A Team of AI Algorithms Just Crushed Humans in a Complex Computer Game
June 25th, 2018Via: MIT Technology Review:
Five different AI algorithms have teamed up to kick human butt in Dota 2, a popular strategy computer game.
Researchers at OpenAI, a nonprofit based in California, developed the algorithmic A team, which they call the OpenAI Five. Each algorithm uses a neural network to learn not only how to play the game, but also how to cooperate with its AI teammates. It has started defeating amateur Dota 2 players in testing, OpenAI says.
NSA’s Wiretap Rooms in Eight U.S. Cities
June 25th, 2018Via: The Intercept:
THE SECRETS ARE hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.
The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it “has access to information that transits the nation,” but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.
Flashback: Mark Klein
Pentagon Prepares to Create Temporary Camps for Illegal Immigrants at Two Bases
June 24th, 2018Via: Reuters:
The U.S. military is preparing to build temporary camps at two military bases to house immigrants, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Sunday, in the latest sign of a growing U.S. military support role for President Donald Trump’s politically charged immigration policies.
Mattis, speaking to reporters during a flight to Alaska, did not specify the names of the bases or say whether they would house immigrant children or their parents, or both.
“The details are being worked out … about exactly how much capacity they need at the two bases, what other kinds of facilities they need built,” Mattis said, as he disclosed the request for the facilities from the government’s Department of Homeland Security.
Related: Trump Says Illegal Immigrants Should Be Deported with ‘No Judges or Court Cases’
Did Stonehenge Builders Use Pythagoras’ Theorem 2,000 Years Before the Greek Philosopher Was Born?
June 23rd, 2018Via: National Post:
THE builders of Britain’s ancient stone circles such as Stonehenge used Pythagoras’s theorem 2,000 years before the Greek philosopher was born, experts have claimed.
A new book, Megalith, has re-examined the geometry of Neolithic monuments and concluded they were constructed by sophisticated astronomers who understood lunar, solar and eclipse cycles and built huge stone calendars using complex geometry.
More: Megalith: Studies in Stone
Researchers Fish Yellowcake Uranium from the Sea With Acrylic Fibers
June 23rd, 2018Via: IEEE:
Researchers at the U.S. Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and LCW Supercritical Technologies made use of readily available acrylic fibers to pull five grams of yellowcake—a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors—from seawater.
The milestone, announced in mid-June, follows seven years of work and a roughly US $25 million investment by the federal energy agency. Another $1.15 million is being channeled to LCW as it attempts to scale up the technique for commercial use. The effort builds on work by Japanese researchers in the late 1990s and was prompted by interest in finding alternative sources of uranium for a future time when terrestrial sources are depleted.
Nuclear power plant operators increasingly want their facilities to run for up to a century, says Gary Gill, a researcher at PNNL who led the seawater extraction effort. But within decades, he says, terrestrial sources of uranium could be depleted or prove to be too expensive for use in commercial reactors.
A 2017 assessment by the World Nuclear Association says that roughly 445 reactors worldwide, with a combined 390 gigawatts of generating capacity, require around 75,000 tons of uranium oxide concentrate each year to operate.
In the U.S., an expected surge of demand for uranium to fuel a fleet of new reactors largely dried up after the 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. More recently, low natural gas prices have hurt the economic case for nuclear power plants, leading some developers to scrap plans for new units and a number of utility operators to consider closing existing ones.
Before it stopped reporting on U.S. uranium reserves a decade ago, the DOE’s Energy Information Administration said terrestrial uranium reserves could meet anywhere from 10 to 23 years’ worth of demand, depending on market prices. EIA pointed out at the time that domestic U.S. uranium mining supplied around 10 percent of U.S. requirements for nuclear fuel.
Unlike terrestrial sources that can be mined at specific locations, uranium in seawater shows up in concentrations of around 3.3 parts per billion. With a total volume estimated at more than 4 billion tons, there is around 500 times more uranium in seawater than in land-based sources. As a result, the widely dispersed sea-based resource could last for thousands of years, Gill says.
Flying Dragon Robot Transforms Itself to Squeeze Through Gaps
June 23rd, 2018Via: IEEE:
It’s a modular flying robot powered by ducted fans that can transform literally on the fly, from a square to a snake to anything in between, allowing it to stretch out to pass through small holes and then make whatever other shape you want once it’s on the other side.
Supreme Court Says Warrant Necessary for Phone Location Data
June 22nd, 2018Via: Cnet:
The US Supreme Court has ruled in favor of digital privacy.
In a 5-4 decision on Friday the justices said that police need warrants to gather phone location data as evidence for trials. That reversed and remanded a decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Carpenter v. United States is the first case about phone location data that the Supreme Court has ruled on. That makes it a landmark decision regarding how law enforcement agencies can use technology as they build cases. The court heard arguments in the case on Nov. 29.
The dispute dates back to a 2011 robbery in Detroit, after which police gathered months of phone location data from Timothy Carpenter’s phone provider. They pulled together 12,898 different locations from Carpenter, over 127 days.
The legal and privacy concern was that police gathered the four months’ worth of Carpenter’s digital footprints without a warrant. A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals judge ruled that cellphone location data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable search and seizure, and therefore didn’t require a warrant.
In the Supreme Court’s ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the government’s searches of Carpenter’s phone records were considered a Fourth Amendment search.
Related: “You work it backwards to make it clean”
Big Pharma Vaccine Billionaire Just Bought the LA Times
June 21st, 2018I remember the operation the LA Times carried out on Gary Webb back in the 1990s, so…
Yeah.
Via: Natural News:
The latest example of Big Pharma taking over the media is the purchase of the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Tribune for $500 million by Big Pharma billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. Instead of paying for advertisements, pharma billionaires have decided to just buy the publications outright so they can control the entire publication. All the journalists here are now officially bought; these publications should officially be recognized as propaganda rags from now on.
Research Credit: Pookie
The World’s First Robot-Made Burger Is About to Hit the Bay Area
June 21st, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
On June 27, the world’s first robot-crafted burger will roll off a conveyor belt in San Francisco and into the hands of the public.
You could call it the freshest burger on Earth.
The product, from Bay Area-based Creator, a culinary robotics company, is assembled and cooked in a machine that contains 20 computers, 350 sensors, and 50 actuator mechanisms. It does everything from slicing and toasting the brioche bun to adding toppings (to order) and seasoning and cooking the patties, all in five minutes. The meat is ground to order—why it’s touted as so fresh—and sourced from premium ingredients. It emerges from the machine piled with tomatoes and lettuce, sprinkled with seasonings, and drizzled with sauces, at which point it’s transferred by human hands to the customer. The price: $6.
U.S. Releases Report Showing Elevated Health Risks from Nonstick Chemicals
June 21st, 2018Hair on fire lunatic fringe people who have assumed this for decades: Right again.
Via: Science Magazine:
President Donald Trump’s administration has released a politically charged toxicology report about nonstick chemicals showing they can endanger human health at significantly lower levels than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has previously called safe.
The draft report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) is a toxicological profile of four types of stain- and water-resistant chemicals.
It finds that so-called “minimum risk levels” for the toxins should be seven to 10 times lower than standards set by EPA in 2016.
The lowest level included in the ATSDR report is 12 parts per trillion in drinking water, which is greater than 80% below the current maximum safe level EPA has advised for two types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
By contrast, the 2016 EPA voluntary health advisory for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) warned that exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion could be dangerous.
The report’s release follows mounting congressional pressure from both sides of the aisle after news surfaced last month that a White House official in January had warned that releasing the report would be a “potential public relations nightmare” (E&E Daily, May 15).
