Trying to pay the mortgage
-
Chart: In Four Years, Apple Sold More iPhones Than All Macs Ever
Being a bb supporter is increasingly a lonely endeavor.
-
-
-
Unmanned and computer-controlled drones, with no ‘man in the loop’?
William Hennigan via LA Times
The X-47B is an experimental jet — that’s what the X stands for — and is designed to demonstrate new technology, such as automated takeoffs, landings and refueling. The drone also has a fully capable weapons bay with a payload capacity of 4,500 pounds, but the Navy said it has no plans to arm it.
The Navy is now testing two of the aircraft, which were built behind razor-wire fences at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s expansive complex in Palmdale, where the company manufactured the B-2 stealth bomber.
Funded under a $635.8-million contract awarded by the Navy in 2007, the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration program has grown in cost to an estimated $813 million.
Last February, the first X-47B had its maiden flight from Edwards Air Force Base, where it continued testing until last month when it was carried from the Mojave Desert to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in southern Maryland. It is there that the next stage of the demonstration program begins.
The drone is slated to first land on a carrier by 2013, relying on pinpoint GPS coordinates and advanced avionics. The carrier’s computers digitally transmit the carrier’s speed, cross-winds and other data to the drone as it approaches from miles away.
The X-47B will not only land itself, but will also know what kind of weapons it is carrying, when and where it needs to refuel with an aerial tanker, and whether there’s a nearby threat, said Carl Johnson, Northrop’s X-47B program manager. “It will do its own math and decide what it should do next.”As Dashiell Bennett observes, doing its ‘own math’ raises many questions:
It [X-47B] could also revolutionize military and international law, as leaders must decide if they can authorize machines to make “lethal combat decisions” — and if anyone back home can be held be responsible when they do. We all saw the Terminator movies, so we know that usually turns out.
Daammmnnnn
-
Who Buys All Those Google Ads? An Infographic Breakdown
Full Story: Wired
Possibly time to go into tech equity
-
The 10 Fastest-Growing (and Fastest-Declining) Cities in the World
A new survey from the Brookings Institution ranks the world’s 200 largest metropolitan economies — which account for half of global GDP — from 1-200. And the winners are …
Full Story: The Atlantic
-
-
”Student loan debt now stands around $1 trillion. Education is often a great investment – but the proposition is more in question every day. Higher education prices increased 440% over the last 25 years – four times the rate of inflation, and twice as bad as health care. Elementary and secondary ed prices have skyrocketed, too, with not even adequate outcomes. On the other side of the ledger is the Moore’s law ecosystem, the most ruthless force in technology and the world economy. Last quarter Netflix streamed two billion hours worth of video – or 228,000 years worth in three months. In just the last week of December, smartphone and tablet owners gobbled up 1.2 billion apps – 43% by Americans. Twenty years ago, a terabyte hard drive, if such a thing had existed, might have cost $5 million. Today, you can pick one up for $69. The price of information plummets. Yet the price of education soars. These two trends cannot both continue. Guess which will crack first.
Apple and the Education-Information Chasm - Forbes (via infoneer-pulse)
Nyu is wayyy too expensive
![stoweboyd:
Unmanned and computer-controlled drones, with no ‘man in the loop’?
William Hennigan via LA Times
The X-47B is an experimental jet — that’s what the X stands for — and is designed to demonstrate new technology, such as automated takeoffs, landings and refueling. The drone also has a fully capable weapons bay with a payload capacity of 4,500 pounds, but the Navy said it has no plans to arm it. The Navy is now testing two of the aircraft, which were built behind razor-wire fences at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s expansive complex in Palmdale, where the company manufactured the B-2 stealth bomber. Funded under a $635.8-million contract awarded by the Navy in 2007, the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration program has grown in cost to an estimated $813 million. Last February, the first X-47B had its maiden flight from Edwards Air Force Base, where it continued testing until last month when it was carried from the Mojave Desert to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in southern Maryland. It is there that the next stage of the demonstration program begins. The drone is slated to first land on a carrier by 2013, relying on pinpoint GPS coordinates and advanced avionics. The carrier’s computers digitally transmit the carrier’s speed, cross-winds and other data to the drone as it approaches from miles away. The X-47B will not only land itself, but will also know what kind of weapons it is carrying, when and where it needs to refuel with an aerial tanker, and whether there’s a nearby threat, said Carl Johnson, Northrop’s X-47B program manager. “It will do its own math and decide what it should do next.”
As Dashiell Bennett observes, doing its ‘own math’ raises many questions:
It [X-47B] could also revolutionize military and international law, as leaders must decide if they can authorize machines to make “lethal combat decisions” — and if anyone back home can be held be responsible when they do. We all saw the Terminator movies, so we know that usually turns out.
Daammmnnnn](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lygdxtI0X01qcz5rmo1_500.jpg)
