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Oct 23, 2014

Who is Amit Singhal (at Google)?

Posted by in categories: futurism, lifeboat, science, transhumanism

This archive file was compiled from an interview conducted at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, 2013.

As late as the 1980s and the 1990s, the common person seeking stored knowledge would likely be faced with using an 18th century technology — the library index card catalogue — in order to find something on the topic he or she was looking for. Fifteen years later, most people would be able to search, at any time and any place, a collection of information that dwarfed that of any library. And unlike the experience with a library card catalogue, this new technology rarely left the user empty-handed.

Information retrieval had been a core technology of humanity since written language — but as an actual area of research it was so niche that before the 1950s, nobody had bothered to give the field a name. From a superficial perspective, the pioneering work in the area during the 1940s and 50s seemed to suggest it would be monumentally important to the future — but only behind the scenes. Information retrieval was to be the secret tool of the nation at war, or of the elite scientist compiling massive amounts of data. Increasingly however, a visionary group of thinkers dreamed of combining information retrieval and the ‘thinking machine’ to create something which would be far more revolutionary for society.

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Oct 23, 2014

Internet: How websites are experimenting on you

Posted by in category: internet

By Chris Baraniuk — BBC Future

(Auraveda/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)

The internet is one big experiment, and you’re part of it. Every day, millions of trials are manipulating what you see when you browse online, to find out how to keep your attention, make you click more links – and spend more money. And these experiments are often secret. You’ll probably never know you were part of them.

This is all thanks to something now well-known in the tech industry, called A/B testing. It means that the web pages served to you are not necessarily the same as those shown to the next person – they might have slightly different colours, an alternate headline or, on social networks, you could be shown different personal information about your friends and family.

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Oct 22, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 23, 2014)

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 23, 2014)

a Amazon and Lifeboat

FINANCIAL TIMES: Insurers ‘unready’ for climate change http://on.ft.com/1CWVHWM

HUFF POST: Amelia: IPsoft’s New Artificial Intelligence Can Think Like A Human, And Wants Your Job http://lnkd.in/daZCHqx

CIO: Lufthansa leaves the computing to IBM http://trib.al/JPKogpE

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 23, 2014)” »

Oct 22, 2014

Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown

Posted by in categories: defense, government, security

— The Guardian

Pentagon Building in Washington

A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.”

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD ‘Minerva Research Initiative’ partners with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”

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Oct 21, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 22, 2014)

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 22, 2014)

0   GRANULARS

INFOWORLD: General Electric lays out big plans for big data http://www.infoworld.com/article/2616433/big-data/general-el…-data.html

THE TELEGRAPH: The Real Cyborgs http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/the-future-is-android/index.html

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Who Has a Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap? Guess! http://www.21stcentech.com/climate-change-adaptation-roadmap-guess/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 22, 2014)” »

Oct 21, 2014

US Now Faces Threat of US-Made Weapons in Iraq

Posted by in categories: military, security
Douglas Birch, Center for Public Integrity / News Investigation — Nation of Change

Never mind that the vehicle is a boxy, lumbering, second-hand set of wheels with a top speed of just 60 mph. To some of the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. M1117, aka the Guardian Armored Security Vehicle, has become their favorite ride.

Or so says Jeremy Binnie, editor of Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor, who has monitored propaganda sites for reports of jihadis toting, towing or tooling around in some of the millions of dollars’ worth of U.S.- and other foreign-built military equipment that ISIS captured after it swept into northern Iraq in early June.

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Oct 20, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 21, 2014)

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 21, 2014)

We Activate Kaisen and We Deactivate Kaisen

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Does Lockheed Martin Really Have a Breakthrough Fusion Machine? http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-ma…n-machine/

FINANCIAL TIMES: IBM shares tumble as profits and sales fall at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/500feb78-584e-11e4-b331-00144feab7de.html

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Ohio State University Invents All-in-One Solar Cell and Battery http://www.21stcentech.com/ohio-state-university-invents-all…l-battery/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 21, 2014)” »

Oct 20, 2014

Could the FBI See Your Selfies?

Posted by in category: surveillance

By — US News

Stock image of a man in a suit using a camera phone.

The FBI is preparing to launch a facial recognition database this summer that includes photos of people without criminal records- and a court case in New York may expand the ability of the government to request data from Facebook to help.

The bureau’s database, called the Next Generation Identification system, or NGI, builds upon the government’s fingerprint database and is slated to be operational this summer, according to the FBI. This database will contain photos of anybody who sends images as part of an application for a job that requires fingerprinting or a background check – even if that person has no criminal record – according to research by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy advocacy organization. The FBI is slated to have 52 million face images by 2015, according to the EFF.

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Oct 19, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 20, 2014)

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 20, 2014)

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MASHABLE: Syrian Woman Wears Hidden Camera to Reveal Life Under ISIS Rule http://mashable.com/2014/09/24/syria-hidden-camera/

TECH CRUNCH: 10 Trends Transforming Enterprise IT http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/18/big-changes-big-money-10-tr…rprise-it/

WIRED: American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing?mbid=synd_digg

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 20, 2014)” »

Oct 19, 2014

Hackers Infiltrated Power Grids in U.S., Spain

Posted by in category: hacking

By Arik Hesseldahl — Re/Code

Hacked Screen

Hackers operating somewhere in Eastern Europe have penetrated the networks of energy companies in the U.S., Spain, France and several other countries and may have gained the ability to carry out cyber-sabotage attacks, researchers at the security company Symantec said today.

In what’s being described as a departure from typical hacking attacks that are intended to steal intellectual property, the attackers gained access to industrial control systems used to maintain power grids and oil and gas pipelines and had the ability to take over operations or even damage them.

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