Lifeboat Foundation

Aquila — facebook’s solar powered internet drone

The internet provides information, opportunity and human connection, yet less than half the world has access. We’re proud to announce the successful first test flight of #Aquila, the solar airplane we designed to bring internet access to people living in remote locations. This innovative plane has the wingspan of an airliner but weighs less than a small car and flies on roughly the power of three blow dryers — incredible!

Source: #facebook

“The cities of the future will be huge and super-dense — but will they also be alive?”

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Hoping Google/ Alphabet, Microsoft are paying attention.

Robin Li (right), chief executive officer of Baidu Inc at the launch of” Baidu Brain” on Sept 1, 2016 in Beijing. (Photo/China Daily)

Chinese tech giant reveals its latest bid to gain the upper hand in the field of artificial intelligence

Continue reading “Baidu offers brainy solutions” »

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf sees a secure future for the network of networks he helped create four decades ago as the co-developer of TCP/IP, the protocol that facilitates internet communications.

“We’re much more conscious of the need to make the system more secure than it has been,” Cerf, Google’s chief internet evangelist, says in an interview with Information Security Media Group. “And there’s a lot going on in the Internet Engineering Task Force [an international community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers] to achieve that objective. And I anticipate in the course of the next decade or so that we will actually see a lot more mechanisms in place in order to enhance security and privacy and safety.”

But if internet security isn’t improved, Cerf says, “people will decide it’s not an environment they find worthy of trust, in which case they’ll look for something else. Maybe, something will replace the internet that’s more secure than it is today.”

Continue reading “Vint Cerf’s Outlook for the Internet He Helped Create” »

Researchers have demonstrated the requirements for secure quantum teleportation using quantum steering.

An international collaboration of researcher from China, Europe, and Australia have demonstrated the precise requirements needed to secure quantum teleportation, a concept that is essential to the future of a quantum internet that lets information to be transmitted securely.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Figured Out What We Need to Achieve Secure Quantum Teleportation” »

Researchers have discovered that voice recognition software Deep Speech 2 has improved to a point that it has become significantly faster and more accurate at producing text on a mobile device than humans are at typing on a keyboard.

Earlier this year, we watched a world-renowned Go mastermind get pummeled in a complex game by an artificial intelligence (AI). Now, humans are about to lose in yet another battle with the machines—and this time, it’s over typing.

Continue reading “Quick Pro Quo: Software Writes Text 3x Faster Than Any Human Can” »

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“In the post that follows I’m trying to develop what I see to be strong analogues to another crucial period/turning point in the history of technology, but like all such comparisons, the differences are as illuminating as the similarities.”

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European Commission Vice -President Andrus Ansip, responsible for the Digital Single Market, and Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger, in charge of the Digital Economy and Society, welcome today’s publication of guidelines on EU net neutrality rules by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). The publication of these guidelines was foreseen in the Regulation on the first EU-wide net neutrality rules which was agreed by the European Parliament and Council last year (press release) and which has applied in all EU Member States since 30 April 2016. The Commission has worked closely with BEREC on the preparation of the guidelines.

Vice-President Ansip and Commissioner Oettinger said:

“Today’s guidelines provide detailed guidance for the consistent application of our net neutrality rules by national regulators across the EU. They do not alter the content of the rules in place which guarantee the freedom of the internet by protecting the right of every European to access internet content, applications and services without unjustified interference or discrimination. Our rules, and today’s guidelines, avoid fragmentation in the single market, create legal certainty for businesses and make it easier for them to work across border. They also ensure that the internet remains an engine for innovation and that advanced technologies and Internet of Things services like connected vehicles as well as 5G applications are developed today, and will flourish in the future. We are pleased with the intensive engagement with stakeholders in the preparation of the guidelines, which contributed to their quality.