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Submission + - Neuralink brain implant starting to fall off (theguardian.com)

Submitted by jd
jd writes: Neuralink’s first attempt at implanting its chip in a human being’s skull hit an unexpected setback after the device began to detach from the patient’s brain, the company revealed on Wednesday.

The patient, Noland Arbaugh, underwent surgery in February to attach a Neuralink chip to his brain, but the device’s functionality began to decrease within the month after his implant. Some of the device’s threads, which connect the miniature computer to the brain, had begun to retract. Neuralink did not disclose why the device partly retracted from Arbaugh’s brain, but stated in a blogpost that its engineers had refined the implant and restored functionality.

The decreased capabilities did not appear to endanger Arbaugh, and he could still use the implant to play a game of chess on a computer using his thoughts, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first broke the news of the issue with the chip. The possibility of removing the implant was considered after the detachment came to light, the Journal reported.

Submission + - New reports on financial entanglements between FDA chiefs and the drug industry (medicalxpress.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: An investigation published by The BMJ today raises concerns about financial entanglements between US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chiefs and the drug and medical device companies they are responsible for regulating.

Regulations prohibit FDA employees from holding financial interests in any FDA "significantly regulated organization" and the FDA says it takes conflicts of interest seriously, but Peter Doshi, senior editor at The BMJ, finds that financial interests with the drug industry are common among its leaders.

Doshi reports that nine of the FDA's past 10 commissioners went on to work for the drug industry or serve on the board of directors of a drug company.

Submission + - Texas Spot Power Prices Jump Almost 100-Fold on Tight Supply (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by ArchieBunker
ArchieBunker writes: Texas electricity prices soared almost 100-fold as a high number of power-plant outages raised concerns of a potential evening shortfall.

Spot prices at the North Hub, which includes Dallas, jumped to more than $3,000 a megawatt-hour just before 7 p.m. local time, versus about $32 at the same time Tuesday, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

This morning, Ercot, as the state’s main grid operator is known, issued a “watch” for a potential capacity reserve shortage from about 7-9 p.m., meaning the buffer of spare supplies could fall to low enough levels to call on back-up generation, cancel or delay outages or curb usage.

The conditions are the tightest of the year so far and raises the risk of prices rising to the $5,000 cap — which they last did on April 16, when Ercot also warned of a potential shortfall. Unusually hot weather in the region has boosted demand for cooling and lowered the efficiency of many power plants. Wind output has also fallen from a day earlier and there are more outages.

“Ercot has not called for conservation this evening,” it said by email. “The grid is operating under normal conditions at this time.”

Submission + - FBI restarts communications with social media companies over 'disinformation' (thepostmillennial.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed at a briefing that intelligence agencies, including the FBI, have resumed discussions with social media companies in preparation for the upcoming 2024 election. This announcement coincides with the ongoing hearings at the Supreme Court regarding Murthy v. Missouri, a case focusing on allegations that federal agencies pressured social media platforms to remove specific content prior to the 2020 presidential election.

This is in the face of ruling that previous similar efforts overstepped the First Amendment by coercing the major social media platforms to remove content.

Submission + - Tesla sends out more layoff notices as employees enter 4th week of job cuts (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by theweatherelectric
theweatherelectric writes: Elon Musk continues to cut deeper at Tesla. The company sent out another round of layoff notices on Sunday night. The latest round of cuts mean that employees at the company are entering their fourth straight week of layoff notices. Four workers told Business Insider that their managers notified them of additional cuts to their teams on Monday morning. Additionally, several Tesla workers took to LinkedIn to say they'd received layoff notices over the weekend. "After watching my team gradually slimmed down week after week since mid-April, I received the dreaded 'Hello Employee' email this Sunday afternoon," one Tesla worker wrote on LinkedIn.

Submission + - MIT Congressman Introduces Patent Reform Legislation (house.gov)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Representative Thomas Massie (a dual-degree holder from MIT) announces the introduction of patent reform legislation designed to restore to Americans a patent system "as the Constitution of the United States originally envisioned it." Massie's legislation, HR 8134, the "Restoring America's Leadership in Innovation Act of 2024" (RALIA), reverses several harmful changes to patent law that arose from Supreme Court rulings and the enactment of the Leahy-Smith "America Invents Act." Among the significant reforms contained in Massie's legislation is a return to the "first to invent" standard to ensure patent protection for America's inventors.

"The RALIA legislation restores to Americans a patent system as the Constitution of the United States originally envisioned it," said Congressman Massie. "In Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers gave Congress the authority to protect the discoveries of inventors. Specifically, they created a patent system to 'promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.' Regrettably, Congress's 2011 enactment of the Leahy-Smith 'America Invents Act' has worked in concert with several Supreme Court decisions to erode this protection's strength and value."

"As the Constitution intends, RALIA restores patent protection to inventors by awarding patents on a 'first to invent' basis rather than the more recently adopted 'first to file' standard," Congressman Massie continued. "A return to a 'first to invent' patent protection system ensures that inventors and the investors who back them can be confident that their innovative work and ideas will be safeguarded. Patents should protect those who innovate, not those who win the race to the patent office."

In addition to restoring patent protections to a "first to invent" standard, RALIA contains other important reforms to the patent system. Notably, RALIA affirms that a patent secures private property rights, allows inventors to get injunctions again against intellectual property thieves, restores inventors' rights to defend their inventions in court by abolishing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and ends the automatic publication of patent applications unless a patent is granted.

Congressman Massie's RALIA legislation is supported by organizations including AMAC Action, American Policy Center, Americans for Limited Government, Center for American Principles, Conservatives for Property Rights, Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, IEEE-USA, Less Government, Let Freedom Ring, 60 Plus Association, the Small Business Technology Council, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Tea Party Patriots Action, The Committee for Justice, Tradition Family Property Inc., U.S. Business & Industry Council, US Inventor, and Veterans Intellectual Property.

In offering their endorsement of the bill, the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund wrote, "a wide range of reforms, such as those contained in the Restoring America's Leadership in Innovation Act, are required if the U.S. patent system is to secure private property rights, promote progress of science and useful arts, and ensure that America remains the world's leader in innovation."

The original cosponsors of RALIA are bipartisan and include Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX), Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), and Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL).

Submission + - US Air Force Secretary flies A.I. controlled Lockheed fighter jet (the-sun.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The potential for autonomous air-to-air combat has been imaginable for decades, but the reality has remained a distant dream up until now. In 2023, the X-62A broke one of the most significant barriers in combat aviation. This is a transformational moment, all made possible by breakthrough accomplishments of the ACE team.

Submission + - IMF sounds alarm on ballooning US national debt: 'Something will have to give

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

Under current policies, public debt in the U.S. is projected to nearly double by 2053. The IMF identified “large fiscal slippages” in the U.S. in 2023, with government spending surpassing revenue by 8.8% of GDP – a 4.1% increase from the previous year, despite strong economic growth.

If this trend continues, the Congressional Budget Office anticipates the national debt will grow to an astonishing $54 trillion in the next decade. Higher interest rates are also compounding the pain of higher debt.

Should that debt materialize, it could risk America’s economic standing in the world.

The IMF is talking down to Washington like we’re a Third World country because that’s the direction Washington is taking us.

Interest payments alone on the current debt is $1.6T/year.

Submission + - British Columbia bans autonomous cars

Submitted by Baloo Uriza
Baloo Uriza writes: In a rare display of sanity in the automotive space, British Columbia has banned autonomous cars from its highways, after years of watching autonomous cars hamper emergency response efforts in California and outright kill a pedestrian in Arizona. Let's hope this regulatory trend continues, and moves into the human space by pulling licenses of drivers with a known history of poor driving.

Submission + - Top Astronomers Confront Possibility They Were Very Wrong About The Universe (futurism.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “We have great data, but the theoretical basis is past its sell-by date,” he added. “More and more people are saying the same thing and these are respected astronomers.”

A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe’s growth in significant ways.

Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is “lopsided” after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.

The team found that one hemisphere actually hosted slightly more of these quasars, suggesting one area of the night sky was more massive than the other, undermining our conception of dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.

“It would mean that two-thirds of the universe has just disappeared,” Sarkar told The Guardian.

Other researchers have suggested that the cosmological constant, which has been used for decades as a way to denote the rate of the universe’s expansion, actually varies across space, which would contradict the standard model of physics.

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