Lifeboat Foundation

New York City’s discerning high-end chefs often ship in rare herbs and edible flowers from other states or even overseas. But Farm.One, an organic farm in the basement of an office building in Manhattan, can pick and deliver the precious leaves and flowers within the same day, says Robert Laing, the company’s CEO.

With its stacked shelves of hydroponic plants and grow lights, Farm. One is part of a growing movement of vertical farming across the world. The tech-enabled system uses less space and water than traditional farming.

Continue reading “The freshest herbs in Manhattan were grown in this office building basement” »

Meet GummiArm, the soft-handed robot that could fill in for a lack of human crop pickers—if British farmers can afford the cost.

The problem: The Telegraph notes that 40 percent of the growing costs for cauliflower, and similar crops like cabbage and broccoli, comes from harvesting in the UK. And that could rise, as crop-picking labor supply is set to decline in the country following Brexit.

Robots could help: University of Plymouth researchers say their GummiArm bot can pick up the slack. Computer vision allows it to work out which vegetable it should try to pick, while its hand can become more or less stiff to gently pick brassicas from their stems. It’s currently being tested in fields in southwestern England.

Continue reading “This cauliflower-picking robot aims to make up for a shortage of human labor in the UK” »

“A few months from now, a group of people will come here with something called an electric car. I need to know whether or not you have the right voltage connection for them to plug in their vehicles. Do you understand what I’m asking for?”

Mr. Dev Reddy, manager of a gas station in rural Anantapur district of India’s Andhra Pradesh looked at me as if he understood. It was 2008, and most people in India had never seen an electric car, but without flinching he took me to a shed to reveal a large plug point, which was used to power an electric sugar cane juicing machine. One look at it and I knew that there was sufficient voltage coming through the connection to be able to charge the lithium-ion battery in the REVA electric vehicles my friends and I would be driving 3,500 kilometers across India.

In 2008, it was folly to imagine India creating new technological solutions to address the climate crisis. For decades India had called itself a victim of climate change and thus incapable of acting to reduce emissions; what’s more, 400 million Indians had no access to electricity at all.

Continue reading “India’s Switch from Environmental Victim to Renewable Energy Champ” »

Several billionaires, most of them Californians, have been funding firms involved in developing life-extension technologies. What if they succeed? What if billionaires alive today live indefinitely and get ever richer?

February saw the announcement in Silicon Valley by X Prize founder, serial entrepreneur, and all-round gee-whiz future-technology promoter Peter Diamandis that he had cofounded a new company called Celularity.

He did so together with Dr. Bob Hariri, a renowned biomedical entrepreneur known for innovations in harvesting placental stem cells. Hariri had previously founded Celgene Cellular Therapeutics.

Continue reading “What if billionaires could live forever?” »

A new section about Bitcoin ATM business models
has been added. Jump to “UPDATE – July 2019”

The good news is that building a Bitcoin ATM is easy and less expensive than you might expect. But, offering or operating them engulfs the assembler in a regulatory minefield! It might just be worth sticking to selling bitcoin on PayPal (visit this website for more information on that). You might also wish to rethink your business model—especially user-demand scenarios. See our 2019 update at the bottom of this article.

A photo of various Bitcoin ATMs appears at the bottom of this article. My employer, Cryptocurrency Standards Association, shared start-up space at a New York incubator with the maker of a small, wall mounted ATM, like the models shown at top left.

What is Inside a Cryptocurrency ATM?

Continue reading “Building a Bitcoin ATM is easy, but…” »

I’d suggest France partner with Algeria to start trying to build a massive solar array in the Algerian desert, there is nothing out there. Although it is a rough neighborhood.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) — France will commit 700 million euros to the International Solar Alliance (ISA), President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday at the founding conference of the organization, reiterating the European country’s commitment to the alliance and clean energy.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ® shakes hands with French President Emmanuel Macron as he arrives to attend the International Solar Alliance Founding Conference in New Delhi, India, March 11, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi.

Continue reading “France to commit 700 million euros to International Solar Alliance” »

Reading the tech press, you would be forgiven for believing that AI is going to eat pretty much every industry and job. Not a day goes by without another reporter breathlessly reporting some new machine learning product that is going to trounce human intelligence. That surfeit of enthusiasm doesn’t originate just with journalists though — they are merely channeling the wild optimism of researchers and startup founders alike.

There has been an explosion of interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning over the past few years, as the hype around deep learning and other techniques has increased. Tens of thousands of research papers in AI are published yearly, and AngelList’s startup directory for AI companies includes more than four thousands startups.

After being battered by story after story of AI’s coming domination — the singularity, if you will — it shouldn’t be surprising that 58% of Americans today are worried about losing their jobs to “new technology” like automation and artificial intelligence according to a newly released Northeastern University / Gallup poll. That fear outranks immigration and outsourcing by a large factor.

But hyperloops are no longer quite so hypothetical. A handful of firms are now competing to develop the necessary technology. And in addition to designing the magnetically levitated pods and testing them on small-scale tracks, the firms are taking preliminary steps to set up hyperloop routes in the U.S. and abroad.

“It’s happening far faster than I would have ever expected, and it’s happening all over the world,” said Dr. David Goldsmith, a transportation researcher at Virginia Tech.

One of the biggest players is Musk himself. His whimsically named Boring Company is planning to dig a hyperloop tunnel that would make it possible to travel from Washington, D.C. to New York City in half an hour (the fastest Amtrak trains make the trip in just under three hours). Meanwhile, a pair of California-based startups, Virgin Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, are developing routes in North America, Asia, and Europe.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s hyperloop dream may come true — and soon” »

Six years after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, a specialized robot has been able to capture images of melted uranium fuel from the site for the first time.