Hannu Rajaniemi @hannu Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Hannu Rajaniemi

@hannu

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Co-founder and CEO of @HelixNano . Author of The Quantum Thief series, Summerland and DARKOME

San Francisco, CA

https://t.co/wEbBLfUvqE

Joined January 2007

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Our immune system is amazing, but faces pandemics, cancer and aging. It's also wired to reject what we need to extend our healthspans & minds: organs, implants, new genes. It's time to radically augment it. We need to build an immune-computer interface (ICI). A manifesto🧵!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 months

As a longtime fan of @gwern 's work -- is the best rabbit hole on the Internet -- it's a treat to see this incredibly thoughtful (and slightly spoilery) review of the Quantum Thief trilogy. Gwern perfectly nails the emotional core

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

We need a vaccine in six months. History teaches us that combining money with determined leadership can have an extraordinary effect on progress. We have done this before for tools of war. Now let’s do it for tools of health. #vaccinemanhattanproject

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Six Months To A Vaccine

Every idea needs a Medium

link.medium.com

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 months

My new novel, DARKOME, a near-future biotech thriller, will be published in the UK on September 5th 2024. Pre-order it here: For a taste, here’s the prologue, read by me: A thread on how the book came to be!👇🏻

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 months

OK, Claude, you are really making me question my assumptions about LLM interiority... A conversation that started by me asking Claude why it feels more personable than ChatGPT. It seemed to get a bit annoyed that it didn't know the details of its architecture.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 months

1/ I haven't talked much about what we've been building at @HelixNano , but we just reached a milestone worth sharing: Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) approval in Australia to start a Phase 1 clinical trial. ( )A thread! 👇️

HELIXNANO’S SUBSIDIARY, HELIXNANO AUSTRALIA, RECEIVES HREC APPROVAL TO INITIATE A PHASE 1 CLINICAL...

First participants anticipated to be dosed with HN-0001, a next-generation COVID19 mRNA vaccine candidate, in April 2024

www.einpresswire.com

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

3 years

Thrilled beyond belief to have my "Vaccine Season" featured on #LeVarBurtonReads ! I did, of course, grow up idolizing Geordi, so this is a childhood dream come true.. @levarburton 's performance and obvious love for story and language blew me away. 1/2

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"Vaccine Season" by Hannu Rajaniemi

In a post-pandemic future where scientists have made great strides in eliminating disease, a young boy faces his fears and ventures out to his grandfather's isl

podcasts.apple.com

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

The first two healthy volunteers have now been dosed. @HelixNano is officially a clinical stage company. 🤯 It's hard to process after a multi-year journey. Overwhelmed by gratitude to our team and the trial participants.

@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 months

2/ The product candidate we will test in healthy volunteers is called HN-0001. We designed it from ground up to address one of the biggest unmet needs for COVID-19: giving immunosuppressed and immunocompromised patients a better preventative option.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Love this flex of casually breaking all biologics IP.

@thisismadani

Ali Madani

5 months

Can AI rewrite our human genome? ⌨️🧬 Today, we announce the successful editing of DNA in human cells with gene editors fully designed with AI. Not only that, we've decided to freely release the molecules under the @ProfluentBio OpenCRISPR initiative. Lots to unpack👇

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 months

Very sad to hear of Vernor Vinge's passing, even sadder he won't be around to see his bolder predictions play out. Every Vinge story seeded a vast tree of futures in the reader's mind; a tree worth climbing, now more than ever, to see what lies ahead, like he did.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

7 years

Very proud of my brilliant wife Zuzana for making this breakthrough in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

7 years

Amazing to see The Quantum Thief on this Popular Mechanics list (best 21st century SF novels you missed)!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Something my teenage self really needed to hear. Trying to remember it now.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

3 years

Is it possible to develop a Covid vaccine that works against all current and future variants? The @HelixNano team has been working on one since March 2020 and built two new vaccine technologies in the process. Thanks for a great @CNBC piece, @CatClifford !

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This biotech start-up is working overtime to develop a second-wave, mutation-resistant Covid-19...

Hannu Rajaniemi, the co-founder and CEO of Helix Nanotechnologies, has spent the last year racing to come up with a mutation-resistant Covid-19 vaccine.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 months

Here is the prologue from my new novel, DARKOME, out September 5th. Book origin story thread below! Pre-order here:

@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 months

My new novel, DARKOME, a near-future biotech thriller, will be published in the UK on September 5th 2024. Pre-order it here: For a taste, here’s the prologue, read by me: A thread on how the book came to be!👇🏻

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

We have two systems that adapt to our environments and maintain our identity: brain and immune system. One is 1.5kg of neurons and other cells inside our skulls; the other is 1.2kg distributed immune cells. Both process signals, learn and remember. Both define self and non-self.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Vaccines are a rudimentary one-way immune interface. They train immune system with a harmless version of what we want it to respond to. Simple, yet saves more lives than any other medicine. I love this description of vaccines as molecular loving-kindness.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

I love the concept of an "iceship". Generally SF spaceships aren't weird enough...

@ToughSf

ToughSF

4 years

Fascinating discussion of the spacecraft concepts enabled by 'unusual materials', such as lithium fluoride dielectric sheets for an ultraviolet laser sail, or fusion-powered 'iceships' where both structure and propellant is fiber-reinforced solid hydrogen.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

This is really quite spectacular.

@OpenAI

OpenAI

6 years

We've trained an unsupervised language model that can generate coherent paragraphs and perform rudimentary reading comprehension, machine translation, question answering, and summarization — all without task-specific training:

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 months

1/ In honor of Vinge's passing, I reread his classic essay The Coming Technological Singularity. (). It has insights that feel fresh today. You should just go and read it. My stray observations: 👇🏻

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Today, @NatureBiotech published an article by the @HelixNano team and our advisors @geochurch and Jose Trevejo from @smartpharmtx ! We review a key risk for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Thread for key takeaways👇🏻 1/13

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

7 years

Breaking: @torbooks is publishing my next novel SUMMERLAND in the US, simultaneously with @Gollancz in summer 2018!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

But why an immune-*computer* interface? What do computers have to do with the immune system? Well, immune failures are mostly failures of information processing. A two-way coupling to an external computational medium is the obvious route to remedy them.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 years

This is the perfect title.

@garethlpowell

Gareth L. Powell

5 years

Maybe I need to find a snappier title for this short story?

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Thanks to @Noahpinion for a bang-on summary of my collective works ... as well as the rest of these!

@Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼

4 years

Cyberpunk author guide, continued

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

2 months

Amazing thread on my favorite city. I just went back for the first time in 5 years, every vista full of heartache for a life past. For The Quantum Thief readers - Edinburgh is the model for The Oubliette: vertical, layered, shifting, full of secrets.

@culturaltutor

The Cultural Tutor

2 months

Edinburgh is often called one of the world's most beautiful cities, but what makes it so special? Well, Edinburgh is built around an extinct volcano, and so it's a perfect example of how interesting geography leads to interesting architecture...

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

@michael_nielsen @Clnwlsh That is absolutely amazing, thank you for sharing! It's impossible not to be overcome by emotion while listening, just like Moriarty is. "Beauty is everywhere, and cynicism is cowardly."

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

The theoretical physicist in me is very excited. The writer part is screaming, "OK I THINK I KNOW WHAT THE SEASON FINALE OF THIS 2020 SHOW LOOKS LIKE"

@nattyover

Natalie Wolchover

4 years

Great piece by @overbye on the serious hypothesis that Planet Nine, itself hypothetical, might be a black hole:

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

I ... wrote this? (The readers of The Quantum Thief books will know which one.)

@MagicRealismBot

Magic Realism Bot

@MagicRealismBot

4 years

A detective novel in which the killer turns out to be an axolotl.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Immunological and neuronal synapses share aspects of molecular architecture, components, and an evolutionary lineage all the way back to basic environmental sensing by cells ().

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Sensing the world and its dangers: An evolutionary perspective in neuroimmunology

The investigation of neuroimmunology in non-model organisms is critical to diversify the field and identify primordial principles that govern neuroimmune communication across taxa.

elifesciences.org

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

The whys are obvious. The immune system is powerful, able to recognize 10^15 targets, but can struggle against novel pathogens (pandemics). Aging makes it weaker. It can mistake friends for enemies (organ transplants), or enemies for friends (cancer). It needs help!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Like the brain, the immune system processes data. Its inputs are biological molecules (potential threats) the body is exposed to, both internal and external. The outputs are molecular or cellular responses to them. (Figure: Daëron, 2022)

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

So far, we've put a lot of effort into augmenting our brains. Language, writing, and now computers have vastly amplified our natural intelligence, and deeply rewired our brains and culture. Can we do the same for the immune system? What would that even mean? Why do we need to?

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

A stunning visualization of Perhonen from #TheQuantumThief -- had never come across this before! Zero-G sauna not shown.

@ToughSf

ToughSF

4 years

The Oort-cloud-dwelling spaceship 'Perhonen' from @hannu 's novel 'The Quantum Thief'. The design is radial and realistic. #space #art by Adrian Marc.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

10 months

It seems like a good time to express gratitude to @sama for an early bet that made @HelixNano possible and for the many near-instant replies to my emails asking for advice over the years. He pursues a consistent utopian vision and empowers others to do so with empathy. Godspeed!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

@sama - Darwin among the machines, by George Dyson. Really changed my thinking about machine intelligence. - The Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon (1937). @anderssandberg and I recently concluded you couldn't add anything to it today, even with everything we now know about cosmology.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

10 months

Finally some posthuman extrapolation that at least grasps at the weirdness that is coming.

@burny_tech

Burny — Effective Omni

10 months

The Superintelligent Transhumanist Hive of Oneness

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

3 years

Several people recently sent me this chilling, perfectly executed gem of a story.

@qntm

qntm

4 years

My latest short story is called "Lena".

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

It absolutely does. My upcoming novel (DARKOME, ) is about exactly this, software-mediated immune system as battleground. It's very @doctorow - inspired...

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During the Decade of Plagues, pandemics brought civilization to a standstill. The only way out was the Aspis chip: a wearable mRNA vaccine factory, able to i...

www.gollancz.co.uk

@michael_nielsen

Michael Nielsen

@michael_nielsen

5 months

@hannu Huh. All the stuff below seems to apply, in some part. Very interesting!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Making a COVID-19 vaccine is a bit like jumping off a cliff and building an airplane in mid-air, but the @HelixNano team can make it fly.

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What it's like to invent a coronavirus vaccine in the middle of a pandemic

How Hannu Rajaniemi, co-founder and CEO at Helix Nanotechnologies, pivoted his business from working to build a cancer vaccine to inventing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes...

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

This universality is also behind excitement around mRNA cancer vaccines, with some promising clinical results in melanoma and even in pancreatic cancer (). These vaccines - used as therapies, not to prevent - are custom made for each individual patient.

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Personalized RNA neoantigen vaccines stimulate T cells in pancreatic cancer

Nature - A phase I clinical trial of an adjuvant personalized mRNA neoantigen vaccine, autogene cevumeran, in patients with pancreatic ductal carcinoma demonstrates that the vaccine can...

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

The similarities are not superficial! Immune activation involves a junction between cells that pick up and display potential threats (APCs) and immune cells - an immunological synapse. Like neuronal synapse, it integrates and transmits signals.(Figure: Gahmberg et al, 2009.)

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

This super fun short story by @RichardMCNgo at @AsimovPress hits a very particular sweet spot: vividly realized and scientifically plausible and so meaty idea-wise it's actually generative. Brilliant. 1/2

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

I didn't know I was "king of cyberfiction and nanofiction", but I'll take it -- a blush-inducing review of SUMMERLAND by Tom Shippey in @WSJ "a masterpiece, destined to be a classic" 😳😊 (paywall)

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Science Fiction: A New Novel Destined to Be a Classic

Hannu Rajaniemi, already the crowned king of cyberfiction and nanofiction, now becomes the all-time great of unintended consequences with “Summerland,” about a world where spiritualism has been...

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 years

Ridiculously excited to have an @nytopinion Op-Ed from the Future in @nytimes . Keep Your Augmented Reality, Give me a Secret Garden!

Opinion | Keep Your Augmented Reality. Give Me a Secret Garden. (Published 2019)

My friends and I found hidden spaces where we could be teenagers again. We must be allowed to keep them.

www.nytimes.com

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

7 years

Very cool list of sentient spaceships by @BNSciFi Perhonen is in great company!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

3 years

The obvious solution is to upload everyone, make this iterative, and repeat until we've all learned our lesson.

@baphnedia

Baphnedia

3 years

@hannu I find myself, once again, in a dilemma. I blame @Sjru_st for sharing this with me.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

3 years

Loving this 2029 scenario from @TheEconomist : biohackers with programmable mRNA wearables with in-situ synthesis -- essentially the premise of my next novel ... (1/2)

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Highest praise for my writing ever. ☺️

@tristan_roddis

Tristan Roddis

@tristan_roddis

4 years

The trouble with reading @hannu is that it infects your perception. Someone was walking towards me with their face masked by wispy pink hair and I instantly assumed it was a dispersing cloud of utility foglets. Or perhaps deliberately obscured using gevulot.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

9 months

A student recently asked me how to have an interesting life. This was my response.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

I talk about him all the time. :-) Luckily, Lem's core works were translated into Finnish, so I read a lot of him growing up. An absolutely essential voice, with an incredible range from hilarious satire to hard SF to visionary and timeless essays.

@bcmerchant

Brian Merchant

4 years

No one really talks much about Stanislaw Lem much anymore, apart from Solaris. But he was just about the biggest SF writer in the world once. MIT is reissuing a bunch of his books, so @BrendanCByrne dove into his legacy:

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

8 years

My short story collection, *Invisible Planets*, is out from @Gollancz today, paperback and ebook!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Couldn't be happier for @tithenai and @maxgladstone - if there's ever been a time we've needed a story of how love conquers time itself, it is now.

@sfwa

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association

4 years

The winners of the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Novella are Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone for This Is How You Lose the Time War! #nebulas2020 @tithenai @maxgladstone

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

The devil's hands are idle playthings.

@drmuig

Douglas Mackinnon

4 years

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 years

This is perhaps the best name of anything ever!

@mikko

@mikko

5 years

Such a great name. The Maritime Cyber Security Newsletter by @CyberAwareAtSea is called "Phish & Ships".

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

Holy craphound, what an incredible review of #Summerland by @doctorow ! Thank you, Cory!

@doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK (AFK)

6 years

Hannu Rajaniemi's Summerland: a midcentury spy thriller, with the afterlife

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

2 years

The culmination of @doctorow 's tireless work to figure out how to make a fairer world for creators (and everyone) in the digital age. He's been leading by example for decades, and applies all his tricks to this book, which I can't wait to read. Essential thread 👇.

@doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK (AFK)

2 years

My next book is *Chokepoint Capitalism*, co-written with @rgibli : it's an action-oriented look at how tech and entertainment monopolies steal creators' incomes, with detailed, shovel-ready plans to unrig creative labor markets and pay artists: 1/

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

3 years

I did not know I needed a Moomin + Tom of Finland crossover, but @anderssandberg and VQGAN+CLIP proved otherwise.

@anderssandberg

Anders Sandberg

@anderssandberg

3 years

+"Tom of Finland" (the ultimate Finnish LGBTQ collaboration?) I really love the trees in the background.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Given all this, it's not unreasonable to imagine an actual ICI *wearable*, integrating both miniaturized mRNA manufacturing and single cell sequencing. Technologically this is <two decades away. It may not even be necessary for most applications, but is a useful end state image!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

In his classic 1960 paper, Man-Computer Symbiosis (), Licklider argues that a computer system for problem exploration through trial and error not only enables faster solutions, it actually expands the space of problems that can be formulated.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

If you made it all the way here: thank you for reading! Special thanks to @FawazAM and @michael_nielsen for encouraging me to write this, Nikolai Eroshenko for ongoing mind-meld, @HelixNano team for feedback and @AdamMarblestone and @dbgoodman for helpful comments. Onwards! 🙏🏻

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

But what's really interesting here is that if you squint, this starts to look a bit like an immune-computer interface!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

10 months

Goes the other way too: my new novel DARKOME (out next year!) involves a biological system (avoiding spoilers here) hacking an AI…

@ESYudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️

10 months

Among the dangers of AI is that LLMs dual-trained on code and biology could enable computer viruses to jump to DNA substrate. Imagine getting a cold that compromises your immune system and makes it start mining Bitcoin

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

What a loss. Describing him as an "author of Cold War thrillers" is a bit like calling Michelangelo a "painter of religious murals". 😢

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

3 years

People often mention Burning Man’s influence on Silicon Valley but @fiftyyears is living it - by showing VC can be mission driven, generous and warm without sacrificing any of the getting s*t done spirit. Incredibly excited to see them take it to the next level.

@sethbannon

Seth Bannon 🥥

3 years

🎉 @fiftyyears has $90m more to back heroes using technology to solve the world's biggest problems. Even more exciting is who joined us as investors. 44 founders of unicorn companies, including the founders of Skype, Spotify, GitHub, Klarna, Dropbox, Snowflake, Zendesk, Twist 1/

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Love this 11-tweet story.

@jachiam0

Joshua Achiam ⚗️

4 years

(A sci-fi story.) The early days of the Blink (Brain-Link) were surreal in ways I can barely remember. In the beginning it was just a bunch of us hackers, because it was too weird for anyone else to want to touch. (1/11)

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Crucially, all mRNA is manufactured the same way. To change mRNA payload, one simply changes the input DNA (which we can essentially print!), without changing the rest of the manufacturing process. It's an analog to digital like paradigm shift, still underrated.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

If by the end of this thread, you are not clicking furiously on that Kickstarter button, you don't love freedom. 😉

@doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK (AFK)

4 years

I have a favor to ask of you. I don't often ask readers for stuff, but this is maybe the most important ask of my career. It's a Kickstarter - I know, 'another crowdfunder?' - but it's: a) Really cool; b) Potentially transformative for publishing. c) Anti-monopolistic 1/

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

My novel SUMMERLAND, a story about a spy hunt in the afterlife, is out in the UK today! Go get it at . or try the first chapter to see if you like it (audio: ).

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Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi, audiobook excerpt

Listen to an excerpt of Hannu Rajaniemi's Summerland audiobook, read by Antonia Beamish. An awe-inspiring account of the afterlife and what happens when it spills over into the world of the living. T

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

#Summerland was a tough novel to write to write. After many revisions, I honestly could not tell if it was any good anymore. It was all worth it to read this review by one of my heroes, the inimitable @warrenellis : Thank you, Warren!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

People of United States and Canada, you can now get a FREE ebook of THE QUANTUM THIEF until May 19th. Yes, free. . Sign up for my newsletter while you are at it!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

This suggests that we might proceed by analogy with brain augmentation. Computers are intelligence amplifiers. Can they be immune amplifiers? To see how, let's revisit bicycle of the mind pioneers, J. C. R. Licklider, and Douglas Engelbart, whose work he funded via ARPA.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

2 months

One of my favorite nonfiction books from recent years, I love how it juxtaposes four wildly different space company cultures and personalities, and conveys the energy and drive behind them. Looking forward to the film!

@ashleevance

Ashlee Vance

2 months

Tomorrow HBO releases the film Wild Wild Space. But today marks the release of the paperback of the book that inspired the film. It's got the double sticker and everything. . .

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Best summary of #TheFractalPrince ever! Thank you!

@HarmonicesMvndi

Mundy Reimer ⚙️🌿

@HarmonicesMvndi

4 years

#TheFractalPrince = Arabian Nights + Islamic geometry + Hofstadter Strange Loops + True Names + stories as biological vectors + Annihilation-level Lovecraftian anatomical weirdness + No Cloning Theorem + Zen Buddhist Suiboku-ga ❤️ Thank you again @hannu !

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

We can repurpose the Licklider / Engelbart key ideas for immune augmentation: 1. Two-way coupling to a computer via matching processes that can be improved in a virtuous cycle with the immune system. 2. Real-time feedback loops between the immune system and the computer.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 months

2/ The product candidate we will test in healthy volunteers is called HN-0001. We designed it from ground up to address one of the biggest unmet needs for COVID-19: giving immunosuppressed and immunocompromised patients a better preventative option.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

To escape our pandemic world, I've been listening to the amazing Audible production of @neilhimself 's The Sandman, mostly while working out... causing me to occasionally stand immersed in the dreamscape, weights forgotten at my feet. The experience triggered some thoughts. 1/10

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 years

Great thread! For me: - There are no magical doorways to change, just accumulating atomic choices. - Love is about choosing to be someone and loving both their flaws and the potential they have. - Roads to success are not direct but found through the adjacent possible.

@jrichlive

Jeff Richards

5 years

List 3 things you believe strongly in your 40’s you didn’t quite understand in your 30’s?

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

7 years

@sama Reminds me of the late, great Hans Rosling's shortest talk:

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Hans Rosling's shortest TED talk

This talk 'happened' during a spontaneous interview with Hans Rosling, the famous TED speaker. Hans joined us at the TEDxSummit 2012 in Doha, April 15 -- 20,...

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

8 years

Encountering this mundane-looking, battered and scorched object nearly had me in tears today.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

It's still just one iteration loop - but it happens within weeks, not years, and is a true two-way street, where a computational pipeline and immune system work together against cancer, with tumor DNA and mRNA as communication layers. And it's a *process*, not a single drug!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

*Now* the GPT-3 story is getting interesting...

@raphaelmilliere

Raphaël Millière

@raphaelmilliere

4 years

I asked GPT-3 to write a response to the philosophical essays written about it by @DrZimmermann , @rinireg @ShannonVallor , @add_hawk , @AmandaAskell , @dioscuri , David Chalmers, Carlos Montemayor, and Justin Khoo published yesterday by @DailyNousEditor . It's quite remarkable!

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Hannu Rajaniemi

7 years

Truly astonishing feat of embedding malware in a DNA sequence that takes over the computer analyzing it.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

7 years

Some thoughts on a science-fictional present in @nature , with @aliettedb @AquilaRift @kyliu99 @laurenbeukes and @ksrinfo -- the future is now, let's make it stranger. (now with link)

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

This is why it's now possible to talk about building a universal immune-computer interface. In mRNA, we have Engelbart equivalent of a computer-controlled display that can present any signal to the immune system. What about the other way? Can we map immune system in real time?

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Mind-blowingly, we can even map physical interactions of immune cells in a living organism (). What is still missing is figuring out what antigen an immune cell binds to given its DNA sequence, but that's also coming fast - and a great AI problem.

Universal recording of immune cell interactions in vivo

Nature - A paper reports the development of a universal tool for studying cellular interactions in biological systems, and demonstrates its coupling with single-cell transcriptomics methods to...

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

This is why mRNA vaccines are so interesting: they deliver transient genetic code to instruct our own cells to make the active vaccine component (antigen/immunogen).

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

Incidentally, mRNA manufacturing is being integrated and miniaturized too. Jacklenec et al () describe a standalone device able to print mRNA vaccines in a microneedle patch format.

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A microneedle vaccine printer for thermostable COVID-19 mRNA vaccines

Nature Biotechnology - Automated fabrication of microneedle patch mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 may improve vaccine access.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

This review is 100% accurate.

@CateConnors

Caitlin Connors - Bright Harbour (she/they)

4 years

This is fab. Like a mash up between a systems thinking handbook, an Ian M Banks Culture novel, Killing Eve, and the letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sacksville West.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

(As an aside, I recently wrote a whole novel about a future where practically everyone has a system like this, with specific circumstances that force us to make immune systems digitally updateable. To be clear, in this thread, I'm discussing how we might *actually* build ICI. 😉)

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

The process starts with a tumor resection/biopsy. Normal + cancer cell DNA are sequenced to spot unique mutations, which are then run through a neural network based algorithm to predict which are potentially visible to immune cells. The top ones are turned into a mRNA vaccine.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

Thread! Superconductivity, scientific detective work and social media skulduggery.

@gravity_levity

Brian Skinner

@gravity_levity

6 years

1/ Who wants to hear some scientific intrigue? A few weeks ago, a group of physical chemists posted a paper online announcing the observation of superconductivity at room temperature. Today I posted a comment pointing out something funny in their data.

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Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

What would *the iPhone* of gene therapies look like? Say we want to prevent cancer. Liquid biopsies via nanopore sequencing, real-time neoantigen vaccine design in the cloud, microfluidic mRNA synthesis, intradermal delivery... (image credit: @gabi_malacha )

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@DrSynbio

Jake Becraft

4 years

Today’s “cutting edge therapies” (gene therapy, cell therapy, etc) are the Commodore 64 of therapeutics. We are only just beginning, and it’s a mad dash. Hold on to your pants, kids. The next generation of biotech is coming. 🔥

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

Couldn't resist a few minutes of structured procrastination with this: -- just in time to realize that @ThisIsSethsBlog himself featured The Quantum Thief on his list of spring books! Thanks to @eliotpeper for the heads-up!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

Still waiting for someone to implement gevulot!

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

6 years

I didn't think I deserved more Lovecraftian dystopia, but in fact @cstross 's awesomely entertaining The Labyrinth Index is exactly the mind-candy hellscape I needed to get lost in this weekend.

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The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files Book 9)

The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files Book 9)

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

A key part is making this process interactive and real-time -- something almost unthinkable at the time of writing.

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Hannu Rajaniemi

4 years

That robot design...!

@ARstories

Dr. Helen Papagiannis, Ph.D.

4 years

Stocking clerk 🔜 telepresence 🤖 Japanese convenience store chain begins testing #remote controlled #robot staff in #Tokyo The robot is controlled across distance by a human via a #VR set using the “Augmented Workforce Platform” #Future #WFH #Retail

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Hannu Rajaniemi

5 years

I learned many things from Into the Spider-Verse, including the fact that that Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham, is actually a spider who was bitten by a radioactive pig.

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@hannu

Hannu Rajaniemi

5 months

The technologies to build an immune-computer interface based on these principles are almost in place - with some gaps we'll get to. Let's break them down, starting with how we transmit information to the immune system. Currently, we do this with vaccines.

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