Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Nov 5
2023

Tesla to run smaller native version of xAI’s Grōk using local compute power

The first product from Elon Musk-led xAI was announced on Friday, and the CEO has suggested that Tesla’s vehicles may natively run a smaller version of the AI assistant.

On Saturday, X user and Tesla enthusiast Chuck Cook spotted that Musk liked a post saying that a smaller, quantized version of the AI model Grōk would run natively on Tesla with local computing power. Following Cook’s mention, Musk noted that Teslas will likely come with the largest amount of usable inference compute in the world — as long as the vehicles’ AI computer can run the Grōk model.

Provided our vehicle AI computer is able to run the model, Tesla will probably have the most amount of true usable inference compute on Earth.

Nov 5
2023

First plasma fired up at world’s largest fusion reactor

Japan’s JT-60SA tokamak will test technologies put to use in ITER.

Nov 5
2023

Next-Gen $25,000 Tesla EV To Be Produced In Germany: Report

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently had an opportunity to visit the Tesla Giga Berlin-Brandenburg plant in Grünheide near Berlin, Germany. Besides making some pronouncements about interior decor, Musk reportedly let on that the plant is expected to be engaged in making Tesla’s next-generation, affordable electric car model.

According to the Gigafactory Berlin News channel on Twitter/X, which covers plant-related news, Musk announced during his visit that the upcoming €25,000 electric car (known in the U.S. to be a $25,000 electric car) will be produced in Berlin.

Nov 5
2023

Fancy Gyroscopes Are Key To Radio-Free Navigation

Back in the old days, finding out your location on Earth was a pretty involved endeavor. You had to look at stars, use fancy gimballed equipment to track your motion, or simply be able to track your steps really really well. Eventually, GPS would come along and make all that a bit redundant for a lot of use cases. That was all well and good, until it started getting jammed all over the place to frustrate militaries using super-accurate satellite-guided weapons.

Today, there’s a great desire for more accurate navigational methods that don’t require outside communications that can easily be jammed. High-tech gyroscopes have long been a big part of that effort, allowing the construction of inertial navigation systems with greater accuracy than ever before.

Nov 5
2023

World’s most sensitive force sensor measures in ‘quectonewtons’

The quantum behaviours of extremely cold rubidium atoms can be used to detect forces smaller than a tenth of what is needed to lift a single electron.

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Nov 5
2023

New calculations say there are more living cells than grains of sand or stars in the sky

The gargantuan number comes from crunching data on photosynthesis, other means of converting carbon dioxide into organic matter.

Nov 5
2023

First benchmarks back up Apple claims of blazing-fast M3 chip speeds [Updated]

The Geekbench database’s benchmark speed test results show Apple’s on target with its claims about M3 chip speed.

Nov 5
2023

2000-Year Old Charred Manuscripts Reveal Their Secrets

Imagine trying to read a 2000-year old scroll from an ancient civilization. Now imagine that scroll is rolled up, and in a delicate, charred, carbonized form, having been engulfed by the fiery eruption of a volcano. The task would seem virtually impossible, and the information in the scroll lost forever. Right?|

As it turns out, new developments are changing that. Modern scanning techniques and machine learning tools have made it possible to read fragments of the heavily-damaged Herculaneum scrolls. Hopes are now that more of the ancient writings will be salvaged, giving us a new insight into the ancient past.