Urban Reconnaissance Through Supervised Autonomy (URSA)

DARPA |  DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office is hosting a Proposers Day to provide information to potential applicants on the structure and objectives of the new Urban Reconnaissance through Supervised Autonomy (URSA) program. URSA aims to develop technology to enable autonomous systems operated and supervised by U.S. ground forces to detect hostile forces and establish positive identification of combatants before U.S. troops encounter them. The URSA program seeks to overcome the inherent complexity of the urban environment by combining new knowledge about human behaviors, autonomy algorithms, integrated sensors, multiple sensor modalities, and measurable human responses to discriminate the subtle differences between hostile individuals and noncombatants. Additional details are available at https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-18-48/listing.html. 

To register, visit https://www.client-meeting.net/Proposers-Day-May-2018. Registration closes at 4:00 PM ET on April 25, 2018.

Please address administrative questions to DARPA-SN-18-48@darpa.mil, and refer to the URSA Proposers Day (DARPA-SN-18-48) in all correspondence. 

DARPA hosts Proposers Days to provide potential performers with information on whether and how they might respond to the Government’s research and development solicitations and to increase efficiency in proposal preparation and evaluation. Therefore, the URSA Proposers Day is open only to registered potential applicants, and not to the media or general public.

Full URSA program details will be made available in a forthcoming Broad Agency Announcement posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website. 

One year of accumulation of crime in central Chicago [OC] from r/dataisbeautiful

They Will Kill You

theintercept |  DRONES ARE A TOOL, not a policy. The policy is assassination. While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S. personnel, Congress has avoided legislating the issue or even defining the word “assassination.” This has allowed proponents of the drone wars to rebrand assassinations with more palatable characterizations, such as the term du jour, “targeted killings.”

When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to boots on the ground and are authorized only when an “imminent” threat is present and there is “near certainty” that the intended target will be eliminated. Those terms, however, appear to have been bluntly redefined to bear almost no resemblance to their commonly understood meanings.

The first drone strike outside of a declared war zone was conducted more than 12 years ago, yet it was not until May 2013 that the White House released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes. Those guidelines offered little specificity, asserting that the U.S. would only conduct a lethal strike outside of an “area of active hostilities” if a target represents a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons,” without providing any sense of the internal process used to determine whether a suspect should be killed without being indicted or tried. The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been one of trust, but don’t verify.

The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides. The Intercept granted the source’s request for anonymity because the materials are classified and because the U.S. government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers. The stories in this series will refer to the source as “the source.”  Fist tap Dale

The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source said.  Fist tap Dale

MindSmash Pipes Up Into The Digital Catheter...,

endgadget |  The new replay tools offered in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds are so much more than standard video-capture technology. In fact, it isn't video capture at all -- it's data capture. The 3D replay tools allow players to zoom around the map after a match, tracking their own character, following enemies' movements, slowing down time and setting up cinematic shots of their favorite kills, all within a 1-kilometer radius of their avatar. It's filled with statistics, fresh perspectives and infinite data points to dissect. This isn't just a visual replay; it's a slice of the actual game, perfectly preserved, inviting combatants to play God.

PUBG is an ideal test case. It's a massively popular online game where up to 100 players parachute onto a map, scavenge for supplies, upgrade weapons and attempt to be the last person standing. Even though it technically came out in December, PUBG has been available in early access since March and it's picked up a considerable number of accolades -- and players -- in the process. Just last week, SteamDB reported PUBG hit 3 million concurrent players on PC, vastly outstripping its closest competitor, Dota 2, which has a record of 1.29 million simultaneous players.

Part of PUBG's success stems from developers' relentless focus on making the game fun to watch. Live streaming is now a major part of the video-game world, with sites like Twitch and YouTube Gaming growing in prominence and eSports bursting into the mainstream.

Kim says PUBG creator Brendan Greene and CEO Chang Han Kim built the idea of data-capture into the game from the beginning, and Minkonet's tech is a natural evolution of this focus. Minkonet and PUBG developers connected in late 2016 and started working together on the actual software earlier this year.

"One of their first visions was to have PUBG as not just a great game to play, but a great game to watch," Kim says. "So they were already from the very beginning focused on having PUBG as a great live streaming game; esports was also one of their sort of long-term visions."

Is Ideology The Original Augmented Reality?

nautil.us |  Released in July 2016, Pokémon Go is a location-based, augmented-reality game for mobile devices, typically played on mobile phones; players use the device’s GPS and camera to capture, battle, and train virtual creatures (“Pokémon”) who appear on the screen as if they were in the same real-world location as the player: As players travel the real world, their avatar moves along the game’s map. Different Pokémon species reside in different areas—for example, water-type Pokémon are generally found near water. When a player encounters a Pokémon, AR (Augmented Reality) mode uses the camera and gyroscope on the player’s mobile device to display an image of a Pokémon as though it were in the real world.^* This AR mode is what makes Pokémon Go different from other PC games: Instead of taking us out of the real world and drawing us into the artificial virtual space, it combines the two; we look at reality and interact with it through the fantasy frame of the digital screen, and this intermediary frame supplements reality with virtual elements which sustain our desire to participate in the game, push us to look for them in a reality which, without this frame, would leave us indifferent. Sound familiar? Of course it does. What the technology of Pokémon Go externalizes is simply the basic mechanism of ideology—at its most basic, ideology is the primordial version of “augmented reality.”

The first step in this direction of technology imitating ideology was taken a couple of years ago by Pranav Mistry, a member of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, who developed a wearable “gestural interface” called “SixthSense.”^** The hardware—a small webcam that dangles from one’s neck, a pocket projector, and a mirror, all connected wirelessly to a smartphone in one’s pocket—forms a wearable mobile device. The user begins by handling objects and making gestures; the camera recognizes and tracks the user’s hand gestures and the physical objects using computer vision-based techniques. The software processes the video stream data, reading it as a series of instructions, and retrieves the appropriate information (texts, images, etc.) from the Internet; the device then projects this information onto any physical surface available—all surfaces, walls, and physical objects around the wearer can serve as interfaces. Here are some examples of how it works: In a bookstore, I pick up a book and hold it in front of me; immediately, I see projected onto the book’s cover its reviews and ratings. I can navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface, zoom in, zoom out, or pan across, using intuitive hand movements. I make a sign of @ with my fingers and a virtual PC screen with my email account is projected onto any surface in front of me; I can then write messages by typing on a virtual keyboard. And one could go much further here—just think how such a device could transform sexual interaction. (It suffices to concoct, along these lines, a sexist male dream: Just look at a woman, make the appropriate gesture, and the device will project a description of her relevant characteristics—divorced, easy to seduce, likes jazz and Dostoyevsky, good at fellatio, etc., etc.) In this way, the entire world becomes a “multi-touch surface,” while the whole Internet is constantly mobilized to supply additional data allowing me to orient myself.

Mistry emphasized the physical aspect of this interaction: Until now, the Internet and computers have isolated the user from the surrounding environment; the archetypal Internet user is a geek sitting alone in front of a screen, oblivious to the reality around him. With SixthSense, I remain engaged in physical interaction with objects: The alternative “either physical reality or the virtual screen world” is replaced by a direct interpenetration of the two. The projection of information directly onto the real objects with which I interact creates an almost magical and mystifying effect: Things appear to continuously reveal—or, rather, emanate—their own interpretation. This quasi-animist effect is a crucial component of the IoT: “Internet of things? These are nonliving things that talk to us, although they really shouldn’t talk. A rose, for example, which tells us that it needs water.”¹ (Note the irony of this statement. It misses the obvious fact: a rose is alive.) But, of course, this unfortunate rose does not do what it “shouldn’t” do: It is merely connected with measuring apparatuses that let us know that it needs water (or they just pass this message directly to a watering machine). The rose itself knows nothing about it; everything happens in the digital big Other, so the appearance of animism (we communicate with a rose) is a mechanically generated illusion.

Slaughterbots

sfgate |   In the video above, the technology is initially developed with the intention of combating crime and terrorism, but the drones are taken over by an unknown forces who use the powerful weapons to murder a group of senators and college students. The video does contain some graphic content.

Russell, an expert on artificial intelligence, appears at the end of the video and warns against humanity's development of autonomous weapons.

"This short film is just more than speculation," Russell says. "It shows the results of integrating and militarizing technologies that we already have."  Fist tap Big Don.

Africa in 2040 (REDUX Originally Posted 2/20/08)

Paul Chefurka's grim assessment of what's in store for Africa. Please read and bookmark this paper.

There is a darkness moving on the face of the land. We catch glimpses of it in newscasts from far-off places that few of us have ever seen. We hear hints of it on the radio, read snippets about it in newspapers and magazines. The stories are always fragmentary, lacking context or connection. They speak of things like inflation in Zimbabwe, war in Chad, electricity problems in Johannesburg, famine in Malawi, pipeline fires in Nigeria, political violence in Kenya, cholera in Congo. Each snapshot of grief heaves briefly into view, then fades back into obscurity. With every fresh story we are left asking ourselves, "Is there something bigger going on here, some unseen thread connecting these dots? Or is this just more of the same from a continent that has known more than its share of misery?"

This paper is my attempt to connect those dots, to tease some order out of the chaos of the news reports. I will use some very simple numerical techniques to fill in the missing lines, and in the end a picture will emerge. I can tell you in advance that the picture is fearsome beyond imagining, and you may well be tempted to avert your gaze. I would advise you instead to screw up your courage and take a good look. It is crucial to our future as a civilized race.

I expect the collapse to turn Africa into the next arena for a quick game of "Disaster Capitalism." Large trans-national entities will make offers of "significant assistance" to particular countries in return for untrammeled access to their resource base. The vultures will be lining the banks of the Zambezi waiting for the feast, no doubt about it.

"I know there's rumors in Ghana `All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here,' Bush said at a news conference with Kufuor. "That's baloney. As they say in Texas, that's bull."

Instead, he said the new command — unique to the Pentagon's structure — was aimed at more effectively reorganizing U.S. military efforts in Africa to strengthen African nations' peacekeeping, trafficking and anti-terror efforts.

"The whole purpose of Africom is to help African leaders deal with African problems," Bush said.

Bush sought to dispel the notion about militarization of Africa even before giving reporters a chance to ask him about it. Kufuour said he was satisfied with Bush's explanation, and thanked him for announcing it "so that the relationship between us and the United States will grow stronger."

For now, the administration has decided to continue operating Africom out of existing U.S. bases on the continent with a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. War-wrecked Liberia is the only African nation that has publicly offered to host a headquarters. Bush said before the trip that "if" a headquarters for Africom is ever established on the continent, he would "seriously consider" Liberia as the host.

DPD has a supply of bombs, drones, and used one to kill a civilian in a public place today...,

theverge |  Police in Dallas used a bomb disposal robot to kill a suspect after last night’s deadly shooting during a protest. In a press conference, Dallas police chief David Brown said that the robot was deployed after negotiations with the suspect failed. "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," said Brown. "Other options would have exposed our officers to great danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb."

It’s not entirely clear what the "device" in question was, although it may have been one of the small explosives that are normally used to safely detonate larger bombs. A previous statement, from Dallas’ mayor, said only that the suspect had died after police used explosives to "blast him out."

Police have used remote-controlled bomb disposal robots for other purposes; San Jose police talked a man out of suicide last year after delivering a phone and pizza to him via one. But this is the first known case where a department has described using one as a weapon, defense technology expert Peter Singer posted on Twitter, although he notes it's been used this way informally by US troops and insurgents. Unlike with the "killer robots" that have ethicists most worried, any decisions in Dallas were made clearly by humans — it’s much more like an advanced tool used in an unexpected way than anything artificially intelligent or designed for murder. Still, beyond the unmanned drones used in bombing strikes, it’s one of the first known times that a robot has been intentionally used to kill a human outside the battlefield.