• Every time I think about doing something illegal or hear about people from only a few generations ago doing something fun but slightly illegal.

    Then I think. There is no way you could do that now the police would use all the surveillance that is everywhere and if I got caught their wouldn’t be a slap on the wrist and grow up. But it would be a serious issue for my future jobs and going to other countries.

    Makes me think I’m in a futuristic movie. Just not one of the happy ending ones.

  • The technology behind it isn’t new, but The Thought Emporium is a Youtuber who:

    1: DIY-d a genetically modified virus to cure his own lactose intolerance (successfully)

    2: Is currently working on a biological computer that runs on animal neurons.

    3: Has livestreams where the viewers submit ideas (like making tomatoes spicy) and he designs DNA to accomplish it.

    Also he helped shut down a scam health product that contained radioactive material which isn’t particularly futuristic (actually it reminds me of the “radiation is good for you” craze in the early 20th century) but I wanted to mention it anyways.

  • Turns out we can express most of proteins, some of the time, and then isolate them. This includes enzymes, when isolated these can do things like they naturally do but now in flask, but also they do things that aren’t remotely natural but are useful for us. These things are pretty fragile usually so then some of these can be modified so that they are resistant to higher temperatures, detergents etc. This is not only the nerdy shit like advanced chemical synthesis - lots of dishwasher tablets and and washing powders contain enzymes that cut proteins into pieces (like subtilisin), so in some cosmic sense dishwasher digests your leftover food off plates

    Enzymes are still proteins, and have all problems of proteins. Turns out, you can just take the most important part out of enzyme, make it, or something functionally similar out of completely synthetic parts, and it still works. Sure, it’s not as active or selective, most of the time, but it’s resistant to things that would absolutely shred proteins. This is called organocatalysis and it was subject of 2021 Nobel Prize

    Sometimes you want to take an enzyme and make it not work. We also have a tool for that: first you have to get structure of that enzyme, or some receptor protein, and by looking how a small set of random molecules lodges in it you can make a very selective, very potent ligand, sculpting it atom by atom with no knowledge other than protein structure. If you have time and resources, this can be made to work for almost any protein (that can be crystallised)

  • Driverless cars, VR and the recent NASA experiment where four people started living in a simulated Mars environment for an year, even conducting VR space walks - all of this makes me feel we’re living in the movie Total Recall.

  • We have phones as powerful as computers in our hands when 20 years ago that was impossible. The exponential growth of computers and smartphones is mind-blowing. And the amount of technology that has bloomed from all of that

    •  Squids   ( @Squids@sopuli.xyz ) 
      link
      fedilink
      English
      510 months ago

      I’ve had a 3d printer for years and I still can’t really get over how nuts it is. Like it feels like one of those things you’d read about in science magazines as this amazing super scientific thing the scientists out in MIT have in their labs like a supercomputer or some expensive toy people who build stuff on YouTube have in their garage next to the lathe and big fancy CNC table, but no, it’s just, here. On my desk. Being used to casually print stuff that I’ve designed myself on the computer like it’s nothing.

      My great grandad was a carpenter and I wish I could’ve shown him it. I wonder what he’d think, seeing something that was once only in the realm of handcrafted diagrammes and days of building now a few hours of modelling and printing away.

  • Modern cell phones. It’s crazy that I basically never need a computer now. My phone is so diversely useful. I spend more money on phones than computers now. It’s also the best camera I’ve ever had! Phones are just so cool lol.

    •  kratoz29   ( @kratoz29@lemm.ee ) 
      link
      fedilink
      English
      410 months ago

      I know where you are coming from, but I can’t see how a phone would be a replacement of a computer, not with Android nor iOS, maybe we need a better mobile OS 😂

      My Mac is on repair currently and one of my most uses for it was to manage my docker containers hosted in my NAS, while I can do some of that in my Android phone it is a pain in the ass to work with it, especially if it can retain many tabs opener as any modern browser lol.

      The Samsung Dex thingy kinda gets close to this new future though.

      • I feel like the average person doesn’t need a computer most of the time. Anyone who’s a “power user”, for lack of a better term, probably does. I run a VM with a desktop OS on my Proxmox setup that I remote into from my phone for things that I require a full OS for but don’t want to break out my laptop. I often find myself remoting into it from my laptop anyway just for continuity.

      • Because most people don’t really need a computer nor do they know how to use them.

        There was a sweet spot for my generation where you got good at computers but the generations either side are equally as poor with them.

        I’m a software developer who just build a custom rig for at home and I can tell you I rarely use it, as I want to do anything but look at a computer after doing it all day at work. I can do everything I need from my phone.

        I can be a computer nerd at weekends.

  •  eezeebee   ( @eezeebee@lemmy.ca ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1110 months ago

    The LANDSAT program. Not exactly new since it’s been going for about 50 years, but it’s still fascinating and maybe more relevant than ever with concerns about climate change.

    We can get different types of data about a landscape from the different parts of the light spectrum. For example, telling coniferous and deciduous trees apart based on how they reflect light. Imagine echolocation on steroids, using light.

    https://youtu.be/DGE-N8_LQBo