Lifeboat Foundation

WhatsApp is dropping its subscription fees to access the popular messaging service. WhatsApp introduced the fees a few years ago, forcing new users to pay an annual 99 cents subscription after the first year. “As we’ve grown, we’ve found that this approach hasn’t worked well,” admits WhatsApp in a company blog post today.

“Many WhatsApp users don’t have a debit or credit card number and they worried they’d lose access to their friends and family after their first year. So over the next several weeks, we’ll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service.”

If you’ve been using WhatsApp for the six years it has been available then you’ve probably never experienced the subscription fees. Most original users were granted a free lifetime service, but in recent years the company introduced its subscription to new users. Recode reports that if you’ve already paid the 99 cents for the year then there won’t be a refund, but subscription fees will cease immediately.

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The material to create space elevators will be developed by 2030, enabling a new golden age of space travel, according to a study published in the journal New Space.

“The material needed to have a 100,000 km rope will become real before 2030 and enable the creation of this low-cost access to space,” wrote Cathy W Swan, of SouthWest Analytic Network, Peter A Swan and John M Knapman, of the International Space Elevator Consortium, and David I Raitt, retired from the European Space Agency.

A space elevator would make launching people, satellites and craft into geostationary orbit dramatically cheaper than at present, with the researchers estimating it would drop from the current prices of $25,000 per kg for commercial launches and $40,000 per kg for governmental launches to $100 per kg for materials.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc-6JPF9o0

A robot ethicist is going after sex robots, saying that banning them is important if you care about real relationships. Dr. Kathleen Richardson claims that men will prefer the robots and that real women will become obsolete. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian (The Point) hosts of The Young Turks discuss.

Would you buy a sex robot? Can it replace a real person? Let us know in the comments below.

Continue reading “Will Sex Robots Make Real Women Obsolete?” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSwZ2Y0Ops

Here are 18 predictions that finally came true in 2015, from an actual working hoverboard to cyborgised brains.

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“Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who lived aboard the International Space Station from 2012 to 2013, recently explained to CBC Music how difficult it was to play guitar in space, along with some pointers for future space musicians.”

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Asteroid mining and space tourism are all well and good, but a network of researchers around the world is thinking bigger when it comes to space exploration: interstellar travel.

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Military Robots are full speed ahead.

Forget debates about Britain’s nuclear deterrent. New technology means a country can be brought to its knees with the click of a mouse.

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Hmmm; China to explore the “dark side” of the moon by 2018. And, potential huge pay off in the form of rich mineral deposits is the key.

China’s going to land on the dark side of the moon, for the first time in human history. That means more than you might realize.

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Making meds from the bacteria living inside your gut. Interesting concept; however, it does remind me of some of the Sigourney Weaver movies.

Relatively new discoveries about of the role of the microbiome in human health have sparked a race to develop new therapies based on microbes.

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