Lifeboat News #72

#72

Lifeboat News

This issue published on 07/01/08. Copyright 2008 Lifeboat Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

Official Google News Source

Thanks to efforts by our Director of Research, Brian Wang, our blog has been approved as an official Google News source and will show up in Google News results within a few weeks.
 
You can learn about Brian at http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.brian.l.wang and you can see Google News at http://news.google.com/

Bigger Machine Activation

Thanks to many donors, our new primary machine has been activated and lifeboat.com has been moved to it. We raised $3,520 which was $1,020 greater than our goal of $2,500! You can see the list of these donors at https://russian.lifeboat.com/ex/time.for.a.bigger.machine
 
Our new machine has 4 cores and 4 gigs of memory and can handle A LOT of traffic. This ginormous hardware is critical for us since Google News will be providing us with extra traffic in the near future. (Supporting Google News on our old machine wasn't going to work...)
 
We would also like to thank Chris Haley for donating $2,200 towards our bigger machine •AND• agreeing to become System Administrator for it as well. Chris was in charge of our complex move between our old machine and new machine and did an excellent job! You can learn about Chris at http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.chris.k.haley
 
Finally, to give you an idea of the power of our new machine... Over the past 7 days, we averaged higher traffic than KurzweilAI.net which is a popular site. Yet the average workload on our machine was 0.00 compared to the 4.00 workload the 4 cores on this machine COULD handle on a sustained basis. (And we are still working on implementing additional software changes to improve the capacity of this machine.)

Reports

Our Scientific Advisory Board members have generated many interesting reports recently. They include:
 
"The Age of Virtuous Machines" by J. Storrs "Josh" Hall at http://lifeboat.com/ex/the.age.of.virtu...machines
 
"10 Futuristic Materials" by Michael Anissimov at http://lifeboat.com/ex/10.futuristic.materials
 
"Classifying Extinction Risks" by Michael Anissimov at http://lifeboat.com/ex/classifying.exti...on.risks

Events

The Global Catastrophic Risks Conference will be held July 17 to July 20 at the University of Oxford. Our James Hughes, Anders Sandberg, Mike Treder, and Eliezer Yudkowsky will be speaking. Learn more at http://global-catastrophic-risks.com/ab...onf.html
 
Our Lawrence A. Baines, Raj Bawa, Craig Bettles, Peter C. Bishop, Dennis M. Bushnell, Josh Calder, Arthur L. Caplan, Joe Coates, José Luis Cordeiro, William J. Cosgrove, William Crossman, Irene J. Dabrowski, Yasmin Dada-Jones, Evan M. H. Faber, Devin Fidler, Medard Gabel, Ashok K. Gangadean, Jay Gary, Jerry Glenn, Ted Gordon, Terry Grim, Linda Groff, William E. Halal, Don Heathfield, Jay Herson, Michael Jackson, Carl Jensen III, Shun-jie Ji, Tom Lombardo, Gary Marx, Jim Mathews, Kenneth L. Nichols, Amy Oberg, Jonathan Peck, John L. Petersen, Carrie Rathsack, Scott Reif, Sheila R. Ronis, Karlin Sloan, Rick Smyre, Stephen F. Steele, Mike Treder, Thomas F. Valone, Verne Wheelwright, James Wright, Mariann Zanardo, and Michael Zey will be speaking at "WorldFuture 2008: Seeing the Future Through New Eyes" at the Hilton Washington, Washington, D.C., from July 26 to July 28. Learn more at http://www.wfs.org/2008schedule.htm

Interview

Listen to our Dennis M. Bushnell on a C-Realm Podcast at http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/entry/474108

Link of the Month

The University of Delaware's Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (SEPP) program made us link of the month at http://sepp.dbi.udel.edu/

Growing Membership

The Terasem Movement donated $4,000 to the Lifeboat Foundation saying, "We believe Lifeboat's work directly relates to Terasem's mission to establish diversity, unity, and joyful immortality via geoethical nanotechnology and personal cyberconsciousness."
 
Learn about the Terasem Movement at http://www.terasemcentral.org/
 
Our donor list is growing rapidly with Michael Haislip becoming our 12th Lifeboat 500 member. You can learn about Michael at http://www.michaelhaislip.com/ and about our Lifeboat 500 program at https://russian.lifeboat.com/ex/500 As our donor list grows, more and more, we will be able to make programs a reality instead of just a report on paper. (Let us know if there is any particular program/project that you think we should fund.)
 
Here are some of the recent donations/pledges we have received since the last newsletter:
 
Michael Haislip: $25,000, Terasem Movement: $4,000, Chris Haley: $2,285, Donald Maclean: $1,000, Brian Cartmell: $575, Humberto Castaneda: $200, Sergio M.L. Tarrero: $170, Anonymous: $140, Michael Anissimov: $85, Eric Bauswell: $85, William J. Cosgrove: $85, Michael Dickey: $85, Jason Gaverick Matheny: $85, Philippe Van Nedervelde: $85, Kenneth P. Weiss: $85, Peter Murray: $75, Matthew L. McGuirl: $50, Jesse Merriman: $40, C M Anderson: $25, Vincent A. Cate: $25, Adam Dobrin: $25, Rick Hubbard: $25, Robert Hunt Robinson: $25, James William Taylor: $25, Mark A. Walker: $25, Alexander Braitberg: $10, Stephen Fleming: $10, Joshua Fox: $10, Christopher Dilkus: $10, Sylvia Engdahl: $10, George Garrett: $10, Joseph P. Jackson III: $10, Sheridan Layman: $10, Marcel Lossi: $10, Glenn A. Miller: $10, Sarah Jane Pell: $10, John N. Philipps (Jack): $10, Kaj Sotala: $10, and Thoughtware.TV: $5.
 
Our Join Us page at https://russian.lifeboat.com/ex/join.us now allows you to pay for your membership anywhere from monthly to every ten years.