Lifeboat Foundation

Critics are not fully convinced though.

Earlier this month, the New York Police Department (NYPD) announced the induction of two robotic dogs into its force, a move that was opposed by rights activists citing surveillance concerns. Now an incident of a garage collapse where a robotic dog was used in search and rescue operations is being hailed by the City Mayor Eric Adams as justification for its use, The New York Times.

The robotic dogs inducted belong to Boston Dynamics, which Interesting Engineering has extensively covered over the years. Their robotic dog, dubbed Spot, has been designed for use in adverse situations and is equipped with abilities and sensors.

All journalists who cover violence enjoy macabre humor. If not, they will go insane.

Mark Pedelty noted in his lauded anthropological study War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents that we can be a human being or a journalist, but not both.

The game card above reenforces Pedelty’s observation that “reporters were forced to normalize the abnormal and routinize the absurd.”

The announcement comes as the social media giant increasingly diverts its attention from creating a virtual reality-based Metaverse to embed AI features across its platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp.

Editing photos, analyzing surveillance footage and understanding the parts of a cell. These tasks have one thing in common: you need to be able to identify and separate different objects within an image. Traditionally, researchers have had to start from scratch each time they want to analyze a new part of an image.

Meta aims to change this laborious process by being the one-stop-shop for researchers and web developers working on such problems.

United Launch Alliance’s second-to-last Delta 4-Heavy rocket is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral April 20 with a classified cargo for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency, a mission that will mark ULA’s first flight of the year, officials announced this week.

ULA and the National Reconnaissance Office, the customer for the national security mission, announced the target launch date Tuesday.

The mission is known as NROL-68, and is expected to loft a large surveillance satellite into geosynchronous orbit, joining a fleet of government-owned spacecraft designed to eavesdrop on the communications of adversaries and foreign powers. But the NRO does not disclose details about its missions, and independent analysts use information about the rocket’s lift capability, trajectory, and similar past launches to predict the purpose of spy satellite missions.

FallenKingdomReads’ list of 10 Science Fiction Books That Predicted the Future with Eerie Accuracy.

Science fiction has always been a genre that imagines what the future might hold, but sometimes it goes beyond mere speculation and eerily predicts what actually happens. Here are ten science fiction books that predicted the future with accuracy that is almost too close for comfort.

This dystopian novel predicted a world in which government surveillance and control were all-encompassing, and the public was constantly monitored and manipulated. Many of the themes in the book have become all too familiar in today’s world of mass surveillance and government control.

Regeneration, Resuscitation & Biothreat Countermeasures — Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D., Program Manager, Biological Technology Office, DARPA

Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D. (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/cdr-jean-paul-chretien) is a Program Manager in the Biological Technology Office at DARPA, where his research interests include disease and injury prevention, operational medicine, and biothreat countermeasures. He is also responsible for running the DARPA Triage Challenge (https://triagechallenge.darpa.mil/).

Continue reading “CDR Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien — DARPA BTO — Regeneration, Resuscitation And Biothreat Countermeasures” »

Pierce, an artist whose work critically engages with weaponized emerging technologies, recently unveiled their latest ingenious project—an everyday hoodie retrofitted to include an array of infrared (IR) LEDs that, when activated, blinds any nearby night vision security cameras. Using mostly off-the-shelf components like LumiLED lights, an Adafruit microcontroller, and silicone wire, as well as we software Pierce that made open-source for interested DIYers, the privacy-boosting “Camera Shy Hoodie” is designed to enable citizens to safely engage in civic protests and demonstrations. Or, wearers can just simply opt-out of being tracked by unknown third-parties while walking down the street.

A DIY hack for hoodies emits infrared LEDs to obscure wearers’ faces from invasive surveillance camera tracking.

Devices now being tested in the sky could gather ultra-precise data.

WASHINGTON — When the Pentagon revealed last week that a high-flying, Chinese balloon was spotted over the United States, officials said they didn’t expect the airship would add much value to the intelligence China is already gathering through its network of spy satellites.

“Our best assessment at the moment is that whatever the surveillance payload is on this balloon, it does not create significant value added over and above what the [People’s Republic of China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low Earth orbit,” a senior defense official told reporters Feb. 2.

While it’s unclear what information the uncrewed airship gathered before the Pentagon shot it down Feb. 4, experts say balloons loitering at high altitudes can offer some advantages over satellites and drones — or could at least augment their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.