Lifeboat Foundation

Michael Terpin — CNN Money

The concept of special economic zones to assist the development of a new industry is common worldwide. So why isn’t there one yet for Bitcoin?

Despite the collapse of Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, digital currencies are one of the fastest growing, disruptive technologies of the past several decades.

But the only places in the United States that are speaking up about Bitcoin are those who want to add additional layers of regulations and red tape.
Remarkably, it’s the two states that would benefit most from this innovation and from greater adoption of Bitcoin: the nation’s financial center (New York) and the hub of innovation (California).

New York’s top financial cop, Benjamin Lawsky, has railed against Bitcoin because of concerns about usage by criminals. He said that it is better to stop all possible money laundering before one knows it really exists than to let “1,000 flowers bloom on the innovation side.”

Continue reading “Viva Bitcoin Vegas?” »

By Harry Corlett — SpaceNews
Neil Armstrong is dead. The space shuttle program is no more. The Constellation program has been canceled, and the main spacecraft is a wheezy 50-year-old Soyuz. Our cosmic escapades feel distant. All those memories of daring men and women of “The Right Stuff” will soon be lost in time, like tears in rain, unless as a species we recognize the urgent need to venture to the stars.

On Jan. 31, NASA honored all the members of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia who perished while “furthering the cause of exploration and discovery.” Surely they would be devastated that their bravery and sacrifice might have been in vain as the great American pioneer flame gutters in the winds of political expediency.

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LIST OF UPDATES (MARCH 03 THROUGH MARCH 10/2014). By Mr. Andres Agostini at The Future of Scientific Management, Today! At http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

Making nanoelectronics last longer for medical devices and ‘cyborgs’
http://www.kurzweilai.net/making-nanoelectronics-last-longer…es-cyborgs

Are you ready for the Internet of Cops?
http://www.kurzweilai.net/are-you-ready-for-the-internet-of-cops

Continue reading “The Future of Scientific Management, Today!” »

Brian Armstrong — TechCrunch

Mt.Gox is gone. The one-time biggest Bitcoin exchange closed its doors this week and filed for bankruptcy this morning. Questions about the future of Bitcoin have once again been up-leveled to the headlines of nearly every major media outlet.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a string of issues in the Bitcoin space, from the transaction malleability bug that ultimately closed Mt.Gox’s doors to a corresponding distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that delayed transfers on multiple exchanges and services. These attacks, along with recent phishing scams and money-laundering arrests, have cast doubt on the Bitcoin space and caused consumer panic — which is fair.

But what hasn’t been communicated well is how those who are truly invested in the future of Bitcoin remain totally confident, because with every attack, breach, and arrest, Bitcoin is getting stronger and proving to consumers and businesses it is not going away.

Here is what is not being said about Bitcoin that should be.

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By Eduard Gismatullin — Irish Examiner

More than 70 individuals with a combined wealth of $200bn (€145bn) are investing in space projects including travel, Knight Frank said ahead of its release of The Wealth Report 2014 on Wednesday.

A suborbital trip from London to Sydney will take about two hours and 12 minutes or one-tenth the time of flying by plane.

Continue reading “Property investors to use space travel” »

Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub

Silicon Valley sprung up on big open stretches of land where military installations had once been. Early semiconductor and computing businesses needed the space. But as Moore’s law progressed and mobile computing became the thing, the tech industry crept up into the seven-by-seven mile peninsula that is San Francisco. The city’s South of Market district is now nearly a strip mall of tech startups.

But tucked away in one of the neighborhood’s utilitarian office buildings is a technology company that harkens back to the early days of Silicon Valley: Planet Labs, founded by former NASA engineers, which builds satellites to photograph the Earth. Even so, the company doesn’t need a ton of space: Its satellites are about the size of a breadbox. The company recently recruited a batch of Stanford University students and built 28 satellites in 17 days in its cramped SoMa offices (pictured above).

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By Carolyn Cox — Geekosystem

Tomorrow is apparently “Future Day,” and not just in the same way that today is present day. March 1st is an unofficial holiday for transhumanists, designed to “elevat[e]the human condition” and maybe help us prepare for the robot uprising.

Started in 2012, “Future Day” was created Ben Goertzel and Adam A.Ford of the transhuman nonprofit Humanity+ to engender conversations about humanity’s role in a rapidly changing world. Future Day’s website states,

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Continue reading “Are we already living in the technological singularity?” »

By Signe Brewster - Gigaom

3D printing is slow; so slow that printing an object several feet long is an arduous task that can take days. As a result, most 3D printers are tailored to printing small objects that take a few hours at most.

That could change for industrial-sized printers after the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and machine tool manufacturer Cincinnati Incorporated signed an agreement this month, 3Dprint.com reported today. The partnership will focus on creating a 3D printer capable of printing objects at 200–500 times the speed and 10 times the size of most current printers.

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