Lifeboat Foundation

At the end of 2017 and the first months of 2018, we witnessed a surge of interest in Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. Perhaps the word “interest” gives too much credit to ICOs. Most are scams. ICOs are pushed through by vendor hype, rather than pulled through by investor research. They are almost all pump-and-dump schemes.

But what about Bitcoin? It is not a scam, but questions remain about regulation, intrinsic value* and its likelihood to be superseded by something better. Bitcoin skeptics point to two facts: (1) Bitcoin is open source, and so anyone can create an equally good altcoin. (2) Newer coins incorporate improvements that overcome governance and scaling issues: cost, transaction speed, the burgeoning electric needs of miners, or whatever…

While both statements are true, they miss the point. This is not a VHS-vs-Beta scenario. Bitcoin has achieved a 2-sided network and it is free to fold in every vetted improvement that comes along. For Bitcoin, all those other coins are simply beta tests.

Even the functional tokens will unwittingly feed their “improvements” into Bitcoin. For this reason, it is a safe bet that Bitcoin will reign supreme for years to come—perhaps even long enough for the dominos to fall.

Continue reading “ICOs & Altcoins rise and fall—yet, Bitcoin endures” »

Finally, a TV display you can roll up and take with you.

Summary: A new study didn’t find much of a difference between healthy low-carb and low-fat diets. The people on both diets lost about the same amount of excess weight. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Is cutting carbs or cutting fat is better? A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggest that it may not matter much.

A team of researchers led by Christopher Gardner, a professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, followed 609 overweight adults ages 18 to 50. The researchers put the study participants, consisting of equal numbers of men and women, on either a low-carb diet or low-fat diet for 12 months.

Summary: UCSF scientists discover a protein in young blood that rejuvenates an aging brain. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Scientists have long been searching for the factors in young blood that give it its rejuvenating powers to drug form for widespread public use.

A team of researchers led by Saul Villeda, Ph.D., an assistant professor of anatomy at UC San Francisco discovered a brain-rejuvenating enzyme that improved memory in adult mice when restored to youthful levels. The researchers say the new protein could lead to new therapies for maintaining the healthy brain function of humans.

Continue reading “Brain rejuvenating protein found in young blood” »

A summary of a Feb 2018 interview with Alexandra Elbakyan of the Sci-Hub pirate website battling the academic publishing establishment.

Parents have been stocking up on bulletproof backpacks, tracking devices and doorstops… to give children a fighting chance at surviving a gunman’s attack at school,” the N.Y. Post reports:

“BulletBlocker, a company that sells bulletproof backpacks ranging in price from $199 for a girly pink one to $490, has seen sales jump 300 percent since the Florida shooting.”

A $95 metal device called “JustinKase,” which is placed under a door and latches to the door’s jamb to prevent entry, was invented by a 17-year-old Wisconsin high school student, Justin Rivard.

Continue reading “Parents are buying these gadgets to protect their kids from school shooters” »

Plurals are known to value compromise, he said, a byproduct of their diversity and comfort with working with peers from different backgrounds. They are also in line to be an “adaptive” generation. These cohorts tend to come right after disruptive generations that change society in significant ways, such as millennials. When adaptive groups come of age, they take the problems that were brought to light by their predecessors and try to work them out.

In their organized calls for action, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School could be defining the nation’s newest generation.

To better protect against the rise of ill-intended AI, policymakers ought to be working closely with technical specialists to be aware of potential applications of machine intelligence. Also, technical developers ought to be proactively reaching out to appropriate leaders when they understand the technology they are developing can have negative applications, the report says.

New report from 26 technology experts issues dire warning about the potential of malicious artificial intelligence.

While some planetary scientists are enthusiastic about Trump’s proposal to send astronauts to the moon before Mars, others are leery about what it could cost or if it will happen.