Archive for the 'Technology' Category
France to Pave 1000km of Roads with Solar Panels
January 29th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — đŻ Via: Treehugger: Over the next five years, France will install some 621 miles (1,000km) of solar roadway using Colas’ Wattway solar pavement. … No, this is not the crowdfunded solar road project that blew up the internet a few years ago, but is a […]
F-35 Software Overrun with Bugs, DoD Testing Chief Warns
January 29th, 2016Via: Ars Technica: The F-35’s flight plan appears to have delays written all over it. A previously unreleased memo from Michael Gilmore, the Department of Defense’s director for Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E), details a list of problems that will likely hold up the testing of the final configuration of the aircraftâand will mean the […]
Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked By British and American Intelligence
January 29th, 2016Via: The Intercept: AMERICAN AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets, monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world. Under a classified program code-named âAnarchist,â the U.K.âs Government Communications Headquarters, or […]
Y Combinator: Basic Income
January 27th, 2016Cryptogon 2014: Something like a basic income could emerge, but it will probably only be enough to survive in a setting akin to a favela. The purpose of the basic income will be to prevent a disorderly societal collapse as machine labor really takes off. — Any objective observer can see that so-called “Advanced” economies […]
California Police Used Stingrays in Planes to Spy on Phones
January 27th, 2016Via: Wired: The governmentâs use of a controversial invasive technology for tracking phones just got a little more controversial. The Anaheim Police Department has acknowledged in new documents that it uses surveillance devices known as Dirtboxesâplane-mounted stingraysâon aircraft flying above the Southern California city that is home to Disneyland, one of the most popular tourist […]
Google Achieves AI ‘Breakthrough’ by Beating Go Champion
January 27th, 2016Via: BBC: A Google artificial intelligence program has beaten the European champion of the board game Go. The Chinese game is viewed as a much tougher challenge than chess for computers because there are many more ways a Go match can play out. The tech company’s DeepMind division said its software had beaten its human […]
Japan: Automated, Clean Room Agriculture
January 27th, 2016Via: TechInsider: The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots. So much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on human farmers, the indoor Vegetable Factory will employ robots that can harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce every day. Don’t […]
Harvard Is Trying to Build an AI as Fast as the Human Brain
January 25th, 2016Via: Wired UK: Harvard University has been awarded $28 million (ÂŁ19m) to investigate why brains are so much better at learning and retaining information than artificial intelligence. The award, from the Intelligence Advanced Projects Activity (IARPA), could help make AI systems faster, smarter and more like human brains. While many computers have a comparable storage […]
The Story Behind National Reconnaissance Office’s Octopus Logo
January 21st, 2016Never mind the nauseating gibberish in the release from NRO. I thought this commentary was comedy gold. Via: Muckrock: The logo was widely lampooned as emblematic of the intelligence community’s tone-deafness to public sentiment. Incidentally, an octopus enveloping the planet also so happens to be the logo of SPECTRE, the international criminal syndicate that James […]
DARPA: Bridging the Bio-Electronic Divide
January 20th, 2016Via: U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: A new DARPA program aims to develop an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world. The interface would serve as a translator, converting between the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the […]
