Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin to Develop Pod-Mounted Aircraft and UAV Laser Defenses
October 30th, 2013Via: Military and Aerospace Electronics: U.S. military researchers are hiring two defense companies to develop technology for pod-mounted laser weapons to protect manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR)-guided surface-to-air missiles. Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are choosing the Northrop Grumman Corp. Aerospace Systems segment in […]
Another Google Barge Spotted on East Coast
October 29th, 2013If there was a list of Cryptogon axioms, #1 would probably be: No collapse due to energy scarcity. I’ve gone into why for many years, so feel free to look through the archives. Terawatts of untapped energy are just swirling around out there in the oceans, waiting to turn the gears of fascism. It was […]
Print a 2,500 Square Foot House in 20 Hours
October 28th, 2013Via: IndustryTap: We have seen huge advancements in 3D printing. We’ve even seen oversized wrenches printed that measure 1.2 meters in length. Now, we can print an entire 2,500 sqft house in 20 hours. In the TED Talk video below, Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California […]
Siri, Have Those People Killed
October 28th, 2013Via: GQ: In 2011, Air Force psychologists completed a mental-health survey of 600 combat drone operators. Forty-two percent of drone crews reported moderate to high stress, and 20 percent reported emotional exhaustion or burnout. The study’s authors attributed their dire results, in part, to “existential conflict.” A later study found that drone operators suffered from […]
High-Frequency Trading and Exchange Technology
October 28th, 2013Via: ACM: I remember coming home late one night, and my mother, a math teacher, asked why I was so depressed and exhausted. I said, “Imagine every day you have to figure out a small part of the world. You develop fantastic machines, which can measure everything, and you deploy them to track an object […]
Some Florida Police Are Using Data to Predict Crime
October 27th, 2013Via: FastCompany: Well, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department isn’t using an oracle yet, but it is getting one step closer to Minority Report-style crime predicting. The department has become the latest agency to use big data analytics and data mining to prevent crime by staying one step ahead of criminals. According to IBM, the company […]
‘Data Shows Google’s Robot Cars Are Smoother, Safer Drivers Than You or I’
October 26th, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review: Data gathered from Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars shows that they are safer and smoother when steering themselves than when a human takes the wheel, according to the leader of Google’s autonomous-car project. Chris Urmson made those claims today at a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California. He presented results […]
All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines
October 26th, 2013Via: The Atlantic: We rely on computers to fly our planes, find our cancers, design our buildings, audit our businesses. That’s all well and good. But what happens when the computer fails?
Rights Groups Say Some U.S. Drone Strikes May Be War Crimes
October 23rd, 2013Via: Wired: Two prominent human rights groups today blasted America’s drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen, painting a grim picture of massive civilian deaths and potentially grave violations of international law. One report by Amnesty International (“Will I Be Next?“) focuses on recent drone strikes in Pakistan while the other, by Human Rights Watch (“Between […]
How to Lose $172,222 a Second for 45 Minutes
October 21st, 2013Via: python sweetness: This is probably the most painful bug report I’ve ever read, describing in glorious technicolor the steps leading to Knight Capital’s $465m trading loss due to a software bug that struck late last year, effectively bankrupting the company. The tale has all the hallmarks of technical debt in a huge, unmaintained, bitrotten […]
