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Jonah Goldberg, National Review

After you heard President Barack Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots?

But just in case the question didn’t occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee’s announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili’s already made this move earlier this year.

With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay their checks without dealing with a waiter or waitress. Both companies insist that they won’t be changing their staffing levels, but if you’ve read any science fiction, you know that’s what the masterminds of every robot takeover say: “We’re here to help. We’re not a threat.”

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The leader of the payments business looks to the future and says Bitcoin is a good idea — but not yet actually a currency. Tap-to-pay, meanwhile, is a dud.

by
PayPal President David Marcus at LeWeb

PARIS — Online payments will look completely different in the next decade, and Bitcoin has a better chance at revolutionizing commerce than the NFC tap-to-pay technology, PayPal President David Marcus predicted Tuesday.

“I really like Bitcoin. I own bitcoins,” Marcus said at the LeWeb conference here. However, he believes people today don’t correctly understand what bitcoins actually are, and he’s not yet ready to let people link their bitcoin wallets with their PayPal accounts.

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By Danielle Elliot CBS News

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/12/09/article-2520818-19FB489500000578-0_634x345.jpg

German postal carrier Deutsche Post DHL is testing a drone delivery service that could deliver medical and food supplies to areas with minimal road access.

On Monday, the company ran a test delivery of its so-called “parcelcopter.” In a flight that lasted two minutes, remote-controlled drone carried a batch of medicine from a pharmacy in the city of Bonn to the company’s headquarters, just across the Rhine River.

The test came just a week after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced on 60 Minutes that his company is developing plans for drone delivery, though it still faces many technological and legal hurdles.

In the DHL test, with two employees controlling it from the ground, the drone flew a little more than half a mile, at a height of about 165 feet.

It is capable of carrying up to 2.6 pounds, and can autonomously navigate using GPS coordinates. The drone cost about $54,900, according to Reuters.

“We are at the beginning of the research project,” DHL manager Ole Nordhoff told Germany’s English news service The Local. “It is an exciting bit of technology.”

By

If NSA employees were bummed that President Obama hasn’t paid them a visit, they’re going to be devastated to learn that all their favorite tech companies are publicly calling them out. Eight companies – Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn and AOL – have put aside their rivalries and issued a call for the reform of government surveillance. “We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide,” says an open letter featured in full-page ads in several newspaper on Monday. “The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish.”

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3d printed pizza

For some odd reason, pizza always seems to be at the forefront of emerging technology. It was the first food you could buy via online ordering, the first food to legitimately be delivered via drones, and now it’s dipping its saucy little Italian toes into 3D printing.

Natural Machines, a startup out of Barcelona, has developed a prototype 3D printer called Foodini that can pump out decent, edible-looking pizza just like a normal 3D printer pumps out custom-made lightswitch covers and drain plugs.

Tesla Model S purchased with Bitcoins from Lamborghini Newport Beach

If you’re not familiar with Bitcoin, you might want to change that. The electronic cryptocurrency is rapidly gaining acceptance around the globe, with many businesses–and even one university–accepting Bitcoins as readily as dollars. Now, a Tesla Model S has been purchased directly with Bitcoin.

The car, sold for an undisclosed sum of Bitcoin by Lamborghini Newport Beach in Costa Mesa, California, appears to have been a lightly used model, if only because it wasn’t sold directly by Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA].

ALSO SEE: 2015 Ford Mustang Preview: Official Photos And Video

Announced on the dealer’s blog, the sale marks the first Bitcoin purchase for Lamborghini Newport Beach–but it won’t likely be the last.

“Lamborghini Newport Beach is proud to announce that we are fully capable of accepting Bitcoin as legal tender for vehicles. We are excited to opening the door to this new currency,” the company wrote on its blog.

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Raymond Wong
Monday, November 25, 2013

We don’t usually write much about buyouts here at DVICE. Buyouts usually go something like this: big company pays a crap-ton of money for smaller company and then we never hear from the smaller company again. Whoopty doo.

But Apple’s latest buyout of PrimeSense for $360 million is worth some discussion because the company’s tech could become part of the building blocks for the living room of the future. That, or we could be looking at some serious Minority Report-type tablets or Macs.

PrimeSense was the company behind the 3D depth camera tech in the original Kinect (Microsoft has since moved on with its own in-house tech for the Xbox One’s Kinect). Microsoft talked the big talk in 2010, and the hacks were a nice distraction, but ultimately, Kinect’s primitive technology only managed to make us look like silly fools dancing around to Dance Central in front of our TVs.

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Android developer Andy Rubin leads new robotics division that aims to complete online shopping with home delivery by droids
, telecoms correspondent
The Guardian,

Online shopping is not the most glamorous aspect of the digital revolution, but it has just become the latest Silicon Valley battleground, with droids racing drones to become the courier of the future.

First Amazon promised to eliminate the drudgery of the post office queue with parcels delivered by drone. Now Google has revealed that it is developing humanoid robots that could one day carry groceries to your door.

Andy Rubin, the Google executive who brought smartphones to the masses by developing Google’s free Android software, has revealed he is working on a secret project for the search engine company to create a new generation of robots.

Rubin resigned unexpectedly from running Android in March, and over the past six months has quietly overseen Google’s acquisition of seven small companies whose combined technology could be used to create a robot with animal characteristics such as a form of vision and moving limbs.

“With robotics it’s a green field,” Rubin told the New York Times. “We’re building hardware, we’re building software, We’re building systems, so one team will be able to understand the whole stack.”

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BTC China, the nation’s largest Bitcoin exchange, has had low-level discussions with regulators seeking recognition of the digital currency that would allow it to be used to buy goods and services in the country.

The company has sought to discuss Bitcoin regulations with officials from agencies including the People’s Bank of China, the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, BTC China Chief Executive Officer Bobby Lee said in a Nov. 29 interview in Shanghai. It’s not yet been able to arrange any high-level meetings, he said.

“They’ll ask us ‘how should you be regulated,’ and I’ll say ‘Hey, here’s what we’ve done proactively and here’s how we think you should regulate us,’” Lee said of the Shanghai-based company’s talks with regulators. Bitcoin is “not on the black list and it’s not on the white list. It’s in the gray area.”

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The GE90 is one of the world’s most powerful jet engines. GE plans to produce 100,000 3D-printed components for the next-generation GE9X and Leap models

General Electric (GE), on the hunt for ways to build more than 85,000 fuel nozzles for its new Leap jet engines, is making a big investment in 3D printing. Usually the nozzles are assembled from 20 different parts. Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing can create the units in one metal piece, through a successive layering of materials. The process is more efficient and can be used to create designs that can’t be made using traditional techniques, GE says. The finished product is stronger and lighter than those made on the assembly line and can withstand the extreme temperatures (up to 2,400F) inside an engine. There’s just one problem: Today’s industrial 3D printers don’t have enough capacity to handle GE’s production needs, which require faster, higher-quality output at a lower cost.

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