Archive for the 'Technology' Category
World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games
December 9th, 2013Via: ProPublica: Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents. Fearing that terrorist or criminal […]
By 2017 Nearly 45% of All New Servers Will Be Bought by Cloud Providers
December 9th, 2013Via: Computerworld: IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding, according to new data. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly […]
Police Collecting Cellphone Data
December 9th, 2013Via: USA Today: The National Security Agency isn’t the only government entity secretly collecting data from people’s cellphones. Local police are increasingly scooping it up, too. Armed with new technologies, including mobile devices that tap into cellphone data in real time, dozens of local and state police agencies are capturing information about thousands of cellphone […]
Birds Will Attack Amazon’s Delivery Drones
December 7th, 2013Amazon is just one potential operator. Once the rules are formalized in 2015, tens of thousands of organizations are going to be operating similar aircraft. Via: Slate: Birds already cause a lot of problems for other things in the airspace. The FAA has tracked more than 121,000 instances of bird-aircraft collisions since 1990. These are […]
Stanford: Method of recording Brain Activity Could Lead to ‘Mind-Reading’ Devices
December 7th, 2013Intracranial implant required. Via: Stanford: A brain region activated when people are asked to perform mathematical calculations in an experimental setting is similarly activated when they use numbers — or even imprecise quantitative terms, such as “more than”— in everyday conversation, according to a study by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists. Using a novel […]
Northrop Grumman RQ-180
December 7th, 2013Via: Aviation Week: A large, classified unmanned aircraft developed by Northrop Grumman is now flying—and it demonstrates a major advance in combining stealth and aerodynamic efficiency. Defense and intelligence officials say the secret unmanned aerial system (UAS), designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, is scheduled to enter production for the U.S. Air Force […]
NROL-39: Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach
December 6th, 2013Via: Register: The NRO are totally embracing their menacing Big Brother persona and putting it out there for world+dog to see, having launched a bunch of satellites and a mysterious payload on a spacecraft yesterday – complete with the logo of a creepy octopus sucking the life out of our world. The Office of the […]
Rise of the Machines – USA
December 6th, 2013Via: Journeyman Pictures:
Microsoft Mood Bra to Help Women with Emotional Pigouts [???]
December 6th, 2013Via: BBC: Microsoft researchers have designed a smart bra that can detect stress. The prototype contains removable sensors that monitor heart and skin activity to provide an indication of mood levels. The aim was to find out if wearable technology could help prevent stress-related over-eating. Mood data was provided to the wearer via a smartphone […]
Determination Can be Induced by Electrical Brain Stimulation
December 6th, 2013Via: Guardian: Doctors in the US have induced feelings of intense determination in two men by stimulating a part of their brains with gentle electric currents. The men were having a routine procedure to locate regions in their brains that caused epileptic seizures when they felt their heart rates rise, a sense of foreboding, and […]
