Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
U.S. Expands Secretive Drone Base for African Shadow War
October 28th, 2012Via: Wired: The Pentagon’s secretive drone and commando base in the Horn of Africa is getting a lot bigger and a lot busier as the U.S. doubles down on its shadowy campaign of air strikes, robot surveillance and Special Operation Forces raids in the terror havens of Yemen and Somalia. Camp Lemonnier, originally a French […]
President Romney Can Thank Obama for His Permanent Robotic Death List
October 25th, 2012Via: Wired: It’s a good thing that Mitt Romney endorsed President Obama’s counterterrorism agenda. Should he win the election in two weeks, Romney will inherit an institutionalized, bureaucratic machine for using lethal robots to target and kill suspected terrorists and their allies. Killing Osama bin Laden was a one-time event; this “Disposition Matrix” is Barack […]
DARPA’s Pet-Proto Robot
October 25th, 2012Via: DARPA: In this video, the Pet-Proto, a predecessor to DARPA’s Atlas robot, is confronted with obstacles similar to those robots might face in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). To maneuver over and around the obstacles, the robot exercises capabilities including autonomous decision-making, dismounted mobility and dexterity.
U.S. Navy: Laser Arsenal Is Just Two Years Away
October 24th, 2012Also, click through for a must-see picture of the BIOSwimmer, which looks like it was invented by SPECTRE. Via: Wired: “On directed energy” — the term for the Navy’s laser cannons, “I’d say two years,” Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the chief of the Office of Naval Research, told Danger Room in a Monday interview. The […]
‘You’re not going to hear about the Windows 8 upgrade cycle. This is the end of Windows.’
October 20th, 2012I run IT for a small business here in the Far North of New Zealand as a favor to family members. While it’s a small business, it’s one of the largest employers in the region. The employees are decentralized and I thought about establishing the right kinds of network connections and remote access systems, servers, […]
Brain-Controlled Full Body Suit to Be Used In Fukushima Cleanup
October 19th, 2012Via: Neurogadget: Japanese company Cyberdyne announced today an improved version of HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb), the exoskeleton which we wrote about almost two years ago, when a tech journalist took a few steps at CES 2011 wearing the brain-controlled cyber-trousers. The latest version of HAL has remained brain-controlled but evolved to a full body robot […]
DHS Request for Information: ‘Robotic Aircraft for Public Safety’
October 11th, 2012Via: Federal Business Opportunities: The Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate is the Department’s primary research and development arm. The S&T Directorate provides federal, state and local officials with the technology and capabilities to protect the homeland. The Directorate’s mission is to protect the homeland by providing Federal and local officials with state-of-the-art technology and other […]
An Autonomous Flying Robot with a Honey Bee Brain
October 10th, 2012Via: University of Sheffield: Scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Sussex are embarking on an ambitious project to produce the first accurate computer models of a honey bee brain in a bid to advance our understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how animals think. The team will build models of the systems in the […]
High Frequency Traders Trying to Create Arbitrage Opportunities by Flooding Market Systems Bogus Quotes
October 9th, 2012Via: CNBC: Translation: the ultimate goal of many of these programs is to gum up the system so it slows down the quote feed to others and allows the computer traders (with their co-located servers at the exchanges) to gain a money-making arbitrage opportunity.
Autonomous Killer Robots More Ethical Than Human Soldiers
October 2nd, 2012Oh sure. Via: CBS News: Drones could soon operate without the help of humans. Agence France-Presse is reporting that the Pentagon wants its drones to be more autonomous, so that they can run with little to no assistance from people. “Before they were blind, deaf and dumb,” Mark Maybury, chief scientist for the U.S. Air […]
