Archive for the 'Technology' Category
‘Now The Military Is Going To Build Robots That Have Morals’
May 14th, 2014Via: DefenseOne: The Office of Naval Research will award $7.5 million in grant money over five years to university researchers from Tufts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Brown, Yale and Georgetown to explore how to build a sense of right and wrong and moral consequence into autonomous robotic systems.
Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack
May 14th, 2014Via: Tim Bray: That’s the title of RFC 7258, also known as BCP 188 (where BCP stands for “Best Common Practice”); it represents Internet Engineering Task Force consensus on the fact that many powerful well-funded entities feel it is appropriate to monitor people’s use of the Net, without telling those people. The consensus is: This […]
Human Consciousness Probably Can’t Be Modeled On A Computer
May 13th, 2014Via: Medium: The central part of their new work is to describe the mathematical properties of a system that can store integrated information in this way but without it leaking away. And this leads them to their central proof. “The implications of this proof are that we have to abandon either the idea that people […]
Robotic Arm Catches Objects On The Fly
May 13th, 2014Via: EPFL: A robot developed by EPFL researchers is capable of reacting on the spot and grasping objects with complex shapes and trajectories in less than five hundredths of a second.
Is Your Job at Risk from Robot Labor? Check This Handy Interactive Chart
May 13th, 2014Via: Quartz: In the second machine age, robots will perform tasks once thought to require uniquely human abilities, like driving our taxis and filleting our fish. But not all jobs will be equally affected by automation. The interactive plot above attempts to sort out the differences. We compared three variables related to the American workforce: […]
Document Establishes NSA’s Involvement in COINTELPRO
May 13th, 2014Via: The Guardian: One document from the Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012, chillingly underscores the point. It revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express “radical” ideas and who have a “radicalising” influence on others. The memo discusses six individuals in particular, all Muslims, though it stresses […]
NSA Routinely Installs Backdoors in Computers and Networking Equipment Exported from the U.S.
May 13th, 2014Via: The Guardian: But while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organisations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA’s Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, […]
New Zealand: Big Brother Has to Sign Off on ISP Infrastructure Changes and Personnel
May 13th, 2014So it goes… Via: ITnews: Local and international telcos and network providers in New Zealand are now required to comply with strict and complex new communications interception and security legislation. … Known as the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act (TICSA), the new law requires network operators to register with the NZ Police. Similary, suppliers […]
Innovative Prosthetic Arm From Segway Inventor Cleared by U.S.
May 10th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: A prosthetic arm made by a company founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen was approved for sale by U.S. regulators, who called it the first such device able to respond to multiple simultaneous commands from a wearer’s brain. Electrodes attached to the arm detect muscle contractions close to the prosthesis, and a computer […]
Inside the Strange New World of DIY Brain Stimulation
May 9th, 2014Via: Wired: With easy access to the research, the equipment, and each other, self-experimenters aren’t consulting their doctors or waiting for scientific consensus. They’re zapping first and asking questions as they go.
