An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Belgium said on Thursday it would review potential health risks linked to Apple's iPhone 12, raising the prospect that more European countries might ban the model after France ordered a halt to sales due to breaches of radiation exposure limits. However, there seemed to be no immediate prospect of an EU-wide ban as the European Commission said it would wait for feedback from other EU countries before deciding on any action. European Union member states, which were notified by the French regulator on Wednesday, have three months to provide comments. Some, such as Italy, said they would take no steps for now.

Mathieu Michel, Belgium's state secretary for digitalization told Reuters that the Belgian regulator was looking into the matter after the French moves. "We immediately asked the IBPT (Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications) for confirmation, or at least an analysis, and this is currently under way," he said. Michel also asked the regulator to review all Apple smartphones, and devices made by others, at a later stage. However, he stressed that European standards were extremely cautious and there were no immediate safety concerns. "So that's why today it's obviously a limit which is being crossed (according to the French regulator) and that's not acceptable, but in terms of health and safety, I don't think there's any reason to think that we're all going to turn into little green men."

The iPhone 12 had passed the radiation test conducted by the French agency in 2021. Germany's network regulator BNetzA reiterated that the work in France could act as a guide for Europe as a whole and that it would examine the issue for the German market if the process in France had progressed sufficiently. The Dutch digital watchdog also said it was looking into the matter and would ask the U.S. firm for an explanation, while stressing there was "no acute safety risk." Portugal's telecommunications regulator ANACOM said it was monitoring and analyzing developments in coordination with France, and expected one of the two likely outcomes: Apple correcting the situation or, failing that, Brussels telling EU member states "to adopt proportional measures." Britain, where the iPhone 12 met radiation safety standards when it was released, has not announced any plans in the wake of France's decision.

"On the morning of his arrest, Grigor Sargsyan was still fixing matches. Four cellphones buzzed on his nightstand with calls and messages from around the world.... The information on his devices would provide a remarkable window into what has become the world's most manipulated sport, according to betting regulators. Thousands of texts, gambling receipts and bank transfers laid out Sargsyan's ascent in remarkable detail..."

That's part one of a two-part story in which more than 181 tennis players are involved, and from more than 30 countries, fixing more than 375 professional tennis matches. The Washington Post reveals the years-long investigation that began when Belgium's gambling commission tipped off their federal prosecutor's office to "irregular wagers on obscure tennis matches played around the world."

The breakthrough came with geolocation data on a cellphone, cross-referenced against the the names of people who'd recently flown to that country... The bets were made in small towns in the Flemish countryside. The gamblers appeared to be acting on inside information; they consistently won even when they bet against steep odds... [Nicolas Borremans, a 45-year-old police investigator based in the Flanders region of Belgium] knew little about sports. He had never watched an entire tennis match. But even a cursory description of the case was enough for him to see how a gambling operation might be used to launder money...

Within a few months, he had traced the accounts of four men who had placed suspicious bets in Belgium, all Armenian immigrants. Their wagers were mostly small — a few hundred euros each — ostensibly to avoid scrutiny. Almost all of the bets were on low-level professional tennis tournaments, where players earned barely enough to pay for their travel. Borremans secured wiretaps on the gamblers' phones, and a team of Armenian interpreters listened in. It became clear that the gamblers were working for someone. They received detailed instructions about which matches to bet on. They weren't gambling just on the outcomes, but on specific scores for sets and games... Borremans added more gamblers to his diagram. "Money mules," he called them. Eventually, he would uncover 1,671 accounts at gambling establishments across Europe. Many were registered by working-class Armenians: mechanics, a pizza deliveryman, a taxi driver.
While the tennis tour "has in recent months issued a raft of bans and suspensions," the article points out that the scale of the gambler/tennis player network "has remained a secret until now, in part because the tour is still working on active investigations related to the operation." (The professional tennis tour has its own investigation unit "formed in part because of pervasive allegations of match-fixing in the sport," which assisted the Belgian police.)

The operation's "maestro" had tried to evade investigators. (One French player received his payment in 21 separate transfers from Armenia.) The maestro also gave the tennis players anonymously-registered SIM cards for communication. But unfortunately, the article points out, every professional tennis player "signs a contract agreeing to hand their phones over to tennis investigators at any time if required." Soon investigators were reading the mastermind's text messages — and even wiretapping his phone calls to his mother.

His phone's search history would later offer a glimpse into his life and concerns. Sargsyan scoured the internet for references to himself and his players ("maestro tennis," "match fixing tennis hossam"); he did some broader research into his world ("tennis corruption," "armenian mafia"); he searched for ways to spend his new fortune ("escort geneve," "villa rent close port mallorca") But, mostly, he searched for new bookmakers ("croatia betting shop," "usa betting," "mybet Australia").
Caught in the investigation were Sebastian Rivera, the Chilean coach based in the United States, and Slovakian tennis player Dagmara Baskova (who says she was paid 10,000 euros for each thrown match). Another French player told investigators "Since 2015, I estimate that I have accepted to deliberately lose or manipulate the outcome of 20 to 30 matches for Maestro, both in singles and doubles." Some tennis players infuriated the maestro by tipping off other gamblers about their plans to throw matches.

Leaving the courtroom for his own trial, the maestro gave this response to the Post reporter asking how he felt about the courtroom proceedings. "If the prosecutor knew what I know, there would be many more people on trial." Later the maestro was sentenced to five years in prison for fraud, money laundering, and leading a criminal organization.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Most research shows that over-the-counter fish oil supplements don't offer cardiovascular benefits, but that hasn't stopped marketers from touting them for heart health, a new study shows.

The sale of fish oil supplements is a multibillion-dollar industry, and many people take fish oil capsules daily, believing the omega-3 fatty acids they contain are good for their overall health, particularly for their heart. While it's true people who eat seafood regularly are less likely to die of heart disease, studies have not shown that taking fish oil as a supplement offers the same benefit. Even so, fish oil marketers continue to make health claims that imply a wide range of benefits, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Cardiology.

The researchers analyzed labels from more than 2,000 fish oil supplements that made health claims. They found more than 80 percent used what is known as a "structure and function claim," which is a general description that describes the role of omega-3 fatty acids in the body — such as "promotes heart health" or "supports heart, mind and mood." Cardiovascular health claims, which accounted for 62 percent, were most common.

Fish oil contains two omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, found naturally in fatty fish such as salmon. Higher levels of these omega-3s have been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, but the observational findings are based on omega-3 levels in the diet, not from supplement use, some experts say. Two recent large clinical trials showed that over-the-counter fish oil supplements do not improve cardiovascular outcomes. But the vagueness of the wording used by fish oil marketers could lead to misinformation about the role of the dietary supplement, said Ann Marie Navar, associate professor of cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who was senior author of the study.
Navar says in the article "It is true that omega-3 fatty acids are present in the brain and are important for all sorts of brain functions.

"What has not been consistently shown with high-quality trials is that taking more of it in the form of a fish oil supplement leads to improved performance or prevention of disease."

The United Nations' proposed Global Digital Compact will exclude technical experts as a distinct voice in internet governance, ignoring their enormous contributions to growing and sustaining the internet, according to ICANN and two of the world's regional internet registries. From a report: The Global Digital Compact is an effort to "outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all." The UN hopes the compact will address issues such as digital inclusion, internet fragmentation, giving individuals control over how their data is used, and making the internet trustworthy "by introducing accountability criteria for discrimination and misleading content." But ICANN, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) worry that recent articulations of the Compact suggest it should use a tripartite model for digital cooperation with three stakeholder groups: the private sector, governments, and civil society. That's dangerous, ICANN and co argue, because technical stakeholders would lose their distinct voice.

They've therefore co-signed and published a document criticizing the Compact as it stands today. "The technical community is not part of civil society and it has never been," the document states, citing outcomes of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) -- a UN event staged in 2003 and 2005 that defined a multi-stakeholder internet governance framework. 2015's WSIS+10 event affirmed that strategy. "This model excludes the technical community as a distinct component, and overlooks the unique and essential roles played by that community's members separately and collectively," DNS overlord ICANN and the registries added.

William Brady writes via The Conversation: People are increasingly interacting with others in social media environments where algorithms control the flow of social information they see. Algorithms determine in part which messages, which people and which ideas social media users see. On social media platforms, algorithms are mainly designed to amplify information that sustains engagement, meaning they keep people clicking on content and coming back to the platforms. I'm a social psychologist, and my colleagues and I have found evidence suggesting that a side effect of this design is that algorithms amplify information people are strongly biased to learn from. We call this information "PRIME," for prestigious, in-group, moral and emotional information. In our evolutionary past, biases to learn from PRIME information were very advantageous: Learning from prestigious individuals is efficient because these people are successful and their behavior can be copied. Paying attention to people who violate moral norms is important because sanctioning them helps the community maintain cooperation.

But what happens when PRIME information becomes amplified by algorithms and some people exploit algorithm amplification to promote themselves? Prestige becomes a poor signal of success because people can fake prestige on social media. Newsfeeds become oversaturated with negative and moral information so that there is conflict rather than cooperation. The interaction of human psychology and algorithm amplification leads to dysfunction because social learning supports cooperation and problem-solving, but social media algorithms are designed to increase engagement. We call this mismatch functional misalignment.

One of the key outcomes of functional misalignment in algorithm-mediated social learning is that people start to form incorrect perceptions of their social world. For example, recent research suggests that when algorithms selectively amplify more extreme political views, people begin to think that their political in-group and out-group are more sharply divided than they really are. Such "false polarization" might be an important source of greater political conflict. Functional misalignment can also lead to greater spread of misinformation. A recent study suggests that people who are spreading political misinformation leverage moral and emotional information -- for example, posts that provoke moral outrage -- in order to get people to share it more. When algorithms amplify moral and emotional information, misinformation gets included in the amplification. Brady cites several new studies on this topic that have demonstrated that social media algorithms clearly amplify PRIME information. However, it's unclear if this amplification leads to offline polarization.

Looking ahead, Brady says his team is "working on new algorithm designs that increase engagement while also penalizing PRIME information." The idea is that approach would "maintain user activity that social media platforms seek, but also make people's social perceptions more accurate," he says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Stefania Benonisdottir and Augustine Kong at Oxford's Big Data Institute have just demonstrated that we can determine if genetic studies are biased using nothing but the genes of the participants. You may wonder how this was done -- quite reasonably, since we can't very well compare the genes of participants to those of non-participants. The analysis done by Kong and his student relies on the key idea that a genetic sequence that occurs more frequently in participants than in nonparticipants will also occur more frequently in the genetic regions that are shared by two related participants. Put differently, a bit of DNA that is common in the population will show up frequently in the study. But it will still only have a 50/50 chance of showing up in the child of someone who carried a copy. If a bit of DNA makes people more likely to enroll in genetic studies, it will be more common both in the overall data and among closely related family members.

So they checked the genetic sequences shared between first-degree relatives -- either parents and children or siblings (but not twins) -- in the UK Biobank. [...] This analysis used genetic data from about 500,000 people collected between 2006 and 2010. It examined roughly 500,000 genetic regions from around 20,000 pairs of first-degree relatives. They didn't find (or look for) "a gene" that correlates with participation in a study. Rather, they compared all of the shared and not-shared genetic sequences among the pairs of first-degree relatives enrolled in the study and analyzed their relative frequencies according to the above three principles. This analysis allowed them to calculate a polygenic score, a summary of how all of the genetic sequences in aggregate contribute to a trait. They deduced that genetics is positively associated with education level, with being invited to participate in further studies, and with accepting that invitation. Genetics was also associated with low BMI. Education level and BMI are both covariates that are often controlled for when using UK Biobank data. But now, no external information is needed; the ascertainment bias can be determined not from looking at other things about the participants' lives, but from their genes.

Benonisdottir, the first author of the work, explained in an email: "It has previously been reported by others that the UK Biobank is not representative with regard to many traits, including BMI and educational attainment. Thus, the fact that these traits are associated with the participation polygenic score, which does not use any information about EA and BMI but is constructed with weights from analysis using our new method of comparing shared and not-shared alleles of participating first-degree relatives, validates that our method is capturing real information about participation." This validation is essential, since their method is so new. The authors of this study propose that their methodology could be used to look for ascertainment bias using only genetic data and that taking participation data into account could help study outcomes become more accurate. They conclude by noting that "participation" is not thus just a result of someone's characteristics and traits; rather, the propensity to participate is a trait in its own right, and one with a genetic component. Being a joiner is hereditary.

Quantum computing could turbo-charge AI into something "massively, universally transformative," argues the South China Morning Post, citing a quote from theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. "AI has the ability to learn new, complex tasks, and quantum computers can provide the computational muscle it needs..."

"AI will give us the ability to create learning machines that can begin to mimic human abilities, while quantum computers may provide the calculational power to finally create an intelligent machine." Where AI brings an ability to self-improve and learn from its mistakes, quantum computers add speed and power. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said "AI can accelerate quantum computing, and quantum computing can accelerate AI...."

Complex calculations that would take classical supercomputers thousands of years to crunch could, in theory, be completed by quantum computers in minutes... In expectation of its advantages, the automotive industry is already collaborating with pioneers in the quantum-computing arena. Daimler has partnered with IBM, Volkswagen with D-Wave Systems (a Canadian quantum-computing firm) and Hyundai with IonQ. "If you can increase the energy density of your battery by another factor of two, three or four, then instead of 300 miles (480km), you can go 600 miles and 1,200 miles on [one] charge," says Kim. "That actually starts to cross the threshold where they become so much more attractive than fossil fuel. And then we can really make an impact on global warming and all these problems..."

Similarly, the mysteries of carbon sequestration could be unravelled by quantum computing, with clear benefits for the efforts to reverse global warming. Drug design at the molecular level could be revolutionised, opening up new avenues for vaccines and, for example, personalised cancer treatment. There's no doubt about it: with effective quantum computing our understanding of chemical processes could become godlike. Finance and investment, too, could be revolutionised by the qubit. The huge range of factors that produce market fluctuations allow for an almost infinite range of possible outcomes, and modelling these possibilities would be relatively simple for quantum computers. Forecasts of market movements would become far more accurate...

For many physicists and mathematicians, every step of the journey towards functional and world-changing quantum computers assumes acknowledgement of an even more profound goal: a greater understanding of the nature of reality. This could also mean that the very nature of understanding has to be reconsidered.
The article suggests we "occupy ourselves with the dawning realisation that something philosophically far-reaching has begun to percolate into our shared consciousness from the laboratories of the world's quantum pioneers."

Last year, Queens resident David Leacraft filed a lawsuit against Canon claiming that his Canon Pixma All-in-One printer won't scan documents unless it has ink. According to The Verge's Sean Hollister, it has quietly ended in a private settlement rather than becoming a big class-action. From the report: I just checked, and a judge already dismissed David Leacraft's lawsuit in November, without (PDF) Canon ever being forced to show what happens when you try to scan without a full ink cartridge. (Numerous Canon customer support reps wrote that it simply doesn't work.) Here's the good news: HP, an even larger and more shameless manufacturer of printers, is still possibly facing down a class-action suit for the same practice.

As Reuters reports, a judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit by Gary Freund and Wayne McMath that alleges many HP printers won't scan or fax documents when their ink cartridges report that they've run low. Among other things, HP tried to suggest that Freund couldn't rely on the word of one of HP's own customer support reps as evidence that HP knew about the limitation. But a judge decided it was at least enough to be worth exploring in court. "Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that HP had a duty to disclose and had knowledge of the alleged defect," wrote Judge Beth Labson Freeman, in the order denying almost all of HP's current attempts to dismiss the suit.

Interestingly, neither Canon nor HP spent any time trying to argue their printers do scan when they're low on ink in the lawsuit responses I've read. Perhaps they can't deny it? Epson, meanwhile, has an entire FAQ dedicated to reassuring customers that it hasn't pulled that trick since 2008. (Don't worry, Epson has other forms of printer enshittification.) HP does seem to be covering its rear in one way. The company's original description on Amazon for the Envy 6455e claimed that you could scan things "whenever". But when I went back now to check the same product page, it now reads differently: HP no longer claims this printer can scan "whenever" you want it to. Now, we wait to see whether the case can clear the bars needed to potentially become a big class-action trial, or whether it similarly settles like Canon, or any number of other outcomes.

Worldcoin will expand its operations to sign up more users globally and aims to allow other organisations to use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology, a senior manager for the company behind the project told Reuters. From the report: "We are on this mission of building the biggest financial and identity community that we can," said Ricardo Macieira, general manager for Europe at Tools For Humanity, the San Francisco and Berlin-based company behind the project.

Macieira said Worldcoin would continue rolling out operations in Europe, Latin America, Africa and "all the parts of the world that will accept us." Worldcoin's website mentions various possible applications, including distinguishing humans from artificial intelligence, enabling "global democratic processes" and showing a "potential path" to universal basic income, although these outcomes are not guaranteed. Most people interviewed by Reuters at sign-up sites in Britain, India and Japan last week said they were joining in order to receive the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the company says verified users can claim.

This week America's Department of Energy announced $100 million to support states, local governments, and public utilities "in purchasing products derived from converted carbon emissions."

The hope is to jumpstart the creation of a market for "environmentally sustainable alternatives in fuels, chemicals, and building products sourced from captured emissions from industrial and power generation facilities." U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm says it will "help transform harmful pollutants into beneficial products." "State and local grants, made possible through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will help demonstrate the economic viability of innovative technologies, resulting in huge net reductions in lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, while bringing new, good-paying jobs and cleaner air to communities nationwide." States, local governments, and public utilities purchase large quantities of products, therefore providing an incentive to purchase products made from carbon emissions is an important method to drive emissions reductions...

[T]he Carbon Utilization Procurement Grants program will help offset 50% of the costs to states, local governments, and public utilities or agencies to procure and use products developed through the conversion of captured carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide emissions. The commercial or industrial products to be procured and used under these grants must demonstrate a significant net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to incumbent products via a life cycle analysis...

Projects selected under this opportunity will be required to develop and implement strategies to ensure strong community and worker benefits, and report on such activities and outcomes.

Smartphones should be banned from schools to tackle classroom disruption, improve learning and help protect children from cyberbullying, a UN report has recommended. From a report: Unesco, the UN's education, science and culture agency, said there was evidence that excessive mobile phone use was linked to reduced educational performance and that high levels of screen time had a negative effect on children's emotional stability. It said its call for a smartphone ban sent a clear message that digital technology as a whole, including artificial intelligence, should always be subservient to a "human-centred vision" of education, and never supplant face-to-face interaction with teachers.

Unesco warned policymakers against an unthinking embrace of digital technology, arguing that its positive impact on learning outcomes and economic efficiency could be overstated, and new was not always better. "Not all change constitutes progress. Just because something can be done does not mean it should be done," it concluded. With more learning moving online, especially in universities, it urged policymakers not to neglect the "social dimension" of education where students receive face-to-face teaching. "Those urging increasing individualisation may be missing the point of what education is about," it said.

An Ohio plastic surgeon lost her medical license after the state medical board investigated her for livestreaming operations on TikTok and surgical complications reported by patients. From a report: The State Medical Board of Ohio voted at a hearing on Wednesday to permanently revoke Dr. Katharine Roxanne Grawe's medical license and to fine her $4,500 "based on her failure to meet standard of care." At the hearing, doctors on the board said that Dr. Grawe, known online as "Dr. Roxy," had previously been cautioned about protecting patient privacy on social media. They also spoke about her treatment of three unnamed patients who had reported complications from procedures, including one whose surgery Dr. Grawe had broadcast a part of on social media.

Dr. Jonathan B. Feibel, vice president of the medical board, recommended that Dr. Grawe's license be revoked because of the "life altering, reckless treatment" provided to those patients. "These outcomes were not normal complications like those that exist in the routine practice of medicine, but were rather caused by recklessness and disregard for the rules governing the practice of medicine in Ohio," he said.

An artificial-intelligence tool has shown promise at helping doctors fight aggressive brain tumors by identifying characteristics that help guide surgery. From a report: The tool -- called the Cryosection Histopathology Assessment and Review Machine, or CHARM -- studies images to quickly pick out the genetic profile of a kind of tumor called glioma, a process that currently takes days or weeks, said Kun-Hsing Yu, senior author of a report released Friday in the journal Med. Surgeons use detailed diagnoses to guide them while they operate, Yu said, and the ability to get them rapidly could improve patients' outcomes and spare them from multiple surgeries. While glioma varies in severity, an aggressive form called glioblastoma can lead to death in less than six months if untreated. Only 17% of people with glioblastoma survive their second year after being diagnosed, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

Surgeons use information about the genetic profile of a glioma tumor when deciding how much tissue to remove from a patient's brain, as well as whether to implant wafers coated in a cancer-fighting drug. Getting that information, however, currently requires time-consuming testing. Yu and his team of researchers trained a machine-learning algorithm to do the work by showing it pictures of samples gathered during brain surgery, and then checking its work against those patients' diagnoses. CHARM learned to match or outperform other AI systems at identifying the genetic profile of a tumor.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The FDA on Thursday granted traditional approval to an Alzheimer's drug for the first time in more than two decades. Now, the question becomes how many people will be able to access the drug, which is targeted at patients in the early stages of the debilitating disease. Medicare has said that it will reimburse the drug's costs -- more than $26,000 annually -- only for beneficiaries enrolled in a nationwide registry that tracks patient side effects and outcomes over time. Patient advocacy groups and some clinicians fear this means that few of the hundreds of thousands of Alzheimer's patients eligible for the treatment will be able to access it.

The agency previously granted Leqembi, developed and manufactured by Eisai and Biogen, accelerated approval before evaluating late-stage clinical trial data earlier this year. The drug moderately slowed trial participants' cognitive decline compared to a placebo, according to the data, but had potentially serious side effects, including brain swelling and bleeding. Under accelerated approval, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it would cover Leqembi only for those participating in a randomized clinical trial, of which none were enrolling. Medicare's coverage determination was contrary to the Veterans Health Administration, which said it would cover the drug for its beneficiaries without restriction.

Roughly 6.7 million people in the U.S. have Alzheimer's, and there are few treatments for the disease. Aduhelm, a drug from Biogen that received accelerated approval in 2021, works similarly to Leqembi by targeting proteins thought to be one of the causes of the disease. But both drugs have received little uptake due to Medicare coverage restrictions, and patient and caregiver concerns over the evidence of its modest benefits. There are five existing treatments for Alzheimer's that treat some of the disease's symptoms, but do not slow progression of the disease.

CNN summarizes the issue. "A recent advisory from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy says there's not enough evidence to determine whether social media is safe enough for children and adolescents when it comes to their mental health." (Although a CNN news anchor points out that "Nearly all of the research points to negative impacts.")

CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent interviewed U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy "to examine what led him to sound the alarm, and who should be responsible for tackling the issue." And the surgeon general remembers when his five-year-old daughter asked to post a picture on social media. "I think finding the right balance is not easy, in part because, you know, the platforms weren't necessarily designed for balance. They were designed to maximize how much time we spend on them." CNN: How worried are you? When people hear something coming from the surgeon general's office, they think of, you know, smoking, opioids, things like this. Social media — is it at that level of concern for you?

Surgeon General: Yes, I would say yes, it is. And, and — but it's it's more complicated... because we know that some kids do actually get benefit from their experience of social media. Some are able to connect more easily with friends and family, to express themselves more creatively and more openly than they otherwise would, and to find community... But one of the things that has become an increasing source of worry for me is that the the association between social media use and harmful outcomes... [W]e're asking parents to somehow figure it out all on their own. And the reason I issued an advisory on this topic is I worry that we have not taken enough action to support parents and kids...

CNN: What is the level of evidence about the dangers of social media and what is the level of evidence that you want? I mean, what does it take for you as a surgeon general to act on this...?

Surgeon General: I think the first question I'm asking is where is the evidence of safety...? There's a lot of association data, right, that's showing an association between use and certain and negative outcomes, like for example, for kids who who use more than 3 hours of social media a day, they face double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms. But we also know that kids are telling us in their own words and their own experience how they're experiencing social media. So, for example, about nearly half of adolescents are saying that using social media makes them feel worse about their body image...

And one of the consistent messages I hear from researchers who's been studying this area for a long time is that they are having a hard time getting access to the data from social media companies. You know, as a parent, I don't ever want to feel like someone or anyone is hiding information from me about how a product affects my child. But that's how a lot of parents are feeling right now. And so that's a place where I think transparency matters. Let's get the data out there so independent researchers can assess it and can help us understand the harms and benefits and which kids are most impacted so we can design, you know, our approach, you know, in a more informed way...

One of the things we call for in my advisory is for the policymakers to step in and establish actual, transparent, enforceable safety standards like we do for other products so that parents have some reassurance around safety... This technology is already being used by 95% of kids, Right. And I don't think that's realistic to put the genie back in the bottle here or to say somehow nobody should be using social media, that that's not the goal here... We don't like leave it up to car manufacturers to determine whether or not they've hit the standards or not. We don't do that with medications either. There should be, you know, independent authority that parents can trust are looking primarily in solely out for the welfare of their kids, and they should be the ones who enforce these standards....

You know, just to put it bluntly, I do not think we have done our job as a society to have the backs of kids and parents on this because we haven't moved fast enough to get the information to ultimately guide them on safe use... [P]arents across the country, people are trying to do the best they can with limited information.
The surgeon general also says their ideal legislation would also "help to reduce kids exposure to harmful content" and include "restrictions on features that seek to manipulate kids into spending excessive amounts of time on these platforms."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Now more than a year into the tech "correction," the denial phase is over. There appears to be a broad consensus that lower valuations are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. But for well-capitalized private companies, it can take a while for the dominos to fall. We've started to see once highly valued businesses sell for disappointing outcomes or shut down altogether. There's a term for these erstwhile unicorns that have seen their valuations crash: unicorpses.

We're starting to see businesses that were valued at hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on paper, evaporate. While last year saw ill-fated failures for fintech business Fast and crypto money mis-manager FTX, the pace of unicorn deaths seems to be accelerating. Just last week we saw the fire sale of truck software business Embark, which went public in 2021 via a SPAC, valued at $4.25 billion. It sold to a private buyer for just over $70 million. Then there was the case of Plastiq, a highly valued lending and payments business that was supposed to go public via a SPAC last year, but failed to list. The company has now filed for bankruptcy. Not to mention, Elizabeth Holmes finally went to jail this week for her famously fraudulent business, Theranos.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from STAT News: Amid what he called the worst youth mental health crisis in recent memory, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory Tuesday warning about social media's impact on developing young brains. "Through the last two and a half years I've been in office, I've been hearing concerns from kids and parents," Murthy told STAT. "Parents are asking 'Is social media safe for my kids?' Based on our review of the data, there isn't enough evidence that it is safe for our kids."

The advisory calls on policymakers and technology companies to take steps to minimize the risks of social media. "This is not going to be an issue that we solve with one sector alone," Murthy said. Policymakers, according to the report, need to develop age restrictions and safety standards for social media -- much like the regulations that the U.S. has in place for everything from cars to medicine. Specifically, Murthy would like to see policymakers require a higher standard of data privacy for children to protect them from potential harms like exploitation and abuse. Technology companies, meanwhile, need to be more transparent about the data they share, according to Murthy. He calls on companies to assess the potential risks of online interactions and take active steps to prevent potential misuse. He also suggests the establishment of scientific advisory committees to inform approaches and policies aimed at creating safe online environments for children.

The advisory also suggests families attempt to protect young people's mental health by developing a family media plan aimed at establishing healthy technology boundaries at home, such as creating "tech-free zones" that restrict phone use during certain hours or family mealtime. But Murthy noted that parents are already at the end of their rope in trying to manage how their children are exposed to and using this rapidly evolving technology. That responsibility has fallen entirely on them up to this point. "We've got to move quickly," he said. "None of us should be satisfied until we have clear evidence that these platforms are safe." The surgeon general's report comes two weeks after the American Psychological Association issued a health advisory on teens and social media use. The group noted the increased risk of anxiety and depression among adolescents who are exposed to discrimination and bullying online. "Other research has shown that adolescents ages 12-15 who spent more than three hours per day on social media face a heightened risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes compared to those who spent less time online," adds STAT News.

Australia's stock market operator, ASX Ltd, has announced that it will no longer pursue the rebuilding of its software platform using blockchain technology. The decision comes after an external review found that the project would require significant rework, and ASX stated that it will explore more conventional technology options to achieve its business goals. Reuters reports: ASX frustrated market participants in November by "pausing" a rebuild of its all-in-one trading, settlement and clearing software based on the decentralized computing concept, after an external review found it had to be largely reworked after seven years of development. The company has since said it is considering options for another attempt at the rebuild of the 30-year-old software, but at a meeting with participants this week it said it would not involve blockchain or related "distributed ledger technology" (DLT).

Asked if the next attempt would "go down the more conventional route, that is without the focus on DLT (or) blockchain," exchange project director Tim Whiteley told the meeting that "while we continue to explore all the options, certainly we will need to use a more conventional technology than in the original solution in order to achieve the business outcomes." The statement signals the end of what was to be one of the world's most prominent use cases of the concept that promises to accelerate online transactions by processing them securely in multiple locations.

Until now, ASX has said it may resurrect the project using blockchain-based technology developed by New York-based contractor Digital Asset. It has said it will announce a new strategy for the project by year-end. Whiteley told the meeting ASX was on track to decide a new strategy by year-end. It sent a request for information to potential software vendors and "issued an RFP to a number of vendors who responded more positively ... for more detailed feedback," he said, using the acronym for a request for proposal. Market participants had told ASX they did not want a risky, single-date changeover to new software, and "that feedback has been taken into the implementation planning," Whiteley said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI, specifically generative AI, has the potential to transform healthcare. At least, that's the sales pitch from Hippocratic AI, which emerged from stealth today with a whopping $50 million in seed financing behind it and a valuation in the "triple-digit millions." The tranche, co-led by General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz, is a big vote of confidence in Hippocratic's technology, a text-generating model tuned specifically for healthcare applications.

Hippocratic -- hatched out of General Catalyst -- was founded by a group of physicians, hospital administrators, Medicare professionals and AI researchers from organizations including Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Google and Nvidia. After co-founder and CEO Munjal Shah sold his previous company, Like.com, a shopping comparison site, to Google in 2010, he spent the better part of the next decade building Hippocratic. "Hippocratic has created the first safety-focused large language model (LLM) designed specifically for healthcare," Shah told TechCrunch in an email interview. "The company mission is to develop the safest artificial health general intelligence in order to dramatically improve healthcare accessibility and health outcomes."

Shah emphasized that Hippocratic isn't focused on diagnosing. Rather, he says, the tech -- which is consumer-facing -- is aimed at use cases like explaining benefits and billing, providing dietary advice and medication reminders, answering pre-op questions, onboarding patients and delivering "negative" test results that indicate nothing's wrong. [...] Shah claims that Hippocratic's AI outperforms leading language models including GPT-4 and Claude on more than 100 healthcare certifications, including the NCLEX-RN for nursing, the American Board of Urology exam and the registered dietitian exam. Hippocratic aims to have its LLM detect tone and communicate empathy better than its rivals -- in part by "building in" good bedside manner, says Shah. They have designed a benchmark to evaluate their model's humanistic qualities, and it scored higher than other models, including GPT-4.

As for whether or not it can replace a healthcare worker, Hippocratic argues that their models, trained under medical professionals' supervision, possess high capabilities.

"We're only releasing each role -- dietician, billing agent, genetic counselor, etc. -- once the people who actually do that role today in real life agree the model is ready," Shah said. "In the pandemic, labor costs went up 30% for most health systems, but revenue didn't. Hence, most health systems in the country are financially struggling. Language models can help them reduce costs by filling their current large level of vacancies in a more cost-effective way."

The swift growth of artificial intelligence technology could put the future of humanity at risk, according to most Americans surveyed in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday. From the report: More than two-thirds of Americans are concerned about the negative effects of AI and 61% believe it could threaten civilization. [...] The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that the number of Americans who foresee adverse outcomes from AI is triple the number of those who don't. According to the data, 61% of respondents believe that AI poses risks to humanity, while only 22% disagreed, and 17% remained unsure.