In these seemingly dire times, optimism can be a revolutionary act.

Here’s two quick doses:

• Dose 1: Charles Stross’s Reasons to be Cheerful:
  

  There’s been enormous progress in genomics; we’re now on the threshold of truly understanding how little we understand. While the anticipated firehose of genome-based treatments hasn’t materialized, we now know why it hasn’t materialized, and it’s possible to start filling in the gaps in the map. Turns out that sequencing the human genome was merely the start. (It’s not a blueprint; it’s not even an algorithm for generating a human being. Rather, it’s like a snapshot of the static data structures embedded in an executing process. Debug that.) My bet is that we’re going to have to wait another decade. Then things are going to start to get very strange in medicine.

• Dose 2: a fan-made promo clip for NASA:

  

from wikipedia

We’re 11 days into 2011 and I’m watching the north of my country drown on live-television, as they in turn switch between exhausted officals giving press conferences, to reports straight from social media. In fact, they’re just sending viewers straight to #qldfloods. But, look.. SHINY!

Let’s face it, we’re going to need ever better methods to record disaster pr0n and navigate our way through it. OK, we don’t need them, but some kind of distraction is needed now and again. What have we got so far this year?

Augmented reality HUDS? Check. This was just released for skiers:

Introducing  Transcend, Recon Instruments’ collaboration with Colorado’s Zeal Optics. Transcend is the world’s first GPS-enabled goggles with a head-mounted display system.

Minimum interaction is required during use, sleek graphics and smart optics are completely unobtrusive for front and peripheral vision making it the ultimate solution for use in fast-paced environments.

Transcend provides real-time feedback including speed, latitude/longitude, altitude, vertical distance travelled, total distance travelled, chrono/stopwatch mode, a run-counter, temperature and time. It is also the only pair of goggles in the world that boasts GPS capabilities, USB charging and data transfer, and free post-processing software all with a user-friendly, addictive interface.

Just like the dashboard of a sports car or the instruments of a fighter jet, Transcend’s display provides performance-enhancing data, but only when you choose to view it. Safe, smart, fun…all wrapped up in the hottest goggle frame of 2010/11.

Now, of course you ask, but how will I best show my friends a panoramic, interactive recording of that sick black run (or train for the next one)? Sony has just the thing:

Besides looking über futuristic, Sony’s “virtual 3D cinematic experience” head mounted display (aka ‘Headman’) sports some fairly impressive specs. The tiny OLED screens inside are head HD resolution (1280 x 720), and the headphones integrated into the sides of the goggles are outputting high quality simulated 5.1 channel surround sound.

OK, that’s just a prototype. But something like it will be coming soon, so leave some space for it in your underground bunker.

But m1k3y, you say.. “those are great and all, but WHERE’S MY CLATTER?!” Well, I saved the best for last:

In 2008, as a proof of concept, Babak Parviz at the University of Washington in Seattle created a prototype contact lens containing a single red LED. Using the same technology, he has now created a lens capable of monitoring glucose levels in people with diabetes.

It works because glucose levels in tear fluid correspond directly to those found in the blood, making continuous measurement possible without the need for thumb pricks, he says. Parviz’s design calls for the contact lens to send this information wirelessly to a portable device worn by diabetics, allowing them to manage their diet and medication more accurately.

Lenses that also contain arrays of tiny LEDs may allow this or other types of digital information to be displayed directly to the wearer through the lens. This kind of augmented reality has already taken off in cellphones, with countless software apps superimposing digital data onto images of our surroundings, effectively blending the physical and online worlds.

Making it work on a contact lens won’t be easy, but the technology has begun to take shape. Last September, Sensimed, a Swiss spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, launched the very first commercial smart contact lens, designed to improve treatment for people with glaucoma.

The disease puts pressure on the optic nerve through fluid build-up, and can irreversibly damage vision if not properly treated. Highly sensitive platinum strain gauges embedded in Sensimed’s Triggerfish lens record changes in the curvature of the cornea, which correspond directly to the pressure inside the eye, says CEO Jean-Marc Wismer. The lens transmits this information wirelessly at regular intervals to a portable recording device worn by the patient, he says.

Like an RFID tag or London’s Oyster travel cards, the lens gets its power from a nearby loop antenna – in this case taped to the patient’s face. The powered antenna transmits electricity to the contact lens, which is used to interrogate the sensors, process the signals and transmit the readings back.

Each disposable contact lens is designed to be worn just once for 24 hours, and the patient repeats the process once or twice a year. This allows researchers to look for peaks in eye pressure which vary from patient to patient during the course of a day. This information is then used to schedule the timings of medication.

…

Parviz, however, has taken a different approach. His glucose sensor uses sets of electrodes to run tiny currents through the tear fluid and measures them to detect very small quantities of dissolved sugar. These electrodes, along with a computer chip that contains a radio frequency antenna, are fabricated on a flat substrate made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a transparent polymer commonly found in plastic bottles. This is then moulded into the shape of a contact lens to fit the eye.

Parviz plans to use a higher-powered antenna to get a better range, allowing patients to carry a single external device in their breast pocket or on their belt. Preliminary tests show that his sensors can accurately detect even very low glucose levels. Parvis is due to present his results later this month at the IEEE MEMS 2011 conference in Cancún, Mexico.

“There’s still a lot more testing we have to do,” says Parviz. In the meantime, his lab has made progress with contact lens displays. They have developed both red and blue miniature LEDs – leaving only green for full colour – and have separately built lenses with 3D optics that resemble the head-up visors used to view movies in 3D.

Parviz has yet to combine both the optics and the LEDs in the same contact lens, but he is confident that even images so close to the eye can be brought into focus. “You won’t necessarily have to shift your focus to see the image generated by the contact lens,” says Parviz. It will just appear in front of you, he says. The LEDs will be arranged in a grid pattern, and should not interfere with normal vision when the display is off.

For Sensimed, the circuitry is entirely around the edge of the lens (see photo). However, both have yet to address the fact that wearing these lenses might make you look like the robots in the Terminator movies. False irises could eventually solve this problem, says Parviz. “But that’s not something at the top of our priority list,” he says.

So close… And Terminator eyes? That’s a feature, not a bug. YES PLEASE!

This is the full text of A Biopunk Manifesto (an update of A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto), as delivered by Meredith Patterson at the UCLA Outlaw Biology Symposium, January 29th-30th, 2010.

Scientific literacy is necessary for a functioning society in the modern age. Scientific literacy is not science education. A person educated in science can understand science; a scientifically literate person can *do* science. Scientific literacy empowers everyone who possesses it to be active contributors to their own health care, the quality of their food, water, and air, their very interactions with their own bodies and the complex world around them.

Society has made dramatic progress in the last hundred years toward the promotion of education, but at the same time, the prevalence of citizen science has fallen. Who are the twentieth-century equivalents of Benjamin Franklin, Edward Jenner, Marie Curie or Thomas Edison? Perhaps Steve Wozniak, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard or Linus Torvalds — but the scope of their work is far narrower than that of the natural philosophers who preceded them. Citizen science has suffered from a troubling decline in diversity, and it is this diversity that biohackers seek to reclaim. We reject the popular perception that science is only done in million-dollar university, government, or corporate labs; we assert that the right of freedom of inquiry, to do research and pursue understanding under one’s own direction, is as fundamental a right as that of free speech or freedom of religion. We have no quarrel with Big Science; we merely recall that Small Science has always been just as critical to the development of the body of human knowledge, and we refuse to see it extinguished.

Research requires tools, and free inquiry requires that access to tools be unfettered. As engineers, we are developing low-cost laboratory equipment and off-the-shelf protocols that are accessible to the average citizen. As political actors, we support open journals, open collaboration, and free access to publicly-funded research, and we oppose laws that would criminalize the possession of research equipment or the private pursuit of inquiry.

Perhaps it seems strange that scientists and engineers would seek to involve themselves in the political world — but biohackers have, by necessity, committed themselves to doing so. The lawmakers who wish to curtail individual freedom of inquiry do so out of ignorance and its evil twin, fear — the natural prey and the natural predator of scientific investigation, respectively. If we can prevail against the former, we will dispel the latter. As biohackers it is our responsibility to act as emissaries of science, creating new scientists out of everyone we meet. We must communicate not only the value of our research, but the value of our methodology and motivation, if we are to drive ignorance and fear back into the darkness once and for all.

We the biopunks are dedicated to putting the tools of scientific investigation into the hands of anyone who wants them. We are building an infrastructure of methodology, of communication, of automation, and of publicly available knowledge.

Biopunks experiment. We have questions, and we don’t see the point in waiting around for someone else to answer them. Armed with curiosity and the scientific method, we formulate and test hypotheses in order to find answers to the questions that keep us awake at night. We publish our protocols and equipment designs, and share our bench experience, so that our fellow biopunks may learn from and expand on our methods, as well as reproducing one another’s experiments to confirm validity. To paraphrase Eric Hughes, “Our work is free for all to use, worldwide. We don’t much care if you don’t approve of our research topics.” We are building on the work of the Cypherpunks who came before us to ensure that a widely dispersed research community cannot be shut down.

Biopunks deplore restrictions on independent research, for the right to arrive independently at an understanding of the world around oneself is a fundamental human right. Curiosity knows no ethnic, gender, age, or socioeconomic boundaries, but the opportunity to satisfy that curiosity all too often turns on economic opportunity, and we aim to break down that barrier. A thirteen-year-old kid in South Central Los Angeles has just as much of a right to investigate the world as does a university professor. If thermocyclers are too expensive to give one to every interested person, then we’ll design cheaper ones and teach people how to build them.

Biopunks take responsibility for their research. We keep in mind that our subjects of interest are living organisms worthy of respect and good treatment, and we are acutely aware that our research has the potential to affect those around us. But we reject outright the admonishments of the precautionary principle, which is nothing more than a paternalistic attempt to silence researchers by inspiring fear of the unknown. When we work, it is with the betterment of the community in mind — and that includes our community, your community, and the communities of people that we may never meet. We welcome your questions, and we desire nothing more than to empower you to discover the answers to them yourselves.

The biopunks are actively engaged in making the world a place that everyone can understand. Come, let us research together.

via biopunk | TheGeneHackMan

Check out this fantastic documentary from 2009, produced by the very busy Bradley L. Garrett:

This video is a 30-minute introduction to the practice of urban exploration. Constructed as a video article for the journal Geography Compass, the article uses footage from the author’s own explorations in California, Las Vegas and London to visually depict a theoretical unpacking of the practice by 5 academic geographers.

His vimeo channel contains footage of his various infiltrations.
Here’s two, for starters:

Friday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt spoke at a Stanford Policy Institute conference regarding the development of the US’s proposed National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace project.  During the conference Schmidt confirmed that the US Commerce Department beat out the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to administer the initiative.

Schmidt claims that the program will be voluntary and will allow for anonymity, however, the exact format of the program is still in the drafting stages.  He was sure to emphasize, however, that he’s not talking about a National ID card.  At least, not a mandatory one:

“We are not talking about a national ID card,” Locke said at the Stanford event. “We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.”

However, it is clear from previously released documentation, that the plan, if it is initiated is to make moving on the internet as difficult as possible without Trusted ID.

In May of 2009, when President Obama announced the creation of the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator that Schmidt now holds, the “Cyberspace Policy Review” was released.  The document outlined a ten point near-term action list with number ten being:

10.  Build a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the Nation.

What that seems to mean is best summed by io9’s Annalee Newitz:

And here’s where my not-so-wild speculation about Facebook identities comes in. Many companies have turned to Facebook as an “identity management” system (including Gawker Media), allowing people to log into their services using their Facebook identity. The reason is simple: Most people only have one Facebook identity, and they stick with it. There’s a general notion that your Facebook identity is your authentic identity, or at least an identity that you keep over time, and that its characteristics can be traced back to who you are in real life. Therefore, having you log into every web service, from io9 comments to Digg to (possibly in the future) Paypal, is a way of managing your identities. Instead of having a separate identity for each of those services, you have one. Easy to manage, easy to trace.

Why shouldn’t Obama’s cyberczar just cut a deal with Facebook (and maybe a few other social networks like LinkedIn) and turn those profiles into your authentic identities? So you can send mail and buy things using your Facebook ID, and that’s how you’ll be tracked. Hey, you’re already on Facebook right? And you can set your profile to “private.” So it’s easy and “privacy enhancing.” (Never mind how easy it is to get around those privacy settings – pay no attention to that black hat behind the curtain.)

The scenario I’m describing is, in essence, how the Social Security Card became the twentieth century’s identity management system starting in the 1930s. These cards were not originally intended as ID cards, or as a way to authenticate your true identity. They were just a way to manage government assistance to those who needed it. But they became an ID card simply because everyone in the US had been issued one. When the government and businesses needed a way to track people’s identities, it became the easy choice. Showing your social security card meant that you couldn’t just come up with random new names for yourself every time you signed a form or took a job.

Though people in the US now think of the Social Security Card as the “obvious” form of ID, it took years for it to evolve from a simple social assistance card to an “identity management vision.”

This theory is borne out by some of the language in the current draft of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace proposal:

This Strategy is a call to action that begins with the Federal Government continuing its role as a primary enabler, first adopter and key supporter of the envisioned Identity Ecosystem.  The Federal Government must continually collaborate with the private sector, state, local, tribal, and international
governments and provide the leadership and incentives necessary to make the Identity Ecosystem a reality.  The private sector in turn is crucial to the execution of this Strategy.  Individuals will realize the benefits associated with the Identity Ecosystem through the conduct of their daily online transactions in cyberspace. National success will require a concerted effort from all parties, as well
as joint ownership and accountability for the activities identified

The key terminology there is: “Individuals will realize the benefits associated with the Identity Ecosystem through the conduct of their daily online transactions in cyberspace.”  In short: While it won’t be mandatory, expect to have to do more legwork to do business online. It is very much like using your Facebook account to long into other services on the net.  It is simple, quick, convenient, and even sometimes security enhancing.  (My policy of only logging into Gawker sites with Facebook meant that my data was totally safe during the Great Gawker Password Leak of 2010.)  The downside is that Facebook is now my point of contact with a lot of parts of the web and I’m still using their problematic service.

More from the proposal:

Voluntary participation is another critical element of this Strategy.  Engaging in online transactions should be voluntary to both organizations and individuals.  The Federal Government will not require organizations to adopt specific identity solutions or to provide online services, nor require individuals to obtain high-assurance digital credentials if they do not want to engage in high risk online
transactions with the government or otherwise.  The Identity Ecosystem should encompass a range of transactions from anonymous to high assurance.  Thus, the Identity Ecosystem should allow an individual to select the credential he or she deems most appropriate for the transaction, provided the credential meets the risk requirements of the relying party.

So you’d only need Trusted credentials if the places you’re interacting with require them – which, since there’s money in it for them, many private-sector entities will be gladly complying with.  Sure, you can still post here or 4chan or wherever with an anonymous ID, but if you want to do business with iTunes, Paypal, ebay or move goods and services via the net, you’ll need a Trusted ID.  You’ll likely see a stratification with social services as well with TwitterTrusted and FacebookTrusted accounts having their content prioritized over non-Trusted or anonymous users.  In addition, on Friday, Google announced it was testing email authentication with its Google Apps business clients.  Imagine not being able to send email that would make it past the spam filter if it wasn’t from a GoogleTrusted account.

One thing is clear from reading the supporting documentation and that’s that the US Government itself will not be the ones managing and implementing this program.  The plan is to create guidelines regarding what a Trusted Identity means and how it works and then have that system rolled out and implemented by private-sector partners.  In essence, it’s not the government controlling your identity on the internet, it’s the government selling your identity to corporations so they can control it.   Which, honestly, I think might be an even more frightening prospect.

There is a lot of information out there on this initiative, I encourage you to check it out for yourselves.

[io9: President Obama Welcomes the Cyber State]

[Grinding: What Does Obama’s Identity Management Vision Mean?]

[Grinding: The Grim Facebook Future]

[The Cyberspace Policy Review (pdf)]

[National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (pdf)]

This 30min documentary covers not just the origin of the Arduino, but how it’s helped create the MakerBot (which is getting a lot of attention at CES) and other interesting designs in hackerspaces across the globe.

It’s also worth pointing out the Practical Arduino book and blog, co-authored by Jon Oxer (who we’ve featured here before for his RFID implant.)

via Mark Pesce

Welcome to 2011, it’s only going to get weirder.

(Spy glasses to chic cyberpunk-as-fuck sunglasses with one slick marketing trick. From nerd toy to designer wear.. etc etc. What’s next?)

Sensebridge (mentioned in the previous post) have two wearable project kits available:

• Northpaw
• Heart Spark

For a demo of each, see this video:

Video of Lepht Anonym‘s presentation at 27c3, mentioned earlier, is now online.

This isn’t our normal sort of news, but I figured I’d showcase it anyway given my own recent spat of Autosuperheroic and Real Life Superheroes posts.

Over at Bleeding Cool, they have a fascinating tidbit about “The Punishers” – an alleged cadre of rogue police officers.

Shortly after the beating a Milwaukee Police Department commander investigated a suspected rogue group of officers known as “the Punishers,” who wore black gloves and caps embossed with skull emblems while on patrol, according to newly released documents.

Capt. James Galezewski wrote in 2007, “This is a group of rogue officers within our agency who I would characterize as brutal and abusive.. At least some of the officers involved in the Jude case were associated with this group, although there is reason to believe the membership extended beyond those who were convicted in the case.”

The piece goes on to describe how many of the alleged members had Punisher tats, and other assorted bits of Frank Castle paraphernalia that they often took with them on the job – not the least of which are the skull-emblazoned caps they wore on duty.  This, if it is true, is a good example of the dark side of the autosuperheroic urge. While cops playing vigilante isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination; cops playing The Punisher while playing vigilante is.

Yes, we can all be Batman but within that same current are the same kind of fascist undertones that superhero comics have always wrestled with, and nothing says that better than cops uniting under the flag of Frank Castle to bust a few heads.

[Via Bleeding Cool]