Meet the Super-Taskers (Psychology Today) — As part of the Nissan GT Academy challenge, the top 10 players of the car-racing game Gran Turismo are given the chance to race real automobiles in competition. They’re very good—too good, in fact. A graduate racing a real car in the British GT in 2012 was so fast that he could keep up with the professionals in what was supposed to be an amateur event. In 2013, GT Academy graduates were banned from such races in the UK. Instead, they have to compete against the pros.
A View of Game Developers From The Future (Ian Bogost) — A new arms race commenced—for virtual attention, which the Patrons converted into financial instrument. While historians agree that ancient works like Civilization and chess still provided inspiration, games primarily became a specialized form of banking. As long as there has been advertising, there has been an attention economy: you advertise where people pay attention—whether it’s on the walls of buildings or above urinals.
ErLLVM — providing multiple back ends for the High Performance Erlang (HiPE) with the use of the LLVM infastructure. Making the very-lightweight-multithreading Erlang less of a closed world fruitcake deployment can only be good.
