Trump Meets with Kissinger [???]
May 10th, 2017I shit you not.
Via: NPR:
After the Lavrov session had concluded, members of the U.S. media were allowed into the Oval Office, where they found the president sitting with Henry Kissinger, who served as President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state. The meeting hadn’t been listed on the president’s official schedule.
Trump said he and Kissinger had met to talk “about Russia and various other matters,” according to the pool report.
Storm
May 10th, 2017The power isn’t out for us yet, but it will be. See you on the other side.
Mexico Was Second Deadliest Country in 2016
May 10th, 2017Via: CNN:
It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines.
As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico’s drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 — second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.
Tesla Battery Researcher Claims They Doubled Lifetime of Batteries in Tesla’s Products 4 Years Ahead of Time
May 9th, 2017Update: Professor Jeff Dahn’s Talk
If you have any interest in lithium ion batteries, this is very definitely worth your time.
—
Woh.
I wonder how long it will be before Tesla slaps a 20 year warranty on their energy storage products…
Via: Electrek:
“In the description of the [Tesla] project that we sent to NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) to get matching funds from the government for the project, I wrote down the goal of doubling the lifetime of the cells used in the Tesla products at the same upper cutoff voltage. We exceeded that in round one. OK? So that was the goal of the project and it has already been exceeded. We are not going to stop – obviously – we have another four years to go. We are going to go as far as we can.”
Europe: How Billions Vanish Into the Security Industry Black Hole
May 9th, 2017Via: The Correspondent:
The European Union spends billions on research into advanced technologies meant to make society safer. But our investigation – with 22 journalists in 11 countries – shows that the generous subsidies are mostly good for one thing: filling the coffers of the security industry.
Trump Fires Comey
May 9th, 2017
Via: Independent:
FBI Director James Comey – who was leading an investigation into alleged links between Donald Trump’s team and Russia – has been fired by the US President.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement that Mr Comey has been “terminated and removed from office.” Mr Trump acted on “clear recommendations” from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
However, Democratic Senators were quick to point out the constitutional crisis that has been created by Mr Trump removing a man in charge of investigating him. Senator Dick Durbin said on the Senate floor that the firing of Mr Comey raises questions “as to whether the Russian interference in the last presidential election… will also be investigated by the FBI.”
More Robots, Fewer Jobs
May 8th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
Are you about to be replaced by a robot? The question has broad implications for the U.S. economy, especially the manufacturing sector. Industries that robotize tend to increase output. But robots can have dire consequences for workers.
Two economists recently concluded that both jobs and wages fall in parts of the U.S. where more robots are installed. The March 2017 study by Daron Acemoglu of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University shows the commuting zones—i.e., local labor markets—where robot installations have grown the most.
Unmanned U.S. Air Force Space Plane Lands After Secret, Two-Year Mission
May 7th, 2017Via: Reuters:
The U.S. military’s experimental X-37B space plane landed on Sunday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, completing a classified mission that lasted nearly two years, the Air Force said.
The unmanned X-37B, which resembles a miniature space shuttle, touched down at 7:47 a.m. EDT (1147 GMT) on a runway formerly used for landings of the now-mothballed space shuttles, the Air Force said in an email.
The Boeing-built space plane blasted off in May 2015 from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard an Atlas 5 rocket built by United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Boeing Co (BA.N).
The X-37B, one of two in the Air Force fleet, conducted unspecified experiments for more than 700 days while in orbit. It was the fourth and lengthiest mission so far for the secretive program, managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.
Macron Elected French President
May 7th, 2017Via: AFP:
Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron resoundingly won France’s landmark presidential election, first estimates showed Sunday, heading off a fierce challenge from the far-right in a pivotal vote for the future of the divided country and Europe.
The victory caps an extraordinary rise for the 39-year-old former investment banker, who will become the country’s youngest-ever leader.
He has promised to heal a fractured and demoralised country after a vicious campaign that has exposed deep economic and social divisions, as well as tensions around identity and immigration.
Initial estimates showed Macron winning between 65.5 percent and 66.1 percent of ballots ahead of Le Pen on between 33.9 percent and 34.5 percent.
Unknown three years ago, Macron is now poised to become one of Europe’s most powerful leaders, bringing with him a hugely ambitious agenda of political and economic reform for France and the European Union.
The result will resonate worldwide and particularly in Brussels and Berlin where leaders will breathe a sigh of relief that Le Pen’s anti-EU, anti-globalisation programme has been defeated.
After Britain’s vote last year to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s victory in the US, the French election had been widely watched as a test of how high a tide of right-wing nationalism would rise.
Le Pen, 48, had portrayed the ballot as a contest between Macron and the “globalists” — in favour of open trade, immigration and shared sovereignty — and her “patriotic” vision of strong borders and national identities.
The Military is Using Human Brain Waves to Teach Robots How to Shoot
May 6th, 2017Via: Government Executive:
Modern sensors can see farther than humans. Electronic circuits can shoot faster than nerves and muscles can pull a trigger. Humans still outperform armed robots in knowing what to shoot at — but new research funded in part by the Army may soon narrow that gap.
Researchers from DCS Corp and the Army Research Lab fed datasets of human brain waves into a neural network — a type of artificial intelligence — which learned to recognize when a human is making a targeting decision. They presented their paper on it at the annual Intelligent User Interface conference in Cyprus in March.
Why is this a big deal? Machine learning relies on highly structured data, numbers in rows that software can read. But identifying a target in the chaotic real world is incredibly difficult for computers. The human brain does it easily, structuring data in the form of memories, but not in a language machines can understand. It’s a problem that the military has been grappling with for years.
…
The researchers hope their new neural net will enable experiments in which a computer can easily understand when a soldier is evaluating targets in a virtual scenario, as opposed to having to spend lots of time teaching the system to understand how to structure different individuals’ data, eye movements, their P300 responses, etc. The goal, one day, is a neural net that can learn instantaneously, continuously, and in real-time, by observing the brainwaves and eye movement of highly trained soldiers doing their jobs.
