Posts

Pentagon Teams up With Apple, Boeing to Develop Wearable Tech

/0 Comments/in , /by

ogU.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter awarded $75 million on Friday to help a consortium of high-tech firms and researchers develop electronic systems packed with sensors flexible enough to be worn by soldiers or molded onto the skin of a plane.

Carter said funding for the Obama administration’s newest manufacturing institute would go to the FlexTech Alliance, a consortium of 162 companies, universities and other groups, from Boeing , Apple and Harvard, to Advantest Akron Polymer Systems and Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

The group will work to advance the development and manufacture of so-called flexible hybrid electronics, which can be embedded with sensors and stretched, twisted and bent to fit aircraft or other platform where they will be used.

“This is an emerging technology that takes advanced flexible materials for circuits, communications, sensors and power and combines them with thinned silicon chips to ultimately produce the next generation of electronic products,” Carter said . . .

The consortium, which will be managed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, will add $90 million to the federal money. Local governments will chip in more, boosting the group’s total five-year funding level to $171 million. (Read more from “Pentagon Teams up With Apple, Boeing to Develop Wearable Tech” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Techies Are Hiring This Wiccan Witch to Protect Their Computers From Viruses and Offices From Evil Spirits [+video]

/3 Comments/in , /by

Many people have had their computer or smartphone possessed by an evil demon — or at least that’s what it can feel like when some mysterious bug keeps causing an app to crash, or your phone keeps shutting off for no reason.

But if you truly think your electronics have been invaded by an evil spirit, there’s someone who will take your call — Reverend Joey Talley — a Wiccan witch from the San Francisco Bay Area who claims to solve supernatural issues for techies.

The Bay Area has always had a freewheeling spirit, which is part of the reason the tech industry found such a firm foothold there. And tech people are often experimental by nature, gravitating toward promises of an improved life through trial-and-error. This has led to some interesting crossover in San Francisco, with certain tech big shots from companies like Salesforce, Facebook, and Apple seeking out mystic help for conventional problems, SF Weekly reports.

Talley is one of those mystics, a Marin County witch boasting three master’s degrees and over 40 years of experience. Though tech problems are not the only ones Talley tackles, she is routinely called upon to debug people’s tech woes with spiritual energy.

“Most people want me to protect their computers from viruses and hacks,” she told SF Weekly. “So I’ll make charms for them. I like to use flora.” And when there are problems in office hardware, Talley turns to “Jet,” a black stone that serves to block energy. In extreme cases, she casts protection spells of her own over the entire company. (Read more from “Techies Are Hiring This Wiccan Witch to Protect Their Computers From Viruses and Offices From Evil Spirits” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Google Director: Humans Will Be Hybrids by 2030

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNN Money In the future, humans are going to be artificially intelligent.

That’s the prediction of Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google (GOOGL, Tech30), who spoke Wednesday at the Exponential Finance conference in New York.

Kurzweil predicts that humans will become hybrids in the 2030s. That means our brains will be able to connect directly to the cloud, where there will be thousands of computers, and those computers will augment our existing intelligence. He said the brain will connect via nanobots — tiny robots made from DNA strands . . .

Kurzweil, who is known as one the world’s leading inventors, has predicted what the future will look like before. In the ’90s, he made 147 predictions for 2009. In 2010, he reviewed his predictions, 86% of which were correct. He gave himself a “B” grade . . .

For those concerned with artificial intelligence taking over the world, Kurzweil said we have a moral imperative to keep developing the technology while controlling for potential dangers. (Read more from “Ray Kurzweil: Humans Will Be Hybrids by 2030” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

New GPS Technology That Identifies Locations Within Centimetres Could Open Way for Advances in Virtual Reality

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: The Independent

Photo Credit: The Independent

New GPS technology that can identify locations accurate to within centimetres could open the way for huge advances in virtual reality and mobile mapping, scientists believe.

Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas said the centimetre-accurate GPS-based positioning system could allow unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver packages to a specific spot on a consumer’s back porch.

The new system, which is far more precise than the orientation capability currently available on smartphones, could also enable collision avoidance technologies on cars and allow virtual reality (VR) headsets to be used outdoors.

Researchers said the advanced GPS coupled with a smartphone camera could be used to quickly build a globally referenced 3-D map of one’s surroundings that would greatly expand the radius of a VR game. Currently, VR does not use GPS, which limits its use to indoors and usually a two-to three-foot radius.

Todd Humphreys, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and lead researcher, said: “Imagine games where, rather than sit in front of a monitor and play, you are in your backyard actually running around with other players. To be able to do this type of outdoor, multiplayer virtual reality game, you need highly accurate position and orientation that is tied to a global reference frame.” (Read more from “New GPS Technology That Identifies Locations Within Centimetres Could Open Way for Advances in Virtual Reality” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Could Virtual Reality Bring Your Loved Ones Back From the Dead?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Project Elysium-970-80The hardware and software behind virtual reality is improving at a rapid rate, and that opens up new possibilities – like being able to chat with a computer-generated representation of someone who has long since shuffled off this mortal coil.

That’s the idea behind Project Elysium, a new app Paranormal Games is putting together ready for the Oculus VR Jam 2015. Details are scarce at the moment but the firm will have to submit screenshots for the competition next week and then video footage the week after that . . .

For people who lost loved ones when they were very young, it might offer more comfort than flicking through a faded photo album, for example – and the tech might also enable actors to keep on landing those starring roles long after they’ve passed on. Still, for most of us this is an idea that’s going to take a lot of getting used to. (Read more from “Could Virtual Reality Bring Your Loved Ones Back From the Dead?” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Watch: European Company Implanting Electronic Chips in Employees’ Hands

/2 Comments/in , /by

By BBC. Want to gain entry to your office, get on a bus, or perhaps buy a sandwich? We’re all getting used to swiping a card to do all these things. But at Epicenter, a new hi-tech office block in Sweden, they are trying a different approach – a chip under the skin.

Felicio de Costa, whose company is one of the tenants, arrives at the front door and holds his hand against it to gain entry. Inside he does the same thing to get into the office space he rents, and he can also wave his hand to operate the photocopier.

That’s all because he has a tiny RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip, about the size of a grain of rice, implanted in his hand. Soon, others among the 700 people expected to occupy the complex will also be offered the chance to be chipped. Along with access to doors and photocopiers, they’re promised further services in the longer run, including the ability to pay in the cafe with a touch of a hand.

On the day of the building’s official opening, the developer’s chief executive was, himself, chipped live on stage. And I decided that if was to get to grips with this technology, I had to bite the bullet – and get chipped too.

The whole process is being organised by a Swedish bio-hacking group which was profiled by my colleague Jane Wakefield recently. One of its members, a rather fearsome looking tattooist, inserted my chip. (Read more about the company in Sweden implanting electronic chips under their staff’s skin HERE)

______________________________________________________

Jury Awards $150,000 in ‘Mark of the Beast’ Case

By WND. For the managers of West Virginia’s Consol Energy/Consolidation Coal Company, it was just a technological innovation to improve tracking of employees’ time and attendance, but for Beverly R. Butcher Jr. it was the Bible’s “Mark of the Beast.”

A jury sided this month with the general laborer, awarding him $150,000 in compensatory damages, reported the Clarksburg Exponent Telegram.

Butcher, an evangelical Christian, asserted he had been told he was required to submit to biometric hand scanning, even though he informed his employer in writing it was contrary to “his genuinely held religious beliefs about the relationship between hand-scanning technology and the Mark of the Beast and Antichrist discussed in the Bible.”

Revelation 13:16-17, a passage many Christians see as warning of the future Antichrist, reads: “He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.” (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Boy Gets 3D Printed ‘Storm Trooper’ Prosthetic Arm (+video)

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Alex Heigl. Liam Porter is 7 years old. He lives in Augusta, Georgia, and recently, he got a new arm.

Born without part of his left arm, Porter had a traditional prosthetic when he was younger, but his mom Ryan told the The Augusta Chronicle that it was cumbersome for a growing boy.

“It didn’t really move,” she said. “So to a little kid, it was nothing but dead weight. He did a lot without it.”

His new arm, though, is an improvement in every way.

Not only is it lighter and easier to move, it’s also aesthetically modeled after the armor worn by the Imperial Stormtroopers in Star Wars. (Read more about the boy who received the 3D printed prosthetic arm HERE)

________________________________________________

Russian Battle Robots Near Testing for Military Use

By The Moscow Times. Machine-gun wielding battle robots are going to be tested in Russia’s Astrakhan region for use by the country’s Strategic Missile Forces, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.

Major Dmitry Andreyev, a representative for the Defense Ministry’s Strategic Missile Forces, was cited as saying that preparation for the testing is currently in its final stage.

The trials will be focused on “exploring mobile and stationary robotic systems, including those that are responsible for the formulation of remote-controlled means of stealth technology and signaling,” Andreyev said. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

New Weapon in the Terror Tool Kit? Encryption Software Blocks all Eavesdropping

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APA cheap new encryption technology for mobile phones completely blocks eavesdropping, even from warrant-wielding law enforcement agents – raising fears the technology could fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals.

The software poses a growing problem that U.S. law enforcement agencies call “going dark” – the spread of communications technologies that cannot be intercepted even with a warrant because agencies lack the technical capabilities.

But experts say the feds’ proposed solution to get around the blackout – by legally mandating the insertion of “back doors” into such software to allow eavesdropping – creates an opening which could be exploited by hackers, online criminals or cyberspies.

The issue is not unique to the United States. Intelligence and counter-terrorism officials in the United Kingdom are concerned about the new mobile phone application, called Seecrypt, according the London Mail on Sunday.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Now Using Technology to Track All Credit Card Transactions

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: US NewsThe Internal Revenue Service relies on technology more than ever to sniff out tax cheats using robo-audits and data mining—but so far it has caught lot of minnows, and big fish are still eluding detection.

Even as millions of people’s accounts are screened online and matched against their digital files elsewhere, the IRS’s data-detection tools come nowhere close to collecting the $400 billion in tax dodges estimated to take place each year. The area in which its robo-audits have had the most impact is on tax returns for low-income taxpayers who try to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit. In total, fraudulent claims totaled $2 billion, just 0.01 percent of the total of individual taxes. The EITC was the biggest single compliance problem cited.

That amount is expected to rise in the tax year ahead as the IRS extends the use of data mining to include the personal data of millions more taxpayers. Its sophisticated data-matching and pattern-recognition technology, largely developed by IBM over the past decade, will reach up the income ladder to include more middle-income and small-business filers who itemize deductions, although it is unlikely to have any impact on the complicated filings of high-net-worth taxpayers in the top 5 percent of income earnings, say tax experts who have studied the IRS plans.

“Real time” audits of electronic tax returns. The IRS’s next phase in high-tech tax collection will be to create a “real-time” check of tax returns to “match them to third party information,” said U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George in testimony before Congress. Starting this year, the IRS tools will be able to track all credit card transactions, for starters. The agency has also instructed agents on using online sources such as social media and e-commerce sites including eBay, as well as the rich data generated by mobile devices. In one controversial disclosure in April, the ACLU showed documents in which the IRS general counsel said the agency could look at emails without warrants, but the IRS has said it will not use this power.

Read more from this story HERE.

Court OKs Warrantless Use of Hidden Surveillance Cameras on Private Property

/5 Comments/in , , /by

photo credit: fonstokPolice are allowed in some circumstances to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant, a federal judge said yesterday.

CNET has learned that U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled that it was reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission — and without a warrant — to install multiple “covert digital surveillance cameras” in hopes of uncovering evidence that 30 to 40 marijuana plants were being grown.

This is the latest case to highlight how advances in technology are causing the legal system to rethink how Americans’ privacy rights are protected by law. In January, the Supreme Court rejected warrantless GPS tracking after previously rejecting warrantless thermal imaging, but it has not yet ruled on warrantless cell phone tracking or warrantless use of surveillance cameras placed on private property without permission.

Yesterday Griesbach adopted a recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan dated October 9. That recommendation said that the DEA’s warrantless surveillance did not violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and requires that warrants describe the place that’s being searched.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the use of technology as a substitute for ordinary police surveillance,” Callahan wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.