Lifeboat Foundation

Mark Zuckerberg said it was “ridiculous” for people to think that he changed Facebook’s name to Meta because of the recent wave of backlash.

The CEO told The Verge in an interview — which was published shortly after the name change was announced Thursday — that the current news cycle had no effect on the decision.

“Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing,” Zuckerberg told the outlet. “If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in.”

3D solar towers circa 2016.

Improving Efficiency

Most solar panels are placed flat on rooftops because they are designed to harness solar energy when the sun is directly overhead. However, when the angle of the sun’s rays hitting the panel changes, traditional panels quickly become less efficient.

Continue reading “MIT Is Building 3D Solar Towers, and So Far They Have Achieved Phenomenal Results” »

The Team Seas event is live. For every $1 raised they will remove 1 pound of plastic from the ocean. Please support this event by watching supporting videos and material and donating.

‘Optical Accelerators’ ditch electricity, favoring light as an exchange medium.

Researchers with IBM and Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute have developed “optical accelerators” — optical switches that use light instead of electricity to convey state changes and transmit information. The inventors claim an up to 1,000x speedup compared to traditional transistor-based switches — and there are applications for both classical and quantum computing.

If China — and then Russia and other nuclear powers — get gliders, however, these defensive systems will be obsolete. Nuclear payloads could then zip around the South Pole instead, for instance. They’d never even exit the atmosphere. And they could change their trajectory, being controlled all along by a Chinese operator with a joystick.

All this makes China sound menacing and aggressive. In that sense, the news seems to rhyme with revelations that China is also building a couple of hundred silos for more conventional intercontinental missiles that could carry nukes.

In reality, China probably appears so aggressive only because it feels incredibly insecure. The greatest fear in Beijing is that in an escalating conflict — over Taiwan or whatever else — the U.S. might be tempted one day to launch preemptive nuclear strikes to take out all or most of China’s arsenal. The Americans would only contemplate such a drastic step, of course, if they thought that their own defenses could parry any remaining missiles coming from China in retaliation.

While the metaverse might seem like a far off dream, more fit for the pages of a Neal Stephenson novel than reality, some are already attempting to cash in the concept — and even provide a digital workforce for it.

Enter Soul Machines 0 a New Zealand-based company that says it’s designing AI-driven digital humans for clients to use for things like customer service, promotional videos, and education. However, the company also has its sights set on the future — with co-founder Greg Cross saying it plans to create a “digital workforce” for a potential metaverse, according to The Verge.

Continue reading “A Startup Is Creating Digital Human Servants to Work in the Metaverse” »

Quantum physicists at the University of Copenhagen are reporting an international achievement for Denmark in the field of quantum technology. By simultaneously operating multiple spin qubits on the same quantum chip, they surmounted a key obstacle on the road to the supercomputer of the future. The result bodes well for the use of semiconductor materials as a platform for solid-state quantum computers.

One of the engineering headaches in the global marathon towards a large functional quantum computer is the control of many basic memory devices—qubits—simultaneously. This is because the control of one qubit is typically negatively affected by simultaneous control pulses applied to another qubit. Now, a pair of young quantum physicists at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute working in the group of Assoc. Prof. Ferdinand Kuemmeth, have managed to overcome this obstacle.

Global qubit research is based on various technologies. While Google and IBM have come far with quantum processors based on superconductor technology, the UCPH research group is betting on semiconductor qubits—known as spin qubits.

An international team of researchers wants to find people who are genetically resistant to SARS-CoV-2, in the hope of developing new drugs and treatments.

Imagine being born naturally resistant to SARS-CoV-2, and never having to worry about contracting COVID-19 or spreading the virus. If you have this superpower, researchers want to meet you, to enrol you in their study.

As described in a paper in Nature Immunology¹ this month, an international team of scientists has launched a global hunt for people who are genetically resistant to infection with the pandemic virus. The team hopes that identifying the genes protecting these individuals could lead to the development of virus-blocking drugs that not only protect people from COVID-19, but also prevent them from passing on the infection.

Continue reading “The search for people who never get COVID” »

SpaceX had to fix the toilet on its capsule before this mission could fly.

Early in the morning on October 31st, SpaceX will launch its next astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, part of the company’s Crew-3 mission. Liftoff is scheduled for 2:21AM ET out of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Continue reading “How to watch SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station” »