Lifeboat Foundation

Phase 1, which was the Design part of the competition, was completed back in 2015. Phase 2 is the Structural Member Competition, and the most recent level challenged competitors to 3D print a beam for bend testing. Scores were calculated based on the final material composition of the 3D printed beam and the maximum load that could be held before it failed.

Seoul-based Moon X Construction were not eligible for prize money, but $67,465 was awarded to Form Forge of Oregon State University for the second place entry. Foster and Partners with Branch Technology of Chattanooga, Tennessee came in third, earning $63,783, after getting $85,930 for getting first place in the first round of Phase 2. Fairbanks University of Alaska and CTL Group Mars of Illinois came in fourth and fifth respectively, with Singaporean team ROBOCON finishing in sixth place.

Continue reading “NASA announces winners for latest round of 3D Printed Habitat challenge, over $200k prize money awarded” »

The vital question for governments around the world, whatever their country’s economic situation, needs to be: what is the future of work in an era of exponential technological development?

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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a trip to Homer, Alaska, this weekend to do characteristically Alaskan things, like catching fish, cutting fish, watching other people catch fish, oh, and thinking hard about the concept of basic income.

Zuckerberg visited Homer as part of his personal challenge to visit every state in America in 2017. While there, he took some time out of fishing to write a blog post about Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, a state-sponsored form of basic income that redistributes profits from the state’s natural resources to its residents once a year, usually handing them around $1,000 per person (some years as much as $2,000).

“This is a novel approach to basic income in a few ways. First, it’s funded by natural resources rather than raising taxes,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Second, it comes from conservative principles of smaller government, rather than progressive principles of a larger safety net. This shows basic income is a bipartisan idea.

Continue reading “Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Again Calls for Basic Income” »

Among startups, the race to start mining asteroids is underway. Their pioneering work could transform our economy – and one day, our ability to explore the universe.

➡🖒⛧Well worth a listen!⛧🖒⬅.

Robots moving deeper into the American workplace—how much decision-making will we turn over to machines?

For all the change that has come with the digital revolution – in the ways we work and communicate and do business – the real impact still lies ahead. Computers – machines themselves – are become smarter all the time. That intelligence is being wired into real world action. That’s overturning giant companies. It’s moving in on what we thought only humans could do. Andrew McAfee and Eric Brynjolfsson are on it. It’s exciting. And terrifying. This hour On Point: intelligent machines move in. — Tom Ashbrook

Continue reading “Machine Over Mind In A New Economy” »

The two academic authors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who became the pin-up boys of the Davos crowd for their previous book on The Second Machine Age (2014), do a neat job of scanning the technological horizon and highlighting significant landmarks. This is a clear and crisply written account of machine intelligence, big data and the sharing economy. But McAfee and Brynjolfsson also wisely acknowledge the limitations of their futurology and avoid over-simplification. No one can really have much idea how the business world is going to evolve or predict the precise interplay between all these fast-changing forces.

A new book by the authors of ‘The Second Machine Age’ suggests that digital disruption is coming to the corner office.

Interview with Dr. Jose Luis Cordeiro at the International Longevity and Cryopreservation Summit in Madrid.

During the recent International Longevity and Cryopreservation Summit in Madrid, LEAF Board member Elena Milova had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Jose Luis Cordeiro new fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) and long-term proponent of innovation technologies in many fields. Jose shared his vision on how public perception of rejuvenation technologies is changing over time and what are the main outcomes of the groundbreaking show he and his team managed to organize.

Continue reading “Dr. Jose Luis Cordeiro – Supporting the development of cryonics and rejuvenation biotechnology” »

Lifeboat Foundation readers are aware that the world has become progressively more chaotic. Part of the danger comes from centralized points of failure. While large institutions can bear great stress, they also cause more harm when they fail. Because there are so few pillars, if one collapses, the whole system is destroyed.

For instance, prior to the federal reserve system, bank runs we extremely common. However, since the financial system consisted of small, competing institutions, failure was confined to deficient banks. So while failure was frequent, it was less impactful and systemic. In contrast, after the establishment of the federal reserve, banks became fewer and larger. Failures, while more infrequent, were large scale catastrophes when they occurred. They affected the whole economy and had longer impact.

This is even more important in political systems, which are the foundation of how a society operates. In order to have a more robust, antifragile social order, systems must be decentralized. Rather than a monopolistic, static political order, there must be a series of decentralized experiments. While failures are inevitable, it can be localized to these small experiments rather than the whole structure.

Continue reading “Startup Societies Summit: A Decentralized Governance Trade Show” »

Apple just announced onstage at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference that Apple Pay is getting person-to-person payments. The feature will come in iOS 11, which was announced onstage, and will be available later this year.

It’s an obvious swipe at the part of the payments market that apps like Venmo, PayPal, and Square Cash have cornered. But there’s a catch — P2P payments with Apple Pay will live inside iMessage, and it’s unclear if Apple will let users perform them outside of its messaging app. Also, the money will be transferred to something called an “Apple Pay Cash Card,” which can then be sent to your bank account. That means Apple is not only coming for the Venmos of the world, but maybe the banks themselves.