Lifeboat Foundation

VNTANA and Satisfi Labs are collaborating on a hologram concierge platform. The finished product will allow businesses to combine a virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence with augmented reality visuals.

VNTANA and Satisfi Labs have announced a new platform that will allow businesses to develop a hologram concierge to be used in business. The project fuses artificial intelligence (AI) with augmented reality (AR) technology to produce a 3D persona that can interact with customers.

Continue reading “A New, Artificially Intelligent Hologram Was Just Born” »

In addition to Deloitte, the other remaining big-four accounting firms – including EY, KPMG and PwC – have introduced the technology-driven services in China to businesses ranging from banking, technology, and consumer services.

Mainland based accountants are embracing automation to lower office administration costs and enhance efficiency, moves which are opening the door to a wider embrace of artificial intelligence (AI).

Delixi Electric, a manufacturer of low-voltage electrical products, is banking on robotics to trim time needed for tax invoice issuance by 75 per cent. The Zhejiang province-based company needs to issue more than 5,000 value-added-tax invoices to more than 600 clients nationwide monthly.

Continue reading “Robots finds a welcome reception among China’s finance and tax services” »

The price of electricity from offshore wind in Britain has dipped below the level guaranteed to Hinkley Point, raising questions about the construction of the vast nuclear power station.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy disclosed Monday the results of auctions for state subsidies for three new wind offshore farms.

Denmark’s DONG Energy won the auction to build Hornsea Two, which will become the world’s biggest offshore wind farm off the coast of Yorkshire in northern England.

During the recent Longevity and Cryopreservation Summit in Madrid, LEAF board member Paul Spiegel discussed the social ramifications of increased lifespans thanks to emerging technologies. He spoke of the need for society to adapt to deal with longer lives. We invite you to watch the talk he gave and also to read an interview providing deeper insight on the necessary changes in the pension system.

But first, a few words about Paul. Paul graduated cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979 and from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1983. He has attended Harvard Law School, the University of Paris, Sorbonne, and International Christian University in Tokyo.

Continue reading “Paul Spiegel: Beyond Retirement – A New Social Compact for the Age of Longevity” »

Here’s a people-friendly/business-friendly plan to replace Labor Day with Basic Income Day in America. Your half million dollars is waiting and yours! http://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-with-federal-lan…2017-7 #FederalLandDividend

Futurist and 2018 libertarian candidate for California governor Zoltan Istvan outlines his plan to give everyone a government kickback from untapped land.

Our Andromeda interstellar probe article has been featured in MlT Technology Review :

Business Impact.

Femto-spacecraft could travel to alpha centauri.

Continue reading “Here’s how to get to Alpha Centauri: propel a tiny spacecraft on the tip of a powerful laser beam” »

Chinese electronics giant Huawei on Saturday unveiled its first mobile personal assistant with artificial intelligence in Berlin, in hopes it will rival the dominance of Samsung’s Bixby and Apple’s Siri.

“Smartphones are smart but they are not intelligent enough,” Richard Yu, chief executive of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, said at this year’s IFA electronics fair.

The mobile assistant, called Kirin 970, will systematically respond to three questions—” the most important combination,” Yu said: Where is the user? Who are they and what are they doing?

LEATHERMAKING is an ancient craft. The oldest leather artefact found so far is a 5,500-year-old shoe from a cave in Armenia, but paintings in Egyptian tombs show that, 7,000 years ago, leather was being turned into all manner of things, from sandals to buckets to military equipment. It is a fair bet that the use of animal skins for shelter and clothing goes back hundreds of thousands of years at least.

Leathermaking is also, though, a nasty business. In 18th-century London the soaking of putrefying hides in urine and lime, to loosen any remaining flesh and hair, and the subsequent pounding of dog faeces into those skins to soften and preserve them, caused such a stench that the business was outlawed from the City proper and forced downwind and across the river into Bermondsey. In countries such as India and Japan, the trade tainted people as well as places and was (and often still remains) the preserve of social outcasts such as Dalits and Burakumin.

Let’s say you are the program manager of a very large, complex system. Perhaps it’s an aircraft, or a building, or a communications network. Your system is valued at over US $500 million. Could you imagine being told that you won’t ever be able to maintain it? That once it’s operational, it will never be inspected, repaired, or upgraded with new hardware?

Welcome to the world of satellite building. After a satellite is launched, it is on a one-way journey to disrepair and obsolescence, and there is little anyone can do to alter that path. Faults (which are called anomalies in the space business) can only be diagnosed remotely, using data and inferential reasoning. Software fixes and upgrades may be possible, but the nuts and bolts remain untouched. The upshot: Even if a satellite is operating well, it could lose its state-of-the-art status just a few years into a typical 15-year lifetime.

If governments and private companies could actively repair and revitalize their satellites in geosynchronous orbit—and move them to new orbits as needed—they could extend the lifespans of their investments and substantially defer the cost of building and launching replacements.

Continue reading “Robot Mechanic Could Prevent Satellites From Becoming Space Junk” »