Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Construction of NSA’s $1.5 Billion Data Center in Utah Is Underway
January 6th, 2011Via: Desert News: Officially named the Utah Data Center, the facility’s role in aggregating and verifying dizzying volumes of data for the intelligence community has already earned it the nickname “Spy Center.” Its really long moniker is the Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center — the first in the nation’s intelligence community.
DARPA Kicks Off Mind’s Eye Program; ‘Persistent Stare, Camera-Equipped Unmanned Ground Vehicles’
January 6th, 2011Via: U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (.pdf): Ground surveillance is a mission normally performed by human assets, including Army scouts and Marine Corps Force Recon. Military leaders would like to shift this mission to unmanned systems, removing troops from harm’s way, but unmanned systems lack a capability that currently exists only in humans: visual […]
Dawn of the Age of the Robot
December 30th, 2010This article reminded me of reading OMNI magazine in the 1980s, when I should have been doing my homework. Hopefully, much of this stuff will remain as science fiction / grant swindles for another 20 years… but I doubt it. Via: Guardian: The robots are coming. The second decade of the 21st century will see […]
Brazil to Replace Oil Rigs with ‘Underwater Cities’
December 30th, 2010When I saw the headline, I had a terrifying Bioshock flashback, but there won’t be any people down there. Via: Telegraph: Traditional oil rigs will be replaced with “underwater cities” within a decade under ambitious plans being drawn up by Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned energy group. Petrobras plans to turn science fiction into reality to extract […]
Living Earth Simulator
December 29th, 2010I seriously need a Magic 8 Ball category. Via: BBC: It could be one of the most ambitious computer projects ever conceived. An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth – from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or […]
Nearly 1 in 4 Students Too Stupid to Pass U.S. Army Entrance Exam
December 22nd, 2010It’s actually much worse than the headline indicates. Check out this sentence: Pentagon data shows that 75 percent of those aged 17 to 24 don’t even qualify to take the test because they are physically unfit, have a criminal record or didn’t graduate high school. Via: AP: Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to […]
Mexican Drone Cashes in Backyard of El Paso Home
December 17th, 2010Via: El Paso Times: The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating Tuesday’s crash of a Mexican drone in El Paso’s Lower Valley. “We are collecting data about the crash. We don’t have the aircraft because it was returned to its owner,” said Keith Holloway, spokesman for the NTSB, which investigates aircraft crashes in the United […]
Steve Wozniak: ‘We’ve Lost a Lot of Control’
December 8th, 2010Via: CNN: The world has mostly caught on to Steve Wozniak’s vision of having a computer in every home. But this digital lifestyle can sometimes turn rotten, he said last week. Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs and designed, programmed and built some of the world’s first personal computers, laments the byproducts of a […]
Human Resources
December 5th, 2010If Cryptogon had a “required viewing” list, Human Resources would be at the top. However, this is not a movie for beginners. I’ve been gazing down the barrel of this predicament of ours for twenty years and I felt my pulse quicken and the hair on my arms standing on end as I watched this. […]
Recruiting Robots for Combat
November 28th, 2010Via: New York Times: The Maars robots first attracted the military’s interest as a defensive system during an Army Ranger exercise here in 2008. Used as a nighttime sentry against infiltrators equipped with thermal imaging vision systems, the battery-powered Maars unit remained invisible — it did not have the heat signature of a human being […]
