Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
U.S. Expanding Military Drone Surveillance Operations Around the World
July 21st, 2013Via: Washington Post: As the Obama administration dials back the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. military is shifting its huge fleet of unmanned aircraft to other hot spots around the world. This next phase of drone warfare is focused more on spying than killing and will extend the Pentagon’s […]
San Jose State Suspends Online Classes Project Udacity After As Many As 80% of Students Fail
July 21st, 2013Via: Los Angeles Times: San Jose State University is suspending a highly touted collaboration with online provider Udacity to offer low-cost, for-credit online courses after finding that more than half of the students failed to pass the classes, officials said Thursday. Preliminary results from a spring pilot project found student pass rates of 20% to […]
Google: Ultimately, “The Goal Is To Insert A Chip Inside Your Head”
July 20th, 2013Via: Independent: Ultimately, as Page and co-founder Sergey Brin have asserted, the goal is to insert a chip inside your head for the most effortless search engine imaginable. … In Building 43 of the Googleplex, Ben Gomes talks with barely concealed excitement about a “new epoch”. A Google fellow and the company’s Vice President of […]
And Now, ‘Smart Plates’: California May Issue Digital License Plates
July 19th, 2013Via: CBS: California may become the first state to issue digital license plates that can be registered electronically and record tolls. Privacy advocates are concerned the plates could become tracking devices for law enforcement. Instead of a metal license plate, the digital plate would be a computer screen, slightly larger than an iPad. Registering the […]
‘Robots to Revolutionize Farming’
July 16th, 2013Via: AP / Time: On a windy morning in California’s Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon Valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds. The engineers were testing the Lettuce Bot, a […]
ATLAS Humanoid Robot
July 12th, 2013Via: DARPA / Boston Dynamics: Say hello to ATLAS, one of the most advanced humanoid robots ever built! ATLAS was developed for DARPA by Boston Dynamics. Software-focused teams from Tracks B and C of the DARPA Robotics Challenge will use the robot to compete in the first physical competition of the Challenge in December 2013 […]
U.S. Navy Makes History by Landing Unmanned Drone on Aircraft Carrier
July 11th, 2013This is what passes for industrial policy in the U.S. Air transportation companies would like nothing more than to replace human pilots with machines. This X-47B effort is essentially public funding toward that goal. Anyway, someone should Photoshop out the meatsacks on the deck of the aircraft carrier and replace them with T-1000s. Via: Guardian: […]
Lack of Experienced Pilots, Boneheaded FAA Policies and Over Reliance on Flight Automation Systems Will Cause More Plane Crashes
July 11th, 2013Via: Natural News: When flight 214 crashed last week at the San Francisco airport, killing two people and injuring dozens, many people were in a state of disbelief. How could a Boeing 777 — the “Titanic” of commercial airliners — be piloted so carelessly that the pilot seemingly flew it into the seawall and caused […]
Cameras to Monitor Emotional States of Students
July 1st, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review: Even a good teacher may not always be able to tell, at a glance, which students are quietly struggling and which need more of a challenge. Fortunately, laptops may soon come with enough emotional intelligence built in to do the job for them. A recent study from North Carolina State University […]
Foxconn to Speed Up ‘Robot Army’ Deployment
June 27th, 2013Via: IT World: Manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group is on track with its goal to a create a “million robot army”, and already has 20,000 robotic machines in its factories, said the company’s CEO Terry Gou on Wednesday. Workers’ wages in China are rising, and so the company’s research in robots and automation has to […]
