Lifeboat Foundation

I get this question a lot. Today, I was asked to write an answer at Quora.com, a Q&A web site at which I am the local cryptocurrency expert. It’s time to address this issue here at Lifeboat.

Question

I have many PCs laying around my home and office.
Some are current models with fast Intel CPUs. Can
I mine Bitcoin to make a little money on the side?

Answer

Other answers focus on the cost of electricity, the number of hashes or teraflops achieved by a computer CPU or the size of the current Bitcoin reward. But, you needn’t dig into any of these details to understand this answer.

You can find the mining software to mine Bitcoin or any other coin on any equipment. Even a phone or wristwatch. But, don’t expect to make money. Mining Bitcoin with an x86 CPU (Core or Pentium equivalent) is never cost effective—not even when Bitcoin was trading at nearly $20,000. A computer with a fast $1500 graphics card will bring you closer to profitability, but not by much.

Continue reading “Extra PCs laying around? Why not mine Bitcoin?” »

What if the world is genuinely shaping to be transformed to Jacque Fresco’s ideal world? — vision of global Resource Based Economy?! The idealistic.

Talk of commercial missions to the moon, constellations of satellites, space tourism, and a trillion-dollar space economy filled the NewSpace conference in Renton Tuesday. There was also a cautionary tale.

Ocasio-Cortez’s 100%-renewable plan puts her in agreement with a coalition of US mayors who have committed to the goal of complete decarbonization within their own cities. But Ocasio-Cortez, who has an economics degree, also couples that plank with an economic plan she is calling the Green New Deal.

In a major upset on Tuesday night, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina democratic socialist from the Bronx, beat out the longtime US representative Joe Crowley in the New York primaries. In the overwhelmingly Democratic district, she is practically certain to win a seat in Congress during the general election in November.

Ocasio-Cortez’s climate-change platform would become the most progressive of that of any sitting Congressperson in the Democratic party—and her primary victory catapults that platform into the mainstream.

Continue reading “Ocasio-Cortez’s climate plan is the only one that matches scientific consensus on the environment” »

The deadlines set for “singularity” are also seen by some as an attempt to scare and coerce governments into implementing the movement’s social and technological “agenda”. However, when the names of major tech corporations of the world like Google, Nokia and Tesla are associated with the transhumanist ideology, it is difficult to dismiss the premise and prospects of this new revolutionary socio-technological movement.

For several centuries, political movements have emanated from nationalist or religious convictions, socio-political and economic theories or even environmental concerns. However, issues of science and technology have rarely driven mainstream socio-political discourse as scientists have hardly ever indulged in propounding societal constructs for the future.

However, a technology-oriented intellectual movement may soon become the focus of political debate as 21st century science stands at the brink of reshaping human identity itself.

Continue reading “Transhumanism: Politics of hybridizing humans with robots” »

Behind all this is a change in the way a lot of journals make their money. Over the past decade, many have stopped selling subscriptions. Instead, they charge authors a publication fee and permit people to read the result for nothing. This “open access” business model has the advantage of increasing the dissemination of knowledge, but it also risks corrupting the knowledge thus disseminated.

WHETHER to get a promotion or merely a foot in the door, academics have long known that they must publish papers, typically the more the better. Tallying scholarly publications to evaluate their authors has been common since the invention of scientific journals in the 17th century. So, too, has the practice of journal editors asking independent, usually anonymous, experts to scrutinise manuscripts and reject those deemed flawed—a quality-control process now known as peer review. Of late, however, this habit of according importance to papers labelled as “peer reviewed” has become something of a gamble. A rising number of journals that claim to review submissions in this way do not bother to do so. Not coincidentally, this seems to be leading some academics to inflate their publication lists with papers that might not pass such scrutiny.

Experts debate how many journals falsely claim to engage in peer review. Cabells, an analytics firm in Texas, has compiled a blacklist of those which it believes are guilty. According to Kathleen Berryman, who is in charge of this list, the firm employs 65 criteria to determine whether a journal should go on it—though she is reluctant to go into details. Cabells’ list now totals around 8,700 journals, up from a bit over 4,000 a year ago. Another list, which grew to around 12,000 journals, was compiled until recently by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado. Using Mr Beall’s list, Bo-Christer Björk, an information scientist at the Hanken School of Economics, in Helsinki, estimates that the number of articles published in questionable journals has ballooned from about 53,000 a year in 2010 to more than 400,000 today. He estimates that 6% of academic papers by researchers in America appear in such journals.

Continue reading “Some science journals that claim to peer review papers do not do so” »

Space is the next frontier for war.

• President Donald Trump’s proposed “Space Force” could help fuel the $1 trillion intergalactic economy, Morgan Stanley says.
• The bank is tracking 100 private companies poised to profit from interstellar industries.

If President Donald Trump successfully organizes his so-called Space Force, it could speed up investment in what Morgan Stanley sees as the next trillion-dollar economy.

In a note to clients Friday, the bank doubled down on its intergalactic thesis from last October, saying the Space Force “could address critical vulnerabilities in national security, raising investor awareness in the formation of what we see as the next trillion-dollar economy.”

Continue reading “Trump’s ‘Space Force’ could fuel a new $1 trillion economy, Morgan Stanley says” »

The famous psychologist Timothy Leary once referred to himself as a “surfer,” envisioning a future where, “[t]o study biology, you can press a button and make yourself part of the human body. You can become a white blood cell and learn about the circulatory system by traveling through an artery. You can call up the Prado Museum in Madrid and study Goya’s paintings.”

When I think about the future, I envision mass technological disruptions across the entire landscape. Artificial intelligence (AI) being embedded into the very fabric of our architecture and institutions, 3D printing transforming our socio-economic system from scarcity to abundance, and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) unleashing infinite potential in shaping our perceptions of reality.

Continue reading “How Virtual Reality Will Help Shape Our Psychedelic Future” »

American companies like Amazon and Netflix are already using artificial intelligence, says data scientist Michael Li, and ones that will not adapt will be left behind. What we need is to expand the discussion and possible regulation of this new technology that is transforming our lives.