Lifeboat Foundation

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” »

New story and video on transhumanism from Vocativ:

His name is Zoltan Istvan, and he’s running on the Transhumanist ticket.

Continue reading “The transhumanist presidential candidate wants you to live forever” »

Still trying to figure out how Luxembourg got a space program.

(AFP) Luxembourg has staked its claim to the final frontier with an ambitious plan to profit from the mining of asteroids, the government said Thursday.

The Grand Duchy has joined forces with American company Deep Space Industries (DSI) to cash in on the wealth of natural resources thought to exist on asteroids.

Continue reading “Luxembourg reaches for the stars with asteroid mining deal” »

“Facebook Inc. will soon lose a high-profile player in its virtual-reality push.”

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“Daniel Chao, a Stanford-trained neuroscientist, and Brett Wingeier, a biomedical engineer, founded Halo Neuroscience in 2013. … Halo Sport uses electrodes to stimulate the brain’s motor cortex, which controls planning and voluntary movements. Energized motor neurons send stronger signals to athletes’ muscles, which Chao says allows them to reap greater rewards from every rep.”

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“A question of particular philosophical urgency today is this: are virtual realities currently being designed in 3d game studios going to be more or less of a retreat from reality than the consensual fictions of the past, such as 2d games, novels, sporting events and religious mythologies?”

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