Lichess (Lichess.org) started as a simple tech experiment and grew into the second most popular chess website on the internet, second only to Chess.com. According to Alexa, Lichess is currently one of the 1,150 most visited websites globally. Lichess is entirely free for users, has no advertisements, and is open-source, meaning the code is publicly accessible.

1. Lichess.org will always be free.

2. It will never contain advertisements.

3. It will always be open source.

Over the past ten years, Lichess has evolved to push the boundaries of online chess. On a 2017 podcast episode of The Perpetual Chess Podcast hosted by Ben Johnson, Thibault Duplessis, the founder of Lichess, talked about how Lichess has evolved through the years. Duplessis was a twenty-four-year-old coder at the time and described himself as an average chess player. Duplessis decided to use chess as a vehicle to show the abilities of open source for real-time communication. Early improvements were just for Duplessis technical pleasure.

Lichess attracted an enthusiastic community that would cause the site to expand rapidly. Coders, developers, and players were all attracted by the core principles of Lichess. Having no advertisements is a point of emphasis for Duplessis. He describes advertisements as pollutants that make people stupid.

Duplessis said, I want to interact with people, not just consumers. I want them to be contributors if possible.

By contributors, Duplessis means with their time and energy, but the site does rely on donations from users who become patrons. I have been a Lichess user for almost four years, but only recently decided to become a paying supporter. It wasnt easy to find the donation page, which is by design.

The site is maintained and developed by people who want to work on it. They work on the site out of passion, not for money, which Duplessis says brings out peoples best work. Lichess has been translated into over ninety languages and was the first chess site to have features that support players with blindness.

Duplessis proudly touted that The bus factor for Lichess was up to four people. The site is not wholly reliant on Duplessis to continue. It would take a bus to hit him and three other of the top developers for Lichess to fail.

The Lichess community is welcoming, and it is an excellent place to play chess for all levels of skill and experience. The site, behind its founder, Thibault Duplessis, remains true to its core principles of being completely open-source, staying free to users, and having no advertisements. This fidelity has caused the Lichess community to grow because it does not answer to anyone. The passion of the contributors and players continues to keep Lichess on the cutting edge. May the next ten years of Lichess be as successful and inspiring as the first.

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Ten Years of Chess Innovation. How Lichess grew from a simple tech | by Samuel Sullivan | SUPERJUMP | Sep, 2020 - Medium

TheMechanics Institute will gather the top U16 players in the country for the 2020 U.S. Cadet National Championship onChess.comthis weekend, Sept. 25-27.

TheCadet Championship is aneight-player invitational event comprised of the six highest USCF-rated players under the age of 16, the 2020K-8Barber Champion, and an organizer wildcard.Considering the accessibility to players who do not have the obstacle of travel for this online event, this may be one of the strongest fields ever assembled in the championships history, anda lot of action is expected.Here is the field for this year:

IM Justin Wang 2540

IM Christopher Yoo 2540

IM Andrew Zhang Hong 2533

FM Robert Shlyakhtenko 2459 (Barber Champion)

IM Arthur Guo 2446

FM Maximillian Lu 2431

FM Christopher Shen 2424

NM Ruiyang Yan 2242 (Organizer Wildcard)

The tournament will be round-robin format with seven rounds, with one gameto beplayed on Friday, three gamesonSaturday, and thefinalthree rounds on Sunday. All games will be played with a time control of G/70 +10.No playoff will happen inthe event of afirst-placetie, but instead tiebreak scores will determine the prize distribution.

First place will collect $7,000 in prizes,including a $6,000 collegiate scholarshipjointly supported by US Chess and Dewain Barber. Barber, the Dean of Scholastic Chess in the U.S., has also made available one-year US Chess membership extensions for each of the participants.

Fair play in the event is a top priority for both the organizer and US Chess.Players will be monitored live,where every player will have two cameras on them, andgameswillalso be analyzed by grandmasters, chess.com experts and Dr. Ken Reganfrom the University of Buffalo. Directing the eventwill be NTD JohnMcCumiskey, who will oversee the overall decisions and executions.

The Mechanics Institute will provide live commentary of the action every day through itsTwitch channel.Main commentators will be the Institutes grandmaster-in-residence and three-time U.S. Champion GM Nick deFirmian, along withMechanics legend FM Paul Whiteheadand chessdirector Abel Talamantez.Special guest commentatorsare expectedthroughout the weekend, including2018 US Champion GM Sam Shankland, two-time US champion GM Patrick Wolff,as well asformer Mechanicschessdirector andcaptain of the US Olympic Team IM John Donaldson.

Event schedule is as follows:

Virtual Opening Ceremony -Friday, Sep 25: 3PM PT / 6ET

Round 1 - Friday, Sep 25: 4PM PT / 7 ET

Round 2- Saturday, Sep 26: 9AM PT / 12ET

Round 3- Saturday, Sep 26: 1PM PT / 4ET

Round 4- Saturday, Sep 26: 4PM PT / 7 ET

Round 5- Sunday, Sep 26: 9AM PT / 12ET

Round 6- Sunday, Sep 26: 1PM PT / 4ET

Round 7- Sunday, Sep 26: 4PM PT / 7 ET

Thisyears eventmarks the 20thanniversary sinceit was last hosted by theMechanics Institute. In 2000, Donaldson directed theCadet Championship fora field thatincluded current GM Josh Friedel and IM Daniel Fernandez. It is a great honor and prestige for the Institute to be able to organize this event in this special year.

For more information, visit the event page.

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Mechanics' to Host U.S. Cadet National Championship this Weekend - uschess.org

9/22/2020 When was the first time in your life you played chess? Most probably at the age of six to eight years? Whatever the answer is, we have an adorable quiz about young titled chess masters for you. If chess is a big part in your life, which isn't a bad thing at all, you should be able to guess at least seven out of twelve correctly. Here is your challenge!

The young talents you are about to see have grown into exceptional chess players. You have surely seen all of their faces in their adult state, but rarely how they looked like as a children. If you think of some outstandingdetails of their faces, e.g. the haircut, eye colour, lips, jaw structure or even the ears, you might be able to tell who is who.

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Fritz and Chesster - Part 2

Jump into chess action, move by move, to rescue Chesster from deep within King Blacks castle. Join Fritz and Bianca in a thrilling chess adventure as they enter rooms of the castle, where each challenge will help you sharpen skills and prepare for the ultimate showdown.

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Fritz and Chesster - Part 3 Chess for winners

This unforgettable chess adventure is designed to advance young chess players skills, move by move. Discover mini-games, brain-twisters and more at every attraction. Pick up chess tips and skills as you ride in bumper cars and the Ferris wheel. Polish up your chess strategy and tactics, opening, middle game and endgame and use what youve learned to win. Youll have lots of fun while you learn more about the serious business of playing and winning chess!

Maybe interesting to add, that we have a special software made for kids to learning chess in a playful and fun way. It has been awarded with the "German Computer Games Award"

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Guess the child prodigy - Chessbase News

The Blitz Tournament of the Americas, organizedby theMechanics Institute in partnership withKmadaChess and Chess SinFronteras, was held onChess.com onSaturday, Aug. 15. The free eventaimed toshowcase the talents of titled men and women players from across the Americas,bringing our diverse communities together andbuilding new partnerships.

Through these collaborative partnerships and word of mouth,the 9-round open Blitz (G/3+2) battleregistered 91 playersand represented15 different countries,including 9 Grandmasters, 13 International Mastersand 20 titled women.

The tournament wasstreamed"> by the Mechanics Instituteon Twitch, as well as several other streamersfromparticipating countries, including WIM Ivette Garcia Morales and GM Josh Friedel.It was a phenomenal event in its simplicity of message and the strength of the participating players: When it comes to efforts to unite people through chess, chess players are generous with their time and come out in full force.

CubanGM Juan Carlos Obregon Rivero won with a score of 8/9.GM Conrad Holt took second place with a score of 7.5/9,whileIM Andrew Hong and FM Kyron Griffithtied for thirdwith 7/9.CubanWGM Lisandra Teresa Ordaz Valdesfinished asthe topfemalewith 6/9, andPerusAnn Lindsay Chumpitaz Carbajalalso posted an excellent performancewith 5.5/9.

Threeplayers remained with perfect scoresafter three rounds,includingObregon Rivero,ColumbianGM Andres Gallegoand two-time U.S. Champion GM Patrick Wolff. Wolff is a Mechanics Institute Trustee who is not an active chess player, but hedefinitely showedhe has the fire and skill to match up against some of the very best. He faced off against Holt in roundfourand delivered this win against a very strong blitz player.

Obregon Riverobeat Wolffin roundfive,setting up this round 6 matchupwithGallegabetween the onlytwoplayers leftunbeaten.

Afterhis loss to Wolff,Holt went on a tear with three consecutive victories, setting upthiseighth-roundmatchupwith Obregon Rivero.

Heading into the final round, Obregon Rivero needed only adrawto win the event, though hehadto get passedyoung phenom IM ChristopherYoo, whoseamazing tactical abilityin blitzcould posea danger to any player in the world. But the GM closed the show like a champion, taking the final roundand winning in clear first place.

Girl power wasdefinitely presentin this event, as women and girls made up more than 20% of the field.Here is a nice win fromValdesagainst IM Abhimanyu Mishra.

The Blitz Tournament of the Americas showed how passion and love for the game can bring out the best in people. Players came out not for prizes or titles, but for competition, for the opportunity to play new players and make new connections. It wasan event people could follow from their homes and enjoy, knowing that it was all done in the spirit of giving.

We would like to thank the teamsfromKmadaChess andChess SinFronterasfor their collaboration and partnership for this historic free event, as well asall the players for being generous with their time, all the streamers who helped promote the event, and the chess community at-large for rallying together during the pandemic to keep chess going.

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Blitz Tournament of the Americas: Bringing Cultures and Communities Together Through Chess - uschess.org

The event, featuring 75 players from 15 countries, will begin Thursday and end Saturday, two days before the birthday of the Premier

South Asian Chess Council, in collaboration with Golden Sporting Club and Canadian University of Bangladesh, is going to organize Joytu Sheikh Hasina International Online Chess Tournament to mark the 74th birthday of the Bangladesh Prime Minister.

The three-day event, featuring 75 participants from 15 countries, will begin Thursday and end Saturday, two days before the birthday of the Premier.

Bangladesh Chess Federation will be providing technical and logistic support.

A total of 12 Grandmasters confirmed their participation so far.

Three Bangladeshi GMs out of five Ziaur Rahman, Enamul Hossain Razib and Reefat bin Sattar will be taking part, while Niaz Murshed and Abdullah al Rakib have been ruled out due to health and personal reasons.

BCF general secretary Syed Shahabuddin Shamim informed that this will be the first international chess competition of such format hosted by Bangladesh.

He said, Some clubs arranged online tournaments before but this is different. Here neutral pairings of the participants will be ensured. Three international arbiters, one each from Bangladesh, Iran and Philippines will conduct the games.

Shamim also said Indian GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly is enlisted as the top-ranked player of the event.

Along with 49 from the host country, other participants are from Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore.

BCF and South Asian Chess Federation president IGP Benazir Ahmed will inaugurate the event from the CUB premises via zoom.

To reveal the details, a press conference was held at Hotel Westin in Dhaka Tuesday in the presence of Chowdhury Nafeez Sarafat, chairman of CUB, and BCF vice president.

Prize money $6,000 will be distributed to the winners while the top three Bangladesh performers will get $1,500 as special prize.

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Int'l online chess event to mark 74th birthday of PM Hasina - Dhaka Tribune

The PRO Chess League finalsstart on Friday, so it's high time to take a closer look at the four teams that will be fighting for the title. Today: the China Pandas.

The PRO Chess League finals will take place on September 25-27 on Chess.com/Live with commentary onChess.com/TV. Below are the four teams and their lineups.

Lineups PRO Chess League Finals

We are providing a closer look at all four teams and their roads to the finals.In this article, the focus is on the China Pandas.

The Pandas had no fewer than 10 players who played for their team this season. By far the most active was GM Wei Yi, who played 36 games and scored 24.5 points. GM Li Chao was good for 11 points from 19 games.

The other two players who will be in the finals, GMs Ding Liren and GM Yu Yangyi, scored 6/8 and 8/12 respectively.

As the top GMs were not always available, the Pandas struggled somewhat in the regular season this year. The team started with two losses, including their match with one of the other finalists: the Armenia Eagles.

The Pandas lost one more time, in the fifth round, but a total of six wins was just enough to finish in fourth place and make it to the playoffs.

With stronger lineups later than at the start, the Pandas started to get rolling and won in weeks three and four. Against the Hungary Hunters, they had three 2700 GMs who definitely helped in scoring an important 10.5-7.5 win as the Hunters would eventually finish in fifth place.

Li defeated GM Gabor Papp in a nice game. As it turned out, the king walk to g3 was still theory!

The China Pandas started their playoffs with a 9.5-6.5 win against the California Unicorns on March 4. Five days later, they eliminated the Germany Bears, champions of the Central Division, with the exact same score.

The best-performing player for the Pandas was Yu, who made 3.5/4. Here's his win vs. GM Arik Braun that ended in checkmate.

We're seeing the China Pandas in the semifinals for the third time. In their first season in 2018, the Chinese players reached the final but dramatically lost to the Armenia Eagles in a tiebreak. The two teams met again in the match for third place last year when the Pandas took small revenge.

While Wei has by far the most experience this season, Yu and Li bring a lot of PRO Chess League history as both have played in all three seasons that the Pandas have participated in. Together, the two have played a total of 123 games in 2018-2020!

The PRO Chess League finals will take place on September 25-27 on Chess.com. For the semifinals on Friday, Sept. 25, the Pandas face the favorites: the Saint Louis Arch Bishops. Incidentally, these teams have never played before.

The other semifinal is played between theArmenia Eagles and the Canada Chessbrahs. The two losing teams will then face each other on Saturday, Sept. 26, for a fight for third place, while the big final is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 27.

Like in the regular season, time control for all games will be 10 minutes plus a two-second increment.Every player on a team will play every player on the other team for a total of 16 games. The four finalists will be competing for a $40,000 prize fund with $20,000 going to the winner. All matches will be streamed live with expert commentary onChess.com/TV.

See also:

Excerpt from:

Road To The PCL Finals: China Pandas - Chess.com

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (PRWEB) September 22, 2020

CHESS Health, the leading provider of comprehensive addiction management technology, announced today that Next Step Community has chosen to implement CHESSs eRecovery solution, a comprehensive care management platform for substance use disorder which includes the evidence-based Connections App.

Next Step Community will use the Connections App to offer valuable functionality for the entire treatment and recovery journey, including:

The stress and forced isolation created by COVID-19 has had a huge impact on those struggling with Substance Use Disorder in the state of Indiana, said Dana Simons, executive director of Next Step Community. When we found the CHESS Connections App, we knew it was the perfect solution to enable our clients and alumni to achieve long-lasting recovery by offering support in the palm of their hands. The App offers a safe, supportive online community to those in rural areas where there are no services available.

Everyone at CHESS Health is excited to work with Next Step Community to address substance use disorder in the Wabash Valley community, said Hans Morefield, chief executive officer of CHESS Health. We love working with innovative, outcome-focused programs like Next Step that share our belief in the importance of creating and maintaining connections for recovery.

About CHESS Health CHESS Health is the developer of the leading, evidence-based telehealth platform supporting the entire addiction management life cycle. The platform facilitates digital handoffs for getting more patients into treatment (eIntervention); improves outcomes through digital CBT (eTherapy) and reduces relapse and supports long term recovery (eRecovery). For providers, the CHESS platform grows patient volume through more successful referrals, improves treatment delivery, and improves treatment outcomes, including reduced relapse. Health plans and governments also benefit from more individuals in treatment and better outcomes; with the CHESS platform, they also gain analytic insights into provider performance. CHESS Health has received recognition from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrations National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP), the Journal of Substance Abuse and the Surgeon General. For more information, visit http://www.chess.health.

About Next Step Next Step is a faith-based program in Terre Haute, Indiana for those who are serious about overcoming their addiction to drugs and alcohol. Next Step provides both residential programs and outpatient services such as substance abuse groups, AA meetings, peer coaching, case management, life skills training and mental health services. Our goal is to help those who are serious about managing their substance use disorder regain an independent, substance-free lifestyle. Learn more at http://www.nextsteptoday.org.

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CHESS Health Selected by Next Step Community, an Addiction Recovery Program Located in Terre Haute, Indiana - PR Web

The movie Critical Thinking was more than two decades in the making by the time the cast and crew began filming in Miami in 2018. After reading a 1997 article about the Miami Jackson High School chess team in the Miami Herald's now-extinct Tropic magazine,producer Carla Berkowitz bought the rights to the story and spent years trying to make a movie about the unlikely pack of high school students who became one of the winningest teams in the nation.

Berkowitz ultimately linked up with actor and director JohnLeguizamo and co-producer Scott Rosenfelt to make the film a reality. But by time Critical Thinking was ready for release, COVID-19 had changed life in Hollywood and beyond. Movie theaters shuttered, and film festivals were canceled or closed to U.S. residents. So Critical Thinking wound up being quietly released to select theaters on September 4 andmade available for direct download on platforms including Amazon Video, Apple TV, and iTunes.

The film's release won't be completely devoid of fanfare, however.Tonight, Berkowitz and actor Corwin Tuggles, part of the ensemble cast of chess players, will appear at the New York Latino Film Festival for a sold-out, socially distanced screening of Critical Thinking followed by a Q&A.

"It's at a drive-in in the Bronx behind Yankee Stadium," Berkowitz tells New Times. "That is the only festival we're actually able to attend."

So far, the film has garnered mostly positive reviews from critics, and it has a 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Many have noted the diverse cast of Black and Latino actors, some of whom are more established and some who are making their big-screen debuts. Tuggles, who has appeared in episodes of Broad City and Orange Is the New Black, stars alongside Bumblebee's Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Spanish-language film actor Jeffry Batista, TV actor William Hochman, and Pose star Angel Bismark Curiel.

The characters in the movie are based on former students at Miami Jackson who took a chess classcalled Critical Thinking that wastaught bycoach Mario Martinez. The real-life chess players have stayed in touch with Berkowitz for the past 23 years and consulted on the film.

"It's avery inclusive movie and that has always been my goal. The lives of these boys and the coach were represented in an elegant and accurate way that they deserve," Berkowitz says.

Producer Carla Berkowitz with the five real-life Miami Jackson chess players.

Photo courtesy of Carla Berkowitz

The movie's release came just days before theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new diversity rules for the Oscars, requiring films to include actors in underrepresented groups. Berkowitz says she applauds the change, noting that an Oscar nomination is a privilege, not a right.

"It's like a shakedown, but in a good way," she says. "I feel like it's a very good start in just waking the world up that no one's gonna watch your movie if you're not going to start including people of every race, color, gender, and ability."

Although some reviewers found the characters in Critical Thinkingto be clichs of low-income people of color, Berkowitz points out that the movie is almost entirely based on actual people and events, right down to the chess matches. The real-life players helped reconstruct their old games move by move so that moviegoers particularly those who play chess would see an accurate depiction of tournament play.

"It was very important to me that no one said, 'Oh, that doesn't happen in chess,' 'That's fake,' 'That's movie magic,'" Berkowitz says.

The real-life chess players saw a screener of the movie at Berkowitz's home months ago, pre-COVID, but Berkowitz says she wanted to experience Critical Thinking on the big screen. Because movie theaters in Broward reopened in August, she drove up to Tamarac two weeks ago and watched the film as she'd always planned to.

"Iwas crying," she says. "To hear thesound design that I was a part of, and to actually be able to hear it in surround sound."

Nevertheless, she says, those watching at home are "enjoying it a lot, but not seeing it with popcorn."

Besides, her true audience was always the Jackson chess players themselves Oelmy "Ito" Paniagua, Gil Luna, Rodelay Medina, Sedrick Roundtree, and Marcel Martinez.

"I'mvery happy for them and for me, in the sense that I was able to follow through on a promise to them that was really kind of a crazy promise," Berkowitz says. "Watching them watch other people play them was, I think, the highlight of my life."

Jessica Lipscomb is news editor of Miami New Times and an enthusiastic Florida Woman. Born and raised in Orlando, she has been a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

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The True Story Behind Critical Thinking, Movie Based in Miami - Miami New Times

There's no evidence of an afterlife. But there's also no proof that our medical death needs to be the end of our subjective experience. There's no proof that death is irreversible, or immortality impossible.

In fact, some researchers believe immortality isn't just possible, but inevitable.

Alexey Turchin, an author, life extensionist, and transhumanist researcher from Moscow, believes artificial intelligence will eventually become so powerful that humans will be able to "download" themselves or, the quantifiable information contained in their brains into computers and live forever.

It'll take a long time to develop that technology anywhere from 100 to 600 years, according to Turchin.

"The development of AI is going rather fast, but we are still far away from being able to 'download' a human into a computer," Turchin told Russia Beyond. "If we want to do it with a good probability of success, then count on [the year] 2600, to be sure."

That might be out of reach for modern humans. But downloading yourself onto a computer is just one potential route to immortality. In 2018, Turchin and Maxim Chernyakov, of the Russian Transhumanist Movement, wrote a paper outlining the main ways technology might someday make resurrection and, therefore, immortality possible.

The paper defines life as a "continued stream of subjective experiences" and death as the permanent end of that stream. Immortality, to them, is a "life stream without end," and resurrection is the "continuation of that same stream of experiences after an arbitrarily long gap."

Another key clarification is the identity problem: How would you know that a downloaded copy of yourself really was going to be you? Couldn't it just be a convincing yet incomplete and fundamentally distinct representation of your brain?

If you believe that your copy is not you, that implies you believe there's something more to your identity than the (currently) quantifiable information contained within your brain and body, according to the researchers. In other words, your "informational identity" does not constitute your true identity.

In this scenario, there must exist what the researchers call a "non-informational identity carrier" (NIIC). This could be something like a "soul." It could be "qualia," which are the unmeasurable "subjective experiences which could be unique to every person." Or maybe it doesn't exist at all.

It's no matter: The researchers say resurrection, in some form, should be possible in either scenario.

"If no 'soul' exist[s], resurrection is possible via information preservation; if soul[s] exist, resurrection is possible via returning of the "soul" into the new body. But some forms of NIIC are also very fragile and mortal, like continuity," the researchers noted.

"The problem of the nature of human identity could be solved by future superintelligent AI, but for now it cannot be definitively solved. This means that we should try to preserve as much identity as possible and not refuse any approaches to life extension and resurrection even if they contradict our intuitions about identity, as our notions of identity could change later."

Turchin and Chernyakov outline seven broad categories of potential resurrection methods, ranked from the most plausible to most speculative.

The first category includes methods practiced while the person is alive, like cryonics, plastination, and preserving brain tissue through processes like chemical fixation. The researchers noted that there have been "suggestions that the claustrum, hypothalamus, or even a single neuron is the neural correlate of consciousness," so it may be possible to preserve just that part of a person, and later implant it into another organism.

Other methods get far stranger. For example, one method includes super-intelligent AI that uses a Dyson sphere to harness the power of the sun to "power enormous calculation engines" that would "reconstruct" people who collected a sufficient amount of data on their identities.

Turchin

"The main idea of a resurrection-simulation is that if one takes the DNA of a past person and subjects it to the same developmental condition, as well as correcting the development based on some known outcomes, it is possible to create a model of a past person which is very close to the original," the researchers wrote.

"DNA samples of most people who lived in past 1 to 2 centuries could be extracted via global archeology. After the moment of death, the simulated person is moved into some form of the afterlife, perhaps similar to his religious expectations, where he meets his relatives."

Delving further into sci-fi territory, another resurrection method would use time-travel technology.

"If there will at some point be technology that allows travel to the past, then our future descendants will be able to directly save people dying in the past by collecting their brains at the moment of death and replacing them with replicas," the paper states.

How? Sending tiny robots back in time.

"A nanorobot could be sent several billion years before now, where it could secretly replicate and sow nanotech within all living being[s] without affecting the course of history. At the moment of death, such nanorobots could be activated to collect data about the brain and preserve it somewhere until its future resurrection; thus, there would be no need for forward time travel."

Pixabay

The paper goes on to outline some more resurrection methods, including ones that involve parallel worlds, aliens, and clones, along with a good, old-fashioned possibility: God exists and one day he resurrects us.

In short, it's all extremely speculative.

But the aim of the paper was to catalogue known potential ways humans might be able to cheat death. For Turchin, that's not some far-off project: In addition to studying global risks and transhumanism, the Russian researcher heads the Immortality Roadmap, which, similar to the 2018 paper, outlines various ways in which we might someday achieve immortality.

Although it may take centuries before humans come close to "digital immortality," Turchin believes that life-extension technology could allow some modern people to survive long enough to see it happen.

Want a shot at being among them? Beyond the obvious, like staying healthy, the Immortality Roadmap suggests you start collecting extensive data on yourself: diaries, video recordings, DNA information, EEGs, complex creative objects all of which could someday be used to digitally "reconstruct" your identity.

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Can we resurrect the dead? Researchers catalogue potential future methods - Big Think

Naming your game after a well-established genre is a gutsy move, but CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is shaping up to be one of the biggest cyberpunk stories in gaming history.

Taking into account everything we know about Cyberpunk 2077, the open-world RPG looks like it's crawling with seedy criminals, shady corporations, cybernetic limbs, and neon streets, as well as tackling all those spectacularly dense themes of transhumanism, AI, and the dismantling of corporate and governmental hierarchiesyou know, the usual.

With CD Projekt Red taking on one of the biggest sci-fi genres, what other 'punk' derivatives are left for the taking? A lot, apparently. Over the past few days, I've fallen down a rabbit hole of cyberpunk derivatives. But before we dive into real-world body hacking, frills from 18th century France, and Buck Rogers, here are some punk genres that games have explored.

Steampunk is one of the big cyberpunk sub-genres and games like BioShock Infinite, Dishonored, and Sunless Sea have taken major inspiration from it's Victorian-era industrial steam-powered world. Wolfenstein and games like Iron Harvest take on the gritty and dirty industrial aesthetics of Dieselpunk. The Fallout series is famous for its retro-futuristic imagining of Atompunk, and then there's 11-bit Studio's own genre, FrostpunkVictorian industrialisation meets frozen ecological crisis.

Whether they are fully-fledged worlds or have more of a focus on aesthetics, here are some more punk genres that deserve a gaming spotlight.

Many derivatives of cyberpunk are retrofuturistic in their worldbuilding, pulling on ideas and aesthetics from the past (looking directly at you, Victorian era). But what makes Solarpunk special is that it is firmly set in the future.

Solarpunk envisions an optimistic future that directly tackles environmental concerns with renewable and sustainable energy sources. Instead of a bleak wasteland, Solarpunk is bright and hopeful. Butjust because climate change and pollution have been solved doesn't mean that everything is a utopia. This is what could make Solarpunk an interesting backdrop for games. Instead of bashing you over the head with how awful everything is, Solarpunk is about worlds that are so close to being perfect but fall just short. I can totally see this making a great backdrop for a sprawling RPG.

For whatever reason, a core feature of many punk genres is what resource is used to power technology, but Clockpunk is less focused on steam, diesel, or electric-run mechanics and more on basic technology. Clockpunk is all about intricate mechanismslike the interlocking gears of a pocket watch, the intricacies of automatons, or the detailed sketches of Da Vinci. There's also just a general focus on beautiful, delicate machinery, and Dimitriy Khristenko's mechanical bugs are an amazing example of something that would fit perfectly into the clockpunk aesthetic.

There's not much in terms of world-building to Clockpunk, but the genre makes a great foundation for worlds that have light fantasy elements, such as magic or alchemy, which can act as the world's main power resources.It's emphasis on visual design also makes it perfect for puzzle games like Magnum Opus.

More of a visual aesthetic than a loosely defined alternate reality, Rococo Punk takes inspiration from the whimsical visual style of the Rococo period. It's used in a similar way to Decopunk (think the glossy interiors of BioShock) in that it's purely just a look rather than a philosophy. Visually, the genre involves theatrical outfits with lots of dramatic frills with building interiors having lots of grand, sweeping curves and gold trimming. There's not a pair of greasy goggles in sight.

It sounds super classy, but I'm not sure what makes it particularly 'punk'. Then again, there were lots of brutal beheadings in 18th century France at the height of Rococo's popularity, and having your head chopped off for wanting to dismantle the French monarchy is pretty punk.

Biopunk is all about the wonderful world of biohacking which involves modifying the human body through biological means. This form of human experimentation involves 'hacking' your own body in hopes of improving your physical or mental state. The genre also includes themes of corporate and governmental control over body modification and genetic engineering.

BioShock totally has the Biopunk corner covered, but then after reading this totally bonkers Vox article about real-world biohackers there's so much more that writers can draw from. There's a wealth of source material for Biopunk in the real world too, like Silicon Valley's $8,000 young blood transfusions where an older person pays for a young person's blood to be pumped into their body as some sort of 'elixir of life' because why not?I don't think I'll ever get over reading that anytime soon.

Taking inspiration from Atompunk, Raypunk is one of the more outlandish punk genres and focuses on far-future science fiction with a distinct retro twist. Its aesthetic is close to mid-20th century pulp science fiction like the original Star Trek series or the Jetsonsanything featuring brightly colored rayguns, flying cars, and clunky talking robots.

It's not all Buck Rogers, though. Raypunk (known also as Raygun Gothic) can be surreal and dark, which sounds far more interesting honestly. Rick Remender's comic book Low is the closest piece of media I know of that captures the genre's "world of tomorrow" aesthetic while still being pretty bleak and serious.

I honestly don't really understand this one, but this Wikipedia page cites The Flintstones as part of the Stonepunk genre so that makes it legit, apparently.

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CD Projekt Red have nabbed Cyberpunk, but here are 5 other punks that deserve games - PC Gamer