Lifeboat Foundation

This mysterious rock-comet is the parent body of this week’s Geminid meteor shower. It’ll brush closely past Earth on December 16, just a few nights after the Geminids’ peak. Will 2017 be a fantastic year for the Geminids?

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in the domains of security and employment, what are the policy implications? What effects might AI have on cybersecurity, criminal and civil justice, and labor market patterns?

https://vl.dk/event/vl-doegnet-2018/ #transhumanism #AI

Driver captures dramatic footage showing just how close the massive wildfire in California is to a major freeway in Los Angeles.

Latest updates: http://cnn.it/2AWewTV

For comparison the internal volume of the ISS is 916 cubic meters.

And they’re wild.

IN AN AGE of nonstop breaches and hacks, getting a handle on your own digital security matters more than ever. But everyone has their own threat model—a set of concerns unique to themselves. The average smartphone user doesn’t need to know what a Faraday cage is; an NSA contractor probably already has a good grasp of security basics. (Or … do they?) In this guide, we’ve included a few ways to improve your online security posture based on those different levels of risk. These won’t prevent the next megabreach or banish ransomware from the earth. They’re not all-encompassing. But they’ll help get you in the mindset of the types of steps you should be taking based on your particular situation. And they’ll help ensure that the next time you read one of those paralyzing headlines, it doesn’t apply to you.

In an age of nonstop breaches and hacks, getting a handle on your own digital security matters more than ever. But everyone has their own threat model—a set of concerns unique to themselves. The average smartphone user doesn’t need to know what a Faraday cage is; an NSA contractor probably already has a good grasp of security basics. (Or … do they?) In this guide, we’ve included a few ways to improve your online security posture based on those different levels of risk. These won’t prevent the next megabreach or banish ransomware from the earth. They’re not all-encompassing. But they’ll help get you in the mindset of the types of steps you should be taking based on your particular situation. And they’ll help ensure that the next time you read one of those paralyzing headlines, it doesn’t apply to you.

That might not be a bad thing.

V isitors to Henn-na, a restaurant outside Nagasaki, Japan, are greeted by a peculiar sight: their food being prepared by a row of humanoid robots that bear a passing resemblance to the Terminator. The “head chef,” incongruously named Andrew, specializes in okonomiyaki, a Japanese pancake. Using his two long arms, he stirs batter in a metal bowl, then pours it onto a hot grill. While he waits for the batter to cook, he talks cheerily in Japanese about how much he enjoys his job. His robot colleagues, meanwhile, fry donuts, layer soft-serve ice cream into cones, and mix drinks. One made me a gin and tonic.

H.I.S., the company that runs the restaurant, as well as a nearby hotel where robots check guests into their rooms and help with their luggage, turned to automation partly out of necessity. Japan’s population is shrinking, and its economy is booming; the unemployment rate is currently an unprecedented 2.8 percent. “Using robots makes a lot of sense in a country like Japan, where it’s hard to find employees,” CEO Hideo Sawada told me.

Continue reading “Robots Will Transform Fast Food” »

Aubrey de Grey, from Nov 28, 2017.

Virtual Futures presents Dr. Aubrey de Grey who claims to have drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging and proposes that that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born.

Continue reading “End Aging — with Aubrey de Grey | Virtual Futures Salon” »

FOR millennia, man has broken rocks. Whether with pickaxe or dynamite, their own or animal muscle, in a digger or a diesel truck, thick-necked miners have been at the centre of an industry that supplies the raw materials for almost all industrial activity.