By the time you read this, Carnegie Mellon roboticists and Darpa chieftains will be rolling out their latest mechanical warrior: a six-and-half-ton, six-wheeled unmanned behemoth called Crusher. Back in October, I took a look at the bot as it was being built, in a restored brick-and-chestnut mill on the banks of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny River. Even […]
April 2006
Ok, ok. I know the topic is a couple of days old. And I know it was mentioned in yesterday’s Rapid Fire. When when Jimmy Wu sent in a short post about using tongues to make better sense of the battlefield, well, I couldn’t resist. In Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein envisioned troopers using their heads […]
You can’t blame ‘em for trying, I guess. Defense contractors want to sell a bigger pile of their gear to the Pentagon. So, from time to time, they come up with all kinds of, shall we say, sub-optimal explanations why their hardware should be used more often. Like jamming IEDs with supersonic fighters. Or delivering […]
* “Dogs Go Where Satellites Can’t“ * Secrecy hurting CIA studies * Ridge in homeland budget shenanigans * Listen up, Darpa! * Missile defense radar breaks in four days * Global info grid gags * San Clemente Isle’s sound wave mystery * Mad scientists need drugs, quick * Navy taps Vietnam “river rats“ * “After […]
Oh, this is gonna be good. Ryan Singel, the man behind a zillion data-mining scoops, and cracker-legend-turned-editor Kevin Poulsen have teamed up for a new blog over at Wired News. 27B Stroke 6 (named for Brazil’s most famous form) will “scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, in a daily briefing on security, freedom […]
