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May 29, 2019

I See You: the posthuman subject and spaces of virtuality – Rebecca Bishop

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution, neuroscience

https://paper.li/e-1437691924


Everything is backwards now, like out there is the real world and this is the dream. (James Cameron’s Avatar, 2009)

Over recent years, considerable scholarly attention and mass media speculation has been paid to the emergence of the figure of the posthuman – a vision of augmented human that has undergone radical transformation as a result of new biotechnological and informatic technologies. This posthumanity lives simultaneously in the world of the virtual and the biological, cast concurrently as the future of a biomedically enhanced humanity and a figuration for overcoming the identity politics of the past. Some are arguing that we will eventually leave the human ‘as we know it’ behind, in a techno-modified, cognitively enhanced evolution, while in critical theory, the posthuman is being lauded as an ontology through which the boundary structures of the EuroWestern legacy of humanism can be dismantled.

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May 29, 2019

All the Ways Google Tracks You—And How to Stop It

Posted by in category: futurism

Google knows more about you than you might think. Here’s how to keep it from tracking your location, web browsing, and more.

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May 29, 2019

New video from our 2019 Undoing Aging conference: Adelaida Palla, Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University working in Dr. Helen Blau €™s lab, presenting her work on novel targets to stimulate muscle stem cells to promote skeletal muscle regeneration and strength in the aged

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

http://undoing-aging.org/videos/adelaida-palla-presenting-at-undoing-aging-2019

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May 29, 2019

Hacking conservation: how a tech start-up aims to save biodiversity

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, engineering, existential risks

Dehgan hopes that the organization’s prizes and other initiatives will bring innovative solutions to conservation’s deepest problems. Hundreds of people have already been lured in through challenges and engineering programmes such as Make for the Planet — a multi-day, in-person event — and an online tech collaboration platform called Digital Makerspace, which matches conservationists with technical talent.


Standard efforts have failed to slow the pace of extinctions, so Conservation X Labs is trying a fresh approach.

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May 29, 2019

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, futurism

Projects based on the elimination of trust have failed to capture customers’ interest because trust is actually so damn valuable. A lawless and mistrustful world where self-interest is the only principle and paranoia is the only source of safety is a not a paradise but a crypto-medieval hellhole.


Its failure to achieve adoption to date is because systems built on trust, norms, and institutions inherently function better than the type of no-need-for-trusted-parties systems blockchain envisions. That’s permanent: no matter how much blockchain improves it is still headed in the wrong direction.

This December I wrote a w idel y–ci rc ul ated article on the inapplicability of blockchain to any actual problem. People objected mostly not to the technology argument, but rather hoped that decentralization could produce integrity.

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May 29, 2019

Living machines: MIT’s former president on the next technology revolution

Posted by in category: innovation

In her new book, “The Age of Living Machines,” Susan Hockfield argues that we have entered a new era of scientific innovation in America.

[Photo: VCG/VCG via Getty Images].

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May 29, 2019

Exploding stars led to humans walking on two legs, radical study suggests

Posted by in category: climatology

Scientists say surge of radiation led to lightning causing forest fires, making adaptation vital.

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May 29, 2019

Astounding AI Guesses What You Look Like Based on Your Voice

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Okay, this is pretty impressive.

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May 28, 2019

What’s the Magic Behind Graphene’s ‘Magic’ Angle?

Posted by in category: materials

A new theoretical model may help explain the shocking onset of superconductivity in stacked, twisted carbon sheets.

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May 28, 2019

Astronomers find ‘Forbidden’ planet in ‘Neptunian Desert’ around its star

Posted by in category: space

An exoplanet smaller than Neptune with its own atmosphere has been discovered in the Neptunian Desert around its star by an international collaboration of astronomers, with the University of Warwick taking a leading role.

The rogue planet was identified in the new research, led by Dr Richard West including Professor Peter Wheatley, Dr Daniel Bayliss and Dr James McCormac from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the University of Warwick.

NGTS is situated at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in the heart of the Atacama Desert, Chile. It is a collaboration between UK Universities Warwick, Leicester, Cambridge, and Queen’s University Belfast, together with Observatoire de Genève, DLR Berlin and Universidad de Chile.

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