Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Apple and Google Just Attended a Confidential Spy Summit in a Remote English Mansion
May 23rd, 2015Via: First Look: At an 18th-century mansion in England’s countryside last week, current and former spy chiefs from seven countries faced off with representatives from tech giants Apple and Google to discuss government surveillance in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s leaks. The three-day conference, which took place behind closed doors and under strict rules about […]
New ‘Deep Learning’ Technique Enables Robot Mastery of Skills Via Trial and Error
May 22nd, 2015I mainly posted this because of the Comedy Gold juxtaposition below. haha Via: UC Berkeley: The work is part of a new People and Robots Initiative at UC’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). The new multi-campus, multidisciplinary research initiative seeks to keep the dizzying advances in artificial intelligence, robotics […]
Teachers Using Pens and Paper in the Classroom “Not Fair” to Students, Microsoft Official Says
May 20th, 2015In other news, Microsoft Study Shows that Technology Is Shortening Attention Spans. Via: The Georgia Straight: Pens and paper have no place in the modern classroom. And chalkboards? They should be banished from our schools too. That’s what Lia De Cicco Remu, director of Partners in Learning at Microsoft Canada, told the Georgia Straight ahead […]
Amputees Control Bionic Legs with Their Thoughts
May 20th, 2015Via: Reuters: Amputees can control their bionic prosthetic limbs with their minds, thanks to tiny implanted myoelectric sensors (IMES) developed by Icelandic orthopedics company Ossur and surgically placed in a patient’s residual muscle tissue. Ossur implanted tiny sensors in the residual muscle tissue of two amputees that they say trigger movement in the prosthesis via […]
Ripasso Testing 34% Efficient Concentrated Solar System in Kalahari Desert
May 18th, 2015Disclosures: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand and I’m long Enphase Energy. — Via: Guardian: A new solar electricity generation system that developers claim is the most efficient in the world, is being tested in South Africa’s Kalahari desert. The Swedish company behind the project – which combines military technology with an idea […]
Self Driving Trucks Will Wipe Out Millions of Jobs
May 18th, 2015Via: Medium: Robot trucks also don’t need salaries?—?salaries that stand to go up because fewer and fewer people want to be truckers. A company can buy a fleet of self-driving trucks and never pay another human salary for driving. The only costs will be upkeep of the machinery. No more need for health insurance either. […]
Why Today’s Automobile Industry Looks A Lot Like IBM in 1985
May 18th, 2015Via: TechCrunch: With the number of mobile phone subscriptions shortly expected to exceed the total global population, what is the next great connected device going to look like? Hint: It’ll have four wheels. Gartner predicts that there will be 250 million connected cars on the road by 2020. That means one in every three cars […]
UK Government Quietly Rewrites Hacking Laws to Give GCHQ Immunity
May 17th, 2015Via: ArsTechnica: The UK government has quietly passed new legislation that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones. While major or controversial legislative changes usually go through normal parliamentary process (i.e. democratic debate) before being passed into law, in this case an amendment to the Computer […]
Feds Say That Banned Researcher Hacked Flight Control Systems
May 17th, 2015And Now: Man’s Claims of Hacking Plane Discredited by Law Enforcement Via: Bloomberg: U.S. law enforcement officials have no credible evidence that commercial airplane cockpits have been hacked from passengers’ seats, contradicting a man who claims he did just that. While most airplanes can’t be hacked because flight-control computers are separate from the connections passengers […]
Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors
May 14th, 2015Via: FirstLook: The talking heads have been backstopping the NSA’s mass surveillance more or less continuously since it was revealed. They spoke out to support the agency when NSA contractor Edward Snowden released details of its programs in 2013, and they’ve kept up their advocacy ever since — on television news shows, newspaper op-ed pages, […]
