Deep Future

Frank Rieger is a hacker in Germany and one of the most well-known spokesman for the chaos computer club. This organization is unlike anything we have in the United States, unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else in the world. It’s computer hackers who’ve taken an interest in figuring out how to be activists for policy decisions in government that affect technology, especially computers, privacy, data. All the things that actually matter, but get thrown by the wayside by our corporate overlords. It’s amazing getting to hang out with these guys. They’re doing something we haven’t figured out how to accomplish, how to create a lobby. They’ve been very effective. Talking to Frank about what they’ve accomplished over the years and things they’ve worked on is, both inspiring and terrifying because, they have had wins, but also losing ground at times as well. And it’s just this sort of continual war of escalation, trying to keep governments from becoming surveillance states. Keep them from violating the sensibilities that we’ve had to develop in hard fought wars in the past. With authoritarian, dictatorships, and other despots who’ve taken control. They keep coming back in different forms. I wish we could find a way to be so engaged here in the U.S. Personally, I started going to Germany for their event 25 years ago. I remember the first time I went with some American hackers to the Chaos Computer Congress, it happens every year in Germany between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It’ll blow your mind. These hackers are incredible. It’s inspiring to see what they can do. I think it is kind of a backlash to the very structured education program in Germany and Europe at large. The misfits, they go hard and I’ve seen them do incredible things I thought were impossible at times. If it’s of any interest to you to go to hacker convention, this is the one to go to. I think you’ll see that Frank is a very level person. He’s smart and well-spoken. He’s standing up for what’s right. I’m thrilled to be sharing with you. Important Links: Frank Rieger on Wikipedia (in German) Chaos Computer Club Recorded on June 17, 2024The post Chaos Computer Club of Germany – Frank Rieger appeared first on .

Two nerds bullshitting about LinkedIn basically being Dungeons & Dragons for squares. Recorded on July 5, 2024The post LinkedIn is D＆D – ØF appeared first on .

Two nerds bullshitting about robots that can give a good massage. Recorded on May 15, 2024The post Massagebot 5000 Part I – ØF appeared first on .

Join Bruce Damer, a scientist and director at the BIOTA Institute, as he discusses groundbreaking theories on the origin of life, including the role of meteorites and wet-dry cycling. Bruce bravely shares his journey with psychedelics, highlighting their potential to advance scientific discovery and personal transformation. He advocates for a future where psychedelics facilitate profound insights and societal change, while emphasizing the importance of mentorship in unconventional science. Delve into this intriguing blend of biology and consciousness!

Two nerds bullshitting about making amino acid Legos that kids can plug together to make proteins. This turned into a completely unrelated conversation about delivering personalized pharmaceuticals. Recorded on May 15, 2024The post Amino Acid Anal Bead Toy for Kids – ØF appeared first on .

 Robert Green is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. He’s the director of Genetics Research at Brigham and Women’s hospital and the co-founder of Nurture Genomics, where they’re doing genomic screening for infants to detect and mitigate actionable genetic conditions. If you don’t understand what that means, you’re in the right place because we have a long conversation, digging into that topic and picking it apart for your understanding. Robert Green and Pablos This is a super exciting frontier for medicine. We are at a point where we know the science, and we know how to sequence a genome. We know how to correlate some of those things that we see in the genetic code to actual health problems that are predictive. Some of this is just a bug in the code that causes you to get some kind of cancer or other degenerative disease. We know it’s there and in a lot of cases, we actually know what to do about it. There is no systematic screening for people, much less for infants. That’s what Robert’s trying to solve. This is very important, very exciting stuff and It will change the future of how we take care of people and prevent genetic diseases from disrupting their lives and taking their lives. You want to know about this. This is a great conversation. He’s very good at explaining what’s been found in the science and how they’re implementing it.  Enjoy! Important Links: G2P Nurture Genomics Harvard Medical School Brigham and Women’s Hospital About Robert Green Robert C. Green, MD, MPH is a medical geneticist and physician-scientist who directs the G2P Research Program in translational genomics and health outcomes in the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Green is currently Associate Director for Research of the Partners Center for Personalized Genetic Medicine, a Board Member of the Council for Responsible Genetics and a member of the Informed Cohort Oversight Boards for both the Children’s Hospital Boston Gene Partnership Program and the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative. He was the lead author of the recently published recommendations from the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics for management of incidental findings in clinical sequencing. Recorded on May 6, 2024The post Genome Sequencing for Kids – Robert Green appeared first on .

Two nerds bullshitting about feeding the output from one industrial process as the input for another. Recorded on May 15, 2024The post Industrial Ouroboros – ØF appeared first on .

Dan Shapiro with his game Robot Turtles. Photo by Jonathan H. Liu I met Dan Shapiro years ago when I went out to fly kites with Elan Lee. What a delightful guy! Dan is an inspiring entrepreneur with boundless energy, always upbeat. He’s had, I think, four companies that succeeded, maybe three that were venture backed. Dan did something super cool. He got excited about making a board game that would teach kids how to program called Robot Turtles. He made that game using Kickstarter or something, and in the process really figured out how to succeed at crowdfunding. I think at the time it was one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns ever for game. But then he took that knowledge and he used it when he started Glowforge. Glowforge is a desktop laser cutter. This is a tool you can use to cut materials. You draw something on your computer, click print and it’ll literally use a laser to go cut or engrave materials. You’ve seen this kind of thing. Things engraved in wood that are done this way now, and lots of parts can be made this way for all kinds of projects. Dan wanted to democratize that. I don’t know if my laser cutter was the first one he ever saw, but one way or another, he ended up with one in his garage and they were like these kind of crummy, chinese laser cutters with print drivers from hell that are used to operate them, and they’re sort of dicey, but it’s still inspiring because what you can do with them. Dan had one in his garage to make Robot Turtles. So the next company he wanted to make, Glowforge, was to try and take that amazing tool and bring it to everyone. And this was very analogous to what Makerbot had done with 3D printers, which I got to help with a little bit. In those days, Dan asked me what I thought about it and I got to help him, be a little advisor for Glowforge. They made this thing a very big success, in part by crowdfunding the first version and this was really hard to do. They made the first prototype. Made a very inspiring video about it. They did a crowdfunding campaign and got world record pre-orders for this thing and that’s how they funded starting the company and it’s hard to do that. Hard to keep everybody happy. All these things, especially hardware projects always take longer than you hope or estimate. I think they probably lost some of their backers along the way for those reasons. But they did ship, which was not true of a lot of other crowdfunding campaigns. I’m a Kickstarter junkie, so I back all kinds of stuff and a good fraction of it never shows up and a good fraction of it shows up and by the time it does, I can’t remember what it was in the first place. I’ve been wanting to share this conversation with Dan with you guys for a long time. He’s a great entrepreneur. I have a hard time getting him to say anything mean about anybody or anything, he’s so positive. You’ll learn about not only Glowforge and what they’ve done, but also, a little bit about how to think about these technologies and bringing them into the world. Enjoy! Important Links: Glowforge Robot Turtles Dan Shapiro Photobucket MakerBot About Dan Shapiro Dan Shapiro is a high networth individual based in Seattle, Washington. Dan is a Co-Founder and serves as the CEO of Glowforge. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of Robot Turtles, Google, Sparkbuy, and Ontela. He was also the Founder of Photobucket. He seeks to invest in consumer internet, mobile, finance and education-based companies operating in Seattle and Silicon Valley. Shapiro is currently investing in private equity, including venture capital fund strategies. Recorded on May 15, 2024The post Hardware is Hard – Dan Shapiro appeared first on .

Two nerds bullshitting about using X-PRIZE and Kickstarter to get nuclear reactors built. Recorded on May 15, 2024The post Nuclear Reactor Kickstarter – ØF appeared first on .

Two nerds bullshitting about their search for the ultimate black t-shirt. We tried shirts from Vollebak, Ministry of Supply, ETON, Wyr. Recorded on March 13, 2024The post Black T-Shirt Review – ØF appeared first on .