Lifeboat Foundation

Advocates contend central bank digital currencies can make cross-border transactions easier, promote financial inclusion and provide payment system stability. There are also privacy and surveillance risks with government-issued digital currencies. And in times of economic uncertainty, people may be more likely to pull their funds from commercial banks, accelerating a bank run.

Intense interest in cryptocurrencies and the Covid-19 pandemic have sparked debate among central banks on whether they should issue digital currencies of their own.

China has been in the lead in developing its own digital currency. It’s been working on the initiative since 2014. Chinese central bank officials have already conducted massive trials in major cities including Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou.

Continue reading “Central banks around the world want to get into digital currencies—here’s why” »

Summary: Combining brain activity data with artificial intelligence, researchers generated faces based upon what individuals considered to be attractive features.

Source: University of Helsinki.

Continue reading “Beauty is in the Brain of the Beholder: AI Generates Personally Attractive Images” »

Nearly a half-century after the last Apollo astronaut stepped foot on the moon, NASA is working to send its first woman to the lunar surface. Bill Whitaker reports.

Study describes passive cooling system that aims to help impoverished communities, reduce cooling and heating costs, lower CO₂ emissions.

Passive cooling, like the shade a tree provides, has been around forever.

Recently, researchers have been exploring how to turbo charge a passive cooling technique — known as radiative or sky cooling — with sun-blocking, nanomaterials that emit heat away from building rooftops. While progress has been made, this eco-friendly technology isn’t commonplace because researchers have struggled to maximize the materials’ cooling capabilities.

Just days after SN10 completed the first – albeit hard – Starship prototype landing, SN11 is set to rollout to the launch site for its own attempt. Incremental progress is being made with the test flights, with another tweak to the landing sequence set to be implemented, based on data gained from SN10. Meanwhile, the first Super Heavy prototype continues stacking operations while parts for up to Starship SN20 are being staged at the Production Site.

These future vehicles are set to take up residence at a launch site SpaceX plans to expand, per updated documentation. Starship SN10:

Scientists have discovered how to read unopened 300-year-old letters that had been folded using a mysterious technique.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wq-kmFCrF5Q

“In the three videos, which were posted under the TikTok account @deeptomcruise, someone who appears to be Cruise is seen playing golf, doing a magic trick and awkwardly sharing an anecdote. Everything is practically spot on, from the laugh to the gestures to the facial expressions. But in reality, it’s just Fisher behind the camera, whose image has been warped by deepfake technology.”

It took a lot more work than the average person could handle, says visual effects artist Chris Ume.

Continue reading “Creator of Tom Cruise deepfakes shares how he made those viral TikTok videos” »

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have shown that they can block inflammation in mice, thereby protecting them from liver disease and hardening of the arteries while increasing their healthy lifespan.

Researchers have succeeded in making an AI understand our subjective notions of what makes faces attractive. The device demonstrated this knowledge by its ability to create new portraits that were tailored to be found personally attractive to individuals. The results can be used, for example, in modeling preferences and decision-making as well as potentially identifying unconscious attitudes.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki and University of Copenhagen investigated whether a computer would be able to identify the facial features we consider attractive and, based on this, create new images matching our criteria. The researchers used artificial intelligence to interpret brain signals and combined the resulting brain-computer interface with a generative model of artificial faces. This enabled the computer to create facial images that appealed to individual preferences.

Continue reading “Beauty is in the brain: AI reads brain data, generates personally attractive images” »

“As several people mention in the replies to LenKusov, shooting or otherwise damaging that hefty lithium battery pack could make it explode—which is either very bad if you’re close-range, or exactly what you want if you’re somehow hitting it from a distance and trying for fireworks.”

It turns out that a flip through Spot’s user manual reveals its weaknesses.