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Philosopher Patrick Lin On the Ethics of Military Robotics

from slashdot - 2 months ago

Last month, philosopher Patrick Lin delivered this briefing about the ethics of drones at an event hosted by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture-capital arm. It's a thorough and unnerving survey of what it might mean for the intelligence service to deploy different kinds of robots. This story is very definitely not like Asimov's robotic laws! As fine a mind as Isaac Asimov had, his Robot stories seem a bit naive, in view of where we are headed with robotics."

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MSI infuses more gaming juice into its G Series notebooks with processor refresh

from engadget - 4 months ago

They may have barely finished component convalescence after being kitted out with NVIDIA's GTX 570M, but MSI's GT780DXR and GT683DXR are getting yet another technical leg-up. This time, the processors are being nudged up to an Intel Core i7-2670QM, replacing the Core i7-2630QM we found on these gaming rigs last time we met. The ultra slim X460 series will also get the same CPU refresh. We'll admit, it's a pretty gentle update, but it should help keep MSI's latest offerings close to the bleeding edge of high-end ...

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Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac?

from slashdot - 4 months ago

The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: 'The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children. It's second nature for us to ask a colleague or a friend a question and for them to answer the same way. Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly. It's a much more natural approach than using a mouse on a desktop. And I highly doubt the impact is going to stop at phones.'"

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Dell announces Inspiron One 2320 touchscreen all-in-one

from engadget - 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Over the past few weeks, we've seen HP and Toshiba freshen up their all-in-ones, while Samsung made a belated jump into the market just last week. Today, it's Dell's turn -- the company just announced an addition to its all-in-one lineup, the 23-inch Inspiron One 2320. Funnily enough, the new design reminds us somewhat of the PCs HP trotted out last month in that it has an easel-like display with enough space underneath to stow the keyboard, although this one doesn't have a tilting screen. Spec-wise ...

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Video Timeline: People Talking to Computers [Video]

from gizmodo - 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Samsung looks to block iPhone 4S sales in France, Italy

from engadget - 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Not exactly a shocking development here, but Samsung has just announced that it's looking to block sales of the iPhone 4S throughout France and Italy, opening up yet another frontier in its ongoing patent war with Apple. In a statement, the company confirmed that it will file two preliminary injunction requests in Paris and Milan today, on the grounds that Cupertino's new handset infringes upon two patents related to WCDMA standards for 3G-enabled devices. And it looks like this could only the beginning, with the manufacturer stating that i ...

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AMD Brings New Desktop Chips Down To 65W

from slashdot - 4 months, 2 weeks ago

AMD's new Llano-powered A-series APUs have had a difficult birth on the desktop. The first chips were saddled with a 100W power rating, making them look rather unattractive next to Intel's 65W parts. Now, AMD has rolled out a 65W version of Llano that's nearly as fast as its 100W predecessor despite drawing considerably less power under load. This A8-3800 APU doesn't skimp on integrated graphics, which is key to Llano's appeal. If you're not going to be using the built-in Radeon, the value proposition of AMD's latest desktop APUs looks a little suspect."

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New Apple iPhone 4S: All the Information Updating Live [IPhone]

from gizmodo - 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Four Atom chips sneak out of Intel, soon to appear in netbooks and nettops

from engadget - 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Rarely do you hear of new chips sneaking out of Intel, Escape from Alcatraz-style. But that's (figuratively) happened today, with a quartet of processors appearing with little fanfare from Chipzilla. Two of these you might recognize as members of the delayed Cedar Trail series, the D2500 and D2700. The former clocks at 1.86GHz and 2.13GHz, with the latter upping that to 2.13GHz and 2.4Ghz; both have a t ...

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Wiki Editor Helps Reveal Pre-9/11 CIA Mistakes

from slashdot - 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Kevin Fenton was reading the Department of Justice's 2004 Inspector General report on pre-9/11 intelligence failures. Parts of it didn't make sense to him, so he decided to add the information in the report to Paul Thompson's 9/11 timeline at the wiki-style website History Commons. Eventually, Fenton's work led him to uncover the identity of a CIA manager who ran the Bin Ladin unit before 9/11, when agents there deliberately withheld information about two 9/11 hijackers from the FBI. That manager was named Richard Earl Blee and he is now the subject of a documentary by Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, of secrecykills.org, who confirmed his identity using techniques right out of the 70s film All the President's Men. Blee, along with Cofer Black and George Tenet, have found the work disturbing enough to release a joint statement denying some of the allegations."

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