[From Wired’s Autopia blog, where the post includes another picture; see a recent related story here] Supersonic Jet Ditches Windows for Massive Live-Streaming Screens By Alexander George 02.18.14 Spike Aerospace is in the midst of building the first supersonic private jet. And when the $80 million S-512 takes off in December 2018, it won’t have something you’d find on every other passenger aircraft: windows. The Boston-based aerospace firm is taking advantage of recent advances in video recording, live-streaming, and display technology with an interior that replaces the windows with massive, high-def screens. The S-512’s exterior will be lined with tiny…

[From Motherboard, where the story includes more pictures and a video] The Robot That Makes Virtual Sex Feel Real Written by Brian Merchant February 14, 2014 In the future, some people will choose to spend Valentine’s Day alone, having virtual sex with a 3D avatar with the help of a fully responsive robotic assistant. And by the future, I mean maybe next year. Intrepid horndog hackers can do it right now. Tenga is a Japanese manufacturer of disposable male sex toys—they make cylindrical “masturbation aids” that somehow don’t seem as repulsive as the Fleshlight (perhaps mostly because they’re not called…

[From AP via Salon] [Image: In this Jan. 7, 2014 file photo, show attendees play a video game wearing Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets at the Intel booth at the International Consumer Electronics Show(CES), in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)] Q&A: A documentarian working in virtual reality By Derrik J. Lang Feb. 19, 2014 LOS ANGELES (AP) — Forget 3-D glasses. Oscar-nominated documentarian Danfung Dennis believes the next evolution in filmmaking will be to surround viewers with images in 360 degrees — directly on their noggins. Dennis, whose gripping 2012 film “Hell and Back Again” told of a…

[From GCN; follow the links for more information and images] [Image: An interface for helm control of a ship. Note the position of his hands, floating above the controls a la Minority Report rather than touching them directly. From The Verge.] Virtual reality headset helps Navy simulate future workspaces By Kathleen Hickey Feb 18, 2014 The Office of Naval Research’s Project BlueShark is an effort to create a high-tech, futuristic environment to demonstrate what the Navy’s workspaces might look like and what emerging innovative technologies might provide in the next decade. BlueShark was developed by the University of Southern California’s…

[A change of pace – the ultimate form of (tele)presence; this is from The New York Times] [Image: Art by Olimpia Zagnoli] Is the Universe a Simulation? Feb. 14, 2014 By Edward Frenkel In Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” the protagonist, a writer, burns a manuscript in a moment of despair, only to find out later from the Devil that “manuscripts don’t burn.” While you might appreciate this romantic sentiment, there is of course no reason to think that it is true. Nikolai Gogol apparently burned the second volume of “Dead Souls,” and it has been lost forever.…

[From NJ.com, with an addendum from NBC News] [Image: AP European History students at the Hun School in Princeton facetime with their teacher.] Hun School teacher holds class via tablet as she sits in Pa. Turnpike gridlock By Alyssa Mease/The Times of Trenton on February 15, 2014 PRINCETON [New Jersey] – After missing multiple school days because of snow this winter, Hun School history teacher Lynn McNulty wasn’t going to let a series of chain-reaction car crashes and a miles-long traffic jam on the Pennsylvania Turnpike yesterday keep her from school another day. “I was probably about two miles back…

[From Motherboard] A Virtual Reality Train Ride Reveals a Link Between Height and Paranoia By Victoria Turk January 29, 2014 As anyone who’s been to a gig and isn’t six feet tall has probably experienced, being surrounded by people taller than you—why does that always happen?—can be annoying at best, and kind of scary at worst. There’s a certain vulnerability that comes with suddenly feeling shorter than those around you. A paper published online today in the journal Psychiatry Research looks at part of this phenomenon, by investigating the relation between height and paranoia. The study, which was led by…