Category Archives: Technology

Living in the Future

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This is an interesting approach to the aging problem:

The study, led by Assistant Professor Corina Amor Vegas, utilized a technique known as CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cell therapy.

This “living” drug is already known for its effectiveness in treating certain blood cancers, having received FDA approval in 2017.

However, Amor Vegas and her team are the first to demonstrate its potential beyond cancer treatment, showing its remarkable ability to rejuvenate and slow down aging in mice.

The results observed in mice were significant. They displayed a reduction in body weight, enhanced metabolism and glucose tolerance, and increased physical activity, all without any tissue damage or toxicity.

“If we give it to aged mice, they rejuvenate. If we give it to young mice, they age slower. No other therapy right now can do this,” said Amor Vegas.

Note that the FDA approved this in 2017. This could significantly reduce the time to market for use as an anti-aging drug. And it would seem that doctors could start prescribing it off label immediately.

I like living in the future.

What Caliber for Robot Dogs?

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Skynet smiles:

I think I need to stock up on long range precision AP rounds.

Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras

Modeling Earthquakes

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Quote of the Day

Earthquakes are difficult to forecast but we’ve made great strides with this new model. The update includes more faults, better-characterized land surfaces, and computational advancements in modeling that provide the most detailed view ever of the earthquake risks we face.

image

Mark Petersen
USGS geophysicist
January 16, 2024
New map shows where damaging earthquakes are most likely to occur in US 

When the validity or failure of your model won’t be known for another century or two it is reasonably easy to be confident enough to sell your services and act convincing.

I don’t know if Petersen and company are knowingly unethical, and perhaps they really do have an earthquake model that is worth more than the bits of memory used to store it, but I have my doubts.

I trust this model even less than the climate models. Many of the forces are deep in the earth acting on materials with unmeasurable characteristics over time periods of 1000s of years.

It does match the “gut feel” of what might expect. And that is probably all that is necessary to get paid and become an “expert in the field”.

Doomsday Cult Puzzled that the Earth Still Exists

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Quote of the Day

The laws of thermodynamics dictate that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, but new research has found that atmospheric moisture has not increased as expected over arid and semi-arid regions of the world as the climate has warmed.

The findings are particularly puzzling because climate models have been predicting that the atmosphere will become more moist, even over dry regions. If the atmosphere is drier than anticipated, arid and semi-arid regions may be even more vulnerable to future wildfires and extreme heat than projected.

David Hosansky
January 17, 2024
Climate change isn’t producing expected increase in atmospheric moisture over dry regions: Study

After about the third paragraph I was laughing the rest of the way through the article.

There is no hint they would ever consider the possibility their climate heating models are flawed or that the mean global temperature is not increasing. It is like a doomsday cult predicting the end of the world on January 1, 2000 and when it doesn’t happen they don’t question the integrity of their prophet, but instead claim the destroyer gave them a second chance.

Read When Prophecy Fails: A Doomsday Cult on Alien Invasion for more insight on the behavior and psychology of these type of people. You might expect they would forsake their prophet when confronted with irrefutable evidence of the failure of the prophecies. But that is not what happens. Instead, most of the time, they will prophesize all the more vigorously.

I find the psychology absolutely fascinating.

And, of course, the same psychology exists within the gun grabber community.

The Point of Government

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Quote of the Day

Because the point of government is to create social trust. I started this talk by explaining the importance of trust in society, and how interpersonal trust doesn’t scale to larger groups. That other, impersonal kind of trust—social trust, reliability and predictability—is what governments create.

To the extent a government improves the overall trust in society, it succeeds. And to the extent a government doesn’t, it fails.

But they have to. We need government to constrain the behavior of corporations and the AIs they build, deploy, and control. Government needs to enforce both predictability and reliability.

That’s how we can create the social trust that society needs to thrive.

Bruce Schneier
December 4, 2023
AI and Trust

Via a message from Stephanie.

Schneier raises my hackles. It seems to me, that far too often he concludes more government is the solution to problems he imagines. What would he have us do when it is extraordinarily clear that the government is less trustworthy than any corporation or AI?

I’m far more inclined align myself with:

The end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the states of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no law, there is no Freedom.

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Chains are but an ill wearing, how much Care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.

John Locke
Two Treatises of Government

Explicitly and from a source far more important, just governments are created to protect the rights of individuals:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

To the extent that a government does not align itself with this goal is the extent to which it is unjust and illegitimate.

Living in the Future

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Quote of the Day

Scientists have discovered a new way to destroy cancer cells. Stimulating aminocyanine molecules with near-infrared light caused them to vibrate in sync, enough to break apart the membranes of cancer cells.

Aminocyanine molecules are already used in bioimaging as synthetic dyes. Commonly used in low doses to detect cancer, they stay stable in water and are very good at attaching themselves to the outside of cells.

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In tests on cultured, lab-grown cancer cells, the molecular jackhammer method scored a 99 percent hit rate at destroying the cells. The approach was also tested on mice with melanoma tumors, and half the animals became cancer-free.

David Nield
December 27, 2023
Scientists Destroy 99% of Cancer Cells in The Lab Using Vibrating Molecules

I like living in the future.

Living in the Future

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The Jetson One is supposed to be available for sale next year at a price of just under $100K.

This craft avoids some of the roadblocks of other attempts to get into this (create is probably aa better term) market because it is classified as an ultralight.

The specs on the current version indicate it could carry me but not if I had a small bag of groceries with me.

The payload would have to at least 50% more and the cost reduced by a factor of four before I would give it serious consideration, but it would be very handy for a quick trip to and from town at my place in Idaho. Because of the long and winding road into the nearest town it takes 30 minute of driving time. It is less than eight miles as a VTOL would fly. That translates into eight to ten minutes instead of the 30 minutes driving time. And when the roads are hazardous because of snow and ice, this would save even more time and might even be safer.

The flight time without a recharge is 20 minutes so the trip into town would be at the edge of its range for a round trip. Still, that is very cool.

I’ve been causally looking at personal affordable VTOL craft for at least 35 years now. There have lots of promises and nothing of substance.

Mind Reading Tech

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Living in the future has tradeoffs. This will be “interesting”:

In an unprecedented scientific achievement, experts have developed a system that is capable of reading human thoughts and converting them into text.

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The core of this technology lies in its ability to record and decode brain activity through an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap. Participants in the study silently read texts while the cap captured their brain’s electrical activity.

This EEG data is then processed by an AI model named DeWave, a creation of the UTS team. DeWave distinguishes itself by translating EEG signals into coherent words and sentences, learning from extensive EEG datasets.

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The current translation accuracy is around 40 percent on the BLEU-1 scale, with aspirations to reach the efficacy of traditional language translation or speech recognition systems, which hover around 90 percent.

The implications in multiple dimensions are staggering.

If someone were to read my thoughts they may not like what they read.

A machine reading the thoughts of a human

AI Insight

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Quote of the Day

It doesn’t even take that much imagination to think of how it’ll go with a much smarter thing! Just think of the dynamics between you and a much less smart thing, and how dumb it would be if the less smart thing was so confident you could never outsmart them!

Aella (@Aella_Girl)
November 25, 2023
Post on X

Interesting insight. She has a point. If AI can develop real “smarts” and not just a really good memory things could get “interesting”.

Of course The Terminate series is the all-time best dystopian AI story. But the first one I read was The Forbin Project. Read the book (Ouch! $53.91 for a used paperback) or watch the movie. As an engineer I really liked the details in the story. And even though the story was set in the mid 1970s I didn’t really think I would see the day when we were seriously considering computers would be a threat to their creators.

Times change.

Prepare appropriately.

News You Can Use

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The science on masks and viruses:

No mask is 100% effective. An N95, for example, is named as such because it is at least 95% efficient at blocking airborne particles when used properly. But even if a mask has an 80% efficiency, Marr said, it still offers meaningful protection.

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Marr said her team aerosolized the coronavirus, pulled it through a mask, and then examined how much virus survived on the mask. The study reported some viral particle remained on some cloth masks, but no virus survived on the N95s or surgical masks.

Marr’s team also touched artificial skin to masks and looked at how many virus particles transferred to the artificial skin. No infectious virus transferred.

“I hope the study kind of shows that it’s something we don’t need to worry about as much as we were told,” Marr said.

15 Things You Should Never Say to a Legal Gun Owner

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Quote of the Day

  1. ‘Why do you need a gun?’
    Imagine asking someone, “Why do you need freedom of speech?” Owning a gun in the United States is a constitutional right, not a “need.” People have various reasons for owning firearms, from self-defense to hunting and sport shooting. Questioning the “need” implies you know better than they do when it comes to their personal choices or safety concerns. A tad condescending, don’t you think?
  2. ‘You must be paranoid.’
    Paranoia? Really? Owning a gun doesn’t mean someone is donning a tinfoil hat and waiting for the sky to fall. For many, it’s about personal safety, the safety of loved ones, or even the enjoyment of shooting as a sport. Labeling someone as paranoid for exercising a constitutional right is a bit of a stretch.
  3. ‘Guns are the problem.’
    Ah, the reductionist argument that blames an inanimate object for the complexities of human behavior and societal issues. Gun violence is a serious matter but boiling it down to “guns are the problem” ignores the multifaceted factors like mental health, socio-economic conditions, and more. It’s not as black and white as some would like to believe.
  4. ‘Gun-free zones work.’
    Cute idea, except for the pesky detail that many public shootings occur in designated gun-free zones. The concept ignores the fact that those bent on doing harm are not likely to be deterred by a sign on the door.
  5. ‘The Second Amendment is outdated.’
    The notion that any part of the Constitution is “outdated” opens a can of worms. Are other rights outdated too? The Second Amendment exists for multiple reasons, and its modern applicability is still a topic of fervent debate. Dismissing it as “outdated” is dismissive of that ongoing conversation.
  6. ‘You’re compensating for something.’
    Oh, the classic Freudian jab. This cliché suggests that owning a gun is a form of overcompensation for personal inadequacies. It’s a cheap shot (pun intended) that does nothing to further a constructive conversation about gun ownership or gun control.
  7. ‘You must be a Republican.’
    Ah, yes, because only Republicans appreciate constitutional rights? Gun ownership exists across the political spectrum, and assuming otherwise only serves to perpetuate divisions and stereotypes.
  8. ‘Only the police should have guns.’
    Entrusting an entire society’s safety solely to the police assumes an infallibility that no institution possesses. It also ignores the importance some place on personal freedom and self-defense.
  9. ‘It’s too easy to get a gun.’
    Before making this sweeping statement, perhaps consider the background checks, waiting periods, and federal and state laws that exist. “Easy” is a relative term and assumes that current laws aren’t stringent or effective.
  10. ‘Assault weapon bans work.’
    Defining “assault weapon” is notoriously tricky, and evidence on the effectiveness of bans is mixed. Saying they “work” is a one-size-fits-all statement that ignores the complexities of the issue.
  11. ‘Only criminals have guns.’
    If this were true, we’d have a country full of criminals. Millions of law-abiding Americans own guns for a variety of legitimate purposes. Conflating legal gun ownership with criminal activity is not just inaccurate; it’s disrespectful to a large part of the population.
  12. ‘You shouldn’t have a gun if you have kids.’
    This one assumes that gun owners are inherently irresponsible when it comes to storage and safety. Many gun owners who are parents take extra precautions to ensure their firearms are stored safely, away from their children. Just like you’d childproof your home for other hazards, the same goes for firearms.
  13. ‘You must be a gun nut.’
    For some reason, an interest in firearms gets stigmatized as an obsession or a sign of paranoia. Let’s remember that owning a gun doesn’t necessarily make someone a “gun nut” any more than owning a car makes someone a “car nut.” People own guns for various reasons: sport, hunting, and self-defense, among others. Labeling someone as a “gun nut” simply for owning a gun is a dismissive way to avoid more nuanced conversations about individual rights and responsibilities.
  14. ‘Guns kill people.’
    This is the “IT argument” that gets rolled out in every gun debate. While it’s true that firearms can be used to harm others, placing the blame solely on the inanimate object oversimplifies a complex issue. Most legal gun owners would point out that a gun, like a car or a knife, is a tool; it requires a human to operate it. They argue that the focus should be on responsible ownership and usage, rather than demonizing the object itself. This phrase can shut down meaningful dialogue about issues like gun safety, mental health, and responsible ownership.
  15. ‘You’re part of the problem.’
    The ol’ blame game—a classic! By declaring a legal gun owner as “part of the problem,” you’re not just tossing a Molotov cocktail into a nuanced debate; you’re also casually ignoring the fact that many gun owners are fervent advocates for responsible gun use and safety measures. Way to lump everyone together! This kind of accusatory tone isn’t just an over-simplification; it’s a conversation ender. If the goal is to alienate someone rather than discuss the complexities of gun ownership and societal issues, then bravo, mission accomplished!

Casey Lee
November 7, 2023
15 things you should never say to a legal gun owner

This set of statements was suggested to me by Microsoft Start (the default startup page with the Edge browser). I am rather impressed with it. It frequently suggests interesting articles about selecting a gun or a change in guns laws. I used to have Google News as my startup landing page. I never saw articles which portrayed gun owners as reasonable people or gun ownership as a civil right.

I suspect Microsoft created an algorithm to show me things I have expressed an interest in and just let it do it’s thing.

I suspect Google puts their thumb on the scales of what they believe is appropriate for people to read and think.

I have long considered Google to be evil. Nothing has changed to suggest I should change my mind.

Anti-Aging Vaccine Failure?

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This was almost a year ago. I wonder how it turned out:

Scientists will trial a new longevity drug in the UK next year that they say could increase the life expectancy of some people to up to 120 years of age.

Researchers are developing a treatment that could significantly increase a person’s healthy lifespan and, in turn, their longevity, by boosting their immune systems. This has been made possible after they found a way to slow down – and potentially even prevent – the natural ageing of T cells, a key part of our immune defences.

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Professor Lanna has set up a London-based company called SentCell to develop the vaccine, which he says will be trialled in humans in 2023.

Asked roughly how long a person’s life could potentially be extended by this vaccine, if effective, he said “120 years”.

“[The trial] will happen in the UK next year and we expect the drug in the market as soon as possible. I cannot say more because it is confidential,” he said.

I can find lots of references in the 2018 to 2022 time frame, but nothing since then.

I asked Bing Chat for the results of the human trials and it responded with, “I’m sorry, but as of my last update in 2021, I don’t have the most recent information on the results of the human trials for the anti-aging treatment developed by Professor Alessio Lanna and his team at University College London.”

Their web site doesn’t have any information from 2023 either. I suspect things didn’t work out very well.

Plastic Stronger Than Steel

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This was nearly two years ago. Where can I get a plastic gun barrel for my .300 Win Mag?

Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities.

The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets.

Such a material could be used as a lightweight, durable coating for car parts or cell phones, or as a building material for bridges or other structures, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.

“We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” he says. “It has very unusual properties and we’re very excited about that.”

See also Irreversible synthesis of an ultrastrong two-dimensional polymeric material | Nature.

Fallout Shelters

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I stumbled across some interesting facts on fallout shelters (emphasis added):

The former Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries often designed their underground mass-transit and subway tunnels to serve as bomb and fallout shelters in the event of an attack. Currently, the deepest subway line in the world is situated in St Petersburg in Russia, with an average depth of 60 meters, while the deepest subway station is Arsenalna in Kyiv, at 105.5 meters.[14]

Germany has protected shelters for 3% of its population, Austria for 30%, Finland for 70%, Sweden for 81%,[15] and Switzerland for 114%.

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Switzerland built an extensive network of fallout shelters, not only through extra hardening of government buildings such as schools, but also through a building regulation requiring nuclear shelters in residential buildings since the 1960s (the first legal basis in this sense dates from 4 October 1963).[24] Later, the law ensured that all residential buildings built after 1978 contained a nuclear shelter able to withstand a blast from a 12-megaton explosion at a distance of 700 metres.

Those Swiss! See also:

Build Your Own Underground Shelter

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Very cool!

Unlimited Thrust and Delta V

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Quote of the Day

Deploying Quantum Drive into orbit in a Rogue satellite on SpaceX Transporter 9 is a milestone for the future of space propulsion.

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Quantum Drive’s capability allows Rogue to produce new satellite vehicles with unlimited Delta V.

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There are many things that have held back space exploration, one of them of course is power and propulsion.

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IVO’s quantum drive eliminates this propulsion problem by eliminating the fuel. By taking away the fuel, then you have essentially unlimited thrust.

Richard Mansell
IVO chief executive
November 18, 2023
SpaceX launches ‘zero fuel’ engine into space

Interesting. I like living in the future.

This will be very cool… If it actually works.

Consider me a little bit skeptical.

Living in the Future

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Artificial leaves can now directly make liquid fuels:

Powered only by sunlight, a new device converts carbon dioxide and water to liquid fuels that could be directly used in car engines.

The device, presented in the journal Nature Energy, is the latest evolution of an artificial leaf. Researchers have been working for years on such systems that mimic photosynthesis to sustainably produce fuels at low cost. Previous artificial leaves produced simple products like carbon monoxide and hydrogen. But the new one takes an important step forward by making energy-dense ethanol and propanol fuels.

They say that currently it is not very efficient. With photovoltaic cell being mature and with excellent efficiency the artificial leaves have a strong competitor. The advantage the leaves have is on the storage side of things.

The fuel releases CO2 when burned. But because the leaves originally pulled the carbon from the air, the fuel will be carbon neutral. Technically, it will not be a fossil fuel.

This will be interesting to watch.

I love living in the future.

Boomershoot Mortars

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I was looking for a blog post of mine referencing the bowling ball mortars which visited Boomershoot a few times. A day or two later Bing Chat sent me an alert on my cell phone with with a link to the following:

Boomershoot mortars are a type of homemade artillery that can launch projectiles such as bowling balls, paint cans, or even stuffed animals at high velocities and distances. They are often used by enthusiasts of the Boomershoot event, which is a long-range precision rifle shooting event with high explosive targets12

Some of the key features and uses of boomershoot mortars are:

I hope this helps you learn more about the fascinating world of boomershoot mortars. If you want to see some examples of boomershoot mortars in action, you can watch this video: BOWLING BALL MORTARS AT THE BOOMERSHOOT.

The narrative is not too far of from reality. But it certainly isn’t correct either.Some obvious inaccuracies are:

  • Mortars have never been used to hit our reactive targets.
  • I do not recall anything other than bowling balls being used for projectiles.
  • No projectiles have been launched further than about 400 yards. And that was at an angle across the range rather than directly downrange.
  • To the best of my knowledge no one as estimated the altitude of the projectiles and I am very skeptical any of them have been near 1000 feet.

Keep all this in mind when you use or read something generated by the new chat AIs.

New Stable Elements May Have Been Found

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Quote of the Day

Now a team at the University of Arizona in Tucson has made a mystifying and “exciting” discovery while analyzing an incredibly dense asteroid named 33 Polyhymnia. The asteroid — named after the Greek muse of sacred hymns — is so dense that researchers theorize that it may be made up of elements not contained on the periodic table.

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In a study published in mid-September in The European Physical Journal Plus, researchers concluded that Polyhymnia has a measured density higher than those of any elements known to exist on Earth.

Eric Lagatta
October 19, 2023
Study: Asteroid known as Polyhymnia may contain ‘superheavy’ elements unknown to humans

It may be “interesting” trying to bring back samples. Imagine trying to use a stick to scrape a sample off the turret of a modern tank. That asteroid is going to be an alloy of some sort…

We live in interesting times.

Cyborg Rights

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Quote of the Day

Over the past half-century, the microprocessor’s capacity has doubled approximately every 18-24 months, and some experts predict that by 2030, machine intelligence could surpass human capabilities. The question then arises: When machines reach human-level intelligence, should they be granted protection and rights? Will they desire and perhaps even demand such rights?

Zoltan Istvan
October 19, 2023
Creating Sapient Technology and Cyborg Rights Should Happen Soon

Interesting questions. Just wait until artificial life forms are allowed to vote and they multiply at exponential rates. Things will get really interesting then.