Lifeboat Foundation

General-purpose automation could radically improve society by vastly accelerating construction, manufacturing, and R&D. Just as the scale and complexity of today’s cities would have been unimaginable 200 years ago, we may see a similar factor of value growth over the next 50 years. Quality of life may dramatically increase as well. I envision that billions could be lifted out of poverty and the average person may live like today’s wealthiest top 1%. Space colonization might be made feasible. Keep in mind these projections are highly speculative. Nonetheless, it is worth considering the remarkable possibilities! #automation #tech #robotics #futurism

The rise of humanoid robots didn’t happen overnight, but a kind of perfect storm has accelerated the phenomenon over the past year and change. The foundation, of course, is decades of research.

Toiling away in research facilities and R&D departments laid the ground work for a new generation of technology. The necessary software and components have come a long way, driven by innovations in industrial robotics, autonomous driving and even the smartphone industry.

Continue reading “This is Apptronik’s humanoid robot, Apollo” »

Apple’s new “State of Mind” feature in the Health app is more than a tech update; it’s Apple’s foray into helping us understand our emotions. Beyond tracking physical activity with the Apple Watch, the company is now capturing our moods. This, combined with insights from a new Journal app (which Apple says will be woven into our life’s events and multimedia tapestry), aims to give a full picture of our daily experiences, both in body and mind.

Here’s how Apple envisions this feature will play out in real life.

Imagine a vacation in an unfamiliar city. At the start of your day, the Health app prompts you to record your mood. You describe it as “Very Pleasant” and indicate to the app that… More.

Continue reading “The Science Behind Apple’s ‘State Of Mind’ Feature, Explained By A Psychologist” »

A new record time for quantum coherence is reported, with a single-photon qubit encoded for 34 milliseconds. This is 55% longer than the previous record set in 2020.

In classical computing – such as the PC, smartphone, or other device you are currently using – information is processed with bits, which exist in a binary state of either a 0 or a 1. Quantum computing, by contrast, involves the processing of information with quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in a “superposition” of both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This allows quantum computers to do certain types of calculations much faster than classical computers.

Kenya’s mobile pay platform was probably the first established in 2007. In 4 years it will be two decades. I had PayPal with my old phone line. Now the President of Kenya, there with Tim Cook has said Apple play also will be integrated with MPESA, Kenya’s mobile money platform. Kenyans also were paid about $2 an hour to make ChatGPT safer. Kenya has alot to offer, except leadership. 🙄 President Ruto spoke at the US-Affica Business Roundtable yesterday.

By Daniel Ogetta.

Reporter.

Continue reading “Ruto sells M-Pesa revolution as Adan Mohamed introduced as cabinet secretary in US meeting” »

What would happen if, instead of buying the newest iPhone every time Apple launches one, you bought that same amount of Apple stock? There is a tweet floating around saying that if you had bought Apple shares instead of an iPhone every time they came out, you’d have hundreds of millions of dollars. The math is off (if you’d spent $20k on Apple stock when the rumors of the iPhone first started, you’d have $1.5 million today, at best) but in any case – it’d only make sense if you were clairvoyant in 2007, and knew when Apple would be launching phones, and at which price.

I figured a more fair way of calculating it would be to imagine buy a top-of-the-line iPhone every time Apple releases a new iPhone, or spend the same amount on Apple stock. If you had done that, by my calculations, you’d have spent around $16,000 on iPhones over the years (that’s around $20,000 in today’s dollars). If you’d bought Apple shares instead, you’d today have $147,000 or so — or a profit of around $131,000.

Apple unveiled its new iPhone lineup on Tuesday, with its Lightning charger ports replaced on the newest models by a universal charger after a tussle with the European Union.

The European bloc is insisting that all phones and other small devices must be compatible with the USB-C charging cables from the end of next year, a move it says will reduce waste and save money for consumers.

The firm had long argued that its cable was more secure than USB-C chargers, which are already deployed by Apple on other devices and widely used by rivals including the world’s biggest smartphone maker Samsung.

Scientists have shown that the biomass of 12 previously unstudied strains of cyanobacteria from around the globe is efficient at the biosorption of the rare earth elements lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and terbium from aqueous solutions. This allows these rare elements, for which demand is steadily growing, to be collected from wastewater from mining, metallurgy, and the recycling of e-waste, and reused.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 chemically similar metals, which got their name because they typically occur at low concentrations (between 0.5 and 67 parts per million) within the Earth’s crust. Because they are indispensable in modern technology such as light emitting diodes, mobile phones, electromotors, wind turbines, hard disks, cameras, magnets, and low-energy lightbulbs, the demand for them has increased steadily over the past few decades, and is predicted to rise further by 2030.

Sometimes when you dig into the technology underneath your favorite devices and applications, you almost wish you hadn’t.

Still, it’s good to get an idea of what hackers are doing, how teams are responding, and what’s going on with the mobile devices that we all rely on more and more with each new year. Some of that has an intersection with AI/ML, in ways that might surprise you.

Check out Adam Chlipala’s talk on modern methods: applying this sort of data science to the practice of computer programming is going to be pretty heavy for anyone who isn’t a coder.

A year ago, Pinterest’s then brand-new collage-making app Shuffles was going viral on TikTok as Gen Z users sought out invites in order to create their own inspirational image boards. Now, that collage-making capability is heading over to Pinterest’s main app with the launch of a new feature that lets users leverage the platform’s advanced visual technology to cut out images and build interactive collages of favorite products and other visual content they find inspiring.

The idea is clearly lifted from Shuffles, which uses similar image cutout tech. On the app, users could build their own collages using photos from Pinterest’s own library or by snapping photos with their phone’s camera. When they found an image they like, they could cut out objects from the foreground of the photo — a feature that was also introduced with iOS 16 and now is being used to make image stickers for iMessage in iOS 17.

Not only did these collages serve as inspirational mood boards, the objects in the completed work were also shoppable. Users could tap on the items and be redirected to Pinterest where they can find out if the item can be purchased on a retailer’s website.