Lifeboat Foundation

Dehgan hopes that the organization’s prizes and other initiatives will bring innovative solutions to conservation’s deepest problems. Hundreds of people have already been lured in through challenges and engineering programmes such as Make for the Planet — a multi-day, in-person event — and an online tech collaboration platform called Digital Makerspace, which matches conservationists with technical talent.

Standard efforts have failed to slow the pace of extinctions, so Conservation X Labs is trying a fresh approach.

Projects based on the elimination of trust have failed to capture customers’ interest because trust is actually so damn valuable. A lawless and mistrustful world where self-interest is the only principle and paranoia is the only source of safety is a not a paradise but a crypto-medieval hellhole.

Its failure to achieve adoption to date is because systems built on trust, norms, and institutions inherently function better than the type of no-need-for-trusted-parties systems blockchain envisions. That’s permanent: no matter how much blockchain improves it is still headed in the wrong direction.

This December I wrote a w idel y–ci rc ul ated article on the inapplicability of blockchain to any actual problem. People objected mostly not to the technology argument, but rather hoped that decentralization could produce integrity.

Continue reading “Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future” »

In her new book, “The Age of Living Machines,” Susan Hockfield argues that we have entered a new era of scientific innovation in America.

[Photo: VCG/VCG via Getty Images].

Scientists say surge of radiation led to lightning causing forest fires, making adaptation vital.

Okay, this is pretty impressive.

A new theoretical model may help explain the shocking onset of superconductivity in stacked, twisted carbon sheets.

An exoplanet smaller than Neptune with its own atmosphere has been discovered in the Neptunian Desert around its star by an international collaboration of astronomers, with the University of Warwick taking a leading role.

The rogue planet was identified in the new research, led by Dr Richard West including Professor Peter Wheatley, Dr Daniel Bayliss and Dr James McCormac from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the University of Warwick.

NGTS is situated at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in the heart of the Atacama Desert, Chile. It is a collaboration between UK Universities Warwick, Leicester, Cambridge, and Queen’s University Belfast, together with Observatoire de Genève, DLR Berlin and Universidad de Chile.

Continue reading “Astronomers find ‘Forbidden’ planet in ‘Neptunian Desert’ around its star” »

Men should favour weight lifting and running over cycling in order to preserve their bones, scientists have said after a study suggested brittle bone disorders are more common than previously thought.

Scientists measuring the bone density of men and women between the ages of 35 and 50 found 28 per cent of men showed precursor signs of osteoporosis, compared to 26 per cent of women.

The results are surprising because the debilitating condition, which affects around three million people in the UK, is more commonly associated with women than men.

Continue reading “Go running over cycling to avoid brittle bones, men told” »

Our civilization is made up of countless individuals and pieces of material technology, which come together to form institutions and interdependent systems of logistics, development and production. These institutions and systems then store the knowledge required for their own renewal and growth.

We pin the hopes of our common human project on this renewal and growth of the whole civilization. Whether this project is going well is a challenging but vital question to answer.

Continue reading “Civilization: Institutions, Knowledge and the Future — Samo Burja” »