Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 10/23/24. We aim to educate people about this crucial area along with providing information of what is taking place.
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Anthropic's new Computer Use tool can take control of users' mouse cursors and perform basic tasks on their computers. It is now available exclusively with Anthropic's mid-range 3.5 Sonnet model via the API. It works by taking rapid successive screengrabs, so it can miss short-lived notifications and other changes and is incapable of some common actions like drag-and-drop. The tool is still cumbersome and error-prone at times. A video from Anthropic explaining the tool is available in the article.
FinalSpark, a Switzerland-based startup that offers a platform which allows researchers interested in biocomputing to write code that interacts with brain organoids, created a virtual world with a butterfly model to demonstrate its platform.
Three Chinese patients received treatment for autoimmune disorders using engineered immune cells made from donor cells. All three recipients reported improvements to their conditions. The treatment involved genetically engineering healthy-donor-derived CD19-targeting CAR-T cells using CRISPR-Cas9 to address issues with immune rejection. The study demonstrates the high safety and promising immune modularity effect of off-the-shelf CAR-T cells in treating severe refractory autoimmune diseases.
Colossal, a company founded to try to restore the mammoth to the Arctic tundra, released a progress report last week on the work involved in resurrecting the thylacine, which went extinct in 1936. Marsupial biology has features that may make de-extinction somewhat easier, and it appears that the technology available for working with marsupials is expanding rapidly. Colossal has a nearly complete genome sequence from a thylacine sample and it expects to complete the genome shortly. It is working on technology that will allow marsupial embryos to develop inside artificial uteruses.
Anthropic Advances AI Frontier with Model Updates and Revolutionary Computer Control Feature
In a significant move that further cements its position in the AI industry, Anthropic has announced two major developments: upgraded versions of its AI models and a groundbreaking computer control feature. These announcements represent both incremental improvements in existing capabilities and a bold step into new territory for AI interaction.
Anthropic has released two updated models: Claude 3.5 Sonnet (new) and Claude 3.5 Haiku. The new Sonnet version shows across-the-board improvements over its predecessor, with particularly notable gains in coding capabilities - an area where Claude was already considered an industry leader.
Benchmark results paint a compelling picture of the new Claude 3.5 Sonnet's capabilities:
Graduate-level reasoning (GPT-QA): Improved from 59% to 65%
MLU Pro: Advanced from 75% to 78%
Math problem solving: Substantial jump from 71% to 78%
High school math competitions: 16% using zero-shot chain of thought, nearly double the previous version
Agentic coding: Significant increase from 33% to 49%
While these improvements are impressive, it's worth noting that in some areas, competitors maintain their edge. For instance, Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro still leads in math problem solving with 86.1%. Notably absent from the benchmarking comparisons was Anthropic's O1 model, likely due to its different operational approach involving longer "thinking" time.
The Claude 3.5 Haiku update is also significant, as this smaller model now outperforms the previous Claude 3 Opus, demonstrating Anthropic's ability to achieve better results with more efficient models.
Perhaps the most intriguing announcement is Anthropic's new "Computer Use" capability, currently available in beta through their API. This feature allows Claude to directly control a computer, interacting with the interface just as a human would - moving the mouse, clicking, typing, and navigating through applications.
Executing actions through mouse movements and keyboard inputs
This approach, while seemingly simple, represents a significant advancement in AI's ability to interact with existing computer interfaces. Rather than requiring specialized APIs or integration points, it can work with any software that has a visual interface.
Anthropic has implemented several important safety measures:
Recommendation to use dedicated virtual machines or containers with minimal privileges
Warnings about handling sensitive data and authentication information
Suggestions to limit internet access to allowlisted domains
Emphasis on human confirmation for consequential actions
Technical Challenges
The system faces some technical hurdles, particularly in coordinate mapping and pixel counting accuracy. These challenges highlight why this approach might be a transitional solution rather than the long-term future of AI-computer interaction.
This development points to a broader vision of human-computer interaction where traditional interfaces might become less relevant. Just as humanoid robots are designed to work in environments built for humans, this computer control capability allows AI to operate in digital environments designed for human use.
However, this may be an intermediate step. Future operating systems might be built specifically for AI interaction, making this current approach obsolete. Companies like Google and Apple, with their deep integration into mobile and desktop operating systems, are particularly well-positioned to shape this future.
Anthropic's latest announcements represent both evolutionary and revolutionary progress in AI development. While the model improvements continue the steady march toward more capable AI systems, the computer use feature opens up entirely new possibilities for AI assistance and automation. Though still in its early stages, this development could mark the beginning of a fundamental shift in how we think about human-computer-AI interaction.
The challenge ahead lies in balancing these powerful capabilities with appropriate safety measures and determining the most effective ways to implement AI control of computer systems. As this technology matures, we may see the emergence of new paradigms in computer interface design specifically optimized for AI interaction.
"This technology wants to take your instrument. We are the instruments as film actors."
Speaking at the 25th Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday, the "Longlegs" star warned up-and-comers not to let their performances be manipulated with AI to create "employment based digital replicas" (EBDRs) — and no, not even in the limited terms described by new protections against the tech.
We must have posted this one at the same time. Wonder what it will do to make up artists in Hollywood. I hadn't even thought of that till Roy read me this article this morning.
All kinds of jobs will be erased. There are direct job losses and then you have the auxiliary.
For example, is they shut down the Space Shuttle program, there were 7K jobs lost at KSC. The estimate was there were 27K jobs affected in a 3 country area.
There was a breakfast place that was out of the way but was packed at 6 AM with people going to one of the back gates. After those people were laid off, the restaurant crashed.
When I was growing up here in Kenosha, WI we had American Motors Corporation, which eventually became Chrysler beforre they pulled out completely. After that we were pretty much almost a ghost town here. Before that, however, the downtown area was always busy, there were bars and restaurants everywhere. The city is finally building up again. Even after the Jacob Blake riots in 2020.
And they're finally doing something with the land on which the automobile factory stood and was empty for so many years.
"There is a new technology in town. It's a technology that I didn't have to contend with for 42 years until recently," Cage said referring to EBDRs, as quoted by Deadline.
"This technology wants to take your instrument," he continued. "We are the instruments as film actors. We are not hiding behind guitars and drums."
EBDRs are one of two types of digital replicas described in the groundbreaking deal struck between actors and movie studios following the conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike last year.
Whereas "independently created digital replicas" allow for the creation of entire (potentially AI) clones of an actor without their participation, EBDRs only work with the performer's physical involvement for a specific project — like, for example, the AI de-aging of an actor's face.
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A team of scientists from MIT made a remarkable discovery while trying to make magnetic coils using extrusion printing.
Semiconductors are essential for today's electronics, providing computational capabilities and the ability to control electric signals. They are also highly complex and costly, so researchers have proposed a cheap, "semiconductor-free" way to achieve electronic democratization.
This is an important research and discovery, especially in this age of devices. Cost cutting will go a long way.
Thanks for the #brainupdate friend.
#gmfrens #freecompliments
The researchers claim their method is suitable for printing resettable fuses, an essential element for active electronics. The team manufactured the devices with standard, affordable 3D printing machines and inexpensive, biodegradable polymer material doped with copper nanoparticles. They discovered that if a large amount of electric current passes through the material, the printed logic gates exhibit a spike in electrical resistance before returning to their original state after the current flow is interrupted.
A team of scientists from MIT made a remarkable discovery while trying to make magnetic coils using extrusion printing. The process melts a filament and ejects the resulting material from a nozzle, printing a 3D shape layer-by-layer. Extrusion is a known 3D-printing method engineers can use to generate logic gates that can control electricity without any semiconductor components.
Once worth $6 billion, 23andMe has lost 98% of its value and is on the verge of being delisted from the Nasdaq. So what happened?
Founded in 2006, 23andMe set out to revolutionize the once very exclusive genetic testing business with a direct-to-consumer model. Thanks to capital from high-profile backers and celebrity endorsements, the company was able to market its test kits at affordable prices.
Unlike competitors like Ancestry.com, 23andMe sought to leverage its database for drug discovery. The company went public in 2021 and was valued around $3.5 billion. The funding allowed 23andMe to develop its drug research team and spearhead partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.
"We're really at a point in time where I'm ready to explode," 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki told CNBC in 2021. "There's huge opportunities in therapeutics and huge opportunities in our consumer business."
Shortly after debuting on the Nasdaq, rising interest rates made it more difficult to raise funding, and sales began to fall. The company introduced a premium subscription product in 2020 that it hoped would make up for the lack of recurring revenue from its test kits, but that strategy failed to pan out. The company reported a $312 million net loss in the 2023 fiscal year, and by September 2023, 23andMe's share price slid below $1.
Anthropic has released an updated version of its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model with a new Computer Use feature that can interact with apps on a PC.
In a pitch to investors last spring, Anthropic said it intended to build AI to power virtual assistants that could perform research, answer emails, and handle other back-office jobs on their own. The company referred to this as a “next-gen algorithm for AI self-teaching” — one it believed that could, if all goes according to plan, automate large portions of the economy someday.
Anthropic Unveils Major Update: Claude 3.5 Sonnet Gets Desktop Control Capabilities
Anthropic has taken a significant step toward its vision of AI-powered virtual assistants with the release of an upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet model that can nOW interact with desktop applications. This development, announced on Tuesday, introduces a new "Computer Use" API that allows the AI to emulate human-like computer interactions through keystrokes, mouse movements, and button clicks.
While Anthropic recommends starting with low-risk tasks, this update represents a significant step toward their goal of automating back-office work. The company has confirmed that Claude 3.5 Opus is in development, suggesting continued evolution of their AI capabilities.
This development marks a crucial milestone in AI automation, though Anthropic emphasizes the importance of careful implementation and appropriate precautions when dealing with sensitive data.
LinkedIn users on Tuesday began noticing a problem with their follower counts on the platform
LinkedIn users on Tuesday began noticing a problem with their follower counts on the platform: They were dropping rapidly, and sometimes by many hundreds of users at once. With no official word at the time from LinkedIn, many began speculating that the situation was the result of LinkedIn purging fake accounts from the platform.
Some even spoke with authority on the matter, claiming that the problem was due to a decision by the company to clean out fake, inactive, or duplicate accounts. Others leveraged the opportunity to pitch their expertise in being able to help LinkedIn members from having their accounts “banned.” Still more questioned what they may have done wrong to see their accounts lose so much traction in such a short period of time.
Though the general consensus was that this was a purge enacted by LinkedIn, the company announced later in the day that it had looked into the issue and has now “resolved” the problem. It did not offer an explanation as to the cause.
“We heard some members may have seen a change in their connection and follower count,” the company wrote in a post on X. “Our team quickly looked into this. We’re happy to report this has now been resolved.”
Prevailing theories suggest that Mars was once covered in a major liquid water system of oceans, rivers, and lakes, which presupposes a thick atmosphere that could maintain temperatures at which liquid water could exist.
But 3.5 billion years later, its barren surface leaves only hints of its once lush history behind, leading scientists to wonder what exactly happened to this atmosphere.
As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances, the vast majority of the planet's atmosphere just might be trapped in sedimentary rocks lining the Red Planet's surface.
According to their calculations, roughly 80 percent of the carbon dioxide of Mars' ancient atmosphere could be trapped inside carbon-based organic compounds.
Excitingly, the scientists suggest this carbon could be extracted and turned into rocket fuel, facilitating future trips to and from the distant planet.
"Based on our findings on Earth, we show that similar processes likely operated on Mars, and that copious amounts of atmospheric CO2 could have transformed to methane and been sequestered in clays," said author and MIT geology professor Oliver Jagoutz in a statement. "This methane could still be present and maybe even used as an energy source on Mars in the future."
It's officially illegal to publish fake, AI-generated product reviews.
Sweeping changes to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines aimed at cleaning up the polluted, confusing world of online product reviews went into effect on Monday, meaning the federal agency is now allowed to levy civil penalties against bad actors who knowingly post product reviews and testimonials deemed misleading to American consumers.
The new guidelines are expansive, prohibiting sleazy businesses from engaging in a wide array of abusive tactics. That list includes using generative AI tools to whip up fake testimonials or product review articles — bonus points if those reviews are attributed to someone who isn't real, or published by someone overstating or misreporting their level of experience with a given product.
A perfect example of this kind of content? Review-style articles published at dozens of media companies including Sports Illustrated and The Miami Herald by a third-party media company called AdVon Commerce, which multiple Futurism investigations revealed to be largely AI-generated and even bylined by fake authors outfitted with equally fake profile pictures and bios purporting alleged expertise.
A Boeing satellite belonging to multinational service provider Intelsat mysteriously blew into pieces in geostationary orbit over the weekend.
According to an official update, an "anomaly" caused the satellite — dubbed IS-33e — to be destroyed, resulting in what the company calls a "total loss."
"Migration and service restoration plans are well underway across the Intelsat fleet and third-party satellites," the update reads.
It's unclear what exactly caused the satellite to break up. The US Space Force announced it was "tracking around 20 associated pieces" but "observed no immediate threats."
US-based space tracking company ExoAnalytic Solutions told SpaceNews that it's tracking 57 associated pieces of debris.
While we have yet to find out the exact cause for the breakup, the incident serves as a reminder of the often limited life of satellites, as well as the ever-present threat of existing space debris colliding with our assets in orbit — a precarious situation that could potentially lead to a disaster.
3D printing objects using metal is a well-established technique
3D printing objects using metal is a well-established technique, but it tends to be too complex, expensive, or imprecise to match traditional methods at scale. Armed with $14 million from Nvidia and Boeing, Freeform aims to change that by building a new metal additive printing process that it says changes the game — and yes, there’s an AI angle, too.
Co-founders Erik Palitsch (CEO) and TJ Ronacher (president) both worked at SpaceX, where they were principal architect and lead analyst, respectively, of the Merlin engines and other programs. While there, they saw the potential of 3D printing parts using metal, but also experienced the method’s shortcomings firsthand.
“We saw the potential of metal printing; it has the potential to transform basically any industry that makes metal things. But adoption has been slow and success has been marginal at best,” said Palitsch. “Why is it not practical to use at scale? Fundamentally, because of three things: crappy and inconsistent quality; speed — commercial printers are very slow; and cost — the price for these printers is astronomical.”
They concluded that if they could operationalize the process to provide a printing service rather than sell a printer, they could crack the whole thing wide open. So they joined up with Tasso Lappas, former CTO of Velo3D, to start Freeform.
The production company behind the sci-fi blockbuster "Blade Runner 2049" is suing Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk for copyright infringement.
In the lawsuit, the company asserts that AI-generated stills used in promotional material related to Tesla's "We, Robot" event — the site of the disastrous debut of its robotaxi project — were clearly ripping off the movie.
The production company, which is called Alcon Entertainment, didn't beat around the bush while actively distancing itself from Musk and his abrasive, racist antics.
"Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account," the lawsuit reads.
Worse yet, Alcon — and Warner Bros Discovery, which is joining it as a plaintiff — allege that Tesla asked for permission to use a "Blade Runner 2049" still but was turned down, suggesting the EV maker knowingly infringed on the company's copyright by bastardizing its own version using an AI image generator.
The image "was clearly intended to read visually either as an actual still image from ‘BR2049’s iconic sequence of [protagonist] K exploring the ruined Las Vegas, or as a minimally stylized copy of one," Alcon alleges.
Bose gave up on Sleepbuds after two generations. It was a sad, premature end for a promising product.
Bose gave up on Sleepbuds after two generations. It was a sad, premature end for a promising product. The headphone maker came closer to creating a truly great pair of sleep headphones than anyone else. Ultimately, however, it seems the company was no longer interested in pursuing the product, which proved a major setback for the category at large.
The two generations of Sleepbuds we got weren’t without their faults, however. At the top of the list was a case of a company that was sure it knew what consumers wanted better than consumers themselves. The buds’ inability to stream Bluetooth audio was something Bose could have easily reconciled with the Sleepbuds 2.
Instead, the company was sure users would be content streaming preloaded white noise tracks. Any decision to limit choice in a consumer product must be justified by the manufacturer, but Bose never gave a compelling reason for limiting such choice. No doubt hardware limitations played a role, but streaming is an essential feature for a pair of $250 specialty earbuds.
“Every passing car is captured,” says 4th Amendment lawsuit against Norfolk, Va.
Police use of automated license-plate reader cameras is being challenged in a lawsuit alleging that the cameras enable warrantless surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The city of Norfolk, Virginia, was sued yesterday by plaintiffs represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm.
Norfolk, a city with about 238,000 residents, "has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program," said the complaint filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Like many other cities, Norfolk uses cameras made by the company Flock Safety. A 404 Media article said Institute for Justice lawyer Robert Frommer "told 404 Media that the lawsuit could have easily been filed in any of the more than 5,000 communities where Flock is active, but that Norfolk made sense because the Fourth Circuit of Appeals—which Norfolk is part of—recently held that persistent, warrantless drone surveillance in Baltimore is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in a case called Beautiful Struggle v Baltimore Police Department."
“It was a successful Cert flight, and now we’re knee deep in finalizing certification.”
United Launch Alliance has started assembling its next Vulcan rocket—the first destined to launch a US military payload—as the Space Force prepares to certify it to loft the Pentagon's most precious national security satellites.
Space Force officials expect to approve ULA's Vulcan rocket for military missions without requiring another test flight, despite an unusual problem on the rocket's second demonstration flight earlier this month.
ULA has launched two Vulcan test flights. Military officials watched closely, gathering data to formally certify the rocket is reliable enough to launch national security missions. The first test flight in January, designated Cert-1, was nearly flawless. The Cert-2 launch October 4 overcame an anomaly on one of Vulcan's strap-on solid rocket boosters, which lost its exhaust nozzle but kept firing with degraded thrust.
The rocket's twin BE-4 main engines, made by Blue Origin, corrected for the asymmetric thrust from the two strap-on boosters. Vulcan's Centaur V upper stage also fired its engines longer than planned to make up for the shortfall in performance from the damaged strap-on solid motor. Ultimately, the rocket reached its planned trajectory and delivered a dummy payload into interplanetary space.
Col. James Horne, who oversees launch execution for Space Systems Command, called the test flight a "successful launch" in an interview with Ars. The nozzle failure caused a "significant loss of thrust" from the damaged booster, he said.
The Vulcan rocket's ability to overcome the dramatic nozzle failure, which was easily visible in video of the launch, "really demonstrated the robustness of the total Vulcan system," Horne said.
Stem cell editing, complete genome, and cane toad resistance mark necessary steps.
Colossal, the company founded to try to restore the mammoth to the Arctic tundra, has also decided to tackle a number of other species that have gone extinct relatively recently: the dodo and the thylacine. Because of significant differences in biology, not the least of which is the generation time of Proboscideans, these other efforts may reach many critical milestones well in advance of the work on mammoths.
Late last week, Colossal released a progress report on the work involved in resurrecting the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct when the last known survivor died in a zoo in 1936. Marsupial biology has some features that may make de-extinction somewhat easier, but we have far less sophisticated ways of manipulating it compared to the technology we've developed for working with the stem cells and reproduction of placental mammals. But, based on these new announcements, the technology available for working with marsupials is expanding rapidly.
Colossal has branched out from its original de-extinction mission to include efforts to keep species from ever needing its services. In the case of marsupial predators, the de-extinction effort is incorporating work that will benefit existing marsupial predators: generating resistance to the toxins found on the cane toad, an invasive species that has spread widely across Australia.
The primary threat from cane toads comes from bufotoxins, a group of related, complicated chemicals that bind to a protein found on the surface of cells called ATP1A1. This protein helps control the traffic of ions across the cell membrane. Andrew Pask, who is leading Colossal's marsupial efforts, told Ars that animals in the cane toad's native range in Africa share a mutation in ATP1A1 that greatly reduces bufotoxin binding. Now, the team has engineered that change into the genome of a marsupial stem cell line and showed that it boosted resistance by a factor of over 6,000. (A manuscript describing some of this work is available.)
NASA and DARPA will fly a prototype nuclear rocket in 2027—potentially making it one of the first of its kind built and operated by the US.
NASA plans to send crewed missions to Mars over the next decade—but the 140 million-mile (225 million-kilometer) journey to the red planet could take several months to years round trip.
This relatively long transit time is a result of the use of traditional chemical rocket fuel. An alternative technology to the chemically propelled rockets the agency develops now is called nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses nuclear fission and could one day power a rocket that makes the trip in just half the time.
Nuclear fission involves harvesting the incredible amount of energy released when an atom is split by a neutron. This reaction is known as a fission reaction. Fission technology is well established in power generation and nuclear-powered submarines, and its application to drive or power a rocket could one day give NASA a faster, more powerful alternative to chemically driven rockets.
NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are jointly developing NTP technology. They plan to deploy and demonstrate the capabilities of a prototype system in space in 2027—potentially making it one of the first of its kind to be built and operated by the US.
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Light pollution from sources on the surface of the Earth are major obstructions for layperson astronomers and stargazers who are unable to see past the glow of streetlights, lit high-rises, and other sources of illumination. But China’s expansive satellite system is proving that human-made light pollution is just as capable of ruining observations from their position well into the planet’s orbit. The Asian nation’s Qianfan program has orbiting bodies that glow so brightly that they are beginning to interfere with nighttime observations.
The Chinese satellite program in question was launched in August and represents the first of many more that will be launched into the sky over the next several years. Known in English as “Thousand Sails,” Qianfan was conceived to be a “mega constellation” of satellites that will serve China as part of a vast communication network. The small spacecraft were constructed by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology, and is reported to be the Far East’s answer to the United States-based SpaceX Starlink satellites.
Surveys show decline in customer satisfaction with what is available to stream.
Subscription fees for video streaming services have been on a steady incline. But despite subscribers paying more, surveys suggest they're becoming less satisfied with what's available to watch.
At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks Chairman John Landgraf that refers to an era of rampant content spending that gave us shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. For streaming services, the Peak TV era meant trying to lure subscribers with original content that was often buoyed by critical acclaim and/or top-tier actors, writers, and/or directors. However, as streaming services struggle to reach or maintain profitability, 2024 saw a drop in the number of new scripted shows for the first time in at least 10 years, FX Research found.
Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with the quality of content available on streaming services seems to have declined for the past couple of years. Most surveys suggest a generally small decline in perceived quality, but that’s still perturbing considering how frequently streaming services increase subscription fees. There was a time when a streaming subscription represented an exclusive ticket to viewing some of the best new TV shows and movies. But we’ve reached a point where the most streamed TV show last year was Suits—an original from the USA Network cable channel that ended in 2019.
We obtained 900 complaints the FCC received about T-Mobile’s infamous price hike.
T-Mobile promised users who bought certain mobile plans that it would never raise their prices for as long as they lived—but then raised their prices this year. So it's no surprise that 2,000 T-Mobile customers complained to the government about a price hike on plans that were advertised as having a lifetime price lock.
T-Mobile's "Lifetime price Lock" Controversy: Broken Promises and customer Backlash
In a significant development that has sparked widespread customer outrage and regulatory scrutiny, T-Mobile has come under fire for raising prices on plans that were marketed with "lifetime" price guarantees. The controversy has led to over 2,000 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaints and a class-action lawsuit, highlighting the growing tension between corporate practices and consumer trust in the telecommunications industry.
T-Mobile's journey into this controversy began in 2015 when it introduced the "Un-contract" promise, which was later extended to T-Mobile One plans in January 2017. The company's marketing was unequivocal: customers would keep their price until they decided to change it. Then-CEO John Legere emphasized this commitment, stating, "T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile One plan."
The company positioned itself as different from other carriers, with Legere declaring, "We're the Un-carrier. Everything the carriers do, we un-do." He specifically criticized competitors for using "desperate, short-term promotions to suck you in and lock you down—only to jack up rates later," promising that T-Mobile would not engage in such practices.
Despite these promises, T-Mobile implemented price increases of $2 to $5 per line in 2024, affecting customers across various plans, including those marketed with lifetime price guarantees. The impact was particularly significant for customers with multiple lines, with some reporting increases of up to $50 per month for accounts with ten lines.
The customer response was immediate and severe, with complaints flooding the FCC. Many of the affected customers were seniors on the 55+ plan, who found themselves facing unexpected increases on fixed incomes. The complaints revealed a pattern of frustration and betrayal, with customers pointedly noting they were "still alive" despite their "lifetime" guarantees being violated.
T-Mobile's defense of the price increases has centered around a previously undisclosed caveat in their FAQ, which essentially nullified the price-lock promise. According to the company, the Un-contract merely committed T-Mobile to pay the final month's recurring service charges if prices were raised and customers chose to leave within 60 days.
However, customers have strongly contested this interpretation, with many pointing to specific marketing materials and terms of conditions that appeared to make unambiguous promises. For instance, Maryland resident John Bradshaw highlighted terms stating that for customers on price-lock guaranteed Rate Plans, T-Mobile would not increase monthly recurring service charges "for as long as you continuously remain a customer in good standing on a qualifying Rate Plan."
Many customers and critics have drawn a direct line between T-Mobile's behavior and its 2020 acquisition of Sprint. Complaints to the FCC frequently cited the Merger as enabling T-Mobile's price increases by reducing competition in the wireless market. Some customers have called for re-examination of the merger and even suggested breaking up the combined company to restore market competition.
The situation has been exacerbated by inconsistent and often frustrating responses from T-Mobile's customer service. Customers report receiving various explanations for the price increases, including:
Claims that price lock was a special program that began in 2022
Explanations that increases were due to "retired" plans
Acknowledgments of the promises but assertions that the board and CEO decided to no longer honor them
Justifications based on T-Mobile raising rates less than other carriers
Many customers feel trapped in their T-Mobile service due to device installment plans, which require full payment if customers terminate service. This has created a situation where customers must either accept the price increases or face substantial device payoffcosts to switch carriers.
The controversy has attracted attention from multiple regulatory bodies:
The FCC has received over 2,000 complaints about the price increases
The Federal trade Commission (FTC) has received approximately 60 complaints
A class-action lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey
Both the FCC and FTC have previously taken action against T-Mobile for other violations. The FCC recently fined T-Mobile for data breaches and selling users' real-time location data, while the FTC secured a $90 million settlement in 2014 over unwanted third-party charges.
Customers with multiple family lines facing multiplicative increases
Many of these customers chose T-Mobile specifically for its price guarantee, making the increases especially burdensome for those least able to absorb additional costs or switch carriers.
The resolution of this controversy may have far-reaching implications for the telecommunications industry and corporate marketing practices. The pending class-action lawsuit and potential regulatory investigations could force T-Mobile to:
Roll back the price increases
Provide compensation to affected customers
Face additional oversight or restrictions
Make significant changes to its marketing practices
The outcome could also influence how other telecommunications companies approach price guarantees and long-term customer commitments in the future.
Conclusion
T-Mobile's decision to raise prices on "lifetime" guaranteed plans represents more than just a pricing dispute—it highlights the complex relationship between corporate promises, customer trust, and regulatory oversight in the modern telecommunications landscape. As the legal and regulatory processes unfold, the case may set important precedents for how companies can market their services and what recourse customers have when long-term promises are broken.
The controversy serves as a reminder of the importance of clear, honest marketing practices and the potential consequences of prioritizing short-term profits over long-term customer relationships. As one customer noted to the FCC, "If this is allowed to stand, then words have no meaning, businesses are able to lie directly and blatantly to the American people." The resolution of this issue may well determine whether such dire predictions come true or whether consumer protections can effectively guard against such practices in the future.
"This will only embolden other militaries or adversaries to do the same."
As The Intercept reports, a wishlist put forward by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) — a furtive counterterrorism group within the US Department of Defense (DoD) — reveals the agency's interest in using generative AI to create fake online internet users.
That's despite the US government's persistent warnings that deepfakes and other AI-generated content will deepen the misinformation crisis and lead to a muddier information ecosystem for everyone.
In the document, JSOC explains that it's seeking "technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content" for use by Special Operations Forces. This "solution," JSOC adds, "should include facial and background imagery, facial and background video, and audio layers."
According to the wishlist, JSOC wants SOF agents to "use this capability to gather information from public online forums."
In other words, JSOC wants to provide its special ops teams with the technology to create sophisticated, bespoke AI deepfakes, capable of convincing social media users that they're the real deal for the sake of information-gathering efforts.
We need to know when machines are getting close to human-level reasoning, with all the safety, ethical, and moral questions this raises.
Two of San Francisco’s leading players in artificial intelligence have challenged the public to come up with questions capable of testing the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like Google Gemini and OpenAI’s o1. Scale AI, which specializes in preparing the vast tracts of data on which the LLMs are trained, teamed up with the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) to launch the initiative, Humanity’s Last Exam.
The Challenge of Testing AI: A New Frontier in Intelligence Assessment
In a significant development in the artificial intelligence landscape, Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) have launched an ambitious initiative called "Humanity's Last Exam." This project, offering $5,000 prizes for the TOP 50 selected questions, aims to create new ways to evaluate advanced AI systems, particularly as traditional testing methods become increasingly inadequate.
The challenge facing AI evaluation is multifaceted. Modern Large language Models (LLMs) like Google Gemini and OpenAI's latest offerings are already excelling at conventional tests in fields ranging from intelligence to law. However, this success raises a crucial question: Are these achievements meaningful when the AI systems may have already encountered the test content during their training?
The problem is set to intensify. According to Epoch AI's projections, by 2028, AI systems will have effectively processed all human-written content. This milestone presents a fundamental challenge in continuing to assess AI capabilities accurately.
Several key issues complicate the testing landscape:
Model Collapse: As AI-generated content proliferates across the Internet and gets incorporated into future training sets, there's a risk of degrading AI performance. To counter this, developers are increasingly gathering data from human-AI interactions.
Data Collection Evolution: Some experts advocate for "embodied AI" solutions, where systems learn through real-world interactions. Tesla's autonomous vehicles and Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses exemplify this approach, collecting real-world data through sensors and cameras.
Intelligence Definition: The fundamental challenge of defining and measuring intelligence, particularly Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), remains. Traditional IQ tests have long been criticized for their narrow scope, and AI faces similar limitations in its evaluation metrics.
The field is seeing innovative attempts to create more comprehensive testing methods:
The ARC Solution
François Chollet's "abstraction and reasoning corpus" (ARC) represents a notable advancement in AI testing. Unlike traditional benchmarks, ARC tests an AI's ability to:
Current results are telling: Leading LLMs like OpenAI's latest models and Anthropic's Sonnet 3.5 achieve only 21% success rates on the ARC public leaderboard. Even with more sophisticated approaches reaching 50%, these scores remain well below human performance levels of over 90%.
Scale/CAIS Initiative
The Humanity's Last Exam project takes a unique approach by:
Crowdsourcing test questions from a broad expert coalition
Keeping winning questions private to prevent AI systems from "studying" for the test
Creating a more dynamic and unpredictable evaluation framework
As AI systems continue to advance, the challenge of testing them becomes increasingly complex. The field must not only develop ways to measure current AI capabilities but also prepare for testing potential superintelligent systems - a challenge that pushes the boundaries of our current understanding of intelligence assessment.
The ongoing efforts to create new testing methodologies reflect a crucial understanding: as AI systems approach and potentially surpass human-level reasoning, we need robust ways to evaluate their capabilities, with significant implications for safety, ethics, and governance in the AI age.
This architectural license agreement has been the cornerstone of the partnership that has kept Android smartphones humming with Qualcomm's cutting-edge processors for years.
The long-simmering battle between British chip designer Arm and American semiconductor superstar Qualcomm has just reached a boiling point. Arm has now given Qualcomm notice that it is terminating the license allowing Qualcomm to create its own chips based on Arm's intellectual property.
This "architectural license" agreement has been the cornerstone of the partnership that has kept Android smartphones humming with Qualcomm's cutting-edge processors for years. Now, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg, Arm has fired off a 60-day cancellation notice that could bring this long-standing deal crumbling down.
For the uninitiated, the hostility between these two tech titans that were once close partners stems from Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of chip design startup Nuvia in 2021.
Arm alleges that when Qualcomm acquired Nuvia, it violated the licensing terms since Nuvia already had a separate agreement with Arm. The company's stance is that Qualcomm should have renegotiated those terms instead of simply absorbing Nuvia's existing Arm licenses. This led Arm to sue Qualcomm in 2022 for breach of contract and trademark infringement.
AI video has come incredibly far in the years since the first models debuted in late 2022, increasing in realism, resolution, fidelity, prompt adherence (how well they match the text prompt or description of the video that the user typed) and number.
But one area that remains a limitation to many AI video creators — myself included — is in depicting realistic facial expressions in AI generated characters. Most appear quite limited and difficult to control.
But no longer: today, Runway, the New York City-headquartered AI startup backed by Google and others, announced a new feature “Act-One,” that allows users to record video of themselves or actors from any video camera — even the one on a smartphone — and then transfers the subject’s facial expressions to that of an AI generated character with uncanny accuracy.
The free-to-use tool is gradually rolling out “gradually” to users starting today, according to Runway’s blog post on the feature.
While anyone with a Runway account can access it, it will be limited to those who have enough credits to generate new videos on the company’s Gen-3 Alpha video generation model introduced earlier this year, which supports text-to-video, image-to-video, and video-to-video AI creation pipelines (e.g. the user can type in a scene description, upload an image or a video, or use a combination of these inputs and Gen-3 Alpha will use what its given to guide its generation of a new scene).
A new paper is sparking debate with its finding that, despite progress in medicine, increases in life expectancy are slowing.
Human life expectancy dramatically increased last century. Compared to babies born in 1900, those born at the turn of the 21st century could live, on average, three decades longer—with many living to celebrate their 100th birthdays. In other words, for much of the century, each passing year added something like three months to a person’s potential time on Earth.
To optimists in the longevity field, the rapid rise in life expectancy will likely continue at a steady, if not accelerated, pace.
Others have a more pessimistic view. In their predictions, humans will hit a natural ceiling, with the average person in developed countries living to an age far less than 100.
A new study adds to the debate with analysis of data from 1990 to 2019. After examining life expectancy from eight countries with the longest living populations, plus those from Hong Kong and the US, the team reached a troubling conclusion: Despite innovations in healthcare, the increase in overall life expectancy is slowing down.
“Most people alive today at older ages are living on time that was manufactured by medicine,” said study author S. Jay Olshansky, a veteran researcher of aging at the University of Illinois. “But these medical Band-Aids are producing fewer years of life even though they’re occurring at an accelerated pace, implying that the period of rapid increases in life expectancy is now documented to be over.”
The concept of Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) is a fascinating topic that has garnered significant attention in the fields of life extension, artificial intelligence, and futurism. To dive deeper, let's break down the key components and ideas surrounding LEV.
Longevity Escape Velocity is a hypothetical point in time when the benefits of life extension technologies become so significant that they allow individuals to overcome the biological limitations of human aging and mortality. This concept was first introduced by Ray Kurzweil, a renowned futurist and inventor, in his 2005 book "The Singularity Is Near."
The LEV concept is based on the idea that life extension technologies will eventually reach a point where they can significantly improve human healthspan, potentially even allowing individuals to live indefinitely. This would occur when the benefits of these technologies outweigh the costs, and the advantages of living longer become so great that they become a self-sustaining feedback loop.
To estimate the LEV, researchers have proposed using a "break-even point" analysis. This involves estimating the time it would take for life extension technologies to improve human healthspan by a certain percentage, such that the benefits of the technology outweigh the costs.
One way to calculate LEV is to use a rough estimate of the rate at which life extension technologies will improve human healthspan. For example, some researchers have suggested that life extension technologies could improve healthspan by 20-30% every 10 years. This would result in an exponential increase in healthspan, leading to a potential LEV.
Several researchers have proposed different estimates of LEV based on their own analyses and models. Some estimates range from around 2045 to 2100, while others are more speculative and range from 2020 to 2120.
The 2045 estimate
One commonly cited estimate of LEV is around 2045, based on the assumption that life extension technologies will improve human healthspan by 20-30% every 10 years, starting from a baseline of around 30% improvement per decade. This would result in an exponential increase in healthspan, leading to a potential LEV around 2045.
Several factors could influence the timing of LEV, including:
Rate of technological progress: The rate at which life extension technologies improve human healthspan will play a significant role in determining the timing of LEV.
Cost and accessibility: The cost and accessibility of life extension technologies will also impact the timing of LEV, as they may limit the adoption of these technologies.
Societal and cultural factors: Societal and cultural factors, such as attitudes towards aging and death, may also influence the timing of LEV.
Potential risks and challenges: The potential risks and challenges associated with life extension technologies, such as the possibility of unintended consequences or the impact on social structures, may also impact the timing of LEV.
If LEV is achieved, it could have significant implications for human society, including:
Increased human lifespan: LEV would potentially allow individuals to live indefinitely, or for a very long time, without suffering from the physical and cognitive decline that typically accompanies aging.
Changes in social structures: LEV could lead to significant changes in social structures, as traditional retirement models and pension systems may become obsolete.
New economic models: LEV could also lead to new economic models, as individuals may choose to continue working and contributing to society for extended periods.
Redefining human identity: LEV could also lead to a redefinition of human identity, as individuals may need to adapt to new roles and responsibilities in a society where life extension technologies are widely available.
Overall, the concept of Longevity Escape Velocity is a complex and multifaceted topic that raises important questions about the future of human health, aging, and society. While it is still highly speculative, LEV has the potential to fundamentally change the way we think about human lifespan and the possibilities for human existence.
Back in June, Amazon announced that it was launching a secondary storefront at an invite-only conference for Chinese sellers.
Following reports earlier this year that Amazon is responding to competition from Shein and Temu with its own budget storefront, internal documents have revealed the kind of prices it will be charging. Merchants will be subject to extreme price caps, including no more than $20 for sofas.
Back in June, Amazon announced that it was launching a secondary storefront at an invite-only conference for Chinese sellers. The store will enable them to ship their items directly to US consumers, allowing Amazon to compete with Temu and Shein, which have been attracting more customers thanks to the rock-bottom prices they offer – despite the often dubious quality.
Amazon said at the time that the storefront would feature a variety of unbranded items, many priced under $20.
According to a new report from The Information, Amazon has informed merchants about the price caps it is imposing on its secondary store. The messages include a list of 700 items, such as $8 for jewelry, $9 for bedding, $13 for guitars, and $20 for sofas.
Amazon plans to charge sellers lower fulfillment fees for items sold through the low-cost storefront. Sellers would be charged between $1.77 and $2.05 to ship a 4-to-8-ounce item. That represents significant savings over the $2.67 to $4.16 Amazon charges for items of a similar weight shipped under its Fulfillment by Amazon program from a domestic warehouse.
Unsurprisingly, just as AI has been instrumental in advancing other device categories, it's now beginning to make a significant impact in the car market.
While smart glasses and other wearables have been getting a great deal of attention lately, the market poised to be the largest and most impactful new category of personal devices is cars. With the shift to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and ongoing advances in assisted and autonomous driving, the automotive industry is on the verge of becoming the "next big thing" for the tech sector.
Unsurprisingly, just as AI has been instrumental in advancing other device categories, it's now beginning to make a significant impact in the car market.
The latest example comes from Qualcomm, which recently unveiled next-gen versions of its automotive-focused chips at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui. The Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite are designed for infotainment and assisted/autonomous driving features in premium vehicles and are expected to start sampling in 2025.
Both chips and their respective software platforms are part of Qualcomm's Snapdragon Digital Chassis, which debuted in 2022. Building on the company's previous automotive efforts, these new chips feature the Oryon CPU architecture.
Oryon represents a major leap in performance and power efficiency compared to previous Qualcomm CPUs. It's also a key component of the Snapdragon X Elite chips for PCs, released earlier this year. A second-generation version of Oryon is also part of the new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile CPU for smartphones.
Axiom Station: It is a commercial space station being developed by Axiom Space to operate in low-Earth orbit. It will be the first commercial space station in the world.
Gateway Space Station: NASA-led Gateway Program is an international collaboration to establish humanity's first space station around the Moon as a vital component of the Artemis campaign.
A new study found the most capable AI models could cooperate in groups of at least 1,000—an order of magnitude more than humans.
Humans are social animals, but there appear to be hard limits to the number of relationships we can maintain at once. New research suggests AI may be capable of collaborating in much larger groups.
The Future of Collaboration: AI's Ability to Work in Large Groups
Humans are inherently social creatures, but our ability to maintain relationships is limited. The concept of Dunbar's Number, which suggests that humans can only maintain social groups of around 150 people, has become a popular benchmark for the optimal size of human groups in business management. However, new research suggests that AI may be capable of collaborating in much larger groups, potentially revolutionizing the way we approach complex tasks.
Researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany tested the social capabilities of large language models (LLMs) by simulating groups of the same model, each with a random opinion. They found that the most capable models could cooperate in groups of at least 1,000, an order of magnitude more than humans. This is a significant finding, as it suggests that AI may be able to collaborate at scales far beyond what is possible for humans.
The researchers used a simple experiment to test the social capabilities of the LLMs. They created multiple instances of the same model, each with a random opinion, and then showed each copy the opinions of all its peers. They then asked each copy if it wanted to update its own opinion based on the opinions of its peers. The team found that the likelihood of the group reaching consensus was directly related to the power of the underlying model.
The results of this study suggest that larger AI models could potentially collaborate at scales far beyond what is possible for humans. This has significant implications for the way we approach complex tasks, as it could enable AI to work together to solve problems that are currently beyond the capabilities of individual models.
For instance, in the field of medicine, AI could be used to analyze large amounts of medical data and collaborate with other AI models to identify patterns and make predictions about patient outcomes. In the field of finance, AI could be used to analyze large amounts of financial data and collaborate with other AI models to identify trends and make predictions about market movements.
However, there are also some limitations to consider. For example, agreeing on something does not necessarily mean that it is the right solution. The researchers noted that the solution that the AI agents settle on may not be optimal, and that there is a good chance that the solution will not be the best one.
Additionally, there are computational costs associated with running large groups of AI models. While the idea of AI collaborating in large groups is promising, it may not be practical in the near future due to the computational resources required.
Despite these limitations, the potential for AI to collaborate in large groups is an exciting one. As the technology continues to evolve, it is likely that we will see more advanced AI models that are capable of working together to solve complex problems. Whether current models are smart enough to take advantage of this ability is unclear, but it seems entirely possible that future generations of the technology will be able to.
In conclusion, the study of AI's ability to collaborate in large groups is an important area of research that has significant implications for the future of AI. While there are limitations to consider, the potential for AI to work together to solve complex problems is an exciting one that could have a significant impact on a wide range of fields.
El Cosmico, a hotel in Texas, will gain 43 new rooms and 18 houses, which will be printed using Icon's giant gantry-style Vulcan printer.
The first 3D-printed house in the US was unveiled just over six years ago. Since then, homes have been printed all over the country and the world, from Virginia to California and Mexico to Kenya. If you’re intrigued by the concept but not sure whether you’re ready to jump on the bandwagon, you’ll soon be able to take a 3D-printed dwelling for a test run—by staying in the world’s first 3D-printed hotel.
The hotel is under construction in the city of Marfa, in the far west of Texas. It’s an expansion of an existing hotel called El Cosmico, which until now has really been more of a campground, offering accommodations in trailers, yurts, and tents. According to the property’s website, “the vision has been to create a living laboratory for artistic, cultural, and community experimentation.” The project is a collaboration between Austin, Texas-based 3D printing construction company Icon, architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group, and El Cosmico’s owner, Liz Lambert.
El Cosmico will gain 43 new rooms and 18 houses, which will be printed using Icon’s gantry-style Vulcan printer. Vulcan is 46.5 feet (14.2 meters) wide by 15.5 feet (4.7 meters) tall, and it weighs 4.75 tons. It builds homes by pouring a proprietary concrete mixture called Lavacrete into a pattern dictated by software, squeezing out one layer at a time as it moves around on an axis set on a track. Its software, BuildOS, can be operated from a tablet or smartphone.
The Vulcan 3D Printer is a highly advanced additive manufacturing device that was developed by NASA's Langley Research Center and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in the early 2000s. The device was designed to print objects in space, where traditional 3D printing processes are often limited by the lack of gravity, temperature control, and access to raw materials.
The Vulcan 3D Printer is a large, compact device that is approximately 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. It is designed to be highly modular, with interchangeable print heads, extruders, and other components. The device uses a combination of robotic and mechanical systems to move the print head and extruder, allowing for high-speed printing and precise control over the printing process.
The Vulcan 3D Printer uses a unique extrusion-based process to print objects. The device uses a high-temperature, high-pressure gas mixture to melt and extrude metal or ceramic powders, which are then deposited onto a substrate to form a solid object. The printing process is controlled by a sophisticated computer system that adjusts the temperature, pressure, and flow rate of the gas mixture in real-time to achieve precise control over the printing process.
The Vulcan 3D Printer is capable of printing a wide range of materials, including metals, ceramics, and polymers. The device uses a combination of powder feed systems and liquid metal systems to deposit material onto the substrate. The materials used in the printing process can be tailored to specific applications, such as printing high-temperature materials for aerospace applications or printing biocompatible materials for medical applications.
The Vulcan 3D Printer is capable of operating at extremely high temperatures, ranging from 500°C to 1000°C. The device also uses high-pressure gas mixtures to print materials, which allows for precise control over the printing process and the ability to print complex geometries.
The Vulcan 3D Printer is designed to print objects at extremely high speeds, with some reports suggesting that it can print objects at rates of up to 100 times faster than traditional 3D printing devices. The device also uses advanced sensing and control systems to achieve precise control over the printing process, allowing for accurate printing of complex geometries and small features.
The Vulcan 3D Printer has undergone significant testing and development since its inception. In 2011, NASA announced that the device had successfully printed a functional engine component in space, demonstrating its potential for use in space exploration. The device has also been used to print a variety of other objects, including satellite components, rocket nozzles, and even a functional engine for a small satellite.
The Vulcan 3D Printer is one of the most advanced 3D printing technologies in the world, and it is often compared to other technologies, such as FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) and SLS (Selective Laser Sintering). While these technologies are widely used in industry and academia, the Vulcan 3D Printer offers several advantages, including its ability to print at extremely high speeds, its ability to print complex geometries, and its ability to operate in extreme environments.
Despite its advanced capabilities, the Vulcan 3D Printer is not without its challenges and limitations. One of the main challenges is the high cost of the device, which is estimated to be in the millions of dollars. Additionally, the device requires highly trained personnel to operate, and it requires a sophisticated control system to achieve precise control over the printing process.
Overall, the Vulcan 3D Printer is a highly advanced additive manufacturing device that is capable of printing objects in space and other extreme environments. Its unique design and printing process make it an ideal technology for a variety of applications, including space exploration, aerospace, and medical research.
Several companies and labs are betting the latest generation of chatbots could make useful research assistants, accelerating science.
There has long been hope that AI could help accelerate scientific progress. Now, companies are betting the latest generation of chatbots could make useful research assistants.
Most efforts to accelerate scientific progress using AI have focused on solving fundamental conceptual problems, such as protein folding or the physics of weather modeling. But a big chunk of the scientific process is considerably more prosaic—deciding what experiments to do, coming up with experimental protocols, and analyzing data.
This can suck up an enormous amount of an academic’s time, distracting them from higher value work. That’s why both Google DeepMind and BioNTech are currently developing tools designed to automate many of these more mundane jobs, according to the Financial Times.
At a recent event, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said his company was working on a science-focused large language model that could act as a research assistant, helping design experiments to tackle specific hypotheses and even predict the outcome. BioNTech also announced at an AI innovation day last week that it had used Meta’s open-source Llama 3.1 model to create an AI assistant called Laila with a “detailed knowledge of biology.”
"Every organization will have a constellation of agents."
Microsoft is releasing a suite of autonomous AI models — or "agents" — that can serve as virtual employees for its customers.
Not only that, the company is also giving users the ability to create autonomous agents of their own using its Copilot Studio. These can be tailored as needed, capable of working on your behalf, Microsoft claims, or assisting in your workflow.
The products, which were first announced in May, represent Microsoft planting a flag in the world of AI agents, which are supposed to be more self-sufficient than conventional models and are designed to work, hypothetically, without human intervention.
"Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world," Microsoft wrote in a blog post. "Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous."
Microsoft views AI agents as a way of supercharging you — or your company's — productivity.
The ten ready-made versions it will be releasing via Dynamics 365, Microsoft's suite of business app, can purportedly perform roles such as identifying sales opportunities for a human sales lead or helping customer service teams.
What's more alpha male than driving around in a big, red-blooded Cybertruck? Shooting one, of course.
In a video that's gone viral on social media, some dude in a tank top and shorts — purportedly porn star Dante Colle — stares down a Cybertruck parked in the middle of a field, raises his handgun, and fires, putting one through the stainless steel ass of the vehicle.
There's a lot of stupid stuff going on here. Shooting a Cybertruck, for one.
Shooting it while barely standing a dozen feet away — which in all likelihood means he was actually lucky that the round went clean through, because otherwise he could've been in the path of a dangerous ricochet.
As Variety reports, Blumhouse Productions, best known for franchises like "Halloween" and "The Purge," has announced a partnership with Meta that grants it access to an early version of the tech company's recently-unveiled video generation AI model Movie Gen.
The partnership between Blumhouse Productions and Meta, as well as the use of generative AI in the film industry, raises several concerns and questions. Here are some of the key points to consider:
One of the primary concerns is the issue of authorship and ownership. When a film is generated using generative AI, who owns the rights to the final product? Is it the humanfilmmaker, the AI algorithm, or someone else entirely? This raises questions about the role of human creativity and the value of labor in the film industry.
Generative AI can produce content that is identical to or similar to existing works. This raises concerns about the ability of AI-generated content to add unique value to a film or replace human creativity altogether. If AI-generated content can replicate existing works, does it have any inherent value or originality?
The partnership between Blumhouse and Meta has sparked concerns about the role of human creatives in the film industry. If AI-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent, will human filmmakers be relegated to secondary or supporting roles? Will their skills and expertise become less valuable?
The use of generative AI in the film industry could have a disproportionate impact on emerging filmmakers. Many new filmmakers are struggling to make a name for themselves, and the use of AI-generated content could further stifle their creative output and limit their opportunities.
The use of generative AI in the film industry could also have significant economic implications. If AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, it could lead to a decrease in demand for human filmmakers and their services. This could have a ripple effect throughout the industry, impacting not just filmmakers but also other professionals, such as editors, cinematographers, and sound designers.
Some experts argue that the use of generative AI in the film industry requires regulation to ensure that it is used in a responsible and transparent manner. This could involve guidelines on the use of AI-generated content, as well as laws to protect human creatives and their rights.
The partnership between Meta and Blumhouse raises questions about the responsibility of AI companies and studios. While Meta has acknowledged the concerns of the creative community, it is unclear what steps the company will take to address these issues. Blumhouse, on the other hand, has a reputation for championing emerging filmmakers and pushing the boundaries of the film industry. However, its partnership with Meta has sparked concerns about its commitment to human creativity and the value of labor.
The use of generative AI in the film industry is likely to have far-reaching consequences for the industry as a whole. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, it will be interesting to see how the industry adapts and evolves. Will the film industry become more streamlined and efficient, or will it become increasingly dominated by AI-generated content? Only time will tell.
In conclusion, the partnership between Blumhouse Productions and Meta, as well as the use of generative AI in the film industry, raises a number of complex and contentious issues. While there are potential benefits to the use of AI-generated content, there are also significant concerns about authorship, ownership, originality, and the role of human creatives. As the industry continues to grapple with the implications of AI-generated content, it is essential to have an open and honest conversation about the potential risks and benefits.
Blumhouse Productions was founded in 1998 by Jason Blum and his business partner, Marc Warren. At the time, Blum was a young entrepreneur with a passion for film production. He had previously worked in the film industry, but he wanted to start his own company and produce films that were low-budget, high-concept, and focused on the horror and thrillergenres.
The company's early years were marked by struggles and challenges. Blum and Warren had to work tirelessly to secure financing for their projects, often relying on private investors and crowdfunding campaigns to support their films. Despite the challenges, Blumhouse Productions continued to produce films, starting with the 1999 release of "The Faculty," a sci-fihorror film that was made on a budget of just $3.5 million.
Blumhouse's big break came in 2007 with the release of "Paranormal Activity," a found-footage horror film that was made on an incredibly low budget of just $15,000. The film was written and directed by Oren Peli, a young filmmaker who had previously worked on several low-budget films.
"Paranormal Activity" was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $193 million worldwide on a budget of just $15,000. The film's success can be attributed to its clever marketing campaign, which included a series of online ads that made it seem like the film was actually a real found-footage documentary.
Following the success of "Paranormal Activity," Blumhouse expanded its operations and began producing more films. In 2008, they released "The Last Exorcism," a found-footage horror film that was made on a budget of just $1.5 million and grossed over $33 million at the domestic box office.
In 2009, they released "Insidious," a horror film that was made on a budget of just $1.5 million and grossed over $97 million worldwide. These films demonstrated Blumhouse's ability to produce low-budget, high-concept horror films that could be marketed and distributed in a way that made them seem like bigger, more expensive films.
Blumhouse's success can be attributed to their unique "model" of producing low-budget horror films that are marketed and distributed in a way that makes them seem like bigger, more expensive films. This model involves several key elements, including:
Low budgets: Blumhouse films are often made on extremely low budgets, often for just $1-5 million. This allows them to keep production costs down and focus on marketing and distribution.
High-concept films: Blumhouse films are often based on high-concept ideas, such as found-footage horror or supernatural thrillers. These concepts are designed to be attention-grabbing and appealing to audiences.
Clever marketing campaigns: Blumhouse uses clever marketing campaigns to make their films seem like bigger, more expensive films. This can include online ads, social media promotions, and partnerships with major studios.
Distribution deals: Blumhouse has distribution deals with major studios, such as Universal Pictures and Lionsgate. These deals allow them to distribute their films to a wider audience and capitalize on the success of their films.
Blumhouse has won numerous awards for their films, including several Academy Award nominations and wins. They have also won several other awards, including the Saturn Award for Best independent film and the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Low-Budget Film.
In addition to producing films, Blumhouse has also expanded into television production. They have produced several TV shows, including "The Blacklist," "Scream Queens," and "Truth Be Told."
Blumhouse's success has had a significant impact on the film industry. Their model of producing low-budget, high-concept horror films has been widely influential, and many other production companies have followed in their footsteps.
Blumhouse's success has also led to a shift in the way that studios approach horror films. Many studios have begun to take a more serious approach to horror films, investing in bigger budgets and more elaborate productions. However, Blumhouse's model has also shown that it is possible to make successful horror films on a much smaller budget.
Overall, Blumhouse Productions has established itself as a major player in the film industry, known for their low-budget, high-concept horror films that are marketed and distributed in a way that makes them seem like bigger, more expensive films.
The artificial intelligence industry is obsessed with size. Bigger algorithms. More data. Sprawling data centers that could, in a few years, consume enough electricity to power whole cities.
This insatiable appetite is why OpenAI—which is on track to make $3.7 billion in revenue but lose $5 billion this year—just announced it’s raised $6.6 billion more in funding and opened a line of credit for another $4 billion.
Eye-popping numbers like these make it easy to forget size isn’t everything.
Some researchers, particularly those with fewer resources, are aiming to do more with less. AI scaling will continue, but those algorithms will also get far more efficient as they grow.
Last week, researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2) released a new family of open-source multimodal models competitive with state-of-the-art models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o—but an order of magnitude smaller. Called Molmo, the models range from 1 billion to 72 billion parameters. GPT-4o, by comparison, is estimated to top a trillion parameters.
Ai2 said it accomplished this feat by focusing on data quality over quantity.
Algorithms fed billions of examples, like GPT-4o, are impressively capable. But they also ingest a ton of low-quality information. All this noise consumes precious computing power.
To build their new multimodal models, Ai2 assembled a backbone of existing large language models and vision encoders. They then compiled a more focused, higher quality dataset of around 700,000 images and 1.3 million captions to train new models with visual capabilities. That may sound like a lot, but it’s on the order of 1,000 times less data than what’s used in proprietary multimodal models.
Instead of writing captions, the team asked annotators to record 60- to 90-second verbal descriptions answering a list of questions about each image. They then transcribed the descriptions—which often stretched across several pages—and used other large language models to clean up, crunch down, and standardize them. They found that this simple switch, from written to verbal annotation, yielded far more detail with little extra effort.
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Synthesia, a text-to-video AI company with a valuation of over one billion dollars, claims that its tech allows users to "create studio-quality videos with AI avatars" as easily as they can throw together a slide deck.
The company's clientele is a wild mix, ranging from media stalwarts like Reuters and global accounting giant Ernst & Young to authoritarian regimes — a reality that's come as a terrible surprise to the human models whose faces Synthesia's AI models are trained on.
As The Guardian reports, several human models who posed for Synthesia have been horrified to discover that their likenesses have been used in AI-powered propaganda clips generated by groups linked to authoritarian states like China, Russia, and Venezuela.
"I'm in shock, there are no words right now," Mark Torres, a creative director based in London who modeled for Synthesia, told The Guardian after viewing one of the clips for the first time. "I've been in the [creative] industry for over 20 years and I have never felt so violated and vulnerable. I don't want anyone viewing me like that."
"Just the fact that my image is out there, could be saying anything – promoting military rule in a country I did not know existed," Torres added. "People will think I am involved in the coup."
The FSB said risks from global finance's exploration of tokenization are low because the technology has failed to be adopted at scale.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) released a report Wednesday stating that the risks posed to the global financial system by institutional finance's exploration of tokenization are minimal, primarily due to the technology's limited adoption thus far.
In its report, the FSB, which was created in 2009 by the G20 in the wake of the global financial crisis, noted that initiatives like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund are still in their early stages, which helps to mitigate potential threats to the financial system for now.
"The limited publicly available data on tokenisation suggest that its adoption is very low but appears to be growing, and the use of tokenisation in the financial sector does not currently pose a material risk to financial stability, mostly due to its small scale," the FSB report said.
Despite suggesting that the technology currently presents a low risk because of its inability to scale, the report identified several financial stability vulnerabilities associated with DLT-based tokenization.
Key concerns include liquidity mismatches, leverage issues, asset quality, interconnectedness, and operational fragility. The report warns that these risks could escalate if the tokenization of assets scales significantly, particularly if the industry can resolve interoperability issues and receive clearer regulatory guidance.
One of the main challenges highlighted is the potential for liquidity and maturity mismatches, where the timelines for converting tokenized assets into cash may differ from the assets themselves. This could lead to redemption run risks, which pose a threat to financial stability. Additionally, the report noted that as tokenization projects become more complex and opaque, the associated risks may increase, especially during times of market stress.
It's "the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat."
In a Chinese-language paper published late last month in the Chinese Journal of Computers, the researchers claim they were able to use one of D-Wave's off-the-shelf quantum computers to attack Substitution-Permutation Networks (SPNs), classical cryptography algorithms employed in widely-used encryption standards. As Tom's Hardware reports, the paper delineates two distinct methodologies, both rooted in D-Wave's quantum annealing algorithm.
SPNs are used in algorithms tasked with protecting sensitive institutions including militaries and banks — meaning that, if the researcher's claims are true, their findings could force institutions to revisit their cybersecurity measures.
Experts have long warned that quantum computers, which work in a fundamentally different way than conventional ones, could soon break encryption standards that keep highly classified information from the prying eyes of hackers. The latest research suggests the tech is making strides towards such an eventuality.
According to the hackers' paper, their findings represent "the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today," as quoted by The South China Morning Post.
A BREAKTHROUGH DECISION. For the first time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a medication derived from marijuana. It's called Epidiolex. GW Pharmaceuticals developed the drug to treat two rare forms of epilepsy that manifest during childhood, Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. In clinical trials, the medication reduced patient seizures by up to 40 percent.
BETTER FOR PATIENTS. As for patients, keyhole surgeries boast a number of benefits over open surgeries. They reduce a patient's chances of developing a hernia by 50 percent, require fewer post-surgery painkillers, and decrease infection rates. However, because keyhole procedures require a high level of technical expertise, they are often eschewed in favor of open surgeries.
Versius can change that by training surgeons in just a fraction of the time. For example, a surgeon typically needs 60 to 80 hours of practice to learn how to manually tie a surgical knot inside a patient through a keyhole incision. With Versius, a surgeon can learn the procedure in just 30 minutes. This could increase the number of doctors equipped to perform keyhole surgeries, making the procedures themselves more common.
WAITING ON THE RED TAPE. Versius isn't the first or only surgical robot. However, these bots are becoming easier to use and more mobile. Someday, hospital staff could simply wheel Versius in and out of operating rooms as needed — if regulatory bodies decide to approve the surgical bot for clinical use, that is.
TREATING THE UNTREATABLE. Children with Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome typically experience multiple types of seizures, as well as learning problems and intellectual disabilities that often prevent them from ever living "normal" lives.
There are already six drugs on the market that treat Lennox-Gastaut. But there aren't any approved medications for Dravet syndrome. That means Epidiolox could be patients' only hope at treating their debilitating illness. Even more, doctors could choose to prescribe the medication "off-label" (for conditions not officially approved), expanding the number of patients it could help.
RELIEF, NOT RECREATION. Epidiolex contains cannabidiol (CBD), one of the two main compounds in cannabis. Unlike the other compound, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), CBD doesn't produce a "high," so users of Epidiolex won't get the same buzz from using the medication that a recreational user expects to get from smoking THC-containing marijuana.
Still, before GW Pharmaceuticals can sell Epidiolex, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) needs to recategorize CBD, which means rethinking marijuana, too. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug, meaning it doesn't have any medical value; the FDA approval shows the government thinks CBD does have medical value.
According to a STAT report, the FDA expects that DEA will reclassify marijuana within the next 90 days. So we could be just a few months away from seeing a marijuana-derived medication hit the American healthcare market.
AT&T helped the NSA conduct surveillance on both Americans and foreign citizens.
NSA + AT&T = BFF. On Monday, The Intercept published a report detailing AT&T's collaborative relationship with the National Security Agency (NSA) via a program codenamed FAIRVIEW. According to the report, AT&T facilities in eight U.S. cities play a central role in helping the NSA conduct surveillance on both Americans and foreign citizens — even those who are not AT&T customers. The report provides details on each facility, as well as supporting evidence drawn from public records, interviews, and classified NSA documents.
SPYING ON AMERICAN SOIL. According to The Intercept's report, there's a reason these eight particular facilities, located in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., are of interest to the NSA — each is a "backbone" facility in the AT&T network, processing huge quantities of AT&T customer data.
Beyond that, these facilities also process the data of other communication providers through something called "peering." Essentially, when a company such as Sprint finds its own network overloaded, it can pay AT&T for some of its available bandwidth. At one point or another, AT&T routes the Sprint customers' data through one of these eight facilities.
POWERFUL ALLIES. According to the report, AT&T didn't just give the NSA access to the emails, online chats, phone calls, and other data from customers using its network — it actively helped the agency process the data, prioritizing communications from certain nations and ranking data based on its potential intelligence value.
Officials from all the parties involved are remaining pretty tightlipped about the whole thing. The NSA neither confirms nor denies anything involving the AT&T facilities, while AT&T maintains it's just doing whatever the law requires. Still, it makes total sense that the NSA would want to partner with AT&T — after all, who better to facilitate government surveillance efforts than the world's largest telecommunications company?
As a team, it collected 180 years worth of experience during each day of training.
HEADING FOR THE BIG LEAGUES. On Monday, non-profit AI research company OpenAI published a blog post about OpenAI Five, a group of five neural networks designed to work as a team while playing the real-time computer strategy game called Dota 2. According to the post, OpenAI Five can now beat a team of five human amateur players at the game, albeit with specific restrictions placed on gameplay. In August, it will attempt to beat a team of professional Dota 2 players at The International (TI), an annual Dota 2 tournament hosted by the game's developer, Valve Corporation.
TEAM ALGORITHM. In Dota 2, two teams of five players battle to destroy the other team's "Ancient," a structure at the center of their base. Each player controls a different character, known as a "hero." These heroes have their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and a team's ability to cooperate is key to its success. The developers assigned each OpenAI Five algorithm a specific hero, placing restrictions on the characters to account for areas of the game they hadn't integrated.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. OpenAI Five trained first as individual algorithms in one-vs-one matches and then as a team by playing against itself and past versions of itself. As a team, it collected 180 years worth of experience during each day of training, eventually picking up on strategies typically used by professional Dota 2 players. None of the algorithms could communicate with one another — cooperation was simply one of each algorithm's incentives. This cooperation continued when a human player replaced one of the algorithms.
THE HEROES WE NEED. With OpenAI Five, we could be seeing a preview of the future of AI. In Dota 2, each algorithm has to choose between roughly 1,000 potential moves every one-eighth of a second — far more complex than a game like Go, in which an AI has to choose between 250 moves at a time. Algorithms usually don't operate as teams, either, but this Dota 2 project shows they're more than capable of cooperating with each other — and humans, too.
PACK YOUR BAGS. An executive for Blue Origin says the aerospace company will begin selling tickets for suborbital space flights in 2019, according to a report by Space News. Senior Vice President Rob Meyerson delivered the news during a keynote speech at Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. The flights will be aboard New Shepard, a rocket Blue Origin first started testing in 2015. Those tests will soon include passengers, according to Meyerson.
START SAVING... PROBABLY? So, that's what we know. What we don't know? Pretty much anything else. Meyerson didn't drop any hints as to what New Shepard tickets will get passengers (An hour in space? A day?). He also didn't say what they'd pay for the privilege, but that might be because he simply doesn't know — back in May, Blue Origin (and Amazon) CEO Jeff Bezos told GeekWire the company was still trying to figure out what to charge for New Shepard tickets.
AHEAD OF THE CROWD. Blue Origin isn't alone in attempting to break into the space tourism market — SpaceX, Orion Span, and Axiom Space are just a few of the other companies vying for a piece of the space tourism pie. It also isn't the first company to announce the sale of tickets — Virgin Galactic began selling tickets back in 2013 at $200,000 a pop (later raised to $250,000); as of May 2017, 650 people had put down deposits. Five years later, though, and those flights haven't yet happened.
As we've seen from Virgin Galactic, selling tickets isn't necessarily an indication that a company is just about ready for take off. Still, if Blue Origin is ready to test New Shepard with passengers aboard, it must be feeling pretty confident about the craft — which means the company might just be the first to launch us into the era of commercial space travel.
It's powerful, agile, and could eventually save lives.
ONE CLUNKY ACRONYM. Roboticists from the University of Tokyo's JSK Lab have created a flying robot they call DRAGON, an acronym for Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON. A recent report by IEEE Spectrum includes a video highlighting the bot's ability to change its shape mid-flight in order to navigate through tight spaces.
DRAGON comprises four modules, each boasting a pair of maneuverable fan thrusters. Battery-powered hinged joints link these modules. An Intel Euclid serves as both the eyes and the brain of DRAGON, letting the flying robot "see" the world around it and autonomously decide what shape it needs to assume to fit through a given area.
ONE IMPRESSIVE ROBOT. Indoor drone navigation comes with a variety of unique challenges, not least of which is the issue of having to fit through tight spaces. As noted in the IEEE Spectrum report, this has left developers with two options: make their drones smaller (in which case, they aren't powerful enough to really do much of anything) or put them in protective cages (which also limits their abilities).
While DRAGON can only remain airborne for about three minutes at present, it's both agile and fairly powerful. The JSK developers have big plans for its next stage of development, too. They want to increase the number of modules to 12 and add grippers on each end of the system, giving it the ability to pick up and move objects.
MAN'S NEW BEST FRIEND. It's not hard to imagine using an advanced version of DRAGON to navigate dangerous indoor environments during rescue missions. It could search for survivors in collapsed buildings, removing rubble if necessary to free them. Ultimately, unlike its fictional counterparts, this DRAGON could save human lives.
"[Enceladus] is the only body besides Earth known to simultaneously satisfy all of the basic requirements for life as we know it.”
THE EXCEPTIONAL ENCELADUS. On Wednesday, scientists from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) published a paper in Nature outlining their discovery of complex organic molecules on Enceladus, one of Saturn's 53 moons.
These large, carbon-rich molecules emanate from the ocean beneath the moon's icy surface, escaping as plumes through warm cracks. This emergence of complex organic molecules from a liquid ocean makes Enceladus the only body besides Earth to boast all the basic requirements for life as we know it, said co-author Christopher Glein in a news release.
HELP FROM THE DEPARTED. For their paper, the scientists relied on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which plunged into Saturn's surface in September 2017. During a flyby in 2015, the craft detected hydrogen within the materials emanating from the cracks in Encledaus's surface. Hydrogen sometimes serves as an energy source for microbes living near hydrothermal vents in the Earth's oceans, so the researchers suspect that Encledaus's hydrogen formed due to the moon's own hydrothermal activity.
ANOTHER STEP FORWARD. This isn't the first discovery of organic molecules on Encledaus. However, previous discoveries were of simple molecules with masses below 50 atomic mass units — these newly discovered molecules have masses greater than 200 atomic mass units. Still, a single atom of carbon-12 is 12 atomic mass units, so these "complex" molecules are very tiny.
While this might not be the discovery of extraterrestrial life many are waiting for, these molecules do bring us one step closer to finding it. As Glein noted in the news release, future space missions could provide more in-depth analysis of Encledaus's plumes, perhaps helping scientists figure out exactly how the moon's complex molecules came to be and what sort of biological processes are happening beneath its icy surface.
You could travel from NYC to Tokyo in just two hours.
THERE'S FAST, AND THERE'S HYPERSONIC. On Tuesday, Boeing unveiled its first concept design for a hypersonic passenger jet during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference in Atlanta. The vehicle could theoretically travel at Mach Five, or five times the speed of sound (6,174 kmh/3,836 mph). At that speed, a flight between New York and Tokyo that currently takes 14 hours would drop to just a couple of hours, according to a Popular Mechanics report.
IT'S (NOT) ALL IN THE DESIGN. So how is Boeing’s design going to be able to reach these speeds? As Boeing’s Senior Technical Fellow of Hypersonics Kevin Bowcutt told Popular Mechanics, the craft uses a specific type of engine known as a ramjet, a staple of many hypersonic vehicle designs. He also explained how the hypersonic jet's sharp front-end design would produce minimal drag while its split tail would help to stabilize and steer the vehicle.
We’ve already built and flown craft that exceed hypersonic speed, like the Boeing X-51 Waverider, so we know that building something like this one is at least possible. The biggest obstacle to hypersonic flight isn’t creating the perfect design, though — it’s making the flights affordable. So far, scaling it up (bigger crafts that can go for longer periods of time) has just been too expensive. As John Plueger, president and CEO of AirLease Corp., told CNBC, “It’s hard for me to see, at least in the next 15-20 years, that it’s going to be so cost competitive that it’s going to compel the airlines to take a stab at it."
LOTS OF PLANS. NO PLANES. Boeing is far from the only company considering a future in which we travel at Mach Five. In June 2017, Lockheed Martin announced plans to begin development on the SR-72, a hypersonic military aircraft, though it doesn't expect the craft to be airborne until 2030. In February, researchers in China successfully tested a scaled-down version of their hypersonic I Plane in an air tunnel, reaching a speed of Mach Seven. That craft could also facilitate military operations, a source told the South China Morning Post — if it ever goes into development.
Boeing's newly unveiled passenger plane could transport soldiers or civilians, according to Popular Mechanics, but both groups have quite the wait ahead of them — the craft likely won't be ready for takeoff for another two or three decades.
ON SECOND THOUGHT... In January, Facebook announced a new policy banning companies from advertising initial coin offerings (ICOs), binary options (investments where the return is either a fixed amount or nothing at all), and cryptocurrencies on the platform. On Tuesday, Facebook reversed that policy; it will now allow "pre-approved advertisers" to promote cryptocurrency products and services on the platform. Companies must fill out an application and provide requested background information to earn Facebook's approval to buy cryptocurrency ads. Ads promoting ICOs and binary options are still banned.
STOPPING SCAMS. Facebook's initial decision to stop selling cryptocurrency ads was an attempt to rein in the many companies it claimed were misleading or deceiving users. And, truly, the crypto world has no shortage of scammers — according to CoinDesk, an official from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) told audience members during a crypto workshop on Monday that consumers lost an estimated $532 million to crypto scams between January and February of 2018 (the FTC defines scams as "deceptive investment and business opportunities, bait-and-switch schemes, and deceptively marketed mining machines"). By the end of the year, the FTC estimates that figure will soar to $3 billion.
WHAT WE KNOW & WHAT WE DON'T. We don't know if Facebook's revised policy will prevent scammers from taking advantage of the platform's users. Also unclear: how thoroughly Facebook plans to screen advertising applicants.
What is clear is who will immediately benefit from the policy change: Facebook, which is once again free to generate ad revenue from crypto companies. Hard to say what Facebook was earning from those companies prior to January's ban, but Google — the internet's other advertising giant —generated an estimated $25 million in ad revenue from ICOs alone in 2017. Facebook might invest some of its own money into the crypto realm, as well, with rumors swirling that it could decide to buy digital currency exchange CoinBase.
Facebook also has less competition for crypto ad dollars now. In March, Twitter announced its own ban on certain cryptocurrency ads. That same month, Google announced it was updating its own policy to ban ads promoting cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and binary options. Google's update just went into effect this month, so... is that a coincidence? Or smart timing by Facebook?
AI TO THE RESCUE. When a storm is approaching, responders need as much detail as possible. Predictions of the timing, intensity, and range of the storm could make the differences between citizen lives saved and lives lost.
Luckily, AI is here to make those predictions much more accurate.
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal published an article highlighting the various ways cities across North America use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict and respond to natural disasters. According to the article, these systems make it easier for emergency response personnel to help the people most in need post-disaster.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE. The WSJ article highlights several systems that can do this. There's IBM's AI-powered Outage Prediction tool, which analyzes a combination of historical weather data and real-time weather measurements to predict power outages. That tool is 70 percent accurate at predicting outages up to 72 hours in advance, and its accuracy increases as the storm approaches
There's also One Concern, which uses AI to let emergency responders know where they are most needed after earthquakes, fires, and other disasters. Scottish researchers developed another system that relies on a combination of AI and crowdsourced data to detect instances of flooding within high-risk urban areas. And there are more AI-powered systems that The WSJ didn't get into.
A WORTHY INVESTMENT. These systems are already helping local and city governments better allocate their resources during disasters, no one is using these tools on a large scale, so people aren't quite sure how well it will work, as noted in a report by researchers from Eastern Kentucky University. Investors, then, might be slow to put money into a large-scale project.
But given the success happening at smaller scales, it could simply be a matter of time before more bigger governments decide AI disaster prediction is worth the upfront cost.
For $10,000, you can start your own company that delivers packages exclusively for Amazon.
WORK FOR YOURSELF (BUT REALLY FOR AMAZON). Amazon is looking for a partner. Well, more accurately, lots of little partners.
On Thursday, Amazon launched its Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program, which will encourage entrepreneurs to start small Amazon delivery companies. Each entrepreneur will oversee 40 to 100 employees who will use 20 to 40 Amazon-branded vans to deliver packages year-round, using Amazon's own logistics systems to facilitate the process. Start-up costs for a DSP business are as low as $10,000, and military veterans can apply to have their start-up costs reimbursed. Amazon claims DSP companies can produce annual profits as high as $300,000.
MO' PACKAGES. MO' PROBLEMS. Right now, UPS, FedEx, and the U.S. Postal Service deliver most of Amazon's packages. But Amazon will need a lot more delivered, and soon. People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that established delivery companies simply can't keep up with Amazon's projected growth.
This has led the e-retailer to start looking inward for a solution to its delivery problem, first through Amazon Flex, which allows drivers to use their own vehicles to deliver packages — think Uber or Lyft, but with packages instead of people — and now with the DSP program.
WIN/WIN/WIN? On paper, the DPS program seems like it could benefit Amazon, Amazon's customers, and American workers. According to Amazon, the program won't take work away from existing delivery companies ("There’s so much growth here in parcel delivery that there’s more than enough for everybody,” Amazon’s senior vice president of world-wide operations Dave Clark told The WSJ).
It could also improve Amazon's relationship with customers. In 2013, customers who expected to receive Amazon packages in time for Christmas found themselves disappointed when both UPS and FedEx missed delivery deadlines. Amazon ended up offering refunds to customers — a situation it would no doubt like to avoid in the future. The DPS program also has the potential to create "tens of thousands" of jobs. Let's just hope Amazon delivery drivers are treated better than Amazon warehouse workers.
Downtown traffic is here to stay, at least for a little longer.
ZIPADEEDOO-NAH. Like sitting in traffic? Well, when autonomous vehicles become widespread, you might be doing it a lot more.
A new report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that the use of autonomous vehicles could decrease average travel time by four percent in a city like Boston. That's for people who live in the areas surrounding the downtown core — AVs would actually worsen travel times by five percent inside the city itself.
WEF's impact study used a complex agent-based simulation of traffic and "vehicle-to-vehicle interaction" in downtown Boston to arrive at these numbers, including data from roughly two million daily passenger vehicle trips.
AUTONOMOUS TRAFFIC JAMS. But despite the optimism about alleviating Boston's overall traffic woes, the traffic simulation assumed a 20 percent drop in "personal-car trips, which become mobility-on-demand trips" — think Uber, and Waymo taxi rides. And that may sound pretty optimistic, but with decreasing car sales and a booming ride-hailing industry, it's not much of a stretch. Yet 40 percent of trips would still rely on personal vehicles, clogging up low-capacity arteries, and the downtown core. As for mass-transit, the simulation assumed the behavior of commuters wouldn't change.
TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. Unclogging city centers is a complex issue with a ton of moving parts. Replacing all personal vehicles with AVs — including pay-to-go robot-taxi rides — wouldn't have a huge impact on the number of passenger vehicles on the road. As the WEF report points out, policy makers would have to step in and make changes to local infrastructure to truly have an effect on traffic. For instance, policy makers could introduce per-mile tolls for single-occupancy vehicles, use on-street parking to free up some much needed space for bike lanes or loading zones, or dedicate entire lanes just for AVs. And they ran the numbers again, and the results are promising: a per-mile toll could improve travel time by as much as 15.5 percent.
JOINING THE AV CLUB. Autonomous vehicles can offer us more than just (small) improvements to our traffic nightmare woes. They can improve fuel efficiency, and overall reductions in emissions. And then there is the simple fact that you won't have to stare at the bumper of the poor guy in front of you when you're stuck in traffic. You can lean back, relax, and have the car do the driving. Who cares if you have to spend five percent more time on the road?
THE FUTURE IS NOW. Lyft, Uber, and Waymo's AVs are already hitting the streets — private and public — as we speak. The robo-taxi revolution is right around the corner, and there's not much anybody can do about it. General Motors has already released a steering-wheel-less car concept, giving us a pretty good look at what the future of the private passenger vehicle could look like.
But autonomous vehicles alone won't make the gridlock go up in a puff of smoke. Careful considerations of road infrastructure, and investments in mass transit are just as much part of that effort. Only then will we be able to look back and think of how many hours we've wasted every week sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
It allows consumers to opt-out if companies sell their data.
PROTECTING CALIFORNIANS. Soon, Californians will have a lot more control over their online data. On Thursday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, an online privacy law that restricts large tech companies' use of California consumers' data. When the law goes into effect in 2020, it will require tech companies with annual gross revenues more than $25 million to disclose which categories of data they collect on California consumers. They'll also have to disclose any third-parties they let access that information.
Californians will be able to opt-out of having their data sold, and companies will not be able to penalize them— by limiting their use of the service, for example — for choosing to do so. Users under 16 will need to opt-in to having their data sold. The law also grants California’s attorney general the power to fine companies that don't do enough to protect consumers' personal information from cyber attacks.
SETTING A PRECEDENT. In the wake of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, consumer privacy is getting a lot more attention, even though U.S. legislators have not yet done much to regulate the industry. California's Consumer Privacy Act is largely considered one of the nation's toughest laws on data privacy, if not the toughest law, and it could inspire other states or Congress to take similar action. “I think it’s going to set the standard across the country that legislatures... will look to adopt in their own states,” state Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D) told The Washington Post.
The tech industry is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not all that happy that the law has passed. Robert Callahan, vice president of state government affairs for the Internet Association, a group that represents the interests of Facebook, Google, and other tech companies, claimed in a statement that the law will have "inevitable, negative policy and compliance ramifications" for both California consumers and business.
TOO MUCH COMPROMISE? Still, the tech industry must certainly prefer this law to the far tougher ballot measure that was set to go before voters in November. That measure, drafted by San Francisco real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart, would have given consumers the ability to sue companies for up to $3,000 for each data breach. The law that passed this week limits that figure to $750.
As Mactaggart agreed in advance, he withdrew his measure now that this law his passed. He also said in a statement he was "thrilled" about its passage, calling it "a monumental achievement for consumers."
Still, a law is far easier to amend than a passed ballot measure. That means the version of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 that goes into effect in 2020 might not be the same one signed into law on Thursday. Only time will tell whether the final version benefits consumers or the tech industry.
Amazon snaps up PillPack for a reported $1 billion.
AMAZON HAS ENTERED THE ARENA. On Thursday, Amazon announced it had bought PillPack, an online pharmacy for about $1 billion, a source briefed on the deal told The New York Times. The news caused waves in the $560 billion prescription drug industry; shares of publicly-owned drug companies like Walgreens, Rite-Aid, and CVS dropped by 9.4 percent, 13 percent, and 9.2 percent, respectively.
SMARTER PRESCRIPTIONS. PillPack is pretty unique in the pharmacy industry. First, unlike its competitors, it has no brick-and-mortar stores — the company only delivers medications in the mail. Instead of packaging user medications by the prescription (with a month's worth of one drug in one bottle and another drug in another bottle, for example), PillPack packages medications by the dose.
Say a person has to take three different pills each morning and two each night. A monthly PillPack delivery would include 60 or so tiny packets. Half would contain all three morning medications, and the other half would have the two evening ones. Each packet would include a descriptive label with information on the contained medications.
This service could be tremendously useful for people who take multiple medications. Amazon's takeover could help PillPack scale up (it currently boasts just 1,000 employees). PillPack, meanwhile, is already licensed to deliver medications to all 50 U.S. states, helping Amazon clear the regulatory hurdles that might have complicated its foray into the prescription drug industry.
ALEXA, REFILL MY MEDS. This is the latest of several recent moves that show Amazon is dedicated to making inroads in healthcare. In October 2016, CEO Jeff Bezos said he thought Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa could potentially help healthcare providers. Then, in July 2017, Amazon launched 1492, a secret lab dedicated to healthcare technology.
Just last week, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase announced they'd chosen a CEO for their new healthcare venture. The acquisition of PillPack likely puts us one step closer to the day when we can simply ask Alexa to refill our medications.
The company just landed an order for 10 of its buses.
FROM CHINA, WITH LOVE. On Wednesday, Internet giant Baidu (the Google of China) announced a new partnership. Baidu has agreed to produce 10 of its self-driving Apolong buses for SB Drive, a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, according to a Bloomberg report. Chinese bus manufacturer King Long will handle the production of the autonomous buses, which could arrive in Japan as soon as early-2019. Company executives made the announcement at Baidu Create 2018, the company's annual AI developer conference in Beijing.
MEET THE APALONG. Each 14-passenger Apolong bus is capable of Level 4 autonomy — that means they're "fully autonomous" but aren't designed to handle every possible driving scenario. The buses operate using Baidu's Apollo autonomous driving system, the basis for Baidu's partnerships with Ford, Honda, and other companies.
As of Wednesday, Baidu has produced 100 of the vehicles. While most of those are slated to carry passengers in China, the partnership with SB Drive confirms that Baidu has ambitions for the Apalong beyond its home nation.
SAFER, CLEANER TRANSPORTATION. This isn't the first time Japan has expressed interest in autonomous public transportation, nor is Baidu the only company creating such vehicles. There are several good reasons for that.
First, public transportation is better for the environment, and it can help cities cope with the issue of transporting ever-growing populations. Second, experts predict autonomous vehicles will be far safer than their human-driven counterparts.
Autonomous buses, then, could be the safest, most environmentally friendly way to move from point A to point B, and Baidu appears ready to help usher in this new era of transportation.
“It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay."
LUNAR UPDATE. A.C. Charania, business development director for Blue Origin, says the private aerospace company plans to complete a lunar landing mission before 2023, which would eventually “enable human lunar return.” That is: send humans back to the Moon.
That's an earlier, and more specific, timeframe than anyone at the company had specified up to this point — last year, the Washington Post reported that its Blue Moon project — which includes plans to colonize the Moon, as well as an Amazon-like Moon delivery service — was slated for the mid-2020s.
This news about Blue Origin's came during the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference in Renton, Washington, in late June, according to a GeekWire report.
A LITTLE HELP FROM NASA. Blue Origin first revealed its ambitions for a Moon colony in March 2017. “It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay,” Bezos told The Washington Post. “A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this.”
At the time, Blue Origin was looking to NASA and the U.S. government for assistance in the endeavor. Since then, it's become one of 10 companies chosen to share $10 million in NASA funding for lunar research. That has apparently helped the company to move up the timeframe for when Blue Moon might be accomplished.
“Blue Moon is on our roadmap, and because of our scale, because of what we see from the government, we brought it a little bit forward in time,” Charania said during the NewSpace conference. “I think we are very excited to now implement this long-term commercial solution with NASA partnership.”
A CROWDED SPACE. Blue Origin isn't the only aerospace company eying a return to the Moon. SpaceX has floated plans for future Moon colonization, while NASA, China Manned Space Agency, and Russia's space agency Roscosmos all have manned lunar missions in the works.
With so many organizations in on the effort, it seems like it's only a matter of time before humans take that one small step once again.
The bot can decrease patients' risk of infection and need for painkillers.
MEET VERSIUS. By the end of 2018, surgeons in the United Kingdom could have a new assistant in the operating room: Versius, the world's smallest surgical robot.
Created by CMR Surgical, the bot is essentially three robotic arms attached to a mobile unit about the size of a barstool, according to a recent report by The Guardian. A surgeon controls the bot from a control panel, guiding the arms as they carry out keyhole procedures (surgeries performed through tiny incisions in the body — much less invasive than open surgeries, which require much larger incisions).
BETTER FOR SURGEONS. CMR Surgical is in the process of getting Versius approved by UK regulators so that it can move out of the training room and into the operating room. The company hopes to pass this regulatory hurdle before the end of this year. If approved, the bot could benefit both the surgeons that wield it, and the patients under its tiny knife.
Doctors often find themselves in uncomfortable positions when they perform keyhole surgeries. To get their instruments right where they need to be, they may need to bend their bodies at strange angles, and hold them for extended periods of time. Versius lets them avoid these potentially painful positions by doing the maneuvering for them, while the surgeons can do their work by simply sitting or standing at the bot's console.
Knowing what kind of volcano they're dealing with can help emergency responders deploy resources wisely.
ASH-ANALYZING AI. The shape of a particle of volcanic ash can help volcanologists determine the type of eruption that produced it, which can help response teams know how to react in the aftermath of an eruption. For example, it might let them know how large of an area to evacuate. But in the past, categorizing ash was time-consuming, subjective, and reliant on the availability of highly trained experts.
ASH-ANALYZING AI. The shape of a particle of volcanic ash can help volcanologists determine the type of eruption that produced it, which can help response teams know how to react in the aftermath of an eruption. For example, it might let them know how large of an area to evacuate. But in the past, categorizing ash was time-consuming, subjective, and reliant on the availability of highly trained experts.
Now, scientists from the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that analyzes volcanic ash particles to determine their shape. The scientists detail their research in a paper published in May in the journal Scientific Reports.
TRAINING THE CNN. The Tokyo team's AI is what's known as a convolutional neural network (CNN), a kind of AI frequently used to analyze images. To train it, the researchers used an automated particle analyzer to generate thousands of two-dimensional images of ash particles.
Then, they manually classified the particles into four base shapes: blocky, vesicular, elongated, or rounded. Some particles were a combination of shapes. Next, they fed their CNN 200 images of particles that fit neatly into each category, using those images to teach it to categorize the particles based on certain parameters (for example, rounded particles should have a high degree of circularity).
PASSING THE TEST. After training, the team tested their CNN using about 40 other images of each type of particle. They found that the system was 92 percent successful in accurately categorizing an image. For images it couldn't categorize, it provided probability ratios (for example, a 90 percent probability that a particle is vesicular and a 10 percent probability that it's blocky).
As is, the system could already prove useful in eruption response efforts, but the researchers hope to upgrade their CNN to analyze additional aspects of volcanic ash, including its color and texture, providing even more valuable insights into the type of eruption behind the ash.
The aircraft would turn a disruptive sonic boom into a subtle sonic thump.
WHAT GOES UP REALLY FAST... On Friday, NASA released a video of an Armstrong Flight Research Center test pilot flying an F/A-18 high into the sky and straight back toward the Earth again at more than the speed of sound (767 miles per hour).
The goal wasn't to test the pilot's stomach, though — the maneuver simulates the sonic "thumps" NASA's supersonic jet, the X-59, would generate when in use and flying parallel to the ground. These tests allow NASA to gather data on the ground about the sound the aircraft makes so that, someday, the X-59 (or something like it) could be allowed to fly.
SUPER FAST. SUPER NOISY. In 1973, the U.S. banned supersonic travel over land. The reason? It was just too loud.
Anytime an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound, it creates what's known as a sonic boom. Like a boat pushing aside water as it travels, a supersonic aircraft quickly pushes aside air molecules. This builds up pressure in the molecules and causes shock waves. These shock waves extend behind the craft in two ever-widening cone shapes, one from its front and one from its rear.
The pressure of the molecules releases at the end of each cone, causing a "boom" sound the entire time. When those ends reach the ground, we hear the trademark "boom-boom" of a supersonic jet.
FROM BOOM-BOOM TO THUMP-THUMP. If commercial airplanes were allowed to fly at supersonic speeds, it could dramatically reduce the time it takes to fly from one place to another. Unwilling to give up this possible future, engineers are taking on the task to make a quieter supersonic jet.
In 2016, NASA awarded Lockheed Martin $20 million to work on a quieter supersonic jet. The aircraft they created, now called the X-59, is able to be super quiet and also supersonic thanks to its design — the shape of the X-59's body affects the shape of the shockwaves. This transforms what would normally sound like two sonic booms into a pair of "thumps" — at least, that's how it would work in theory. In April, NASA gave Lockheed Martin $247.5 million to actually build the X-59, but it isn't expected to deliver the craft until the end of 2021.
For now, NASA will continue testing the quiet sonic booms generated by the F/A-18's daredevil maneuver through a series of flights scheduled for November over Galveston, Texas. During those tests, the agency is planning to have volunteers on the ground let them know what they hear.
The data NASA collects might help to convince the U.S. government to lift its ban on supersonic air travel over land. If the government does lift the ban on supersonic travel over land as a result of NASA’s “quiet” technology, we could see commercial supersonic jets take flight, cutting travel times between destinations without disrupting the people still Earth-bound.
The approach used to make the map—which heavily relied on artificial intelligence—could chart more complex brains, such as zebrafish, mice, and even humans.
With a brain the size of a sesame seed, the lowly fruit fly is often considered a kitchen pest. But to neuroscientists, the flies are a treasure trove of information detailing how the brain’s intricate connections guide thoughts, decisions, and memories—not just for the critters, but also for us.
Mapping these connections is the first step. With over 140,000 neurons and 54 million synapses—the connections between nerve cells—packed into such a tiny space, the fruit fly’s brain, however rudimentary compared to ours, is highly complex.
This week, in a tour de force, hundreds of scientists from the FlyWire consortium published the first complete map of an adult female fruit fly’s brain. A project roughly a decade in the making, the wiring diagram will be a rich scientific resource for years to come. The same techniques used to make the map—which heavily relied on artificial intelligence—could be used to chart more complex brains, such as zebrafish, mice, and perhaps even humans.
“Flies are important model systems…since their brains solve the same problems as we do,” said Mala Murthy at Princeton University in a press conference. Murthy co-led the project with Sebastian Seung, who has long championed mapping as a way to better understand the inner workings of our brains and potentially extract algorithms to power more flexible AI.
In one of nine articles on the project published by Nature, Clay Reid at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who was not involved in the project, called the release a “huge deal.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Orion offers a “glimpse of the future” in which smart glasses will replace smartphones as the main mode of communication.
Humans are increasingly engaging with wearable technology as it becomes more adaptable and interactive. One of the most intimate ways gaining acceptance is through augmented reality glasses.
Last week, Meta debuted a prototype of the most recent version of their AR glasses—Orion. They look like reading glasses and use holographic projection to allow users to see graphics projected through transparent lenses into their field of view.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg called Orion “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.” He said they offer a “glimpse of the future” in which smart glasses will replace smartphones as the main mode of communication.
The technology used to develop Orion glasses is not new.
In the 1960s, computer scientist Ivan Sutherland introduced the first augmented reality head-mounted display. Two decades later, Canadian engineer and inventor Stephen Mann developed the first glasses-like prototype.
Throughout the 1990s, researchers and technology companies developed the capability of this technology through head-worn displays and wearable computing devices. Like many technological developments, these were often initially focused on military and industry applications.
In 2013, after smartphone technology emerged, Google entered the AR glasses market. But consumers were disinterested, citing concerns about privacy, high cost, limited functionality, and a lack of a clear purpose.
Mercedes’ patent describes a new system that calculates how much torque to send to the steering wheel.
New cars really are better than they used to be. They last longer, they're more efficient, and they're safer for the occupants in a crash. But it's not entirely a one-way street. If the last time you bought a car was more than a decade ago, you're probably shocked at the cumulative effect of inflation since then. But even ignoring sticker shock, there's also the matter of cars (almost) all having lifeless steering. But a patent filed last year by Mercedes-Benz might have the answer.
Regular readers will have read me complain about the death of steering feedback more than once. And that's a bad thing if you care about driving, or even if you don't. The late Richard Parry-Jones, an engineer whose career at Ford saw him rise to become CTO and head of global R&D, tracked customer satisfaction data and was able to prove to skeptical colleagues that good steering was highly correlated with customer satisfaction "because bad steering is tiring," he wrote.
Mostly, it's down to a switch from hydraulic to electric power-assisted steering—in many cases, the electric motor is placed on the steering column, which has the side effect of filtering out road forces, keeping them from being transferred back up the column and to the driver's hands via the steering wheel.
Other, more expensive electric power steering systems mount the assist motor on the steering rack, which somewhat mitigates the problem, and being thoughtful about suspension geometry—as the Polestar 4 is—can also pay benefits.
The on-stage demo showed off rotations for a number of varied images, from largely symmetrical dragons, horses, and bats to more complex shapes like a sketch of a bread basket or a living cup of fries (complete with arms, legs, eyes, and a mouth). In each case, the machine-learning algorithm does an admirable job assuming unseen parts of the model from what's available in the original 2D view, extrapolating a full set of legs on a side-view horse or the bottom of the Fry Man's shoes, for instance.
Still, we're sure the vector models on stage were chosen to show Project Turntable in its best light. Without a public testable version, it's hard to say how it would handle weird edge cases or drawings that don't closely match objects in its training data (which we don't know the extent of).
Even so, what was shown on stage has some obvious appeal for working artists. After seeing the on-stage video, Ars Creative Director Aurich Lawson exclaimed on our internal Slack, "That’s wizardry. I don't know how well it really works—I bet not nearly as good as that demo a lot of the time—but I’m impressed."
Researcher feeds screen recordings into Gemini to extract accurate information with ease.
Recently, AI researcher Simon Willison wanted to add up his charges from using a cloud service, but the payment values and dates he needed were scattered among a dozen separate emails. Inputting them manually would have been tedious, so he turned to a technique he calls "video scraping," which involves feeding a screen recording video into an AI model, similar to ChatGPT, for data extraction purposes.
What he discovered seems simple on its surface, but the quality of the result has deeper implications for the future of AI assistants, which may soon be able to see and interact with what we're doing on our computer screens.
"The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails," Willison wrote in a detailed post on his blog. He recorded a 35-second video scrolling through the relevant emails, then fed that video into Google's AI Studio tool, which allows people to experiment with several versions of Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash AI models.
Willison then asked Gemini to pull the price data from the video and arrange it into a special data format called JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) that included dates and dollar amounts. The AI model successfully extracted the data, which Willison then formatted as CSV (comma-separated values) table for spreadsheet use. After double-checking for errors as part of his experiment, the accuracy of the results—and what the video analysis cost to run—surprised him.
Central bank digital currencies threaten users’ privacy, London’s Lord Mayor Michael Mainelli told an event hosted by digital pound enthusiasts on Wednesday.
CBDCs can fight financial crime, as payments are traceable, and transaction monitoring can be automated — but there’s a dark side, Mainelli said.
That transparency “equally implies a loss of privacy,” he said. “I’m sorry — you can’t have both.”
His comments come as CBDCs remain a loaded topic across the world. While governments tout them as a welcome solution in an increasingly cashless world, critics slam CBDCs as a threat to people’s privacy.
Mainelli should not be confused with London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Instead, Mainelli’s role, as the head of the City of London Corporation, is to be an ambassador for the UK’s big business and finance community.
Mainelli spoke at an event hosted by the Digital Pound Foundation, which promotes CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenisation.
A CBDC is a digital form of a country's fiat currency, issued and regulated by a central bank. It's a digital representation of a country's currency that can be used for both domestic and international transactions. CBDCs are designed to be a more efficient, secure, and transparent alternative to physical cash and traditional digital payment systems.
CBDCs work similarly to digital currencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but they are backed by the full faith and credit of the central bank. Here's a simplified overview of how CBDCs work:
Issuance: The central bank issues CBDCs digitally, using advanced cryptographic techniques to secure and verify transactions.
Account-based system: CBDCs are stored in a digital wallet, which is linked to a user's bank account or identity. This ensures that transactions are authorized and tracked.
Transactions: CBDCs can be used for transactions, similar to digital currencies. However, CBDCs are not decentralized, meaning that they are not managed by a decentralized network of nodes.
Settlement: CBDCs are settled through the central bank's payment system, which ensures that transactions are processed efficiently and securely.
Storage: CBDCs can be stored in a digital wallet, similar to digital currencies. However, CBDCs are typically stored on the user's device, rather than on a decentralized network.
Secure: CBDCs are designed to be secure, with advanced cryptographic techniques and encryption to prevent counterfeiting and unauthorized transactions.
Transparent: CBDCs can provide real-time information on transactions, making it easier to track and monitor financial activity.
Regulated: CBDCs are regulated by the central bank, ensuring that they are managed and controlled by the government.
Reduced transaction costs: CBDCs can reduce the costs associated with traditional payment systems.
Improved monetary policy: CBDCs can provide the central bank with more flexibility to implement monetary policy, as they can be used to implement negative ⇪ rates× or other unconventional monetary policy tools.
The implementation of CBDCs is still in its early stages, and it's unclear how they will be received by the public and the financial sector. However, several countries are exploring the development of CBDCs, including:
Sweden: Sweden is currently testing a CBDC called e-Krona, which is being developed by the Riksbank.
China: China is reportedly developing a CBDC, which is being tested in several cities.
Bahamas: The Bahamas is testing a CBDC called the Sand Dollar, which is being developed by the Central Bank of The Bahamas.
European Central Bank: The European Central Bank is exploring the development of a CBDC, which could be used by several European countries.
Overall, CBDCs have the potential to revolutionize the way we think about money and financial transactions. However, their implementation poses several challenges and limitations, and it's unclear how they will be received by the public and the financial sector.
DS(i) Mode Hacking, a of the Discord servers I'm part of is being replaced, as its original owner's account was compromised, and the community leaders decided to switch to a server they can control.
I thought this piece of info should be on the blockchain.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is now bragging that the next generation of Starlink internet satellites are going to be so much larger than before, they'll need to be straight-up launched using the company's Starship rocket.
Quote-tweeting a post about SpaceX informing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about "several small but meaningful updates" to the new class of communications satellites, the billionaire highlighted the size of the forthcoming fleet.
"The next generation Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them, will allow for a 10X increase in bandwidth and, with the reduced altitude, faster latency," Musk wrote.
It's neither the first nor the second time the South African-born tycoon has insisted that instead of deploying them on a Falcon 9 rocket as the company does now, SpaceX will use Starship to launch forthcoming generations of Starlink satellites.
This time, however, the plans seem a bit more concrete.
Researchers have managed to encode enormous amounts of information, including images, into DNA at a rate hundreds of times faster than was previously possible
DNA has been used for years to store data, but encoding information into the molecule is painstaking work. Now, researchers have drastically sped it up by mimicking a natural biological process that drives gene expression. This could lead to durable, do-it-yourself DNA data storage technologies.
Even though a single gram of DNA can store hundreds of millions of gigabytes of data, the technology to make use of this isn’t yet fully viable. This is partly because the process of encoding data in DNA requires that each molecule be synthesised “from scratch” after being designed to encode a specific piece of information.
Long Qian at Peking University in China and her colleagues have now developed a way to write information onto DNA more efficiently.
“A good analogy is using a typewriter, where you have to type each letter, versus printing,” says Harris Wang at Columbia University in New York, who wasn’t involved with the work. “They could essentially get all of [the information] onto the ‘paper’ all at once.”
A start-up called Catalog claims it will be able to store a terabyte of data in a gram-sized DNA pellet, but questions remain over whether the technology is ready
BIG data could be about to get much smaller. Catalog, a start-up based at the Harvard Life Lab, has announced plans for the first commercial DNA data storage service. The company says it has developed a way to cheaply store a terabyte of data – the equivalent of 40 Blu-rays – in a DNA pellet.
Using DNA as a data storage medium has long held appeal thanks to its durability and density. If kept cool and dry, DNA can reliably last for hundreds of years, so…
Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months – and now it’s making the tool available to any AI developer
Google has been using artificial intelligence watermarking to automatically identify text generated by the company’s Gemini chatbot, making it easier to distinguish AI-generated content from human-written posts. That watermark system could help prevent misuse of the AI chatbots for misinformation and disinformation – not to mention cheating in school and business settings.
A more detailed explanation of the SynthID technique and its implications for the use of AIchatbots.
What is SynthID?
SynthID is a watermarking technique developed by Google DeepMind to identify and distinguish AI-generated content from human-written posts. The technique uses a complex algorithm to create a unique signature in the text generated by the AI model, making it easier to detect and potentially prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
SynthID works by subtly nudging the AI model toward selecting certain word "tokens" as it generates a sequence of text. This process creates a statistical signature that can be detectable by associated software. The algorithm uses a tournament-style bracket to randomly pair up possible word tokens, with the winner of each pair determining the next step in the process.
Here's a step-by-step explanation of the SynthID process:
Tokenization: The AI model breaks down the input text into individual words or tokens.
Tournament sampling: The algorithm randomly pairs up possible word tokens in a tournament-style bracket.
Winner selection: The winner of each pair is selected based on a watermarking function, which assesses the likelihood of the token being part of the AI-generated text.
Multi-layered approach: The process is repeated multiple times, with the winners moving through successive tournament rounds until just one remains.
Signature creation: The final winner is used to create a unique signature, which is embedded in the generated text.
Improved detection: SynthID can detect AI-generated content with high accuracy, making it easier to identify and potentially prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
Scalability: SynthID can be applied to large language models, making it a scalable solution for detecting AI-generated content.
Flexibility: SynthID can be adapted to different types of AI models and applications.
Google DeepMind is continuing to develop and refine the SynthID technique, with the goal of making it more effective and resilient to attacks. Some potential future directions include:
Improved watermarking functions: Developing more advanced watermarking functions that can better detect and distinguish AI-generated content.
Multi-modal detection: Developing techniques that can detect AI-generated content across multiple modalities, such as text, images, and audio.
Explainability: Developing techniques that can provide more insights into the decision-making process of AI models, making it easier to detect and prevent AI-generated content.
Overall, SynthID is a powerful technique that has the potential to significantly improve the detection and prevention of AI-generated content. As the technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see new applications and use cases emerge that take advantage of its capabilities.
Around the world, seeds of regenerative cities have already been planted. As they grow, they will shape the metropolises of tomorrow.
Cities are never truly complete and done; instead they are always changing, always evolving. One positive change is the rise of regenerative cities—urban centers designed to have a restorative relationship with the environment that protects and enhances local ecosystems.
WIRED Japan collaborated with the urban design studio For Cities to highlight some of the world’s best sustainable urban developments, which are harbingers of what is to come. From using local materials and construction methods to restoring ecosystems, these projects go beyond merely making green spaces and provide hints of how cities of the future will function as well as how they will be built. Here are some places where the future is now.
In this era of megacities, the Singaporean architectural firm WOHA, founded in 1994, has searched for the best way to make a high-rise green city. The luxury hotel Pan Pacific Orchard was completed by the firm in 2023. Despite being in the midst of a high-density city, it features four landscaped terraces that cover an area equivalent to 200 percent of the hotel’s lot size. Thanks to its use of both active and passive strategies to reduce energy and water use, the hotel received Singapore’s highest environmental certification, Green Mark Platinum. The firm has also developed its own WOHA Rating System, which uses five indicators (Green Plot Ratio, Community Plot Ratio, Civic Generosity Index, Ecosystem Contribution Index, and the Self-Sufficiency Index) to measure how its buildings impact the environment and society around them.
Inspired by microscopic worms, Liquid AI’s founders developed a more adaptive, less energy-hungry kind of neural network. Now the MIT spin-off is revealing several new ultraefficient models.
Artificial intelligence might now be solving advanced math, performing complex reasoning, and even using personal computers, but today’s algorithms could still learn a thing or two from microscopic worms.
Liquid AI, a startup spun out of MIT, will today reveal several new AI models based on a novel type of “liquid” neural network that has the potential to be more efficient, less power-hungry, and more transparent than the ones that underpin everything from chatbots to image generators to facial recognition systems.
Liquid AI’s new models include one for detecting fraud in financial transactions, another for controlling self-driving cars, and a third for analyzing genetic data. The company touted the new models, which it is licensing to outside companies, at an event held at MIT today. The company has received funding from investors that include Samsung and Shopify, both of which are also testing its technology.
“We are scaling up,” says Ramin Hasani, cofounder and CEO of Liquid AI, who co-invented liquid networks as a graduate student at MIT. Hasani’s research drew inspiration from the C. elegans, a millimeter-long worm typically found in soil or rotting vegetation. The worm is one of the few creatures to have had its nervous system mapped in its entirety, and it is capable of remarkably complex behavior despite having just a few hundred neurons. “It was once just a science project, but this technology is fully commercialized and fully ready to bring value for enterprises,” Hasani says.
Liquid AI, an MIT spin-off, is a foundation model company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Our mission is to build capable and efficient general-purpose AI systems at every scale.
Our goal at Liquid is to build the most capable AI systems to solve problems at every scale, such that users can build, access, and control their AI solutions. This is to ensure that AI will get meaningfully, reliably and efficiently integrated at all enterprises. Long term, Liquid will create and deploy frontier-AI-powered solutions that are available to everyone.
Spun out of MIT CSAIL, four founders - Ramin Hasani, Mathias Lechner, Alexander Amini, and Daniela Rus, started Liquid AI to create a new generation of foundation models from first principles.
We are thrilled to unveil Liquid AI – an MIT spinoff – to forge the future of AI with enterprise-grade foundation models that are capable, private, and reliable.
Today marks a pivotal moment for us at Liquid AI as we emerge from stealth mode, ready to announce our mission to build best-in-class, domain-specific, and general-purpose AI systems powered by Liquid foundation models.
Founded by a quartet of MIT computerscience and artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) AI and machine learningscientists – Ramin Hasani, Mathias Lechner, Alexander Amini, and Daniela Rus – we are thrilled to unveil our vision and the strides we have made thus far.
At Liquid, we are developing a new generation of AI foundation models built from first principles – going beyond generative pre-trained Transformers (GPTs). Liquid AI models build on a framework that leads to causality, interpretability, and efficiency. Our models enable powerful applications with a profound commitment to environmental responsibility, significantly reducing the carbon footprint of foundational models.
Other investors include Breyer Capital, Tom Preston Werner (GitHub Co-founder), Naval Ravikant (AngelList & AirChat Co-founder), Safar Partners, ISAI Cap Venture (Capgemini’s VC Fund managed by ISAI), Tobias Lütke (Shopify Co-founder), David Siegel (Two Sigma), Chris Prucha (Notion Co-founder), Samsung next, David Blundin (Link Ventures), Bold Capital Partners (Peter Diamandis), Marc Casper (President & CEO of Thermo Fisher), Duke Capital Partners, Argean Capital Management, Latham & Watkins, Bob Young (Red Hat Co-founder) and Automattic.
“We invested in Liquid AI, because we felt this was the Dream Team of artificial intelligence. Their technology will greatly reduce the cost of AI for companies versus the current Transformer-based models and remains adaptable beyond training. It also allows for explainability as opposed to the black box of existing models. It’s a triple threat technology that can be used as a foundational model for functional applications and vertical markets as well.”
– Stephen Pagliuca (Chairman and CEO PagsGroup)
“Liquid’s approach to advancing the state-of-the-art in AI is grounded in the integration of fundamental truths across biology, physics, neuroscience, math, and computer science. We believe that trans-disciplinary approaches will unlock the greatest levels of acceleration towards the most efficient breakthroughs.”
– Joseph Jacks (Founder and General Partner at OSS Capital)
EXCLUSIVE: Officials raise the alarm over the “disorganized occupation of power distribution poles by telecommunications infrastructure”
Amid a growing electric supply crisis in Brazil, São Paulo, the country’s largest city, is intensifying efforts to address a major urban infrastructure problem: the tangled mess of cables and wires that hang from millions of concrete utility poles across the massive metropolis.
São Paulo has an estimated 1.5 million utility poles lining its streets, approximately one for every eight residents. According to the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), more than half of these poles are misused, contributing to overuse, illegal wiring, and dangerous space mismanagement.
Energy distributors manage the poles, while telecom providers pay for the right to use them for their own cables. Yet, oversight is minimal, leading to the chaotic web of wires seen on many street corners.
During repairs, instead of identifying faulty lines, companies often add more cables, further complicating the situation.
Gilberto Kassab is Brazil's ultimate éminence grise, heading a party that has consistently grown its congressional and municipal footprint.
The first round of municipal elections in Brazil, which took place on October 6 in all 5,500 cities save for the capital Brasília, had several winners. But one man, Gilberto Kassab, emerged as the biggest winner of them all.
This is very accurate. This guy has not held a role in politics for a long time, but he is like the master of puppets, controlling everything behind the curtains.
He has not run for an election since 2008. Still, he holds the purse strings of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which, for the first time, elected the most mayors in the country: 888, or about 15 percent of the total, not to mention its candidates who qualified for a runoff to take place on October 27 in many of the country’s biggest cities.
Despite his immense political clout, Mr. Kassab remains unknown to most Brazilians.
Mr. Kassab, age 64, is the fifth of seven children of a physician and a teacher. After graduating in both economics and civil engineering, he worked as a real estate agent before starting his political career as a councilman in São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, in 1993. It took off very fast.
The BRICS group, a coalition of emerging economies, has finalized its expansion plans. Meeting in Kazan, Russia, the current members have selected ten new countries to join their ranks.
In addition, this decision marks a significant shift in the global economic landscape. Cuba and Bolivia have received invitations to join BRICS.
However, Venezuela and Nicaragua, both facing political turmoil, were notably absent from the list. This exclusion reflects recent tensions between these nations and Brazil’s government.
The full list of new invitees includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Nigeria, Uganda, Turkey, and Belarus. This diverse group spans multiple continents, enhancing BRICS’ global reach and influence.
Brazilian diplomats successfully negotiated the inclusion of a key point in discussions. They secured a mention of reforming the UN Security Council, a long-standing goal of both Brazilian and Indian foreign policy.
Colombia stands out in Latin America with its corporate income tax rate of 35%, the highest in the region. This rate presents significant challenges for both domestic startups and foreign companies considering establishing operations in Colombia.
Taxes serve as a fundamental mechanism for state function and maintenance, with personal and corporate income taxes being particularly crucial across the region.
According to PwC data, Colombia shares the top spot for corporate tax rates in Latin America with Argentina, both at 35%. Brazil and Venezuela follow closely with rates of 34%.
Globally, among the 38 OECD member economies, Colombia also ranks highest, surpassing European nations like Portugal and Germany, which have rates of 30%.
This high tax rate poses obstacles for new Colombian businesses and foreign enterprises looking to enter the market. While local companies pay taxes on global income, foreign entities operating in Colombia are taxed only on their Colombian earnings.
Brazilian banks have started increasing mortgage rates and implementing stricter lending conditions as the Central Bank raises basic interest rates (Selic). Itaú Unibanco led this trend by raising its average annual rate from 10.49% to 10.79% in early October.
Caixa Econômica Federal, which handles 70% of Brazil‘s mortgage lending, maintains current rates but will increase down payment requirements starting November 1st.
The SAC payment system will require a 30% down payment instead of 20%, while the Price system increases from 30% to 50%.
Banks face depleting savings account resources traditionally used for mortgage funding. This shortage forces them to seek alternative funding sources directly affected by Selic rate changes.
The mortgage market shows unexpected vigor, with lending reaching R$118.5 billion ($21.16 billion) in the first eight months of 2024. This represents 17.6% growth compared to the same period in 2023.
Here are the current mortgage rates at major Brazilian banks:
Caixa Econômica Federal offers rates from TR + 8.99% to 9.99% annually
Itaú Unibanco starts at TR + 10.79% annually
Bradesco begins at TR + 10.49% annually
Santander ranges from TR + 10.99% to 12.99% annually
Banco do Brasil starts at TR + 10.29% annually
BRB offers rates beginning at TR + 8.99% annually
Caixa Econômica Federal was founded on May 14, 1846, as the "Caixa Econômica de São Paulo" (Economic Savings Box of São Paulo) with the goal of providing savings services to the population of São Paulo, Brazil.
Initially, the institution was a small savings box where people could depositcoins and banknotes to earn interest. Over time, the bank expanded its services to include loans, deposits, and other financial activities.
In 1903, the Caixa Econômica Federal was transformed into a federal institution, and its scope was expanded to the entire country. The bank began to accept deposits from aLL regions of Brazil, and its services were standardized to provide a more comprehensive range of financial products to the population. During this period, CEF played a crucial role in the economic development of Brazil, providing financial services to the government, businesses, and individuals.
After World ⇪ II×, Caixa Econômica Federal underwent significant modernization efforts, introducing new technologies and financial products. The bank expanded its operations to include credit, investments, and insurance services. In 1964, CEF became a commercial bank, and its scope was further expanded to include corporate and international banking.
In 1988, the Brazilian government nationalized Caixa Econômica Federal, and it became a state-owned bank, known as Caixa Econômica Federal. The nationalization process aimed to increase state control over the economy and provide financial services to the broader population. As a state-owned bank, CEF was tasked with promoting economic development, social justice, and financial inclusion.
In the 1990s, Caixa Econômica Federal underwent significant modernization efforts, introducing new technologies and financial products. The bank expanded its operations to include digital banking, mobile banking, and online services. In 2015, CEF was restructured to become a specialized financial institution, focusing on social and economic development programs, such as microfinance, microinsurance, and education financing.
Today, Caixa Econômica Federal is one of the largest banks in Brazil, with over 5,000 branches and 12,000 ATMs across the country. The bank serves over 20 million customers and has a significant presence in the Brazilian economy, providing financial services to individuals, businesses, and institutions.
The first panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court has decided to uphold the individual decision of Justice Alexandre de Moraes—the rapporteur of the case—to withhold former president Jair Bolsonaro’s passport and ban him from having contact with people under investigation.
The restrictions had been ordered as part of probes into an alleged attempted coup d’état in Brazil and the irregular sale of jewelry received by the former leader during international trips.
ustice Moraes argued that the Federal Police investigations are ongoing and there is no justification for reforming the decision preventing Bolsonaro from leaving the country.
For the same reason, the justice also denied the former president access to the plea bargain of Mauro Cid, his former aide-de-camp.
The decision was taken unanimously by Justices Flávio Dino, Luiz Fux, Cristiano Zanin, Cármen Lúcia, and Moraes.
The trial was held online and ended Friday (Oct. 18).
The Brazilian Senate has delayed a bill capping commissions charged by Uber and other ride-hailing platforms.
Caps on drive-hailing apps cut?
The Brazilian Senate has once again delayed a vote on a bill that could reshape the ride-hailing industry. The proposed legislation would cap service fees charged by apps like Uber at 10 percent of a rider’s fare, significantly reducing the commissions that drivers currently pay.
Why it matters. The fees platforms charge drivers are anything but transparent. While Uber claims its average commission is 25 percent, the actual rates can vary wildly.
Opaqueness. One driver in Joinville, a city in southern Brazil, posted a now-private YouTube video showing Uber’s commissions on seven rides from the same day, with values ranging from 13.8 percent to as high as 40 percent.
In 2022, Uber’s Chinese-owned competitor 99 announced it would cap its commissions at 19.99 percent...
Welcome to the Daily Complimenting #threadcast, courtesy of the FreeCompliments Community (hive-140084). In this threadcast, you can:
Tag people and give them a compliment (about their posts, comments, or just in general)
Tag some new members who joined us and give them a compliment so they start their Hive journey with positive vibes
Say good morning to everyone with the #gmfrens tag
Post about a compliment which you've given or received today
Post about something that made you happy today
Tell us how your day is going
Ask for a compliment if you're feeling down
For contributing to Hive's collective kindness and joy, every comment posted in this threadcast will be curated by @fc-leo-curator (run by @thelogicaldude) so that you can become a stronger Lion!
How many egomaniacs does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, they hold the bulb while the world revolves around them. Credit: marshmellowman @crazyphantombr, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of freecompliments
(5/10) Delegate Hive Tokens to Farm $LOLZ and earn 110% Rewards. Learn more.
The price in Greece is wrong in a supermarket the average price is at 0.15 and if you buy it in a restaurant it’s 0.5. Only voss water is like buying liquid gold
I stayed up all night trying to find where the sun was. Then it dawned on me. Credit: benthomaswwd @behiver, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of ben.haase
I spend 15 hours a day on my PC working. They say touch grass, I say no! I spend 2 hours in the gym! Get healthy LEOfriends! #freecompliments #cent #bbh
“LeBron, Bronny make history, take court together for Lakers.
LeBron James and Bronny James became the first father-son duo in NBA history to appear in a game together when they checked in at the same time with 4:00 left in the second quarter Tuesday night.”
@pepetoken just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @jongolson!
Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:
Oooh, there's some awesome peeps on that list! I also like that this was the first sight I saw when I hopped on here, YAY BBH Project! (I;m working on moving up that list 😉 )
The effort being deployed by WEB3 participants is translated into ownership, authority, and influence. It’s this unique recipe that “authorizes” value extraction. There are no shortcuts. You can’t simply create a few WEB3 accounts and then sit back expecting money to come your way. #cent #sapphirecrypto
gooGood morning my belobeloved. How was your night? I hope all of you slept well all? IIt's The beginning of another new day, I wish everyone a happy and successful day ahead. #cent #freecompliment #emotionsfeelings
@pepetoken just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @bitcoinflood!
Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:
Risk management must always be present with anything you attempt within the Crypto and finance world, There are plenty of different strategies one can apply to multiply accumulation. A high APR is pointless if the underlying assets involved are dumped. #cent #sapphirecrypto
Forgot all about Farcaster. But that's pretty much how these startup investments go like this 9 out of 10 will fail but investors don't mind because that 1 out of the 10 will out perform the other 9 that failed. It's a weird thing in the investor world.
Hi there, I see you applied to NFT Showroom so I messaged the linked instagram account to verify! Please reply to us on instagram and we can approve you, thanks :) (since you aren't following @nftshowroom on insta it may be hidden in your message request tab)
This morning’s workout was a perfect blend of power and control. I started with an intense session on the treadmill, focusing on building strength through varied intervals. The treadmill portion was split into three blocks, each beginning with a vigorous one-minute push to really get the heart rate up.
Brainstorming my upcoming "how to live on crypto" subscription content. 🧠
Any requests or suggestions before I finalize it all? 🤔
how much is "live on" ?
Use crypto for a significant portion of your total spending. Probably 20% minimum, but up to 100% (like me since 2016).
#GM Welcome to #selfie #threadcast . Today's challenge is horror selfies. Let's see how many monsters we can catch. #selfie, #memories
#selfie #photographers #thread2earn #freecompliments
Awesome! #bbh, #freecompliment
P.S. you need 15 comments for the Threadcast to show on top of screen ;)
Someone wants an apple... it's not poisoned... or is it? #selfie, #memories
You shouldn't take the shortcut through the forest to go to Grandma's house... you know why, don't you? #selfie, #memories
Just Smile.... #selfie, #memories
My eyes are not buttons, but I am not Coraline. #selfie, #memories
I'm scary with a beard too. #selfie, #memories
Speechless... #selfie, #memories
Only 7, or after this, 6 more comments or #selfies to get this showing.
Thanks you!!
Gifted Premium incoming ;) So your Threadcasts will show.
This isn't a monster 👾 🤣
!DOOK
You sure? It might be! lol !BBH !DOOK
Pretty scary to me when I see it in the miror.
@luchyl! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (25/100)
(html comment removed:
)
Scary...isn´t it? #sefie, #memories
Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 10/23/24. We aim to educate people about this crucial area along with providing information of what is taking place.
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Anthropic publicly releases AI tool that can take over the user’s mouse cursor
Anthropic's new Computer Use tool can take control of users' mouse cursors and perform basic tasks on their computers. It is now available exclusively with Anthropic's mid-range 3.5 Sonnet model via the API. It works by taking rapid successive screengrabs, so it can miss short-lived notifications and other changes and is incapable of some common actions like drag-and-drop. The tool is still cumbersome and error-prone at times. A video from Anthropic explaining the tool is available in the article.
#technology #ai #anthropic
BBC Video: Should children have smartphones in school?
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c33v3yzjk5no
BBC: Ofcom: Clear link between online posts and violent disorder
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70w0ne4zexo
Lab-grown human brain cells drive virtual butterfly in simulation
FinalSpark, a Switzerland-based startup that offers a platform which allows researchers interested in biocomputing to write code that interacts with brain organoids, created a virtual world with a butterfly model to demonstrate its platform.
#technology #finalspark #biocomputing #brain
World’s 1st donor cell therapy helps 3 autoimmune disorder patients in China
Three Chinese patients received treatment for autoimmune disorders using engineered immune cells made from donor cells. All three recipients reported improvements to their conditions. The treatment involved genetically engineering healthy-donor-derived CD19-targeting CAR-T cells using CRISPR-Cas9 to address issues with immune rejection. The study demonstrates the high safety and promising immune modularity effect of off-the-shelf CAR-T cells in treating severe refractory autoimmune diseases.
#technology #health #genetics #cells
And a joke, so that we're not too serious around here.
Lols, everybody sounding very funny today. Is it a funny as Thursday
That's a Wednesday thread though ;)
Ok, all the threads have found today are just very funny.
Good for you.
De-extinction company provides a progress report on thylacine efforts
Colossal, a company founded to try to restore the mammoth to the Arctic tundra, released a progress report last week on the work involved in resurrecting the thylacine, which went extinct in 1936. Marsupial biology has features that may make de-extinction somewhat easier, and it appears that the technology available for working with marsupials is expanding rapidly. Colossal has a nearly complete genome sequence from a thylacine sample and it expects to complete the genome shortly. It is working on technology that will allow marsupial embryos to develop inside artificial uteruses.
#technology #colossal #mammoth #thylacine
Reuters: EU antitrust chief nominee vows to intensify Big Tech crackdown
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/eu-antitrust-chief-nominee-vows-intensify-big-tech-crackdown-2024-10-23/
Reuters: EU's tech security nominee to boost AI use, battlefield technology
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/eus-tech-security-nominee-boost-ai-use-battlefield-technology-2024-10-23/
Reuters: Qualcomm, Alphabet team up for automotive AI; Mercedes inks chip deal
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/qualcomm-alphabet-team-up-automotive-ai-mercedes-inks-chip-deal-2024-10-22/
Reuters: Exclusive: TSMC told US of chip in Huawei product after TechInsights finding, source says
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-told-us-chip-huawei-device-after-techinsights-finding-source-says-2024-10-22/
Reuters: Exclusive: Moon sample talks show space engagement by rivals US and China
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/moon-sample-talks-show-space-engagement-by-rivals-us-china-2024-10-23/
Reuters: EU lags US and China in AI investments, Nvidia CEO says
https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-lags-us-china-ai-investments-nvidia-ceo-says-2024-10-23/
Reuters: Nvidia's design flaw with Blackwell AI chips now fixed, CEO says
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/nvidias-design-flaw-with-blackwell-ai-chips-now-fixed-ceo-says-2024-10-23/
Reuters: US-China tech war seen heating up regardless of whether Trump or Harris wins
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-seen-heating-up-regardless-whether-trump-or-harris-wins-2024-10-23/
Claude 3.5 Sonnet NEW and "Computer Control" Beta (Agentic Future)
Summary below ⏬
Anthropic Advances AI Frontier with Model Updates and Revolutionary Computer Control Feature
In a significant move that further cements its position in the AI industry, Anthropic has announced two major developments: upgraded versions of its AI models and a groundbreaking computer control feature. These announcements represent both incremental improvements in existing capabilities and a bold step into new territory for AI interaction.
Model Improvements: Raising the Bar
Anthropic has released two updated models: Claude 3.5 Sonnet (new) and Claude 3.5 Haiku. The new Sonnet version shows across-the-board improvements over its predecessor, with particularly notable gains in coding capabilities - an area where Claude was already considered an industry leader.
Benchmark results paint a compelling picture of the new Claude 3.5 Sonnet's capabilities:
While these improvements are impressive, it's worth noting that in some areas, competitors maintain their edge. For instance, Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro still leads in math problem solving with 86.1%. Notably absent from the benchmarking comparisons was Anthropic's O1 model, likely due to its different operational approach involving longer "thinking" time.
The Claude 3.5 Haiku update is also significant, as this smaller model now outperforms the previous Claude 3 Opus, demonstrating Anthropic's ability to achieve better results with more efficient models.
Computer Use: A Revolutionary Step Forward
Perhaps the most intriguing announcement is Anthropic's new "Computer Use" capability, currently available in beta through their API. This feature allows Claude to directly control a computer, interacting with the interface just as a human would - moving the mouse, clicking, typing, and navigating through applications.
How It Works
The system operates by:
This approach, while seemingly simple, represents a significant advancement in AI's ability to interact with existing computer interfaces. Rather than requiring specialized APIs or integration points, it can work with any software that has a visual interface.
Safety and Implementation
Anthropic has implemented several important safety measures:
Technical Challenges
The system faces some technical hurdles, particularly in coordinate mapping and pixel counting accuracy. These challenges highlight why this approach might be a transitional solution rather than the long-term future of AI-computer interaction.
Future Implications
This development points to a broader vision of human-computer interaction where traditional interfaces might become less relevant. Just as humanoid robots are designed to work in environments built for humans, this computer control capability allows AI to operate in digital environments designed for human use.
However, this may be an intermediate step. Future operating systems might be built specifically for AI interaction, making this current approach obsolete. Companies like Google and Apple, with their deep integration into mobile and desktop operating systems, are particularly well-positioned to shape this future.
Conclusion
Anthropic's latest announcements represent both evolutionary and revolutionary progress in AI development. While the model improvements continue the steady march toward more capable AI systems, the computer use feature opens up entirely new possibilities for AI assistance and automation. Though still in its early stages, this development could mark the beginning of a fundamental shift in how we think about human-computer-AI interaction.
The challenge ahead lies in balancing these powerful capabilities with appropriate safety measures and determining the most effective ways to implement AI control of computer systems. As this technology matures, we may see the emergence of new paradigms in computer interface design specifically optimized for AI interaction.
BBC: Boeing-made satellite breaks up in space
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8d886l028o
Nicolas Cage Warns Young Actors About AI
"This technology wants to take your instrument. We are the instruments as film actors."
Speaking at the 25th Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday, the "Longlegs" star warned up-and-comers not to let their performances be manipulated with AI to create "employment based digital replicas" (EBDRs) — and no, not even in the limited terms described by new protections against the tech.
#ai #technology #hollywood #actors #entertainment
We must have posted this one at the same time. Wonder what it will do to make up artists in Hollywood. I hadn't even thought of that till Roy read me this article this morning.
All kinds of jobs will be erased. There are direct job losses and then you have the auxiliary.
For example, is they shut down the Space Shuttle program, there were 7K jobs lost at KSC. The estimate was there were 27K jobs affected in a 3 country area.
There was a breakfast place that was out of the way but was packed at 6 AM with people going to one of the back gates. After those people were laid off, the restaurant crashed.
When I was growing up here in Kenosha, WI we had American Motors Corporation, which eventually became Chrysler beforre they pulled out completely. After that we were pretty much almost a ghost town here. Before that, however, the downtown area was always busy, there were bars and restaurants everywhere. The city is finally building up again. Even after the Jacob Blake riots in 2020.
And they're finally doing something with the land on which the automobile factory stood and was empty for so many years.
A lot of towns like that in the Midwest. There are going to be more towns like that in the future.
Consider the demise of Hollywood. What does that do to things in Los Angeles?
"There is a new technology in town. It's a technology that I didn't have to contend with for 42 years until recently," Cage said referring to EBDRs, as quoted by Deadline.
"This technology wants to take your instrument," he continued. "We are the instruments as film actors. We are not hiding behind guitars and drums."
EBDRs are one of two types of digital replicas described in the groundbreaking deal struck between actors and movie studios following the conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike last year.
Whereas "independently created digital replicas" allow for the creation of entire (potentially AI) clones of an actor without their participation, EBDRs only work with the performer's physical involvement for a specific project — like, for example, the AI de-aging of an actor's face.
Article
What is the Website Futurism?
We’re Futurism, a Recurrent Ventures media company, based out of New York City. Futurism was started off a Knight Foundation grant in 2017 — it’s grown from an infographic on a subreddit into a trusted news source read by millions all over the world every month. Since then, our mission: To provide readers a window into the news and stories of tomorrow, today.
LEADERSHIP
We’re a small, award-winning independent team of reporters and writers, who pride ourselves on a commitment to accuracy and ethics in journalism, and publish our news and features entirely free of editorial interference from our parent company.
Content Director Foster Kamer
EDITORIAL
Executive Editor Jon Christian
Senior Editor Victor Tangermann
Staff Writers Noor Al-Sibai, Maggie Harrison
Contributors Frank Landymore, Sharon Adarlo
CREATIVE
Director of Design Tag Hartman-Simkins
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
Senior Audience Development Director Paul Sarconi
PUBLISHING
General Manager Adam Morath
Publisher Emeritus James Del
Founder Alex Klokus
MISSION
We cover the market-moving and world-shaking technological and scientific developments changing the world. This isn’t a site to read about personal or “retail” technologies. On Futurism, you’ll find news about the titans of industry changing the world (and possibly, the worlds beyond ours), as well as the developments of the emergent innovations that will affect every single one of our lives — if they don’t already.
The vast majority of what you’ll see on the site is news-oriented; we also publish features, interviews, and the occasional opinion piece. We strive to provide readers not just with news, but the smart sensibility and gimlet-eyed perspective they won’t find anywhere else. We’re supported by advertising revenue, and the occasional bit of commerce revenue (earned through commissions on posts supplied by a non-news editorial team).
Futurism’s website is currently divided into three sections:
The Latest, which you can find via our homepage. These are our larger stories and features.
Then, there’s The Byte, our flash-news column, which features the latest breaking updates, cutting-edge intelligence, and key analysis on all things future-forward.
Finally, there’s Neoscope, our medical technology and medical science blog, where all of our news breaks and features about the future of health, human bodies, and medicine can be found.
3D-printed semiconductor-free logic gates could soon power cheap electronics devices
A team of scientists from MIT made a remarkable discovery while trying to make magnetic coils using extrusion printing.
Semiconductors are essential for today's electronics, providing computational capabilities and the ability to control electric signals. They are also highly complex and costly, so researchers have proposed a cheap, "semiconductor-free" way to achieve electronic democratization.
#newsonleo #3dprinting #semiconductors #technology
This is an important research and discovery, especially in this age of devices. Cost cutting will go a long way.
Thanks for the #brainupdate friend.
#gmfrens #freecompliments
The researchers claim their method is suitable for printing resettable fuses, an essential element for active electronics. The team manufactured the devices with standard, affordable 3D printing machines and inexpensive, biodegradable polymer material doped with copper nanoparticles. They discovered that if a large amount of electric current passes through the material, the printed logic gates exhibit a spike in electrical resistance before returning to their original state after the current flow is interrupted.
Hi, @taskmaster4450le,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
A team of scientists from MIT made a remarkable discovery while trying to make magnetic coils using extrusion printing. The process melts a filament and ejects the resulting material from a nozzle, printing a 3D shape layer-by-layer. Extrusion is a known 3D-printing method engineers can use to generate logic gates that can control electricity without any semiconductor components.
Inside the fall of 23andMe
Once worth $6 billion, 23andMe has lost 98% of its value and is on the verge of being delisted from the Nasdaq. So what happened?
Founded in 2006, 23andMe set out to revolutionize the once very exclusive genetic testing business with a direct-to-consumer model. Thanks to capital from high-profile backers and celebrity endorsements, the company was able to market its test kits at affordable prices.
#23andme #genetics #technology
Unlike competitors like Ancestry.com, 23andMe sought to leverage its database for drug discovery. The company went public in 2021 and was valued around $3.5 billion. The funding allowed 23andMe to develop its drug research team and spearhead partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.
"We're really at a point in time where I'm ready to explode," 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki told CNBC in 2021. "There's huge opportunities in therapeutics and huge opportunities in our consumer business."
Shortly after debuting on the Nasdaq, rising interest rates made it more difficult to raise funding, and sales began to fall. The company introduced a premium subscription product in 2020 that it hoped would make up for the lack of recurring revenue from its test kits, but that strategy failed to pan out. The company reported a $312 million net loss in the 2023 fiscal year, and by September 2023, 23andMe's share price slid below $1.
Article
Anthropic's new AI model can control your PC
Anthropic has released an updated version of its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model with a new Computer Use feature that can interact with apps on a PC.
In a pitch to investors last spring, Anthropic said it intended to build AI to power virtual assistants that could perform research, answer emails, and handle other back-office jobs on their own. The company referred to this as a “next-gen algorithm for AI self-teaching” — one it believed that could, if all goes according to plan, automate large portions of the economy someday.
#ai #technology #anthropic #technology
Anthropic Unveils Major Update: Claude 3.5 Sonnet Gets Desktop Control Capabilities
Anthropic has taken a significant step toward its vision of AI-powered virtual assistants with the release of an upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet model that can nOW interact with desktop applications. This development, announced on Tuesday, introduces a new "Computer Use" API that allows the AI to emulate human-like computer interactions through keystrokes, mouse movements, and button clicks.
Key Features and Capabilities
The new Computer Use API, currently in open beta, enables Claude to:
The feature is accessible through Anthropic's API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform.
Performance and Limitations
While the update represents a significant advancement, Anthropic is transparent about its current limitations:
Safety Measures and Concerns
Anthropic has implemented several safety features to address potential risks:
Additional Updates: Claude 3.5 Haiku
Anthropic also announced an upcoming Claude 3.5 Haiku model, promising:
Industry Context
This release positions Anthropic in the growing AI agent market, competing with:
According to Capgemini, 10% of organizations currently use AI agents, with 82% planning to integrate them within three years.
Looking Forward
While Anthropic recommends starting with low-risk tasks, this update represents a significant step toward their goal of automating back-office work. The company has confirmed that Claude 3.5 Opus is in development, suggesting continued evolution of their AI capabilities.
This development marks a crucial milestone in AI automation, though Anthropic emphasizes the importance of careful implementation and appropriate precautions when dealing with sensitive data.
Article
LinkedIn confirms the 'follower purge' was just a bug that's now resolved
LinkedIn users on Tuesday began noticing a problem with their follower counts on the platform
LinkedIn users on Tuesday began noticing a problem with their follower counts on the platform: They were dropping rapidly, and sometimes by many hundreds of users at once. With no official word at the time from LinkedIn, many began speculating that the situation was the result of LinkedIn purging fake accounts from the platform.
#linkedin #socialmedia #bug #technology #newsonleo
Some even spoke with authority on the matter, claiming that the problem was due to a decision by the company to clean out fake, inactive, or duplicate accounts. Others leveraged the opportunity to pitch their expertise in being able to help LinkedIn members from having their accounts “banned.” Still more questioned what they may have done wrong to see their accounts lose so much traction in such a short period of time.
Though the general consensus was that this was a purge enacted by LinkedIn, the company announced later in the day that it had looked into the issue and has now “resolved” the problem. It did not offer an explanation as to the cause.
“We heard some members may have seen a change in their connection and follower count,” the company wrote in a post on X. “Our team quickly looked into this. We’re happy to report this has now been resolved.”
Article
Mars' Surface Appears to Be Covered in Potential Rocket Fuel, MIT Finds
Extremely convenient.
Prevailing theories suggest that Mars was once covered in a major liquid water system of oceans, rivers, and lakes, which presupposes a thick atmosphere that could maintain temperatures at which liquid water could exist.
#space #mars #rocketfuel #technology #mit
But 3.5 billion years later, its barren surface leaves only hints of its once lush history behind, leading scientists to wonder what exactly happened to this atmosphere.
As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances, the vast majority of the planet's atmosphere just might be trapped in sedimentary rocks lining the Red Planet's surface.
According to their calculations, roughly 80 percent of the carbon dioxide of Mars' ancient atmosphere could be trapped inside carbon-based organic compounds.
Excitingly, the scientists suggest this carbon could be extracted and turned into rocket fuel, facilitating future trips to and from the distant planet.
"Based on our findings on Earth, we show that similar processes likely operated on Mars, and that copious amounts of atmospheric CO2 could have transformed to methane and been sequestered in clays," said author and MIT geology professor Oliver Jagoutz in a statement. "This methane could still be present and maybe even used as an energy source on Mars in the future."
Article
It's Now Illegal to Post Fake AI-Generated Product Reviews by People Who Don't Exist
It's officially illegal to publish fake, AI-generated product reviews.
Sweeping changes to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines aimed at cleaning up the polluted, confusing world of online product reviews went into effect on Monday, meaning the federal agency is now allowed to levy civil penalties against bad actors who knowingly post product reviews and testimonials deemed misleading to American consumers.
#deepfake #technology #reviews #ftc #newsonleo
The new guidelines are expansive, prohibiting sleazy businesses from engaging in a wide array of abusive tactics. That list includes using generative AI tools to whip up fake testimonials or product review articles — bonus points if those reviews are attributed to someone who isn't real, or published by someone overstating or misreporting their level of experience with a given product.
A perfect example of this kind of content? Review-style articles published at dozens of media companies including Sports Illustrated and The Miami Herald by a third-party media company called AdVon Commerce, which multiple Futurism investigations revealed to be largely AI-generated and even bylined by fake authors outfitted with equally fake profile pictures and bios purporting alleged expertise.
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Large Boeing Satellite Suddenly Explodes Into Pieces
A Boeing satellite belonging to multinational service provider Intelsat mysteriously blew into pieces in geostationary orbit over the weekend.
According to an official update, an "anomaly" caused the satellite — dubbed IS-33e — to be destroyed, resulting in what the company calls a "total loss."
#newsonleo #Boeing #satellite #technology
"Migration and service restoration plans are well underway across the Intelsat fleet and third-party satellites," the update reads.
It's unclear what exactly caused the satellite to break up. The US Space Force announced it was "tracking around 20 associated pieces" but "observed no immediate threats."
US-based space tracking company ExoAnalytic Solutions told SpaceNews that it's tracking 57 associated pieces of debris.
While we have yet to find out the exact cause for the breakup, the incident serves as a reminder of the often limited life of satellites, as well as the ever-present threat of existing space debris colliding with our assets in orbit — a precarious situation that could potentially lead to a disaster.
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Ex-SpaceX engineers land $14M to scale new method for 3D printing metal
3D printing objects using metal is a well-established technique
3D printing objects using metal is a well-established technique, but it tends to be too complex, expensive, or imprecise to match traditional methods at scale. Armed with $14 million from Nvidia and Boeing, Freeform aims to change that by building a new metal additive printing process that it says changes the game — and yes, there’s an AI angle, too.
#newsonleo #spacex #3dprinting #funding #technology
Co-founders Erik Palitsch (CEO) and TJ Ronacher (president) both worked at SpaceX, where they were principal architect and lead analyst, respectively, of the Merlin engines and other programs. While there, they saw the potential of 3D printing parts using metal, but also experienced the method’s shortcomings firsthand.
“We saw the potential of metal printing; it has the potential to transform basically any industry that makes metal things. But adoption has been slow and success has been marginal at best,” said Palitsch. “Why is it not practical to use at scale? Fundamentally, because of three things: crappy and inconsistent quality; speed — commercial printers are very slow; and cost — the price for these printers is astronomical.”
They concluded that if they could operationalize the process to provide a printing service rather than sell a printer, they could crack the whole thing wide open. So they joined up with Tasso Lappas, former CTO of Velo3D, to start Freeform.
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Producers of "Blade Runner 2049" Sue Elon Musk for Dragging Their Movie Into Tesla's Disastrous Robotaxi Event
The production company behind the sci-fi blockbuster "Blade Runner 2049" is suing Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk for copyright infringement.
In the lawsuit, the company asserts that AI-generated stills used in promotional material related to Tesla's "We, Robot" event — the site of the disastrous debut of its robotaxi project — were clearly ripping off the movie.
#newsonleo #elonmusk #tesla #bladerunner2049
The production company, which is called Alcon Entertainment, didn't beat around the bush while actively distancing itself from Musk and his abrasive, racist antics.
"Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account," the lawsuit reads.
Worse yet, Alcon — and Warner Bros Discovery, which is joining it as a plaintiff — allege that Tesla asked for permission to use a "Blade Runner 2049" still but was turned down, suggesting the EV maker knowingly infringed on the company's copyright by bastardizing its own version using an AI image generator.
The image "was clearly intended to read visually either as an actual still image from ‘BR2049’s iconic sequence of [protagonist] K exploring the ruined Las Vegas, or as a minimally stylized copy of one," Alcon alleges.
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As Ozlo's Sleepbuds go on sale, company raises funds for tinnitus treatment
Bose gave up on Sleepbuds after two generations. It was a sad, premature end for a promising product.
Bose gave up on Sleepbuds after two generations. It was a sad, premature end for a promising product. The headphone maker came closer to creating a truly great pair of sleep headphones than anyone else. Ultimately, however, it seems the company was no longer interested in pursuing the product, which proved a major setback for the category at large.
#sleepbuds #ozlo #newsonleo #Product #technology
The two generations of Sleepbuds we got weren’t without their faults, however. At the top of the list was a case of a company that was sure it knew what consumers wanted better than consumers themselves. The buds’ inability to stream Bluetooth audio was something Bose could have easily reconciled with the Sleepbuds 2.
Instead, the company was sure users would be content streaming preloaded white noise tracks. Any decision to limit choice in a consumer product must be justified by the manufacturer, but Bose never gave a compelling reason for limiting such choice. No doubt hardware limitations played a role, but streaming is an essential feature for a pair of $250 specialty earbuds.
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Lawsuit: City cameras make it impossible to drive anywhere without being tracked
“Every passing car is captured,” says 4th Amendment lawsuit against Norfolk, Va.
Police use of automated license-plate reader cameras is being challenged in a lawsuit alleging that the cameras enable warrantless surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The city of Norfolk, Virginia, was sued yesterday by plaintiffs represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm.
#police #lawsuit #technology #newsonleo #surveillance
Norfolk, a city with about 238,000 residents, "has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program," said the complaint filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Like many other cities, Norfolk uses cameras made by the company Flock Safety. A 404 Media article said Institute for Justice lawyer Robert Frommer "told 404 Media that the lawsuit could have easily been filed in any of the more than 5,000 communities where Flock is active, but that Norfolk made sense because the Fourth Circuit of Appeals—which Norfolk is part of—recently held that persistent, warrantless drone surveillance in Baltimore is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in a case called Beautiful Struggle v Baltimore Police Department."
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After nozzle failure, Space Force is “assessing” impacts to Vulcan schedule
“It was a successful Cert flight, and now we’re knee deep in finalizing certification.”
United Launch Alliance has started assembling its next Vulcan rocket—the first destined to launch a US military payload—as the Space Force prepares to certify it to loft the Pentagon's most precious national security satellites.
#newsonleo #spaceforce #ula #technology
Space Force officials expect to approve ULA's Vulcan rocket for military missions without requiring another test flight, despite an unusual problem on the rocket's second demonstration flight earlier this month.
ULA has launched two Vulcan test flights. Military officials watched closely, gathering data to formally certify the rocket is reliable enough to launch national security missions. The first test flight in January, designated Cert-1, was nearly flawless. The Cert-2 launch October 4 overcame an anomaly on one of Vulcan's strap-on solid rocket boosters, which lost its exhaust nozzle but kept firing with degraded thrust.
The rocket's twin BE-4 main engines, made by Blue Origin, corrected for the asymmetric thrust from the two strap-on boosters. Vulcan's Centaur V upper stage also fired its engines longer than planned to make up for the shortfall in performance from the damaged strap-on solid motor. Ultimately, the rocket reached its planned trajectory and delivered a dummy payload into interplanetary space.
Col. James Horne, who oversees launch execution for Space Systems Command, called the test flight a "successful launch" in an interview with Ars. The nozzle failure caused a "significant loss of thrust" from the damaged booster, he said.
The Vulcan rocket's ability to overcome the dramatic nozzle failure, which was easily visible in video of the launch, "really demonstrated the robustness of the total Vulcan system," Horne said.
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De-extinction company provides a progress report on thylacine efforts
Stem cell editing, complete genome, and cane toad resistance mark necessary steps.
Colossal, the company founded to try to restore the mammoth to the Arctic tundra, has also decided to tackle a number of other species that have gone extinct relatively recently: the dodo and the thylacine. Because of significant differences in biology, not the least of which is the generation time of Proboscideans, these other efforts may reach many critical milestones well in advance of the work on mammoths.
#newsonleo #colossal #thylacine #technology
Late last week, Colossal released a progress report on the work involved in resurrecting the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct when the last known survivor died in a zoo in 1936. Marsupial biology has some features that may make de-extinction somewhat easier, but we have far less sophisticated ways of manipulating it compared to the technology we've developed for working with the stem cells and reproduction of placental mammals. But, based on these new announcements, the technology available for working with marsupials is expanding rapidly.
Colossal has branched out from its original de-extinction mission to include efforts to keep species from ever needing its services. In the case of marsupial predators, the de-extinction effort is incorporating work that will benefit existing marsupial predators: generating resistance to the toxins found on the cane toad, an invasive species that has spread widely across Australia.
The primary threat from cane toads comes from bufotoxins, a group of related, complicated chemicals that bind to a protein found on the surface of cells called ATP1A1. This protein helps control the traffic of ions across the cell membrane. Andrew Pask, who is leading Colossal's marsupial efforts, told Ars that animals in the cane toad's native range in Africa share a mutation in ATP1A1 that greatly reduces bufotoxin binding. Now, the team has engineered that change into the genome of a marsupial stem cell line and showed that it boosted resistance by a factor of over 6,000. (A manuscript describing some of this work is available.)
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Nuclear Rockets Could Take Us to Mars in Half the Time. NASA Plans to Fly One by 2027.
NASA and DARPA will fly a prototype nuclear rocket in 2027—potentially making it one of the first of its kind built and operated by the US.
NASA plans to send crewed missions to Mars over the next decade—but the 140 million-mile (225 million-kilometer) journey to the red planet could take several months to years round trip.
#nuclear #rocket #mars #nasa #technology
This relatively long transit time is a result of the use of traditional chemical rocket fuel. An alternative technology to the chemically propelled rockets the agency develops now is called nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses nuclear fission and could one day power a rocket that makes the trip in just half the time.
Nuclear fission involves harvesting the incredible amount of energy released when an atom is split by a neutron. This reaction is known as a fission reaction. Fission technology is well established in power generation and nuclear-powered submarines, and its application to drive or power a rocket could one day give NASA a faster, more powerful alternative to chemically driven rockets.
NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are jointly developing NTP technology. They plan to deploy and demonstrate the capabilities of a prototype system in space in 2027—potentially making it one of the first of its kind to be built and operated by the US.
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What is Singularityhub?
Singularity Hub chronicles technological progress by highlighting the breakthroughs, players, and issues shaping the future as well as supporting a global community of smart, passionate, action-oriented people who want to change the world.
Since 2008, Singularity Hub has offered daily news coverage, feature articles, analysis, and insights on key breakthroughs and future trends in science and technology as well as highlighting how they’re being leveraged to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.
Singularity Hub joined Singularity University in 2012.
With a dedicated editorial staff and a network of expert contributors, stories are targeted at researchers, entrepreneurs, science enthusiasts, technophiles, and the insatiably curious.
Eres un gran escritor sobre tecnología hermano! Dios te bendiga #spanish #freecompliments
Mystery Chinese Satellite Network Is Already Impacting Earth
Light pollution from sources on the surface of the Earth are major obstructions for layperson astronomers and stargazers who are unable to see past the glow of streetlights, lit high-rises, and other sources of illumination. But China’s expansive satellite system is proving that human-made light pollution is just as capable of ruining observations from their position well into the planet’s orbit. The Asian nation’s Qianfan program has orbiting bodies that glow so brightly that they are beginning to interfere with nighttime observations.
#space #china #satellite #technology
The Chinese satellite program in question was launched in August and represents the first of many more that will be launched into the sky over the next several years. Known in English as “Thousand Sails,” Qianfan was conceived to be a “mega constellation” of satellites that will serve China as part of a vast communication network. The small spacecraft were constructed by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology, and is reported to be the Far East’s answer to the United States-based SpaceX Starlink satellites.
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The Guardian: Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore join thousands of creatives in AI warning
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/22/thom-yorke-and-julianne-moore-join-thousands-of-creatives-in-ai-warning
The Guardian: Apple iPad mini A17 Pro review: the best small tablet gets faster
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/23/apple-ipad-mini-a17-pro-review-the-best-small-tablet-gets-faster
The Guardian: X admits ‘error’ led to reinstatement of key suspect in Jamal Khashoggi murder
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/22/jamal-khashoggi-murder-suspect-x-account
The Guardian: Microsoft introduces ‘AI employees’ that can handle client queries
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/21/microsoft-launches-ai-employees-that-can-perform-some-business-tasks
The Guardian: ‘I wanted both sides of the business to be as intimate as being in bed’: tech entrepreneur William Reeve
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/22/i-wanted-both-sides-of-the-business-to-be-as-intimate-as-being-in-bed-tech-entrepreneur-william-reeve
The Guardian: Claude AI tool can now carry out jobs such as filling forms and booking trips, says creator
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/23/claude-ai-anthropic-computer-tasks-form-filling-booking-trips
The Guardian: Child-safety case against Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/22/meta-mark-zuckerberg-child-safety-lawsuit
BBC: Will AI make work burnout worse?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93pz1dz2kxo
BBC: Musk v Ambani: Billionaires battle over India's satellite internet
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3z3ydwdppo
BBC: 'New AI update to lock phones will deter thieves'
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1484r0r3m6o
#freecompliments
Streaming subscription fees have been rising while content quality is dropping
Surveys show decline in customer satisfaction with what is available to stream.
Subscription fees for video streaming services have been on a steady incline. But despite subscribers paying more, surveys suggest they're becoming less satisfied with what's available to watch.
#streaming #entertainment #technology #fees
At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks Chairman John Landgraf that refers to an era of rampant content spending that gave us shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. For streaming services, the Peak TV era meant trying to lure subscribers with original content that was often buoyed by critical acclaim and/or top-tier actors, writers, and/or directors. However, as streaming services struggle to reach or maintain profitability, 2024 saw a drop in the number of new scripted shows for the first time in at least 10 years, FX Research found.
Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with the quality of content available on streaming services seems to have declined for the past couple of years. Most surveys suggest a generally small decline in perceived quality, but that’s still perturbing considering how frequently streaming services increase subscription fees. There was a time when a streaming subscription represented an exclusive ticket to viewing some of the best new TV shows and movies. But we’ve reached a point where the most streamed TV show last year was Suits—an original from the USA Network cable channel that ended in 2019.
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“I am still alive”: Users say T-Mobile must pay for killing “lifetime” price lock
We obtained 900 complaints the FCC received about T-Mobile’s infamous price hike.
T-Mobile promised users who bought certain mobile plans that it would never raise their prices for as long as they lived—but then raised their prices this year. So it's no surprise that 2,000 T-Mobile customers complained to the government about a price hike on plans that were advertised as having a lifetime price lock.
#tmobile #technology #mobile #phones
T-Mobile's "Lifetime price Lock" Controversy: Broken Promises and customer Backlash
In a significant development that has sparked widespread customer outrage and regulatory scrutiny, T-Mobile has come under fire for raising prices on plans that were marketed with "lifetime" price guarantees. The controversy has led to over 2,000 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaints and a class-action lawsuit, highlighting the growing tension between corporate practices and consumer trust in the telecommunications industry.
The Price Lock Promise
T-Mobile's journey into this controversy began in 2015 when it introduced the "Un-contract" promise, which was later extended to T-Mobile One plans in January 2017. The company's marketing was unequivocal: customers would keep their price until they decided to change it. Then-CEO John Legere emphasized this commitment, stating, "T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile One plan."
The company positioned itself as different from other carriers, with Legere declaring, "We're the Un-carrier. Everything the carriers do, we un-do." He specifically criticized competitors for using "desperate, short-term promotions to suck you in and lock you down—only to jack up rates later," promising that T-Mobile would not engage in such practices.
The Price Hike and Customer Response
Despite these promises, T-Mobile implemented price increases of $2 to $5 per line in 2024, affecting customers across various plans, including those marketed with lifetime price guarantees. The impact was particularly significant for customers with multiple lines, with some reporting increases of up to $50 per month for accounts with ten lines.
The customer response was immediate and severe, with complaints flooding the FCC. Many of the affected customers were seniors on the 55+ plan, who found themselves facing unexpected increases on fixed incomes. The complaints revealed a pattern of frustration and betrayal, with customers pointedly noting they were "still alive" despite their "lifetime" guarantees being violated.
T-Mobile's Defense and Customer Rebuttals
T-Mobile's defense of the price increases has centered around a previously undisclosed caveat in their FAQ, which essentially nullified the price-lock promise. According to the company, the Un-contract merely committed T-Mobile to pay the final month's recurring service charges if prices were raised and customers chose to leave within 60 days.
However, customers have strongly contested this interpretation, with many pointing to specific marketing materials and terms of conditions that appeared to make unambiguous promises. For instance, Maryland resident John Bradshaw highlighted terms stating that for customers on price-lock guaranteed Rate Plans, T-Mobile would not increase monthly recurring service charges "for as long as you continuously remain a customer in good standing on a qualifying Rate Plan."
The Sprint Merger Connection
Many customers and critics have drawn a direct line between T-Mobile's behavior and its 2020 acquisition of Sprint. Complaints to the FCC frequently cited the Merger as enabling T-Mobile's price increases by reducing competition in the wireless market. Some customers have called for re-examination of the merger and even suggested breaking up the combined company to restore market competition.
Customer Service Responses and Trapped Customers
The situation has been exacerbated by inconsistent and often frustrating responses from T-Mobile's customer service. Customers report receiving various explanations for the price increases, including:
Many customers feel trapped in their T-Mobile service due to device installment plans, which require full payment if customers terminate service. This has created a situation where customers must either accept the price increases or face substantial device payoff costs to switch carriers.
Regulatory and Legal Response
The controversy has attracted attention from multiple regulatory bodies:
Both the FCC and FTC have previously taken action against T-Mobile for other violations. The FCC recently fined T-Mobile for data breaches and selling users' real-time location data, while the FTC secured a $90 million settlement in 2014 over unwanted third-party charges.
Impact on Vulnerable Customers
The price increases have particularly affected vulnerable populations:
Many of these customers chose T-Mobile specifically for its price guarantee, making the increases especially burdensome for those least able to absorb additional costs or switch carriers.
Customer Strategies and Outcomes
Customers have adopted various strategies to deal with the situation:
The Broader Implications
This controversy raises several important questions about corporate accountability and consumer protection in the telecommunications industry:
Looking forward
The resolution of this controversy may have far-reaching implications for the telecommunications industry and corporate marketing practices. The pending class-action lawsuit and potential regulatory investigations could force T-Mobile to:
The outcome could also influence how other telecommunications companies approach price guarantees and long-term customer commitments in the future.
Conclusion
T-Mobile's decision to raise prices on "lifetime" guaranteed plans represents more than just a pricing dispute—it highlights the complex relationship between corporate promises, customer trust, and regulatory oversight in the modern telecommunications landscape. As the legal and regulatory processes unfold, the case may set important precedents for how companies can market their services and what recourse customers have when long-term promises are broken.
The controversy serves as a reminder of the importance of clear, honest marketing practices and the potential consequences of prioritizing short-term profits over long-term customer relationships. As one customer noted to the FCC, "If this is allowed to stand, then words have no meaning, businesses are able to lie directly and blatantly to the American people." The resolution of this issue may well determine whether such dire predictions come true or whether consumer protections can effectively guard against such practices in the future.
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Demand will stay around "Animation, Visual Effects,Gaming, Comics, and Extended Reality (AVGC-XR)".
#freecompliments
SONOLUMINESCENCE
It refers to the phenomenon of producing light through the irradiation of liquids with ultrasonic waves
It is formed when bubbles formed by cavitation in liquids interact with powerful sound waves
#freecompliments
Square Kilometer Array (SKA)-- World’s largest radio telescope in making, has carried out its first observations and become partially functional.
#freecompliments
The Pentagon Wants to Flood Social Media With Fake AI People
"This will only embolden other militaries or adversaries to do the same."
As The Intercept reports, a wishlist put forward by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) — a furtive counterterrorism group within the US Department of Defense (DoD) — reveals the agency's interest in using generative AI to create fake online internet users.
#socialmedia #technology #pentagon #ai
That's despite the US government's persistent warnings that deepfakes and other AI-generated content will deepen the misinformation crisis and lead to a muddier information ecosystem for everyone.
In the document, JSOC explains that it's seeking "technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content" for use by Special Operations Forces. This "solution," JSOC adds, "should include facial and background imagery, facial and background video, and audio layers."
According to the wishlist, JSOC wants SOF agents to "use this capability to gather information from public online forums."
In other words, JSOC wants to provide its special ops teams with the technology to create sophisticated, bespoke AI deepfakes, capable of convincing social media users that they're the real deal for the sake of information-gathering efforts.
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AI Has a Secret: We’re Still Not Sure How to Test for Human Levels of Intelligence
We need to know when machines are getting close to human-level reasoning, with all the safety, ethical, and moral questions this raises.
Two of San Francisco’s leading players in artificial intelligence have challenged the public to come up with questions capable of testing the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like Google Gemini and OpenAI’s o1. Scale AI, which specializes in preparing the vast tracts of data on which the LLMs are trained, teamed up with the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) to launch the initiative, Humanity’s Last Exam.
#ai #technology #newsonleo
The Challenge of Testing AI: A New Frontier in Intelligence Assessment
In a significant development in the artificial intelligence landscape, Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) have launched an ambitious initiative called "Humanity's Last Exam." This project, offering $5,000 prizes for the TOP 50 selected questions, aims to create new ways to evaluate advanced AI systems, particularly as traditional testing methods become increasingly inadequate.
The Current Testing Dilemma
The challenge facing AI evaluation is multifaceted. Modern Large language Models (LLMs) like Google Gemini and OpenAI's latest offerings are already excelling at conventional tests in fields ranging from intelligence to law. However, this success raises a crucial question: Are these achievements meaningful when the AI systems may have already encountered the test content during their training?
The problem is set to intensify. According to Epoch AI's projections, by 2028, AI systems will have effectively processed all human-written content. This milestone presents a fundamental challenge in continuing to assess AI capabilities accurately.
Emerging Complications
Several key issues complicate the testing landscape:
Data Collection Evolution: Some experts advocate for "embodied AI" solutions, where systems learn through real-world interactions. Tesla's autonomous vehicles and Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses exemplify this approach, collecting real-world data through sensors and cameras.
Intelligence Definition: The fundamental challenge of defining and measuring intelligence, particularly Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), remains. Traditional IQ tests have long been criticized for their narrow scope, and AI faces similar limitations in its evaluation metrics.
New Testing Approaches
The field is seeing innovative attempts to create more comprehensive testing methods:
The ARC Solution
François Chollet's "abstraction and reasoning corpus" (ARC) represents a notable advancement in AI testing. Unlike traditional benchmarks, ARC tests an AI's ability to:
Current results are telling: Leading LLMs like OpenAI's latest models and Anthropic's Sonnet 3.5 achieve only 21% success rates on the ARC public leaderboard. Even with more sophisticated approaches reaching 50%, these scores remain well below human performance levels of over 90%.
Scale/CAIS Initiative
The Humanity's Last Exam project takes a unique approach by:
Looking Ahead
As AI systems continue to advance, the challenge of testing them becomes increasingly complex. The field must not only develop ways to measure current AI capabilities but also prepare for testing potential superintelligent systems - a challenge that pushes the boundaries of our current understanding of intelligence assessment.
The ongoing efforts to create new testing methodologies reflect a crucial understanding: as AI systems approach and potentially surpass human-level reasoning, we need robust ways to evaluate their capabilities, with significant implications for safety, ethics, and governance in the AI age.
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QNLP has emerged as a field of research with potentially profound implications for LLM.
Traditional LLMs excel at processing semantics but struggle with syntax.
QNLP focuses on both--syntax and semantics.
#freecompliments
In a shocking move, Arm cancels Qualcomm's license to manufacture Snapdragon chips
This architectural license agreement has been the cornerstone of the partnership that has kept Android smartphones humming with Qualcomm's cutting-edge processors for years.
The long-simmering battle between British chip designer Arm and American semiconductor superstar Qualcomm has just reached a boiling point. Arm has now given Qualcomm notice that it is terminating the license allowing Qualcomm to create its own chips based on Arm's intellectual property.
#arm #qualcomm #technology #snapdragon
This "architectural license" agreement has been the cornerstone of the partnership that has kept Android smartphones humming with Qualcomm's cutting-edge processors for years. Now, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg, Arm has fired off a 60-day cancellation notice that could bring this long-standing deal crumbling down.
For the uninitiated, the hostility between these two tech titans that were once close partners stems from Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of chip design startup Nuvia in 2021.
Arm alleges that when Qualcomm acquired Nuvia, it violated the licensing terms since Nuvia already had a separate agreement with Arm. The company's stance is that Qualcomm should have renegotiated those terms instead of simply absorbing Nuvia's existing Arm licenses. This led Arm to sue Qualcomm in 2022 for breach of contract and trademark infringement.
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Fear and Loathing of AI This article was from a few days ago. Hollywood has its collective knickers in a twist.
Nicolas Cage Urges Young Actors To Protect Themselves From AI: “This Technology Wants To Take Your Instrument”
By Natalie Oganesyan, Destiny Jackson
October 20, 2024 3:39pm
‘This is a game changer’: Runway releases new AI facial expression motion capture feature Act-One
AI video has come incredibly far in the years since the first models debuted in late 2022, increasing in realism, resolution, fidelity, prompt adherence (how well they match the text prompt or description of the video that the user typed) and number.
But one area that remains a limitation to many AI video creators — myself included — is in depicting realistic facial expressions in AI generated characters. Most appear quite limited and difficult to control.
#newsonleo #runway #ai #facialexpression #technology
But no longer: today, Runway, the New York City-headquartered AI startup backed by Google and others, announced a new feature “Act-One,” that allows users to record video of themselves or actors from any video camera — even the one on a smartphone — and then transfers the subject’s facial expressions to that of an AI generated character with uncanny accuracy.
The free-to-use tool is gradually rolling out “gradually” to users starting today, according to Runway’s blog post on the feature.
While anyone with a Runway account can access it, it will be limited to those who have enough credits to generate new videos on the company’s Gen-3 Alpha video generation model introduced earlier this year, which supports text-to-video, image-to-video, and video-to-video AI creation pipelines (e.g. the user can type in a scene description, upload an image or a video, or use a combination of these inputs and Gen-3 Alpha will use what its given to guide its generation of a new scene).
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Are We Reaching the Limit of Human Longevity? A New Study Says Yes
A new paper is sparking debate with its finding that, despite progress in medicine, increases in life expectancy are slowing.
Human life expectancy dramatically increased last century. Compared to babies born in 1900, those born at the turn of the 21st century could live, on average, three decades longer—with many living to celebrate their 100th birthdays. In other words, for much of the century, each passing year added something like three months to a person’s potential time on Earth.
#humans #life #technology #medicine
To optimists in the longevity field, the rapid rise in life expectancy will likely continue at a steady, if not accelerated, pace.
Others have a more pessimistic view. In their predictions, humans will hit a natural ceiling, with the average person in developed countries living to an age far less than 100.
A new study adds to the debate with analysis of data from 1990 to 2019. After examining life expectancy from eight countries with the longest living populations, plus those from Hong Kong and the US, the team reached a troubling conclusion: Despite innovations in healthcare, the increase in overall life expectancy is slowing down.
“Most people alive today at older ages are living on time that was manufactured by medicine,” said study author S. Jay Olshansky, a veteran researcher of aging at the University of Illinois. “But these medical Band-Aids are producing fewer years of life even though they’re occurring at an accelerated pace, implying that the period of rapid increases in life expectancy is now documented to be over.”
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The concept of Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) is a fascinating topic that has garnered significant attention in the fields of life extension, artificial intelligence, and futurism. To dive deeper, let's break down the key components and ideas surrounding LEV.
What is Longevity Escape Velocity?
Longevity Escape Velocity is a hypothetical point in time when the benefits of life extension technologies become so significant that they allow individuals to overcome the biological limitations of human aging and mortality. This concept was first introduced by Ray Kurzweil, a renowned futurist and inventor, in his 2005 book "The Singularity Is Near."
The idea behind LEV
The LEV concept is based on the idea that life extension technologies will eventually reach a point where they can significantly improve human healthspan, potentially even allowing individuals to live indefinitely. This would occur when the benefits of these technologies outweigh the costs, and the advantages of living longer become so great that they become a self-sustaining feedback loop.
Calculating LEV
To estimate the LEV, researchers have proposed using a "break-even point" analysis. This involves estimating the time it would take for life extension technologies to improve human healthspan by a certain percentage, such that the benefits of the technology outweigh the costs.
One way to calculate LEV is to use a rough estimate of the rate at which life extension technologies will improve human healthspan. For example, some researchers have suggested that life extension technologies could improve healthspan by 20-30% every 10 years. This would result in an exponential increase in healthspan, leading to a potential LEV.
Estimates of LEV
Several researchers have proposed different estimates of LEV based on their own analyses and models. Some estimates range from around 2045 to 2100, while others are more speculative and range from 2020 to 2120.
The 2045 estimate
One commonly cited estimate of LEV is around 2045, based on the assumption that life extension technologies will improve human healthspan by 20-30% every 10 years, starting from a baseline of around 30% improvement per decade. This would result in an exponential increase in healthspan, leading to a potential LEV around 2045.
Factors influencing LEV
Several factors could influence the timing of LEV, including:
Implications of LEV
If LEV is achieved, it could have significant implications for human society, including:
Overall, the concept of Longevity Escape Velocity is a complex and multifaceted topic that raises important questions about the future of human health, aging, and society. While it is still highly speculative, LEV has the potential to fundamentally change the way we think about human lifespan and the possibilities for human existence.
Amazon's new budget storefront to compete with Temu and Shein, offering $20 sofas and low-cost goods
Back in June, Amazon announced that it was launching a secondary storefront at an invite-only conference for Chinese sellers.
Following reports earlier this year that Amazon is responding to competition from Shein and Temu with its own budget storefront, internal documents have revealed the kind of prices it will be charging. Merchants will be subject to extreme price caps, including no more than $20 for sofas.
#newsonleo #amazon #temu #shein #technology
Back in June, Amazon announced that it was launching a secondary storefront at an invite-only conference for Chinese sellers. The store will enable them to ship their items directly to US consumers, allowing Amazon to compete with Temu and Shein, which have been attracting more customers thanks to the rock-bottom prices they offer – despite the often dubious quality.
Amazon said at the time that the storefront would feature a variety of unbranded items, many priced under $20.
According to a new report from The Information, Amazon has informed merchants about the price caps it is imposing on its secondary store. The messages include a list of 700 items, such as $8 for jewelry, $9 for bedding, $13 for guitars, and $20 for sofas.
Amazon plans to charge sellers lower fulfillment fees for items sold through the low-cost storefront. Sellers would be charged between $1.77 and $2.05 to ship a 4-to-8-ounce item. That represents significant savings over the $2.67 to $4.16 Amazon charges for items of a similar weight shipped under its Fulfillment by Amazon program from a domestic warehouse.
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Qualcomm accelerates automotive AI with Snapdragon's latest chips
Unsurprisingly, just as AI has been instrumental in advancing other device categories, it's now beginning to make a significant impact in the car market.
While smart glasses and other wearables have been getting a great deal of attention lately, the market poised to be the largest and most impactful new category of personal devices is cars. With the shift to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and ongoing advances in assisted and autonomous driving, the automotive industry is on the verge of becoming the "next big thing" for the tech sector.
#qualcomm #ai #snapdragon #smartglasses #technology
Unsurprisingly, just as AI has been instrumental in advancing other device categories, it's now beginning to make a significant impact in the car market.
The latest example comes from Qualcomm, which recently unveiled next-gen versions of its automotive-focused chips at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui. The Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite are designed for infotainment and assisted/autonomous driving features in premium vehicles and are expected to start sampling in 2025.
Both chips and their respective software platforms are part of Qualcomm's Snapdragon Digital Chassis, which debuted in 2022. Building on the company's previous automotive efforts, these new chips feature the Oryon CPU architecture.
Oryon represents a major leap in performance and power efficiency compared to previous Qualcomm CPUs. It's also a key component of the Snapdragon X Elite chips for PCs, released earlier this year. A second-generation version of Oryon is also part of the new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile CPU for smartphones.
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Neuralink’s 'Blindsight', a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) implant, received breakthrough device” status by US Food and Drug Administration
#freecompliments
Axiom Station: It is a commercial space station being developed by Axiom Space to operate in low-Earth orbit. It will be the first commercial space station in the world.
#freecompliments
Gateway Space Station: NASA-led Gateway Program is an international collaboration to establish humanity's first space station around the Moon as a vital component of the Artemis campaign.
#freecompliments
AI Agents Could Collaborate on Far Grander Scales Than Humans, Study Says
A new study found the most capable AI models could cooperate in groups of at least 1,000—an order of magnitude more than humans.
Humans are social animals, but there appear to be hard limits to the number of relationships we can maintain at once. New research suggests AI may be capable of collaborating in much larger groups.
#newsonleo #aiagents #technology
The Future of Collaboration: AI's Ability to Work in Large Groups
Humans are inherently social creatures, but our ability to maintain relationships is limited. The concept of Dunbar's Number, which suggests that humans can only maintain social groups of around 150 people, has become a popular benchmark for the optimal size of human groups in business management. However, new research suggests that AI may be capable of collaborating in much larger groups, potentially revolutionizing the way we approach complex tasks.
Researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany tested the social capabilities of large language models (LLMs) by simulating groups of the same model, each with a random opinion. They found that the most capable models could cooperate in groups of at least 1,000, an order of magnitude more than humans. This is a significant finding, as it suggests that AI may be able to collaborate at scales far beyond what is possible for humans.
The researchers used a simple experiment to test the social capabilities of the LLMs. They created multiple instances of the same model, each with a random opinion, and then showed each copy the opinions of all its peers. They then asked each copy if it wanted to update its own opinion based on the opinions of its peers. The team found that the likelihood of the group reaching consensus was directly related to the power of the underlying model.
The results of this study suggest that larger AI models could potentially collaborate at scales far beyond what is possible for humans. This has significant implications for the way we approach complex tasks, as it could enable AI to work together to solve problems that are currently beyond the capabilities of individual models.
For instance, in the field of medicine, AI could be used to analyze large amounts of medical data and collaborate with other AI models to identify patterns and make predictions about patient outcomes. In the field of finance, AI could be used to analyze large amounts of financial data and collaborate with other AI models to identify trends and make predictions about market movements.
However, there are also some limitations to consider. For example, agreeing on something does not necessarily mean that it is the right solution. The researchers noted that the solution that the AI agents settle on may not be optimal, and that there is a good chance that the solution will not be the best one.
Additionally, there are computational costs associated with running large groups of AI models. While the idea of AI collaborating in large groups is promising, it may not be practical in the near future due to the computational resources required.
Despite these limitations, the potential for AI to collaborate in large groups is an exciting one. As the technology continues to evolve, it is likely that we will see more advanced AI models that are capable of working together to solve complex problems. Whether current models are smart enough to take advantage of this ability is unclear, but it seems entirely possible that future generations of the technology will be able to.
In conclusion, the study of AI's ability to collaborate in large groups is an important area of research that has significant implications for the future of AI. While there are limitations to consider, the potential for AI to work together to solve complex problems is an exciting one that could have a significant impact on a wide range of fields.
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You’ll Soon Be Able to Book a Room at the World’s First 3D-Printed Hotel
El Cosmico, a hotel in Texas, will gain 43 new rooms and 18 houses, which will be printed using Icon's giant gantry-style Vulcan printer.
The first 3D-printed house in the US was unveiled just over six years ago. Since then, homes have been printed all over the country and the world, from Virginia to California and Mexico to Kenya. If you’re intrigued by the concept but not sure whether you’re ready to jump on the bandwagon, you’ll soon be able to take a 3D-printed dwelling for a test run—by staying in the world’s first 3D-printed hotel.
#3dprinying #hotel #texas #technology #newsonleo
The hotel is under construction in the city of Marfa, in the far west of Texas. It’s an expansion of an existing hotel called El Cosmico, which until now has really been more of a campground, offering accommodations in trailers, yurts, and tents. According to the property’s website, “the vision has been to create a living laboratory for artistic, cultural, and community experimentation.” The project is a collaboration between Austin, Texas-based 3D printing construction company Icon, architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group, and El Cosmico’s owner, Liz Lambert.
El Cosmico will gain 43 new rooms and 18 houses, which will be printed using Icon’s gantry-style Vulcan printer. Vulcan is 46.5 feet (14.2 meters) wide by 15.5 feet (4.7 meters) tall, and it weighs 4.75 tons. It builds homes by pouring a proprietary concrete mixture called Lavacrete into a pattern dictated by software, squeezing out one layer at a time as it moves around on an axis set on a track. Its software, BuildOS, can be operated from a tablet or smartphone.
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The Vulcan 3D Printer is a highly advanced additive manufacturing device that was developed by NASA's Langley Research Center and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in the early 2000s. The device was designed to print objects in space, where traditional 3D printing processes are often limited by the lack of gravity, temperature control, and access to raw materials.
Design and Architecture
The Vulcan 3D Printer is a large, compact device that is approximately 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. It is designed to be highly modular, with interchangeable print heads, extruders, and other components. The device uses a combination of robotic and mechanical systems to move the print head and extruder, allowing for high-speed printing and precise control over the printing process.
Printing Process
The Vulcan 3D Printer uses a unique extrusion-based process to print objects. The device uses a high-temperature, high-pressure gas mixture to melt and extrude metal or ceramic powders, which are then deposited onto a substrate to form a solid object. The printing process is controlled by a sophisticated computer system that adjusts the temperature, pressure, and flow rate of the gas mixture in real-time to achieve precise control over the printing process.
Materials
The Vulcan 3D Printer is capable of printing a wide range of materials, including metals, ceramics, and polymers. The device uses a combination of powder feed systems and liquid metal systems to deposit material onto the substrate. The materials used in the printing process can be tailored to specific applications, such as printing high-temperature materials for aerospace applications or printing biocompatible materials for medical applications.
Temperature and Pressure
The Vulcan 3D Printer is capable of operating at extremely high temperatures, ranging from 500°C to 1000°C. The device also uses high-pressure gas mixtures to print materials, which allows for precise control over the printing process and the ability to print complex geometries.
Speed and Accuracy
The Vulcan 3D Printer is designed to print objects at extremely high speeds, with some reports suggesting that it can print objects at rates of up to 100 times faster than traditional 3D printing devices. The device also uses advanced sensing and control systems to achieve precise control over the printing process, allowing for accurate printing of complex geometries and small features.
Testing and Applications
The Vulcan 3D Printer has undergone significant testing and development since its inception. In 2011, NASA announced that the device had successfully printed a functional engine component in space, demonstrating its potential for use in space exploration. The device has also been used to print a variety of other objects, including satellite components, rocket nozzles, and even a functional engine for a small satellite.
Comparison to Other 3D Printing Technologies
The Vulcan 3D Printer is one of the most advanced 3D printing technologies in the world, and it is often compared to other technologies, such as FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) and SLS (Selective Laser Sintering). While these technologies are widely used in industry and academia, the Vulcan 3D Printer offers several advantages, including its ability to print at extremely high speeds, its ability to print complex geometries, and its ability to operate in extreme environments.
Challenges and Limitations
Despite its advanced capabilities, the Vulcan 3D Printer is not without its challenges and limitations. One of the main challenges is the high cost of the device, which is estimated to be in the millions of dollars. Additionally, the device requires highly trained personnel to operate, and it requires a sophisticated control system to achieve precise control over the printing process.
Overall, the Vulcan 3D Printer is a highly advanced additive manufacturing device that is capable of printing objects in space and other extreme environments. Its unique design and printing process make it an ideal technology for a variety of applications, including space exploration, aerospace, and medical research.
DeepMind and BioNTech Bet AI Lab Assistants Will Accelerate Science
Several companies and labs are betting the latest generation of chatbots could make useful research assistants, accelerating science.
There has long been hope that AI could help accelerate scientific progress. Now, companies are betting the latest generation of chatbots could make useful research assistants.
#ai #science #deepmind #technology
Most efforts to accelerate scientific progress using AI have focused on solving fundamental conceptual problems, such as protein folding or the physics of weather modeling. But a big chunk of the scientific process is considerably more prosaic—deciding what experiments to do, coming up with experimental protocols, and analyzing data.
This can suck up an enormous amount of an academic’s time, distracting them from higher value work. That’s why both Google DeepMind and BioNTech are currently developing tools designed to automate many of these more mundane jobs, according to the Financial Times.
At a recent event, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said his company was working on a science-focused large language model that could act as a research assistant, helping design experiments to tackle specific hypotheses and even predict the outcome. BioNTech also announced at an AI innovation day last week that it had used Meta’s open-source Llama 3.1 model to create an AI assistant called Laila with a “detailed knowledge of biology.”
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Microsoft Debuting AI-Powered Employees for Companies
"Every organization will have a constellation of agents."
Microsoft is releasing a suite of autonomous AI models — or "agents" — that can serve as virtual employees for its customers.
Not only that, the company is also giving users the ability to create autonomous agents of their own using its Copilot Studio. These can be tailored as needed, capable of working on your behalf, Microsoft claims, or assisting in your workflow.
#microsoft #ai #employees #virutalemployees
The products, which were first announced in May, represent Microsoft planting a flag in the world of AI agents, which are supposed to be more self-sufficient than conventional models and are designed to work, hypothetically, without human intervention.
"Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world," Microsoft wrote in a blog post. "Every organization will have a constellation of agents — ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous."
Microsoft views AI agents as a way of supercharging you — or your company's — productivity.
The ten ready-made versions it will be releasing via Dynamics 365, Microsoft's suite of business app, can purportedly perform roles such as identifying sales opportunities for a human sales lead or helping customer service teams.
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Moron Shoots Cybertruck, Alarmed to Discover It's Not Actually Bulletproof
What's more alpha male than driving around in a big, red-blooded Cybertruck? Shooting one, of course.
In a video that's gone viral on social media, some dude in a tank top and shorts — purportedly porn star Dante Colle — stares down a Cybertruck parked in the middle of a field, raises his handgun, and fires, putting one through the stainless steel ass of the vehicle.
#cybertruck #technology #automotive
Based on the man's dramatic reaction, the huge bullet hole in his ride isn't how he expected his little experiment to turn out.
"Fuck!" he yells. Then he drops his firearm to the ground and buries his head in his hands.
The hysteric cameraman spells it out for us. "I don't think it's bulletproof!"
There's a lot of stupid stuff going on here. Shooting a Cybertruck, for one.
Shooting it while barely standing a dozen feet away — which in all likelihood means he was actually lucky that the round went clean through, because otherwise he could've been in the path of a dangerous ricochet.
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Horror Studio Blumhouse Partners With Meta to Use Its AI Video Generator
Blumhouse goes AI.
As Variety reports, Blumhouse Productions, best known for franchises like "Halloween" and "The Purge," has announced a partnership with Meta that grants it access to an early version of the tech company's recently-unveiled video generation AI model Movie Gen.
#blumhouse #ai #entertainment #hollywood #meta
The partnership between Blumhouse Productions and Meta, as well as the use of generative AI in the film industry, raises several concerns and questions. Here are some of the key points to consider:
Authorship and Ownership
One of the primary concerns is the issue of authorship and ownership. When a film is generated using generative AI, who owns the rights to the final product? Is it the human filmmaker, the AI algorithm, or someone else entirely? This raises questions about the role of human creativity and the value of labor in the film industry.
Originality and Unique Value
Generative AI can produce content that is identical to or similar to existing works. This raises concerns about the ability of AI-generated content to add unique value to a film or replace human creativity altogether. If AI-generated content can replicate existing works, does it have any inherent value or originality?
The Role of Human Creatives
The partnership between Blumhouse and Meta has sparked concerns about the role of human creatives in the film industry. If AI-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent, will human filmmakers be relegated to secondary or supporting roles? Will their skills and expertise become less valuable?
The Impact on Emerging Filmmakers
The use of generative AI in the film industry could have a disproportionate impact on emerging filmmakers. Many new filmmakers are struggling to make a name for themselves, and the use of AI-generated content could further stifle their creative output and limit their opportunities.
The Economic Impact
The use of generative AI in the film industry could also have significant economic implications. If AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, it could lead to a decrease in demand for human filmmakers and their services. This could have a ripple effect throughout the industry, impacting not just filmmakers but also other professionals, such as editors, cinematographers, and sound designers.
The Need for Regulation
Some experts argue that the use of generative AI in the film industry requires regulation to ensure that it is used in a responsible and transparent manner. This could involve guidelines on the use of AI-generated content, as well as laws to protect human creatives and their rights.
The Role of Meta and Blumhouse
The partnership between Meta and Blumhouse raises questions about the responsibility of AI companies and studios. While Meta has acknowledged the concerns of the creative community, it is unclear what steps the company will take to address these issues. Blumhouse, on the other hand, has a reputation for championing emerging filmmakers and pushing the boundaries of the film industry. However, its partnership with Meta has sparked concerns about its commitment to human creativity and the value of labor.
The Future of the Film Industry
The use of generative AI in the film industry is likely to have far-reaching consequences for the industry as a whole. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, it will be interesting to see how the industry adapts and evolves. Will the film industry become more streamlined and efficient, or will it become increasingly dominated by AI-generated content? Only time will tell.
In conclusion, the partnership between Blumhouse Productions and Meta, as well as the use of generative AI in the film industry, raises a number of complex and contentious issues. While there are potential benefits to the use of AI-generated content, there are also significant concerns about authorship, ownership, originality, and the role of human creatives. As the industry continues to grapple with the implications of AI-generated content, it is essential to have an open and honest conversation about the potential risks and benefits.
More information about Blumhouse Productions in detail.
Early Years (1998-2000)
Blumhouse Productions was founded in 1998 by Jason Blum and his business partner, Marc Warren. At the time, Blum was a young entrepreneur with a passion for film production. He had previously worked in the film industry, but he wanted to start his own company and produce films that were low-budget, high-concept, and focused on the horror and thriller genres.
The company's early years were marked by struggles and challenges. Blum and Warren had to work tirelessly to secure financing for their projects, often relying on private investors and crowdfunding campaigns to support their films. Despite the challenges, Blumhouse Productions continued to produce films, starting with the 1999 release of "The Faculty," a sci-fi horror film that was made on a budget of just $3.5 million.
Breakthrough with "Paranormal Activity" (2007)
Blumhouse's big break came in 2007 with the release of "Paranormal Activity," a found-footage horror film that was made on an incredibly low budget of just $15,000. The film was written and directed by Oren Peli, a young filmmaker who had previously worked on several low-budget films.
"Paranormal Activity" was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $193 million worldwide on a budget of just $15,000. The film's success can be attributed to its clever marketing campaign, which included a series of online ads that made it seem like the film was actually a real found-footage documentary.
Expansion and Diversification (2008-2010)
Following the success of "Paranormal Activity," Blumhouse expanded its operations and began producing more films. In 2008, they released "The Last Exorcism," a found-footage horror film that was made on a budget of just $1.5 million and grossed over $33 million at the domestic box office.
In 2009, they released "Insidious," a horror film that was made on a budget of just $1.5 million and grossed over $97 million worldwide. These films demonstrated Blumhouse's ability to produce low-budget, high-concept horror films that could be marketed and distributed in a way that made them seem like bigger, more expensive films.
The "Blumhouse Model" (2010-present)
Blumhouse's success can be attributed to their unique "model" of producing low-budget horror films that are marketed and distributed in a way that makes them seem like bigger, more expensive films. This model involves several key elements, including:
Notable Films (2010-present)
Some of Blumhouse's most notable films include:
Awards and Accolades
Blumhouse has won numerous awards for their films, including several Academy Award nominations and wins. They have also won several other awards, including the Saturn Award for Best independent film and the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Low-Budget Film.
Expansion into television (2010-present)
In addition to producing films, Blumhouse has also expanded into television production. They have produced several TV shows, including "The Blacklist," "Scream Queens," and "Truth Be Told."
Impact on the Film Industry
Blumhouse's success has had a significant impact on the film industry. Their model of producing low-budget, high-concept horror films has been widely influential, and many other production companies have followed in their footsteps.
Blumhouse's success has also led to a shift in the way that studios approach horror films. Many studios have begun to take a more serious approach to horror films, investing in bigger budgets and more elaborate productions. However, Blumhouse's model has also shown that it is possible to make successful horror films on a much smaller budget.
Overall, Blumhouse Productions has established itself as a major player in the film industry, known for their low-budget, high-concept horror films that are marketed and distributed in a way that makes them seem like bigger, more expensive films.
These Mini AI Models Match OpenAI With 1,000 Times Less Data
The artificial intelligence industry is obsessed with size. Bigger algorithms. More data. Sprawling data centers that could, in a few years, consume enough electricity to power whole cities.
This insatiable appetite is why OpenAI—which is on track to make $3.7 billion in revenue but lose $5 billion this year—just announced it’s raised $6.6 billion more in funding and opened a line of credit for another $4 billion.
#ai2 #ai #models #openai #newsonleo #technology
Eye-popping numbers like these make it easy to forget size isn’t everything.
Some researchers, particularly those with fewer resources, are aiming to do more with less. AI scaling will continue, but those algorithms will also get far more efficient as they grow.
Last week, researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2) released a new family of open-source multimodal models competitive with state-of-the-art models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o—but an order of magnitude smaller. Called Molmo, the models range from 1 billion to 72 billion parameters. GPT-4o, by comparison, is estimated to top a trillion parameters.
Ai2 said it accomplished this feat by focusing on data quality over quantity.
Algorithms fed billions of examples, like GPT-4o, are impressively capable. But they also ingest a ton of low-quality information. All this noise consumes precious computing power.
To build their new multimodal models, Ai2 assembled a backbone of existing large language models and vision encoders. They then compiled a more focused, higher quality dataset of around 700,000 images and 1.3 million captions to train new models with visual capabilities. That may sound like a lot, but it’s on the order of 1,000 times less data than what’s used in proprietary multimodal models.
Instead of writing captions, the team asked annotators to record 60- to 90-second verbal descriptions answering a list of questions about each image. They then transcribed the descriptions—which often stretched across several pages—and used other large language models to clean up, crunch down, and standardize them. They found that this simple switch, from written to verbal annotation, yielded far more detail with little extra effort.
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Who is behind AI2?
We are a Seattle based non-profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond.
Our people behind the AI
We unite the best and brightest scientific and engineering minds to explore the potential of truly open AI. Through close collaboration, we rapidly identify, define, and act on the most exciting and promising new ideas in our industry.
To us, diversity—of skills, experiences, and backgrounds—is key to building the safest, most effective open AI technology. So, we invest in DEI through programming and training, research into accessibility and inclusive user experiences, intentional hiring practices, and community building.
Human Models Horrified to Discover Their Faces Are Being Used for AI Propaganda
"People will think I am involved in the coup."
Synthesia, a text-to-video AI company with a valuation of over one billion dollars, claims that its tech allows users to "create studio-quality videos with AI avatars" as easily as they can throw together a slide deck.
#synthesia #ai #video #deepfakes #technology
The company's clientele is a wild mix, ranging from media stalwarts like Reuters and global accounting giant Ernst & Young to authoritarian regimes — a reality that's come as a terrible surprise to the human models whose faces Synthesia's AI models are trained on.
As The Guardian reports, several human models who posed for Synthesia have been horrified to discover that their likenesses have been used in AI-powered propaganda clips generated by groups linked to authoritarian states like China, Russia, and Venezuela.
"I'm in shock, there are no words right now," Mark Torres, a creative director based in London who modeled for Synthesia, told The Guardian after viewing one of the clips for the first time. "I've been in the [creative] industry for over 20 years and I have never felt so violated and vulnerable. I don't want anyone viewing me like that."
"Just the fact that my image is out there, could be saying anything – promoting military rule in a country I did not know existed," Torres added. "People will think I am involved in the coup."
Fine Print
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Tokenization is low risk to global finance, due to slow adoption: FSB
The FSB said risks from global finance's exploration of tokenization are low because the technology has failed to be adopted at scale.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) released a report Wednesday stating that the risks posed to the global financial system by institutional finance's exploration of tokenization are minimal, primarily due to the technology's limited adoption thus far.
#crypto #tokenization #fsb #finance #technology
In its report, the FSB, which was created in 2009 by the G20 in the wake of the global financial crisis, noted that initiatives like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund are still in their early stages, which helps to mitigate potential threats to the financial system for now.
"The limited publicly available data on tokenisation suggest that its adoption is very low but appears to be growing, and the use of tokenisation in the financial sector does not currently pose a material risk to financial stability, mostly due to its small scale," the FSB report said.
Despite suggesting that the technology currently presents a low risk because of its inability to scale, the report identified several financial stability vulnerabilities associated with DLT-based tokenization.
Key concerns include liquidity mismatches, leverage issues, asset quality, interconnectedness, and operational fragility. The report warns that these risks could escalate if the tokenization of assets scales significantly, particularly if the industry can resolve interoperability issues and receive clearer regulatory guidance.
One of the main challenges highlighted is the potential for liquidity and maturity mismatches, where the timelines for converting tokenized assets into cash may differ from the assets themselves. This could lead to redemption run risks, which pose a threat to financial stability. Additionally, the report noted that as tokenization projects become more complex and opaque, the associated risks may increase, especially during times of market stress.
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Chinese Hackers Use Quantum Computer to Break Military Grade Encryption
It's "the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat."
In a Chinese-language paper published late last month in the Chinese Journal of Computers, the researchers claim they were able to use one of D-Wave's off-the-shelf quantum computers to attack Substitution-Permutation Networks (SPNs), classical cryptography algorithms employed in widely-used encryption standards. As Tom's Hardware reports, the paper delineates two distinct methodologies, both rooted in D-Wave's quantum annealing algorithm.
#newsonleo #china #encryption #military
SPNs are used in algorithms tasked with protecting sensitive institutions including militaries and banks — meaning that, if the researcher's claims are true, their findings could force institutions to revisit their cybersecurity measures.
Experts have long warned that quantum computers, which work in a fundamentally different way than conventional ones, could soon break encryption standards that keep highly classified information from the prying eyes of hackers. The latest research suggests the tech is making strides towards such an eventuality.
According to the hackers' paper, their findings represent "the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today," as quoted by The South China Morning Post.
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This is the archive thread for feeding #leoai.
The Digest: A Marijuana-Derived Medication Is Now Approved For Sale in the U.S.
It could be young patients' only shot at relief.
A BREAKTHROUGH DECISION. For the first time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a medication derived from marijuana. It's called Epidiolex. GW Pharmaceuticals developed the drug to treat two rare forms of epilepsy that manifest during childhood, Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. In clinical trials, the medication reduced patient seizures by up to 40 percent.
#cannabis #legal
BETTER FOR PATIENTS. As for patients, keyhole surgeries boast a number of benefits over open surgeries. They reduce a patient's chances of developing a hernia by 50 percent, require fewer post-surgery painkillers, and decrease infection rates. However, because keyhole procedures require a high level of technical expertise, they are often eschewed in favor of open surgeries.
Versius can change that by training surgeons in just a fraction of the time. For example, a surgeon typically needs 60 to 80 hours of practice to learn how to manually tie a surgical knot inside a patient through a keyhole incision. With Versius, a surgeon can learn the procedure in just 30 minutes. This could increase the number of doctors equipped to perform keyhole surgeries, making the procedures themselves more common.
WAITING ON THE RED TAPE. Versius isn't the first or only surgical robot. However, these bots are becoming easier to use and more mobile. Someday, hospital staff could simply wheel Versius in and out of operating rooms as needed — if regulatory bodies decide to approve the surgical bot for clinical use, that is.
TREATING THE UNTREATABLE. Children with Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome typically experience multiple types of seizures, as well as learning problems and intellectual disabilities that often prevent them from ever living "normal" lives.
There are already six drugs on the market that treat Lennox-Gastaut. But there aren't any approved medications for Dravet syndrome. That means Epidiolox could be patients' only hope at treating their debilitating illness. Even more, doctors could choose to prescribe the medication "off-label" (for conditions not officially approved), expanding the number of patients it could help.
RELIEF, NOT RECREATION. Epidiolex contains cannabidiol (CBD), one of the two main compounds in cannabis. Unlike the other compound, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), CBD doesn't produce a "high," so users of Epidiolex won't get the same buzz from using the medication that a recreational user expects to get from smoking THC-containing marijuana.
Still, before GW Pharmaceuticals can sell Epidiolex, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) needs to recategorize CBD, which means rethinking marijuana, too. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug, meaning it doesn't have any medical value; the FDA approval shows the government thinks CBD does have medical value.
According to a STAT report, the FDA expects that DEA will reclassify marijuana within the next 90 days. So we could be just a few months away from seeing a marijuana-derived medication hit the American healthcare market.
The Digest: New Report Details AT&T’s Role in NSA Spying Initiatives
AT&T helped the NSA conduct surveillance on both Americans and foreign citizens.
NSA + AT&T = BFF. On Monday, The Intercept published a report detailing AT&T's collaborative relationship with the National Security Agency (NSA) via a program codenamed FAIRVIEW. According to the report, AT&T facilities in eight U.S. cities play a central role in helping the NSA conduct surveillance on both Americans and foreign citizens — even those who are not AT&T customers. The report provides details on each facility, as well as supporting evidence drawn from public records, interviews, and classified NSA documents.
#nsa #surveillance #att #technology
SPYING ON AMERICAN SOIL. According to The Intercept's report, there's a reason these eight particular facilities, located in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., are of interest to the NSA — each is a "backbone" facility in the AT&T network, processing huge quantities of AT&T customer data.
Beyond that, these facilities also process the data of other communication providers through something called "peering." Essentially, when a company such as Sprint finds its own network overloaded, it can pay AT&T for some of its available bandwidth. At one point or another, AT&T routes the Sprint customers' data through one of these eight facilities.
POWERFUL ALLIES. According to the report, AT&T didn't just give the NSA access to the emails, online chats, phone calls, and other data from customers using its network — it actively helped the agency process the data, prioritizing communications from certain nations and ranking data based on its potential intelligence value.
Officials from all the parties involved are remaining pretty tightlipped about the whole thing. The NSA neither confirms nor denies anything involving the AT&T facilities, while AT&T maintains it's just doing whatever the law requires. Still, it makes total sense that the NSA would want to partner with AT&T — after all, who better to facilitate government surveillance efforts than the world's largest telecommunications company?
The Digest: Five AI Algorithms Worked Together to Beat Humans at a Strategy Game
As a team, it collected 180 years worth of experience during each day of training.
HEADING FOR THE BIG LEAGUES. On Monday, non-profit AI research company OpenAI published a blog post about OpenAI Five, a group of five neural networks designed to work as a team while playing the real-time computer strategy game called Dota 2. According to the post, OpenAI Five can now beat a team of five human amateur players at the game, albeit with specific restrictions placed on gameplay. In August, it will attempt to beat a team of professional Dota 2 players at The International (TI), an annual Dota 2 tournament hosted by the game's developer, Valve Corporation.
#ai #technology #algorithm #aopenai
TEAM ALGORITHM. In Dota 2, two teams of five players battle to destroy the other team's "Ancient," a structure at the center of their base. Each player controls a different character, known as a "hero." These heroes have their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and a team's ability to cooperate is key to its success. The developers assigned each OpenAI Five algorithm a specific hero, placing restrictions on the characters to account for areas of the game they hadn't integrated.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. OpenAI Five trained first as individual algorithms in one-vs-one matches and then as a team by playing against itself and past versions of itself. As a team, it collected 180 years worth of experience during each day of training, eventually picking up on strategies typically used by professional Dota 2 players. None of the algorithms could communicate with one another — cooperation was simply one of each algorithm's incentives. This cooperation continued when a human player replaced one of the algorithms.
THE HEROES WE NEED. With OpenAI Five, we could be seeing a preview of the future of AI. In Dota 2, each algorithm has to choose between roughly 1,000 potential moves every one-eighth of a second — far more complex than a game like Go, in which an AI has to choose between 250 moves at a time. Algorithms usually don't operate as teams, either, but this Dota 2 project shows they're more than capable of cooperating with each other — and humans, too.
The Digest: Blue Origin’s Spaceflight Tickets Will Go on Sale in 2019
But who knows what they’ll cost.
PACK YOUR BAGS. An executive for Blue Origin says the aerospace company will begin selling tickets for suborbital space flights in 2019, according to a report by Space News. Senior Vice President Rob Meyerson delivered the news during a keynote speech at Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. The flights will be aboard New Shepard, a rocket Blue Origin first started testing in 2015. Those tests will soon include passengers, according to Meyerson.
#blueorigin #spaceflight #space
START SAVING... PROBABLY? So, that's what we know. What we don't know? Pretty much anything else. Meyerson didn't drop any hints as to what New Shepard tickets will get passengers (An hour in space? A day?). He also didn't say what they'd pay for the privilege, but that might be because he simply doesn't know — back in May, Blue Origin (and Amazon) CEO Jeff Bezos told GeekWire the company was still trying to figure out what to charge for New Shepard tickets.
AHEAD OF THE CROWD. Blue Origin isn't alone in attempting to break into the space tourism market — SpaceX, Orion Span, and Axiom Space are just a few of the other companies vying for a piece of the space tourism pie. It also isn't the first company to announce the sale of tickets — Virgin Galactic began selling tickets back in 2013 at $200,000 a pop (later raised to $250,000); as of May 2017, 650 people had put down deposits. Five years later, though, and those flights haven't yet happened.
As we've seen from Virgin Galactic, selling tickets isn't necessarily an indication that a company is just about ready for take off. Still, if Blue Origin is ready to test New Shepard with passengers aboard, it must be feeling pretty confident about the craft — which means the company might just be the first to launch us into the era of commercial space travel.
The Digest: This Floating Robot DRAGON Can Change Shape Mid-Flight
It's powerful, agile, and could eventually save lives.
ONE CLUNKY ACRONYM. Roboticists from the University of Tokyo's JSK Lab have created a flying robot they call DRAGON, an acronym for Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON. A recent report by IEEE Spectrum includes a video highlighting the bot's ability to change its shape mid-flight in order to navigate through tight spaces.
#technology #robot
DRAGON comprises four modules, each boasting a pair of maneuverable fan thrusters. Battery-powered hinged joints link these modules. An Intel Euclid serves as both the eyes and the brain of DRAGON, letting the flying robot "see" the world around it and autonomously decide what shape it needs to assume to fit through a given area.
ONE IMPRESSIVE ROBOT. Indoor drone navigation comes with a variety of unique challenges, not least of which is the issue of having to fit through tight spaces. As noted in the IEEE Spectrum report, this has left developers with two options: make their drones smaller (in which case, they aren't powerful enough to really do much of anything) or put them in protective cages (which also limits their abilities).
While DRAGON can only remain airborne for about three minutes at present, it's both agile and fairly powerful. The JSK developers have big plans for its next stage of development, too. They want to increase the number of modules to 12 and add grippers on each end of the system, giving it the ability to pick up and move objects.
MAN'S NEW BEST FRIEND. It's not hard to imagine using an advanced version of DRAGON to navigate dangerous indoor environments during rescue missions. It could search for survivors in collapsed buildings, removing rubble if necessary to free them. Ultimately, unlike its fictional counterparts, this DRAGON could save human lives.
One of Saturn’s Moons Has Everything Needed to Host Life
"[Enceladus] is the only body besides Earth known to simultaneously satisfy all of the basic requirements for life as we know it.”
THE EXCEPTIONAL ENCELADUS. On Wednesday, scientists from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) published a paper in Nature outlining their discovery of complex organic molecules on Enceladus, one of Saturn's 53 moons.
These large, carbon-rich molecules emanate from the ocean beneath the moon's icy surface, escaping as plumes through warm cracks. This emergence of complex organic molecules from a liquid ocean makes Enceladus the only body besides Earth to boast all the basic requirements for life as we know it, said co-author Christopher Glein in a news release.
HELP FROM THE DEPARTED. For their paper, the scientists relied on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which plunged into Saturn's surface in September 2017. During a flyby in 2015, the craft detected hydrogen within the materials emanating from the cracks in Encledaus's surface. Hydrogen sometimes serves as an energy source for microbes living near hydrothermal vents in the Earth's oceans, so the researchers suspect that Encledaus's hydrogen formed due to the moon's own hydrothermal activity.
ANOTHER STEP FORWARD. This isn't the first discovery of organic molecules on Encledaus. However, previous discoveries were of simple molecules with masses below 50 atomic mass units — these newly discovered molecules have masses greater than 200 atomic mass units. Still, a single atom of carbon-12 is 12 atomic mass units, so these "complex" molecules are very tiny.
While this might not be the discovery of extraterrestrial life many are waiting for, these molecules do bring us one step closer to finding it. As Glein noted in the news release, future space missions could provide more in-depth analysis of Encledaus's plumes, perhaps helping scientists figure out exactly how the moon's complex molecules came to be and what sort of biological processes are happening beneath its icy surface.
Boeing’s Hypersonic Concept Jet Could Cut Flight Times by 85 Percent
You could travel from NYC to Tokyo in just two hours.
THERE'S FAST, AND THERE'S HYPERSONIC. On Tuesday, Boeing unveiled its first concept design for a hypersonic passenger jet during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference in Atlanta. The vehicle could theoretically travel at Mach Five, or five times the speed of sound (6,174 kmh/3,836 mph). At that speed, a flight between New York and Tokyo that currently takes 14 hours would drop to just a couple of hours, according to a Popular Mechanics report.
IT'S (NOT) ALL IN THE DESIGN. So how is Boeing’s design going to be able to reach these speeds? As Boeing’s Senior Technical Fellow of Hypersonics Kevin Bowcutt told Popular Mechanics, the craft uses a specific type of engine known as a ramjet, a staple of many hypersonic vehicle designs. He also explained how the hypersonic jet's sharp front-end design would produce minimal drag while its split tail would help to stabilize and steer the vehicle.
We’ve already built and flown craft that exceed hypersonic speed, like the Boeing X-51 Waverider, so we know that building something like this one is at least possible. The biggest obstacle to hypersonic flight isn’t creating the perfect design, though — it’s making the flights affordable. So far, scaling it up (bigger crafts that can go for longer periods of time) has just been too expensive. As John Plueger, president and CEO of AirLease Corp., told CNBC, “It’s hard for me to see, at least in the next 15-20 years, that it’s going to be so cost competitive that it’s going to compel the airlines to take a stab at it."
LOTS OF PLANS. NO PLANES. Boeing is far from the only company considering a future in which we travel at Mach Five. In June 2017, Lockheed Martin announced plans to begin development on the SR-72, a hypersonic military aircraft, though it doesn't expect the craft to be airborne until 2030. In February, researchers in China successfully tested a scaled-down version of their hypersonic I Plane in an air tunnel, reaching a speed of Mach Seven. That craft could also facilitate military operations, a source told the South China Morning Post — if it ever goes into development.
Boeing's newly unveiled passenger plane could transport soldiers or civilians, according to Popular Mechanics, but both groups have quite the wait ahead of them — the craft likely won't be ready for takeoff for another two or three decades.
Facebook Will Once Again Allow Ads Promoting Cryptocurrencies
Facebook changed its mind.
ON SECOND THOUGHT... In January, Facebook announced a new policy banning companies from advertising initial coin offerings (ICOs), binary options (investments where the return is either a fixed amount or nothing at all), and cryptocurrencies on the platform. On Tuesday, Facebook reversed that policy; it will now allow "pre-approved advertisers" to promote cryptocurrency products and services on the platform. Companies must fill out an application and provide requested background information to earn Facebook's approval to buy cryptocurrency ads. Ads promoting ICOs and binary options are still banned.
STOPPING SCAMS. Facebook's initial decision to stop selling cryptocurrency ads was an attempt to rein in the many companies it claimed were misleading or deceiving users. And, truly, the crypto world has no shortage of scammers — according to CoinDesk, an official from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) told audience members during a crypto workshop on Monday that consumers lost an estimated $532 million to crypto scams between January and February of 2018 (the FTC defines scams as "deceptive investment and business opportunities, bait-and-switch schemes, and deceptively marketed mining machines"). By the end of the year, the FTC estimates that figure will soar to $3 billion.
WHAT WE KNOW & WHAT WE DON'T. We don't know if Facebook's revised policy will prevent scammers from taking advantage of the platform's users. Also unclear: how thoroughly Facebook plans to screen advertising applicants.
What is clear is who will immediately benefit from the policy change: Facebook, which is once again free to generate ad revenue from crypto companies. Hard to say what Facebook was earning from those companies prior to January's ban, but Google — the internet's other advertising giant —generated an estimated $25 million in ad revenue from ICOs alone in 2017. Facebook might invest some of its own money into the crypto realm, as well, with rumors swirling that it could decide to buy digital currency exchange CoinBase.
Facebook also has less competition for crypto ad dollars now. In March, Twitter announced its own ban on certain cryptocurrency ads. That same month, Google announced it was updating its own policy to ban ads promoting cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and binary options. Google's update just went into effect this month, so... is that a coincidence? Or smart timing by Facebook?
With AI, Forecasters Can More Accurately Predict Storms And Save Lives
AI can predict what humans can't see.
AI TO THE RESCUE. When a storm is approaching, responders need as much detail as possible. Predictions of the timing, intensity, and range of the storm could make the differences between citizen lives saved and lives lost.
Luckily, AI is here to make those predictions much more accurate.
#ai #newsonleo #weather #stormpredicting
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal published an article highlighting the various ways cities across North America use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict and respond to natural disasters. According to the article, these systems make it easier for emergency response personnel to help the people most in need post-disaster.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE. The WSJ article highlights several systems that can do this. There's IBM's AI-powered Outage Prediction tool, which analyzes a combination of historical weather data and real-time weather measurements to predict power outages. That tool is 70 percent accurate at predicting outages up to 72 hours in advance, and its accuracy increases as the storm approaches
There's also One Concern, which uses AI to let emergency responders know where they are most needed after earthquakes, fires, and other disasters. Scottish researchers developed another system that relies on a combination of AI and crowdsourced data to detect instances of flooding within high-risk urban areas. And there are more AI-powered systems that The WSJ didn't get into.
A WORTHY INVESTMENT. These systems are already helping local and city governments better allocate their resources during disasters, no one is using these tools on a large scale, so people aren't quite sure how well it will work, as noted in a report by researchers from Eastern Kentucky University. Investors, then, might be slow to put money into a large-scale project.
But given the success happening at smaller scales, it could simply be a matter of time before more bigger governments decide AI disaster prediction is worth the upfront cost.
Amazon Needs More Delivery Companies and Wants You to Start Them
For $10,000, you can start your own company that delivers packages exclusively for Amazon.
WORK FOR YOURSELF (BUT REALLY FOR AMAZON). Amazon is looking for a partner. Well, more accurately, lots of little partners.
On Thursday, Amazon launched its Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program, which will encourage entrepreneurs to start small Amazon delivery companies. Each entrepreneur will oversee 40 to 100 employees who will use 20 to 40 Amazon-branded vans to deliver packages year-round, using Amazon's own logistics systems to facilitate the process. Start-up costs for a DSP business are as low as $10,000, and military veterans can apply to have their start-up costs reimbursed. Amazon claims DSP companies can produce annual profits as high as $300,000.
MO' PACKAGES. MO' PROBLEMS. Right now, UPS, FedEx, and the U.S. Postal Service deliver most of Amazon's packages. But Amazon will need a lot more delivered, and soon. People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that established delivery companies simply can't keep up with Amazon's projected growth.
This has led the e-retailer to start looking inward for a solution to its delivery problem, first through Amazon Flex, which allows drivers to use their own vehicles to deliver packages — think Uber or Lyft, but with packages instead of people — and now with the DSP program.
WIN/WIN/WIN? On paper, the DPS program seems like it could benefit Amazon, Amazon's customers, and American workers. According to Amazon, the program won't take work away from existing delivery companies ("There’s so much growth here in parcel delivery that there’s more than enough for everybody,” Amazon’s senior vice president of world-wide operations Dave Clark told The WSJ).
It could also improve Amazon's relationship with customers. In 2013, customers who expected to receive Amazon packages in time for Christmas found themselves disappointed when both UPS and FedEx missed delivery deadlines. Amazon ended up offering refunds to customers — a situation it would no doubt like to avoid in the future. The DPS program also has the potential to create "tens of thousands" of jobs. Let's just hope Amazon delivery drivers are treated better than Amazon warehouse workers.
It Will Take A Lot More Than Autonomous Vehicles To Unclog City Centers
Downtown traffic is here to stay, at least for a little longer.
ZIPADEEDOO-NAH. Like sitting in traffic? Well, when autonomous vehicles become widespread, you might be doing it a lot more.
A new report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that the use of autonomous vehicles could decrease average travel time by four percent in a city like Boston. That's for people who live in the areas surrounding the downtown core — AVs would actually worsen travel times by five percent inside the city itself.
WEF's impact study used a complex agent-based simulation of traffic and "vehicle-to-vehicle interaction" in downtown Boston to arrive at these numbers, including data from roughly two million daily passenger vehicle trips.
AUTONOMOUS TRAFFIC JAMS. But despite the optimism about alleviating Boston's overall traffic woes, the traffic simulation assumed a 20 percent drop in "personal-car trips, which become mobility-on-demand trips" — think Uber, and Waymo taxi rides. And that may sound pretty optimistic, but with decreasing car sales and a booming ride-hailing industry, it's not much of a stretch. Yet 40 percent of trips would still rely on personal vehicles, clogging up low-capacity arteries, and the downtown core. As for mass-transit, the simulation assumed the behavior of commuters wouldn't change.
TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. Unclogging city centers is a complex issue with a ton of moving parts. Replacing all personal vehicles with AVs — including pay-to-go robot-taxi rides — wouldn't have a huge impact on the number of passenger vehicles on the road. As the WEF report points out, policy makers would have to step in and make changes to local infrastructure to truly have an effect on traffic. For instance, policy makers could introduce per-mile tolls for single-occupancy vehicles, use on-street parking to free up some much needed space for bike lanes or loading zones, or dedicate entire lanes just for AVs. And they ran the numbers again, and the results are promising: a per-mile toll could improve travel time by as much as 15.5 percent.
JOINING THE AV CLUB. Autonomous vehicles can offer us more than just (small) improvements to our traffic nightmare woes. They can improve fuel efficiency, and overall reductions in emissions. And then there is the simple fact that you won't have to stare at the bumper of the poor guy in front of you when you're stuck in traffic. You can lean back, relax, and have the car do the driving. Who cares if you have to spend five percent more time on the road?
THE FUTURE IS NOW. Lyft, Uber, and Waymo's AVs are already hitting the streets — private and public — as we speak. The robo-taxi revolution is right around the corner, and there's not much anybody can do about it. General Motors has already released a steering-wheel-less car concept, giving us a pretty good look at what the future of the private passenger vehicle could look like.
But autonomous vehicles alone won't make the gridlock go up in a puff of smoke. Careful considerations of road infrastructure, and investments in mass transit are just as much part of that effort. Only then will we be able to look back and think of how many hours we've wasted every week sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
California Cracks Down on the Companies Harvesting Your Data
It allows consumers to opt-out if companies sell their data.
PROTECTING CALIFORNIANS. Soon, Californians will have a lot more control over their online data. On Thursday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, an online privacy law that restricts large tech companies' use of California consumers' data. When the law goes into effect in 2020, it will require tech companies with annual gross revenues more than $25 million to disclose which categories of data they collect on California consumers. They'll also have to disclose any third-parties they let access that information.
Californians will be able to opt-out of having their data sold, and companies will not be able to penalize them— by limiting their use of the service, for example — for choosing to do so. Users under 16 will need to opt-in to having their data sold. The law also grants California’s attorney general the power to fine companies that don't do enough to protect consumers' personal information from cyber attacks.
SETTING A PRECEDENT. In the wake of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, consumer privacy is getting a lot more attention, even though U.S. legislators have not yet done much to regulate the industry. California's Consumer Privacy Act is largely considered one of the nation's toughest laws on data privacy, if not the toughest law, and it could inspire other states or Congress to take similar action. “I think it’s going to set the standard across the country that legislatures... will look to adopt in their own states,” state Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D) told The Washington Post.
The tech industry is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not all that happy that the law has passed. Robert Callahan, vice president of state government affairs for the Internet Association, a group that represents the interests of Facebook, Google, and other tech companies, claimed in a statement that the law will have "inevitable, negative policy and compliance ramifications" for both California consumers and business.
TOO MUCH COMPROMISE? Still, the tech industry must certainly prefer this law to the far tougher ballot measure that was set to go before voters in November. That measure, drafted by San Francisco real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart, would have given consumers the ability to sue companies for up to $3,000 for each data breach. The law that passed this week limits that figure to $750.
As Mactaggart agreed in advance, he withdrew his measure now that this law his passed. He also said in a statement he was "thrilled" about its passage, calling it "a monumental achievement for consumers."
Still, a law is far easier to amend than a passed ballot measure. That means the version of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 that goes into effect in 2020 might not be the same one signed into law on Thursday. Only time will tell whether the final version benefits consumers or the tech industry.
The Digest: Amazon Buys Online Pharmacy, Dives Deeper Into Healthcare Industry
Amazon snaps up PillPack for a reported $1 billion.
AMAZON HAS ENTERED THE ARENA. On Thursday, Amazon announced it had bought PillPack, an online pharmacy for about $1 billion, a source briefed on the deal told The New York Times. The news caused waves in the $560 billion prescription drug industry; shares of publicly-owned drug companies like Walgreens, Rite-Aid, and CVS dropped by 9.4 percent, 13 percent, and 9.2 percent, respectively.
SMARTER PRESCRIPTIONS. PillPack is pretty unique in the pharmacy industry. First, unlike its competitors, it has no brick-and-mortar stores — the company only delivers medications in the mail. Instead of packaging user medications by the prescription (with a month's worth of one drug in one bottle and another drug in another bottle, for example), PillPack packages medications by the dose.
Say a person has to take three different pills each morning and two each night. A monthly PillPack delivery would include 60 or so tiny packets. Half would contain all three morning medications, and the other half would have the two evening ones. Each packet would include a descriptive label with information on the contained medications.
This service could be tremendously useful for people who take multiple medications. Amazon's takeover could help PillPack scale up (it currently boasts just 1,000 employees). PillPack, meanwhile, is already licensed to deliver medications to all 50 U.S. states, helping Amazon clear the regulatory hurdles that might have complicated its foray into the prescription drug industry.
ALEXA, REFILL MY MEDS. This is the latest of several recent moves that show Amazon is dedicated to making inroads in healthcare. In October 2016, CEO Jeff Bezos said he thought Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa could potentially help healthcare providers. Then, in July 2017, Amazon launched 1492, a secret lab dedicated to healthcare technology.
Just last week, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase announced they'd chosen a CEO for their new healthcare venture. The acquisition of PillPack likely puts us one step closer to the day when we can simply ask Alexa to refill our medications.
Baidu’s Autonomous Buses Will Start Transporting Passengers in Japan Next Year
The company just landed an order for 10 of its buses.
FROM CHINA, WITH LOVE. On Wednesday, Internet giant Baidu (the Google of China) announced a new partnership. Baidu has agreed to produce 10 of its self-driving Apolong buses for SB Drive, a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, according to a Bloomberg report. Chinese bus manufacturer King Long will handle the production of the autonomous buses, which could arrive in Japan as soon as early-2019. Company executives made the announcement at Baidu Create 2018, the company's annual AI developer conference in Beijing.
MEET THE APALONG. Each 14-passenger Apolong bus is capable of Level 4 autonomy — that means they're "fully autonomous" but aren't designed to handle every possible driving scenario. The buses operate using Baidu's Apollo autonomous driving system, the basis for Baidu's partnerships with Ford, Honda, and other companies.
As of Wednesday, Baidu has produced 100 of the vehicles. While most of those are slated to carry passengers in China, the partnership with SB Drive confirms that Baidu has ambitions for the Apalong beyond its home nation.
SAFER, CLEANER TRANSPORTATION. This isn't the first time Japan has expressed interest in autonomous public transportation, nor is Baidu the only company creating such vehicles. There are several good reasons for that.
First, public transportation is better for the environment, and it can help cities cope with the issue of transporting ever-growing populations. Second, experts predict autonomous vehicles will be far safer than their human-driven counterparts.
Autonomous buses, then, could be the safest, most environmentally friendly way to move from point A to point B, and Baidu appears ready to help usher in this new era of transportation.
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Blue Origin Plans to Begin Colonizing the Moon No Later Than 2023
“It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay."
LUNAR UPDATE. A.C. Charania, business development director for Blue Origin, says the private aerospace company plans to complete a lunar landing mission before 2023, which would eventually “enable human lunar return.” That is: send humans back to the Moon.
That's an earlier, and more specific, timeframe than anyone at the company had specified up to this point — last year, the Washington Post reported that its Blue Moon project — which includes plans to colonize the Moon, as well as an Amazon-like Moon delivery service — was slated for the mid-2020s.
This news about Blue Origin's came during the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference in Renton, Washington, in late June, according to a GeekWire report.
A LITTLE HELP FROM NASA. Blue Origin first revealed its ambitions for a Moon colony in March 2017. “It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay,” Bezos told The Washington Post. “A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this.”
At the time, Blue Origin was looking to NASA and the U.S. government for assistance in the endeavor. Since then, it's become one of 10 companies chosen to share $10 million in NASA funding for lunar research. That has apparently helped the company to move up the timeframe for when Blue Moon might be accomplished.
“Blue Moon is on our roadmap, and because of our scale, because of what we see from the government, we brought it a little bit forward in time,” Charania said during the NewSpace conference. “I think we are very excited to now implement this long-term commercial solution with NASA partnership.”
A CROWDED SPACE. Blue Origin isn't the only aerospace company eying a return to the Moon. SpaceX has floated plans for future Moon colonization, while NASA, China Manned Space Agency, and Russia's space agency Roscosmos all have manned lunar missions in the works.
With so many organizations in on the effort, it seems like it's only a matter of time before humans take that one small step once again.
The World’s Smallest Surgical Robot Is Almost Ready for the Operating Room
The bot can decrease patients' risk of infection and need for painkillers.
MEET VERSIUS. By the end of 2018, surgeons in the United Kingdom could have a new assistant in the operating room: Versius, the world's smallest surgical robot.
Created by CMR Surgical, the bot is essentially three robotic arms attached to a mobile unit about the size of a barstool, according to a recent report by The Guardian. A surgeon controls the bot from a control panel, guiding the arms as they carry out keyhole procedures (surgeries performed through tiny incisions in the body — much less invasive than open surgeries, which require much larger incisions).
BETTER FOR SURGEONS. CMR Surgical is in the process of getting Versius approved by UK regulators so that it can move out of the training room and into the operating room. The company hopes to pass this regulatory hurdle before the end of this year. If approved, the bot could benefit both the surgeons that wield it, and the patients under its tiny knife.
Doctors often find themselves in uncomfortable positions when they perform keyhole surgeries. To get their instruments right where they need to be, they may need to bend their bodies at strange angles, and hold them for extended periods of time. Versius lets them avoid these potentially painful positions by doing the maneuvering for them, while the surgeons can do their work by simply sitting or standing at the bot's console.
This AI Analyzes Ash to Figure out the Cause of a Volcanic Eruption
Knowing what kind of volcano they're dealing with can help emergency responders deploy resources wisely.
ASH-ANALYZING AI. The shape of a particle of volcanic ash can help volcanologists determine the type of eruption that produced it, which can help response teams know how to react in the aftermath of an eruption. For example, it might let them know how large of an area to evacuate. But in the past, categorizing ash was time-consuming, subjective, and reliant on the availability of highly trained experts.
ASH-ANALYZING AI. The shape of a particle of volcanic ash can help volcanologists determine the type of eruption that produced it, which can help response teams know how to react in the aftermath of an eruption. For example, it might let them know how large of an area to evacuate. But in the past, categorizing ash was time-consuming, subjective, and reliant on the availability of highly trained experts.
Now, scientists from the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that analyzes volcanic ash particles to determine their shape. The scientists detail their research in a paper published in May in the journal Scientific Reports.
TRAINING THE CNN. The Tokyo team's AI is what's known as a convolutional neural network (CNN), a kind of AI frequently used to analyze images. To train it, the researchers used an automated particle analyzer to generate thousands of two-dimensional images of ash particles.
Then, they manually classified the particles into four base shapes: blocky, vesicular, elongated, or rounded. Some particles were a combination of shapes. Next, they fed their CNN 200 images of particles that fit neatly into each category, using those images to teach it to categorize the particles based on certain parameters (for example, rounded particles should have a high degree of circularity).
PASSING THE TEST. After training, the team tested their CNN using about 40 other images of each type of particle. They found that the system was 92 percent successful in accurately categorizing an image. For images it couldn't categorize, it provided probability ratios (for example, a 90 percent probability that a particle is vesicular and a 10 percent probability that it's blocky).
As is, the system could already prove useful in eruption response efforts, but the researchers hope to upgrade their CNN to analyze additional aspects of volcanic ash, including its color and texture, providing even more valuable insights into the type of eruption behind the ash.
NASA Starts Tests to Prepare For Flight of "Quiet" Supersonic Jet
The aircraft would turn a disruptive sonic boom into a subtle sonic thump.
WHAT GOES UP REALLY FAST... On Friday, NASA released a video of an Armstrong Flight Research Center test pilot flying an F/A-18 high into the sky and straight back toward the Earth again at more than the speed of sound (767 miles per hour).
The goal wasn't to test the pilot's stomach, though — the maneuver simulates the sonic "thumps" NASA's supersonic jet, the X-59, would generate when in use and flying parallel to the ground. These tests allow NASA to gather data on the ground about the sound the aircraft makes so that, someday, the X-59 (or something like it) could be allowed to fly.
SUPER FAST. SUPER NOISY. In 1973, the U.S. banned supersonic travel over land. The reason? It was just too loud.
Anytime an aircraft exceeds the speed of sound, it creates what's known as a sonic boom. Like a boat pushing aside water as it travels, a supersonic aircraft quickly pushes aside air molecules. This builds up pressure in the molecules and causes shock waves. These shock waves extend behind the craft in two ever-widening cone shapes, one from its front and one from its rear.
The pressure of the molecules releases at the end of each cone, causing a "boom" sound the entire time. When those ends reach the ground, we hear the trademark "boom-boom" of a supersonic jet.
FROM BOOM-BOOM TO THUMP-THUMP. If commercial airplanes were allowed to fly at supersonic speeds, it could dramatically reduce the time it takes to fly from one place to another. Unwilling to give up this possible future, engineers are taking on the task to make a quieter supersonic jet.
In 2016, NASA awarded Lockheed Martin $20 million to work on a quieter supersonic jet. The aircraft they created, now called the X-59, is able to be super quiet and also supersonic thanks to its design — the shape of the X-59's body affects the shape of the shockwaves. This transforms what would normally sound like two sonic booms into a pair of "thumps" — at least, that's how it would work in theory. In April, NASA gave Lockheed Martin $247.5 million to actually build the X-59, but it isn't expected to deliver the craft until the end of 2021.
For now, NASA will continue testing the quiet sonic booms generated by the F/A-18's daredevil maneuver through a series of flights scheduled for November over Galveston, Texas. During those tests, the agency is planning to have volunteers on the ground let them know what they hear.
The data NASA collects might help to convince the U.S. government to lift its ban on supersonic air travel over land. If the government does lift the ban on supersonic travel over land as a result of NASA’s “quiet” technology, we could see commercial supersonic jets take flight, cutting travel times between destinations without disrupting the people still Earth-bound.
Groundbreaking Brain Map Reveals Fruit Fly Brain in Stunning Detail
The approach used to make the map—which heavily relied on artificial intelligence—could chart more complex brains, such as zebrafish, mice, and even humans.
With a brain the size of a sesame seed, the lowly fruit fly is often considered a kitchen pest. But to neuroscientists, the flies are a treasure trove of information detailing how the brain’s intricate connections guide thoughts, decisions, and memories—not just for the critters, but also for us.
#brain #technology #fruitfly
Mapping these connections is the first step. With over 140,000 neurons and 54 million synapses—the connections between nerve cells—packed into such a tiny space, the fruit fly’s brain, however rudimentary compared to ours, is highly complex.
This week, in a tour de force, hundreds of scientists from the FlyWire consortium published the first complete map of an adult female fruit fly’s brain. A project roughly a decade in the making, the wiring diagram will be a rich scientific resource for years to come. The same techniques used to make the map—which heavily relied on artificial intelligence—could be used to chart more complex brains, such as zebrafish, mice, and perhaps even humans.
“Flies are important model systems…since their brains solve the same problems as we do,” said Mala Murthy at Princeton University in a press conference. Murthy co-led the project with Sebastian Seung, who has long championed mapping as a way to better understand the inner workings of our brains and potentially extract algorithms to power more flexible AI.
In one of nine articles on the project published by Nature, Clay Reid at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who was not involved in the project, called the release a “huge deal.”
Article
Meta Has Launched the World’s ‘Most Advanced’ Glasses. Will They Replace Smartphones?
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Orion offers a “glimpse of the future” in which smart glasses will replace smartphones as the main mode of communication.
Humans are increasingly engaging with wearable technology as it becomes more adaptable and interactive. One of the most intimate ways gaining acceptance is through augmented reality glasses.
#meta #zuckerberg #technology #smartglasses
Last week, Meta debuted a prototype of the most recent version of their AR glasses—Orion. They look like reading glasses and use holographic projection to allow users to see graphics projected through transparent lenses into their field of view.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg called Orion “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.” He said they offer a “glimpse of the future” in which smart glasses will replace smartphones as the main mode of communication.
The technology used to develop Orion glasses is not new.
In the 1960s, computer scientist Ivan Sutherland introduced the first augmented reality head-mounted display. Two decades later, Canadian engineer and inventor Stephen Mann developed the first glasses-like prototype.
Throughout the 1990s, researchers and technology companies developed the capability of this technology through head-worn displays and wearable computing devices. Like many technological developments, these were often initially focused on military and industry applications.
In 2013, after smartphone technology emerged, Google entered the AR glasses market. But consumers were disinterested, citing concerns about privacy, high cost, limited functionality, and a lack of a clear purpose.
Article
Mercedes’ patented steering may finally make EVs exciting to drive
Mercedes’ patent describes a new system that calculates how much torque to send to the steering wheel.
New cars really are better than they used to be. They last longer, they're more efficient, and they're safer for the occupants in a crash. But it's not entirely a one-way street. If the last time you bought a car was more than a decade ago, you're probably shocked at the cumulative effect of inflation since then. But even ignoring sticker shock, there's also the matter of cars (almost) all having lifeless steering. But a patent filed last year by Mercedes-Benz might have the answer.
#mercedes #ev #automotive #technology
Regular readers will have read me complain about the death of steering feedback more than once. And that's a bad thing if you care about driving, or even if you don't. The late Richard Parry-Jones, an engineer whose career at Ford saw him rise to become CTO and head of global R&D, tracked customer satisfaction data and was able to prove to skeptical colleagues that good steering was highly correlated with customer satisfaction "because bad steering is tiring," he wrote.
Mostly, it's down to a switch from hydraulic to electric power-assisted steering—in many cases, the electric motor is placed on the steering column, which has the side effect of filtering out road forces, keeping them from being transferred back up the column and to the driver's hands via the steering wheel.
Other, more expensive electric power steering systems mount the assist motor on the steering rack, which somewhat mitigates the problem, and being thoughtful about suspension geometry—as the Polestar 4 is—can also pay benefits.
Article
Adobe shows off 3D rotation tool for flat drawings
Project Turntable uses machine learning to craft posable 3D models from 2D vectors.
#adobe #3d #image #ai
The on-stage demo showed off rotations for a number of varied images, from largely symmetrical dragons, horses, and bats to more complex shapes like a sketch of a bread basket or a living cup of fries (complete with arms, legs, eyes, and a mouth). In each case, the machine-learning algorithm does an admirable job assuming unseen parts of the model from what's available in the original 2D view, extrapolating a full set of legs on a side-view horse or the bottom of the Fry Man's shoes, for instance.
Still, we're sure the vector models on stage were chosen to show Project Turntable in its best light. Without a public testable version, it's hard to say how it would handle weird edge cases or drawings that don't closely match objects in its training data (which we don't know the extent of).
Even so, what was shown on stage has some obvious appeal for working artists. After seeing the on-stage video, Ars Creative Director Aurich Lawson exclaimed on our internal Slack, "That’s wizardry. I don't know how well it really works—I bet not nearly as good as that demo a lot of the time—but I’m impressed."
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Cheap AI “video scraping” can now extract data from any screen recording
Researcher feeds screen recordings into Gemini to extract accurate information with ease.
Recently, AI researcher Simon Willison wanted to add up his charges from using a cloud service, but the payment values and dates he needed were scattered among a dozen separate emails. Inputting them manually would have been tedious, so he turned to a technique he calls "video scraping," which involves feeding a screen recording video into an AI model, similar to ChatGPT, for data extraction purposes.
#ai #videoscraping #data #video #technology
What he discovered seems simple on its surface, but the quality of the result has deeper implications for the future of AI assistants, which may soon be able to see and interact with what we're doing on our computer screens.
"The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails," Willison wrote in a detailed post on his blog. He recorded a 35-second video scrolling through the relevant emails, then fed that video into Google's AI Studio tool, which allows people to experiment with several versions of Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash AI models.
Willison then asked Gemini to pull the price data from the video and arrange it into a special data format called JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) that included dates and dollar amounts. The AI model successfully extracted the data, which Willison then formatted as CSV (comma-separated values) table for spreadsheet use. After double-checking for errors as part of his experiment, the accuracy of the results—and what the video analysis cost to run—surprised him.
Article
A digital pound will jeopardise people’s privacy, London City mayor tells CBDC event
London's City ambassador tells digital money event CBDCs are a privacy risk.
#crypto #cbdc #stablecoin #governments #money
Central bank digital currencies threaten users’ privacy, London’s Lord Mayor Michael Mainelli told an event hosted by digital pound enthusiasts on Wednesday.
CBDCs can fight financial crime, as payments are traceable, and transaction monitoring can be automated — but there’s a dark side, Mainelli said.
That transparency “equally implies a loss of privacy,” he said. “I’m sorry — you can’t have both.”
His comments come as CBDCs remain a loaded topic across the world. While governments tout them as a welcome solution in an increasingly cashless world, critics slam CBDCs as a threat to people’s privacy.
Mainelli should not be confused with London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Instead, Mainelli’s role, as the head of the City of London Corporation, is to be an ambassador for the UK’s big business and finance community.
Mainelli spoke at an event hosted by the Digital Pound Foundation, which promotes CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenisation.
Article
What is a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)?
Let's dive deeper into the concept of central ⇪ digital currencies× (CBDCs) and explore their features, benefits, and potential implications.
What is a central bank digital currency (CBDC)?
A CBDC is a digital form of a country's fiat currency, issued and regulated by a central bank. It's a digital representation of a country's currency that can be used for both domestic and international transactions. CBDCs are designed to be a more efficient, secure, and transparent alternative to physical cash and traditional digital payment systems.
How do CBDCs work?
CBDCs work similarly to digital currencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but they are backed by the full faith and credit of the central bank. Here's a simplified overview of how CBDCs work:
Features of CBDCs
CBDCs have several features that distinguish them from traditional digital currencies:
Benefits of CBDCs
CBDCs offer several benefits, including:
Concerns about CBDCs
While CBDCs offer several benefits, they also raise several concerns, including:
Implementation of CBDCs
The implementation of CBDCs is still in its early stages, and it's unclear how they will be received by the public and the financial sector. However, several countries are exploring the development of CBDCs, including:
Challenges and limitations
The implementation of CBDCs poses several challenges and limitations, including:
Overall, CBDCs have the potential to revolutionize the way we think about money and financial transactions. However, their implementation poses several challenges and limitations, and it's unclear how they will be received by the public and the financial sector.
DS(i) Mode Hacking, a of the Discord servers I'm part of is being replaced, as its original owner's account was compromised, and the community leaders decided to switch to a server they can control.
I thought this piece of info should be on the blockchain.
Elon Musk Says Next-Gen Starlink Satellites Will Be So Huge They’ll Need to be Launched With Starship
"So big that only Starship can launch them."
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is now bragging that the next generation of Starlink internet satellites are going to be so much larger than before, they'll need to be straight-up launched using the company's Starship rocket.
#elonmusk #starlink #satellite #starshipt #space #telecommunications
Quote-tweeting a post about SpaceX informing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about "several small but meaningful updates" to the new class of communications satellites, the billionaire highlighted the size of the forthcoming fleet.
"The next generation Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them, will allow for a 10X increase in bandwidth and, with the reduced altitude, faster latency," Musk wrote.
It's neither the first nor the second time the South African-born tycoon has insisted that instead of deploying them on a Falcon 9 rocket as the company does now, SpaceX will use Starship to launch forthcoming generations of Starlink satellites.
This time, however, the plans seem a bit more concrete.
Article
DNA has been modified to make it store data 350 times faster
Researchers have managed to encode enormous amounts of information, including images, into DNA at a rate hundreds of times faster than was previously possible
DNA has been used for years to store data, but encoding information into the molecule is painstaking work. Now, researchers have drastically sped it up by mimicking a natural biological process that drives gene expression. This could lead to durable, do-it-yourself DNA data storage technologies.
#dna #storage #data #technology
Even though a single gram of DNA can store hundreds of millions of gigabytes of data, the technology to make use of this isn’t yet fully viable. This is partly because the process of encoding data in DNA requires that each molecule be synthesised “from scratch” after being designed to encode a specific piece of information.
Long Qian at Peking University in China and her colleagues have now developed a way to write information onto DNA more efficiently.
“A good analogy is using a typewriter, where you have to type each letter, versus printing,” says Harris Wang at Columbia University in New York, who wasn’t involved with the work. “They could essentially get all of [the information] onto the ‘paper’ all at once.”
Article
Archived article:
First commercial DNA data storage service set to launch in 2019
A start-up called Catalog claims it will be able to store a terabyte of data in a gram-sized DNA pellet, but questions remain over whether the technology is ready
#dna #data #storage
BIG data could be about to get much smaller. Catalog, a start-up based at the Harvard Life Lab, has announced plans for the first commercial DNA data storage service. The company says it has developed a way to cheaply store a terabyte of data – the equivalent of 40 Blu-rays – in a DNA pellet.
Using DNA as a data storage medium has long held appeal thanks to its durability and density. If kept cool and dry, DNA can reliably last for hundreds of years, so…
Article
Google tool makes AI-generated writing easily detectable
Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months – and now it’s making the tool available to any AI developer
Google has been using artificial intelligence watermarking to automatically identify text generated by the company’s Gemini chatbot, making it easier to distinguish AI-generated content from human-written posts. That watermark system could help prevent misuse of the AI chatbots for misinformation and disinformation – not to mention cheating in school and business settings.
#google #deepfake #ai #gemini #chatbot
A more detailed explanation of the SynthID technique and its implications for the use of AI chatbots.
What is SynthID?
SynthID is a watermarking technique developed by Google DeepMind to identify and distinguish AI-generated content from human-written posts. The technique uses a complex algorithm to create a unique signature in the text generated by the AI model, making it easier to detect and potentially prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
How does SynthID work?
SynthID works by subtly nudging the AI model toward selecting certain word "tokens" as it generates a sequence of text. This process creates a statistical signature that can be detectable by associated software. The algorithm uses a tournament-style bracket to randomly pair up possible word tokens, with the winner of each pair determining the next step in the process.
Here's a step-by-step explanation of the SynthID process:
Benefits of SynthID
SynthID has several benefits, including:
Limitations of SynthID
While SynthID is a powerful technique, it is not without its limitations. Some of the limitations include:
Future directions
Google DeepMind is continuing to develop and refine the SynthID technique, with the goal of making it more effective and resilient to attacks. Some potential future directions include:
Implications for AI chatbots
The development of SynthID has significant implications for the use of AI chatbots. Some potential implications include:
Overall, SynthID is a powerful technique that has the potential to significantly improve the detection and prevention of AI-generated content. As the technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see new applications and use cases emerge that take advantage of its capabilities.
Article
Here’s What the Regenerative Cities of Tomorrow Could Look Like
Around the world, seeds of regenerative cities have already been planted. As they grow, they will shape the metropolises of tomorrow.
Cities are never truly complete and done; instead they are always changing, always evolving. One positive change is the rise of regenerative cities—urban centers designed to have a restorative relationship with the environment that protects and enhances local ecosystems.
#newsonleo #technology #cities #future
WIRED Japan collaborated with the urban design studio For Cities to highlight some of the world’s best sustainable urban developments, which are harbingers of what is to come. From using local materials and construction methods to restoring ecosystems, these projects go beyond merely making green spaces and provide hints of how cities of the future will function as well as how they will be built. Here are some places where the future is now.
In this era of megacities, the Singaporean architectural firm WOHA, founded in 1994, has searched for the best way to make a high-rise green city. The luxury hotel Pan Pacific Orchard was completed by the firm in 2023. Despite being in the midst of a high-density city, it features four landscaped terraces that cover an area equivalent to 200 percent of the hotel’s lot size. Thanks to its use of both active and passive strategies to reduce energy and water use, the hotel received Singapore’s highest environmental certification, Green Mark Platinum. The firm has also developed its own WOHA Rating System, which uses five indicators (Green Plot Ratio, Community Plot Ratio, Civic Generosity Index, Ecosystem Contribution Index, and the Self-Sufficiency Index) to measure how its buildings impact the environment and society around them.
Article
Liquid AI Is Redesigning the Neural Network
Inspired by microscopic worms, Liquid AI’s founders developed a more adaptive, less energy-hungry kind of neural network. Now the MIT spin-off is revealing several new ultraefficient models.
Artificial intelligence might now be solving advanced math, performing complex reasoning, and even using personal computers, but today’s algorithms could still learn a thing or two from microscopic worms.
#ai #technology #neuralnetwork #liquidai
Liquid AI, a startup spun out of MIT, will today reveal several new AI models based on a novel type of “liquid” neural network that has the potential to be more efficient, less power-hungry, and more transparent than the ones that underpin everything from chatbots to image generators to facial recognition systems.
Liquid AI’s new models include one for detecting fraud in financial transactions, another for controlling self-driving cars, and a third for analyzing genetic data. The company touted the new models, which it is licensing to outside companies, at an event held at MIT today. The company has received funding from investors that include Samsung and Shopify, both of which are also testing its technology.
“We are scaling up,” says Ramin Hasani, cofounder and CEO of Liquid AI, who co-invented liquid networks as a graduate student at MIT. Hasani’s research drew inspiration from the C. elegans, a millimeter-long worm typically found in soil or rotting vegetation. The worm is one of the few creatures to have had its nervous system mapped in its entirety, and it is capable of remarkably complex behavior despite having just a few hundred neurons. “It was once just a science project, but this technology is fully commercialized and fully ready to bring value for enterprises,” Hasani says.
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What is Liquid.ai?
Liquid AI, an MIT spin-off, is a foundation model company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Our mission is to build capable and efficient general-purpose AI systems at every scale.
Our goal at Liquid is to build the most capable AI systems to solve problems at every scale, such that users can build, access, and control their AI solutions. This is to ensure that AI will get meaningfully, reliably and efficiently integrated at all enterprises. Long term, Liquid will create and deploy frontier-AI-powered solutions that are available to everyone.
Spun out of MIT CSAIL, four founders - Ramin Hasani, Mathias Lechner, Alexander Amini, and Daniela Rus, started Liquid AI to create a new generation of foundation models from first principles.
Liquid AI: A New Generation of AI Models from First Principles
We are thrilled to unveil Liquid AI – an MIT spinoff – to forge the future of AI with enterprise-grade foundation models that are capable, private, and reliable.
Today marks a pivotal moment for us at Liquid AI as we emerge from stealth mode, ready to announce our mission to build best-in-class, domain-specific, and general-purpose AI systems powered by Liquid foundation models.
Founded by a quartet of MIT computer science and artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) AI and machine learning scientists – Ramin Hasani, Mathias Lechner, Alexander Amini, and Daniela Rus – we are thrilled to unveil our vision and the strides we have made thus far.
At Liquid, we are developing a new generation of AI foundation models built from first principles – going beyond generative pre-trained Transformers (GPTs). Liquid AI models build on a framework that leads to causality, interpretability, and efficiency. Our models enable powerful applications with a profound commitment to environmental responsibility, significantly reducing the carbon footprint of foundational models.
We are thrilled to announce that we have raised $46.6M in seed capital, led by OSS capital and PagsGroup (the family office of Stephen Pagliuca).
Other investors include Breyer Capital, Tom Preston Werner (GitHub Co-founder), Naval Ravikant (AngelList & AirChat Co-founder), Safar Partners, ISAI Cap Venture (Capgemini’s VC Fund managed by ISAI), Tobias Lütke (Shopify Co-founder), David Siegel (Two Sigma), Chris Prucha (Notion Co-founder), Samsung next, David Blundin (Link Ventures), Bold Capital Partners (Peter Diamandis), Marc Casper (President & CEO of Thermo Fisher), Duke Capital Partners, Argean Capital Management, Latham & Watkins, Bob Young (Red Hat Co-founder) and Automattic.
“We invested in Liquid AI, because we felt this was the Dream Team of artificial intelligence. Their technology will greatly reduce the cost of AI for companies versus the current Transformer-based models and remains adaptable beyond training. It also allows for explainability as opposed to the black box of existing models. It’s a triple threat technology that can be used as a foundational model for functional applications and vertical markets as well.”
– Stephen Pagliuca (Chairman and CEO PagsGroup)
“Liquid’s approach to advancing the state-of-the-art in AI is grounded in the integration of fundamental truths across biology, physics, neuroscience, math, and computer science. We believe that trans-disciplinary approaches will unlock the greatest levels of acceleration towards the most efficient breakthroughs.”
– Joseph Jacks (Founder and General Partner at OSS Capital)
Got a hashrate bump for dash as well 👀
Uptober finally here?
send it
Bom dia galera! Depois de alguns dias de ausência, estamos de volta com nosso #threadcast
São Paulo power crisis sparks calls for energy regulation overhaul
EXCLUSIVE: Officials raise the alarm over the “disorganized occupation of power distribution poles by telecommunications infrastructure”
Amid a growing electric supply crisis in Brazil, São Paulo, the country’s largest city, is intensifying efforts to address a major urban infrastructure problem: the tangled mess of cables and wires that hang from millions of concrete utility poles across the massive metropolis.
#saopaulo #brazil #energy #newsonleo
São Paulo has an estimated 1.5 million utility poles lining its streets, approximately one for every eight residents. According to the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), more than half of these poles are misused, contributing to overuse, illegal wiring, and dangerous space mismanagement.
Energy distributors manage the poles, while telecom providers pay for the right to use them for their own cables. Yet, oversight is minimal, leading to the chaotic web of wires seen on many street corners.
During repairs, instead of identifying faulty lines, companies often add more cables, further complicating the situation.
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Então agora a estratégia é condensar mais e investir naquelas que realmente acho que darão certo
Esses dias foram bem corridos por isso acabei não conseguindo subir o threadcast
Tive médico e acabei ficando doente além de tudo
Mas agora deu uma melhorada então estamos de volta a atividade
Alguns probleminhas pra resolver hoje mas, com sorte, não será um dia tão caótico
Tá bem complicado, to comuita coisa acumulada pra ajustar na Hive haha
Preciso tirar uns dias pra focar nisso
Mas ta complicado... fim de semana sempre cheio de coisa e dia da semana nem se fala
Muitas oportunidades surgindo, mas é hora de focar em algumas e tentar maximizar
No passado já corri atrás de tudo e acabei me dividindo em muitas coisas e não acho que foi a melhor ideia
Isso concentra um pouco mais o risco, mas ainda acho que é um uso mais eficiente dos meus recursos
Incluindo tempo, claro. É um dos recursos mais importantes
Domingo tem segundo turno por aqui
Aconteça o que acontecer, finalmente essa loucura vai acabar
Acho difícil não ser o Nunes o vencedor
Apesar dele não ter feito nada durante o mandado e a campanha, a rejeição ao Boulos é enorme
Queria eu ter uma vida fácil assim kkk
Kassab, the most powerful man in Brazil you’ve never heard of
Gilberto Kassab is Brazil's ultimate éminence grise, heading a party that has consistently grown its congressional and municipal footprint.
The first round of municipal elections in Brazil, which took place on October 6 in all 5,500 cities save for the capital Brasília, had several winners. But one man, Gilberto Kassab, emerged as the biggest winner of them all.
#brazil #elections #kassab #politics
This is very accurate. This guy has not held a role in politics for a long time, but he is like the master of puppets, controlling everything behind the curtains.
Powerful and dangerous. A snake
Those types tend not to put themselves out front. They prefer to pull the strings without too many eyes on them.
He has not run for an election since 2008. Still, he holds the purse strings of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which, for the first time, elected the most mayors in the country: 888, or about 15 percent of the total, not to mention its candidates who qualified for a runoff to take place on October 27 in many of the country’s biggest cities.
Despite his immense political clout, Mr. Kassab remains unknown to most Brazilians.
Mr. Kassab, age 64, is the fifth of seven children of a physician and a teacher. After graduating in both economics and civil engineering, he worked as a real estate agent before starting his political career as a councilman in São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, in 1993. It took off very fast.
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BRICS Expansion: Ten New Nations Join, Reshaping Global Economic Alliances
The BRICS group, a coalition of emerging economies, has finalized its expansion plans. Meeting in Kazan, Russia, the current members have selected ten new countries to join their ranks.
In addition, this decision marks a significant shift in the global economic landscape. Cuba and Bolivia have received invitations to join BRICS.
#newsonleo #economy #brics
However, Venezuela and Nicaragua, both facing political turmoil, were notably absent from the list. This exclusion reflects recent tensions between these nations and Brazil’s government.
The full list of new invitees includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Nigeria, Uganda, Turkey, and Belarus. This diverse group spans multiple continents, enhancing BRICS’ global reach and influence.
Brazilian diplomats successfully negotiated the inclusion of a key point in discussions. They secured a mention of reforming the UN Security Council, a long-standing goal of both Brazilian and Indian foreign policy.
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Colombia Leads Latin America with Highest Corporate Tax Rate
Colombia stands out in Latin America with its corporate income tax rate of 35%, the highest in the region. This rate presents significant challenges for both domestic startups and foreign companies considering establishing operations in Colombia.
Taxes serve as a fundamental mechanism for state function and maintenance, with personal and corporate income taxes being particularly crucial across the region.
#newsonleo #colombia #latinamerica
According to PwC data, Colombia shares the top spot for corporate tax rates in Latin America with Argentina, both at 35%. Brazil and Venezuela follow closely with rates of 34%.
Globally, among the 38 OECD member economies, Colombia also ranks highest, surpassing European nations like Portugal and Germany, which have rates of 30%.
This high tax rate poses obstacles for new Colombian businesses and foreign enterprises looking to enter the market. While local companies pay taxes on global income, foreign entities operating in Colombia are taxed only on their Colombian earnings.
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Major Brazilian Banks Raise Mortgage Rates and Tighten Lending Requirements
Brazilian banks have started increasing mortgage rates and implementing stricter lending conditions as the Central Bank raises basic interest rates (Selic). Itaú Unibanco led this trend by raising its average annual rate from 10.49% to 10.79% in early October.
Caixa Econômica Federal, which handles 70% of Brazil‘s mortgage lending, maintains current rates but will increase down payment requirements starting November 1st.
#brazil #banks #mortage #economy #lending
The SAC payment system will require a 30% down payment instead of 20%, while the Price system increases from 30% to 50%.
Banks face depleting savings account resources traditionally used for mortgage funding. This shortage forces them to seek alternative funding sources directly affected by Selic rate changes.
The mortgage market shows unexpected vigor, with lending reaching R$118.5 billion ($21.16 billion) in the first eight months of 2024. This represents 17.6% growth compared to the same period in 2023.
Here are the current mortgage rates at major Brazilian banks:
Caixa Econômica Federal offers rates from TR + 8.99% to 9.99% annually
Itaú Unibanco starts at TR + 10.79% annually
Bradesco begins at TR + 10.49% annually
Santander ranges from TR + 10.99% to 12.99% annually
Banco do Brasil starts at TR + 10.29% annually
BRB offers rates beginning at TR + 8.99% annually
Article
Caixa Econômica Federal (CEF) - a bank with a rich history in Brazil. Here's a brief overview:
Early years (1846-1903)
Caixa Econômica Federal was founded on May 14, 1846, as the "Caixa Econômica de São Paulo" (Economic Savings Box of São Paulo) with the goal of providing savings services to the population of São Paulo, Brazil.
Initially, the institution was a small savings box where people could deposit coins and banknotes to earn interest. Over time, the bank expanded its services to include loans, deposits, and other financial activities.
National Expansion (1903-1946)
In 1903, the Caixa Econômica Federal was transformed into a federal institution, and its scope was expanded to the entire country. The bank began to accept deposits from aLL regions of Brazil, and its services were standardized to provide a more comprehensive range of financial products to the population. During this period, CEF played a crucial role in the economic development of Brazil, providing financial services to the government, businesses, and individuals.
Modernization and diversification (1946-1988)
After World ⇪ II×, Caixa Econômica Federal underwent significant modernization efforts, introducing new technologies and financial products. The bank expanded its operations to include credit, investments, and insurance services. In 1964, CEF became a commercial bank, and its scope was further expanded to include corporate and international banking.
State Bank and Nationalization (1988)
In 1988, the Brazilian government nationalized Caixa Econômica Federal, and it became a state-owned bank, known as Caixa Econômica Federal. The nationalization process aimed to increase state control over the economy and provide financial services to the broader population. As a state-owned bank, CEF was tasked with promoting economic development, social justice, and financial inclusion.
Modernization and Reforms (1990s-Present)
In the 1990s, Caixa Econômica Federal underwent significant modernization efforts, introducing new technologies and financial products. The bank expanded its operations to include digital banking, mobile banking, and online services. In 2015, CEF was restructured to become a specialized financial institution, focusing on social and economic development programs, such as microfinance, microinsurance, and education financing.
Today, Caixa Econômica Federal is one of the largest banks in Brazil, with over 5,000 branches and 12,000 ATMs across the country. The bank serves over 20 million customers and has a significant presence in the Brazilian economy, providing financial services to individuals, businesses, and institutions.
Supreme Court upholds decision to retain Bolsonaro’s passport
The first panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court has decided to uphold the individual decision of Justice Alexandre de Moraes—the rapporteur of the case—to withhold former president Jair Bolsonaro’s passport and ban him from having contact with people under investigation.
The restrictions had been ordered as part of probes into an alleged attempted coup d’état in Brazil and the irregular sale of jewelry received by the former leader during international trips.
#brazil #supremecourt #bolsonaro
ustice Moraes argued that the Federal Police investigations are ongoing and there is no justification for reforming the decision preventing Bolsonaro from leaving the country.
For the same reason, the justice also denied the former president access to the plea bargain of Mauro Cid, his former aide-de-camp.
The decision was taken unanimously by Justices Flávio Dino, Luiz Fux, Cristiano Zanin, Cármen Lúcia, and Moraes.
The trial was held online and ended Friday (Oct. 18).
Article
Brazilian lawmakers eye cap on Uber fees
The Brazilian Senate has delayed a bill capping commissions charged by Uber and other ride-hailing platforms.
Caps on drive-hailing apps cut?
The Brazilian Senate has once again delayed a vote on a bill that could reshape the ride-hailing industry. The proposed legislation would cap service fees charged by apps like Uber at 10 percent of a rider’s fare, significantly reducing the commissions that drivers currently pay.
#brazil #uber #fees
Why it matters. The fees platforms charge drivers are anything but transparent. While Uber claims its average commission is 25 percent, the actual rates can vary wildly.
Opaqueness. One driver in Joinville, a city in southern Brazil, posted a now-private YouTube video showing Uber’s commissions on seven rides from the same day, with values ranging from 13.8 percent to as high as 40 percent.
In 2022, Uber’s Chinese-owned competitor 99 announced it would cap its commissions at 19.99 percent...
Article
Daily Complimenting Threadcast!
Welcome to the Daily Complimenting #threadcast, courtesy of the FreeCompliments Community (hive-140084). In this threadcast, you can:
For contributing to Hive's collective kindness and joy, every comment posted in this threadcast will be curated by @fc-leo-curator (run by @thelogicaldude) so that you can become a stronger Lion!
#freecompliments
Please let me know whether you'd like to be tagged here on a daily basis. Everyone on the tag list gets curated for replying!
Tag List: @crazyphantombr, @ganjafarmer, @ijebest, @ngwinndave, @sabrinah, @thelogicaldude
I want to thank the new member of our community #freecompliments
@generikat
!luv
@freecompliments, @crazyphantombr(1/10) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community | HiveWiki | <>< daily
Aww, thank you for the warm welcome to the community @crazyphantombr😊
#freecompliments
!PIZZA
Thank you for bringing them in, brother!
A warm welcome to you @generikat. Looking forward to seeing your new content! :D
!LOL !BBH !INDEED !DOOK
lolztoken.com
Hummus-cide
Credit: reddit
@crazyphantombr, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of freecompliments
(4/10)
Delegate Hive Tokens to Farm $LOLZ and earn 110% Rewards. Learn more.
@crazyphantombr! @freecompliments likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @freecompliments. (4/50)
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And I also want to thank the new member of our community #freecompliments
@thatboyjake
!LUV
@freecompliments, @crazyphantombr(2/10) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community | HiveWiki | <>< daily
Thank you for bringing him in as well!
A warm welcome to you @thatboyjake. Looking forward to seeing your new content! :D
!LOL !BBH !INDEED !DOOK
lolztoken.com
One, they hold the bulb while the world revolves around them.
Credit: marshmellowman
@crazyphantombr, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of freecompliments
(5/10)
Delegate Hive Tokens to Farm $LOLZ and earn 110% Rewards. Learn more.
thank you so much, free compliments is great
@crazyphantombr! @freecompliments likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @freecompliments. (5/50)
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Ótimo dia para ser feliz!
Faça sua parte!
Faça o seu melhor!
!PIZZA
Time to fill the wick.
you son of a bitch i'm in
Just bought a @zingtoken Energy Vial!
In India, the price of 1L water bottle is 20 INR which is roughly 25 Cents.
#freecompliments
The price in Greece is wrong in a supermarket the average price is at 0.15 and if you buy it in a restaurant it’s 0.5. Only voss water is like buying liquid gold
I rarely buy water in a bottle. Austria has top drinking water from the tap. It is almost free :)
Just thought of this thing. Who sells water in Kenya? The same corporations as in Europe...
Selling water must be like printing money.
In Sweden the tap water is so good there is usually no point to buy bottle water.
A good common to all of us, being marketed in this way.
UAE is mostly a dessert. They have done an amazing job keeping the prices where they are.
– Frédéric Bastiat
#cent #bbh #classicliberal #bastiat
#hockey
Great that you have the opportunity to go and have a great time at one of those games.
#QUDodxnaBP5dcTUiJcYYiSyJUujRkpuouNNmqcaPmskLgNFgHTRRfJHqyNdZyfWaFuvEpt7Z5T9q97VVZiiU6nJ9QQuYdbNuBkBULHAzPtgqKr266XwbgRe6rsrq1U9Fbi9p3aDrrQGYvjEEFw46UQ9zdMwYRX9Xc8Ke6nK5LvBKvyLbSoyehVMqF4JzF88vawwu92Bv4t6114hZssVFFpuCUXzRFk7WUs3kUx7jHzHBMnVgrS8ngZWrGYrLqQaj3rFe9K6L1GUYS3o3JwgynN6sDTjR585kfCh5WnQ691Efvbppz44HqKRHMJt86UQPYFCc7gk81padKSiMRRDnK29sEukS67vQzvjtpNVruquZZxUKjvnxoffzMYF1EdGAhpuHb6YrxbhiUA9Ztg8GccN2FS666kdx218Lm7Xfd5ewtUyH5ZeXAJM7Q35VXPFFtwoWYLhz8r
Hi, @simplegame,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
Who can remember #floppy #disks? Whether you can or not, they surely have their place in the history. 😄
#funny #it #technology
As a Muslim I disagree about the Jesus dying part, but yeah, floppy becoming the icon of saving makes sense. !LOLZ
lolztoken.com
Luckily I Noah guy.
Credit: happyme
@behiver, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of ahmadmanga
(1/2)
Delegate Hive Tokens to Farm $LOLZ and earn 110% Rewards. Learn more.
That's a real good one !LOLZ
lolztoken.com
Then it dawned on me.
Credit: benthomaswwd
@behiver, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of ben.haase
(3/10)
Farm LOLZ tokens when you Delegate Hive or Hive Tokens.
Click to delegate: 10 - 20 - 50 - 100 HP
They were my storage buddies back in the day 😊
Remember them well here. May even have one in a box somewhere.
#VKcbnZtz5vueL9uEyEg9osXqz3SegKRH8YAWf7oMFfi8462DppZGR5Cm4tcCfnuk33uVGawhKTHfH7A7zLHHDfdPNRYcxxGXWWbUYnhkXp7z3oT1bmFGkzRNinvB2Z1QXrSTNbUTKNx2qiwzvSYk972E8fKZBcnfF3vxfgPw3RAJzsKE5hhE6WbBmrRpWyQrH2p7Qz598x51hhSpgiGAxQCqi9xTzHaM94UxMCQHueQEnomKPydgdVcVcUpCW2GnmHvi3jk9FBkNGeqH1ypS9pW3MxQc2XqvQNEVWGoG94Pgs2sMG
#VKcbnZtz5vueL9uEyEg9osXqz3SegKRH8YAWf7oMFfi8462DppZGR5Cm4tcCfnuk33uVGawhKTHfH7A7zLHHDfdPNevsMqQhZKBKaqu9zVNYeDScsYJU4PFpu8xFtxYk3s7He2HsFn8YgG2mrnnwmTRjjPFMxvhJZ1pjDTxTxwfyhxSthHJyrHNfoKtj6k9Mzn9i6PYUJmkk1cgEoA5FRFNK4EUnk2G9w3RvdFkY8fw7tRDoKmqE1t5yGvbB58kBRHephjVtsvxubWng6o1LLdbNodssa4L1d6sC6uHZ324HquEqk
I spend 15 hours a day on my PC working. They say touch grass, I say no! I spend 2 hours in the gym! Get healthy LEOfriends! #freecompliments #cent #bbh
But my touching grass is doing farm work and hiking... So... that counts in my opinion, lol.
Of course 💯!
health is wealth we all know but mostly ignoring the fact. Good to see you thatvyou are concentrating on workout.
#freecompliments #gf
Yes if it was easy everyone would do it. Ty.
With the short content platforms picking up pace, I think it is in the interest of all Lions:
If a thread is posted from Ecency, Peakd or somewhere else, will that particular thread still have $LEO rewards?
#feedback #question #interest
No. only InLeo content rewards in Leo
That makes sense. What if I upvote a thread from another platform, will that reward the upvoted thread with LEO? 🤔
I've checked out the peakd version of short content form.. I like the mobile version better than InLeo's mobile version (hence the questions)
nope Leo rewards only work on InLeo
let the InLeo team know what you like better.
Welp, so much for buying my 100 $LEO for 13 $HIVE.....Back up to 15 Hive for 100 LEO.....Lovely lol
Oops. lol
!BBH
You buy it all?
Not this week, picked up for 5K over the last 2 weeks though ;)
gotcha...yeah i grabbed 100 under 13 hive yesterday....that didnt last long
Going to be intersting to see where it goes from hear.
Hey my friend do you personally know any of these?
They are still supporting the clicktrackprofit Witness.
i'll tag @mcoinz79 @niallon11 and @trumpman I know they use Threads.
let me check to see if they support me yet ;)
@niallon11 is the only one out of the 3 that is not supporting @thebbhproject yet ;)
Have you tried bribery.
I hear it's highly effective. 😀
What can I offer you? lol
My post explaining the dash-inleo intergration...
https://inleo.io/publish?edit=inleo-dash-integration-part-2-3mz
perfect thank you!
@jongolson! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (33/100)
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That sounds very good and taking advantage of that small rise
ESPN post:
“LeBron, Bronny make history, take court together for Lakers.
LeBron James and Bronny James became the first father-son duo in NBA history to appear in a game together when they checked in at the same time with 4:00 left in the second quarter Tuesday night.”
#nba #sports
LeBron has a grown son. I feel old 😅
Me Too 😂
The benefits of joining a guild, 92 SPS rewards from our recent Brawl.
#linkincomments #splinterlands #cent #bbh #freecompliments
https://inleo.io/@logen9f/splinterlands-social-media-challenge-the-perks-of-joining-a-guild-jqz?referral=logen9f
#QUDodxnaBP5dcTUiJcYYiSyJUujRkpuouNNmqcaPmskLgNFgHTRRfJHqyNdZyfWaFuvEpt7Z5T9q97VVZiiU6nJ9QM6stSR8GwRRXmkQjYZbzsnw876sQ2hHDiTZmb4nZuGv8UgdAYAFAe1Ls8G4XU6mrMxJqfjZ1ctMyZGQbAHp3coG6yUCs89BN9vs4gJgMrFGVPPTctcjDZLh3UmMAnb17Y6fXXymjfpaQBpp858DvEiduLYGJcUV25tWg5WER9momM7dGqaRTNMuw53xPPGoFZDgwCMtezYdMpkpGFKjwPVxBWMfYcp5uUXTxDtW5mpB7DM4iiY6WeQQgM2JrugxsFKfjjHZ1XQG2zMftierKXitcq9jwQNVBnTt2q6r2suNbvyqsZPRTiyUuAMA2hb7jKQWog8x9keU6fhqevM6W6NiP1Tg29XERf5XULJGGQv7HcAQdo
Utah hockey club sets record for most shots at goal without scoring in NHL history. At least I got to see history made even though they lost. #NHL
Oh thats a new NHL team right?
yeah. Fun to see them play even though they lost. !PIZZA
Hi, @dkid14,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
Good morning Lions. Tropical Storm Kristine (Trami) is in our country today
#dailydook #freecompliments #cent #bbh #pepe #lolz
Be safe!
good morning
Hope everything will be ok.
Be safe and stay inside.
#freecompliments #gf
Thank you bro
hope you are well
Not as bad in our city as other parts in the country. Thank you.
Good Morning, take care buddy.
This is one of the coolest things i’ve seen online in a while. Stashing this for future #jongojems in a few years.
I need some more of this. Motivation lacking a little this week. Thanks for sharing. !PIZZA !BBH
This is the mindset for a lifetime.
Dis is a meaningfull won. !DIY !BBH !DOOK
@jongolson! @pepetoken likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @pepetoken. (6/100)
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You can query your personal balance by
!DIYSTATS@jongolson! @dkid14 likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @dkid14. (1/5)
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Wen you meet a fellow lion in #splinterlands https://inleo.io/threads/view/logen9f/re-leothreads-2wtqvtdnh
Top 10 BBHO Rich List
#bbh
Oooh, there's some awesome peeps on that list! I also like that this was the first sight I saw when I hopped on here, YAY BBH Project! (I;m working on moving up that list 😉 )
I love your timing Special K :) !BBH !DOOK
Thank ye Professor B!
Any time :)
@generikat! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (38/100)
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20k bbh, my goal
!pizza
Awesome :) !BBH !DOOK
@crazyphantombr! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (18/100)
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Coming up on nearly 2k myself
You are awesome :) !BBH !DOOK
@bitcoinflood! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (8/100)
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yall remember this tiktok trend? Lol
I have NEVER seen this before. WTF 😂
it was a trend for like 2 weeks a few years ago
How did I miss this?
no idea. Made the rounds a few years bscm
Hi, @l337m45732,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
As a matter of fact no. #lolz Hab sum $CHICKEN tho'. !BBH !WEIRD !DOOK
@l337m45732! @pepetoken likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @pepetoken. (10/100)
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Alexandra Daddario is our beauty of the day… Those eyes… #bbh #dailydook #photography #moviesonleo
Best quote I heard in a while: #bbh #dailydook
That is why I use Texas Toast ;)
!BBH !DOOK
@pele23! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (20/100)
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A high bread/shit ratio is definitely better.
$DASH
The effort being deployed by WEB3 participants is translated into ownership, authority, and influence. It’s this unique recipe that “authorizes” value extraction. There are no shortcuts. You can’t simply create a few WEB3 accounts and then sit back expecting money to come your way. #cent #sapphirecrypto
https://img.inleo.io/DQmVuXU1BEAwPPgoBo42XkqoTKteYSmhcCYkYL1UKPJDHLc/YouTube%20Channel%20Art%20(73).jpg
$CSPR is near all time low. With a solid project and a great chain, I think it is a good time to buy.
#tsig #cspr #casper #mexc #bybit #okx #bitget #kucoin #gateio #bitmart #cdc #cryptodotcom #pob #cent
El mejor plato
e ve muy completo con todo lo que nos gusta. Gracias.
I fought @solymi in our recent Guild Brawl 😀
#dailydook #freecompliments #cent #bbh #pepe #lolz #splinterlands
ggs! Good battle.
gooGood morning my belobeloved. How was your night? I hope all of you slept well all? IIt's The beginning of another new day, I wish everyone a happy and successful day ahead. #cent #freecompliment #emotionsfeelings
Good morning. Night was quite well as I slept well and it's a good start for my day.
#freecompliments
That's awesome. Have a wonderful day #freecompliments
GM frens, mi playing gaem wit frens man.
Hit up @pepetoken if you want to play Frog Battle Trading Card Game.
#gmfrens #freecompliments #cent #bbh #dailydook
How bullish are you anon?
#freecompliments #pepe #meme #lolz #cent #bbh #dailydook
Super bullish on $PEPE honestly
Love to hear it fren. !BBH !DIY !DOOK
@bitcoinflood! @pepetoken likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @pepetoken. (26/100)
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You can query your personal balance by
!DIYSTATSHi, @bitcoinflood,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
Risk management must always be present with anything you attempt within the Crypto and finance world, There are plenty of different strategies one can apply to multiply accumulation. A high APR is pointless if the underlying assets involved are dumped. #cent #sapphirecrypto
Why anyone should consider buying an Inleo #premium?
Wrong answers only 😅
#inleo #cent #bbh #dailydook
I can't think of a wrong answer!!
$BTC rises with this price. #hive #leo #btc #cent
Lol… this sums up a lot
Forgot all about Farcaster. But that's pretty much how these startup investments go like this 9 out of 10 will fail but investors don't mind because that 1 out of the 10 will out perform the other 9 that failed. It's a weird thing in the investor world.
Daily wise words from dani-asi
#wisdom #inleo #hive #freecompliments #aliveandthriving #lifefacts #motivation #inspiration #success #gmfrens
Been slacking a bit on curation work, need to get those numbers back up.
It's same to my case also.
Que genial es explorar música y apoyar a muchos artistas emergentes
😍
que realmente son buenos.
Hi there, I see you applied to NFT Showroom so I messaged the linked instagram account to verify! Please reply to us on instagram and we can approve you, thanks :) (since you aren't following @nftshowroom on insta it may be hidden in your message request tab)
This morning’s workout was a perfect blend of power and control. I started with an intense session on the treadmill, focusing on building strength through varied intervals. The treadmill portion was split into three blocks, each beginning with a vigorous one-minute push to really get the heart rate up.
#movetoearn #fitness
All-Outs and Tempo Session - My Actifit Report Card: October 22 2024
Today is my sister birthday, I'll enjoy some cake and time with family 🙌🏼
After a long hiatus, I made another #Hive meme!
#cryptocurrency #blockchain