Police to Use Information from Internet Connected Appliances
January 2nd, 2017Via: Telegraph:
High-tech washing machines and fridges will soon be used by detectives gathering evidence from crime scenes, experts have forecast.
The advent of ‘the internet of things’ in which more devices are connected together in a world of ‘smart working’ could in future provide important clues for the police.
Detectives are currently being trained to look for gadgets and white goods which could provide a ‘digital footprint’ of victims or criminals.
Mark Stokes, the head of the digital, cyber and communications forensics unit at the Metropolitan Police told The Times: “Wireless cameras within a device, such as fridge, may record the movement of owners and suspects.
Foxconn Plans to Replace Almost Every Human Worker with Robots
January 1st, 2017Just in case anyone out there thinks that this is somehow not real, or not going to happen, ASUS moved to 100% automation for video card production back in 2015.
Via: The Verge:
Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant behind Apple’s iPhone and numerous other major electronics devices, aims to automate away a vast majority of its human employees, according to a report from DigiTimes. Dai Jia-peng, the general manager of Foxconn’s automation committee, says the company has a three-phase plan in place to automate its Chinese factories using software and in-house robotics units, known as Foxbots.
…
The slow and steady march of manufacturing automation has been in place at Foxconn for years. The company said last year that it had set a benchmark of 30 percent automation at its Chinese factories by 2020. The company can now produce around 10,000 Foxbots a year, Jia-peng says, all of which can be used to replace human labor. In March, Foxconn said it had automated away 60,000 jobs at one of its factories.
Related: Advice for Children: Tell Them to Never Expect Stable Employment
The One About Amazon’s Floating Warehouses
December 29th, 2016My guess about this one is that it’s a joke—something like Elon Musk’s tunnel boring tweets.
Assuming that it would be physically possible to float hundreds of tons of merchandise over a city (forget about the FAA for a moment), what would the economics of that look like?
In any event, Jeff Bezos will probably be able to launch himself into space long before the floating warehouse plans… take off.
Via: Inverse:
Way back in April, Amazon quietly received a patent for “aerial fulfillment centers” — massive blimp warehouses that would float 45,000 feet in the sky and deliver products with precision-guided UAVs. In other words, in the future, you could order something online and have it literally fall out of the sky minutes later.
U.S. patent 9,305,280 was filed by Amazon Technologies Inc. on behalf of inventors Paul William Berg, Scott Isaacs, and Kelsey Lynn Blodgett all the way back in December of 2014.
NATO Auditor General Found Shot Dead
December 28th, 2016The link below appears to be the only source for this story in English at this time.
Via: Express:
POLICE in Belgium are probing the death of a high ranking NATO official after his body was discovered in his car with a gunshot wound to the head.
According to reports, Yves Chandelon, the 62-year-old auditor general of NATO was found miles away from both his home and office.
His body was found in the Belgian town of Andenne, 62 miles away from his home in Lens on December 16.
According to local newspaper reports Mr Chandelon was the registered keeper of three weapons however the gun found at the scene did not belong to him, it has been claimed.
And more bizarrely it has been reported locally that the gun which killed him was found in the glovebox of the vehicle.
Local news reports say Mr Chandelon’s family are concerned about the circumstances of the case.
They say initial suggestions that it was a possible suicide are incorrect.
Growing Number of Americans Are Retiring Outside the U.S.
December 28th, 2016Via: AP:
Newly widowed, Kay McCowen quit her job, sold her house, applied for Social Security and retired to Mexico. It was a move she and her husband, Mel, had discussed before he passed away in 2012.
“I wanted to find a place where I could afford to live off my Social Security,” she said. “The weather here is so perfect, and it’s a beautiful place.”
She is among a growing number of Americans who are retiring outside the United States. The number grew 17 percent between 2010 and 2015 and is expected to increase over the next 10 years as more baby boomers retire.
Just under 400,000 American retirees are now living abroad, according to the Social Security Administration. The countries they have chosen most often: Canada, Japan, Mexico, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Retirees most often cite the cost of living as the reason for moving elsewhere, said Olivia S. Mitchell, director of the Pension Research Council at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Tesla Autopilot Predicts Accident Caught on Dashcam a Second Later
December 27th, 2016Via: Electrek:
In the video embedded below, we can hear the Tesla Autopilot’s Forward Collision Warning sending out an alert for seemingly no reason, but a fraction of a second later we understand why when the vehicle in front of the Tesla crashes into an SUV that wasn’t visible from the standpoint of the Tesla driver, but apparently it was for the Autopilot’s radar…
What is most impressive is that fact that we can clearly hear the Forward Collision Warning alert before the lead vehicle even applied the brake, which shows that the Autopilot wasn’t only using the lead vehicle to plan the path, but also the vehicle in front of it – the black SUV.
Obama Quietly Signs The “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” Into Law
December 27th, 2016Via: ZeroHedge:
Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.
In short, long before “fake news” became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label “fake news.”
Research Credit: Kurt
The Mosul Dam Is Failing
December 27th, 2016Via: The New Yorker:
The problem wasn’t structural: the dam had been built to survive an aerial bombardment. (In fact, during the Gulf War, American jets bombed its generator, but the dam remained intact.) The problem, according to Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi-American civil engineer who has served as an adviser on the dam, is that “it’s just in the wrong place.” Completed in 1984, the dam sits on a foundation of soluble rock. To keep it stable, hundreds of employees have to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below. Without continuous maintenance, the rock beneath would wash away, causing the dam to sink and then break apart. But Iraq’s recent history has not been conducive to that kind of vigilance.
Virtual Reality Allows the Most Detailed, Intimate Digital Surveillance Yet
December 26th, 2016Via: The Intercept:
But as the tech industry continues to build VR’s social future, the very systems that enable immersive experiences are already establishing new forms of shockingly intimate surveillance. Once they are in place, researchers warn, the psychological aspects of digital embodiment — combined with the troves of data that consumer VR products can freely mine from our bodies, like head movements and facial expressions — will give corporations and governments unprecedented insight and power over our emotions and physical behavior.
World’s Largest Hedge Fund to Replace Managers with Artificial Intelligence
December 22nd, 2016Via: Guardian:
The world’s largest hedge fund is building a piece of software to automate the day-to-day management of the firm, including hiring, firing and other strategic decision-making.
Bridgewater Associates has a team of software engineers working on the project at the request of billionaire founder Ray Dalio, who wants to ensure the company can run according to his vision even when he’s not there, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“The role of many remaining humans at the firm wouldn’t be to make individual choices but to design the criteria by which the system makes decisions, intervening when something isn’t working,” wrote the Journal, which spoke to five former and current employees.
The firm, which manages $160bn, created the team of programmers specializing in analytics and artificial intelligence, dubbed the Systematized Intelligence Lab, in early 2015. The unit is headed up by David Ferrucci, who previously led IBM’s development of Watson, the supercomputer that beat humans at Jeopardy! in 2011.
Research Credit: Jb
