House GOP Group Envisions Massive Changes to Civil Service
Human Capital Officers May Get More Influential
EPA’s Pruitt Deflects Blame, But Promises Changes
A Renewed Push for a Performance Pay Fund
The Administration’s War on Regulations
Flash Poll: The AI Advantage
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Why DARPA’s Augmented Reality Software Is Better Than Google Glass
May 28, 2014 Six years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) decided that they had a new dream. The agency wanted a system that would overlay digital tactical information right over the top of the physical world. So, they created a program called Urban Leader Tactical Response, Awareness and Visualization (ULTRA-Vis)...
The Trick That Makes Google's Self-Driving Cars Work
May 16, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
Google's self-driving cars can tour you around the streets of Mountain View, California. I know this. I rode in one this week. I saw the car's human operator take his hands from the wheel and the computer assume control. "Autodriving," said a woman's voice, and just like that, the car...
Computers See Your Face as a Child. Will They Recognize You as an Adult?
May 13, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
This story began with a simple question: if a facial recognition system processes a lot of pictures of a child, will it recognize that person when he or she grows up? If I were to upload all my childhood photos to Facebook (or some future Facebook), could a biometric identification...
The Hacker Who Worked on a Navy Nuclear Aircraft Carrier
May 9, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
Nicholas Knight and his hacker crew, Digi7al, were a lot like other hacking crews. According to a Federal indictment filed this week, they broke into computers, took information, posted it, and boasted about their exploits. But there is a key difference: Nicholas Knight was employed by the Navy on the...
CAPTCHAs Are Becoming Security Theater
April 17, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
CAPTCHAs are a time-worn way for humans to tell computers that we are human. They are those little boxes filled with distorted text that we've been told humans can decipher, but computers—the bad guys' computers—cannot. So, Watson-be-damned, we enter the letters and gain access to whatever is behind the veil,...
In Defense of Google Flu Trends
March 27, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
In 2008, Google released an experiment called Flu Trends, which attempted to predict the prevalence of the flu from searches that users made for about 40 flu-related queries. Based on the data up to that point in time, Flu Trends worked really well. The Centers for Disease Control, which had...
The 3D Future of Your Smartphone Camera
March 14, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
A matte black robotic camera the size of a 1980s lunchbox sits atop a tripod. On its face, there are three 2D cameras and three 3D sensors. There's a handle on one end sprouting from the left side of the device. Its handler hits a button on an iPad app,...
Man vs. Sea: The Quest for the Perfect Armor Is Nearly Complete
March 6, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
A search for a photo of a miniature submarine took me to a government website, and as I browsed the tiny thumbnails, I saw something better than a tiny sub in the water. I found a picture of a man standing on the bottom of the ocean. And I've been...
Why Drugs Need Horseshoe Crab Blood for FDA Approval
February 26, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
The thing about the blood that everyone notices first: It's blue, baby blue. The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn't the color. It's a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of bacterial presence and trap them in inescapable clots....
This GIF Shows What Might Be Water Flowing on Mars
February 10, 2014
FROM NEXTGOV
NASA scientists have long chanted a mantra about Mars: follow the water, follow the water. So, we sent a lander to the northern latitudes looking for extant ice. More recently, the Mars Curiosity rover has been exploring planetary features that seem created by long-ago water flows, at least if Martian...
