Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: government

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFA6DLT1jBA

Elon Musk unveils SpaceX’s future Mars vehicle and discusses the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars. The presentation focuses on potential architectures for sustaining humans on the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.

Overview:
00:00. Why Mars and become a multi-planetary civilisation.

05:55. Early exploration missions.

09:15. Challenge 1: Full re-usability

11:17. Challenge 2: Refilling in orbit

12:31. Challenge 3: Mars propellant production.

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“The world awoke on Wednesday to an actuality it had never known before: a modern state of Israel without Shimon Peres. But in many respects Mr. Peres’s Israel began to disappear long ago.”

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The huge wave of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices has the U.S. government worried that the technology harbors lurking security threats.

According to a Defense One article, the U.S. Department of Justice has joined other agencies in evaluating IoT technology for national security risks.

And with up to 50 billion connected devices coming online by 2020, the government is scrambling to assess threats from the fast evolving technology.

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A self-driving car may someday have to decide between your life and the lives of others. But how should the car choose? If you don’t know how to make that decision, that’s okay — Washington doesn’t either.

That’s one big takeaway in a new, lengthy document from the Department of Transportation that lays out options to make autonomous vehicles safer–and represents the most public sign of the attention self-driving cars are getting from politicians despite their inability to vote.

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LONDON, Sept. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — This report provides quantitative analysis and unprecedented level of insight into China’s RFID industry, analyzing the market by application, region, frequency band and value chain. The report develops a ten-year segmented market forecast. It also provides detailed profiles of 28 listed companies in addition to a further summary of 110 other Chinese RFID players. By 2025 the total RFID market in China will reach US$4.3 billion. This report provides a complete view of the RFID suppliers, value chain, applications and trends in China. It looks not only at the RFID manufacturing base in China, but also the applications of RFID in China, providing ten year forecasts by 13 application categories. IDTechEx has studied the RFID market globally for 15 years and this research builds on that knowledge in addition to new research carried out in Chain by IDTechEx analyst Dr Xiaoxi He. Over 150 RFID companies have been identified.

China already has 85% of the world’s RFID manufacturing capacity, being a major exporter of tags. In addition, the second generation National Identification Card project in China is the largest RFID order by value and China is delivering it by using Chinese-only resources almost exclusively. Thanks to strong support by the government, China has used RFID widely on applications ranging from library assets to train tickets, and as China becomes a leader in manufacturing in most segments — from cars to planes — it will fuel increasing demand for RFID in manufacturing and many other industries.

As RFID is increasingly being deployed around the world (IDTechEx expect that over 8.5 billion tags will be sold globally in 2015 versus 7 billion in 2014), suppliers are in the process of shaving off fractions of a cent from each inlay, particularly for passive UHF. That means picking up and moving manufacturing base to China in some cases. There have also been other, relatively new entrants that by strong investment (including acquisition) have gained a relatively high market share from nothing in a few years, examples being Arizon RFID and Shangyang, to name a few.

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1st Robot has been arrested this year; guess Kurzweil’s request for Robots to have Constitutional Rights may have a need.

You might be forgiven if you were under the impression that the Russian government is a bit behind the times when it comes to modern technology and its never ending desire to stifle every last bit of dissent possible. Between the bouts its had with internet censorship and some strange claims about how binge-watching streaming services are a form of United States mind-control, it would be quite easy to be left with the notion that this is all for comedy. Alas, blunders and conspiracy theories aside, much of this technological blundering is mere cover for the very real iron grip the Russians place upon free speech, with all manner of examples in technology used as excuses to silence its critics.

And now it’s no longer just human beings that need fear the Russian government, it seems. Just this past week, a robot was arrested at a political rally. And, yes, I really do mean a robot, and, yes, I really do mean arrested.

A robot has been detained by police at a political rally in Moscow, with authorities attempting to handcuff the machine. The rally was for Valery Kalachev, a candidate for the Russian Parliament, who had rented the robot for his campaign.

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The nominee to lead the U.S. Strategic Command warned Congress this week that China and Russia are rapidly building space warfare capabilities and the United States is lagging behind in efforts to counter the threat.

Both Beijing and Moscow are developing anti-satellite missiles and laser guns and maneuvering killer space robots that could cripple strategic U.S. communications, navigation and intelligence satellites, the backbone of American high-technology warfare.

Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, picked to be the next Stratcom commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Chinese and Russian space weapons pose “an emerging challenge” and that the Pentagon is accelerating its efforts to counter the threat.

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My suggestion; don’t be one of those companies and governments in the next 5yrs that waits until the 9th hour meanwhile others planned, invested, and executed properly so they’re not exposed like you are.

The race to create new cryptographic standards before super-fast quantum computers are built that can rip apart data protected by existing encryption methods isn’t going fast enough, two senior Canadian officials have warned a security conference.

“I think we are already behind,” Scott Jones, deputy chief of IT security at the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), responsible for securing federal information systems, told the fourth annual international workshop on quantum-safe cryptography in Toronto on Monday.

Quantum computing – or more accurately, computers that use quantum mechanics – is not a dream, Jones and others told the conference of business executives, crypto academics, IT companies and government officials. One prediction is there’s a one in seven chance that by 2026 a quantum computer will exist that can break RSA-2048 encryption. It may take longer — or, if there’s an advance, shorter.

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China has its sights to be the World’s SV.

Editor’s Note:

The New York Times business bestseller Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle which explores the roots of Israeli innovation has garnered global attention and won its co-authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer worldwide fame overnight. In a recent interview with Global Times reporter Zhang Ni (GT) in Beijing, Singer (S), who served as an adviser to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee before moving to Israel in 1994, said he believes China is more innovative than people think. He suggested that China is ahead of the US in some aspects, as Facebook is now trying to copy China’s WeChat.

GT: Do you think China is a start-up nation? Do you think China is an innovative country?

S: The process that happened first in the US and then in Israel is happening now in a very big way in China. Entrepreneurship is growing rapidly in China. There are probably thousands of start-ups already. In addition to this natural growth, the Chinese government is strongly encouraging people. Entrepreneurship is very risky and difficult. When you have encouragement from the government, it makes things easier. China is already producing some very innovative companies as well as a lot of start-ups. This process has moved fast in the past five years and is going to move tremendously as well in the next five. I think China is much more innovative than people think. They just don’t realize how innovative Tencent, Huawei and Xiaomi or many start-ups are.

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Dr Michael Adeogun and Dr Max Ryadnov from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have written an expert view for Bio-Based World News on the importance of measurement science in synthetic biology, highlighting the vital work that NPL has already undertaken in this field.

Synthetic biology is a growing field which seeks to develop solutions to major global challenges, such as the generation of sustainable and affordable materials and chemicals, and the use of bio-engineered organisms as products. The UK aims to achieve a £10bn market in synthetic biology by 2030.

Since the publication of the government-commissioned Synthetic Biology Roadmap in 2012, the UK has become the second largest investor in synthetic biology, having developed a national network of research centres, doctoral training programmes and knowledge facilities to drive growth in the commercial sector.

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