Lifeboat Foundation

Japan and China are racing to build a new type of ultra-fast, levitating train, seeking to demonstrate their mastery over a technology with big export potential.

Magnetic levitation, or maglev, trains use powerful magnets to glide along charged tracks at super fast speeds made possible by the lack of friction. A handful of short distance and experimental maglev trains are already in operation, but Asia’s two biggest economies are vying to develop what would be the world’s first long-distance intercity lines.

The biggest computer chip in the world is so fast and powerful it can predict future actions “faster than the laws of physics produce the same result.”

That’s according to a post by Cerebras Systems, a startup company that made the claim at the online SC20 supercomputing conference this week.

Working with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, Cerebras designed what it calls “the world’s most powerful AI compute system.” It created a massive chip 8.5 inch-square chip, the Cerebras CS-1, housed in a refrigerator-sized computer in an effort to improve on deep-learning training models.

A five-part series on China’s ongoing debate about how technology ought to fit alongside financial services in fintech, and how regulators can ringfence systemic risks around the growth industry in the event of disruptions or defaults.

The newly measured rate of a key nuclear fusion process that forged the first atomic nuclei matches the picture of the universe 380,000 years later.

Glow in the dark wombats.

Scientists find out wombats also glow or have biofluorescence (when under UV light). Not long ago they found out that the platypus also glow.

Australian scientists are surprised to learn that many animals glow under UV light, though more research is required to discover why.

Continue reading “Glow-in-the-dark wombats take scientists by surprise in accidental discovery” »

Here’s what the world’s space agencies hope to learn about the Red planet.

Code Unto Caesar

Durendal’s algorithm wrote scripture about three topics: “the plague,” “Caesar,” and “the end of days.” So it’s not surprising that things took a grim turn. The full text is full of glitches characteristic of AI-written texts, like excerpts where over half of the nouns are “Lord.” But some passages are more coherent and read like bizarre doomsday prophecies.

For example, from the plague section: “O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; When they saw the angel of the Lord above all the brethren which were in the wilderness, and the soldiers of the prophets shall be ashamed of men.”

Telesat Canada is combining with major shareholder Loral Space & Communications to form one public company to finance its Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation.

Telesat Canada and its co-owners Loral Space and Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) revealed Tuesday that Telesat Canada and Loral will become subsidiaries of Telesat Corporation, a new publicly traded Canadian incorporated and controlled company. The company will be headquartered in Ottawa and led by Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg.

“Following the closing of the transaction, Telesat will have access to the public equity markets, providing increased flexibility and optionality to support our promising investment opportunities, including Telesat LEO, which will bridge the digital divide both at home in Canada and around the world, and give our customers the competitive advantage they need to be successful,” Goldberg commented in the news release.

Circa 2012