Lifeboat Foundation

On this episode, learn about digital addiction, and the symptoms of technology addiction with our guest Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist currently working as the Chief of Addiction Medicine at Stanford’s Dual Diagnosis clinic. She was recently interviewed for the Social Dilemma, the amazing Netflix documentary exploring the dangers of social media. On this episode, we really dive deep into the heart of digital addiction—the symptoms of technology addiction, how it starts, how it controls our behavior, and how to escape its magnetic pull. But more specifically, we explore the role of social media and smartphones, and how these tools are hijacking our evolutionary drive for novelty, pleasure, exploration, and connection with other human beings.

Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist who is Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University and an author. Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter in our reward pathway. It tells us when to feel pleasure and pain, it can cause depression and anxiety, and it’s being hijacked by the modern world. Phones, video games, porn, food, our world is filled with cheap dopamine, which in turn is making us miserable. Expect to learn how dopamine creates a see-saw balance of pleasure and pain, why cravings to use your phone are driven by dopamine, the truth about dopamine detoxing, how to reset your brain’s dopamine balance, the most successful interventions for changing your relationship to dopamine long term and much more…

Its potential uses range from ultra-durable smartphone screens to soft, luminous light fixtures.

In pursuit of this objective, researchers have devised innovative strategies for modifying wood in recent years, imbuing it with new capabilities.

These advancements open the door to potentially substituting conventional, non-renewable, petroleum-based materials in diverse applications, including automobiles, energy storage, construction, and environmental remediation. This shift signifies a departure from the traditional domains of construction and paper industries for wood.

Continue reading “Scientists develop transparent wood for smartphone screens, windows” »

Ukraine’s largest mobile phone operator said Russia was most likely behind a “powerful” cyberattack that disrupted phone and internet services Tuesday for about 24 million people in the country.

The cyberattack, the largest to strike Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began nearly two years ago, took down ATMs and digital banking services, disabled some air raid sirens, and hampered broader cellular service across Ukraine.

“This is definitely a cyberattack and the probability that Russian entities are behind it is very close to 100%,” Oleksandr Komarov, chief executive officer of Kyivstar GSM JSC, told Bloomberg by phone.

Fairphone promises five Android version upgrades and at least eight years of security updates to achieve a total lifespan of a decade. Whether its performance will remain adequate for all users’ needs throughout that time remains to be seen.

What the industry can learn

In a world dominated by disposable electronics, the Fairphone 5 stands out. The Fairphone 5 offers a different excitement – the thrill of a phone built to last. With its modular design, long-term software support, and commitment to sustainability, the Fairphone 5 is a game-changer for anyone who wants a smartphone that’s both good for their pocket and the planet. While the EU is pushing for a removable battery for all smartphones by 2027, making USB-C already a standard, more needs to be done.

A small taste of the Core Ultra 9 185H’s flagship performance.

Sam Altman says he got so many messages after being fired from OpenAI that his phone was unusable. The CEO was abruptly ousted by board members last month before being reinstated. Altman said the situation had been chaotic and confusing.

Sam Altman told Trevor Noah during a podcast appearance that he was inundated with messages in the chaotic aftermath of his firing.

Google has revealed “Gemini”, which it says is its largest science and engineering project ever.

It is also the company’s latest attempt to catch up with rival OpenAI to develop artificial intelligence, and try and build a better system than its ChatGPT.

As such, Gemini will come to Google’s Bard, the chatbot that it released in the wake of ChatGPT in an attempt to catch up. But it will also roll out to Google’s Pixels phones and elsewhere.

Is phone and digital media addiction real? If so, what steps can be taken to mitigate it? This is something that a recent study published in the journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior hopes to address as a team of researchers discuss a new instrument called the Digital Media Overuse Scale (dMOS) to determine a person’s level of addiction to digital media such as their phone. This study comes at a time when smartphones and digital media device technologies are only improving and holds the potential to help scientists and clinicians make the connection between technology and psychology.

“We wanted to create a tool that was immediately useful in the clinic and lab, that reflects current understandings about how digital addiction works, that wouldn’t go obsolete once the next big tech change hits,” said Dr. Daniel Hipp, who is a research consultant at the Digital Media Treatment & Education Center in Boulder, Colorado, and lead author of the study.

For the study, the researchers developed dMOS to address the outdated methods pertaining to bridging the gap between technology and psychology, such as how we talk about technology and asking outdated questions. The goal of dMOS is to allow scientists and clinicians to conduct a variety of analyses pertaining to digital media usage, including a broad analysis such as social media as a whole or a more focused analysis such a specific social media platform such as Facebook.