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Brain implants helped make a integer avatar of a changeable survivor’s face
The news: A pistillate who mislaid her quality to talk aft a changeable 18 years agone was capable to replicate her dependable and adjacent convey a constricted scope of facial expressions via a machine avatar. A brace of papers published successful Nature yesterday astir experiments that restored code to women via encephalon implants amusement conscionable however rapidly this tract is advancing.
How they did it: Both teams utilized signaling devices implanted into the encephalon to seizure the signals controlling the tiny movements that supply facial expressions. Then they utilized AI algorithms to decode them into words, and a connection exemplary to set for accuracy. One team, led by Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon astatine the University of California, San Francisco, adjacent managed to seizure emotions.
The caveats: Researchers caution that these results whitethorn not clasp for different people, and either way, we are inactive a precise agelong mode from tech that’s disposable to the wider public. Still, these proofs of conception are hugely exciting. Read the afloat story.
—Cassandra Willyard
How caller batteries could assistance your EV complaint faster
The news: Chinese artillery elephantine CATL has unveiled a caller fast-charging battery—one that the institution says tin adhd up to 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) of scope successful 10 minutes. That’s faster than virtually each EV charging today, and CATL claims the caller cells, which it plans to nutrient commercially by the extremity of 2023, volition “open up an epoch of EV superfast charging.”
Why it matters: Although EVs are progressively popular, drivers tin beryllium held backmost by worries astir the constricted scope of their batteries, and the request to complaint for upwards of fractional an hour. Innovation successful artillery materials, if matched with advancement successful charging infrastructure, could assistance mimic the convenience of gas-powered cars and promote adoption of EVs. Read the afloat story.
—Casey Crownhart
If you privation to larn much astir wherefore accelerated charging is truthful important to the aboriginal of EVs, and what it’ll instrumentality to velocity things up, work this week’s edition of The Spark, Casey’s play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things vigor and climate. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 India’s satellite landing was a success 🚀
Great quality for each of us, arsenic it means we’ll larn much astir the moon’s mostly unexplored southbound pole. (Reuters)
+ Here’s wherefore it’s significant, and what’ll travel next. (Wired $)
+ India seems to beryllium replacing Russia arsenic a abstraction power. (Quartz $)
2 Greece is battling its biggest wildfires yet
It’s having to tackle scores of simultaneous blazes crossed the country. (NYT $)
+ Why Lahania’s wildfires were truthful dreadful. (Wired $)
+ Locals accidental the inferno began aft firefighters near a ‘contained’ fire. (NYT $)
+ The G20 pledged to extremity fossil substance subsidies—then quadrupled them. (Quartz $)
+ Norway has opened the world’s biggest floating upwind farm. (Reuters)
3 Google is trying to person it some ways with AI and copyright
It’s acknowledging musicians merit to beryllium paid for their data… but not publishers. (The Verge)
+ Some of the thorniest questions astir AI volition beryllium answered successful court. (WSJ $)
+ How judges, not politicians, could dictate America’s AI rules. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Nvidia posted insanely bully fiscal results
It’s present the sixth-most invaluable nationalist institution successful the world, arsenic it profits from the AI boom. (WP $)
5 AI is everywhere… yet besides nowhere
CEOs speech a bully game, but drill into the details, and it’s yet to marque immoderate existent interaction for the immense bulk of companies. (FT $)
+ Artificial quality is infiltrating wellness care. We shouldn’t fto it marque each the decisions. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Instagram is inactive riddled with transgression activity
It’s not lone failing to mean the merchantability of guns, drugs, and counterfeit cash—it’s actively promoting and profiting from it. (404 Media)
7 TikTok Shop is hemorrhaging wealth successful the US
But whether the $500 cardinal it’s spent truthful acold this twelvemonth is truly a nonaccomplishment oregon an concern remains to beryllium seen. (The Information $)
8 How to speech to your kids astir societal media
Step one? Set a bully illustration yourself. (Wired $)
+ How to log off. (MIT Technology Review)
9 It’s official: gifs conscionable aren’t chill these days
I’m arsenic gutted arsenic you are. (The Guardian)
10 Netflix has fixed up asking for its DVDs back 📀
If you’ve inactive got a DVD player, you’ve inactive got a abbreviated model of clip to nab immoderate escaped discs. (Vox)
Quote of the day
“They are going to turn up successful a satellite wherever this is the norm.”
—Yazmin Bahena, a mediate schoolhouse societal studies teacher, tells the New York Times wherefore she thinks schools are amended disconnected teaching students however to usage AI tools than banning them.
The large story
The adjacent enactment for messenger RNA could beryllium bigger than covid vaccines
February 2021
Many covid vaccines were built and tested successful nether a year, acknowledgment to a antecedently unproven exertion made 20 years earlier: messenger RNA.
In the adjacent future, researchers believe, shots that present impermanent instructions into cells could besides pb to vaccines against herpes and malaria, amended flu vaccines.
But researchers besides spot a aboriginal good beyond vaccines. They deliberation the exertion volition licence inexpensive cistron fixes for cancer, sickle-cell disease, and possibly adjacent HIV. Read the afloat story.
—Antonio Regalado
English (US) ·