Employers Demand Workers’ Genetic Test Results. Nothing exploitative and monstrous about that, nope!

We’re all as good as dead. These things will be a lot less cute when they’re inevitably weaponized.

Megacities Military Unit. Pretty good research for all you near-future, soft-dystopian, and slow-apoc writers. Don’t forget to add the battalion of ‘bots from that previous link.

Are Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Lightsails? Decide for yourself by reading the paper. I mean, honestly, no, probably not. But it’s the sort of thing we ought to be thinking about anyway! Our search for life outside the solar system is fairly hopeless. I mean, yeah, there’s life out there. That is no longer a question in the same way it was for the first half of my life when we had no data about the existences of extrasolar planets. Now, of course, we know the galaxy is lousy with planets. From there life only needs access to energy, stability, and time. And the number of stars times the number of planets across the timeline of the Milky Way tells us that it is almost unthinkable that life does not exist somewhere else in our galaxy.

But our search has been largely concerned with detecting 20th century-ish radio signals. Given the vast chasms of space and time involved, this is frankly hopeless and sort of dumb. I mean, we should keep doing it just in case, it’s a trivial use of time and computation, but if there’s another technological civilization out there, they’ll be exploiting those kinds of signals and power levels for a small sliver of its potential lifespan. If we’re optimistic enough to assume they don’t kill themselves, they’ll spend far more time exploiting bigger and stranger technologies that ought to be easier to detect if only we get a little weird with our thinking.

Google’s AI + Blockchains = healthcare. Basically an attempt to keep medical data completely private but still useful. Drones and cyber-eyes get all the attention, but it’s the nuts and bolts stuff like this that’ll be the augmented heart fueling the cyberpunk future we’re living through.