Wages for Wheat; NK's Moon Dreams; The Very Bad, Horrible Iran Deal; Obama the Feminist; Battery Spy; Growing Cities of Tomorrow; Chimeras Carefully; and The Not So Far-Fetched Flood Story

Venezuela

Where flour, pasta and milk can cost a month's pay cnn

There's hardly ever fresh milk on the shelves. The same for powdered milk, which can sell on the black market for 100 times its official price. We found milk being sold for 7,000 bolivares -- more than $700 at the official currency exchange rate, though if you have U.S. dollars you can exchange them on the black market at vastly more favorable rates, perhaps getting 1,000 bolivares to the dollar.

This story reminded me a bit of the third seal (famine) describes in Revelation 6:6 NIV

Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "Two pounds of wheat for a day's wages, and six pounds of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"

Why AI?; AI Building AI; Personal Aircraft; Robo-Cockroaches Take the Stairs; Mini Moto; Glo-In-The-Dark Highways; Bot Sewn Sow; Da Vinci's DNA Code; 35 Tons of Dead Fish; American Crisis; Pope's Unity Award; $1b Peace Pledge; Foam Goat Heads; and NK's Propaganda Push

Today we have lots of tech related articles, from more robo-cockroaches (the mini-robots of choice by scientists, it seems) to 'engines' so small you can't see them to concrete that glows in the dark for up to 12 hours. Also, look closely - one of these links is not like the others...

AI

WHY AI? currentoldnews.blogspot

Back before I started this blog, when I used to email links of current event stories, a friend cornered me at church one day. Cocking his head a little funny, he said something to the effect of: "You sure email a lot of stuff about AI!"

His confused, perplexed response to AI articles as "current (old) news" was understandable - and perhaps you share his sentiments. And I admit - it is a little unusual because it is so sci-fi and out there, seeming more at home in a movie than in a newspaper.

In my first long-form article on this blog, I ramble on a bit as to why I include AI articles so often in these daily lists of news. 'Long' is a key word. Grab your coffee before clicking the link :)

Building AI Is Hard—So Facebook Is Building AI That Builds AI wired

No joke. Inside Facebook, engineers have designed what they like to call an “automated machine learning engineer,” an artificially intelligent system that helps create artificially intelligent systems. It’s a long way from perfection. But the goal is to create new AI models using as little human grunt work as possible.

Tech

Personal aircraft aiming to take off from your home phys.org

Founded in February 2015 by four engineers and doctoral students from the Technical University of Munich in Germany, Lilium has already proved the concept with several scale, 25 kg prototypes and is now developing its first ultralight vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

The dream continues...:D

Watch robo cockroach buddies help one another climb stairs theverge v

It's a simple demonstration, meant to show how smaller robots like this can work together to overcome tasks they can't handle alone. The UC Berkeley scientists from the university's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab have been playing with their roach and bug designs for a while now, and suggest the bots will eventually find a place in disaster rescue scenarios.

Cambridge scientists lay claim to world’s tiniest engine, a million times smaller than an ant heralddemocrat

It’s at [the] microscopic scale that scientists at the University of Cambridge say they’ve constructed a working engine. The prototype motor, which the physicists described Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, relies on lasers, gold particles and the exploitation of a nifty physics principle called van der Waals forces.

Looking to light highways with light-emitting cement phys.org

During the day, any building, road, highway or structure made out of this new cement can absorb solar energy and emit it during the night for around 12 hours.

Why We Should Care About the Autonomous Robot That Just Performed Surgery on a Pig fortune

The significance of this, beyond its meaning in the medical world, is that surgery strikes most of us as just about the last job we could imagine a robot doing. But robots are clearly on their way to doing it.

Printing Working Robot and Multi-Material Prototypes; NK Can Only Hit Millions and Millions of People; AI Diagnostician; Delivery Bot 3; No Plumbing Toilet; Metal Foam; and UK Synthetic Biology

3D Printing

MIT 3D prints a complete walking robot engadget

The breakthrough that researchers have made centers around creating what's being called "printable hydraulics," a way to create liquid-filled pumps inside the manufacturing process. According to CSAIL director Daniella Rus, the technique "is a step towards the rapid fabrication of functional machines." She adds that "all you have to do is stick in a battery and motor and you have a robot that can practically walk right out of the printer."

Plus video...

3D printer creates full-color, multiple material prototypes in a single print run gizmag

The J750 is not the first Polyjet printer from Stratasys, but it is the first that can print in five colors – cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white – instead of just three. The addition of white in particular means the printer can now use the CMYK process to derive a broad spectrum of 360,000 accurate color shades. Indeed, the printer can even recreate color gradients and complex patterns such as wood grain, plaid, and so on.

North Korea

North Korea Needs 3 Things to Hit the U.S. With a Nuclear Weapon time

Primarily a video. I love that they that reiterate multiple times that NK can't hit us, then say that NK can hit just about everyone in the general area, but not us...so all is good.

AI

Mass General will use artificial intelligence to improve hospital care venturebeat

Using AI, physicians can compare a patient’s symptoms, tests, and history with insight from a vast population of other patients. Initially, the MGH Clinical Data Science Center will focus on the fields of radiology and pathology — which are particularly rich in images and data — and then expand into genomics and electronic health records.

Robots

This Cute Self-Driving Robot Wants to Deliver Your Food or Laundry fortune

For now, Carry has been used in pilot programs on a couple of school campuses, where it mostly interacts with pedestrians and completes various kinds of deliveries. A mobile app lets customers interact with Carry, such as open one of its four compartments to grab their parcels, while a software tool will let its eventual customers easily send delivery orders to Dispatch’s fleet of these robots.

These delivery bots seem to have suddenly become a thing...

Household

Bill Gates is Financing a Next-Generation Waterless Toilet That Transforms Human Waste into Bio-Fuel industrytap

UK researchers have developed an inexpensive waterless toilet with energy-producing capabilities. The goal behind this new eco-friendly Nano Membrane Toilet is to help the 2.4 billion people worldwide who do not have access to sanitized and safe lavatory facilities.

There's an animated video of how this, um, works.

Materials

Metal foam strong enough to stop bullets upi

Armor piercing bullets are supposed to be indestructible. They never met metal foam.

DNA

UK Lab Makes DNA For Synthetic Biology news.sky

This is the Foundry, a £2m centre which opens today in Imperial College London. It plans to industrialise the process of preparing DNA for use in synthetic biology.

Other...

Domino's new app orders you pizza automatically with zero clicks businessinsider