Lifeboat Foundation

Written by Jason Koebler — Motherboard

Remember when a majority of new tech jobs were going to India and China? Well, increasingly, those jobs are going away altogether. Outsourcing, it turns out, is in the early stages of being automated.

This morning, news broke that Yahoo would be laying off at least 400 workers in its Indian office, and back in February, IBM cut roughly 2,000 jobs there. Cisco has been considering cuts in India as well.

Continue reading “Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated” »

Excerpted from “The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us” by Diane Ackerman — Salon.com

Hod Lipson is the only man I know whose first name means “splendor” in Hebrew and a V-shaped wooden trough for carrying bricks over one shoulder in English. The paradox suits him physically and mentally. He looks strong and solid enough to carry a hod full of bricks, but he would be the first to suggest that the bricks might not resemble any you’ve ever known. They might even saunter, reinvent themselves, refuse to be stacked, devise their own mortar, fight back, explore, breed more of their kind, and boast a nimble curiosity about the world. Splendor can be bricklike, if graced by complexity.

His lab building at Cornell University is home to many a skunk-works project in computer sciences or engineering, including some of DARPA’s famous design competitions (agile robots to clean up toxic disasters, superhero exoskeletons for soldiers, etc.). Nearby, two futuristic DARPA Challenge cars have been left like play-worn toys a few steps from a display case of antique engineering marvels and an elevator that’s old and slow as a butter churn.

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Blitzkrieg Foresight!

Let us stop the universal guesswork to make decisions by ignoramuses of supine ignorance, beginning with the elitist “…intellectuals…”, specially those postdoctorals from the Ivy-league and Oxbridge.

You do not make (throughput to output) decisions to be instituted in the past, but in the Continual Present, whose Continuum is hugely connected to the Future.

ALL CONTAINED HERE IS A VERY BRIEF LITERAL EXCERPT OF ANDRES AGOSTINI’S WHITE SWAN BOOK:

Continue reading “Blitzkrieg Foresight! — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn.” »

Sam Chaltain — NEPC

Whenever I want to get a feel for the national mood, I look to Hollywood – and the films it thinks we’ll pay to see. In the post-911 malaise, there was the dystopian world of The Dark Knight. In the era of extended male adolescence, there’s just about anything from Judd Apatow. And now, in the shadow of the Technological Singularity, there are a slew of movies about humankind’s desire to transcend the biological limits of body and brain.

Continue reading “Sam Chaltain: The Singularity is Coming. What Should Schools Be Doing About It?” »

FUTURISM UPDATE (December 09, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Wireless brain sensor-transmitter could unchain neuroscience from cables http://www.kurzweilai.net/wireless-brain-sensor-transmitter-…rom-cables

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Australian researchers set new world record in solar-energy efficiency http://www.kurzweilai.net/australian-researchers-set-new-wor…efficiency

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Spray-on solar sensors for random surfaces http://lnkd.in/e_9vjFR

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (December 09, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn” »

by Dave Taylor — SF Movie Review

At the brink of human destruction, with almost all of the Earth’s population killed by a massive increase in solar storms, one city remains. It’s humanity’s last gasp, complete with artificial cloud cover created and managed by the primitive Automata Pilgrim 7000 robots. Millions of them. All working to keep the last vestige of humanity alive.

In a nod to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, the millions of robots in this dismal future world are ruled by two unalterable, built-in security protocols: Robots are prohibited from harming any form of life and Robots cannot alter themselves or any other robots. But what if they started modifying themselves anyway?

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By Sarah Laskow — Grist

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A team of scientists over in Europe have decided to take the idea of “green” power very, very literally: They have developed a system to harness the energy generated by moss.

Modern Farmer:

Continue reading “Moss can power a radio, and could eventually charge your phone” »

By Michael Molitch-Hou — 3D Printing Industry

Kai Parthy, inventor of the original Laywoo-D3 and Laybrick filaments, is back with an exciting new material for desktop filament fabricators. An extension of his foam PORO-LAY line, Kai has developed a sponge filament he calls Layfomm. Though objects printed with Layfomm are pretty ordinary and stiff, upon initial printing, when they’re dipped in water for two to three days, they become soft and flexible.

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FUTURISM UPDATE (December 06, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

MOSCOW TIMES: King of Thailand Buys Russian Planes for Royal Fleet http://lnkd.in/ejaUFk8

“…Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded…”

MIT Technology Review (blog)- Who Owns the Biggest Biotech Discovery of the Century? http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/532796/who-own…e-century/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (December 06, 2014) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn” »