The newest TOP500 List - the ranking of the world's most powerful supercomputers - dropped today, and one significant thing is clear: graphics processing units are increasingly augmenting the power of the world's most sophisticated supercomputers, allowing relatively cheap ways to help these behemoths of calculation carry out their work in new ways.
In an international cyber sting that is being called the biggest cyber criminal takedown in history, the FBI has arrested six Estonians accused of running a botnet that controlled more than 4 million computers in 100 countries (keep in mind there are only about 200 countries in the world). But as nefarious and far-reaching as that sounds, the scheme itself brings the story to something of an anti-climax. The botnet was simply diverting browsers to sites that served up advertising and then collecting referral fees.
A sheriff's office in the US state of Texas is taking a big and potentially controversial step forward with a new piece of law enforcement technology. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Conroe, Texas, is prepping its deputies to fly a US$300,000 unmanned ShadowHawk helicopter --paid for with a Department of Homeland Security grant--that someday might carry a weapons payload.
While our friends Jaguar and Ranger toil to model the Earth's atmosphere, star formation and battery chemistry, other supercomputers in the US are working on classified national security problems. Namely: What happens when a nuclear weapon explodes? Are we sure nuclear weapons would actually work, should, God forbid, the world decided to use them?
We've spent a lot of time talking about quantum stuff lately. Some is just cool for its own sake, some of it could genuinely revolutionise the way we do things, but either way, quantum mechanics has already shown it can be applied to a range of practical uses. Add one more to the list - a US defence firm has come up with the idea of using photons to create highly-dense and principally unbreakable communications.
He was the infamous leader and self-proclaimed “King of Kings”, whose 42-year dictatorship was condemned by the world. For the last few months of his life, while the Kingdom of Libya was in civil turmoil, Colonel Gaddafi never made a phone call - until right before he was killed.
The ongoing imperative to turn soldiers into "supersoldiers" has seen some pretty superhero-esque technological enhancements become real-world defense sector pursuits, like the ability to hear through walls, to fly at will, or to harness superhuman strength. Now we can add X-ray vision to that list.
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