Artificial Intelligence Swarms Silicon Valley on Wings and Wheels
July 24th, 2016See artificial intelligence winters and hype cycles.
Via: New York Times:
For more than a decade, Silicon Valley’s technology investors and entrepreneurs obsessed over social media and mobile apps that helped people do things like find new friends, fetch a ride home or crowdsource a review of a product or a movie.
Now Silicon Valley has found its next shiny new thing. And it does not have a “Like” button.
The new era in Silicon Valley centers on artificial intelligence and robots, a transformation that many believe will have a payoff on the scale of the personal computing industry or the commercial internet, two previous generations that spread computing globally. Computers have begun to speak, listen and see, as well as sprout legs, wings and wheels to move unfettered in the world.
The shift was evident in a Lowe’s home improvement store here this month, when a prototype inventory checker developed by Bossa Nova Robotics silently glided through the aisles using computer vision to automatically perform a task that humans have done manually for centuries.
The robot, which was skilled enough to autonomously move out of the way of shoppers and avoid unexpected obstacles in the aisles, alerted people to its presence with soft birdsong chirps. Gliding down the middle of an aisle at a leisurely pace, it can recognize bar codes on shelves, and it uses a laser to detect which items are out of stock.
Silicon Valley’s financiers and entrepreneurs are digging into artificial intelligence with remarkable exuberance. The region now has at least 19 companies designing self-driving cars and trucks, up from a handful five years ago. There are also more than a half-dozen types of mobile robots, including robotic bellhops and aerial drones, being commercialized.
“We saw a slow trickle in investments in robotics, and suddenly, boom — there seem to be a dozen companies securing large investment rounds focusing on specific robotic niches,” said Martin Hitch, chief executive of Bossa Nova, which has a base in San Francisco.
Funding in A.I. start-ups has increased more than fourfold to $681 million in 2015, from $145 million in 2011, according to the market research firm CB Insights. The firm estimates that new investments will reach $1.2 billion this year, up 76 percent from last year.
Self Driving Car Company Asks People to Generate Data with Mobile Phones
July 24th, 2016But what I really thought was interesting was the inducement to get people to do this: Comma Points and a scoreboard.
In other words, Hotz turned this into a game. I wonder if he plans to use the Chffr app to offer bonus points to get people to drive on roads that present particularly difficult challenges to the AI? See: Pokemon Go/Soft Control.
Via: cnet:
You don’t have to be a billionaire investor to get involved with the development of self-driving cars. Thanks to George Hotz and his company, Comma.ai, all you need is a cell phone, a windshield mount and Hotz’s own Chffr app.
Chffr is available only for Android phones at the moment. After downloading it, mount your camera on the windshield and open the app. Chffr records your drive and watches along as you navigate around bicyclists, wait for cars at stop signs and other daily traffic-related occurrences. It uploads that data to Comma.ai’s servers, which compiles all the data it receives to help its autonomous-driving kit learn to mimic human behavior.
For using Chffr, you’ll earn something called “Comma Points.” Nobody’s really sure what the points are for, but for the time being, they’re reflected on a leaderboard on Comma.ai’s site, so you can see who’s doing the best job at contributing. Right now, friend of Roadshow Alex Roy is in second place, and George Hotz himself is down in ninth.
Super-Hard Metal ‘Four Times Tougher Than Titanium’
July 24th, 2016Via: BBC:
A super-hard metal has been made in the laboratory by melting together titanium and gold.
The alloy is the hardest known metallic substance compatible with living tissues, say US physicists.
The material is four times harder than pure titanium and has applications in making longer-lasting medical implants, they say.
Conventional knee and hip implants have to be replaced after about 10 years due to wear and tear.
Details of the new metal – an alloy of gold and titanium – are revealed in the journal, Science Advances.
Germany: Several Dead, Injured After Shots Fired at Munich Shopping Center
July 22nd, 2016Gunman Found Dead
Via: CNN:
At least nine people were killed and 21 others hurt Friday in a shooting rampage at a busy shopping district in Munich, Germany, police said. Police searched for attackers, thinking there might be three, and found a man who’d killed himself on a side street near Olympia shopping mall, police Chief Hubertus Andrae said.
Based on surveillance video and witness statements, police concluded he was the sole gunman, Andrae said. The unidentified attacker was an 18-year-old German-Iranian who had lived in Munich for more than two years. The man was not known to police and his motives are unclear, authorities said. No group has claimed responsibility. Many children were among the casualties. Police said 16 people remain hospitalized.
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AFP: Three Suspected Gunmen in German Shooting
#BREAKING Three suspected gunmen in German shooting: police
— AFP news agency (@AFP) July 22, 2016
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Update: GSG9 Has Responded
On this Daily Mail article, I’m pretty sure the guys in the dark green are GSG9.
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Via: NBC:
Several people were dead or injured after shots rang out at a shopping center Friday evening in Munich, Germany, police said. Multiple gunmen were believed to be on the loose.
“At the moment we don’t know where the perpetrators are. Take care and avoid public places,” Munich police tweeted.
Munich police confirmed to NBC News that there were casualties, but didn’t give an exact number.
According to a police spokesperson, the shooting started at a McDonald’s attached to the mall before the shooters made their way into the mall.
Inside the Test Flight of Facebook’s First Internet Drone
July 21st, 2016Via: The Verge:
In its first flight, Aquila exceeded engineers’ expectations for its energy efficiency. More test flights are planned, aimed at flying Aquila “faster, higher, and longer,” says Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of engineering, in a blog post today. And then Aquila will have its next big test: flying with the “payload,” as Facebook calls the laser communication system that a team is building in Woodland Hills, CA. In July 2015, the team announced that its lasers could deliver data at tens of gigabytes per second, about 10 times faster than the previous standard. And the lasers are quite precise, able to target an area the size of a dime from 10 miles away. (The lasers connect with base stations on the ground to supply internet access.) Facebook says the system has performed well in independent tests.
When will a fleet of Aquila drones bring data to the world? Facebook won’t say. There are several technical challenges remaining in getting Aquila to reliably fly 90-day stretches. The team hasn’t yet implemented solar panels on the prototype — the test flight plane ran using batteries only. The team is still working out how to build batteries with a density high enough to sustain lengthy missions. Then there’s the cost — Facebook says Aquila needs to be much cheaper if the world is going to deploy a fleet of them. “We need to develop more efficient on-board power and communication systems; ensure the aircraft are resilient to structural damage to reduce maintenance costs and able to stay aloft for long periods of time to keep fleet numbers low; and minimize the amount of human supervision associated with their operation,” Cox wrote in a blog post today.
Aquila is also likely to face regulatory obstacles, which could rival the laws of physics in terms of the challenges they present.
$13 Billion Aircraft Carrier Struggles with Air Operations, Can’t Defend Itself, Systems ‘Likely Require Redesigning’
July 21st, 2016Well, the good news is that $13 billion looks like pocket lint compared to the cost of the F-35 catastrophe.
Have a nice day.
Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier isn’t ready for warfare.
The $12.9 billion USS Gerald R. Ford — the most expensive warship ever built — may struggle to launch and recover aircraft, mount a defense and move munitions, according to the Pentagon’s top weapons tester. On-board systems for those tasks have poor or unknown reliability issues, according to a June 28 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
“These four systems affect major areas of flight operations,” Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation, wrote Pentagon and Navy weapons buyers Frank Kendall and Sean Stackley. “Unless these issues are resolved, which would likely require redesigning” of the aircraft launch and recovery systems “they will significantly limit the CVN-78’s ability to conduct combat operations,” Gilmore wrote, using a technical name for the carrier.
iPhone Case to Monitor Device’s Radios for Surveillance Activity
July 21st, 2016Of course, inexpensive signal blocking pouches can prevent phones from communicating. You have to test them to make sure that they’re actually blocking the signals. See: Black Hole Faraday Bags, for example.
This thing below, however, will tell you when something dodgy is happening. (Much better than my warm-to-the-touch-dead-battery indicator.)
Via: Wired:
A mockup of Edward Snowden and Bunnie Huang’s iPhone modification, showing the SIM card slot through which their hardware add-on would access the phone’s antennae to monitor them for errant signals. Andrew Huang & Edward Snowden
When Edward Snowden met with reporters in a Hong Kong hotel room to spill the NSA’s secrets, he famously asked them put their phones in the fridge to block any radio signals that might be used to silently activate the devices’ microphones or cameras. So it’s fitting that three years later, he’s returned to that smartphone radio surveillance problem. Now Snowden’s attempting to build a solution that’s far more compact than a hotel mini-bar.
On Thursday at the MIT Media Lab, Snowden and well-known hardware hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang plan to present designs for a case-like device that wires into your iPhone’s guts to monitor the electrical signals sent to its internal antennas. The aim of that add-on, Huang and Snowden say, is to offer a constant check on whether your phone’s radios are transmitting. They say it’s an infinitely more trustworthy method of knowing your phone’s radios are off than “airplane mode,” which people have shown can be hacked and spoofed. Snowden and Huang are hoping to offer strong privacy guarantees to smartphone owners who need to shield their phones from government-funded adversaries with advanced hacking and surveillance capabilities—particularly reporters trying to carry their devices into hostile foreign countries without constantly revealing their locations.
A Mormon Tycoon Wants to Build Joseph Smith’s Mega-Utopia in Vermont
July 21st, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
As the story goes, the plat plan appeared to Smith while he was studying Enoch, an Old Testament prophet who designed a city so perfect it was whisked off to heaven. The text accompanying the blueprint, written out by Smith and his comrades, says each plat should house 15,000 to 20,000 people within one square mile (though the definition of a mile has changed slightly), and that the design should be replicated worldwide. Written in the style of 15th century English, it reads: “When this square is thus laid off and supplied, lay off another in the same way, and so fill up the world in these last days, and let every man live in the city, for this is the city of Zion.”
Finland: Man Jailed for Defending Himself Against Armed Home Invaders
July 21st, 2016Via: Russia Today:
The homeowner has been convicted of “excessive self-defense and attempted manslaughter,” Helsinki news reports. He will serve an unconditional sentence for four years and two months, which he has to spend in prison. The man also has to pay damages to his attackers, with the fine totaling €21,000 (US$23,000). The newspaper does not provide information on the severity of injuries sustained by the home-invaders, however, it is known that they survived the event.
The attackers were also convicted for felony home invasion and assault, yet their punishments are much less harsh.
All three received one-year-and-two-month conditional sentences, which is similar to probation or house arrest in Finland, depending on the case. The offender serves the sentence outside of jail, but has to follow strict jail-like rules.
The trio was also ordered to pay the homeowner damages, but their combined fine was ruled to be €3,000 (US$3,300).
Trump Appears to Put Conditions on Aiding NATO Allies
July 21st, 2016The U.S. has always run protection rackets with its “international partners.” Does Trump coming out and practically saying, We’re going to run protection rackets, make the situation any worse?
Here’s the shock and hysteria from the Clinton camp over this:
“For decades, the United States has given an ironclad guarantee to our NATO allies: we will come to their defense if they are attacked, just as they came to our defense after 9/11. Donald Trump was asked if he would honor that guarantee. He said … maybe, maybe not.”
The statement added: “Ronald Reagan would be ashamed. Harry Truman would be ashamed. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who helped build NATO into the most successful military alliance in history would all come to the same conclusion: Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our Commander in Chief.”
Evoking the ghost of Ronnie Ray-Gun to get people to vote for Hillary? Priceless.
Via: USA Today:
Donald Trump appeared in an interview to set conditions on coming to the aid of NATO allies while touting a foreign policy approach that would see the United States “fix our own mess” before intervening to help solve problems in other countries.
Trump said that if Russia were to attack the Baltic States — new NATO members whose friendly relations with the West Moscow views as a threat — he would decide on coming to their aid only after assessing how those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.” He characterized these obligations in mostly economic terms.
He spoke to the New York Times ahead of his acceptance of the Republican nomination for president on Thursday. He told the publication how he would make international partners contribute more to defense costs, pull out of treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada if they don’t meet U.S. interests and redraw the terms of long-held global cooperation.
He said he would “prefer to be able to continue” with existing agreements but on specific terms: “We are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everyone else in the world.”
