Some of the heat energy is lost in a process called hysteresis, but the researchers found a way to limit that. Hysteresis just means that there’s a time lag between the material heating, turning magnetic, and inducing current in the surrounding coil so the conversion isn’t perfect. What the article doesn’t go into is whether the magnetic field is maintained with steady heat; if it isn’t, the metal would have to be cooled and heated repeatedly to keep inducing electricity in the coil…not very efficient.

More here.

We’ll grow in vitro cloned meats in factories that are computerized and run by artificial intelligence. You can just grow the part of the animal that you’re eating. Some people say, “Oh, that sounds yucky.” I say, “Well, why don’t you go visit a factory-farming installation? You’ll find that getting meat from living animals is yucky.” But we’ll need a marketing genius to sell the idea.

Speaking of marketing, what idea about the future do you have the hardest time selling?

People are most resistant to the idea of dramatic extensions to life expectancy, because it affects every decision they make. They have this cycle of life in mind. People sort of wax philosophical–”Oh, I don’t want to live past 100.” I’d like to see them say that when they’re 100.

More at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2033076,00.html

ScribeFire

I still haven’t found the perfect blogging client, but ScribeFire comes close in terms of tight Firefox integration and ease of re-blogging from a website I’ve stumbled on.

What’s still missing:

• Drag and drop of images from the web to be uploaded to my blog with author attribution.
• Stability. Random freezing while writing a long blog post is unnerving.

This is why people are twittering/posterousing/tumblring instead of blogging these days…

Princeton neuroscientists strapped a mouse onto a suspended ball and had it navigate a Quake 2-inspired virtual maze. This experiment was conducted “to study the individual neurons in the hippocampus that control motion.” Apparently it’s difficult to control and study the neurons of a mouse when it’s physically moving, and this method makes that easier. It may seem cruel, but I’m sure the mouse prefers it to dissection and skin cream testing. Why they didn’t use the millions of gamers who pay to do this is beyond me. Wired article has the details.

[via Techeblog]

I can’t wait for this tech to hit the mainstream! I hate remembering to charge things and trying to find plug points for new applicances.

Augmented reality interface using multitouch gestures and a mini-projector. Pick up a book, see it’s Amazon rating on the cover, page through it and see annotations by friends, etc. So many possiblities, but I still want a brain implant or glasses for privacy so people can’t see that I’m researching them as we speak.

Via jediant

Most doomsday stories depend on a strong AI to destroy civilization, like Skynet or Eagle Eye, but Daniel Suarez’s book Daemon proposes the terrifying scenario that the human race could be trapped by narrow distributed AI. Far simpler computer programs that don’t embody consciousness but are programmed to respond to events by triggering voice synthesized phone calls, network take-overs, asynchronously coordinated manufacturing, and so forth. Impossible to shut down, and self-sustaining like current viruses and trojan horses, these bots are triggered by the obituary of Matthew Sobol to enact his master plan for a new world order by dismantling our current civilization. Sobol was a ultra-rich game designer who died from brain cancer, and the AI in his games succeeded not by anticipating the players but by manipulating them, and this is the key point in why his Daemon succeeds.

I couldn’t stop reading this book, and was a little disappointed that it ended on a cliffhanger, but now that I found out the sequel Freedom is underway I can’t wait to see what happens!
While this book is a thrill ride that is going to make a fantastic movie, it also made me re-evaluate where technology is taking us and what it’s weak points are. IT security experts haven’t dismissed the scenario in the book out of hand, which just goes to show how solid our infastructure is right now. Be afraid. We’re all connected…and there is no escape…

Preview chapters available on thedaemon.com.

Daniel Suarez presentation on how bots control our lives right now at FORA.tv (video).

These clever nano-scale critters are made of glass with one side covered by cobalt, which is magnetic, so it can be precisely controlled by a 3D magnetic field to travel through your body. They’re even capable of pushing objects 10000 times larger, so they could be used for delivering drugs to specific points of the body. Link to Newscientist.

TPB should shut down voluntarily for a month to prove that they aren’t effecting Hollywood’s earnings, that should shut them up and force them to make decent entertainment to earn more. Greedy f-ckers.

Update: Seems the court took the commercial nature of the site into account when making a decision. So the lesson here is: Don’t put advertising on your pirate site.

More at Wired and Slashdot.

From Today’s Big Thing. Buy one at Jetlev.com.