Why the copyright terms on a goldmine of works from 1923 are about to expire.

When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, movies, songs, and books created in the United States in 1923—even beloved cartoons such as Felix the Cat—will be eligible for anyone to adapt, repurpose, or distribute as they please.

A 20-year freeze on copyright expirations has prevented a cache of 1923 works from entering the public domain, including Paramount Pictures’ The Ten Commandments, Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim, and novels by Aldous Huxley.

Such a massive release of iconic works is unprecedented, experts say—especially in the digital age, as the last big dump predated Google.

“There is certainly great value in effectively restarting the public domain, but the mistake was having extended the term of protection for already created works in the first place,” Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, told Motherboard.

For this we can thank a 1998 rule known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, famously lobbied for by the Walt Disney Company as a means to extend copyright protections. It was believed that Disney hoped to lengthen the copyright of the 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie, which marked the debut of a certain Mr. Mouse…….more to read….

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjek4z/a-massive-amount-of-iconic-works-will-enter-the-public-domain-on-new-years-eve

Elizabeth Warren launches exploratory committee ahead of likely 2020 presidential run

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/politics/elizabeth-warren-exploratory-committee-2020/index.html

The future of battlefield communications is resting comfortably near your back gums.

Next time you pass someone on the street who appears to be talking to themselves, they may literally have voices inside their head…and be a highly trained soldier on a dangerous mission. The Pentagon has inked a roughly $10 million contract with a California company to provide secure communication gear that’s essentially invisible.

Dubbed the Molar Mic, it’s a small device that clips to your back teeth. The device is both microphone and “speaker,” allowing the wearer to transmit without any conspicuous external microphone and receive with no visible headset or earpiece. Incoming sound is transmitted through the wearer’s bone matter in the jaw and skull to the auditory nerves; outgoing sound is sent to a radio transmitter on the neck, and sent to another radio unit that can be concealed on the operator. From there, the signal can be sent anywhere.

“Essentially, what you are doing is receiving the same type of auditory information that you receive from your ear, except that you are using a new auditory pathway — through your tooth, through your cranial bones — to that auditory nerve. You can hear through your head as if you were hearing through your ear,” said Peter Hadrovic, CEO of Molar Mic creator Sonitus Technologies. He likened the experience to what happens when you eat a crunchy breakfast cereal — but instead of hearing that loud (delightfully marketable) chewing noise, you’re receiving important communications from your operations team.

Your ability to understand conversations transmitted through bone improves with practice. “Over the period of three weeks, your brain adapts and it enhances your ability to process the audio,” said Hadrovic. But even “out of the gate, you can understand it,” he said. (more below)

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/09/military-now-has-tooth-mics-invisible-hands-free-radio-calls/151145/

Enhanced, Electricity-Generating 'Superorgans'

Why stop at just mimicking biology when we can biomanufacture new and improved humans?

Bioprinting technology is advancing so quickly that some scientists believe 3D printing an entire artificial human organ is only five to ten years off. That alone is pretty bonkers, science-wise, and could save many lives. But why stop there? Once you start talking about manufacturing body parts, the inevitable lurking question is: Can we go beyond just mimicking biology to make technologically improved humans?

At least one scientist, Ibrahim Ozbolat from the University of Iowa, believes that 3D bioprinting will pave the road to this posthuman future. "There might be some brand new organ that doesn't exist in the human body, but it can be transplanted in the human body to enhance the functionality," Ozbolat said in an interview with HuffPost Live this week.

In other words, simply replacing failed organs is thinking small. Bioprinted enhanced organs—or artificial ones that don’t exist in nature—can be engineered to perform specific, useful functions, such as treating disease.

You can bioprint "an organ that is going to be part of the human body and generate electricity that can run the heart."​

Already, a 3D-printed artificial pancreas that can regulate glucose levels in diabetic patients is being developed at the University of Iowa’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology Group, which Ozbolat heads up.

But “bioprinting enhanced organs is different than our pancreatic organ printing project,” Ozbolat explained in an email. “Pancreas printing is for making an artificial pancreas to regulate glucose level in blood, not targeting at something better than a natural pancreas.”

Enhanced, “superorgans” that improve upon nature could open the door to a new era of personalized medicine. Speaking to HuffPost Live, Ozbolat said bioprinting could be used to create an organ that can generate electricity in the human body. An electrogenic organ could power electronic implants, like pacemakers, without the need for batteries.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnjjp5/3d-bioprinters-could-make-enhanced-electricity-generating-superorgans