Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Flying Robots Replace Oil Roughnecks
September 20th, 2015Via: Bloomberg: Oil rig inspection is a dangerous business. Traditionally roughnecks dangled from a wire, in gale-force winds if needed, to manually log wear and tear on the girders. Assessments include giant chimneys — called flare stacks — that belch fire during million-dollar-a-day shutdowns. Increasingly the industry has found that swapping abseiling humans for small […]
Apple Meets California Officials to Discuss Self-Driving Car
September 19th, 2015Via: Guardian: Apple executives have discussed their plans for an “autonomous vehicle” with officials at California’s department of motor vehicles (DMV), the Guardian has learnt. According to documents obtained by the Guardian, Mike Maletic, a senior legal counsel at Apple, had an hour-long meeting on 17 August with the department’s self-driving car experts Bernard Soriano, […]
Cyborg Insects
September 19th, 2015Via: Vice: I asked Anthes why she thought the military was so keen to work with insects. “I’d imagine there are several reasons,” she said. “Firstly those creatures are simpler to work with, biologically speaking. It’s much easier to commandeer an insect’s nervous system than a dog’s or a human’s. But also, for the specific […]
Scientists Claim They Have Grown Human Sperm in the Lab
September 19th, 2015Via: Independent: Human sperm cells have been made in the laboratory for the first time by culturing immature cells taken from the testes of infertile men. The breakthrough promises to help young boys made sterile by cancer treatments and adult men who cannot make their own sperm, scientists have claimed. The sperm cells made in […]
American Airlines Flights Grounded Nationwide
September 17th, 2015Via: CBS: The Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday that American Airlines has grounded flights nationwide due to computer issues. American Airlines sent out a tweet responding to customers, saying it was “working to resolve technical issues.”
Barbie Wants to Get to Know Your Child
September 17th, 2015I would assume that every utterance from children playing with the dolls will be archived. Check this out: The writers marked important questions with ‘‘flags,’’ and this enabled Hello Barbie’s most unnerving power: She could remember the answers and use them for conversation starters days or weeks later. ‘‘She should always know that you have […]
Deep Learning Machine Teaches Itself Chess in 72 Hours, Plays at International Master Level
September 16th, 2015Via: MIT Technology Review: In a world first, an artificial intelligence machine plays chess by evaluating the board rather than using brute force to work out every possible move.
Increased Use of Computers in Classrooms: “More Likely to be Associated with Lower Results”
September 16th, 2015Via: BBC: Investing heavily in school computers and classroom technology does not improve pupils’ performance, says a global study from the OECD. The think tank says frequent use of computers in schools is more likely to be associated with lower results. The OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher says school technology had raised “too many false […]
Watch 50 Drones Controlled at Once in a Record-Breaking Swarm
September 16th, 2015Via: New Scientist: A team at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has succeeded in launching 50 drones that were all controlled by a single person. “To our knowledge, this is a world record for the number of UAVs under single operator control, by quite a long way,” says project lead Kevin Jones. The […]
Another Attack on Bay Area Fiber Optic Cables
September 16th, 2015Via: USA Today: Someone deliberately severed two AT&T fiber optic cables in the Livermore, Calif., Monday night, the latest in a string of attacks against the Internet’s privately run backbone. AT&T is offering a $250,000 reward in connection with the latest attacks. AT&T’s fiber optic network is legally considered a critical piece of the nation’s […]
