Lifeboat Foundation

In the self-driving future envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, car owners might be saying “goodbye” to a whole lot more than steering wheels.

Musk is so sure of the safety features bundled into Tesla vehicles that his company has begun offering some customers a lifetime insurance and maintenance package at the time of purchase.

No more monthly insurance bills. No more unexpected repair costs.

Continue reading “Tesla is so sure its cars are safe you’ll say goodbye to a lot more than just steering wheels” »

LEGO and BMW teamed up to create a model set for one of the automaker’s most popular motorcycles – BMW R 1200 GS Adventure.

Lego Technic engineers used the same 603 pieces from the model to construct a concept hoverbike. Then, their colleagues at BMW, impressed by the design, built a life-sized replica of the futuristic bike.

My new article for Psychology Today on my federal audit and the coming day of eliminating taxes because of technology.

With all that in mind—and the $7500 they say I owe them—they know I wouldn’t hire an accountant at $150 an hour to deal with the thousand-plus receipts, payments, and supposed car log entries I made last year—since the amount I’d spend on an accountant in the San Francisco Bay Area might easily end up more than $7500. They also surely know I won’t do it myself, since it’s definitely not worth my own time.

They have me in a pickle—even though it’s more than obvious my busy self probably has far more in write-offs than I even bothered to report in the first place. In fact—given how perturbed I feel at the IRS and its 82,000 full time employees this moment, if it was just economical, I’d re-file to get more of my earnings back. But in the twisted game they created in their 74,000+ page tax code, it’s not worth it.

Continue reading “A Libertarian Transhumanist’s Take on the Future of Taxes” »

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cars with no steering wheel, no pedals and nobody at all inside could be driving themselves on California roads by the end of the year, under proposed state rules that would give a powerful boost to the fast-developing technology.

For the past several years, tech companies and automakers have been testing self-driving car prototypes in neighborhoods and on freeways. But regulators insisted those vehicles have steering wheels, pedals and human backup drivers who could take over in an emergency.

On Friday, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles proposed regulations that would open the way for truly driverless cars.

Continue reading “Driver-optional cars: Once-reluctant California opens a road” »

“Tesla Inc. has completed a solar project in Hawaii that incorporates batteries to sell power in the evening, part of a push by the electric car maker to provide more green power to the grid.”

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Sometimes, you hear about a futuristic concept that just makes you laugh—until you learn more about it and realize how utterly genius it is. Well, go ahead and laugh at Goodyear’s concept for autonomous-car tires: they’re spherical. Now keep reading, and get ready to have your mind blown.

Robots and AI are going to become an everyday part of life, but will that take away other everyday parts of life?

“The shipping company Maersk has now announced that it has been working with IBM to use the blockchain to keep track of shipments as they’re hauled across the seas.”

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Superlubricity nano-structured self-assembling coating repairs surface wear, decreases emissions and increases HP and gas mileage.

Globally about 15 percent of manmade carbon dioxide comes from vehicles. In more developed countries, cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and other vehicles account for a third of emissions related to climate change. Emissions standards are fueling the lubricant additives market with innovation.

Up to 33% of fuel energy in vehicles is used to overcome friction. Tribology is the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion inclusive of friction, wear and lubrication. This is where TriboTEX, a nanotechnology startup is changing the game of friction modification and wear resilience with a lubricant additive that forms a nano-structured coating on metal alloys.

This nano-structured coating increases operating efficiency and component longevity. It is comprised of synthetic magnesium silicon hydroxide nanoparticles that self-assemble as an ultralow friction layer, 1/10 of the original friction resistance. The coating is self-repairing during operation, environmentally inert and extracts carbon from the oil. The carbon diamond-like nano-particle lowers the friction budget of the motor, improving fuel economy and emissions in parallel while increasing the power and longevity of the motor.

TriboTEX has a Kickstarter campaign that has just surpassed $100,000 in funding. The early bird round has just closed that offered the product at one half the cost of its retail. The final round offers the lubricant system self-forming coating at 75 percent and is ending shortly. The founder Dr. Pavlo Rudenko, Ph.D. is a graduate of Singularity University GSP11 program.