X-Risk

"The Lifeboat Foundation is ready to begin work on an ambitious project called the Lifeboat Foundation X-Risks Network. Our page for this project is https://lifeboat.com/ex... Our mailing list/forum for this project is at http://groups.google.com/group... To get invited to the discussion on our mailing list/forum, send an email with the subject “Lifeboat Foundation X-Risks Network” to membership@lifeboat.com. The goal of the X-Risks Network project is to combine a bayesian network, a debate graph, and a project tracking system all into one graph. The project is focused on tracking progress on existential risk reduction and then determining the most leveraged ways to help reduce existential risks. This project is an extension of the debate graph idea posted to http://lesswrong.com/lw... which is an extension of the Transhumanist Wiki’s Scenarios Project at... more... - Alexander Kruel

"Destroying the Earth by means of a supernova is a geocide method which comes in two broad varieties. In one of them, we move the Earth to the vicinity of a star which is about to go supernova and wait. Transit time is a factor, and then we have to consider just how long we wish to wait. Imminently collapsing stars are not easily come by in space. All in all, such a proposal is thoroughly tedious and mundane. Somehow, it smacks of effort and laziness. It lacks panache. The other option we have is to leave the planet where it is and induce the Sun to go supernova manually, and this is the task I want to consider today. What causes a supernova, anyway?" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"More than twelve United States battleships and at least one Israeli ship crossed the Suez Canal towards the Red Sea on Friday, British Arabic Language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported Saturday." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

Wonder why the Egypt gov risks a huge backlash in its reputation for a maneuver? - Alexander Kruel

"A study out today in the journal Science tracks the path of swine flu, which may have receded from the forefront of humanity’s attention but hasn’t quit mixing and moving and making ready. The scientists led by virologist Malik Peiris say the flu virus that the world feared last year has gone back into pigs in China, where it’s laying down and recombining its genetics with other flu strains. And, they say, we’re not sufficiently monitoring the danger of a new strain jumping back to people." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"In this talk Alexey Turchin argues that the program of the search of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a source of extinction risk. The main idea is that passive SETI is much more dangerous activity than messaging to stars because we could download Alien AI (that is a scheme of a computer and program to it) which will use the Earth to send its copies further. The following is based on two premises: First is that extraterrestrial civilizations do exist in the distances which allow radio communication, but do not allow interstellar travel (which is from one thousand to one million light years). Second is that artificial intelligence is possible as a self-evolving classic computer program." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"I recently came to the chilling conclusion that we are watching the battle for the human species play out today, and not on the eve of the Grim Meathook Future or the Singularity as I’d hoped. Something with stakes that big, you’d think would involve at least a few lasers or robot gladiators battling it out for the survival of the future. Instead, what I found myself watching was the P2P downloads scene. And, if my initial realization held any water – it wasn’t looking good for Team Humans." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Electricity is all around us. It lifts elevators, pumps gas, lights rooms, cooks food, and even powers a growing fleet of cars. We generally take the vast electric grid for granted until it turns off. Only then do we realize how important it is. Blackouts owing to technical foul-ups are bad enough, but new hazards, some malicious and some from nature, threaten to create electrical disturbances on an unprecedented scale." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"The centre of most galaxies harbours a massive black hole. Our Milky Way galaxy is one of these - the exotic object there however is reasonably calm, unlike some super-massive gravity monsters in other galaxies. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and other institutions around the world have now analysed 199 of these galaxies and discovered what makes the black holes at the galaxy centres become active: The black holes were "switched on" some 700 million years ago after major galaxy merger events. (The Astrophysical Journal, in press)" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Saudis practiced standing down anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage for attack on Iranian nuclear sites, the London Times reports." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Even with midair refueling, the targets would be as the far edge of Israeli bombers' range at a distance of some 2,250km. An attack would likely involve several waves of aircraft, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest, the Times said. Passing over Iraq would... more... - Alexander Kruel

"Uh oh. "The Sun is waking up from a deep slumber," NASA 's Richard Fisher says. It looks like old Sol is going to be in a cranky mood when it becomes fully awake, ready to wreak havoc on gadgets across the globe. Could this be the 2012 disaster superstitious fraidy-cats are babbling about? In April, one of the most massive solar eruptions in years occurred. Luckily, Earth wasn't in the line of fire. Scientists warn that if we find ourselves in the path of one of these gigantic solar storms, it could cost $2 trillion to fix the resulting mess. Big uh-oh. That's 20 times the damage of Hurricane Katrina." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"On May 12, 2010, North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper declared that the “Scientists of the DPRK succeeded in nuclear fusion reaction on the significant occasion of the Day of the Sun this year.” “Now obviously this is balderdash,” my friend Josh Pollack wrote, “but what kind of balderdash is it?” In the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, the “Day of the Sun” is the birthday of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, who is known as the “Sun of the Nation.” (Kim Il Sung is itself a solar nom de guerre, meaning “Become the Sun.”) Given that no country has mastered fusion in quite the way the North Koreans seem to imply, Josh concludes the whole thing is “sheer mystical flapdoodle.”" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Perhaps you think I’m crazy or naive to pose this question. But more and more the past few months I’ve begun to wonder if there is a possibility here that this idea may not be too far off the mark. Not because of some half-baked theory about a global conspiracy or anything of the sort but simply based upon the behavior of many multinational corporations recently and the effects this behavior is having upon people everywhere. Again, you may disagree but my perspective on these financial giants is that they are essentially predatory in nature and that their prey is any dollar in commerce that they can possibly absorb. The problem is that for anyone in the modern or even quasi-modern world money is nearly as essential as plasma when it comes to our well-being. It has been clearly demonstrated again and again – all over the world – that when a population has become sufficiently destitute that the survival of the individual is actually threatened violence inevitably occurs. On a large... more... - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

Short answer: yes! - !lker yoldas. )°(

"Video sur­veil­lance is getting more ef­fec­tive—or in­vas­ive, if you’re in­clined to see it that way. Two new tech­nolo­gies could lead, their de­vel­op­ers say, to dra­mat­ic in­creases in sec­u­rity of­ficers’ abi­lity to track alleged ter­ror­ists or crim­i­nals. A new U.S. cam­era sys­tem pro­vides a nearly 360-degree view of an ar­ea in un­prec­e­dent­ed de­tail. And a new Is­rae­li tech­nol­o­gy lets peo­ple re­view­ing sur­veil­lance vid­e­os by­pass hours’ worth of use­less da­ta so they can ze­ro in on events of in­ter­est." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Have you seen this man? If so, please ask him to make up his mind. Shahram Amiri, a 32-year-old Iranian nuclear scientist, is at the center of an episode of United States-Iran intrigue that just got weirder, thanks to YouTube. Amiri disappeared during his pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last year, and anonymous U.S. officials confirmed that he defected, presumably bringing information about Iran’s nuclear program. Now he—or someone purporting to be him—appears in two contradictory videos that claim he was either abducted and tortured by the United States or is living happily here and going about his studies." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

Hah...like out of some Hollywood movie. - Alexander Kruel

"U.S. diplomacy moving into 'high gear' over nuclear sanctions vote; Russia: Sanctions should not be 'excessive'." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from Mogadishu where presence of US drones reveals western anxiety over country's conflict" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Serious scientists may disdain anecdotal evidence, but we have evidence that some of them are pretty good with an anecdote. Last Thursday, the World Science Festival brought a collection of science geeks to The Moth, where the brave souls took the stage not to explain their work, but to tell stories of their lives in science. The evening’s biggest scientific celebrity was theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, winner of a 2004 Nobel Prize in physics. His story began with a phone call. The editors of Scientific American were hoping he would write a rebuttal to a letter they’d just received. “The letter was from a man who I later learned was a banana farmer in Hawaii,” Wilczek recalled. “He was worried about black holes. He was worried about a particle accelerator that was being built on Long Island that could produce black holes, and he was worried that the black holes would swallow up Long Island and then the world.” Wilczek happily wrote a response to defend the honor of the... more... - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"A new mathematical technique for measuring how close power grids are to catastrophic failure could help prevent outages in future." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"As computational resources modernize, physicists have become increasingly interested in understanding the dynamics of disease spread. The problem is essentially one of statistical physics, where the theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena and the tools of numerical simulations enable physicists to predict how epidemic outbreaks will evolve in time [1]. Most recent progress has considered diseases that die out quickly, but when persistent infections occur in a population, individuals may be infected but not infectious (i.e., “latently” infected) for long periods of time—even a lifetime. From a technical point of view, this seemingly minor aspect implies the system is open, since newborns enter the dynamics and some individuals die for causes not directly related to the disease. Now, in a paper appearing in Physical Review E, Joaquín Sanz, L. Mario Floría Peralta, and Yamir Moreno Vega at the Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, report on the threshold for an epidemic to occur... more... - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Maybe it all gets just too complicated. Too many things go wrong at the same time. The capacity of the world's leaders and institutions to respond in a coherent and authoritative way on several huge problems at the same time ebbs away. This opens the way for calculated lunges by different regional powers, aiming quickly to establish some new facts on the ground while attentions are distracted elsewhere." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"We can’t with certainty ascribe the 1686 and 1834 observations to impacts, but the fact that we now have three Jupiter strikes within fifteen years does raise the eyebrows. The 2009 impactor is thought to have been about 500 meters wide, probably having its origin in the Hilda family of asteroids that orbit near Jupiter. It’s chastening to hear that its strike created an event that was the equivalent of several thousand nuclear bombs exploding. Not as big as the largest Shoemaker-Levy impacts, but that fact in itself tells us that while Jupiter may do a good job cleaning out our system’s inner debris, one stray asteroid could do unthinkable damage on our planet’s surface." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Any intervention by the Iranian military would be considered highly provocative by Israel which accuses Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"IF AN alien bug invaded the brains of half the population, hijacked their neurochemistry, altered the way they acted and drove some of them crazy, then you might expect a few excitable headlines to appear in the press. Yet something disturbingly like this may actually be happening without the world noticing. Toxoplasma gondii is not an alien; it is a relative of that down-to-earth pathogen Plasmodium, the beast that causes malaria. It is common: in some parts of the world as much as 60% of the population is infected with it. And it can harm fetuses and people with AIDS, because in each case their immune systems cannot cope with it. For other people, though, the symptoms are usually no worse than a mild dose of flu. Not much for them to worry about, then. Except that there is a growing body of evidence that some of those people have their behaviour permanently changed. One reason to suspect this is that a country’s level of Toxoplasma infection seems to be related to the level of... more... - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"But where are they all anyhow? For years, NASA and others have been searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. The universe is 13.7 billion years old and contains some 10 billion trillion stars. Surely, in this lapse of suns, advanced life would have evolved if it were possible. Yet despite half a century of scanning the sky, astronomers have failed to find any evidence of life or to pick up any of the interstellar radio signals that our great antennas should be able to easily detect. Some scientists point to the "Fermi Paradox," noting that extraterrestrials should have had plenty of time to colonize the entire galaxy but that perhaps they've blown themselves up. It's conceivable the problem is more fundamental and that the answer has to do with the evolutionary course of life itself." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Computer aided crash (proof of concept for future cyber-attack) There has yet to be a definitive explanation of how stocks such as Proctor and Gamble plunged 47% and the normally solid Accenture plunged from a value of roughly $40 to one cent, based on no external input of information into the financial system. The SEC has issued directives in recent years boosting competition and lowering commissions, which has had the effect of fragmenting equity trading around the US and making it highly automated. This has created four leading exchanges, NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq OMX Group, Bats Global Market and Direct Edge and secondary exchanges include International Securities Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, the CME Group and the Intercontinental Exchange. There are also broker-run matching systems like those run by Knight and ITG and so called ‘dark-pools’ where trades are matched privately with prices posted publicly only after trades are done. As similar picture has emerged in... more... - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"The two Koreas are in a dangerous standoff over the sinking of a South Korean warship by the north. Given Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons, any conflict could quickly turn very nasty. The crisis presents China, North Korea's main ally and an important trading partner of South Korea, with a difficult dilemma." - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

There are more people in NK concentration camps than the population of Gaza... - Alexander Kruel

"What does the Neanderthal genome have to with post-apocalyptic science fiction? It may seem like odd inspiration, but Neanderthals have aroused my interest in one of the most venerable genres of science fiction. Last summer I was awaiting the release of The Road movie, reading a piece of classic post-nuclear sci-fi (John Wyndham's 1955 The Chrysalids), and thinking about some recent news stories on the (then) forthcoming Neanderthal genome sequence. I was struck by the thought that the last Neanderthals lived in what could be thought of as a post-apocalyptic world. They were going extinct. Did they notice? What kind of world did the last survivors live in?" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"The universe as we know it might not end unexpectedly and unpredictably. That’s good. But on the other hand, it might. That’s bad. Consider just one way the universe could change unexpectedly. Physicists call it a “vacuum metastability event.”" - Alexander Kruel from Bookmarklet

"Unbeknownst to us, all of space (even where there is complete vacuum) could be stuck in a relatively high energy state that has been stable so far, but might not remain so forever. This relatively high energy state is termed a “false vacuum.” At some spot in the universe this state could suddenly transition to a lower energy state (because of chance quantum tunneling, or a high-energy... more... - Alexander Kruel