Lifeboat Foundation

Plus, Turing also showed that achieving universality doesn’t require anything fancy. The basic equipment of a universal machine is just not more advanced than a kid’s abacus — operations like incrementing, decrementing, and conditional jumping are all it takes to create software of any complexity: be it a calculator, Minecraft, or an AI chatbot.

Likewise, consciousness might just be an emergent property of the software running AGI, much like how the hardware of a universal machine gives rise to its capabilities. Personally, I don’t buy into the idea of something sitting on top of the physical human brain — no immortal soul or astral “I” floating around in higher dimensions. It’s all just flesh and bone. Think of it like an anthill: this incredibly complex system doesn’t need some divine spirit to explain its organized society, impressive architecture, or mushroom farms. The anthill’s intricate behaviour, often referred to as a superorganism, emerges from the interactions of its individual ants without needing to be reduced to them. Similarly, a single ant wandering around in a terrarium won’t tell you much about the anthill as a whole. Brain neurons are like those ants — pretty dumb on their own, but get around 86 billion of them together, and suddenly you’ve got “I” with all its experiences, dreams, and… consciousness.

So basically, if something can think, it can also think about itself. That means consciousness is a natural part of thinking — it just comes with the territory. And if you think about it, this also means you can’t really have thinking without consciousness, which brings us back to the whole Skynet thing.

face_with_colon_three year 2021.

The solar aircraft is made by a Spanish-American aerospace startup called Skydweller Aero. Based in Oklahoma City, the company raised $32 million in its Series A funding round, led by Italian aerospace firm Leonardo.

Continue reading “This Autonomous Solar-Powered Aircraft Will Fly for 90 Days Straight” »

Earth’s H₂O is 97 percent seawater, and most of the remaining 3 percent is inaccessible, frozen in glaciers or permafrost. Only a small portion, about half of a percent, exists as freshwater in aquifers and rivers that humans can tap into. A process called, however, allows us to dip into the oceans to satisfy our thirst.

Desal has been around for decades and is used to make both seawater and salty groundwater drinkable. But scientists think that it will become increasingly important in a warmer, drier future. In a recent UN-led review, researchers stated that “‘conventional’ sources of water such as rainfall, snowmelt and river runoff captured in lakes, rivers, and aquifers are no longer sufficient to meet human demands in water-scarce areas.”

During a media roundtable at the 2019 American Geophysical Union conference, Peter Fiske, director of the Water-Energy Resilience Research Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, discussed why we might need to more strongly consider this technology—at times written off for its high costs and energy use—to stabilize water supplies in the future. Here’s what you need to know.

Discussion with Jeff Krehmer about his book Infinite Resources: How to sustainably develop the arctic, by supplying green hydrogen, fresh water and healthy food to the world, while mitigating the negative effects of anthropocentric climate change.

Links related to Infinite Resources:
The book Infinite Resources:
https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Resou?tag=lifeboatfound-20…

Continue reading “Infinite Resources: Develop the arctic, green hydrogen, fresh water and healthy food for the world” »

The only problem with plastic profusion is that “recycling” it is at a “caveman’s” level!

In considering materials that could become the fabrics of the future, scientists have largely dismissed one widely available option: polyethylene.

The stuff of plastic wrap and grocery bags, polyethylene is thin and lightweight, and could keep you cooler than most textiles because it lets heat through rather than trapping it in. But polyethylene would also lock in water and sweat, as it’s unable to draw away and evaporate moisture. This antiwicking property has been a major deterrent to polyethylene’s adoption as a wearable textile.

Continue reading “Could we recycle plastic bags into fabrics of the future?” »

A clean energy startup develops a record-breaking residential solar module that records an efficiency figure of 26.9 percent.

Battery technology is undergoing a rapid evolution. Recent years have seen significant improvements in both range and charging speed for EVs. BYD and CATL’s upcoming batteries are the latest example, aiming to revolutionize charging times. These companies are reportedly set to debut their ultra-fast-charging LFP batteries by the end of this year, potentially eliminating the need for lengthy charging stops during road trips.

The key to these rapid charge times lies in the 6C charging rate boasted by both the BYD Blade 2.0 and CATL Qilin 2.0 battery packs. In simpler terms, the “6” signifies that the charging multiplier is six times the battery capacity. For instance, a 100-amp-hour battery could be charged with a massive 600-amp current.

Continue reading “Electric Vehicles Could Soon Recharge in 10 Minutes, BYD and CATL on the Verge of Breakthrough” »

Bioenergy Innovation For The U.S. Bioeconomy — Dr. Valerie Sarisky-Reed Ph.D. — Director, Bioenergy Technologies Office, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

Join host Nick Tucker and team for the first ever Hard Reset Podcast episode on vertical farming. We’re diving deeper on the technology and ideas featured in our vertical farming video episode, sharing bonus info that never made it to the final cut, and responding to some of the most popular (and meanest) comments.