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Category: futurism – Page 1,147

Bill Gates now uses an Android phone

Windows Phone has been dead for a good year now, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has decided it’s also time to move on. In an interview with Fox News Sunday (spotted by On MSFT), Gates reveals he’s now using an Android phone. While Gates doesn’t reveal the exact model, he does note that it has “a lot of Microsoft software” on it, which could suggest it’s a special Microsoft Edition Samsung Galaxy S8 handset with bundled software.

Microsoft started selling the Samsung Galaxy S8 handset in its retail stores earlier this year, and it includes apps like Office, OneDrive, Cortana, and Outlook. Any Android phone also supports these apps, but Microsoft’s customized S8 does suggest the company might continue to offer this for other Android devices in the future.

While Gates is switching to Android, he’s still not interested in an iPhone. Gates famously banned iPhones and iPods at home in the past, but he does admit that Steve Jobs was a “genius” in the Fox interview. Gates is still using Windows-based PCs, but he’s still not switching over to an iPhone, despite the Steve Jobs praise.

You better explain yourself, mister: DARPA’s mission to make an accountable AI

Continued advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning promise to produce autonomous systems that will perceive, learn, decide, and act on their own. However, the effectiveness of these systems is limited by these machines’ current inability to explain their decisions and actions to human users. Explainable AI—especially explainable machine learning—will be essential if future users are to understand, appropriately trust, and effectively manage an emerging generation of artificially intelligent machine partners.

The Future the US Military is Constructing: a Giant, Armed Nervous System

The military wants to “network everything to everything,” which sounds a bit like the setup for the Terminator franchise.

Service chiefs are converging on a single strategy for military dominance: connect everything to everything.

Leaders of the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines are converging on a vision of the future military: connecting every asset on the global battlefield.

That means everything from F-35 jets overhead to the destroyers on the sea to the armor of the tanks crawling over the land to the multiplying devices in every troops’ pockets. Every weapon, vehicle, and device connected, sharing data, constantly aware of the presence and state of every other node in a truly global network. The effect: an unimaginably large cephapoloidal nervous system armed with the world’s most sophisticated weaponry.

DARPA funds Reaction Engines hypersonic precooler tests

Reaction Engines Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Reaction Engines, today announced that it has received a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to conduct high-temperature airflow testing in the United States of a Reaction Engines precooler test article called HTX. The precooler heat exchanger is a key component of the company’s revolutionary SABRE air-breathing rocket engine and has the potential to enable other precooled propulsion systems. The primary HTX test objective is to validate precooler performance under the high-temperature airflow conditions expected during high-speed flights up to Mach 5.

“We have been greatly encouraged by the increasing interest in our technology’s potential and are thrilled to embark on our first U.S. government contract with DARPA for HTX,” said Dr. Adam Dissel, President of Reaction Engines Inc. “Full-temperature testing of the precooler will provide the most compelling near-term proof of the technology’s potential to accelerate the future for high-speed air-breathing systems.”

The HTX precooler test builds upon previous successful ground tests of the precooler technology conducted at ambient environmental conditions in the United Kingdom. These previous tests validated precooler design methodology, manufacturing techniques, and test operations plans.

Fears grow Bali’s volcano could erupt at any time

More than 35,000 people have fled the largest volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali, fearing it will erupt for the first time in more than half a century.

A natural disaster has been declared in parts of Bali as authorities imposed an exclusion zone around Mount Agung following increasing volcanic activity on Sunday.

Strong tremors rippled through areas in the eastern part of the one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, packed with Australian families enjoying the school holidays, sparking authorities to order people to leave a 12 kilometre (8 mile) zone around the mountain.