Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
‘Is it only a matter of time before drone technology is used in civil society?’
April 30th, 2012Via: Independent: It is the snooping function foreseen by Orwell that is the most significant next step for drones in our societies: with our cities and public buildings already saturated with surveillance cameras, we may fondly suppose that the state’s monitoring of our daily lives has gone as far as it can go. But we […]
Obama Regime Escalates Drone War in Yemen
April 26th, 2012Via: Washington Post: The United States has begun launching drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen under new authority approved by President Obama that allows the CIA and the military to fire even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known, U.S. officials said. The policy shift marks a significant […]
FAA Releases Lists of Organizations Authorized to Operate Unmanned Aircraft in the U.S.
April 24th, 2012Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation: This week the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally released its first round of records in response to EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for information on the agency’s drone authorization program. The agency says the two lists it released include the names of all public and private entities that have […]
Startup Claims ‘Holy Grail’ of System on Chip Design
April 23rd, 2012Yikes. If this is real, it will definitely accelerate the grim trends in technology that you’ve been reading about on Cryptogon and lots of other places. Scum from Wall Street to Fort Meade will be frothing over this one. Via: EE Times: The first automated software-to-chip dream came out of the closet Monday (April 23), […]
IBM’s Internal Plan to Grow Earnings-Per-Share to $20 by 2015: Fire Most U.S. Employees
April 19th, 2012Via: Cringely: The direct impetus for this column is IBM’s internal plan to grow earnings-per-share (EPS) to $20 by 2015. The primary method for accomplishing this feat, according to the plan, will be by reducing US employee head count by 78 percent in that time frame. Reducing employees by more than three quarters in three […]
Top U.S. Colleges to Offer Free Classes Online
April 18th, 2012Since MIT did it with Open Courseware years ago, I suspected that the point of the “free education” offerings was to create a pool of relatively skilled workers in some of the poorest countries in the world. You know, places with open sewers where people sleep on dirt floors… and where lots of these people […]
Dual-Focus Contact Lens Prototypes Ordered by Pentagon
April 15th, 2012Via: BBC: The Pentagon has put in an order for prototype contact lenses that give users a much wider field of vision. The lenses are designed to be paired with compact heads up display (HUD) units – glasses that allow images to be projected onto their lenses. Much bulkier HUDs are already deployed by the […]
DARPA’s Robotics Challenge
April 11th, 2012Via: IEEE Spectrum: IEEE Spectrum got an early look at the Broad Agency Announcement, known as BAA, the solicitation document that DARPA is making public today. Here are the most relevant bits: • GOAL: The goal of the new program is to “develop ground robotic capabilities to execute complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments.” […]
A New Microchip Knows Just Where You Are, Indoors and Out
April 10th, 2012Via: MIT Technology Review: Broadcom has just rolled out a chip for smart phones that promises to indicate location ultra-precisely, possibly within a few centimeters, vertically and horizontally, indoors and out. The unprecedented accuracy of the Broadcom 4752 chip results from the sheer breadth of sensors from which it can process information. It can receive […]
Military Researchers Zapping Brains to Make Better Snipers
April 8th, 2012Better snipers? *pfft* You’ll need this technology to help you make sense of all the information on your Heads Up Display: Via: The Week: Over the past few years, however, it’s become increasingly clear that applying an electrical current to your head confers similar benefits. U.S. military researchers have had great success using “transcranial direct […]
