Lifeboat Foundation

This flexible smartphone/tablet is beyond our wildest dreams.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk presented some new details on the Tesla Network’s Robotaxi ride-hailing service during the company’s Autonomy Day. Musk outlined his how much electric car owners can earn from the service, as well as how long vehicles can last operating as autonomous ride-sharing Robotaxis.

Musk started his presentation by reiterating Tesla’s Master Plan, which includes the deployment of the company’s Robotaxi program sometime in 2020 (pending regulatory approval, of course). Musk joked about Tesla’s delays in the rollout of Full Self-Driving features, though he did note that “we said we’re gonna do the Robotaxi, and we’re gonna do the Robotaxi.”

Tesla owners who wish to use their vehicles for the Tesla Network will be able to manage their electric cars through their smartphone. Musk dropped several points of information that will be key to the Tesla Network’s Robotaxi service as well. Among these is the vehicles’ longevity. The CEO noted that current-generation battery packs are good for about 300,000 to 500,000 miles, though Tesla’s upcoming batteries which will go on production next year will operate for twice as long, up to 1 million miles with minimal maintenance.

Continue reading “Tesla outlines plan for ‘Robotaxi’ ride-sharing service” »

The LG Wallpaper TV is the thinnest display I’ve ever seen or held. It’s thinner than a smartphone and I can easily pick up the 65-inch! It uses LG’s OLED technology so you’ve got super dark blacks, vibrant colors and the overall picture quality you’ve come to expect from OLED. Because the Wallpaper TV is so thin it connects to an external sound bar speaker for power and video connections. The speaker is louder than standard TV speakers and features Dolby Atmos capabilities.

LG Signature OLED TV W product page — http://geni.us/UnboxW7US
LG Signature OLED TV W on Amazon — http://geni.us/UnboxW7a

Continue reading “Unboxing The Mind Bending Wallpaper TV… — YouTube” »

EU researchers have developed a graphene-enabled detector for terahertz light that is faster and more sensitive than existing room-temperature technologies. This can lead to a fully digital low-cost terahertz camera system. This could be as cheap as the camera inside the smartphone, since such a detector has proven to have a very low power consumption and is fully compatible with CMOS technology.

Detecting terahertz (THz) light is extremely useful for two main reasons. Firstly, THz technology is becoming a key element in applications regarding security (such as airport scanners), wireless data communication, and quality control, to mention just a few. However, current THz detectors have shown strong limitations in terms of simultaneously meeting the requirements for sensitivity, speed, spectral range, being able to operate at room temperature.

Secondly, it is a very safe type of radiation due to its low-energy photons, with more than a hundred times less energy than that of photons in the visible light range.

Continue reading “Graphene Terahertz Cameras Could Become Common” »

Indeed, Schindler stressed that Google would generate personalized Maps recommendations in “privacy-sensitive, opt-in ways.”

The company is betting that adding more data about places and businesses to Maps will lead people to spend more time on the service. As users expect more from Maps, Google has extra space to introduce more ads.

“We want to be able to highlight things that are around you and surface them nearby to you in a way that’s not disrupting your experience,’’ said Rajas Moonka, director of product management for Google Maps. Because so much of what users are looking for in Google Maps is commercial in nature, ads can be a helpful addition to the experience, he said.

Continue reading “Google’s Next Big Money Maker Could Be the Maps on Your Phone” »

Back in the late 1990s, a traveler from Lebanon to London would have noticed something interesting about telecommunications in the two countries, while many people in Lebanon owned a mobile phone, London was still accustomed to using red telephone boxes to make calls on the run. What caused such a difference? During the Lebanese Civil War, all landline infrastructures were destroyed, and the Lebanese leapfrogged to owning mobile phones. Fast-forward 20 years to today and one can see a similar pattern in many developing countries, where landlines and personal computers are bypassed for mobile internet. 5G is going to make that shift even more dramatic and in many other similar areas, technology is enabling us to bypass existing infrastructure and to rethink the way things are made.

Manufacturing cars is highly efficient and in most 21st century facilities you hardly see any people. Everything is done by robots on a moving assembly line. But it makes you wonder if such a factory setup would make sense for new product categories, which in the beginning are a novelty at best? For example, flying cars or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ( UAV). The questions we should be asking: How are we going to do it cost-effectively and with similar automation as automotive factories? And can Additive Manufacturing help these novel product categories excel, cut costs and completely skip the assembly line altogether? Just like when Henry Ford created the first moving assembly line back in 1913, it was then a necessity for industrial production to take place. If we wish to cut costs, simplify assembly, reduce factory footprints and part counts, Additive Manufacturing starts becoming a necessity and as a result, we can start questioning the 100-year-old assembly line.

One day, phones will be made from stardust and unicorns. For now, though, we have four choices.

It’s a difficult choice: Go hungry or go it alone.

When soldiers are weighed down on the battlefield by food supplies and the heavy battery packs that power their communication equipment, they often choose to ditch the rations. It’s a sacrifice made to keep devices powered up and communication lines open in the field.

Smaller, longer-lasting batteries would help lighten a soldier’s load, so USC researchers are working with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop better batteries that weigh half as much as current power packs.

Continue reading “The better batteries that will power your phone—and a green future” »

Circa 2012

Switching your phone off for important meetings or trips to the cinema can be a pain in the ass. Victor Johansson has a solution, though: he’s designed the Escape Jacket, which features a Faraday cage in the inside pocket to immediately take your phone off the grid.

UK-based designer Johansson says that the concept is all about you-time. He explains:

Continue reading “This Jacket’s Faraday Cage Conveniently Silences Your Phone” »