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[Osmosis Jones]

The solution to neurdegeneration? (Also Alzheimer)

Promising. Couple it with the fact you can detect Alzheimers with peanut butter, and we may just see the disease become a thing of the past.

[Solifuge]

In fun tech news, US Military announces plans to have Powered Infantry Armor in the field in 3 years.

I'm hoping this means in a decade or so, we'll see civilian applications of strength-enhancing exosuits, for construction, heavy labor, or mobility assistance. Sure, my grandmother has a Titanium Hip, but I'd like to see proper bionically-enhanced grandparents in the future.

BBC News feed, you're alright.

[olemars]

I'm hoping this means in a decade or so, we'll see civilian applications of strength-enhancing exosuits, for construction, heavy labor, or mobility assistance. Sure, my grandmother has a Titanium Hip, but I'd like to see proper bionically-enhanced grandparents in the future.

There are one or two sort-of commercially available products like this available already, although the names elude me. A hospital around here bought one to assist rehabilitation of paralyzed patients.

[Lagslayer]

Pfft!

Biopunk > Cyberpunk

[alway]

How Target and similar companies know you're pregnant before anyone else. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

[Gentlefish]

How Target and similar companies know you're pregnant before anyone else. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

Not only that, but also how they know EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU after you shop there once...
This goes into the terrified thread.

[10ebbor10]

You're surprised by that. I mean, that technology is almost a decade old.

[Dutchling]

You're surprised by that. I mean, that technology is almost a decade old.

I don't keep up with the times.

Then how did you read the article?

[Sergarr]

You're surprised by that. I mean, that technology is almost a decade old.

I don't keep up with the times.

Then how did you read the article?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSf9aEETnvE

[Solifuge]

How Target and similar companies know you're pregnant before anyone else. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

The bit on page 4-5 about how Febreze rebranded itself to piggyback on behavioral cleaning habits was really cool. But the marketing behemoth it alludes to is also sort of heartless, calculating, and terrifying.

[Descan]

I -really- can't wait until we have replicators, so we can stop dealing with a whole fucking tonne of bullshit companies spouting bullshit, and at most we have to deal with 1 product, the replicators themselves, and it is therefore relatively easy to learn enough about them to say to a bullshit company "Lolno i'mma buy someone elses." Perhaps two if you count "raw materials".

That's assuming they're not just handed out like candy. :v

[Solifuge]

With 3D printers, we're getting closer. Once people start to 3D-print protein paste into artificially flavored foods, and realize how much having access to that kind of tech has the potential to change the world, we'll see a drive toward more and more refined printers that can handle a wider variety of matter.

Eventually, we'll get a molecular printer that can use heat/pressure/electricity to bond raw elements into complex compounds. Of course, we'll still have to buy raw elements... but once fusion is working smoothly, and we can synthesize heavier elements like carbon and nitrogen from lighter ones on an industrial scale, I could see something akin to replicators on the distant horizon.

[alway]

How Target and similar companies know you're pregnant before anyone else. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

That actually makes me feel rather pissed off.

I like how privacy appears to becoming less of a fact and more of an illusion.

It's not even privacy though. In this case, it's just information based on what you bought; which as it turns out, contains huge quantities of statistical data when placed in the context of statistical databases. It isn't so much invading privacy as it is mining information they already have for implications hidden in the patterns.

And that information is vast and highly valuable; pretty much every company is doing it these days. They can predict what you will want before you even know you want it. All of it done is such a way that no human ever knows any of the information gathered and created about a specific individual; not even the caretakers of the software. It isn't quite about a privacy; the NSA or similar privacy invading organizations might be interested in the individual, but companies really aren't. If it does anything, it is more an invasion of the notion of your own free will. We humans like to think of ourselves as spontaneous, unpredictable, unique... a highly common theme among a variety of media. And yet, when it comes right down to it, simple statistical analysis will figure out what you want before you do, with a high degree of accuracy (recommender systems).

Which is why AI will almost certainly end up in a role as caretaker to humanity; and to a large extent, how it already has.

[kaijyuu]

simple statistical analysis will figure out what you want before you do, with a high degree of accuracy (recommender systems).

If Amazon's recommendation system is anything to go by, this technology is the opposite of accurate.

Maybe it's just Amazon, though.

[Descan]

No, we're talking about cases where Target sends coupons for baby items before the customer even realizes they (or, in one case I heard, their teenage daughter, though she didn't know either) are pregnant.