— The Blaze
Billionaire Elon Musk has a passion for advancing technology; he recently announced plans to create the world’s single largest solar production and told CNBC he wants to put humans on Mars by the end of the 2020s.
But it appears there’s one area of technology he isn’t ready to push: artificial intelligence.
— Venture Beat
We can finally talk about virtual reality games with a straight face.
At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) video game trade show in Los Angeles, a small pool of VR games held their own against a big slate of indie titles and triple-A blockbusters. This is the first year that Oculus VR, the poster boy for VR’s resurgence with its popular Oculus Rift headset, had a presence on the expo floor, an elegant booth that wasn’t too far from Oculus’s biggest competitor, Sony’s Project Morpheus. Neither company has set a release date for their devices (Samsung, the third challenger for the VR crown, is trying to beat them both to market).
Robert McMillan — Wired
Every six months, a team of supercomputing academics compiles a list of the most powerful computers on the planet. It’s called the Top500 list, and it has become a competition of sorts. National labs vie against universities, military facilities, NASA, and even temporary cloud-based supercomputers—all to see who’s building the worlds’ largest number-crunching machines.
This year, the machine on the top of the list is Tihane-2, a Chinese system that can perform 33.86 quadrillion calculations per second. But here’s the thing. Tihane-2 was on top back in November of 2013, and a year ago too. In fact, when you look at the top 10 machines on the June list, there’s only one new entry–an unidentified Cray supercomputer, operated by the U.S. government. It’s ranked tenth.
Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub
Deep brain stimulation as a treatment for epilepsy and movement disorders, most notably Parkinson’s disease, has rapidly gone from experimental to standard practice. With devices to provide delicate electro-stimulation to the brain now available and with maps of which neurons do what steadily gaining detail, attention is now shifting to using the approach to treat mental illness.
Steven Kotler — Singularity Hub
Violence is contagious, this we know. Time and again, researchers have found that exposure to aggression links directly to increases in violent behavior. This is why, for example, 30% of abused children grow up to be abusers themselves. It’s also why, as Gary Slutkin, a professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the executive director of CURE Violence, recently told New Scientist: “[P]eople who have observed violence are 30 times more likely to commit it. Under certain conditions it can be up to 100 to 1,000 times more likely.”
Diet restriction suspends development in nematode worms, doubles lifespan http://www.kurzweilai.net/diet-restriction-suspends-developm…s-lifespan
Modeling how neurons work together to perform movements: not as random as we thought http://www.kurzweilai.net/modeling-how-neurons-work-together…we-thought
A low-cost ‘super-resolution’ microscopic optical device http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-low-cost-super-resolution-microscopic-optical-device
Smile! A Drone Is About to Take Your Picture http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/smile-a-drone-is-ab…s&_r=0
CNN: Something that will NEVER happen to Germania and Scandinavia. ‘Foreign Legion’ in Iraq and Syria may bring jihad to West http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/16/world/meast/iraq-sria-fore…?hpt=hp_c1
BUSINESS INSIDER: Nine Nations Have Nukes — Here’s How Many Each Country Has https://www.geekwrapped.com/archive/nine-nations-have-nukes-…ountry-has
TRANSFORM PETROLEUM IN OBSOLETE AND WORTHLESS. Here’s Why The Middle East Will Be ‘On Fire’ For The Foreseeable Future http://www.businessinsider.com/the-middle-east-will-be-on-fi…2014-6
How to Explain the Number of Financial Crimes on Wall Street http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2014/06/17/no-one-…ial-crime/
Traders say they are not “too big to fail”, clearing houses may be http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/01/traders-clearing-idUKL5N0MT37120140401
Retail banks’ worst nightmare? Google http://www.cnbc.com/id/101127506
A Look Behind The FBI’s Cyber Most Wanted List http://www.forbes.com/sites/frontline/2014/06/18/a-look-behi…nted-list/
Singapore Billionaire Bets Big on Energy in Africa, Asia http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-19/singapore-b…-asia.html
Oracle Sales, Profit Miss Analysts’ Estimates http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-19/oracle-sale…mates.html
Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub
“It’s that time again.” These were the words on more than one pair of lips at Singularity University’s 2014 Graduate Studies Program (GSP) opening ceremony.
The 10-week summer program was Singularity University’s first offering six years ago, and it remains at the heart of Singularity University’s mission today—to use technology to positively impact a billion people in the next ten years.
