Immortality Medicine

• July 31st Call to Action Against Racism and Fascism
• Chomsky’s advice for anarchists
• How politics rely on disgust
• Why misogynists make great informants
• Can technology bring on a worldwide social revolution?
• Free software as part of the anarchist toolkit
• Secure communication for Android
• Two new issues of Hack This Zine
• Why transhumanism is the best bet for avoiding extinction (from 2009, but good)
• Monopolists of the genetic code
• Google and CIA invest in future of web monitoring
• Obama’s Surveillance Power Grab
• Corporate profits return, but there’s zero hiring

I have a new Android smartphone, and I was recently looking into options for anonymous browsing on  it. The Tor Project offers an app called Orbot that enables using the Tor network, but at the moment it only works on Android 1.x because the 2.x OS doesn’t have a way yet for you to set the proxy. While digging around into some phone hacks, however, I discovered that you can use the Voice Dialer app to run certain commands. By saying “proxy,” for example, you get a proxy configuration screen. Interesting enough, this enables you to set a proxy and run Orbot to use Tor on your phone.

Here’s how to do it:

• Install the Orbot app
• Pull up the Voice Dialer app, and speak the word “proxy”
• In the proxy configuration screen, put 127.0.0.1 and port 8118
• Fire up the Orbot app
• Your browsing session will now be anonymized via Tor (test it here)
• When you’re done, pull up the Voice Dialer again and reset the proxy to return to regular browsing

This works for unrooted phones. This only seems to work via the cell’s 3G connection, not over wifi.  It also only anonymizes your browser traffic. For more info, read up on Tor.

He’s done a string of excellent creator-owned graphic novels — The Nightly News, Transhuman and Pax Romana. He brings a smart approach to sci-fi and an interesting way of looking at the world.

The genetic engineering chiller “Splice” is a double helix of perversity. Canadian director Vincent Natali borrows freely from his countryman David Cronenberg in this tale of suspense, sexual transgression and body horror (the term for films that find their disturbing effects in physical deformity, mutation or disease).

“Splice” deserves credit for a novel take on a familiar theme, and for aiming to disturb us by pushing the boundaries of behavior instead of unleashing buckets of gore. But it loses points for uninspired execution.

Canadian chiller is devoid of a clear message.

The genetic engineering chiller “Splice” is a double helix of perversity.

• The Appleseed Project: an open-source distributed social networking project. An alternative to Facebook, and unlike Diaspora, is already running. Originated in anarchist circles. Development.  Drumbeat. Beta. Latest Source. Facebook. Twitter.
• IT in Developing Nations Makes Women and Poor Happier.
• Infoladies of Bangladesh Revolutionize Rural Life.
• Afrocyberpunk: “But here in Africa, development has been dangerously asymmetrical. By the time any product hits our soil it’s already fully-developed and ready to be abused by the imagination. Technology designed for vastly different societies invariably trickles down to our streets, re-sprayed, re-labeled, and hacked to fit whatever market will take it. Regulation? You can forget about regulation.”
• James Hughes on Beyond the Human Race — and “Human Racism”
• Nobody Encrypts Their Phone Calls. Some interesting links and talk in the comments.
• Google Launches Encrypted Search
• Twitter’s Role in Bangkok Conflict.
• Leaking Legitimacy. “… it’s become increasingly clear that there is a coordinated information operations campaign in place to downplay the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill … eyt another body blow to the nation-state and the global market system as legitimate organizational constructs.”
• Interview with Meredith Patterson from DIYBio
• Craig Venter Creates Synthetic Life: This is major, major scientific news. The ETC calls for a moratorium on synthetic biology (ain’t going to happen). Ken MacLeod offers commentary.
• Open Letter to Glenn Beck from AK Press. “From what sense we can make of your show, you seem happy with “altering” rather than “abolishing” a screwed-up system. For you, replacing the old boss with a new one (Sarah Palin?) is good enough. We understand that you’re confused–these are confusing times. But, deep down, you and the tea partiers know that you can’t trust any politician, or banker, or corporate hack, or union bureaucrat…or anyone who makes their living sucking power and profit from ordinary people. Which, unfortunately, probably includes multi-millionaires like you.

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April 1 JEFFERSON STREET STRUTTERS The six-piece jazz band from Northern Virginia performs American popular tunes. The group’s motto: “We play happy music.” 7-9 p.m. Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. 703-838-4199. http://www.torpedofactory.org . Free.

Find and Compare prices on transhuman space at Smarter.com.

Questions and answers with Ben GoertzelI was searching for answers to an old issue that bugged me for years: is there anything like ‘chinese logic’. By chinese logic I refer to odd reasoning patterns, that do not seem to follow what in the west is called ‘logical thinking’.

During a GDC panel that mainly focused on Eidos Montreal’s struggle to create a distinct visual style for its Deus Ex prequel, art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletete slide a few gameplay details into his presentation.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in the year 2027 and chronicles the rise of cybernetic augmentation, a technological renaissance Jacques-Belletete dubbed the “transhuman …

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– A caption accompanying a March 11 Sports article about the Washington Redskins’ signing of defensive lineman Maake Kemoeatu incorrectly identified which player in the 2004 photo was Kemoeatu. Kemoeatu was on the far left, not the right. The player identified as Kemoeatu was actually Kelly Gregg,…

During a GDC panel that mainly focused on Eidos Montreal’s struggle to create a distinct visual style for its Deus Ex prequel, art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletete slide a few gameplay details into his presentation.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in the year 2027 and chronicles the rise of cybernetic augmentation, a technological renaissance Jacques-Belletete dubbed the “transhuman …

Questions and answers with Ben GoertzelI was searching for answers to an old issue that bugged me for years: is there anything like ‘chinese logic’. By chinese logic I refer to odd reasoning patterns, that do not seem to follow what in the west is called ‘logical thinking’.

Here are some collected links that have caught my eye recently:

• Digital Security and Tactics By (and For) Anti-Authoritarians event this March 12th at the 8 Days of Anarchy in the Bay Area
• Latvian “Robin Hood” hacker leaks bank details
• Ultimate griefing: publishing the private info on the rich to fuel public outrage
• The complicated politics of Italian transhumanism Part 1: Stefano Vaj defends against claims that his overhumanism politics are fascist
• The complicated politics of Italian transhumanism Part 2: the critics lay out their evidence for claiming the overhumanists are fascists (see also this and this)
• The MikroKopter: small, cheap, carries a camera, and there are instructions to build your own
• Public reactions to terrorist threats: projecting leadership qualities onto political figures, with serious political consequences
• Survival of the kindest: how evolution drives compassion and collaboration
• Security implications of volume shadow copy in Windows 7/Vista: no secure deletion possible
• Microsoft 7/Vista Law Enforcement Forensics Guides
• Hackers brew code to counter police forensics: COFFEE, meet DECAF

Feb. 18 SECOND THURSDAY ART NIGHT This open-gallery event, rescheduled from last week, includes a 6-8 p.m. reception at the Target Gallery for “Imprint,” a juried exhibition of contemporary printmaking; a printmaking demonstration at 7:30 in Studio 325; and music by Mercury Fools the Alchemist. 6-9…

Eglin AFB FL (AFNS) Feb 11, 2010 – Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Imagination Engines, Inc., a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract to develop advanced algorithms for mobile autonomous robots. The Air Force needs creative terrain-sensing and multivalued behavior-fusion algorithms for these robots due to the high uncertainty and complexity of battlefield environments.

Image of work by Adam “5100″ Feibelman, courtesy Project 4 The neighborhood around the Convention Center seems to be the hot spot for new galleries lately. First Long View Gallery moved a few blocks down 9th Street to their new location last autumn, followed by Civilian Art Projects’ move to the old Warehouse spot on 7th Street a few months ago. If you remember, all three tenants of the Penn …

Look into the future with our singularity experts. A Project inspired by GOOD’s miniseries on the singularity by Michael Anissimov and Roko Mijic. Over the past few months we’ve been lucky to have Michael Anissimov of Accelerating Future and Roko Mijic of Transhuman Goodness writing a series of posts about the future of technology and artificial intelligence called Singularity 101. With these …

What They Say Searching for the key to save a world beyond hope. Tsutomu Nihei’s sci-fi horror epic…

TARA HAGAN The Observer Visitors to this month’s First Friday event will have the chance to ÔMeet the Robinson’s’ at Stardust Book Lounge/Rhapsody Glassworks. The downtown venue will feature Michael and Isabelle Robinson — a husband and wife duo who will offer a mix of photography and music.[...]

Aaron Johnson is Kick-Ass We’ll try not to hype this up too much, but we are very-happy-head-exploding-excited to announce that the Opening Night Film for SXSW 2010 is the World Premiere of the filthy-mouthed, bloody-fisted, superhero re-imagining Kick-Ass , directed by Matthew Vaughn ( Layer Cake ) and starring Aaron Johnson ( Nowhere Boy , the upcoming John Lennon biopic). About a month ago …