Tag: News

Science

Cyborg cockroaches could one day scurry to your rescue

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Imagine yourself trapped in a building’s rubble following an earthquake. It’s a terrifying prospect, especially if time is of the essence for search and rescue operations. Now imagine  one of your rescuers turns out to be a cyborg cockroach.  Regardless of how you feel about insects, a team of scientists at Osaka University in Japan apparently believe these resilient little bugs can come in handy in times of disaster. According to the researchers’ paper recently published within the journal Cyborg…

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Raspberry Pi users might soon get access to Sony’s AI technology

 Naomi  0 18 

Sony’s semiconductor branch announced plans to move forward with a “strategic investment” in Raspberry Pi. This is not just out of passion for DIY-centric products, but instead with goals to increase security capabilities via AI integration. Sony Semiconductor Solutions hopes to soon offer its AITRIOS “edge AI sensing technology built around image sensors” for Raspberry Pi 4 devices, according to an official statement on Wednesday. “Our pre-existing relationship encompasses contract manufacturing, and the provision of image sensors and other semiconductor…

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Watch a robot hand only use its ‘skin’ to feel and grab objects

 Amy  0 19 

Robots can have trouble grasping the concept of “grasping.” It’s so bad that even a toddler’s motor skills are usually far more developed than some of the most advanced bots. For example, as instinctually easy as it is for a human to pick up an egg, robots usually struggle to compute the intricacies of force and manipulation while also not expending too much energy. To solve this issue, researchers at the University of Cambridge recently found a novel solution by…

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After 2,000 years of debate, Italy’s massive suspension bridge to Sicily may finally happen

 Naomi  0 27 

Boasting 6,637 feet between its two towers, Turkey’s 1915 Çanakkale Bridge officially nabbed the title as world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened to the public on March 18, 2022. Barely a year after earning the crown, however, Italy may be stepping up to construct an even longer engineering feat—one that’s over 2,000 years in the making, no less. However, critics argue that its odds for completion may be as figuratively long as its literal span. As Wired explained on…

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Super-thin ‘mirror membranes’ could lead the way to bigger space telescopes

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It took years of design and engineering toil to successfully get the largest-ever telescope mirror into space. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope’s trademark, 6.5-meter-in-diameter, gold-coated array orbits the sun 1.5 million kilometers above Earth, routinely providing stunning, previously inaccessible views of the universe. As incredible as its results are, however, a new, promising “mirror membrane” breakthrough is already in the works that could one day show scientists space in a new way. According to a recent announcement from Germany’s…

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Human brains have to work overtime to beat robots at Ping-Pong

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Dealing with humanoid robots in their current iterations often seems a bit uncanny—the technology feels vaguely like us, but comes up short in a way that boggles the mind. While this may not be as major a problem in manufacturing roles, in industries like elderly care, personality—even if robotic—could go a long way. But it’s more than just how they look—movement is key, too. As robots increasingly become integrated facets of everyday modern life, both their makers and outside researchers…

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Almost 99 percent of hospital websites give patient data to advertisers

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Last summer, The Markup published a study revealing that roughly one-third of the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America utilized the Meta Pixel. In doing so, a small bit of coding provided the namesake social media giant with patients’ “medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments” for advertising purposes.  The most recent deep dive into third-party data tracking on medical websites, however, is even more widespread. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, you could be hard-pressed to…

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AI is trying to get a better handle on hands

 Naomi  0 32 

AI text-to-image generators have come a long, arguably troubling way in a very short period of time, but there’s one piece of human anatomy they still can’t quite grasp: hands. Speaking with BuzzFeed earlier this year, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, an artist and associate professor of AI and the arts at the University of Florida, explained that until now, AI programs largely weren’t sure of what a “hand” exactly was. “Hands, in images, are quite nuanced,” she said at the time. “They’re…

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The ‘TikTok ban’ is a legal nightmare beyond TikTok

 Naomi  0 42 

The fate of the RESTRICT Act remains unclear. Also known as the “TikTok ban,” the bill has sizable bipartisan political—and even public—support, but critics say the bill in its current form focuses on the wrong issues. If it becomes law, it could change the way the government polices your internet activity, whether or not you use the popular video sharing app.  Proponents of the RESTRICT Act, which stands for “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications…

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A Bitcoin Easter egg has been buried in macOS since 2018

 Amy  0 77 

The copy of the original white paper explaining Bitcoin’s technological, philosophical, and economic underpinnings has been available online since its publication in 2008—but for some reason, a file version is potentially also buried in every Apple product running MacOS. First spotted by the blogger Andy Baio, a simple copy-paste of the following commands entered into Terminal will reveal the cryptocurrency explainer tucked away within macOS systems folders:  open /System/Library/Image/ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf PopSci can also confirm the PDF’s existence on Ventura 13.2.1…

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Sounding like an AI chatbot may hurt your credibility

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Relationships are all about trust, and a new study shows AI-aided conversations could help build rapport between two people—but only as long as no one suspects the other is using AI. According to a Cornell University research team’s investigation published this week with Scientific Reports, using AI-assisted responses (i.e. “smart replies”) can change conversational tone and social relationships, as well as increase communication speeds. And although more positive emotional language is often used in these instances, people who merely suspect…

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Two alcohol recovery apps shared user data without their consent

 admin  0 41 

Update 04/06/2023: Comments from Monument’s CEO have been added to this article. According to recent reports, two online alcohol recovery startups shared users’ detailed private health information and personal data to third-party advertisers without their consent. They were able to do so via popular tracking systems such as the Meta Pixel. Both Tempest and its parent company, Monument, confirmed the extensive privacy violations to TechCrunch on Tuesday. They now claim to no longer employ the frequently criticized consumer profiling products…