FutureFilter

Stunning AI Breakthrough Takes Us One Step Closer to the Singularity

Remember AlphaGo, the first artificial intelligence to defeat a grandmaster at Go? Well, the program just got a major upgrade, and it can now teach …

A Game Where You Play As An AI With Amnesia

Say Hello to the Lego Women of NASA

Lego has blessed your quest for a birthday gift for your favorite young (or, for that matter, full grown) female STEM enthusiast, rolling out a …

Big-budget, single-player gaming isn’t dead (yet) | Ars Technica

Despite industry pressures, the narrative adventure isn't going anywhere.<p>Yesterday's news that EA is shutting down Visceral Games is bad news for …

The Mathematical Genius of Auto-Tune

Auto-Tune — one of modern history’s most reviled inventions — was an act of mathematical genius.

Dark chocolate is now a health food. Here’s how that happened. - Vox

The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of scientific studies to show cocoa is good for you.<p>A year after James Cadbury, the 30-something great-great-great-grandson of the British chocolatier John Cadbury, launched his luxury cocoa startup in 2016, he introduced an avocado chocolate bar.<p>Cadbury …

Bad Blood? Why Transfusions from Women May Be Risky for Men

Getting blood from a woman who has ever been pregnant could be risky for men, a new study from the Netherlands suggests.<p>The study, published today …

Caught In the Act! Five Black Hole Couples Found Merging (Videos)

Astronomers have pinpointed five pairs of merging black holes using three different space- and ground-based instruments and two sky surveys.<p>A new …

How David Fincher Hijacks Your Eyes

Stretchable 'skin' gives robots the sense of touch

Robots show a lot of promise as first responders, but they can't effectively dismantle bombs or perform delicate first aid procedures if they can't <i>feel</i> what they're touching. To remedy that problem, a team of engineers from the University of Washington and UCLA have developed stretchable skin that …

Flowing water could have carved valleys on 'icy' ancient Mars - Futurity

Scientists have long been torn between two ideas about the climate on ancient Mars: "wet and warm" vs. "cold and icy." New research splits the …

What would the average human do?

Artificial intelligence researchers want to teach computers to make moral choices based on millions of human survey responses.<p>Last year, researchers …

Peer pressure forced whales and dolphins to evolve big brains, like humans

The human brain has evolved and expanded over millennia to accommodate our ever-more-complex needs and those of our societies. This process is known as “encephalization” and has given us the big brain we need to communicate, cooperate, reach consensus, empathize, and socialize. The same is true for …

What Is Synesthesia?

Synesthesia is a neurological condition that causes the brain to process data in the form of several senses at once. For example, a person with …

The Radical Message of 'Halt and Catch Fire'

The opening credits of <i>Halt and Catch Fire</i> play out like a beautiful idea. A series of gleaming signals race across a retro-futuristic landscape of …

Are We Ready for Intimacy with Robots?

Love in the Time of Robots<p><b>Hiroshi Ishi­guro builds androids. Beautiful, realistic, uncannily convincing human replicas. Academically, he is using</b> …

To Take on Tesla, Volvo Revamps Its Polestar Brand

Volvo is in the midst of a reincarnation. The Swedish automaker is leaving behind its former life as the maker of super safe, super boxy wagons, and …

Goodbye Uncanny Valley

Aerospace firm wants to send an inflatable habitat to orbit the moon

Bigelow Aerospace has been working on inflatable space habitats for a while now. The company sent a small inflatable unit to the ISS that added a small living area on the space station and it partnered with United Launch Alliance (ULA) last year on plans to launch its B330 module to Low Earth …

California Becomes First State to Legally Recognize Nonbinary Genders On All State-Issued ID Documents

After Governor Jerry Brown signed the the Gender Recognition Act into law on Sunday, California officially became the first state to legally …

‘Halt and Catch Fire’ Series Finale Review: The Future Is Female in a Powerful Ending to a One-of-a-Kind Show

"Halt and Catch Fire" ended exactly as it began, and it was beautiful.<p>[<i>Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for the “Halt and Catch</i> …

Shannon Luminary Lecture Series - Stephen Fry, actor, comedian, journalist, author

The Zoomable Universe takes us from galactic webs to subatomic fields | Ars Technica

This gorgeous new book recalls the golden age of science journalism.<p>Sometimes we want science to show us the complexity and uncertainty of …

Setting The Mood For Assassins Creed: Origins

Raphael Lacoste, senior art director at Ubisoft, needed to set the scene for the series’ shift to Egypt for <i>Origins</i> when development began a few years …

"Mariachi Plaza" Clip - Disney/Pixar's Coco

‘Blade Runner 2049’ Composer Benjamin Wallfisch on the Unique Score, Experimenting, & Vangelis

Composer Benjamin Wallfisch has been a very busy guy lately. Over the past 18 months he’s composed the scores to Hidden Figures, A Cure for Wellness, …

The Butchering Art: Victorian Medicine, From Blood-Caked Aprons and Body Snatching, to Antiseptic

“Ticketed spectators watched anatomists slice into the distended bellies of decomposing corpses, parts gushing forth not only human blood but also …

Hey #Twitterville we just wrapped production so here's a special message #StarWars

Observatories Across the World Announce Groundbreaking New Gravitational Wave Discovery

Vicky Kalogera, a Northwestern University physicist, took her week of much-needed vacation in Utah this past August. She promised her family she’d …