Lifeboat Foundation

A NY-DC hyperloop isn’t the first outrageous claim we’ve heard from Silicon Valley.

30 lucky customers will get their hands on the first Tesla Model 3 electric cars to roll off the production line. Here’s why it matters.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appear to be at odds over the future of the artificial intelligence. CNN’s Richard Quest discussed the feud with physics professor Michio Kaku…

“It’s really negative, and in some ways, I actually think it’s pretty irresponsible,” said Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook.

Elon Musk thinks we need to build a base on the moon if we are going to stoke public interest in space travel.

Speaking at the International Space Station (ISS) Research & Development Conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the SpaceX founder and leader spoke about the various opportunities space offers for business and innovation. He also lamented that many people seem to be unaware of the International Space Station, or do not seem to fully understand “how cool the ISS is.”

Asked what opportunities space affords, Musk cited several things, but said, “If you want to get the public fired up, you’ve got to put a base on the moon,” adding that it would be the “continuance to the dream” of the Apollo missions.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: We need to build a base on the moon” »

(This is a followup post to three earlier posts on forecasting. The first in May 2015 forecast both blimp-based and dedicated building-based drone deployments (later patented by Amazon); The second in October 2015 largely predicted Elon Musk’s Tesla Masterplan Part Deux by 9 months, the third in July 2016 among other things correctly hypothesised the use of Model X falcon wings for future possible Tesla bus designs. I try to get it right but I mainly enjoy the idle speculation).

I was recently in San Francisco and had a very random number of drinks with two very friendly employees of US telco AT&T. As is often the case I turned the conversation towards autonomous vehicles, and more specifically two of Elon Musk’s companies, Tesla and SpaceX.

I was curious about how cars, such as a Model S, have much greater data connectivity needs than ever before. Right now, Teslas connect to AT&T’s network and it seems clear that data needs will only increase for data hungry vehicles that drive themselves. Already Tesla cars consume quite a few gigabytes of data per month.

Continue reading “Will SpaceX become the world’s biggest telecoms provider? Probably” »

Breaking : Elon Musk’s ideas on SpaceX DeepMind Tesla and The Dangers of #AI #Robots #Armageddon caused by AI & ideas for NASA — National Aeronautics and Space Administration (starts at 42mins in video).

Closing Plenary Introducing the New Chair’s Initiative “Ahead of the Curve”

Continue reading “NGA 2017 SUMMER MEETING — Introducing the New Chair’s Initiative ‘Ahead of the Curve’” »

Hyperloop One this week announced that it completed the first full-scale test of its high-speed transportation system, a move the company hailed as the burgeoning technology’s “Kitty Hawk moment.”

The test vehicle only reached 70 miles per hour, a tenth of the company’s eventual target speed. But the firm felt assured enough to set another phase of testing for later this year, when they hope to reach 250 miles per hour. Eventually, the system could reach a top speed of 700 miles per hour, nearly the speed of sound.

The Hyperloop’s potential velocity has helped it captivate the public’s imagination ever since Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk popularized the concept in 2012. But the proposed system, a sort of high-speed train that uses aerodynamic pods propelled through a vacuum cylinder, is not just about speed, according to many of the people developing it since Musk open-sourced the idea. It’s about changing how we think about moving people and cargo, a $1.48 trillion industry in the United States alone.

Continue reading “This Supersonic-Speed Transit System Just Completed a Major Test” »

My new article from Vice Motherboard on liberty and privacy. This is one of my most ambitious philosophical works yet: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjx5y5/liberty-mi…th-privacy #Libertarian

If tech is surveilling us constantly, we need the ability to use it to watch the watchers.

Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, transhumanist, author of The Transhumanist Wager, and a Libertarian candidate for California Governor.

Continue reading “Liberty Might Be Better Served by Doing Away with Privacy” »