An analysis from Randall Munroe.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Launching A Space Start Up
Is now the time?
It seems like a very promising future, with a lot of converging technologies and trends.
An Anti-Aging Hormone
…that could make you smarter?
Heck, I’d be happy with the anti-aging part myself. Though I have a commenter or two that could stand to be smarter.
High-Speed Rail
From Beijing to CONUS? Under the Bering Strait?
I don’t think so.
Rocket Science Airlines
I have no comment.
3-D Printing And Spaceflight
Ten ways it could revolutionize it.
I really think we are on the verge of the most exciting era for human spaceflight since the sixties.
The New Crew Systems
A story on Dragon, CST and Dreamchaser at the Daily Mail.
Cancer
Have they really found a cure?
…the developments at Penn point, tantalizingly, to something more, something that would rank among the great milestones in the history of mankind: a true cure. Of 25 children and 5 adults with Emily’s disease, ALL, 27 had a complete remission, in which cancer becomes undetectable.“
It’s a stunning breakthrough,” says Sally Church, of drug development advisor Icarus Consultants. Says Crystal Mackall, who is developing similar treatments at the National Cancer Institute: “It really is a revolution. This is going to open the door for all sorts of cell-based and gene therapy for all kinds of disease because it’s going to demonstrate that it’s economically viable.”
Also:
“I’ve told the team that resources are not an issue. Speed is the issue,” says Novartis Chief Executive Joseph Jimenez, 54. “I want to hear what it takes to run this phase III trial and to get this to market. You’re talking about patients who are about to die. The pain of having to turn patients away is such that we are going as fast as we can and not letting resources get in the way.”
Yes. Faster please.
FUD From NASA And CNES
They try to tell SpaceX how hard reusability is.
I’ve got to run some errands, but I’ll have some comments later. Briefly, though, Dumbacher’s comparison with the SSME is pretty much worthless.
Technology Law
…will soon be reshaped by people who don’t use email:
as Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Parker Higgins convincingly argues, it’s not the justices’ lack of personal experience with technology that’s the problem; it’s their tendency to not understand how people use it. Returning to Justice Roberts’s concerns about villains with two phones: if he is in fact unaware of how common that behavior is – he certainly didn’t watch Breaking Bad – then that suggests a major gap in his understanding of society.
This lack of basic understanding is alarming, because the supreme court is really the only branch of power poised to confront one of the great challenges of our time: catching up our laws to the pace of innovation, defending our privacy against the sprint of surveillance. The NSA is “training more cyberwarriors” as fast as it can, but our elected representatives move at a snail’s pace when it comes to the internet. The US Congress has proven itself unable to pass even the most uncontroversial proposals, let alone comprehensive NSA reforms: the legislative branch can’t even get its act together long enough to pass an update our primary email privacy law, which was written in 1986 – before the World Wide Web had been invented.
So the future of our privacy, of our technology – these problems land at the feet of a handful of tech-unsavvy judges.
Kind of scary.