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Steven Kotler — Forbes
singularity-university-summit-europe-1000x400

*This article co-written with author Ken Goffman.

One of the things that happens when you write books about the future is you get to watch your predictions fail. This is nothing new, of course, but what’s different this time around is the direction of those failures.

Used to be, folks were way too bullish about technology and way too optimistic with their predictions. Flying cars and Mars missions being two classic—they should be here by now—examples. The Jetsons being another.

But today, the exact opposite is happening.
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By Michael S. Malone — MIT Technology Review

The view from Mike Steep’s office on Palo Alto’s Coyote Hill is one of the greatest in Silicon Valley.

Beyond the black and rosewood office furniture, the two large computer monitors, and three Indonesian artifacts to ward off evil spirits, Steep looks out onto a panorama stretching from Redwood City to Santa Clara. This is the historic Silicon Valley, the birthplace of Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel and Atari, Netscape and Google. This is the home of innovations that have shaped the modern world. So is Steep’s employer: Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, where personal computing and key computer-­networking technologies were invented, and where he is senior vice president of global business operations.

And yet Mike Steep is disappointed at what he sees out the windows.
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— CoinDesk
Gemini
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss aren’t shy about issuing bold predictions for Gemini, their recently revealed bitcoin exchange project.

Calling it the “NASDAQ or Google of bitcoin”, the president and CEO, respectively, believe Gemini will be the fully regulated, fully compliant and fully banked institution the US bitcoin ecosystem needs to develop to its full potential.

In a new interview with CoinDesk, the brothers – prominent bitcoin investors and two of the largest-known holders of bitcoin – opened up about Gemini, discussing why they feel the exchange can become the market leader in what has been an increasingly active part of the bitcoin space.

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Quartz

Bill Gates hosted a Reddit Ask Me Anything session yesterday, and in between pushing his philanthropic agenda and divulging his Super Bowl pick (Seahawks, duh), the Microsoft co-founder divulged that he is one in a growing list of tech giants who has reservations when it comes to artificial intelligence.

In response to Reddit user beastcoin’s question, “How much of an existential threat do you think machine superintelligence will be and do you believe full end-to-end encryption for all internet activity [sic] can do anything to protect us from that threat (eg. the more the machines can’t know, the better)??” Gates wrote this (he didn’t answer the second part of the question):

I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned. Read more

A revolutionary Finding waits for the final Clinch: c-global

Otto E. Rossler

Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract: The global nature of the speed of light in the vacuum, c, was reluctantly given up by Einstein in December of 1907. A revival of the status c had enjoyed during the previous 2 ½ years, from mid-1905 to late-1907, is in the literature for several years by now. The consequences of c-global for cosmology and black-hole theory are far-reaching. Since black holes are an acute concern to date because there exists an attempt to produce them down on earth, the question of whether a global-c transform of the Einstein field equations can be found represents a vital issue — only days before an experiment that is based on the assumed absence of the new result is about to be ignited. (December 22, 2014, February 6, 2015)

Imagine: Einstein’s c were not just a local constant of nature everywhere, as one reluctantly believes it to be since late 1907, but rather a global constant. Then this return to the original 1905–1907 view would revolutionize physics. For example, cosmic expansion — whose speed by definition is added to the local c — would cease to be a physical option. Second, quantum mechanics would cease to generate problems in its unification with general relativity (or rather vice versa). Thirdly, black holes would be stable and hence show their voraciousness at any — even the smallest — size.

But is the speed of light c not a global constant anyhow in general relativity? While every layman and most every physicist does believe so, this status got actually lost by c in late 1907. To witness, it suffices to have a look at the famous “Shapiro time delay”: Light from a distant satellite is characterized, when grazing the sun on its way towards earth, by an increased travelling time compared to the sun’s absence along the light path [1]. This empirically verified famous implication of Einstein’s equation is canonically believed to reflect a locally masked reduction of the speed of light c in the vicinity of the sun [1]. But with c being a global constant, automatically an increased depth of the space-time funnel present around the sun is the real reason for the delay [2].

Is this unfamiliar proposal the physically correct one?

There are two pieces of evidence in favor of this being so, each individually sufficient. First, the famous “Schwarzschild solution” of the Einstein field equations was shown to possess a global–c transform [3]; hence the global constancy of c exists mathematically. Second, the famous “equivalence principle” between ordinary kinematic acceleration and gravitational acceleration, postulated by Einstein in late 1907, happens to be based solely on special relativity with its well-known global c. The equivalence principle was recently proved to actually non–imply a reduction of c more downstairs in the constantly accelerating extended long Einstein rocketship [4]. A third piece of evidence exists by implication: a global–c transform of the full Einstein field equations – despite the fact that this transform still waits to be written down explicitly.

But why not rather wait with giving c-global a broad visibility in the scientific community, given the embarrassing cosmological consequence which it entails as mentioned? It is c-global’s other big implication (regarding black holes) which justifies and necessitates the visibility. Why?

It is because black holes have a chance to get produced down on earth starting next month [5] .

The official safety report of the experiment [6] is already seven years old. Only an absolutely non-ignorable global–c transform of the full Einstein field equation can apparently force the almost 7 years old LSAG “safety report of the most prestigious experiment of history to be renewed in time. “In time” means: before the re-start at twice world-record energies scheduled for next month [5]. The reward to the scientific journal which accepts this brief note for publication will lie in the emergence-in-time of the existing if not yet made-explicit “global–c Einstein equation.” This task is a superhuman one indeed because finding the transform requires a unique strength of mind (or else serendipity) so that the world likely will have to wait for decades. Therefore, the manpower – the many alerted readers – of this Big Blog is needed as a planetary resource in the face of the rapidly closing time window.

In view of CERN’s open refusal to update its 7 years old Safety Report before the re-start at doubled world-record energies, one cannot be more grateful to Stephen Hawking for his timely warning [7]. There never was a stronger reason to admire this unique person and personality.

I thank Bill Seaman for having alerted me to Stephen Hawking’s latest coup. For J.O.R.

References

[1] I.I. Shapiro, Fourth test of general relativity. Physical Review Letters 13, 789–791 (1964).
[2] A half-3-pseudosphere replaces the Flamm paraboloid: https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/03/ccc-constant-c-catastrophe
[3] O.E. Rossler, Abraham-like return to constant c in general relativity: Gothic-R theorem demonstrated in Schwarzschild metric. Fractal Spacetime and Noncommutative Geometry in Quantum and High Energy Physics 2, 1–14 (2012). Preprint on: http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/chaos.pdf
[4] O.E. Rossler, Equivalence principle implies gravitational-redshift proportional space dilation and hence global constancy of c. European Scientific Journal 10(9), 112–117 (2014).
[5] CERN: see http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/5537/20150101/cern-larg…h-2015.htm
[6] Official LHC Safety Report, latest edition: http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf (note the date 2008)
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJdc3hkcCUc#t=31

Mark Wilson — FastCo

“Obviously, it’s not a thoroughly vetted concept, but I think it’s extremely intriguing where drones might show up,” says Mark Rolston, founder of argodesign. “It would be nice to see them used this way, rather than another military function or more photography.”

The idea was born from a team brainstorming session around how health care could become more accessible. The designers first thought about how they could build a better ambulance, and the rise of autonomous vehicles inspired them to consider a self-driving ambulance. Then they thought of helicopters and drones, and the rest developed from there.

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Ariel Schwartz — FastCo

No matter how many coding initiatives for women and diversity programs are launched, the inescapable fact remains: The tech industry is overloaded with men, especially in the top ranks. It’s an vicious cycle. The more men are hired for top jobs, the more they tend to hire men themselves.

Entrepreneurs Eileen Carey and Lauren Mosenthal believe the best path to gender equality is peer mentorship—that is, mentorship from people at your same skill and career level. So they created Glassbreakers, an online platform that matches women in tech (product managers, software engineers, data scientists, and so on) with peer mentors. It’s a little like online dating for mentors.

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Quartz

Bitcoin’s ideological foe is becoming its saving grace.

To many Bitcoin enthusiasts, the decentralized currency’s allure was that it was designed to exist beyond the reach of government regulation. Free from central banks, its value wasn’t tied to government policies or geopolitical factors.

But now it seems the very regulation its creator or creators (since we don’t actually know who first minted Bitcoin) guarded against is what’s now buoying the cryptocurrency’s price. Read more

By — SingularityHub
http://cdn.singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/microchip-kurzweil-predictions-3-1000x400.jpgIn my new book BOLD, one of the interviews that I’m most excited about is with my good friend Ray Kurzweil.

Bill Gates calls Ray, “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” Ray is also amazing at predicting a lot more beyond just AI.

This post looks at his very incredible predictions for the next 20+ years.

So who is Ray Kurzweil?

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