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You cannot swing a virtual cat on the 'net without hitting a news item about the appearance of Pokémons everywhere. The little Nintendo critters from the 1990s are back amongst us, visible only to those who have downloaded the Pokémon Go app on their smartphones.

The app allows users to view their surroundings but inserts pocket monsters where it sees fit. Players can ambulate through their surroundings spotting and collecting them, or something like that.

Stories about the app abound. Here are a few:

Adderall and Ritalin have been used for some time in academia by some students and faculty seeking to get ahead in their occupations. Both drugs were developed to treat people with conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder.

The Seattle City Light utility is preparing installation of the Denny Street substation. Why is this news? Because the new substation does not look like a substation. Behold!

Denny Street substation

(Courtesy NBBJ Architects.)

Perhaps the earliest suggestion that consumer drones were about to take off in a big way was the "tacocopter", the little drone brings people tacos from above. The idea exploded onto the Web in 2012 with the product launch.

The death of Johsua Brown in a collision between his Tesla and a big rig has led to some reflections on automation and trust. However, it also raises issues about in what ways our world is, or should be, readable by machines.

The ins and outs of self-driving vehicles have been much in the news, as have concerns over software systems taking over jobs.

On 7 May 2016, Joshua Brown was killed as his Tesla drove underneath an 18-wheeler on US 27-A highway in Florida. The truck was making a left turn from the westbound lanes across the eastbound lanes when the eastbound Tesla Model S struck it.

A team of Mechanical Engineering students at Rice University have invented a gizmo that they hope will help mitigate food waste. The device is called "BioBlend" and it consists of an add-on to a standard garburator that processes food scraps into a paste suitable for composting or conversion to biogas.

Check out the video below.

A couple of interesting pieces have appeared describing effects of computerization on medicine.

The Communications of the ACM has an interesting short article on the rise of so-called social bots. A social bot is software that emulates a human being on social media. An example of a social bot would be a Twitter account that talks up Kanye West.

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Pokemon conquers Waterloo?

Professor Modafinil

An attractive electrical substation?

DNN: 7 July 2016

The machine readable roadway

Fighter pilots soon out of work?

Death in Tesla using autopilot function

Garbage gizmo to reduce food waste?

Efficient medicine

The bots are coming!