Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Britain: Police UAVs Might be Armed with Non Lethal Weapons
February 11th, 2010Via: Wired: Police forces all over the UK will soon be able to draw on unmanned aircraft from a national fleet, according to Home Office plans. Last month it was revealed that modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers, and will be in place in […]
Family Spends $5000 Per Year on Screen Related Services
February 10th, 2010You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. —Morpheus, The Matrix Don’t breathe the air, don’t drink the water, don’t eat the food, but, being saturated with endless electronic […]
Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included
February 6th, 2010Via: Wired: The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch. As part of its budget for […]
U.S. Plans Crewless Anti Submarine Warfare Ships
February 3rd, 2010Via: Register: Those splendid brainboxes at DARPA – the Pentagon’s in-house bazaar of the bizarre – have outdone themselves this time. They now plan an entirely uncrewed, automated ghost frigate able to cruise the oceans of the world for months or years on end without human input. The new project is called Anti-submarine warfare Continuous […]
Quadrennial Defense Review: Melee Mode, Cyberwar, More Killer Robots, Environmental Catastrophes
February 1st, 2010Via: CNN: The Pentagon will no longer shape the U.S. military to fight two major conventional wars at once, but rather prepare for numerous conflicts and not all in the same style, according to a draft of a new strategic outlook the Pentagon is announcing on Monday. The new mantra for military planners will replace […]
Nanosecond Trading Strains Infrastructure: Firms Failing to Control Their Algorithms
January 26th, 2010See: Trading Shares in Milliseconds Via: Financial Times: An explosion in trading propelled by computers is raising fears that trading platforms could be knocked out by rogue trades triggered by systems running out of control. trading-thumb.jpgTrading in equities and derivatives is being driven increasingly by mathematical algorithms used in computer programs. They allow trading to […]
Britain: Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones
January 24th, 2010Via: Guardian: Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance. The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is […]
Israeli Military Robots
January 12th, 2010Via: Wall Street Journal: Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare. Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its high-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world’s leading innovators of military robotics. “We’re trying […]
Houston Police Department UAV
January 9th, 2010Robotic System Makes a Novel Scientific Discovery
January 8th, 2010Dress up brute force real pretty and put lipstick on it. Via: Wales Online: IT was hailed as taking artificial intelligence to a new level. Now, the creation by Welsh scientists of the first robot in the world to make an independent scientific discovery has been named the fourth most significant discovery of 2009 by […]
