Lifeboat Foundation

Fifty years of Moore’s law scaling in microelectronics have brought remarkable opportunities for the rapidly evolving field of microscopic robotics^1,2,3,4,5. Electronic, magnetic and optical systems now offer an unprecedented combination of complexity, small size and low cost^6,7, and could be readily appropriated for robots that are smaller than the resolution limit of human vision (less than a hundred micrometres)^8,9,10,11. However, a major roadblock exists: there is no micrometre-scale actuator system that seamlessly integrates with semiconductor processing and responds to standard electronic control signals. Here we overcome this barrier by developing a new class of voltage-controllable electrochemical actuators that operate at low voltages (200 microvolts), low power (10 nanowatts) and are completely compatible with silicon processing. To demonstrate their potential, we develop lithographic fabrication-and-release protocols to prototype sub-hundred-micrometre walking robots. Every step in this process is performed in parallel, allowing us to produce over one million robots per four-inch wafer. These results are an important advance towards mass-manufactured, silicon-based, functional robots that are too small to be resolved by the naked eye.

The InMotion V11 takes the general concept of an electric unicycle and then ratchets the insanity up to “11” with a gigantic motor and true air suspension.

Artificial Intelligence research is making big strides. But in practice?

There are several buckets you can use to categorize AI, one of which is the BS bucket. Within, you’ll find simple statistical algorithms people have been using forever. But there’s another bucket of things that actually weren’t possible a decade ago.

“The vast majority of businesses are still in the early phases of collecting and using data. Most companies looking for data scientists are looking for people to collect, manage, and calculate basic statistics over normal business processes.”

Continue reading “AI in the enterprise: Prepare to be disappointed – oversold but under appreciated, it can help… just not too much” »

The digital yuan and the existing systems are not mutually exclusive. Most consumers are likely to continue using their Alipay or WeChat Pay platforms – or both systems, in many cases – for their multitude of applications and services that have evolved from simple payments to loans, asset management and money-market investments.

China already boasts more digital mobile payment users than anywhere else on earth, in a US$49 trillion market almost 500 times bigger than in the United States. The People’s Bank of China governor Yi Gang wants to hasten the digital transformation of China’s currency and economy.

The job of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible. A powerful way to combat destructive behaviors of any kind is to construct a sound image of where you’d like to be at some point in the future. Explore what it will sound, look, taste, and feel like to live your future life, to be your future self. And then assess each temptation you face with this image in mind. Weigh whether it will move you closer or further away from that future. Seduce yourself, appropriate your own longing for a better, more pleasurable, more spectacular future.

The movement is a call to action for studios to make movies, for artists to paint pictures, and for anyone with access to the means of creation and communication to participate in the most pragmatic form of dreaming. To imagine a world so compelling you don’t want to wake up—not until the dreamworld becomes reality. To create something literal, like Akon’s newly announced project to build a real life Wakanda in Senegal.

Solarpunk just might be the cultural movement we deserve in the midst of our ongoing trials and tribulations. It’s the one we need to make the rest of this decade a palatable, even euphoric experience. Sometimes, demanding to thrive is the very best way to survive. It is the necessity and audacity not only of hope, but of beauty.

Summary: Lessons from other historic pandemics show social tension accumulated throughout epidemics lead to significant episodes of rebellion.

Source: Bocconi University

If you have not been hearing much of the French Gilets Jaunes or of the Italian Sardines in the last few months, it’s because “the social and psychological unrest arising from the epidemic tends to crowd-out the conflicts of the pre-epidemic period, but, at the same time it constitutes the fertile ground on which global protest may return more aggressively once the epidemic is over,” writes Massimo Morelli, Professor of Political Science at Bocconi, in a paper recently published in Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy.

Over the course of Earth’s four billion-year history, things have moved around rather a lot – including the continents of today.

An online interactive map shows exactly where your hometown has wandered over the course of hundreds of millions of years of continental drift.

Created by California palaeontologist Ian Webster in a web application, the map is based on geological models created by Christopher Stoese, CNN reported.

Amazon’s quantum computing service is currently good for learning about quantum computing and developing NISQ-regime quantum algorithms, but stay tuned.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mGz_QKbNm18

The DR7 is designed to be a personal commuter aircraft. So far, a 1/3 scale full composite proof-of-concept aircraft has been tested successfully. In order to minimize the propeller hazards, the rotors have been enclosed. They are tilted downwards for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) launches and landings. They tilt horizontally to go forward. And all of this fits into a regular car garage.

http://www.deloreanaerospace.com/

Continue reading “DeLorean DR7 Wants To Fly Us Back To The Future” »