Printed on a 3D printer jet the drone has set a speed record

   2015-11-22 20:04:08
A new drone with a jet engine may be the most complex flying machine printed on a 3D printer. The ...
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Tattoos and tattoo images of Swedish actresses, singers and models (part 2)

   2015-11-21 15:31:00
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CEO of drone technology company says initial regulations on all but the cheapest unmanned aerial vehicles will be ‘really bad’ but will improve Bob Young, CEO of PrecisionHawk, said registration might include some kind on license plate on the drone itself: ‘it’s as stupidly easy as that’. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP in Seattle @meharris Saturday 21 November 2015 12.00 GMT Last modified on Saturday 21 November 2015 12.05 GMT Regulations are likely to apply to all but the very cheapest drones before Christmas, according to an expert who helped write the upcoming rules. “Yes, registration will happen for this Christmas. And yes, it will be really bad,” says Bob Young, CEO of drone technology company PrecisionHawk, a member of the FAA’s Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Task Force. “What I’m focused on is just to be a little bit better tomorrow, and that allows you to embrace the fact that you’re really bad today.” Related: Commercial drones could require direct human oversight for years, FAA says The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) set up the UAS Task Force last month after drones were blamed for interfering with sporting events and even wildfire emergencies, and commercial pilots reported seeing twice as many drones in the air as last year. The Task Force is due to deliver its report to the FAA on Saturday, containing recommendations for a registration process for the estimated 700,000 unmanned aircraft that are expected to be bought in the run-up to Christmas. Young’s company PrecisionHawk, which develops data and safety systems for drones, was one of about 25 manufacturers, retailers, hobbyists, trade associations, law enforcement and airport officials chosen to draft the suggestions. “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of us are law-abiding people who will do our best to keep our drones from flying into the White House,” said Young. “Then there are 0.001% who are too stupid to know that’s not a good idea, and 0.0001% who are bad actors wanting to use drones to do something seriously dangerous. What we have to do is stay ahead of those bad actors.” At first, says Young, registration might include some kind of license plate on the drone itself. “On the registrations side, it’s as stupidly easy as that,” says Young. “But there are going to have to be multiple stages. In future versions of this registration system, you’re going to need a reasonably sophisticated way of connecting a drone to its operator.” Unlike cars, which have a driver physically present in the vehicle, drones can be controlled remotely via radio, or even over the internet from thousands of miles away. “Do you mandate that everyone who flies a drone has some sort of homing beacon connected to the drone?” wonders Young. “So that at the same time that the FAA knows where the drone is through the cellphone or satellite network, it also knows where the drone’s operator is on the planet.” Young does not see any technical reason why such a national, or even global, surveillance system should not be possible. “Think of the billions of devices connected to the internet. A few million more flying robots plugged in in the same way, where you know precisely which robot is connected to which operator, is technically trivial to do,” he says. In fact, PrecisionHawk is already developing a drone air traffic control system called Low Altitude Traffic and Airspace Safety (Latas) to power this “internet of flying things”. A prototype version, using Verizon’s 4G LTE wireless data, Iridium satellite links, GPS navigation and ADS-B radio surveillance technology for manned aircraft, is currently undergoing testing in North Carolina. Young believes that the registration regulations, whatever they end up being, will probably apply to all but the least capable toy drones on the market. “I don’t think they can make an exception,” says Young. “Unless they push severe constraints on the manufacturers and say, a toy drone cannot fly more than 300 feet away from the operator, in which case it can be unregulated and unregistered.” The FAA will now use the Task Force’s recommendations and public comments to develop an interim rule on registration, which it hopes to release in December and go into effect shortly after. There will then be another opportunity for the public to comment before the agency issues its final rule, probably next year. “I’m fully supportive of what the FAA is trying to do,” says Young. “Their first initiative will be flawed… but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t start somewhere, or that they shouldn’t commit to making it better next Christmas and even better the Christmas after that.”

We had Rory Carroll invite ‘Alexa’ aka the Echo into his home. There was helpful cooking assistance, endless facts and figures, an amusing misunderstanding – and concerns over what exactly Amazon does with all that interaction data Theodore in the movie Her. Photograph: Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar It was not that Alexa seemed human, exactly, or evoked the operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the film Her, but that it – she – seemed to merit respect. Yes, partly out of anthropomorphism. And partly out of privacy concerns. Don’t mess with someone who knows your secrets. The device, after all, was uploading personal data to Amazon’s servers. How much remains unclear. Alexa streams audio “a fraction of a second” before the “wake word” and continues until the request has been processed, according to Amazon. So fragments of intimate conversations may be captured. A few days after my wife and I discussed babies, my Kindle showed an advertisement for Seventh Generation diapers. We had not mooched for baby products on Amazon or Google. Maybe we had left digital tracks somewhere else? Even so, it felt creepy. Quizzed, the little black obelisk in the corner shrugged off any connection. “Hmm, I’m afraid I can’t answer that.” With dozens of daily interactions recorded in the app’s history it grows to quite an archive, giving the dates and times I asked Alexa, for instance, to play John Lennon, or add garlic to the grocery list, or check on the weather in Baja California, where I was planning a vacation. Banal footnotes to life, mostly, but potentially lucrative intelligence for a retail behemoth dubbed the “everything store”. In the app settings you can delete specific voice interactions, or the whole lot. But doing so, the settings warn, “may degrade your Alexa experience”. It is unclear if deleting audio purges all related data from the company’s servers. This was on a lengthy list of questions I had for the people who designed the Echo and run its servers. Amazon initially seemed open to granting the interviews, then scaled it down to one interview with a departmental vice-president in October. October came and went and Amazon’s press representative went silent, killing the interview without explanation. Which, to paraphrase Alexa, was not very nice to do. ••• People who think about technology for a living have a wide range of views on Alexa. “With Amazon Echo, it was love at first sight,” wrote Re/code’s Joe Brown. “The allure of Alexa is her companionship. She’s like a genie in a sci-fi-looking bottle – one not quite at the peak of her powers, and with a tiny bit of an attitude.” In an interview Ronald Arkin, a robot ethicist and director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology, was more phlegmatic. Technology advances bring benefits and drawbacks – you can’t stop the tide but can choose whether to stay out, paddle or plunge in, he said. “Amazon and Google have all sorts of data about our preferences. You don’t have to use their products. If you do, you’re saying OK, I’m willing to allow this potential violation of my privacy. No one is forcing this on anyone. It’s not mandated à la 1984.” It is up to us if artificial intelligence technology makes us smarter or dumber, more industrious or lazy, says Arkin. “It is changing us, the way we operate. The question is, how much control do you want to relinquish?” The Echo, says Arkin, is a well-engineered advance in voice recognition. “What’s interesting is it’s another step into turning our homes into robots.” The prospect does not alarm him. “You see this in sci-fi: Star Trek, Knight Rider. It’s the natural progression.”

Кокни - в дословном переводе - означает "петушиное яйцо", но на самом деле не имеет ни к фермам, ни птицам никакого отношения. Такими "петушиными яйцами" называли недоразвитые яйца молодой несушки, и эта не самая приятная коннотация дала возможность английским городским жителям называть так простых городских рабочих, которые совсем не имели понятия о деревенском жизненном укладе …

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