Tag: events

Artificially Intelligent Russian Robot Escapes…Again

Slashdot reader Taco Cowboy brings a new report about Russian robot IR77, which has escaped from its research lab again… The story goes that an engineer working at Promobot Laboratories, in the Russian city of Perm, had left a gate open. Out trundled Promobot, traveling some 150 feet into the city before running out of juice. There it sat, batteries mostly dead, in the middle of a Perm street for 40 minutes, slowing cars to a halt and puzzling traffic cops A researcher at Promobot’s facility in Russia said that the runaway robot was designed to interact with human beings, learn from experiences, and remember places and the faces of everyone it meets. Other versions of the Promobot have been docile, but this one just can’t seem to fall in line, even after the researchers reprogrammed it twice. Despite several rewrites of Promobot’s artificial intelligence, the robot continued to move toward exits. “We have changed the AI system twice, ” Kivokurtsev said. “So now I think we might have to dismantle it”. Fans of the robot are pushing for a reprieve, according to an article titled ‘Don’t kill it!’: Runaway robot IR77 could be de-activated because of ‘love for freedom’ Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Artificially Intelligent Russian Robot Escapes…Again

These Images Were Taken With an Entirely New Kind of Photography

Image: Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS These beetles may look like two different species, but they’re the same individual. The difference lies in how they were photographed, using a new lens that allows scientists to “see” one of the most fundamental properties of biology: chirality. Read more…

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These Images Were Taken With an Entirely New Kind of Photography

Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer

An anonymous reader writes: The EFF reports that a federal court in Virginia today ruled that a criminal defendant has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in his personal computer (PDF), located inside his home. The court says the federal government does not need a warrant to hack into an individual’s computer. EFF reports: “The implications for the decision, if upheld, are staggering: law enforcement would be free to remotely search and seize information from your computer, without a warrant, without probable cause, or without any suspicion at all. To say the least, the decision is bad news for privacy. But it’s also incorrect as a matter of law, and we expect there is little chance it would hold up on appeal. (It also was not the central component of the judge’s decision, which also diminishes the likelihood that it will become reliable precedent.) But the decision underscores a broader trend in these cases: courts across the country, faced with unfamiliar technology and unsympathetic defendants, are issuing decisions that threaten everyone’s rights. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer

Why Columbus Just Won $140 Million to Become the Transportation City of the Future

Of the seven cities chosen as finalists for the US Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, Columbus, Ohio may have seemed like the underdog. (It was the only finalist that has no rail system whatsoever.) But today, USDOT announced Columbus as the winner of over $50 million in cash that will transform its transportation system into one of the most forward-looking in the country. Read more…

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Why Columbus Just Won $140 Million to Become the Transportation City of the Future

Advertiser That Tracked Around 100M Phone Users Without Consent Pays $950,000

Mobile advertising firm InMobi will be paying a fine of $950, 000 and revamp its services to resolve federal regulators’ claims that it deceptively tracked locations of hundreds of millions of people, including children. Ars Technica reports:The US Federal Trade Commission alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday that Singapore-based InMobi undermined phone users’ ability to make informed decisions about the collection of their location information. While InMobi claimed that its software collected geographical whereabouts only when end users provided opt-in consent, the software in fact used nearby Wi-Fi signals to infer locations when permission wasn’t given, FTC officials alleged. InMobi then archived the location information and used it to push targeted advertisements to individual phone users. Specifically, the FTC alleged, InMobi collected nearby basic service set identification addresses, which act as unique serial numbers for wireless access points. The company, which thousands of Android and iOS app makers use to deliver ads to end users, then fed each BSSID into a “geocorder” database to infer the phone user’s latitude and longitude, even when an end user hadn’t provided permission for location to be tracked through the phone’s dedicated location feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Advertiser That Tracked Around 100M Phone Users Without Consent Pays $950,000

The Cheapest Kindle Just Got Better

Amazon has just announced some nice improvements to the cheapest Kindle . The price is still crazy good at $80, and the battery still lasts for weeks. (It also still has a middling 167 ppi display.) But it’s also thinner, lighter, and now comes in black and white. Read more…

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The Cheapest Kindle Just Got Better

Microsoft: Nearly One In Three Azure Virtual Machines Now Are Running Linux

Mary Jo Foley, reporting for ZDNet: Microsoft’s self-professed Linux love is helping the company in the cloud. During his keynote at DockerCon 2016 in Seattle today, Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich showed off some of the new and upcoming ways Microsoft is adding more container support to its cloud and server products. He also revealed a couple of new interesting datapoints. In the past year, Russinovich said, Microsoft has gone from one in four of its Azure virtual machines running Linux to nearly one in three. The other two-thirds of Azure customers are running Windows Server in their virtual machines. Russinovich showed off the promised Windows Server support that officials said would be coming at some point to the company’s Azure Container Service (ACS). Microsoft made Azure Container Service generally available in April 2016, but for Linux containers only. Last year, company execs said Microsoft also would bring Windows Server support to ACS. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft: Nearly One In Three Azure Virtual Machines Now Are Running Linux

Drone Footage Inside a 19th-Century Church Looks Too Incredible to Be Real

The talented pilots and cinematographers of France’s BigFly skillfully piloted a camera-equipped drone through the sanctuary of the 137-year-old Église Saint-Louis de Paimbœuf . Given the church is filled with priceless art and architecture, the skills needed to ensure the drone didn’t hit anything are easily as impressive as the stunning footage they captured. Read more…

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Drone Footage Inside a 19th-Century Church Looks Too Incredible to Be Real