Devrandom

Qualia are made of other Qualia

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The Thesis When you see the color red, a pattern of neurons activates. That pattern is connected to blood, sunsets, heat, danger, and ripe fruit; each of those connections is itself an activation pattern, and on the view below it is itself a quale. The pattern does not merely represent red; it is the experience of red. The thesis: qualia, the “what it is like” of experience, are activation patterns of other qualia, in neural networks.

COVID-19 Resource Page

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 16:22:39 +0000

I started a COVID-19 resource page.

COVID-19 Resources

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 10:54:30 +0000

Disclaimer: I am a computer scientist, not an epidemiologist. I am familiar with the math, but might make subject-matter mistakes. The Big Picture The death rate is the metric most likely to be accurate, so lets graph it for the world and various countries. Here is the data from Our World in Data with the death rate per million people. I have here a few countries that I’m interested in, but feel free to add more since the chart is interactive.

Debian installer on a USB key

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 13:34:41 +0000

I couldn’t find a concise article about creating a Debian installer USB key with a writable file system, so here is my take. This assumes you have an available Linux system. Note that some old BIOSes might not happily boot USB drives created in this way. Install syslinux Insert the USB key and find the device using dmesg (assumed to be at /dev/sdg below) Create a FAT partition, mark it bootable (assumed at /dev/sdg1 below) Put mbr.

Fixing up your Android OTA file

Wed, 02 May 2012 22:13:15 +0000

If you’ve deleted some apps (e.g. using TitaniumBackup) and have a custom recovery, but you still want to apply an OTA, here’s what you can do:

unzip the OTA file (into a directory named “n”)

Run some sed commands:

FILE=n/META-INF/com/google/android/updater-script cp $FILE t sed -i '/apply_patch_check.*EmailGoogle/d;/apply_patch.*EmailGoogle/,+2d' $FILE sed -i '/apply_patch_check.*PlusOne/d;/apply_patch.*PlusOne/,+2d' $FILE sed -i '/apply_patch_check.*Gmail/d;/apply_patch.*Gmail/,+2d' $FILE diff -u t $FILE rm n/recovery/etc/install-recovery.sh cd n zip -r ../o3.zip .

and then use your custom recovery (e.g. clockwork) to install the zip.

USENIX Security Conference 2011

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:22:51 +0000

I am attending the USENIX security conference this week. Sessions are available online. Here are my notes from sessions that I found interesting (bold for extra): Network Security in the Medium Term: 2061–2561 AD, Charles Stross Stross is one of my favorite science fiction authors. The main direction of the talk was the future political importance of information security. This is due to the intrusiveness of future information breaches once lifelogging, bioinformatics and other very intimate technologies are adopted.

BuddyNS

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:53:53 +0000

BuddyNS is a free secondary name service. Yes, free. I started using it a couple of months ago and had no issues. Good for your random project domains where you can’t justify spending on DNS fees.

Max More is now CEO of Alcor

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 23:59:29 +0000

It’s interesting to see one of the major characters in the Extropian movement (precursor to the H+ movement) become the CEO of Alcor.

Moving your Android Contact List to a New Phone

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:31:25 +0000

This is a somewhat technical article and assumes knowledge of Android and Linux. Just got a Nexus S, and had some issues moving my contact list from my old phone. So I decided to write this up. You have two options: * If you come from a ROM that allows export to SD, just use Import/Export to USB storage, copy the file over, then import it * Option #2 would have been to use Titanium Backup. However, it doesn’t seem to work right for restoring on the Nexus S (yet). * Otherwise, you can copy the contacts2.db file. Of course, you have to root your target phone first. Then copy the db file to the sdcard. As root, do (assuming standard layout): cd /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases rm contacts2.db cat /sdcard/contacts2.db > contacts2.db chmod 660 contacts2.db ls -l .. # see who owns this directory chown contats2.db You might have to restart your phone for the contacts to be re-read.

Atomically Precise Fabrication

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:56:38 +0000

Zyvex can now build atomically precise 3-D structures from silicon. That’s a nano equivalent to the MakerBot. Arbitrary structures can be used to build templates and tools that can further build other tools, bootstrapping a new industry.

Brain Emulation by 2030

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:11:24 +0000

Over the past few years I’ve been thinking about whole brain emulation (WBE) and the required computational resources. My conclusion is that the required technology level will be reached in the 2025 - 2030 time frame. Although most estimates focus on calculations per second, the relevant parameters are:

Calculations per second
Memory size
Memory bandwidth per node
Inter-node communication bandwidth

Here I assume the WBE detail level to be somewhere between level 4 (spiking neural model) and level 5 (electrophysiological model) from the Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap. The computational capacity required would be around 100 Exa-FLOPS (1e20) and the memory capacity 10 Peta-bytes (1e13). Plugging these into the CPU and memory timeline calculators, gives an expected arrival time of 2026 and 2020 respectively for $1M. Based on my models, it appears that memory bandwidth will be a significant bottleneck, while inter-CPU node bandwidth will not be. I’ve created a spreadsheet where the two bandwidths are estimated. The architecture I envision is 1 million compute nodes arranged in a 2-D cluster, 1000 on the side. Each node will have 100 TFLOPS CPU capacity and 10 GB of memory. Nodes are connected to the nearest 4 neighbors using a high speed bus. Longer distances are covered by multiple hops. The inter-node bandwidth is dependent on the distance that voltage information has to travel, which is related to the axon length. Although some axons are very long, axon lengths probably follow a power law distribution, and long ones are rare. Based on a 1KHz update frequency and ~60 nodes within average axon distance, the required communication bandwidth is 250 Gb/s, which is close to the capabilities of current technology. The local node memory bandwidth is dependent on the amount of synapse state memory and required refresh rate. Based on a 1KHz update rate, this works out to 14 TB/s. This figure is about 3 orders of magnitude higher than current technology. The high memory bandwidth required makes it is likely that some kind of CPU/memory on-die integration will be required. The memristor seems a good candidate. It is interesting to think of the brain as a 2.x dimension structure, due to the non-zero depth and also due to the folds. The question has been asked if this provides a barrier to implementation. The depth aspect is not an issue, since dividing the brain on a 2-D grid will put most vertical columns on the same node. Folds effectively reduce the length that an axon has to travel. It seems that in the worst case two points that “should” be a meter apart (brain diameter when laid flat) are only 10 cm apart (brain actual diameter). This may increase the inter-node bandwidth by a factor of 100, if most axons take advantage of the added dimensionality for routing. Since the inter-node bandwidth is relatively modest, it is doubtful that even a 100 fold increase will make it the bottleneck instead of the memory bandwidth. In sum, here are the performance requirements:

1 million compute nodes in a 2-D topology
100 TFLOPS per node
10GB memory per node
10TB/s memory bandwidth
4 links to neighboring nodes at 250 Gb/s

It seems likely that this kind of machine will be available by 2030 for $1M, and possibly as early as 2025. It would be useful to evaluate the increase in memory bandwidth over time and extrapolate to this time frame.

Singularity Summit 2010 – live blogging – day 2

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:59:11 +0000

Missed Eliezer Yudkowsky: Simplified Humanism and Positive Futurism. 9:40 - Ramez Naam: The Digital Biome Plenty of carrying capacity for the biome - 30-300 billion people with advanced biotech. We are using only 1/1000 of the incident energy from the sun. There’s no reason to crash due to lack of resources with advanced tech. Population is predicted to level off at 10 billion. Good points, but the Singularity is likely to happen on a shorter time scale.

Singularity Summit 2010 - live blogging - day 1

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 10:00:24 +0000

9:30 - Missed Michael Vassar’s talk. 9:50 - Gregory Stock is talking. He is skeptical about progress in the bio realm. He says that the FDA is a damper on progress, but he also says that there are difficult problems. He brings up Alzheimer’s as an example. I think he is underestimating the power of info tech to change the way we do bio-science. Having read/write access to DNA, plus “in-silico” simulations will change the game.

Sir Martin Reese about the Future of the Cosmos

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:27:53 +0000

Martin talks about the future of the cosmos and our responsibility to prevent existential risks at a long now foundation seminar. Nice to see H+ memes coming from the president of the Royal Society. H/T Tom McCabe @ Kurzweil AI

Long-Distance Wiring Diagram of the Monkey Brain

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:41:30 +0000

Raghavendra Singh and Dharmendra S Modha published a paper in PNAS detailing 383 brain regions and 6,602 connections between them.

Eben Moglen's Talk - Freedom in the Cloud

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:41:42 +0000

A very insightful talk about how we lost our freedom and how to regain it You can also read the full transcript linked from there.

Motivation and Background for the User Controlled Web

Sat, 22 May 2010 14:53:17 +0000

Here are some background pointers: A list of projects in this space. The Diaspora project is listed under “deployable on commodity webhosting”. I was under the impression that they are actually more of a p2p application. A set of ideas for this space on the GNU Social wiki. Adriana Lukas talks about the user-controlled web and the mine project. (She coins a fun acronym: Relationships on Individuals’ Own Terms - RIOT. ) (flash video removed June 2016) There seems to be quite a bit of activity with 20-30 projects, but the efforts are fragmented. Different projects have different goals and approaches. Some focus on a piece of the user experience and others focus on technology. For example, the Mine! project is a technology piece focused on rich sharing of data (including links, photos) with strong user control. OneSocialWeb is focused on messaging. With Elgg you can create social networks - but it’s not really user controlled. Diversity is great, but one or two well-thought out efforts need to win. Critical mass is a must in order to win in this space.

The Diaspora Project and the User Controlled Web

Thu, 20 May 2010 00:03:32 +0000

I’m pretty excited about the Diaspora project generating a groundswell of support. They managed to raise $170K in two weeks through kickstarter (they asked for $10K). Why am I excited? I’ve written before about walled gardens and user controlled Internet apps. It is crucial that we invert the control structure of the web if we want to be in control of our destiny. There are some critical challenges that a user-controlled system must face:

Secure software distribution - users will want to install applets inside their environments. Third party audit and signing of code will be necessary in order to keep the apps flowing, but without compromising users’ instances. Applets will also have to be firewalled from each-other - as some will be more trusted and some less. I’ve previously written a couple of posts about the challenges of secure software distribution.
Peer to peer naming and search - it should be easy to find stuff, without necessarily knowing their URLs. A global, fully distributed naming and search system will be important.
A distributed reputation system will be a natural fit for a distributed social network.
Memory footprint - current web application frameworks are designed for high volume apps, and therefore take up quite a bit of memory to load application code. These frameworks can afford to do so, because they expect to amortize the memory over many users. However, a user-controlled system will have one user per instance. Clever memory sharing among instances will be necessary.

I can’t wait to see what the first prototype looks like. There are some additional projects along these lines that are worth a look and are actually further along:

http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/ - LAMP (PHP) based
http://onesocialweb.org/ - Java/XMPP based

Maybe none of these will make it. But the $170K is a signal - that people care about this.

On Nanotech and Economics

Thu, 13 May 2010 22:12:21 +0000

Tihamer Toth-Fejel writes about Productive Nanosystems and the 2009 Financial Meltdown. The collisions between unstoppable juggernauts and immovable obstacles are always fascinating—we just cannot tear our eyes away from the immense conflict, especially if we have a glimmer of the immense consequences it will have for us. So it will be when Productive Nanosystems emerge from the global financial meltdown. To predict what will happen in the next decade or so, we must understand the essential nature of wealth, and we must understand the capabilities of productive nanosystems.

DNA not Patentable

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:24:49 +0000

Sanity prevails in federal court! News at 11.

Brain Preservation Tech Prize

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:25:27 +0000

As a Cryonics member, I became interested in a new initiative to fixate the brain in a plastic medium: brainpreservation.org Would be excellent to have a high fidelity preservation procedure that doesn’t require maintenance (such as liquid nitrogen in the case of Cryonics).

Quantified Self: CMS50 Oximeter

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:23:18 +0000

After attending a couple of Quantified Self meetups, I was inspired to quantify various aspects of myself and my life. For example, I was wondering if I am breathing well while I sleep, since I have been waking up tired on occasion. I bought the Contec CMS50-F oximeter from here. The software that comes with the CMS50 could be more reliable and user-friendly, and only runs on Windows. I ended up spending a day reverse engineering the USB protocol and writing a Python program to acquire and graph the data. The software is on Gitorious. Here are some of the charts you can get: [gallery link=“file”]

Blue Brain Project Documentary - Year 1

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:12:16 +0000

Noah Hutton’s company Couple 3 Films has released year 1 of a 10 year documentary project documenting the Blue Brain project. The project includes Henry Markham’s work on reverse engineering the brain, scaling up from rodents to humans by 2010. The work is funded by the Swiss government.

$3000 Whole Genome Sequencing Cost

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:23:05 +0000

Life Technologies announces $3,000 marginal cost (later this year) for sequencing complete human genomes. This is after Illumina announced the same for $10,000 (now). So a $1,000 genome early next year? Here comes personalized medicine.

Attack Scenarios on Software Distributions

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:26:01 +0000

I’ve been asked to outline specific scenarios after I posted a previous entry on the Google’s network compromise. Here are some, from most serious to least serious: Build host - the machines that compile the source into binary packages are compromised. In this scenario, code can be injected by the malicious party into the package just before it is signed and prepared for distribution. All clients that install the updated packages are affected.

Doubling in Incidence of Malicious Data Breaches

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:13:58 +0000

CNet reports on Ponemon institute’s survey showing a doubling of data breach incidents. Average cost per record in the surveyed group is around $200.

Operation Aurora and Software Distributions as Single Points of Security Failure

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:48:51 +0000

Operation Aurora (Google’s compromise by China) highlights the possibility that software distributions may be targeted for code injection by malicious parties. If Apple, Microsoft or a linux distributors are compromised, a large percentage of individuals, businesses and governments could be consequentially compromised when they install software updates. One way to mitigate such a risk is to have multiple independent security auditors sign software distributions. This is more likely to be successful in an open-source environment, where source is available and can easily be inspected. I started such an initiative in late 2009 - Gitian.org.

IBM's Blue Brain and Simulated Level of Detail

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:58:31 +0000

Henry Markham calls IBM’s cat scale brain simulation a hoax. Markham claims that the simulation doesn’t have the 10,000+ differential equations needed to simulate the synapses with fidelity. This argument is a version of the naturalistic fallacy - if Nature requires X to achieve a result, we will have to perform X when replicating the effect. It is useful to think about the simulation’s level of detail (LOD) in terms of certain thresholds, from most detailed to least detailed:

Noise level: at this level (call it LODn) the lack of precision is on the order of the noise present in a biological brain. It is not possible to distinguish the functioning of such a simulated brain from the functioning of a biological brain.
Functional level: at this level (call it LODf) the lack of precision is greater, but the result is functionally similar. There may be some behavior changes, but the overall capabilities (e.g. “intelligence”) are similar.
Equivalence level: at this level (call it LODe) the precision is even lower, but this is compensated with tweaks to the simulated physiology. The result is equivalent in capabilities, although some characteristics may be very different. For example, the retina can be replaced with a non-biological equivalent.

The computation power required for LODn > LODf > LODe. There are likely order of magnitude differences between the levels. If we consider a non-biological example - a digital computer, what does it take to simulate it? It is obviously enough to simulate the logic function. The Markham’s line of reasoning would seem to argue that we have to simulate the voltage gradients and charge movements in each transistor! In the transistor case, LODn would involve simulating each transistor’s logic function. LODf would involve an instruction set simulation (e.g. the QEMU emulator). LODe would involve using the most convenient instruction set (e.g. x86) and recompiling any software. Clearly, an LODe simulation is several orders of magnitude more efficient. Markham fails to convince that his preferred level of simulation is required for LODn, never mind the other levels. One way to find out what levels require is to actually run simulations and compare to physical neural matter. The Blue Brain project aims to do that, although the results are not conclusive yet. It would be good if more research was directed at comparing their simulation to a biological brain. This would make the project more grounded.

Nasal flu vaccine

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:13:13 +0000

Alex and I got nasal H1N1 vaccines on Tue. I felt tired on Wed and Alex has a sore throat. Nasal is live-attenuated instead of dead virus. Apparently symptoms are more likely with the nasal. On the up-side - no preservatives! Does the nasal-spray flu vaccine LAIV (FluMist) contain thimerosal? No, the nasal-spray flu vaccine LAIV (FluMist) does not contain thimerosal or any other preservative.

The computation market becomes more liquid

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:03:26 +0000

The Register tells us that Amazon will auction their excess capacity. We’re a couple of steps away from computation becoming a liquid commodity. The next step is for a couple of additional providers to arise (Google?). The step after that is for the APIs to be brought in sync by the providers or by a third party intermediary.

Cool advanced user-interface video

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:18:33 +0000

Very nice attention to detail on the user-interface widgets…

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love technofixes

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 02:35:36 +0000

Peter Thiel writes regarding the failure of Democracy to preserve freedom and some possible technofix strategies. He includes are thoughts about creating freedom in Cyberspace, Outer space or on the high seas. I think it would be interesting to build certain distributed Internet apps that could change the dynamics of freedom, including reputation systems, gifting/barter systems and user-controlled Internet apps. Peter’s article resonated strongly with my experience and my interpretation of history. As I see it, Democracies suffer from slow erosion of freedom over time, much like the increase of entropy in a closed system or overgrazing in the tragedy of the commons. Legislated freedom acts like a public good - and as such is under-produced. I also agree with the thesis that technology seems has strong effect on the production of public good. This is especially true of communication technologies, such as the printing press, phones and the Internet. There are several technology projects I am interested in that could change the dynamics of freedom: Distributed reputation systems - such as described in Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - would allow fluid transmission of reputation information, enabling ad-hoc decentralized organization. It would reduce the dependence on monolithic institutions / walled gardens, such as eBay, Amazon, credit bureaus and other systems that enable centralized control. Gift/barter economies with distributed record keeping - such as described in Bruce Sterling’s short story Maneki Neko or as practiced at Burning Man. User-controlled Internet apps - allowing people to own their data and applications rather than ceding control to third party application providers. It would be a step further in the evolution of open-source, and it would parallel the aims of the AGPL. Interested in any of these? Please drop me a note. (Note: the term Technofix is usually used pejoratively, but I like it.) Update: Michael Anissimov writes about Peter’s article and muses about the differences between socialism and libertarianism being moot once scarcity is reduces by advanced technology. I tend to agree. H/T: Nanodot

Simplified nanobot anti-aging solution

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:56:41 +0000

[ I’ve started this article 2 years ago - will post it now even though I feel it is incomplete. ] I’d like to propose a somewhat simplified approach to eliminate aging, given early-stage molecular robots and following the SENS approach to aging. Results in this approach depend on equal amounts of creation of new cells and destruction of old cells to exponentially reduce the amount of aging related defects in the body over time. Aubrey de Grey proposes 7 mechanisms for aging, which are believed to be comprehensive:

Cell loss and atrophy
Nuclear mutations
Mitochondria mutations
Death resistant cells
Extracellular crosslinks
Extracellular junk
Intracellular junk

My proposal is to construct three different molecular machines, that perform the following functions:

A robot (the Checker) that randomly enters cells and mitochondria, checksums the chromosomes and induces cell death if any mutations are detected. If no mutations are detected, the telomeres are restored to full length.
A second robot (the Remover) that randomly engulfs small ( 2 - 8 ) clusters of cells and removes them from the body. This is very similar to a Phagocyte, but is indiscriminant.
A third robot (the Renewer) that induces replication where there is a shortage of cells - probably using some kind of stem cell therapy.

These are engineering tasks and may be possible with early-stage molecular engineering. One might object to the indiscriminant removal of cells by the Remover. However, the body is able to recover from microscopic injury. Random removal of cells reduces the absolute amount of junk, while allowing the body to regenerate to replace the removed cells. A crucial aspect of the Remover is that it actually removes the entire material engulfed (except for regular water) from the body, e.g. through urine. This means that we don’t have to design ways to break down different proteins and structures - we’ll just physically remove them from the body. We also don’t bother correcting DNA. We just destroy the mutated cells and depend on non-mutated cells to take their place. Here are the 7 mechanisms, and how each is addressed:

Cell loss and atrophy - addressed by the Renewer
Nuclear & Mitochondrial mutations - addressed by the Checker - mutated cells and mitochondria are destroyed
Death resistant cells - Remover will exponentially eliminate these
Extracellular crosslinks, and intra/extracellular junk - addressed by the Remover + Renewer

The density of junk (crosslink/intra/extracelluar) is reduced by a factor of 2 when a cell (and its surrounding space) is removed and replaced by a new cell. This is because one cell worth of junk is eliminated. The density of junk will be reduced exponentially in the body as a whole. For example, if 1% of cells are removed per week, 40% of junk will be eliminated per year and 93% in 5 years. The rate will have to be higher than the rate of junk production. I believe there are several advantages to this proposal. Penetrating cells, checking DNA, engulfing and elimination are all processes that appear in nature and are relatively simple to engineer. We don’t have to design novel ways to break down junk. Additionally, I think it is better to maintain correct DNA than to just protect against cancer. As mutations increase over time, the rate of production of toxic proteins and junk will increase, thereby limiting longetivity anyway. This is in contrast with WILT. There are several open questions, including:

Can the body regenerate on the order of 1% of all cells in a week, given encouragement with the right signals and without side-effects such as inflammation?
What about nerves/CNS where connectivity matters, and the cells do not normally divide?
Are there any microscopic structures that may be disrupted by a high rate of cell turnover?
What percentage of cells have any mutation? If this number is too high, the Checker may have to correct DNA, not only check it.
What effects do epigenetics have on this design? Do we have to check for epigenetic mutations? It seems so. We will have to create a baseline catalog of valid epigenetic switches, so that we know which one do not require Remover action.
Mitochondria may be too small to enter with a robot - might have to just randomly retire some fraction of them and create new ones

Even if the complete proposal is made difficult by such issues, the Checker by itself will cure all forms Cancer.

Chris Phoenix on Nanotech Fast Takeoff

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:39:03 +0000

Chris Phoenix is writing an interesting series of articles over at CRN about the dynamics of the development of molecular engineering. His thesis, as far as I understand it after the first three articles, is that we’re likely to see a fast takeoff, because it’s easy to achieve excellent results after you’ve achieved good enough. One example is error rate - going past an adequate error rate to a superlative one just requires additional purification / error correcting steps.

Freedom is generative

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:53:41 +0000

I’ve been thinking about what we learned about freedom from the open-source movement. I think one of the more important benefits of freedom is that it is generative. You can glue things together in ways that create completely new things. For example, you can take the Internet, existing computers and the ability to write software (originally the Mosaic browser) and create a whole new ecosystem - the World Wide Web. What if you didn’t have the freedom to transmit arbitrary data on wires?

Obama really thinks warrantless wiretapping is OK

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:39:58 +0000

Wired reports that Obama’s administration sided with the previous administration in a federal court filing. To all the people that said Obama’s FISA vote was political expediency - you were wrong - it’s policy. H/T: Slashdot

Cool virus infection and assembly videos

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:33:43 +0000

Fun video with accurate structures and mechanism, although motions are not realistic (Brownian motion is not goal directed). The third video is the most involved. H/T: Eric Drexler

Obama's DOJ appointment

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:32:53 +0000

First, Obama votes for FISA, effectively saying that it’s okay for AT&T and other telcos in cahoots with the president to violate the constitution by spying on people without a warrant. Then he appoints an ex-RIAA lawyer to a top DOJ post - corporate interests above all. Not much hope there.

Human Scale Memory Timeline Calculator

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:45:10 +0000

I have previously mentioned my estimator for when human scale computation power will be available. I have since realized that the bottleneck might be memory rather than computation. I’ve created a similar estimator for memory. Although we may achieve human level compute power in 2014, it looks like memory capacity will lag by another 6 years, assuming low estimates. With high estimates, compute power is available in 2020 and memory capacity will lag by 5 years after that, to 2025. However, if Flash memory or similar technology will do the trick, a factor of 4 in cost reduction will advanced the timeline by about 4 years.

Brian Wang's things to watch for 2009

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:25:22 +0000

Brian Wang writes about technologies to watch for 2009, including Memristors, high speed networking, optical computing and quantum computing.

Peer to Peer Development

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:46:01 +0000

GitTorrent (described on Advogato) is a really distributed version control system, based on Git and BitTorrent. It seems to hold the promise of: Public keys (PGP) are used for authenticating changes No central web site for a project Easy forking of projects Package and OS distributions without a central download location A distributed mechanism for security and feature updates The significance of all this is that it: levels the playing field for individual developers and small groups routes around censorship more effectively allows end user to choose different views of the repository based on which developers they trust H/T: Slashdot I would suggest a further improvement - multiple signatures on sources and on binaries.

Bill Joy for CTO of the USA?

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:26:07 +0000

Apparently, John Doerr recommended Bill Joy yesterday as the USA CTO to Barak Obama. Misguided relinquishment anyone? Excerpt from Joy’s article “Why the future doesn’t need us”:

These possibilities are all thus either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.

This could be pretty bad. H/T: slashdot Update: Slashdot reports that Bill Joy is not in the running anymore. Haven’t looked at the two that are, yet.

Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:03:06 +0000

A very detailed roadmap written by Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom and published by the Future of Humanity Institute / University of Oxford. Lots of nice complexity estimates for different emulation detail levels. Seems like 2020 will be an interesting year. H/T: Next Big Future

2008 Singularity Summit

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:28:14 +0000

The 2008 Singularity Summit is coming up on Saturday. I’ve been helping out on the web site and payment processing. Should be interesting.

Reputation Economies symposium

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:02:46 +0000

O’Reilly Radar has a blog post about the Yale symposium on reputation economies in cyberspace.

OpenSocial insecurity - no user to app authentication

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 21:40:23 +0000

I was pretty excited to hear about Google trying to set a standard for social network applications. I wasn’t so happy to notice a serious omission in the way security is handled. Executive Summary: no user authentication! Any user can forge anybody else’s identity when interacting with any OpenSocial application. As it currently stands, it is not possible to write secure social applications on the platform. For example, with any messaging application, anybody could message another user’s friends and it will seem like the latter did it. Or they could post embarrassing material and it would look like someone else posted it. Or they could read any information that is supposed to be shown only to the application user, such as private notes. Details: in order for an application to securely handle user data, it must know who the user is. Also, it should not be possible to impersonate a user. For this to happen, it is not enough for the client-side (e.g. JavaScript) to pass the user-id to the application back-end. It must also pass some kind of token that authenticates the user and cannot be forged by third parties. For example, it’s not enough for a container name (e.g. “orkut”) and a user id (e.g. “123456789”) to be passed. You’d need another piece of information that could only be generated by Orkut, in order to prove that this really is their user and that it’s not a random third party claiming to be the same person. If you don’t do this, anybody can look at the JavaScript code in a debugger and substitute whatever user ID and container name they want. They will then be able to deface the application by taking any action as the original user and be able to read any private information stored in the application on behalf of that user. How FaceBook does user authentication: Facebook provides a secret key to the application developer. This key is stored on the server-side of the application and is never transmitted on the wire. Facebook signs the security sensitive headers of the request, including the user ID. The application can verify the signature using the shared secret key. This is a relatively standard way of performing authentication and Facebook gets it right. How this could be implemented in OpenSocial: A solution can be constructed by use of authentication namespaces, secret key exchange and signatures. A user ID would be a URL of the form: https://orkut.com/container/people/12345 where https://orkut.com/container/ is the namespace and 12345 is the user ID. The application XML descriptor would include a callback URL. The callback would happen in two stages: first the container hits the callback URL to inform the application that a new container-to-application binding is requested for the container https://orkut.com/container/ and provide a one-time key. The application would then hit https://orkut.com/container/bind and pass back the one-time key and the application URL. The container would return the shared secret. The application could also hit the bind URL without a one-time key in case the shared secret was lost to ask that the exchange be repeated. Now that we have a secret key, every time the application’s box is displayed, the container would pass a a user ID, a unique timestamp and a signature of these values to the client-side of the application (JavaScript). In PHP pseudocode: $sig = md5($userid . $stamp . $secret) . The JavaScript code would pass these along with the request. An impersonator would not be able to generate a valid signature on any user ID other than their own.

OpenSocial vs. Facebook API - an analysis

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:56:07 +0000

Executive Summary

OpenSocial applications will have diverging look-and-feel, from each other and from the containers. This is because the containers do not provide common elements to blend the application into the container.
OpenSocial applications may not be vertically resizable, since they will exist in an iframe. However, Google has an API For resizing that some or all of the networks may implement
Facebook has additional API functionality that is not present in OpenSocial
The Facebook API is server oriented, whereas the OpenSocial/Google Gadgets API is client-side JavaScript oriented

Common container features

Application directory
User’s active application page
Left side application link
Canvas page
Profile box
News feed

Common API features

Basic feature in common include getting data for a person, getting friends and publishing user actions.

OpenSocial UI programming model

The OpenSocial UI programming model is based on Google Gadgets. The Google Gadget platform puts your application inside an iframe. This provides isolation between the container and the application. However, this also means that the size of the containing frame is fixed. It is not clear if resizing will be available on the various social networks. Because your application lives in an iframe, you can have arbitrary HTML, Javascript and other objects inside your application. OpenSocial applications can be wholly or partially server-less. State information can be manipulated by the JavaScript of the application. The application’s gadget can be cached. Functionality available as part of Google Gadgets: state (aka user-preferences), tabs, drag-and-drop, inline alerts (aka mini-messages), grid, internationalization, content fetch from URL, RSS fetch. Google caches any content fetches, but there is a refresh function. Functionality available as part of OpenSocial JavaScript API: Activities (aka News Feed), People Data (aka Social Graph), Persistence (aka key-value pairs). There seems to be a 1-1 correspondence between functionality in the JavaScript API and the server API.

Facebook UI Programming Model

Facebook profile boxes and non-iframe canvas pages use FBML, which is based on HTML. No iframe is built. Rather, FB sanitizes the HTML and sandboxes the JavaScript to ensure that applications do not misbehave on the page. FB also caches the profile box content, so that profile load times are predictable. Facebook provides quite a few UI elements to make application development easier and more consistent with the FB UI:

Friend multi-select and invite widget
User name generation, with possessive forms
Tabs and headings
Error/warning/dialog boxes
Editor
Wall-like message board widget
Easy to use Ajax library (proxied by FB)
Automatic visibility controls

These elements make it easier for an application to look like part of FB and eases initial development. I predict that OpenSocial apps will have diverging look-and-feel because the container does not provide default look and feel elements to the apps. In other words, each app will look different, even for common tasks.

OpenSocial Server-side API

OpenSocial functionality requires authentication with Google’s AuthSub. It remains to be seen how this is implemented in the context of an open system like OpenSocial. The API uses REST. The functionality of the API is very similar to the OpenSocial JavaScript API.

Facebook API

The Facebook API is accessible on the server side part of the application. The JavaScript part does not have access to the API. The API provides the following additional functionality over that of OpenSocial:

Reading events
Reading a person’s groups
Reading/writing photos
Reading/writing marketplace listings
Setting a person’s status
Setting content elements to be cached on Facebook

Presumably, OpenSocial will add some of this functionality with time.

Making choices

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:54:03 +0000

Brian Wang posts a very cogent article about how global forces exist which delay progress and cause global harm. This includes the use of coal instead of cleaner energy (including nuclear), causing hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. It also includes corruption and violence preventing distribution of food and medicine and preventing economic growth. I find it amazing that the human race spends on the order of a million dollars per year on molecular manufacturing when the potential impacts are measured in trillions.

VCs at the Singularity Summit

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:43:01 +0000

Steven Jurveston and Peter Thiel gave presentations today. I found these to be very interesting perspectives. Thiel’s theorized that the increase in frequency and magnitude of boom and bust cycles are a prelude to the Singularity, which would be a sustained boom driven by radical increases in productivity. Something to watch. Jurveston’s main thesis was that AI created by evolutionary algorithms would have a strong competitive advantage over attempts to use traditional design.

Presentation by Artificial Development

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 15:21:11 +0000

Artificial Development is giving a presentation at the Singularity Summit about their CCortex and CorticalDB products. Seems like a full featured product to create biologically plausible neural networks/brain maps (CorticalDB) and simulate the resulting network (CCortex). They claim biological high fidelity simulation, 8 bit action potentials, etc. . The claim of up to 100 million neurons seems pretty aggressive. Not sure why they would be so much ahead of the IBM effort using x86 CPUs, even if they have thousands of them.

At the Singularity Summit

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:12:06 +0000

The most memorable morning session at the Singularity Summit 2007 was the inimitable Eliezer Yudkowsky’s. He talked about three different schools of thought about the Singularity: Vingean - where prediction becomes impossible Accelerationist - exponential technological change Greater than Human Inteligence - in a positive feedback loop His thesis was that the three schools reinforce but also contradict each-other. Another good point Eliezer makes is that advances in scientific knowledge and algorithms reduce the threshold for the Singularity.

Many-worlds Immortality and the Simulation Argument

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 02:58:02 +0000

An alternative to the simulation argument: Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument argues that at least one of the following must be true:

the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage
any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history
or we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation

However, I see other possibilities. Assumptions:

The strong many-worlds theory is correct (i.e. all consistent mathematical systems exist as universes, a.k.a “everything exists”)
The many-worlds immortality theory is correct (i.e. for every conscious state there is at least one smooth continuation of that state in the many-worlds)

Given these assumptions, it doesn’t matter if we are in a simulation because our conscious state exists in many simulations and many non-simulated worlds that look identical to us (but are different in imperceptible ways). Even if all the simulations stopped, there would still be a continuation of our conscious state in a non-simulated world consistent with our observations to date. Further, it seems that there are more non-simulated worlds than simulated worlds. This is because there are many ways a mathematical model can exist so that it cannot be formulated in a finite way, and therefore not simulatable by an intelligent entity. It might even be that simulatable world are of measure zero in the many-worlds. Further out ideas: A fascinating related idea is the Egan Jump as described in the book Permutation City. The idea is to jump to another world in the many-worlds by simulating the genesis of a new universe. In this universe you code yourself into the initial conditions, and design the rules so that you end up as an upload in the substrate of the new universe. Because that universe will continue as it’s own mathematical model, your conscious state will continue in that universe, branching off your original self. Yet another, more distantly related idea is that the peculiarities of our universe (quantum physics, large amounts of empty space) are in a sense an error correcting mechanism. Because any perturbation of a world is also a world, the result is quite chaotic and inhospitable to meaningful life. The structure we see around us with large aggregates “average out” the chaos. This leads to a stable environment as required for conscious observers to arise.

Amazon tries to patent S3

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:05:26 +0000

Slashdot reports that Amazon is trying to patent S3. This means that I will refrain from using it for any project, and stop using it for my existing business, FillZ.

An insufficient present

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:36:26 +0000

I strongly identify with this concept.

Mouse brain simulated at 1/10 of real-time

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 23:04:54 +0000

Update: the BlueGene/L instance used here is only 1/32 of the size of the one deployed at LLNL, so we are still within the high bound after all. On the other hand, it remains to be seen how accurate the model is compared to a functional neuron.

Dharmendra S Modha posts an article about a recent result presented at CoSyNe 2007.

We deployed the simulator on a 4096-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer with 256 MB per CPU. We were able to represent 8,000,000 neurons (80% excitatory) and 6,300 synapses per neuron in the 1 TB main memory of the system. Using a synthetic pattern of neuronal interconnections, at a 1 ms resolution and an average firing rate of 1 Hz, we were able to run 1s of model time in 10s of real time!

This is excellent news, since it will now be possible to figure out what biological modeling aspects are important to functionality. Since the human brain has 100 billion neurons, this represents 1/10,000 of a human brain. The computer was a $100 million BlueGene/L. So an improvement of 10,000,000 is required in order to model a human brain for $1M in real time. However, the BlueGene/L is two years old, and it is about 20 times less efficient compared to commodity hardware (based on a quoted 360 teraflops). So the real improvement required is only around 100,000. Based on this data, the human brain requires 10 Exa CPS, one order of magnitude above the high estimate use in my calculator. Human equivalent for $1M would be available around the year 2023. Hardware specifically suitable for this application may bring this back to 1 Exa CPS and pull this back to the year 2020.

Various Autism pointers

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 02:20:57 +0000

- Discover has an article about environmental stress (diet, toxins), inflammation and Autism. - A University of Nottingham study described on the Biosingularity blog shows that autistic children are actually very good at inferring mental states by looking at eyes. This study uses moving images and overturns previous studies where static images were used. I personally find expressions quite readable, yet I used to block them out because the associated emotional charge is anxiety provoking.

Compute power estimate for future (and past) years

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 01:27:46 +0000

Since I end up figuring these a few times a year, I went ahead and created a little calculator. It has two fields for year, and calculates the compute powers and ratio. It also compares the compute powers to that required to compete with (or simulate) a human brain.

Nano and lightyears in context

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:51:36 +0000

Check out this interactive “powers-of-ten” flash presentation from Nikon. Good for some perspective… Make sure your browser is full screen or you may miss the controls at the bottom. Hat tip to Nanodot.

Random collection of reputation system articles

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:18:04 +0000

Here is a collection of links to articles about reputation systems, in no particular order: - Random Reputation Ramblings (and quite a few other reputation posts on same blog) - Reputation systems vendor relationship management (VRM - opposite of CRM) - Group reputation and application to loans - Jim Downing mentions a study on feedback gaming on eBay on the Smart Mobs blog - On gaming reputation systems in Privacy Digest

Advances in top-down nanotech

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:55:30 +0000

Brian Wang has a good review article about recent advances in top-down nanotech and some projections. Maybe top-down will meet bottom-up in 10 years?

Stanford Delta Scan and Technologies for Cooperation

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:39:16 +0000

Stanford’s Delta Scan makes predictions similar to my take on Web 3.0, including: Trust over Social networks / Social accounting methods (i.e. reputation systems) the rise of computing grids Social mobile computing Knowledge collectives Mesh networks Giving rise to: Adhocracies Faster innovation Faster/better decision making Increase in effectiveness of online economies

Crowdhacking

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:31:24 +0000

Wired latest issue has an article about the emerging arms race between rating systems (such as eBay, Amazon, Digg) and crowdhackers. Crowdhackers take advantage of the naive methods used to aggregate ratings in existing systems. A crowdhacking proof system will have to use a transitive trust model rather than the naive averaging existing systems use.

Nano-Ethics and Spirituality

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:47:30 +0000

Dr. Donald Bruce, writes an article titled Faster, Higher, Stronger in the first issues of Nano Now. In response, Chris Phoenix takes issue with Dr. Bruce’s perceived ethical fallacies. I think one of the major deficiencies in Dr. Bruce’s article is the false dichotomy between material improvement and spiritual improvement. Living longer, better, with more access to information and in richer personal networks allows one to spend more effort and be supported on the path to spiritual growth.

Google Releases Paper on Disk Reliability

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:26:19 +0000

Google is a prime user of commodity grid supercomputing. As such, they are in a perfect position to release a paper on disk reliability, with hundreds of thousands of data points. Very interesting results, including the failure of SMART to predict failures, and low correlation with usage and temperature. This will be important as grid supercomputing becomes the preferred way to manage compute resources. Update: Slashdot points to another storage paper presented at FAST ‘07 confirming some of the points in the Google paper, and invalidating the manufacturers’ MTTF estimates.

Supercruncher "web 3.0" applications

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:54:38 +0000

Bill McColl writes an article named Supercruncher Applications on his Computing at Scale blog about massively parallel “web 3.0” applications. In particular the following caught my eye: continuous search, complex algorithmic trading and decentralized marketplaces and recommendation agents. This is related to my previous post about the future of the web. Found through Slashdot.

GPU increases computation heavy lifting by 10-200x

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 16:36:12 +0000

This slashdot article talks about Nvidia’s compiler environment for the new GeForce 8800 GPU. Apparently, you can get a 10-200x increase in performance for heavy numeric tasks compared to a CPU. Assuming this will enable a 100x increase in Neural Network computation, it will save 8 years or so in Moore’s law timeline to NN based AI.

What is Friendly?

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:29:30 +0000

Bob Mottram argues in a post on the Streeb-Greebling Diaries that Friendly AI suffers from a critcal flaw. The definition of Friendly is lacking: The elephant in the room here though is that there really is no good definition for what qualifies as “friendly”. What’s a good decision for me, might not be a good decision for someone else. I completely agree. A well known result in game theory - Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem - means that it is not possible, even in principle, to tally votes (i.

CRNANO on DNA based nanomanufacturing

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:22:59 +0000

Chris Phoneix at CRNANO has some suggestions for nanomanufacturing using DNA bricks, and a followup article.

Web 3.0, according to Devrandom

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 18:39:22 +0000

Here is what I think Web 3.0 will have:

A global and open Reputation Network

A distributed and open Computing and Storage Platform

Reputation Network

What does it mean for a Reputation Network to be global? Currently, we have propietary reputation systems, such as the reputation scores for sellers (and buyers) at Amazon and eBay. However, that reputation is not portable. This means that if an Amazon third-party seller wants to start selling on eBay, they have to start from scratch, as if their business is new. Trust is an integral ingredient to transactions. It becomes crucial on the internet, when a buyer and a seller are likely to never have heard of each-other. With portable reputations, a trust metric can be made available in all interactions.

What about the open part? A global reputation system owned by one entity is a non-starter. Why would one trust a single entity to provide basic infrastructure that affects all commerce and other interaction? Reputation should be like TCP/IP - based on open standards so that different vendors can provide different levels of service and create a robust overall system. The individual reputation systems can remain under the control of Amazon, eBay and others. However, they can inter-operate so that they can create a global reputation network.
Reputation should be subjective. End-users should be able to subscribe to different raters, and thereby compute different scores for the same target. End-users have diverse values and preferences. One number cannot capture this diversity.
Storage and Computing

What about storage and computing? Currently, people have presence on the Web through Blogs, Wikis, Storefronts, IM, e-mail, etc. . However, creating a new Web application faces certain barriers. The application creator has to acquire servers, manage them, ensure that the data is safe and face scalability issues as the application grows in popularity. Also, interoprability between applications is difficult. A standardized computing and storage abstraction will allow new application to be installed by the user into their virtual computing appliance. Users will have control of which application they run and how the applications communicate. Applications and data will migrate to physical hardware based on what the user is willing to pay and what scalability requires.

The division of labor is: the application provider does what they are good at - writing applications. The computing and storage providers provide efficient and reliable computing and storage (and if they don’t - the application can migrate easily or even automatically). The end-user does what they do best - connect the dots and provide content.

About me

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 17:56:51 +0000

My name is Devrandom. I am a futurist, a computer geek, entrepreneur and other things. I was also the founder of FillZ. I am currently working at Google. Here is a picture of me: You can contact me at c1.blog2010@niftybox.net .

Brian Wang's predictions

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 13:36:12 +0000

Brian Wang has predictions. And he has some actual references to back them up. (Found through Accelerating Future.)

Hybrid Wetware

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:21:11 +0000

Wired reports about machines controlled by natural neural networks. Georgia Institute of technology.

Japan's Petaflop Supercomputer

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 03:13:59 +0000

Japan builds MDGrape3 - a petaflop supercomputer for a measly $9 million. The hardware is specialized, but may possibly be suitable for neural simulation.

Singularity Institute

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:14:33 +0000

Accelerating Future has a piece about some interesting progress for the Singularity Institute. Apparently they have offices right here in SF. I still believe that the Friendly AI initiative will have a hard time achieving meaningful success. I think it’s more likely that we will be able to create friendly Uploads first, or at least that we should strive towards that goal.

Nanofactory Collaboration

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 23:52:18 +0000

CRN reports: Nanotechnologists Robert A. Freitas, Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle have launched a “Nanofactory Collaboration” website. Too early, or just the right timing?

NPR piece on Singularity with Doctorow and Vinge

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 17:42:35 +0000

NPR : Man-Machine Merger Arriving Sooner Than You Think Blogged with Flock

Amazon releases grid storage

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:41:43 +0000

Price is reasonable too! Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon S3 / Amazon Web Services Blogged with Flock

Three systems of action

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:53:36 +0000

CRN posts a review of their “Three Systems of Action” - Guardian, Commercial and Information. Parallels to Government, Industry and Open-Source. Responsible Nanotechnology: Systems Working Together Blogged with Flock

People Aggregator - unification of social networks?

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:28:06 +0000

Federated, single-signon, standards based. What’s not to like? BroadBand Mechanics presents People Aggregator Web site is not fully functional yet, so have to wait. Blogged with Flock

More "everything exists" links

Sun, 28 May 2006 02:20:42 +0000

http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/inv/investigations.html http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/toe.pdf http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0302/0302131.pdf http://www.physica.freeserve.co.uk/

Computable universes

Sun, 28 May 2006 01:51:30 +0000

Looks like there are some people working on the “all quantized universes exist” angle: Jürgen Schmidhuber’s Computable Universes page.

A final theory and the Omniverse

Sun, 28 May 2006 01:00:06 +0000

I just read “The Cosmic Landscape” by Leonard Susskind. Susskind believes that the small magnitude of the cosmological constant (119 zero digits after the decimal) compared to a randomly generated constant (which is likely to be close to to unity) leads to a multiple universe explanation. The actual choice of universe in which we live is constrained (and enabled) by the Anthropic Principle (AP). We exist in a habitable universe (where the constant is within a range consistent with life). Other universes exist in the Multiverse where things are not fine tuned, but nobody is there to notice. Susskind further makes a distinction between the Landscape (set of possible universes) and Multiverse (set of actual universes). Universes can actually be born from other ones through quantum fluctuations and it seems that Susskind thinks that only those Universes born from others are “real”. However, that seems arbitrary. What is the reason that only some of the universes in the Landscape exist, assuming they are all consistent? There is no “prime motive”, so no set of universes is preferred over any other set. Just because a Universe can arise from another, doesn’t seem to give its existence additional justification. For example, assume Universe A can give rise to B and C. Then on the other hand we have D that can give rise to E and F. If we say B exists (is in the multiverse) and E does not (in the Landscape but not in the Multiverse), what is the reason for that? Additionally, Susskind speaks of the Landscape as being created by varying parameters of String Theory. The question here is what are the limits? All theories can be embelished or modified with additional rules and constructs. Different Landscapes can be created. Why choose one Landscape over another? I would like to propose an extension to these ideas. Here is what I propose:

The Landscape includes all self-consistent mathematical constructs (the Omniverse)
The Multiverse and Landscape are identical

Some corollaries:

Every self-consistent mathematical construct exists as an independent universe
We exist in such a universe (but we have to find out which one)
Every perturbation of a self-consistent mathematical construct also exists

Note that a mathematical construct is not just what humans can conceive of - it’s the class of all possible ones. Some speculations:

Quantum mechanics has a random nature at small scales because every perturbation exists
Our particular universe is a machine that is good at hiding the perturbations. In particular, at the macroscopic level the perturbations are smoothed out. This is another application of the AP - life could not exist in a fatally chaotic and/or unpredictable universe.
The Universe is quantized and finite in all dimensions and magnitudes (although unboundedness may be okay). Otherwise we get into the measure problem.

I found a few other mentions of similar ideas. The canonical references seems to be Max Tegmark: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/toe_frames.html I believe a couple of additional features apply that I haven’t seen in other people’s theories: 1. randomness is a given at the bottom, because all perturbation exist, and universe must smooth it out 2. the measure problem means that the universe must be quantized and finite.

Google is god

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 03:24:50 +0000

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/24/technology/dumbest_googlegod/index.htm

Frappr

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:57:12 +0000

Location based social network. http://www.frappr.com/ and the transhumanist group thereon: http://www.frappr.com/transhumanists

Timeline to Singularity

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:07:03 +0000

(this one is by my father, Vladimir) Timeline for Singularity is Near (by R. Kurzweil) 2025: IPM creates the first machine to execute 500 trillion instructions/second, the throughput needed to simulate the brain. 2027: Mr. Bill Bates obtains from IPM the exclusive rights to produce a human-level software system. Bill buys an inexpensive brain simulation and creates the first Humachine. 2028: With huge VC financing and a grant from POD, Bill hires tens of thousands of programmers, builds a campus of 400 buildings and achieves de facto monopoly in Humachine software business.

What Matt Bamberger believes about the Singularity

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 04:06:22 +0000

Here is the long version: http://www.mattbamberger.com/Main/WhatIBelieveAboutTheSingularityLong Singularity before Nano? Interesting…

Winner take all and Molecular Manufacturing

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 02:21:36 +0000

I posted on a discussion about the problem of winner-take-all and MM.

The Singularity is Near by Kurzweil

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 05:16:21 +0000

Good semi-introductory text to give to all your smart friends.

Molecular Tinkertoys

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 05:12:02 +0000

Check out Schafmeister Lab for interesting progress in arbitrary shaped nanostructures from a fixed set of building blocks.

Nanotech and molecular tech

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 09:16:06 +0000

Every promising field has plenty of hype. Lots of “jump on the bandwagon” relabeling of existing research. Here is a definition of nanotechnology: Nanotechnology is technology on the nanometer scale. Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary activity, drawing on physics, chemistry, electronics, materials science and molecular biology. And a separate definition for molecular engineering: methods and tools to design and produce high-complexity atomically precise structures. Molecular engineering is a nanotechnology. I’m interested in molecular engineering.

Nano links

Sat, 31 Jul 2004 16:55:52 +0000

Protein based assembly: http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Papers/PBAoNP.html

I started a Blog.

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 07:09:58 +0000

Yup. I jumped on the bandwagon. The bandwagon has been circling the town for awhile now, waiting for me to jump on it.