

Andrew Côté
15.5K posts

@Andercot
engineering physicist, writes about deep tech, physics, energy, sci fi and whatever. founder @hyperstition_x produces @deeptechweek





The new AI Camera Assistant* with Xperia Intelligence brings stories to life. Using subject, scene and weather, it suggests expressive options with adjustments of colour, exposure, bokeh, and lens for breathtaking photos*. sony.co.jp/en/xperia-1m8/… #SonyXperia #Xperia1VIII

A peer-reviewed paper published last year in the journal Bioethics by two professors at Western Michigan University School of Medicine argues that it is "morally obligatory" to genetically engineer ticks to spread alpha-gal syndrome, a permanent condition that makes you violently allergic to red meat. The paper is called "Beneficial Bloodsucking." Their argument: if eating meat is morally wrong, then preventing the spread of a disease that forces people to stop eating meat is also morally wrong. Scientists should gene-edit lone star ticks to enhance their ability to carry alpha-gal syndrome and expand their range into urban environments to infect more people. They call this a "moral bioenhancer." They frame releasing genetically modified disease-carrying ticks as a "vaccination" that only "infringes" on your bodily autonomy rather than "violating" it. The distinction, apparently, is that a tick bit you instead of a government official holding you down. Alpha-gal syndrome is not mild. The CDC estimates up to 450,000 Americans are already affected. Cases have surged 100-fold in the last decade. Symptoms include anaphylaxis. There is no cure. Alpha-gal cases are exploding across the United States. The lone star tick's range is expanding far beyond its historical territory. And two academics at a medical school published a paper arguing this is a good thing that should be accelerated. At what point do we stop treating papers like this as fringe academic exercises and start asking whether anyone is already acting on them?



I can’t believe how you can still hear that’s it’s a V8. Too cool.




Seems entirely possible Life on Earth was accidentally seeded by some super advanced nanobot weaponry from the Great Galactic War that made the night sky quiet. Probably a bunch of nascent civilizations about to encounter empty Ark ships and abandoned wormhole networks etc

There's a huge risk to orbital datacenters which I'm surprised I haven't seen discussed anywhere. All SSO datacenter operators need to align their orbital direction: strictly prograde (dusk-dawn) or strictly retrograde (dawn-dusk). If even a small number of players decide differently from the rest then head-on collisions are essentially guaranteed. A single collision would release 40 tons of TNT, quickly turning this very special orbit into a debris field. The good news is - the solution is very simple. There are few benefits of mixing dawn-dusk with dusk-dawn. Everyone just needs to choose dawn-dusk. Starcloud is working hard to make this happen. DM me if you are a dawn-dusk SSO user and would like to help.


The absolute non-takeoff of VR and AR is probably one of the big upsets in consumer electronics history Pretty much everyone thought this would be huge and it sort of just isn't

Jason on founders doing ayahuasca: "They come back from an ayahuasca trip or Burning Man and they're like, I'm living a lie. I need to go be a yoga instructor. I need to start a surf camp." If you’re a VC and a founder hits a wall, how do you deal with it? @jason