Lifeboat Foundation

Earlier this year at Facebook’s F8 conference, the company revealed three innovation pillars that make up the company’s ten-year vision: connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR). Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer is responsible for leading each of them. Despite the fact that the vision is ten-years in duration, the company has made significant progress in each.

Facebook’s progress in AI can been seen in everything from the company’s news feed to the way in which people are tagged. The virtual reality innovations are best demonstrated through the Oculus Rift, which I demo’d last Thursday. More recently, the company made a great flight forward on the connectivity pillar as Acquila, a long-endurance plane that will fly above commercial aircraft and the weather, took flight in Arizona. The goal is for this v-shaped aircraft that has a wingspan longer than a Boeing 737, but weighs under 1,o00 pounds to bring basic internet access to the developing world.

I met with Schroepfer at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, and we discussed these three pillars and a variety of other topics, including the company’s recruiting methods, how the company maintains its innovative edge, and the logic behind its headquarters — one of the largest open-space offices in the world.

Continue reading “Facebook’s 10-Year Plan: Connectivity, Artificial Intelligence, And Virtual Reality” »

Every single operating system developed by Google to date has one thing in common: they’re based on the Linux kernel. Chrome OS, Android, Chromecasts, you name it. Linux has powered Google hardware for years.

However, the Linux kernel is not ideal for every situation. Especially in the case of embedded devices like car dashboards or GPS units, full-blown desktop kernels like Linux impact performance and cause other issues. There’s a massive ecosystem of operating systems designed for embedded hardware, and Google may be working on their own.

Enter “Fuchsia.” Google’s own description for it on the project’s GitHub page is simply, “Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)”. Not very revealing, is it? When you begin to dig deeper into Fuchsia’s documentation, everything starts to make a little more sense.

Continue reading “Google is developing an OS called ‘Fuchsia,’ runs on All the Things” »

Goodyear’s BH03 concept tire looks to capture the heat generated by tires when they move, and why they absorb sunlight when stationary, to charge electric car batteries.

Researchers at MIT and ETHZ have developed a working mathematical model for slot-based intersections. If successful, traffic efficiency would double and pollution would be greatly reduced.

One more of these; we may see government step in at the consumer’s urging.

Nobody was killed or even injured. But a minor accident involving a Tesla Model S running on Autopilot in China is again raising questions about exactly how the feature works.

The electric car company said Wednesday that it is investigating the Aug. 2 incident. The driver’s Tesla sideswiped a Volkswagen that was parked halfway in the lane of a busy Beijing highway. The company said Autopilot was engaged and the driver was not holding the steering wheel.

Continue reading “Another Tesla Autopilot Crash, This Time in China” »

How many things do we own, that are common today, that didn’t exist 10 years ago? The list is probably longer than you think.

Prior to the iPhone coming out in 2007, we didn’t have smartphones with mobile apps, decent phone cameras for photos/videos, mobile maps, mobile weather, or even mobile shopping.

None of the mobile apps we use today existed 10 years ago: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat, Uber, Facetime, LinkedIn, Lyft, Whatsapp, Netflix, Pandora, or Pokemon Go.

Continue reading “72 Stunning Things in The Future That Will be Common Ten Years From Now That Don’t Exist Today” »

My friend jumped out of a plane and solved a rubiks cube before pulling the parachute!

Stephen spends a month and a half learning how to solve a Rubiks cube from scratch so that he can attempt to solve it while skydiving.

Continue reading “How to Learn Anything” »

A six-seat, vertical takeoff and landing airplane.

Many folks have voiced the concerns over autonomous autos for many legitimate reasons including hacking and weak satellite signals for navigation especially when you review mountain ranges of the east coast.

The world has witnessed enormous advances in autonomous passenger vehicle technologies over the last dozen years.

The performance of microprocessors, memory chips and sensors needed for autonomous driving has greatly increased, while the cost of these components has decreased substantially.

Continue reading “Autonomous car development will speed up following a fatality” »