The March of Technology

[TheMightyEthan]

You could do that in Texas though and probably no one would notice.

 

Or eastern Russia...

[Enervation]

You could do that in Texas though and probably no one would notice.

 

Or eastern Russia...

 

If it's easy to produce fuels using this method, each country would effectively be able to produce its own fuel supply, with the possible exception of un-industrialized/Third World countries.

 

I can only imagine how much the United States would capitalize on this since its military is HEAVILY reliant on fuels.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I know that they wouldn't actually produce all the fuel in one giant field.

 

I was just trying to further illustrate how little space is really needed for it.

[deanb]

http://www.physorg.c...sion-video.html

 

Cold Fusion reaction between Nickel and Hydrogen to make Copper. Runs at 400W.

Dunno if it's fake or not, but they reckon they're going into production in a few months.

 

Oh and working cold fusion, especially for small scale stuff like that, is HUGE. Even working regular fusion is big news if possible.

As of yet, only managed to pump out seconds at a time at most.

[deanb]

For those in the US the Jeapordy clip that started this thread?

That episode is airing tonight

http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/

[deanb]

http://news.discovery.com/tech/money-tracker-cash-transistor-110224.html

 

transistors that'll fit on money, making money easy to track.

I don't see why we can't just fully move over to plastic.

[deanb]

About the advance of the GUI and away from kb/m to more interactive systems.
Some actual innovation. Though I can't say I'd be happy if that's the Win 8 UI shown off midway through (there's suggestions that it is). If it's like WMC then yeah it looks good, but I'd like something "windows"

[deanb]

http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/05/costs-of-dna-sequencing-falling-fast-look-at-these-graphs/

 

DNA sequencing is getting cheaper (like much cheaper, from $100million in '01 to $50,000 in '11)

Problem is, as the article points out, is the cost of getting the genome n all that is cheap, but the research hasn't caught up to it yet. So it's pretty much a bunch of useless information (we know some obviously).

But they hope because it's now so cheap to do that it should be easier to just get genomes to faf about with n look and compare n such.

And then once it's done....better hope you're not a private healthcare system :/

[Mal]

Genetic profiling... discrimination? More likely than you think.

Really, some of the cost for some stuff seems to be came up with in thin air...

[deanb]

I threw this up on Twitter last night, worth sharing here:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/latest-geminoid-is-disturbingly-realistic

 

 

 

And this is the previous model from a couple years ago

 

[Enervation]

Huh, what show or series is the second video from, dean? I don't recall James May being on any other show other than Top Gear.

[deanb]

I think it's James May's Big Ideas.

 

But he's done plenty:

James May's Top Toys*

James May's 20th Century*

James May's: My Sister's Top Toys

James MAy's Big Ideas*

James May on the Moon

James May at the Edge of Space*

James May's Toy Stories*

James May's Man Lab

 

Ones with * are worth watching. Also they're all only like 5 episodes each, or in the case of the "top toys" ones just one off for Xmas.

 

edit-ish: Yeah it's Big Ideas Episode 2 "Man-Machine"

[WTF]

Besides all those shows that Dean's Mentioned James May used to go around with Oz Clarke on some wine adventures for a few documentaries.

 

 

On topic about the Geminoids, I've always thought they were pretty interesting though I'm still not sure if it's something totally worth doing. I remember some 5-6 years ago a Russian Scientist was working on replicating the human brain (was pretty close too). [it was around the time I'd stopped working on a personal study on what causes us to think, the whole bit of being self-aware and the chemistry behind it.] Imagine if those two basically came together.

 

Again OT: they're apparently going to do a prequel for Bladerunner. Sigh poor PK Dick.

[deanb]

Their intention is to see how well people react around robots/androids and I think it's worth doing now than letter. See what types of robots we react well around.

(tbh I reckon they'd be a deep distrust of human like robots over things like Asimo or those elderly care bots with the weird arms)

[WTF]

I get that. Though generally when something looks closer to us, the more we tend to distrust it. The less it looks human the more we trust it.

 

Works differently with animals though, if you take a look at the animals we keep as pets particularly you can see how the ones that we've allowed to propogate have humanoidish features. Yes while they are mammals, not everything has what we with our human eyes consider 'pretty' or 'beautiful'. Most of what we consider are unnatural which sort of explains how we've managed to get animals to look the way we want over the years we've domesticated them.

[TheMightyEthan]

I used to not believe in the uncanny valley because stuff just doesn't creep me out by being almost-but-not-quite real looking. Then, however, I was at an art museum with my fiancee and there was this statute of an old man that was basically completely real looking. I thought it was cool, but it creeped my fiancee out, she was like begging me to leave it.

 

I have since refined my belief: it's not that the uncanny valley doesn't exist, it's just that I'm weird and am not affected by it.

[deanb]

Yeah my sister freaked out before we even got into Madam Tussades, never mind getting in with the wax models. She's always been a bit iffy on stuff like stuffed animals. Some folks especially don't react well. And that's what the gemonoids do. Found out what exactly it is that freaks people out.

I think maybe being gamers has a bit to do with it, you're more used to this kind of stuff.

 

Anywho:

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...d-printers.html

 

I believe after smartphones 3D printing will be the next major disruptive technology. Though food printing will probably be more of a fad within that.

[Enervation]

I think it's James May's Big Ideas.

 

But he's done plenty:

James May's Top Toys*

James May's 20th Century*

James May's: My Sister's Top Toys

James MAy's Big Ideas*

James May on the Moon

James May at the Edge of Space*

James May's Toy Stories*

James May's Man Lab

 

Ones with * are worth watching. Also they're all only like 5 episodes each, or in the case of the "top toys" ones just one off for Xmas.

 

edit-ish: Yeah it's Big Ideas Episode 2 "Man-Machine"

 

Holy crap, I had no idea he did so many shows.

 

And lol. "Man Lab." Nice one, May. Nice one.

[Mal]

It would be pretty cool if in the future, 3D printer can utilize all the plastic bags we use each and every day. Plastic bags are very plentiful and they, I would think, can easily be melted as needed. At the moment, I imagine that you would have to shred up the bags in a paper shredder, then feed a melter to feed a head with something to work with. Some advanced versions could use just whole bags, maybe.

 

Heheh, sounds pretty interesting, these 3D printers.

[deanb]

http://inhabitat.com/chicagos-willis-tower-to-become-a-vertical-solar-farm/

[deanb]

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/03/spinning-the-suns-rays-into-fuel.html?ref=hp

 

Supposedly some scientists have developed a cheap and useful "artificial leaf" at first I thought it'd be some solar panel tech, but it's a chemical thing designed to break down water into hydrogen. Hydrogen being a pretty damn clean and potent fuel source.

[deanb]

A talk on Googles Driverless cars.
Basically on how they're pretty good, could save millions of lives. But we don't yet have the correct mentality, so just a single human fatality would pretty much scrap the project. Basically we're fine with other people killing millions of other people. But a robot killing just one is totally unacceptable. I guess I can kind of understand, robots and math n all that are meant to be perfect, infallible. And you can't take a robot to court.

p.s I've yet to see it, just the synopsis. As I said in the other thread, watching fifth element.

[AgamemnonV2]

 

A talk on Googles Driverless cars.

Basically on how they're pretty good, could save millions of lives. But we don't yet have the correct mentality, so just a single human fatality would pretty much scrap the project. Basically we're fine with other people killing millions of other people. But a robot killing just one is totally unacceptable. I guess I can kind of understand, robots and math n all that are meant to be perfect, infallible. And you can't take a robot to court.

 

p.s I've yet to see it, just the synopsis. As I said in the other thread, watching fifth element.

Flying cars, robot cars, etc. It's all ultimately silly. Given the rising problem of traffic correlating with rising population, as well as the increasing density of population in urban areas, neither of those concepts are going to solve the future's problems when it comes to transportation. Personally I think public transportation will become the norm, i.e. underground high-speed trains. And then the only people that will have flying cars are government employees (i.e. police, fire-fighting, and emergency forces). Eventually roads won't be able to be widened well enough to compensate increasing traffic and the fight for the last pieces of free property will convert most city roads to add construction on top of them.

 

At least that's my theory.

[deanb]

Robot cars would mean perfectly managed traffic system potentially cutting congestion by a large amount because it's not relying on people who tend to be pretty selfish about the whole thing.

 

Anyway:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/8423536/Genetically-modified-cows-produce-human-milk.html

 

The chinese have created GM cows able to produce human-like breast milk (which means more nutritious as well as the greater immune boosting benefits we have from drinking human milk)

Turns out Chinese, surprise surprise, have more relaxed GM laws for this kind of thing, hence them being allowed to splice human and cow DNA.

I've just mentioned on twitter how it's weird that the concept of drinking human milk is pretty taboo. Obviously we don't have cow n human milk on the shelves cos humans don't produce enough to compete with cows, and cow milk is sustaining enough for daily needs. I'm well aware on the benefits of human milk, but I'm not sure where I'd be on the idea of going to the shop and having the option of cow milk, or GM Human-Cow milk. Even if it tasted the same, same texture, just the nutritional value of human milk I'd still have a mental hurdle on the concept of drinking human milk. Even writing out "human milk" seems a bit weird.

 

Why are we more okay with drinking the milk of bovines than of our own species?

[TheMightyEthan]

I wouldn't have any trouble drinking human-cow GM milk, though I would have a hard time if there were actual human milk from human breasts on the shelves.