Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Microsoft’s Quantum Mechanics
October 10th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review: In 2012, physicists in the Netherlands announced a discovery in particle physics that started chatter about a Nobel Prize. Inside a tiny rod of semiconductor crystal chilled cooler than outer space, they had caught the first glimpse of a strange particle called the Majorana fermion, finally confirming a prediction made in […]
Tesla Model S Gains Autopilot
October 10th, 2014Via: cNet: …Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced at an event in Los Angeles that every car manufactured over the last two weeks comes with new sensor hardware to enable what he calls Autopilot capabilities. … The Autopilot hardware includes forward-looking radar and camera, combined with all-around long-range ultrasonic sensors. A software update being sent […]
UW Fusion Reactor Concept Could Be Cheaper Than Coal
October 8th, 2014Via: University of Washington: Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven’t penciled out. Fusion power designs aren’t cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels […]
Rolls-Royce to Add ‘Robotic’ Chauffeur
October 7th, 2014Via: Drive: Rolls-Royce is set to join the race to delete the driver – and the chauffeur too. The iconic British luxury car maker is looking to its parent company, BMW, to adopt autonomous driving technologies before the end of the decade.
Gartner: One in Three Jobs Will be Taken by Software or Robots by 2025
October 7th, 2014Wired: Training the software that will replace you. Tired: Training the Indian worker who will replace you. Expired: Stable jobs with decent pay. Via: Computerworld: “The shift is from doing to implementing, so the doers go away but someone still has to implement,” said Strohmaier. IT is a shift, although a slow one, to new […]
U.S. Navy Tests Robot Boat Swarm to Overwhelm Enemies
October 7th, 2014Via: IEEE Spectrum: A fleet of U.S. Navy boats approached an enemy vessel like sharks circling their prey. The scene might not seem so remarkable compared to any of the Navy’s usual patrol activities, but in this case, part of an exercise conducted by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), the boats operated without […]
U.S. Navy’s Self-Guided, Unmanned Patrol Boats
October 5th, 2014Looks like a remote controlled Ma Deuce up front. Via: AP: Self-guided unmanned patrol boats that can leave warships they’re protecting and swarm and attack potential threats on the water could join the Navy’s fleet within a year, defense officials say, adding the new technology could one day help stop attacks like the deadly 2000 […]
Contact Lost With Planes One by One as FAA Fire Spread
October 3rd, 2014Via: Bloomberg: The first radio links with pilots were lost just as the pre-dawn crush of flights into Chicago began. Air-traffic controllers in a nondescript Federal Aviation Administration building about 40 miles from the city switched to backup channels. Then those failed. They tried emergency connections, which also went dead. Within minutes, radar feeds, flight […]
JPMorgan Hack Exposed Data of 83 Million Households and Small Businesses, Among Biggest Breaches in History
October 2nd, 2014Via: Reuters: Names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of the holders of some 83 million households and small business accounts were exposed when computer systems at JPMorgan Chase & Co were recently compromised by hackers, making it one of the biggest data breaches in history. The bank revealed the scope of the previously disclosed […]
The Unpatchable Malware That Infects USBs
October 2nd, 2014Via: Wired: Like Nohl, Caudill and Wilson reverse engineered the firmware of USB microcontrollers sold by the Taiwanese firm Phison, one of the world’s top USB makers. Then they reprogrammed that firmware to perform disturbing attacks: In one case, they showed that the infected USB can impersonate a keyboard to type any keystrokes the attacker […]
