Lifeboat Foundation

Jason Clenfield and Pavel Alpeyev — Bloomberg


In the five years since bitcoin was created, the hunt for them has consumed enough electricity to keep the Eiffel Tower lit for 260 years. One man’s way around the utility bills: the family power plant.

Alex Wilhelm is a bitcoin miner, one of thousands who use computers to solve complex math problems and get their hands on the digital currency. The expatriate living in Tokyo has 30 remote-controlled servers mining virtual gold in an old brick building in the Austrian countryside. His father is donating the electricity, which comes from a water-driven turbine that survived a World War II bombing raid and once powered the entire village of Tattendorf, where Wilhelm grew up.

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Zack Burgess — Crains Detroit Business


The next time you grab a sandwich, order a pizza or pay for IT services, you may not have to reach for your wallet. Instead, you could have the option of paying the bill with bitcoins.

Businesses including the Bronx Deli in Farmington, Dynamic Technologies in Livonia, Athena Coney Island in Novi and Papa Romano’s in Troy affirm the use of bitcoin currency. According to coinmap.org, a website that tracks the businesses using it, there are at least 10 in the area that accept bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn’t regulated as a currency or security, though federal regulators, most recently the Securities and Exchange Commission, have raised red flags about it. In March, the SEC sent an inquiry and data request to the currency’s creator, an elusive person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto doesn’t believe the SEC has any legal grounds.

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Tyler Lee — Ubergizmo


So we’ve seen how 3D printers can be used to print medical-related gadgets, such as a portion of a skull, and while those are great and serve as viable alternatives compared to current implants and whatnot, wouldn’t it be better if those 3D printed medical gadgets/accessories could actively help your healing process as well?Well perhaps now it can, thanks to a prototype cast which not only acts as a regular cast, but at the same time uses ultrasonic vibrations that will help speed up the bone healing time. This design was put together by Turkish student, Denis Karasahin, who managed to win the 2014 Golden A’Design Award for his idea.

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Peter Braun — Digital Trends


Koenigsegg has gone from sketches on napkins to making some of the fastest most desirable cars money can buy.

Just how has it accomplished this in the face of established marquees like Ferrari, Porsche, and Lamborghini? Secret Swedish government backing? The favor of the mighty gods of Valhalla? It is possible – especially that second one.

What we can say for sure is that it has been willing – from the start – to take risks on new technology. And on the revolutionary One:1 that new technology is 3D printing.

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Richard Corliss — Time

Johnny Depp dies and is reborn as a computer brain in Transcendence, the latest science-fiction thriller about artificial intelligence. Smart machines that may serve or dominate mankind are as old as Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon, or Karel Capek’s 1920 play R.U.R. — and as recent as this week’s episode of The Simpsons, in which Dr. Frink revives the dead Homer as a chatty screensaver. They have also inhabited some of the finest SF movies, including Dark Star, Star Wars, Star Trek the Motion Picture, Alien, Blade Runner, The Terminator and RoboCop. The list is inspiring and nearly endless.

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Mary Thompson — CNBC

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“Facebook and the Future of Global Governance”

Truthout

April 3, 2014

Emanuel Pastreich

Continue reading “‘Facebook and the Future of Global Governance’ (by Emanuel Pastreich)” »

TED

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Matthew de Paula - Popular Science


Welcome to the Speed Lab, where Popular Science explores the most important disruptive technology in the world of cars and transportation.

We want to start by setting something straight: “Speed” for our purposes doesn’t just stand for acceleration or how fast a vehicle can go—although we certainly relish testing those limits. It’s about the rapid pace at which the automotive industry is reinventing itself. After decades of slow, steady improvements, we’re now in an age of dramatic change.

In the next year alone, we can expect great leaps in autonomy and fuel economy. Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, and others are in a race to put hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles on the road by 2015—or even sooner, in Hyundai's case. (I tested Toyota’s prototype late last year in Tokyo, and let me tell you, it was a blast to drive.) Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan aim to offer autonomous-driving vehicles by 2020.

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