December 2013 – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Mon, 05 Jun 2017 03:29:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 Overmanagement https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/overmanagement Tue, 31 Dec 2013 05:35:41 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9680 Overmanagement by Mr. Andres Agostini

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This is an excerpt from the conclusion section o, “…Overmanagement…,”  that discusses some management strategies.  To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

BEGINNING OF EXCERPT.

Question: What other contemporary issues particularly concern you? Do you find signs of
hope or resistance around these issues that, perhaps, you finding heartening?

Well, we can make a long list, including the things we’ve talked about, but it’s also worth
remembering that, hovering over the things we discussed, are two major problems. These
are issues that seriously threaten the possibility of decent human survival. One of them is
the growing threat of environmental catastrophe, which we are racing towards as if we
were determined to fall off a precipice, and the other is the threat of nuclear war, which
has not declined, in fact it’s very serious and in many respects is growing. The second one
we know, at least in principle, how to deal with it. There is a way of significantly reducing
that threat; the methods are not being pursued but we know what they are. In the case of
environmental catastrophe it’s not so clear that there will even be a way to control of
maybe reverse it. Maybe. But, the longer we wait, the more we defer taking measures, the
worse it’s going to be.

It’s quite striking to see that those in the lead of trying to do something about this
catastrophe are what we call “primitive” societies. The first nations in Canada, indigenous
societies in central America, aboriginals in Australia. They’ve been on the forefront of
trying to prevent the disaster that we’re rushing towards. It’s beyond irony that the richest
most powerful countries in the world are racing towards disaster while the so-called
primitive societies are the ones in the forefront of trying to avert it.

END OF EXCERPT.

Please see the full article at  http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

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A Guide To Spotting And Hiding From Drones https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/a-guide-to-spotting-and-hiding-from-drones Sun, 29 Dec 2013 20:46:48 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9675 Kelsey D. Atherton — Popular Science

Consider it a rough Audubon guide to the mechanical fauna of battlefields. Created by Amsterdam-based designer Ruben Pater, the Drone Survival Guide is, on one side, a rough bird watcher’s guide to the modern robot at war. The other side is a short section of printed survival tips, and the guides are available in Pashto, Dutch, German, Italian, Indonesian, Arabic, and English.

The selection of drones included in the guide leads heavily towards those from NATO member countries, with the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States all represented, as well as NATO itself, for the other member countries that use these drones. Partly because those are the countries that have used drones, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the most, but partly because they are just the countries where it is easier to get information about the scale and wingspan of their flying robots.

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Here’s A 3D Printed Robot That Can 3D Print Objects https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/heres-a-3d-printed-robot-that-can-3d-print-objects Sun, 29 Dec 2013 02:28:04 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9669 By — WebProNews

In 2013, we saw the rise of the 3D printed robot. Now students are looking to complete the cycle by making a 3D printed robot that can double as a 3D printer.

A group of students in San Francisco have created a new robot that they call Geoweaver. It’s a hexapod robot that rolls around on wheels and is equipped with a glue gun extruder. When fed instructions, it can roll around on a large surface and print structures that would not be possible on a regular 3D printer.

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The U.S.‘s 5 Most Bitcoin-Friendly Cities https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/the-u-s-s-5-most-bitcoin-friendly-cities Sun, 29 Dec 2013 02:08:47 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9664

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Bitcoin miners do not have to register as money transfer services: ruling https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/bitcoin-miners-do-not-have-to-register-as-money-transfer-services-ruling Sun, 29 Dec 2013 01:54:37 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9661 Will Conley — Slash Gear

Bitcoin miner Milly Bitcoin has done a little citizen letter-writing, and the results should make virtual currency miners breathe a sigh of relief. Milly Bitcoin’s mining company Atlantic City Bitcoin last June wrote to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requesting an official administrative ruling on whether ACB must register as a money transfer service. FinCEN has now replied, and the answer is no.

ACB requested the ruling because there has been much confusion as to whether mining — and spending the proceeds — constituted a money transfer service. This may seem a ridiculous question to virtual currency aficionados, but the confusion arose because some businesses dealing in virtual currencies do indeed operate as money transfer services. Mining and spending virtual currency, however, is not a transfer service. Such was the ruling by FinCEN.

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Tech’s next feats? Maybe on-demand kidneys, robot sex, cheap solar, lab meat https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/techs-next-feats-maybe-on-demand-kidneys-robot-sex-cheap-solar-lab-meat Fri, 27 Dec 2013 22:32:09 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9657

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Transhumanism Will Change Everything https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/transhumanism-will-change-everything Fri, 27 Dec 2013 22:15:46 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9654 Dylan Love, provided by Business Insider

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This is spooky stuff, but it’s real and it’s already happening.

Humans are augmenting themselves with computers and technology that will expand their abilities, and it’s going to get more advanced and morally complex as time passes.

Imagine transplanting your entire consciousness into a computer. That’s a new type of immortality. Imagine having a robotic exoskeleton that’s not just part of your body — it is your body. That’s a new type of existence entirely.

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Robots and humans, for decades kept separate from each other on factory floors, are inching toward integration. After years of walling off robots to ensure safety, some companies are finding ways to put them alongside people, with lightweight materials and new sensors enabling engineers to build machines that can be employees’ partners or even worn on the job.

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Drug Hopes to Delay Onset of Alzheimer’s Symptoms With a Monthly Shot in the Arm https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/drug-hopes-to-delay-onset-of-alzheimers-symptoms-with-a-monthly-shot-in-the-arm Fri, 27 Dec 2013 21:27:31 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9651 PET_scan-normal_brain-alzheimers_disease_brain-banner

Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise, even as doctors continue to struggle to find potential treatments for it. Researchers expect the number of those suffering from dementia to grow from 44 million at present to three times that by 2050.

The growing number puts increased pressure on researchers to do something to ameliorate the disease. And one drug is attracting the spotlight as it enters clinical trials. Eric Karran, the director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said in a press conference in the lead-up to a G8 summit on dementia that he is “full of hope” that a drug now being tested in the United States on patients with mild dementia may be to Alzheimer’s disease what statins are to heart disease.

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Will NYC Get Its First Bitcoin ATM in 2014? https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/will-nyc-get-its-first-bitcoin-atm-in-2014 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/will-nyc-get-its-first-bitcoin-atm-in-2014#comments Fri, 27 Dec 2013 20:35:20 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9641

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Using Pigeons to Avoid Government Surveillance: Not as Crazy as It Sounds https://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/12/using-pigeons-to-avoid-government-surveillance-not-as-crazy-as-it-sounds Thu, 26 Dec 2013 22:31:31 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=9637 — Slate

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This essay originally appeared in Internet Monitor 2013: Reflections on the Digital World, published by the Internet Monitor project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license and has been lightly edited to align with Slate’s style guide. 

On June 30, 2013, prompted by revelations of surveillance programs in the United States and United Kingdom, former Union of International Associations Assistant Secretary-General Anthony Judge published a detailed proposal titled “Circumventing Invasive Internet Surveillance With Carrier Pigeons.” In it, Judge discusses the proven competence of carrier pigeons for delivering messages, their non-military and military messaging capacity, and Chinese experiments to create pigeon cyborgs. Judge acknowledges that pigeon networks have their own vulnerability (such as disease, hawks, or being lured off course by sexy decoys), but argues that others have proven pigeons are effective at transmitting digital data.

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