Lifeboat Foundation

Your online profile is less a reflection of you than a caricature.

Whether you like it or not, commercial and public actors tend to trust the string of 1s and 0s that represent you more than the story you tell them. When filing a credit application at a bank or being recruited for a job, your social network, credit-card history, and postal address can be viewed as immutable facts more credible than your opinion.

But your online profile is not always built on facts. It is shaped by technology companies and advertisers who make key decisions based on their interpretation of seemingly benign data points: what movies you choose to watch, the time of day you tweet, or how long you take to click on a cat video.

Continue reading “Your digital identity has three layers, and you can only protect one of them” »

Decoder, developed in collaboration with a games developer, gets users to assume the role of an intelligence officer tasked with breaking up global criminal gangs (users are able to select a character and their backstory).

To meet the objective, users have to identify different combinations of number strings in missions littered with distraction.

Winning each mission means users unlock letters of the next criminal location (the higher the score, the more letters revealed).

Continue reading “Cambridge University releases a brain-training app that improves concentration akin to Ritalin” »

Taking a page from film noir spycraft, a team of researchers found a way to photograph an object while pointing a camera in the opposite direction.

Childhood’s End

Dr. Twyman developed the idea of social futurism which can be characterized as the idea of using technology to solve social problems. Dr. Twyman has tried two variations to drive interest in the community as well as some political efforts external to that. The most recent incarnation of this was an ARG (alternate reality game). Whether you thought his approaches to Zero State and Social Futurism were good or not, the idea of Social Futurism is something we need more people to talk about.

While the details to me are unimportant in most things the central idea IS important. With Social Futurism it evolves out of the same moral and ethical model that includes a deep respect and needs to help those around us, something I think more of us and should include as part of our lives and the message we share with others through our actions and the example we set.

Continue reading “Dialog, Social Futurism and a Zero State Condition” »

Neuroscientists have successfully hooked up a three-way brain connection to allow three people to share their thoughts – and in this case, play a Tetris-style game.

The team thinks this wild experiment could be scaled up to connect whole networks of people, and yes, it’s as weird as it sounds.

It works through a combination of electroencephalograms (EEGs), for recording the electrical impulses that indicate brain activity, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), where neurons are stimulated using magnetic fields.

Continue reading “Brains of 3 People Have Been Successfully Connected, Enabling Them to Share Thoughts” »

This new real-time CGI technology is unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

The tech-savvy Black Mirror audience is a natural fit since, as Engelbrecht put it, they tend to be “a little more experimental and willing to be out there.” But it was the mind of Brooker and the potential for what he could create that made Netflix want to go all in. In order to fully execute Brooker’s vision, Netflix created new technology, including “state tracking” to remember the choices viewers make over the course of the story. That tech is what allows for the unique experience for each viewer. Choices made earlier in the episode impact scenes and storylines as the viewer goes in ways that can be subtle (like an advertisement for the cereal that was picked) or very impactful, even resulting in which endings a viewer can unlock.

Netflix released its first interactive experience for adults with ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ on Dec. 28. The teams behind the immersive film, which debuts first-of-its-kind technology, tell The Hollywood Reporter how to be an active player in Charlie Brooker’s story.

The fate of Westeros will soon be revealed.

In the meantime, entomologist Brett Ratcliffe has found three new contenders for the throne.

The University of Nebraska professor named three of his eight newest beetle discoveries after a trio of dragons in George R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series (known more popularly as HBO’s Game of Thrones).

Continue reading “New Beetle Species Named After ‘Game of Thrones’ Dragons” »

May the force be with you…

• A man named Ryan, who asked INSIDER to only use his first name, decided to prank his parents with a Christmas gift this year.
• He told them it was a portrait of Jesus, when really the painting he gave them was of Ewan McGregor’s character Obi-Wan Kenobi from the “Star Wars” films.
• When Ryan spoke to INSIDER, he had admitted the prank to his dad, but his mother still didn’t know the painting wasn’t of Jesus.

A Utah man gave his parents a portrait of Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi for Christmas, and his mother hung it on her wall thinking it was Jesus.

Ryan, who asked INSIDER to only use his first name, shared Click on photo to start video.

Continue reading “A Utah man pranked his parents by giving them a portrait of Obi-Wan Kenobi that looks like Jesus for Christmas” »