Lifeboat Foundation

Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.

Uber’s Pittsburgh fleet, which will be supervised by humans in the driver’s seat for the time being, consists of specially modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles outfitted with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers. Volvo Cars has so far delivered a handful of vehicles out of a total of 100 due by the end of the year. The two companies signed a pact earlier this year to spend $300 million to develop a fully autonomous car that will be ready for the road by 2021.

The Volvo deal isn’t exclusive; Uber plans to partner with other automakers as it races to recruit more engineers. In July the company reached an agreement to buy Otto, a 91-employee driverless truck startup that was founded earlier this year and includes engineers from a number of high-profile tech companies attempting to bring driverless cars to market, including Google, Apple, and Tesla. Uber declined to disclose the terms of the arrangement, but a person familiar with the deal says that if targets are met, it would be worth 1 percent of Uber’s most recent valuation. That would imply a price of about $680 million. Otto’s current employees will also collectively receive 20 percent of any profits Uber earns from building an autonomous trucking business.

Continue reading “Uber Debuts Its First Fleet of Driverless Cars in Pittsburgh” »

I agree with Gerd on many points.

Futurist Gerd Leonhard’s latest book “Technology Vs. Humanity” paints a potentially grim future for every person on the planet. What should businesses and individuals be doing to think about the forthcoming “tech-manity” sea change?

Asteroid miners need a short-term financial plan that will keep them in business until they can get rich extracting resources from space-rocks.

China means business; and what will the long-term impacts to SV be? Could the US see a brain drain soon?

China has been encouraging its industrial firms to rise up the value chain through technical innovation and tougher efficiency standards, with the aim of creating globally competitive conglomerates.

It has vowed to be more selective in the way it disburses funds, and aims to cut off credit for non-competitive firms that are unable to upgrade.

Continue reading “China launches $30 billion state-controlled venture capital fund” »

Continue reading “Apple’s Tim Cook arrives in China bearing gifts: A new research center and environmental help — By Chris O'Brien | VentureBeat” »

LONDON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Technavio’s latest report on the global aircraft synthetic vision system (SVS) market provides an analysis on the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook from 2016–2020. Technavio defines an emerging trend as a factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline.

Improved safety standards and changing regulatory scenario to boost the aircraft SVS market until 2020. Tweet this

An SVS is a computer-mediated reality system for aerial vehicles, which uses 3D technology to provide pilots with a clear understanding of their flying environment. It was developed by NASA and the US Air Force in the late 1970s and 1980s, in support of air safety and advanced cockpit research.

Continue reading “Improved Safety Standards and Changing Regulatory Scenario to Boost the Global Aircraft Synthetic Vision System Market Through 2020: Technavio” »

“Apple’s CEO talks iPhones, AI, privacy, civil rights, missteps, China, taxes, Steve Jobs — and steers right past the car rumors”

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ndpxuf-uJHE

Commercial space travel is about to become a reality brought about by many private companies bent on taking their earthbound successes into space. The FAA is now open to granting permits to private companies to travel into space. It is hoped that this activity will lead to the colonization of Mars.

Elon Musk of SpaceX has the goal of beginning the colonization of Mars in the next decade. He plans to make commercial space travel and colonization a reality in his lifetime, according to The Washington Post. Mr. Musk is the mastermind behind both Tesla and SpaceX. He is one of the most brilliant minds of our time. An innovator and businessman, Elon has a track record of making dreams a reality and turning his plans into tangible results. Comparing his project to the colonization of America, Mr. Musk explains why he thinks people will agree to move to mars.

Continue reading “Commercial Space Travel And Colonization: SpaceX, NASA, And NextSTEP Make Preparations For Lift Off” »

Seagate has just announced a whopping 60 TB solid-state-drive, the largest SSD yet with that sort of capacity. Unfortunately, the SSD is only meant for businesses, released as an addition to Seagate’s data center portfolio. With four times the capacity of the next leading SSD, this massive hard drive could hold up to 12,000 DVD movies or even a whopping 400 million photos. Just sit back and think about how ridiculous an amount of data that really is.

The drive was created with quick accessibility in mind, and its flexibile artchitecture means it’ll be simple for data centers to grow from 60TB to accommodate 100TB or more of data in the future, all using the same form factor.

The 60TB SAS SSD is only available right now for demonstration, though it will officially make its debut some time in 2017. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know exactly what the drive itself will look like, though given the fact that it’s just a SSD, I can’t imagine it’ll look especially wild.