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Inverts the traditional diagram of an earth-based foundation, instead depending on a space-based supporting foundation from which the tower is suspended. This system is referred to as the Universal Orbital Support System (UOSS). By placing a large asteroid into orbit over earth, a high strength cable can be lowered towards the surface of earth from which a super tall tower can be suspended.

Analemma is a proposal for the world’s tallest building ever. Harnessing the power of planetary design thinking, it taps into the desire for extreme height, seclusion and constant mobility. If the recent boom in residential towers proves that sales price per square foot rises with floor elevation, then Analemma Tower will command record prices, justifying its high cost of construction.

Full project description: cloudsao.com/ANALEMMA-TOWER

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A rebuttal of the ‘only for the rich’ objection often raised against the development of rejuvenation biotechnologies.


Some people are worried that rejuvenation might be a privilege accorded only to the rich. It’s okay to be concerned that this might happen, because if enough people are concerned about it, it’s more likely that we will actually do what it takes prevent this from happening. However, some people aren’t just concerned about it; they are argue that, to forestall the risk that rejuvenation may be something only few can afford, it should be never developed in the first place. This is an extremely flawed line of reasoning, for several reasons.

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Artificial intelligence is not a vague concept we picked up from a science fiction novel. It is the single biggest technology trend since the Internet, and the money-making potential is huge.

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are all ready to soar on the winds of change. Most people expect it to be a zero-sum game, but their varying strengths will allow them all to succeed.

Microsoft is likely going to own the enterprise segment. Amazon will probably win the consumer device fight, and Google could become a healthcare giant.

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And yet, as impressive and powerful as these new technologies and machines are—and they’re becoming more so all the time—I believe they’re an opportunity to be embraced by accountants.

Computers and software have evolved to a point where they can populate spreadsheets, crunch numbers, and generate financial statements and earnings reports more quickly and accurately than any human accountant. In fact, machines are already taking on many of an accountant’s old, routine, administrative chores—on-line tax returns, and book-keeping software, are great examples of routine work that accountants no longer have to do.

This is a good thing. It is already allowing for human accountants to be more sophisticated advisors and planners. In this way, technology can be best used as a tool that gives humans more space to focus on analysis, interpretation, and strategy. In other words, computers have enormous potential to empower—rather than displace—accountants.

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We’ve created the world’s first Spam-detecting AI trained entirely in simulation and deployed on a physical robot.

Our vision system successfully flagging a can of Spam for removal. The vision system is trained entirely in simulation, while the movement policy for grasping and removing the Spam is hard-coded. Our detector is able to avoid other objects, including healthy ones such as fruit and vegetables, which it never saw during training.

Deep learning-driven robotic systems are bottlenecked by data collection: it’s extremely costly to obtain the hundreds of thousands of images needed to train the perception system alone. It’s cheap to generate simulated data, but simulations diverge enough from reality that people typically retrain models from scratch when moving to the physical world.

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