Brazil Unveils ‘Robocop’ Suit to Protect Elite Police Unit During World Cup
May 15th, 2014Via: National Post:
There will be a RoboCop style to the face of policing in Rio when football fans turn up for the World Cup in Brazil next month.
Members of a special unit set up for the tournament and the 2016 Olympics in Rio have been given 200 sets of the 22lb “RoboCop” protective equipment, which is flame resistant to up to 427C.
It includes a helmet and vest that protects the back, chest and shoulders, plastic shin pads, a pepper spray mask and a belt for a.40 calibre pistol, stun gun, handcuffs and baton.
The Major Events Police Battalion, a branch of the military police, was formed in January this year in response to widespread public demonstrations during last year’s Confederations Cup.
That tournament was marred by ugly clashes between police and demonstrators as thousands protested against public spending on the World Cup. Rio de Janeiro will host seven games during the competition, including the final on July 13.
Skygate 911
May 15th, 2014Via: Pilots for 9/11 Truth:
Ocean Confetti
May 15th, 2014Via: MinuteEarth:
‘Now The Military Is Going To Build Robots That Have Morals’
May 14th, 2014Via: DefenseOne:
The Office of Naval Research will award $7.5 million in grant money over five years to university researchers from Tufts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Brown, Yale and Georgetown to explore how to build a sense of right and wrong and moral consequence into autonomous robotic systems.
Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack
May 14th, 2014Via: Tim Bray:
That’s the title of RFC 7258, also known as BCP 188 (where BCP stands for “Best Common Practice”); it represents Internet Engineering Task Force consensus on the fact that many powerful well-funded entities feel it is appropriate to monitor people’s use of the Net, without telling those people. The consensus is: This monitoring is an attack and designers of Internet protocols must work to mitigate it.
Hunter Biden to Ukraine Gas Board
May 13th, 2014Via: Politico:
Hunter Biden, the younger son of Vice President Joe Biden, will be joining Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, the company announced in a statement
“The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals,” Alan Apter, Burisma Holdings’ chairman of the board of directors, said in a statement, which was reported by The Moscow Times on Tuesday.
Human Consciousness Probably Can’t Be Modeled On A Computer
May 13th, 2014Via: Medium:
The central part of their new work is to describe the mathematical properties of a system that can store integrated information in this way but without it leaking away. And this leads them to their central proof. “The implications of this proof are that we have to abandon either the idea that people enjoy genuinely [integrated] consciousness or that brain processes can be modelled computationally,” say Maguire and co.
Since Tononi’s main assumption is that consciousness is the experience of integrated information, it is the second idea that must be abandoned: brain processes cannot be modelled computationally.
Robotic Arm Catches Objects On The Fly
May 13th, 2014Via: EPFL:
A robot developed by EPFL researchers is capable of reacting on the spot and grasping objects with complex shapes and trajectories in less than five hundredths of a second.
Is Your Job at Risk from Robot Labor? Check This Handy Interactive Chart
May 13th, 2014Via: Quartz:
In the second machine age, robots will perform tasks once thought to require uniquely human abilities, like driving our taxis and filleting our fish. But not all jobs will be equally affected by automation. The interactive plot above attempts to sort out the differences.
We compared three variables related to the American workforce: the median wage for various jobs; the number of people employed in those positions in the United States; and the likelihood that these jobs will become automated. The data for this last metric come from a recent study, “The Future of Employment” (pdf). Use the interactive to explore which jobs are most susceptible to computerization, how many people will be affected, and how much money these workers make.
The densest cluster sits at the bottom-right, representing the massive numbers of workers in jobs that are both low-paying and highly likely to become automated. That corner is home to many occupations that are already being automated: cashier, retail salesperson, telemarketer.
But a low median wage doesn’t necessarily mean robots are set to make humans in a given job obsolete. In the bottom-left are low-income jobs that require high levels of “social intelligence” or creativity, such as coaching and photography. Computers are still hopeless at these kinds of tasks.
Document Establishes NSA’s Involvement in COINTELPRO
May 13th, 2014Via: The Guardian:
One document from the Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012, chillingly underscores the point. It revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express “radical” ideas and who have a “radicalising” influence on others. The memo discusses six individuals in particular, all Muslims, though it stresses that they are merely “exemplars”.
The NSA explicitly states that none of the targeted individuals is a member of a terrorist organisation or involved in any terror plots. Instead, their crime is the views they express, which are deemed “radical”, a term that warrants pervasive surveillance and destructive campaigns to “exploit vulnerabilities”.
Among the information collected about the individuals, at least one of whom is a “US person”, are details of their online sex activities and “online promiscuity” – the porn sites they visit and surreptitious sex chats with women who are not their wives. The agency discusses ways to exploit this information to destroy their reputations and credibility.
