Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change and habitat loss. As a species, we need to go vegan or move to sustainable meat production. But let’s be realistic, people won’t give up meat willingly. So, the cost of meat needs to go waaay up or we need a less destructive way to produce it. Andras Forgacs has an exciting solution:
This microscopic water creature is so hardy it can survive the vacuum of space. It has also managed to incorporate a large amount of foreign DNA, which may not only explain it’s incredible resiliency, but may change how we think about evolution. Key quote:
We think of the tree of life, with genetic material passing vertically from mom and dad. But with horizontal gene transfer becoming more widely accepted and more well known, at least in certain organisms, it is beginning to change the way we think about evolution and inheritance of genetic material
Source: The tardigrade genome has been sequenced, and it has the most foreign DNA of any animal – ScienceAlert
Without Steve Jobs at Apple to champion the first principles of design — like make it invisible — it looks like Apple needs outside critics like Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini to push back against Jonny Ives:
Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist.
From Fast Company
Keeping in mind that Stuxnet, the most ingenious computer worm the world has seen so far, was created by the NSA to target Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, consider:
[N]ow with that code available in the wild for anyone to study and copy, the digital weapon can serve as a blueprint to design other attacks targeting vulnerable control systems in the United States and elsewhere—to manipulate valves in a gas pipeline, for example, or to release sewage into waterways, or possibly even to take out generators at a power plant. It wouldn’t necessarily require the resources of a wealthy nation to pull off such attacks. With most of the core research and development already done by Stuxnet’s creators to expose the vulnerabilities in these systems, the bar has been lowered for other attackers, state and nonstate players alike, to get in the game.
from Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Kettner:
A great presentation on the evolution of the brain and the hierarchical theory of mind. If you’re interested in reading more, I recommend his book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.