The technology behind it isn’t new, but The Thought Emporium is a Youtuber who:
1: DIY-d a genetically modified virus to cure his own lactose intolerance (successfully)
2: Is currently working on a biological computer that runs on animal neurons.
3: Has livestreams where the viewers submit ideas (like making tomatoes spicy) and he designs DNA to accomplish it.
Also he helped shut down a scam health product that contained radioactive material which isn’t particularly futuristic (actually it reminds me of the “radiation is good for you” craze in the early 20th century) but I wanted to mention it anyways.
mRNA vaccines. You can literally code a vaccine now. That’s just mind blowing to me.
Especially impressive when you consider the etymology of the word “vaccine” and realize that a century ago vaccines were created by incubating them in a cow
Vegan Feta cheese
CoViD mask usage
PV panel price reduction
IPCC cooperation and language
Gamified drone wars producing music videos
PrEP
Turns out we can express most of proteins, some of the time, and then isolate them. This includes enzymes, when isolated these can do things like they naturally do but now in flask, but also they do things that aren’t remotely natural but are useful for us. These things are pretty fragile usually so then some of these can be modified so that they are resistant to higher temperatures, detergents etc. This is not only the nerdy shit like advanced chemical synthesis - lots of dishwasher tablets and and washing powders contain enzymes that cut proteins into pieces (like subtilisin), so in some cosmic sense dishwasher digests your leftover food off plates
Enzymes are still proteins, and have all problems of proteins. Turns out, you can just take the most important part out of enzyme, make it, or something functionally similar out of completely synthetic parts, and it still works. Sure, it’s not as active or selective, most of the time, but it’s resistant to things that would absolutely shred proteins. This is called organocatalysis and it was subject of 2021 Nobel Prize
Sometimes you want to take an enzyme and make it not work. We also have a tool for that: first you have to get structure of that enzyme, or some receptor protein, and by looking how a small set of random molecules lodges in it you can make a very selective, very potent ligand, sculpting it atom by atom with no knowledge other than protein structure. If you have time and resources, this can be made to work for almost any protein (that can be crystallised)
Every time I think about doing something illegal or hear about people from only a few generations ago doing something fun but slightly illegal.
Then I think. There is no way you could do that now the police would use all the surveillance that is everywhere and if I got caught their wouldn’t be a slap on the wrist and grow up. But it would be a serious issue for my future jobs and going to other countries.
Makes me think I’m in a futuristic movie. Just not one of the happy ending ones.
We have phones as powerful as computers in our hands when 20 years ago that was impossible. The exponential growth of computers and smartphones is mind-blowing. And the amount of technology that has bloomed from all of that
Data compression. Something about “making less data out of … The same data” is really mind blowing, & the math is sick
It is not that complicated, to make a simple example with strings: AAAABBBABABAB takes up 13 spaces, but write (compress) it like 4A3B3AB take up 6 spaces compressing it more than 50%.
Now take AAAABBBABABABAAAABBBABABAB with 26 spaces and write it as 2(4A3B3AB) with 9 spaces it takes only 30% of the space.
Compression algorithms just look for those repetitive spaces.
Takes those letters and imagine them being colored pixels of a picture
The DNS it’s so mind blowing to think about how we are able to map so many domains to so many ip adresses so smart and stable
Funny you should say that. DNS is 40 years old. Definitely not futuristic tech. But yeah, it works surprisingly well.
And that the service replies practically instantly every time no matter which domain you choose.
Edit: wtf is with these downvotes? DNS is without a doubt the fastest part of accessing the internet. In website load time, it’s an almost unnoticable fraction of the total load time.
Lithium polymer batteries that make advanced computing portable. We wouldn’t be able to create multi function cell phones without the battery power and longevity of those batteries. Star trek tricorders are going to be the next big tech coming to the generation after Gen z.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but wake me up when we’ve got replicators and holodecks. They’re as enticing now as they were decades ago.
If you lived in a society that had ready access to replicators and holodecks, you’d probably be asking for teleportation and eternal youth.
What’s amazing yesterday is boring today. That’s kinda part of the human condition.
Being able to fly anywhere in the world with almost zero planning, and then being able to communicate back to anyone at home with almost zero delay, would have been unheard of just two generations ago, but now that it’s normal, it’s a shrug and look for the next thing.
If you’ve got replicators, you already have half of a teleporter, and you already have the technology necessary to fabricate replacements for failing body parts, so you’re already at least partway to teleportation and eternal youth.
Tricorders are 70ies tech. 2000s dumbphones are more advanced.
You’re thinking of their com badge, the tricorder was the thing they flipped open to analyse a rock or reverse the polarity of a time crystal. It could do basic medical work, interface with electronics, detect life forms, determine if plants are edible, all sorts
Yes, I love carrying potentially explosive batteries in the pocket…
I hope you also love driving an actual explosion. Also known as a car.
Also, I actually had a vehicle from 1987 that totally flooded the cylinders with gasoline due to a fault in the carburetor, and even then it didn’t explode when I started it.
Seriously though, what’s up with these EV’s that’ll just as soon randomly burn your garage and house down while you’re asleep and the car isn’t even running?
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I wish you people would actually do a comparison between ICE engine explosions vs. EV explosions.
Guess what? Firefighters can actually put out ICE vehicles, but they still haven’t figured out a solid way of putting out EV batteries.
Guess what? When ICE vehicles explode, more often than not they’re already running and there’s some electrical short or something. EV will just as soon explode in your garage while you’re sleeping.
Guess what? Studies show that since EV’s are way heavier, they wear through tires way faster? Did you know it takes approximately one barrel of crude oil to make an average car tire?
Guess what? Autonomous vehicles seem to have a habit of getting confused around emergency vehicles and causing wrecks, into the very vehicles meant to save people from accidents.
Guess what? Lithium ion batteries are typically rated for a max safe temperature of around 40⁰C, while the pavement the battery sits right over can be over 80⁰C
I’m too lazy to look up links, you’re smart, go Google these things or whatever. All these facts check out.
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Voyager 2
Blows my mind every fucking time I read about it.
Props to the USA/NASA and their engineers for achieving something so long lasting with technology from ~50 years ago.
I’m holding a small device in my hand that gives me access to all of humanity’s knowledge.
Granted, I’m using it to dick around on Lemmy, but…
To be fair there’s plenty of knowledge on Lemmy as of today… And porn, lots of porn.
The Internet is for porn!
I have yet to encounter any porn on lemmy.
Do you have the NSFW filter off within your Lemmy or app’s settings?
On behalf of Gnorv, yes. I have made sure multiple times that my NSFW filter is off. I have only seen an occasional NSFW - like One per month, and it’s never porn - even when I browse by New.
Please Help.
Every time I hear about World Coin scanning people’s retina’s for $50, driver monitoring tech inside new cars, or Amazon asking people to pay for things with palm prints I feel a bit like I’m living in the Minority Report. Does that count?
cyberpunk without any cool aesthetics.
What, you don’t appreciate the beauty of an anti-homeless bench? /s
I like how every single new car model is an almost-identical Crossover.
Funny story, I live in a place where people turn up their noses at the slightly smaller crossovers for identity reasons, and there’s a noticeable trend towards driving scooters with an aftermarket envelope because “normal cars” are just too big.
The future isn’t necessarily positive I guess
Railguns on navy ships.
Micro SD cards, 1TB that tiny, for $50
Someone else here mentioned the Steam Deck as a powerful handheld on the go, I want to do a similar approach.
Playing PS1 games with a Miyoo Mini, I swear my child’s dream was to play PS1 games in a handheld sized similar to my Game Boy Advance from that time, now we can do it in even smaller devices! (And this one isn’t even the tiniest lol).
