopoulos tipped off an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia had “political dirt on Hillarious Clinton.” The Australians ultimately relayed that information to the FBI two months later, according to the Times account. Papadopoulos admitted in October that he made a false statement to FBI investigators about his contacts with foreigners claiming to have high-level Russian connections and made a plea agreement to cooperate with the probe. “Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert,” the Fusion executives wrote. “But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most investors shun? “What came back shocked us,” they wrote. “Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.” After the election, they wrote, “Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power.” The dossier, as The Post’s Jack Gillum and Shawn Boburg reported in December, alleged that the Russian government collected compromising information on Trump and that the Kremlin was trying to assist his campaign. As previously reported by multiple news outlets, Fusion GPS was hired first in the fall of 2015 by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded in part by New York hedge fund operator Paul Singer to look into various Republican presidential candidates, including Trump. It has already been reported that the Free Beacon called off Fusion GPS in May 2016 as Trump was clinching the nomination, before Steele was hired by the firm, according to the Free Beacon.

Why is it when people ask what's your nationality or ethic background Americans say, "Oh I'm English, French, Spanish, German or whatever" Why don't we say we are American. When you go to France or Italy or wherever, people don't say I'm this or that they say "I'm French, I'm English I'm whatever country I'm from" When will people say I'm American. My mother and father were born here. I was born here. I don't go around saying my roots are from somewhere else. My roots are American... I don't care where my grand father or great grandfather came from. My family is American. JMHO B/A

Me too... If there was ever the need for a third party it is right now. People on both sides of the aisle are brainwashed. It is sad. No matter who I meet Democrat or Republican, they can find no fault in their party members. That is idiotic. Did Obama say things good and bad? Of course. Has Trump said things that are good and bad? Of course. But when you talk to people on either side they can't except anything that might differ from the party message... That's nuts, and that's why I'm not a party member, but an independent. People need to vote both sides out just one time and show these crooks where the real power is... With the voter... JMHO B/A

When will this guy go away??? I don't understand how he is still standing. B/A

Isn't that pathetic... Do as I say not as I do.... Geeez B/A

This is actually moving up and down on xe.com... Usually it stays pretty consistent... B/A

Bitcoin USD 9,357.01 -869.85 -8.5055%

Things do seem to be moving faster and faster... B/A

Rates as of right now 1 USD =1,190.74IQD US Dollar1 USD = 1,190.74 IQD ↔ Iraqi Dinar1 IQD = 0.000839812 USD 2018-02-01 07:27 local time

Wasn't this originally started by one of the Republicans running for president? B/A

I'm glad they are building, but the point is they were already here... It's not like they weren't already manufacturing here. Don't get me wrong it is great for the additional investment but you guys act like this is a new concept. It's an expansion which is a good thing. Just like GM building cars in China... People in China love Buicks and we love Chinese products... It's a global economy in full swing. B/A

JinkoSolar Announces Results of 2017 Annual General Meeting By PR Newswire, November 15, 2017, 05:50:00 AM EDT JinkoSolar has over 15,000 employees across its 8 production facilities in China (5), Malaysia, Portugal, and South Africa; 16 overseas subsidiaries in Japan (2), Singapore, India, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Australia, South Africa and United Arab Emirates; and 18 global sales offices in China (2), United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Kenya, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico Nothing new here... Move along B/A

I don't know Schmidt B/A

Nope I'm saying he is well educated and knows what's coming to those in charge... I think he wants out before he is dragged in to the ongoing mess. B/A

As a former judge, prosecutor and dedicated lawyer, it looks like he's getting out of town before the legal s**t hits the fan... JMHO B/A

The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio for the 168 companies included in this report stands at about about 70-to-1, with some CEOs making more than 300 times the median salary of their employees – just in cash (base pay, bonuses, profit sharing, etc.). Many CEOs receive substantial stock/option grants and perks as part of their compensation, which can more than quadruple their total annual pay. But similar data for employees by company is not readily available, so we looked solely at cash compensation for both CEOs and workers to calculate ratios for this report. Larry Merlo, the CEO of CVS Health Corp, made roughly 434 times the salary of the median CVS employee in 2015, the largest ratio between CEO and employee pay at any company on this list. See the full list of CEO-to-employee pay ratios It wasn't always this way. In 1965, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio in the United States stood at about 20-to-1, according to a 2015 report by the EPI. But starting in the 1970s up through 2014, "inflation-adjusted CEO compensation increased 997 percent, a rise almost double stock market growth and substantially greater than the painfully slow 10.9 percent growth in a typical worker's annual compensation over the same period." Is this a problem? Is it out of line for the Chief Executive of a successful company to be paid hundreds of times the salary of his or her average employee? Or is CEO a demanding enough job requiring such a highly developed skillset that these high salaries are deserved? "Excessive executive pay is deservedly blamed for rising income inequality, because worker pay has stagnated as executive pay has soared," said the New York Times in a July 14 editorial. Additionally, the idea that the inequality between executive and worker pay is contributing to the downfall of the American middle class has been prevalent on the campaign trail this election year. But not everyone sees the disparity as an issue. Some even question the validity of the data, pointing out the pay of a CEO at an average company is only about four-times higher than the average American worker, a decidedly more balanced ratio than found at the largest firms. The problem there, however, is that the average firm is very small, employing just 20 workers, and workers at those companies are not representative of the typical American employee. Again, according to the EPI report, a typical American worker "works in a firm with roughly 1,000 workers. Half (52 percent) of employment and 58 percent of total payroll are in firms with more than 500 or more employees. Firms with at least 10,000 workers provide 27.9 percent of all employment and 31.4 percent of all payroll." Remember when families could live comfortable lifes with one wage earner? The effect of what companies have done to their employee wages has had a direct effect on the quality of life for American workers and the implosion of the family. JMHO B/A

Funny how greed has taken over American business. Companies wanted to share their success. Not anymore..

Round 'em up!!! B/A