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Submission + - SPAM: Elon Musk's Neuralink shows monkey with brain-chip playing videogame by thinking

Submitted by watsspace
watsspace writes: April 9 (Reuters) — Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's brain-chip startup released footage on Friday appearing to show a monkey playing a simple videogame after getting implants of the new technology.

The 3-minute video by Neuralink shows Pager, a male macaque with chips embedded on each side of its brain, playing 'Mind Pong'. Although he was trained to move a joystick, it is now unplugged. He controls the paddle simply by thinking about moving his hand up or down.

"First @Neuralink product will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs," Musk tweeted on Thursday.

"Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again. The device is implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look & feel totally normal."
Neuralink works by recording and decoding electrical signals from the brain using more than 2,000 electrodes implanted in regions of the monkey's motor cortex that coordinate hand and arm movements, the video's voiceover said.

"Using these data, we calibrate the decoder by mathematically modeling the relationship between patterns of neural activity and the different joystick movements they produce."

Co-founded by Musk in 2016, San Francisco-based Neuralink aims to implant wireless brain computer chips to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer's, dementia and spinal cord injuries and fuse humankind with artificial intelligence.

In August 2020, Musk unveiled a pig with a Neuralink chip implant, describing it as "a Fitbit in your skull."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers free (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: The policy by the funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will expand on existing rules covering all research papers produced from its £8 billion in annual funding.

About three-quarters of papers recently published from U.K. universities are open access, and UKRI’s current policy gives scholars two routes to comply: Pay journals for “gold” open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher’s website, or choose the “green” route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year.

From April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted: Researchers choosing green open access must deposit the paper immediately when it is published.

Submission + - The FTC Votes Unanimously to Enforce Right to Repair (wired.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: During an open commission meeting Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission voted unanimously to enforce laws around the Right to Repair, thereby ensuring that US consumers will be able to repair their own electronic and automotive devices. The vote, which was led by new FTC chair and known tech critic Lina Khan, also comes 12 days after President Joe Biden signed a broad executive order aimed at promoting competition in the US economy. The FTC’s endorsement of the rules is not a surprise outcome; the issue of Right to Repair has been a remarkably bipartisan one.

This is a follow up to the FTC's report it issued in May blasting many tech and automotive companies about the methods they were using to actively suppress people's ability to repair the devices and machines they purchased, how these methods were also limiting third parties from entering into the market, and how these methods were being used to enforce a "planned obsolescence". Forcing users to upgrade or suffer with degradated equipment that the FTC could not find any reasonable rationale to support why such degradation was absolutely required.

For now, the FTC’s policy statement is a giant underscore for existing laws, while dozens of states consider Right to Repair bills at the state level. The commission said today it would investigate repair restrictions both as potential violations of antitrust laws and from a consumer protection angle. The FTC is also encouraging the public to report warranty abuse—as defined by the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act of 1975, which prohibits manufacturers from telling consumers that a warranty is voided if the product has been altered or tampered with by someone other than the original manufacturer.

Submission + - Four-day week 'an overwhelming success' in Iceland (bbc.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success" and led to many workers moving to shorter hours, researchers have said. The trials, in which workers were paid the same amount for shorter hours, took place between 2015 and 2019. Productivity remained the same or improved in the majority of workplaces, researchers said. A number of other trials are now being run across the world, including in Spain and by Unilever in New Zealand. In Iceland, the trials run by Reykjavík City Council and the national government eventually included more than 2,500 workers, which amounts to about 1% of Iceland's working population. Many of them moved from a 40 hour week to a 35 or 36 hour week, researchers from UK think tank Autonomy and the Association for Sustainable Democracy (Alda) in Iceland said. The trials led unions to renegotiate working patterns, and now 86% of Iceland's workforce have either moved to shorter hours for the same pay, or will gain the right to, the researchers said.

Submission + - Audacity's new owners introducing spyware and restrictions (fosspost.org) 1

Submitted by tlhIngan
tlhIngan writes: Audacity, the popular GPL audio editor, was purchased by Muse two months ago. Since their, the new corporate overlord has introduced changes in the program — adding telemetry and a privacy policy allowing data sharing between Europe, the US and Russia. In addition, new changes have added restrictions on use by people under 13 years of age (a contravention of the GPL). FOSS Post reports that these changes mean Audacity is now potential spyware and should be removed from use until officially forked. It should also be noted that Audacity is not a program requiring cloud services or online access to use.

Submission + - YouTube is banning alcohol, gambling, and politics from masthead ads (theverge.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: YouTube will no longer be accepting ads relating to alcohol, gambling, politics, or “prescription drug terms” for its masthead ad slot, which appears at the top of the website and app, Axios first reported. Google told The Verge the limitations on what kind of ads can appear in this slot will help “lead to a better experience for users.”

The masthead slot is one of the first things users see when they open YouTube, so it’s understandable that keeping ads about drugs, alcohol, or gambling out of it would make YouTube more inclusive for everyone. As for politics, it could help the platform avoid controversies, like the one that arose when then-President Donald Trump purchased the slot for three days during the 2020 election.

Submission + - G7 Nations Promise 'Overwhelmingly Decarbonized' Electricity By 2030 (politico.com)

Submitted by Charlotte Web
Charlotte Web writes: The "Group of Seven" (or G7) nations are some of the world's largest economies — the U.S. and Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, and Italy, and Japan. On Sunday they pledged $2 billion to help developing countries pivot away from fossil fuels and pledged an "overwhelmingly decarbonized" electricity sector by 2030. The New York Times calls these "major steps in what leaders hope will be a global transition to wind, solar and other energy that does not produce planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions."

Politico's Ryan Heath argues "The language on a 'green revolution' is quite strong — there's plenty of detail missing, but it gives climate campaigners a lot to hit leaders with if they fail to deliver. And it's a big deal for the G-7 to agree to 'to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of our land and oceans by 2030.'"

Submission + - Linux x86/x86_64 Will Now Always Reserve The First 1MB Of RAM (phoronix.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: The Linux x86/x86_64 kernel code already had logic in place for reserving portions of the first 1MB of RAM to avoid the BIOS or kernel potentially clobbering that space among other reasons while now Linux 5.13 is doing away with that "wankery" and will just unconditionally always reserve the first 1MB of RAM.

The Linux kernel was already catering to Intel Sandy Bridge graphics accessing memory below the 1MB mark, the first 64K of memory are known to be corrupted by some BIOSes, and similar problems coming up in that low area of memory. But rather than dealing with all that logic and other possible niche cases besides the EGA/VGA frame-buffer and BIOS, the kernel is playing it safe and just always reserving the first 1MB of RAM so it will not get clobbered by the kernel.

Submission + - SPAM: TikTok Gives Itself Permission To Collect Biometric Data On US Users

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A change to TikTok’s U.S. privacy policy on Wednesday introduced a new section that says the social video app “may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information” from its users’ content. This includes things like “faceprints and voiceprints,” the policy explained. Reached for comment, TikTok could not confirm what product developments necessitated the addition of biometric data to its list of disclosures about the information it automatically collects from users, but said it would ask for consent in the case such data collection practices began. The biometric data collection details were introduced in the newly added section, “Image and Audio Information,” found under the heading of “Information we collect automatically” in the policy. This is the part of TikTok’s Privacy Policy that lists the types of data the app gathers from users, which was already fairly extensive.

The first part of the new section explains that TikTok may collect information about the images and audio that are in users’ content, “such as identifying the objects and scenery that appear, the existence and location within an image of face and body features and attributes, the nature of the audio, and the text of the words spoken in your User Content.” The policy also notes this part of the data collection is for enabling “special video effects, for content moderation, for demographic classification, for content and ad recommendations, and for other non-personally-identifying operations,” it says. The more concerning part of the new section references a plan to collect biometric data. It states: "We may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information as defined under US laws, such as faceprints and voiceprints, from your User Content. Where required by law, we will seek any required permissions from you prior to any such collection."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: China reports first human case of H10N3 bird flu

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with a rare strain of bird flu known as H10N3, Beijing’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Tuesday.

Many different strains of bird flu are present in China and some sporadically infect people, usually those working with poultry. There is no indication that H10N3 can spread easily in humans.

The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, was hospitalized on April 28 and diagnosed with H10N3 on May 28, the health commission said. It did not give details on how the man was infected.
Link to Original Source

Comment Competition is illegal? When did that happen? (Score 2) 184

Actually, they are specifically arguing that they can't compete.

Third, Viasat will suffer competitive injury from the agencyâ(TM)s Order. SpaceX intends to use its environmentally irresponsible constellation to compete directly with Viasat in the market for satellite broadband services. SpaceXâ(TM)s current network is insufficient for widespread commercial availability, but it has explained that once it has enough Starlink satellites in LEO â" and it is launching them at a rapid clipâ"it will be able to move out of âoebetaâ mode, extend its reach geographically, and compete with Viasat for customers directly.

So yeah, they are literally saying that they desperately want the commission to stop SpaceX from getting enough satellites into orbit that they can move out of "beta" and compete directly. They even quote SpaceX's statement that it intends to compete for customers. They make it sound like competing for customers is a bad thing, as if it was illegal or something.

Farther down they express the concern that if the commission doesn't stop SpaceX now, SpaceX will be able to argue down the road that they can't suspend service without harming SpaceX's customers, thus ensuring that they will be continuing to harm ViaSat's competitiveness over the long term.

Sure, the environmental stuff is all over the document, but it really feels like the core concern is that they might actually have to compete with someone.

And the article makes it very clear that ViaSat is terrible service. Sufficiently terrible that inconsistent and wildly variable "beta" StarLink service looks both awesome and super-speedy in comparison. One person interviewed in the article talks about willingly forking over a $300 cancellation fee to ViaSat just for the privilege of "upgrading" to a long-distance DSL internet service, and that was apparently worth the price of doing so.

Comment My Personal Wishlist for Windows: The Next Gen (Score 1) 172

by Zitchas (#61421816) Attached to: Microsoft Says 'Next Generation of Windows' Coming Soon

No-one at Microsoft will likely every read this, but here goes my personal wishlist to think about:
1) Streamline it. Windows is an Operating System. Get rid of all the crud. ALL the non-OS related things. No garbageware, no junk games, flash (yeah, I know, it's heading out the door. About time), onedrive, contact manager, XBOX. (I just realized a couple weeks ago xbox is broadcasting all my activity online without ever asking me about it. Gah! At least I have to log-in to steam first...)
2) Self-contained. No online-required stuff. Mac had a not-terrible voice control system back in the late '90s. I'm sure a modern computer can do 100x better without compromising our privacy by shipping a sound stream to unknown servers. I *love* the idea of Cortana. I would use Cortana daily if it was 100% self-contained on my system. Instead, I block it and lock it down.
3) Gamer mode! The main reason I still run Windows is for a) game compatibility, and b) professional software that is highly resource intensive. Give us a Professional version that is actually aimed at professionals who actually *need* to use the resources of their systems.

Give me Windows with those three things, and I will happily use Windows and be done with the whole alternative OS thing.

Likelyhood of getting those three things? Slim to none, sadly.

Comment Project Drawdown Solutions (Score 1) 1

by Zitchas (#61419700) Attached to: Why Bill Gates and John Kerry are wrong about climate change

As a case in point, check out the Drawdown Project:
https://www.drawdown.org/solut...

An entire table full of solutions that are completely within our technological means of accomplishing right now that would more than solve climate change. Even partially accomplishing a fraction of them would do wonders.

Now, whether or not we have the *will* to do them.... That's another matter.

If we want a "miracle solution" that allows the entire world to go on living exactly the same way North Americans do right now without any changes and without requiring anyone to change any habits or anything... Yeah, that'll need some fancy technology from the future.

Not even fusion power will do the trick - it has to be cheap, something we can build quickly and easily, and small enough to avoid triggering any NIMBY protests. Given how far away fusion power *still* is, pinning hopes on developing it *and* it being cheap, simple, and small on top of everything else seems a bit much. We're probably a good 50+ years away from achieving *that.*

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