Lifeboat Foundation

Stella Vita is the World’s first ever solar powered campervan capable of a staggering 600 Km on a single charge! Aptly described as a “self-sustaining house on wheels” it comes kitted out with a double bed, sofa, kitchen area, a shower, sink and toilet! This could just be the perfect way to go off-grid…! Robert went to meet the engineers at Eindhoven University of Technology to see it for himself.

0:00 A solar powered campervan?!
1:20 A 3000Km road trip.
3:55 Better than the back of a Tesla.
4:38 Back to Uni.
6:40 600Km of range.
7:12 Everything is lightweight.
8:51 Experimental but comfortable.
9:44 Key design elements.
10:43 Built in this room.
11:35 Robert makes his bid.
12:02 Arriving in Tarifa.
12:50 Can we buy one?
13:30 Bobby’s outro.

Continue reading “World’s FIRST Solar Powered Campervan!” »

[Prof. Marvin Minsky] is a very well-known figure in the field of computing, having co-founded the MIT AI lab, published extensively on AI and computational intelligence, and, let’s not forget, inventing the confocal microscope and, of course, the useless machine. But did you know he also was a co-developer of the first Logo “turtle,” and developed a computer intended to run Logo applications in an educational environment? After dredging some PDP-10 tapes owned by the MIT Media Lab, the original schematics for his machine, the Turtle Terminal TT2500 (a reference to the target price of $2500, in 1970 terms), are now available for you to examine.

The machine itself was created in an interesting way; by affixing discrete socketed TTL chips to a large panel, some three hundred or so, the interconnect was performed automatically using a computer-controlled wiring machine that read the design from magnetic tape. The 2,500 used 16-bit user-definable instructions read from a tiny 4k control store. Instruction microcode was read from a 1k microcode store backed up with 64k of RAM. Unusually, it sported a dual display configuration, with one text display and a second vector display for rendering real-time graphics. The machine was intended to run the Logo programming language developed by [Seymour Papert] and others, but this was impossible due to its tiny control store. Instead, it became a display terminal for a connected computer with sufficient resources. You can read more about this fascinating period of time in AI, the life of [Minsky], and others in this New Yorker article.

Continue reading “Marvin Minsky’s 2500 Logo Computer” »

At least, from a genetic point of view | Science & technology.

After Microsoft launched its SoftCard add-on for the Apple II PC, it released a number of similar cards for IBM PCs, but a few years later the company shut down that hardware division.

A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team.

The concept of a mirror universe has often been studied in theoretical cosmology, and as a new study shows, it might help us solve problems with the cosmological constant.

The Drone Jar creates sound using three square-wave oscillators which modulate against each other to create dynamic tones. These oscillators alone already open up a wealth of sonic possibilities, but combined with the exciting control method, the Drone Jar becomes an inspiring and exploratory way to create music.

Though the Drone Jar is best suited to dark environments where light can be directed at the inputs, it also creates neat results outside in the sun. Check out the video demonstration, which uses a flashing bike light, to hear the endless potential of this little device!

Tesla has added a discount to the new inventory of Model S and Model X vehicles and three years of free Supercharging for deliveries by the end of the quarter.

With the end of the quarter approaching, Tesla is looking to deliver better-looking financial results by not ending it with many vehicles in inventory.

To achieve this, Tesla has regularly applied special discounts or incentives to take delivery of new inventory vehicles by the end of the quarter.

Cuneiform is the oldest known form of writing, but it is so difficult to read that only a few hundred experts around the world can decode the clay tablets filled with wedge-shaped symbols. Now, a team of archaeologists and computer scientists from Israel has created an AI-powered translation program for ancient Akkadian cuneiform, allowing tens of thousands of already digitized tablets to be translated into English instantaneously.

Globally, libraries, museums, and universities have more than half a million clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform. But the sheer number of texts, and the tiny number of Akkadian readers — a language no one has spoken or written for 2,000 years — means just a small fraction of these tablets have been translated.

A new Google Translate-type program may allow armchair archaeologists to try their hand at cuneiform interpretation.