Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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By Ted Greenwald — MIT Technology Review

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Most tech startups are silent spaces where earbud-clad engineers peer into monitors. Not Hampton Creek Foods. The two-year-old company’s office—a filled-to-bursting space in San Francisco’s South of Market tech hotbed—grinds, clatters, and whirs like a laundromat run amok. That’s the sound of industrial-strength mixers, grinders, and centrifuges churning out what the company hopes is a key ingredient in food 2.0: an animal-free replacement for the chicken egg.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists have funded several food-related startups in the past year, but Hampton Creek has gathered the most momentum. It has A-list investors including Founders Fund, Horizon Ventures, and Khosla Ventures, and two undisclosed industrial food companies are experimenting with its plant-based egg substitute. The prepared-food counter at Whole Foods began using the startup’s egg-free Just Mayo mayonnaise in September 2013, with four other mainstream grocery chains lined up for the first half of this year. And, thanks to a recent investment round that boosted Hampton Creek’s funding to $30 million and drew in Li Ka-shing, the wealthiest person in Asia, Just Mayo soon will be sold by a large online grocer in Hong Kong.

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White Swan Update by Andres Agostini, Countermeassuring Every Unthinkable Black Swan, at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

030

New algorithm shakes up cryptography http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140515163739.htm

Global Growth Worries Climb http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304547704579564292749621218?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304547704579564292749621218.html

Will the FCC be able to enforce an open internet? http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/will-fcc-be-able-enforce-open-internet

Fallout from Russia’s Adventure in Crimea – A New Space Race? http://www.21stcentech.com/fallout-russias-adventure-crimea/

Boeing Has Crew Capsule to Replace Soyuz and with Bigelow a Private Space Station to Replace the ISS http://www.21stcentech.com/boeing-crew-capsule-replace-soyuz/

The future beyond the Web is called FIA http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/14/the-future-beyond-the-web-is-called-fia-and-it-just-got-15-million/

New Study of Tropical Cyclones Indicates Polar Migration http://www.21stcentech.com/study-tropical-cyclones-polar-migration/

Planning for the Next NASA Mars Rover Mission http://www.21stcentech.com/planning-nasa-mars-rover-mission/

Strongly interacting electrons in wacky oxide synchronize to work like the brain http://phys.org/news/2014-05-strongly-interacting-electrons-wacky-oxide.html

Internet of Things network to launch in UK next year http://phys.org/news/2014-05-internet-network-uk-year.html

Venus Express gets ready to take the plunge http://phys.org/news/2014-05-venus-ready-plunge.html

Wildfires worse due to global warming, studies say http://phys.org/news/2014-05-wildfires-worse-due-global.html

White Swan Update by Andres Agostini, Countermeassuring Every Unthinkable Black Swan, at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

BBC
Robot

Two robotics experts, Prof Ronald Arkin and Prof Noel Sharkey, will debate the efficacy and necessity of killer robots.

The meeting will be held during the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). A report on the discussion will be presented to the CCW meeting in November. This will be the first time that the issue of killer robots, or lethal autonomous weapons systems, will be addressed within the CCW.

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- Gizmodo
Scientists Have Reconnected Severed Nerves with Liquid Metal

Get your T-1000 jokes ready, because we’re one step closer to liquid metal-powered people. As a team of Chinese biomedical engineers recently used an alloy to close the gap between severed sciatic nerves in frogs. In effect, it made electronic circuits out of nerves — and it worked.

Shockingly, this sci-fi solution is as simple as it sounds. Looking for a way to keep muscles active while nerves healed, the Tsinghua University researchers identified liquid metal as a highly conductive but also safe material to bridge the gap. They decided on the liquid metal alloy gallium-indium-selenium, a benign material that’s liquid at body temperature. (This liquid metal is not to be confused with the brand-name wonder material Liquidmetal, which is not actually a liquid.) The liquid metal alloy is also highly conductive.

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The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador Mr. Andres Agostini’s own Applied Non-Theological Omniscience defined:

Applied Non-Theological Omniscience defined:

“… Applied non-theological omniscience consists of having total knowledge; knowing everything, having infinite knowledge, the current state of knowledge, the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known and actually knowing everything that can be known. Synonyms to omniscience include panshopy, polyhistory and all-knowingness …”

Transformative and Integrative Risk Management (TAIRM) methodology, under applied omniscience, is the theme of the White Swan idea.

The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador Mr. Andres Agostini’s own Transformative and Integrative Risk Management (TAIRM) methodology and White Swan defined:

“…Transformative and Integrative Risk Management (TAIRM) methodology, a most advanced beyond-insurance risk management systems, comprises of all activities and initiatives required to seize the optimum degree of risk ( a ) elimination, ( b ) mitigation, ( c ) modulation or ( d ) control within the constraints of ( i ) operational effectiveness, ( ii ) time, and ( iii ) cost, attained through the specific, systemic and systematic application of management, scientific, engineering and applied mathematical principles throughout all phases and facets of system operation, articulated under ( 1 ) Systems Approach, ( 2 ) Engineering, ( 3 ) Classical Risk Management and ( 4 ) Practical Non-Theological Omniscience…”

Transformative and Integrative Risk Management (TAIRM) methodology is the theme of the White Swan idea.

Applied Non-Theological Omniscience defined:

“… Applied non-theological omniscience consists of having total knowledge; knowing everything, having infinite knowledge, the current state of knowledge, the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known and actually knowing everything that can be known. Synonyms to omniscience include panshopy, polyhistory and all-knowingness …”

Jesus Diaz — SPLOID

At last we got to see the full trailer for Chris Nolan’s Insterstellar. The drama seems centered around a worldwide food crisis fired by climate change and resource depletion—a quite probable future. The space travel part seems equally plausible, showing what may be the first realistic depiction of a real warp drive.

Of course, warp drives are not real. Yet (hopefully?) But physicist have theorized about it and NASA has a small group of people working on them. I’m firmly in the camp of “if we can imagine it, we can build it.” But we will get to that later. Watch the trailer first:

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Philip Rosedale — MIT Review

Recent weeks have been good ones for people interested in virtual reality. The Facebook acquisition of Oculus has galvanized the idea that “something wonderful” will happen if we put on these strange headsets and visually enter other worlds. Of course, most people assume this means gaming.

And it’s true that the upcoming Crystal Cove Oculus headset (which tracks the head’s position and rotation) will immerse its users in the most amazing computer gaming experiences they could have ever thought possible. But that’s not the big part of the story.

After we’ve had the Oculus strapped to our faces for a few months and the novelty has worn off, we might find ourselves asking some important questions: “Where are the other people?” And “Where can I start working and learning and building in here?”

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By Erik Sofge — Popular Science

It happens quickly—more quickly than you, being human, can fully process.

A front tire blows, and your autonomous SUV swerves. But rather than veering left, into the opposing lane of traffic, the robotic vehicle steers right. Brakes engage, the system tries to correct itself, but there’s too much momentum. Like a cornball stunt in a bad action movie, you are over the cliff, in free fall.

Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn’t be simpler.

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Andrea Chang — LA Times
Bitreserve.org
Halsey Minor, founder of CNET and an early backer of Salesforce.com, is launching bitcoin platform Bitreserve.org.

The site aims to address the volatile nature of the cryptocurrency by providing real-time transparency, transaction traceability and proof of solvency.

“Bitcoin is a remarkable innovation, created and supported by lots of very smart people,” Minor said. “Bitreserve is built on top of the bitcoin network, allowing members to convert bitcoin into money they know, trust and understand.”

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