Tech News & Discussion

I (32F) sleep with my phone on do not disturb mode, but only two contacts are set up to bypass that: my husband‘s phone and my mom‘s phone.

At 1:30 AM, my phone rang and it was my husband‘s phone. I woke him up to tell him he was butt dialing me with his Apple Watch or something, but he said it wasn’t him. Phone, iPad, watch, laptop were all sitting on the desk in the room with us.

The phone immediately rang again a second time, and I answered it. It was a woman sobbing. Then a man said, hello, do you not know whose number this is? But the crying continued and I was all flustered from being startled awake, demanding to know who it was. The man said, look, do you think you can get somewhere to speak to her in private? Then my husband reached over and hung up my phone.

Holy shit. Think about that in reverse. My husband gets a call from me, it sounds like me sobbing, and a man is demanding to speak with him? He seemed to know this was a scam from a mile away, and now having thought about it in daylight hours, I see that too.

My question is, I get how somebody can spoof his number and start calling around. But how does somebody spoof his number and then know to call MY number? Knowing that it would appear to ME as a number I recognize?

Okay, some people are spending some money, but I want some people's realistic thoughts on why it's not an all consuming investment priority...

With recent advancements in understanding artificial learning and large data analysis, we are making meaningful steps toward being able to understand and quantize the human brain. With more focused research and almost unlimited funding, we could theoretically manipulate brain structure, modify it, store it, and rebuild a human brain within our lifetimes (maybe 20 years).

With recent advancements in gene editing and data analysis, we are making meaningful steps in being able to edit genes as we choose, grow designer tissues, and edit our bodies. With more focused research and almost unlimited funding, we could do the mundane like regrow organs and reverse the effects of aging, but we could be also do the fantastic like change our fundamental characteristics (taller, faster, stronger, or hell - get weird with it and make the furries happy).

Given that a human can easily happily live on only a few million dollars in perpetuity, and given that the top 0.1% of the globe controls something on the order of $20 trillion, I feel like these goals are within reach. Bezos is 60, so a world-wide coordinated effort is within his lifetime. Instead private equity is throwing a billion a quarter at companies with a dubious plan to reach profitability. Why not market funds with "Invest with us and the fires from burning your cash might allow you to live forever".

Ive been struggling all weekend with the thought that we could reshape the phases of human life, and add so much more color to our world, but we're choosing to walk rather than run. Why would people choose to age on a yacht when they have a chance of rolling back time and getting an effective do-over? Why be an 80 year old billionaire instead of going back to your 20s/30s with a hundred million and all your knowledge?

As a middle class human, even the idea that the rich will live forever and it could be out of reach for me financially is still exciting, because they would be invested in the future of the planet whereas that doesn't seem like a strong motivator for them today...