One thing that's evident about President Donald Trump's proposal for the Golden Dome missile defense shield is that designing, deploying, and sustaining it will cost a lot of money, at least several hundred billion dollars, over the course of several decades.

Beyond that, it's really anyone's guess. That doesn't sit well with some lawmakers , but the Republican-controlled Congress committed $25 billion in July as a down payment for new missile-defense technologies.

The White House stated in May that Golden Dome will cost $175 billion over three years, but a new study from a center-right think tank concludes that it is simply not enough to develop the kind of multi-layer shield Trump described in a January executive order. It's also clear that it will take longer than three years to implement the full spectrum of defense capability envisioned for Golden Dome.

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One thing that's evident about President Donald Trump's proposal for the Golden Dome missile defense shield is that designing, deploying, and sustaining it will cost a lot of money, at least several hundred billion dollars, over the course of several decades.

Beyond that, it's really anyone's guess. That doesn't sit well with some lawmakers , but the Republican-controlled Congress committed $25 billion in July as a down payment for new missile-defense technologies.

The White House stated in May that Golden Dome will cost $175 billion over three years, but a new study from a center-right think tank concludes that it is simply not enough to develop the kind of multi-layer shield Trump described in a January executive order. It's also clear that it will take longer than three years to implement the full spectrum of defense capability envisioned for Golden Dome.

Read full article

Comments

One thing that's evident about President Donald Trump's proposal for the Golden Dome missile defense shield is that designing, deploying, and sustaining it will cost a lot of money, at least several hundred billion dollars, over the course of several decades.

Beyond that, it's really anyone's guess. That doesn't sit well with some lawmakers , but the Republican-controlled Congress committed $25 billion in July as a down payment for new missile-defense technologies.

The White House stated in May that Golden Dome will cost $175 billion over three years, but a new study from a center-right think tank concludes that it is simply not enough to develop the kind of multi-layer shield Trump described in a January executive order. It's also clear that it will take longer than three years to implement the full spectrum of defense capability envisioned for Golden Dome.

Read full article

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Certain dogs can not only memorize the names of objects like their favorite toys, but they can also extend those labels to entirely new objects with a similar function, regardless of whether or not they are similar in appearance, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. It's a cognitively advanced ability known as "label extension," and for animals to acquire it usually involves years of intensive training in captivity. But the dogs in this new study developed the ability to classify their toys by function with no formal training, merely by playing naturally with their owners.

Co-author Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, likens this ability to a person calling a hammer and a rock by the same name, or a child understanding that "cup" can describe a mug, a glass, or a tumbler, because they serve the same function. “The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function," she said. "So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”

Fugazza and her Hungarian colleagues have been studying canine behavior and cognition for several years. For instance, in 2023, we reported on the group's experiments on how dogs interpret gestures, such as pointing at a specific object. A dog will interpret the gesture as a directional cue, unlike a human toddler, who will more likely focus on the object itself. It's called spatial bias, and the team concluded that the phenomenon arises from a combination of how dogs see (visual acuity) and how they think, with "smarter" dog breeds prioritizing an object's appearance as much as its location. This suggests the smarter dogs' information processing is more similar to that of humans.

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Certain dogs can not only memorize the names of objects like their favorite toys, but they can also extend those labels to entirely new objects with a similar function, regardless of whether or not they are similar in appearance, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. It's a cognitively advanced ability known as "label extension," and for animals to acquire it usually involves years of intensive training in captivity. But the dogs in this new study developed the ability to classify their toys by function with no formal training, merely by playing naturally with their owners.

Co-author Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, likens this ability to a person calling a hammer and a rock by the same name, or a child understanding that "cup" can describe a mug, a glass, or a tumbler, because they serve the same function. “The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function," she said. "So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”

Fugazza and her Hungarian colleagues have been studying canine behavior and cognition for several years. For instance, in 2023, we reported on the group's experiments on how dogs interpret gestures, such as pointing at a specific object. A dog will interpret the gesture as a directional cue, unlike a human toddler, who will more likely focus on the object itself. It's called spatial bias, and the team concluded that the phenomenon arises from a combination of how dogs see (visual acuity) and how they think, with "smarter" dog breeds prioritizing an object's appearance as much as its location. This suggests the smarter dogs' information processing is more similar to that of humans.

Read full article

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Certain dogs can not only memorize the names of objects like their favorite toys, but they can also extend those labels to entirely new objects with a similar function, regardless of whether or not they are similar in appearance, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. It's a cognitively advanced ability known as "label extension," and for animals to acquire it usually involves years of intensive training in captivity. But the dogs in this new study developed the ability to classify their toys by function with no formal training, merely by playing naturally with their owners.

Co-author Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, likens this ability to a person calling a hammer and a rock by the same name, or a child understanding that "cup" can describe a mug, a glass, or a tumbler, because they serve the same function. “The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function," she said. "So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”

Fugazza and her Hungarian colleagues have been studying canine behavior and cognition for several years. For instance, in 2023, we reported on the group's experiments on how dogs interpret gestures, such as pointing at a specific object. A dog will interpret the gesture as a directional cue, unlike a human toddler, who will more likely focus on the object itself. It's called spatial bias, and the team concluded that the phenomenon arises from a combination of how dogs see (visual acuity) and how they think, with "smarter" dog breeds prioritizing an object's appearance as much as its location. This suggests the smarter dogs' information processing is more similar to that of humans.

Read full article

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At last year's Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg focused less on the company's line of Quest VR headsets and more on the "Orion" prototype see-through augmented reality glasses , which he said could launch in some form or another "in the next few years." At the Meta Connect keynote Wednesday evening, though, Zuckerberg announced that the company's Meta Ray-Ban Display AR glasses would be available starting at $799 as soon as Sept. 30.

To be sure, Meta's first commercial smartglasses with a built-in display are a far cry from the Orion prototype Zuckerberg showed off last year. The actual "display" part of the Ray-Ban Display is a paltry 600×600 resolution square that updates at just 30 Hz and takes up a tiny 20 degree portion of only the right eyepiece. Compared to the 70 degree field-of-view and head-tracked stereoscopic 3D "hologram" effect shown on the Orion lenses, that's a little disappointing.

Still, Zuckerberg was able to call the 42 pixels per degree (PPD) you get on the Ray-Ban Display's display "very high resolution," in a sense (the Meta Quest 3 tops out at around 25 PPD across its much larger display). And hands-on reports suggest the bright 5,000 nit display is viewable even in bright outdoor scenarios, thanks in part to Transitions lenses that automatically darken to block outside light.

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At last year's Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg focused less on the company's line of Quest VR headsets and more on the "Orion" prototype see-through augmented reality glasses , which he said could launch in some form or another "in the next few years." At the Meta Connect keynote Wednesday evening, though, Zuckerberg announced that the company's Meta Ray-Ban Display AR glasses would be available starting at $799 as soon as Sept. 30.

To be sure, Meta's first commercial smartglasses with a built-in display are a far cry from the Orion prototype Zuckerberg showed off last year. The actual "display" part of the Ray-Ban Display is a paltry 600×600 resolution square that updates at just 30 Hz and takes up a tiny 20 degree portion of only the right eyepiece. Compared to the 70 degree field-of-view and head-tracked stereoscopic 3D "hologram" effect shown on the Orion lenses, that's a little disappointing.

Still, Zuckerberg was able to call the 42 pixels per degree (PPD) you get on the Ray-Ban Display's display "very high resolution," in a sense (the Meta Quest 3 tops out at around 25 PPD across its much larger display). And hands-on reports suggest the bright 5,000 nit display is viewable even in bright outdoor scenarios, thanks in part to Transitions lenses that automatically darken to block outside light.

Read full article

Comments

At last year's Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg focused less on the company's line of Quest VR headsets and more on the "Orion" prototype see-through augmented reality glasses , which he said could launch in some form or another "in the next few years." At the Meta Connect keynote Wednesday evening, though, Zuckerberg announced that the company's Meta Ray-Ban Display AR glasses would be available starting at $799 as soon as Sept. 30.

To be sure, Meta's first commercial smartglasses with a built-in display are a far cry from the Orion prototype Zuckerberg showed off last year. The actual "display" part of the Ray-Ban Display is a paltry 600×600 resolution square that updates at just 30 Hz and takes up a tiny 20 degree portion of only the right eyepiece. Compared to the 70 degree field-of-view and head-tracked stereoscopic 3D "hologram" effect shown on the Orion lenses, that's a little disappointing.

Still, Zuckerberg was able to call the 42 pixels per degree (PPD) you get on the Ray-Ban Display's display "very high resolution," in a sense (the Meta Quest 3 tops out at around 25 PPD across its much larger display). And hands-on reports suggest the bright 5,000 nit display is viewable even in bright outdoor scenarios, thanks in part to Transitions lenses that automatically darken to block outside light.

Read full article

Comments