What Happens When You Can’t Look Away? How VR Developers Used Gaze Activated Technology To Captivate … – UploadVR

A young woman runs up to the camera, frantic. She begs the viewer not to look away from her, to steady their eyes but then, in the corner, a flash. And then another one, just out the corner of your eye. And she continues to beg, the viewer finds it harder and harder to focus, until eventually, most give in and glance over. With an ominous warning, she disappears, replaced by a fearsome monster.

Or at least, thats what generally happened. For those viewers at last years Comic-Con who chose the straight and narrow path, the main character of the MTV show Teen Wolf rewarded them by killing the monster with her weaponized scream. The piece, which was sponsored by AT&T, was viewed by thousands at the event and drew almost a million unique views when it was posted on YouTube and Facebook the following day.

The most interesting part of the experience was that the user didnt know their actions had any impact on the story. Done overtly, gaze-activation can lend a choose your own adventure sheen to a piece, which is fine if thats the aim. But done covertly, it can provide fascinating insight into the human mind, not to mention a subtle way to make an experience interactive without having to hand someone controllers.

Gaze activation can also provide valuable data to both developers and the brands who fund their content. Heatmaps are great, but gaze activation allows those on the back end to see exactly what cues people responded to in order to change a narrative, even if the cues we subtle. For those who want to test certain messages or plot points, it can be fascinating to see what makes people look away or focus on something else and of course, any psychology student would have a field day with the data from an experience like Teen Wolf alone.

For AT&T, underwriting the experience was a chance to connect with a younger audience and stand out in the crowded field of Comic-Con. As VR emerges, brands can take advantage of the fact that the technology is so new to create memorable experiences for users, who will then recall their first immersive experience, hopefully with great fondness and brand awareness. Adding something like gaze activated technology also allowed them to create further points for discussion, as friends who did the experience were likely to compare endings and try to figure out why they saw different things.

Its not enough for a brand to just make a 360 experience and expect people will pay attention anymore. Both developers and brands need to explore breakthrough technology like gaze activation in order to push content to the next level of interactivity and immersion.

Cortney Harding is a contributing columnist covering the intersection of VR and media. This column is an editorial product of TVREV, produced in partnership with Vertebrae, the native VR/AR ad platform.

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Not meeting your goals – HuffPost

I gave up daily vlogging recently. On January 1, 2017, I announced Id start uploading a video every single day. There was no end in mind. Some people have taken on this challenge and lasted days. Some people have lasted years. I lasted a little over 3 months.

The breaking point was a company meetup at Highrise, a simple CRM company I took over from Basecamp in 2014. Our meetup was just a handful of days. But those days were optimized to spend every minute possible together since were all working remotely the rest of the year.

There was a lot of great footage from the meetup, but I didnt have any time to edit fun stories together. Or think about pacing. Add music.

I shot YouTube live videos to at least get something out and keep my commitment to the daily vlog, but my YouTube stats started to tank.

So, I decided to focus on creating better videosones I thought could get the most likes and viewsfor each and every upload. My daily vlog became a barely weekly vlog. Sometimes Id get two videos done in a week. Sometimes none.

And I started disliking the project more and more.

On the first day of my Sophomore year in high school, there was a welcome students event in our auditorium. I was barely paying attention but heard my name called out. Ugh, whats this about? The dread became surprise and then elation when they announced I had the highest grade point average so far of our entire class of 400+ kids. Woah. I was not expecting that.

With this newfound ability to compete at having the highest grade point average, I just wanted to keep competing. Could I be my high school valedictorian in a few years?

That Sophomore year, I was in an AP (Advanced Placement) art class. For some reason the teachers and I did not get along. And I guess I didnt have much talent with the art assignments. It showed in my grade for the class. My hopes for valedictorian were evaporating. It felt awful.

Junior year rolled around, and work just got harder. More tough classes, even less time for school work with all the extracurricular activities I was doing. My goal of having the best grades got worse.

But then I started making better friends with this guy, Al Wyman. Al and I had known each other since basketball camp in grade school. When we found ourselves in the same ethics class Junior year, we began talking more and more.

Those talks changed something in me. Wed banter back and forth about the books we were reading (or supposed to be reading for class) from the likes of Herman Hesse or Camus. And I realized how much I enjoyed our chats about school work. Not the competition for grades. But the act of learning, debate, application.

Why was I so focused on grades, when I should be more focused on the act of education?

In that ethics class, there was a project about the famous Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks: Redraw the painting and write an essay of whose in our version and why.

I experimented with the idea that maybe I could just focus on learning and enjoying the experience instead of getting the best grade.

But there was a catch. There wasnt enough time to thoroughly tackle this project without pulling yet another all nighter. So I just didnt do it when the teacher wanted it done.

After the project was due, I finally had an opportunity to focus on getting the project done and give it my all, learning even more about the original painting, and about the people I felt interesting enough to belong in my version. I turned the project in a couple days later and felt great about what I had learned and produced.

What happened was kind of a surprise. The teacher took it, looking at me a bit quizzically. I said, Sorry I couldnt turn this in on time. But here is my work. I hope I can still get some credit for it.

A few days later he gave it back to me, with a great grade on iteven accounting for the points he took off for turning it in late.

It taught me a valuable lesson. I could still perform well without actually focusing on that as a goal. Really, I needed to take care of myself, and commit to a system of learning, not a goal of the best grades.

My time in highschool got so much better after that. There were multiple projects I started turning in late so I could get more sleep. And I learned so much more in the process.

I still ended up with a really high average when I graduated. I wasnt the valedictorian. I was close, but it didnt matter anymore. That last year and a half of high school was some of the best time of my life, and I got so much out of it.

If I look back at my career, the best moments are when I repeated what I did in high schoolfocus on systems, not goals. If I focused too much on where my startup would be when I wanted it to be there, I was miserable. When I focused on just showing up, learning as much as I could, delivering things our customers wanted on a regular basis, I enjoyed it, and we still got great results.

My first Y Combinator startup from 2006 didnt turn into the mega-success I had envisioned, but became an enjoyable ride that still propelled my career forward and turned into even better and brighter things for others as well.

I had a goal with Y Combinator in 2011 to create a Groupon-sized success. Again I became miserable. Until I instead focused on a system of creating things that met needs I understood well because I had them myself.

That led to Draft, simple writing and version control software. It wasnt the thing I envisioned making in 2011, but the system got me what Id call a pretty wild success.

Now I run Highrise. The founders of Basecamp handed me the reigns when they wanted to spin it off. That was never a goal. How could it be? No one could have made it an intention. But this system of showing up every day and creating new things regularly got me here.

Staring at my YouTube stats was a mistake. Theres so much to getting traction, and so much of it isnt under my control.

What I can focus on is showing up every day. Filming. Editing (when I can). Getting on camera. Trying to find a story from the day even if it doesnt work out.

I sure as hell enjoy it more. And I think I might still get great results. Maybe not what I envisioned at first. But it seems like things have a way of working themselves out.

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Cognitive computing will bring increased intelligence to EHRs – ModernMedicine

The typical electronic health record (EHR) system holds more information than any one person could analyze, as do all the medical journals and medical data repositories that exist.

But physicians could soon leverage all of that information to make better decisions, according to leading health IT experts, as EHRs and other healthcare software systems begin to incorporate cognitive computing.

Cognitive computing, a branch of artificial intelligence, harnesses self-learning systems, data mining, natural language processing and other technologies to analyze information, identify patterns and draw conclusions just as the human mind does, only on a vastly larger scale and speed.

The result will be computers that act more like virtual assistants than data-entry systems.

Cognitive computing will impact how we deliver care, it will impact clinical workflows and it will impact other spaces within the physician business as well, said Todd Evenson, MBA, chief operating officer at the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).

Its able to identify outputs that a physician didnt necessarily think of, said Ian E. Hoffberg, applied innovation manager, health information systems, for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

Health IT experts offered a vision of how cognitive computing will work in a typical physicians office:

Task-automation software, known as a bot, could answer calls and take information, directing callers to the right person or to a computer system where the caller can upload health data to be analyzed; the system could alert staff to callers who need immediate attention based on the analysis.

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5 Essential Tips For Surviving Superhot VR – UploadVR

Superhot VR does not love you. It wants to hurt you, beat you, break you, and grind you down into the hardened combat veteran that youll need to embody to survive. With the hit VR combat game finally arriving on PlayStation VR (PSVR) this week, we thought it was about time to offer some helpful tips for the field. Because the best warriors dont just move fast, they think fast too.

Its true that in Superhot VR time moves only when you do, but when you fire a gun or throw an object things move a little faster than you might realize. Going on the offensive makes your enemies far more dangerous, so its essential that you stop and take a look before launching your attack. Is theres a knife hovering in front of your eye? Then best dodge that before opening fire.

If youre moving only one body part at any time then, quite frankly, youre doing it wrong. Superhot is an active game for both body and mind; you should always be thinking about where the next attack is coming from in conjunction from who to kill next or where your next weapon is located. You need to be doing your best limbo impressions as you reach for that gun on the chair, otherwise theres a good chance youll be getting a bullet in your head in the next few seconds.

Some levels of Superhot VR are trial and error, simple as that. You wont be able to beat every sequence without dying (unless youre Neo), so memorize each fight and prepare for whats coming. If the next area has a low wall to take cover then crouch before you grab the pyramid to proceed. Youll save valuable time and get the drop on the enemy instead of waste space crouching when you first arrive.

This one I cant stress enough. Most objects in Superhot VR have the miraculous ability to stop bullets in their tracks and still not break. That goes for pretty much anything except bottles and glasses. The game expects you to use this mechanic often, but its also too easy to forget its there. A shuriken might be a pain to throw, but it works miracles as a shield. If you find a shotgun in your face dont just duck; find something to take the brunt of the attack too.

Following on from the last point, make sure not to discard any useful items as soon as you arrive in a new scene. It might be tempting to empty that crate of plates at the nearest bad guy, but its actually a much better idea to keep hold of them until youre sure you can make a kill with them. The last thing you want is to end up empty handed in front of a swarm of baddies. Chances are at least one guy with a gun is running towards you, so use those items to block bullets until his weapon is in reach.

Superhot VR is available now on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.

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I’m giving up on Snapchat because it’s way too bloated – Mashable


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I'm giving up on Snapchat because it's way too bloated
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There was a short period when I couldn't wrap my mind around you. You'd delete ... There was no need to download video clips to a computer, edit them on a timeline in a video editor, wait for the video to export, and then find a place to upload it to ...

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Our system will be able to handle registrations easily: Navin Kumar, Chairman, GST Network – Economic Times

In an interview with ET Now, Navin Kumar, Chairman, GST Network , talks about the number of resgistrations, the GSTN website and how it has been designed to handle heavy workload. Edited excerpts:

Navin Kumar: As of yesterday, the total number of new registrations was 7,98,000. This is the number of applications submitted and out of that about 5,30,000 have already been approved. As far as migration is concerned - the number is now well beyond 70 lakhs out of 86 lakhs.

Do you think the real test of GSTN will be in the month of September when everybody starts filing the returns?

Navin Kumar: We are starting the functionality for uploading invoices next week. That functionality will be a very important one because we want all the businesses, particularly those that generate very large number of business to business invoices to come and upload their data on our system. The load on the system will keep on increasing from that point of time and we are ready for it. So whether it is return filing, invoice uploading - our system has been designed to take care of heavy load and we are confident that our system will be able to handle the load easily.

As we understand GSTN is the IT backbone of GST. How will you make sure that all the small traders that have yet not registered will be registering in some more time?

Navin Kumar: The registration depends on the person, so whenever a person wants to register and he has to keep in mind the provision of law which says that within a month of the date, when the liability to register arises, he has to register. Our portal has the functionality of registration open 24 hours so they can come anytime and register themselves.

How do you plan to tackle all the difficulties that might arise with the GST registrations?

Navin Kumar: If a person who wants to register goes through the help files, the user guide that we have put in our portal, we have also put a number of videos and video-based tutorials. If they go through these they will face no problems. I case they do face any problems, they need to contact our helpdesk, which will guide them and help them complete their process.

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Our system will be able to handle registrations easily: Navin Kumar, Chairman, GST Network - Economic Times

‘I felt relieved’ – What happens when you ditch social media – BBC News


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'I felt relieved' - What happens when you ditch social media
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"I deleted the account for my own peace of mind but I do think Facebook needs to put something into action that deletes the bullies accounts instead. It's unfair." Forty percent of people surveyed said they felt upset if nobody liked their selfie and ...

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Fresh flaws in e-Medhabruti scholarship – HERE. NOW

July 20 2017

9,310total views, 4,414views today

Bhubaneswar: Despite prompt action and implementation of online procedure, irregularities have been made at institute-level in uploading of merit details of students for selection of the e-Medhabruti scholarship scheme of higher education department. This time the government itself has found the irregularities. The government has invited online applications from the students for award of fresh and renewal scholarship under e-medhabruti scholarship scheme and the applications were verified offline by the concerned institution heads. It was found that the marks figured by the institutions is not matching with the original marks obtained by the concerned student, official sources said. However, the government has not distributed the scholarship to the students found ineligible during verification. After finding the irregularities, additional chief GVV Sarma Wednesday written letter to all principals and asked them to upload details of students like income certificate, mark sheets, resident certificate and bank accounts. For the year 2016-17, the list of provisionally selected students was uploaded on the website on 22.05.2017 with instruction to the principals to verify the non-validated applications by 07.06.2017. However, it is a matter of serious concern that less than 15 per cent of institutions have replied so far. Even among the validated cases, it was found that ineligible applicants have also been validated leading to doubts whether the principal had actually verified with due application of mind, Sarma said in his letter. The inconsistencies include marks claimed by students not matching with the marks list given by Board of Secondary Education (BSE) and Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE), he pointed out. In order to expedite disposal of e-Medhabruti scholarships to eligible students, the government has prescribed new procedure and asked the principals to follow it. It has been decided that for both the year 2016-17 and 2017-18, the fresh as well as renewal cases, will be authenticated online by the head of the institution or principal of the college. This means no further offline documents will be entertained. The secretary has instructed the principals to collect students details including income certificate, mark sheets, resident certificate, caste certificate (for SC and ST students) and bank accounts and verify as per the e-Medhabruti guidelines. If the application of the student is found valid, then the principals would upload the details of students in the website (www.medhabruti.org). The principals have to authenticate the applications of the students for the year 2016-17 by August 10 and August 20 for the year 2017-18. If any principal or head of the institution would be personally responsible for any further irregularities, the government warned. Earlier, gross irregularities have been reported in selection of applicants and distribution of scholarship to the students. After that, the government has made it online. The government provides `10,000 every year to each engineering and professional degree student and PG Merit students, `12,000 to Special Girl Merit, `5,000 to senior Merit and `3,000 to junior merit students who qualifies for e-Medhabruti scholarship.

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Hands-On: The Mira Prism Headset Wants To Be The Google Daydream Of AR – UploadVR

When Ben Taft and Matt Stern, two of the co-founders of Mira, opened up the box of the Prism AR headset for me for the first time Ill be honest: I wasnt that impressed. Having tried the HoloLens and Meta 2 Id seen what extremely expensive AR devices were capable of (again: not that impressed personally) so I wasnt going to hold my breath for this relatively cheap looking pair of lenses attached to a glorified visor. But after trying them out for myself Ive gotta say I changed my mind.

The Prism AR headset, from new company Mira, is lightweight, cheap, and surprisingly effective. All you do is clip your smartphone into the devices holder, the screen reflects images onto the lenses in front of your face, and then you can easily see and interact with everything right there in front of you. It helps that the field of view is surprisingly large when compared to the likes of the postage-stamp sized view in the Microsoft HoloLens.

In addition to announcing the device today, Mira is announcing $1.5 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital, Troy Capital Partners, S-Cubed Capital, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, global will.i.am, Jaunt VR founder Jens Christensen, and more.

Instead of relying on hand-based gesture controls every Prism will come with a controller you hold in your hand similar to the Samsung Gear VR or Google Daydream controller. The design principles, style, color, and controller arent the only things that reminded me of the Daydream though the co-founders themselves are pretty honest about the inspiration.

Whereas the HoloLens, Meta, and other contemporary AR devices are aiming at a high-end market with only devkits right now, the Prism is launching a single device with a controller thats all powered wirelessly by your smartphone for just $99. Since the phone powers everything no separate devkit is even required.

As developers, we wanted a way to build and experiment in AR without the need for expensive equipment, and as AR enthusiasts, we wanted the opportunity to play and explore without limits. We challenged ourselves to build a mobile headset that would make AR accessible to anyone, said Taft, co-founder and CEO of Mira, in a prepared statement. Prism is a bridge between the physical and digital worlds and Mira is creating the thread that lets people connect and share experiences.

Taft and Stern explained to me that the core inspiration behind the Prism was a desire to get peoples gaze off of their phones and back to the world around them. After deleting social media off of his phone completely, Taft realized how freeing it felt. Now with Prism, the two realities are able to merge together seamlessly.

Obviously this evokes a similar promise that weve heard time and time again with AR technology and frankly we arent there yet, but the low cost and ease-of-use the Prism represents is certainly a step in the right direction.

For my hands-on time with the device they walked me through the setup process that involved calibrating the controller and getting used to wearing a 360-degree set of AR lenses. They sat around my head comfortably and hung in front of my eyes. There was plenty of room to keep my standard everyday glasses on still.

Stern (right) and I (left) playing a multiplayer AR game on two Prism headsets.

The two main demos I tried involved spinning around in circles while shooting aliens, similar to Face Raiders on the Nintendo 3DS, and guiding a rolling doughnut through a maze reminiscent of Pac-Man. For the latter demo Stern actually put on a second Prism headset and joined in through wireless networking. We were able to both look down and see the same maze on the table using the AR card marker, shown above. The image you see was taken using Miras Spectator Mode which allows anyone with an iOS device or iPad to watch the experience happening in real-time.

The Mira Prism is far from being the most advanced device on the market, but its not trying to be. With a goal of fulfilling the role of being the Google Daydream of AR, there are a lot of hurdles left to cross still.

When it launches there will be a handful of apps available, but most of the responsibility falls in the laps of intrepid developers to make content for the device or add AR modes onto existing mobile apps. Software sells hardware so a compelling reason to own one of these has yet to really arise other than the novelty factor alone.

The Prism is a big move for ARs step towards mass adoption. If youre interested in learning more you can visit the official website to learn more and pre-order yours for $99. Devices will ship to developers this fall with consumer units should start arriving before the end of the year. At launch the device will be iOS only with Android support coming later.

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Bombay High Court quashes PIL seeking 50 per cent seats for ‘non-minority students’ in minority institutions – The Indian Express

By: Express News Service | Mumbai | Published:July 19, 2017 1:52 am If the directions as sought for by the petitioner are issued, disregarding all the subsequent developments, it will lead to a chaotic situation and disrupt the entire admission process in the State of Maharashtra. Resultantly, the petition is dismissed, said Chief Justice Manjula Chellur.

The Bombay High Court Tuesday dismissed a public interest litigation seeking to keep aside 50 per cent seats for non-minority students in minority institutions. The PIL also alleged lack of transparency in the admission process, saying more than the assigned percentage of students under minority quota were given seats through backdoor entry.

If the directions as sought for by the petitioner are issued, disregarding all the subsequent developments, it will lead to a chaotic situation and disrupt the entire admission process in the State of Maharashtra. Resultantly, the petition is dismissed, said Chief Justice Manjula Chellur.

The petition was filed by an NGO, Forum for Justice in Education, against the state government and colleges established and administered by Shri Vile Parle Kelavani Mandal. The petitioner had referred to newspaper reports regarding the manner in which the colleges run by Shri Vile Parle Kelavani Mandal have admitted their students. The court pointed out that the state had issued government resolutions keeping in mind Supreme Court judgments regarding this issue to streamline the entire process.

A perusal of the government resolutions issued from 2009 onwards shows that the state government has taken a decision to make the process of admission of students online. The GRs take in their ambit the minority institutions as well. The entire admission process is done online. The admission to all these categories is on merit. The minority institutions have to upload their management quota as well as the in-house quota and the system adopted is transparent, said the court.

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Silicon Valley’s Bonfire of the Vainglorious – lareviewofbooks

JULY 17, 2017

From all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil Good Lord, deliver us.

Book of Common Prayer, 1928

NO MORE SEX! was the unexpected news that Londons Daily Herald brought its readers in February 1929. Those intrigued enough to continue reading found yet more startling information on WHAT HUMANS MAY BE LIKE ANOTHER DAY such as MEN WITH EARS UNDER LUNGS by the same scientifically pedigreed author. The source: John Desmond Bernal, a young Irishman whose daring new book, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, offered a PEEP INTO THE FUTURE.

A crystallographer and molecular biologist, Bernal was familiar to the denizens of Cambridge and Bloomsbury for his piercing eyes, rolling gait, and Marxist beliefs. He counted H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and C. P. Snow among his colleagues, and at least three Nobel Prize winners among his protges. As a scientific humanist, he believed that rational thought coupled with radical new technologies would enable modern society to confront the three enemies of the rational soul, as he called them.

First among these enemies was The World, by which he meant the limits of terrestrial resources and the sheer unpredictability of our planets environment. He proposed that people leave the planet, with its massive, unintelligent forces of nature, heat and cold, winds, rivers, matter and energy, and expand out into the cosmos, where they could establish permanent settlements with free communication and voluntary associations of interested persons. In this way, people would also free themselves from the shackles of earthly politics and societal mores.

But to thrive in these new environments, humans would have to overcome the limits of their bodies what he called The Flesh. For Bernal, this demanded radical surgery, the replacement of organs and tissues by mechanical substitutes, and the directed modification of humanitys genome. Eventually, these new and improved humans, if we could still call them that, would acquire a form of immortality, preserving their ideas and memories by capitalizing on the electronics and machines with which they were likely to be conjoined.

One problem remained, however. For all their technological wizardry, people were still, well, people. Could they overcome the obstacles placed before them by The Devil, Bernals third enemy? No matter how much science advanced, humanitys desires and fears [] imaginations and stupidities would likely remain a treacherous foe. To achieve their glorious future, people would have to transcend their greed, gullibility, and pretensions to godhood.

Bernals rough sketch resonated with an set of ideas circulating among British scientists in the 1920s. Just a few years earlier, Julian Huxley, a British evolutionary biologist whose brother Aldous would go on to author Brave New World, proposed the term transitional human to refer to a person who had deliberately modified and improved his or her own physical and biological architecture. In his 1927 book Religion Without Revelation, he imagined what would happen when humanity decided to transcend itself [] realizing new possibilities of and for [] human nature. By embracing the zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities, Huxley predicted humanity would finally be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. He termed this new secular faith in the future transhumanism.

Despite the tragic history of eugenics in the first half of the 20th century, the notion of an improved people and other such transhumanist ideas continued to percolate among futurists. Even before the cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard left the Earths atmosphere, medical researchers discussed avenues for altering human biology with chemicals and machines in order to enable long-term space travel, coining the word cyborg in the process. But this interest remained low-key until the late 1980s, when a small but creative cohort of future-leaning techno-hipsters in coastal California embraced transhumanisms flexible tenets. As cultural critics Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron wrote in a classic 1995 essay critiquing the dot-com era, this Californian Ideology blended the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies with the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. The technology journalist Paulina Borsook characterized the ensuing attitude toward society and government as cyber-selfish.

From the Bay Area, for example, a slickly produced magazine called Mondo 2000 introduced readers to virtual reality, hacker culture, smart drugs, life extension, and nanotechnologies. Its debut issue derided the old future as being about going back to the land, growing tubers and soybeans, reading by oil lamps. Finite possibilities and small is beautiful. It was boring! With the Cold War ending and cyberspace beckoning, theres a new whiff of apocalypticism across the land. A general sense that we are living at a very special juncture in the evolution of the species. But where Bernal and Huxley envisioned biological transformations that could potentially benefit society as a whole, this new cult of transhumanists, death defeaters, and allied techno-enthusiasts focused on the self: the perfection of body and mind as individual self-fulfillment. In California, the net and nanotechnology met Narcissus.

Mark OConnells open-minded new book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among the Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death offers an update on the desires, dreams, and delusions of late 20th- and early 21st-century technological optimists. With a practiced journalists sense of engagement and empathy leavened by healthy skepticism, OConnell describes the peculiar constellation of scientists, seekers, grifters, and con artists orbiting techno-optimist communities over the past half century. Hoping to become rich, famous, and/or immortal, this population encompasses a seemingly dizzying array of types and propositions that can, Id argue, be cleaved into three basic camps.

First, there are the cooks. Their approach to increasing peoples life spans is based on chemistry, genetics, medicine, and other tools of biotechnology. Prominent among them today is English biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey. Born in 1963, de Grey took a PhD in 2000 from Cambridge for research into how inhibiting damage to mitochondrial DNA could extend life spans. Three years later, he co-founded the Methuselah Foundation to shed light on the processes of aging and find ways to extend healthy life. Six years after that, he started the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence(SENS) Research Foundation. Based in Mountain View, California, a few miles from Googles HQ and Stanford University and adjacent to a Jehovahs Witnesses Hall, its fortunes were boosted by Silicon Valley investors and de Greys own multimillion dollar inheritance. Public appearances on shows like Good Morning America and popular books like his 2008 Ending Aging transformed de Grey into a highly visible spokesperson for the immortality movement, such as it is.

OConnell describes meeting de Grey at a bar in San Francisco, where the aging researcher the adjective works both ways was enjoying a breakfast beer. De Greys presentation of the current state of research into regenerative medicine was as much performative as it was perspicacious. For every day that I bring forward the defeat of aging, he claimed, Im saving a hundred thousand fucking lives! OConnell pushed de Grey on such statements, including whether it was possible for people to live a thousand years. Possible? Sure. But, the guru admitted, its very much dependent on the level of funding.

Ah, yes. The funding. A recent article in The New Yorker features a California living room, circa March 2017, teeming with celebrities, scientists, dot-com zillionaires, and venture capitalists. A tony Tupperware party for those anxious about aging, its attendees learn about and, more notably, market and sell their secrets of longevity. Sergey Brin, the fortysomething co-founder of Google and the 13th richest person on the planet, sadly acknowledges that, yes, he too is mortal, but at least hes planning to do something about it. In fact, Google has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the California Life Company (Calico) to combat aging. Even Town & Country is pushing the immortality movement right along with news of Pippa Middletons honeymoon and revelations about what your travel bag for the Hamptons says about you.

All this would be fine let the ber-rich pursue their batshit crazy schemes but, as OConnell suggests, these expensive, research-intensive solutions to the death problem may then crowd out other issues and approaches. We can already help people millions of them live longer and better lives. Its here! Hail the future! Ah forget about it. No one working on Silicon Valleys Sand Hill Road seems inclined to get super-stoked about pushing for universal health care, better public schools, sane gun laws, and a decent living wage. Why champion urban sanitation and clean drinking water when Bono and Leonardo DiCaprio are probably already on it? Todays transhumanism isnt about helping the masses. Its all about me the glorious, death-deferring me. And as my colleagues Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel have noted, the media isnt helping the situation either; its breathless coverage of high-profile, low-probability, pseudo-Ponzi schemes has downstream effects, encouraging young scientists and engineers to invest their energies in trying to solve the wrong problems. OConnells book places these quixotic efforts in context, offering much-needed critical analysis that never veers into condescension.

The cooks approach to augmenting humanity has found sympathetic communities in places far afield from Silicon Valley. One of OConnells best chapters is titled Biology and its Discontents. In it, he introduces us to a motley collection of practical transhumanists operating a small company called Grindhouse Wetware in Pittsburgh and describes these biohackers zeal for augmenting peoples bodies via implants. In 2013, as proof of concept, one of Grindhouses co-founders had a device implanted into his own body that wirelessly transmits biometric information to his smart phone. (One can only imagine the possibilities if it could be linked to Tinder.) However, as OConnell thoughtfully notes, biohackers enthusiasm for a techno-future where they possess the equivalent of superpowers is muted by something darker. Gesturing to his seemingly normal and well-functioning body, one such biohacker tells OConnell, Im trapped here. Transhumanism, at least in this version, appears less about liberation than self-annihilation. Like the ancient Gnostics, these people believe that our flesh is a prison trapping the soul our bodies, our burdens, as it were. But then, transhumanism has always had more than a whiff of eschatology about it.

This near-contempt for our mortal vessels takes us to a second faction lets call them the coders who are selling their own strategy for defeating or deferring death. Instead of augmenting the body with high-tech gadgets or through genetic and medical tweaks, they propose abandoning the Flesh altogether. The body as a machine to be maintained and augmented is old hat; they focus instead on the mind. Drawing on philosophical debates going back to Descartes, they imagine it as software a program or data file that can be copied indefinitely and remain useful, so long as an operating system exists to run it. Making a copy of a persons mind is the first step toward uploading it for storage and retrieval.

Accomplishing this feat, advocates say, will require a detailed understanding of what consciousness is and how it works, which, in turn, rests on a detailed physical understanding of the physical links and connections between neurons and other cells. Again, OConnell draws our attention to Silicon Valley, where small companies, some with transhumanists at their helm, are developing tools for more precise brain scans and mapping. Their agenda is of course predicated on the assumption that the essence of what makes you uniquely you can be reduced to physical terms: to bits and bytes of information.

Whether people are information, chemistry, or indeed spirit or soul has kept stoned undergraduates talking into the wee hours and philosophers employed, but theres now an undeniable commercial aspect to all of this. OConnell takes us on a detour into the world of robotics and autonomous vehicles, areas of research and development drawing vast sums of money and labor. We meet some of the real actors pulling the strings and bear witness to Silicon Valleys roots [] deep in the blood-rich soil of war. The technologies that companies like Google and Uber are developing for autonomous vehicles are dual-use and can readily be militarized. In fact, given the long history of funding by defense agencies like DARPA, we might as well speak of technologies like the autonomous vehicles prowling San Joses streets as civilianized.

Just as workers and labor unions are concerned about the effects of automation on jobs something OConnell addresses scenarios of mind-uploading easily invite questions of whether our machines will one day supplant us. In 1983, Omni published a short essay by SF writer Vernor Vinge describing a future in which technological change accelerates at an exponential rate. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, Vinge suggested, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding. Sort of like when Trump was elected, but with robots.

Since Vinges essay appeared, people like Ray Kurzweil engineer, transhumanist, and, more recently, Google executive have made considerable money and headlines predicting how technological advances, especially in areas such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology, will drive us to that world-altering moment when there is a rupture in the fabric of human history. In 2009, Kurzweil helped start the Singularity University, located just off interstate 101 in Mountain View. Students from around the world have competed for spots in the programs summer sessions while CEOs, inventors, and investors plunked down $12,000 or more for week-long executive programs on topics like exponential manufacturing and accelerating returns. What they would really benefit from, however, are a few classes at a local community college. In such places, they might learn that if your only model for how technologies develop over time is the cherry-picked exponentiality of examples tracking Moores Law, well, you probably should revise your business plan.

Meanwhile, celebrity technologists like Elon Musk have made headlines simply by expressing their fears about the growing power of artificial intelligence systems. In turn, celebrity interest has created a cottage industry of academic and nonprofit think tanks, many of them in California, devoted to studying existential risks. They are funded in part by technology companies and their executives. A cynic might be so bold as to suggest that the whole enterprise is a self-licking ice cream cone. A realist, at least one focused less on abstractions such as the future of humanity, might argue that the real problems Silicon Valley executives should address have less to do with tomorrows artificial intelligence than with the plain ol natural stupidity eroding and disrupting our civil society today.

The topic of stupidity, in all its many-splendored and undeniably human forms, leads us to the third community of people associated with this ideology. Meet the conned, who, alas, include the author of Valley of the Gods: A Silicon Valley Story. Alexandra Wolfe spins a tale of Silicon Valley absurdity masquerading as altruism, although shes unlikely to pitch it in these terms. Unfortunately, her book also peddles just about every possible stereotype cue the scrawny nerd with thick glasses, baggy jeans, and a T-shirt on page three who cant seem to get laid, and every other variant of the hoodie-clad technological disrupter, creatively destroying all in his path.

The conned in Wolfes superficial fly-through of Silicon Valley include select college-age recipients of fellowships. The deal is this: if accepted, you will receive $100,000. You will also agree to drop out of college for the length of the fellowship while you pursue your entrepreneurial dream. The pied piper peddling this bullshit is Peter Thiel, who announced the eponymous program in 2010. When George Packer profiled him in 2011, Thiel was just another dot-com tycoon professing a slew of contradictory ideas and beliefs. Packer provided an indelible image of Thiel the libertarian no rules! and yet a proponent of life extension live longer! blazing down a California highway in his Mercedes sans seat belt. Besides railing at the uselessness of a college education this from the man blessed with not one but two degrees from Stanford Thiel lambasted the political correctness he thought universities propagated. Such thoughts coming from a gay man whose rights are legally if thanklessly protected in the United States is an eccentricity Wolfe doesnt explore.

The cohort of those conned by Thiels munificence includes the young and oh-so-nave Jonathan Burnham. When we meet him, young Burnham has just received a Thiel fellowship. Asked How would you change the world? Burnham doesnt opt for curing malaria or improving inner cities. Nope. Not disruptive enough. He wants to mine asteroids. By the end of the book, Burnham has received a moon-sized helping of reality. As he told The New York Times, Its been really eye-opening for me to realize that just because you have a big idea doesnt mean thats all its going to take to make something happen. Isnt that the kind of advice that mentors what the Thiel program ostensibly provides are supposed to give their charges? Oh, right. Thats so quaint, so undisruptive.

Wolfe certainly benefited from access to a colorful class of characters, even if they are predominantly male and resolutely infantile. This said, a few women proto-entrepreneurs do appear in Valley of the Gods such as Laura Deming, who dropped out of MIT to pursue research on life extension but they are all too often characterized by what they wear rather than what they think. Wolfes reticence in offering critical analysis is a shame. Surely she could have said something about the deep structural and cultural biases women and people of color face in the tech world and STEM fields in general.

For example, not far away from where some of the Thiel Fellows lived and coded is there a difference? are the 27,000-plus undergraduates of San Jose State University. Many are first-generation college students for whom a college education offers a ladder to the middle class and a decent income. In contrast, Burnhams parents boast about how a Thiel Fellowship offered their kid a new kind of status symbol [] it said their son could get into Harvard but turned it down for something better. Its one thing to write about a group of young people who, after being accepted to Yale, Princeton, and MIT, decided not to attend. Thats their privilege. But when the message is that higher education is for chumps, worth neither time nor public investment well, thats a very different kind of privilege.

Adding insult to injury is Wolfes sometimes shaky understanding of how Silicon Valley got to be the valley of the gods. Even Thiel himself, in his 2016 address to the GOP convention, acknowledged the federal governments role in laying the foundations for the internet. (Uncle Sugar actually funded the engineers who built the infrastructure enabling Thiel to become fabulously wealthy, but, hey, lets not quibble.) Wolfe seems unaware or unwilling to address this inconvenient truth. Instead we get just-so history where Stanford academics and heroic businessmen not decades of massive Cold War defense spending created Silicon Valley. In this story, regulations and rules seem hardly to matter, which may explain why Santa Clara County has two dozen Superfund cleanup sites. And it may explain why, in Wolfes book, we get vignettes about a lobbyist who helped Uber shaft the employees who want to unionize while circumventing local regulations. Move fast and break things indeed!

One might dismiss both OConnell and Wolfes books for reporting about ideas, ideologies, and individuals who could easily be consigned to the margins. That would be a mistake. Peter Thiel matters. He has gone from being a billionaire with some odd ideas ignore, if you can, his interest in parabiosis (i.e., rejuvenation via blood transfusions from young people) to being a billionaire with influence in the White House. In addition, media attention and millions of dollars of private support from Silicon Valley moguls have nudged elements of the transhumanist movement closer to the mainstream. Like economic returns from Bay Area tech companies today, human enhancement technologies of the future will not be evenly distributed. If were now exercised over how the rich get privileged access to airline seats, imagine the reaction from le menu peuple when they see the callow Jared Kushners of tomorrow get brain upgrades while being infused with teenaged blood. Perhaps this explains why some of the United Statess wealthiest people are prepping for the day when the pitchforks come out a veritable bonfire of the vainglorious and they retreat to their converted ICBM silos and island compounds.

There are two futures, the future of desire, and the future of fate, J. D. Bernal said in The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, and mans reason has never learned to separate them. People use technologies to build the future. Visions of technological tomorrows proffered by cooks or coders matter. They matter a great deal. They are inherently political. And despite their pretentions to benefit humanity, they ignore vast swaths of the population. Not to take such visions seriously to treat them as no more than play or whimsy is to be conned.

W. Patrick McCray is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Certain passages in this essay have appeared before in The Visioneers and on the authors website.

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Silicon Valley's Bonfire of the Vainglorious - lareviewofbooks

How to back up your data with Google’s new Backup and Sync feature – TechRepublic

Image: iStockphoto/pixelparticle

In an effort to make it easier for users to back up files to Google Drive, Google recently launched its new Backup and Sync feature. According to a Google blog post, the feature allows users to continuously back up their files to Google Drive from any folder on their local machine.

Backup and Sync works for both Google Photos and Google Drive, replacing the previous Google Photos desktop uploader and Google Drive for Mac and PC, the post said.

In theory, the new tool operates much like the consumer version of Dropbox. Once installed, users simply point to which folder they wish to back up, and the program will continue to upload and sync new data as it is added to the connected folder.

SEE: Cloud Data Storage Policy Template (Tech Pro Research)

To get started using the service, it is important to first check the system requirements and make sure that your machine qualifies. If so, proceed to the Drive download page and/or the Photos download page to download Backup and Sync.

Once you have downloaded the program of your choosing, find the installer in your downloads window and double-click it. Follow the on-screen prompts to install the program for your Mac or PC.

Upon installation, find the application and open it. The, click the blue GET STARTED button at the bottom of the window. You'll be required to sign in with the Google account you wish to connect it to. After putting in your credentials, click the blue NEXT button.

Keep in mind that Google considers this a consumer product, and if you're an enterprise G Suite user, your admin may have blocked access to the Backup and Sync feature.

Once signed in, you will need to choose what folders you wish to sync. All of the folders will be selected by default, so you will need to deselect them if you wish for them not to sync.

Additionally, you will need to choose what quality of files you want to upload. The High quality option is a reduced file size that is uploadable for free. Original quality files will count against your available storage in Drive.

It's important to note that you may need to upgrade your Drive storage to properly use Backup and Sync, and the cost may be more expensive than comparable services as The Next Web noted. Once you've made your selections, click the blue NEXT Button at the bottom.

On the final page, you'll be given the option of whether or not you wish to sync your Drive account back to the machine you're working on, thereby making all of the files already there available locally on your machine. This option is selected by default, so be sure to deselect it if you don't want to sync older Drive data back to your computer. Once you have made your selection, click the blue START button to finish the setup.

Being that Backup and Sync is intended for the consumer audience, enterprise users should exercise caution before downloading it. Be sure to check your company's data policies to make sure that the use of such a tool is in line with company standards and compliance. If you need additional resources to develop a cloud storage policy, check out our templates on Tech Pro Research.

See the rest here:

How to back up your data with Google's new Backup and Sync feature - TechRepublic

Google Nest review: a shopper’s guide to the thoughtful smart home – The Australian Financial Review

Alphabet's Nest Cam Outdoor (left) and Nest Cam Indoor.

Seeing as Nest has finally come to Australia, and seeing as the folks at Nest like to describe their products as "thoughtful" home technology, rather than "smart" home technology, we've found ourselves entertaining a dangerous notion.

What if, heaven forbid, that were actually true?

What if Nest, a company with all the resources in the world given it's owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, actually had thought long and hard about its smart-home products, its smoke detectors, its thermostats and its security cameras? What if those products really were more thoughtful than all the other stuff on the market, the stuff we've spent the last two years reviewing here in the Digital Life Labs, two years of our lives that we're never going to get back?

What would those products look like? Would they be any different from the indoor and outdoor smart-home security cameras and the smart smoke detector that Nest just launched in Australia? Being the thoughtful little gadget reviewers that we are (and what if that were actually true, too?) we've put together a shopping list for you, of some of the things that you should look for if ever you were crazy enough to buy into the shemozzle that is the so-called smart home.

It goes without saying that smart home equipment has to be easy to install. Not everyone is as smart as you are. And, on that front, Nest is as good as you could hope for. Once you've installed the Nest app on your phone and set up a Nest account on the internet, all you have to do is point your phone's camera at the QR code printed on the Nest device, and it's good to go.

And if you install, say, a Nest Cam Indoor security camera together with a Nest Protect smoke alarm, the basic rules governing the interaction between those devices are automatically set up for you, too. The camera automatically activates and starts recording whenever smoke is detected. Nest is good like that.

What needs to be said though is that simplicity shouldn't be bought at the cost of sophistication. If you want to geek out by setting up some peculiar rules for your smart home let's say you want the Nest security camera in your living room to activate and alert you the moment someone tunes the Foxtel box to some adult channel you should be able to program that too, even if it's a little tricky.

Nest isn't good like that. It doesn't expose its controls to other smart-home platforms in your house the way Linksys Wemo devices do and gaining access to those Nest controls outside the house, out in the cloud, is a right pain.

In a thoughtful home, would the connected devices run on batteries or on mains?

For its Nest Cam Indoor and Nest Cam Outdoor security cameras, Nest has opted for mains, which is an imperfect answer, but no more imperfect than opting for batteries the way, say, Netgear's Arlo has.

Particularly when you're installing them outdoors, mains-powered security cameras take a lot more installing, and doubly so with the Nest Cam Outdoor camera, which has a thick power cable that can't be unplugged, meaning you may have to cut and re-terminate it if you need to fit the power cable through a small hole in your brickwork.

But once they're in place, mains powered devices are definitely better. To save power, battery-powered security cameras tend to go to sleep, waking up when motion is detected but never waking up fast enough to actually capture all the motion. The Nest cameras, on the other hand, record all the time, so you never miss a frame of the burglar walking out your door with your TV.

A lot of smart-home equipment seems to have been designed with the US market in mind, where internet upload must be plentiful and fast.

But not everyone has fast broadband upload speeds. Some of us have to live in the world dreamt up by Malcolm Turnbull, where the internet isn't nearly as fast nor as symmetrical as it might be, and in that world a lot of smart-home equipment more or less breaks. Ring's smart doorbell, for instance, is almost completely useless without fast(ish) upload speeds.

Mercifully, Nest lets you tailor your upload speed requirements, lowering the video quality so it matches the quality of your broadband upload connection. Which, unless you are lucky enough to have fibre to the home, is often no more than a trickle.

The only thing more annoying than having a false alarm sent to your phone by your so-called smart home is coming home to discover that someone has walked out with your TV, and your security cameras have completely missed it. Getting the right balance between false positives and false negatives is rare in the smart-home world (Arlo cameras send alerts to your phone whenever a cloud passes in front of the sun, for instance), but Nest is pretty good at it.

For instance, you can set your Nest cameras so they only alert you when they see what they think is a person. In our tests, it worked surprisingly well, and has eliminated almost all the false positives from the system without yet creating any false negatives.

You can also set your Nest camera so it alerts you when it sees any type of motion, which will all-but eliminate the risk of false negatives, but will tend to give you more false positives. However, at least the false alarms will appear on your phone with a different message ("Your Kitchen camera has noticed some activity", as opposed to "Your Kitchen camera thinks that it saw someone"), so you're far less likely to have a heart attack when you see it.

You can also set the Nest cameras so they alert you when they hear noises, like people speaking or dogs barking, but in our tests that feature only works when people speak quite loudly very near the camera, which seems a little useless.

In an ideal, thoughtful world, smart-home equipment would function locally as well as in the cloud. Rules, such as "start recording whenever you see motion", would work even when there was no internet connection, and interactions between devices, even those from different manufacturers, would take place directly or via a local hub, without the need for a cloud service to act as the go between.

The trouble is, that doesn't mesh with the way the smart-home manufacturers operate. Most manufacturers want you to buy a monthly subscription to their services, and so they put things like file storage, image processing and device interactivity in the cloud where you have to pay for them.

Nest is more guilty of this than most. You can't connect a Nest camera to, say, a Philips Hue light globe without going into the cloud, which means it's too slow to be used for simple home automations, such as automatically turning lights on the moment the camera detects motion.

Worse still, you can't even connect two Nest devices together locally. In order to trigger Nest cameras to start videoing whenever it detects smoke, the Nest Protect smoke alarm has to notify the Nest cloud service of the alert, and get it to turn on the cameras.

What if the cloud service isn't available? What if the internet connection to the house is down because, you know, the house is on fire?

See the rest here:

Google Nest review: a shopper's guide to the thoughtful smart home - The Australian Financial Review

Three Reasons You Won’t Return After This Life – Big Think

Many people are deeply invested in what happens when they die. Entire religions are constructed around theories of the afterlife. Christianity and Islam promise special places to go to while Buddhism prescribes breaking free from the hamster wheel of existence to leave the cycle of death and birth. Is any of this actually possible?

Stephen Batchelor is skeptical. In Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist the former monk points out that the Buddha avoided discussing body-mind dualism, which the notion of rebirth relies on, while refusing to speculate on metaphysics. The religion that formed after his death injected this rebirth problem into its theology despite the Buddhas insistence that it is not a meaningful question.

Batchelor cites many Buddhist thinkers that make rebirth the foundation of Buddhism. For example, the sixth/seventh century Indian philosopher Dharmakrti was a dualist who insisted the mind is immaterial and nothing material, such as a body, could give rise to cognition. When Batchelor expressed his skepticismDharmakrti never mentions the brain because he had no access to fMRI technologyhis teacher promised that the student would realize truth through meditation.

Thus the proof of rebirth rested on a subjective experience of a non-physical entity in a non-ordinary state of awareness. If you lack such an experience yourself, then you have to trust the word of meditators more accomplished than oneself.

Which is the same reason the Buddha left his two yoga teachers; he would not take their word for what he had to figure out for himself. When he did come to a conclusion it had nothing to do with the afterlife and everything with recognizing illusions we suffer during this lifetime. Batchelor compares this sort of blind faith with Christians mystics knowing God and people claiming to have been abducted by aliens. Theres no way to test their claims.

Anecdotes run into trouble because today we can measure consciousness. While we might not have discovered a mechanism that turns consciousness on (most consider it an emergent phenomenon) we do know it shuts off when the body dies. No body, no mindno dualism.

Which is the topic of Michael Shermers forthcoming book, Heavens to Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia. In a recent column the Skeptic magazine founder lists three reasons you wont survive past death.

Your memory cannot be restored

Transmigration relies on the notion that you are a collection of memories that survives intact. But thats not how memory works. Every time you recall a memory it has changed from the original experience. Whatever has happened since has influenced your retelling of that moment. We are not static animals; were fluid processes continually remembering the past differently dependent upon the situation. You feel like the same person that woke up yesterday, but from a neurological perspective its not quite you. The continuum of identity is likely a survival trait that enables us to function within societies, but as the Buddha knew, identity is an illusion. A highly elaborate one that persists for decades (or even a century), but a ruse nonetheless.

Duplication doesnt work

Therefore theres no exact replica of you that survives beyond death. A twin brother or sister might be a copy of you, but its not you. Therefore making a copy of your brains connectome, which Shermer writes is a diagram of its neural connections, and putting it into another body flies in the face of basic biology. As Shermer concludes, Neither duplication nor resurrection can instantiate you in another plane of existence.

Youre more than your memories

Shermer notes that some researchers speculate that we each have a memory self and a point of view self. If you upload your memories (MEMself) into a computer your point of view (POVself) returns intact. But memory is not only dependent upon the experience itself, but also your current environment. We constantly change our point of view dependent upon audience. We recall differently depending on whos around and where we are. The notion that your entire point of view would survive intact is impossible. Death, he writes, is a permanent break in continuity.

Buddhist rebirth relies on karma, which is often treated as you get what you pay for. Yet this is disproven when good people needlessly suffer and criminals achieve lucrative positions in government and business. Ive heard it expressed that they must have done good deeds in a previous life or theyll suffer in the future. Such are the ridiculous lengths people go in trying to reason why someone suffers or succeeds due to this misguided idealization of karma.

Instead lets consider a seemingly benign example. In Los Angeles I often observe people stop two or three car lengths behind other cars at red lights because theyre consumed with whatever is on their phone. They often dont realize when the light changes because theyre not paying attention to the light or for the welfare of anyone else.

Karma is not going to get them, but their actions do have consequences, which is the intended meaning of the word karma. First off, cars stuck behind are left to wait until another light because that first car remained a few car lengths behind. Factor in the additional time that it takes for the texter to reorient to their surroundings and you have a perfect working definition of karma: your actions have consequences. Your inability to pay attention to your surroundings affects others negatively in this case. You might have made someone later for an important appointment, or you simply annoyed a line of people behind you because you had to know how well your latest selfie performed on Instagram.

Your actions and personality are truly what gets left behind. These are passed down from life to life: ideas, biases, diseases, religions, money. Just because youre not remembered later does not mean you didn't influence others; just because everyone remembers your name does not mean you benefited this planet. Your actions always have consequences, many of which youll never realize. Thats karma. It's nothing magical. Just put down your phone to look around and you'll see it everywhere.

In her book, How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett writes that it takes many brains to make a mind. This is true in a social species. I offload pieces of memory to my wife, who handles certain tasks in our marriage, just as she offloads to me. Thats why when a longtime partner dies the other half tends to feel a piece of them has perished. That might seem sad, but its quite beautiful to have such a strong connection to another.The residue of your life sticks to others and their consciousness.

Which is why the metaphysical idea of reincarnation is unnecessary and even distracting from what matters in life. Shermer concludes that some find his skepticism dispiriting, but he believes it to be the opposite.

Awareness of our mortality is uplifting because it means that every moment, every day and every relationship matters. Engaging deeply with the world and with other sentient beings brings meaning and purpose.

--

Derek's latest book,Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health, is out now. He is based in Los Angeles. Stay in touch onFacebookandTwitter.

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Three Reasons You Won't Return After This Life - Big Think

Hack your commute: Watch a startup pitch – Marketing Week

Whether youre on the lookout for ideas to add to your incubator, fancy pretending youre a judge on Dragons Den or are simply keen to understand the entrepreneurial mindset better, you dont have to be in a concrete-walled warehouse in Old Street to connect with startups.

Sites such as HumbleRise.com and TheStartupPitch.com offer platforms for entrepreneurs to upload video pitches that are publicly available and free to view.

Both sites are pretty basic, and the pitches themselves can be rough around the edges; but given they are relatively untapped resources compared to startup blogs such as TechCrunch, there is always a chance of happening across the next undiscovered Google or Airbnb.

Both sites are heavily focused on US-based pitches, though TheStartupPitch is UK-run. It posts website and social media details of the businesses featured.

Many of HumbleRises pitches come from applications made to the Y Combinator startup accelerator. Company founders can be contacted through the site, but only by giving your email address.

Continued here:

Hack your commute: Watch a startup pitch - Marketing Week

Trevor ES Smith | Your Relationship Is Settled But … – Jamaica Gleaner

Your relationship has navigated dangerous curves, hit bumps, and fallen into a few pot holes, but the wheels are in tact, and there is a commitment to ride out the journey together.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the relationship. You might have points of disagreements, but nothing that is potentially disastrous. Yet, if you think about it, the magic may be missing. Some of the gloss has been removed.

You have worked hard at your relationship and invested heavily in it. In the same way that your financial ventures should work for you, investment in your relationship should offer benefits.

The sense of security is priceless. Peace of mind is something to be treasured. But there is clearly more. Get more!

There might be valid reasons why you can't physically relive some of the 'good times', but thank God for equipping us with a memory.

Sharing precious memories - ideally supported by photos and videos - in the company of family and friends can flicker the flames. The next generation are always interested in getting titbits about your experiences. Recapture the art of storytelling while putting new energy into your relationship.

One great idea is to capture the storytelling events on video for posterity. Tablets or smartphones can do the trick, and you can upload them to Vimeo or even a private YouTube channel. Don't be put off by the technology. There is a family member or neighbour who will sort that out.

Your job is to get your partner to sit with you and share memories on camera.

With the blessings of stability and peace of mind come the challenges of complacency and monotony. Over the years you follow familiar patterns, and one day feels like the next. Genuine excitement and curiosity are lost for the most part.

Routine have a way of extinguishing the flame. If that continues long enough, they become the new normal and you might not even be consciously aware of dying embers.

One solution is to disrupt the routine and re-energise your relationship. Take turns at coming up with something engaging and different. This need not be expensive or require a lot of effort. The objective is to disrupt the routine and inject feelings of expectancy and intrigue.

This can even be done indoors, although a change of environment is a good idea.

The truth is, we are plain tired. We work hard and juggle many interests, and that saps our energy. We just want to claim any leftover moments to collapse into our personal space and recharge our batteries.

That is understandable. However, the question still stands, why would you work so hard on an investment and not seek to draw on it?

Why would you have this treasured asset and ignore what it has to offer?

In order to re-energise your relationship, you need to find ways to unwind and set aside periods for joint relaxation.

Reconnecting through the pursuit of shared interests is a powerful, multidimensional solution. You get to unwind, share quality time together, improve communication and have fun. This works wonders for your health and state of mind as added benefits.

Your flirting muscles might have grown weak due to lack of use. Put them back in action to re-energise your relationship.

Change the way you dress and carry yourself in the home. Ballroom attire is not required, but you might accept that some of what you currently wear does not present you in the best light to this individual with whom you are flirting.

Corny pickup lines are not out of place and might generate laughter (good for your health and your relationship).

If you want to re-energise your relationship with immediate results and make it last go to: http://www.successwithpeople.org/how-to-bless-your-marriage/

- Trevor E.S. Smith has published two relationship books. He is a director of the Success with People Academy - A SHRM-preferred provider and home of the SHRM-accredited 3-D team leader certification: Leading difficult, dominant and diverse personalities.

The Success with People Academy team are world-leading implementers of personal behavioural DNA analyses and 360 surveys on the revolutionary FinxS platform from extended DISC.

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Trevor ES Smith | Your Relationship Is Settled But ... - Jamaica Gleaner

Glitch Creates Unintentional Extra Ending In Sci-Fi Steam Game – Kotaku

Event 0 is a science fiction game that came out last year. Since release, players have discovered four different endings to the gamewhich is strange, because according to the designer, it only has three.

The emotional core of Event 0 rest between the player and an AI called Kaizen-85. Throughout the game, players get to know Kaizen by interacting at terminals and typing out questions, learning more and more about the games story. At the end of the game, players must decide whether or not to upload their consciousness to a computer. Theres only supposed to be three endings:

However, players found that if you treat Kaizen nice, dont upload your consciousness but also save an experimental engine that he wanted to destroy, Kaizen will begrudgingly turn the ship to Earth. Game designer Emmanuel Corno learned about this ending only after looking at the games Wikipedia page and was surprised.

The fourth ending shouldnt exist, according to Corno, but is the result of an unknown glitch in the game. Kaizen is supposed to always turn down the player if they disobey him and save the engines but something within the games code is faulty, creating an extra ending with a bit more nuance.

This is crazy, Corno told Kotaku. Kaizen isnt supposed to let anyone get back with the Singularity Drive to Earth. This is how we coded the AI. I have absolutely no idea how this happens.

Although the ending is the result of a glitch, it accidentally adds additional nuance to the player relationship with Kaizen and creates more consequences for their interactions. The AI planned by the developers to never forgive the players betrayal can actually do just that. The glitch generated discussion when the game released, with fans talking about what endings were the best. Many players were surprised by the ending since it goes against one of Kaizens main motivations.

It sounds bizarre, one player said. Kaizen has been hellbent on destroying that damn drive.

Ive never seen that happen ever, another said. He keeps on insisting that you destroy the drive.

The ending is real and you can watch it here. Even if it isnt what was intended, there are currently no plans to get rid of the glitch.

Now, I dont want to fix it. I love the idea that we made a game with an ending so secret we didnt know it by ourselves, Corno said. Even if it contradicts some golden rules of Kaizen, it also make it more human. People can change their mind. So does Kaizen.

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Glitch Creates Unintentional Extra Ending In Sci-Fi Steam Game - Kotaku

Glitch Creates Unintentional Extra Ending In Sci-Fi Steam Game – Kotaku Australia

Event 0 is a science fiction game that came out last year. Since release, players have discovered four different endings to the game which is strange, because according to the designer, it only has three.

The emotional core of Event 0 rests between the player and an AI called Kaizen-85. Throughout the game, players get to know Kaizen by interacting at terminals and typing out questions, learning more and more about the game's story. At the end of the game, players must decide whether or not to upload their consciousness to a computer. There's only supposed to be three endings:

However, players found that if you treat Kaizen nice, don't upload your consciousness but also save an experimental engine that he wanted to destroy, Kaizen will begrudgingly turn the ship to Earth. Game designer Emmanuel Corno learned about this ending only after looking at the game's Wikipedia page and was surprised.

The fourth ending shouldn't exist, according to Corno, but is the result of an unknown glitch in the game. Kaizen is supposed to always turn down the player if they disobey him and destroy the engines, but something within the game's code is faulty, creating an extra ending with a bit more nuance.

"This is crazy," Corno told Kotaku. "Kaizen isn't supposed to let anyone get back with the Singularity Drive to Earth. This is how we coded the AI. I have absolutely no idea how this happens."

Although the ending is the result of a glitch, it accidentally adds additional nuance to the player relationship with Kaizen and creates more consequences for their interactions. The AI planned by the developers to never forgive the player's betrayal can actually do just that. The glitch generated discussion when the game released, with fans talking about what endings were the best. Many players were surprised by the ending since it goes against one of Kaizen's main motivations.

"It sounds bizarre," one player said. "Kaizen has been hellbent on destroying that damn drive."

"I've never seen that happen ever," another said. "He keeps on insisting that you destroy the drive."

The ending is real and you can watch it here. Even if it isn't what was intended, there are currently no plans to get rid of the glitch.

"Now, I don't want to fix it. I love the idea that we made a game with an ending so secret we didn't know it by ourselves," Corno said. "Even if it contradicts some golden rules of Kaizen, it also make it more human. People can change their mind. So does Kaizen."

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Scott Ludlam, co-deputy leader of the Federal Greens and perhaps the strongest advocate for the video game industry in Australia, has resigned from his party and the Federal Parliament effective immediately.

"I think we'd do better with a healer," I suggested to my Overwatch team earlier this week. We were in the spawn room defending the Temple of Anubis and, without a healer, we would quickly forfeit the objective. Not even the slightest pause passed before a teammate told me that, instead, "What we need is another man."

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Glitch Creates Unintentional Extra Ending In Sci-Fi Steam Game - Kotaku Australia

TomTom Adventurer GPS Watch Designed With Hikers and Skiers in Mind – Tech.Co

In an expanding world of Android Smartwatches and the Apple Watch, there has been a recent shift in how athletes track and monitor their progress. Now, many GPS trackers are including extra bells and whistles that allow you to receive texts, use mini-apps, and otherwise become distracted from their ultimate goal; however, TomTom decided to kick it old school with their latest Adventurer watch while undercutting the competitors. From the basics such as running and cycling, to the off the beaten path of trail-running, hiking, and skiing, the TomTom Adventurer is designed to not just track your progress, but ensure you go where youre intending.

If you enjoy hiking such as myself, but cant find your way out of a paper bag, using TomToms GPX upload feature will solve your problem. Rather than a separate GPS designed for hiking, the Adventurer has one built, but you will need to plot your course in preparation.

This deviates from most other GPS watches that simply just track where you have gone or use the technology to report back progress, and for those that do include similar features, they typically cost another $200 on top of TomToms $350. The Adventurer also happens to look a bit better than those watches to boot.

While training for triathlons and in an attempt to not get lost on a metric century ride on the outskirts of Charleston, SC, I gave the TomTom Adventurer numerous tests and environments to work through over the course of a month.

Before we break down how the TomTom Adventurer did across triathlon training and the not so metric century ride, lets dig into whats in the box, what it tracks, and how it stands out.

For starters, the Adventurer tracks everything youd expect from a mid-tier fitness tracker and GPS watch, and then some.

For activities it will track: steps, active minutes, distance, heart rate, speed, altitude, 3D distance, pace, calories burned, even your sleep habits. As for specific activity types it will track: running, treadmill runs, trail runs, hiking, cycling, indoor cycling (requires a power meter), swimming, skiing, snowboarding, gym training, freestyle, and a stopwatch. Interestingly for its ability to upload GPX courses, youd think it would also include things such as kayaking or paddleboarding, but those are not available. Sensor wise, it includes an optical heart rate tracker, barometer, compass, GPS, and motion.

The standout feature here is the ability to upload your own GPX courses and trials. Unlike standard GPS and smartwatches, this will let you use something like Strava to plot a course anywhere in the world, find your entry point, and then it will help you navigate it. If you deviate from your course, the compass feature is accessible to find your way back. This is a super helpful feature for those who go off the beaten path, and is not something youll find in the Apple Watch, Android Wear, or basic GPS trackers.

As for what you get in the box, the TomTom Adventurer comes with an adjustable wristband, the tracker, two chargers, the bluetooth earbuds, and extra earbud tips.

Beyond the basics youll also get 3GB of built in storage for music. Using the desktop TomTom app, you can sync files from your computer that do not contain DRM. The process is relatively easy and you get general playback controls on the watch.

While we wont get too detailed with the earbuds, they actually sound surprisingly good. One of the chief complaints I usually have for earbuds is that there is some sort of governor on how loud they get, but these things will probably make you go deaf. With that said, the extra tips and accessories will make it a comfortable fit while youre off doing your thing, and you wont even need to bring your phone. Its sweat resistant too, so when I started dumping gallons of water on my head in the 110 Charleston humidity, they still stayed in.

Overall the features that are available with the TomTom Adventurer are topnotch, especially the ability to upload your own GPX based trail. Ill get into that a bit more during the cycling section. The only weird issue that I ran into while using the watch had to do with an sync error. If you set the clock to 12 hours and then sync it to a computer, it will kick back into 24 hour mode. Its a minor annoyance, but worth the mention.

Like any GPS watch, running with the TomTom Adventurer is as simple as using the directional pad to select outdoor run, letting the GPS connect up (which is quite fast), and youre on your way. You can also select more advance options such as training goals, heart rate zones, and a few others. In addition to training, you can set a specific playlist and trial if you have one uploaded.

As youre running youll typically see three sets of data, but by pressing on the down button you can toggle through them. Things like pace, overall time, speed, distance, and heart rate zone are available. Once youre done, press and hold the left button and itll pause your activity, and then you hold it again to complete it. Oddly enough to find past activities that were tracked you have to go back into the run option, then press up. From there you can scroll through by date.

To track your runs youre going to get the best of three worlds. First, the TomTom app is wonderful, but on top of that it integrates with Runtastic and Strava. Although you do have to manually tell the app and watch to sync or to connect it with your computer, their integration with both of these work better than the Apple Watch (swimming in particular).

As far as comfort goes, the watch itself is lightweight and doesnt feel bulky, and this is coming from a guy with relatively small wrists. Most GPS watches look like giant dishes, and this has just the right about of screen to easily see while running.

Just like the running tracker, TomTom Adventurers cycling portion allows you to track the same attributes, as well as cadence if you have the sensor on your bike. For cyclists, speed alone isnt that important, but its being able to keep a consistent speed paired with hitting your target heart rate. When in cycling mode youll be able to toggle over to the right and it will highlight your current heart rate and map it to a five point scale (easy sprint) to show you how hard youre working. Other than that it works just as well as the running component, and the GPS was mapped against both the Apple Watch and iPhone 7 Plus with similar results.

The standout feature on the TomTom Adventurer is tied to the GPX Upload. If you just want to do basic triathlon training and plan on staying on the road, TomTom Spark will do the trick. However, if you are keen on getting yourself lost on purpose, building out a trail is as easy as pulling up Strava, creating a map, exporting it, and then uploading it through TomToms desktop app. Fortunately due to where I live, winging your path is not advised when cycling, and they dont call Charleston the worst city for cyclists for a reason. My face and head can attest to why you should always plot a course for long distance rides, which is exactly why I used the watch to plot out a metric century ride (slightly over 60 miles).

Even while on the bike it was easy to follow the general direction youll need to track against, but you wont get things like a 3D view or even the road. Its an incredibly simple system, but that also keeps you from getting distracted. Go too far off course? Itll just as easily help you track back to where you left off. This was a particularly helpful feature when a kind southern individual in a giant truck laid their horn down as they got behind me, causing me to ride off the road and blow out a tube. Bless his heart. Charleston riding issues aside, the GPX upload feature worked wonderfully, and will be very handy when its time for hiking during the Spring and Fall.

Unlike running or cycling, swimming has a bit more limited features for tracking. Due to the watches heart rate tracker (which does work on a very sweaty arm), it simply doesnt work underwater. For the most part you need a special heart rate monitor for swimming anyways, although sometimes the Apple Watch does pull it. After putting in the size of the pool, TomTom Adventurer will track your speed, duration, swolf, lengths of the pool, spl, and calories burned. When compared to the Apple Watch using their built in activity tracker, TomTom was actually more accurate. Usually the Apple Watch over reports distance.

Overall the three primary activities I tested the TomTom Adventurer with worked wonderfully. While I dont want to assume it works just as well for skiing and snowboarding, Id take a wild guess that it does.

We all know it, fitness watches are usually just outright ugly. They are bulky, filled with weird shapes, and scream that they are sporty. While the TomTom Adventurer is no Apple Watch, it is a simple and clean cut design. Now you wont be wearing this with a suit, but at the same time its something that can easily be worn through most of your regular day. Its also comfortable enough where you can wear it from the time you wake up all the way until the time you wake up again.

Unlike most other GPS watches, the TomTom Adventurer requires you to pop the tracker out of the band to be charged. It uses a proprietary charging doohickey that either connects to your computer or a USB wall outlet. Its a bit odd at first, but I ran into no issues with it.

Overall the design of the watch makes it appealing, but it being lightweight and comfortable is the selling point. The only issue I found with the design is that for the backlight to kick in, you have to cover over the display with the palm of your hand. You can also set it in night mode while in an activity, but the hand covering part was a bit odd.

Should you buy the TomTom Adventurer GPS watch? If youre looking for a no-frills tracker that will not only track your runs, swims, skiing, trail-running, hiking, cycling and more, but also guide you through trails, absolutely. While the price may seem a bit higher than one may expect for what I dare say is now considered a dumb GPS watch (like dumb phone, but not dumb), the competing offerings are nearly twice as much and dont come with a bluetooth headset. TomToms GPX upload feature really makes this a standout device from its Spark series, and will add a nice little safety net for those who like to travel off paved roads. We give the TomTom Adventurer a 4.5 out of 5 due to its price point, accuracy, but a bit of a miss on the UI such as getting a post-activity recap.

Price: $289 ($350 on their site)

Where to buy: Amazon, TomTom

Read more Gear and Gadget guides and reviews at TechCo

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TomTom Adventurer GPS Watch Designed With Hikers and Skiers in Mind - Tech.Co