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Government GPS now has a new backup approach.


The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to demonstrate a positioning, navigation and timing system that will use very low frequency band signals as backup in case military forces lose access to GPS networks.

Lin Haas, DARPA strategic technology officer, discussed the Spatial, Temporal and Orientation Information in Contested Environments project at DARPA Demo Day, the U.S. Army said May 19.

DARPA plans to demonstrate the STOIC system by fiscal year 2018 or 2019 while an at-sea demo will be conducted this year.

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All is promising for Biometrics and biometric informatics; however, the technologies to date leveraged in IoT and other environments for parsing, analysis (especially predictive analysis), as well as better presented needs to be improved to be of value. We have seen great progress in the collection of the information and for some basic identification capabilities it looks good; however, to truly be effective and of value we need a lot more work done in this space especially when you look at today’s landscape of collecting information in areas of IoT and processing/ analysis with big data.


The global biometrics market is projected to cross US $ 24.8 billion by 2021. Fingerprint recognition biometric systems are the most preferred type of biometric systems used across the globe, owing to their ease of use, low cost, high speed and accurate results.

Biometric systems are used across various public as well as private offices for enhancing the security of data and information, as these systems provide an accurate validation as compared to traditional methods such as ID cards, PINs, passwords, etc. Increasing use of biometrics in e-commerce and cloud computing solutions, coupled with initiatives taken by the government of various countries across the world to adopt biometrics systems for identification and verification purposes are some of the major factors driving demand for biometric solutions, globally.

Moreover, introduction of e-passports and e-visas, use of biometrics in criminal identification, increasing demand for smartphones integrated with biometric technologies and implementation of biometric technology in election administration are anticipated to drive the global biometrics market over the next five years.

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Good write up by Peter on Neil Jacobstein’s perspective on AI. Peter never disappoints in his articles.


Singularity University is part business incubator and part think tank founded by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil in 2008 in the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley. Among the topics that have risen in prominence in the curriculum of the University is artificial intelligence.

Neil Jacobstein is a former President of Singularity University, and currently he chairs the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at Singularity University on the NASA Research Park campus in Mountain View California. We recently spoke, and the conversation covered his thoughts on how AI can be used to augment current human capability, strategies technology executives should use to think about AI, the role the government should play in helping mitigate the potential job losses from AI, his perspectives on the dangers of artificial intelligence that have been expressed by major thought leaders, advice on how to train workers to be prepared for the coming wave of AI, and a variety of other topics.

(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please click this link. This is the sixth interview in my artificial intelligence series. Please visit these links to interviews with Mike Rhodin of IBM Watson, Sebastian Thrun of Udacity, Scott Phoenix of Vicarious, Antoine Blondeau of Sentient Technologies, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, and Oren Etzioni of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.)

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Now this is going to be very interesting. We will learn a lot about self control, stress, and how cultural condition definitely applies to how people handles different forms and types of stress. Cannot wait to see the results of this study. And, with the government taking these first steps may actually show hope.


China’s mental health record is tarred by social stigma and a lack of resources. While public initiatives are now seeking to rectify the issue, the country’s active startup ecosystem is also competing to fill the gaps.

According to a study published in 2011, a staggering 91.8 per cent of Chinese people with a mental health diagnosis never seek help. Part of that has to do with the shortage of trained mental health professionals in China, as well as the country’s psychiatrist-to-patient ratio, which is as low as 1.24 per 100,000 patients, compared to the global average of 4.15 per 100,000.

“The problem is huge,” says Jin Hsueh, the co-founder and CEO of KaJin Health, a Taiwanese startup that provides an online counseling service to people in Chinese-speaking communities. “There are [90] million [people with] depression in China, and very, very [few] that ever seek for help, talking to a doctor or therapist.”

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Boy; wait until next month with China’s Quantum Launch.


By Munish Sharma.

Cyber has been one of the key discussion items during both Prime Minister Modi’s just concluded visit to the United States and President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US some nine months back. After Xi’s visit, China and the US signed a Cyber Agreement in October 2015. India and the US will ink a cyber agreement in the next sixty days. Notwithstanding these similarities, the intent of and expectations from these two agreements are fundamentally different; the former is an attempt to manage insecurity and the latter is a quest for security. An analysis of the joint statements issued at the end of the Modi and Xi visits to the US highlights the contrasting differences in India and China’s bilateral ties with the United States in the cyber realm.

China : US – Cyber and State Visit

Xi Jinping’s state visit to the US took place in the shadow of a massive cyber-attack on the Office of Personnel Management (December 2014), which compromised the fingerprint records of 5.6 million people and Social Security numbers and addresses of around 21 million former and current government employees. 1 The US has been accusing China of theft of intellectual property targeted against its defence industries, private sector and key governmental functions; amounting to economic espionage. Accusations in this regard go back to 2004, when a series of coordinated attacks – dubbed as Titan Rain – targeted the computer networks of Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA. Cyber espionage featured in every high-level talk and security report.

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Several months ago I warned folks about how criminals can use AI (drones, robots, self driving cars, 3D printers printing drugs, etc.) against the public. Here is another example of how stolen technology can place people at risk.


Australia definitely has a love/hate relationship with 3D printing. There are numerous research programs and innovative ideas coming to us from Down Under, from a periodontist bioprinting jaw and gum cells for future dental surgeries to a group of entrepreneurs using the technology to benefit a charity for children at risk. New partnerships and distribution agreements abound.

3D printing is undoubtedly responsible for an inordinate amount of good happening—with much more to come—on the Australian continent. But the subject of fabricated weaponry has led the government to explore the dark side of this technology, with some police even admitting that they are terrified of 3D printed guns. Whether law enforcement approves or not, the flow of hardware is certainly on the rise for offering the tools of the trade to designers on nearly every level, legal or otherwise.

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Wow and just in time for China’s Quantum Satellite launch next month.


News about this “extreme” decision has drawn ire from many Singaporeans who have criticised the government’s decision on social media.

But, in a surprise move, the Singaporean government has resorted to limiting the Internet access for government work stations for over a year for security reasons. The system of “No internet” for public servants should be more clear-cut, experts say.

He added: “As public servants, we have a duty and responsibility to protect the Government and citizens’ information and data”.

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Silicon Valley is trying a new approach in get new tech into the US government (states, counties, and cities/ towns) hands.


I think most of us can agree that the internet poses some unique and wide-scale risks to our privacy.

Our every move online can be — and often is — tracked. In the past, it might have been hard for companies or the government to know your interests, political leanings, religious affiliation or health problems. But they can glean all that and more by simply watching what you do on the internet.

With a few exceptions, the government has failed to meaningfully curtail the data collection or help consumers gain some real control or choice over it. And industry self-regulation has been a joke.

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