Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
New Video Surveillance System Tags, Tracks and Follows
December 27th, 2011Via: Reuters: Software developed for closed-circuit television systems can identify individuals and track them across entire networks of cameras. Joel Flynn reports. Related: Coming Soon: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone
Iran Hijacked U.S. Drone by Exploiting Long Known Vulnerability, According to Iranian Engineer
December 20th, 2011Via: Christian Science Monitor: In an exclusive interview, an engineer working to unlock the secrets of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel says they exploited a known vulnerability and tricked the US drone into landing in Iran. Iran guided the CIA’s “lost” stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known […]
Rare Photographs Show Ground Zero of the Drone War
December 12th, 2011Via: Wired: The epicenter of global terrorism, and the CIA’s highly classified drone war against extremist groups, is a black hole on the map — a region of Pakistan off limits to outsiders, and especially Westerners. It’s an area so dangerous that even the Pakistani military avoids it. The CIA may have launched 70 drone […]
Predator Drone from U.S. Air Force Base Used in North Dakota Police Operation
December 11th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times: Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North […]
X-37B Spacecraft: “It’s Still Up There”
December 1st, 2011Via: MSNBC: The secretive X-37B robotic space plane is about to set its own space-endurance record on a hush-hush project operated by the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. The craft, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle-2, was boosted into Earth orbit atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 5. […]
Widespread Police Use of Drones Coming Soon
November 30th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times: Drone aircraft, best known for their role in hunting and destroying terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, may be coming soon to the skies near you. Police agencies want drones for air support to find runaway criminals. Utility companies expect they can help monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. Farmers believe […]
PayPal’s Links to Palantir, a Metasearch Technology Used by Intelligence, Law Enforcement and Military Organizations
November 27th, 2011And guess where they’re located? That’s right: Facebook’s former building. I couldn’t make it up if I tried. Via: Bloomberg: An organization like the CIA or FBI can have thousands of different databases, each with its own quirks: financial records, DNA samples, sound samples, video clips, maps, floor plans, human intelligence reports from all over […]
Robots Will Soon Begin Patrolling South Korean Prisons
November 25th, 2011Via: Telegraph: Robot guards with sensors to detect abnormal behaviour will soon begin patrolling South Korean prisons to ease the burden on their human counterparts, researchers said on Thursday.
‘Super Soldiers’: The Quest for the Ultimate Human Killing Machine
November 17th, 2011Via: Independent: The era of The Terminator, the perfect robotic killing machine, is decades away; to date, all efforts to create a humanoid robot that can climb the stairs, let alone fight the Taliban, have been risible. But scientists are reporting breakthroughs with the next-best thing – the creation of human terminators, who feel less […]
Northwestern University Researchers Increase Capacity and Decrease Charge Time of Lithium Ion Batteries by Ten Times
November 16th, 2011Via: Northwestern University: Imagine a cellphone battery that stayed charged for more than a week and recharged in just 15 minutes. That dream battery could be closer to reality thanks to Northwestern University research. A team of engineers has created an electrode for lithium-ion batteries — rechargeable batteries such as those found in cellphones and […]
