If there's one thing that Australia's two main political parties agree on, it's that replicating Silicon Valley on local shores is a Very Good Thing. The governing Liberal/National coalition and opposition Labor party are both advocating more spending on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teaching and back tax tweaks to replicate American arrangements felt to foster startups. If we do these things, we're told, a few weeks from now a new generation of coding-capable kids will come up with lots of great ideas that put a rocket under Australia's economy. Casey penned the piece containing that quote in response to the surfacing of the old Tweet below. And she follows up with the "overthrow of capitalism".

The US Army has just taken possession of a very special robot. The HDMS 551s1 by robotics company Resquared is designed to perform precision tasks, controlled by a human operater. Its two arms are equipped with specially designed two-fingered grippers, and a human-like torso for further degrees of freedom. Watching HDMS 551s1 perform tasks such as stacking blocks on little poles is impressive -- and demonstrates the sort of dexterity required for the army's purposes. The robot will be put to use in explosive ordnance disposal, which requires a high degree of precision.

About Author The second phase of Delhi's odd-even rule ended Saturday, but restrictions on "surge pricing" used by cab aggregators Ola and Uber to meet demand and supply is not expected to end till the state government issues sector-specific guidelines. Maitreya One, a black futurist and hip-hop artist living in Harlem, steps off the Greyhound bus on a warm morning in Montgomery, Alabama. I walk up to him and give him a hug. Nightmare scenarios involving Artificial Intelligence typically involve computers that become too smart for their own good and turn against their creators. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 famously refused to open the pod bay doors for Dave: Well, now we have an entirely different cause to be wary of AI, and the culprit is human rather than machine.

Soldiers are expected to carry heavy packs across rough terrain, sometimes under fire. Now engineers have created a flexible exosuit designed to make their lives slightly easier because it reduces the energy cost of walking when carrying heavy load. The textile suit, using cables and motors, could also be used by hikers and emergency professionals who are first on the scene of an incident. Unlike the exosuits seen in superhero films, engineers at Harvard University used fabric to build their suit. By comparison, rigid exoskeletons are heavier and can interfere with the natural movement of the joints, causing the wearer to change the way they walk.

A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 2:51 p.m. EDT Wednesday, concluding a successful International Space Station resupply mission. MELBOURNE, Fla. -- A SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean just before 3 p.m. ET Wednesday to wrap up a month-long visit to the International Space Station, returning to Earth with more than 3,700 pounds of equipment and science research. "The Dragon spacecraft has served us well," British astronaut Tim Peake radioed to mission controllers in Houston after the Dragon floated from the outpost in darkness at 9:19 a.m., released by its robotic arm. "It's good to see it departing full of science, and we wish it a safe recovery back to planet Earth." Among the 1,300 pounds of experiment on board were more than 1,000 tubes of blood, urine and saliva collected from former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly before his year-long ISS mission ended in March.

An Arlington, Va.-based company called Deep Learning Analytics has developed a deep machine learning automatic target recognition (ATR) program prototype for DARPA that will help assist aircraft pilots in finding targets.Deep Learning Analytics is nine months into… You must be logged in as a subscriber to view this page. Please log in below to access the content. If you are already a Defense Daily subscriber or registered user, login here.

A SpaceX capsule returned to Earth on Wednesday with precious science samples from NASA's one-year space station resident. SpaceX reported a good splashdown, with three red-and-white striped parachutes slowing the final descent. The Dragon had been at the station for a month, dropping off supplies as well as an experimental, inflatable room that will pop open in two weeks. It was set free by the station's big robot arm. "Dragon spacecraft has served us well, and it's good to see it departing full of science," Peake radioed from 250 miles up.

While the human brain is often seen as the ultimate model for robotic intelligence, scientists are also learning plenty from the neurobiological structures and processes of more humble creatures, from fruit flies to rodents. Take the fruit fly – or rather, the maggot that grows up to be a fruit fly. Drosophila fruit fly larvae have fewer than 10 000 neurons – compared to about 100 billion in the human brain. But they display a range of complex orientation and learning behaviours that computational theory does not adequately explain at present. By studying how the larvae change their response to stimuli such as smells when these are associated with reward or punishment, the EU-funded MINIMAL project aims to unpick the exact mechanism underlying learning processes.

A federal judge in California has ruled that three Illinois men can proceed with their class-action lawsuit challenging Facebook's facial recognition software used to identify people in uploaded photos. Adam Pezen, Carlo Licata and Nimesh Patel, all of the Chicago area, separately sued the social media giant last year, the Chicago Tribune reported (http://trib.in/1USAw5s The cases were combined and transferred last summer to the Northern District of California court. The men allege that Facebook was illegally collecting biometric data from people "tagged" in photos posted by other users and that its use of facial recognition software violates Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act. In 2008, Illinois enacted the Biometric Information Privacy Act to regulate how individuals, companies and organizations can collect and use biometric data, which determine a person's identity based on unique biological or physical characteristics.

The site launched about a week ago and the app hasn't even been released yet, but the concept has already proven popular, NBC News reported. Thousands of people have already signed up to nab a spot on the waitlist and this past Friday, the site had 200 sign-up requests an hour. "This is about finding the right partner and not caring if they're on the other side of the border," CEO Joe Goldman explained to The Guardian. "You should go to a place where you'll be happy. For a number of Americans, in the event of a Trump presidency, that place would be Canada."