Archive for July, 2017
U.S. Navy Ship in Persian Gulf Armed with Laser Weapon
July 21st, 2017Via: CNN: In the sometimes hostile waters of the Persian Gulf looms the US Navy’s first — in fact, the world’s first — active laser weapon. The LaWS, an acronym for Laser Weapons System, is not science fiction. It is not experimental. It is deployed on board the USS Ponce amphibious transport ship, ready to […]
The Tiny Satellites Ushering in the New Space Revolution
July 19th, 2017Smile for the birdy. Via: Bloomberg: With all 149 satellites in place, Planet will be able to photograph every inch of Earth’s surface every day—something even the U.S. government can’t do. This satellite constellation is one of many signs that the relationship between humans and space is changing in ways unseen since Russia and the […]
Mercenary Army to Fix Afghanistan?
July 19th, 2017Oh sure! Via: Defense One: Here’s a crazy idea floating around Washington these days, outlandish even by today’s outlandish standards: The United States should hire a mercenary army to “fix” Afghanistan, a country where we’ve been at war since 2001, spending billions along the way. The big idea here is that they could extricate U.S. […]
Synthesizing Obama
July 17th, 2017Via: University of Washington: Given audio of President Barack Obama, we synthesize a high quality video of him speaking with accurate lip sync, composited into a target video clip. Trained on many hours of his weekly address footage, a recurrent neural network learns the mapping from raw audio features to mouth shapes. Given the mouth […]
Tech May Replace Half of All Low-Skilled Jobs in the U.S.
July 17th, 2017Via: CBS: Ball State University sits in Muncie, Indiana, at the heart the “Rust Belt,” so educators there have the right to be pessimistic about the drift of the U.S. economy. But a report by the school’s Center for Business and Economic Research goes even further. “We found a toxic brew,” said CBER Director Michael […]
Facial Recognition Coming to Police Body Cameras
July 17th, 2017Via: Defense One: Even if the cop who pulls you over doesn’t recognize you, the body camera on his chest just might in the future. Device-maker Motorola announced Monday that would partner with artificial intelligence software startup Neurala to build “real-time learning for a person of interest search” on Motorola products such as the Si500 […]
Former Haiti Government Official Shoots Himself in the Head in Miami-Area Hotel
July 17th, 2017Via: Miami Herald: Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official, was found dead Tuesday in a South Dade motel room in what the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office is ruling a suicide. “He shot himself in the head,” said Veronica Lamar, Miami-Dade medical examiner records supervisor. She listed his time of death at 12:19 p.m. The […]
Used GPUs Flood Market as Ethereum’s Price Crashes Below $150
July 16th, 2017haha that didn’t take long: I’m hoping to buy a used GTX 1070 for my son’s 10th birthday in November. Will there be a flood of cheap GTX 1070s on eBay by then? Via: OC3D: Over the past few months, there has been a GPU shortage, forcing the prices of mid-range graphics cards up as […]
Homeland Security Says Americans Who Don’t Want Faces Scanned on International Flights “Shouldn’t Travel”
July 15th, 2017Via: ZDnet: Homeland Security’s advice for the millions of Americans traveling overseas who don’t want to end up in its facial biometric database is simply not to travel. That’s according to the agency’s own assessment document published earlier this year of a new so-called traveler verification project to “capture facial images of travelers” leaving the […]
Australian PM Calls for End-to-End Encryption Ban, Says the Laws of Mathematics Don’t Apply Down Under
July 15th, 2017#comedygold Via: EFF: “The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”, said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today. He has been rightly mocked for this nonsense claim, that foreshadows moves to require online messaging providers to provide law enforcement with back door access […]
