The Morning After: Tuesday, March 28th 2017

Plug inElon Musk’s latest project is Neuralink

So what’s next for a billionaire after launching rockets and mass producing electric cars? If you’re Elon Musk, the answer apparently is plugging computers into human brains. The Wall Street Journal reports his new venture, Neuralink, is working on “neural lace” technology that could allow us to upload and download our thoughts. We have our speculation about what that could mean for humanity (“I know kung-fu”), but Musk tweeted that a long post about Neuralink is coming to the Wait But Why blog in about a week.

Look carefullyThis is (probably) not CGI

Filmmaker Francis Chee posted a 23-second time-lapse video showing the cell division of a frog egg in stunning detail. According to Chee, he pulled it off with a custom-designed microscope, LEDs and optics, all set on an anti-vibration to capture the process that actually took about 33 hours.

Don’t throw out your hard-drive yetIntel’s ultra-fast 3D storage is ready for your home PC

The good news is that Intel’s speedy (at least 900MB/s in peak sequential reads) Optane storage will be available for home PCs and not just servers. The bad news? With a price tag of $77 for just 32GB, it’s intended for caching, allowing users to get SSD speed without needing to buy a more expensive drive that will hold all of their data. But don’t worry — if the price is no object and compromises are impossible, you can expect larger Optane SSDs to arrive later this year.

TeaseThis is one corner of Andy Rubin’s next smartphone

Andy Rubin already gave you Android and the Sidekick, and now he’s back with another new mobile device. His tweet shows the design features a minimal amount of bezel, but most of the details are still a mystery. The flagship smartphone from his new company Essential Products Inc. is expected to drop in the middle of this year.

How can something this black be green?‘Air-Ink’ uses carbon soot to make ink

Start-up Graviky has created an exhaust filter that can pull 95% of the carbon soot from diesel exhausts, and then transform this into useable, purified, black ink or paint. The resulting ink matches regular sharpies and adds the smugness of knowing you’ve picked a greener option.

But wait, there’s more…