Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
First UAV Flight in Support of Domestic Law Enforcement Operation Occurred in 2009 in Austin
January 24th, 2011Via: Washington Post: AUSTIN – The suspect’s house, just west of this city, sat on a hilltop at the end of a steep, exposed driveway. Agents with the Texas Department of Public Safety believed the man inside had a large stash of drugs and a cache of weapons, including high-caliber rifles. As dawn broke, a […]
IBM’s Watson: How About, “We’re Fucked” for $100, Alex
January 14th, 2011Update: Watson Won Via: PC World: Wrapping up a three-day run on the Jeopardy game show, IBM’s Watson computer has beaten two former champions in a historic match of man versus machine. —End Update— Ah, don’t worry. Surely, the regime will use this for good. *sigh* Via: Boston Globe: IBM recently created a supercomputer named […]
Drone May Be Coming to Miami-Dade
January 6th, 2011Via: WSVN: A new piece of technology may soon be coming to South Florida, but is already raising concerns from residents. The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane that is equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the […]
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 […]
