This Week’s Awesome Stories from Around the Web (Through Aug 17, 2014)

Since last week’s reading list was well received, we’re serving up another round of the most intriguing articles in science and technology this week. And if you see one that we missed, feel free to add them in the comments.

Siri’s Inventors Are Building a Radical New AI That Does Anything You Ask | WIRED
“‘I’m extremely proud of Siri and the impact it’s had on the world, but in many ways it could have been more…now I want to do something bigger than mobile, bigger than consumer, bigger than desktop or enterprise. I want to do something that could fundamentally change the way software is built.'”

Crowdfunding and Venture Funding: More Alike Than You Think | NY Times 
“’The crowd is often thought as being crazy. There was a sense that they would back musicals about Internet cats, and experts would back serious work…it turns out the crowd does consider the quality of projects and outcomes pretty well.’”

Building Mind-Controlled Gadgets Just Got Easier | IEEE Spectrum
“‘The first time you get something to move with your brain, the satisfaction is pretty amazing.'”

No, Dystopian Sci-Fi Isn’t Bad for Society. We Need It More Than Ever | WIRED
“With so much technology constantly barraging us with the idea that every innovation is going to “change the world for the better,” where better to suss out the good and the bad than in fiction?”

First-Person Hyperlapse Videos | Microsoft.com
“We present a method for converting first-person videos, for example, captured with a helmet camera during activities such as rock climbing or bicycling, into hyper-lapse videos, i.e., time-lapse videos with a smoothly moving camera.”

Plants May Use Newly Discovered Molecular Language To Communicate | Science Daily
“‘The discovery of this novel form of inter-organism communication shows that this is happening a lot more than any one has previously realized.'”

The Maker’s Mark: Yves Behar is the man behind Silicon Valley’s most beautiful gadgets | The Verge
“’The secret,” he says, “is in the relationship between the person and the object.’”

Is Encrypted Messaging Entering the Mainstream? | The Wall Street Journal
“‘If asked whether they think privacy is very important, [consumers] will likely answer very positively, but still share lots of personal information quite freely on social networking sites or in exchange to get a discount or money off voucher.'”

Humans Need  Not Apply | CGP Grey/YouTube
“Just as mechanical muscles made human labor less in demand, so are mechanical minds making human brain labor less in demand.”

[Image credit: Keoni Cabral/Flickr]