Lifeboat Foundation

By Gabriel Popkin — Nautilus

I’ve never seen the computer you’re reading this story on, but I can tell you a lot about it. It runs on electricity. It uses binary logic to carry out programmed instructions. It shuttles information using materials known as semiconductors. Its brains are built on integrated circuit chips packed with tiny switches known as transistors.

In the nearly 70 years since the first modern digital computer was built, the above specs have become all but synonymous with computing. But they need not be. A computer is defined not by a particular set of hardware, but by being able to take information as input; to change, or “process,” the information in some controllable way; and to deliver new information as output. This information and the hardware that processes it can take an almost endless variety of physical forms. Over nearly two centuries, scientists and engineers have experimented with designs that use mechanical gears, chemical reactions, fluid flows, light, DNA, living cells, and synthetic cells.

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Prague Post

An the open-source, 3D-printed robot is set to inspire innovation in classrooms

Meet Poppy, the first completely open-source, 3D printed, humanoid robot (@poppy_project). Poppy is a robot that anybody can build and program. That means it’s not just a tool for scientists and engineers: the team of developers aims to make it part of vocational training in schools, giving students the opportunity to experiment.

Poppy was developed in France by Inria’s Flowers team, which creates computer and robotic models as tools for understanding developmental processes in humans. Dr Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, who holds an ERC Starting Grant in Computer Science and Informatics, explains: “Very little has been done to explore the benefits of 3D printing and its interaction with computer science in classrooms. With our Poppy platform, we are now offering schools and teachers a way to cultivate the creativity of students studying in areas such as mechanics, computer science, electronics and 3D printing.”

by Darrell Etherington — TechCrunch

Apple is working on a car, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Mac maker kicked off a top-secret project to develop an electric car with a minivan aesthetic, per the WSJ’s sources, after CEO Tim Cook approved the project nearly a year ago. It includes “hundreds” of staffers and is led by Ford Motor vet and Apple VP Steve Zadesky. The project involves research into battery tech, robotics and metal production, according to the paper.

The report comes hot on the heels of a Financial Times story confirming Apple R&D efforts around car tech, and goes further than either that report or an earlier one from Business Insider wherein an Apple employee reportedly confirmed some kind of car-focused project. As I wrote earlier, it makes perfect logical sense that Apple would focus some effort on this area, given the direction in which the tech industry in general is headed.

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c-global means that the speed of light in the vacuum, c, can no longer be added-on to other speeds like a global expansion speed.

Hence three historical events have the same structure:

• The “phlogiston” theory of fire got superseded by Lavoisier’s discovery of oxygen
• The “miasma” theory of infection got superseded by Semmelweis’ discovery of asepsis
• The “big-bang” theory of the cosmos got superseded by the discovery of c-global

A collateral consequence of c-global is the fact that the deliberate attempt to produce black holes down on earth, scheduled to re-start at doubled energies in two months’ time, cannot be allowed without a prior disproof of c-global. Otherwise the re-start becomes a crime.

I thank Stephen Hawking for his recent public acknowledgment of the danger.

Andrew Liszewski — Gizmodo

We haven’t seen much of Boston Dynamic’s four-legged self-balancing Big Dog robot since it was last spotted hurling cinder blocks in a lab. And that’s maybe because the company’s robotic geniuses have been hard at work building a smaller more agile version called Spot that weighs just 160 pounds so it can safely operate both indoors and out.

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By Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub

One of my old professors used to say calculus is the language of the universe. Now, every so often, I’ll watch trees in the wind, cars on the road, or clouds rolling by, and see equations made manifest.

Though the world appears incomprehensibly huge and endlessly varying, all that mind-boggling complexity emerges from a shared set of instructions. Instructions that, until relatively recently, we couldn’t see, let alone understand.

But of course, this is no longer the case. Each year we learn more about the laws governing how particles interact to form atoms, stars, and galaxies; the chemical axioms behind reactions and materials; and the molecular code directing the assembly and evolution of every living thing on the planet.

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By: Press Trust of India — The Indian Express

A robot-staffed hotel, said to be the world’s first, is set to open in Japan in July where guests checking into the futuristic facility will be greeted and served by remarkably human-like robots.

Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in typical Dutch style in terms of its architecture in Nagasaki Prefecture has unveiled plans to open the modern hotel with robot staff and other advanced technologies to significantly reduce operating costs.
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Brendan Byrne — Value Walk

The 3D-printed plastic body is mounted on a carbon fiber chassis, which keeps the weight of the vehicle to a minimum. “Despite being an urban concept car, it is no slouch and can reach a top speed of 60 kilometers per hour, while maintaining low-energy consumption,” said computer engineering student Ilmi Bin Abdul Wahab, who currently lives in a GEM Singapore condo, and led the development of NV8.

A separate group of students at the university built another car, named NTU Venture (NV) 9. This three-wheeled racer makes use of tilting technology inspired by motorcycle racing to allow it to take corners at high speeds.

“The resulting design looks like a fusion between a F1 race car and a glider plane, with an all surround canopy for increased visual awareness,” said NV9 team manager Winston Tan, who is studying electrical and electronic engineering.
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by John Biggs — TechCrunch

Bitcoin mining is not a pretty business. It requires lots of specialized servers that are essentially unusable for normal computing and lots of cooling. But when you bring thousands of miners together in the same room, things really get ugly.

Motherboard has some fascinating footage of a bitcoin mine in Liaoning Province, China. The mine, set up in an unused factory, is a snakes’ nest of wires and high-powered fans, a sort of high-tech server farm that is so resource-intensive that it has to be optimized to a fault.
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