Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Texas: Arlington Police Get Federal Approval to Fly Drones Across City
March 20th, 2013Via: Dallas News: Two remote-control helicopters could be photographing crime scenes and searching for missing people in Arlington as soon as next month. Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson announced Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration has given the city permission to get the rotors turning on the project in late February. Police are quick to […]
Hacked PCs Falsify Billions of Ad Clicks
March 20th, 2013Via: Financial Times: Online investigators have exposed a network of hijacked computers that defrauded advertisers by generating billions of fake ad views. The so-called botnet scheme, which hijacked 120,000 residential PCs in the US and cost advertisers millions of dollars a month, highlights the increasing complexity and opacity of online advertising. Spider.io, a London-based start-up […]
Amazon and CIA Ink Cloud Deal
March 20th, 2013Via: FCW: In a move sure to send ripples through the federal IT community, FCW has learned that the CIA has agreed to a cloud computing contract with electronic commerce giant Amazon, worth up to $600 million over 10 years. Amazon Web Services will help the intelligence agency build a private cloud infrastructure that helps […]
The Internet Is a Surveillance State
March 17th, 2013Via: CNN: The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we’re being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks […]
Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Scale CHIMP Robot Has Four Limbs, But Moves on Treads Like a Tank
March 16th, 2013Via: CMU: A team from Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center is building a new class of robot to compete in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Robotics Challenge — a human-size robot that moves, not by walking, but on rubberized tracks on the extremities of each of its four limbs. Though the […]
Oregon Company to Sell Drone Defense Technology to Public
March 16th, 2013Any guesses as to what this is? Maybe… Blind the drones’ cameras with lasers? They would have to be sure they weren’t lasing something with a human pilot, though. Hmm. Via: U.S. News and World Report: Do you want to keep drones out of your backyard? An Oregon company says that it has developed and […]
Army Officer Invokes ‘Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines’ In Drone Paper
March 14th, 2013Via: Business Insider: Along the way Pryer writes that he wishes he believed that America would one day look back at “transnational drone strikes as a morally disastrous policy that our nation brie?y toyed with at the turn of the century, before gaining wisdom from this folly.” He believes himself to be optimistic in this […]
Robobees
March 13th, 2013Via: Harvard: Overview of the Micro Air Vehicles Project INSPIRED by the biology of a bee and the insect’s hive behavior … we aim to push advances in miniature robotics and the design of compact high-energy power sources; spur innovations in ultra-low-power computing and electronic “smart” sensors; and refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent […]
Ohio Judge: Traffic Cameras Are a Scam Against Motorists
March 11th, 2013Via: Columbus Dispatch / AP: A southwestern Ohio judge yesterday ordered a halt to a speeding-ticket blitz in a village that installed traffic cameras, saying it’s “a scam” against motorists. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman blasted the cameras and the thousands of $105 citations that resulted. He ruled that they violate motorists’ constitutional […]
U.S. Air Force Disappears Drone Strike Statistics
March 9th, 2013Scrubbed: Click here to see the original December 2012 and January 2013 statistics and the ones apparently loaded online Feb. 22. Via: Air Force Times: As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of […]
