January 2025
Jan. 7, 2025
🔗 CIA robot dragonfly spy device (via Daniel Miessler) # In the 1970s the CIA built a tiny robot dragonfly listening device that could fly 200 meters in a few seconds to eavesdrop on conversations. It used a gas-powered fluidic oscillator to flap its wings 1,800 times per minute and could be controlled by an infrared laser beam. They claim the device was never used for a mission because it struggled with crosswinds above 7mph.
At this link, the second video shows flight tests of the device.
🔗 Study: Waymo robocars are safer than human drivers (via Daniel Miessler) # An insurance company reported that Waymo has logged 25 mmillion fully autonomous miles and showed a 88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims. In other words, if humans had driven these same miles there would have been 8x as many property damage claims and 13x as many bodily injury claims.
💬 from Gurwinder (via) #
The best way to learn something is to try to teach it to others. The sense of responsibility to your student motivates you to understand a topic, and the act of explaining something helps you to connect the dots and commit them to memory.
🔗 YouTube: Death Spiral of Army Ants (via Gurwinder) #
A phenomenon where army ants follow each other in circles, sometimes until they die — and thus known as an “ant death spiral” — was captured on camera at a university in Venezuela. Biologist Javier David Uzcategui Gonzalez filmed the footage at Simon Bolivar University in Miranda, describing the occurrence as “very rare”. In an August 2020 tweet, Gonzales explained that the phenomenon, also called an ant mill, will happen when some ants lose track of the colony and follow others “in a rotating circle of death.”