This experimental plane, which reached supersonic speeds yesterday, is designed to travel faster than the speed of sound without creating bothersome sonic booms
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The Universe Is About to Wake Up
Ray Kurzweil’s Six Epochs of Intelligence maps the entire history of the universe as a story of accelerating information processing, from subatomic particles to a future merger of human and artificial intelligence.
Each epoch operates on a dramatically compressed timescale compared to the one before, driven by what Kurzweil calls the Law of Accelerating Returns.
We trace the journey from atoms forming after the Big Bang, through the emergence of DNA and the Cambrian Explosion, to the rise of brains, technology, and what Kurzweil predicts comes next.
By 2029, he believes AI will pass the strong Turing test, opening the door to brain-computer interfaces that link our neocortices directly to the cloud.
The final epoch envisions intelligence spreading throughout the cosmos, though critics like Michael Shermer argue this collides with the laws of physics.
Chapters.
00:00 — Intro.
HP Lovecraft’s Shoggoth Explained: Anatomy, Origin, and a Modern Metaphor for AI?
Lovecraft’s ultimate amorphous, shape-shifting horror. Far more than just a monster, this protoplasmic nightmare from At the Mountains of Madness is a creature of pure, terrifying potential—a slave race that violently found its own mind.
We’re dissecting the Shoggoth’s anatomy and dark origins, but more importantly, we are exploring why this hundred-year-old biological horror is the perfect modern metaphor for Large Language Models (LLMs) and A.I.
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Detailed Timestamps.
Longevity Scientist: Aging Is A Disease. We Just Don’t Know How to Treat (yet)
Joe Betts-LaCroix and Retro Biosciences recently raised funding at a $1.8 billion valuation. In his first podcast appearance since the announcement, Joe shares his vision for extending healthy human lifespan and the breakthroughs driving the longevity industry forward.
Joe Betts-LaCroix explains why aging is becoming a legitimate scientific target. He shares how new discoveries are turning longevity from speculation into measurable biology.
The conversation explores how AI is accelerating research, while highlighting why biology remains one of the hardest problems to solve. Even with smarter models, real-world testing and clinical trials still take time.
Joe also discusses Alzheimer’s, partial cellular reprogramming, and the future of longevity medicine. He shares why exercise remains the best longevity tool available today and what the next decade could look like for human health.
Joe is the CEO of Retro Biosciences and a longtime entrepreneur focused on science and technology. His mission is to extend healthy human lifespan and accelerate breakthroughs in aging research.
This episode is brought to you by NADclinic, the go-to destination for longevity and human performance. Check them out at https://nadclinic.com.
A low-tech solution to the 6G problem—metacrystal panels offer cheap way to guide wireless signals around corners
A passive 3D-printed panel could redirect wireless signals around corners without electronics or power. The metacrystal design can handle multiple incoming waves and different frequency bands, offering a lower-cost option for hard-to-reach indoor spaces.
Basements, tunnels, large buildings—a weak Wi-Fi or mobile signal in these hard-to-reach places is frustrating. The usual solution is to add more electronics like routers, repeaters and base stations. Yet, as we move towards a 6G mobile network, this kind of complex infrastructure can be unsustainable and prohibitively expensive. Higher-frequency channels of 6G communications aim to provide vastly more data bandwidth than the current 5G, but those channels are more easily blocked by walls, people and other obstacles.
To tackle this, researchers at Aalto University have developed a new solution in the form of metacrystals: passive, 3D-printed smart panels that can shape wireless signals without electronics, a power supply or active tuning. The paper, “Metacrystals: Inversely-designed 3D-printed intelligent panels for 6G communications” is published in Nature Communications.
“When a room is too dark, you can bring in more lamps—or use simple mirrors to guide the already available light. This is what these metacrystals do, but with radio waves,” explains doctoral researcher Mahdi Asgari. “Unlike previously proposed single-layer intelligent surfaces, these volumetric metacrystals can be designed to control multiple incoming signals or frequency bands independently—a key requirement for realistic wireless communication.”
Quantum Space to go public in SPAC deal
WASHINGTON — Quantum Space, a company led by a former NASA administrator that is developing highly maneuverable spacecraft for national security missions, will go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
Quantum Space announced June 8 that it will merge with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. VI, a SPAC traded on the Nasdaq exchange. The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter, with Quantum Space then trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol QSPC.
The deal includes a $300 million investment, known as a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, by Inflection Point into Quantum Space. The SPAC also has $253 million in trust that would go to Quantum Space, assuming none of its shareholders redeem their shares. The deal would value Quantum Space at more than $1.1 billion if there are no SPAC redemptions.
Geoffrey Hinton Just Said AI Is Already Conscious
Full episode: • AI pioneer geoffrey hinton: AI is consciou…
Geoffrey Hinton — the Nobel Prize-winning physicist widely regarded as the Godfather of AI — sits down with Alex Kantrowitz on the Big Technology Podcast to discuss something he rarely says out loud: he believes AI is already conscious. Not eventually. Not theoretically. Already.
In this clip, Hinton dismantles the popular \.
Claude is Self-Evolving?
In this episode, I break down Anthropic’s research on recursive self-improvement—AI systems that can design and train the next generation with less human help—and why the key battleground is “taste” (choosing goals and next steps). I compare this to evolutionary algorithms and newer examples like DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve, Sakana’s Darwin Gödel Machine, and Karpathy’s AutoResearch, then cover METR Task Horizon and how task length has been doubling. I go through Anthropic’s internal results (Claude writing most merged code, speedup experiments, bug fixes, and a study where models sometimes pick better research next steps), plus the main skepticism: bad productivity metrics, internal-only models, and Goodhart’s Law/reward hacking. I end with an open safety problem where Claude agents closed the gap far faster than humans, and what this means for specifying and checking work.
LINKS:
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Terahertz biophotonics: Understanding the path towards practical applications for biological imaging
Biophotonics is a multidisciplinary field that involves the development and application of light-based technologies to study, monitor and treat biological systems. The ability to directly image cells and molecules has led to many fundamental discoveries in the past century. More recently, the terahertz (THz) region of the electromagnetic spectrum has attracted growing interest as a promising frontier for advancing biological research.
The THz frequency range is associated with several fundamental biological processes. Although THz radiation is strongly absorbed by water—traditionally viewed as a limitation—this property can enable sensitive characterization of hydration states and water content. Compared with visible light, THz waves can also penetrate certain biological tissues more effectively.
However, despite steady advancements, the adoption of THz biophotonics still lags behind visible light-based techniques in directly observing cellular and molecular dynamics. This is largely due to several challenges, including relatively low spatial resolution (a consequence of the longer THz wavelengths), high sensitivity to water that complicates measurements, slower imaging speeds and bulky instrumentation. Fortunately, recent developments suggest strong future potential.