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Germany isn’t content with relying on financial incentives to usher in an era of pollution-free cars. The country’s Bundesrat (federal council) has passed a resolution calling for a ban on new internal combustion engine cars by 2030. From then on, you’d have to buy a zero-emissions vehicle, whether it’s electric or running on a hydrogen fuel cell. This isn’t legally binding, but the Bundesrat is asking the European Commission to implement the ban across the European Union… and when German regulations tend to shape EU policy, there’s a chance that might happen.

The council also wants the European Commission to review its taxation policies and their effect on the “stimulation of emission-free mobility.” Just what that means isn’t clear. It could involve stronger tax incentives for buying zero-emissions cars, but it could also involve eliminating tax breaks for diesel cars in EU states. Automakers are already worried that tougher emission standards could kill diesels — remove the low cost of ownership and it’d only hasten their demise.

Not that the public would necessarily be worried. Forbes notes that registrations of diesels, still mainstays of the European car market, dropped sharply in numerous EU countries in August. There’s a real possibility that Volkswagen’s emission cheating scandal is having a delayed effect on diesel sales. Combine that with larger zero-emissions incentives and the proposed combustion engine ban, and it might not take much for Europeans to go with electric or hydrogen the next time they go car shopping.

Continue reading “Germany calls for a ban on combustion engine cars by 2030” »

RED PILL!!!!

The hypothesis that we might all be living in a computer simulation has gotten so popular among Silicon Valley’s tech elites that two billionaires are now apparently pouring money into breaking us out of the simulation.

That’s according to a new profile in the New Yorker about Y Combinator’s Sam Altman. The story delves into Altman’s life and successes at the helm of the famous boot-camp and investment fund for tech startups, and doesn’t shy away from the quirkier aspects of Altman’s character.

Continue reading “Two billionaires want to help break humanity out of a giant computer simulation” »

Research funding for AI risk soars:

GiveWell’s main guy Holden Karnofsky decided he was fully on board with the issue of AI risk, and the Open Philanthropy Project has given around $7.5 million total to the issue to date.

The latest funder to make AI a chief concern is the Open Philanthropy Project, anchored by the wealth of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, which this year bumped up artificial intelligence risk to near the top of its priority list. This has led to its biggest grant to the field yet, $5.5 million toward the launch of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, led by UC Berkeley prof and AI pioneer Stuart Russell.

Continue reading “More Concern From Silicon Valley Donors About the Risks of Artificial Intelligence” »

Short new video out on transhumanism via News:

Meet the 2016 presidential candidate who believes humans will eventually live forever.

Last week the U.S. corporation Monsanto, which holds a leading position in the global market of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), reached a licensing agreement with the Broad Institute, Cambridge, USA, on the commercial use of the innovative genome-editing technology CRISPR/Cas9 for agriculture applications. This news has led some experts to believe that Monsanto will now completely switch from producing ‘traditional’ GMOs to ‘genetically edited’ organisms, which are supposedly ‘safer and practically identical’ to their natural alternatives.

Let’s have a closer look at this technology which makes GMO supporters feel so enthusiastic and has been positioned by them as the universal panacea solving all of mankind’s problems. We will also delve deeper into some of the darker aspects of CRISPR/Cas9; the points that biotechnology lobbyists prefer not to discuss.

Continue reading “‘Genetically Edited Organisms’(GME): Monsanto and the CRISPR Genome Editing Technology. Who Would you Trust to ‘Play God’?” »

IVF male children inherit their father’s fertility problems. Hopefully, preimplantation genetic diagnostics (PGD) can help solve this problem for the next generation born via IVF, and it can start solving it TODAY.

Tests on young men conceived via intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection show that they have lower sperm quantity and quality that those conceived naturally.

Follow along with the Exponential Medicine 2016 livestream, presented by Guidewell. Join Singularity University as we explore the convergence of health and technology to catalyze the future of medicine.

Join us on Twitter @ExponentialMed and with #xmed.

Continue reading “Singularity University Live Stream of Exponential Medicine 2016” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVett3htjBM

Interstellar travel is the term used for hypothetical manned or unmanned travel between stars. Interstellar travel will be much more difficult than interplanetary spaceflight; the distances between the planets in the Solar System are less than 30 astronomical units (AU)—whereas the distances between stars are typically hundreds of thousands of AU, and usually expressed in light-years. Because of the vastness of those distances, interstellar travel would require a high percentage of the speed of light, or huge travel time, lasting from decades to millennia or longer.

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