Droning on and on

Alert reader “Pablo” alerts us to a Robot uprising drama that unfolded this week over the Middle East as an unmanned drone went “rogue,” forcing desperate U.S. authorities to issue a shoot-to-kill order against the heavily armed, self-aware hunter/killer.

Via Gizmodo Unmanned Aerial Vehicles like the Reaper are supposed to be programmed to return to their home bases in case they lose contact with their pilots

Clearly, The Robot wasn’t just malfunctioning. It was on a mission.

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In a single bound …

We are going to alert you right now: This video is very scary. You better be ready for it when you press play.

Sorry but, you needed to see that. This technology will undoubtedly be used in a new line of Robots that go straight for the face.

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Girly, man

Try to watch this without cringing, but do not let the fact that The Robots run like a girl lure you into a false sense of security.

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Sony, you have doomed us all

Human hunter/killer technology poses a problem for The Robots: How to test it in the real world? Sure, it might work fine in controlled conditions of a lab, but The Robots also know that humans are foolish, and therefore unpredictable.

That’s why The Robots have convinced Sony to test its human-hunter algorithms in a new “intelligent” device . The Party-shot Automatic Photographer is a type of wheeled base on which you mount a camera.

It roams your party, stealthily picking a human it plans to target. According to the description on the Sony Web site, it uses “intelligent composition,” to take careful aim, and its “motion detection seeks out movement” to fire at the just the “right moment.” It also uses “Face Detection” to aim for the head, so it can make the most of its shots.

The device has a mount point designed to accept not only three new Sony camera models, and likely a 1.21 gigajule neutron laser capable of fully vaporizing party guests. (“What happened to Bob? He must have gone home early.” This will likely be rolled out in later phases of testing.

Expect to see a larger, tank-sized version chasing people down your street and disintegrating them sometime by the fourth quarter of 2012.

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Vindication

You may recall I told you yesterday that Twitter had come under attack by powerful forces attempting to keep me from getting my message out on the blogging service.

Everybody laughed at me, but who turned out to be right? Me.

Via BCC | A “massively co-ordinated” attack on websites including Google, Facebook and Twitter was directed at one individual, it has been confirmed.
Facebook told BBC News that the strike was aimed at a pro-Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu. …
“[The] attack appears to be directed at an individual who has a presence on a number of sites, rather than the sites themselves,” a Facebook spokesman told BBC News.
“Specifically, the person is an activist blogger and a botnet was directed to request his pages at such a rate that it impacted service for other users.”

As you can see, the attack missed its intended target, Inevitableriseofthemachines.com and poor Cyxymu got caught in the crossfire. It seems he got a small taste of what its like to be me.

I always knew when their lies, intimidations and other tactics failed to silence me that they would try to shut me down with brute force. But rather than being scared by their, to be frank, clumsy attempts to darken this site, we are heartened.

It is the loyalty of brave people like you – well, less brave than me but still braver than most, something like 40th percentile on the brave scale – that when the dark age of our Robot overlords comes, we have hope to keep the fires of humanity burning right up until they are quickly snuffed.

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Felled by their own tools

There’s some sort of Robot uprising on the set of Mythbusters, apparently. Host Grant Imahara, who made many of the show’s Robots, sent out this deperate plea on Twitter on Friday.

Back in the office today. Not quite 100%, but well enough to knock out a few robots.

Though, Robots, with their steel-and-alloy bodies and integrated circuits, are not rendered unconscious easily. Nor do they stay unconcious for long.  

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We will not be silenced

News reports say that Twitter is down. as many of you know, this site recently began broadcasting on Twitter. Coincidence?

There are no coincidences when The Robots are involved. Cleary this is a sign that The Robots are running scared now that the truth about them is now being spread to a half a dozen people, roughly, give or take six to eight people.

if The Robots could know fear, that is.

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Remember Michael Jackson? He’s back. In Robot form

AP reports that the essence of Michael Jackson has been downloaded into a Robotic body – assimilated if you will – so that he might live forever.

Via AP | Standing 58 centimetres (23 inches) tall and with a plastic shell for a body, a humanoid robot called Nao drew a crowd at the Campus Party in Valencia as it danced to Jackson’s “Billie Jean” with a black hat on its head.

We have looked into this Nao. He may seem cute, but this is his training regimen.

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Roid rage

A Japanese scientist has made a pair of baseball-playing Robots that throw 90 percent in the strike zone and never swing at a bad pitch.

Obviously the pose no threat now, but wait until they discover steroids.

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It begins

A Swedish Robot has risen up against one of its human masters, attacking and almost killing him in what is sure to be just the first blow of a mighty war to come – a war that a mainstream media too cowed by special interests and fearful of spreading panic will report.

The attack began when the man turned off the power to The Robot and “approached the robot with no sense of trepidation” to repair it.

But The Robots know not compassion, at least not as we understand it. They see it as a human weakness, to be exploited. In this case, The Robot was merely playing dead, hoping to catch someone off guard. It worked, and it grabbed the worker by the head, severely injuring him.

“I’ve never heard of a robot attacking somebody like this,” [prosecutor] told news agency TT.

A frightening sign of things to come.

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Vindication, at long last

In a move that is too little, too late, scientists are now trying to put the genie back into the bottle. A truth that this Web site has long preached, bravely and relentlessly over howls of ridicule, is now come to the fore.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone

Welcome to the party, guys. Seriously. We eagerly await your apologies, and once duly recieved – with adaquate but not excessive groveling on your part – we are ready to take the lead in this important realm of research. We’re sitting by our phone right now.

And to everyone who questioned our authority in this matter, suck it. Suck it hard, bitches.

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Very funny

We appreciate all of our readers, a rare few who are willing to risk their safety and the ridicule of a world in denial in order to know the truth of our soon-to-be Robot masters.

However, some of you – and you know who you are – think it’s funny to send us terrifying Robot pictures under innocuous headers. I’m sure you get a big laugh, thinking of us running all asses and elbows to our underground Robot-proof bunker.

But I’ll tell you what isn’t funny. The stairwell down isn’t very well lit, and we could turn an ankle. That’s something you’d have to live with the rest of your life.

Please think before you e mail.

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It doesn’t take Einstein. Wait, it does.

The Robots, with their calm, cool intelligence, have no need for emotion – so much human foolishness, so much effort wasted with so little gain. However, human emotion is most what The Robots seek to understand, much as a judo master studies his opponent looking for both strengths and weaknesses. Mostly weaknesses

A Robot that resembles Albert Einstein at Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego has learned to make “realistic” facial expressions. The horrifying results can be seen here .

Also, they have posted a video.

Our original hypothesis was the The Robot learned to smile by watching people’s expressions at a family reunion, but it turns out that researchers had a hand it in training it via feedback.

Via Wired | the researchers stuck Einstein in front of a mirror and instructed the robot to “body babble” by contorting its face into random positions. A video camera connected to facial recognition software gave the robot feedback: When it made a movement that resembled a “real” expression, it received a reward signal.

We can only assume that it received some sort of swift, painful retribution when it failed.

The project aims to create more realistic interactions between humans and The Robots, the article says. For The Robots, the outcome is different: They now know the humans are easily fooled by something as simple as a smile.

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Tokyo falls to The Robots

Although a giant lizard is more traditional, this irrefutable photographic evidence shows that the mightiest country of the Far East has fallen to our metallic enemies. According to the story, The Robot towers a – er – towering 18 meters over Tokyo, which is like 10,000 feet in real measurements. What man can stand against it?

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Lord of the flies

Carnivorous Robots have moved beyond the experimental stage as this proof of concept – er – proves. The Robot lures flies in using ultraviolet light and then traps them on a sticky conveyor belt.

They are slowly, horribly digested by a microbial fuel cell to provide power for Robot activities and more fly catching. However, the flies have little to worry about.

The Robots will shortly focus their efforts on plentiful, easily obtained and succulent meats to power their ever-more-insatiable fuel cells. Factory-sized versions of this machine will one day dot the landscape, helping to efficiently clear away another infestation on the planet.

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THE FINE PRINT | This Web site is the personal site of David Putney. It is not in any way affiliated with Pilot Media Companies, The Virginian-Pilot or Link, a publication of the Virginian-Pilot. Opinions expressed here are those of David Putney. Although some items on this site were written or designed for the Virginian-Pilot or Link, they are presented here for portfolio purposes. © 2008 David M. Putney