Archive for the 'Technology' Category
FBI Arrests NSA Contractor
October 5th, 2016Via: The Atlantic: The FBI arrested a National Security Agency contractor in late August for stealing classified material from the intelligence organization, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday. Federal prosecutors have charged Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials. Martin […]
Not OK, Google
October 5th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch: At its hardware launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Alphabet showed the sweeping breadth of its ambition to own consumers’ personal data, as computing continues to accelerate away from static desktops and screens, coalescing into a cloud of connected devices with the potential to generate far more data — and data of […]
Outage Knocks Out All Major Phone Providers on the East Coast
October 5th, 2016Via: Daily Dot: Every major phone carrier experienced outages on United States’ east coast this morning from about 11:00am local time until around 11:45am. DownDetector.com, which tracks technology failure, illustrated the precipitous collapse of major networks. More: Outage at Level 3
Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails for U.S. Intelligence
October 4th, 2016Via: Reuters: Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest […]
Not The Onion: ‘A Robot Baby Intended to Make Lonely People More Happy’
October 3rd, 2016Via: Independent: Toyota has created a tiny robot baby that it hopes can make lonely people more happy. The company’s Kirobo Mini is meant to help provide a companion. It looks like a baby – and could even serve that purpose for people in Japan, where it will be sold and where falling birth rates […]
California: Governor Authorizes Fully Autonomous Vehicle Testing Without Human Driver Backup
September 30th, 2016Via: Mercury News: California Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a bill that for the first time allows testing on public roads of self-driving vehicles with no steering wheels, brake pedals or accelerators. A human driver as backup is not required, but the vehicles will be limited to speeds of less than 35 mph. The […]
Microsoft: 5000 Staff to AI Division
September 30th, 2016Via: Microsoft: Microsoft Corp. announced on Thursday it has formed the Microsoft AI and Research Group, bringing together Microsoft’s world-class research organization with more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers focused on the company’s AI product efforts. The new group will be led by computer vision luminary Harry Shum, a 20-year Microsoft veteran whose career […]
My First Solar Customer to Ditch the Grid
September 29th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — I just sold my first off grid system to a customer with grid power available at his house. He’s going pretty small (2 kW array, 4x 230AH 12V AGM batteries, 4kW/48V pure sine wave inverter), but he said he’s fed up with dealing with electricity […]
AI Legion of Doom: Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft Form AI Partnership
September 28th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch: The world’s largest technology companies hold the keys to some of the largest databases on our planet. Much like goods and coins before it, data is becoming an important currency for the modern world. The data’s value is rooted in its applications to artificial intelligence. Whichever company owns the data, effectively owns […]
Elon Musk: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species
September 28th, 2016Via: Space: At a conference in Mexico today (Sept. 27), the SpaceX founder and CEO unveiled the company’s Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which will combine the most powerful rocket ever built with a spaceship designed to carry at least 100 people to the Red Planet per flight. If all goes according to plan, the reusable […]
