Lifeboat Foundation

China makes heaving R&D investments in technologies for telecom and travel industry (namely railway) that reduces China’s dependency on foreign tech companies. Looks like we’re heading more and more into a protectionism world.

China will ramp up investment to develop essential industrial components and materials next year, in a move to reduce reliance on foreign technology in key sectors including telecommunications and railways.

Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said on Monday the ministry will channel more resources to help tackle technological bottlenecks in 20 industrial parts and 15 industrial materials.

Continue reading “China to beef up research of key components” »

China’s push for technology partnership with Pakistan.

LAHORE: Pak-China Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Wang Zihai said that the Chinese model of indulging academics and technocrats in production facilities should be adopted in Pakistan to create more competitive and research-backed products.

This was said during a meeting with five-member Chinese delegation from Jinan technology University China.

Continue reading “PCJCCI president stresses involvement of technology” »

3D for the weekend inventors for a great cause to boot.

The British duo 3D printing prosthetic arms for children, for free, in the back garden.

The HoloLens field of view issue has been preoccupying Microsoft for some time, and they have been exploring a number of solutions, which tend to show up in their patent filings.

As Microsoft writes:

Continue reading “Microsoft patents Holodeck-style projection room” »

If you loathe having to talk out loud when ordering a meal at a fast-food restaurant, and you happen to love KFC, then you might want to start considering packing it up and moving to China where Baidu has just teamed up with the major chicken brand to create a more automated restaurant. The venture aims to use the company’s latest technologies to bring novel ways of providing service to KFC customers.

As an added feature, the outlet also offers augmented reality games via table stickers, a concept also made available to 300 other KFC locations in Beijing.

Baidu’s tech in this new restaurant, however, is all about guessing what you want before you can even ask; image recognition hardware installed at the KFC will scan customer faces, seeking to infer moods, and guess other information including gender an age in order to inform their recommendation.

Continue reading “KFC’s latest weird tech suggests an order based on your face” »

The relationship between the government and the auto industry is about to be transformed. But into what?

Eight years ago, that relationship hardly could have been more awkward. Two of the Detroit 3 were begging Congress for a lifeline. The federal government would later fire General Motors’ CEO, orchestrate a bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler and emerge as a shareholder in both — a highly un-American arrangement that would lead to a successful recovery, yes, but also lingering tensions and shame.

The relationship is different now, but it’s not necessarily better. The Obama administration shed the stake in the car companies but has wrapped its tentacles more tightly around the industry in many ways, including strict consent decrees to monitor safety and tough targets for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions.

Continue reading “DARPA races offer model for government-industry relations” »

You might wonder, at some point today, what’s going on in another person’s mind. You may compliment someone’s great mind, or say they are out of their mind. You may even try to expand or free your own mind.

But what is a mind? Defining the concept is a surprisingly slippery task. The mind is the seat of consciousness, the essence of your being. Without a mind, you cannot be considered meaningfully alive. So what exactly, and where precisely, is it?

Traditionally, scientists have tried to define the mind as the product of brain activity: The brain is the physical substance, and the mind is the conscious product of those firing neurons, according to the classic argument. But growing evidence shows that the mind goes far beyond the physical workings of your brain.

Continue reading “Scientists say your ‘mind’ isn’t confined to your brain, or even your body” »

Tilt Brush example. — Pictures courtesy of HTC ViveLONDON, Dec 27 — From January 11 to 14, 2017, the Royal Academy of Art in London will present the first ever 3D-printed artworks in virtual reality, produced in collaboration with HTC Vive.

Artists from the Royal Academy and its alumni will create artwork using the virtual reality platform HTC Vive, creations that visitors to the exhibition will be able to experience in real time, “fully immersing themselves in the virtual piece.”

Breaches, hacking, ransomware, cyber threats, weaponized AI, smart toothbrushes are but a few examples of scary tech out there to make your day less than fantastic.

Weapons systems that think on its own are in production, with governments racing to catch up on how to regulate these fast-paced advancements.

Police and military already use drones and robots to eliminate threats, but (as far as we know) it’s hardware controlled by humans.

Continue reading “Blake Dowling: Hacking, weaponized artificial intelligence, ransomware and other fun just for you” »