Dan Kohn’s Blog

Defcon hackers find it’s very easy to break voting machines

http://flip.it/X41biq

Here’s what happened when that security robot drowned

http://flip.it/vZ-7wF

From Robot Magazine insert:

We are sorry to inform you that Robot Magazine discontinued publication after March/April 2017 issue.

Ed note: I was sorry to get this note. I have been reading the magazine for years….now where will I get my fill of robot news?

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Rule 3: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 4: Your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were.

Rule 5: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT.

Rule 6: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off.

Rule 7: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 8: The world won’t care about your self-esteem.

Rule 9: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.

Rule 10: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger
flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 11: If your born poor, it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor, it is your mistake.

Bonus Rule: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

From: Scroll.in

Watch: This short film shows robots working endlessly, stuck in a vicious cycle. Or is it us?

Maybe it’s the story of our lives, not the machines’.

Your job may not feel as boring or predictable as the work that assembly-line robots perform, but Michael Marczewski’s animated short film Vicious Cycle will make you think again.

Be warned, though, the film gets progressively darker, even if with humorous notes, as tasks such as chopping wood or even playing baseball are broken down to reveal their monotonous essence.

“I’ve always been intrigued by intricate mechanisms,” Marczewski said. “And I began to play around and make some in Cinema 4D. Then the idea of connecting them to helpless robots came, and it evolved from there. My initial idea was to make a fake instructional video with the robots acting out various tasks to demonstrate how to do them, but then everything starts to go wrong. I think the malfunctioning allows for a lot of comedic moments in the film.”

The robots are pushed to work harder and faster, stuck in vicious cycles, until they eventually buckle under pressure and suffer a massive breakdown. Sounds familiar?

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2017/07/05/at-gencyber-boot-camp-memphis-students-get-lessons-in-coding-and-exposure-to-hot-careers/

Robot ‘uses initiative’ to save little girl’s life as she is about to be crushed by shelving unit

http://flip.it/m9WYln

Microsoft made its AI work on a $10 Raspberry Pi

http://flip.it/2hF45z