Lifeboat Foundation

Science is hard. Writing about science can be hard too, although it’s almost never as hard as doing actual science. And yet we science writers tend to get the science wrong a lot. This appears to be the case, to a rather stunning extent, in the instance of the reporting this week around new findings that researchers say shows the rotation of Earth’s inner core is slowing down relative to the spin of the mantle above it.

It helps to visualize this: Earth’s inner core is a solid ball that is surrounded by a fluid outer core. This is how it can rotate at a different pace compared to the planet’s outer layers — it’s essentially spinning at its own pace in a molten ocean at the center of our world… More.

Despite Canva being worth in the region of $26 billion, it appears startups feel there is still plenty to be mined from this ;easy-to-use design platform’ arena. Admittedly, Professional Adobe tools remain fiddly for most people. Perhaps that’s why Berlin-based startup.

Kittl has now raised an €10.8 million ($11.6 million) Series A for its design platform which it claims allow people to “easily turn ideas into graphic products”.

The latest funding round was led by Left Lane Capital. Also participating was Europe’s Speedinvest and a number of angel investors including Intercom Co-Founder Des Traynor, former Bebo CEO Shaan Puri, and product leaders from Calm, Amazon and Instagram.

In the wake of a seminal wave of new artificial intelligence startups such as OpenAI, a new U.K. company claims it can track and rank banks on their ability to develop and deploy AI platforms. Evident, a benchmarking and intelligence company, says its inaugural Index can rank the 23 largest banks in North America and Europe on their competence in AI.

Evident, a benchmarking and intelligence company, says its inaugural Index can rank the 23 largest banks in North America and Europe on their competence in AI.

“As the real-world application of AI accelerates at astonishing speed, we believe that this transformation is too important — for managers, for investors, for society at large — to be happening in a darkened room. Our Index measures the race to banking AI maturity in a way that brings transparency to the top of the agenda,” said Alexandra Mousavizadeh, Evident co-founder and CEO in a statement.

Didn’t they just have record-breaking profits?

There’s an eerie similarity to the statements tech companies have made about their recent layoffs. Mainly, if the press releases are to be believed, the C-suite of every Big Tech company on Earth — well, with the notable exception of Apple, which has not announced layoffs — figured no one would ever go outside or spend money offline again after the pandemic and their various online businesses would stay just as big as they were during the heights of covid.

I do love a heavily lawyered statement that was clearly written by the public relations department! In fact, these are all so similar that they might as well have come from the same PR person… More.

Continue reading “Why are so many tech companies laying people off right now?” »

It’s stupid. It’s funny. And I like it.

Over the past few years, a bunch of tools have been released that use AI to edit video calls in real time so that the caller is making eye contact with the camera. FaceTime can do it. Microsoft Teams can do it. And Nvidia Broadcast can do it, too. (Provided, in each case, you have the necessary hardware or software.)

This tech comes with a bunch of interesting questions, of course.

Continue reading “The best use for AI eye contact tech is making movie stars look straight at the camera” »

The AI-powered Watermark Remover.io effortlessly erases watermarks on copyrighted images in seconds.

The already-contentious relationship between AI and the creative industry might soon get even more complicated thanks to a free-to-use service that can completely remove watermarks from images. Watermark Remover.io (as seen via Creative Bloq.

The functionality of Watermark Remover.

Continue reading “This impressive tool removes watermarks in seconds” »

Theories on how to build a space elevator have been around for decades. Scientists say not only would such technology change humanity, but that we could have built one by now.

#Space #Science #Technology.

Continue reading “Space Elevators Are Getting Closer to Reality” »

What happens when two dynamic (and wildly entertaining) science educators come together to talk about evolution VS. creationism? This podcast answers the question. With Forrest Valkai and Erika / Gutsick Gibbon.

We could be living in the most important century in history. Here’s how Artificial Intelligence might uphold a historical trend of super-exponential economic growth, ushering us into a period of sudden transformation, ending in a stable galaxy-scale civilization or doom. All within the next few decades.

This video is based on Holden Karnofsky’s “most important century” blog post series: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/

Continue reading “Everything might change forever this century (or we’ll go extinct)” »