Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Robert Reich to New College Graduates: ‘You’re F*cked’
May 20th, 2012I’ve excerpted what I think are the key sentences. Via: Robert Reich: So much of what was once considered “knowledge work” – the kind that college graduates specialize in – can now be done more cheaply by software. Or by workers with college degrees in India or East Asia, linked up by Internet. Related: The […]
Facebook IPO
May 19th, 2012Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. Some emails have been coming in about the Facebook IPO. I don’t ever trade IPOs. As a 100% technical trader, there’s nothing to go on with an IPO. The values associated with the IPO are arbitrary and there is often VERY […]
Apple Sends Siri to Re-Education Camp Over Double Plus Ungood Statements
May 17th, 2012Via: BBC: The debate over “what is the best smartphone ever?” took an unexpected twist after Apple’s voice-activated assistant Siri appeared to favour the iPhone’s rival. Over the weekend, users of Siri were told the answer was Nokia’s Lumia 900. But Siri now responds to the same question with a jovial: “Wait… there are other […]
Google’s Bots Now Running Javascript They Encounter
May 17th, 2012Via: Ars: Google feeds its search engine’s index with site data from a virtual army of “bots”—Web-crawling applications that scour sites for content. But in the past, Google’s bots hit a wall when they ran into interactive content that was loaded through JavaScript—especially on pages that use Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) to allow users […]
Canon: Fully Automated Digital Camera Manufacturing by 2015
May 15th, 2012Via: AP: Canon Inc. is moving toward fully automating digital camera production in an effort to cut costs — a key change being played out across Japan, a world leader in robotics. If successful, counting on machines can help preserve this nation’s technological power — not the stereotype of machines snatching assembly line jobs from […]
U.S. Air Force Can ‘Accidentally’ Spy On American Citizens for 90 Days
May 9th, 2012Via: Wired: As long as the Air Force pinky-swears it didn’t mean to, its drone fleet can keep tabs on the movements of Americans, far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen. And it can hold data on them for 90 days — studying it to see if the people it accidentally spied upon […]
Google’s Self-Driving Car Licensed to Hit Nevada Streets
May 9th, 2012Via: PC World: Google’s self-driving car is growing up right in front of our eyes: The fledgling autonomous vehicle program recently passed its driver’s license test in Nevada, the first license of its kind in the United States. Obtaining Nevada’s self-driving car license clears the way for Google to test its technology on public roads […]
U.S. Companies Selling Drones to Undisclosed Foreign Governments
May 8th, 2012Via: The American Independent: A Texas-based defense contractor is selling drones overseas to foreign governments for use in combating narcotics trafficking and terrorism. Which countries are buying them and exactly how they are being used, however, is largely unknown. This uncertainty has led to calls from human rights activists for greater transparency and accountability for […]
All Hail the Robotic Farmers and Pilots of the Future
May 2nd, 2012Via: Wired: Fighter pilot Mary “Missy” Cummings saw it coming while landing her F/A-18 supersonic jet on a Navy aircraft carrier — the world-changing disruption barreling toward the present. Instead of landing the multi-million-dollar machine on the small deck of the ship herself in the 1990s, a computer accomplished the tricky feat for her. “Here […]
Economist Intelligence Unit: ‘Rise of the Machines: Moving from Hype to Reality in the Burgeoning Market for Machine-to-Machine Communication’
April 30th, 2012Via: Economist Intelligence Unit: Fast-forward to 2012, and much of what used to be M2M whiteboard concepts can now be found in the field. The Fonterra Co-operative Group, a New Zealand-based dairy company, has set up autonomous forklifts within a warehouse that can work around the clock, with far fewer accidents and reduced wear and […]
