Lifeboat Foundation

The number of Star Trek sci-fi technology that ultimately became real-life tech never ceases to amaze. The series inspired the development of touchscreens, communicators became mobile phones, PAADs became tablets, replicators became 3D printing, and now holodecks are becoming virtual and augmented realities (VRs and ARs). And while fully immersive environments like the holodeck still remain in the realm of sci-fi, a recent report from BBC on a hologram zoo indicates that the future isn’t so far-fetched when it comes to immersive holographic.

The holograms use a new depth technology that not only makes the animals seem big but makes them visible as 3D objects rather than suspended 2D images.

According to the report, the visitors of Australia’s Hologram Zoo, which opened earlier this year, can dodge stampeding elephants, peer into the gaping jaws of a hippopotamus, pet-friendly giraffes, and witness more than 50 lifelike displays from dinosaurs to gorillas—all crafted from concentrated beams of light.

Smartphone sales have had their worst quarterly performance in over a decade, a fact that raises two big questions. Have the latest models finally bored the market with mere incremental improvements? And if they have, what will the next form factor (and function) be? Today a deep tech startup called Xpanceo is announcing $40 million in funding from a single investor, Opportunity Ventures in Hong Kong, to pursue its take on one of the possible answers to that question: computing devices in the form of smart contact lenses.

The company wants to make tech more simple, and it believes the way to do that is to make it seamless and more connected to how we operate every day. “All current computers will be obsolete [because] they’re not interchangeable,” said Roman Axelrod, who co-founded the startup with material scientist and physicist Valentyn S. Volkov. “We are enslaved by gadgets.”

With a focus on new materials and moving away from silicon-based processing and towards new approaches to using optoelectronics, Xpanceo’s modest ambition, Axelrod said in an interview, is to “merge all the gadgets into one, to provide humanity with a gadget with an infinite screen. What we aim for is to create the next generation of computing.”

Continue reading “Canalys Newsroom — North American smartphone shipments to fall 12% in 2023 despite premium segment strength” »

Starlink’s website update is revealing a bit more about its plans for a satellite-delivered cell phone service. The new page for “Starlink Direct to Cell” promises “ubiquitous coverage” from “cellphone towers in space” that will work over bog-standard LTE. The current timeline claims there will be text service starting in 2024, voice and data in 2025, and “IoT” service in 2025.

Today satellite phone connectivity still requires giant, purpose-built hardware, like the old-school Iridium network phones. If you’re only looking for emergency texting, you can also make do with Apple’s introduction of the barely there connectivity paradigm, requiring being inside a connectivity window, holding up a phone, and following a signal-targeting app. Starlink wants to bring full-blown space connectivity to normal smartphone hardware.

Smartphone sales have had their worst quarterly performance in over a decade, a fact that raises two big questions. Have the latest models finally bored the market with mere incremental improvements? And if they have, what will the next form factor (and function) be? Today a deep tech startup called Xpanceo is announcing $40 million in funding from a single investor, Opportunity Ventures in Hong Kong, to pursue its take on one of the possible answers to that question: computing devices in the form of smart contact lenses.

The company wants to make tech more simple, and it believes the way to do that is to make it seamless and more connected to how we operate every day. “All current computers will be obsolete [because] they’re not interchangeable,” said Roman Axelrod, who co-founded the startup with material scientist and physicist Valentyn S. Volkov. “We are enslaved by gadgets.”

With a focus on new materials and moving away from silicon-based processing and towards new approaches to using optoelectronics, Xpanceo’s modest ambition, Axelrod said in an interview, is to “merge all the gadgets into one, to provide humanity with a gadget with an infinite screen. What we aim for is to create the next generation of computing.”

Starlink satellites will soon be offering Direct to Cell capabilities to enable texting, calling, and browsing everywhere on Earth. SpaceX will start satellite-based text messaging in 2024 and expand to voice and text support in 2025. They will offer cellular connectivity to IoT devices in 2025. The service will work with existing LTE phones without the need for any hardware, firmware changes, or special apps.

Direct to Cell will also connect IoT devices with common LTE standards. SpaceX plans to equip its future Starlink satellites with an advanced eNodeB modem. This innovation will essentially transform a Starlink satellite into a cellphone tower in space.

This will be enabled by tens of thousands of satellites and eventually millions of satellites will replace most of the 5 million cell towers on Earth. It will means everyone and everything can be connected. All people, robots, and self driving vehicles will be connected.

The service was supposed to be launched in beta this year but has been pushed back after Starship has failed to reach orbit.

SpaceX’s satellite-powered mobile telephony service could be available in 2024, according to recent changes in the service provider’s webpage. Direct to Cell will allow text, voice, and data services from Starlink’s V2 satellites.

Launched more than 30 years ago, satellite-based telephone services are still as challenging to use as they were back then. With the advent of satellite-based internet services, thanks to Starlink, interest in telephony has increased again. Apple introduced it in their latest iPhone but limited it to emergency purposes and nothing beyond basic texts.

Your phone may have more than 15 billion tiny transistors packed into its microprocessor chips. The transistors are made of silicon, metals like gold and copper, and insulators that together take an electric current and convert it to 1s and 0s to communicate information and store it. The transistor materials are inorganic, basically derived from rock and metal.

But what if you could make these fundamental electronic components part biological, able to respond directly to the environment and change like living tissue?

This is what a team at Tufts University Silklab did when they created transistors replacing the insulating material with biological silk. They reported their findings in Advanced Materials.

The concept could prolong the usage duration among users while also increasing areas of application thanks to a lighter-weight device.

Microsoft’s recently approved patent for augmented reality (AR) glasses shows a swappable battery that could make it a top choice among buyers when it becomes available. The patent was published last week, MSPowerUser.

AR glasses are considered the next frontier of mobile technology that promises to replace smartphones today. About a decade ago, Google attempted to develop something along these lines and released its Glass to the public. However, high costs and limited functionality led to its ultimate demise, even though the concept continues to thrive.

It is now apparent that the mass-produced artifacts of technology in our increasingly densely populated world—whether electronic devices, cars, batteries, phones, household appliances, or industrial robots—are increasingly at odds with the sustainable bounded ecosystems achieved by living organisms based on cells over millions of years.

Cells provide organisms with soft and sustainable environmental interactions with complete recycling of material components, except in a few notable cases like the creation of oxygen in the atmosphere, and of the fossil fuel reserves of oil and coal (as a result of missing biocatalysts).

However, the fantastic information content of biological cells (gigabits of information in DNA alone) and the complexities of protein biochemistry for metabolism seem to place a cellular approach well beyond the current capabilities of technology, and prevent the development of intrinsically sustainable technology.