Lifeboat Foundation

Let’s say you are the program manager of a very large, complex system. Perhaps it’s an aircraft, or a building, or a communications network. Your system is valued at over US $500 million. Could you imagine being told that you won’t ever be able to maintain it? That once it’s operational, it will never be inspected, repaired, or upgraded with new hardware?

Welcome to the world of satellite building. After a satellite is launched, it is on a one-way journey to disrepair and obsolescence, and there is little anyone can do to alter that path. Faults (which are called anomalies in the space business) can only be diagnosed remotely, using data and inferential reasoning. Software fixes and upgrades may be possible, but the nuts and bolts remain untouched. The upshot: Even if a satellite is operating well, it could lose its state-of-the-art status just a few years into a typical 15-year lifetime.

If governments and private companies could actively repair and revitalize their satellites in geosynchronous orbit—and move them to new orbits as needed—they could extend the lifespans of their investments and substantially defer the cost of building and launching replacements.

Continue reading “Robot Mechanic Could Prevent Satellites From Becoming Space Junk” »

Berkeley-based quantum computing firm Rigetti will allow 40 machine learning startups from 11 countries to make use of its devices to help crunch their AI problems.

Rigetti is small compared to its main rivals—the likes of Google, IBM, and Intel. But as we’ve reported in the past, the firm is working on a complex chip architecture that promises to scale up well, and should be particularly suited to applications like machine learning and chemistry simulations. That’s why we made it one of our 50 Smartest Companies of 2017.

But, like IBM and Google, part of Rigetti’s business model has always been to develop a kind of quantum-powered cloud service that would allow people to make use of its technology remotely. The newly announced partnership—which will be with companies from Creative Destruction Lab, a Canadian incubator that focuses on science-based startups—is a chance to test that theory out using Rigetti’s Forest programming environment.

Continue reading “This Small Quantum-Computing Firm Wants to Supercharge AI Startups” »

Zero-day vulnerabilities targeting popular secure messenger applications, like Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, can fetch payments of up to $500,000 from Zerodium, a buyer and seller of zero-day research, based on a newly released list of available awards offered by the U.S. firm.

The market for zero-day vulnerabilities — an undisclosed software security hole that can be exploited by hackers — is notoriously rich and murky. Traders tend to operate away from public scrutiny for a number of reasons that make it difficult to learn about the market.

Although Zerodium isn’t known for the transparency of its business, the company’s listings for vulnerabilities provides a window into the supply and demand behind the vulnerability resale industry.

Continue reading “Private firm puts $500K bounty on Signal, WhatsApp zero-day vulnerabilities” »

” … Paul Tudor Jones co-founded JUST Capital to fix the ills of corporate capitalism by identifying the most just or “good” companies. Will it work?”

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Set on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island, the third annual Blockchain Summit, hosted by BitFury, a leading full service Blockchain company, and Bill Tai, a venture investor and technologist, has come to a close. This event was an intimate, if perfectly balanced, gathering of technology, policy, investment and business leaders from around the world and across sectors. Topics ranged from the public policy implications of what is being heralded as a foundational technology, to new emerging business models that can ride on the very rails that enabled the global bonanza of digital currencies like Bitcoin. A key question that underpinned the Summit is if Blockchain could not have existed without the Internet, what could not exist without Blockchain?

Blockchain technology can undoubtedly change industries, especially those that labor under often byzantine, opaque and friction-laden business models. While many of the early pioneers are focusing on finance and insurance, the opportunities for this radical technology may very well reorder society as we know it. The remarkable case of Estonia, for example, shows a country reinventing itself into a future-proof digital state, where citizen services are rendered nearly instantaneously and to people all over the world. Similarly, promising work inspired by the famed Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, on improving land registries is being carried out by BitFury in a host of countries. With land and property being the two largest assets people will own — and the principal vehicle of value creation and wealth transfer — an unalterable, secure and transparent registration process should give the world comfort and elected leaders longevity.

What drives this unique technology is the power of distributed singularity, from which Blockchain’s identity pioneers like Dr. Mariana Dahan, who launched the World Identity Network on Necker Island, and Vinny Lingham of Civic, draw their inspiration. Blockchain operates on the basis of a distributed ledger (or database) system, inexorably marching forward recording and time-stamping transactions or records. While some may herald Bitcoin as Blockchain’s “killer app,” it is easy to maintain that the killer app is not the digital currencies that ride on Blockchain’s rails, but rather the rail system altogether. Two trains can ride on rails. But a high-speed maglev train is a decidedly faster mode of transport than a steam engine. Just as the maglev makes little or no contact with the rails enabling low-friction transport, the Blockchain can greatly reduce the friction in how the world transfers and records value.

Continue reading “Blockchain and the Power of Singularity” »

Death, taxis and technology: titles in the running for this year’s Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year give a new twist to the old maxim about certainty.

The 17 books on the 2017 longlist include analyses of the implications of world-changing innovations, from the iPhone to drones; a lively account of the rise of Uber; and a sobering history of the role war, plague and catastrophe have played in shaping our economies.

Titles about the relentless march of technology dominate the FT/McKinsey annual prize.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Amazon.com Inc is exploring a technology first developed for the U.S. military to produce tasty prepared meals that do not need refrigeration, as it looks for new ways to muscle into the $700 billion U.S. grocery business.

The world’s biggest online retailer has discussed selling ready-to-eat dishes such as beef stew and a vegetable frittata as soon as next year, officials at the startup firm marketing the technology told Reuters.

The dishes would be easy to stockpile and ship because they do not require refrigeration and could be offered quite cheaply compared with take-out from a restaurant.

Nextbigfuture interviewed Naveen Jain at the Singularity University Global Summit. Naveen K. Jain is a business executive, entrepreneur and the founder and former CEO of InfoSpace and a fonder of Moon Express, Viome, World Innovation Institute, Bluedot, iNome, TalentWise and Intelius. He was Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon India’s “Most Admired Serial Entrepreneur,” and the receiver of “Albert Einstein Technology Medal” for his pioneers in technology, he has been repeatedly honored for his entrepreneurial successes. Red Herring also recognized him as one of the “Top 20 Serial Entrepreneurs” and with the “Lifetime Achievement Award.” In 2015, Naveen Jain had a net worth of $2.2 billion.

How the tech billionaires are planning to send you into space.

John Thornhill investigates whether big government or big business will fund the future of space exploration.

Continue reading “The billionaire space race” »