Lifeboat Foundation

Huaqiangbei, the world’s largest electronics wholesale market area in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen, has become the latest Wonderland for geeks, the way Tokyo’s Akihabara was to otaku during the tech bubble at the turn of the millennium. Amid the warren of closet-sized shops and makeshift stalls, the latest catalogue of smartphones, LED lights, holograms, electronic parts and every type of gadget imaginable compete for attention and the spending yuan of consumers.

Shenzhen has become an international hotspot for the unmanned aerial vehicle industry, following the global success of drone giant DJI.

Exactly one week after new Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger unveiled plans to reinvent Intel Corp., Arm Ltd. announced version 9 of its architecture and put forth its vision for the next decade. We believe Arm’s direction is strong and compelling as it combines an end-to-end capability, from edge to cloud to the data center to the home and everything in between.

Moreover, it doubles down on Arm’s model of enabling ecosystem partners to add significant value while at the same time maintaining software compatibility with previous generations. We see this as extremely important because the variety of use cases requiring specialized silicon is rapidly expanding in the marketplace, and the Arm architecture is by far in our view the best-positioned to capitalize on this coming wave.

Continue reading “Chip industry battle royal: Arm throws down the gauntlet at Intel’s feet” »

Patient thought, patient labor, and firmness of purpose are almost omnipotent.

A single “super photon” made up of many thousands of individual light particles: About ten years ago, researchers at the University of Bonn produced such an extreme aggregate state for the first time and presented a completely new light source. The state is called optical Bose-Einstein condensate and has captivated many physicists ever since, because this exotic world of light particles is home to its very own physical phenomena.

Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Martin Weitz, who discovered the super photon, and theoretical physicist Prof. Dr. Johann Kroha have returned from their latest “expedition” into the quantum world with a very special observation. They report of a new, previously unknown phase transition in the optical Bose-Einstein condensate. This is a so-called overdamped phase. The results may in the long term be relevant for encrypted quantum communication. The study has been published in the journal Science.

Mars Incorporated has developed an autonomous robot that will follow shoppers around a grocery store to tempt them with candy before they checkout.

The company working on a militarized version of BD’s Spot. It looks like just a straight copy. Sadly, no FB page, and didn’t see any other robots on there besides this. I think some humanoid robot competition would be helpful.

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Privacy & Legal

Elon Musk is going to pay $100 million towards a prize to come up with the best carbon capture technology. (Or so he tweets. Details are scarce so far.)

The maverick tech CEO’s promise is not particularly notable for its generosity. With a net worth of over $200 billion, $100 million is 0.05% of Musk’s wealth.

But still, the richest person in the world’s tweet brings attention to an often-overlooked technology that has been around since the 1970s but has mostly been relegated to niche corners of the energy community.

30 Pieces of silver for the masses.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) just published a report titled Fossil Fuel Foolery, which identified 10 tactics that the fossil fuel industry used as excuses for not accepting accountability for its impacts on the environment and human health. DesmogBlog noted that the industry used a long list of deceptive tactics that concealed environmental destruction harming Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as well as low-income communities. Not surprising — the fossil fuel industry only cares about money, and if the planet and human health stand in the way of that, so be it.

The article gave a snapshot of the report findings, and one of the most disturbing things I took notice of was the common tactic that the NAACP described as “co-opt community leaders and organizations and misrepresent the interests and opinions of communities,” sometimes with financial support, to “neutralize or weaken public opposition.”

Continue reading “The Fossil Fuel Industry Used Deception To Conceal Damage To BIPOC — NAACP Report” »

Public can try pulling faces to trick the technology, while critics highlight human rights concerns.