Lifeboat Foundation

Advocates of Active SETI say it’s better to put our best foot forward first, before E.T. gets the wrong idea about us from shock jocks and reality TV. As in politics, define ourselves before someone else does it for us. Plus, they contend, they’d already know we’re here anyway.

Two new separate groups of scientists now want to send coded radio messages into the cosmos in hopes of deliberately attracting the attention of intelligent space aliens. Known as Active SETI (Active Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), it’s arguably no safer to entice unknown offworlders into our planetary living room than to invite total strangers in for coffee and crullers.

But even if they are totally unsavory, it’s highly likely that an interstellar civilization would already be picking up our electromagnetic leakage and therefore already know we’re here, Douglas Vakoch, President of the San Francisco-based non-profit METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International, told me.

Continue reading “Hiding From Hostile Space Aliens Is No Longer An Option” »

Posted by norm jouppi, distinguished hardware engineer, google.

Machine learning provides the underlying oomph to many of Google’s most-loved applications. In fact, more than 100 teams are currently using machine learning at Google today, from Street View, to Inbox Smart Reply, to voice search.

But one thing we know to be true at Google: great software shines brightest with great hardware underneath. That’s why we started a stealthy project at Google several years ago to see what we could accomplish with our own custom accelerators for machine learning applications.

Continue reading “Google supercharges machine learning tasks with TPU custom chip” »

The study, published in the journal Nature, relies on data on past ice levels of the Totten Glacier in East Antarctica to evaluate the rate of melting. Without intense efforts to stem man-made global warming, the glacier’s melting process could cross the point of no return within the next 100 years, according to report. The result would add more than 6.6 feet (2 meters) of sea level rise over the coming several centuries, in addition to several feet of rise from other sources.

“The evidence coming together is painting a picture of East Antarctica being much more vulnerable to a warming environment than we thought,” said study author Martin Siegert, an Imperial College London researcher, in a press release. “This is something we should worry about.”

Read More: See How Your City May Be Affected by Rising Sea Levels.

Steve Forbes sits across Brian Singer, a partner at William Blair, as Blair explains the potential of blockhain encryption to empower individuals. He also explains why credit card companies are beginning to embrace a technology that undermines their high fees.

https://youtu.be/CecpCepnkAU

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., May 17, 2016 — A gene that scientific dogma insists is inactive in adults actually plays a vital role in preventing the underlying cause of most heart attacks and strokes, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined. The discovery opens a new avenue for battling those deadly conditions, and it raises the tantalizing prospect that doctors could use the gene to prevent or delay at least some of the effects of aging.

“Finding a way to augment the expression of this gene in adult cells may have profound implications for promoting health and possibly reversing some of the detrimental effects with aging,” said researcher Gary K. Owens, PhD, director of UVA’s Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center.

Unexpected Protective Effect

A digital stethoscope for a digital age.

Google’s new virtual-reality platform, Daydream, will include VR-ready phones and a headset and controller set to come out in the fall. CNET sat down with Google VR chief Clay Bavor to talk about the company’s roadmap for the new technology.

Watch more CNET videos: http://www.cnet.com/video

Continue reading “Meet Daydream, Google’s vision for virtual reality” »

3D printing could have specific uses in the shoe market.

Hmmmmm.

“We had analysts crawling all over that,” says Chappell of the Hold Security cache. “Quickly it was clear that a lot of those were from previous breaches.”

Anyone using this tool would have had a rapid assessment of their potential exposure. If breached data turns out to be new, the next task is to understand how it might have ended up in the hands of criminals. There are several sources for breached data including straight database theft but also phishing attacks and malware campaigns, each with its own dynamics and set of business implications.

Continue reading “Digital Shadows — new tool helps organisations peer inside data breaches” »