If you're a virtual reality enthusiast, you probably read Kevin Kelly's April Wired cover story on Magic Leap, "The World's Most Secretive Startup." Kelly is one of the few people who've seen the much-hyped mixed reality technology being produced by the Fort Lauderdale company and was suitably impressed by it. "While Magic Leap has yet to achieve the immersion of The Void," he wrote (referring to the Utah-based immersive experience company), "it is still, by far, the most impressive on the visual front -- the best at creating the illusion that virtual objects truly exist." As the co-founder of Wired, publisher of the Cool Tools website, and former publisher and editor of The Whole Earth Review, Kelly has always been prescient about these things. In his new book, The Inevitable: Understanding 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, he compellingly outlines a set of behaviors and trends that will change the way we live. We recently spoke with Kelly about the themes of the book, and of course, the latest developments in VR. There Is Only R: The first question I have to ask: what do you think of the Pokemon Go phenomenon? Given what you've written about the VR and AR, what's your take on it? Kevin Kelly: I think it's just wonderfully thrilling to see -- I think perhaps the only unexpected thing about it is its apparent suddenness.

The home feed, a collection of Pins from the people, boards and interests followed, as well as recommendations including Picked for You, is the most heavily user-engaged part of the service, and contributes a large fraction of total repins. The more people Pin, the better Pinterest can get for each person, which puts us in a unique position to serve up inspiration as a discovery engine on an ongoing basis. The home feed is a key way to discover new content, which is valuable to the Pinner, but poses a challenging question. Given the ever increasing number of Pins from various sources, how can we surface the most personalized and relevant Pins? Pinnability is the collective name of the machine learning models we developed to help Pinners find the best content in their home feed.

Father Gabriele Amorth, a prominent Roman Catholic exorcist, has died after a long illness, an Italian care facility said Saturday. Santa Lucia Foundation, a Rome rehabilitation center, said Saturday that Amorth died a day earlier in another Rome hospital, where he was recently transferred after his health worsened. Foundation officials said he had suffered from various respiratory and circulatory problems. Exorcism in the Catholic Church received more attention after Pope John Paul II repeatedly sought to convince skeptics the devil was very much active in the world. During his papacy, the Vatican issued guidelines for driving out devils and stressed the power of evil.

Ryan Hunter-Reay said this week has brought a full range of emotions, with the birth of his third son coming only hours before he learned that his father-in-law was dead in an apparent murder-suicide. The former Indianapolis 500 winner is married to Beccy Gordon, and the couple welcomed son Rhodes Maverick Hunter-Reay on Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Not long afterward, they were informed that her father, former racer "Baja" Bob Gordon, had been found dead alongside his wife in their Orange home. Police said Bob Gordon died of a gunshot wound and Sharon Gordon was strangled. Hunter-Reay said the Gordon family wanted him to proceed to Sonoma Raceway in Northern California, where IndyCar concludes its season Sunday.

Computer programs have defeated humans in Jeopardy!, chess and Go. Now a program developed at Case Western Reserve University has outperformed physicians on a more serious matter. The program was nearly twice as accurate as two neuroradiologists in determining whether abnormal tissue seen on magnetic resonance images (MRI) were dead brain cells caused by radiation, called radiation necrosis, or if brain cancer had returned. The direct comparison is part of a feasibility study published in the American Journal of Neuroradiology today. "One of the biggest challenges with the evaluation of brain tumor treatment is distinguishing between the confounding effects of radiation and cancer recurrence," said Pallavi Tiwari, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve and leader of the study.

Only a few decades ago, the concept of virtual offices was more like science fiction than a potential future scenario. However, more and more organisations are jumping on the remote working and virtual office bandwagon. In the near future, we won't need a conference room anymore. For important meetings we will just sit down – or stand – with our tablet and VR headset and wait for the others to join the virtual conference room. Across the table from you is your co-worker John, who is working from his home office in Zurich today.

It has been 73 years since the Supreme Court ruled that students in public schools couldn't be forced to pledge allegiance to the American flag or engage in other patriotic demonstrations. But some educators obviously haven't gotten the message. In recent days, a principal in Florida told students they would be ejected from sports events if they didn't stand during the national anthem. A student in Northern California said her class-participation grade was lowered because she refused to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance, her chosen form of protest over the mistreatment of her Native American ancestors. A high school football player in Massachusetts said he was told he would be suspended if he emulated San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and knelt during the national anthem.

At our recent bots, ai & messaging meetup we talked through our thoughts on simplifying the bot strategy and design process -- from objectives to conversation trees and beyond. Here is a roundup of our latest thoughts on designing and building effective messaging applications, bots and more. The first step in the bot planning process is deciding what the bot will do for the bot's creator, and what it will do for the bot's users. There's no point in in making something no-one will want to use, and no point in making something that does nothing for your business. So define both sets of objectives clearly and look for how these could overlap within a messaging application.

Chrissie Lightfoot takes a detailed look at how AI is used by law firms and what is on the horizon. As a futurist, an entrepreneur, and a lawyer, I always get asked, 'What do you think is the next big thing in the legal world?' I always begin my response with a catch-all reply: 'The next big thing is anything that helps you attract and keep a client. No client equals no business. A bit of a cliché, I know.

The new Surface Complete for Education warranty program allows schools to pool their accidental damage claims. Microsoft R Server Developer Edition is now available on the Linux version of the company s Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM), enabling users to build models using Microsoft s ScaleR libraries. In January, Microsoft launched R Server Developer Edition, a free version of the analytics platform for developers, students and nonproduction deployments. The offering arrived nearly a year after the software maker announced it was acquiring Revolution Analytics, the leading commercial supporter of R, the popular open-source statistical computing language. Making Microsoft R Server Developer available on the Linux flavor of the DSVM offers a major bump in big data processing capabilities.