Daily Archives: March 19, 2017

Too many antique stereotypes: My Country at the Dorfman. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Observer

One of Rufus Norriss aims since he became artistic director of the National two years ago has been to make sure that the theatre lives up to its name. He worries that it wears London blinkers. My Country: A Work in Progress is a reflection of that anxiety and a response to Brexit.

Norris and Carol Ann Duffy have edited interviews with people from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and all corners of England to get a picture of Britain on the verge of leaving Europe and perhaps of Scottish independence. Their views on patriotism, immigration and Europe are interleaved with words by Duffy, spoken by chairwoman Britannia, played by Penny Layden in plumed helmet. There are no London witnesses, whose mostly Remain arguments are likely to be well known to a Dorfman audience. Will that look like a lack as the play goes on tour?

We are in a different, more obviously dark condition, the closest to civil war than any time in my life

The intent is laudable. The execution by multi-tasking actors is sleek. But the effect is limp. Verbatim drama can excite the imagination as much as any fiery fiction. But to do so it must bring us voices we havent heard before or make us hear familiar voices in a new way. There are too many antique stereotypes here: the whisky-swigging Scot, the singing Welshman. And too much jaunty theatricality. Layden strenuously imitates Boris Johnsons plummy goofiness as if his demeanour rather than his views were up for challenge.

Worst of all, it is old hat. There are some voices that it would have been salutary to hear a year ago. Sweet and melancholy glimpses. From a north-eastern farmer, beautifully voiced by Laura Elphinstone, who talks of his Galloways and Blue Greys. From the Edinburgh man who went to the council school just across from Fettes college and remembers those shielded Tony Blairs in their Harris tweed jackets. It is too late now. We are in a different, more obviously dark condition, the closest to civil war than any time in my life. Old friends cannot bear to be in the same room with those who voted differently. That is the country I would like to see on stage now. This looks like a soft dodging of a painful conflict.

At the Dorfman, National Theatre, London until 22 March, then touring

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My Country: A Work in Progress review a laudable but limp look at ... - The Guardian

Recode has obtained detailed internal documents showing that Uber has a long way to go to create working self-driving cars. Ubers vehicles, according to the documents, still need extremely frequent human intervention, lagging far behind competing systems.

The most negative number for Uber is that, during the week ending March 8 th , human drivers had to take over from autonomous systems once every 0.8 miles. That number has actually worsened slightly since the end of January, when drivers had to intervene every 0.9 miles. Those numbers are for all such disengagements of driverless systems, including a car misreading lane markings a seemingly minor problem that nonetheless was behind a recent Tesla crash .

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In the most recent period, human drivers had to take over only once every 200 miles to prevent a serious accident, a number which has improved significantly. This category would include incidents like missed stop lights in San Francisco, which the company later mischaracterized in public statements.

Despite slight improvement, those rates compare poorly to similar metrics from other self-driving car projects. Waymo, Google's self-driving spinoff, reported only 0.2 disengagements per 1,000 miles driven in California in 2016. Cruise , a self-driving startup now owned by GM , reported 18.5 total disengagements per 1,000 miles driven.

One mitigating factor for Ubers disengagement numbers is that many of those miles were logged in urban Pittsburgh, arguably a more challenging environment than, for instance, a California highway.

The other takeaway from Recodes report is in the number of miles logged by Ubers self-driving systems. That number has risen steadily as Ubers self-driving test fleet has grown, from 5,000 total miles per week in early February, to just over 20,000 miles per week in early March.

Those numbers compare slightly better with the competition. Waymo has put at least 636,000 miles under its autonomous vehicles wheels in California, while GMs Cruise only logged 9,776 miles in 2016.

Why Audi Created a New Business Devoted to Self-Driving Tech

But the real 500-pound gorilla in this room is Tesla, whose vehicles have have logged 222 million miles in Autopilot mode, and gathered more than 1.3 billion miles worth of driving data. Thats not quite the same as actual autonomous miles driven (Autopilot is, despite its name, not full autonomy), but the data is a huge asset for machine-learning purposes.

Of course, Uber is working from behind in the race towards autonomy. Its Advanced Technology Center in Pittsburgh, staffed by poached Carnegie Mellon researchers , only launched two years ago. Teslas Autopilot was first offered in October of 2014, while Google has been working on the problem since 2009.

But that, arguably, is precisely the point. Uber cant afford to remain years behind the competition on what it has described as an existential necessity. Tesla, Waymo, or GM are certain to deploy self-driving taxi fleets the second their tech is viable, or license it to someone who will. In the low-friction ridesharing marketplace, that could cut Uber off at the knees.

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Uber Sharply Lags Competition in Self-Driving Progress - Fortune

The Coast Guard search off Mayo has made significant progress today.

The search crew hunting for the wreckage of missing Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 116 are beginning a meeting around now to discuss the next stage of the operation.

The Irish Lights ship, the Granuaile arrived off Blacksod Bay this morning, fitted with new hi-tech equipment, which has helped the team scan the ocean bed around the suspected crash site.

Heavy swells in recent days had prevented boats from getting near the site where a signal from the black box was detected.

The Coast Guard's Declan Geoghegan has said that the weather finally gave them a break today.

Captain Dara Fitzpatrick was laid to rest yesterday while her colleagues Mark Duffy, Paul Ormsby and Ciarn Smith all remain missing.

MrGeoghegan said there was a massive amount of organisation behind today's operation.

He said "It's a combination of three agencies, the Irish Lights, the Navy Marine Institute and the Coast Guard working together in terms sharing equipment.

"So there will be sonar equipment and the diving equipment and the back-up in terms of a recompression chamber and generators."

"They're submersibles, thay can go underwater, there is a camera feed to the surface and they can light up an area."

He finished by saying "They can also do certain mechanical operations like attaching cables for lifting equipment and they use a picture of what's beneath the surface."

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Coast Guard make significant progress off Mayo coast - Newstalk 106-108 fm

This is how Lockheed envisions its laser weapon being put to use.

A laser hits its target in an instant. Getting to a practical laser weapon can feel like it's taking an eternity.

This week brought signs of progress, one from the US Army and the other from defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Both involved laser weapons still a long way from being battlefield-ready.

The more momentous news came from Lockheed, which on Thursday said that it has wrapped up development and testing of a nearly 60-kilowatt fiber laser for the Army. That's double the power of a system the company showed off two years ago that it said disabled a truck from a mile away.

Those Lockheed systems got their juice by combining multiple lower-power fiber-optic lasers to produce a single, higher-power beam, a method that promises a relatively straightforward path to ever more powerful weapons. In the case of Lockheed's newer laser, the output was a single beam of 58KW, what the company called "a world record for a laser of this type."

Lockheed did not immediately provide additional details on the new laser.

Research into laser weapons -- part of a larger field known as directed energy -- stretches back decades, but so far has yielded little more than prototypes and the occasional big-budget, high-profile flop. The attraction is easy to understand: A laser beam travels at the speed of light, far faster than missiles or bullets, and with incredibly precise targeting. Proponents talk of an ammo supply that's cheap and almost limitless -- so long as there's a handy source of electricity.

All the branches of the military see laser weapons in their future, on a modest scale. The Navy has tried out systems that can disable the engines on small attack boats, and has even deployed a laser-weapon-equipped ship to the Persian Gulf. The Air Force envisions lasers on special operations aircraft.

But laser systems are complex and delicate, unlike the rugged gear that a military depends upon to work reliably in harsh, dangerous conditions. The laser beams themselves would be subject to atmospheric conditions less favorable than those found in labs or test environments.

That's where the Army's news this week comes in. Its Space and Missile Defense Command on Friday reported the results of some real-world testing of a vehicle-mounted laser weapon at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Over five days of trials as February turned to March, the Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser 2.0 -- a testbed system mounted on the chassis of a Stryker armored vehicle -- had to engage with quadcopters and small fixed-wing unmanned aircraft. At just 5KW of power, it was a popgun compared with the system Lockheed just wrapped up testing.

The MEHEL 2.0 just completed a trial by fire at the White Sands Missile Range.

But the MEHEL 2.0, also a fiber laser, proved its worth, according to the Army.

"We learned the 5KW laser was able to defeat the targets," said Adam Aberle, the SMDC official overseeing the project, in a statement. "We were able to verify and show that we could put a radar and a laser on a platform so it could self-cue to targets and that was very successful."

It's the sort of testing that's been happening off and on for years.

Aberle also acknowledged "some limitations in the system," saying that "we have plans to correct those deficiencies for future activities."

The new Lockheed system, meanwhile, will be making its way to the Army, with much work planned for the coming months. It'll be integrated onto a larger vehicle than the Stryker, and its White Sands testing could happen in the middle of the Army's fiscal year 2018.

Eventually, the Army is aiming for even higher power levels.

"Our ultimate goal is to have a 100KW laser on a vehicle. That's what we're going for," said John Cummings, an SMDC spokesman. "We have to take baby steps to get there."

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Laser weapons see some light progress - CNET

Firing up jumpers, Durant 'clearly making progress,' will travel with Warriors

Editor's Note: The above video is from Friday, March 17, 2017.

OAKLAND -- Kevin Durant over the past 10 days has progressed from taking shots from a chair to set shots to firing up jumpers.

Though there still is no timetable for his return, Durant will be on the team flight Sunday when the Warriors travel to Oklahoma City.

Hes clearly making progress. Its great, coach Steve Kerr said late Saturday afternoon, prior to tipoff against the Milwaukee Bucks.

Durant sustained a sprained medial collateral ligament (MCL) and bone bruise to his left knee on Feb. 28 at Washington. He returned to the Bay Area the next day, his leg immobilized in a bulky brace while he moved about on crutches.

Scheduled for re-evaluation in about 10 days, Durant is walking comfortably and working up a sweat on the stationary bicycle.

You can tell hes making improvements and following the game plan, Stephen Curry said. I see him in the weight room doing cardio stuff trying to stay as close to game shape as he can while hes hurt. You like to see improvements every day. We still dont know when hell be back.

Durant said he would not return until his knee feels 100 percent, and his teammates -- who are 4-4 in the eight games he has missed -- would have it no other way.

When hes ready, well know, Draymond Green said. But its not really our job to try to figure out every day how hes doing. You can kind of see hes getting better and you just leave it at that.

BOX SCORE

LOS ANGELES --When the Cleveland Cavaliers decided to restLeBron James,Kyrie IrvingandKevin Lovein the same game, they also provided a welcome boost to the Los Angeles Clippers, who got to sit their own starters for the entire fourth quarter of a predictably one-sided victory.

The fans paying for high-priced Staples Center seats, or tuning in for a national television game between title contenders?

They all lost out, thanks to the unsavory choices prompted by the NBA's demanding schedule.

Blake Griffinscored 23 points and the Clippers snapped their three-game losing streak with a 108-78 win over Cleveland on Saturday night.

But the Clippers' domination of the Cavs' supporting cast added another chapter to the NBA's long-running debate on rest. Coaches are increasingly choosing caution over competitiveness, and both Cleveland's Tyronn Lue and Los Angeles' Doc Rivers expressed ambivalence about the choice Lue felt he had to make.

"There is a fan base that probably bought tickets tonight to seeLeBron Jamesplay for the first time," said Rivers, who rested Griffin on Thursday. "They didn't get a chance to see that, and that's not cool."

The crowd hated Lue's decision, reacting with confusion when the starting lineups were announced and then booing James when he joined the Cavs on the bench early in the first quarter. "We Want LeBron!" chants were taken up by much of the crowd on several occasions.

"I heard," Lue said. "I wanted him, too."

Lue said Love already was scheduled to sit out this game in his comeback from left knee surgery, and Irving left Thursday's game at Utah early with tightness in his own left knee. With the Cavs beginning a stretch of eight games in 14 days, Lue also decided to rest James instead of allowing him to play without his full supporting cast.

"It's a long season, and a lot of games," Lue said. "We have a lot of back-to-back games. Everybody has. Four in five nights are tough. Five in seven are tough. ... But it's been going on for years. It's not the first time we've done it. I think coaches are taking responsibility, trying to look after their players, make sure they get the proper rest."

James didn't speak to reporters before heading out into the Hollywood night, but Lue said the superstar didn't like the decision. Lue said his three stars all will return Sunday night against the woeful Lakers.

CLIPS CRUISE: The result was not surprising - and perhaps just what the Clippers needed to shake up their team in a humdrum March. Los Angeles (41-29) had lost six of 10, and Oklahoma City is a half-game behind the Clippers for fifth place in the Western Conference.

J.J. Redickadded 16 points as the Clippers swept their season series with the Cavs. Griffin poured in 13 points in the third quarter while Los Angeles pulled away.

"Playing against the best is the reason everyone wants to play in the NBA," Griffin said. "But at the same time, we'll take all of these wins. It's a bit of both. Not clear-cut one way or the other."

THE LEFTOVERS: Channing Frye, Deron Williams andJ.R. Smithstarted for Cleveland in the stars' place along withIman ShumpertandTristan Thompson. All five starters hit double figures.

The Cavaliers (45-22) have lost five of eight, but still lead Boston by 1 1/2 games atop the Eastern Conference.Richard Jeffersonscored 12 to lead the Cavs in their lowest-scoring game of the season.

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME: For the second straight week, ABC's showcase Saturday night game was dampened by a coach's decision to sit his best players. Golden State's Steve Kerr satStephen Curry,Klay Thompson,Draymond GreenandAndre Iguodalafor a showdown with San Antonio last week.

Rivers said the Saturday national games used to be protected against these problems because their afternoon starts prevented a team from being forced to play Friday night. The showcase is now an evening game.

"I think that we have to protect the national games," Rivers said. "We have to treat those games like they're afternoon games, and you don't play the night before, and you don't play the next night after. It sounds so easy, but it is not, because it's hard to schedule around that. It makes the rest of the schedule harder ... but the look of (these last two) back-to-back ABC national games is not good."

TIP-INS: Cavaliers: Shumpert played after spraining his left shoulder Thursday. ... Kyle Korver also missed his sixth straight game with a foot injury. Lue still hopes he can play on this road trip.

Clippers: Rivers flatly rejected a widely reported rumor of a possible reunion with the Orlando Magic: "I have a past with the Magic. I have no future. My future is here." Rivers coached the Magic from 1999-03. ...Chris Paulwent 0 for 8 from the floor, but had seven assists.

UP NEXT: Cavaliers: At the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday.

Clippers: Host the New York Knicks on Monday.

OAKLAND -- The focus of this Warriors resurgence will be on the defense, as it should be, especially after they closed out a perfect week at home Saturday night by limiting the Bucks to 40.4-percent shooting.

But there was palpable relief with seeing Stephen Currys shots falling through the rim so cleanly the net barely noticed.

The defense, the Warriors know they can bring at any time. Its their staple, the one basic element they can rely on times of strife.

But Currys offense Saturday night was the eye-opener. If the defense drove this 117-92 victory over Milwaukee, his shooting sent a gentle, relaxing breeze through Oracle Arena that dried those beads of sweat that had been collecting for weeks.

It wasnt so much Currys 28 points but the sheer efficiency of it all: 9-of-13 shooting, including 6-of-8 from beyond the arc, and 4-of-4 from the line. It was the first game in three weeks in which Curry didnt miss most of his 3-point shots.

With the sight of those shots going down, the teams swagger, which took a massive tumble when Kevin Durant went down with an injury on Feb. 28, has materialized once again. Thats the magic of Hot Steph.

Thank God I rested him last week, Warriors coach Steve Kerr joked, referring to Curry being held out of the March 11 game at San Antonio.

No, Steph was great. Without any sarcasm, getting through that stretch last week, we know, looking at the schedule it was going to be a tough stretch. We didnt know Kevin was going to get hurt. But it was the double-whammy.

Curry surely appeared refreshed. In three games at home this week he was 13-of-28 from beyond the ar.

In the seven games before this three-game homestand, for all practical purposes road games with a gruel travel schedule, Curry was 18-of-76 from deep.

Not that he ever wavered.

Keep shooting, Curry said. Thats it, really. Cant get discouraged by misses, cant get too big-headed about good games. Keep pushing, keep your routine up and feed off your teammates energy. And keep the confidence.

Curry made his first 3-ball, a 26-footer with 4:53 left in the first quarter. He missed his second and third attempts, then made his last four in a five in a row, including a buzzer-beater at the end of the first and a 33-footer in the final minute of the half.

Hes going to make shots, Bucks coach Jason Kidd said. You can be on him. Hes going to make them from halfcourt. Hes going to make some very tough shots . . . thats just who he is.

Thats not who he was for the better part of three weeks. Those days appear to have faded into history.

I havent been worried about him at all, teammate Andre Iguodala said. I really look at his bounce, more than anything, the way hes running and the way hes shooting. The schedule is brutal; 82 games is a long time. Thats to be expected.

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