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Oct 5, 2014

Your iPhone Can Finally Make Free, Encrypted Calls

Posted by in category: mobile phones

By — Wired

signal

If you’re making a phone call with your iPhone, you used to have two options: Accept the notion that any wiretapper, hacker or spook can listen in on your conversations, or pay for pricey voice encryption software.

As of today there’s a third option: The open source software group known as Open Whisper Systems has announced the release of Signal, the first iOS app designed to enable easy, strongly encrypted voice calls for free. “We’re trying to make private communications as available and accessible as any normal phone call,” says Moxie Marlinspike, the hacker security researcher who founded the nonprofit software group. Later this summer, he adds, encrypted text messaging will be integrated into Signal, too, to create what he describes as a “single, unified app for free, easy, open source, private voice and text messaging.”

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Oct 4, 2014

Method of Sustainable Fuel-less Terra-forming of Venus & Mars

Posted by in categories: existential risks, futurism, human trajectories, solar power, space, sustainability

Terra Forming Venus & Mars by leveraging Asteroids
Inspired by: Lifeboat Foundation

Both Mars and Venus can be terra-formed to provide Earth-like gravity and atmospheres; Venus with an effort of about 100 years to terra-form the atmosphere, and Mars with an effort of about 2,000 years to terra-form the atmosphere. These are both potentially realized through the use of systems of solar sails. Asteroids provide many of the resources needed to seed related development.

Business model for interplanetary transport without fuel

Conceptual Space Elevator

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Oct 4, 2014

Organs-on-Chips emulate human organs, could replace animals in tests

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

By — GizMag

Emulate's lung-on-chip, seen here, is lined with human lung and blood vessel cells

The search for more efficient tests of pharmaceuticals without animal models is taking a stride forward, with a new technology being developed in the US called Organs-on-Chips. The new miniature platform and software, which mimic the mechanical and molecular characteristics of human organs, were developed by bioengineers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

The device, about the size of a small computer memory stick, is created using microchip-manufacturing techniques. It features a porous flexible membrane that separates two channels at the center of the device. The channels are filled with living human cells and tissues cultured in a fluid that mimics the environment inside the human body. Micro-engineering and automated instrumentation allows the system to perform real-time analysis of biochemical, genetic and metabolic functions within single cells.

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Oct 3, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 04, 2014)

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 04, 2014)

a Amazon and Lifeboat

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: Pentagon launches Insider Threat Program http://defensesystems.com/articles/2014/10/02/dod-insider-threat-program.aspx

WASHINGTON POST: Why quarantines won’t stop Ebola from spreading in the U.S. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/03/w…n-the-u-s/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 04, 2014)” »

Oct 3, 2014

What if your memories could live past your mortal shelf life?

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, futurism, innovation, life extension, posthumanism, singularity, transhumanism

Would you have your brain preserved? Do you believe your brain is the essence of you?

To noted American PhD Neuroscientist and Futurist, Ken Hayworth, the answer is an emphatic, “Yes.” He is currently developing machines and techniques to map brain tissue at the nanometer scale — the key to encoding our individual identities.

A self-described transhumanist and President of the Brain Preservation Foundation, Hayworth’s goal is to perfect existing preservation techniques, like cryonics, as well as explore and push evolving opportunities to effect a change on the status quo. Currently there is no brain preservation option that offers systematic, scientific evidence as to how much human brain tissue is actually preserved when undergoing today’s experimental preservation methods. Such methods include vitrification, the procedure used in cryonics to try and prevent human organs from freezing and being destroyed when tissue is cooled for cryopreservation.

Hayworth believes we can achieve his vision of preserving an entire human brain at an accepted and proven standard within the next decade. If Hayworth is right, is there a countdown to immortality?

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Oct 3, 2014

A Hair Salon Guru’s Next Big Thing: Ending Shampoo

Posted by in category: chemistry

By — Wired

Hair 2

“I honestly think in five years people are going to go, ‘Oh God, remember when we used to wash our hair with shampoo?’” says Michael Gordon. That’s a striking statement, given Gordon’s own history: He created the famed haircare company Bumble and Bumble in 1977, the spin off product line in 1992, and then in 2006 sold his stake to Estée Lauder. But he isn’t advocating for unwashed hair. He’s explaining Purely Perfect, his new product line that defies just about every expectation most consumers have when it comes to personal hygiene.

The marquee product is a hair cleanser that has no detergents and doesn’t create a foam. Specifically, it’s free of sodium laureth sulfate, a chemical ingredient used in virtually all shampoos because it kills oils and leaves users with a squeaky-clean scalp. Problem is, that also dries out skin and hair follicles—a problem that most people treat by buying, without batting an eye, additional products like conditioners and hair masks. Instead, the Purely Perfect cleansing creme has aloe vera, rose flower oil, evening primrose oil, and peppermint oil. Using it feels nothing like shampoo: Massage the balm into your scalp, through your strands, and rinse it out. That’s it. No lathering, no rinsing, no repeating. And no Bumble and Bumble.

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Oct 2, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 03, 2014)

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 03, 2014)

justice

BBC: Toyota’s plans for a fuel cell future http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29459999

POPULAR SCIENCE: CHEOS– China’s New Eye In Space http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/eastern-arsenal/cheos-chi…e-in-space

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Oct 2, 2014

Synthetic molecule uses salt to trigger self-destruction of cancer cells

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

By — GizMag

A team of international researchers has developed a new synthetic molecule that triggers s...

A team of international researchers has developed a molecule capable of triggering cancer cell death by carrying chloride into cancer cell membranes. The molecule flushes the cells with salt and causes them to self-destruct, potentially paving the way for new types of anti-cancer drugs.

The international effort involves researchers from the UK, Texas and South Korea who have collaborated to develop a synthetic ion transporter with a chloride payload. Once it reaches the cancer cells, the chloride interacts with the sodium in the cell membranes and leads to its demise.

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Oct 1, 2014

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 02, 2014)

Posted by in category: futurism

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 02, 2014)

a Amazon and Lifeboat

CIO: Microsoft Wants You to Help Predict the Future, and Bet on it http://www.cio.com/article/2689412/innovation/microsoft-want…on-it.html

FINANCIAL TIMES: Robots are our saviours, not the enemy. The alternative is a world in which wages fall and prices rise, writes Peter Thiel http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db02d75c-4400-11e4-baa7-00144feabdc0.html

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 02, 2014)” »

Oct 1, 2014

The Abolition of Medicine as a Goal for Humanity 2.0

Posted by in categories: biological, bionic, biotech/medical, ethics, futurism, genetics, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, philosophy, policy, transhumanism

What follows is my position piece for London’s FutureFest 2013, the website for which no longer exists.

Medicine is a very ancient practice. In fact, it is so ancient that it may have become obsolete. Medicine aims to restore the mind and body to their natural state relative to an individual’s stage in the life cycle. The idea has been to live as well as possible but also die well when the time came. The sense of what is ‘natural’ was tied to statistically normal ways of living in particular cultures. Past conceptions of health dictated future medical practice. In this respect, medical practitioners may have been wise but they certainly were not progressive.

However, this began to change in the mid-19th century when the great medical experimenter, Claude Bernard, began to champion the idea that medicine should be about the indefinite delaying, if not outright overcoming, of death. Bernard saw organisms as perpetual motion machines in an endless struggle to bring order to an environment that always threatens to consume them. That ‘order’ consists in sustaining the conditions needed to maintain an organism’s indefinite existence. Toward this end, Bernard enthusiastically used animals as living laboratories for testing his various hypotheses.

Historians identify Bernard’s sensibility with the advent of ‘modern medicine’, an increasingly high-tech and aspirational enterprise, dedicated to extending the full panoply of human capacities indefinitely. On this view, scientific training trumps practitioner experience, radically invasive and reconstructive procedures become the norm, and death on a physician’s watch is taken to be the ultimate failure. Humanity 2.0 takes this way of thinking to the next level, which involves the abolition of medicine itself. But what exactly would that mean – and what would replace it?

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