Lifeboat Foundation

Wondering why this can’t happen here

German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt in a Tesla S at the 2014 AMI Auto Show (Photo: Jens Schlueter/Getty Images)

Diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles officially are an endangered species in Germany, and possibly all of the EU. This after Germany’s Bunderat has passed a resolution to ban the internal combustion engine starting in 2030, Germany’s Spiegel Magazin writes. Higher taxes may hasten the ICE’s departure.

Continue reading “Germany’s Bundesrat Resolves End Of Internal Combustion Engine” »

Smart viruses holding hospital equipment to ransom. Malware that impersonates people you know. Data-altering software that can destroy corporations. Get ready.

A look at the military 10 years into the future—human soldier deaths become unacceptable:

THERE will be no longer be human casualties of war from wealthy countries within 10 years as advanced militaries will begin sending MACHINES to warzones to do their bidding, an expert has claimed.

Material is flexible, cheap, and easy to produce.

CYBATHLON Championship for Athletes with Disabilities.

Watch the Cybathlon live here on 8 October. Livestreaming will start from 9.30 a.m.

These are the 5 hottest emerging technologies in 2016.

MIT is 3D-printing a new type of robot skin that’s a lot more customizable than human skin.

In Brief.

• Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa will share the prize for their design and synthesis of the ‘world’s smallest machines.’
• The state of molecular machines today is at the same level as that of the electric motor in the 1830’

A trio of European scientists brought home the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa were awarded 8 million Swedish krona for their work on molecular machines.

Continue reading “Nanomachines Score The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry” »

Whenever we lose someone close to us, there’s an inclination, a need even, to sort through our memories of that person. Memories not just in our minds, but our digital memories too—emails, texts, photos, videos, social media posts.

But eventually, we have to stop looking through those texts and photos, because after a while, it’s like listening to a song on repeat for too long. The memories are static, they will never change, shift, and grow like the real person, and you just have to move on.

When Eugenia Kuyda lost her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, she wanted to memorialize him in a different way. As the cofounder of Luka, an artificial intelligence startup which recommends books and restaurants through a chat interface, Kuyda worked with her engineering team to collect thousands of Mazurenko’s texts and create a chatbot based on his personality.

Continue reading “What Happens When You Create a Chatbot to Memorialize a Friend” »