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Oct 1, 2016
Patagonia’s Ex-CEO Moves To Create Argentina’s Largest Nature Preserve — By Alexander C. Kaufman | The Huffington Post
Posted by Odette Bohr Dienel in categories: environmental, government
“The donation is part of an ambitious plan to preserve Argentina’s northeastern Iberá wetlands and restore populations of six species of wildlife, including jaguars, that had gone extinct in the region. Tompkins plans to donate about 341,350 acres, a spokeswoman from her nonprofit Tompkins Foundation told The Huffington Post.”
Oct 1, 2016
How would sex work in space?
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: Elon Musk, sex, space travel
Elon Musk doesn’t want to simply send humans to Mars. The SpaceX CEO has bigger ambitions. He wants us to be an “interplanetary species,” which means creating a self-sustaining civilization on Mars, which means living and dying on Mars — which at some point might mean sex and pregnancy on Mars.
So how would that work?
Given that Musk hasn’t figured out how to keep people alive on the trip to the Red Planet, it’s unlikely he has details on how people will make more people once they’re there. We don’t have any data on how human bodies will work on Mars specifically, but we have enough information to know that sex in space could be a real hassle.
Oct 1, 2016
3D printing grows up: scientists are using the tech to make an earthmoving machine
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: 3D printing, transportation
Scientists at the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory are assembling the world’s first 3D-printed hydraulic excavator, a prototype which they say will explore the feasibility of printing with metal alloys.
3D-printing, or additive manufacturing (AM), mostly uses plastics of some sort to create objects layer by layer. Plastics are cheap, light, and easy to melt, lending themselves to the process. Metals, on the other hand, are heavy, costly, and melt at much higher temperatures – making them a challenging material for 3D printing.
But metals are what is needed if truly useful machines like cars or tractors are to be 3D-printed.
Oct 1, 2016
Controversial AI has been trained to kill humans in a Doom deathmatch
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: computing, robotics/AI
A competition pitting artificial intelligence (AI) against human players in the classic video game Doom has demonstrated just how advanced AI learning techniques have become – but it’s also caused considerable controversy.
While several teams submitted AI agents for the deathmatch, two students in the US have caught most of the flak, after they published a paper online detailing how their AI bot learned to kill human players in deathmatch scenarios.
Continue reading “Controversial AI has been trained to kill humans in a Doom deathmatch” »
Oct 1, 2016
This device pulls clean drinking water out of thin air
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: education, sustainability
When kids learn about the planet’s water cycle, they’re taught a simple concept: our atmosphere is filled with water vapour that has evaporated from the bodies of liquid water we see around us. When the vapour’s temperature gets low enough, it gets turned back into water.
The presence of that vapour becomes especially apparent in the summer when droplets collect on glasses of ice water and air conditioning units drip onto unsuspecting passersby.
An Israeli company called Water-Gen does not think of that condensation as a byproduct; instead, it has built machines specifically designed to create and harvest as much condensation as possible.
Continue reading “This device pulls clean drinking water out of thin air” »
Oct 1, 2016
HBO’s Westworld Creators Talk AI, Sentience, And Surveillance
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: entertainment, robotics/AI, surveillance
Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan explore dark sides of AI and humanity in series that reboots the 1973 film about a robotic theme park gone haywire.
Researchers show how they can reverse engineer and reconstruct someone else’s machine learning engine—using machine learning.
Oct 1, 2016
IBM announces AI-powered decision-making
Posted by Elmar Arunov in categories: business, robotics/AI
IBM today announced today Watson -based “Project DataWorks,” the first cloud-based data and analytics platform to integrate all types of data and enable AI-powered decision-making.
Project DataWorks is designed to make it simple for business leaders and data professionals to collect, organize, govern, and secure data, and become a “cognitive business.”
Sep 30, 2016
DARPA Ramps Up Defenses Against Russia’s Electro-Attacks on the Battlefield
Posted by Karen Hurst in category: military
Posts about DARPA Ramps Up Defenses Against Russia’s Electro-Attacks on the Battlefield written by Nwo Report.