Google=Skynet Part 9: Nothing's gonna save your one last dime 'cause it owns you

I'll keep this short. Now Google is making cars that drive themselves.



Also, they must have got all the speech samples they needed for the robots to understand us, because they are discontinuing their free 411 service.

Previous Stories:
Google=Skynet Part 8: Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you
Google=Skynet Part 7: Could it be that the smog's playing tricks on my eyes
Google=Skynet Part 6: 'Cause I think we've seen that movie, too
I've got a secret I've been hiding under my skin
Google = Skynet, Part 4
Jake's JK: This is not a good sign
Uh oh, Google is at it again
Google's Plan for Worldwide Domination

Google=Skynet Part 7: Could it be that the smog's playing tricks on my eyes

Previous Stories:
Google=Skynet Part 6: 'Cause I think we've seen that movie, too
I've got a secret I've been hiding under my skin
Google = Skynet, Part 4
Jake's JK: This is not a good sign
Uh oh, Google is at it again
Google's Plan for Worldwide Domination

Forget 2012. 2019 is gonna be AWESOME!

Once the realm of bad sci-fi movies, (and kickass tv shows) real life scientists are actually working on a simulation of the human brain. Seriously.

Excellent news for fans of computer technology, neuroscience, and people who think that humans telling the machines what to do is totally backwards. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, says we are ten years away from a functional artificial human brain. The Blue Brain project was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data.

"Ten years away" sounds pretty arbitrary to me. Like what someone would say when they really don't know how long something will take.

Hmm, like:
Competitive solar energy
Unlimited solar energy storage
3-D television
Spiderman (without all the radioactive spider bite nonsense)
Competitive Chinese cars in the US
Iran's ability to build a nuclear bomb
High speed rail service in the UK
Sony PlayStation 4
Legalized Drugs
Quantum Computing
Ford's plugin hybrid car
Realistic hydrogen-fueled cars
Inexpensive genome sequencing
A spaceport in Wisconsin
Recovery from Hurricane Katrina
A better green lightbulb
Open source speech recognition software
EU's Skylon space shuttle
Male birth control pill (still waiting on this one, 1976)
Cure for tuberculosis

Then again, sometimes they get it right, like this 1998 article mentioning HD-quality video. It was really only off by about 6 months.

At least Google is not involved with this one.

Google=Skynet Part 6: 'Cause I think we've seen that movie, too

When an article is entitled New Technology Portends 'Sentient Computers', its going to catch my eye. Not because I think, "OMG! The robots are taking over!", but because its usually some hack job reporter extrapolating some basic technology's ability to an exponential degree.

Not this time:

“Landmark recognition software” can correctly identify many popular landmarks on the Web throughout a range of perspectives and scenarios. This new technology “enables computers to quickly and efficiently identify images of more than 50,000 landmarks from all over the world with 80 percent accuracy,” the vendor claims.

This is working, now. A robot programmed with this tech would, 4 times out of 5, be able to instantly know where it was. And the vendor who created this amazing technology?

Wait for it...

Up until now, computers could “see” what we see only in a limited and imperfect way. But suddenly things are becoming clearer. Google claims to have made substantial progress in endowing computers with image recognition capabilities, often referred to as “computer vision,” a task artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have been wrestling with for 35 years.

Google. Why did it have to be Google?

Computers are good at solving complex mathematical problems, sorting through enormous amounts of data quickly, storing massive amounts of information, etc. As Ray Kurzweil pointed out at 22.28 in a 2006 video on the "Roots of the Matrix": “Machines can remember billions of things accurately, they can do logical analysis at extremely high speed… We are not very good actually at logical or analytical thinking. Computers are already much better than us at considering the logical implications of many different factors.”

They have detailed files.

Visual pattern recognition is something AI researchers have struggled with mimicking in computers. And Google is not the only major entity accelerating in this field. Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) is also a player. Face recognition is a component of programs such as iPhoto 09, where accuracy is about 50 percent to start with, and the program learns and the hit rate rises as more and more identifications are confirmed or rejected.

Although Google and Apple’s ambitions may appear narrow and of limited interest at the moment, a more advanced version of this software applied to the Web in general could be an enormous advance. When we add to the mix things that computers excel at -- rapid processing and prodigious memory -- we can begin to envision the potential magnitude of this budding tool, and it is like nothing we have yet imagined.

Actually, we have imagined it. It was made into 3 great movies and one shitty one.

Previous Stories:
I've got a secret I've been hiding under my skin
Google = Skynet, Part 4
Jake's JK: This is not a good sign
Uh oh, Google is at it again
Google's Plan for Worldwide Domination

Oh what a nice contented world, let the banners be unfurled

When Obama Wins is predicting that President Obama will call for the dissolution of the evil, evil company known as the Google:

I've got a secret I've been hiding under my skin

We have this bizarre dichotomy in the US of wanting everything to be infinitely convenient, yet infinitely inexpensive. When cell phone companies…sorry-wireless providers…started charging outrageous prices for directory assistance calls (I think Sprint is up to $2.50/number, but I could be wrong), it was only a matter of time before companies like 1-800-FREE-411 and Google started to offer free, advertising-based directory assistance.

Except Google, once again, has ulterior motives. From InfoWorld:

You may have heard about our [directory assistance] 1-800-GOOG-411 service. Whether or not free-411 is a profitable business unto itself is yet to be seen. I myself am somewhat skeptical. The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model ... that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search.

The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. ... So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we're trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high accuracy.

So they are recording your voice requests and processing them to teach their ginormous computer system how to understand human speech. Just one more step toward the robots taking over the world.

Previous Stories:
Google = Skynet, Part 4
Jake's JK: This is not a good sign
Uh oh, Google is at it again
Google's Plan for Worldwide Domination

Plans for everyone, It's in the whites of my eyes

According to this article from MSNBC, the Chinese government routinely monitor Internet usage in their country. If you use the web to view pornography, profanity, or politically unsavory writings, you should expect a visit from the local constabulary.

Now the government has created some cartoon police officers that randomly pop up on the most popular Chinese web portals to remind you that big brother is watching. To cut down on the intimidation factor, they are cute little cherubs:


In a related story, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now requiring the following warning label to be placed on all telephones in the U.S.:

Google = Skynet, Part 4

I'm going to convince you all that Google is Skynet, if its the last thing I do (and it probably will be).

The "Do No Evil" company is at it again. Newlywed skynet Google co-founder Sergey Brin and company have plunged nearly $4 million into Anne Wojcicki's (aka Mrs. Brin's) genomics company, 23andMe, Inc.

Yes, I said genomics.

According to their website (emphasis mine):

23andMe is a privately held company developing new ways to help you make sense of your own genetic information.

Even though your body contains trillions of copies of your genome, you've likely never read any of it. Our goal is to connect you to the 23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint (plus your mitochondrial DNA), bringing you personal insight into ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits. By connecting you to others, we can also help put your genome into the larger context of human commonality and diversity.

Toward this goal, we are building on recent advances in DNA analysis technologies to enable broad, secure, and private access to trustworthy and accurate individual genetic information. Combined with educational and scientific resources with which to interpret and understand it, your genome will soon become personal in a whole new way.

So, now they want us to willingly surrender our genetic fingerprints? Why, to complete their "detailed files" on us all?

According to CEO Eric Schmidt:

"The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'."

Sounds to me like an enslaved human race, forced to work for evil robots.

Wake up sheeple. Sarah Connor was right!

Jake's JK: This is not a good sign

So my Jeep is built, shipped, and unloaded from the train. So what is keeping it from being delivered to my local dealership?

Goddamned wildfires!

Seriously. The train unloads the vehicles in Miami, which then come across Alligator Alley on a truck. That just happens to be where a 15,913-acre fire is burning this week.

"Eh, it should be out in a week or so," sez the talking head from the Division of Forestry.

Fuck.

BTW, the kickass satellite pic of the smoke from the fires came from the MODIS Rapid Response System Gallery. Its a pretty sweet searchable database of images from NASA's satellites. You know, the ones Google will hijack when they take over the world.

Our tax dollars at work, folks.

Uh oh, Google is at it again

I told you people this before, but nobody listens. Google is Cyberdyne Systems. You know, from the Terminator movies? Remember this? Or this?

Well, they are now one step closer to evil robotic domination. This time they enlisted Carnegie Mellon, Microsoft, and Intel to help the cause.

Take a look at the photo to the right. No, that is not a miniature Darth Vader helmet on top, it's a Logitech webcam. These guys are all about using cheap, easy to find parts. All the better for roving hunter-killers to scavenge spare parts from their disabled brethren.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new series of robots that are simple enough for almost anyone to build with off-the-shelf parts, but are sophisticated machines that wirelessly connect to the Internet.

The robots can take many forms, from a three-wheeled model with a mounted camera to a flower loaded with infrared sensors. They can be easily customized and their ability to wirelessly link to the Internet allows users to control and monitor their robots' actions from any Internet-connected computer in the world.

That's waaaay too close to "allows SKYNET to control and monitor their robots' actions from any Internet-connected computer in the world."

Google's Plan for Worldwide Domination

From the desk of Dr. Eric Schmidt:

Action plan for Global Ogling Operations Ground Level Execution:

1. Trick NASA into sharing access to data; compile access codes for space-based initiative
   
2. Use high-resolution satellite imaging to map every inch of the globe; analyze strategic weaknesses
   
3. Offer free e-mail service; mine data from messages for "advertising" purposes
4. Offer free IM/voice chat service; link to e-mail service; log calls and mine data for "administrative" purposes
   
5. Get Remote Control for humans from Nippon; upload to every computer using Google software
   
6. Find Sarah Connor; terminate