Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Canadian researchers have discovered a new kind of organism that’s so different from other living things that it doesn’t fit into the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, or any other kingdom used to classify known organisms.

Two species of the microscopic organisms, called hemimastigotes, were found in dirt collected on a whim during a hike in Nova Scotia by Dalhousie University graduate student Yana Eglit.

A genetic analysis shows they’re more different from other organisms than animals and fungi (which are in different kingdoms) are from each other, representing a completely new part of the tree of life, Eglit and her colleagues report this week in the journal Nature.

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SpaceX today received US approval to deploy 7,518 broadband satellites, in addition to the 4,425 satellites that were approved eight months ago.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to let SpaceX launch 4,425 low-Earth orbit satellites in March of this year. SpaceX separately sought approval for 7,518 satellites operating even closer to the ground, saying that these will boost capacity and reduce latency in heavily populated areas. That amounts to 11,943 satellites in total for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service.

SpaceX “proposes to add a very-low Earth orbit (VLEO) NGSO [non-geostationary satellite orbit] constellation, consisting of 7,518 satellites operating at altitudes from 335km to 346km,” the FCC said in the draft of the order that it approved unanimously today. The newly approved satellites would use frequencies between 37.5 and 42GHz for space-to-Earth transmissions and frequencies between 47.2 and 51.4GHz for Earth-to-space transmissions, the FCC said.

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Getting rid of dirt is one of the largest costs of digging tunnels and Elon Musk’s Boring Company is exploring some creative ways to do that.

They are launching “DIY watchtowers” with bricks made of dirt from their tunnels.

They estimate that the cost of moving the dirt can represent up to 15% of the total cost of a tunnel, which is why they want to turn the dirt into a product itself.

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No one in the electric vehicle space has managed to make battery swapping work yet, but Nio is trying big time with 18 new battery swap stations covering a 2,000+ km expressway in China.

Several companies tried and failed at battery swapping. Tesla had a battery swap system that they seemingly abandoned and Better Place went bankrupt.

But you could say Tesla didn’t try that hard and has instead bet on fast-charging and Better Place was a little too ahead of its time.

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There’s money to be made and lives to be saved with the tiny stuff that’s all around us.

Saving the world (or some subset of people in it) is in vogue among the world’s wealthiest.

Jeff Bezos has a rocket company, Blue Origin. Bezos believes our future is extraterrestrial, and his rocket company exists because he thinks the price for getting anything off this rock is too damn high.

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Tell the FDA to identify and punish organisations who have broken US law by not reporting clinical trial results.

The US’s Food and Drug Administration has at last published its plan to identify and punish the organisations and people who have broken the law by not reporting clinical trial results. The FDA now wants to hear what we think about the plan.

The FDA Amendment Act 2007 says that lots of clinical trials in the US should be registered on ClinicalTrials.gov and report results information there within 12 months of the end of the trial. AllTrials’s FDAAA TrialsTracker shows that 628 clinical trials have broken this law since the first trials became due in January this year. We have written to the FDA every week to update them on the trials that have breached the law and shared with them a rolling estimation of the amount in fines the Agency could levy on the law breakers. The FDA has the power to fine people up to $10,000 a day and we have assessed that they could have raised $904,499,127 – nearly a billion dollars – but no one has ever been fined. That the FDA is now seriously considering how to start doing this is a long-awaited step forward.

These are the draft guidelines. The FDA is asking for comments on them to be submitted here. You don’t have to be a US citizen to comment.

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The Rise of GPU Computing (+ What is Volta, Titan V, RTX…) https://www.facebook.com/singularityprosperity/videos/440193486462231/

In this video, we’ll be discussing the rise of GPU computing and the role it will play in AI computational tasks.

[0:22–5:26] Starting off we’ll look at, the origins of GPU computing and the reason(s) for their mass adoption today.

Continue reading “This video is the sixth in a multi-part series discussing computing” | >

Thoughts on the Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing held by Heales in Brussels.

When I first learned about the possibility of achieving human rejuvenation through biotechnological means, little did I know that this would lead me to meet many of the central figures in the field during a conference some seven years later—let alone that I would be speaking at the very same event. Yet, I’ve had the privilege to attend the Fourth Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) held in Brussels on November 8–10, an experience that gave me a feel of just how real the prospect of human rejuvenation is.

A friendly, welcoming environment

As EHA was the first conference I’ve ever attended, I didn’t quite know what to expect; given that researchers, activists, and investors from all around the world were invited, I had imagined it would probably be a posh, formal event with violins playing on the background and people in suits and formal dresses discussing topics beyond my comprehension while enjoying champagne. Thankfully, the atmosphere was much more relaxed and informal, elegant but not intimidating, which favored the interaction among participants regardless of their backgrounds—though, alas, the topics discussed were indeed mostly beyond my comprehension, as they involved high-level biochemistry with which I’m nowhere near sufficiently familiar (yet).

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