Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Lifeboat Foundation — Futurism Update — Feb/23/2015 — http://www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

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FORBES: Why Information Security Is Everybody’s Business Now http://www.forbes.com/sites/sungardas/2015/02/05/why-informa…iness-now/

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Physics Week in Review (Valentine’s Edition): February 14, 2015 http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2…A_Facebook

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: How to Choose the Form of an Infographic: It’s All about Context http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/2015/02/10/how…A_Facebook

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: Has there been an erosion of trust in politics since the global economy crashed in 2008? http://wef.ch/1z1XoEy

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By –Singularity Hubhttp://cdn.singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/hyperloop-is-coming-3-1000x400.jpg

Have you heard of the Hyperloop? It’s the concept described as “a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and a bullet train.” Think: Los Angeles to Vegas in 20 minutes or LA to San Francisco in 35 minutes.

A new company called Hyperloop Technologies, Inc. was announced on the cover of Forbes this week, and they are taking on a bold new mission. I’m proud to be a founding director of the company, and very excited about the supercredible team that has come together to make Hyperloop happen.

I sit on the Board of the company along with Shervin Pishevar (major early Investor in Uber, Sherpa Ventures), Joe Lonsdale (Founder Palantir & Formation 8), Jim Messina (Pres. Obama’s Reelection Campaign Manager), David Sacks (Paypal, Yammer), and Brogan BamBrogran (Former SpaceX Engineer, and acting CEO).

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The following is short notice, but we just found out this event is open to the public.

You’re invited!

To an announcement of the formation of a new coalition of organizations focused on space development — with special guests Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Rep. Chaka Fattah.

The Lifeboat Foundation and ten other organizations including the National Space Society and the Space Frontier Foundation are joining together to create a new strategic alliance for space development and commerce. We will be unveiling the details on this new alliance, as well as the details on our joint national legislative campaign to advance space policy in 2015.

We are pleased that Congressmen Chaka Fattah and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher will join us, along with representatives of other space organizations, to explain why this is important to space development, commerce, and settlement, and how we will implement our legislative agenda.

Please join us at the 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, Independence Avenue SW and South Capitol Street SE, Washington D.C. 20003, USA on Feb. 25th at 10 am for the press conference announcing the formation of this exciting new partnership.

The Lifeboat Foundation representative at this event will be Amalie Sinclair who can be contacted at [email protected].

— GigaOM

Quantum computing is still in its infancy, even though the idea of a quantum computer was developed some thirty years ago. But there are a whole load of pioneering organizations (like Google) that are exploring how this potentially revolutionary technology could help them solve complex problems that modern-day computers just aren’t capable of doing at any useful speed.

One such organization is NASA, whose use of D-Wave Systems quantum computing machines is helping it research better and safer methods of space travel, air traffic controls and missions involving sending robots to far-off places, explained Davide Venturelli, a science operations manager at NASA Ames Research Center, Universities Space Research Association. I’ll be speaking with Venturelli on stage at Structure Data 2015 from March 18–19 in New York City and we’ll be sure to cover how NASA envisions the future of quantum computing.

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Matthew Herper — Forbes


TONY COLES COULD have had any job he wanted in the drug industry. In five years at the helm of cancer drug developer Onyx Pharmaceuticals he increased its market cap eightfold by purchasing an experimental blood cancer drug for $800 million, developing it into a big seller and flipping the whole company to Amgen AMGN +1.01% for $10.4 billion in October 2013. He personally made $60 million on the deal. Biotech watchers expected him to start another cancer company or even command a drug giant like Merck or Pfizer PFE −0.29%.

Instead, Coles, 54, is using his own money to build a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup called Yumanity that is using yeast, the microbes that help make bread and beer, to study how misfolded proteins in the brain cause Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease and Parkinson’s, and to create drugs based on that knowledge. There’s already interest from Big Pharma. Coles says he chose to attack brain diseases, not tumors, because the need is so dire and the science is so fresh.

“We’ve got 50 million people around the world who have these diseases, costing $650 billion a year, and lots of families like mine that have been affected,” says Coles. “I had a grandmother who died of the complications of Alzheimer’s disease. I think about my own health as well.”

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By David Linden — Wall Street Journal
Is another human being necessary for satisfying sex? Secretly—and perhaps especially on Valentine’s Day—many people love the idea of somehow being free from the constraint of needing another person to experience the heights of sexual excitement. But they shouldn’t get their hopes up: The state of the art in erotic gadgetry is still very crude, and there are reasons, both technical and deeply human, to doubt that we will soon transcend the familiar bodily requirements of our most urgent desires.Sex robots now on the market can sense the user’s movements or voice and respond accordingly. One is RoxxxyGold the TrueCompanion, a 5’7” tall silicone-and-metal model with measurements of 38−30−37, on sale for $6,995. RoxxxyGold has some sensors in her skin and can respond to your voice and carry on a minimal conversation—but she can’t move her limbs or her face. For those on a budget and not inclined toward romance, one can get a horrific $995 version of Roxxxy with no arms, no legs and no ability to listen to or talk about anything other than sex acts. There’s also a male version called Rocky on offer for $1,495, available with or without razor stubble.

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By Josh Dzieza — The Verge
https://lifeboat.com/blog.images/why-teslas-battery-for-your-home-should-terrify-utilities.jpg
Earlier this week, during a disappointing Tesla earnings call, Elon Musk mentioned in passing that he’d be producing a stationary battery for powering the home in the next few months. It sounded like a throwaway side project from someone who’s never seen a side project he doesn’t like. But it’s a very smart move, and one that’s more central to Musk’s ambitions than it might seem.

To understand why, it helps to look not at Tesla, but at SolarCity, a company chaired by Musk and run by his cousin Lyndon Rive. SolarCity installs panels on people’s roofs, leases them for less than they’d be paying in energy bills, and sells surplus energy back to the local utility. It’s proven a tremendously successful model. Founded in 2006, the company now has 168,000 customers and controls 39 percent of the rapidly expanding residential solar market.

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By — Slate
Man operating drone.

Drones are inescapable in today’s media, whether they’re crashing on the White House lawn, soaring over bubbling Icelandic volcanoes, or being sold at the mall as a hot gift. And as a recent Reuters/Ipsos online poll found, when it comes to drones, many Americans are certifiably creeped-out. A remarkable 42 percent of respondents said that they disapprove of the ownership of drones by private citizens. It’s clear this new industry has a PR problem—and if average Americans aren’t convinced that drones can be a force for good, a promising new area of technological advancement could potentially be stopped in its tracks.

The poll of 2,405 Americans demonstrated that many people harbor “not in my backyard” sentiments when it comes to drones: Seventy-one percent said drones should not be permitted to operate over the property of others, while 64 percent said they hope their neighbors won’t add drone flying to their list of weekend pursuits.

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By Gabriel Popkin — Nautilus
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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
All the parts for making Poppy. Photo: European Commission

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.”