Archive for the 'Technology' Category
U.S. Tech Giants Knew of NSA Data Collection, Agency’s Top Lawyer Insists
March 19th, 2014Via: Guardian: The senior lawyer for the National Security Agency stated unequivocally on Wednesday that US technology companies were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data, contradicting months of angry denials from the firms. Rajesh De, the NSA general counsel, said all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under […]
Facebook’s New ‘DeepFace’ Program Is Just As Creepy As It Sounds
March 19th, 2014Via: Huffington Post: Facebook owns the world’s largest photo library, and it now has the technology to match almost all the faces within it. Yes, even the ones you don’t tag. Facebook announced last week that it has developed a program called “DeepFace,” which researchers say can determine whether two photographed faces are of the […]
NSA Capable of Recording Audio from 100% of Unnamed Country’s Phone Calls
March 18th, 2014The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, CEO of CIA contractor Amazon.com, is working with U.S. Government censors to conceal the name of the country in question. Even if we did know the country, this is a ridiculous limited hangout. My guess is that the same thing is happening in the U.S. and that the […]
Los Angeles Times Software Automatically Published Earthquake Story
March 18th, 2014Via: BBC: The Los Angeles Times was the first newspaper to publish a story about an earthquake on Monday – thanks to a robot writer. Journalist and programmer Ken Schwencke created an algorithm that automatically generates a short article when an earthquake occurs. Mr Schwencke told Slate magazine that it took around three minutes for […]
UK Government Wants ‘Unsavoury’ Web Content Censored
March 18th, 2014Via: Wired: The UK minister for immigration and security has called for the government to do more to deal with “unsavoury”, rather than illegal, material online. James Brokenshire made the comments to the Financial Times in an interview related to the government’s alleged ability to automatically request YouTube videos be taken down under “super flagger” […]
The One About Satellites Beaming Power Down to Earth Is Making the Rounds Again
March 17th, 2014*roll eyes* Via: Wired: For decades, the Pentagon has been the world’s largest oil consumer, and as global petroleum prices continue to rise, the military has been searching for feasible energy alternatives. Now they’re looking in space. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is building technology that will allow the military to capture solar power […]
A Tale of Two Internets
March 15th, 2014It sounds a lot like U.S. politics: “A world where you think you are making choices, but in reality, your options are narrowed and refined until you are left with merely the illusion of control.” Via: Scientific American: Imagine an Internet where unseen hands curate your entire experience. Where third parties predetermine the news, products […]
Wireless Electricity: “It’s Perfectly Safe”
March 15th, 2014No thanks. Via: CNN: Don’t worry about getting zapped: Hall assures that the magnetic fields used to transfer energy are “perfectly safe” — in fact, they are the same kind of fields used in Wi-Fi routers. In the house of the future, wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet. If all goes […]
Bill Gates on Automation Eliminating Jobs: “Labor Demand for Lots of Skill Sets Will be Substantially Lower”
March 15th, 2014Via: Business Insider: Big changes are coming to the labour market that people and governments aren’t prepared for, Bill Gates believes. Speaking at Washington, D.C., economic think tank The American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Gates said than within 20 years, a lot of jobs will go away, replaced by software automation (“bots” in tech slang, […]
Russia Blocks Access to Independent News Sites
March 14th, 2014Via: EFF: Russia’s government has escalated its use of its Internet censorship law to target news sites, bloggers, and politicians under the slimmest excuse of preventing unauthorized protests and enforcing house arrest regulations. Today, the country’s ISPs have received orders to block a list of major news sites and system administrators have been instructed to […]
