Good Reads: Mars mission, gene patents, cellphone tracking, 'absurd' start-ups, Netflix streamlines

Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp says he will establish a human colony on Mars within 10 years. The technology already exists, he says, but current missions have the wrong business model. Don’t copy space agencies, he says. Copy the Olympics. 

“The 2012 Olympics in London had revenues of $4 billion for an event that lasted only three weeks,” explains Casey Johnston of Ars Technica. Why? Because people wanted to tune in and see what humans are capable of. “[Mr.] Lansdorp stated that by the time the mission launches the settlers to Mars in 2023, four billion people will be connected to the Internet. Thus, a massive audience is equipped to watch the journey and see how the colonizers’ time on Mars unfolds.”

In other words, Lansdorp plans to fund a Mars colony by turning it into a reality TV show. His organization, Mars One, is accepting applications for the first wave of astronauts. Lansdorp plans for a second voyage to depart in 2025, just in time for Season 2.

Patents for human genes

The Supreme Court heard arguments in April over whether companies should be able to patent human genes. The biotechnology firm Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City currently holds patents for BRCA1 and BRCA2, two human genes that doctors have linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Because of these patents, Myriad is the only company that may create tests to detect mutations in those genes.

The legal issue here comes down to how the court defines genes. If it decides that genes are “products of nature,” then they cannot be patented. “But Myriad’s patents do not cover the genes as they occur in living cells,” writes The Economist. “Rather, they cover isolated forms of the genes ... snipped from the genome and chemically modified to make them analysable in a laboratory.” The company says it spent $500 million creating viable tests for the BRCA pair. That investment and others from the $92 billion biotechnology industry deserve to be protected by patents, argues Myriad.

Companies that track your phone

Cellphone companies have an unprecedented ability to track the behavior of subscribers. Through phone data, carriers know where people go, how long they stay, and what applications they use while there. “This data is under lock and key no more,” writes Jessica Leber in MIT Technology Review. “Under pressure to seek new revenue streams, a growing number of mobile carriers are now carefully mining, packaging, and repurposing their subscriber data to create powerful statistics about how people are moving about the real world.”

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