Over at Boing Boing, there's a must-read interview with rebel author Rudy Rucker, in which he reflects on weird physics and his various storytelling inspirations. And he delivers this gem, about the widespread obsession with living forever:

Most Silicon Valley companies were opposed to the patent reform law that President Obama signed last week. Some argue that the America Invents Act favors large megacorps over smaller companies, and could dampen innovation in the tech sector.

Computronium is defined by some as a substance which approaches the theoretical limit of computational power that we can achieve through engineering of the matter around us. It would mean that every atom of a piece of matter would be put to useful work doing computation. Such a system would reside at the ultimate…

If you read any science fiction or futurism, you've probably heard people using the term "singularity" to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today's io9 flashback.

At Carnegie-Mellon university, a massive computer system called NELL (Never Ending Language Learner) is systematically reading the internet and analyzing sentences for semantic categories and facts, teaching itself English and educating itself in human affairs. We spoke to NELL's creators.

Nobody knows when (or if) The Singularity will arrive, bringing super-smart artificial intelligences — but within twenty years, astronomy could become the first discipline where discoveries outpace scientists' ability to keep up with them, says the Technology Review.

No, sorry, you're not stoned enough to watch the trailer for Turning Into Gods, the new Singularity documentary. You won't be able to appreciate lines like, "In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind."