Month: June 2007

Aubrey de Grey

2019-04-06:

Aubrey de Grey: 2018 was a fantastic year for rejuvenation biotechnology. The main thing that made it special was the explosive growth of the private-sector side of the field – the number of startup companies, the number of investors, and the scale of investment. 2 companies, AgeX Therapeutics and Unity Biotechnology, went public with 9-digit valuations, and a bunch of others are not far behind. Of course this has only been possible because of all the great progress that has been made in the actual science, but one can never predict when that slow, steady progress will reach “critical mass”.

2020-06-16: Towards the mainstream

within 3-5 years there will be a rapid shift in public expectation in longevity. The lab and clinical research will get to the point that experts will be willing to say radical longevity is achievable. Major media will then trumpet it. The public will then change their beliefs.

Network effects getting weaker?

It’s easier than ever to move from one service to another. Blog reader? No problem. Photo site? I have accounts on all of them anyway. Social networks? Yeah I’m signed up on all of them. I use the ones everyone else is using, at the moment. Just like we all do. The rest have a stub profile for me, but don’t see much activity. I started wondering if there was less lock-in than I thought on other services supposedly protected by strong network effects. Like eBay, for instance. They’ve got all the buyers, and all the sellers. But what fraction of their transactions are “Buy it now” from their 700k merchants? Is there an 80/20 rule to those merchants? Could a core be drawn to a new service?

only because people apparently don’t place value in data portability, and like re-entering the same thing. which leads me to believe that most people either prefer things ephemeral or ascribe no value to the implied data.

Germany Idiocy

Google might disable Gmail in Germany as last fallback should the German government maintain its position in regards to a newly passed law on record-keeping and supervision of internet traffic. According to this law, email services here will be forced to maintain personally identifiable records attached to email accounts. What exactly this might mean for Google I don’t know, but perhaps it would result in Gmail having to start requiring full addresses (and perhaps even having to verify an address by sending a snail mail to the user). As usual in these circumstances, the law is pushed through in the name of fighting “terrorists.”

fighting stupid and harmful laws