Lifeboat Foundation

When nature knows best.

“Buying into a smart home ecosystem is sort of like selecting a holy grail in the Temple of the Sun. Choose poorly, and everything crumbles.”

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I believe Richard Feynman was one of our greatest scientific minds. He had a very particular way of looking at the world thanks to his father, and it was to look at the world around him as if he were a Martian. Like a fish born into water, it’s hard to actually see water as being water, because it’s all a fish ever knows. And so as humans, it’s a good idea to try and step outside of our usual frame of mind, to see what it is we as humans think and do, from the perspective of a mind totally alien to our everyday environment. With that in mind, here’s what humans are doing right now, from the perspective of someone from far, far away…

What an interesting place and an interesting time it is for a visit. Earth’s most intelligent primates are busy creating technologies that allow them all to do less work, freeing themselves from millennia of senseless toil and drudgery. Strangely, however, they are using such technologies to force each other to work longer and harder. In one area called the United States, responsible for so much of the world’s technological innovation, at a time when productivity has never been higher, the number of hours spent working for others in exchange for the means to live is now just shy of 50 hours per week, where it was once 40 and soon supposed to be 20 on its way to eventually approaching zero.

Humans are even performing work that doesn’t actually need to be done at all, even by a machine. One of the craziest examples of such completely unnecessary work is in Europe where an entire fake economic universe has been created under the label of “Potemkin companies” like Candelia.

Continue reading “Here’s Why A Universal Basic Income Is The Key To Human Progress” »

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking to take its own swing at an encrypted messaging app.

April 22, 2016.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, like many other federal agencies and the Defense Department as a whole, is bullish on embracing the small, innovative startups popping up in private sector, particularly Silicon Valley. But finding a way to integrate those fast-moving startups into DISA’s rules-encumbered procurement process remains a major hurdle.

It takes a bold person to declare that interstellar travel is now within our grasp. Physicist Stephen Hawking has shown that he is just that, taking part in the Breakthrough Starshot initiative. The project has announced a $100m research programme to investigate the technology of using light to propel spacecraft out of the solar system to explore neighbouring stars.

For the first time in human history, interstellar travel is a realistic and achievable aspiration, and not just the playground of science fiction.

So what has changed that makes interstellar travel achievable? First of all, clear expectations. This is not about a great big spaceship with a colony of astronauts travelling for generations to settle a planet around a distant star. Neither is it about faster-than-light travel, tunnelling through wormholes to arrive at the other side of the universe in an instant of time. This is about technology that already exists, or nearly exists, being applied in new and exciting ways.

Continue reading “Why sailing to the stars has suddenly become a realistic goal” »

The Student Innovation Project, or SIP, gives students a chance to develop an innovative idea and put their creativity to work.

As soon as their sophomore year, students are asked to begin brainstorming for their SIP, and also have two classes that help students prepare for their project. Students take PRO211, taught by Professor Vita-Moore, and PRO 483, taught by Professor Belanger.

During senior year, students use most of the time to work on the SIP, constructing a working model that will later be judged at the SIP Fair by UAT Faculty and local industry leaders for feedback.

Continue reading “Student Innovation Project Fair (SIP Fair)” »

The breakthrough could change gadgets for good.

Stephen Hawking will be making a big announcement today about space exploration. What will it be? Find out at noon, EST.

Hawking and Yuri Milner of the Breakthrough Prize have been building up to an announcement on Project Starshot. So far, the only thing known about the new project is that it has to do with space exploration.

But what’s Hawking’s big reveal about the project? No one knows yet—but it’ll be streaming live right here at noon, EST. Watch along with us.

Continue reading “Watch Stephen Hawking Deliver a Mysterious Announcement on Space Exploration” »

Funded by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and with the blessing of Stephen Hawking, Breakthrough Starshot aims to send probes to Alpha Centauri in a generation.

By Lee Billings on April 12, 2016.