Lifeboat Foundation

“This week, the viral aggregator ViralNova was acquired for $100 million dollars. Meanwhile, the Pitchfork spin-off film criticism site The Dissolve ceased operations with an internet_meaningful blogpost entitled “The End.” The divergence between the missions and lifecycles of these two media projects that both launched in 2013 leave me wondering, “WTF is value?” It is certainly not creating #niche content for ‘intelligent audiences.’ Over the past two years, we’ve learned that there isn’t any actual monetizable ‘cultural value’ in building a content farm with an authoritative voice or domination of a niche area. Instead, it is more important to chase quantifiable human metrics by shoving lowbrow content in front of Facebook users. This is exactly what ViralNova has done better than most content farms–it figured out the current system and #growth_hacked the hell out of it.” Read more

Stunning!

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A superb and fun interview with Dr Michael Fossel and why he believes telomerase therapy is the most direct route to dealing with aging.

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It’s nothing to get too excited or alarmed about, but a robot has passed a modified version of the classic King’s Wise Men Test. It’s another classic case of simulation rather than emulation, but the experiment shows how artificial self-awareness can be programmed into our technology.

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There is a whole lot more to innovation than thinking up a great new idea. A new study from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management suggests that when budding entrepreneurs get time off their normal activities to work on other things — dubbed ‘slack’ time — they use it to complete the less exciting jobs needed to bring a novel project to life.

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Every 15 seconds, a computer, network, or mobile device is hacked by cyber-terrorists. To combat this problem, Syntek Industries has manufactured data couriers designed from advanced machine robotics. These couriers are known as SYNCS. Syncs are programmed to securely deliver data packages without interruption.

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Kurzweil 250 prototype boards (credit: Tim Thompson/Kurzweil Music Systems/Young Chang)

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Sounds good to me!

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“‘The solution is to have people become better people and use technology for good,’ she said. ‘Texting is dangerous. People text while driving, which leads to accidents, but no one says, ‘Let’s remove texting from cell phones.’” Read more