Lifeboat Foundation

A federal appeals court questioned during a hearing Tuesday whether the city of Berkeley is unduly discouraging customers from buying cell phones by requiring retailers to warn them about the possible radiation effects of carrying switched-on phones close to their bodies.

Berkeley’s ordinance, challenged by the cell phone industry, requires dealers to notify customers that the federal government sets radiation standards for the phones and that a user may be exposed to levels above those standards by carrying a cell phone in a pocket or tucked into a bra when the device is connected to a wireless network.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco allowed the law to take effect in January, saying the warning was based on research and guidelines by the Federal Communications Commission.

Continue reading “Court questions whether Berkeley cell phone law goes too far” »

But last week’s disaster in Florida could leave SpaceX still mostly unscathed.

In preparation for writing a review of the Unabomber’s new book, I have gone through my files to find all the things I and others had said about this iconic figure when he struck terror in the hearts of technophiles in the 1990s. Along the way, I found this letter written to a UK Channel 4 producer on 26 November 1999 by way of providing material for a television show in which I participated called ‘The Trial of the 21st Century’, which aired on 2 January 2000. I was part of the team which said things were going to get worse in the 21st century.

What is interesting about this letter is just how similar ‘The Future’ still looks, even though the examples and perhaps some of the wording are now dated. It suggests that there is a way of living in the present that is indeed ‘future-forward’ in the sense of amplifying certain aspects of today’s world beyond the significance normally given to them. In this respect, the science fiction writer William Gibson quipped that the future is already here, only unevenly distributed. Indeed, it seems to have been here for quite a while.

Dear Matt,

Here are the sum of my ideas for the Trial of the 21st Century programme, stressing the downbeat:

Continue reading “The Familiarity of the Future: A Look Back from 1999” »

As technology and innovation move faster and faster, concerns over ownership and access continue to increase. In answer to a question at a Singularity University event, Ray Kurzweil suggested we need to rethink intellectual property laws to more realistically match today’s pace.

Intellectual property laws from the 19th century were envisioned with roughly 20-year cycles, he said, which was enough to give you a head-start on a new idea or invention and attract funding to see it through. But how relevant is a 20-year cycle today when a generation of technology can come and go in a year—and even that is set to speed up?

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil: Accelerating Tech Is Making Old Intellectual Property Laws Obsolete” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y_cqBP08yuA

Ross, the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney, has its first official law firm. Baker & Hostetler announced that they will be employing Ross for its bankruptcy practice, currently comprised of almost 50 lawyers.

Law firm Baker & Hostetler has announced that they are employing IBM’s AI Ross to handle their bankruptcy practice, which at the moment consists of nearly 50 lawyers. According to CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda, other firms have also signed licenses with Ross, and they will also be making announcements shortly.

Continue reading “AI Lawyer ‘Ross’ Has Been Hired By Its First Official Law Firm” »

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.

The first prototype of DeLorean appeared in October 1976, and production officially began in 1981 in Dunmurry, a suburb of south west Belfast, Northern Ireland (with the first DMC-12 rolling off the production line on January 21). The car features gull-wing doors and an innovative fiberglass chassis and underbody structure, along with a brushed stainless steel body.

DMC became famous for its appearance and was modified as a time machine in the Back to the Future film trilogy. A little more than 8,500 DMC-12s left DeLorean’s factory in Northern Ireland between 1981 and 1983, until its founder John DeLorean’s was arrested by the FBI on charges of drug trafficking.

Actually, it is quite impressing that Texas-based DeLorean Motor Company could soon initiate again its production thanks to a new law which exempts small volume car manufacturers from the safety requirements applied to the newly cars. On January 27, 2016, in Humble, Texas location, the car maker announced that production will resume and “new” DMC-12’s will be rolling off the assembly line in early 2017.

Continue reading “DeLorean Motor Company will release new car in 2017” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FGEm1ktRJgk

More on the UN’s concern on the next gen technologies.

UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

Continue reading “Ban Ki-moon: ‘digital technologies like 3D printing have the potential for massive destruction’” »

I’m guessing you’d be like: surprised .

So, here’s the deal. My biohacker friends led by Peter Fedichev and Sergey Filonov in collaboration with my old friend and the longevity record holder Robert Shmookler Reis published a very cool paper. They proposed a way to quantitatively describe the two types of aging – negligible senescence and normal aging. We all know that some animals just don’t care about time passing by. Their mortality doesn’t increase with age. Such negligibly senescent species include the notorious naked mole rat and a bunch of other critters like certain turtles and clams to name a few. So the paper explains what it is exactly that makes these animals age so slowly – it’s the stability of their gene networks.

What does network stability mean then? Well, it’s actually pretty straightforward – if the DNA repair mechanisms are very efficient and the connectivity of the network is low enough, then this network is stable. So, normally aging species, such as ourselves, have unstable networks. This is a major bummer by all means. But! There is a way to overcome this problem, according to the proposed math model.

Continue reading “What would you say if I told you that aging happens not because of accumulation of stresses, but rather because of the intrinsic properties of the gene network of the organism?” »