Lifeboat Foundation

India’s space programme has thus far been a government-backed effort. But now that is changing, with the emergence of a clutch of space technology startups. From propulsion and rocket technology ventures such as Bellatrix, to satellite makers such as Dhruva Space and Team Indus that aspire to bid for entire programmes rather than supply piece-meal components, there are now about two dozen startups in this field compared to only a handful three years ago.

India’s space programme has, so far, been a government backed effort with Isro. With new technology and falling costs, a clutch of space technology startups are garnering domestic and global clients.

(Bloomberg) — For years, wind and solar power were derided as boondoggles. They were too expensive, the argument went, to build without government handouts.

Today, renewable energy is so cheap that the handouts they once needed are disappearing.

On sun-drenched fields across Spain and Italy, developers are building solar farms without subsidies or tax-breaks, betting they can profit without them. In China, the government plans to stop financially supporting new wind farms. And in the U.S., developers are signing shorter sales contracts, opting to depend on competitive markets for revenue once the agreements expire.

If you are a Lifeboat subscriber or have been reading these pages for awhile, you may know why it’s called “Lifeboat”. A fundamental goal of our founder, board, writers and supporters is to sustain the environment, life in all its diversity, and—if necessary—(i.e. if we destroy our environment beyond repair, or face a massive incoming asteroid), to prepare for relocating. That is, to build a lifeboat, figuratively and literally.

But most of us never believed that we would face an existential crisis, except perhaps a potential for a 3rd World War. Yet, here we are: Burning the forests, killing off unspeakable numbers of species (200 each day), cooking the planet, melting the ice caps, shooting a hole in the ozone, and losing more land to the sea each year.

Regading the urgent message of Greta Thunberg, below, I am at a loss for words. Seriously, there is not much I can add to the 1st video below.

Information about climate change is all around us. Everyone knows about it; Most people understand that it is real and it that poses an existential threat, quite possibly in our lifetimes. In our children’s lives, it will certainly lead to war, famine, cancer, and massive loss of land, structures and money. It is already raising sea level and killing off entire species at thousands of times the natural rate.

Continue reading “Greta Thunberg: Most Important Message Ever” »

The i-CoBat project, operating under the UK government’s Faraday Battery Challenge, aims to create an electric vehicle (EV) battery pack which is cooled through immersion using MIVOLT, a biodegradable cooling fluid developed by specialist manufacturer M&I Materials, the project’s leader. Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), the manufacturing research arm of the University of Warwick, along with engineering consultancy Ricardo plc, are partnering with M&I to optimise the EV battery cooling technology for a longer lasting, safer battery product.

A UK consortium is developing new EV battery cooling technology, with the aim of minimising range anxiety for electric vehicle users.

SHA-256 is a one way hashing algorithm. Cracking it would have tectonic implications for consumers, business and all aspects of government including the military.

It’s not the purpose of this post to explain encryption, AES or SHA-256, but here is a brief description of SHA-256. Normally, I place reference links in-line or at the end of a post. But let’s get this out of the way up front:

• Sept 11: Original disclosure
• Sept 11: Community skepticism
• Sept 12: Claim retracted: [announcement] [press]

One day after Treadwell Stanton DuPont claimed that a secret project cracked SHA-256 more than one year ago, they back-tracked. Rescinding the original claim, they announced that an equipment flaw caused them to incorrectly conclude that they had algorithmically cracked SHA-256.

“All sectors can still sleep quietly tonight,” said CEO Mike Wallace. “Preliminary results in this cryptanalytic research led us to believe we were successful, but this flaw finally proved otherwise.”

Continue reading “Was SHA-256 cracked? Don’t buy into retraction!” »

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Bioweapons have been around for centuries, but with advances in synthetic biology we’re now able to make them from scratch.
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Continue reading “Engineered Bioweapons Are the New Security Threat, Here’s What You Need to Know” »

The competition between the United States and China on artificial intelligence is heating up recently. In the coming AI Race, can India with an abundance of engineering talent really catch up with the US and China?

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, and The Internet of Things (IoT) are one of the rapidly advancing technological developments. The rate of progress in the field of these is amazingly rapid. From SIRI to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence is changing our daily life in many ways.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence and India” »