Well, I assume the scientists already have a very long, prioritized list of things they want to look at and a lot of lengthy explanations as to why they want to look at these features of Jupiter and it’s moons. That list is going to be done no matter what the outcome of this solicitation of ideas.

All I want is Diamond Age’s mediatrons.

Well, I don’t know how all the different forks of Android will deal with this but luckily my desk and laptop installations should get updated within the coming months.

And for the commenters here asking what the point of all this is, well, abstract knowledge is is own justification. But, if you actually read the article:

Maybe. Maybe the universe is telling us something and in the decades to come some team of physicists will figure it out.

Bones, muscle and realistic flesh elasticity are harder to model and animate. Notice there is a gap in time as the computer reinflates the bodies after they mushed at the bottom of the “beaker.”

Powerstrips are a technology that’s how old now?

I like Parker’s justification of purely abstract science. He does a very Faraday-esque eyeroll and then explains that there are things that will probably never have any direct practical application and that’s not the point. Abstract knowledge is its own justification. If you don’t see that, well, you must be a pretty…

Well, given that it’s Herzog, I expect a very measured, atmospheric, philosophical and introspective examination of this subject.

Land rights, legal battles, NIMBY and bureaucracy: aren’t these the same things that slow nearly every public works project the whole world over and for all of history all the way back to Sargon’s time? I’m sure if we looked, we’d find that the ancient Romans had a much easier time paving and ducting everything in…

Roughly 40 comments and no one has pointed to this?

All the stars for this. All of them.

So does this record include military automous drones—because that’s what matters.

Certainly not within my lifetime.

“...not to mention, a good weapon in Skynet’s arsenal when it decides to kill all remaining human transportation.”

All this legal nonsense and vendor hardware, software and network lock-in is one of the reasons why I’d rather just build my own smartphone than buy from the OEMS. I’m aware of Project Ara but I’d rather try to do something with one of the Raspberry Pis and a SIM card.

I’m with you on this. I may like the content—which I get torrents of—but TV is a dead medium. I haven’t owned a TV or cable for more than 20 years.

The headline is misleading. This is not whole brain emulation. That is still many decades or centuries away. Instead it’s reading brain states in a very general sense to send commands to computers. It’s stuff like this. Or stuff like this.

Well, cultivating a broad sense of empathy is always good.