Lifeboat News #88

Vreebit.com Supports the Lifeboat Foundation

Our SAB member Michael Fleischmann writes:

Dear Fellow Lifeboat Foundation Members,

Vreebit.com, a free, professional groupware/networking platform developed by one of my companies, has just pledged to donate generously to the Lifeboat Foundation for every LF member who joins their service (over $2,500 for the members of the SAB alone). Not only would this opportunity help fund the ongoing efforts of the Lifeboat Foundation at no cost to us, but it would also substantively enhance our abilities to collaborate and communicate with each other. To allay legitimate privacy concerns, Vreebit refuses to sell or disclose any personal information about its members. I ask all of you to join me on Vreebit by using the following link (to attribute credit to LF): http://www.vreebit.com/index.cfm?rID=lifeboat.

Vreebit offers an array of organizational features including secure document exchange, dynamic discussion boards, selective update subscriptions, calendar and task management, and other group-centric functionality. This is all greatly enhanced by a highly fungible virtual currency system which rewards activities such as new member referrals, provision of expert advice, messaging and updates, sales of products and services, and other network interaction.

For organizations such as the Lifeboat Foundation, Vreebit has just implemented a program to convert these credits into actual donation funds (in US Dollars). By increasing the overall utilization of Vreebit (therefore its value), this mechanism allows the continual direction of resources to the Lifeboat Foundation at no cost to us.

Currently, there is only a basic presence for the Lifeboat Foundation on Vreebit, and I would appreciate being contacted by any party interested in maintaining that Vreebit group. My corporate e-mail address is [email protected], and I am hopeful that this opportunity materializes productively for the Lifeboat Foundation and its members.

Thank you in advance for your participation,

Michael Fleischmann

You can learn more about Michael at http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.michael.fleischmann

You can learn more about this offer at http://lifeboat.com/ex/vreebit

Website Redesign Progress

AGI-10

Our Itamar Arel, Eric Baum, Wlodek Duch, Ben Goertzel, J. Storrs "Josh" Hall, Marcus Hutter, Bert Kappen, Kai-Uwe Kühnberger, Christian Lebiere, Shane Legg, Carlo Lepori, Moshe Looks, András Lörincz, David Orban, Stephen Reed, Sebastian Rudolph, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Ray Solomonoff, Marco Wiering, Mary-Anne Williams, and David Wolpert will be participating in The Third Conference on Artificial General Intelligence at Lugano, Switzerland on March 5-8 (Fri-Mon) 2010.

Learn more at http://agi-conf.org/2010/

Tweetmaster

David Orban joins our staff as Tweetmaster. David is also Tweetmaster of the Singularity University.

Learn about David Orban at http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.david.orban

Follow our Tweets at http://twitter.com/lifeboathq

2009 Feynman Prize

Our Rob Freitas just won the 2009 Feynman Prize! Help fund his diamond mechanosynthesis research at https://lifeboat.com/ex/nano.shield.fund

Productive Nanosystems and the 2009 Financial Meltdown

Read "Productive Nanosystems and the 2009 Financial Meltdown" by our Tihamer "Tee" Toth-Fejel at http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=640

This article is part of our triple partnership with Nanotech-Now and The American Journal of Bioethics.

Ray Solomonoff

Ray Solomonoff joins our Robotics/AI Board. Ray is the founder of the branch of Artificial Intelligence based on machine learning, prediction, and probability. He circulated the first report on machine learning in 1956. He invented algorithmic probability, with Kolmogorov Complexity as a side product, in 1960.

Ray says "The Lifeboat problem becomes more and more critical as our technology 'progresses'."

Learn about Ray at http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.ray.j.solomonoff

Willard Wells

Willard Wells, author of "Apocalypse When?: Calculating How Long the Human Race Will Survive", joins our Scientific Advisory Board. Willard's advisor at Caltech, where he earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, was the great Richard Feynman.

Learn more at http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.willard.wells

Growing Membership

Recent donations/pledges we have received since the last newsletter:

Michael Fleischmann: $550, Michael Anissimov: $85, Michael Dickey: $85, Jason Gaverick Matheny: $85, Sergio M.L. Tarrero: $85, Philippe Van Nedervelde: $85, Kenneth P. Weiss: $85, Allen Maris: $50, Tom Driscoll: $30, Frank C. Adamek: $25, C M Anderson: $25, Rick Hubbard: $25, Alan R. Light: $25, Matthew L. McGuirl: $25, Anonymous: $20, Paul M. Battista: $20, Ronald Amos: $10, Christopher Dilkus: $10, Thomas Dolphin: $10, Stephen Fleming: $10, George Garrett: $10, Joseph P. Jackson III: $10, Aaron Mayzes: $10, Linus Petersson: $10, John N. Philipps (Jack): $10, Rhonda Stevenson: $10, Juan Jaramillo: $5, Vannesa Richie: $5, Ester Royer: $5, Tawny Shoemaker: $5, Krista Smith: $5, vbDict.com: $5, Kenneth D. Evans: $1, C.J. Lanhan: $1, and Penny Springer: $1.

Our Join Us page at https://lifeboat.com/ex/join.us now allows you to pay for your membership anywhere from monthly to every ten years.