Lifeboat Foundation

New Boston Dynamics robot, pretty awesome. I hope they roll out an upgraded ATLASoftBank is supposedly doing a big robotics event later this month.

For more information… stay tuned.

In June, several dozen scientists flew to Big Sky, Montana, to discuss the latest in CRISPR research. They had a lot to talk about, given that CRISPR—a tool that allows scientists to cut DNA to disable genes or insert new ones—is currently the hottest topic in biology, mentioned in the same breath as pronouncements like “changing the world” and “curing humanity of disease.”

On the second day in Big Sky, a Japanese researcher named Osamu Nureki got up to play a short movie clip. “I was sitting in the front, and I just heard this gasp from everyone behind me,” says Sam Sternberg, who worked in the CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley. It was, he says, the biggest reaction to data he’s ever seen at a conference.

Nureki’s paper was published in Nature Communications Friday, and by early morning, the video that astonished the room in Big Sky was making the rounds on science Twitter, too. I watched it, still bleary-eyed from sleep, and I jolted awake immediately.

Continue reading “An Astonishing Video Shows CRISPR Editing DNA in Real Time” »

Well, it has been a super busy month due to the popularity of the new Kurzgesagt videos about aging, and we have seen a massive positive response from the audience to the ideas presented there.

At the time of writing, 116,000 people have liked the video so far, and a mere 963 people have disliked it, with almost 2 million total views to date. Once again, as in the previous video, the ratio of support versus opposition is massively in favor of doing something about aging.

Continue reading “Overwhelming Support for Life Extension” »

China is showing the world how things should be done.

As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.

Last January, the Chinese Academy of Sciences invited Liu Cixin, China’s preeminent science-fiction writer, to visit its new state-of-the-art radio dish in the country’s southwest. Almost twice as wide as the dish at America’s Arecibo Observatory, in the Puerto Rican jungle, the new Chinese dish is the largest in the world, if not the universe. Though it is sensitive enough to detect spy satellites even when they’re not broadcasting, its main uses will be scientific, including an unusual one: The dish is Earth’s first flagship observatory custom-built to listen for a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence. If such a sign comes down from the heavens during the next decade, China may well hear it first.

Letters from a time capsule opened in the Russian city of Novorossiysk have revealed that Soviet students in 1967 believed their peers in 50 years time would be living on other planets and eating ice cream for free, while their homework will be done by machines.

Hundreds of time capsules were laid across the USSR in 1967 as the country celebrated half a century since the Russian Revolution, which eventually led to the creation of the Soviet state. Those messages, containing the accounts of Soviet people’s lives and their messages to descendants, are being opened in Russia this year, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the events of 1917.

READ MORE: Cruiser Aurora fires at Winter Palace 100 years ago, signals peak of Russian Revolution.

As if the mere phrase “killer robots” weren’t scary enough, AI researchers and policy advocates have put together a video that combines present-tense AI and drone technologies with future-tense nightmares.

The disturbing seven-minute movie is being released to coincide with a pitch being made on Monday in Geneva during talks relating to the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, or CCW.

The Government of Dubai Media Office via the United Arab Emirates Prime Minister’s official YouTube channel has released a 3-minute video of the World Economic Forum Global Future Councils 2017 meeting. My speech on the main stage at the event is covered a number of times in the middle of this video as I discuss #transhumanism and human enhancement. I was honored to have founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab and the Prime Minister of UAE, HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, listen to some of my talk. The Global Futures Council event was a big success and a lot of fun: #gfc17

http://fw.to/ilMs6BD
11 November, 2017 — Vice President, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has attended part of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils (AMGFC) organised in partnership between the UAE Government and the World Economic Forum (WEF) – Davos. During a meeting with the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum Professor Klaus Schwab, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed asserted that the United Arab Emirates is keen on adopting the future industry by utilising the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to benefit societies.

Continue reading “The Government of Dubai Media Office” »

Wow!!!

Humans have witnessed many cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, but around the world right now there are about 20 so-called “supervolcanoes” that could outdo them all. One is in Yellowstone National Park.