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Dorinda Elliott — Fast Company


China’s most powerful Internet company is headquartered in a bland, glassy tower in southern Shenzhen. Unlike Silicon Valley’s funky campuses, there is nothing to reveal that this might be a hub of creativity. An insurance company, perhaps? In the middle of its nondescript, corporate lobby, an information desk stands next to the only sign of personality: a pair of giant plush penguins, the Tencent mascot times two. Nearby, an iPad displays stats on the company’s messaging services. But when I pull out a notebook and start jotting down the numbers, the receptionist waves her hand. “Oh no, that’s not updated!” she says. “It’s just for show.”

I’m here for a “tour” of the company, but am only allowed entrance to a museum-like exhibit of Tencent products. The experience feels like a throwback to the tightly controlled Communist Party–sponsored trips reporters went on back in the 1980s, before the country really started opening up to the outside world. An attractive, young, fluent English speaker shuffles me from one screen to another. The three other public relations officers with me offer no analysis of the firm, saying they will get back to me on any questions I have. I ask about the management style of the somewhat mysterious CEO, Pony Ma, and there is an awkward pause. Then the guide brightly tells me: “It’s very equal here. We all call him Pony!”

And that’s the tour.

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Paul Elio believes he’s found a niche in the personal transportation market with a low-cost vehicle that can go really far between trips to the gas station.

Elio Motors has designed a three-wheeled vehicle that gets 84 miles per gallon. And with an eight-gallon tank it can get more than 670 miles in one fill up. The car’s price tag: $6,800.

“We’re not just creating a new vehicle,” Elio said in a press release announcing that more than 10,000 people have already reserved the vehicle. “We’re creating an entirely new industry segment that appeals to people who want a low-cost, highly efficient mode of transportation, but still want to own a unique vehicle that will turn some heads. The Elio gives people the best of both worlds.”

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Kurweil AI
nus-focused-electron-beamCircuits that can operate at frequencies up to 245 terahertz — tens of thousands times faster than today’s state-of-the-art microprocessors — have been designed and fabricated by researchers at National University of Singapore and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

The new circuits can potentially be used to construct ultra-fast computers or single-molecule detectors in the future, and open up new possibilities in nanoelectronic devices. For example, by changing the molecules in the molecular electronic device, the frequency of the circuits can be altered over hundreds of terahertz.

The invention uses a new physical process called “quantum plasmonic tunneling.” Plasmons are collective, ultra-fast oscillations of electrons that can be manipulated by light at the nanoscale.

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Beijing haze
Researchers have found that pollutants are strengthening storms above the Pacific Ocean, which feeds into weather systems in other parts of the world.

The effect was most pronounced during the winter.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Lead author Yuan Wang, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, said: “The effects are quite dramatic. The pollution results in thicker and taller clouds and heavier precipitation.”

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— Singularity Hub
EDAG-Genesis-3D-Printed-Car-Top-View
German auto firm, EDAG, made a stir at this year’s Geneva Motor Show with a fully 3D printed auto body called Genesis. And why not? Its smooth grey curves and futuristic honeycomb ooze sex appeal. And did we mention 3D printed cars?

EDAG aids major carmakers in design and production, and they’re no stranger to the 11-day Geneva Motor Show, a mecca where over 600,000 car enthusiasts come to ogle the best cars of today and glimpse a few visions of tomorrow.

3D printing, of course, falls squarely into the second category. EDAG thinks additive manufacturing has the power to improve the entire carmaking process from design to production—and Genesis is meant to embody that potential.

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Amy Shira Teitel — Motherboard

The Explosive Evolution That Took Rocket Cars and Trains to Space Flight

One night in the spring of 1914, what appeared to be an impossibly large comet whizzed through the skies over Innsbruck, the capital city of Tyrol in western Austria. It terrified the locals; it was too big and too low in the sky to be something as innocent and ordinary as an actual comet or a planet. It turned out to be something equally innocuous, however alien: a rocket-powered model airplane. Nineteen-year-old high school student Max Valier had launched his model with a firecracker as its engine. It was the first in a series of rocket-powered vehicles he would test in his short lifetime, all in the hope of eventually seeing rockets carry men into space.

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TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE POINT BY TONY BUZAN AND THE AUTHOR OF THE WHITE SWAN (ANDRES AGOSTINI), LET US CREATE A DIALOGUE SIMULACRUM BY BART SIMPSON AND HOMER SIMPSON.

001

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE POINT BY BUZAN AND THE AUTHOR, LET US CREATE A DIALOGUE SIMULACRUM BY BART SIMPSON AND HOMER SIMPSON.

Bart: Dad, why do you say that knowledge is a soup?

Homer: Son, because since time immemorial and before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, every type of knowledge was somewhat related to the other type. Tony does some nice chatting about it.

Bart: Dad, what is the Industrial Revolution? But in the process, don’t dictate me an academic lecture and scholarship, please!

Homer: Son, the Industrial Revolution is Day #1 when humans decided to throw in the towel and to make inanimate apparatus to rule the entire human race, thus ruling out hominids.

Bart: Is that Day #1 for Home Personal Computers making?

Homer: For PC making and the ensuing bots!

Bart: What do you mean by bots?

Homer: Those anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic apparatus that stem from Swiss-clockwork manufacturing and some other naughty gadgets by Leo.

Bart: What do you mean by naughty gadgets by Leonardo? Is that the same Leo of the Priory of Sion?

Homer: Yes. Leo’s automaton one, that, I guess, some architect or technologist have resembled and proved utility in that and so the tic-tact-toe thing went into inexhaustible infinity until its own destruction by tear and wear.

Bart: And what is the problem with building a tic-tact-toe thing, rumbling around?

Homer: My son, you are so naive. There is no problem with the tic-tact-toe thing rumbling around. The problem is that Siren Servers are planning to bestow such rumbling-around tic-tact-toe things with beyond-human-thinking capabilities. In the process, some rara avis and pigeons might become endangered species.

Bart: Dad, you must be jockeying! Are you, Dad, suggesting that real-world and present-day humans are entertaining the idea of enabling the worst nightmares predicted by Luddites and Proto-Luddites?

Homer: Well, Bart, the problem with you is that you haven’t read the Singularity is Near. There is no problem because in that book it is cherished that by a bird’s and a bee’s type of transubstantiation thing humans and apparatus will become one single entity. And thus mortality will become an unfashionable thing of the past.

Bart: Dad, but some spooky reasons beyond my understanding Jaron says, like Gerald Celente, that we need to become Siren-Servers advert and be careful that home PCs don’t stand-up and start flying and self-replicating and giving birth to upgraded tic-tac-toe devices.

Homer: Jaron, who?

Bart: That is, Jaron Lanier. He dearly harbors the serious notion of the Siren Servers (ISBN: 978–1451654974).

Homer: Bart, I don’t know that gentleman? What is that silly subtle point you are trying to make with me? To the point, please!

Bart: The problem is that Jaron argues that the man with the outlandish public laughter, a bit out of public proportion and without grace and appalling gusto, is set out, through his Siren Servers’ web-based store, to use rumbling-around tic-tact-toe and beyond-human-thinking capabilities things to do acrobatic-midair hovering, superseding watermelon-sized hovercrafts.

Homer: Son, if that is so anguishly true, I must declare you a shrewd, mordant brainchild. Why Caustic Monsieur Highest-Volume Laughter (ASIN: B007GPYLH0) would want those insane entities to do midair hovering?

Bart: Daddy, so that he can get his non-clouded-based products and cash-capturing to arrive on the customer’s hands, delivering quamtumly-encrypted materials, without the snailed-paced best offices of and by FEDEX or UPS.

Homer: But Bart, when the gentleman in question met with Charlie, did he hint something about you in-point stuff?

Bart: Charlie, Charlie who?

Homer: Charlie Rose, the Bloomberg TV’s journalist and nighttime interviewer, remember?

Bart: Yes, I do. But the Lanier guy says that the tic-tact-toe thing, beyond being smarter than a human device and hovering in the midair spatial plane, it is also going to be wirelessly connected in the temporal locus with the World-Wide Web and it is also going to be able to sequester wireless electricity, too.

Homer: Oh my God, son! Are you sure that you are NOT into the Scottish Rite?

Bart: Are you hinting me to be associated with the foundational architects of Washington D.C.?

Homer: Bart, are you suggesting that Mr. Laughter might as well be using Recondite and Hermetic Knowledge to make the tic-tac-toe a superrich-fortune-generating after-tax wealth, to out-compete Gates III and Buffett I?

Bart: You are close, Dad, but not close enough! Sure thing, Mr. Laughter will secure Recondite and Hermetic Knowledge. But in order to be even more technical and prepared, he is additionally going to use Andy’s practical idea on non-theological applied omniscience. Got it? He will, then, get his White Swan as his Swiss and Jersey Bankers will confirm his in-pocketed CASH. Thence, he will rule many Siren Servers!

Homer: What is the White Swan’s non-theological applied omniscience?

Bart: An invention by DARPA and NASA, greatly propelled by Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard and Dr. Wernher von Braun. And before you ask, NASA is a spinoff by DARPA and DoD. And DARPA is where America’s most sophisticated ground-breaking hotbed-ed scientists reside, research and provide.

Homer: What is a White Swan?

Bart: The beforehand destruction of corporation’s MOST exponential risks and downside futures, transformed into insane richness and gold.

Homer: Do you think that these watermelon-sized wireless ubiquitous hovercrafts (quadracopters) will get into reproducing their non-biological specie?

Bart: Well, Joel and Orson argue that they will make self-replicating and self-upgrading watermelon-sized wireless hovercrafts. They say that the air traffic will be so jammed by the un-biological thinking and mating (reproducing) creatures that jet number 1 won’t be able to take off.

Homer: What Joel and Orson are those?

Bart: The one of the Radical Evolution (ISBN: 978–0767915038). Dad, where do you think these trends will take us to? Orson is a hell-of-American intellectual and movie director and maker that shocked TV viewers with the invasion of and by alien intelligences from the Omniverse’s Recondite and Hermetic: Dark Energy and Dark Matter. To this end, Olson explains his case below.

Homer: I first must correct you. I agree with Andy. He does not like the oversimplified “trend” and “countertrend” words. He says that trend is like a head-shot of a frozen dynamic projected trajectory, only bestowed by the Dynamic Driving Forces. If the Disruptional Singularity warrants it only, the Dynamic Driving Forces will, then, take us into Ray’s Technological Singularity.

Bart: I am confused! What are those singularities about?

Homer: The techie one is about birthing non-biological and transbiological humans that supersede the computational reckoning by today’s human brain. And making natural death an outright thing of the past. The Disruptional one is about human error, terror and flawness making waves in civilian and military spheres, including the imposition of the Cold War II by the express impious deeds of the Euro-Asian superpower as per the invite, not of the U.S., of the naive E.U. so-called “leaders.”

Bart: Can the self-replicating and self-upgrading watermelon-sized wireless hovercrafts carry improvised “x” devices?

Homer: I doubt it, Mr. Laughter has every White Swan calculated in detail. And White Swans hates every form of disruptions and are rara avis that destroy threats and risks.

Bart: What can a White Swan do for the most prominent Seattle inhabitant?

Homer: Make his core-business EVEN infinitely richer while securing a better laughter outpouring to the East Coast of the Atlantic.

Bart: Dad, how can we get on the boat on making wealth like him?

Homer: Through two quick ways. First, by doing smart entrepreneuring. Second, by doing the “…First…” through the White Swan.

Bart: Why is it necessary the White Swan?

Homer: First, in order not to get silly black swans. Second, in order to make your coped-with black swans into beautiful and lucrative White Swans through Transformative and Integrative Risk Management interdisciplinary problem-solving methodology. (That is: Feet-on-the-ground problem solving).

Bart: And What is Transformative and Integrative Risk Management interdisciplinary problem-solving methodology?

Homer: Andy’s interdisciplinary approach to Seize Success, Preclude the Disruptional Singularity and enable Ray’s Technological Singularity.

Bart: How do you define success?

Homer: To this end, Andy says that Success is achieved in two simultaneous ways. FIRST, By securing all of your designated objectives and goals, despite competitors and governments. SECOND, By securing that, as you over-accomplish your designated objectives and goals, you give your competitors tons of Sputnik Moments.

Bart: Oh, I see. Buy what is that Rusky notion that I don’t get?

Homer: Sputnik moments are when you are superseded by your competitors as they throw at you manipulated strategies and technological innovations to disrupt your business from competing. And if you are getting Sputnik moments is because you are doing, without consciousness, black swans only and are not responsive to the White Swan idea.

Bart: Dad, that sounds a bit complicated.

Homer: Bart, for some things you are smart. And for others you are a fool. Competition between business enterprises are harsh actions by Frederick The Great and Emperor Napoleon I.

Bart: Dad, why are you teaching me history? I hate that knowledge field.

Homer: Bart, if you don’t learn history, you are set out to fail at entrepreneuring! You can have all the high tech you want but if you don’t know how to do your strategy right and do right with your risks and futures, you are destined to be bankrupted.

Bart: Dad, Are all entrepreneurs and corporation CEOs and chairpersons so anti-shrewd?

Homer: 97% of them are! Those guys and gals think that by having tons of servers and web-based mobile applications they will outsmart the competition and governments. Hence, they are immeasurably wrong!

Bart: Dad, so one needs to go further than having laptops, servers, kindles, e-readers, i-pads, i-phones and so forth? Are those the employment of what Andy and other call tangibles.

Homer: Yes, son. You gotta do your intangibles. Even tangibles are made up of intangibles. The world is ruled by intangibles. Stated simply, intangibles are Intellectual Capital. You see, not only corporations have Intellectual Capital but also sole proprietors as Andy and Ray. White Swan and Transformative and Integrative Risk Management are Intellectual Capitals, solely owned by Andy.

Bart: Is software contemplated within your Intellectual Capital definition?

Homer: Yes, software is an intangible and an Intellectual Capital. And, for the sake of clarity, you can even have a systematized interdisciplinary methodology in place that does not need computerization or web-basing. You see, Bart, everything under Computronium’s Sun (its own Star) is always, whether we know it or not, reckoning zillion calculations.

Bart: Is the biological mind a good example of a systematized hardware whose locus does not belong to W3?

Homer: Yes, it is. And you can also add that the bio-PC is systematic and yet, in many cases, not systemic.

Bart: And beyond patents and other copyrighted materials, What else is Intellectual Capital?

Homer: Two-fold question. FIRST, there is the knowledge base of the Corporation. SECOND, there is the knowledge base of each Corporation’s employee beyond any property and/or effort by said Corporation.

Bart: Who owns Tony Buzan’s Broth and Soup?

Homer: Well, Tony’s soup has a primordial genesis in people and civilizations from: Classic Ancient Greeks, Classic Ancient Romans and Latins, Classic Ancient Aryans and Germanics, Classic Ancient Scandinavians and, for instance, Classic Ancient Egyptians and Classic Ancient Phoenicians. And the idea by all of them is that the totality of knowledge does not have clearly-human-made knowledge (system) demarcations (boundaries). And superspecialization and overspecialization are NEVER recommended by these Classic Ancient civilizations.

Bart: And because of that by you is that Andy suggests to swiftly and thoroughly embrace the non-theological omniscience notion, just as DARPA, NASA and Shell do since the early 1950s.

Homer: Bart, you are becoming most mordant and probably into the Illuminatis? Are you?

END OF THE EXCHANGE SIMULACRUM.

You are welcome to read the White Swan here.

The White Swan’s Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments: How To Fundamentally Cope With Corporate Litmus Tests and With The Impact of the Dramatic Highly Improbable And Succeed Through Transformative and Integrative Risk Management! [TREATISE EXCERPT]. By © Copyright 2014 Mr. Andres Agostini — All Rights Reserved Worldwide — « https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan »

John Brownlee — Fast Company

Designed by Zuta Labs and now on Kickstarter, the Mini Mobile Robotic Printer is one for the mobile age. It cleverly sheds the bulk of consumer printing by re-imagining what a printer actually is.

Printers, of course, are annoyingly big pieces of hardware that remain tethered to our desktops, a particular insult while other gadgets become ever more mobile. The prime factors of printer bloat are the giant reservoirs of ink and toner needed to power them. Add to that the requirement that a printer be at least as big as a ream of paper.

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— Wired
The Navy is developing electromagnetic railgun launchers, long-range weapons that launch projectiles using electricity instead of chemical propellants.
The U.S. Navy is tapping the power of the Force to wage war.

Its latest weapon is an electromagnetic railgun launcher. It uses a form of electromagnetic energy known as the Lorentz force to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7. Engineers already have tested this futuristic weapon on land, and the Navy plans to begin sea trials aboard a Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket in 2016.

“The electromagnetic railgun represents an incredible new offensive capability for the U.S. Navy,” Rear Adm. Bryant Fuller, the Navy’s chief engineer, said in a statement. “This capability will allow us to effectively counter a wide range of threats at a relatively low cost, while keeping our ships and sailors safer by removing the need to carry as many high-explosive weapons.”

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Education Elucidated by Napoleon Bonaparte and Dr. Wernher von Braun through the White Swan Idea:

WhiteSwanEureka

REFLECTING ON THE EDUCATION WE IMMEDIATELY NEED! NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ON EDUCATION (1769 – 1821) observed:

“…Education, strictly speaking, has several objectives: one needs to learn how to speak and write correctly, which is generally called grammar and belles letters. Each lyceum has provided for this object, and there is no well-educated man who has not learned his rhetoric .… After the need to speak and write correctly comes the ability to count and measure. The lyceums have provided this with classes in MATHEMATICS embracing arithmetical and MECHANICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THEIR DIFFERENT BRANCHES .… The elements of several other fields come next: chronology, geography, and the rudiments of history are also a part of the education of the lyceum .… A young man who leaves the lyceum at sixteen years of age thence knows not only the mechanics of his language and the classical authors, the divisions of discourse, the different figures of eloquence, the means of employing them either to calm or arouse passions, in short, everything that one learns in a course on belles letters. He also would know the principal epochs of history, the basic geographical divisions, and how to compute and measure. He has some general idea of the most striking natural phenomena and the principles of equilibrium and movement both with regard to solids and fluids .… Whether he desires to follow the career of the barrister, that of the sword, or ENGLISH, or letters; if he is destined to enter into the body of scholars, to be a geographer, engineer, or land surveyor — in all these cases he has received a general education necessary to become equipped to receive the remainder of instruction that his circumstances require, and it is at this moment, when he must make his choice of a profession, that the special studies present themselves …”. [113]

DR. WERNHER VON BRAUN ON EDUCATION, (1912 — 1977and Father of the American Space Program) observed:

“…The average citizen today, of course, has far more scientific information at his disposal than did those greatest of intellects of earlier times. Yet paradoxically, I think that THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A GREATER NEED FOR INCREASED UNDERSTANDING AND APPRECIATION OF SCIENCE. It has been said that, although the choice of direction for our civilization will be determined through democratic process, it is there that the problem begins. TO MAKE RATIONAL CHOICES, THE AVERAGE CITIZEN MUST UNDERSTAND THE NATURE AND ROLE OF SCIENCE AT A TIME WHEN ITS BREADTH AND COMPLEXITY ARE INCREASING ALMOST EXPONENTIALLY .… Conversely, the scientist, at a time when he can barely keep up to date in his specialty, must not isolate himself in his parochial interest. Instead, he should see his profession as a part of the larger world, to evaluate himself and his work in relation to all forces, especially the humanities, which shape and advance society. THE NEED, THEN, IS FOR AN EDUCATIONAL PROCESS RESULTING IN MORE SCIENTIFIC LITERACY FOR THE LAYMAN, AND MORE LITERACY IN THE HUMANITIES FOR THE SCIENTISTS .… Man in this scientific age is free only to the extent that he has a grasp on himself and his surroundings. FREEDOM — THE ABILITY TO SPEAK, THINK, ACT, AND VOTE INTELLIGENTLY — is based largely on our ability TO MAKE CHOICES growing out of our understanding of the issues involved. With each advance of science, there is an invitation to more understanding. This is the essence of the burden borne by all peoples since the dawn of humanity. There must be widespread understanding of the role of science in modern society, both as to its limits and our dependence on its basic function as a tool for our survival. This is the imperative for scientific literacy .… How do we encourage scientific literacy? I THINK THE PROBLEM IS HOW TO INSTILL IN STUDENTS A PERMANENT DESIRE TO LEARN. All youth is endowed with curiosity from the very beginning. What can education process do, not only to keep this natural curiosity alive, but to make it a permanent part of the individual drive? .…” [114]

The preceding is facilitated thanks to the emergence of the Book: The White Swan’s Beyond Eureka and Sputnik Moments! [Book Excerpt] By Mr. Andres Agostini at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan