Hasta La Gadget!

A factory full of terminators in the new film "Terminator Salvation."

(Credit: Image copyright 2009 Warner Bros. Courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic)

Be afraid. Be very afraid of these three letters: LAR.

Lethal autonomous robots is what Christof Heyns, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, wants you to think about. He wants a global ban on the development of machines that can target people and kill them without supervision.

“The possible introduction of LARs raises far-reaching concerns about the protection of life during war and peace,” Heyns said Thursday during the presentation of his latest report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. “If this is done, machines and not humans will take the decision on who is alive or dies.”

Heyns, a professor of human-rights law at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, wants the council to consider adopting a moratorium on LARs until the international community reaches consensus on the issue. He called for “serious and meaningful international engagement on this issue before we proceed to a world where machines are given the power to kill humans.”

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While self-driving cars have faced a bit of controversy amongst the general public, it seems the government likes the idea for the most part. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is a branch of the US Department of Transportation, has released a policy that looks to fast-track the development and testing of self-driving cars.

The new policy also encourages (and begs) states to write up legislation that would allow the testing of such vehicles. Only California, Nevada, and Florida are allowing self-driving cars on their roads, but the government is wanting more states to get in on the action in order to take a step forward in the whole process.

The NHTSA thinks that if more and more states legalize self-driving cars, Google and other car manufacturers will be able move at a quicker pace to get these kinds of cars in the driveways of consumers. David Strickland, the head of the NHTSA, said that the agency sees “tremendous promise in these technologies whether you’re looking at the current active safety systems in some vehicles today or whether you’re looking at a truly autonomous vehicle.”

The agency notes that about a third of vehicle fatalities are caused by alcohol, and self-driving technology could reduce car accidents by as much as 80%, saying that the automatic driving technology would essentially get rid of driver error, as many accidents are caused by drivers not paying attention.

General Motors, Toyota, and Audi have said that they’re working on self-driving technology, and the NHTSA is doing a little research of their own as well, but if states don’t cooperate as far as pushing legislation to allow self-driving cars, such a technology could be pushed to a standstill.

VIA: Bloomberg

US Transportation Department backs self-driving cars is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

For decades, the question of what happened to the fearless American pilot Amelia Earhart has been an enticing puzzle for history buffs, but a grainy sonar image of possible plane wreckage could be key in answering the nearly 76-year-old mystery.

Possible theories for the heroine’s demise include a devastating crash into the Pacific, as well as capture and execution by the Japanese, according to PBS. However, researchers working with The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) believe they have found evidence that Earhart landed on a remote reef, after which her plane washed into the ocean and sank, according to the group’s website.

TIGHAR-funded sonar imaging has revealed a 22-foot long object that represents a true “anomaly” in the group’s data, Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. The piece, possibly wreckage from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, is located 600 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean and just west of the remote Nikumaroro Island.

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Five-year-old Charlotte Garside isn’t even 27 inches tall — barely the size of a typical newborn infant — but she’s no baby, according to her mother.

“We’ve been told she looks like a porcelain doll, a baby in a pram and people still call her baby Charlotte, which riles me something chronic, because she’s not a baby, she’s five years old,” Emma Garside told Barcroft TV.

Charlotte, who lives in the English town of Withernsea, was born with a rare form of Primordial Dwarfism. She weighs nine pounds, the same as a large newborn baby.

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Which food producers have the highest profit margins? The answer may surprise you. Did you know, for instance, that ice cream production has a higher profit margin than snack foods? Or that seasoning, sauce and condiment production is more profitable than cookie, cracker and pasta production?

That’s all according to a new report from IBISWorld, a research group that broke down the top 10 food producers by industry. The group used profit margin, rather than revenue, in the ranking to figure out who gets the best bang for their buck.

According to the report, one thing’s for sure: Brand loyalty is really important. Those companies lucky enough to have a long-established brand can now expect to release healthier (read: more expensive) products without taking a hit in sales, because customers already believe the brand to be of high quality.

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