Lifeboat Foundation

The VR system from HTC and Valve comes with greater sticker shock, but also includes more stuff.

“There are real wolves out there. I happen to believe my computer model when it says that the End-Of-The-World-As-We-Know-It is not only a possibility, but a high probability. As the Chinese proverb says, “If you don’t change direction, you will end up where you are headed.” I think we are headed for disaster. But that thought does not thrill me. And it does not panic me into trying to fashion a world so controlled that it is actually predictable. Rather it energizes me to work toward a vision of a World-That-Works-For-Everyone, including all the nonhuman Everyones, a world in which eight billion people (or preferably fewer) maintain a European standard of living in a way that does not undermine the resource base, a world that evolves and learns and dances and operates from generosity and joy.”

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Interstellar space travel is still a matter of science fiction. With our current propulsion systems, it would take millennia to really travel on an interstellar level. However, science is now looking towards new propulsion systems to make interstellar reach possible in significantly less time.

One such system is called Photonic Propulsion, and it’s an insanely interesting idea. The video you see above is a quick summary of a talk given by Philip Lubin of University of California Santa Barbara. It’s a two minute selected sampling of a much larger talk, which you can watch in the source link below.

Continue reading “Could we get to Mars in 3 days? Nasa’s considering Photonic Propulsion tech” »

Living on a houseboat may seem very romantic, but the day-to-day misery of hauling water from shore and listening to the thump of the generator can soon take the icing off the cupcake. As a glimpse into what could be the future of aquatic living, two Fraunhofer Institutes and their partners are working on a self-sufficient floating home that creates its own water, electricity, and heat without looking like a works barge.

Housing shortages are a recurring problem in many parts of Europe and the canals of Amsterdam and London show that floating homes are hardly a new idea. But such residences must either be situated in the few places where power and water hook-ups are practical or find tenants who don’t mind living off the grid.

To make it feasible to live comfortably without being tied up to a pier, Fraunhofer and its associates have initiated the Lusation autartec project, which is aimed at a Germany that is looking more toward floating homes for both recreation and residency.

Continue reading “Self-sufficient floating home to create its own water and energy” »

Poor, old Pluto. Once considered the ninth planet, it was demoted about a decade ago to “dwarf planet” status, meaning that it has different characteristics than the other major planets of our solar system.

Since then, several other dwarf planets about Pluto’s size or bigger have been discovered.

If all of these dwarf planets —and those yet to be seen — were classified as regular planets, we would have an ever-changing number of planets in our solar system. That would be unsettling to astronomers, so they decided Pluto would better fit into this new classification.

Continue reading “Astronomy: Lots of questions about the existence of mysterious Planet Nine” »

The job advertisement was highly specific: applicants had to be passionate about computer games and live in the UK. Oh, and they also had to be amputees who were interested in wearing a futuristic prosthetic limb.

James Young knew straight away he had a better shot than most. After losing an arm and a leg in a rail accident in 2012, the 25-year-old Londoner had taught himself to use a video-game controller with one hand and his teeth. “How many amputee gamers can there be?” he asked himself.

In the end, more than 60 people replied to the ad, which was looking for a games-mad amputee to become the recipient of a bespoke high-tech prosthetic arm inspired by Metal Gear Solid, one of the world’s best-selling computer games. Designed and built by a team of 10 experts led by London-based prosthetic sculptor Sophie de Oliveira Barata, the £60,000 carbon-fibre limb is part art project, part engineering marvel.

Continue reading “Prosthetics: Amputee James Young unveils hi-tech synthetic arm inspired by Metal Gear Solid” »

The trolls have gone retro.

This is how Aurora are produced…

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Google Brain software engineer Quoc Le shares his belief that artificial intelligence and deep learning will shape the future of the world.