Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Trump Admin Takes Equity Stake in IBM and Other Quantum Computing Companies
May 21st, 2026Via: Gizmodo: After taking equity stakes in chipmakers and rare-earth element miners, the Trump administration has a new industry on its radar: quantum computing. On Thursday, the Department of Commerce announced that it was investing more than $2 billion in nine quantum computing companies. In turn, it’ll receive “a minority, non-controlling equity stake” in each. […]
Google Search is Truly Dead
May 20th, 2026This is not new. Google/Screwgle/Poogle is changing the appearance of the front end to a bot interface. This is from four years ago: Of course, people like me (and probably you), noticed that Google search went off the rails long before that. Via: TechLinked: — Via: Samtime:
“Utah Datacenter Could Dump 23 Atomic Bombs Worth of Energy Per Day” [???]
May 20th, 2026Via: The Register: A proposed mega-scale datacenter in the US state of Utah has caused controversy after a physics professor estimated that the facility and its associated power generation could dump 23 atomic bombs’ worth of energy per day. But the real question is whether it will actually ever get built. The datacenter is part […]
Trump Wants $1B to Protect White House Ballroom from Drones and Other Threats
May 20th, 2026Via: Ars Technica: President Donald Trump’s latest pitch for using taxpayer dollars to secure his White House ballroom featured a militarized building—including a rooftop hardened against drone strikes and a “drone port” that could potentially house military drones. The remarks came on May 19 as Trump gave reporters a personal tour of the ballroom project […]
Atlas, Can You Bring Me a Drink?
May 18th, 2026Via: Boston Dynamics:
U.S. Approves Nvidia’s H200 AI Chip Exports to Several Large Chinese Firms
May 14th, 2026Via: First Post: The United States has approved exports of Nvidia’s advanced H200 artificial intelligence chips to several major Chinese technology firms, including Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance, even as US President Donald Trump held high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. According to […]
Google Chrome Downloading 4GB AI Model to Your Device Without Asking, Re-Downloads When You Delete It
May 5th, 2026Firefox has a single kill switch for all AI features. Go to Settings – AI Controls – Toggle on, “Block AI enhancements.” Via: Techspot: Google started turning Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser, into an AI browser last year in response to threats from popular AI-native rivals such as OpenAI. Recent reports have uncovered […]
“I’m Scared About Biological Computing”
May 5th, 2026Via: Mind Dump: So… are the neurons on that chip seeing? We all desperately want to say no. We want to say it’s just a science experiment, that 200,000 neurons isn’t enough to be a “person.” But 200,000 is already more neurons than a jellyfish or a worm. Where do we draw the line?
Israel Tries Cope Cages Against Hezbollah’s Drones
April 30th, 2026Via: The War Zone: Over the course of a nearly two-month old war with Israel, Hezbollah has been increasing its use of fiber-optic controlled first-person view (FPV) drones against Israeli troops and vehicles, something we were among the first to note. Now, it appears that Israel is resorting to the use of anti-drone netting on […]
Google and Pentagon Reportedly Agree on Deal for ‘Any Lawful’ Use of AI
April 28th, 2026Via: The Verge: Google has signed a classified deal that allows the US Department of Defense to use its AI models for “any lawful government purpose,” The Information reports. The agreement was reported less than a day after Google employees demanded CEO Sundar Pichai block the Pentagon from using its AI amid concerns that it […]
