Quick links

Some of the best of what I've been thinking about lately:

• Tiny cheap satellites will provide near real-time imagery of the entire Earth to anyone who wants it, starting in about a year ([1] [2] [3])
  
  
• Amplifying motion and color changes in video, which allows augmented perception ([1] [2])
  
  
• Birds can hear the very low frequency sound produced by severe weather and are able to flee well in advance of incoming storms ([1])
  
  
• Nice example of blending computer science with another field, in this case genealogy, to yield big new gains ([1])
  
  
• "An energy gradient 1000 times greater than traditional particle accelerators" ([1])
  
  
• People "don't want to watch commercials, are fleeing networks, hate reruns, are increasingly bored by reality programming, shun print products and, oh, by the way, don’t want to pay much for content either. Yikes." ([1] [2])
  
  
• Everything we know Google is working on ([1])
  
  
• Funny and informative: "Riding in a Google Self-Driving Car" ([1])
  
  
• Google is rejecting security based on firewalls ([1] [2] [3])
  
  
• "Whether you call it a Star Trek Universal Translator or Babel fish, Microsoft is building it, and it's incredible." ([1])
  
  
• "Every dollar a worker earns in a research field spills over to make the economy $5 better off. Every dollar a similar worker earns in finance comes with a drain, making the economy 60 cents worse off." ([1])
  
  
• "I’m a big believer in making effectively infinite computing resources available internally ... [Give] teams the resources they need to experiment ... All employees should be limited only by their ability rather than an absence of resources or an inability to argue convincingly for more." ([1])
  
  
• "We think of it as a one-on-one tutor. It will test you and generate a personal lesson plan just for you." ([1])
  
  
• "Apparently, a sufficient number of puppies can explain any computer science concept. Here we have multithreading:" ([1])
  
  
• Fantastic to see a US president promoting computer programming to kids: "Becoming a computer scientist isn't as scary as it sounds. With hard work and a little math and science, anyone can do it." ([1])