The accidental discovery of a novel aluminium alloy that reacts with water in a highly unusual way may be the first step to reviving the struggling hydrogen economy. It could offer a convenient and portable source of hydrogen for fuel cells and other applications, potentially transforming the energy market and providing an alternative to batteries and liquid fuels.
“The important aspect of the approach is that it lets you make very compact systems,” says Anthony Kucernak, who studies fuel cells at Imperial College London and wasn’t involved with the research. “That would be very useful for systems which need to be very light or operate for long periods on hydrogen, where the use of hydrogen stored in a cylinder is prohibitive.”
Robert Stark and co-host Sam Kevorkian talk to Zoltan Istvan about his proposal for a California State Basic Income. Zoltan is a Trans-Humanist and futurist writer, philosopher, and journalist. He was the Transhumanist Party’s candidate for president in 2016, has written for Vice, Newsweek, the Huffington Post, and Psychology Today, was a reporter for the National Geographic Channel, and is the author of The Transhumanist Wager.
Yesterday was D-Day in the Bitcoin world: On Tuesday, Aug 1st 2017, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) forked off of Bitcoin (BTC). For anyone with control over their wallet and private keys, they now have an equal amount of BTC and BCH.
I have a Bitcoin wallet. Yet, I don’t have any new Bitcoin Cash—and I have no one to blame but myself. Will I ever get the BCH associated with my pre-fork coins? I think that it is likely, though certainly not assured. If not, it will still be my fault. After all, I had fair warning from the company that I trust as custodian of my assets.
A Cryptocurrency Mantra: “Woe be the person who trusts decentralized cash to a custodian”
I trust Coinbase for good reason. I left my BTC in my Coinbase wallet and vault throughout the fork. Let me tell you how I view the risks of failing to remove my coins before August 1…
Coinbase was clear in warning that BTC withdrawals would be frozen before and after a fork. No problem…I had no immediate need to access my coins.
2. Coinbase warned they had no plan to support BCH—not even for withdrawal after a fork.
I accepted this 2nd warning, even though their reasoning and motives were terribly weak. But, today, I feel very sore. I need a morning after pill! Bitcoin still trades at the level of the past week—about $2700 US/BTC. But my non-existent BCH holdings have significant value! It was briefly as high as $750 per coin, and is now trading at $475. This means that even if I have no desire to save or spend the new coin, I no longer have the option to liquidate my forked asset. I lost a slam-dunk opportunity to capture 17½%.
We’re not talking about a theoretical gain or a gain that assumes liquidation at a momentary spike. We’re talking about right now—a missed opportunity to pocket thousands of dollars!
Am I angry? Not really. I am disappointed at my lack of initiative. I have only myself to blame. For the record—I don’t believe that I have a reasonable legal claim against Coinbase. After all, they warned me! But, I believe that they will give me my forked coins—eventually. They have already acknowledged to conspiracy theorists that they will not keep the forked BCH, in the event that they create a conversion mechanism. In that case, they will allow withdrawal by the owner of the associated BTC. Now that they see dramatic fractional value, how could they not complete the fork?!
Where Does This Leave Me?
I’m not poorer today than I was yesterday, and I still have the same value in Bitcoin. But, I missed a zero-risk opportunity to gain 17½% overnight. It was staring me in the face and I passed it up. At least I draw comfort in my confidence that Coinbase will complete the fork. Please, Coinbase: Complete the fork!
In a not-too-distant future city, superintelligent robots will carry out the majority of vital tasks. Driverless cars will ferry passengers to and from points of interest. Housing and healthcare will be affordable, if not free to all. Political leaders and technologists will speak the same language. And life is good.
Sam Altman, the 32-year-old president of Y Combinator, the most prestigious startup accelerator in Silicon Valley, has laid out this utopian vision over the years, and most definitively in a job listing posted on YC’s blog in June 2016.
“We’re seriously interested in building new cities and we think we know how to finance it if everything else makes sense,” the post read. “We need people with strong interests and bold ideas in architecture, ecology, economics, politics, technology, urban planning, and much more.”
O n a recent evening at a start-up hub in Spitalfields, London, journalist and author Jamie Bartlett spoke to a small group of mostly under 40, mainly techie or creative professionals about his book Radicals: Outsiders Changing the World. The book, which Bartlett started to research in 2014, before Brexit and Trump, chronicles his time with a series of different radical groups, from the Psychedelic Society — who advocate the “careful use of psychedelics as a tool for awakening to the unity and interconnectedness of all things” — to Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the unabashedly far-right English Defence League, to the founder of Liberland, a libertarian nation on unclaimed land on the Serbian/Croatian border, to Zoltan Istvan, who ran as US transhumanist presidential candidate on a platform of putting an end to death. He campaigned by racing around America in a superannuated RV which he’d modified to look like a giant coffin, dubbed “the Immortality Bus.” His efforts were in vain, and illegal, as it turned out: his campaign was in breach of the US’ Federal Electoral Commission rules.
Bartlett’s book has been damned with faint praise — he has been called “surprisingly naive about politics,” and defining ‘radical’ so broadly as to make the term “meaningless.” The general consensus goes that Bartlett’s journey through the farthest-flung fringes of politics and society is entertaining and impressively dispassionate, but not altogether successful in making a clear or convincing case for radicals or radicalism. But at the talk that night Bartlett challenged what he sees as the complacent acceptance and defense of our current political and governmental systems, institutions and ideas, of the kind of technocratic centrism that prevailed throughout the global North until very recently. Perhaps they need some radical rethinking. Many of the radicals Bartlett spent time with may be flawed, crazy or wrong — literally, legally and morally — but they can also hold up mirrors and magnifying glasses to political and social trends. And sometimes, they can prophesize them…
Bartlett began the evening by saying, “If democracy were a business, it would be bankrupt.” A provocative statement, but one that he backs up. He pointed to research showing that only 30% of those born after 1980 believe that it is essential to live in a democracy. That rate drops steadily with age. A closer look at the research around peoples’ attitudes reveals widespread skepticism towards liberal institutions and a growing disaffection with political parties. Freedom House’s annual report for 2016 shows that as faith in democracy has declined so too have global freedoms — 2016 marks the “11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.” While a lot of attention has been given to violent polarization, populism and nationalism rising out of anger at demographic and economic changes, Bartlett suggests that perhaps comfort and complacency are culprits too, and he is not the only one: only last weekFinancial Times columnist Janan Ganesh took up a similar theme.
What are the fringe ideas of today that might become ideas of the future? We cannot, of course, say, but Bartlett’s point is we should be paying much closer attention to the crazed hinterlands of human thought. In 2015 transhumanist Zoltan Istvan was talking about using technology to fundamentally change what it is to be human — to augment our fleshy bodies with steel and silicon. One of Istvan’s favored refrains is the transformative effect of artificial intelligence on the way that we work, and the way that we live. In the past six months, it has become near-impossible to read a newspaper or a magazine without stumbling across a take on how AI is set to change our economy. Istvan’s other hobby-horse is immortality, and using technology to drastically expand the human lifespan — ultimately to the point where it increases so fast that time can’t catch up with us and we reach a kind of “escape velocity.
Eric Shuss, Ed Hudgins, Peter Voss, Zoltan Istvan, Gennady Stolyarov; Michael Shermer (mod) discuss artificial intelligence and robots. Will these developments lead the economy of the future or end capitalism as we know it?
Gennady Stolyarov II, FSA, ACAS, MAAA, CPCU, ARe, ARC, API, AIS, AIE, AIAF, is the second Chairman in the history of the U.S. Transhumanist Party and the Chief Executive of the Nevada Transhumanist Party. Mr. Stolyarov is an actuary, independent philosophical essayist, science-fiction novelist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov regularly produces YouTube videos discussing life extension, libertarianism, and related subjects, In December 2013, Mr. Stolyarov published Death is Wrong, an ambitious children’s book on life extension illustrated by his wife Wendy Stolyarov. Death is Wrong can be found on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats, and can also be freely downloaded in PDF format in the English, Russian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages.
Dr. Edward Hudgins is research director at the Heartland Institute, which seeks to develop and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Hudgins has written extensively on the promise of exponential technologies and the need for a human achievement and entrepreneurial ethos. Before joining Heartland, he worked at The Atlas Society, which promotes the philosophy of reason, freedom, and individualism developed by Ayn Rand. During his stint at the Cato Institute, Hudgins directed regulatory studies and produced the book, Space: The Free-Market Frontier. He has also worked at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and at The Heritage Foundation, where he pioneered the concept of an Index of Economic Freedom. Hudgins has a BA from the University of Maryland, an MA from American University, and a PhD from the Catholic University of America. He has taught at universities both in the United States and Germany.
Zoltan Istvan is a Libertarian candidate for California Governor in 2018. He is often considered one the world’s leading transhumanists after his popular run in the 2016 US Presidential race as a science and technology candidate. Zoltan began his futurist career by publishing The Transhumanist Wager, an award-winning, #bestseller in philosophy that has been compared to Ayn Rand’s work. Zoltan is also a leading technology journalist, a successful entrepreneur, and a former filmmaker and on-camera reporter for the National Geographic Channel. His futurist work and promotion of radical science has reached over 100 million people. He is a graduate of Columbia University, and lives in San Francisco with his physician wife and two young daughters. Breitbart wrote, “Istvan is a dynamic personality, as polarizing as he is engaging.” The New York Times wrote Zoltan has “a plausibly presidential aura.”
Eric Shuss has been actively involved in managing and acquiring high-tech companies for over thirty five years. He has owned and managed successful companies from start-up to thriving, ongoing ventures including professional services consulting firms, high-tech manufacturers and AI and computer software companies. He has extensive international business management experience with a keen understanding of how technology impacts today’s business. He is an author and futurist who serves on several advisory boards. He has worked in mid-to-large companies in roles of Senior Industry Analyst, Managing Consultant, Director of Information Systems, Director of Operations, Vice President, President, COO and CEO. His in-depth knowledge of multiple industries and complex business processes allows him to look at the big picture. He understands that technology alone is not the answer, but is a key component to success.
In the hopes of rising above the laws and regulations of terrestrial nations, a group of Silicon Valley millionaires has bold plans to build a floating city in Tahiti, French Polynesia. It sounds like the start of a sci-fi dystopia (in fact, this is the basic premise behind the video game Bioshock), but the brains behind the project say their techno-libertarian community could become a paradise for technological entrepreneurship and scientific innovation.
The Seasteading Institute was set up in 2008 by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel and software engineer, poker player, and political economic theorist Patri Friedman. Both ardent libertarians, their wide-eyed mission is to “establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.”
“Seasteading will create unique opportunities for aquaculture, vertical farming, and scientific and engineering research into ecology, wave energy, medicine, nanotechnology, computer science, marine structures, biofuels, etc,” their website reads.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents both the biggest opportunity and potentially the greatest threat to the legal profession in history.
This is part of a bigger global revolution – where society, business and government are likely to experience more change in the next 20–30 years than in the last 500.
This large-scale disruption is being driven by the combined effects of AI and other disruptive technologies whose speed, power and capability are growing exponentially – or faster.
These technologies, which are all are fed by AI, include quantum computing, blockchain technology, the internet of things (IoT), big data, cloud services, smart cities, and human augmentation. All of these could be hundreds or thousands of times more powerful within a decade.
The resulting changes mean the total transformation of every business sector, the birth of new trillion dollar industries and a complete rethink of law, regulation, legal infrastructures, and the supporting governance systems for every activity on the planet.