Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 10771

RT has released the first-ever 360-degree footage shot by man in outer space, putting viewers in the shoes of two Russian cosmonauts launching nanosatellites from outside the International Space Station (ISS).

The video, which shows out-of-this-world views of Planet Earth, is the first time that the so-called extravehicular activity (EVA) has been filmed in 360. The immersive new format previously helped viewers explore the ISS modules as part of the Space 360 project.

Cosmonauts Sergey Ryazansky and Fedor Yurchikhin captured the breathtaking scenery while doing their 7.5-hour spacewalk in August, which included maintenance tasks and the launch of five miniature satellites.

Read more

LEAF board director Elena Milova is featured today on the KP website talking about life extension. The page is in Russian but google translate does a reasonable job.

Публикация под заголовком «Мне 32 года, и я потратил $200 тысяч на «биохакинг» произвела в соцсетях эффект разорвавшейся бомбы. Ее автор бизнесмен Сергей Фаге (его состояние оценивается в $45 миллионов) создатель интернет сервисов «Островок» и TokBox рассказал об эксперименте, который он поставил на собой. Его цель ни много ни мало — вечная жизнь. Последние 4–5 лет он изменяет свое тело с помощью биотехнологий. На эту затею он потратил около $200 тысяч, львиная доля из них ушла на тысячи диагностических тестов и консультации врачей. Каждые несколько дней он сдает анализы и изучает детальную картину того, что происходит в его организме. Будучи здоровым человеком, ежедневно принимает несколько десятков разных лекарственных препаратов и, естественно, занимается спортом по собой программе.

Read more

These are a tiny fraction of the examples of how our economy differs from the 20th century industrial economy. Similar changes are under way in the developing world, as labor gives way to robotics and basic goods become affordable and accessible to the planet’s billions. Given those changes, why would 20th century models of prices and rates and money supply work as they used to work?

We like to believe that there are “laws of economics” and past patterns to guide us, but, as Yellen indicated, there is now “considerable uncertainty.” It may feel safer to trust that past patterns will reassert themselves. But maybe policymakers should weigh more heavily the chance that the patterns have changed.

The Federal Reserve takes a 20th-century approach to managing a 21st-century economy.

Read more

Last year, artificial intelligence (AI) research company DeepMind shared details on WaveNet, a deep neural network used to synthesize realistic human speech. Now, an improved version of the technology is being rolled out for use with Google Assistant.

A system for speech synthesis — otherwise known as text-to-speech (TTS) — typically utilizes one of two techniques.

Concatenative TTS involves the piecing together of chunks of recordings from a voice actor. The drawback of this method is that audio libraries must be replaced whenever upgrades or changes are made.

Read more

Washington (AP) — Seated before the grounded space shuttle Discovery, a constellation of Trump administration officials used soaring rhetoric to vow to send Americans back to the moon and then on to Mars.

After voicing celestial aspirations, top officials moved to what National Intelligence Director Dan Coats called “a dark side” to space policy. Coats, Vice President Mike Pence, other top officials and outside space experts said the United States has to counter and perhaps match potential enemies’ ability to target U.S. satellites.

Pence, several cabinet secretaries and White House advisers gathered in the shadow of the shuttle at the Smithsonian Institution’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center to chart a new path in space — government, commercial and military — for the country. It was the first meeting of the National Space Council, revived after it was disbanded in 1993.

Read more

Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s announcement last week accelerating plans for manned flights to Mars ratchets up political and public relations pressure on NASA’s efforts to reach the same goal.

With Musk publicly laying out a much faster schedule than NASA — while contending his vision is less expensive and could be financed primarily with private funds — a debate unlike any before is shaping up over the direction of U.S. space policy.

Read: Before Elon Musk can get SpaceX to Mars, he must overcome these nontechnical hurdles.

Read more

David Brin: “Our midweek posting resumes the ongoing saga of transparency and freedom, and how (surprise?) each year’s declared “secure” system gets stripped bare, in the next. Now it’s Yahoo and Equifax and Billions of records. Millions of sincere people can see an Orwellian nightmare looming. Yet, the common reflex is to call for more shadows and walls! For us to HIDE from elites! It won’t work. It cannot work. It will never work. But there is an alternative. The very same trick that got us our freedom and wealth, in the first place.”

“We will not preserve freedom by hiding. Nor will it ever be possible to conceal info from elites. Moreover, that is not how we got the freedom that we already have.”

“We will remain free by aggressively applying these tools upon all elites. It is the only way we ever got freedom and it is the only way we can retain it.”

The reason why people will always have a hard time believing in the idea of reciprocity in transparency is that it that knowing the elite’s misbehavior is completely useless unless you have some way to punish them. Or to put it in this little dialogue: Elite: I can know everything about you, peon, including your treasonous thoughts. Peon: I also know everything about you, including your treasonous actions. Elite: That’s cute. I also have a death squad. What you gonna do about it, insect? Peon: Oh… Forgot about the death squad. Without some way for mister peon to counter act the traditional strengths of elites, ie: money, power, lackeys, brute force, he is going to be very reticent to give up his one advantage of stealth.

Read more

The link between inflammation, cellular senescence, aging, and cancer is a complex relationship, but a new study sheds light on how these four interact.

The light and dark side of inflammation and cellular senescence

Cellular senescence is a protective mechanism that helps us to stay healthy and avoid cancer by removing damaged and aged cells from the cell cycle while preventing them from creating damaged copies of themselves. Senescent cells are disposed of via a self-destruct process known as apoptosis.

Read more