Lifeboat Foundation

Apple could become the first commercially available smartphone with a satellite in the U.S.

Just a day after Apple announced the iPhone 14’s emergency SOS via satellite feature, SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Musk revealed that SpaceX had talked with Apple Inc about using Starlink connectivity.

Continue reading “Elon Musk reveals SpaceX and Apple discussed Starlink support for iPhone 14” »

Ray Kurzweil predicted Technological Singularity nearly 20 years ago. Elon Musk could enable a world of economic abundance with real world AI. Robotaxi and Teslabot will transform the world more than car and the first industrial revolution.

Tesla sells Model Ys for about $60000, but it currently costs them about $30000–40000 to make them. A Teslabot is 1/30th of the mass of a Model Y. It will use 1/30th of the batteries. The software is an overall cost of development. If billions of bots are produced then the cost would trend toward the cost of the hardware plus Apple iPhone-like margins including the software (say 40% gross margin). At Model Y cost of $30k then the hardware cost for Teslabot will go to $1000. $2000 with margins and software. A bot can work for 8,000 hours in a year. 8,760 hours in a year. $2000 divided by 8,000 hours is $0.25. If you add 10 cents per hour for electricity then it is $0.35 per hour. Going beyond that is bots can work in the factory and work cheaper than humans. Currently 15,000 workers in Tesla China factory. Replace all of them with $0.35 per hour bots. Reduce labor cost component. If a lot of bots can increase production rates. by 2X then all costs spread over more units. Bot-produced solar and batteries can lower the cost of energy by vastly increasing the supply. Those trends could get us to $500‑1000 per bot costs and lower energy costs. Having virtually unlimited labor costing less than 35 cents per hour will be transformational.

Continue reading “Elon’s Real World AI is the Real World Technological Singularity” »

Apple’s new iPhones — the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus — won’t have physical SIM cards. The company announced the nugget at its event in Cupertino today, revealing that eSIM will be the only way the iPhone 14 series authenticates with wireless carriers — at least in the U.S.

ESIM lets you change a wireless carrier, data or service plan through software rather than having to swap a physical SIM card. It’s hardly a new technology, but it’s only within the last few years that eSIM has become more common on mainstream mobile devices.

Apple said that major carriers including T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T will provide resources to assist with eSIM-related questions, service upgrades and changes.

Probably the biggest new feature for the iPhone 14, 14 Plus and 14 Pro isn’t one you’ll use ever day, but you’ll be glad you have it if you need it. The new phones have a built-in satellite connection that people can use to send emergency SOS messages in places where there’s no available cellular signal.

First, your iPhone will help you orient your phone in the direction you need to point it to get the best signal. Once you have a connection, you can open up a message interface that lets you communicate with emergency service providers. Apple says that because of satellite connectivity limits, it’ll take much longer to send messages than you’re used to, so the feature includes some automatic questions it prompts you to answer, like “is anyone hurt?” It’ll have auto-populated answers that you can tap to respond. Apple is also compressing messages to a third of their normal size to make sending them a little quicker.

Apple say that once the message is sent to the satellite, it then gets routed to emergency response centers; if those centers are only set up for voice calls, they’ll first be passed to a response center that’ll then get in touch with emergency response.

What We Owe The Future is available now — you can get it wherever you get your (audio)books or here: https://www.amazon.com/What-Owe-Future-William-MacAskill/dp/…atfound-20
This video was sponsored by the author, Will MacAskill. Thanks a lot for the support.

Sources & further reading:
https://sites.google.com/view/sources-civilization-collapse/

Continue reading “Is Civilization on the Brink of Collapse?” »

Did you know there’s a silent war going on inside your home? Alternating current (AC) electricity comes in from the grid, but many of your appliances and lighting run on direct current (DC). Every time you plug in a TV, computer or cell phone charger, power must be individually converted from AC to DC — a costly and inefficient process. Purdue University researchers have proposed a solution to the problem by retrofitting an entire house to run on its own efficient DC-powered nano-grid.

The project to transform a 1920s-era West Lafayette home into the DC Nanogrid House began in 2017 under the direction of Eckhard Groll, the William E. and Florence E. Perry Head of Mechanical Engineering, and member of Purdue’s Center for High Performance Buildings. “We wanted to take a normal house and completely retrofit it with DC appliances and DC architecture,” Groll said. “To my knowledge, no other existing project has pursued an experimental demonstration of energy consumption improvements using DC power in a residential setting as extensively as we have.”

Computers could transmit highly confidential data even without internet, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth by using their speakers to transmit ultrasonic noise that vibrates nearby smartphones.

We could one day charge our phones and tablets wirelessly through the air, thanks to newly developed technology.

Researchers have used infrared laser light to transmit 400mW of light power over distances of up to 30 meters (98 feet). That’s enough juice to charge small sensors, though in time it could be developed to charge up larger devices such as smartphones too.

All this is done in a way which is perfectly safe – the laser falls back to a low power mode when not in use.

You need to wait till 2023 to get them though.

Lenovo has unveiled its T1 Glasses at its Tech Life 2022 event and promises to place a full HD video-watching experience right inside your pockets, a company press release.

Mobile computing devices have exploded in the past few years as gaming has become more intense, and various video streaming platforms have gathered steam. The computing power of smartphones and tablets has increased manifold. Whether you want to ambush other people in an online shooting game or sit back and watch a documentary in high-definition, a device in your pocket can help you do that with ease.

Continue reading “No VR or AR: A new pocket-size eyeglass will be just big screen experience in your eyes” »