RT @m_cetera: @EricSchmidt calls 824 days of detainment in Ecuadorian Embassy "luxury lodgings"

[Google] wants people never to leave the internet at all. But then there are the self-driving cars and the drones; there’s Baseline Study, a project to collect blood, saliva and urine from hundreds of anonymous volunteers to try to predict the likelihood of heart attacks and other life-threatening conditions; and Calico, a biotech subsidiary that aims – in the words of Time magazine, anyway – to “solve death”. Are these all just the hobbies of astonishingly rich men who’d like to find a way not to die (and a good place for dinner)? Or is there a masterplan? What does Google want?

Some of the biggest names in technology have been making the pilgrimage to the desert for years, happily blending in unnoticed. These include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders, and Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon. But now a new set of younger rich techies are heading east, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, employees from Twitter, Zynga and Uber, and a slew of khaki-wearing venture capitalists.

his article contributes to a special symposium on science fiction and international law, examining the blurry lines between science and fiction in the policy discussions concerning the military use of lethal autonomous robots

Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag

While the technology behind facial recognition continues to develop as its presence increases, some artists are trying to give citizens their privacy back the best way they know how—by designing contraptions that help ordinary citizens avoid detection.

Larry Ellison has transferred a good portion of his wealth to his children Megan and David, also a film producer. The two have 3 million shares of Netsuite and own 900 million shares of Oracle each. It is estimated that the Netsuite holdings are worth $306 million alone.

With a net worth of $51.3 billion, Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison is the fifth wealthiest person in the world. Megan Ellison was born on Jan. 31, 1986, in Santa Clara County, California. Like her father, Megan was rebellious and tough from a young age. She posted this photo of herself to her Twitter account with the caption, "You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else."

Not because they might develop the worst human characteristics, but because they’re nothing like humans at all.If we now reflect that human beings consist of useful resources (such as conveniently located atoms) and that we depend for our survival and flourishing on many more local resources, we can see that the outcome could easily be one in which humanity quickly becomes extinct.

The genre of science fiction offers the analyst an opportunity that cannot be matched by more mimetic genres, namely the chance to look at how sets of widely-circulating expectations of the social serve to constrain authors as they work to introduce as yet unexplored problematiques, the fantasy aspect in much of science fiction storytelling is premised simply on a material difference.