News and Analysis Results
IBM lab builds computerized cat brain
Mad scientists at IBM say they've made "significant progress" towards creating a computer chip that can emulate the human brain's ability to sense, perceive, comprehend, and interact with the real world*. Big Blue says its ultimate goal is to develop computer systems that can handle with real-world ambiguity and interact with …
Scientists ponder rules and ethics of robo helpers
Futurists generally agree that autonomous robots will one day helm mankind's vehicles - largely due to the idea being totally awesome, but also because jet packs and rocket cars are terribly out of fashion within the profession. Do you trust your designated driver? But turning the wheel over to J.E.E.V.E.S. mk. II raises …
Swedish factory fined $3,000 for robot attack
Evil geniuses take note: a near-fatal robot attack only costs an organization about $3,000 in Sweden these days. Swede online rag The Local has reported that a factory north of Stockholm has been fined 25,000 kronor (£2,100) after a malfunctioning bot nearly killed one of its workers. The robo-assault reportedly took place in …
Robo-fish to hunt pollution in Spanish seas
Scientists in the UK plan to release a school of autonomous robotic fish into the sea off northern Spain to help detect for hazardous pollutants in the water. The robots are designed to look like carp and swim like real fish so they won't scare the local meat-based wildlife while patrolling the port of Gijon. Each robo-carp …
2008: The year the little people walked the Earth
2008 will be remembered for many things - the credit crunch, a reshaping of the High St, the iBoob - but most of all for El Reg's innovative approach to illustrating the key stories of the day. So, pull a cracker, pour yourself a glass of port, and peer closely at our review of the year. It's the only macro-economy you need to …
High-speed train toilet attempts to eat Frenchman
Emergency services were on Sunday obliged to cut free a TGV passenger whose arm was swallowed by the high-speed train's sucking dunny, the BBC reports. The unnamed 26-year-old victim - travelling from La Rochelle to Bordeaux - dropped his mobe into the bog and ill-advisedly attempted to retrieve it from the lav's depths. Cue a …
Fire-breathing black cabs: Shock eyewitness photo
Our recent shock piece on an attempted incendiary uprising by the TX4-type cab prompted the neoLuddite Resistance Army to place all London cadres on Defcon Laguna. Well, the reality is worse than we thought. Here's an image caught by an NRA operative last night during a furious firefight in the capital: Last eyewitness photo of …
London battles fire-breathing black cabs
Transport for London last week announced the temporary withdrawal of 500 black cabs following eight spontaneous combustion events in three months - the first incendiary transportation incidents in the capital since Red Ken Livingstone's removal from office apparently contained the fire-breathing vehicle menace. Sadly not. TfL …
Wunderkind starts robot-buster weapons firm
Famed dotcom 1.0 teen millionaire Ben Way has started a company specialising in anti-robot weaponry. Way foresees lucrative business opportunities in suppressing the inevitable rogue killbots and machine rebellions to be expected in coming years. The new company, WAR Defence (Weapons Against Robots) was launched this week. "The …
South African survives exploding fridge attack
It's been suspiciously quiet of late on the murderous white goods front, but confirmation that your kitchen is still out to get you comes in the form of a chilling exploding fridge attack in South Africa. According to the Pretoria Times, Adrian Coetzee, of Silver Lakes, Pretoria, "narrowly escaped death" on Wednesday when the …
Tumble dryer bites woman in Weston-super-Mare
A Weston-super-Mare woman is lucky to have survived an encounter with an obstreperous tumble dryer after a simple fluff-removal operation ended in an emergency services tin-snip deployment, a local rag breathlessly reports. Firefighters were called to the scene in Kewstoke on Monday to find the 30-something victim with her …
Jihadis: We turned hacked killbots against US troops
In a strange twist of fate it has emerged that gutter hacks, writing for a well known publication offering tasty mechanically recovered news-like media product, have handed a stunning propaganda coup to jihadi terrorism. We're obviously very sorry*. The story began last month, when scribblers from Popular Mechanics, attending a …
Dutch fire up petrol-pumping robot
The indolent Dutch may come to rue the day they ever heard the name of Nico van Staveren, petrol station operator and co-developer of a gas-pumping robot which can allegedly recognise your make of car, whip off the petrol cap and deliver the required amount of combustible. The TankPitstop in action Reuters has quite correctly …
Ming the clam battles wolfman over Jordan's jubs
Boffins have dredged up what is thought to be the world's oldest animal - a 405-year-old clam - and rather satisfyingly named it Ming. Unfortunately the clam seems to have since copped it, but the culpable scientists hope that studying it will lead to a greater understanding of the aging process - good news for current and …
Aliens responsible for Italian machine uprising
Italian authorities have confirmed what we at the neoLuddite Resistance Army (NRA) have known all along - that the 2004 machine uprising in the Italian village of Canneto di Caronia was probably caused by aliens. For three weeks, locals battled against spontaneously-combusting TVs, fridges, cookers and mobile phones which …
NASA to unleash 'mind meld' intelligent machines
All members of the neoLuddite Resistance Army are hereby ordered to go to Defcon "Armageddon"* and prepare to battle a new breed of mind-melding intelligent machines and systems under development by NASA's Ames Research Center and the Machine-to-Machine Intelligence Corporation (M2Mi). According to the NASA's chillingly frank …
EU slaps 'Davros tax' on mobility scooters
The EU has moved to restrict the number of mobility scooters available to a machine uprising on the UK streets by slapping import duty on the vehicles, the Telegraph reports. Our artist's impression of a Terminator granny astride a mobility scooter The ruling means a £250 price hike on the average £2.5k cost of the mostly …
Self-combusting toilets menace Japan
We're not sure if "Japan's leading toilet manufacturer" Toto builds city centre cyberloos for the UK market, but its domestic products have evidently fallen under the control of the Lizard Alliance. According to the BBC, the company is offering free repairs to no less than 180,000 Z-series bogs after some of them spontaneously …
Carnivore ATM bites Florida kiddie
A light-fingered Florida nine-year-old has learnt the hard way that you don't mess with ATMs after getting bitten by an Orange County carnivore cash machine. According to a chilling video report on WSMV Nashville, what for Angelica Santiago should have been a routine trip to the store with her parents ended as a four-hour …
Hybrid vehicle attacks petrol station
The driver of a Toyota Prius had a narrow escape recently when his vehicle decided to do away with its human master by ploughing into a Tacoma petrol station "narrowly missing a clerk and sparking a fire". Shaken victim Art Robinson of DuPont told KING5.com he'd just bought the hybrid on the morning of 6 March, but "only after …
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