Watch this self-driving floor-cleaner conquer a supermarket pic.twitter.com/A5so2WeD0f

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) August 8, 2017

Robots that take human jobs should pay taxes - Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has called for a tax on robots to make up losses due to automation.

“Certainly there will be taxes that relate to automation. Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed, and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the robot at a similar level,” the billionaire said in an interview with news website Quartz.

Governments should tax corporations’ use of robots to at least temporarily gear down the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment, according to Gates .... https://www.rt.com/business

Elon Musk to TUNNEL under LA to beat traffic

When Musk first announced his plans to bore a tunnel to his SpaceX offices in Los Angeles, it was hard to know if he was simply venting his frustrations about being stuck in traffic.

But he ended his rant on Twitter with: 'I am actually going to do this'.

The entrepreneur has a strong track record of getting ideas off the ground.

Musk has started two transportation related companies - Tesla for electric cars and SpaceX for launching into space .... http://www.dailymail.co.uk

British and Czech scientists successfully test "super laser" they claim is 10 times more powerful than any other

The so-called "high peak power laser" has a 1,000-watt average power output, a benchmark of sustained, high-energy pulses.

It has revolutionary potential in engineering, for hardening metal surfaces, processing semiconductors and micro-machining material.

The device was developed by Britain's Central Laser Facility (CLF) and HiLASE (High average power pulsed laser), a Czech state research and development project.

"It is a world record which is important," CLF director John Collier told AFP .... https://www.yahoo.com

China 'controlling weather and will make it rain over area twice size of France'

China has a weather machine that it claims will make it rain over an area 1.7 times the size of France.

It’s spending millions on aircraft and chemicals that will be sprayed into the sky.

Those chemicals – typically silver iodide or dry ice – will change the metaphysical make up of the cloud.

This forces it to sleet, rain or even snow artificially, on demand.

The project will take about four years to complete.

It’s not a new technology.

Back in 2008, China launched over 1,100 rockets containing silver iodide before the Olympics opening ceremony so Beijing’s skies would be clear for its fireworks display .... https://www.thesun.co.uk

Does Facebook want to read your THOUGHTS? Secretive division may be developing a mind-reading device

Facebook wants to know your deepest, darkest thoughts.

In April, the site revealed the existence of a new division, known only as 'Building 8' which is dedicated to creating ground-breaking products at the intersection of hardware, software, and content.

And a new job advert posting suggests that the mysterious division could be working on mind-reading technology .... http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Peter Thiel ‘Confirms’ the ‘Age of Apple is Over,’ But Says It’s Not Tim Cook’s Fault

In a "Confirm or Deny" feature by The New York Times this week, PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel "confirmed" that "the age of Apple is over" based on his belief that smartphones will lack further innovation.
The age of Apple is over.

"Confirm. We know what a smartphone looks like and does. It’s not the fault of Tim Cook, but it’s not an area where there will be any more innovation."

While the iPhone has become a familiar product as itturns ten, which perhaps makes it less exciting to some, to say smartphones are not an area where there will be any more innovation will certainly fuel a debate. And, of course, while the iPhone is Apple's most profitable product, it's not its only .... http://www.macrumors.com

"Government can see what's in your phone, pull information out, look at text messages, turn your microphone on" - McAfee

In this episode of Politicking, political activist, tech pioneer and CEO of MGT Capital Investments John McAfee joins Larry King to bring us his valuable insight regarding issues of cybersecurity and the ominous encroachment of mass surveillance and vulnerability of big government agencies .... https://www.youtube.com

Caught On Tape: How The Robots Are Taking Over Amazon

Over the past few years, as Amazon's distribution network has grown at a near-exponential pace, so has its workforce. As the chart below shows, starting in 2010 and continuing through the third quarter, Amazon has seen a staggering increase in its mostly part-time employment: from 28,300 to over 306,000.

However, always seeking ways to cut a few basis points from its razor thin retail margins, Jeff Bezos has discovered that many, if not all, of these part-time laborers, minimum wage as they may be, are expendable, and the company is actively growing its robotic "workforce" in preparation for the moment when most of those 300,000+ workers become fully redundant .... http://www.zerohedge.com

Putin on teleportation: 'We should have kept the West believing we're on it!'

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia should not have "disappointed" the West by correcting a media report which suggested Moscow may soon have its hands on teleportation.

Russia's work on the much-desired ability to move instantly from one place to another was reported by The Telegraphback in the summer. Saying that a "Kremlin-backed research program" sought to make the technology a reality by 2035, the report said that the "multi-trillion pound" project had been presented to Putin .... https://www.rt.com

Russia testing new drones that could scramble sonars in the English Channel and allow nuclear submarines to enter UNDETECTED

It can also act like a nuclear submarine, fooling enemy subs into revealing their position as they track what they believe is one of Vladimir Putin's hunter-killer vessels.

The forty-tonne Surrogat will be able to travel more than 600 miles at a time and carry out top-secret mission 600 metres below the waves.

It could even act as a decoy, drawing Royal Navy ships towards it while Russian nuke subs creep down the English Channel .... https://www.thesun.co.uk

All modern color printers print a secret, nearly invisible code onto every page to allow governments to track the serial number and timestamps

Printer steganography is a type of steganography – “hiding data within data” where tiny yellow dots are added to each page. The dots are barely visible and contain encoded printer serial numbers and timestamps. Unlike many forms of steganography, the hidden information is not intended to be available from a computer file, but to allow serial number and time of printing to be determined by close examination of a printout .... https://en.wikipedia.org

Elon Musk: Robots will take your jobs, government will have to pay your wage

Computers, intelligent machines, and robots seem like the workforce of the future. And as more and more jobs are replaced by technology, people will have less work to do and ultimately will be sustained by payments from the government, predicts Elon Musk, the iconic Silicon Valley futurist who is the founder and CEO of SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX.

According to Musk, there really won't be any other options.

"There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," says Musk to CNBC. "Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen."

In a country with universal basic income, each individual gets a regular check from the government. Switzerland considered instituting a universal basic income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2578) a month this summer. Voters ultimately rejected the plan, but it sparked a broad, global conversation .... http://www.cnbc.com

Artificial Intelligence Predicts Fourth Election in Row

MogIA, an artificial intelligence system and election predictor, has successfully predicted its fourth election in a row.

The system, which learns in real-time by examining data on the internet, placed its bets on Donald Trump to win the 2016 US Presidential Election in October after also successfully predicting both the Democratic and Republican party primaries .... http://www.breitbart.com

Trump will win the election and is more popular than Obama in 2008, AI system finds

An artificial intelligence system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trumpahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House.

MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions .... http://www.cnbc.com

Apple CEO Tim Cook: "We're Going to Kill Cash"