Lifeboat Foundation

Ready for your new RFID chip; if you fly Delta you will need one for your luggage.

Delta Airlines is trying to prevent lost luggage by using technology to track bags from start to finish… KGUN 9 On Your Side — Tucson’s Source for Local News, Sports, and Weather” lang=” en-US.

Eventually it will be in everything tech. This version by IBM; is not for the masses. However, don’t worry; it’s coming.

Users will eventually be able to contribute and review results in the coming community, which will be hosted on the IBM Quantum Experience. So kudos to IBM for properly managing expectations.

The researchers at IBM have created a quantum processor, made up of five superconducting quantum bits (qubits).

Continue reading “IBM’s Quantum Computing Is For ‘Anyone’, But Is It For Everyone?” »

Interesting approach.

Stump up for science.

I will admit that was a smart move for Amazon.

Amazon has hired an artificial intelligence executive from Xerox’s Parc to head artificial intelligence research and development for its Alexa interactive voice technology.

Nice; let’s hope they hit the right target.

“I need a stealth bomber that’s going to get close, and then it’s going to drop a whole bunch of smalls – some are decoys, some are jammers, some are [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] looking for where the SAMs are. Some of them are kamikaze airplanes that are going to kamikaze into those SAMs, and they’re cheap. You have maybe 100 or 1,000 surface-to-air missiles, but we’re going to hit you with 10,000 smalls, not 10,000 MQ-9s. That’s why we want smalls.”

SAMs stands for “Surface-to-Air Missile,” and they’re one of the reasons that the Air Force has invested so much in stealth technology over the years: if a missile can’t see a plane, it can’t hit it. The problem is that the economics don’t quite work that way: it’s easier to make a new, better missile than it is to make an existing airplane even stealthier, and modern Air Force fighters serve for around 30 years each—longer if they’re bombers. Missiles are generally cheaper than airplanes, so anyone who wants to protect against aerial attack just needs to invest in a lot of missiles.

Continue reading “Air Force wants swarms of small ‘kamikaze’ drones to defeat missiles” »

Hmmm;

The intelligence community’s research arm released its annual solicitation looking for the most innovative ideas the private sector has to offer.

Cell phones do not cause brain cancer.

Mobile phone use has not caused a rise in brain cancer in Australia, says a new study led by the University of Sydney.

1100 Declassified U.S. Nuclear Targets from 1956 on the interactive NukeMap. How many nuclear weapons do you think are necessary for deterrence?

Here in the Lifeboat Blog, I have the luxury of pontificating on existential, scientific and technical topics that beg for an audience—and sometimes—a pithy opinion. Regular Lifeboat readers know that I was recently named most viewed Bitcoin writer at Quora under a Nom de Plume.

Quora is not a typical Blog. It is an educational site. Questions and numerous answers form the basis of a crowd-sourced popularity contest. Readers can direct questions to specific experts or armchair analysts. A voting algorithm leads to the emergence of some very knowledgeable answers, even among laypersons and ‘armchair’ experts.

During the past few weeks, Quora readers asked me a litany of queries about Bitcoin and the blockchain, and so I am sharing selected Q&A here at Lifeboat. This is my professional field—and so, just as with Mr. Trump, I must resist an urge to be verbose or bombastic. My answers are not the shortest, but they are compact. Some employ metaphors, but they explain complex ideas across a broad audience.

Continue reading “Bitcoin Pundicy: A Lifeboat Perspective” »