Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows. Recently, a new staff member started at Lifehacker. She booted up her brandnew, companyissued MacBook Pro, and went to plug in her EarPods to listen to some tunes. Your computer keeps installing new apps such as Candy Crush etc after Windows 10 anniversary update Cant stop Windows 10 from installing updates of apps in your PC Instead of taking up phone space with an extra app, you can find out where your precious minutes get spent by visiting your iPhones Battery section, according to. Fire up your Start menu or Dock and think carefully for a moment Out of all your aging desktop apps, how many do you really rely on these daysor even better, how. Searching for iPhone killer returns millions of hits. Its hard to remember any phoneproductserviceplatforminitiativemergerstartup which was not at some. Why Bringing Back a Wooly Mammoth Is No Longer Science Fiction. Dr. George Church is a real life Dr. Frankenstein. The inventor of CRISPR and one of the minds behind the Human Genome Project is no longer content just reading and editing DNAnow he wants to make new life. In Ben Mezrichs latest book, Wooly The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of Historys Most Iconic Extinct Creatures, Church and his Harvard lab try to do the impossible, and clone an extinct Woolly mammoth back into existence. Mezrich, author of the books that would become the feature films 2. The Social Network, seems to have graduated from college to a bioengineering Ph. D with his latest work, which is chock full of scientific explanation detailing every aspect of the Church labs efforts to rewrite the DNA of an elephant to look like a wooly mammoth. But Mezrich is even more interested in telling the stories of the people trying to make the mammoth a reality, dramatizing the lives of Church, his wife, Harvard Professor Dr. Ting Wu, their fellow scientists, researchers working for a competing cloning lab in Korea, and the conservationists at the Siberian preserve where the mammoths will finally reside. While at times his predictions feel too good to be true, Mezrichs prose rarely fails to engage. Gizmodo sat down with Mezrich to talk about a few of the themes present in his book, as well as the future of de extinction and scientific breakthroughs in general. Below is a lightly edited and condensed version of the interview. Gizmodo What brought you to extinct species revival in particular Mezrich Ive been interested in mammoths since I was a kid, basically, and Ive always been a fan of Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park, so its always been on my mind to tell a story like that. Then a couple years ago, I started hearing about Dr. Installing Android On Iphone Clone' title='Installing Android On Iphone Clone' />George Church and the Mammoth Revival project, and I decided I just needed to tell this story. So I basically reached out to him blindly. He let me embed myself in his lab, so I spent a while just living there seeing what was going on, and just getting really into it. Gizmodo An early chapter of the book opens four years in the future, when humans have succeeded in bringing mammoths back to life. What makes you think the project will succeed so soon Mezrich Even at this moment, right now, there are three prehistoric woolly mammoth genomes alive, living in elephant cells, so were on the verge of it. I was talking to George the previous night. Even though he doesnt put a date on it, I put the four year date, but he sees that as totally possible. The slowest part of the process right now is the gestation period of an elephant. Whether well have a woolly mammoth in three years or just be very close in three years, I dont know, but a lot depends on the money and on the elephant. The initiative is how they work on it, but it is feasible. Gizmodo Lets talk about the money. Thats a huge motivating factor behind the project, but it seems like the wealthy are the ones funding scientific efforts a lot of the time Editors Note The Church Labs Genome Sequencing project is funded mainly by private computing and biotechnology companies. Is this a good thing How do you feel about science funded on the whims of oligarchs Mezrich Well its interesting, you look at this marriage between incredibly wealthy people and science, and in some ways its a very good thing. You know, in some ways it pushes science forward. Youre not gonna see and I wish you would Donald Trump pouring money into the woolly mammoth revival project, youre not seeing the government doing these things. Scientists do often have to turn to outside sources, and if someone like Peter Thiel wants to live forever, he needs to fund the things in George Churchs lab. So whatever his personal goal, its good for everybody. I look at it as a positive thing, I think big money has always influenced outside the box science, look at what Elon Musk does or whats going on at Amazon, Facebook or Google. Its very very wealthy people throwing money at crazy ideas, and hopefully we all benefit from it. Peter Thiel put in 1. Gizmodo This book and The Accidental Billionaires both had the protagonists receive additional funding from Peter Thiel. How do you feel about his involvement in particular in such immediately relevant work Mezrich Yeah, Ive written about him twice. Editors Note Mezrich also covered Peter Thiel in his book Accidental Billionaires In this case the way George tells the story, he basically ran into Peter Thiel, and told him about a couple of projects. Thiel said tell me your craziest projects, and he listed a couple of them, and Thiel said, the woolly mammoth, thats the one I want to do. Gizmodo Speaking of other projects, is Church working on anything half as crazy as a mammothMezrich Yeah, absolutely, Church and his lab are doing the anti malaria mosquitos, working with the Gates foundation, theyre building domes over villages in Africa and releasing mosquitoes that cant carry malaria, to test them out. Also, his student Ken Esfeld at MIT is working on transgenic mice to beat lyme disease. The goal is to release 1. Lyme disease onto the island of Nantucket, which is kind of a wild story. In his lab, theyre also working on the pigs with human compatible livers. Free Sound Editor And Recording Software here. Theyve a couple of pig embryos with livers that can be used in humans. Youre looking at the future of transplantation, which is incredible. Theyre working on projects to extend lifespans but the mammoth project and the ones with the transgenic species are the craziest. Gizmodo Do you think meddling with ecosystems and reviving lost species could have negative effects on living onesMezrich You have to be very ethical and responsible because youre working with technology that is very powerful. The same technology that allows you to create a woolly mammoth or an extinct species allows you to eliminate a species if you want. You could eliminate mosquitos Editors Note Scientists are discussing the possibility of doing this with a controversial and speculative technology called gene drive, but that brings up enormous issues in ecology. I think bringing back an extinct species like the mammoth is generally a good thing, I think that the people who dont want Church to do that are usually thinking what does it mean for the Asian elephant population, which is endangered. But its not a zero sum gamewere not giving up on these endangered species. We now have the technology to bring back a species we mostly ate out of existence. Its like a karmic righting of a wrong, and theres been a lot of talk about the sixth extinction, species are going extinct all over the place, but the fact that we can bring one back is a huge moment, I think, in human history and our ability fix the things we were breaking. We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, its something we should do. We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, its something we should do. Gizmodo Church isnt the only one working to clone a mammoth. Theres also Hwang Woo suks Korean dog cloning lab, Soaam Technologies. Can you talk about how you got involved with them Mezrich This is a wild storythis is the story of a disgraced scientist. He was the one who claimed to clone human cells, but it turns out he had been forcing his students to donate their eggs, and secondly that his clone cells are fraudulent, so hes trying to resurrect his reputation by being the first to clone a mammoth. So, he has supposedly got incredibly preserved frozen mammoths out of the ice in the Arctic in conjunction with some Russians, and is going to use those cells to clone the mammoth. Why Apples i. Phone 7 Headphones Dont Work on the Latest Mac. Book. Recently, a new staff member started at Lifehacker. She booted up her brand new, company issued Mac. Book Pro, and went to plug in her Ear. Pods to listen to some tunes while she worked. She was met with the same baffling conundrum as other Apple die hards who rush to procure the latest release Why the hell cant you use the i. Phone 7s Lightning connector headphones with the new Mac. Book Pro Why Get Lightning Headphones in the First PlaceFirst, some background. In 2. 01. 2, Apple introduced the smaller Lightning port on the i. Phone 5 replacing the 3. While the Lightning port necessitated a new charging cable, the Lightning connector was more compact than its predecessor and one could plug it into i. OS devices in either direction, making it more convenient. With the i. Phone 7, Apple made the courageous decision to force the use of its Lightning compatible Ear. Pod headphones by removing the 3. In short, your 3. Ear. Pods that came with the phone, you bought a new pair of Lightning headphones, or you went wireless with Bluetooth compatible headphones to listen to music. Using your old 3. Phone 7 is still possible, but requires the 3. Lightning adapter that comes included with the new i. Phone. That meant carrying around an extra, easy to lose little piece of equipment. Its an example of Apple making design decisions that impact function for the sake of form, a decision the companys made at many points in its past for example, its decision to remove the optical drive in its 2. Macs. I admit, I get a wee bit frustrated when trying to remember which cord goes in which slot for allRead more Read. Removing the 3. 5mm headphone jack was was a positive change, by some metrics. By routing audio through the Lightning port, the phone can play higher quality, 2. Headphone manufacturers are also taking advantage of the fact that headphones can draw power from the i. Phones Lightning port, adding features like noise cancellation and interference reducing DACs digital to analog converters to improve sound quality. But Lightning only headphones only work on i. OS devices with Lightning ports. To listen to music on anything else, like your computer, or even an older i. Phone, youll need to tote around another pair of headphones. There Are No Functional Adapters Yet. Naturally, you might think theres some sort of workaround, or an adapter that can easily fix this incompatibility issue. After all, Apple makes its own adapters for a variety of older interfaces for instance, VGA port adapters for mirroring your i. OS device on a monitor. But unlike 3. 5mm headphones, which can be used with an i. Phone 7 via the Apple made dongle, theres no way to do the reverse and get Lightning headphones to work with anything that doesnt have a Lightning port, making my colleagues new Mac. Book Pro, with its four high speed, reversible USB C ports and single 3. We hate to break it to you, but the traditional USB ports youve used to connect your cameras,Read more Read. A dongle does exist to plug Lightning port headphones into a USB C port, and we tried one, but it still didnt fix the problem. Lightning to USB C adapters only work when charging or transferring data. Which means no audio support, which means no Ear. Pod powered desk concerts in your open plan office. Apple Is Comfortable With User Hostile Tech. Apples Lightning connector is convenient for Apple, but not so much for the rest of us. Its only available on Apples i. OS devices, making switching to, say, an Android device an inconvenient and pricey decisionyoull need new cables, headphones, docks etc. To play nice with others, Apple should have either left the 3. Phone, or switched to USB C, which is what every other cell phone manufacturer is doing. And while their move towards incompatibility with other companys devices isnt surprising, it does seem a little weird that theyd build this kind of glaring incompatibility into their two most recent devicesthe i. Phone 7 and the latest Mac. Book pro. The decision to exclude the Lightning port from its Macsand not to publicly address the compatibility issues also runs counter to its history of transition tools. During the companys switch from Power. PC to Intel processors, it released the Rosetta translator software to keep Power. PC apps running on Intel powered Macs. When the Mac. Book Air debuted without an optical drive, the companys external Super. Drive optical drive eased the transition. My theory The removal of the headphone jack and inclusion of Lightning Ear. Pods is simply a stop gap to the companys true goal of forcing you to go wireless and buy Air. Pods or Beats Bluetooth headphones. Considering the options, going wireless might be the answer, though Id rather get some headphones that, you know, sound good.