NSA: Office of Tailored Access Operations
December 29th, 2013I always thought that this was called Special Collection Service. Maybe this TAO thing is Double Plus Special.
Via: Spiegel:
The NSA’s TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency’s top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is targeting.
Recovery: One Million U.S. Jobless to Lose Financial Aid
December 28th, 2013Via: BBC:
More than a million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits after an emergency federal programme expires on Saturday.
Lawmakers failed to agree on an extension of the scheme before the US Congress began its winter recess.
Former President George W Bush introduced the assistance plan in 2008 at the start of the recession.
Under the programme, jobless people received an average monthly stipend of $1,166 for up to 73 weeks.
The White House says the benefits have kept millions of families out of poverty, but many Republicans argue that the scheme’s annual $25bn price tag is too expensive.
Recovery: New York City Homeless Shelters Fill as Rent Aid Disappears
December 28th, 2013Via: Wall Street Journal:
New York City homeless shelters—swelling with record-high populations not seen since the Great Depression—are increasingly being sought out by people who participated in a now-defunct rent-subsidy program designed to reduce homelessness, according to a report to be released Saturday.
The author of the report, the Coalition for the Homeless, a nonprofit advocacy group, held up the report as evidence that homeless families need longer-term government help with rent to stay out of the shelter system. Since the rental-payment program, known as Advantage, was canceled by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration after state budget cuts in June 2011, the city’s homeless shelter system population has grown to its highest-ever levels: 52,000 people, including 22,000 children.
Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience
December 28th, 2013Here’s one for your Omni-Magazine-Déjà-vu-Moments file folder.
Via: New York Times:
Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head.
The first commercial version of the new kind of computer chip is scheduled to be released in 2014. Not only can it automate tasks that now require painstaking programming — for example, moving a robot’s arm smoothly and efficiently — but it can also sidestep and even tolerate errors, potentially making the term “computer crash” obsolete.
The new computing approach, already in use by some large technology companies, is based on the biological nervous system, specifically on how neurons react to stimuli and connect with other neurons to interpret information. It allows computers to absorb new information while carrying out a task, and adjust what they do based on the changing signals.
In coming years, the approach will make possible a new generation of artificial intelligence systems that will perform some functions that humans do with ease: see, speak, listen, navigate, manipulate and control. That can hold enormous consequences for tasks like facial and speech recognition, navigation and planning, which are still in elementary stages and rely heavily on human programming.
Designers say the computing style can clear the way for robots that can safely walk and drive in the physical world, though a thinking or conscious computer, a staple of science fiction, is still far off on the digital horizon.
Michigan: Cars with Self Drive Mode Allowed on Roads; On Board Human Supervision Required
December 28th, 2013Via: CBS:
Gov. Rick Snyder has signed a law allowing companies to test driverless cars on Michigan roads.
But there’s a key point: Someone must be in the car.
In a statement Friday, Snyder says the law is important to keep Michigan involved in research and development of car technology. He also mentioned a need for the law in his 2013 State of the State speech.
Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap 2013-2038
December 28th, 2013Via: U.S. Department of Defense:
4.1.5 Autonomy and Cognitive Behavior
Nearly all unmanned systems require active control of basic vehicle operations and behavior that affects communications, manpower, and system effectiveness. One of the largest cost drivers in the budget of DoD is manpower. A significant amount of that manpower, when it comes to operations, is spent directing unmanned systems during mission performance, data collection and analysis, and planning and replanning. Therefore, of utmost importance for DoD is increased system, sensor, and analytical automation that can not only capture significant information and events, but can also develop, record, playback, project, and parse out those data and then actually deliver “actionable” intelligence instead of just raw information.
Report PDF: Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap 2013-2038
Identifying People Reflected in the Pupils of Portrait Subjects
December 27th, 2013Via: Los Angeles Times:
Can the eyes of photographed crime victims help authorities spot their victimizers?
According to new research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One, high-resolution photographs can be “mined” for hidden information. Specifically, the authors said that photographs of faces can reveal enough visual information on bystanders to identify them.
In a small sampling of 32 study participants, test subjects were able to spot familiar faces reflected in the pupils of someone who was photographed 84% of the time, researchers said. When the reflected images were of unfamiliar people, observers were able to match the person to a second mug shot with 71% accuracy.
“The bodies of the poor, when they are not captive, are worth little to corporations. But bodies behind bars can each generate $40,000 to $50,000 a year for corporate coffers.”
December 27th, 2013Via: Truthdig:
Shares in the Philadelphia-based Aramark Holdings Corp., which contracts through Aramark Correctional Services to provide the food to 600 correctional institutions across the United States, went public Thursday. The corporation, acquired in 2007 for $8.3 billion by investors that included Goldman Sachs, raised $725 million last week from the sale of the stock. It is one more sign that the business of locking up poor people in corporate America is booming.
Aramark, whose website says it provides 1 million meals a day to prisoners, does what corporations are doing throughout the society: It lavishes campaign donations on pliable politicians, who in turn hand out state and federal contracts to political contributors, as well as write laws and regulations to benefit their corporate sponsors at the expense of the poor. Aramark fires unionized workers inside prisons and jails and replaces them with underpaid, nonunionized employees. And it makes sure the food is low enough in both quality and portion to produce huge profits.
Aramark, often contracted to provide food to prisoners at about a dollar a meal, is one of numerous corporations, from phone companies to construction firms, that have found our grotesque system of mass incarceration to be very profitable. The bodies of the poor, when they are not captive, are worth little to corporations. But bodies behind bars can each generate $40,000 to $50,000 a year for corporate coffers. More than 2.2 million men and women are in prisons and jails in the U.S.
Neural Net Learns Breakout Then Thrashes Human Gamers
December 27th, 2013Via: Medium:
The Atari 2600 games console has a special place in the hearts of any gamers who grew up in the 1970s. It popularised a number of games that changed the games industry for ever, such as Pong, Breakout and Space Invaders. Today, these games have legendary status and still play an important role in the gaming world.
One curious thing about these games is that computers themselves have never been very good at playing them in the same way as humans. That means playing them by looking at the monitor and judging actions accordingly. This kind of “hand-to-eye” co-ordination has always been a special human skill.
Not any more. Today, Volodymyr Mnih and pals at DeepMind Technologies in London say they’ve created a neural network that learns how to play video games in the same way as humans: using the computer equivalent of hand-to-eye co-ordination.
‘We Are Creating Walmarts of Higher Education’
December 27th, 2013Via: The Atlantic:
Universities in South Dakota, Nebraska, and other states have cut the number of credits students need to graduate. A proposal in Florida would let online courses forgo the usual higher-education accreditation process. A California legislator introduced a measure that would have substituted online courses for some of the brick-and-mortar kind at public universities.
Some campuses of the University of North Carolina system are mulling getting rid of history, political science, and various others of more than 20 “low productive” programs. The University of Southern Maine may drop physics. And governors in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin have questioned whether taxpayers should continue subsidizing public universities for teaching the humanities.
Under pressure to turn out more students, more quickly and for less money, and to tie graduates’ skills to workforce needs, higher-education institutions and policy makers have been busy reducing the number of required credits, giving credit for life experience, and cutting some courses, while putting others online.
Related: Top U.S. Colleges to Offer Free Classes Online
