RealitySandwich - Tech

Fight Big Brother ACTA

Faye Sakellaridis — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:48:30 -0800

[Action Alert] • The fight to preserve our online freedom is a seemingly never-ending one. With all the controversy surrounding SOPA and PIPA, you may not have heard of ACTA, or "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement," which threatens the basic infrastructure of the Internet as we know it. ACTA is an agreement between countries besides the United States, which means it can be passed without the approval of Congress and the Supreme Court.

"I Share Therefore I Am"

OddEdges — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:34:34 -0800

Internet freedom has won the day in Sweden as the religion The Missionary Church of Kopimism has been officially recognized by the government, instigating a new discussion on legality, spirituality and the shaky fate of our greatest collective achievement to date: the Net.

Brains in a Vat

Jay Van Liere — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:07:59 -0800

A new scientific development conjures up sci-fi images of Rutger Hauer’s android in Blade Runner – lab-cultured eyes, brain parts, and glands. Yet that is exactly what researchers at Kobe's Riken Center for Developmental Biology have achieved.

New Particle Discovered

OddEdges — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:32:58 -0800

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider still can't find the elusive Higgs boson or "God particle" but have settled for a newly dubbed "Chi" particle.

Though not nearly as significant as the sought for God Particle, the Chi particle has been "hailed as the first clear observation of a new particle since the 17-mile underground accelerator opened for business in 2009."

Spy Files Leaked

Jameson Viens — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:21:09 -0800

Coined the “Spy Files,” the latest WikiLeaks release is a collection of presentations from government-only security conferences claiming the relative ease of country and global-wide surveillance.

And Now, Faster-Than-Light Culture

Michael Garfield — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:26:48 -0800

CIA "Ninja-Librarians" Track Twitter

JO — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:41:11 -0800

The AP has reported that the CIA is mining social media websites like Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to track everything from common public opinion overseas to revolutions in the making. The branch of the CIA, known as the Open Source Center, looks at up-to 5 million tweets a day. The stated objective is to provide the White House with a daily view of world public opinion.

Sinking Leaks

Jay Van Liere — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:42:16 -0700

Recently, WikiLeaks announced that it was suspending publication to “aggressively fundraise” so as to stay afloat. Founder Julian Assange said a financial blockade by Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union has snuffed 95% of WikiLeaks revenue.

Not So Fast

Bill Machon — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:29:22 -0700

Experiments recently conducted in Switzerland appear to show ‘muon neturino’ subatomic particles travelling faster-than-light. Confirmation of the results would challenge Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity, and would turn physics on it’s head. Fantastically, it could also indicate the possibility of time-travel. Scientists are now less enthusiastic about the potential speed of the particles and are urging caution, the need for further experiments, and alternative theories.

Virtual Panopticon

stefaniesara — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:02:31 -0700

Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” comes to mind as the FBI announces its plan to implement a facial recognition service with a database of over 70 million mug shots. Conspirators may fear some cryptic alliance between Facebook and the FBI, worrying that all our faces could be easily uploaded into this next-generation identification system.

Digital Dead Sea

Matt Toussaint — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:44:02 -0700

The Israel Museum, in collaboration with Google, has digitized and made five of the original Dead Sea Scrolls available to the public for the first time. Including among the available texts are the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the scroll known as "The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness". Passages can be viewed in hi

Hacking The Future: The Technology Spore

Evolver Social Movement — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:20:38 -0700

Evolver.net and Bioneers present:
Hacking the Future: The Technology Spore

Wed, Sept. 21

Trending Dissent

OddEdges — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:23:15 -0700

We all remember "Change" so well, possibly because it has collapsed on itself with an embarrassing irony that characterizes the monstrous absurdities and doublespeak throughout modern Americanism. Now, nearly four years since the Bush Administration, "#fuckyouwashington" has become a trending hashtag meme on Twitter. Rawstory reports:

Pig Pancreases for Humans

Nathaniel Page — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:50:57 -0700

New technology may allow researchers to grow human organs inside of pigs. Professor Hiromitsu Nakauchi of the University of Tokyo presented the idea at a European genetics conference last month.

Nakauchi and his colleagues created genetic deficiencies in the embryos of mice so that the mice wouldn’t be able to grow pancreases. Then the scientists injected stem cells from rats into the mice embryos. The mice grew rat pancreases and were fine.

Singularities and Nightmares

David Brin — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:53:58 -0700

In this provocative essay from 2004, the author discusses issues that strike us as even more relevant today than when it was written. We present it here for the benefit of the Reality Sandwich community.

Overview

Has Google's Search Gone Sentient?

rv — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:59:12 -0700

In this TED talk between social media strategist and developer Maf Lewis and I, the liklihood of ayahuasca plant consciousness, internet and web sentience is discussed as metaphor for the social media revolution which can now begin to rebuild local, national, and world government.

Further information is at http:www.googleconsciousness.com

Post-Digging Discoveries

Kate Findley — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:41:13 -0700

Seventeen previously undiscovered Egyptian pyramids as well as 1,000 tombs and 3,000 settlements were spotted thanks to new infra-red technology that detects shapes lurking out of sight. Cameras attached to satellites hovering seven hundred kilometers above the earth can zoom in on objects less than one meter in diameter.

Because these dwellings are built from mud brick, they form a clear indentation against the surrounding soil, making them easy to spot using the technology.

Cyborg Kitsch

OddEdges — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:26:14 -0700

Electrical Cold Turkey

Chris Kaplan — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:57:46 -0700

As the Sun begins to go through a cycle of increased solar storm activity, the US and the UK look to the possibility of scheduling controlled power cuts. By planning these outages around the solar storms, it is hoped that the National Electricity Grids would be protected against damage from

PS The Screen Snag

Dani Katz — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 05:25:25 -0700

The following is excerpted from the forthcoming book Love in a Time of Chemtrails.

And then the Universe decreed: No Deals Shall be Sealed...LOL

Fucking Facebook.

A Farewell to Advertising

Ken Jordan — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 08:19:11 -0700

In the World After Abundance

John Michael Greer — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:59:08 -0700

The following originally appeared on The Archdruid Report.

Facebook Purges UK Pages

Stephen Hershey — Tue, 03 May 2011 12:44:03 -0700

Late last week, dozens of UK Facebook profile pages were suddenly deleted due to their supposed violation of the network's terms of agreement.

"London Student Assembly," "Socialist Unity," "Comrade George Orwell," and more activist-themed pages were targets of this mass deletion.

God Particle Leak?

Chris Kaplan — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:13:00 -0700

This past Easter Sunday it was leaked that the Large Hadron Collider may have detected the elusive Higgs boson, a.k.a the God Particle.

They Know Where You've Been

Marshall Buxton — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:46:07 -0700

Last week a report was released revealing that iphone and android smart phones track your location at all times and transmit it back to Apple and Google respectively. This discovery has many worried about who has access to this data, and how it could be abused.

Change Gets Hacked

Marshall Buxton — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:31:49 -0700

Last week I wrote an action alert about the wrongful imprisonment of Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei (below), with a link to a Change.org petition calling for his release. Yesterday, just before my article was to be posted on Reality Sandwich, we were notified about a cyber attack on Change.org. The attack was complicated, coordinated and completely overwhelmed the servers of Change.org, immediately taking down the site (which is still down).

Password Protected Genes

Kelly Fragale — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:16:45 -0700

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, is an agency of the United States Department of Defense. It was established in 1958 with the mission of keeping US military technology more sophisticated than the nation’s potential enemies.

The Trouble With Vaporware

John Michael Greer — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 04:45:51 -0700

The following article originally appeared on The Archdruid Report.

Fifth Dimensional Jump

Chris Kaplan — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:43:20 -0700

The possibilities keep expanding for the Large Hadron Collider, the latest being time travel.

Still in its infancy, the LHC continues to try and recreate the elusive Higgs boson, a.k.a. the "God particle" that is believed to explain how protons, neutrons, and electrons have mass, as well as joining in the search for dark matter and their likely neutrino counterparts, also known as ghost particles.

Master of Internet Puppets

Julia Knobloch — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:58:56 -0800

A post on Daily Kos reports on a leaked email from HB Gary Federal, a U.S. defense contractor, about using “persona management“ software to create a whole cast of sock-puppet marionettes. The software makes one person seem to be many--the manipulation of online discussions has never been easier.