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Why Design Matters
Posted in futurism
While many people focus on bitcoin’s price fluctuations and potential increase in adoption, currency is just the first application of this game-changing technology. The core of the blockchain provides an alternative governance model to the current oligarchic control shown in the harsh austerity forced against the will of the Greek people.
In the six years of its existence, public awareness of this technology has grown by leaps and bounds. Now, most who are aware of this groundbreaking innovation know the blockchain is a ledger. Yet, this ledger is not simply for accounting monetary transactions.
At its core, it is a platform that allows people to come to agreement on virtually anything without intermediaries. It provides a foundation to make social contracts based on the principle of consensus. Foremost, it enables a larger function of accounting; performing checks and balance on the self interests and the corruptible tendencies that exist in society.
While I AM aware that this is unlikely to end up being the work of an alien civilization, I DO believe that sooner or later (given the mindbogglingly powerful, state of the art observational instruments coming online soon, or already online, I’d DEFINITELY go with SOONER, rather than later!) we will detect an alien civilization in a similar way.
A star that made headlines due to weird brightness dips—leading to speculations of aliens building structures around it—is even weirder than we thought.
We love meat. We love cheese. And for thousands of years we have relied on animals to make them. Impossible Foods has found a better way. We use plants to make the best meats and cheeses you’ll ever eat.
A reversal of thermodynamics could allow life to exist on planets orbiting a black hole, as seen in the film Interstellar.
Your own “Do it yourself” gene editing kit for only $120.
To “democratize” science, Josiah Zayner is packaging and selling his DIY gene-editing technique for $120 so that everyone can cut, paste and stir genes as simply as mixing a vodka tonic.
Very true point & question to raise.
It’s been more than 60 years since the US successfully tested the first hydrogen bomb. Since then only four other countries—Russia, France, China, and the UK—have been able to make one themselves. This week North Korea claimed it had, but you can disregard Kim Jong-un’s boast for now.
A few more countries—India, Pakistan, South Africa, Israel, as well as North Korea—have the know-how to build simpler forms of nuclear weapons: atomic bombs. Still, no other technology in the world has remained out of the hands of so many countries for such a long time. Why?
It may be that the Cold War between the US and Russia deterred states from picking a battle with one of the big guns—but that didn’t stop India and Pakistan. Maybe the non-proliferation lobby after the Cold War convinced states that they don’t need nuclear weapons (South Africa, indeed, gave up its arsenal in 1991)—but Iran and North Korea kept trying.
What’s eating Silicon Valley
Posted in habitats, transportation
I know many; who do take a break/ sabbatical from the valley to spend time with family or reconnect with friends on the east coast, Midwest, or other places that they refer to as home. However, once your sabbatical is in the 6 month period; you cannot wait to come back because the energy and excitement is truly hard to find anywhere else.
Like most people, I look up to and admire the heroes of Silicon Valley (the real ones, not the ones from the TV show). They’ve given rise to services (e.g., Google, Facebook, Uber, LinkedIn, Airbnb) that we use every day and make the world a better place. They’ve created value, wealth, and opportunity at unprecedented historic levels.
I’ve also had the chance to meet some of the leading CEOs and entrepreneurs of the Valley and they are, by and large, good-natured, brilliant, and thoughtful people. They’re earnest and committed to building positive things. Some of them are donors to my organization, for which I’m immensely grateful. It’s clear that Silicon Valley is today more than ever the center of innovation and technological progress.
That said, there are a few things about it that are starting to make me nervous.
With AI, why have attorneys or judges anymore. Frankly, AI is proving to be the most unbiased judges/ decision makers already. And, AI can develop contracts and patent agreements, etc. better than most humans. Plus, AI will outperform humans in discovery work on cases. So, we truly in just 3 years may not need judges and attorneys anymore.
Our list of Truly Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools You Can Use Today was out of date the minute we published it. We knew that would happen and are absolutely thrilled when we discover new capabilities that belong on this list. One we just learned about is EverLaw, provider of perhaps the world’s most advanced litigation platform, designed to be easy to use and programmed to leverage the most powerful technologies available, including cloud computing, mobile solutions and yes, artificial intelligence.
We found Everlaw and learned about their prediction engine and other key platform characteristics from an a16z blog post introducing a new investment. From a16z:
There is also a need for modern solutions to deeply technical problems — such as searching terabyte corpora for relevant documents (the state-of-the-art is mostly keyword search) or identifying clusters of relevant documents based on machine learning techniques (versus relying on humans to manually sift through and connect millions of documents). Historically, an industry vertical with such a legacy business model and architecture (i.e., very slow to change) would have a very hard time attracting top computer science talent to improve the space.