Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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It’s strange times we’re living in when a blockchain billionaire, not the usual Big Tech suspects, is the one supplying the compute capacity needed to develop generative AI.

It was revealed yesterday that Jed McCaleb, the co-founder of blockchain startups Stellar, Ripple and Mt Gox and aerospace company Vast, launched a 501©(3) nonprofit that purchased 24,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to build data centers that’ll lease capacity to AI projects.

Already, the cluster of GPUs — worth an estimated half a billion dollars and among the largest in the world — is being used by startups Imbue and Character.ai for AI model experimentation, claims Eric Park, the CEO of a newly formed organization, Voltage Park, that’s charged with running and managing the data centers.

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IBM’s announcement of a 1,000+ qubit computer is expected in the next few weeks but the startup might be a few leaps ahead.

Boulder, Colorado-based Atom Computing has beaten tech giant IBM in developing a quantum computer with more than 1,000 qubits. This next-generation quantum computing platform will be available for interested users next year, a company press release said.

Developments in quantum computing have become a race of sorts as businesses from different parts of the world are looking to take the lead in this next frontier of technology. Giants such as Microsoft, Google, and IBM have been working on developing their versions of the complex computer in a domain that is equally accessible to startups.

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According to the Chinese Ministry of State Security, “certain countries” are likely working on incredibly potent ethnic bioweapons.

China has blown the whistle on the potential dangers of what it calls “genetic weapons” that could prove to be an incredibly potent weapon of mass destruction, the Global Times reports. On Monday, October 20, 2023, the Chinese Ministry of State Security released a statement on WeChat warning that a “certain” foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) had recruited Chinese “volunteers” to collect biodiversity distribution data under the guise of biological species research to steal China’s species data.

AnnaStills/iStock.

Bioweapon of mass destruction.

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This haunting formation is located 16,000 light-years from Earth.

Two powerful X-ray telescopes have joined forces to study an eerie-looking celestial entity referred to as the “cosmic hand.” NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) captured vivid and complex features of this haunting formation located 16,000 light-years from Earth.

As per the press release, the images revealed the skeletal-like structure of this ghostly hand-shaped formation in space, depicting its magnetic field patterns.

X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./R. Romani et al. (Chandra); NASA/MSFC (IXPE); Infared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DECaPS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt)

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) captured vivid and complex features of this haunting formation located 16,000 light-years from Earth.

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Siemens and Microsoft team up to introduce the Siemens Industrial Copilot and enhance human-machine collaboration.

Microsoft and Siemens have unveiled a groundbreaking partnership aimed at leveraging generative AI to revolutionize industries on a global scale, Microsoft announced.

This collaboration introduces the Siemens Industrial Copilot, an AI-powered assistant designed to enhance human-machine cooperation, particularly in the manufacturing sector significantly. The joint initiative represents a substantial leap forward in AI technology, intending to accelerate innovation and streamline operations across diverse industries.

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NVIDIA looking to ramp up chip production in the face of supply shortage.

NVIDIA, the most profitable chip-making company in the world, has unveiled a custom large language model, the technology on which artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT are based, which the company has developed for their internal use.

Trained on NVIDIA’s proprietary data, “ChipNeMo” will generate and optimize software and provide assistance to human designers in building semiconductors. Developed by NVIDIA researchers, ChipNeMo would be highly beneficial in the context of the company’s work in graphics processing, artificial intelligence, and other technologies.

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The robot guide dog possesses the ability to respond to tugs on a leash.

Researchers have created a robot guide dog to make life easier for the visually impaired with its ability to respond to tugs on a leash. The team of engineers at Binghamton University’s Computer Science Department in New York State has been developing a robotic seeing-eye dog to improve accessibility for those who are visually impaired. Last year, they performed a trick-or-treating exercise with its quadruped robotic dog.

Now, they have demonstrated a robot dog leading a person down a lab hallway, confidently and carefully reacting to directive instructions. Engineers were surprised that throughout the visually impaired… More.

Stephen Folkerts ‘24.

The team of engineers at Binghamton University’s Computer Science Department in New York State has been developing a robotic seeing-eye dog to improve accessibility for those who are visually impaired. Last year, they performed a trick-or-treating exercise with its quadruped robotic dog.

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An international team of scientists has proposed a new remote monitoring method of nuclear stockpiles using mirrors and radio waves.

An international team of scientists has devised an innovative method of using radio waves to monitor a nation’s nuclear stockpile remotely. Conducted by a team of IT security experts from Germany and the United States, it could be used to build trust between nuclear powers to ensure rivals are keeping their promises when it comes to agreed nuclear disarmament treaties. It could also be used to give a “heads up” if one particular nuclear power removes stored nuclear warheads, which could be an indication of intended use.

Johannes Tobisch et al 2023.

Remote nuke monitoring.

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The Melanoma Treating Soap (MTS) was created using cancer-fighting chemicals, mainly Imidazoquinoline, integrated with a nanolipid-based particle transporter.

As child prodigies emerge in the world of innovation at younger ages than ever before, a 14-year-old student named Heman Bekele, residing in Fairfax, Virginia, developed a soap called MTS (Melanoma Treating Soap) to treat skin cancer.

Bekele’s efforts earned him the top prize in the 3M Young Scientist’s Challenge this year, a competition that motivates children to devise innovative solutions for common issues.

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Ballmer is already richer than Google Boys and the CEO of the social media giant Meta.

Steve Ballmer, who started his career as an assistant to Bill Gates, then president of Microsoft, is set to overtake his former employer and become the fourth richest person in the world, Markets Insider.

The report uses information from Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, which tracks the estimated personal fortunes of billionaires from around the world. The list mostly features entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or Bill Gates, who have struck gold with the companies they founded. However, Ballmer is quite the exception since he does not own a company or has never established one.

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