Defence & Security

Digidog, a Robotic Dog Used by the Police, Stirs Privacy Concerns

New York Times: Two men were being held hostage in a Bronx apartment. They had been threatened at gunpoint, tied up and tortured for hours by two other men who pretended to be plumbers to get inside, the police said. One of…

Folding Drone Can Drop Into Inaccessible Mines

IEEE Spectrum: Inspecting old mines is a dangerous business. For humans, mines can be lethal: prone to rockfalls and filled with noxious gases. Robots can go where humans might suffocate, but even robots can only do so much when mines are…

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2021

Technology Review: This list marks 20 years since we began compiling an annual selection of the year’s most important technologies. Some, such as mRNA vaccines, are already changing our lives, while others are still a few years off. Below, you’ll find a brief description along with a link to a…

Darpa Hacks Its Secure Hardware, Fends Off Most Attacks

IEEE Spectrum: Last summer, Darpa asked hackers to take their best shots at a set of newly designed hardware architectures. After 13,000 hours of hacking by 580 cybersecurity researchers, the results are finally in: just 10 vulnerabilities. Darpa is calling it…