Lifeboat Foundation

We love meat. We love cheese. And for thousands of years we have relied on animals to make them. Impossible Foods has found a better way. We use plants to make the best meats and cheeses you’ll ever eat.

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I know many; who do take a break/ sabbatical from the valley to spend time with family or reconnect with friends on the east coast, Midwest, or other places that they refer to as home. However, once your sabbatical is in the 6 month period; you cannot wait to come back because the energy and excitement is truly hard to find anywhere else.

Like most people, I look up to and admire the heroes of Silicon Valley (the real ones, not the ones from the TV show). They’ve given rise to services (e.g., Google, Facebook, Uber, LinkedIn, Airbnb) that we use every day and make the world a better place. They’ve created value, wealth, and opportunity at unprecedented historic levels.

I’ve also had the chance to meet some of the leading CEOs and entrepreneurs of the Valley and they are, by and large, good-natured, brilliant, and thoughtful people. They’re earnest and committed to building positive things. Some of them are donors to my organization, for which I’m immensely grateful. It’s clear that Silicon Valley is today more than ever the center of innovation and technological progress.

Continue reading “What’s eating Silicon Valley” »

Definitely something to ponder on.

‘We can eventually produce offspring that are as different from us as dogs are from grey wolves,’ said Seth Shostak in an opinion piece for Seti.

Continue reading “Could this be humanity’s LAST century? Expert says ‘re-engineering our children’ will lead to the creation of a new species” »

Although the recent article and announcement of Josiah Zayner (CA scientist) new do it yourself gene editing kit for $120 sent shock waves across industry as well as further raised the question “how do we best put controls in place to ensure ethics and prevent disaster or a crisis?”; this genie truly is out of the bottle. Because Josiah created this easily in his own kitchen, it can be replicated by many others in their own homes. What we have to decide is how to best mitigate it’s impact. Black markets & exotic animal, etc. collectors around the world will pay handsomely for this capability and raise the stakes of the most bizarre animals (deadly and non-deadly) to be created for their own profits and amusements.

BURLINGAME, Calif. — On the kitchen table of his cramped apartment, Josiah Zayner is performing the feat that is transforming biology. In tiny vials, he’s cutting, pasting and stirring genes, as simply as mixing a vodka tonic. Next, he slides his new hybrid creations, living in petri dishes, onto a refrigerator shelf next to the vegetables. And he’s packaging and selling his DIY gene-editing technique for $120 so that everyone else can do it, too.

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Since a gas leak erupted outside LA on October 23rd, over 83,000 metric tons of methane have escaped to the atmosphere, prompting public officials to evacuate the neighboring community of Porter Ranch. But as a disturbing new analysis shows, a much broader swath of LA is now drowning in methane.

The Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) is a Cambridge-based nonprofit that’s been shedding light on leaky natural gas infrastructure for years. Last week, HEET sent Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips and Bob Ackley of Gas Safety out to LA to measure pollution in the air surrounding Porter Ranch.

Continue reading “The LA Gas Leak Is Scarier Than We Thought” »

Yesterday, Tesla Motors released software update 7.1 for the Model S and Model X, an update that allows the electric cars to park themselves while you stand by and watch in awe. Today, CEO Elon Musk made a bold prediction: In 2018, this feature will work anywhere that cars can drive.

Called Summon, the functionality is part of Tesla’s Autopilot self-driving technology. Autopilot was introduced with version 7.0 of Tesla’s software in October 2015, and lets drivers take their hands off the wheel in certain conditions.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: You’ll be able to summon your Tesla from anywhere in 2018” »

The real question is what are these? Is it old debris or something else?

Vietnamese military seized three bizarre metal objects that fell from the sky for military investigation. Initial findings showed they are made from Russia and could be part of a failed satellite launch. Similar objects were also found in Turkey and Spain in November 2015.(Photo : World News Times | YouTube)

The Vietnamese military seized three metal balls that fell from the sky on Saturday. The mysterious objects landed in northern Vietnam where witnesses from the Tan Dong and Bao Dap communities heard thunder-like sounds and saw “flying objects” in the sky before the metal balls crash-landed.

Continue reading “Vietnam Officials Seize Mysterious Metal Balls That Fell From Space” »

“[H]alf the people in the world cram into just 1 percent of the Earth’s surface (in yellow), and the other half sprawl across the remaining 99 percent (in black).”

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Remember when a cheap $60 wireless router was all your home needed? We were so naive back then. When everything from your phone to your fridge is on your home network, you need a little more wi-fi horsepower. So TP-Link is introducing the first wireless router with blazing 802.11ad.

For the uninitiated, the 802.11ad protocol adds yet another band of spectrum in the 57-66GHz range (depending on what part of the world you live in) in addition to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands that 802.11ac routers use now.

There’s quite a few technical reasons as to why the jump to 60GHz is a good thing, but the most important for the average consumer is speed. The 5GHz band maxes out at 1,733Mbps, but the new 60GHz band can achieve wireless transfer speeds of up to 4,600Mbps. So streaming 4K video without a network cable? Not a problem.

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