Lifeboat Foundation

Leaves are kind of like nature’s power plants, converting incoming sunlight into energy for the plant to thrive on. Inspired by the real thing, scientists have previously created artificial leaves that function in much the same way as their natural counterparts to produce electricity and even liquid fuels. Now a team at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is using a similar system to produce chemicals, which could one day lead to solar-powered “mini-factories” that can produce drugs, pesticides and other chemicals almost anywhere.

To mimic the light-capturing molecules in leaves, the researchers turned to luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), materials seen in solar-harvesting window technology and used to catch and amplify laser beams carrying data in Facebook’s drone-mounted internet projec t. These LSCs absorb incoming light, convert it to specific wavelengths and then guide the photons to the edges of the device.

Continue reading “Artificial leaf could make a medicinal mini-factory” »

Smile Vector is a Twitter bot that can make any celebrity smile. It scrapes the web for pictures of faces, and then it morphs their expressions using a deep-learning-powered neural network. Its results aren’t perfect, but they’re created completely automatically, and it’s just a small hint of what’s to come as artificial intelligence opens a new world of image, audio, and video fakery. Imagine a version of Photoshop that can edit an image as easily as you can edit a Word document — will we ever trust our own eyes again?

At Quora, I occasionally play, “Ask the expert”. Today, I was asked if the difference between quotes at various Bitcoin exchanges presents a profit opportunity.

In addition to my answer, one other cryptocurrency enthusiast offered pithy, one-line response: He said “Buy local, sell internationally and pocket the difference!” I tend to believe the opposite is more likely to generate profit: Buy internationally and sell locally. But, I am getting ahead of myself. Here is my answer [co-published at Quora]…

Question:
A Bitcoin exchange in my country quotes a different rate than
international markets. Can I profit from the price difference?

Answer:
Buying and selling a commodity with the intention of profiting from the difference in price in various markets, regions or exchanges is called arbitrage. Typically, the item must be widely traded and fungible. Although it can be a tangible item (one that must be delivered or stored, like gold, oil, frozen orange juice or soy beans), arbitrage is more practical when applied to an ‘item of account’, such as foreign currency, equity shares, stock futures, or Bitcoin.

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Researchers from the Tyndall National Institute in Cork have created micro-structures shaped like small pyramids that can create entangled photons. Does this mean that quantum computers are closer than we realize?

Quantum computers have been the stuff of science fiction for the past few decades. In recent times, quantum computers have slowly become more of a reality with some machines successfully solving real world problems such as games and path finding algorithms.

But why are quantum computers so desired by tech firms and why is there so much research into the field? Silicon has been incredibly loyal to the tech world for the past 50 years, giving us the point contact transistor in 1947. Now, silicon is at the center of technology with computers, tablets, smartphones, the IoT, and even everyday items. In fact, you cannot walk down a city street without being in range of some Wi-Fi network or influence from a small silicon device.

Continue reading “Accessible Photon Emission Could Bring Quantum Computing Out of the Lab” »

A lot of people have never heard of the US Governments “Memex” program. Memex is a deep web search engine that was first developed by a Stanford graduate working for Rescue Forensics on behalf of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the agency that created the original ARPANET, which then went on to form the foundation of the internet.

Nice write up about why businesses need to worry about QC sooner v. later. Glad to see more spreading the word.

It’s coming sooner than you think.

Continue reading “If You Want To Protect Your Business, You Need To Start Thinking About Quantum Encryption Now” »

At Quora, I occasionally role play, “Ask the expert” under the pen name, Ellery. Today, I was asked “Is it too late to get into Bitcoin and the Blockchain”.

A few other Bitcoin enthusiasts interpreted the question to mean “Is it too late to invest in Bitcoin”. But, I took to to mean “Is it too late to develop the next big application—or create a successful startup?”. This is my answer. [co-published at Quora]…

The question is a lot like asking if it is too late to get into the television craze—back in the early 1930s. My dad played a small role in this saga. He was an apprentice to Vladamir Zworykin, inventor of the cathode ray tube oscilloscope. (From 1940 until the early 2000s, televisions and computer monitors were based on the oscilloscope). So—for me—there is fun in this very accurate analogy…

John Logie Baird demonstrated his crude mechanical Televisor in 1926. For the next 8 years, hobbyist TV sets were mechanical. Viewers peeked through slots on a spinning cylinder or at an image created from edge-lit spinning platters. The legendary Howdy Doody, Lucille Ball and Ed Sullivan were still decades away.

Continue reading “Is it too late to get into Bitcoin and the Blockchain?” »

The internet giant has spent years migrating the source of electric power at its giant data centers to sources like wind turbines and solar panels.

New report: rise of the machines: the dyn attack was just A practice run.

As the adversarial threat landscape continues to hyper-evolve, America’s treasure troves of public and private data, IP, and critical infrastructure continues to be pilfered, annihilated, and disrupted. The Mirai IoT botnet has inspired a renaissance in adversarial interest in DDoS botnet innovation based on the lack of fundamental security-by-design in the Internet and in IoT devices, and based on the lack of basic cybersecurity and cyber-hygiene best practices by Internet users.

http://icitech.org/icit-publication-the-rise-of-the-machines…ctice-run/

Continue reading “The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology” »