Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
The Assassination Complex
April 4th, 2018Via: The Intercept: The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on […]
Zipline’s Bigger, Faster Drones Will Deliver Blood in the United States This Year
April 4th, 2018Via: IEEE Spectrum: The delivery drone startup has been operating in Rwanda since October of 2016, using small autonomous fixed-wing aircraft to paradrop critical blood products to rural medical clinics. The system is able to get blood from a centralized distribution center to where it’s needed in minutes, independent of time of day, traffic, or […]
Retailers Race Against Amazon to Automate Stores
April 2nd, 2018Via: New York Times: A global race to automate stores is underway among several of the world’s top retailers and small tech start-ups, which are motivated to shave labor costs and minimize shoppers’ frustrations, like waiting for cashiers. They are also trying to prevent Amazon from dominating the physical retail world as it does online […]
Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Woman Crossing Street
March 19th, 2018Update: Police Release Video The LIDAR system should have easily been able to detect that a pedestrian was in the road. Additionally, despite the difficult lighting situation, an alert human driver probably wouldn’t have hit the woman. A professional driver, trained in defensive driving techniques, almost certainly wouldn’t have hit the woman. The ride-along driver […]
By 2019 Every New Ford Will Have 4G LTE Connectivity for Over-The-Air Updates
March 18th, 2018Tesla has been doing this for years, and it’s very disturbing. Of course, the justification is that changes can be made to the car to fix things over the air, without the customer having to bring the car in for servicing. I get all of that. But many people don’t realize that the vehicles are […]
Flying Taxis to be Trialled in New Zealand
March 13th, 2018They have their doomsteads here, so… Via: Radio New Zealand: A network of self-piloted, flying taxis will be trialled in New Zealand, in a partnership with the government. Airways, New Zealand’s air navigation service provider confirmed the trial and said it will develop a nationwide unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) traffic management system which will integrate […]
Palantir Wins $876 Million U.S. Army Contract
March 11th, 2018Via: Bloomberg: Billionaire investor Peter Thiel got a fresh victory in Washington. His data-mining startup, Palantir Technologies Inc., won a much-contested contract to provide software to the U.S. Army. Palantir will work with Raytheon Co. to replace the troubled Distributed Common Ground System now in effect. They beat out seven other proposals for a decade-long, […]
Self-Driving Cars Attacked by Angry Californians
March 9th, 2018Via: Guardian: Two of the six collisions involving autonomous vehicles in California so far this year involved humans colliding with self-driving cars, apparently on purpose, according to incident reports collected by the California department of motor vehicles. On 10 January, a pedestrian in San Francisco’s Mission District ran across the street to confront a GM […]
Google’s AI Is Being Used by U.S. Military Drone Program
March 8th, 2018“For non-offensive uses only.” *snort* Via: Guardian: Google’s artificial intelligence technologies are being used by the US military for one of its drone projects, causing controversy both inside and outside the company. Google’s TensorFlow AI systems are being used by the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) Project Maven, which was established in July last year […]
Self Driving Uber Trucks Start Shuttling Goods Across Arizona
March 6th, 2018Via: USA Today: Uber has been sending self-driving trucks on delivery runs across Arizona since November, the first step in what promises to be a freight transportation revolution that could radically reshape the jobs of long-haul truckers. After testing its technology earlier in 2017, Uber began contracting with trucking companies to use its own autonomous […]
