Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Toyota Set to Sell Long-Range, Fast-Charging Electric Cars in 2022
July 25th, 2017Toyota made a strategic error in holding out hope for hydrogen fuel cell technology as the leaders in zero emission vehicles went ahead with lithium ion batteries. By opting to attempt to make solid state battery technology viable by 2022, Toyota might be trying to make up for lost time. Via: Reuters: Toyota Motor Corp […]
Disney’s Next Movie Could Be Watching You
July 25th, 2017Via: Fast Company: Now, Disney Research has developed a neural network that seems to be chasing a similar idea–but for the world of movies. The system has been trained to watch an audience of theatergoers as they watch a film. It can track reactions like smiling and laughter on hundreds of faces in a dark […]
Wisconsin Company To Implant Microchips In Employees
July 24th, 2017“Get that bag of chips faster.” *creepy grin* Local TV news broadcasts are comedy gold in the zombie apocalypse. Via: KSTP: A Wisconsin company is about to become the first in the U.S. to offer microchip implants to its employees. Yes, you read that right. Microchip implants. “It’s the next thing that’s inevitably going to […]
Elon Musk Claims U.S. Approval for World’s Longest Tunnel
July 21st, 2017My guess is that there are so many secret underground facilities in and around Washington DC that this will simply not happen. But if this does somehow get approved, an additional guess is that you’ll be able to slap a Mr. Fusion on your Tesla before the DC hyperloop is running. In any event, Musk […]
U.S. Navy Ship in Persian Gulf Armed with Laser Weapon
July 21st, 2017Via: CNN: In the sometimes hostile waters of the Persian Gulf looms the US Navy’s first — in fact, the world’s first — active laser weapon. The LaWS, an acronym for Laser Weapons System, is not science fiction. It is not experimental. It is deployed on board the USS Ponce amphibious transport ship, ready to […]
The Tiny Satellites Ushering in the New Space Revolution
July 19th, 2017Smile for the birdy. Via: Bloomberg: With all 149 satellites in place, Planet will be able to photograph every inch of Earth’s surface every day—something even the U.S. government can’t do. This satellite constellation is one of many signs that the relationship between humans and space is changing in ways unseen since Russia and the […]
Synthesizing Obama
July 17th, 2017Via: University of Washington: Given audio of President Barack Obama, we synthesize a high quality video of him speaking with accurate lip sync, composited into a target video clip. Trained on many hours of his weekly address footage, a recurrent neural network learns the mapping from raw audio features to mouth shapes. Given the mouth […]
Tech May Replace Half of All Low-Skilled Jobs in the U.S.
July 17th, 2017Via: CBS: Ball State University sits in Muncie, Indiana, at the heart the “Rust Belt,” so educators there have the right to be pessimistic about the drift of the U.S. economy. But a report by the school’s Center for Business and Economic Research goes even further. “We found a toxic brew,” said CBER Director Michael […]
Facial Recognition Coming to Police Body Cameras
July 17th, 2017Via: Defense One: Even if the cop who pulls you over doesn’t recognize you, the body camera on his chest just might in the future. Device-maker Motorola announced Monday that would partner with artificial intelligence software startup Neurala to build “real-time learning for a person of interest search” on Motorola products such as the Si500 […]
Used GPUs Flood Market as Ethereum’s Price Crashes Below $150
July 16th, 2017haha that didn’t take long: I’m hoping to buy a used GTX 1070 for my son’s 10th birthday in November. Will there be a flood of cheap GTX 1070s on eBay by then? Via: OC3D: Over the past few months, there has been a GPU shortage, forcing the prices of mid-range graphics cards up as […]
