Lifeboat Foundation

The wave of automation that swept away tens of thousands of American manufacturing and office jobs during the past two decades is now washing over the armed forces, putting both rear-echelon and front-line positions in jeopardy.

“Just as in the civilian economy, automation will likely have a big impact on military organizations in logistics and manufacturing,” said Michael Horowitz, a University of Pennsylvania professor and one of the globe’s foremost experts on weaponized robots.

David Bowie died a year ago today. Back in 1999 he made this incredible prediction about how the internet would change our lives forever to a sceptical Jeremy Paxman.

Twenty years after the project began, scientists think they are now just weeks away from receiving their first picture of a black hole.

The numbers behind the creation of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) are mind boggling enough, let alone the thought of what it might see on April 5 when it’s trained on Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

It’s 26,000 light years from Earth. Even though its “edge” is 20-odd million kilometres across, EHT team members say seeing it is still like trying to pinpoint a grapefruit on the Moon.

Continue reading “Scientists might be just weeks away from taking the first real picture of a black hole” »

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►Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5hfmsl/cellage_…ells_with/

Our society has never aged more rapidly – one of the most visible symptoms of the changing demographics is the exponential increase in the incidence of age-related diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases and osteoarthritis. Not only does aging have a negative effect on the quality of life among the elderly but it also causes a significant financial strain on both private and public sectors. As the proportion of older people is increasing so is health care spending. According to a WHO analysis, the annual number of new cancer cases is projected to rise to 17 million by 2020, and reach 27 million by 2030. Similar trends are clearly visible in other age-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease. Few effective treatments addressing these challenges are currently available and most of them focus on a single disease rather than adopting a more holistic approach to aging.

Continue reading “CellAge Campaign: iPhone Reward Raffle Draw” »

Sweden is beginning to look at doing away with physical money in favor of a completely digital currency given that the amount of hard cash and coin in circulation has already decreased by 40 percent. While Sweden’s economy is better equipped to handle such a change, other countries do not share the same ability in infrastructure, and many would be resistant to the increased transparency of digital currency.

Test for anemia with a single drop of blood.

Here’s my take on why the overpopulation objection to rejuvenation is morally unacceptable.

In this article, I’ll try to show that the overpopulation objection against rejuvenation is morally deplorable. For this purpose, whether or not the world is overpopulated or might be such in the future doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with facts and data in the two other articles dedicated to this objection; for now, all I want is getting to the conclusion that not developing rejuvenation for the sake of avoiding overpopulation is morally unacceptable (especially when considering the obvious and ethically more sound alternative), and thus overpopulation doesn’t constitute a valid objection to rejuvenation.

I’ll start with an example. Imagine there’s a family of two parents and three children. They’re not doing too well financially, and they live packed in a tiny apartment with no chances of moving somewhere larger. Clearly they cannot afford having more children, but they would really like having more anyway. What should they do?

The only reasonable answer is that they should not have any more children until they can afford having them. Throwing away the old ones for the sake of some other child to be even conceived yet would be nothing short of sheer madness.

Continue reading “Moral implications” »

Scientists just endorsed human gene manipulation.

Husar, a 38-year-old telecom salesman, had spent most of his life eating the sort of Eastern European fare typical of his native Ukraine: lots of meat, potatoes, salt and saturated fats. DNA Lifestyle Coach suggested his body might appreciate a more Mediterranean diet instead.

Recently, Vitaliy Husar received results from a DNA screening that changed his life. It wasn’t a gene that suggested a high likelihood of cancer or a shocking revelation about his family tree. It was his diet. It was all wrong.