Archive for the 'Technology' Category
The Website That Visualizes Human Activity in Cities Across the World
September 9th, 2015Via: MIT Technology Review: Phone data is set to become a standard resource that almost anyone can use to study and watch humanity continuously, much as they can now watch the weather unfold anywhere on the planet almost in real time. But one thing is holding them back—the lack of powerful computational tools that can […]
New Teflon Coating Renders Drones Nearly Invisible
September 8th, 2015Via: Inverse: Just as we’re getting used to the idea of drones flying overhead, the University of California-San Diego has figured out how to make them invisible. While making a drone literally invisible isn’t possible, covering it in a sheet that reflects its surroundings — like a fluid mirror — has a similar effect. The […]
“The mission I have to educate everybody is really an attempt to delay what AI will eventually do to us”
September 4th, 2015In ten or twenty years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the majority of paid work in companies, that is, work that isn’t done by machines, being done by these “certificate” holders. —Top U.S. Colleges to Offer Free Classes Online And now: “Nanodegrees.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. Also see: Humans Need Not Apply: Via: The […]
Microsoft Adding Windows 10 Style Spyware to Windows 7 and Windows 8
August 31st, 2015Update: Several Windows 10 Privacy Tools — How many hosts is Microsoft phoning everything home to? Is it feasible to just block them all with an external firewall so a Windows box simply can’t reach Microsoft? The article below says that Windows 10 is ignoring the hosts file and phoning home anyway, so it seems […]
Boeing: Portable Drone-Killing Laser
August 29th, 2015Via: The Verge: Boeing has been researching ways to disable drones with lasers for a while now, and this week, the defense contractor released new footage (below) of its Compact Laser Weapons System: a portable, tripod-mounted device that can burn a hole in a UAV or a quadcopter in seconds. The system is essentially a […]
Pentagon Teams Up with Apple, Boeing to Develop Wearable Tech
August 28th, 2015Via: Reuters: U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter awarded $75 million on Friday to help a consortium of high-tech firms and researchers develop electronic systems packed with sensors flexible enough to be worn by soldiers or molded onto the skin of a plane. Carter said funding for the Obama administration’s newest manufacturing institute would go to […]
New Boss on Construction Sites Is a Drone
August 27th, 2015Via: MIT Technology Review: For some construction workers, any thoughts of slacking off could soon seem rather quaint. The drones will almost certainly notice. The workers building a lavish new downtown stadium for the Sacramento Kings in California are being monitored by drones and software that can automatically flag slow progress. Once per day, several […]
India Just Turned Off Mobile Internet for 63 Million Citizens Amid Protests in Ahmedabad
August 27th, 201563 million! Imagine everyone in California and Texas without mobile data access. Via: The Next Web: Mobile internet services have been blocked in the Indian state of Gujarat (home to nearly 63 million people), following violent protests led by the Patel community after one of its leaders was detained by local police in Ahmedabad.
Police Secretly Track Cellphones to Solve Routine Crimes
August 24th, 2015Via: USA Today: In one case after another, USA TODAY found police in Baltimore and other cities used the phone tracker, commonly known as a stingray, to locate the perpetrators of routine street crimes and frequently concealed that fact from the suspects, their lawyers and even judges. In the process, they quietly transformed a form […]
Not The Onion: Thync’s Mood-Altering Headset
August 24th, 2015You’ll love this. Via: TechCrunch: During the demo, Thync co-founder and CEO Isy Goldwasser explained that the module wasn’t directly stimulating neurons in my brain (that would be too damn weird for me to try, to be honest). Instead, it uses tiny pulses of electricity to stimulate the skin at your temple, which then activates […]
