Apple not hit by Heartbleed. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than smart. The best is to be both.

 

How Apple dodged the Heartbleed bullet
[Via AppleInsider]

In 2011, Apple told its developers that it would be deprecating OS X’s Common Data Security Architecture including OpenSSL, describing it as an outdated relic of the late 1990s. Nearly three years later, OpenSSL was hit by a severe flaw that affected a wide swath of vendors and their users, but not Apple.

[More]

Apple was not hit by the Heartbleed defect because it had stopped using the vulnerable software in its operating systems 6 months before the vulnerability was added.

Apple just saw some other flaws in the underlying Open Source security applications and moved to its own.

Smart and lucky.Best way to go. 

The future of space travel started today

The first reusable spacecraft – Falcon-9R – successfully took off today. Here is a video of what this type of rocket will provide us.

And here is a recent test flight if the compete Facon-9R:

From almost 1000 feet the rocket returned to the same place it took off from. When this becomes routine, Space-X homes to reuse it up to 100 times. This will greatly lower the price of space travel.

Mankind just entered a new age a few minutes ago, thanks to Space-X

We just had the successful launch of a Space-X Falcon 9 to resupply the ISS. The reason this is a new age is that this is a newversion of the Falcon 9 – it has retractable landing legs!

This will allow the first stage to be brought back to Earth safey, to land on a landing pad and to be reused. On this flight, they will not try to land the first stage, But they will soon.

Yes, for the first time in human history, a rocket that can be reused. Space-X- hopes to be able to do this perhaps 100 times. This reduces the cost of getting tnto space a lot if it can be done routinely.

Perhaps down to $10 a pound! That will change everything.

But we need to see some successful experiments with the technology. They expect only a 30% chance of success today. Keep your fingers crossed.

Americans are confident about the future. Not as much about the present

 

Future of Technology | 
[Via Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project]

The American public anticipates that the coming half-century will be a period of profound scientific change, as inventions that were once confined to the realm of science fiction come into common usage. This is among the main findings of a new national survey by The Pew Research Center, which asked Americans about a wide range of potential scientific developments—from near-term advances like robotics and bioengineering, to more “futuristic” possibilities like teleportation or space colonization. In addition to asking them for their predictions about the long-term future of scientific advancement, we also asked them to share their own feelings and attitudes toward some new developments that might become common features of American life in the relatively near future. Overall, most Americans anticipate that the technological developments of the coming half-century will have a net positive impact on society. Some 59% are optimistic that coming technological and scientific changes will make life in the future better, while 30% think these changes will lead to a future in which people are worse off than they are today. 

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Looking forward 50 years, almost 60% of Americans are confident that technology will provide tremendous gains (although they still want their jet cars). As we look closer to the present, the confidence drops tremendously.

So, we just need to move some of that future confidence to the present.

Neil deGrasse Tyson moderating a debate on selling space

From March 2014. We live on the cusp of an amazing age. It will save us all.

Isaac Asimov discussing global warming and the exact way the world needs to be saved – 25 years ago

An amazing speech that could be given today.  Done without notes.

And it recapitulates almost everything I have been focussed on for some time. Talk about walking in the footsteps of giants!

Oncoming global warming. The amazing benefits of the Cold War. The changing aspects of nation states. National security. 

The sticks that are driving cooperation between nation states. And the carrots.

How the Constitution shows us a path forward. How Westward expansion produced a united country, not one with Southern separatists.

It will be about getting into space and beaming power back to Earth.

We now no longer can simply have one nation state fight another. Because what they do affects us all.

We need to figure out how to deal with the effects of humanity that transcend all national boundaries.

It is well worth watching the whole thing. It will be 45 minutes that could make a difference.

The disruption of Health will be distributed

 

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

Advances in health IT must be viewed as a whole
[Via O'Reilly Radar]

Reformers in health care claim gigantic disruption on the horizon: devices that track our movements, new treatments through massive data crunching, fluid electronic records that reflect the patient’s status wherever she goes, and even the end of the doctor’s role. But predictions in the area of health IT are singularly detached from the realities of the technical environment that are supposed to make them happen.

To help technologists, clinicians, and the rest of us judge the state of health IT, I’ve released a report titled “The Information Technology Fix for Health: Barriers and Pathways to the Use of Information Technology for Better Health Care.” It offers an overview of each area of innovation to see what’s really happening and what we need to make it progress further and faster.

[More]

Health has always been intimately connected with technology, from removing the handle of a drinking well to a handheld ultrasound wand.

Dealing with human health is probably the most complex system of endeavor mankind us currently trying to solve. Old, authoritarian, top-down approaches are giving way to newer, distributed, bottom-up paradigms.

And new digital tools are driving this.

Often we can only solve health problems because of the technological tools we have access to.

But healthcare has been slow to activate the greatest impacts of the digital revolution – to connect people and communities in ways to solve very complex problems. Healthcare’s natural attraction to the status quo for many medical needs– after all, if a doctor makes a mistake, people can die – means that therapeutic benefit often has to be shown BEFORE anything changes.

Patient healthcare data and its mining does not easily fit this paradigm. Authoritarian approaches stemming from the  medical edifice we all face still drives almost all our health concerns. So change is slow.

But it is coming. Faster than many of the authoritarian processes can deal with.

This has not stopped people from doing the mining themselves. From places like 23andme, patientslikeme to crowdfunding projects, individuals are now taking much greater control of their health data.

And finding out all sorts of interesting things.

Often without any form of mediator, because they can.

(It reminds me of the battle I was part of almost 20 years ago. We needed to connect to the internet because it was becoming critical in order to do our biomedical research. The IT department was very reluctant and stonewalled, due to fear of disrupting things. We simply said we could connect to the internet without needing them. Our IT needs had become decentralized , distributed, and we could simply dial-up without needing the IT department at all. So we did.)

Medicine is becoming a more distributed system, decentralizing access and the practice of medicine. It is, in many way, at right angles and in conflict with the authoritarian processes we find in medicine today.

This holds tremendous opportunity to revolutionize what we know about medicine. But with tremendously disruptive effects on the status quo.

There will be real battles here but the conflict between the old, authoritarian system and the new, distributed system will find a balance which eventually helps us all.

Because it has real benefits. And it cannot really be stopped anyway.