Lifeboat Foundation

Technology, meet your future beyond AI & Quantum.

While scientists study the possibilities of storing data in DNA, the web magazine Engadget reports that another group of researchers are looking into the possibility of utilizing living cells for next-generation computing.

The latest studies have developed a method of integrating both analog and digital computing into gene-based circuits. This allowed researchers to convert analog chemical reactions into binary output, or the ones and zeros that regular computers understand.

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Legendary master filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams) examines the past, present and constantly evolving future of the Internet in Lo And Behold: Reveries Of The Connected World. Herzog conducted original interviews with cyberspace pioneers and prophets such as PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, Internet protocol inventor Bob Kahn, and famed hacker Kevin Mitnick. These provocative conversations reveal the ways in which the online world has transformed how virtually everything in the real world works, from business to education, space travel to healthcare, and the very heart of how we conduct our personal relationships.

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” The explosion of information technology on the internet has lead to some of its greatest glories.” Magnolia has released an official US trailer for the new Werner Herzog documentary Lo and Behold: Reveries of The Connected World, in which Herzog profiles the internet and how it has changed the world, for better or worse. The doc premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to mostly positive reviews. We featured the first two trailers a few months ago while waiting for release info to be revealed. The doc has 10 distinct chapters, from “The Early Days” to “The Future”, and explores both the good and bad of what the internet has provided. I’m still quite excited to see this doc, anything by Herzog is usually quite fascinating.

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Another reliable article on the Quantum Internet work.

You can’t sign up for the quantum internet just yet, but researchers have reported a major experimental milestone towards building a global quantum network — and it’s happening in space.

With a network that carries information in the quantum properties of single particles, you can create secure keys for secret messaging and potentially connect powerful quantum computers in the future. But scientists think you will need equipment in space to get global reach.

Continue reading “Quantum satellite device tests technology for global quantum network” »

A quantum node device that might pave the way for a future space-based quantum Internet has been successfully tested for the first time aboard a small satellite.

The device, called SPEQS, has been developed by a team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Glasgow-based University of Strathclyde. It contains technology for creation of the so-called correlated photons, which are a precursor for the better known entangled photons that communicate across large distances.

In an article published in the latest issue of the journal Physical Review Applied, the team led by NUS researcher Alexander Ling described first result of the experiment, which saw the SPEQS system reliably creating and measuring pairs of photons with correlated properties.

“It’s been dubbed the Google tax, but it will likely hit every global internet company operating in India—and, in turn, the country’s fledgling startup and digital advertising ecosystems.”

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With the robot economy looming large in the coming decades, one solution to vanishing jobs may simply be to give people money regardless of whether or not they work.

That idea is called “basic income,” and it just gained the support of one of the tech world’s founding fathers, Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

“I think a basic income is one of the ways of addressing massive global inequality,” Berners-Lee, who founded the Web in 1989, explained on a recent episode of The Economist podcast.

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Make no mistake, today’s wearables are clever pieces of kit. But they can be bulky and restricted by the devices they must be tethered to. This has led engineers to create thinner and more powerful pieces of wearable technology that can be applied directly to the skin. Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by Zhenqiang “Jack” Ma, have developed “the world’s fastest stretchable, wearable integrated circuits,” that could let hospitals apply a temporary tattoo and remove the need for wires and clips.

With its snake-like shape, the new platform supports frequencies in the .3 gigahertz to 300 gigahertz range. This falls in what is set to become the 5G standard. For a mobile phone, 5G enables faster speeds and greater coverage, but with epidermal electronics, engineers have discussed the possibility that wearers could transmit their vitals to a doctor without having to leave their home.

While the idea isn’t unique, the integrated circuits created by Ma and his team have a much smaller footprint than those developed by other researchers. Earlier transmission lines can measure up to 640 micrometers (or .64 millimeters), but UW–Madison’s solution is just 25 micrometers (or .025 millimeters) thick. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research also supports Ma’s research, suggesting that his wearable breakthroughs may help pilots of the future.

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Money can buy you immortality, according to the Russian internet multi-millionaire who is ploughing a fortune into a project to create a human that never dies.