Lifeboat Foundation

If I am not mistaken she edited The Three Body Problem, she did not write it.

In what seems like a story ripped straight from the pages of an Isaac Asimov novel, a recently deceased Chinese woman named Du Hong just had her brain cryogenically frozen in hopes that, in the future, the technology to bring her back to life will be created. No joke. Hong, a science fiction author herself, paid upwards of $120k to have her brain sent from China to Scottsdale, Arizona to undergo a freezing procedure at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Her idea is that while modern tech doesn’t allow for the reanimation of her brain today, inevitable advancements in cryonics will one day bring her back to life.

Before passing away last May from pancreatic cancer, the 61-year-old Du decided she wanted to allow her brain to be the subject of experiments after her death. Though it took some time before the team at Alcor actually conducted the procedure, doctors in Beijing prepped Du’s brain after her official time of death on May 30. Despite the Alcor Life Extension Foundation agreeing to freeze Du’s brain, the organization made it clear that it wouldn’t be the one to actually attempt to bring Du back to life in the future.

Continue reading “Sci-fi author has brain cryogenically frozen so it can be reanimated in the future” »

I did an interview on AI and politics for CBC, which also went out on NPR yesterday.

This week, Google’s artificially intelligent computer, AlphaGo won a tournament in the complex board game called Go. American presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan says it’s that in a matter of 10 to 15 years A.I. will be advanced enough to be president of the United States of America.

Continue reading “The case for a robot president” »

The first games for Oculus Rift are pretty sweet, though some can cause motion sickness.

An initiative to resolve global suffering with the removal of all money, debt and trade, which are now outdated and unnecessary through modern technology.

In a controversial move, Kuwait has passed a law making it mandatory for all its 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents to have their DNA entered onto a national database.

Anyone who refuses to submit their DNA for testing risks one year in prison and a fine of up to US$33,000, and those who provide a fake sample can be jailed for seven years.

The decision came after an Islamic State-led suicide bombing in Kuwait City on 26 June, which killed 26 people and wounded 227 more. The government hopes that the new database, which is projected to cost around US$400 million, will make it quicker and easier to make arrests in the future.

Continue reading “Kuwait has become the first country to make DNA testing mandatory for all residents” »

POSTECH has created a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that not only adds life to drones but can also replace lithium-ion batteries in smartphones.

Battery life. Two words that can turn anyone who owns an electronic device into a total wreck. But scientists at POSTECH may have found the solution to prevent you from having a panic attack each time you see your device almost out of juice.

Prof. Gyeong Man Choi and his Ph.D. student Kun Joong Kim have developed a miniaturized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) powerful enough to extend the flying time of drones to more than an hour. And that’s just the start.

Forget bionic knees, this company will let you grow a new one.

BEIJING China’s production and sale of electric cars will more than double this year, the industry minister said on Sunday.

More than 300,000 electric cars were sold in China last year, Miao Wei, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told reporters on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament on Sunday.

The reliability, mileage and lifespan of electric batteries needs improvement and China needs to speed up the installation of electric car charging stations, Miao said.

Biohacker Andrew Pelling has figured out a way to create living, functional biological objects that don’t exist in nature — without deliberately modifying DNA in any way. In one experiment, h…