Lifeboat Foundation

The more we try to grasp it, the more it slips away.

According to widely accepting science, the Lingwulong shenqi shouldn’t exist.

Dr Ian Pearson warns ‘electronic immortality’ will require careful planning. It could mean we live on after death in an ‘upgraded body’ — but could also mean we no longer own our own minds.

Amazon’s Echo lineup, like some smart speakers, uses proximity detection to decide which device is best-suited to responding to your voice commands. It’s a clever way to prevent multiple devices from waking up at the same time. There’s just one problem: support in non-Amazon devices has been inconsistent at best, creating a mess if you have third-party gear that doesn’t use the feature. Thankfully, that shouldn’t be an issue from here on out. Amazon has moved its Echo Spatial Perception technology to the cloud, ensuring that all devices can use it.

The ESP upgrade is automatic and doesn’t require any changes on the part of hardware makers. It’s also more accurate, according to Amazon, and can change over time as Alexa receives upgrades.

This doesn’t change some limitations for multi-device households. Many commands still apply specifically to the device where they’re set, such as reminders and timers. Even so, this could be a crucial update for Amazon. If it’s going to bring Alexa to virtually every device it can, it has to create a harmonious ecosystem.

Continue reading “Amazon will prevent command confusion on all Alexa devices” »

A series of earthquakes have shaken a region of ocean off the west coast of the UScientists have detected a cluster of 11 earthquakes, ranging in magnitude from 2.8 to 5.6 on the Richter scale. The cluster occurred on the seabed at the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, around six miles (10km) underwater. This plate forms part of the Cascadia subduction zone, which runs from Northern California to British Columbia. Previous studies have warned this geological spot of weakness has the potential to deliver an earthquake much stronger than the infamous San Andreas fault. Seismologists say a full rupture along the 650-mile-long (1,000 km) …→

LONDON — An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life.

Experts said the results suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future — a step that would allow scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development.

The team, led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain’s Cambridge University, had previously created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow.

Continue reading “Artificial embryos are a step closer to becoming reality” »

It’s first and final flight happened nearly 30 years ago, but Energia could become the cornerstone of Russia’s future space ambitions.

Which future are you going to pick?

Today, I would like to tell you two short stories describing what your far future might look like, depending on the choices that you €”though not only you €”will make in the near future. Feel free to leave a comment to let others know which one you’d rather have as your real future.

Story 1: A day in 2140

Continue reading “Choose Your Own Story” »

When I leave China, I feel I’ve gone back 10 years…

Surging use of mobile payment apps WeChat and Alipay has transformed daily life.