“But back to those five minutes. Between 11:49 and 11:54, something extraordinary happened. For about 300 seconds, the computers took over. The stock, which had dropped four points in the five minutes prior, froze in an incredibly narrow five-cent range while two sets of computers put in thousands upon thousands of bids against one another. On one side, the underwriters’ computers were offering to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock to keep it from dipping below the crucial $38 level; on the other, high frequency traders were making veerrryyy slightly higher bids at just above $38 — $38.01, $38.02 — which they would sell, literally seconds later […]
For a few minutes, the most-watched stock in the world behaved like a malfunctioning computer program. The stock that convinced untold thousands of regular people with E-Trade accounts to get back into investing behaved according to rules that literally none of them understood, traded at volumes that none of them could conceive of and effectively followed contradictory orders from two sets of screaming robots. This is what future shock feels like.”
—
How Facebook’s IPO Got Hijacked by Computers (via @wonderlandblog)
Oh, and this doesn’t even get to the part where NASDAQ didn’t boot up correctly and $3MM in trades got DDOSed.
(via slavin)
(via slavin)
Spanish Government Deploys Robotic Fish to Monitor Maritime Pollution
Currently the port relies on divers to monitor water quality, which is a lengthy process costing €100,000 per year. The divers take water samples from hundreds of points in the port, then send them off for analysis, with the results taking weeks to return. By contrast, the SHOAL robots would continuously monitor the water, letting the port respond immediately to the causes of pollution, such as a leaking boat or industrial spillage, and work to mitigate its effects.
The SHOAL fish are one and a half metres long, comparable to the size and shape of a tuna, but their neon-yellow plastic shell means they are unlikely to be mistaken for the real thing. A range of onboard chemical sensors detect lead, copper and other pollutants, along with measuring water salinity.
They are driven by a dual-hinged tail capable of making tight turns that would be impossible with a propeller-driven robot. They are also less noisy, reducing the impact on marine life.
The robots are battery powered and capable of running for 8 hours between charges. At the moment the researchers have to recover them by boat, but their plan is that the fish will return to a charging station by themselves.
Working in a group, the fish can cover a 1 kilometre-square region of water, down to a depth of 30 metres. They communicate with each other and a nearby base-station using very low-frequency sound waves, which can penetrate the water more easily than radio waves. However, this means the fish have a low data transmission rate and can only send short, predefined messages. “It’s a good solution, but it requires thinking carefully about what data to transmit and how to use that data,” says Kristi Morgansen, a roboticist at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the research.
Robotic fish shoal sniffs out pollution in harbours - environment - 22 May 2012 - New Scientist
via joshbyard:
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“, “Depending on how good the roboticists get how quickly, there’s going to become a point where there really isn’t enough in it for a sufficiently large fraction of humanity. I simply see no way this trend can continue without eventually rendering almost all of us irrelevant. People’s basic survival instincts will not tolerate that. However, by that point, there may very well be no easy way back, and all hell will break loose.” In other words, the problem won’t be that the robots will kill us, but that the rise of robots will disintegrate our society, none of us will be able to make a living, and we’ll kill each other. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice if a robot cleaned your toilet for you?” — Rise of the Machines
(via Early Warning: Global Robot Population)
“
A drone used by police on Merseyside crashed into the River Mersey during a routine training exercise.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which was fitted with CCTV, apparently lost battery power while being flown by officers in Aigburth in February 2010.
Attempts to make an emergency landing failed and it crashed into the water.
[…]
Shortly before the crash, police were forced to take it out of service temporarily as they discovered they were using it without an appropriate licence.
They needed permission from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to fly within 50m of people and within 150m of buildings.
A licence was later granted by the CAA, but soon afterwards the device plummeted into the river and could not be found.
” — BBC News - Police drone crashes into River Mersey (NB: Article dates from October 2011. via @blech)(via new-aesthetic)
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