General Atomics is working hard to put a close cousin of its Reaper anti-terrorism drone in the hands of local law enforcement.
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Dear vice president mike pence, chairman of the national space council:
Thank you for your leadership of the National Space Council that has been recreated under the authority of President Trump. In 1962, when the Council was first formed under the leadership of Vice President Johnson, its executive director, Edward Welsh, played a decisive role in the drafting and passage of the Communications Satellite Act, which led to the creation of COMSAT and the subsequent formation of INTELSAT, an intergovernmental communications satellite organization initially with 14-member governments in 1964 that was privatized in 2001. COMSAT was the first major step towards the commercial use of outer space. In 1967, after Johnson had been elected president, he reported that “the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 [has] brought mankind to the threshold of a full-time global communications service to which all nations of the world may have equal access.”
The world is at a watershed moment regarding outer space. Governments have dominated in outer space. Increasingly, though, private investment will shape the future in space. The US does not have a strategy nor is it organized to effective ly advance private space development and the emergence of a self-sustaining space economy. This is the principal challenge to be addressed by the Space Council.
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Fearless Parent Radio
Posted in internet, neuroscience, transhumanism
I recently did a 50-min interview with Pratik Chougule on transhumanism:
#105 — What is Transhumanism? ** August 23, 2017 Guest // Zoltan Istvan ** Host // Pratik Chougule, JD
Look around and you’ll see humanity not just engaged with technology but integrated in ways that are unexpected, sophisticated, fascinating, and for many of us, fundamentally alarming. There’s a nostalgia for the simplicity of the pre-internet past… for the time that my teenage kids call “ye olden days.”
It’s pretty clear, however, that we aren’t stuffing tech back into the box anytime soon. And humanity is beset with all sorts of problems. Development of these technologies is accelerating and impacting human intelligence and physiology in ways that might transform what it means to be… human.
How do we wrap our heads around these ideas? How can we explore, plan, and lead responsibly? Join co-host Pratik Chougule and guest Zoltan Istvan as they discuss:
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This will be the first visual biomarker for aging in mice, and will help validate potential anti-aging interventions. For more info please visit:
https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/mouseage-photographic-aging-clock-in-mice/
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Meet the “ems” — machines that emulate human brains and can think, feel and work just like the brains they’re copied from. Futurist and social scientist Robin Hanson describes a possible future when ems take over the global economy, running on superfast computers and copying themselves to multitask, leaving humans with only one choice: to retire, forever. Glimpse a strange future as Hanson describes what could happen if robots ruled the earth.
About the speaker.
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An international consortium of experts are campaigning for a ban on AI weapons. This comes at a conference in Australia where the latest advances in artificial intelligence and its uses are being explored…
Say the words killer robots and Hollywood franchise Terminator may come to mind. But while artificial intelligence experts say that sort of advancement in autonomous lethal weapons is decades off. Other systems are already being developed including Russia’s robot tank BAE Systems long-range autonomous missile bomber and Samsung sentry gun which can fire at will and is already deployed along South Korea’s Demilitarized Zone.
But at a leading artificial intelligence conference being held in Melbourne. Global AI founders have released an open letter calling for a ban on the development and deployment of autonomous lethal weapons.
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The old saying “use it or lose it” very much applies to reducing the impact that aging has on the mind and body. Of all the things we can do right now to help stay healthy as we grow older, exercise is probably the most useful.
Supplements have questionable results in humans, and none can really be described as geroprotective due to the lack of data. However, lifestyle and diet are very important in how we age, and caloric restriction has shown some interesting benefits in multiple species, including humans.
However, of all these things, exercise is probably the most important, and staying active can greatly influence our trajectory towards frailty in old age. Many people do not get the exercise they need as they age and, as a result, this can influence how well they age. Certainly, some level of age-related frailty may be a case of neglect and not exercising enough[1].
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That problem from the frontier of technology is why many tech leaders foresee the need for a new “edge computing” network—one that turns the logic of today’s cloud inside out. Today the $247 billion cloud computing industry funnels everything through massive centralized data centers operated by giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. That’s been a smart model for scaling up web search and social networks, as well as streaming media to billions of users. But it’s not so smart for latency-intolerant applications like autonomous cars or mobile mixed reality.
Cloud computing’s big, distant data centers can’t support VR and self-driving cars—but “edge computing” can.
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British neuroscientist (file pic) Adrian Owen made it his mission to find a way to communicate with patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state.
Since 1997, I had been using hospital brain scanners to test patients in vegetative states to see if they were in fact still conscious, though trapped in their bodies.
I was working as a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Addenbrooke’s Hospital when I scanned my first ‘vegetative’ patient, Kate, while showing her photos of her family as she lay inside a brain-scanning machine.
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