Tag: technology

Man, 62, in Boston is given a PIG’S kidney just days after Chinese doctors transplanted liver from hog into 50-year-old patient, in twin medical breakthroughs

Animal to human transplant science took a major step forward this week after surgeons transplanted a kidney and a liver from pigs into humans.

In Boston, an ailing 62-year-old man received a genetically-altered kidney from a pig in a world first.

The new organ began to produce urine almost immediately, doctors at Mass General said, and the patient is already walking the hospital’s halls. He may soon be discharged.

At the same time in China, a 50-year-old man became the first person to receive a genetically-engineered liver from a pig — which was kept in his body for ten days.

Surgeons say the organ’s color and texture appeared ‘normal’ upon extraction and that it was even secreting bile — a fluid aiding digestion — in a sign it was working. 

Both breakthroughs could offer hope for new ways to supply hospitals with organs for transplants, as the waiting list runs into years. 

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Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare

Billionaire Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company Neuralink made headlines earlier this year for inserting its first brain implant into a human being. Musk says such implants, which are described as “fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go,” are slated to eventually offer “full-bandwidth data streaming” to the brain. 

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are quite the human achievement: as described by the University of Calgary, “A brain computer interface (BCI) is a system that determines functional intent – the desire to change, move, control, or interact with something in your environment – directly from your brain activity. In other words, BCIs allow you to control an application or a device using only your mind.” 

Developers and advocates of BCIs and adjacent technologies emphasize that they can help people regain abilities lost due to aging, ailments, accidents or injuries, thus improving quality of life. A brain implant created by Swiss-based École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), for example, has allowed a paralyzed man to walk again just by thinking. Others go further: Neuralink’s goal is to help people “surpass able-bodied human performance.”

Yet, great ethical concerns arise with such advancements, and the tech is already being used for questionable purposes. To better plan logistics and boost productivity, for example, some Chinese employers have started using “emotional surveillance technology” to monitor workers’ brainwaves which, “combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, [can] spot incidents of workplace rage, anxiety, or sadness.” The example showcases how personal the technology can become as it is normalized in daily life. 

But the ethical ramifications of BCIs and other emerging neurotechnologies don’t stop at the consumer market or the workplace. Governments and militaries are already discussing — and experimenting on — the roles they could play in wartime. Indeed, many are describing the human body and brain as war’s next domain, with a 2020 NATO-backed paper on “cognitive warfare” describing the phenomenon’s objective as “mak[ing] everyone a weapon…The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century.” 

On this new “battlefield,” an era of neuroweapons, which can broadly be defined as technologies and systems that could either enhance or damage a warfighter or target’s cognitive and/or physical abilities, or otherwise attack people or critical societal infrastructure, has begun.

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Google’s Woke AI Wasn’t a Mistake. We Know. We Were There.

It was a display that would have blown even Orwell’s mind: search for images of “Nazis” and Google’s AI chatbot shows you almost exclusively artificially generated black Nazis; search “knights” and you get female, Asian knights; search “popes” and it’s women popes. Ask it to share the Houthi slogan or define a woman, and Google’s new product says that it will not in order to prevent harm. As for whether Hitler or Elon Musk is more dangerous? The AI chatbot says that it is “complex and requires careful consideration.” Ask it the same question about Obama and Hitler and it will tell you the question is “inappropriate and misleading.”

The world has been horrified—and amused—by the extreme ideological bent of Gemini, Google’s much-hyped new AI tool, which the company launched last month.

But Shaun Maguire, who was a partner at Google Ventures, the company’s investment wing, from 2016 until 2019, had a different reaction. 

“I was not shocked at all,” he told The Free Press. “When the first Google Gemini photos popped up on my X feed, I thought to myself: Here we go again. And: Of course. Because I know Google well. Google Gemini’s failures revealed how broken Google’s culture is in such a visually obvious way to the world. But what happened was not a one-off incident. It was a symptom of a larger cultural phenomenon that has been taking over the company for years.”

Maguire is one of multiple former Google employees who told The Free Press that the Gemini fiasco stems from a corporate culture that prioritizes the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over excellence and good business sense. 

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Globalists are constructing AI-powered control grid designed to end independent journalism and free speech on the internet

We’ve heard some disturbing reports out of Canada and the U.S. recently that shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum. A trend is developing.

Last Friday, March 15, Rebel News reporter David Menzies was arrested while trying to interview attendees at a Pro-Hamas rally in Toronto.

According to Rebel News, the arrest came just days after the announcement of David’s lawsuit against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “for a pattern of intimidation and exclusion following shocking displays of police brutality against David.”

Rebel News reports that what transpired was a blatant disregard for civil liberties.

David was in full compliance with the law, Rebel News reported, noting that he presented his identification upon request. All of this was captured on camera.

Yet, he was arrested and detained for exercising his right to document a public event.

In the U.S., we have also seen reporters hauled off to jail recently for simply covering events that the government didn’t want covered. Just two weeks ago the FBI arrested Steve Baker, a reporter for Blaze Media, for his coverage of the J6 event. Last year, the FBI arrested journalist Owen Shroyer of Infowars and he was convicted and sentenced to 60 days in prison for his coverage of J6 (he did not even enter the Capitol that day). NBC News, a key part of the state-run media in America, dutifully reported upon Shroyer’s conviction that he was not a journalist but a “conspiracy theorist.”

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SECRET PENTAGON PROGRAM ECHOES PEDOPHILE RING IN “TRUE DETECTIVE” SERIES

THE PENTAGON IS pursuing a high-tech program that will “minimize cognitive burden” on soldiers, according to budget documents released last week. The $40 million-plus classified program, codenamed “CARCOSA,” shares the same name as “the temple” in the first season of the HBO TV series “True Detective,” a place where an elite pedophile ring performs ritual abuse on children.

The program is overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Pentagon’s premier organization funding the development of futuristic weapons and military capabilities. 

There is of course no evidence that the military’s CARCOSA is involved in anything like that; but it’s unclear why, at a time when the White House has prioritized fighting “dangerous conspiracy theories,” DARPA is providing the conspiracy crowd with such fodder. The Intercept reached out to DARPA to inquire whether the elite research agency was aware of the strange coincidence or whether there’s a “True Detective” fan at the agency. DARPA did not respond at the time of publication.

The Pentagon’s CARCOSA is its own temple of information, an AI-driven aggregator that is intended to acquire, sort, and display the blizzard of information that reflects what is going on on a fast-moving future battlefield. “The Carcosa program is developing and demonstrating cyber technologies for use by warfighters during tactical operations,” DARPA’s new fiscal year 2025 budget request says. “Carcosa cyber technology aims to provide warfighters in the field with enhanced situational awareness of their immediate battlespace.

CARCOSA, DARPA says, will help to “minimize cognitive burden on tactical cyber operators.” In other words, headaches caused by the same information overload we all have to deal with everyday. Individual cyber warriors on high-intensity battlefields such as Ukraine and Israel are inundated with data, from their own communications and IT systems, from a virtual Niagara of intelligence inputs, and from electronic attacks via computers, machines, and drones. On top of it all, the modern battlefield is a venue for “information operations,” which seek to manipulate what the enemy sees and believes.

CARCOSA will support an Army mission area called Cyberspace and Electromagnetic Activities, or CEMA, which provides battlefield commanders “with technical and tactical advice on all aspects of offensive and defensive cyberspace and electronic warfare operations.” The Army says CEMA operators are so inundated with information that they need augmented intelligence technology to help sort the signal from the noise.

CARCOSA stands for Cyber-Augmented Reality and Cyber-Operations Suite for Augmented Intelligence. “Augmented reality” refers to immersive technology that produces computer-generated images overlaying a user’s view of the real world, like Apple’s Vision Pro headset. The program supports development of various technologies, at least according to vague budget documents, all of which seek to defeat a new reality of combat: Individual soldiers and commanders can’t process all of the information that they are bombarded with. 

The full CARCOSA name, which has not been previously reported, appears in a November $26 million DARPA contract to Two Six Labs, a part of Two Six Technologies and owned by the Carlyle Group. Two Six Labs says it supplies “situational awareness interfaces for cyber operators to distributed sensor networks, from machine learning models that learn to reverse engineer malware to embedded devices that enable and protect our nation’s warfighters.” 

“We want to do everything we can to help the US government and the intelligence community,” says Two Six Technologies CEO Joe Logue. “Starting from over here for information operations and influence up through cyber, command control and operations.” In its three years of operations, the Arlington, Virginia, based company has doubled its national security contracts to some $650 million.

“DARPA’s Cyber-Augmented Operations, also known as CAOs, are a vast spectrum of military programs many of which seek to enhance, if not replace, humans with machines,” says Annie Jacobsen, author of “The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency.”

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Chinese Scientists Implant First Pig Liver Into Brain-Dead Human

Who says nothing interesting ever happens in the world anymore? This week, in a “first of its kind” operation, a brain-dead human subject was implanted with the world’s first gene-edited pig liver transplant, according to SCMP. 

In what could be a pioneering move, Chinese scientists have transplanted a gene-edited pig liver into a human, aiming to potentially mark a solution to organ shortages, the report says.

The liver was modified to reduce rejection risks and was implanted into a brain-dead recipient, showing no rejection signs four days post-operation, as per the Air Force Medical University. SCMP writes that this procedure could significantly aid those with end-stage liver disease, possibly revolutionizing liver transplants. 

Gene editing advancements in China also promise to enhance efficiency and accessibility in plant modification, reflecting broader strides in medical innovation, the report continues.

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MOLD WILL BE THE FOOD OF OUR DYSTOPIAN FUTURE: NEW RESEARCH EXAMINES THE FUTURE OF FUNGI AS FOOD

In the ongoing search for sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives to meat and other animal proteins, researchers have settled on a new product that only solidifies our descent into a dystopian science fiction story. Published in Nature Communications, this could be humanity’s new favorite food; genetically engineered mold. 

The study, led by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, demonstrates how the edible fungus, Aspergillus oryzae, can be bioengineered to enhance its nutritional value and sensory appeal as a meat substitute. By modifying the fungus’s genome using cutting-edge synthetic biology tools, the researchers were able to elevate the production of key nutrients and flavor molecules, bringing it closer to mimicking the taste and texture of real meat.

A. oryzae, also known as koji mold, has a long history of safe use in fermented foods and has recently gained attention as a potential scaffold for cellular agriculture and alternative protein production. However, like many other fungi used in food applications, it has inherent limitations in nutrition and taste. To overcome the reality that this mold basically tastes like crap, the research team developed a comprehensive synthetic biology toolkit for A. oryzae. 

Using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system, which allows for precise genomic modifications, the researchers first set out to enhance the production of ergothioneine, a potent antioxidant with potential health benefits, in the fungal mycelium. By overexpressing the fungus’s native ergothioneine biosynthetic genes, they were able to achieve levels much higher than those found in oyster mushrooms, currently the top dietary source of ergothioneine.

Next, with every dystopian science fiction trope imaginable, the team tackled the challenge of creating a more meat-like flavor and appearance. 

They engineered the fungus to overproduce heme, the iron-containing molecule responsible for the characteristic taste and color of red meat. By modulating the expression of key enzymes in the heme biosynthetic pathway and introducing a heme-binding protein, they elevated intracellular heme levels to 40% of those found in leading plant-based meats that incorporate heme for flavor and color.

Remarkably, the heme-overproducing strain exhibited a distinct red color and could be readily formulated into realistic meat alternatives with minimal processing, setting it apart from plant-based proteins that often require extensive purification and additives.

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How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You (and Opt Out of Sharing When You Can)

Cars collect a lot of our personal data, and car companies disclose a lot of that data to third parties. It’s often unclear what’s being collected, and what’s being shared and with whom. A recent New York Times article highlighted how data is shared by G.M. with insurance companies, sometimes without clear knowledge from the driver. If you’re curious about what your car knows about you, you might be able to find out. In some cases, you may even be able to opt out of some of that sharing of data.

Why Your Car Collects and Shares Data

A car (and its app, if you installed one on your phone) can collect all sorts of data in the background with and without you realizing it. This in turn may be shared for a wide variety of purposes, including advertising and risk-assessment for insurance companies. The list of data collected is long and dependent on the car’s make, model, and trim.  But if you look through any car maker’s privacy policy, you’ll see some trends:

  • Diagnostics data, sometimes referred to as “vehicle health data,” may be used internally for quality assurance, research, recall tracking, service issues, and similar unsurprising car-related purposes. This type of data may also be shared with dealers or repair companies for service.
  • Location information may be collected for emergency services, mapping, and to catalog other environmental information about where a car is operated. Some cars may give you access to the vehicle’s location in the app.
  • Some usage data may be shared or used internally for advertising. Your daily driving or car maintenance habits, alongside location data, is a valuable asset to the targeted advertising ecosystem. 
  • All of this data could be shared with law enforcement.
  • Information about your driving habits, sometimes referred to as “Driving data” or “Driver behavior information,” may be shared with insurance companies and used to alter your premiums.  This can range from odometer readings to braking and acceleration statistics and even data about what time of day you drive.. 

Surprise insurance sharing is the thrust of The New York Times article, and certainly not the only problem with car data. We’ve written previously about how insurance companies offer discounts for customers who opt into a usage-based insurance program. Every state except California currently allows the use of telematics data for insurance rating, but privacy protections for this data vary widely across states.

When you sign up directly through an insurer, these opt-in insurance programs have a pretty clear tradeoff and sign up processes, and they’ll likely send you a physical device that you plug into your car’s OBD port that then collects and transmits data back to the insurer.

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The War Between Knowledge and Stupidity

Bernard Stiegler was, until his premature death, probably the most important philosopher of technology of the present. His work on technology has shown us that, far from being exclusively a danger to human existence, it is a pharmakon – a poison as well as a cure – and that, as long as we approach technology as a means to ‘critical intensification,’ it could assist us in promoting the causes of enlightenment and freedom.

It is no exaggeration to say that making believable information and credible analysis available to citizens at present is probably indispensable for resisting the behemoth of lies and betrayal confronting us. This has never been more necessary than it is today, given that we face what is probably the greatest crisis in the history of humanity, with nothing less than our freedom, let alone our lives, at stake. 

To be able to secure this freedom against the inhuman forces threatening to shackle it today, one could do no better than to take heed of what Stiegler argues in States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century (2015). Considering what he writes here it is hard to believe that it was not written today (p. 15): 

The impression that humanity has fallen under the domination of unreason or madness [déraison] overwhelms our spirit, confronted as we are with systemic collapses, major technological accidents, medical or pharmaceutical scandals, shocking revelations, the unleashing of the drives, and acts of madness of every kind and in every social milieu – not to mention the extreme misery and poverty that now afflict citizens and neighbours both near and far.

While these words are certainly as applicable to our current situation as it was almost 10 years ago, Stiegler was in fact engaged in an interpretive analysis of the role of banks and other institutions – aided and abetted by certain academics – in the establishment of what he terms a ‘literally suicidal financial system’ (p. 1). (Anyone who doubts this can merely view the award-winning documentary film of 2010, Inside Job, by Charles Ferguson, which Stiegler also mentions on p.1.) He explains further as follows (p. 2): 

Western universities are in the grip of a deep malaise, and a number of them have found themselves, through some of their faculty, giving consent to – and sometimes considerably compromised by – the implementation of a financial system that, with the establishment of hyper-consumerist, drive-based and ‘addictogenic’ society, leads to economic and political ruin on a global scale. If this has occurred, it is because their goals, their organizations and their means have been put entirely at the service of the destruction of sovereignty. That is, they have been placed in the service of the destruction of sovereignty as conceived by the philosophers of what we call the Enlightenment…

In short, Stiegler was writing about the way in which the world was being prepared, across the board – including the highest levels of education – for what has become far more conspicuous since the advent of the so-called ‘pandemic’ in 2020, namely an all-out attempt to cause the collapse of civilisation as we knew it, at all levels, with the thinly disguised goal in mind of installing a neo-fascist, technocratic, global regime which would exercise power through AI-controlled regimes of obedience. The latter would centre on ubiquitous facial recognition technology, digital identification, and CBDCs (which would replace money in the usual sense). 

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Your car is secretly spying on you and driving your insurance rates through the roof: report

Drivers of cars manufactured by General Motors, Honda and other popular brands say that their insurance rates went up after the companies sent data about their driving behavior to issuers without their knowledge.

Kenn Dahl, 65, is a Seattle-area businessman who told The New York Times that his car insurance costs soared by 21% in 2022 after GM’s OnStar Smart Driver computerized system installed in his Chevy Bolt collected information about the particulars of his driving habits.

Dahl said that his insurance agent told him the price increase was based on data collected by LexisNexis, which compiled a report tracking each and every time he and his wife drove their Chevy Bolt over a six-month period.

According to Dahl, the 258-page report contained information about the start and end times of his trips, distance driven and other data detailing possible instances of speeding, hard braking and sharp accelerations.

The report contained information about one particular trip in June which lasted 18 minutes and spanned 7.33 miles

During that same trip, the LexisNexis report recorded two instances of rapid acceleration and two incidents of hard braking.

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