Lifeboat Foundation

In an experiment with science fiction implications, neurologists say they taught monkeys to play a game by stimulating their brains with electrodes.

In an April 2014 article, I demonstrated how one might approach a fair Bitcoin valuation.

• Original Methodology: What fraction of the daily float
  needed to support daily global commerce will Bitcoin capture?

My methodology was based on the demand that Bitcoin would generate if it displaced a small fraction of cash and credit used for retail and commercial payments around the world. At the time, Bitcoin had a value of USD $450. I estimated that if it captured 5% of global payments, it would have a fair value of about $10,000/BTC (I didn’t complete the calculation—I left that up to the reader. That’s because I was concerned that publishing such a prediction would cause me to lose credibility as an economist and blogger. For what it is worth, I also predicted that a rise to $10,000 would take 5~8 years.

As you might imagine, my friends and family urged me to unload my BTC investment. The April 2014 price of $450/BTC seemed very high to most armchair analysts. After all, thirteen months earlier, it had been just $45.

Continue reading “Bitcoin Fair Value Calculation” »

Humanity has reached its peak and is now probably in its downfall, according to major new research.

People have long thought of human development as one long process of improvement, going on forever. But we are now running up against the limits of how good we can be, say scientists – and most likely we’ll now just begin to fall again.

The major research review looked at 120 years of data and found that there appears to be limits on our characteristics, like when we die, how tall we can be and how strong we are. We are pushing up against those limits now, the research suggests.

Continue reading “The human race has peaked and will now get worse, scientists confirm” »

Machine learning drove the breakthrough.

Ray Kurzweil discusses how biotechnology is rapidly and radically changing our lives, which will improve our health and longevity.

Thanks to 21st century science and engineering, by the time we’re ready to visit the asteroid belt to mine minerals… we may not need to.

Scientists have developed new 3D-printed plastic objects that can hook up to Wi-Fi without the aid of any electronics or batteries, meaning household devices could get a lot smarter in the future without the need for any circuitry.

If that’s not blowing your mind just yet, think about this: the tech could be used to make a laundry bottle that orders a refill online as soon as it runs out, or a simple volume slider that connects to your speakers without any cabling or even a power source.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Created Plastic Objects That Can Connect to Wi-Fi Without Any Electronics” »

(Tech Xplore)—Researchers exploring AI systems are making news and familiarizing the public with terms like reinforcement learning and machine learning. Recent headlines are still making some heads turn in surprise. AI software is “learning” how to replicate itself and to build its own AI child.

As such, Google’s AI created its child AI using reinforcement learning, entirely automated.

Meet ‘NASNet.’ Google researchers refer to it as a novel architecture.