• Technology

    DARPA Wants to Override Evolution to Make Immortal Synthetic Organisms

    By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 2.6.2010 27 Comments

    It's been a long time since a Pentagon project from the DARPA labs truly evoked a "WTF DARPA?!" response, but our collective jaw dropped when we saw the details on a project known as BioDesign. DARPA hopes to dispense with evolutionary randomness and assemble biological creatures, genetically programmed to live indefinitely and presumably do whatever their human masters want. And, Wired's Danger Room reports, when there's the inevitable problem of said creatures going haywire or realizing that they're intelligent and have feelings, there's a planned self-destruct genetic code that could be triggered.

    2.17.2010 at 12:15pm - Comment by JimStars

    orangebloodedal, I think you got it backwards ... Man made GOD in his own image ... not the other way around. BladeRunner and BattleStar -- Phhtttt ... such puny robot stuff ... Beserkers (Fred Saberhagen) .. now there are some robots run amok to write home about (hopefully before they get there).

  • Technology

    New Jaguar Supercomputer Outruns IBM's Roadrunner as World's Fastest

    By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.16.2009 4 Comments

    A supercomputer known as Jaguar has finally bested IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer in the biannual TOP500 list, but researchers have already begun looking into exascale supercomputers that consist of 100 million cores and run 1,000 times faster than Jaguar. Computerworld reports that the U.S. Department of Energy has begun holding workshops on the new supercomputers to run high-res climate models, develop smart grids and aid fusion energy design.

    11.23.2009 at 04:33pm - Comment by JimStars

    I see where the editor dithered about how to represent the Oak Ridge 1.075 petaflops as 1..75 (I can hear him/her saying ... "Yeah that looks like more that 1.04 pflops to me!") A decimal point here ... a decimal point there ... pretty soon it adds up to real FLOPS!

  • Technology

    IBM's Blue Gene Supercomputer Models a Cat's Entire Brain

    By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.18.2009 30 Comments

    Cats may retain an aura of mystery about their smug selves, but that could change with scientists using a supercomputer to simulate the the feline brain. That translates into 144 terabytes of working memory for the digital kitty mind.

    11.23.2009 at 04:23pm - Comment by JimStars

    What does Blue Gene/IP think about? Food ... Food ... Food ... Sleep ... Sleep ... Sleep ... Pat me ... Pat Me ... Pat me ... That's about it! (maybe BIRD! SQUIRREL! or MOUSE! every so often too) No very much output per Terabyte of ram....

  • Technology

    Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

    By Posted on 7.13.2009 30 Comments

    This month marks the 40th anniversary of humankind's first steps on the moon. Auspiciously timed is Craig Nelson's new book, Rocket Men--one of the most detailed accounts of the period leading up to the first manned moon mission. Here, we have ten little-known Apollo 11 facts unearthed by Nelson during his research.

    7.20.2009 at 02:44pm - Comment by JimStars

    Hey you missed THE MOST IMPORTANT Thing That Nobody Knows: Armstrong was SUPPOSED to say: "That's one small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind" ... which of course makes sense and was quite clever ... But instead he missed or swallowed the 'A' and it came out as a not quite so profound: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" ... (since Man and Mankind are the same thing in that one -- no cleverness). They tried recently to try to extract the 'A' sound from the recordings but without luck and so it still stands the way he said it rather than the way he meant it. If I were Neil I'd be peeved about that -- probably as much as Obama was when the oath of office got all messed up (thru no fault of his own really).



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March 2010: Aerobot Invasion

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