Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Neural Net Learns Breakout Then Thrashes Human Gamers
December 27th, 2013Via: Medium: The Atari 2600 games console has a special place in the hearts of any gamers who grew up in the 1970s. It popularised a number of games that changed the games industry for ever, such as Pong, Breakout and Space Invaders. Today, these games have legendary status and still play an important role […]
‘We Are Creating Walmarts of Higher Education’
December 27th, 2013Via: The Atlantic: Universities in South Dakota, Nebraska, and other states have cut the number of credits students need to graduate. A proposal in Florida would let online courses forgo the usual higher-education accreditation process. A California legislator introduced a measure that would have substituted online courses for some of the brick-and-mortar kind at public […]
No Hands on Deck: Dawn of the Crewless Ship
December 26th, 2013Automation, lower costs, you know the routine. The monkey wrench in the gears appears further down in the piece. Via: Financial Times: Remote-controlled ships used to come wrapped up as presents under the Christmas tree, but if European researchers and one of the world’s best-known engineering groups have their way, full-size versions will start replacing […]
Mikhail Kalashnikov, Soviet Inventor of the AK-47, Dies at 94
December 23rd, 2013Via: Time: Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Soviet general who designed the ubiquitous automatic weapon that now bears his name, died Dec. 23 at the age of 94. Iterations of the gun he invented now exist in the tens of millions, making it the most popular rifle in the wars of the latter half of the twentieth […]
The OpenWorm Project
December 23rd, 2013Via: Telegraph: An ambitious project to recreate an entire roundworm, cell by cell, in a software model has reached a crucial breakthrough as the digital animal wriggled for the first time. The OpenWorm project brings together scientists and programmers from around the world in the common goal of entirely recreating the structure and behaviour of […]
Google-Owned SCHAFT Robot Won DARPA Robotics Challenge
December 22nd, 2013Via: Slashgear: The Google-owned Japanese robotics company SCHAFT has won the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials by a wide margin. It scored 27 out of 32 points, beating its nearest competitor IHMC Robotics by seven points. Coming up third was Tartan rescue with 18 points, and MIT following that with 16 points. The contest took place […]
Windows XP: Microsoft’s Ticking Time Bomb
December 22nd, 2013I’m surprised by how many of you guys are still using XP. April 8th, 2014 is the date to circle on your calendar. Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you’ve done it by then. Via: PC Pro: The final deadline for Windows XP support will act as a starting pistol for hackers, as […]
U.S. Tests Surveillance Balloons on Mexico Border
December 21st, 2013Via: AP: The U.S. Border Patrol will evaluate the use of three helium-filled surveillance balloons along the Texas-Mexico border that were originally used by the Department of Defense in Iraq and Afghanistan. Standing beneath a 52-foot-long tethered balloon on Thursday in Penitas, the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector Chief Rosendo Hinojosa said the blimp-shaped […]
GnuPG: 16 Years of Protecting Privacy
December 21st, 2013I don’t trust anything completely when it comes to computer security, but I trust GnuPG more than anything else. Via: GnuPG: Today marks 16 years since the first release of GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG). In that time the project has grown from being a hacker’s hobby into one of the world’s most critical anti-surveillance tools. […]
NSA Had Secret Contract with RSA
December 21st, 2013Via: Reuters: As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor […]
