Car Completes 99% of 3,400-Mile U.S. Road Trip in Autonomous Mode
April 3rd, 2015Via: AP:
An autonomous car’s recent 3,400-mile U.S. road trip proves there’s at least one thing computers do better than humans: Follow the speed limit.
Auto supplier Delphi Corp. fitted an Audi Q5 with radar, cameras and laser sensors to navigate the 15-state journey from San Francisco to New York, mostly traveling on highways. The car drove itself 99 percent of the time, Delphi said Thursday.
Along the way, the autonomous Audi never drove above the speed limit, even when everyone else did. As a result, other drivers subjected the car — and its human occupants — to “a few hateful gestures,” said Jeff Owens, Delphi’s chief technology officer Jeff Owens.
The person sitting in the car’s driver seat intervened once when traffic was weaving around in a construction zone, and again when the car didn’t want to move into a busy left lane to avoid police stopped on the right shoulder. The car also got a little skittish when it was next to semi-trailer trucks, edging over to avoid them. But for the most part, it easily navigated bridges, traffic circles and open highways, even in heavy rain, Owens said.
“We expected we would be in autonomous mode most of the time, but to be in it close to 99 percent of the time was a pleasant surprise,” Owens told The Associated Press Thursday. “The equipment was flawless.”
Delphi engineers collected nearly three terabytes of data — equivalent to 30 percent of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress — that they can use to further enhance autonomous driving systems.
Yemen’s Shiite Rebels Capture Presidential Palace in Aden
April 2nd, 2015Via: CTV:
Yemen’s Shiite rebels and their allies fought their way through the commercial centre of Aden on Thursday and seized the presidential palace on a strategic hilltop in this southern coastal city, security officials said.
The capture was a major blow to the Saudi-led coalition, which has been carrying out airstrikes for a week now across Yemen, including in the capital, Sanaa, in a campaign meant to halt the advance of the Iran-backed rebels known as Houthis.
The Maasheeq palace in Aden — a cluster of colonial-era villas perched atop a rocky hill that juts into the Arabian Sea — was President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s last seat of power before he fled to Saudi Arabia last month in the face of the Houthi advance. He had earlier fled to Aden from rebel-held Sanaa.
California Imposes First-Ever Mandatory Water Restrictions
April 2nd, 2015Via: Time:
California’s governor issued unprecedented mandatory water restrictions for the entire state on Wednesday, in the face of a persistent drought that is growing dire.
Governor Jerry Brown directed the State Water Resources Control Board to cut the state’s water usage by 25% by enacting a series of water-reduction practices, which could translate to savings of about 1.5 million acre-feet of water over the next nine months. The plan would include replacing 50 million sq. ft. of lawns throughout the state with drought-tolerant landscaping, replacing appliances with energy-efficient models and enforcing restricted water use for places like golf courses and cemeteries. Additional measures will address agricultural water use and investment in water-saving technologies.
“Today we are standing on dry grass where there should be five feet of snow. This historic drought demands unprecedented action,” said Brown in a statement referring to the record-low snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. “Therefore, I’m issuing an executive order mandating substantial water reductions across our state. As Californians, we must pull together and save water in every way possible.”
AI Interns: Software Already Taking Jobs from Humans
April 1st, 2015Via: New Scientist:
Humans used to manually move data between the relevant systems to complete these tasks, copying a phone number from one database to another, for instance. The user still has to call up and speak to a human, but now an AI does the actual work.
To train the AI, it watches and learns while humans do simple, repetitive database tasks. With enough training data, the AIs can then go to work on their own. “They navigate a virtual environment,” says Jason Kingdon, chairman of Blue Prism, the start-up which developed O2’s artificial workers. “They mimic a human. They do exactly what a human does. If you watch one of these things working it looks a bit mad. You see it typing. Screens pop-up, you see it cutting and pasting.”
Turkey Power Outage Shuts Down Public Transportation and Half of Provinces
April 1st, 2015Via: Guardian:
A huge power cut has caused chaos and shut down public transport on Tuesday across Turkey, with the government refusing to rule out that the electricity system had been the victim of an attack.
The nationwide power cut, the worst in 15 years, began about 10.36am in Istanbul, the state-run Anatolia news agency quoted the Turkey Electricity Transmission company (TEIAS) as saying.
It was confirmed to have hit 49 of the country’s total 81 provinces, from the Greek border to those in the south-east neighbouring Iran and Iraq, including Istanbul and the capital, Ankara.
Several hours later, swaths of Turkey including much of Istanbul were still without power, although public transport systems such as metro lines appeared to be working again.
Former Blackwater Gets Rich as Afghan Drug Production Hits Record High
April 1st, 2015Via: Guardian:
In a war full of failures, the US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan stands out: opiate production has climbed steadily over recent years to reach record-high levels last year.
Yet there is a clear winner in the anti-drug effort – not the Afghan people, but the infamous mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater.
Statistics released on Tuesday reveal that the rebranded private security firm, known since 2011 as Academi, reaped over half a billion dollars from the futile Defense Department push to eradicate Afghan narcotics, some 32% of the $1.8bn in contracting money the Pentagon has devoted to the job since 2002.
The company is by far the biggest beneficiary of counternarcotics largesse in Afghanistan. Its closest competition, the defense giant Northrop Grumman, claimed $250m.
…
Far from eradicating the deep-rooted opiate trade, US counternarcotics efforts have proven useless, according to a series of recent official inquiries. Other aspects of the billions that the US has poured into Afghanistan over the last 13 years of war have even contributed to the opium boom.
In December, the United Nations reported a 60% growth in Afghan land used for opium poppy cultivation since 2011, up to 209,000 hectares. The estimated $3bn value of Afghan heroin and morphine represents some 15% of Afghan GDP.
“Given the growth in opium poppy cultivation, it must be assumed that the Taliban’s income from the illegal trade in narcotics has remained an important factor in generating assets for the group,” the United Nations reported.
That same month, the US inspector general for Afghanistan warned that the opium trade would surely rise as international aid money flees the country with the winding down of the war. Yet the inspector general also noted that US reconstruction projects, particularly those devoted to “improved irrigation, roads, and agricultural assistance” were probably leading to the explosion in opium cultivation.
“[A]ffordable deep-well technology turned 200,000 hectares of desert in southwestern Afghanistan into arable land over the past decade,” the inspector general found, concluding that “much of this newly arable land is dedicated to opium cultivation”.
Research Credit: ottilie
1,000-Year-Old Onion and Garlic Eye Remedy Kills MRSA
March 31st, 2015Via: BBC:
A 1,000-year-old treatment for eye infections could hold the key to killing antibiotic-resistant superbugs, experts have said.
Scientists recreated a 9th Century Anglo-Saxon remedy using onion, garlic and part of a cow’s stomach.
They were “astonished” to find it almost completely wiped out methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as MRSA.
Their findings will be presented at a national microbiology conference.
The remedy was found in Bald’s Leechbook – an old English manuscript containing instructions on various treatments held in the British Library.
Anglo-Saxon expert Dr Christina Lee, from the University of Nottingham, translated the recipe for an “eye salve”, which includes garlic, onion or leeks, wine and cow bile.
Experts from the university’s microbiology team recreated the remedy and then tested it on large cultures of MRSA.
Amazon Tests Delivery Drones at Secret Canadian Site After U.S. Frustration
March 31st, 2015Via: Guardian:
Amazon is testing its drone delivery service at a secret site in Canada, following repeated warnings by the e-commerce giant that it would go outside the US to bypass what it sees as the US federal government’s lethargic approach to the new technology.
The largest internet retailer in the world is keeping the location of its new test site closely guarded. What can be revealed is that the company’s formidable team of roboticists, software engineers, aeronautics experts and pioneers in remote sensing – including a former Nasa astronaut and the designer of the wingtip of the Boeing 787 – are now operating in British Columbia.
The end goal is to utilise what Amazon sees as a slice of virgin airspace – above 200ft, where most buildings end, and below 500ft, where general aviation begins. Into that aerial slice the company plans to pour highly autonomous drones of less than 55lbs, flying through corridors 10 miles or longer at 50mph and carrying payloads of up to 5lbs that account for 86% of all the company’s packages.
Amazon has acquired a plot of open land lined by oak trees and firs, where it is conducting frequent experimental flights with the full blessing of the Canadian government. As if to underline the significance of the move, the test site is barely 2,000ft from the US border, which was clearly visible from where the Guardian stood on a recent visit.
Hives
March 31st, 2015Warning: Nothing that appears on Cryptogon should be considered medical advice.
Update: Vitamin B-12
Vitamin B-12 worked for reader KD.
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Update: Thanks to Everyone Who Emailed
Woh. A lot of people have had experience with hives. The large majority of people concur with everything you’d read within two minutes on the Internet:
1) Find and avoid the trigger (good luck with that). It’s hilarious, by the way, looking up causes of hives. It would be easier if it just said, “Anything can cause hives.”
2) Use antihistamines.
Reader tal recommended very large doses of Vitamin C in a comment below. I’d previously tried 4 grams over a 24 hour period, but that didn’t seem to do anything. Hives continued to flare up at that level. Last night, I was ready to tap the mat so I took the cetirizine, which worked remarkably well. I’ll try tal’s Vitamin C dose schedule (or until saturation) if it comes back again.
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I’ve got hives. Bad.
This has never happened to me before. I have no idea what set this off.
Even though I was pretty sure I guessed it right with Doctor Goggle, I actually panicked anyway and went to see a real doctor. Yep, hives. She prescribed me Cetirizine HCl and Hydrocortisone cream.
I’m really hoping that this just fizzles out after a couple of days.
But I might as well ask: If you have had hives, have any alternative remedies worked for you?
Shooting Incident at NSA
March 30th, 2015Update: “Two cross-dressing men…”
This one gets a Cryptogon WTF Gold Star.
Via: Guardian:
Two cross-dressing men who were shot at by National Security Agency police when they disobeyed orders at a heavily guarded gate had just stolen a car from a man who picked them up for a motel “party”, police said Tuesday.
One suspect was killed and the other was injured, along with an NSA police officer, as the driver of the stolen SUV apparently tried to get away from the guards.
The SUV’s owner, a 60-year-old man from Baltimore who has not been publicly identified, told investigators that he had picked up the two strangers in Baltimore. They arrived around 7.30am on Monday to “party” at the nearby Terrace Motel in Elkridge, Howard County police said.
A police spokeswoman, Mary Phelan, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that she “can’t confirm there was any sexual activity involved”, and declined to elaborate on whether drugs or alcohol were part of their “party”.
About an hour after checking into a room, the SUV owner told police he went to the bathroom, and when he came out, the others were gone, along with his car keys. He called police to report the stolen car, and minutes later, just before 9am, the men took a highway exit that leads directly to a restricted area at the NSA entrance at Fort Meade.
The FBI said on Monday that agents do not believe terrorism was their motive. No one has explained yet why the men ended up outside the NSA. However, the new timeline suggests they may have simply taken a wrong turn while fleeing the motel, about 12 minutes away.
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Via: Washington Post:
Shots were fired Monday morning after two people in a vehicle tried to ram a gate at Fort Meade, a military installation in Anne Arundel County, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation.
One person was killed and at least one other person was injured, according to two law enforcement officials. Few other details were immediately available about the incident which occurred around 9 a.m.
Anne Arundel County Fire officials confirmed that they had sent units to NSA’s facility but said they could not release any information because the incident is on the NSA property.
Just before 11 a.m., NSA officials said they had no further information.
