Bitnation provides the same services traditional governments provides, from dispute resolution and insurance to security and much more.
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BITNATION: Governance 2.0
Posted in governance, security
From the archives.
Solar rotation rates. Credit: NASA
Most Astronomy 101 courses continually pound the idea that our own star is almost boringly average. After all, it’s only one of billions of G-spectral type, solar-like stars in the galaxy.
But the sun’s relative magnetic quiescence, in comparison to other sun-like stars, may be the reason we’re here to talk about it. Or so suggests new observations of a nearby bright solar type star that is a close analogue to our own.
The X Prize Foundation has launched a number of competitions over the years that includes everything from addressing water quality and women’s safety to exploring the depths of the ocean, to sending rovers to the moon. Now, it’s assembled a supergroup of some of the world’s best-known science fiction authors to help the organization imagine what the future will look like.
The Science Fiction Advisory Council is made up of 64 advisors, which includes some of the biggest names from the world of science fiction literature, film, and television: Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, David Goyer, Nancy Kress, Annalee Newitz, Larry Niven, Bruce Sterling, J. Michael Straczynski, Charles Stross, Andy Weir, and many others. Eric Desatnik, X Prize’s senior public relations director, told The Verge in an e-mail that he brought the idea of the advisory council to the foundation’s founder, Peter Diamandis last year, who “said yes before I could even finish my sentence.”
The goal, he explains, “is to accelerate positive change in the world by bringing together” people who have already been doing just that. He noted that several of the foundation’s projects, were inspired directly by science fiction stories, including this the tricorder-style device that was awarded a $2.6 million prize.
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This is the age of the citizen journalist where people on the street armed with a smartphone and a Twitter account are often the first on the scene of an accident, fire or other emergency. These folks know about an incident that requires emergency services well before first responders.
Dataminr introduced a new product on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt today in New York City that searches the Twitter firehose for emergency situations throughout the city, and channels news alerts to first responders.
The system is designed to filter out fake announcements, jokesters, pranksters and other non events, so first responders aren’t wasting their time chasing rumors of non-events.
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Do you remember the details of your very first birthday? Of course you don’t. But Rebecca Sharrock does, because the 27-year-old from Brisbane has got something called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). It’s a condition that stops people from being able to forget anything, and it’s thought that only around 60–80 people in the world have it. As a result, Rebecca is able to recall every part of her life in vivid detail, whether it be the dreams she had at eighteen months old or being photographed in a car just 12 days after her birth!
“My parents carried me to the driver’s seat of the car (my father’s idea) and placed me down upon it for a photo,” she wrote in a recent blog post. “As a newborn child I was curious as to what the seat cover and steering wheel above me were. Though at that age I hadn’t yet developed the ability to want to get up and explore what such curious objects could be.” As if this isn’t impressive enough, she can even recite the entire collection of Harry Potter books! She’s also currently writing her own book about her experiences, called My Life is a Puzzle, and it sounds as if the contents are going to be very memorable indeed. (h/t)
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Please enjoy this interview with Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of SENS Research Foundation — one of the most successful advocacy and fundraising initiatives supporting breakthrough research on the main mechanisms of aging and age-related diseases. http://www.sens.org
In this video Dr. de Grey speaks about the progress in developing interventions to tackle age-related damages identified by SENS as the main ones.
Interviewer — LEAF/Lifespan.io Board member Elena Milova.
Dr. de Grey received his BA in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000, respectively. He is Editor-in-Chief of Rejuvenation Research (http://www.liebertpub.com/overview/rejuvenation-research/127/), is a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association, and sits on the editorial and scientific advisory boards of numerous journals and organizations.
Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, thinker, and futurist famous for forecasting the pace of technology and predicting the world of tomorrow.
In this video, Kurzweil predicts when he thinks we’ll get programmable matter—or the ability to manipulate everyday objects at the atomic level—and what that means not just for the things around you, but for you as a person.
According to Kurzweil, beginning with virtual reality in the digital realm and moving into the physical with programmable matter, people will make themselves into avatars of other people, or even each other.
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I finally found a copy of my radio interview at Stanford University last month discussing how I’d pay for a #basicincome by leasing out federal land (called a “Federal Land Dividend”). It’s an hour long interview with a guests asking questions: We discuss transhumanism too.
In this April 18, 2017 episode, we speak with Zoltan Istvan, who ran for President in the Transhumanist party, and is now running for California Governor as a Libertarian. He proposes a Universal Basic Income, funded by the leasing of federal lands. How does this compare to the Georgist ideal of a citizen’s dividend funded by land rents?
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These 14 billionaires just promised to give away more than half of their money like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett
Posted in biotech/medical, economics, education, health, sustainability | 1 Comment on These 14 billionaires just promised to give away more than half of their money like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett
Started in 2010 by Bill and Melinda Gates, worth $88.5 billion, and Warren Buffett, worth $74.2 billion, the Giving Pledge is a commitment by wealthy individuals and families to give away more than half of their wealth to causes including including poverty alleviation, refugee aid, disaster relief, global health, education, women and girls’ empowerment, medical research, arts and culture, criminal justice reform and environmental sustainability.
Started in 2010, the Giving Pledge now includes 168 wealthy individuals and couples from 21 countries.
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UPDATE May 17, 2017: The IBM PowerAI team and Nimbix have recently announced support for the hackathon. Teams at the hackathon will enjoy access to PowerAI systems for the weekend, which will significantly improve deep learning model building for ET signal classification. Thanks, Nimbix and IBM PowerAI.
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