“President Obama has signed an executive order calling for the US to build the world’s fastest computer by 2025. The supercomputer would be 20 times quicker than the current leading machine, which is in China. It would be capable of making one quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second –
“It’s called the blockchain, the technology that underlies the cryptocurrency bitcoin. A blockchain is essentially a transaction ledger, much like the record-keeping systems employed by conventional financial firms, such as banks. Traditional ledgers are owned and maintained by one institution, and access to them is restricted to prevent tampering. A
“China’s military plans to produce nearly 42,000 land-based and sea-based unmanned weapons and sensor platforms as part of its continuing, large-scale military buildup, the Pentagon’s annual report on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) disclosed Friday. China currently operates several armed and unarmed drone aircraft and is developing long-range range unmanned
“Software upgrades and outdated applications that don’t work on new platforms are just a fact of life for people who use computers and other devices. DARPA, however, wants to change that by making software systems that can run for over a century without getting updates from their developers and despite
“A more immediate concern is that a machine doesn’t have to be superintelligent to do a lot of damage, if it is sufficiently empowered. Stock market flash crashes are one example: Hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost in minutes as a result of minor, difficult-to-completely-eliminate bugs. The clear
“The Amazon Machine Learning service is designed to give developers without machine learning background the tools to build smart, data-driven applications that can not only analyze what’s happening in real time or what happened in the past, but also predict what’s going to happen in the future (and that’s what’s most
“Brazilian prosecutors have relied heavily on confessions from company insiders to expose an alleged graft ring at Petróleo Brasileiro. But there was another crucial ingredient: thousands of instant messages that alleged wrongdoers sent each other via BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM. Those communications helped local authorities make connections between suspected money
“Here is what life is like for a woman with no bank account in a developing country. She keeps her savings hidden — in pots, under mattresses, in fields. She constantly worries about thieves. She may even worry about her husband taking cash she has budgeted for their children’s needs.
“A Turkish court has ordered blocks on Twitter and YouTube for sharing photos of a hostage taken during an armed siege last week. The blocks have been imposed because images of a deadly siege were being shared via the social networks. In the siege two gunmen reportedly from a far-left
“The Traffic Prediction Project is setting out to crunch all traffic data, including historical numbers where available, from transport departments, road cameras, Microsoft’s Bing traffic maps, and even drivers’ social networks, to see if established patterns can help foresee traffic jams from 15-60 minutes before they happen.” Source: How Microsoft’s