The next generation of Apple Silicon chips has arrived with the announcement of the company's new M1 Ultra SoC (system on a chip), the latest entry to Apple's M1 chipset lineup that's even more powerful than the M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips its released so far. From a report: The key to the M1 Ultra is the Apple's UltraFusion architecture -- effectively, Apple is fusing together two separate M1 Max chips into a single, massive SoC, thanks to the 2.5TB/s inter-processor connection that the M1 Max offers. That design lets Apple double virtually all the specs from its M1 Max chip on the M1 Ultra: 20 CPU cores (16 performance and four efficiency), 64 GPU cores, a 32-core Neural Engine for AI processing, and up to 128GB of RAM. All told, Apple says that the M1 Ultra offers eight times the performance of the regular M1.

Qualcomm is using Mobile World Congress to show off some new technology that should improve 5G connectivity and wireless audio. From a report:The Snapdragon X70 5G modem-RF system attempts to improve your phone's 5G connection with the help of an AI processor. This helps it maximize 5G signal for better coverage -- particularly important for mmWave signals, which are short-range compared to the broader coverage of low and mid-band frequencies. Qualcomm says this improvement is limited to situations like stadiums and city blocks, and that it doesn't address one of mmWave's key weaknesses: the signal's inability to travel from outdoors to indoors. But where there's no mmWave signal, the new AI processor should boost sub-6GHz coverage and speeds, too. The new audio features, wrapped up in a platform called Snapdragon Sound, include a feature teased last year: wireless earbud support for 16-bit "CD-quality" lossless audio over Bluetooth.

In NFL news, an American football team — the Denver Broncos — "are up for sale," reports CNBC, "and a group of crypto enthusiasts is aiming to raise more than $4 billion using a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, to make it their own...." This group includes an eclectic mix of attorneys, accountants, software developers, pro athletes, and at least one mathematician. One of the people spearheading the cause is Sean O'Brien, who spent over a decade in Cisco's legal department, before leaving the corporate world to run a few small businesses with his wife. "We know it sounds a bit crazy, but it's also a bit badass," said O'Brien. "The purpose essentially is to establish an infrastructure so that fans from all walks of life can be owners of the Denver Broncos."

The pro football team is valued at just under $4 billion, and it is expected to garner the biggest price tag in North American sports history, according to ESPN....

DAOs take coordination of resources on the internet to a new level, according to Auston Bunsen, co-founder of QuikNode, which provides blockchain infrastructure to developers and companies. "They represent a new kind of organization moving at hyper speed," said Bunsen. Investor Cooper Turley, who has helped build several popular DAOs, says they're like an "internet community with a shared bank account."

"Basically, a small group of people come together to form a chat group, and then they decide to pull capital together, [typically] using an Ethereum wallet," Turley previously told CNBC....

Though the group will still fundraise in cryptocurrency, the idea is to give people partial ownership, in which they will participate in deciding how the team is run... The BuyTheBroncos group also has a pretty solid plan B. Organizers tell CNBC the more realistic goal is to raise around 25% of the money needed to place the winning bid, and from there, join forces with a consortium of more traditional buyers to make up the difference.
The group's Twitter account had less than 50 followers before CNBC's article — but 390 followers after the article ran. And O'Brien tells CBNC his ultimate goal is "to essentially open up peoples' eyes to what a DAO can do in the real world and make a tangible connection between this web3 life and the real world.

"Our thought is that it accelerates DAO adoption for solving real-world problems such as food scarcity or unhoused peoples."

In a desperate bid to get his children offline, some guy in France apparently blitzed his entire town's internet connection -- by accident, that is. He now faces up to six months in prison for the outage. From a report: A report from the outlet France Bleu says the unnamed dad tried to use a multi-wave band jammer to temporarily cut off the internet connection at his residence in the town of Messanges. Jammers, which are illegal in France (and also in the U.S.), work by interfering with telecommunication signals, thus stifling connections. Despite their illegality, people still get arrested for using them, pretty much all the time. In this case, the dad in question deployed the device in the hopes of prying his social-media-addicted children away from the grips of their devices.

When later questioned by a government official, the man apparently admitted that he only wanted to cut off the connectivity to his house at night, between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. -- probably so his kids would put the phones down and just go to bed already. Unfortunately for the padre, the jamming device was powerful enough to cut connectivity not just to his own residence but, unbeknownst to him, to those of many, many others in the surrounding area. His neighbors eventually started reporting their outages, after which the government was forced to investigate.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Now that Windows 11's first major post-release update has been issued, Microsoft has started testing a huge collection of new features, UI changes, and redesigned apps in the latest Windows Insider preview for Dev channel users. By and large, the changes are significant and useful -- there's an overhauled Task Manager, folders for pinned apps in the Start menu, the renewed ability to drag items into the Taskbar (as you could in Windows 10), improvements to the Do Not Disturb and Focus modes, new touchscreen gestures, and a long list of other fixes and enhancements.

But tucked away toward the bottom of the changelog is one unwelcome addition: like the Home edition of Windows 11, the Pro version will now require an Internet connection and a Microsoft account during setup. In the current version of Windows 11, you could still create a local user account during setup by not connecting your PC to the Internet -- something that also worked in the Home version of Windows 10 but was removed in 11. That workaround will no longer be available in either edition going forward, barring a change in Microsoft's plans. While most devices do require a sign-in to fully enable app stores, cloud storage, and cross-device sharing and syncing, Windows 11 will soon stand alone as the only major consumer OS that requires account sign-in to enable even basic functionality.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Army released (PDF) its climate change strategy this week, and it's a lengthy document that shows how the largest and oldest branch of the military will not only prepare for climate change but will also zero out emissions from most of its operations and activities. The Army says that the goal isn't just to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions -- though that's a key outcome -- but also to make the force more resilient by "adapting infrastructure and natural environments to climate change risks." The strategy takes a multipronged approach toward addressing the climate threat, including overhauling the Army's installations and its acquisitions and logistics practices.

On just the facilities side, the Army buys more than $740 million of electricity every year, producing over 4.1 million metric tons of carbon pollution. To bring those numbers down while also improving its ability to operate when the grid goes down, the Army says it will install microgrids at each of its more than 130 installations by 2035. Already, 25 microgrids are "scoped and planned" through 2024. Microgrids are usually connected to the wider grid, though they can be easily cut off without losing power, allowing operations to continue if the connection is severed or the grid goes down. Currently, the Army is looking into solar, wind, and batteries to power microgrids.

On bases, myriad vehicles support day-to-day operations, and the new plan calls for the nontactical vehicle fleet to be all-electric by 2035. That includes everything from light trucks like Chevrolet Tahoes and Ford F-150s to massive prime movers like the "Dragon Wagon" and the HEMTT. Light-duty vehicles like the Tahoe are scheduled to be all-electric by 2027. Tactical vehicles, though, will take a bit longer. The Army hopes to hybridize them by 2035 before moving to all-electric in 2050. The plan doesn't spell out what it considers to be tactical vehicles, though the designation likely includes things like Humvees and MRAPs. Currently, there's no concrete plan for all-electric tanks and self-propelled artillery. The Army's plan is also requiring it to "proactively train its people and prepare a force that is ready to operate in a climate-altered world," the document says.

Furthermore, a "Climate 101" course has been rolled out "to introduce fundamentals of climate science to base architects and garrison commanders, and it says it will update all of its training modules, exercises, and simulations to consider the impacts of climate change by 2028," adds Ars Technica. "The goal is to prepare the entire force for whatever conditions climate change presents, from severe weather to a thawing Arctic."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Starting this year, the federal government will begin doling out $5 billion to states over five years to build a nationwide network of fast chargers. The plan initially focuses on the Interstate Highway System, directing states to build one charging station every 50 miles. Those stations must be capable of charging at least four EVs simultaneously at 150 kW. Once states have completed the Interstate charging network, they'll be able to apply for grants to fill in gaps elsewhere. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, a new agency formed to help the Transportation and Energy Departments administer the program, will allow case-by-case exceptions to the 50-mile requirement if, for example, no grid connection is available nearby.

Funding for the initial Interstate portion of the program will be allocated using a formula that mimics how federal highway grants are distributed. Starting in fiscal year 2022, $615 million will be available to build charging stations, and $300 million will be allocated to set up the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. Ten percent of each year's funding will go toward filling gaps in the network. After the initial $5 billion program is launched, another $2.5 billion in discretionary grants will be available to build chargers in rural and underserved areas.

As part of their plans submitted to the federal government, states will need to ensure that the charging stations will be reliable -- at least one charger per station needs to be working more than 97 percent of the time -- and that they will limit their impact on the electric grid. States are also directed to design stations so they can be easily expanded and upgraded as demand grows and charging rates increase. The new program also encourages states to site chargers near travel centers, convenience stores, visitor centers, or restaurants. To get credit for their Interstate build-out, states will have to install chargers that use the Combined Charging System, also known as CCS. [...] The new program also prioritizes domestic production of chargers, which has already spurred some manufacturers to begin setting up operations in the US. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg says the agency is looking at how people will pay for charging. "Part of this program is going to be a shared standard. If we're going to use taxpayers' dollars to help private actors put in charging stations, then of course we need to make sure the citizen is getting good value out of it. There may be any number of network benefits through loyalty programs. That's fine," he said, "but we've got to make sure... everybody can benefit."

"Scientists have made the first steps to develop an atlas of world cancer, hoping it will bring us closer to a cure," reports the Telegraph.

"A map showing stark differences in the incidence of 10 types of cancer between Spain and Portugal has sparked a race to pinpoint causes and risk factors people should avoid." It shows huge differences for people living only a short distance apart, sometimes across the border between Spain and Portugal, and others occurring within the same country. Scientists say it will take years to solve the puzzle completely but are confident that the map provides the pieces. There are easier questions and more complex riddles. But it all points to environmental factors — as opposed to genetics — playing a major role in causing cancers.

The lung cancer map tells a clear story of far higher levels of smoking tobacco in Spain than in Portugal, with the latter country showing a consistent hue of dark blue for a lower risk of mortality, while Spain has large areas lit up in red, at least on the map representing men. Twenty per cent of Spanish adults are daily smokers, compared with just over 11 per cent in Portugal. But the data from cancer of the larynx, also linked to smoking, tells a vastly different story, with a high mortality risk for men shown straddling the border in southern Portugal and south western Spain, as well as patches in the north of both countries. "The lung cancer and smoking connection is very clear, so why in other cancers that have a strong link with tobacco are we seeing such surprising differences?" asks Pablo Fernández-Navarro, the lead co-ordinator of the atlas from the Spanish side.

"This is what is so fantastic. If whole countries had uniform levels of mortality, the maps would be in plain colours. Given that it is not the case, now we have to investigate and explain these differences, eliminating one factor after another," Fernández-Navarro told The Telegraph.

In the case of larynx cancer, the Spanish epidemiologist says the map confirms that smoking is by no means the only risk factor, and that other elements must also be at work, from alcohol intake to levels of pollutants such as asbestos or petrochemicals in the environment.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the link.

"Proponents of AI audiobook narration tout its much lower production costs (compared to a traditional recording of a human narrator) as a way to improve profitability of audiobooks," reports Publisher's Weekly, "as well as allowing publishers to publish more audiobooks that have limited audiences.

"But according to actor and narrator Emily Lawrence, cofounder of the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association and president of its board of directors, 'It's very easy to reduce this issue to dollars and cents, but it's very complicated and nuanced.'" If AI narration proliferates, "it's not just narrators who will lose their jobs," Lawrence said. "There's an entire ecosystem of people who rely on audiobooks for their livelihood. People who direct audiobooks, people who edit audiobooks, people who check audiobook narration for word-for-word perfection against the manuscript.... Similarly, in audiobook narrator Hillary Huber's view, the negatives of AI outweigh any positives. She places "loss of livelihoods, loss of integrity in storytelling, and loss of personal connection" high on her list of concerns. "The only pros I see are financial," she said. "And it's the other team that benefits, not the narrators nor the listeners. Do you really think [AI company] Speechki is going to pass their savings on to the listener? No. Listeners make choices about what to spend money on, and they have a right to demand clear labeling of robot voices, as do authors....

[Anthony Goff, who until this month was senior v-p and publisher of Hachette Audio] noted at Hachette... his team is looking at using AI for some titles that have never been produced in audio before — a move that would help ensure that "the largest possible number of Hachette's titles are always accessible in audio format," he said. "Interest in previously unrecorded content would help us make decisions about what would make sense to bring to market as fully produced audiobook editions moving forward, created by a professional narrator and our dedicated production staff." Goff's experimentation lines up with the key point that those who champion AI narration raise: AI can provide publishers with a cost-effective way to produce more audiobooks to help meet burgeoning consumer demand. Industry statistics illustrate the gulf between the number of audiobooks that get to market and the number that could potentially be recorded. According to the most recent data from the Audio Publishers Association, more than 71,000 audiobooks were published in 2020. Though that number marks an industry high, it's still only a fraction of the number of print books published in 2020....

Despite AI narration's potential to help grow the audiobook sector, its emergence is "creating an existential crisis for our narrator community," Lawrence said. "It is not only threatening to take away our jobs and completely remove us from the equation but — and this is my main concern — it's threatening the art that we love. And as a community, we fully believe that what we do is art. Whether I'm out of a job or not, I would be devastated that the art that I care so deeply about is so horribly compromised."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Hackers have stolen more than $324 million in cryptocurrency from Wormhole, the developers behind the popular blockchain bridge confirmed Wednesday. The platform provides a connection that allows for the transfer of cryptocurrency between different decentralized-finance blockchain networks. Wormhole said in a series of tweets Wednesday afternoon that thieves made off with 120,000 wETH, or wrapped Ethereum, worth nearly $324 million at current exchange rates. The platform's network was also taken offline for maintenance. This is one of the largest crypto thefts of all time and the second-largest theft from a DeFi service, blockchain analysis firm Elliptic said in a statement. UPDATE: All $320 million in funds have been restored.

joshuark writes: Microsoft has filed an amicus brief supporting Epic Games in its appeal against Apple, and argues that, "the potential antitrust issues stretch far beyond gaming." As Epic Games continues to file its appeal against the 2021 ruling that chiefly favored Apple, interested parties have been contributing supporting filings to the court. Notably, those have included US attorneys general, but now Microsoft has also joined in on the side of Epic Games. Microsoft's amicus filing included below, sets out what it describes as its own "unique -- and balanced -- perspective to the legal, economic, and technological issues this case implicates." As a firm which, like Apple, sells both hardware and software, Microsoft says it "has an interest" in supporting antitrust law. Describing what it calls Apple's "extraordinary gatekeeper power," Microsoft joins Epic Games in criticizing alleged errors in the original trial judge's conclusions. "Online commerce and interpersonal connection funnels significantly, and sometimes predominantly, through iOS devices," says Microsoft. "Few companies, perhaps none since AT&T... at the height of its telephone monopoly, have controlled the pipe through which such an enormous range of economic activity flows." To support its claim that the Epic Games vs Apple ruling has "potential antitrust issues [that] stretch far beyond gaming," Microsoft describes what else it sees as this "enormous range of economic activity." "Beyond app distribution and in-app payment solutions - the adjacent markets directly at issue in this case," says Microsoft's filing, "Apple offers mobile payments, music, movies and television, advertising, games, health tracking, web browsing, messaging, video chat, news, cloud storage, e-books, smart-home devices, wearables, and more besides."

An undersea fibre-optic cable which connects Tonga to the rest of the world was severed during the eruption of a volcano. From a report: New Zealand's ministry of foreign affairs says it could take more than a month to repair breaks in the 49,889km (31,000miles) of cable that serves the South Pacific. The undersea eruption - followed by a tsunami - led to Tonga's 110,000 people being cut off. A 2G wireless connection has been established on the main island, using a satellite dish from the University of the South Pacific. But the service is patchy, and internet services run slowly. The cable, which is operated by Tonga Cable, is believed to have broken about 37km (23 miles) offshore. According to Reuters, fault-finding conducted by the company in the aftermath of the volcano seemed to confirm a cable break.

he process of mending it is actually quite simple, according to principal engineer at Virgin Media, Peter Jamieson, who is also vice-chairman of the European Subsea Cable Association. "They will send a pulse of light from the island and a machine will measure how long it takes to travel and this will establish where the break is," he explained. Then a cable-repair boat will be sent to the location of the first break. It will use either an ROV (remotely-operated underwater vehicle) or a tool known as a grapnel (basically a hook on a chain) to retrieve the broken end. That will be re-joined to fresh cable on board the boat and then the same process will happen at the other end of the break. If all goes well, the whole process will take between five and seven days. It will take time to get a cable repair boat to the archipelago and the closest one is currently stationed in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea - about 4,700km (2,900 miles) away. The specialised ship, The Reliance, serves more than 50,000km (31,000 miles) of cable in the South Pacific.

On Tuesday, Turkish police in eleven different provinces took forty suspects into custody for an alleged money laundering scam perpetrated using the Twitch streaming platform. Kotaku reports: According to Demiroren News Agency (via Daily Sabah and Dexerto), the suspects are accused of using stolen credit cards to buy Bits, which are essentially the platform's virtual currency. Those Bits were then allegedly sent to streamers, who then paid the scammers real money through a 70 to 80 percent refund. So, if the scammers bought 1,000 Bits for $10, this could be a way for them to make $7 or $8 from a stolen credit card, and streamers to pick up the difference. Compound more stolen credit cards and much higher dollar amounts, and you end up with a scam that could total an estimated $9.8 million. This appears to be a long-running operation, with an email paper trail going back two years.

Faster internet access has significantly weakened civic participation in Britain, according to a study that found involvement in political parties, trade unions and volunteering fell as web speeds rose. From a report: Volunteering in social care fell by more than 10% when people lived closer to local telecoms exchange hubs and so enjoyed faster web access. Involvement in political parties fell by 19% with every 1.8km increase in proximity to a hub. By contrast, the arrival of fast internet had no significant impact on interactions with family and friends. The analysis of behaviour among hundreds of thousands of people led by academics from Cardiff University and Sapienza University of Rome found faster connection speeds may have reduced the likelihood of civic engagement among close to 450,000 people -- more than double the estimated membership of the Conservative party. They found that as internet speeds rose between 2005 and 2018, time online "crowded out" other forms of civic engagement.

The study's authors have also speculated that the phenomenon may have helped fuel populism as people's involvement with initiatives for "the common good," which they say are effectively "schools of democracy" where people learn the benefit of cooperation, has declined. Other studies have shown that social media engagement has strengthened other kinds of civic engagement, for example by helping to organise protests and fuelling an interest in politics, even if it does not manifest in traditional forms of participation. However, politics conducted online has been found to be more susceptible to "filter bubbles," which limit participants' exposure to opposing views and so foster polarisation.

Meta may be the loudest company building AR and VR hardware. Microsoft has HoloLens. Apple is working on something, too. But don't count out Google. The Verge: The search giant has recently begun ramping up work on an AR headset, internally codenamed Project Iris, that it hopes to ship in 2024, according to two people familiar with the project who requested anonymity to speak without the company's permission. Like forthcoming headsets from Meta and Apple, Google's device uses outward-facing cameras to blend computer graphics with a video feed of the real world, creating a more immersive, mixed reality experience than existing AR glasses from the likes of Snap and Magic Leap. Early prototypes being developed at a facility in the San Francisco Bay Area resemble a pair of ski goggles and don't require a tethered connection to an external power source.

Google's headset is still early in development without a clearly defined go-to-market strategy, which indicates that the 2024 target year may be more aspirational than set in stone. The hardware is powered by a custom Google processor, like its newest Google Pixel smartphone, and runs on Android, though recent job listings indicate that a unique OS is in the works. Given power constraints, Google's strategy is to use its data centers to remotely render some graphics and beam them into the headset via an internet connection. I'm told that the Pixel team is involved in some of the hardware pieces, but it's unclear if the headset will ultimately be Pixel-branded.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: A connection between the human herpesvirus Epstein-Barr and multiple sclerosis (MS) has long been suspected but has been difficult to prove. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the primary cause of mononucleosis and is so common that 95 percent of adults carry it. Unlike Epstein-Barr, MS, a devastating demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, is relatively rare. It affects 2.8 million people worldwide. But people who contract infectious mononucleosis are at slightly increased risk of developing MS. In the disease, inflammation damages the myelin sheath that insulates nerve cells, ultimately disrupting signals to and from the brain and causing a variety of symptoms, from numbness and pain to paralysis. To prove that infection with Epstein-Barr causes MS, however, a research study would have to show that people would not develop the disease if they were not first infected with the virus. A randomized trial to test such a hypothesis by purposely infecting thousands of people would of course be unethical.

Instead researchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School turned to what they call "an experiment of nature." They used two decades of blood samples from more than 10 million young adults on active duty in the U.S. military (the samples were taken for routine HIV testing). About 5 percent of those individuals (several hundred thousand people) were negative for Epstein-Barr when they started military service, and 955 eventually developed MS. The researchers were able to compare the outcomes of those who were subsequently infected and those who were not. The results, published on September 13 in Science, show that the risk of multiple sclerosis increased 32-fold after infection with Epstein-Barr but not after infection with other viruses. "These findings cannot be explained by any known risk factor for MS and suggest EBV as the leading cause of MS," the researchers wrote. In an accompanying commentary, immunologists William H. Robinson and Lawrence Steinman, both at Stanford University, wrote, "These findings provide compelling data that implicate EBV as the trigger for the development of MS." Epidemiologist Alberto Ascherio, senior author of the new study, says, "The bottom line is almost: if you're not infected with EBV, you don't get MS. It's rare to get such black-and-white results."

Google says that its Chrome browser will soon block internet websites from querying and interacting with devices and servers located inside local private networks, citing security reasons and past abuse from malware operations. From a report: The change will take place through the implementation of a new W3C specification called Private Network Access (PNA) that will be rolled out in the first half of the year. The new PNA specification adds a mechanism inside the Chrome browser through which internet sites can ask systems inside local networks for permission before establishing a connection. If local devices, such as servers or routers fail to respond, internet websites will be blocked from connecting.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A defunct hydro plant in Costa Rica is getting a new lease on life by powering crypto mining, and bringing clean energy to a rapidly expanding business. More than 650 machines from 150 customers operate non-stop from this plant next to the Poas River, just outside of capital city San Jose. Costa Rica generates nearly all its energy from green sources, where the state has a monopoly on energy distribution. But the government stopped buying electricity due to surplus power in the country, forcing the plant to reinvent itself.

Eduardo Kooper is the owner of Data Center CR and the plant. "We had a lot of power, but we did nothing with it. We had to pause activity for nine months. We looked for many alternatives -- from making fried food, frozen food -- everything that used a lot of energy. Just a year ago, someone told me about Bitcoin, blockchain, and digital mining." Kooper, skeptical at first, learned that the crypto mining business requires a lot of energy, much of which comes from fossil fuels. The company invested $500,000 to venture into hosting digital mining computers. "Our market is the international miner who is looking for better conditions," said Kooper. "That miner is looking for clean energy, cheap energy that is economically viable, and looking for internet connection, where he finds it is where that miner is going to go."

Snap is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for rejecting its application to trademark the word "spectacles" for its digital eyewear camera device. But the USPTO has maintained that "spectacles" is a generic term for smart glasses and that Snap's version "has not acquired distinctiveness," as required for a trademark. The Verge reports: In its complaint filed Wednesday in US District Court in California, Snap claims that the Spectacles name "evokes an incongruity between an 18th century term for corrective eyewear and Snap's high-tech 21st century smart glasses. SPECTACLES also is suggestive of the camera's purpose, to capture and share unusual, notable, or entertaining scenes (i.e., "spectacles") and while also encouraging users to make 'spectacles' of themselves." Snap first introduced its camera-equipped Spectacles in 2016 ("a wearable digital video camera housed in a pair of fashionable sunglasses," according to its complaint), which can take photos and videos while the user wears them and connects with the Snap smartphone app. [...]

Snap's new complaint posits that there's been enough media coverage of Spectacles, bolstered by some industry awards and its own marketing including social media, to support its claim that consumers associate the word "spectacles" with the Snap brand. Snap first filed a trademark application for Spectacles in September 2016, "for use in connection with wearable computer hardware" and other related uses "among consumer electronics devices and displays." During several rounds of back-and-forth with the company since then, the USPTO has maintained that the word "spectacles" appeared to be "generic in connection with the identified goods," i.e. the camera glasses. Snap continued to appeal the agency's decision. In a November 2021 opinion, the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (pdf) upheld the decision, reiterating that the word "spectacles" was a generic term that applied to all smart glasses, not just Snap's version. Despite the publicity Snap claimed its Spectacles had received from its marketing and social media, the board noted in its opinion that Spectacles' "social media accounts have an underwhelming number of followers, and the number of followers is surprisingly small," which didn't support the company's argument that there had been a high enough level of consumer exposure to Snap's Spectacles to claim that consumers associated the word with Snap's brand.

In its Tuesday complaint, Snap's attorneys argued that "spectacles is an old-fashioned term popular in the 18th century," and that it "is not often used today in the United States," especially by Snapchat's young audience. "This indicates that modern-day usage of "spectacles" in the United States -- especially among a younger demographic of consumers who are the relevant consumers of Snap's SPECTACLES camera product -- is not commonly understood to mean eyeglasses, and certainly not a wireless-enabled video camera product." But the USPTO appeal board said in November that the evidence didn't support that argument, and that the word "spectacles" still retains its generic meaning and therefore can't be trademarked. The board noted that in its own marketing, Snap had demonstrated that its Spectacles "eyeglasses form is a feature, function and characteristic of the camera, not only functionally but aesthetically." Snap's lawsuit, which names acting USPTO director Drew Hirshfeld, seeks to have the appeal board's November decision reversed.

Time reports on virtual doppelgangers — also known as "digital twins". (Alternate URL here.) Created by feeding video, images, blueprints or other data into advanced 3-D mapping software, digital twins are being used in medicine to replicate and study internal organs. They've propelled engineers to devise car and plane prototypes — including Air Force fighter jets — more quickly. They allow architects and urban planners to envision and then build skyscrapers and city blocks with clarity and precision. And this year, digital twins began to break into the mainstream of manufacturing and research. In April, chipmaker Nvidia launched a version of its Omniverse 3-D simulation engine that allows businesses to build 3-D renderings of their own — including digital twins. Amazon Web Services announced a competing service, the IoT TwinMaker, in November...

The need was always there. In the 1960s, NASA created physical replicas of spaceships and connected them to simulators so that if a crisis ensued on the actual vehicle hundreds of thousands of miles away, a team could workshop solutions on the ground. Dave Rhodes, the senior vice president of digital twins at Unity Technologies, a video-game and 3-D-platform company, says that digital-twin technology is only now being widely released because of several confluent factors, including the increased computing power of cloud-based systems, the spread of 5G networks, improvements in 3-D rendering and the remote work demands of COVID-19....

Digital-twin technology is being trialed across the medical landscape, for planning surgical procedures and exploring the heart risks of various drugs... Digital twins are also being used in other complex and potentially dangerous machines, from nuclear reactors in Idaho to wind turbines in Paris.... Digital twin humans are coming too: the NFL and Amazon Web Services have created a "digital athlete" that will run infinite scenarios to better understand and treat football injuries.... BMW could soon implement digital twins at all facilities.

Frank Bachmann, the plant director in Regensburg, says that the advantages of digital twins will only be fully realized when every factory is digitized in a standard way. "We need these processes of digital twins everywhere," he says.
The technology "raises questions about privacy and cybersecurity," Time warns. "Many of these digital twins are made possible by a multitude of sensors that track real-world data and movement.

"Workers at factories with digital twins may find their every movement followed; the hacker of a digital twin could gain frighteningly precise knowledge about a complex proprietary system."