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“As more and more people around the world live in cities — nearly two in three Americans already do — how well cities are run will affect the future of the planet in profound ways.”

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Soon, the machines really might be watching your every move — and, for the first time, independently making sense of what they see.

Let’s face it: Tablets are on the brink of death, and it’s difficult to get excited about a new slate these days. And even though tablet-laptop hybrids are taking off, that market is cornered by Surfaces and iPad Pros. So I wasn’t prepared to be as thrilled as I was by Lenovo’s latest offering. The Yoga Book, based on my experience with a preview unit, is not merely a mimicry of Microsoft’s Surface Book; it has impressively innovative features and a well-thought-out interface that make it a solid hybrid in its own right.

Martin Kern, Interim Director at the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) highlights the importance of open innovation.

Colonizing Mars may require humanity to tap into its inner bear.

Researchers are working on ways to induce a hibernation-like torpor state in astronauts — a breakthrough they say would slash costs and make the long journey to the Red Planet safer and far less taxing for crewmembers.

Such benefits could help lay the foundation for the first footsteps on Mars, and they’re essential to the establishment of a long-term human outpost there, project team members said. [Red Planet or Bust: 5 Crewed Mars Mission Ideas].

Continue reading “‘Hibernating’ Astronauts May Be Key to Mars Colonization” »

Back in April, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner pledged US$100 million toward a crazy plan to visit another star system.

The mission — Breakthrough Starshot — aims to get this done by propelling teeny, tiny spaceships to 20 percent the speed of light with powerful lasers.

Milner and famed physicist Stephen Hawking initially said their destination would be Alpha Centauri: a star system located some 4.37 light-years (25.7 trillion miles) away from Earth.

Continue reading “This russian billionaire has a plan to explore Proxima b, our closest Earth-like planet” »

The desktop variant of innovative torrent client WebTorrent has now clocked up an impressive 250,000 downloads, its founder reports. In a market where competing clients are often closed source or commercial ventures, WebTorrent promises to be transparent and non-commercial, forever. And that’s despite Netflix knocking at the door.

Stanford University graduate Feross Aboukhadijeh is passionate about P2P technology. The founder of P2P-assisted content delivery network PeerCDN (sold to Yahoo in 2013), Feross is also the inventor of WebTorrent.

In its classic form, WebTorrent is a BitTorrent client for the web. No external clients are needed for people to share files since everything is done in the user’s web browser with Javascript. No browser plugins or extensions need to be installed, nothing needs to be configured.

Continue reading “WebTorrent: 250K Downloads & Strong With Zero Revenue” »