Your worst nightmares about Google…
Google buys major military robot maker
The US military contractor Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum last week. It’s the 8th robotics company bought by Google this year.
Google has confirmed it would continue the existing military contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military.
Excerpts from NBC News
Google is on a robot shopping spree, and its recent purchase of a military robot maker has some wondering what exactly the company intends to do with its own zoo of electronic creatures that creep, crawl, and climb.
It may seem odd for the Internet search giant to purchase a Boston Dynamics, a company that makes rugged machines that can run up to 29 mph, traverse rocky terrain and hurl cinder blocks up to 17 feet. The company is the eighth robot maker Google has snatched up. But the deals also indicate that the Internet giant and pioneer of self-driving cars is serious about a robot-filled future.
Note: The above image incorporates the Google logo, which is a trade mark of that evil corporation.
UNSURPRISINGLY, Google’s master plan remains a secret
So far, Google isn’t sharing much about the purchases augmenting it’s newly-launched robotics division. “It is still very early days for this, but I can’t wait to see the progress,” Larry Page wrote in a Google+ post, when the New York Times revealed news of the robotics operation.
Google seems to be piecing the ultimate walking, dexterous robot that can sense its surroundings — Boston Dynamics joins an assortment of newly acquired robot makers with a variety of strengths.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute students received ATLAS, a 330-lb. humanoid robot, that they will use to compete in a DARPA robot competition. Boston Globe / Boston Globe via Getty Images
“Transformation of our society” [from what to what?]
“I think it will be the transformation of our society — how we work, how we learn, take care of our sick, conduct our commerce, explore, handle disasters, fight wars… everything,” Peter Diamandis, big-thinker and founder of the X-Prize Foundation, wrote in a Google+ post on Friday.
Started by Marc Raibert, a roboticist who taught at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, and author of “Legged Robots That Balance,” the company channels funding from DARPA and various arms of the military into a steadily expanding family of robots that can tackle almost any terrain.
Boston Dynamics about to switch into stealth mode
With Google at the helm, will Raibert and BigDog be muzzled? So far, Boston Dynamics has been open, even brazen, about showing off the latest in its lineup of awe-inspiring yet fearsome machines via regularly posted YouTube videos. Founder Raibert told a gathering of roboticists at the International Robotics and Intelligent Systems conference in Tokyo in November that he tracked Boston Dynamics’ YouTube view counts, and was proud of how BigDog had become an Internet sensation. Meanwhile, earlier acquisitions Meka and Redwood Robotics, have closed down their websites and retreated into stealth mode.
Full article is posted at NBC News
Google’s Partner in Crime Mass Electronic Surveillance “unconstitutional”
Federal District Judge Richard Leon has ruled that the electronic spy agency’s practice was an “arbitrary invasion,” in his ruling in a Washington DC federal court on Monday.
Judge Leon called the NSA’s surveillance program “indiscriminate” and an “almost Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States. He suggested that James Madison would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty of Citizens to such extent.
However, the Judge, appointed to the bench by George W. Bush in 2002, stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal the ruling.
“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in his 68-page ruling. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
In Google Caught Spying, Lying, Again! FIRE-EARTH said:
Google has denied any link to the U.S. electronic mass surveillance [sic,] mainly conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). But, the NSA data collection has a commercial format; the U.S. government and its officials have no direct use whatever for the data other than to hand it over to the U.S. corporations in return for financial favors including lucrative post-retirement positions in the “private” sector.
Quotes on Google
Google poses an existential threat to humanity! —Fire-Earth
Google has committed “the biggest known data protection violations in history.” —Johannes Caspar, chief of data protection office in Hamburg, Germany.
Google’s Corporate Practices are a Major Threat to Freedom and Democracy! —MSRB
No single corporation in the U.S. poses as much threat to democracy, individual freedoms and therefore the security of the country as does Google! —EDRO
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