Lifeboat Foundation

The holidays might be a time of slowed activity for most companies in the tech sector, but for SpaceX, it was a time to ramp production efforts on the latest Starship prototype — “Starship SN1” as it’s called, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. This flight design prototype of Starship is under construction at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas development facility, and Musk was in attendance over the weekend overseeing its build and assembly.

Musk shared video of the SpaceX team working on producing the curved dome that will sit atop the completed Starship SN1 (likely stands for “serial number 1,” a move to a more iterative naming system and away from the “Mark” nomenclature used for the original prototype), a part he called “the most difficult” in terms of the main components of the new spacecraft. He added that each new SN version of the rocket SpaceX builds will have minor improvements “at least” through the first 20 or so versions, so it’s clear they expect to iterate and test these quickly.

As for when it might actually fly, Musk said that he hopes this Starship will take off sometime around “2 to 3 months” from now, which is still within range of the projections for a first Starship high-altitude test flight given by the CEO earlier this year at the unveiling of the Starship Mk1 prototype. That prototype was originally positioned as the one that would fly for the high-altitude test, but it blew its top during testing in November and Musk said they’d be moving on to a new design rather than repair or rebuild the Mk1.

Samsung disclosed that it will introduce an “artificial human” called Neon at CES 2020 on Jan. 7 that is totally different than its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Bixby, Digital Trends reported.

The limited information about Neon was shared on Samsung’s Twitter account, and includes an “Artificial Human” teaser in several languages with the tagline “Have you met an ‘artificial’?”

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It seemed as if AWS was lagging behind Google, Microsoft, and IBM when it comes to quantum computing but they’ve finally taken a step forward with their latest announcement.

AWS has officially announced the preview launch of its first-ever quantum computing service known as Braket. However, AWS is still not building their own quantum computer. Instead, they chose to partner with IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave in providing computing services through the cloud.

How Does it Work?

At Roswell we have developed the first Molecular Electronics chip. We utilized advances in semiconductor technology, nano-fabrication and bio-sensors to create standard CMOS chips that directly integrate sensor molecules into the CMOS integrated circuits.

Going “on-chip” to deploy bio-sensors provides unprecedented economics, precision, portability, and scalability. Our first chip is designed to read DNA; future chips will be designed for protein detection and other diverse bio-sensing applications.

Summary: Study finds EEG features may not always be accurate in being able to capture the level of consciousness in patients under anesthesia. Source: Michigan Medicine

In September 2018, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres gave a speech on the global lack of trust, or what he called a “trust deficit disorder.” He just gave a similar speech, this time discussing blockchain specifically. The organization isn’t just motivated to build a more sustainable world or reducing waste from their supply chain, but as American support has waned, donors are demanding assurance their donations are being spent for the purpose they were intended.

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres says the intergovernmental giant needs to embrace blockchain. In a statement provided to Forbes by the secretary-general’s office, Guterres touted the technology first made popular by bitcoin as a crucial component of the organization that generate’s $50 billion in revenue annually.

Coming at a time when the president of China has touted blockchain as a national priority, and the $6 billion United Nations Children’s Fund has started accepting bitcoin and ethereum donations for some of its projects, the statement from Guterres shows that cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology is being seriously explored at the highest levels of the largest organizations in the world.

Continue reading “Secretary-General Says United Nations Must Embrace Blockchain” »

Pick of today’s crop of random items in Posthuman Daily https://www.academia.edu/34665732/Nietzsche_s_Posthuman_Impe…nshumanism https://paper.li/e-1437691924

Babette Babich, “Nietzsche’s Posthuman Imperative: On the Human, All too Human Dream of Transhumanism,” in: Yunus Tuncel (ed.) Nietzsche and Transhumanism: Precursor or Enemy? (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2017), pp. 101–113.

I thought this book was going to be done in only a couple of months. It ended up taking over a year.

I am glad the Ebook version is now available on Amazon Kindle Store. Paperback version will be released soon.

Preorder details for the paperback version will be announced by tomorrow.