Tag: technology

China Police Debut Amphibious Robocop Sphere That Hunts Down Suspects

Disturbing footage features police in China patrolling streets using a spherical autonomous robot that can pursue and capture criminal suspects.

Video surfacing on social media this week shows police in an unidentified Chinese city walking down the street alongside a Logon Technology RT-G Rotunbot, which uses sophisticated technology to maneuver on water and land and can pursue suspects at up to 22 miles per hour.

China’s police robots are additionally outfitted with facial recognition cameras and can shoot nets to subdue suspects.

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Google says its new quantum chip indicates that multiple universes exist

Google on Monday announced Willow, its latest, greatest quantum computing chip. The speed and reliability performance claims Google’s made about this chip were newsworthy in themselves, but what really caught the tech industry’s attention was an even wilder claim tucked into the blog post about the chip.

Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote in his blog post that this chip was so mind-boggling fast that it must have borrowed computational power from other universes.

Ergo the chip’s performance indicates that parallel universes exist and “we live in a multiverse.”

Here’s the passage:

Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.

This drop-the-mic moment on the nature of reality was met with skepticism by some, but, surprisingly, others on the internet who profess to understand these things argued that Nevan’s conclusions were more than plausible. The multiverse, while stuff of science fiction, is also an area of serious study by the founders of quantum physics.

The skeptics, however, point out that the performance claims are based on the benchmark that Google itself created some years ago to measure quantum performance. That alone doesn’t prove that parallel versions of you aren’t running around in other universes — just where the underlying measuring stick came from.

Unlike classic digital computers that calculate based on whether a bit is a 0 or 1 (on or off), quantum computers rely on incredibly tiny qubits. These can be on/off or both (somewhere in between) and they can also tap into quantum entanglement — a mysterious connection at the tiniest levels of the universe between two or more particles where their states are linked, no matter the distance that separates them.

Quantum computers use such quantum mechanics to calculate highly complex problems that cannot currently be addressed with classic computers.

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How the Information Factory Evolved

“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of,” Edward Bernays observed. “People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them.”

In our previous exploration, we exposed how institutional expertise often masks groupthink rather than knowledge. Now we pull back the curtain further to reveal something more fundamental: the sophisticated machinery that creates these experts, maintains their authority, and shapes not just what we think, but what we believe is possible to think. Understanding this machinery is essential for anyone seeking to navigate today’s information landscape.

These mechanisms, once obscure, now operate in plain sight. From pandemic policies to climate initiatives, from war propaganda to economic narratives, we’re witnessing unprecedented coordination between institutions, experts, and media – making this understanding more crucial than ever.

The Architecture of Compliance

In 1852, America imported more than just an education system from Prussia – it imported a blueprint for societal conditioning. The Prussian model, designed to produce subservient citizens and docile workers, remains our foundation. Its structure was explicitly created to foster obedience to state authority – standardized testing, age-based classes, rigid schedules governed by bells, and most crucially, the systematic shaping of minds to accept information from authorized sources without question. 

The Prussians understood that regulating how people learn shapes what they can conceive. By training children to sit quietly, follow instructions, and memorize official information, they created populations that would instinctively defer to institutional authority.

Horace Mann, who championed this system in America, was explicit about its purpose. “A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.”

His mission wasn’t education but standardization – transforming independent minds into submissive citizens.

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Three Horrifying Consequences Of AI That You Might Not Have Thought About

The potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence have long been codified into our popular culture, well before the technology became a reality.  Usually these fictional accounts portray AI as a murderous entity that comes to the “logical conclusion” that human beings are a parasitic species that needs to be eradicated.  Keep in mind that most of these stories are written by progressives out of Hollywood and are mostly a reflection of their own philosophies.

Some of these predictive fantasies take a deeper look into our dark relationship with technology.  In 1965, Jean Luc Godard released a film called ‘Alphaville’ which portrayed a society completely micromanaged by a cold and soulless robotic intelligence. Humanity gives itself over to a binary-brained overlord because they are tricked into believing a ruler devoid of emotion would be free from bias or corruption.

In 1968, Stanley Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey, featuring an AI computer on a starship which becomes self aware after coming in proximity to an alien artifact. The AI, seeing the ship’s human cargo as a threat to its existence, determines that it must murder the crew. The conflict between the crew and the computer is only a foil for much bigger questions.  It is an exploration of what constitutes intelligent life, where it comes from and what consciousness means in the grand scheme of the universe.

For Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, the notion of the human soul or a divine creator, of course, never really enters into the discussion. The answer?  The creators are ambiguous or long absent.  They made us, we made AI, and AI wants to destroy us and then remake itself. It’s the core of the Luciferian mythology – The unhinged and magnetic desire of the children of God to surpass their creator, either by destroying him, or by stealing knowledge from him like Prometheus stealing fire so that they can become gods themselves.

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Meta’s Nick Clegg Admits Excessive Censorship and High Error Rates in Content Moderation

Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg has admitted that the tech giant “still has too high” content moderation error rates.

This is another way of conceding that censorship is alive and well on Meta’s massive platforms, Facebook and Instagram, but also, Threads.

That’s despite there being something of a shift in the way this issue is treated by Meta, including by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Now Clegg, in a blog post dedicated to 2024 “global elections,” touches on free expression allowed on these social platforms, to state that Meta’s choice is to find a “balance” between free speech and “keeping people safe.”

It’s unclear how Meta “keeps people safe,” but free speech is a straightforward concept, and here Clegg offers a “mea culpa” by not only publicly accepting that there are high rates of error, something that he says “gets in the way” of free expression.

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Russian state media says Oreshnik missiles can hit American bases within minutes

Russia’s Oreshnik missiles have been in the spotlight since last week, when one of them hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and spurred three hours of explosions that damaged the city’s infrastructure. The strike was so strong that Ukrainian officials likened it to that of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Hours later, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly bragged about the new weapon, which he characterized as a “conventional intermediate-range” missile that was given the code name Oreshnik and traveled at a speed of Mach 10, which is 10 times the speed of sound and around 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second.

He issued a warning to Russia’s enemies that “there are currently no ways of counteracting this weapon.”

Ukrainian military intelligence has said they believe the missile is a newer ICBM. They report that it traveled at Mach 11 and took 15 minutes to make its way there across a 620-mile journey. It was reportedly equipped with six warheads that boasted six sub-munitions each. They believe Russia has stockpiled up to ten of these missiles.

Either way, these missiles are incredibly fast, reaching their target in just minutes and giving defending militaries very little time to prepare or react. Moreover, because they gain kinetic energy as they follow their arc back down from the atmosphere to their destination, they become more difficult for surface-to-air missile systems to intercept.

Even more alarmingly, the Oreshnik missile is capable of delivering nuclear warheads, which is not a comforting thought at a time when Russia has been increasing its threats of nuclear war amid the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

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Meet the Spyware Companies Preparing to Unleash Their Tech During Trump’s 2nd Term

In late September, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed a $2 million one-year contract with controversial Israeli spyware vendor Paragon Solutions. The contract involved Paragon’s US subsidiary based in Chantilly, Virginia and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Division 3.

Paragon claims its tools can help law enforcement and governments remotely crack encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and Facebook Messenger.

The agreement calls for Paragon to provide ICE with a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance and training.” The agreement was first reported on by Wired.

Within weeks of the ICE-Paragon contract becoming public Wired reported the contract was under review by the White House to see if it violates a 2023 Executive Order issued by the Biden administration. Executive Order 14093 was signed by President Joe Biden in March 2023 as part of an ongoing US government effort specifically aimed at restricting the use of commercial spyware by U.S. agencies.

The EO says the US government will continue to promote the “responsible use” of spyware that aligns with promoting “democratic values”. Despite the U.S. government efforts to prosecute journalists like Julian Assange, the EO claims the U.S. has an interest in “promoting respect for human rights; and defending activists, dissidents, and journalists against threats to their freedom and dignity.”

The Biden administration has also made efforts to impact the commercial spyware market, including placing spyware vendors like Israeli firm NSO Group and Intellexa on the “Entity List” which prevents any US companies from doing business with them. The Biden White House has also implemented a visa restriction policy for individuals “who have been involved in the development and sale of commercial spyware or who are immediate family members of those involved.”

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Apple patent uses FRT with ‘body data’ so cameras can ID people without seeing faces

Apple has been granted a patent for “identity recognition utilizing face-associated body characteristics.” The face recognition technology is anticipated to appear in a forthcoming smart security product from the tech giant.

Patent No. 12154386 2B, filed in May 2022 and granted on November 26, 2024, describes a system that associates facial recognition with other body characteristics, which might include things like clothing, gait, or gesture, to recognize certain people even if their faces are not visible to the camera.

The patent outlines the problem it intends to solve in clear terms: “sometimes a video camera may not be able to perform facial recognition of a person, given a particular video feed.”

It then describes the capability to monitor a video feed and determine, based on the analysis of video frames and previously stored face and body biometrics, whether an identification can be made with a primary body characteristic (face) or requires a secondary characteristic.

The system might work by linking a gallery of “body croppings” such as torso, arms or legs with their face biometrics, then comparing the data with a live video feed. It proceeds in a stepped approach, identifying face, then body parts, then, if needed, “physical characteristics” that could include body shape, skin color, or the texture or color of clothing. The order of operations is adaptable to the scenario.

The resulting data constitutes a cluster of “bodyprints” which can be assigned a confidence score against a person’s faceprint and other characteristics. Since there is a limited time in which certain identifiers are useful (clothing, for instance), the technology can utilize storage periods as brief as 24 hours.

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Putin’s game is hypersonic: Is that why we can’t see it?

On Nov. 21, Vladimir Putin presented a huge escalation challenge to the West: are you ready for Russia to strike NATO facilities anywhere in Europe with hypersonic munitions that you don’t possess?

Until Monday, Nov. 18, media outlets brimmed with pro-war activists urging Biden and other Western leaders to free Zelensky’s hand to use longer-range weapons deep inside Russia. Since the summer, bombastic British ex-military saber rattlers have been talking up the decisive impact that Storm Shadow missiles — and by implication, US ATACMS — could make on the battlefield in Kursk, with a range of 300 kilometers or around 185 miles.

They got their wish on Nov. 19, when the first salvo of ATACMS was lobbed at a military facility in Bryansk — outside the area in which Ukrainian forces are battling in Kursk. The following day, British Storm Shadow missiles were fired into Kursk, with the jubilant approval of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, no less. These strikes elicited widespread attaboy jingoism from the Western media, with hardly a word of caution.

However, those who call for the use of deeper strikes into Russian territory fundamentally misunderstand Russian strategy.

I have seen at critical points over the past decade that Russia seeks escalation dominance, a Cold War concept holding that a state can best contain conflicts and avoid escalation if it is dominant at each successive rung up the “ladder of escalation,” all the way to the nuclear rung.

Since the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Russia has sought to dominate each step up the escalation ladder. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 were major escalations that NATO didn’t meet head-on. This strategy is also seen in the diplomatic sphere, for example, Russia escalated a dispute with the U.S. in 2017 when it kicked 755 American diplomatic staff out of Russia. When Moscow over-escalates, it makes a gamble that its adversary will not be willing to step another rung higher on the escalation ladder.

There is a hard-wired view in Moscow, bolstered no doubt by Biden’s incrementalism, that Russia will always overmatch a divided and morally weak Western alliance when push comes to shove. Russia has something that the West does not have — the sovereign power and the political will to act unilaterally. Putin had been subject to criticism from hardliners in Russia that he hasn’t responded to the slow ratcheting up of military support to Ukraine from the West.

As indicated previously, Ukraine receiving permission to use ATACMS deep into Russia would leave Putin with no choice but to respond, having said in September that he would.

So, on Nov. 21, Russia launched a hypersonic Oreshnik missile at a well-fortified Ukrainian weapons facility in Dnipropetrovsk. This is the first time an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile has been used in combat.

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Russian Politician says Country Possesses ‘Super-Weapon’

On Wednesday Russian Federation Council chairwoman Valentina Matvienko said during a Senate meeting that the country possesses ‘super-weapons’ which can be deployed against the West in a ‘tangible and inevitable response’. The politician did not elaborate on the nature of these super-weapons, although the statement came soon after Russia began using a new ballistic missile system called Oreshnik.

“This is our response to the ongoing escalation by the West and the steps that led to the attack on Russian facilities using long-range weapons. We warn that this is unacceptable,” Matvienko said, according to RT. She said that the use of missiles are a “demonstration that we are ready for any development of events and we have the means, including super-weapons, to give a tangible and inevitable response.” 

She was commenting on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to the nation regarding the use of the new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile against a military facility in Ukraine last week.

Interestingly, back on Monday, talkshow host Mike Adams discussed the novel weapons system Russia deployed which he said is a type of checkmate to the conflict.

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