Toggle light / dark theme

Amnesty International — part of the group that helped break the news of journalists and heads of state being targeted by NSO’s government-grade spyware, Pegasus — has released a tool to check if your phone has been affected. Alongside the tool is a great set of instructions, which should help you through the somewhat technical checking process. Using the tool involves backing up your phone to a separate computer and running a check on that backup. Read on if you’ve been side-eyeing your phone since the news broke and are looking for guidance on using Amnesty’s tool.


The process is straightforward, but it requires some patience.

The canisters can’t stay on the 11-acre storage site on Bailey Peninsula in Wiscasset forever. And the specter of climate change and ocean level rise adds urgency to the hunt for a solution.


That’s a problem because the waste — 1400 spent nuclear fuel rods housed in 60 cement and steel canisters, plus four canisters of irradiated steel removed from the nuclear reactor when it was taken down — is safe for now, but can’t stay in Wiscasset forever.

The situation in Wiscasset underscores a thorny issue facing more than 100 communities across the U.S.: close to a hundred thousand tons of nuclear waste that has no place to go.

Securing these remnants of nuclear energy generation is an ongoing task that requires armed guards around the clock and costs Maine Yankee’s owners some $10 million per year, which is being paid for with money from the government.

The chip world’s most important machines are made near corn fields in the Netherlands. The U.S. is trying to block China from buying them.


The one-of-a-kind, 180-ton machines are used by companies including Intel Corp., South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and leading Apple Inc. supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to make the chips in everything from cutting-edge smartphones and 5G cellular equipment to computers used for artificial intelligence.

China wants the $150-million machines for domestic chip makers, so smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co. and other Chinese tech companies can be less reliant on foreign suppliers. But ASML hasn’t sent a single one because the Netherlands—under pressure from the U.S.—is withholding an export license to China.

The Biden administration has asked the government to restrict sales because of national-security concerns, according to U.S. officials. The stance is a holdover from the Trump White House, which first identified the strategic value of the machine and reached out to Dutch officials.

“The trend for feeding dogs raw food may be fuelling the spread of antibiotic resistant-bacteria”, the researchers said in a press release for their study, to be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases.

Separate research to be presented at the same conference found resistance to a last-resort antibiotic may be passing between pet dogs and their owners.


Antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” — which the World Health Organization calls one of the top global threats to public health — usually conjure images of hospital settings.

Boiling lobsters alive may be banned under a new law in the UK designed to protect the welfare rights of animals considered sentient beings. So, are lobsters sentient, do they feel pain, and what does science have to say about the moral quagmire of crustacean agony and cooking pots?

Back in May 2021, the UK government introduced a bill to formally recognize animals as sentient beings. Among the many facets of the bill, it aimed to limit the import of products from trophy hunting, push for fairer space requirements for farm animals, and stop people from owning primates as pets.

However, the bill only covered animals with a backbone and didn’t include any protections for non-vertebrates, which includes octopuses, squid, insects, and crustaceans. The Times reports that ministers are now preparing to back an amendment to the House of Lords, the upper house of the UK Parliament, to extend the legislation to shellfish and cephalopod mollusks. As per the report, this is likely to involve an outright ban on boiling lobsters alive.

Daniel Schmachtenberger is a philosopher and founding member of The Consilience Project. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
- Ground News: https://ground.news/lex.
- NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour.
- Four Sigmatic: https://foursigmatic.com/lex and use code LexPod to get up to 60% off.
- Magic Spoon: https://magicspoon.com/lex and use code LEX to get $5 off.
- BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off.

EPISODE LINKS:
Daniel’s Website: https://civilizationemerging.com/
The Consilience Project: https://consilienceproject.org/

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast.
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr.
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 — Introduction.
1:31 — Aliens and UFOs.
20:15 — Collective intelligence of human civilization.
28:12 — Consciousness.
39:33 — How much computation does the human brain perform?
43:12 — Humans vs ants.
50:30 — Humans are apex predators.
57:34 — Girard’s Mimetic Theory of Desire.
1:17:31 — We can never completely understand reality.
1:20:54 — Self-terminating systems.
1:31:18 — Catastrophic risk.
2:01:30 — Adding more love to the world.
2:28:55 — How to build a better world.
2:46:07 — Meaning of life.
2:53:49 — Death.
2:59:29 — The role of government in society.
3:16:54 — Exponential growth of technology.
4:02:35 — Lessons from my father.
4:08:11 — Even suffering is filled with beauty.

SOCIAL:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman.
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman.
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman.
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman.
- Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman.
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

Join the SRIC3 final event big party!

Here’s where you can find the Zoom coordinates to join us celebrating the 2021 Space Renaissance Congress completed:

Though the voting process will remain open until Thursday July 15th, i am happy to announce that **we have elected the new President of Space Renaissance International, Prof. Bernard Foing, and the new Board of Directors!**

Hereafter the received votes so far, that assure we passed the quorum, and the election of our new leadership.

63, 77% of the having right to vote voted so far on the 3 final motions, namely:

Final Resolution: AYE 97, 73%, NAY 0%, ABS 2.27%

Thesis 1 Motion: AYE 93, 18%, NAY 0%, ABS 6.82%

Pretty soon, people won’t have to provide a fingerprint or a driver license to prove their identity — if VU has its way.

The Argentina-based fraud and identity protection company announced $12 million in Series B funding Monday from backers including software developer Globant, as well as Agrega Partners, NXTP Ventures, Bridge One, the IDB Lab and Telefónica. The new funding gives the company total venture-backed investments of $20 million, CEO Sebastián Stranieri told TechCrunch.

Stranieri, who has worked in the cybersecurity industry for the past 20 years, got the idea for VU in 2007 after spending hours helping his grandmother verify her identity with the Argentinian government in what turned out to be a two-minute process.

As someone with a passionate interest in longevity, transhumanism and biological immortality — I am naturally both excited and optimistic that medical technology will continue to advance in my lifetime — hopefully to the point where humanity has cured or at least greatly mitigated the signs & symptoms of most diseases as well as disabilities, radically expanded human biological lifespan regardless of age, and created a more dignified existence for all as a result of rapid breakthroughs in robotics, AI, automation, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology — which I hope in turn will largely eradicate poverty, disease, food & shelter insecurity, natural resource scarcity, environmental degradation and income inequality. I know that some of my likeminded friends are far more skeptical that we will ever see outright cures or significant mitigations for major diseases and disabilities — much less radical life extension or perhaps biological immortality in human beings — which are widely available on a commercial basis. They cite their belief that pharmaceutical giants, a plethora of not for profit organizations (i.e., American Cancer Society), and many other allegedly “self-interested parties” supposedly allied with government regulatory bodies — apparently do not want to see diseases or disabilities cured or lifespan significantly extended — EVER — as this would prevent them from earning untold sums selling treatments and supports for such things on a regular ongoing basis (i.e., chemo drugs for cancer, statins for cardiovascular disease, inhaled/oral steroids for lung disease, renal replacement therapy for kidney disease, mobile supports for spinal cord injuries, ect.) They believe that too much money would be at stake, too many jobs on the line and the entire “pharma-medical-academic industrial complex” supposedly at great risk, if actual cures or significant mitigations ever saw the light of day. Some of these friends even cite their belief that fully autonomous, accident proof, self-driving cars will most likely never occur — as it would supposed put the entire auto insurance industry at existential risk as well as deprive law enforcement agencies of a key source of reliable revenue (issuing speeding tickets) This one makes me giggle! 🤭 My friends also believe that radical life extension in human beings — much less biological immortality — would apparently upset the proverbial apple cart — where the “powers that be” are concerned — in terms of everything from the highly lucrative profits which are derived from pharmaceutical sales, old age homes, life and health insurance plans, personal financial services and all of the sales of key products and services associated with the aging process — to macroeconomic considerations such as the long term viability of government entitlement programmes. They believe that government regulatory authorities allegedly working at the behest of the aforementioned self-interested parties will always seek to delay, disrupt or even derail ANY and ALL significant progress into cures/mitigations for disease/disabilities, radical human life extension and/or human biological immortality. Apparently, new biotech start ups which do advance the aforementioned things are allegedly “always aggressively bought out by monopoly capital — with their cures and advances indefinitely suppressed” I personally tend to be more on the positive and optimistic side where these things are concerned — but perhaps these rather pessimistic arguments do have some validity — minus the implied conspiracy theory aspect. Do you think human beings will ever be “allowed” to truly be free from illnesses and disabilities? Will we ever be “permitted” to radically expand our lifespans or even become biologically immortal at some point? Please discuss.


I have already taken a few courses for a master’s in physics at the University of Antwerp and I want to complete it there. In a bachelor’s degree you get a basis of knowledge in physics and quantum physics, but it gets more detailed in a master’s.

The main reason I chose to study physics is because my end goal is to achieve immortality. One of the areas that is important in the study of immortality is physics, but as of yet, there is no mapped out path to achieve it.

I am interested in immortality because my grandparents suffer from heart disease. I want to help them and I want to help other kids so they don’t have to lose their grandparents. You could look at immortality as a very big puzzle. We have a lot of pieces of the puzzle, which are different studies and research, and it’s possible that combining the knowledge from those studies will develop new insights and ideas. Something I am interested in is artificial organs; I would like to be able to replace as many parts of the body as possible with artificial organs. I plan to do a lot of studying, gather a lot of knowledge and then all the pieces will hopefully fit in together and the puzzle of immortality may be solved.