Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
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 […]
‘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 […]
