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Archive for the ‘drones’ category: Page 169

Jun 10, 2014

RE: Does Advanced Technology Make the 2nd Amendment Redundant?

Posted by in categories: drones, ethics, government, law, law enforcement, military, policy
#Exclusive: @HJBentham @ClubOfINFO responds to @Hetero_Sapien @IEET
After the reprint at the ClubOfINFO webzine of Franco Cortese’s excellent IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) article about how advanced technology clashes with the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, I am interested enough that I have decided to put together this response. Changes in technology do eventually force changes in the law, and some laws ultimately have to be scrapped. However there is an argument to be made that the Second Amendment’s deterrent against tyranny should not be dismissed too easily.
Franco points out that the Second Amendment’s “most prominent justification” is that citizens require a form of self-defense against a potentially corrupt government. In such a case, they may need to take back the state by force through a “citizen militia”.

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Apr 28, 2014

Drone rock: Robotics company creates a flying, musical band

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

— ars technica

Up until this point, the musical genre known as “drone rock” had been a weird, indie niche that consisted of slow, loud guitar noise. If machinists and programmers have their way, that description will need some major rewriting—but it’ll probably seem just as weird.

This week, a team at Philadelphia-based KMel Robotics, known for building airborne video recording solutions, turned their robot-making talents to creating a band. The company pre-programmed a six-aircraft ensemble to hover over instruments and strum or strike without any human interaction, other than the team’s initial strike of a “play” button.

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Apr 23, 2014

Book Review: The Human Race to the Future by Daniel Berleant (2013) (A Lifeboat Foundation publication)

Posted by in categories: alien life, asteroid/comet impacts, biotech/medical, business, climatology, disruptive technology, driverless cars, drones, economics, education, energy, engineering, ethics, evolution, existential risks, food, futurism, genetics, government, habitats, hardware, health, homo sapiens, human trajectories, information science, innovation, life extension, lifeboat, nanotechnology, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, philosophy, policy, posthumanism, robotics/AI, science, scientific freedom, security, singularity, space, space travel, sustainability, transhumanism

From CLUBOF.INFO

The Human Race to the Future (2014 Edition) is the scientific Lifeboat Foundation think tank’s publication first made available in 2013, covering a number of dilemmas fundamental to the human future and of great interest to all readers. Daniel Berleant’s approach to popularizing science is more entertaining than a lot of other science writers, and this book contains many surprises and useful knowledge.

Some of the science covered in The Human Race to the Future, such as future ice ages and predictions of where natural evolution will take us next, is not immediately relevant in our lives and politics, but it is still presented to make fascinating reading. The rest of the science in the book is very linked to society’s immediate future, and deserves great consideration by commentators, activists and policymakers because it is only going to get more important as the world moves forward.

The book makes many warnings and calls for caution, but also makes an optimistic forecast about how society might look in the future. For example, It is “economically possible” to have a society where all the basics are free and all work is essentially optional (a way for people to turn their hobbies into a way of earning more possessions) (p. 6–7).

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Apr 20, 2014

Here’s What Drone Attacks in America Would Look Like

Posted by in category: drones

— Wired

Photo: Tomas van Houtryve/VII. “Baseball practice in Montgomery County, Maryland. According to records obtained from the FAA, which issued 1,428 domestic drone permits between 2007 and early 2013, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Navy have applied for drone authorization in Montgomery County."

If U.S. citizens knew how it felt to be targeted by deadly flying robots, it might shape domestic attitudes toward the Obama administration’s drone program. Artist Tomas Van Houtryve is using video and photography to foster that discussion by putting average Americans under drone-like surveillance.

“The drone has become the preferred tool of the ‘War on Terror,’” says Van Houtryve. “We live in the most media-connected age ever, and yet the American public has no visual narrative of the drone war. This is a secret war, making it easier to push to the back of our minds or only think about in abstract terms.”

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Apr 20, 2014

Spain’s sudden ban on drones is a punch in the gut for its film industry

Posted by in category: drones

Matthew Bennett — Quartz

Last October, Ridley Scott and more than a thousand extras and film crew arrived in Andalusia, in southern Spain, to shoot Exodus, his new epic about the life of Moses starring Christian Bale. “They spent a whole month here”, Piluca Querol, the director of the Andalusia Film Commission, told Quartz: “It’s the first time unemployment has gone down in Almería at that time of year, thanks to all of the construction.”

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The movie industry is an important contributor to the economy in Andalusia, the region with the highest unemployment rate in all of Europe (pdf). “Film producers use drones a lot,” Querol said, “especially in pre-production to get things ready, prepare shots and look for possible camera positions.” She added, “of course [drone images] promote Spain abroad, in our case as a great place to film movies”.

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Apr 1, 2014

The White Swan’s Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments! [TREATISE EXCERPT] By Mr. Andres Agostini at www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, alien life, astronomy, automation, big data, biological, bionic, bioprinting, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, climatology, complex systems, computing, cosmology, counterterrorism, cybercrime/malcode, cyborgs, defense, disruptive technology, driverless cars, drones, economics, education, energy, engineering, environmental, ethics, evolution, existential risks, exoskeleton, finance, food, futurism, genetics, geopolitics, government, habitats, hardware, health, homo sapiens, human trajectories, information science, innovation, internet, law, law enforcement, life extension, lifeboat, military, mobile phones, nanotechnology, neuroscience, open access, open source, philosophy, physics, policy, posthumanism, privacy, robotics/AI, science, scientific freedom, security, singularity, space, supercomputing, surveillance, sustainability, transhumanism, transparency, transportation

The White Swan’s Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments: How To Fundamentally Cope With Corporate Litmus Tests and With The Permanent Impact of the Dramatic Highly Improbable And Succeed and Prevail Through Transformative and Integrative Risk Management! [TREATISE EXCERPT]. By © Copyright 2013, 2014 Mr. Andres Agostini — All Rights Reserved Worldwide — « www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini AND www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini » — The Lifeboat Foundation Global Chief Consulting Officer and Partner, Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador —

(An Independent, Solemn, Most-Thorough and Copyrighted Answer. Independence, solemnity, thoroughness, completeness, detail, granularity of details, accuracy and rigor, hereunder, will be then redefined by several orders of nonlinear magnitude and without a fail).

[TREATISE EXCERPT].

To Nora, my mother, who rendered me with the definitiveness to seek the thoughts and seek the forethoughts to outsmart any impending demand and other developments. To Francisco, my father: No one who has taught me better. There is no one I regard most highly. It is my greatest fortune to be his son. He endowed me with the Agostini family’s charter, “…Study and, when grown up, you will neither be the tyrants’ toy, nor the passions’ servile slave…” I never enjoyed a “…Mom…”, but considerably enjoyed a gargantuan courageous Mother, Father, Grandparents and Forbears.

Continue reading “The White Swan's Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments! [TREATISE EXCERPT] By Mr. Andres Agostini at www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini” »

Apr 1, 2014

Dirigible Drones Will Watch the World From 13 Miles Up

Posted by in categories: drones, engineering, surveillance

— Wired
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sGqQek3pqQ#t=106
With UAVs crowding navigable airspace and plans underway to put giant mega-satellites into orbit, it was just a matter of time before a drone-satellite hybrid was developed to fit between the two spaces. StratoBus, a new project out of France, is conceptualized to do just that. Designed to be about the length of a football field and 25 yards in diameter, the blimp-shaped vehicle’s shell will be made of carbon fiber.

Without a launcher, StratoBus floats to the lower stratosphere at an altitude of about 13 miles where developers say it will be in a perfect position to carry out a range of functions, including surveillance, border security monitoring, communications reinforcement and facilitating navigation — all from a stationary position with the help of two self-adjusting electric motors. The StratoBus will be able to endure missions of up to a year with a total lifetime of five years.

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Mar 18, 2014

Driverless Cars, Meet Captainless Ships: Autonomous Vehicles To Take To The Sea

Posted by in categories: automation, drones

— Singularity Hub
Unmanned-bridge-C-Thomas-Porathe-lg
If artificial intelligence is sophisticated enough to guide a car through Bay Area traffic, surely it can pilot a ship safely from port to port on the open sea. That’s the premise of a European Union-funded project called MUNIN tasked with designing largely automated cargo ships by the beginning of 2015.

The project got a push from Rolls-Royce plc, the major British military contractor that splintered from the car company with the same name in 1973, when an executive hinted that Rolls-Royce may design such systems and that they would bring down the industry’s costs.

“Sometimes what was unthinkable yesterday is tomorrow’s reality. So now it is time to consider a roadmap to unmanned vessels of various types,” Oskar Levander, the company’s vice present of innovation, engineering and technology said in a recent company publication.

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Mar 5, 2014

Facebook Is Reportedly Buying A Drone Manufacturer

Posted by in categories: business, drones

By — Fast Company

For big tech companies, drones are a shining, whirly emblem of the future. Amazon and Google say they would like to use them to deliver things to your doorstep, and now Facebook wants to use them to create Internet infrastructure.

Facebook reportedly has plans to buy Titan Aerospace, a company that makes “near-orbital, solar-powered drones which can fly for five years without needing to land,” for $60 million, according to TechCrunch. The basic idea is that these unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, would buzz over “the parts of the world without Internet access, beginning in Africa.”

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Feb 25, 2014

Drones to Deliver Government Docs in the United Arab Emirates Next Year

Posted by in category: drones

— Singularity Hub
quadcopter_dusk (1)
Remember when Jeff Bezos said Amazon would deliver packages using drones at some point in the next few years? Bezos and Amazon may be beat to the punch by a government in the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently launched a million dollar contest to develop and implement a fleet of delivery drones within a year.

Competitors will design drones to deliver government documents. The drone’s cargo compartment would be secured biometrically—requiring a finger print or retina scan to release the paperwork inside. The UAE plans to announce a winner in May, and after six months of testing in the dust and heat, begin regular service.

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