Lifeboat Foundation

(SpaceX) SpaceX launched 6,400 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station on Monday afternoon, and the roughly 100,000 people watching the live video online got to experience a rare shot of the reusable portion of the rocket sticking its landing in real time.

It was SpaceX’s 40th Falcon 9 mission and 11th rocket launch this year.

Continue reading “SpaceX landed another rocket on target after launching supplies to the Space Station — watch live footage of the perfect landing” »

This week electrovehicle and space transit magnate Elon Musk unveiled his master plan for the human race to become “a multi-planetary species”, starting with travel to Mars. But while I know it’s an act of remarkable hubris for me to even say this, I believe SpaceX’s plans for their Interplanetary Transport System have some pretty glaring flaws. The good news is they are flaws that are easily corrected by applying some decades-old solutions from the American and Soviet space-faring experience.

After going over the system architecture and basic spacecraft design, I think there are places where the system can be made to use less fuel, reduce manufacturing complexity, increase crew room, deliver more payload, and more.

Tonight during Valve’s yearly Dota 2 tournament, a surprise segment introduced what could be the best new player in the world — a bot from Elon Musk-backed startup OpenAI. Engineers from the nonprofit say the bot learned enough to beat Dota 2 pros in just two weeks of real-time learning, though in that training period they say it amassed “lifetimes” of experience, likely using a neural network judging by the company’s prior efforts. Musk is hailing the achievement as the first time artificial intelligence has been able to beat pros in competitive e-sports.

Tesla’s solar-powered house comes to life.

In step forward for Elon Musk’s neural lace and transhumanists everywhere, a new paper published this month by researchers at Harvard University reports on the successful implantation of an electronic neuromorphic mesh in the brains of mice without triggering an immune response.

Neuroprostheses show promise in the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury and for the creation of brain-machine interfaces such as the neural lace, but a major stumbling block for researchers has been the propensity of these implants to induce an immune response, inflammation and scaring in the brain, severely limiting their potential use.

Continue reading “Study Shows Injectable Electronic Neural Lace Melds With Neurons Without Causing Immune Response” »

Starting with just a digital file, scientists manufactured the common flu virus.

Elon Musk finally unveils the long-awaited electric car for the masses.

In a not-too-distant future city, superintelligent robots will carry out the majority of vital tasks. Driverless cars will ferry passengers to and from points of interest. Housing and healthcare will be affordable, if not free to all. Political leaders and technologists will speak the same language. And life is good.

Sam Altman, the 32-year-old president of Y Combinator, the most prestigious startup accelerator in Silicon Valley, has laid out this utopian vision over the years, and most definitively in a job listing posted on YC’s blog in June 2016.

“We’re seriously interested in building new cities and we think we know how to finance it if everything else makes sense,” the post read. “We need people with strong interests and bold ideas in architecture, ecology, economics, politics, technology, urban planning, and much more.”

Continue reading “How this 32-year-old investor with ties to Elon Musk wants to use AI to build a perfect planet” »

A NY-DC hyperloop isn’t the first outrageous claim we’ve heard from Silicon Valley.