Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

This DARPA program will give Army and Marine aviators a robot co-pilot A DARPA program is building software to allow helicopters to fly autonomously so that pilots can focus on tasks other than flying while on missions. By Todd South October 31, 2018 Army aviators recently ran helicopters through missions with a kind of robot co-pilot for the first time, using technology a company says will be demonstrated in coming months on Black Hawk helicopters. The pilots directed an “optionally piloted helicopter” through mission scenarios ranging from obstacle avoidance to contour flight, according to a release. The pilots used the technology to move a modified commercial helicopter, the S-76B Sikorsky, known as Sikorsky Autonomy Research Aircraft or SARA, through the scenarios designed under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program with Lockheed Martin. The automated capabilities are part of the Army’s larger Future Vertical Lift program, which aims to revol...

Medical students 'raised on screens lack skills for surgery'   Leading surgeon says lack of hobbies and creativity in schools has affected children’s practical abilities Matthew Weaver Tue 30 Oct 2018  14.25 EDT New medical students have spent so much time on screens that they lack vital practical skills necessary to conduct life-saving operations, a leading surgeon has warned. Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College London, said that a  decline in hands-on creative subjects  at school and practical hobbies at home means that students often do not have a basic understanding of the physical world. Backing a  campaign by  educational thinktank the Edge Foundation to encourage more creative subjects in the national curriculum,  Kneebone said spending hours engaged in virtual worlds was no substitute for experience in the real world. “Partly it stops [students] being aware in three dimensions of what’s ...

The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether. By Nellie Bowles Oct. 26, 2018 The parents in Overland Park, Kan., were fed up. They wanted their children off screens, but they needed strength in numbers. First, because no one wants their kid to be the lone weird one without a phone. And second, because taking the phone away from a middle schooler is actually very, very tough. “We start the meetings by saying, ‘This is hard, we’re in a new frontier, but who is going to help us?’” said Krista Boan, who is leading a Kansas City-based program called START, which stands for Stand Together And Rethink Technology. “We can’t call our moms about this one.” For the last six months, at night in school libraries across Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., about 150 parents have been meeting t...

Waymo gets the green light to test fully driverless cars in California Human-free driving in the Golden State By Andrew J. Hawkins@andyjayhawk   Oct 30, 2018, 5:11pm EDT Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, has been granted permission to operate fully driverless cars without human drivers behind the steering wheel on public roads in California. The company is the first to receive a driverless permit in the state. Waymo will restrict its driverless test cars to the neighborhoods of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Palo Alto. “We know this area well,” the company said in a statement, noting it includes its own headquarters (housed within Google’s X lab) as well as Alphabet’s main campus. If it seeks to expand its testing, Waymo says it will notify the new communities first and obtain permission from the DMV. Waymo’s permit includes day and night testing on city streets, rural roads, and highways with posted speed limit...

DARPA Wants to Build Computers With 'Common Sense' By  Jack Corrigan , Staff Correspondent OCTOBER 26, 2018 It’s one of the many programs the agency will fund under its $2 billion next-generation artificial intelligence initiative. Even today’s most advanced artificial intelligence tools lack the common sense that lets humans move through the world, but the Pentagon’s research wing is kicking off a program to instill computers with knowledge people often take for granted. The Machine Common Sense program, launched Oct. 19 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will explore multiple methods for teaching computers broad strategies for navigating the world. Today’s AI tools can only be trained in highly specialized tasks, but through the program, DARPA intends to give the technology a basic, widely applicable toolbox for solving problems. AI with common sense wouldn’t need computer scientists to explicitly tell them, for instance, that gravity always makes o...

New Movie Claims Google Handed the Popular Vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 BY TYLER O'NEIL SEPTEMBER 23, 2018 When Donald Trump surprised the world by winning the 2016 election, liberals clung to the idea that his victory was illegitimate because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. According to a psychologist who supported Clinton in 2016, however, Google's bias in Clinton's favor may remove even that symbolic victory from her. Almost all of Clinton's popular vote margin could be attributed to Google bias, making her win "negligible." Dr. Robert Epstein, a psychologist who earned his Ph.D. at Harvard, actually reported this finding last year, but he explains how it works in the upcoming film "The Creepy Line." Epstein made a stir in 2015 by reporting in Politico that Google could "rig" the 2016 election. This story discussed the results of his study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scien...

'Free speech' social platform Gab has gone offline Offline: Gab is taking time off the internet, under immense pressure following the Pittsburgh attack. BY JOHNNY LIEU October 28, 2018 Gab has gone offline. The self-described "free speech social media platform" is taking time off the internet, after landing under the spotlight when it was discovered the suspect involved in Pittsburgh's synagogue shooting was a poster and user on the site. Gab posted a message on its homepage, announcing that the site will be "inaccessible for a period of time" as it works "around the clock" to transition a new hosting provider. The platform has been banned by PayPal, and fellow online payment service Stripe is looking to cut off the site. Gab's new hosting service, Joyent, reportedly will suspend the site from 9 a.m. ET on Monday, Oct. 29. Gab's domain registrar, GoDaddy, has also asked for the platform to take its business...

China's Apple Watch Supplier Under Fire Over Student Labour Manufacturing internships are permitted under Chinese labour law in some cases, but SACOM found the work has "literally nothing to do with learning" and violated some of the country's labour law provisions permitting intern work in factories. Agence France-Presse October 30, 2018 09:43 IST The US titan has sold tens of millions of Apple Watches -- which can cost up to $1,499. WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES: Apple is investigating a factory in southwest China after a labour rights group said the tech giant's supplier forced student workers to work "like robots" to assemble its popular Apple Watch. Many were compelled to work in order to get their vocational degrees and had to do night shifts, according to an investigation by Hong Kong-based NGO Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM). SACOM interviewed 28 students at the plant in Chongqing municipality over...

The world's first humanless warehouse is run only by robots and is a model for the future ·         Mujin, a start-up spun out of Tokyo University, has developed robot controllers that can fully automate warehouses and fulfillment centers. ·         Its customer, JD.com, has what it calls the world's first fully automated e-commerce warehouse in China equipped with Mujin robots. ·         The Japanese start-up wants to help automate warehouses in the United States. Guest Contributor | Tim Hornyak      October 30, 2018 CNBC.com At a recent technology show in Tokyo, a large robot arm reached into a full-sized mockup of a shipping container and began unloading boxes from it. Set on a platform that moved back and forth, the robot was doing a job usually carried out by warehouse workers and forklift operators. The goal of the company that's developin...

Grocers Enlist Robots to Chase E-Commerce Venture firms have invested more than $1.2 billion in grocery technology this year, double the total for 2017 Simbe’s ‘Tally’ robot scans shelves to flag when items are out of stock in a Schnucks store. PHOTO: SIMBE ROBOTICS By Heather Haddon Oct. 29, 2018 8:02 a.m. ET Grocers are stocking their warehouses with robots and artificial intelligence to increase efficiency as competition for consumer spending on food picks up. Robots are relatively new to the food industry, where customer interaction is common and many goods like fruit are fragile and perishable. Startups are vying to sell supermarkets an array of robots that perform different tasks. Venture-capital firms have invested more than $1.2 billion in grocery technology this year, according to PitchBook, a financial-market data provider, double the total for 2017. Technology geared toward packing up online orders for collection also faces competition from compan...

Porn-Watching Employee Infected Government Networks With Russian Malware, IG Says By  Jack Corrigan , Staff Correspondent OCTOBER 25, 2018 Government auditors traced a malware infection back to a single porn-watching employee within the U.S. Geological Survey. An Interior Department watchdog recommended the U.S. Geological Survey ratchet up internet security protocols after discovering its networks had been infected with malware from pornography sites. The agency’s inspector general traced the malicious software to a single unnamed USGS employee, who reportedly used a government-issued computer to visit some 9,000 adult video sites, according to  a report  published Oct. 17. Many of the prohibited pages were linked to Russian websites containing malware, which was ultimately downloaded to the employee’s computer and used to infiltrate USGS networks, auditors found. The investigation found the employee saved much of the pornographic material on an unauthorized ...