Archive for the 'Technology' Category
AI Beats Professional Poker Players
January 31st, 2017Via: BBC: A poker-playing AI has beaten four human players in a marathon match lasting 20 days. Libratus, an artificial intelligence program developed at Carnegie Mellon University, was trained to play a variant of the game known as no-limit heads-up Texas hold ’em. In a similar tournament in 2015, the humans won. The victory has […]
LibreTaxi: Free and Open Source Alternative to Uber/Lyft
January 31st, 2017Via: LibreTaxi: LibreTaxi makes taxi affordable by getting rid of the third party between passengers and drivers. Negotiate the price before the ride is confirmed, pay cash upon arrival. 1-minute hiring for all drivers.
Cafe X, Bringing Robots to the Coffee Shop
January 30th, 2017Via: TechCrunch: The world’s first coffee shop opened in Constantinople in 1555. Four hundred and some years later, Cafe X is putting a twist on that old barista model. Opening in San Francisco today, the startup is opting instead to have a large robotic arm craft your caffeinated potions.
Bag of Chips Can Sense If You’ve Been Drinking and Call You an Uber
January 30th, 2017Via: Mashable: Tostitos’ new bag wants to chaperone your Super Bowl party. In honor of the big game, the chip maker is launching a special-edition version of its packaging with a built-in sensor that can detect trace levels of alcohol in your breath. If it decides you’ve been drinking — regardless of how much — […]
DragonflEye Project Wants to Turn Insects Into Cyborg Drones
January 26th, 2017Via: IEEE: As hard as we’re trying, it’s going to be a very long time before we’re able to build a robotic insect that’s anywhere near as capable or versatile as a real one. So for now, we rely on a cybernetics approach to get real insects to do our bidding instead. Over the past […]
Robotic Fabricator Could Change the Way Buildings Are Constructed
January 25th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review: So what is the state-of-the-art for construction robots? Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Markus Giftthaler at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland and a few pals who have developed a new class of robot capable of creating novel structures on a construction site. They call their new […]
Musk Apparently Not Joking About Tunnel Boring Venture
January 25th, 2017Is this real? Via: Electrek: If you weren’t convinced that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was serious about launching a new company to start digging tunnels, maybe you will be now that he is putting a timeline on the project. He announced early this morning that they have made “exciting progress” and that he expects to […]
Massive Networks of Fake Accounts Found on Twitter
January 25th, 2017Via: BBC: Massive collections of fake accounts are lying dormant on Twitter, suggests research. The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger. UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it. Some of the accounts have been used […]
Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs
January 24th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: Automation means wells need only five workers, down from 20.
U.S. Solar Industry Passes Oil, Coal and Gas for Job Creation
January 24th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: ComputerWorld: Solar employment now accounts for the largest share of workers in the U.S. power generation field, surpassing coal, gas and oil, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In 2016, the solar workforce increased by 25% over the […]
