Lifeboat Foundation

By Sebastian Blanco - AutoBlogGreen

We’ve heard of EV kit cars that can take a week (or an hour) to build, but how long do you think it would take to build an EV from scratch, using this new-fangled 3D-printing technology? If the technology from Local Motors works as advertised, it should take no more than the five days. The public will get to see for ourselves during this year’s International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, IL in September. Two years ago, at the 2012 International Manufacturing Technology Show, Local Motors built its Rally Fighter (pictured) on the grounds during the six-day event.

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By Richard Waters — Financial Times


If Daniel Nadler is right, a generation of college graduates with well-paid positions as junior researchers and analysts in the banking industry should be worried about their jobs. Very worried.

Mr Nadler’s start-up, staffed with ex–Google engineers and backed partly by money from Google’s venture capital arm, is trying to put them out of work.

Its algorithms assess how different securities are likely to react after the release of a market-moving piece of information, such as a monthly employment report. That is the kind of work usually done by well-educated junior analysts, who pull data from terminals, fill in spreadsheets and crunch numbers. “There are several hundred thousand people employed in that capacity. We do it with machines,” says Mr Nadler. “We’re not competing with other [tech] providers. We’re competing with people.”

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By Jeff John Roberts - GigaOM

One of the reason bitcoins get so much attention is because people keep stealing them. Every week it seems that another “secure” wallet service gets plundered by tech-savvy thieves.

That’s one of the appeals of Xapo, a startup that just received a $20 million investment to build out its secure, insured “vault” for bitcoins.

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By Evan Ackerman — IEEE Spectrum

Really, Kuka? You got us all excited for this match between one of your cool new robots and a world champion table tennis player. We were thinking to ourselves, “Wow, Kuka wouldn’t have set this whole thing up unless it was actually going to be a good match! Maybe we’ll see some amazing feats of high speed robot arms, vision systems, and motion tracking!”

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Charles Arthur — The Guardian


Though the idea of the “Babelfish” — a thing able to translate between any two languages on the fly — was created by the author Douglas Adams as a handy solution to the question of how intergalactic travellers could understand each other, it could be reality within 25 years. At least, that is, for human language.

Prof Nigel Shadbolt, a close associate of the web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says that the idea of automatic machine translation “on the fly” is achievable before the world wide web turns 50.

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By Hotelier Middle East Staff

Virgin Galactic — backed by the Abu Dhabi government’s Aabar Investments — is expected to launch its first space flight within three months, marking the first commercial trip into outer space in history.

Branson, who also spoke about his plans to launch commercial space flights between London and Australia during a recent trip to Dubai, said if the flights are commercially successful there were numerous plans for space-related enterprises.

“If we can get enough people wanting to fly [to space] we can start building Virgin hotels in space, we can start doing trips to Mars, we can colonise Mars, we can start pulling asteroids back to Earth to see what minerals they have got in them,” he said during an interview on The Jonathan Ross show in the UK on Saturday.

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Beyond and Above Dr. Strangelove and Royal Dutch Shell: The Future of Omniscient Scenario-Planning Methodology, Today! By Mr. Andres Agostini.

This is a personal yet summarized and copyrighted P.O.V. that is professional, thorough and complete. This independent exploration is based on 30 years of practical experience and pragmatic expertise.

When I was 25 I was fully introduced and indoctrinated on worldwide Royal Dutch Shell’s scenario-planning methodology by Shell’s nationalized company Maraven. That introduction and indoctrination came through the kind deeds and executive decision of and by Maraven President, Dr. Carlos Castillo and the high-ranking strategic planners under his command.

Continue reading “Beyond and Above Dr. Strangelove and Royal Dutch Shell: The Future of Omniscient Scenario-Planning Methodology, Today!” »

LIST OF UPDATES (MARCH 17 THROUGH MARCH 24/2014). By Mr. Andres Agostini at The Future of Scientific Management, Today!

Three-part nanoparticles for biomedicine eliminate biocompatibilty, storage problems
http://www.kurzweilai.net/three-part-nanoparticles-for-biome…e-problems

Robotic prosthesis turns drummer into a three-armed cyborg
http://www.kurzweilai.net/robotic-prosthesis-turns-drummer-i…med-cyborg

NASA tests new robotic refueling technologies
http://www.kurzweilai.net/nasa-tests-new-robotic-refueling-technologies

Continue reading “The Future of Scientific Management, Today!” »