jyonkov
Neven Boyanov
Bertrand
Daniel Radev
Stefan Stefanov
Apostol Apostolov
ihayes2000
Jean
Bloom Energy seems cool. The article at Mashable gives some more details.
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nkolev
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nkolev
The new version of the P2 theme is much better and finally has post titles!
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Neven Boyanov
Yes, the P2 is (much) better now, it’s like real blog.
No need to change the theme anymore.
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nkolev
Today I read an interesting article about a new line of electric buses that uses ultracapacitors. These buses are now operational in Shanghai. It’s a beautiful and simple idea that results in energy saving and no need to use wires.
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nkolev
I want to bring back to our attention (after more than 20 years!) Carl Sagan and his TV Series Cosmos, which has inspired tons of discussions and brainstorming between me and Yonel back then. The great news is that all 13 episodes are available on Hulu and I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna watch them again!
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Neven Boyanov
That’s great. I grew up with this stuff. Actually, several months ago I was looking for these movies and searched through some torrents but was not able to find the entire collection at good quality.
It looks like they are on Hulu with (cc) license, interesting.…opss: For now, Hulu is a U.S. service only.
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Nikolay
Yeah, unfortunately.
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jyonkov
outside of US watch it on http://www.surfthechannel.com/search/all/3/1/cosmos.html#
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Daniel Radev
There is a torrent @zamunda (entire collection). Otherwise we need US anonymous proxy
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Nikolay
If you find a tool that allows one to download Hulu movies, I can download them for you.
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Apostol Apostolov
According to EzTV.it, the series are being ripped and distributed in higher quality than old releases as they get released on Hulu.
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nkolev
Here’s an interesting product from the Netherlands – a LED-based light bulb that consumes 6 watts of power and can replace a 60-watt bulb and has a life of 25 years. As the founder of the company says (who’s a grandchild of Philips original founder), this can have a much bigger effect on power saving than solar panels and other methods to conserve. You can read the CNET aritcle here.
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Apostol Apostolov
Sounds like an improvement on the recently announced Panasonic EVERLED technology. It’s all about the price. If the Netherland company can offer their tech at under 40$ a bulb Panasonic asks for their bukbs, they will save a viable market. Consumers may care about energy savings but there’s a breaking point at which they don’t really care about tech improvement as for price dropping.
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Nikolay
True. I wouldn’t want to cough up a lump sum and exchange all my bulbs at home, but I can do one by one and within one year, let’s say.
There’s something that is being overlooked in regards to fluorescent bulb – they radiate UV and increase getting skin cancer even being at home and can also lead to migraines. I’m not sure if LEDs has similar properties, but I heard that in UK mass switch to fluorescent lights is being put on hold.
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nkolev
Let’s build some gadgets!
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Apostol Apostolov
Better yet, let’s build a Chumby!
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/17/chumby-kits-for-sale.html
I spammed you a lot about Chumby today, Nick,. but it is totally worth it. I am going to buy the boring new model because it’d be cheaper and have 475 Mhz processor among other tiny improvements. Like I said before, radioclock is the last 20th Century tech at home and I want it destroyed and exchanged with a Linux-based multimedia-toting widget-rich compu-clock.
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Nikolay
You’re not spamming me, no way. I wish I had more spare cash to buy all the gadgets I can now only dream about!
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Apostol Apostolov
I get paid today (phew! another tiny monthly victory against the recession) so I am going to put 300 BGN towards a Chumby. I really want to check Facebook in bed without having to reach for an iPod.
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Daniel Radev
I have Nokia N700 lying around doing just nothing. Any ideas for some usage are welcomed…
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Apostol Apostolov
I could spend few hours telling you some application ideas or automation ideas, or I can just ask you kindly to give it to me. Knowing myself, I’ll settle for the latter. Who knows, I might get converted to a Maemo zealot.
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Daniel Radev
I’m ready to sell the thing. Keep in mind that it is the first model of Nxxx series…
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Nikolay
Oh, so you want get higher, antique pricing…
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Daniel Radev
well, depends on how you look at this…I personally would pay higher pricing for G4 Cube for example…:)
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Neven Boyanov
Radev, I’m giving you $20, in cash.
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Daniel Radev
That’s a start, but definitely not a deal…:)
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Neven Boyanov
Ok, what are the parameters of the device, the accessories and your price?
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nkolev
Here’s a company (Halcyon Molecular) that can truly change everything covered on TechCrunch. Imagine what the low cost of full sequencing (and a lot more data going to be available) can do to the Medicine, the ultimate personalization, match making, and so on. I’m sure Sergey Brin would rush to acquire/merge Halcyon Molecular with 23andMe. I always thought that Sergey’s interest in DNA is from the aspect of the ultimate ad platform – DNAds or GeneAds or whatever. Your DNA linked to your Google Account gets you precisely targeted ads that you’ll love with huge conversion rates for advertisers and big bucks for Google.
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Daniel Radev
It’s a scary thought to have my DNA linked to Google account. Precisely targeted ads looks like blackmailing to me…
btw: there is a movie – “Idiocracy”. Take a look when you have some time…-
Nikolay
I don’t mind Google having my DNA – Google or any other non-evil multi-billion corporation (isn’t multi-billion equivalent to evil though?) to aggregate such data, which used by researchers can benefit me and all of us. Privacy is overrated. If we all have life recorders (like Microsoft’s SenseCam, but recording a lot more than just that), correlating our daily activities, events with our DNAs can give answers to many medical, psychological, criminal, and so on questions that would stay unanswered until something like this happens. I’m not afraid of a Big Brother; I’m afraid of science not advancing fast enough before we or our children become too old or too sick… Think from this perspective and privacy will really sound ridiculously. Life is way too short to be wasted with non-issues like these! My co-worker Pete said once: “I really want to live long enough to see Playstation 10″… or something in that sense.
Me too and that’s why I’m one of those fanatics who strongly believe that science should always be put first as it has the key to solve all miseries of today. Putting human rights first will take us only a block away! Analyzing DNA and having tons of data to correlate it with would take us far… just like stem cell research. We just need to put science first like it used to be in the past. I’m fed up with that “sharehoder value” crap I hear left & right! So many great ideas failed to materialize just because they weren’t easy to monetize and that’s what’s slowing down the progress.-
Apostol Apostolov
While I believe DNA sequencing can benefit users a great deal especially in fields of medicine and self-improvement, exposing DNA sequencing data to third parties either directly or indirectly is bound to happen, and is a collosal privacy issue that the general population already is negatively already heavily dispositioned towards. Companies with access to DNA sequencing could refuse job positions, health insurance or other bonuses and options to personel that is likely to develop certain physical weaknesses, illnesses or short life span. In a world where human genome can provide quantative degree of success would likely deny options to people with less chance of success or requiring longer preparation or training. Even without genome modification available to the masses, our soceity would develop towards a future similar to the vision of the cult movie Gattaka. There is a lot of opposition to such business models on a social and on a government level.
I think any company interested in using DNA sequencing data on a mass scale should allow users to generate data out of their DNA offline, for free (despite associated costs, such program should be heavily funded), and then pick what information from their sequencing results is being shared online with data companies such as Google. For example, a user could pay for the sequencing, but then cashback up to free service by providing bits of data to data companies, with bits of data being freely chosen by the user so that if he decides, he won’t share those he believes would be used negatively against him. Although one can imagine such a program being covered in enough legalese to confuse users and that would open a totally different can of worms.
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Nikolay
First, nobody is perfect and “perfect” costs tons (the simple demand-supply rule), so, if companies use DNA to screen candidates out, it would be in 95-99% of the cases for the right reasons. At the end, more well-suited workers means higher efficiency leading to lower cost and faster progress. We all know what means to deal with a person who’s not right for their job, don’t we?
Of course, I’ve watched Gattaca and others on the subject; read sci-fi in the past… but that’s just that – fiction! I applied for a contracting job a few months ago and they made me undergo drug test via urine sample, which is a standard policy with many employers. Many companies do full background check in the US – your credit history, your driving record, your criminal record, etc, so, even if they add a DNA screening in the future – do you think it will make a big difference given the current level of screening? And I’m talking about a regular develop jobs here! I am also talking about the country that claims to have the most advanced democracy and human rights!
Anyway, human society is a very complex system, but it finds balance pretty quickly – there are many examples in history. That’s why I think we should focus on solving real problems, problems that kill and truly make millions suffer. The rest will follow naturally as advances in science and humanity go in parallel. If it happens that a part of the society starts to abuse technology to discriminate and enslave the rest, then, again, look back into history.
My point is that the human body is probably the most complex system in this universe (wrongly assuming that there are no aliens). So, in order for us to better know ourselves, we can only do so by collecting and crunching tons and tons of data and that’s why I believe DNA, life recorders, and other such methods would provide the data required. Also, having such data available to personal intelligent agents would completely revamp our lives.
An example is the wide use of LBS (Location-Based Services) nowadays. It was just 3 years ago when people (including me) were predicting the failure of those due to people caring too much about their privacy. Well, intelligence prevailed and people chose to trade privacy for better lives. The same I hear is happening in Japan with their payment cards – convenience prevailed over concerns. And that’s what usually happens – people exaggerate and overthink something, then they try it out and see nothing bad is happening and continue to use it, then start using it more and more, and at the end they can’t live without it.
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Apostol Apostolov
Nickolay, the society as it is does not favor techno-fascism you propose. Even small changes to a general population thinking take a whole lot of time – racism and gay rights being two simple issues that are yet to be resolved even in most civilized countries. Your example with location-based services is not the same, as it illustrates acceptance of privacy issue opt-in services by a small group of technology-fluent users. Most of those services do not get deeply integrated and are not inherent to every human being’s life and their segregation into multiple, non-compatible services makes their impact very small, compared to what a DNA-sequencing nationwide or worldside database could do to every facet of a human’s life. Also, the problem with the undefined right of self-realization. The problem is very well studied in Gattaca. While fiction is fiction, I separate the fictional story of a man overcoming his shortcomings from the realistic look on an engineered society. In a society that favors gene-perfection and filters based on innate qualities, giving life to imperfect gene-carrying individuals is a crime against that individual because of his inability to exist as a productive unit in that society. Our society does not have gene-modification technologies right now. Filtering people by gene-qualities without tools to modify human genome to suit perfection, is like punishing people for being born, with no exception. I can guarantee you that your point will not hold in congress nor court. Too many implications that do not offer a solution to them, nobody would dare open such Pandora’s Box.
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Nikolay
I really don’t see where you get the fascism ideas from. I never mentioned gene modification and engineering babies and that’s the big problem – people always seem to scale down any idea to their biggest nightmare.
I am not supporting any gene alterations and you probably don’t know, but I’m a person who is a huge supporter of everything natural and green, I eat organic, I don’t take medicines that do nothing and just tax liver and other organs. “Studying” and “altering” are two different things. And even without mass DNA sequencing and aggregating life data, rich would still be altering their genes and engineer their heirs. You can’t stop this! They already engineer babies here in the US – you pay $3K and get the gender of baby you want. Also, “perfect” is all relative. The Aztec considered cross-eyed women the most beautiful. Nowadays, the crazier you are, the cooler people think you’re, and so on. So, again, things change and to me, there isn’t such thing as an imperfect person – we are as perfect as we could be given evolution and natural selection. Genes give us different starts in life, but what we become is possibly mostly driven by other things. The classic example are the twins. Another example is having good genetic material, but your mom smoked heavily during pregnancy or used recreational drugs or spent too much time nearby the microwave oven.
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Neven Boyanov
Very interesting discussions here.
Why we are so afraid of age and death? In fact, it is a philosophical question.
If we assume for a moment that death is a real end and there’s no afterlife, then there’s nothing to worry about. You just die and all your suffering and pain ends with the end of your life. On the other hand, some people believe that death is not an end but just another beginning. We don’t know that for certain since no one have ever returned from there. But in all cases, that’s even better. There’s a third group of course who believe that life does not exist at all, but it’s only a product of the imagination of a giant (supreme) being, or just a “matrix” in the memory of the primeval computer that controls the universe.
So then why studding NDA to prolong your lifespan? What you gonna do after you turn 100?
You haven’t lived even one third of your life and you’re already thinking about living longer, isn’t that absurd?
Every period of humans life has its purpose. At 10 you start discovering things in the world around you; at 20 you start learning things; at 30 you develop yourself, you enjoy your family and children; at 40 you start gathering the fruits your long years labor; at 50 you enjoy the life; at 60 you enjoy your grandchildren; at 70 – I don’t know what you do, it’s too early for me to think about it. But what you gonna do after you turn 110? You certainly cannot do what you were doing when you were 22.
Everything in the existence has its purpose, including all living things and all thinking things – like humans and aliens. It is interesting topic anyways. I was wondering why that giant turtle Adwaita lived 250 years.
Like it or not people and companies will continue DNA research, studding it, modifying it.
It is tempting to claim that DNA researches could cure a lot of diseases but may harm someone else, but for a great cause. But tell me if you can find the ultimate medicine for the worst disease in the world and removed it from the face of the earth forever, but you have to kill one person, will you do that?
Seriously, I’ll be most afraid of the Chinese, they will probably produce some kind of a 99 cents personal DNA analyzer or $9.99 personal DNA modifier, that you can buy from eBay – free shipping. But that will be long after all the military research labs have implemented some “improvements” to their soldiers – for army there’s no limits and there’s no moral, there’s only short term winning strategies and tactics that do not coupe with life and its preservation. This is not science fiction.
I’m sure that one could find 100% practical reasons why such studies should be supported. Unfortunately, we nave no choice but observe, we cannot influence this, but no one can stop us for thinking about it and discuss it.
If it was only for the purpose of pure science and to add more to the knowledge of human race, yes – I will support, I could even participate a research – as a white mouse. But in the world of that strange mixture of democracy and capitalism (I like the remark about Idiocracy), I always have doubts about what’s the real purpose behind the beautiful color brochures that suggest you do this or that.
BTW, I forgot to mention – these are just random thoughts on Tuesday morning.-
Apostol Apostolov
Neven, governments are most afraid of society of no fear. People who fear are predictable and easy to control and manipulate, thus can be contained within certain boundaries of behavior. People who fear nothing – including age or death – are hard to control and manipulate. Such development on a global scale would meet extreme government resistance, thus manipulated social resistance as well. We do not know what a society of no fear would breed, as no society has ever maintained such. In fact, societies are based on fear – from the primitive fear for survival, to the social fear of ostracizing.
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Apostol Apostolov
It seems I cannot further reply within the old thread so I have to start a new one. Nickolay, Fascism AFAIK is about eliminating people based on inherent traits deemed unworthy, not modifying them. I think gene modification would go in lines of forced post-humanism. But fascism is about eliminating people – and in a future where gene analysis eliminates people from social and professional career is pretty much fascism in action. If that statement offends you, I apologize and won’t dig into it further.
Studying DNA and altering DNA are two completely different things, although the former is ultimately seeking to achieve the latter. The problem with studying DNA and having the data vailable for verification and analysis by third parties without the ability to modify it actually means that you brand certain people unworthy or uncapable of certain acts, certain professions and compensating innate incapabilities by definition of their DNA analysis, no matter how precise the data it. Actually being able to modify the DNA structure would compensate for that – by sacrificing a mid-generation of naturally born humans, we will strive towards a generation of perfect human beings. Perfect for the tasks the parents have set to prepare their child for – family of sportsmen would want a physically talented kid, family of lawyers want an intelligent son, etc. Specialization in life based on pre-birth modification will even further limit individuals in excelling in totally different fields of professional life, i.e. super intelligent geek who is denied physically capable genes and would live a life in envy towards physically capable jocks – only because his life has been predetermined by choice of DNA sequencing. Media will continue to influence consumerism values and set expectations even further, into body modification perhaps, now that the general population could meet criteria that prior that were strictly in the domain of selected physically gifted individuals. As for post-birth development, we both agree that people get their potential from the genes, but how they develop that potential is in the hands of their parents, their own and their environment. That is beyond control of simple genetic analysis, yet in a world that favors structural predetermination, people would be preferred for their genetic affinity even if they show phychological or emotional incompetence for the job.
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Nikolay
I understand Fascism and just wondered when did I mention elimination – that’s all and I don’t get offended so easily!
Anyway, at the end, Fascism is a lo-tech DNA modification – by eliminating unworthy people, you control the “quality” of the collective DNA of the future – materializing the Aryan race in the course of several generations – just like they probably did in Troy. But, tell me, aren’t they doing this nowadays anyway? In the USA, every pregnant woman undergoes a Down Syndrome test. If the test is positive, the parents have the choice of an abortion. Isn’t this a low-grade Fascism of the modern time?-
Apostol Apostolov
Actually, if we have to be precise, Fascism was not about DNA modification at all – it was about DNA elimination. Germany presumed Aryan race was superior, no need of modification as it was already superior as it is, and went jihad on everyone else. You are right about DNA filtering for Down Syndrome, but on a larger scale when a baby can be checked for almost every trait and parents decide abortion on base of trait is not good enough, keep in mind we have a serious problem. What if the world goes totally pro-intelligence and parents start aborting children showing physical traits but low intelligence traits?
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Nikolay
You are right that Fascism was DNA (owner) elimination – my mistake. I’m not perfect, I’m not Aryan.
Regarding existing practices in the US: they screen for sickle cells and some other diseases using blood samples. If the mother would be 35+ during delivery, they also routinely perform amniocentesis, which is getting genetic samples from the baby and then they run various tests. Then parents should make a decision upon any positive tests.
But I’m sure that even now the rich can send samples to private companies such as Knome and perform full sequencing… BTW, Knome used to charge $300K an year ago and now I see they have lowered to “only” $100K.
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Nikolay
OMG, I just saw that Knome has their site in… Russian (their only translation)! I guess they get a lot of business from Russian oligarchs!
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nkolev
Here’s an interesting Canadian company that provides computer vision hardware: Point Grey Research.
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Apostol Apostolov
Point Grey’s USB 3.0 webcam is definitely showing where USB 3.0 is moving us – towards pixel-precision, full-screen video conferencing at 1080p/1200 resolutions. With GeForce CUDA being capable of encoding 1080p in real time to MPEG-4 or similar codecs for streaming, we’re definitely going to have a massive jump in quality of webcams, allowing for webcam-based TV shows on UStream and QIK at unthinkable before quality level. Myself, I am more excited about USB 3.0 bringing high-resolution to LCD tablets that struggled in the past with precision, latency and poor resolutions, so Wacom Cintiq’s future looks even brighter.
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Nikolay
Did you guys see the outrageously priced Livepack that Livestream offers today at $2.5K/month for live HD streaming?
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nkolev
And now, the most ridiculous robotics project I’ve ever seen: Deep Green, featured today on TechCrunch.
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nkolev
Here’s an interesting robotics project: iCub, the Toddler Robot. Go check it out!
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jyonkov
This video makes you think about how kids learn, a specially if you have kids
I personally think that reproducing human behavior can be quite difficult taking in consideration the billions of years of evolution. But from experience, I think that it can be useful to cheat a bit and model behavior with mathematical models that we know are not the ones human brain uses… For example while working at MASA Group I’ve created a model (weighted graph) that represented a map and simple behavior principles and applied a simple A* shortest path algorithm that eventually preformed better in terms of motion planning than some PHD cognitive research projects and while writing this I’ve realized that my work has a name now: behavior pathfinding. The thing that can be quite exiting is to find a simple way to determine position in space for example using ultrasound and triangulation and implement simple robot that use “behavior pathfinding” to navigate it-self around. A free way to model and test this positioning system can be http://www.scilab.org/
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jyonkov is discussing. 
Apostol Apostolov, 
jyonkov 2:34 pm on February 25, 2010 Permalink |
Yes its really cool, i was just reading it on MIT Tech Review… I wonder if concentrated solar power can be used to produce the heat necessary for operation.