2/2)
“For the past five years, the X-planes for this aircraft have been quietly laying the foundation for the F-47 flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, and proving that we can push the envelope of technology with confidence.”
@osinttechnical.bsky.social
1/2) US 6th gen. fighter prototypes have been flying since 2019, and a four demonstrators, a pair each from Boeing & Lockheed Martin, have already racked up “hundreds of hours" of flight testing, per the #DOD’s experimental research arm #DARPA #F47
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1903606922605187441?s=46
03. Sofortige Vertragsänderung: Eine gezielte Überarbeitung der Verträge zur Ergänzung der #Verteidigung durchführen. Einen ganzheitlichen Konvent einberufen, um die Erweiterung vorzubereiten.
04. Schulden für Verteidigung: EU-Schulden für gemeinsame, mehrjährige Beschaffung ausgeben, eine europäische #DARPA (Behörde für Forschungsprojekte der Verteidigung) und spezialisierte regionale Industriecluster einrichten.
3/6
Watching #BattlestarGalactica (new series) season 2 finale. As the army of #DARPA bots (#Elon's army) marches onto #NewCaprica! Ugh! Too close to home?
#DARPA just announced a forthcoming program entitled "Exponentiating Mathematics", focusing on challenges to auto-formalization (and auto-decomposition of large proofs into small lemmas). The preliminary announcement (still short on many details) can be found at https://sam.gov/opp/4def3c13ca3947069b1779e7ff697c6a/view
[As mentioned in previous posts, there is significant uncertainty in the federal funding environment at present, nevertheless there is still activity in launching new proposals.]
This information is all out there, but it's good to have it in one place. The TL;DR is that the #Trump administration's goal is nothing less than the destruction of #American #science, and they may well get it. #NIH and #NSF are the most obvious and immediate targets—but #CDC, #FDA, #NASA, #NOAA, and even #DARPA are on the hitlist, along with numerous other funding agencies scattered throughout the government.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-s-happening-inside-nih
Authoritarians are often very fond of *engineering*: consider #Hitler's obsession with "#Wunderwaffen," or the #USSR's bloody-minded but largely successful approach to building a space program. But they fear and hate *science*, because inquiring into the fundamental nature of reality is anathema to ideology. Of course #engineering without #science runs dry fast, and you end up with everything from faulty machinery to mass starvation. This doesn't really bother the people in charge, most of the time. "Some of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."
Engineering is also where the profit comes from, which is why governments *have* to fund science to get the shiny toys. Very few private organizations are able to fund years-long blue-sky research, and those that can usually don't particularly want to. I'm lucky enough to work in a field where a fair amount of science *is* privately funded, but it's still all downstream from academic science—and that means #government #grants.
Take those away, and it's like killing the roots of a plant. The leaves may look healthy for a while, but sooner or later the whole thing withers. Since farming this particular plant is not only how I make my living, but also what keeps people I care about alive (including myself, as the years go by) I take the whole thing kind of personally. Hell if I know what to do about it, though.
Well. For the moment, there's still some life above ground. I'd better get back to that, and harvest what I can. Maybe we'll make it through the famine to come.
From 2017: #Google has finally found a buyer for its amazing, scary robot companies, #BostonDynamics and #Schaft: #SoftBank
The companies are not disclosing a price.
by April Glaser
Updated Jun 8, 2017, 10:07 PM EDT
"Japan’s big-betting holding firm SoftBank is buying Boston Dynamics, one of the most highly regarded robotics labs in the world, from Google’s parent company #Alphabet for an undisclosed price.
"Google acquired Boston Dynamics in 2013 under the leadership of Andy Rubin, the co-inventor of #Android, who was leading a wave of acquisitions of robotics companies under the search giant.
"Boston Dynamics’ robots routinely make headlines, including a high-profile demo at this year’s TED conference. The company, led by CEO Marc Raibert, has made a robotic cheetah that can run 28 miles per hour, a robotic dog that it recently used to deliver packages to doorsteps in Boston, and most recently a massive legged and wheeled robot that can clear hurdles and walk down stairs.
"The firm has been hailed by other roboticists for its ability to blend hardware and #ArtificialIntelligence to make machines capable of dynamic, agile movements. Its most recent wheeled robot, Handle, can manipulate objects that are comparable to its own weight, and its four-legged, animal-like robots can maneuver over different types of terrain.
"One industry source said earlier this year that Boston Dynamics’ most recent machine 'changes the whole ballgame.'
"SoftBank is also buying Schaft, a Japan-based robotics firm that unveiled a bipedal walking robot last year, from Alphabet. A source close to the matter said Schaft, which was part of Google, never fully integrated into the company and operated as a sort of separate entity taking a different approach to robotics than the rest of Google.
"The deal makes sense for SoftBank, which has been working in robotics for years, having acquired a majority stake in the robotics company #Aldebaran in 2012. Aldebaran makes the humanoid robot Pepper, which is being used in retail and customer service settings throughout Japan, and increasingly in the U.S. SoftBank has also invested in related technologies, including buying chip design firm #ARMHoldings last year for more than $30 billion. SoftBank also led a $20 million investment round in #FetchRobotics, a company that makes warehouse logistics robots, in 2015.
"Rubin left Google in 2014 after driving a string of robotics acquisitions, which, sources have told Recode, left a number of the companies without much direction about what their role at Google would be.
"Prior to being acquired by Google, Boston Dynamics largely operated on military research contracts. Its humanoid #Atlas robot was used in #DARPA’s robotics challenge in 2015."
https://www.vox.com/2017/6/8/15766440/softbank-alphabet-google-robotics-boston-dynamics-schaft
#Terminator #TechBroFascism
Down the rabbit hole...
The Skynet Conspiracy
December 12, 2024
fake politics
Skynet is Real
"Skynet is a company in the fictional movie Terminator (1984) and Terminator: Judgement Day (1991) and others. But to me Skynet is not fictional. The movies are 'predictive programming' long before any of this came to be.
"In the fictional world of the movie, Cyberdyne – the company that created Skynet – was a computer firm operating out of Sunnyvale, California. The street name was El Camino Real.
"In reality, Sunnyvale, California, along with Mountain View, Menlo Park and Palo Alto are today Silicon Valley, the now world-famous center of computers, internet and AI that developed in the 1990s and early 2000s. El Camino Real is a real street and a mere 10 minute drive from today’s #Google Headquarters.
"How did the writers of #Terminator know this would become the world center of #AI more than two decades later?
"When the movie script was written in 1983, the term '#Internet' was not yet public. The writers used the word 'Skynet'.
From the Terminator Fan Wiki Page:
"'A T-800 Terminator, which was sent from the future and designed to kill humans, programmed to assassinate Sarah Connor, was crushed in one of the hydraulic presses in Cyberdyne’s factory. Thus, the company obtained the machine’s wreckage, including its CPU chip and an arm.
"After its arrival in 1984, Meta-Node was able to reach Cyberdyne Systems Laboratory in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. It provided the technical data, which accelerated the development of Skynet. This leap of engineering accelerated the events that led to Skynet achieving self-awareness, thereby making any Resistance futile. The Meta-Node then served as an information tutor and guardian, uploading to the fledgling Skynet all the tactical data gathered about the future, then protecting it so it could carry out Judgment Day. As Skynet of this timeline gained various knowledge from the #MetaNode, there would be no #Resistance after the nuclear holocaust'.
And:
"'#Cyberdyne eventually developed Skynet, a network of supercomputers that employed #ArtificialIntelligence in order to replace human beings as commercial and military aircraft pilots, and for the control of other military systems, including nuclear missiles. The system went online on August 4, 1997. On August 29, 1997, Skynet became self-aware. In a panic, its creators attempted to shut it down, but Skynet retaliated by launching a nuclear attack against Russia, knowing that the Russian counterattack would eliminate its enemies in the United States, initiating an indeterminately long period of global warfare. The battle pitted humans against Cyberdyne machines, which developed ever-increasing capabilities. Although the company was presumably shut down or destroyed, the event was later known as Judgment Day.
"In other words, the military created Skynet (Internet & Big Tech). Cheyenne Mountain does not only exist in the fictional Universe, it’s also a real military place beneath a mountain. Skynet achieved self-awareness. Then it used Robots to wage war against humans.
The Military runs Big Tech
:It is true that the Internet was created by the military – by #DARPA to be exact. DARPA is short for “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency”. They invented it in the 1960s, quarter of a century before they let us have it, and called it ARPANET. One of the early Logos used by DARPA:
I assert that they didn’t only create Internet, but all of Big Tech. I think it’s easy to prove and I’ll try to right now.
In Mountain View, California the following companies share the same physical space:
- #Google
- #Lockheed
- #Microsoft
- #Air Force
- #Amazon
- #HewlettPackard
- #NASA
- #Facebook"
Read more (if you dare...)!
https://falsehistory.net/the-skynet-conspiracy/
@caseynewton This does not surprise me. #Alphabet (#Google's parent company) was in bed with #DARPA for many, many years... #KillerRobots #Terminator #TechBroFascism
"Autonomous weapons systems select and apply force to targets based on sensor processing rather than human input. Some autonomous weapons systems have existed for years, but the types, duration of operation, geographical scope, and environment in which such systems operate have been limited. Now technological advances are spurring the development of autonomous weapons systems or 'killer robots,' which would operate without meaningful human control, delegating life-and-death decisions to machines. Such weapons systems raise serious ethical, moral, legal, accountability, and security problems and concerns. #HumanRightsWatch is a founding member of #StopKillerRobots campaign, a civil society coalition that calls for a new international treaty to prohibit and restrict autonomous weapons systems."
@GraniteGeek So were the "Terminator" robots. While there is an international ban on "killer robots", I'm sure that's not stopping some countries from developing them.
Meet #DARPA's real-world #Terminator, #Atlas
https://www.extremetech.com/defense/161193-meet-darpas-real-world-terminator-atlas
Can walls of #oysters protect shores against #hurricanes? #DARPA wants to know.
#Tyndall Airforce base will test a new way to protect shorelines from intensified waves and storm surges: a 50m array, made up of three chevron-shaped structures each weighing about 46,000lbs, can take 70% of the oomph out of waves, according to tests. But this isn’t your grandaddy’s #seawall. It’s specifically designed to be colonized by oysters, some of nature’s most effective wave-killers.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/10/can-walls-of-oysters-protect-shores-against-hurricanes-darpa-wants-to-know/
#US #DARPA responds to #China's #gallium export controls: awards #Raytheon three-year contract to develop new types of #transistors
China controls the lion's share of gallium supply and its recent export restriction on gallium potentially mean additional risks for American national security.
To respond to this challenge, the U.S. Department of Defense agency DARPA has tasked Raytheon to develop synthetic diamond and aluminum nitride #semiconductors.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/u-s-darpa-responds-to-chinas-gallium-export-controls-awards-raytheon-three-year-contract-to-develop-new-types-of-transistors
Robohirn für Helikopter: Sikorsky baut autonomes Flugsystem in Black Hawks ein
Die US-Armee will ihre Black-Hawk-Helikopter modernisieren und ihnen das autonome Fliegen beibringen. Das könnte in gefährlichen Missionen von Vorteil sein.
DARPA Thinks Walls of Oysters Could Protect Shores Against Hurricanes
https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-thinks-walls-of-oysters-could-protect-shores-against-hurricanes/
#ycombinator #science #environment #hurricanes #weather #extreme_weather #darpa
NASA und DARPA kooperieren bei Entwicklung von Robotern zur Satellitenwartung
Das Robotik-Projekt, das unter anderem militärische Satelliten im Orbit auf dem neuesten Stand halten soll, wird künftig von der NASA unterstützt.
At DEFCON, DARPA announced the finalists for their AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) - they're pushing for AI to help lock down critical software. $4 million grand prize.
Team Atlanta, one of the finalists, shared their journey. They were the only crew to spot and offer a patch for a zero-day (SQLite3).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkJimGWJYgw
https://team-atlanta.github.io/blog/post-atl/
Hacker News 
