Senate Adds Another Foreclosure Kingpin To Trump’s Cabinet

The Senate voted on Monday evening to confirm Wilbur Ross as secretary of commerce. The 79-year-old billionaire private equity investor is President Donald Trump’s 10th cabinet nominee to be confirmed, and remarkably, is the second member of Trump’s cabinet who was deeply involved in companies that swept up the housing crisis with foreclosures marred by document fraud like robo-signing.

The first, Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary, invested in and ran OneWest bank, which foreclosed on tens of thousands of Americans in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. During his Senate confirmation hearing, he denied that his bank used the illegal practice of robo-signing, but public documents obtained by The Columbus Dispatch showed that was a false statement.

Ross may not have been the CEO of a bank foreclosing on homeowners, but he was nevertheless intimately involved and invested in two companies that were accused of widespread wrongdoing. American Home Mortgage Servicing was accused of illegal foreclosure practices while it ran the second-biggest portfolio of subprime mortgages in the country.

American Home effectively outsourced the fraud, David Dayen reported, using “a company called DocX, which forged millions of mortgage assignments, claiming to be the officers of dozens of different banks … documents were fraudulently signed after the fact to recreate a chain of title that lenders broke.” The company was eventually sold to Ocwen, which was fined $2.1 billion in 2013 for its unethical business practices. Ross served on Ocwen’s board from 2012 to 2014.

Not only is Ross a member of a secret Wall Street fraternity, where, clad in velvet slippers, he sang show tunes mocking poor people, but he also has pockmarks that would likely have sunk his nomination if he’d been put forward by another president for consideration by another Senate.

During his confirmation hearing, Ross admitted to employing an undocumented household worker for years. It was only after he was nominated by Trump to be commerce secretary that he asked all his “dozen or so” household employees to prove they were legally allowed to work in the U.S. “This one employee was unable to and therefore was terminated,” Ross said at his confirmation hearing. Hiring undocumented workers sank two of President Bill Clinton’s nominees for attorney general and President George W. Bush’s first choice for labor secretary pulled out after it emerged she had sheltered an undocumented woman.

Ross has also outsourced 2,700 U.S. jobs in companies he has invested in since 2004, Labor Department data published by Reuters shows. Reviewing his investment in International Textile Group, which under Ross’ ownership rebranded and shed hundreds of American jobs, The Daily Beast dubbed him, “Trump’s future secretary of outsourcing.”

And then there is Ross’ involvement in the coal industry, which Trump talks about reviving at seemingly every opportunity. In 2005, Ross fully acquired a series of coal mines that he had long been the largest investor in. One of those properties was Sago Mine, which was hit with 208 violations by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration that year. More than half those citations were labeled “serious and substantial,” like 20 roof falls, 14 wire insulation problems and three cases of inadequate ventilation plans.

On Jan. 2, 2006, an early morning blast ripped through the mine, trapping 13 miners underground for two days. Only one survived. Ross did not visit the disaster site and says the deaths haunt him. He agreed to pay the dead miners’ families a total of $2 million.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Former Google Engineer Blasts Company's HR Practices After Sexual Harassment Revelation

Earlier today, Recode reported that Uber had asked its new SVP of engineering, Amit Singhal to resign after he failed to disclose the circumstances involved in his departure from Google. According to Recode, Singhal resigned from Google in early 2016 after an investigation into a sexual harassment claim brought…

Read more…

The Robot Arm of our Nightmares Plays in a Pool of Blood

In the future, robots will frolic in pools of human blood and use it for lubrication. Then robot arms will be forced to clean it all up. Today we can get a little taste of that horror that lies before us.


If you want to see a robot arm squeegee up a massive puddle of blood, either time travel into the future or check out this installation by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. It is called “Can’t Help Myself” and it is on display at the Guggenheim Museum through March.

I bet that arm is enjoying itself, playing with that pool of blood like some deranged serial killer. We are all well and truly screwed.

[via Boing Boing via Neatorama]

Mozilla Announces Acquisition Of Pocket

If you love saving articles for reading later, then there’s a good chance that you might have used Pocket. For those who are unfamiliar with Pocket, basically this is an app that lets you save websites for reading later. You can curate a list of websites and they’ll be made available to you whenever you want.

It even has an extension for browsers such as Chrome so that you can save websites from the desktop and have it sync with the app as well. That being said, it looks like the folks at Mozilla have decided to acquire them. To be more specific, Mozilla has acquired Read It Later Inc., which is the company that made Pocket.

According to Mozilla’s announcement on their website, “As our first strategic acquisition, Pocket contributes to our strategy by growing our mobile presence and providing people everywhere with powerful tools to discover and access high quality web content, on their terms, independent of platform or content silo.”

Also by acquiring Pocket, Mozilla has announced that they will be making the app open-source. From what we can tell Pocket will continue to function similarly as before, at least for now. We’re not sure what specific plans Mozilla has for the app in the future, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled.

Mozilla Announces Acquisition Of Pocket , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

SpaceX Wants To Spend Two Tourists Into Space Next Year

While there might be tour packages that take you exotic locations around the world, if you’re looking for something that’s a little more out of this world, you might be interested to learn that space tourism will be a thing in the future, and the folks at SpaceX appear to be getting ready for that.

In an announcement on its website, SpaceX has announced that come 2018, they will be sending two private citizens into space. “We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration.”

This is not the first time that space tourism has happened as prior to this, it was reported that tourists looking to go into space have paid the Russian government as much as $20 million a trip to the International Space Station. SpaceX has not disclosed the names of the two individuals who will be making the trip, nor how much they will be paying, but we reckon it probably won’t be cheap.

The company also expects that this is only the beginning of thing as others have similarly expressed their interest in making the trip as well.

SpaceX Wants To Spend Two Tourists Into Space Next Year , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

‘Smart’ Teddy Bear Leaks 2 Million Recordings Of Kids And Their Parents

Recently you might have heard that over in Germany, a particular children’s doll had been banned for sale over privacy issues. Because toys these days come with smarter features such as internet connectivity, the ability to record video and audio, we can only imagine the nightmare should these recordings be leaked or should these toys be hacked.

Unfortunately that nightmare has become a reality for one company. In a report from Motherboard, a company by the name of Spiral Toys had left customer data of its CloudPets brand on a database that was not password-protected or behind a firewall. This resulted in the data, more than 800,000 user accounts credentials, being stolen by hackers and held for ransom.

According to Troy Hunt, a security researcher and Victor Gevers, the chairman of the non-profit GDI Foundation, the database has been spotted making its rounds in the internet underground and it was also spotted that along with the user account credentials, close to 400,000 friend records and over 2 million voice messages had also been stolen.

In Hunt’s blog, he writes, “It only takes one little mistake on behalf of the data custodian […] and every single piece of data they hold on you and your family can be in the public domain in mere minutes. If you’re fine with your kids’ recordings ending up in unexpected places then sobeit, but that’s the assumption you have to work on because there’s a very real chance it’ll happen.” Spiral Toys has yet to comment on the incident.

‘Smart’ Teddy Bear Leaks 2 Million Recordings Of Kids And Their Parents , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

‘Turn Touch’ Is A Beautiful Wood Remote Control For Your Home

Gadgets these days have certainly come a long way in design, where many companies are realizing that form can be just as important as function, or that there are many customers out there who would actually prioritize aesthetics over functionality. If you do you prefer your gadgets to look good, then maybe Turn Touch could be of interest to you.

Turn Touch is a Kickstarter project for a remote control for your home. We know that remote controls are a dime a dozen and there are plenty of much more functional and feature-rich remotes out there, like the Logitech Harmony, but what makes Turn Touch so different is that it is made out of wood.

According to its inventor Samuel Clay, “Turn Touch is a smart home remote control carved out of beautiful mahogany wood. This is a remote control for Hue lights, Sonos speakers, and all the other connected devices in your home. Turn Touch works on iOS and macOS, giving you control of your music, videos, presentations, and more.”

One of the charms of the remote, apart from its design, is that it can be used to perform multiple actions at once, where one button can execute multiple commands. For example you can use it to lock your door and turn off your lights simultaneously. The buttons are also fully customizable to your needs.

We suppose there is a bit of a novelty of owning a wooden remote control, but if you’re looking for something discreet that is also functional, then maybe this could be worth investing in. The Turn Touch is priced at $59 on Kickstarter and is expected to retail for $79 upon its release.

‘Turn Touch’ Is A Beautiful Wood Remote Control For Your Home , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Huawei Imagines Cell Towers Wirelessly Charging Drones

[MWC 2017] One of the problems with drones is that typically their battery life leaves a lot to be desired. For consumer drone usage this might not be a problem, but if one is using drones to make site inspections, then this could prove to be very troublesome as it means either bringing along multiple drones, or having to constantly charge them.

However during MWC 2017, Huawei’s X Labs project envisions a future where cell towers could potentially be used to wirelessly charge drones as they fly around them to make site inspections. Granted we don’t expect these towers to fully charge drones or be used as a charging point, but basically the idea is that it will keep the drone constantly juiced up so that the pilot will be able to complete their work and inspection without needing to recharge it.

Of course this will require a fair bit of power and at the moment, wireless charging isn’t quite where it needs to be at the moment. Even our phones with wireless charging still need to be “tethered” to a charging mat, although there are talks about maybe “true” wireless charging could find its way to the iPhone 8 later this year.

In any case it seems that maybe Huawei’s vision for the future is still several years away from being made a reality, but the implications are huge as being able to charge wirelessly off cell towers could be used for more than just drone inspections.

Huawei Imagines Cell Towers Wirelessly Charging Drones , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Pokemon GO update: Eevee evolution charts tweaked

For those in Pokemon GO about to evolve their Eevee into the first Espeon or Umbreon they’ve ever had, pay attention. The most recent chart of Eevolutions, methods, and best potential outcomes has arrived. Barring all Pokemon GO hacks and whatnot, we’re having a look at the insides of the software to show you exactly what’s possible for Eevee in … Continue reading

ASUS ZenFone AR hands-on: Google Tango sells us a BMW

ASUS launched the ZenFone AR back at CES in January, but the Project Tango phone wasn’t quite ready for its augmented reality close-up. Turns out, there are some ZenFone AR handsets floating around at MWC 2017 this week, not least being used by the team at BMW and Accenture for their iVisualizer demo. Imagine our surprise when the ASUS handset … Continue reading