Lifeboat Foundation

Ever left the house and immediately regretted your choice of pastel shirt? Well, a new colour-changing thread developed by researchers in the US could soon make that feeling a thing of the past — and could also open up the possibility of using our garments as tactile displays we wear on our bodies.

Not only could you switch from a black t-shirt to a green one, you could also change the logo on your top. We’re still a long way from that, but this new technology, called Ebb, is showing plenty of promise, and could eventually lead to brand new types of smart clothing.

The colour-shifting threads change their hues in response to electrical charges. It’s being developed as part of Google’s Project Jacquard — one of the company’s spin-off endeavours that’s looking into the potential of making our clothing touch-sensitive and interactive.

Continue reading “New ‘smart threads’ can change the colour of your clothes instantly” »

Google’s Project Soli was one of the highlights of the company’s developer conference last year, but there’s been little news about it since then.

The technology uses special radar-sensors packed in a tiny chip to detect a person’s physical movements (such as rubbing two fingers together), letting a person do things like turn the volume up on a radio without actual touching anything.

The recent news that Regina Dugan, the head of the Advanced Technology and Projects lab at Google that oversaw Soli, jumped ship to go work at rival Facebook, did not seem like a good sign for the future of Soli. And with Microsoft’s recent unveiling of similar technology, Google’s impressive product demo last year seemed like it might not make it out of the lab.

Continue reading “Google is quietly making progress on one of its most jaw-dropping tech projects” »

Despite the fact that they’re still unsure of how it works exactly, NASA scientists have confirmed once again that the seemingly impossible EmDrive is legit.

Michio Kaku.

The 69-year-old bestselling author, theoretical physicist and futurist takes a longer, more pragmatic view, calling AI an end-of-the-century problem. He adds that even then, if humanity’s come up with no better methods to constrain rogue AI, it’ll be a matter of putting ‘a chip in [artificially intelligent robot] brains to shut them off.’

Artificial intelligence (AI) will end us, save us or—less jazzy-sounding but the more probable intersection of both—eventually obsolete us. From humbling chess grandmaster losses at the hands of mathematically brilliant supercomputers to semantic networks with the linguistic grasp of a four-year-old, one thing seems certain: AI is coming.

Continue reading “The World’s Smartest People Speak on Artificial Intelligence” »

New reports that Russia is considering lava tubes as habitat; here’s one from my lava tube archives…

Nearside of Moon, by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With only a trace of an exosphere, future lunar astronauts working nights outside will likely feel as if they are walking a catwalk through space itself.

Continue reading “Life In A Lunar Lava Tube: Nearside Tunnels As Ready-Made Moonbases” »

We could see commercials for the “Spotless Mind” someday and in various releases. However, why stop there?

Recently, scientists did find the gene that ties serial and mass murders together as a cause for their evil deeds and CRISPR could someday eliminate these people from existing which is a great thing. However, what happens if folks in power believe everyone in Europe and the US cannot have any religious belief and/ or values in order (in their own belief) to keep everyone equal; so they use this technolgy to eradicate how people believe or view the world. Just imagine; like John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

Jim Carrey’s role as shy and morose Joel Barish in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is deeply memorable in the context of his predominantly comedic repertoire of movie roles. And context is everything when it comes to recollection of memories. Though the kind of memory erasing technologies showcased in Eternal Sunshine may be too farfetched to ever become reality, scientists have nonetheless managed to make astounding progress in understanding and manipulating memories.

Continue reading “A breakthrough in science of memory: How a ‘Spotless Mind’ could soon be Reality” »

CRISPR to take bio- and dirty-bombs to new levels.
Great; however, QC needs to be front and center on this; or, I see a bunch of funding spent on research that will be render useless by the time it goes to market due to the progress in QC.

I truly feel bad for the labs who are having to tests for bio- and dirty-bomb material. Really a dangerous job.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking for research proposals to develop a system that would enable the government and law enforcement to identify the actual individual behind a cyber attack.

Continue reading “DARPA looking to develop new technology to ID cybercriminals” »

Harold Cohen, an abstract painter who developed Aaron, one of the first and eventually one of the most complex computer software programs for generating works of art, died on April 27 at his home in Encinitas, Calif. He was 87.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his son, Paul, said.

Mr. Cohen was a painter growing weary with the traditional practice of art in the late 1960s when he taught himself, out of curiosity, how to program a computer.

Continue reading “Harold Cohen, a Pioneer of Computer-Generated Art, Dies at 87” »

A Chinese robot is set to compete with grade 12 students during the country’s national college entrance examination next year and get a score qualifying it to enter first-class universities.

The robot being designed will appear in three exams – math, Chinese and a comprehensive test of liberal arts, which includes history, politics and geography, said Lin Hui, CEO of an artificial intelligence company in Chengdu.

The robot will have to finish the exams during designated periods like the other examinees. It will take its exams in a closed room with just proctors and a notary present.

Continue reading “Robot to sit for China’s national college entrance exam” »