Lifeboat Foundation

The military’s primary advanced research shop wants to be a leader in the “third wave” of artificial intelligence and is looking at new methods of visually tracking objects using significantly less power while producing results that are 10-times more accurate.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been instrumental in many of the most important breakthroughs in modern technology—from the first computer networks to early AI research.

“DARPA-funded R&D enabled some of the first successes in AI, such as expert systems and search, and more recently has advanced machine learning algorithms and hardware,” according to a notice for an upcoming opportunity.

Data from ESA’s Gaia star mapping satellite have revealed tantalizing evidence that the nearest star cluster to the Sun is being disrupted by the gravitational influence of a massive but unseen structure in our galaxy.

If true, this might provide evidence for a suspected population of ‘dark matter sub-halos’. These invisible clouds of particles are thought to be relics from the formation of the Milky Way, and are now spread across the galaxy, making up an invisible substructure that exerts a noticeable gravitational influence on anything that drifts too close.

Continue reading “Tantalizing Evidence: Is the Nearest Star Cluster to the Sun Being Destroyed?” »

Introducing a new SpaceX concept for the most efficient, modular, artificial gravity space station ever imagined.

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Continue reading “SSS Pt 1: What Would A SpaceX Space Station Look Like?” »

The lives of infomorphs (or ‘cyberhumans’) who have no permanent bodies but possess near-perfect information-handling abilities, will be dramatically different from ours. Infomorphs will achieve the ultimate morphological freedom. Any infomorph will be able to have multiple cybernetic bodies which can be assembled and dissembled at will by nanobots in the physical world if deemed necessary, otherwise most time will be spent in the multitude of virtual bodies in virtual enviro… See More.

“I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the Universe.” — Buckminster Fuller

The term ‘Infomorph’ was first introduced in “The Silicon Man” by Charles Platt in 1991 and later popularized by Alexander Chislenko in his paper “Networking in the Mind Age”: “The growing reliance of system connections on functional, rather than physical, proximity of their elements will dramatically transform the notions of personhood and identity and create a new community of distributed ‘infomorphs’ — advanced informational entities — that will bring the ongoing process of liberation of functional structures from material dependence to its logical conclusions. The infomorph society will be built on new organizational principles and will represent a blend of a superliquid economy, cyberspace anarchy and advanced consciousness.”

Continue reading “First Look Over the Event Horizon of Singularity: Your Future Life as a Cyberhuman” »

Necessity truly can be the mother of invention. A new university president explains how the pandemic forced massive changes at his institution — and why smart use of technology was invaluable.

During the pandemic, the National Museum of Mathematics found new ways to build human connections.

Satellite delivery isn’t exactly cutting-edge tech these days. Lately it feels like SpaceX is doing that every week. Liftoff usually starts with a ground-based rocket, which is expensive and time-consuming to launch. Aevum believes its massive Ravn X drone can do it better, for less money.

At 80 feet long and 18 feet tall, the Ravn X is the world’s biggest drone, says Aevum. Driven by Aevum’s proprietary software, the drone would fly itself to a specified altitude, where it would launch a rocket to deliver a payload of small satellites to low Earth orbit. Click the video above for more on the delivery process.

The launch system is 70% reusable, Aevum said. CEO Jay Skylus hopes to get that close to 100%.

A team of researchers at the University of Georgia has created a backpack equipped with AI gear aimed at replacing guide dogs and canes for the blind. Intel has published a News Byte describing the new technology on their Newsroom page.

Technology to help blind people get around in public has been improving in recent years, thanks mostly to smartphone apps. But such apps, the team notes, are not sufficient given the technology available. To make a better assistance system, the group designed an AI system that could be placed in a backpack and worn by a blind person to give them much better clues about their environment.

Continue reading “AI-equipped backpack allows the blind to walk in public without dogs or cane” »

Nitinol, a “memory” metal that can remember its original shape when heated, is an industrial gem that will play a key role in NASA’s next mission to Mars.

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Continue reading “How a metal with a memory will shape our future on Mars” »