Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
LAPD Spies on Millions
March 2nd, 2014Via: L.A. Weekly: Los Angeles and Southern California police, by contrast, are expanding their use of surveillance technology such as intelligent video analytics, digital biometric identification and military-pedigree software for analyzing and predicting crime. Information on the identity and movements of millions of Southern California residents is being collected and tracked. In fact, Los Angeles […]
Autonomous Drones Flock Like Birds
March 1st, 2014Via: Nature: A Hungarian team has created the first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock. The researchers watched as the ten autonomous robots took to the air in a field outside Budapest, zipping through the open sky, flying in formation or even following a leader, all without any central control. The aircraft, called […]
Rolls-Royce Drone Ships
February 26th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: In an age of aerial drones and driver-less cars, Rolls-Royce (RR/) Holdings Plc is designing unmanned cargo ships. Rolls-Royce’s Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel’s bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains […]
This Man’s $600,000 Facebook Disaster Is a Warning for All Small Businesses
February 22nd, 2014I figured this out after blowing only $10 on Facebook advertising. It’s incredible that companies are wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on this breathtaking scam. Via: Business Insider: Recently, however, Brar has fallen out of love with Facebook. He discovered — as Business Insider reported recently — that his Facebook fanbase was […]
New Jet-Powered Drone Can Kill 1,800 Miles From Home Base
February 22nd, 2014Via: Wired: The Avenger (formerly Predator C), whose prototype flew its first flight in 2009, is operationally ready after a new round of tests completed last month, according to its maker, General Atomics. Based on the company’s more well-known MQ-9 Reaper drone, Avenger is designed to perform high-speed, long-endurance surveillance or strike missions, flying up […]
Google’s Project Tango: Indoor 3D Mapping and Tracking
February 20th, 2014Because tracking you outside is so 1990s. It’s not enough for the Legion of Doom to be able to track your every move outside. It now wants to map your indoor world, in 3D, and where you are in it. NSA/NGA will love this. Coincidence: Tango: Tango (U.S.) NATO phonetic alphabet for the letter “T” […]
“A Robotic Wingman of Sorts”: Heavily Armed Drones May Accompany U.S. Fighter Pilots Into Combat
February 15th, 2014Via: U.S. Naval Institute: Could the U.S. Navy’s future Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft have an air-to-air role? The service’s director of air warfare Rear Adm. Mike Manazir posed that it could during a Dec. 20 interview with USNI News. Manazir contemplated the possibility that that the UCLASS, which is primarily being […]
After 5 Rejections, Apple Accepts App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes
February 13th, 2014Via: Mashable: Persistence, it turns out, does pay off. After rejecting it five times, Apple has finally approved an app that tracks every U.S. drone strike and sends a push notification to users every time a flying robot carries out a deadly mission around the world. Josh Begley, the data artist and developer who made […]
Much of the Editing Work on Wikipedia Is Done by Bots
February 13th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review: Less well known is Wikidata, an information repository designed to share basic facts for use on different language versions of Wikipedia. Wikidata therefore plays a crucial role in lubricating the flow of information between these online communities. Maintaining all this data is a difficult job. It requires significant editing and polishing, […]
DARPA’s Experimental Spaceplane XS-1
February 12th, 2014Via: space.com: The United States military is making progress toward developing a new unmanned space plane, which it aims to begin flight-testing in 2017. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to award the first design contracts for the vehicle project — known as Experimental Spaceplane, or XS-1— in May or thereabouts, officials said. […]
