Lifeboat Foundation

Univ. of Texas | Phys.org

“The study supports previously published research that has found online learning to be equally or more effective than in-person instruction. The new study, however, delves further by examining the evolution of learning in digital spaces, including various approaches to credentialing and assessment beyond the traditional grading scale and diploma. Future technology structures that bear no resemblance to current learning management systems are described as part of the tool set for the 21st century education.”

Read more

But if so, it means the end of earth soon. This frequently published result is contradicted by no one in physics. The lobby just bets on the media remaining quiet.

It is ironic that so many physicists take their children hostage. This is because the media do not ask them why they are not afraid. For then they would start to stutter and their children would begin to ask questions. Even Stephen Hawking could no longer afford to skirt the issue.

The ultimate reason, of course, is Einstein. He alone can help. The “happiest thought of my life,” as he always said, has a further consequence (c-global). Ask your teachers about it. You will learn they have no idea. This is at the root of the problem: irrational dogmatism. Worse to date than in the middle ages because the consequences do not hurt a minority of women: this time around everyone is the victim.

The poor witches on the stakes probably foresaw it all since no one else had a closer look at the nature of human society. So only in Auschwitz later on, after the doors were closed. Please, do change your attitude, poor consensus-based society without a heart: Why not show the world that you love your children, my dear physicist colleagues? Do stand the trial that you are under in the face of a watching globe!

Continue reading “No one knows at what Likelihood Black Holes will be produced in June at CERN” »

David Auerbach | Slate

“Twitter’s strength is being the pulse of the Internet, the place where news gets broken in 140-character messages, where important topics start trending the second they enter the collective hivemind, and where politicians and celebrities and thinkers of all stripes can make announcements without the bother of a press release or the filter of the media. Yet this has always made Twitter Janus-faced: Is it a real-time news aggregator or a social network? More importantly, how will it make money?” Read more

The Economist

“The employment of drones for nefarious, or potentially nefarious, purposes thus seems to have begun in earnest. It is only a matter of time before somebody attempts to use a drone, perhaps carrying an explosive payload, to cause serious damage or injury. The question for the authorities is how to try to stop this happening.” Read more

Amir Mizroch | Wall Street Journal

“Facebook’s AI research is currently being used in image tagging, predicting which topics will trend, and face recognition. All of these services require algorithms to sift through vast amounts of data, like pictures, written messages, and video, to make calculated decisions about their content and context. Facebook has a big advantage over university campuses who have toiled for decades in the field. It can vacuum up the reams of data required to ‘teach’ machines to make correlations.” Read more

Scott Andes & Mark Muro | Brookings Institute

“The substantial variation of the degree to which countries deploy robots should provide clues. If robots are a substitute for human workers, then one would expect the countries with much higher investment rates in automation technology to have experienced greater employment loss in their manufacturing sectors…Yet the evidence suggests there is essentially no relationship between the change in manufacturing employment and robot use.” Read more

Andy Greenberg — Wired
It’s taken close to half a decade. But WikiLeaks is back in the business of accepting truly anonymous leaks.

On Friday, the secret-spilling group announced that it has finally relaunched a beta version of its leak submission system, a file-upload site that runs on the anonymity software Tor to allow uploaders to share documents and tips while protecting their identity from any network eavesdropper, and even from WikiLeaks itself. The relaunch of that page—which in the past served as the core of WikiLeaks’ transparency mission—comes four and a half years after WikiLeaks’ last submission system went down amid infighting between WikiLeaks’ leaders and several of its disenchanted staffers. Read more

Katie M. Palmer and Neel V. Patel — Wired

You’d be forgiven for forgetting, but Elon Musk and Richard Branson aren’t the only billionaire magnates at the helm of a spacecraft company, gunning to rule the future of privatized space flight. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has been flying under the radar—but at long last, the company yesterday launched its flagship suborbital spacecraft from its West Texas proving grounds in a developmental test flight.

Video released by the company shows the spacecraft, called New Shepard, blasting off to an altitude of 307,000 feet before its crew capsule separates from a propulsion module. Named after the first US astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, the craft is meant to take off and land vertically, utilizing a reusable first-stage booster—the same approach SpaceX is using in its Falcon 9 rocket. Read more

By Phil McKenna — MIT Technology Review

Seeking to expand its business beyond electric vehicles, Tesla Motors will sell stationary batteries for residential, commercial, and utility use under a new brand, Tesla Energy.

Tesla is launching the home battery business partly because it’s already making vehicle batteries—and as a result it can benefit from the economies of scale that come from making both. Another reason is that the market for storage is expected to grow in concert with the use of solar power. Tesla needs both electric vehicles and solar power to boom if it hopes to fulfill the projected output from a vast $5 billion battery “gigafactory” it’s building in Nevada.

Read more