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Mar 19, 2016

Virtual reality horror game The Brookhaven Experiment will scare the s**t out of you

Posted by in categories: entertainment, virtual reality

The unholy, skinless, bloody creatures shambled toward me on all sides. My pistol was pitifully inadequate. For the first time ever, I pulled a VR rig off my head in the middle of a demo.

Not even extreme nausea had caused me to do so before Thursday, when I demoed the HTC Vive game The Brookhaven Experiment at Valve Software’s booth at the 2016 Game Developers Conference. I’d always choked down the bile and forced myself to finish the demo rather than bail, even though this is almost always a bad decision. Call it stupid gamer pride.

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Mar 19, 2016

Pretty Certain This Tarp-Covered Object Isn’t A UFO But It Is Very Intriguing

Posted by in categories: law enforcement, transportation

The image above has been splashed all over the net over the last week. It looks like a scene out of The Flight Of The Navigator, but really, that tarp could be hiding the future of American air power.

The image was taken by Arizona resident Charlene Yazzie on Arizona Route 77, with the convoy of trucks and black SUVs from the Department of Public Safety heading south toward the town of Holbrook, Ariz.

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Mar 19, 2016

Sci-fi author has brain cryogenically frozen so it can be reanimated in the future

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cryonics, life extension, neuroscience

If I am not mistaken she edited The Three Body Problem, she did not write it.


In what seems like a story ripped straight from the pages of an Isaac Asimov novel, a recently deceased Chinese woman named Du Hong just had her brain cryogenically frozen in hopes that, in the future, the technology to bring her back to life will be created. No joke. Hong, a science fiction author herself, paid upwards of $120k to have her brain sent from China to Scottsdale, Arizona to undergo a freezing procedure at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Her idea is that while modern tech doesn’t allow for the reanimation of her brain today, inevitable advancements in cryonics will one day bring her back to life.

Before passing away last May from pancreatic cancer, the 61-year-old Du decided she wanted to allow her brain to be the subject of experiments after her death. Though it took some time before the team at Alcor actually conducted the procedure, doctors in Beijing prepped Du’s brain after her official time of death on May 30. Despite the Alcor Life Extension Foundation agreeing to freeze Du’s brain, the organization made it clear that it wouldn’t be the one to actually attempt to bring Du back to life in the future.

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Mar 19, 2016

The case for a robot president

Posted by in categories: computing, geopolitics, robotics/AI

I did an interview on AI and politics for CBC, which also went out on NPR yesterday.


This week, Google’s artificially intelligent computer, AlphaGo won a tournament in the complex board game called Go. American presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan says it’s that in a matter of 10 to 15 years A.I. will be advanced enough to be president of the United States of America.

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Mar 19, 2016

Fun (and Some Nausea) with the First Games for the Oculus Rift Headset

Posted by in categories: entertainment, virtual reality

The first games for Oculus Rift are pretty sweet, though some can cause motion sickness.

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Mar 19, 2016

Let’s make everything free

Posted by in category: futurism

An initiative to resolve global suffering with the removal of all money, debt and trade, which are now outdated and unnecessary through modern technology.

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Mar 18, 2016

Kuwait has become the first country to make DNA testing mandatory for all residents

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, law enforcement

In a controversial move, Kuwait has passed a law making it mandatory for all its 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents to have their DNA entered onto a national database.

Anyone who refuses to submit their DNA for testing risks one year in prison and a fine of up to US$33,000, and those who provide a fake sample can be jailed for seven years.

The decision came after an Islamic State-led suicide bombing in Kuwait City on 26 June, which killed 26 people and wounded 227 more. The government hopes that the new database, which is projected to cost around US$400 million, will make it quicker and easier to make arrests in the future.

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Mar 18, 2016

Scientists Make Mini Fuel Cells That Keep Phones Charged For a Week

Posted by in categories: drones, energy, mobile phones

POSTECH has created a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that not only adds life to drones but can also replace lithium-ion batteries in smartphones.

Battery life. Two words that can turn anyone who owns an electronic device into a total wreck. But scientists at POSTECH may have found the solution to prevent you from having a panic attack each time you see your device almost out of juice.

Prof. Gyeong Man Choi and his Ph.D. student Kun Joong Kim have developed a miniaturized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) powerful enough to extend the flying time of drones to more than an hour. And that’s just the start.

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Mar 18, 2016

Breakthrough Knee Replacement

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, transhumanism

Forget bionic knees, this company will let you grow a new one.

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Mar 18, 2016

China’s electric cars sales to double in 2016: minister

Posted by in category: transportation

BEIJING China’s production and sale of electric cars will more than double this year, the industry minister said on Sunday.

More than 300,000 electric cars were sold in China last year, Miao Wei, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told reporters on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament on Sunday.

The reliability, mileage and lifespan of electric batteries needs improvement and China needs to speed up the installation of electric car charging stations, Miao said.

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