Mercenaries to Lose Immunity

The days of treating Iraq like a first person shooter may be numbered. Seems that the Iraqi people were getting tired of being shot by trigger happy psychopaths for little to no reason.

from the BBC:

The US embassy in Baghdad has not confirmed the announcement, which comes as the US and Iraq are negotiating a controversial security pact.

Foreign firms employing thousands of guards won huge contracts in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion, but were not subject to Iraqi or US military law.

Iraqi frustration became fury last year when guards killed 17 people in a day.

Pentagon promises cyber binoculars in 3 years

The Pentagon is saying that it can put out a rather impressive piece of collaborative technology. Reading brain signals and everything. I hope there are applications for this tech beyond shooting people more efficiently.

From Wired:

In a new effort dubbed "Luke's Binoculars" -- after the high-tech binoculars Luke Skywalker uses in Star Wars -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is setting out to create its own version of this science-fiction hardware. And while the Pentagon's R&D arm often focuses on technologies 20 years out, this new effort is dramatically different -- Darpa says it expects to have prototypes in the hands of soldiers in three years.

Weird Science

A very interesting interview with the director of DARPA, the military technology agency.

from Wired:

"We're on the verge of having computers with densities approaching a monkey's brain, and it won't be long before we'll have a computer with the density of transistors, or equivalent to neurons and almost human. What we're missing is the architecture."