Lifeboat Foundation

Portland computer science research company Galois snagged a $6.2 million grant from the Department of Defense for a project that, if successful, could make the current battle between the FBI and tech giant Apple obsolete.

The three-year research contract comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and will fund research into quantifying privacy preservation systems.

‘Can you quantify how private a system is or isn’t and can you make a judgment about it,’ said Galois CEO Rob Wiltbank,…

Continue reading “Portland firm DARPA research could make disputes like Apple v FBI obsolete” »

Personally, I thought they already had one.

The U.S. government eyes cryogenically cooled circuitry for tomorrow’s exascale computers.

Still not sold on the whole robotics at this point; still not at the level where it needs from a multi-functional capability state plus still too jerky and most are more like a CPU on wheels.

TORONTO, ON –(Marketwired — February 23, 2016) — ­­ Astro Boy may be a fictional character, but Pepper the Robot is its real-­world incarnation. Pepper –­­ the world’s first humanoid robot –­­ will join exhibitors like MasterCard, Fluid, Vizera and Eyris, as they interact with industry experts as part of The Retail Collective Lab, sponsored by MasterCard, at this year’s Dx3 Trade Show and Conference.

“Online abuse can be cruel – but for some tech companies it is an existential threat. Can giants such as Facebook use behavioural psychology and persuasive design to tame the trolls?”

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Researchers from a university and Google demonstrate a crucial error-correction step needed to make quantum computing practical.

Sometimes, it seems like the tech world is inexorably bending towards a future full of curved devices. At MWC in Barcelona, we saw yet another prototype display, this time from English firm FlexEnable. Now, this isn’t a working device of any kind — it’s essentially just a screen running a demo — and neither is FlexEnable a consumer electronics company. But the firm says its technology is ready to go, and it’s apparently in talks with unnamed hardware partners who want to make this sort of device a reality. How long until we see fully-fledged wristbands like this on the market? Eighteen months is the optimistic guess from FlexEnable’s Paul Cain.

The prototype uses plastic transistors to achieve its flexibility, creating what the company calls OLCD (organic liquid crystal display) screens. FlexEnable says these can achieve the same resolutions as regular LCD using the same amount of power, but, of course, they have that added flexibility. These transistors can be wrapped around pretty much anything, and also have uses outside of display technology. FlexEnable was also showing off thin flexible fingerprint sensors, suggesting they could be wrapped around a door handle to add security without it being inconvenient to the user.

Continue reading “FlexEnable has created a screen you can wrap around your wrist” »

Cannot wait to hear Mckenna’s perspective on BMIs for brain connection to all things digital, and microbots used to extend life as well as bionic body parts.

Famed psychonaut Terence Mckenna envisioned a very radical approach of bridging psychedelics with virtual reality to create a supercharged version of consciousness in which language, or rather the meaning behind what we speak, could be made visual in front of our very eyes.

In Mckenna’s “cyberdelic” future of virtual reality, artists and the revival of art, would be at the forefront of innovation, according to a talk he gave to a German audience in 1991.

Continue reading “Terence Mckenna’s ‘cyberdelic’ predictions for Virtual Reality 25 years on” »

Nice

Like laptops, the battery life and responsiveness of wearables will improve over years as the components get smaller and more power efficient.

3D Printing hazardous to the environment due to toxins.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing, also known as additive manufacturing, refers to those technologies capable of developing 3D objects from raw materials, like metals and polymers based on computerized 3D parametric models.