Category Archives: Mind Uploading

By IANS|Mar 11, 2017 08:12 am

New Delhi: Doing a quick U-turn in about 24 hours, digital payments firm Paytm on Friday suspended the two per cent charge it announced for adding money using credit cards. We are suspending the two per cent charge on credit cards for adding money to wallet, keeping users convenience in mind. We will introduce new features to prevent credit card misuse in adding money, Paytm said in a blog post here on Friday.

With an intent to prevent the misuse of transfer to bank facility at 0 per cent, Paytm had earlier applied a refundable fee of two per cent on add-money through credit cards.

At the same time, we are conscious that this move caused inconvenience to a large segment of our users, including those who are using their credit card for genuine transactions, it said, reports IANS.

The withdrawal of the two per cent charge apparently came in view of losing out to competition after mobile wallet major MobiKwik on Thursday announced that it would continue to offer free uploading of money.

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Paytm to continue free uploading of money | Free Press Journal - Free Press Journal

The first major expansion for Stellaris, Utopia, is only a month away, and it may be the biggest and most transformative piece of DLC that Paradox Development Studio has ever released for any of its grand strategy games. Along with the accompanying 'Banks' patch (free to existing owners), were in for overhauls to the ethics, factions, and unrest systems, Tradition trees that allow us to further shape our empires over time, the chance to build space wonders (including entirely new planets), and late game 'ascension paths' that allow you to, for instance, turn all of your people into robots. Every Jim, Bob, and Xelgthrana is buzzing with gossip about these new features, so Ive broken them down belowalong with some speculation on how the galaxy will be affected.

What's new: Rather than deviating semi-randomly, different ethics (say, Militarism) will have an attraction value that determines how likely the people in your empire are to adopt them. The official ones you pick for your government will get a bonus to attraction, especially if you took the fanatical version. Factions will tend to organize around a specific ethic (such as a Human Supremacy faction for xenophobes), which will exert pressure based on their membership numbers to get you to pass policies they like. If a faction is unhappy with the government, its people will become unhappy, generating a new modifier called unrest (reducing resource output and potentially spawning rebellions) on the planets where they live.

Implications: The good news is, your governing ethics will be far less locked-in for the duration of a campaign than they used to be. The bad news is, all your people know this and will constantly be pestering you to represent their wishes, as pesky citizens who dont even know what its like to run a galactic empire are wont to do.

Whats new: Empires will now generate a new resource called Unity from building certain structures and taking certain actions. These can be spent on Traditions (costing less for smaller, more homogenous empires and those that maintain lower levels of internal unrest), which are similar to the social policy trees in Civilization 5. Each follows a common theme: Supremacy gives you more space ships and bigger laser beams to strap onto them. Prosperity helps you turn Space Resources and Space Labor into more sweet, sweet, space cash.

Implications: Increasing tradition cost from unhappy pops will help cohesive and pleasant empires who dont exploit or enslave their citizens better compete with ruthless, sprawling ones who think children should be factory workers and aliens should be appetizers. Speaking of alien rights...

Whats new: Its now possible to set specific rights within your empire for every type of alien you encounter on an individual basis, from Citizenship (full citizens, non-voting, slaves, or even forced expulsion), military service, immigration rights, and even how many children they can have. With the expansion, youll also be able to pick from four kinds of slavery (put strong species to work, conscript the scary ones into the army, and turn the pretty ones into Space Butlers), and five kinds of purges (including processing them for food, if your single-minded space locusts are understandably more concerned with devouring flesh than making friends).

Implications: Have you ever wondered what those little furry dudes who keep sending you diplomatic insults taste like? You probably have now.

Whats new: When you complete a Tradition tree, you will unlock one of eight Ascension Perk slots, which are a way of adding powerful, permanent bonuses to your empire. These can include huge boosts to naval capacity, the ability to terraform otherwise uninhabitable worlds, and unlocking massive space wonders (see below). Most significantly, however, you may choose (though are not obligated) to spend two of your perk slots on one of three Ascension Paths: Synthetic for Materialist empires (becoming cyborgs, then eventually uploading the minds of your people into machines), Psionic for Spiritualist empires (awakening the latent psychic potential of your race and interacting with a strange, otherworldly dimension called The Warp The Shroud), and Biological (manipulating the DNA of any race in your empire to add and remove traits), which is open to any ethos and particularly suitable for Hive Minds.

Implications: For those who want it, this represents a path to a sort of endgame destiny for your species. For those who dont well, well probably still have to find ways to deal with the implications of entirely cybernetic empires, gene-modders who want to assimilate our people into their hive mind, and the strange being in The Shroud calling itself The End of the Cycle that some of the spiritualists have been murmuring about.

Whats new: At species creation, you can forego selecting any ethos for your species and instead choose to be a Hive Mind, a psionically-linked meta-organism that acts as one consciousness. Since your entire race possesses but a single will, mechanics like happiness, unrest, and factions are disabled. The downside? Your pops cant survive in non-Hive Mind empires, and non-Hive Mind pops in your own (including on worlds youve conquered) will be automatically consumed (literally turned into food) by the swarm. This, understandably, gives you a diplomatic penalty to any non-Hive Mind empires you meet. In particular, watch out for anyone named Ender.

Implications: IF YOU WERE ONE OF US, WE WOULD NEED NOT EXPLAIN THE IMPLICATIONS TO YOU. THE SWARM IS ALL. YOU WILL BE CONSUMED. HEY, WHATS THAT ON YOUR PSEUDOPOD? HA-HA, GOTCHA. THERE WAS NOTHING. YOU HAVE BEEN DUPED BY THE SUPERIOR INTELLECT OF THE SWARM.

What's new: After acquiring the proper ascension perk, you will be able to build massive structures in space. These include orbital habitats to house your population around uninhabitable planets (such as gas giants), Dyson spheres that encircle a star and harness huge amounts of energy (though they render any planets in the system cold and dead), and a sensor array that will give you limited vision over the entire galaxy. Like wonders in other 4X games, these projects take huge amounts of time and resources, and other empires will be notified that you are building them (with the exception of orbital habitats, which are a smaller investment).

Implications: With the ability to harness the energy of entire stars, it may now be possible to run the Large Pixel Collider at full power. If this is the last you hear from us, just know that we went out doing what we love. Also, the machine consciousness is probably coming for you next. Run.

See the rest here:

Everything new in Stellaris: Utopia, one of Paradox's biggest game ... - PC Gamer

Trending News: Good Enough To Make A Porn Star Orgasm? Now You Can Find Out Long Story Short

A cam site has launched an iTunes-like digital marketplace where you can upload clips of cunnilingus through yoursmartphone. When the simulated oral sex is uploaded, anyone can download the experience to their vibrators and get their O-face on.

Are you a cunning linguist (to borrow the name of the rap group)? Are you as good as a porn star? Well, now you can find out with a new service from the wild and pervy brains over at CamSoda.

The cam site has just launched O-cast, which is similar to their recently released 'iTunes for Blowjobs,'but for women to experience. You simplydownload the O-Cast app from their site and give the screen your best 'ABCs' or whatever. Yes, literally lick the screen (you might want to give your phone an old wipedown for germs).

Then, just upload your best licks to the site where women can choose and download their favorite tongue dance to a teledildonics sex toy (it only works with the Lovense Lush Bluetooth egg vibrator).

You better be good, though, because your magic tongue will be competing with cam girls, porn stars and other average Janes/Joes through the digital marketplace. To make things even more competitive, keep in mind that if the porn stars are uploading, chances are they might want to try it out for themselves.

CamSoda says it'slaunching the service in conjunction International Women's Month and will make all downloads free for March in honor of the lovely ladies out there. After that, each cunnilingus download will be a buck.

Man, cam sites sure changing the future of sex.

Do women really want to get off to some stranger's tongue?

As many as 68% of women fake orgasms, according to a recent survey.

Excerpt from:

Cam Site Launches iTunes-Like Marketplace Of Oral Sex For Women - AskMen

Curtis McDaniel, 22, from New Jersey, USA, was just 11-years-old when white speckles began to appear on his skin caused by vitiligo

A MAN who was bullied for his rare skin condition has defied those who tormented him by becoming a successful magazine model.

Curtis McDaniel, from New Jersey, USA, was just 11-years-old when white speckles began to appear on his skin caused by vitiligo an autoimmune disorder that stops cells from producing pigment.

Caters News Agency

Soon, his face and body developed large white patches and bullies labelled him zebra and Michael Jackson while kids would run away from him crying.

But, when he was 17, the teen stopped seeing his condition, which affects one per cent of the worlds population, as a curse and a couple of years later he was scouted as a model after uploading a selfie.

Now Curtis is a part-time model and soon he will feature on MTVs True Life show, which he hopes to use as a platform to educate others about vitiligo.

Caters News Agency

Caters News Agency

Curtis, 22, said: I was the only person in my family to have vitiligo and took it pretty hard at school, I was bullied a lot by people for my skin.

They would call me burnt lips, Michael Jackson, zebra, giraffe and people thought I was contagious I had a lot.

Girls would ask if I was burned and would say Ew whenever they saw me.

I was a spectacle everywhere I went, I once had kids running out of a store crying when they saw me and was called a monster.

Vitiligo is a skin condition which causes patches of skin to lose their pigmentation it is causes by a lack of the pigment melanin in the skin.

One percentof the population suffers from it and it affects every ethnicity and gender equally.

The main symptom of vitiligo is flat, white spots or patches on your skin.

Initially, the vitiligo may start as a patch of skin that is paler than the rest. Gradually, the patch will become completely white.

Vitiligo does not cause discomfort to your skin, such as dryness, but patches may occasionally be itchy.

If you have vitiligo, the pale areas of your skin are more vulnerable tosunburn.

Treatment for vitiligo is based on improving your skins appearance, you cannot reverse the depigmentationandthe effects of treatment are not usually permanent.

For smaller patches of vitiligo you may be prescribed a steroid cream, thiscan sometimes stop the spread of the patches, and may restore some of your original skin colour.

Before I used to think my skin was a curse, but now I realise my skin is a gift, its allowing me to influence people.

Once I had this new outlook on my skin, I stopped getting so angry and started to smile more.

Before, I hated having my picture taken, so to me I never would have believed I could model.

Caters News Agency

Curtis suffered a deep depression for five years, while he struggled to understand why he had been affected by the condition.

He said: It took over my wrists, arms, then went under my nose, around my lips and my left eyelid too.

Whenever I saw a new white spot while looking in the mirror it would make me angry, once it started to affect my face I punched a mirror in anger.

I was in a bad place.

But, after returning to Christianity, Curtis mind-set changed, and he realised he should see his skin in a positive light.

Curtis said: Its all a process, confidence isnt something you just get, youve got to look at yourself in the mirror and change your mind-set.

Caters News Agency

Caters News Agency

Caters News Agency

Skin is so materialistic, you have to love who you are.

Now, Curtis models while studying and hopes that by proudly showing his skin he can inspire others with vitiligo to not hide away.

Since embracing his condition, Curtishas found people are more attracted to him for both his appearance and his personality.

Curtis said: Its pretty cool, people like the pattern of my skin and also the confidence I have too, I never could have imagined this would be my life now.

Whenever I model or speak I dont want people to see my skin but my heart, I want them to see my heart through my skin.

A lot of people have told me that when they first saw me they liked my skin but what was most attractive was reading about me as a person, thats what makes them fall in love with me.

Originally posted here:

A man with vitiligo who was called 'zebra' by bullies has defied their cruel comments by becoming a model - The Sun

From cursory field clearing process to bewildered farmers, inadequate kerosene to half-finished burning of the affected plots, there are just too many gaps in the suspected control symptoms of wheat blast mission that the Bengal government has undertaken in a war footing mode.

Wheat blast is a deadly disease caused by fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. Symptoms similar to this disease that wrecked havoc in April 2016 in Bangladesh (forcing authorities to destroy standing crops on nearly 20,000 hectares) showed up in two districts of Bengal Nadia and Murshidabad. Alarm bells rang in Bengal and Delhi and the Mamata Banerjee government ordered destruction and burning of the wheat on about 1,000 hectare in these districts on an emergency basis.

Central government officers visited Bengal and held meetings with us. There is no other way than to burn the crops. Primarily the symptoms look like what blast. We have to contain it because it will be devastating if it spreads. We have pressed in men and materials at the villages. However, it is a huge exercise and some shortcomings may be there. We are trying our best, said Purnendu Bose, state agriculture minister.

A farmer in Nadia shows the remains of his field after government officials set fire . Part of the crop remained unburnt. (Subhankar Chakraborty/HT PHOTO)

But a visit to some of the affected fields of Chapra blocks of Nadia district on Saturday by HT team exposed quite a few gaps resulting in some of the affected crops remaining untouched.

Read: Deadly wheat blast symptoms enters India through the Bangladesh border, Bengal govt burning crops on war footing

There seems to be fewer agriculture personnel in the districts who can ensure a fool-proof destruction of each and every strand of the wheat crop. They were visiting the fields, since morning but they dont have enough machines to fell the crops and burn them.

The government employees want the farmers to take the initiative to destroy their harvest. But they were suffering from the shock of the disease and the resultant financial loss. The government has announced a compensation, but it is not adequate to cover our loss. Moreover, we have no idea when the money will be paid to us, said Sixty-year-old Dulal Sheikh of Sonpukur village in Chapra Block in Nadia, situated barely 8 kms away from the Bangladesh border.

Bengal government has deployed combined harvester machines to clear the fields. But the numbers of such machines are far less than needed. (Subhankar Chakraborty/HT PHOTO)

They set fire to my field. But a lot of it remains. How will I clear all of it? Who will pay for it? I have already lost the crop, said Dulal Sheikh. The administration is offering Rs 50,375 as compensation for crop destroyed of per hectare.

The scene was the same at Sonpukur, Hatikhola, Mohotpur, Sikra and other villages in Nadia near the Indo-Bangladesh border.

On Saturday, a harvester machine felled more than half the crop on his 12.5 cottah field. But the machine has many fields to work on Saturday was the deadline set by the government for destruction of the crops and has to leave.

The government officials present at the spot set fire to the crops, but they had to leave even if half the crop was not burnt. As the HT team found out, merely setting fire to the crop could not ensure their destruction only the crop ripe for harvest would burn, while the unripe green ones would not.

Goverment officer speaking to villagers in Nadia. There is a need for more officers on the ground to cover all the affected villages. (Subhankar Chakraborty/HT PHOTO)

There were unexpected hurdles.

There is not even sufficient kerosene needed to effectively burn the entire crop. The unripe ones dont burn properly and remain. We are therefore seeking the help of the farmers, said an officer on conditions of anonymity.

At some areas authorities are asking farmers to cut the crop and burn it themselves, making a visit later.

The ramifications can be dangerous. Agri experts conceded that if the fungus crosses the borders of Bengal to reach the wheat basket in the Hindi heartland, the effects can be disastrous.

The record books, however, are unlikely to show these gaps. Government officers are recording the culling and burning process taking a few snaps of the field, the farmers and uploading the information along with the coordinates of the plot on a government website at the end of the day.

Read: Ground Zero: Farmers stare helplessly as govt race against time to contain spread of wheat blast like symptoms

In some fields the fungus, however, may continue to thrive and spread. The disease was first identified in 1985 in Brazil, and thereafter it spread to Bolivia and Paraguay. Last year it spread in six districts of Bangladesh.

Read this article:

Mind the gap: burn and destroy mission in Bengal fields leaves a few questions - Hindustan Times

lareviewofbooks

The Modest Problem of Death: On Mark O'Connell's To Be a Machine lareviewofbooks Don Hertzfeldt's The World of Tomorrow, an animated short about mind uploading, won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Film at Sundance. The Terminator series and its lead cyborg need no introduction. Science is an almanac of unlikely victories, O ...

Continued here:

The Modest Problem of Death: On Mark O'Connell's To Be a Machine - lareviewofbooks

If you have a new app or use case requiring scalable, on-demand or pay-as-you-go storage, one or more public cloud storage services will probably make your short list. It's likely your development team has at least dabbled with cloud storage, and you may be using cloud storage today to support secondary uses such as backup, archiving or analytics.

Every cloud storage option has its pros and cons. Depending on your specific needs, the size of your environment, and your budget, its essential to weigh all cloud and on-prem options. Download this comprehensive guide in which experts analyze and evaluate each cloud storage option available today so you can decide which cloud model public, private, or hybrid is right for you.

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While cloud storage has come a long way, its use for production apps remains relatively limited. Taneja Group surveyed enterprises and midsize businesses in 2014 and again in 2016, asking whether they are running any business-critical workloads (e.g., ERP, customer relationship management [CRM] or other line-of-business apps) in a public cloud (see "Deployments on the rise"). Less than half were running one or more critical apps in the cloud in 2014, and that percentage grew to just over 60% in 2016. Though cloud adoption for critical apps has increased significantly, many IT managers remain hesitant about committing production apps and data to public cloud storage providers.

Concerns about security and compliance are big obstacles to public cloud storage adoption, as IT managers balk at having critical data move and reside outside data center walls. Poor application performance, often stemming from unpredictable spikes in network latency, is another top-of-mind issue. And then there's the cost and difficulty of moving large volumes of data in and out of the cloud or within the cloud itself, say when pursuing a multicloud approach or switching providers. Another challenge is the need to reliably and efficiently back up cloud-based data, traditionally not well supported by most public cloud storage providers.

How can you overcome these kinds of issues and ensure your public cloud storage deployment will be successful, including for production workloads? We suggest using a three-step process to assess, compare and contrast providers' key capabilities, service-level agreements (SLAs) and track records so you can make a better informed decision (see: "Three-step approach to cloud storage adoption").

Let's examine specific security, compliance and performance capabilities as well as SLA commitments you should look for when evaluating public cloud storage providers.

Maintaining cloud data storage security is generally understood to operate under a shared responsibility model: The provider is responsible for security of the underlying infrastructure, and you are responsible for data placed on the cloud as well as devices or data you connect to the cloud.

All three major cloud storage infrastructure-as-a-service providers (Amazon Web Services [AWS], Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud) have made significant investments to protect their physical data center facilities and cloud infrastructure, placing a particular emphasis on securing their networks from attacks, intrusions and the like. Smaller and regional players tend also to focus on securing their cloud infrastructure. Still, take the time to review technical white papers and best practices to fully understand available security provisions.

Though you will be responsible for securing the data you connect or move to the cloud, public cloud storage providers offer tools and capabilities to assist. These generally fall into one of three categories of protection: data access, data in transit or data at rest.

Data access: Overall, providers allow you to protect and control access to user accounts, compute instances, APIs and data, just as you would in your own data center. This is accomplished through authentication credentials such as passwords, cryptographic keys, certificates or digital signatures. Specific data access capabilities and policies let you restrict and regulate access to particular storage buckets, objects or files. For example, within Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), you can use Access Control Lists (ACLs) to grant groups of AWS users read or write access to specific buckets or objects and employ Bucket Policies to enable or disable permissions across some or all of the objects in a given bucket. Check each provider's credentials and policies to verify they satisfy your internal requirements. Though most make multifactor authentication optional, we recommend enabling it for account logins.

Data in transit:To protect data in transit, public cloud storage providers offer one or more forms of transport-level or client-side encryption. For example, Microsoft recommends using HTTPS to ensure secure transmission of data over the public internet to and from Azure Storage, and offers client-side encryption to encrypt data before it's transferred to Azure Storage. Similarly, Amazon provides SSL-encrypted endpoints to enable secure uploading and downloading of data between S3 and client endpoints, whether they reside within or outside of AWS. Verify that the encryption approach in each provider's service is rigorous enough to comply with relevant security or industry-level standards.

Data at rest:To secure data at rest, some public cloud storage providers automatically encrypt data when it's stored, while others offer a choice of having them encrypt the data or doing it yourself. Google Cloud Platform services, for instance, always encrypt customer content stored at rest. Google encrypts new data stored in persistent disks using the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) and offers you the choice of having Google supply and manage the encryption keys or doing it yourself. Microsoft Azure, on the other hand, enables you to encrypt data using client-side encryption (protecting it both in transit and at rest) or to rely on Storage Service Encryption (SSE) to automatically encrypt data as it is written to Azure Storage. Amazon's offering for encrypting data at rest in S3 is nearly identical to Microsoft Azure's.

Also, check for data access logging -- to enable a record of access requests to specific buckets or objects -- and data disposal (wiping) provisions, to ensure data's fully destroyed if you decide to move it to a new provider's service.

Your provider should offer resources and controls that allow you to comply with key security standards and industry regulations. For example, depending on your industry, business focus and IT requirements, you may look for help in complying with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Service Organization Controls 1 financial reporting, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or FedRAMP security controls for information stored and processed in the cloud. So be sure to check out the list of supported compliance standards, including third-party certifications and accreditations.

Unlike security and compliance, for which you can make an objective assessment, application performance is highly dependent on IT environment, including cloud infrastructure configuration, network connection speeds and the additional traffic running over that connection. If you're achieving an I/O latency of 5 to 10 milliseconds running with traditional storage on premises, or even better than that with flash storage, you will want to prequalify application performance before committing to a cloud provider. It's difficult to anticipate how well a latency-sensitive application will perform in a public cloud environment without actually testing it under the kinds of conditions you expect to see in production.

Speed of access is based, in part, on data location, meaning expect better performance if you colocate apps in the cloud. If you're planning to store primary data in the cloud but keep production workloads running on premises, evaluate the use of an on-premises cloud storage gateway -- such as Azure StorSimple or AWS Storage Gateway -- to cache frequently accessed data locally and (likely) compress or deduplicate it before it's sent to the cloud.

To further address the performance needs of I/O-intensive use cases and applications, major public cloud storage providers offer premium storage capabilities, along with instances that are optimized for such workloads. For example, Microsoft Azure offers Premium Storage, allowing virtual machine disks to store data on SSDs. This helps solve the latency issue by enabling I/O-hungry enterprise workloads such as CRM, messaging and other database apps to be moved to the cloud. As you might expect, these premium storage services come with a higher price tag than conventional cloud storage.

Bottom line on application performance: Try before you buy.

A cloud storage service-level agreement spells out guarantees for minimum uptime during monthly billing periods, along with the recourse you're entitled to if those commitments aren't met. Contrary to many customers' wishes, SLAs do not include objectives or commitments for other important aspects of the storage service, such as maximum latency, minimum I/O performance or worst-case data durability.

In the case of the "big three" providers' services, the monthly uptime percentage is calculated by subtracting from 100% the average percentage of service requests not fulfilled due to "errors," with the percentages calculated every five minutes (or one hour in the case of Microsoft Azure Storage) and averaged over the course of the month.

Typically, when the uptime percentage for a provider's single-region, standard storage service falls below 99.9% during the month, you will be entitled to a service credit. (Though it's not calculated this way for SLA purposes, 99.9% availability implies no more than 43 minutes of downtime in a 30-day month.) The provider will typically credit 10% of the current monthly charges for uptime levels between 99% and 99.9%, and 25% for uptime levels below 99% (Google Cloud Storage credits up to 50% if uptime falls below 95%). Microsoft Azure Storage considers storage transactions failures if they exceed a maximum processing time (based on request type), while Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage rely on internally generated error codes to measure failed storage requests. Note that the burden is on you as the customer to request a service credit in a timely manner if a monthly uptime guarantee isn't met.

Also, carefully evaluate the SLAs to determine whether they satisfy your availability requirements for both data and workloads. If a single-region service isn't likely to meet your needs, it may make sense to pay the premium for a multi-region service, in which copies of data are dispersed across multiple geographies. This approach increases data availability, but it won't protect you from instances of data corruption or accidental deletions, which are simply propagated across regions as data is replicated.

With these guidelines and caveats in mind, you can better assess whether public cloud storage makes sense for your particular use cases, data and applications. If public cloud storage providers' service-level commitments and capabilities fall short of meeting your requirements, consider developing a private cloud or taking advantage of managed cloud services.

Though public cloud storage may not be an ideal fit for your production data and workloads, you may find it fits the bill for some of your less demanding use cases.

Companies move toward public cloud storage

Evaluate all variables in the cloud storage equation

Public, private or hybrid? What's the right cloud storage for you?

Excerpt from:

Overcome problems with public cloud storage providers - TechTarget

The goal of transcending flesh is an old fetish. Yogis meditated and fasted for eons in order to rise above our meat casing, performing painful ablutions and inventing kriyas, intense breathing exercises that are physiologically indistinct from intentional hyperventilation. The goal of many religions, from some forms of Tibetan Buddhism to numerous strains of Christianity and Islam, is all about letting the spirit soar free.

While language changes, pretensions remain. Today we talk about uploading consciousness to an as of yet discovered virtual cloud. Artificial intelligence is only moments away, so the story goes, with experts weighing in on the ethical consequences of creating machines void of emotional response systems. In this view consciousness, itself a loaded and mismanaged term, is nothing more than an algorithm waiting to be deciphered. Upon cracking the code, immortality awaits.

Of course others are more grounded. The goal of extending life to 150 years includes the body by default, though the mind is still championed above all else. Yet we seem to age in opposing directions by design. At forty-one little has changed in how I think about myself, yet my body is decaying: a post-knee surgery creek here, a perpetual tight shoulder there. It certainly feels like a slowly approaching transition, even if that, like much of life, is an illusion.

The brain has rightfully been placed as the seat of consciousness. It is certainly the weigh station where all perceptions pass through. Yet in discussion of becoming robots an essential facet of life is missed: consciousness is not only produced by your brain, it is also your nervous systems response to the environment. In this sense it might be better to think of your entire body as your brain.

Thats an argument cognitive scientist Guy Claxton is making. History might belong to Hippocratic holism and Cartesian dualism, but in the past few decades scientists have become serious neurological fanboys. Breakthrough technologies made non-invasive means of measuring blood flow available, reshaping how we think about metacognition. No longer do we only know that we think, we can now witness how our brain responds to every single thought and emotion, then string together the threads in the fabric of cognition.

When we believe a separate mind (or spirit) exists apart from our body, Claxton writes, we make worse decisions regarding our body. He points to a study at the University of Cologne in which two groups read texts, one in support of dualism, the other expressing mind and body as part of the same being.

Not only did the dualists report less engagement and interest in healthy behaviours and attitudes than the physicalists, they were actually more likely to choose the chips than the salad when they went off for lunch.

Which is effectively how we always act. Dualism supports everything from suicidal terrorism to environmental destructionif you believe another spirit world better than this one awaits, why care about what we do to the planet and its resources? We were put here to lord over this domain anyway.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari finds this phenomenon apparent in everything from religion to economics. In Homo Deus, he argues that as we transformed from animals struggling to survive to animals that thrive our main pursuit became pleasure. Impatient creatures we are, we swerve manically between stress and boredom in the perpetual quest for gratification, taking out whatever stands in our way.

Case in point: Today the headlines proclaim that the Dow Jones passed 21,000 for the first time in history. Immediately speculators started wondering what does 30,000 look like? The myth of perpetual progress creates an impossible load for the planet to handle. Harari believes the incessant anxiety of unfettered growth is digging us a certain grave. Because we train our eyes on the markets algorithms, however, were blinded to the destruction our surroundings. Then someone says that climate change is merely an engineering problem and we think, Sure, why not? Just more numbers on a screen to be managed.

This disembodiment from our environment comes with a heavy toll. Harari cites the Buddha, who taught that the pursuit of pleasure is the root of suffering. Upon achieving a goal we dont pause to revel in satisfaction. Instead we immediately crave more, dopamine monkeys chasing grapes.

Claxton finds a partial solution in yoga and meditation, which help in the development of embodied cognition. (Harari meditates two hours every day, and performs one sixty-day Vipassana retreat each year.) The relationship between our body and mind is critical for self-understanding. That we ever separated them is likely an aberration of biological development, as Paul Bloom points out. Cognitive software updates might be constant, but upgrading physiological hardware takes quite some time, and so the feeling of dualism is likely to persist.

Matthew Crawford believes the disembodied culture fostered since the Industrial Revolution diminishes personal autonomy. He left a lucrative career at a D.C. think tank to work as a motorcycle mechanic, resulting in one of the best books on this subject Ive read. He finds manual work more intellectually engaging than sitting behind a computer selling political agendas. The fact that education is mostly focused on technology is unfortunate, as it promotes disassociation from the world we live in.

The disappearance of tools from our common education is the first step toward a wider ignorance of the world of artifacts we inhabit.

Weve made some strides of late, however, at least with our own bodies if not tools. While physicality has generally been removed from our daily workload, the exercise industry continues to expand. Six days a week I move bodies in yoga and fitness classes. People inherently recognize theyre not only toning and stretching their muscles and fascia. Emotional catharsis and mental focus keeps studios and gyms crowded. If emotional intelligence has been a catchphrase over the last decade, a renaissance in physical intelligence is occurring.

Thats important. Rewarding careers that push numbers from bank account to bank account instead of those responsible for building the buildings those computers sit inside is an indication of how disembodied weve become as a culture. Championing sedentary behavior in the quest of prosperous algorithms is a modern tragedy we dont pay enough attention to. More than our personal well-being is at stake. We need our bodies as much as our brains, a lesson we need to learn before atrophy is complete.

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Derek's next book,Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health, will be published on 7/4/17 by Carrel/Skyhorse Publishing. He is based in Los Angeles. Stay in touch onFacebookandTwitter.

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From AI to Anxiety Relief, The Brain Needs a Body - Big Think

Smartphones put a world of information, games, videos, and music at your fingertips. That is, until you run out of data. It only takes a few minutes of throttled, agonizingly slow speeds to realize how much you rely on that cellular connectionand how important it is to stay within your data allowance. The solution: Cut back on the amount of data your phone chews through. Adjusting your settings to reduce data usage will come in handy for those with limited data plans or travelers who plan to spend time out of network.

We've collected some tips for staying on the right side of your data boundaries. Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, there are two sets of options you need to bear in mind: Those in your phone's main operating system settings, and those in the individual apps you've installed.

Android gives you a detailed look at your overall data usagejust tap Data usage in the Settings app (if you're not using stock Android, you should see something similar). There are a few helpful tools here: You can obviously see your current data stats, but if you tap on the graph, you can also set a level at which Android displays an alert about your usage. Check your monthly plan and configure the limit accordingly.

Tap the Mobile data usage entry further down to get a more detailed look at the data you've been using, as well as a list of the apps that have been the worst offenders for eating up your allowancethis will come in handy when we configure individual app settings later on.

You can also tap Data Saver to turn on this useful feature, built into the latest versions of Android. It limits the data apps can use in the background, which stops most apps from downloading or uploading data (think background email syncing and so on) when they're not actually openunless you're connected to Wi-Fi.

To manually set whether apps can or can't use data in the background, tap on the individual app entries in the Mobile data usage list.

Meanwhile to stop apps from updating when you're not on a Wi-Fi connection (some of those updates can be pretty hefty), go to the Play Store app, open the Settings option from the menu, and tap Auto-update apps.

Finally, tap the menu button on the Data usage screen (the three vertical dots in the corner) and then pick Mobile networks. Here you can switch off data roaming, where data is downloaded on cellular networks other than your registered one (usually when you're traveling). This can help avoid unwanted bills when you get back from vacation.

Over on iOS there are some comparable settings you can work through to take control of your iPhone or iPad's data usage. Get to know these options first and then move on to individual app settings later if you need to.

Tap Cellular Data (labelled Mobile Data in some parts of the world) in Settings to get at all the key configuration options. This screen also lists how much data individual apps are using, just like the Android equivalent does.

To prevent an app from using data when not on Wi-Fi, just toggle its switch to off. To shut down mobile data completely, toggle the top switch. The Cellular Data Options submenu, meanwhile, lets you turn off data roaming when you're not connected to your primary network (like those times when you're out of the country).

The newest versions of iOS have a Wi-Fi Assist feature, where your device will fall back to cellular networks if Wi-Fi reception is poor. It's designed to speed up browsing on patchy Wi-Fi networks, but it can chew through a lot of data. To prevent that, switch this option off underneath the apps list.

As on Android, you can tell iOS not to download app updates over cellular networks: Choose iTunes & App Store from the Settings app, then toggle the Use Cellular Data option to off.

Another option is to prevent apps from uploading and downloading data in the background while they're not in use. Tap General then Background App Refresh from Settings, and you can disable this for individual apps or stop it completely.

There are plenty of ways to configure Android or iOS to use less data, but some individual apps will have data usage settings of their own. We can't cover every app out there, but these tricks should rein in some of the most data-hungry ones.

Open up the settings in the Facebook app, for example, and you can stop videos from autoplaying when you're not on Wi-Fi, cut down on the number of notifications you get, change the quality that photos and videos are uploaded at, and more. The settings menu layout varies between iOS and Android, but these options are easy to find.

Google Chrome for Android has a data saver tool all of its ownit preloads and compresses pages through Google's servers before sending a stripped-down version to your mobile. You can enable it from the main Settings menu inside the app.

Have a look at the apps on your own phone to see if any similar options are available, particularly for those apps that are appearing high up in your data usage tables. For example, think about music and podcast appsare they syncing playlists and downloading new content over cellular connections? The settings for many of these apps will let you restrict this activity so it only happens over Wi-Fi networks.

Preparation will also help you cut down on total data usage. We've already mentioned music playlists, which you can sync ahead of time while you're still on your home Wi-Fi, but you can do the same in Google Maps: Go to Offline areas from the main menu, and you'll be able to download parts of the map before leaving the house. This should save you from using as much data when you're on the road.

Finally, get connected to as many Wi-Fi spots as you can: at work, at your coffee shop, at your friends' houses (as long as they're not unsecured networks). Any time you're not relying on cellular networks alone, you can be saving on data.

Read more from the original source:

Data limits are the worsthere's how to stay under yours - Popular Science

B2B processes get smarter in the cloud TechTarget Microsoft, for instance, created its Cortana suite with build-it-yourself in mind. ... The best use of shared analytics in some B2B partnerships might simply be a common platform for uploading data sets to be scrutinized for process-improving trend ...

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B2B processes get smarter in the cloud - TechTarget