Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Circa 2018

After 12 years of work, researchers at the University of Manchester in England have completed construction of a “SpiNNaker” (Spiking Neural Network Architecture) supercomputer. It can simulate the internal workings of up to a billion neurons through a whopping one million processing units.

The human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons, exchanging signals through hundreds of trillions of synapses. While these numbers are imposing, a digital brain simulation needs far more than raw processing power: rather, what’s needed is a radical rethinking of the standard computer architecture on which most computers are built.

Continue reading “Million-core neuromorphic supercomputer could simulate an entire mouse brain” | >

Amanda Levete’s firm AL_A is partnering with Canadian energy company General Fusion to design a pioneering power plant that will use nuclear fusion.

The prototype plant will act as a demonstration facility for the technology, which uses hydrogen as fuel, with onsite facilities for experts and the general public to visit.

“General Fusion wants to transform how the world is energised by replicating the process that powers the sun and the stars,” said AL_A.

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Though its a bit old, and sometimes innacurate or snarky in narration, it’s still the most detailed depiction of the cryonics process — the procedure itself on a real person, the person preserved before dying and her family as they decide to do this, deal with her death, and reflect on it after she’s preserved. It’s quite emotional and sometimes graphic, but well worth watching. Will it work? Maybe. But if you are NOT preserved there is NO chance at all. From your perspective it’d be like waking up right after dying in some distant future without feeling like any time passed at all.

That sounds a hell of a lot more appealing and likely than a bearded man on a fluffy cloud winking at me after I die.

Anita Riskin is one of hundreds of people who believe in cryonics — the process where doctors freeze human bodies. Preserve them, so that some time in the future they can be resuscitated — brought back to life. Now, as Anita Riskin sets out on her amazing journey, for the first time, you’ll see how it’s actually done — at times, quite graphically.

Continue reading “Frozen humans brought back to life | 60 Minutes Australia” | >

Firefly Aerospace currently plans for its maiden Alpha rocket launch to happen as early as Dec. 22, co-founder and CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC, as his company prepares for the next major milestone in its plan to offer a variety of space transportation services.

Markusic is confident in the launch date because of the “rigid” requirements of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where Firefly is finishing up work to prepare the launchpad at SLC-2. While “everything is susceptible to surprises,” with room in the schedule to launch as late as Jan. 31, Markusic said the “full gamut of rules” at Vandenberg means the company has put extra work into certification for Alpha’s first launch.

“We took the hard route to flight, and that was by going to a launch range that has very strict requirements,” Markusic said. “So our design has been highly vetted, as we have a lot of requirements that are put on us by the range and that makes the rocket ultimately more reliable.

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Tesla has dismissed Evan Horetsky, also known as ‘Mister Giga’, the engineer behind Tesla’s construction projects and more recently leading Gigafactory Berlin construction, according to a German report.

Horetsky is a mechanical engineer who joined Tesla back in 2015 to work on the Gigafactory Nevada project.

He has since participated in most of Tesla’s construction projects around the world and most recently, he was put in charge of Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin project.

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