Translate

Monday, August 31, 2020

New York-based healthcare analytics company Aetion raises $82M Series B (Alaric DeArment/MedCity News)

Alaric DeArment / MedCity News:
New York-based healthcare analytics company Aetion raises $82M Series B  —  The healthcare analytics company said it had raised the extension funding from three new investors and would use it to accelerate development of its real-world evidence technology.  —  A data analytics firm focused …



from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2QDL4sb
via A.I .Kung Fu

Sunday, August 30, 2020

UVC wands kill viruses. They're also a 'major safety issue,' experts warn - CNET

The invisible light can kill viruses and pathogens like the one that causes COVID-19, but experts are raising alarms about the potential safety risks.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/3jrG5an
via A.I .Kung Fu

The best outdoor smart home products to buy in summer 2020 - CNET

Here are the best smart home devices for your yard.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/3gIhJYd
via A.I .Kung Fu

The best office chairs for 2020 - CNET

If your current office chair is causing you pain, it might be time for an upgrade.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/2G3fyBJ
via A.I .Kung Fu

Kymeta raises $85M led by Bill Gates as it prepares to launch a flat panel antenna for cellular and satellite broadband connections (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Kymeta raises $85M led by Bill Gates as it prepares to launch a flat panel antenna for cellular and satellite broadband connections  —  Bill Gates is boosting his bet on next-generation satellite broadband technology, leading a new $85 million funding round for Kymeta as the Redmond, Wash. …



from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3jtmYwx
via A.I .Kung Fu

The airline founder building Asia’s next super app

AirAsia’s Tony Fernandes is expanding into banking, music and e-payments to help tackle the travel slump.

from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/31HAbMf
via A.I .Kung Fu

How the startup Farmers Business Network is trying to disrupt the largely brick-and-mortar $40B US farm supply business, while agri giants refuse to play along (Jacob Bunge/Wall Street Journal)

Jacob Bunge / Wall Street Journal:
How the startup Farmers Business Network is trying to disrupt the largely brick-and-mortar $40B US farm supply business, while agri giants refuse to play along  —  Farmers Business Network faces pressure from big suppliers as it tries to grow its online platform



from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3gIO3tR
via A.I .Kung Fu

30 of the best TV shows to stream on Hulu - CNET

Looking for a great show to watch tonight? Here are some of the best Hulu has to offer.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/3gbEMKE
via A.I .Kung Fu

30 best movies to stream on Disney Plus - CNET

Looking for something other than Marvel or Star Wars? Here are some of the hidden gems on Disney Plus.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/32HLdjI
via A.I .Kung Fu

Tenet ending explained and all questions answered - CNET

Christopher Nolan's latest mind-bender is oftentimes mind-boggling. Here are some answers to what the hell happened.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/2ERzlmZ
via A.I .Kung Fu

The best gaming routers in 2020 - CNET

A gaming router may be overkill for most of us, but if you're looking for low-latency performance and advanced features, here's what we recommend.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/31FEHe8
via A.I .Kung Fu

Profile of cloud database company Snowflake's CEO Frank Slootman, hired sixteen months ago, as he takes his third startup public (CNBC)

CNBC:
Profile of cloud database company Snowflake's CEO Frank Slootman, hired sixteen months ago, as he takes his third startup public  —  - Frank Slootman is preparing to take Snowflake public 13 years after his first tech IPO, Data Domain, and eight years after his second, ServiceNow.



from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3bcBGFy
via A.I .Kung Fu

Government paid influencers to promote Test and Trace

Taxpayer money was used to pay influencers to promote Test and Trace.

from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/3bdp94k
via A.I .Kung Fu

The 15 Best Wireless Headphones (2020): Earbuds, Noise-Canceling, and More

These are WIRED's favorite wireless headphones and earbuds for taking phone calls, listening to music, working out, and more.

from Wired https://ift.tt/2xejcRV
via A.I .Kung Fu

Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater

Rock climb without fear. Play a symphony in your head. Superhuman vision to see radar. Discover the nature of consciousness. Cure blindness, paralysis, deafness and mental illness. Those are just a few the applications that Elon Musk and employees at his neuroscience company Neuralink, formed in 2016, believe that electronic brain-computer interfaces will one day bring about.

While none of these advances are close at hand and some are unlikely, in a “product update” streamed over YouTube on Friday, Musk, also the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, joined staffers wearing black masks to discuss the company’s work towards an affordable, reliable brain implant which Musk believes billions of consumers will clamor for in the future.

“In a lot of ways,” Musk said, “It’s kind of like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires.”

Although the online event was described as a product demonstration, there is as yet nothing that anyone can buy or use from Neuralink. (This is for the best since most of the company’s medical claims remain highly speculative.) It is, however, engineering a super-dense electrode technology that is being tested on animals.

Neuralink isn’t the first to believe brain implants could extend or restore human capabilities. Researchers began placing probes in the brains of paralyzed people in the late 1990s in order to show signals could let them move robot arms or computer cursors. And mice with visual implants really can perceive infrared rays.

Building on that work, Neuralink says it hopes to further develop such brain-computer interfaces (or BCIs) to the point where one can be installed in a doctor’s office in under an hour. “This actually does work,” Musk said of people who have controlled computers with brain signals. “It’s just not something the average person can use effectively.”

Throughout the event, Musk deftly avoided giving timelines or committing to schedules, including when Neuralink’s system might be tested in human subjects.

As yet, four years after its formation, Neuralink has provided no evidence that it can (or has even tried) to treat depression, insomnia, or a dozen other diseases that Musk mentioned in a slide. One difficulty ahead of the company is perfecting microwires that can survive the “corrosive” context of a living brain for a decade. That problem alone could take years to solve.

The primary objective of the streamed demo, instead, was to stir excitement, recruit engineers to the company (which already employs about 100 people) and build the kind of fan base that has cheered on Musk’s other ventures and has helped propel the gravity-defying stock price of electric car-maker Tesla.

Pigs in the matrix

In tweets leading up to the event, Musk had promised fans a mind-blowing demonstration of neurons firing inside a living brain—though he didn’t say of what species.  Minutes into the livestream, assistants drew a black curtain to reveal three small pigs in fenced enclosures; these were the subjects of the company’s implant experiments.

The brain of one pig contained an implant, and hidden speakers briefly chimed out ring-tones which Musk said were recordings of the animal’s neurons firing in real time. For those awaiting the “matrix in the matrix,” as Musk had hinted on Twitter, the cute-animal interlude was different than hoped for. To neuroscientists, it was nothing new; in their labs the buzz and crackle of electrical impulses recorded from animal brains (and some human ones) has been heard for decades.

A year ago, Neuralink presented a sewing-machine robot able to plunge a thousand ultra-fine electrodes into a rodent’s brain. These probes are what measure the electrical signals emitted by neurons, whose speed and patterns are ultimately a basis for movement, thoughts and recall of memories.

An illustration of a prototype neural sewing machine with a helmet to secure a patient’s head.
WOKE STUDIO

In the new livestream, Musk appeared beside an updated prototype of the sewing robot encased within a smooth, white plastic helmet. Into such surgical headgear, Musk believes, billions of consumers will one-day willingly place their heads, submitting as an automated saw carves out a circle of bone and a robot threads electronics into their brains.  

The futuristic casing was created by the industrial design firm Woke Studio, in Vancouver. It’s lead designer, Afshin Mehin, says he strived to make something “clean, modern, but still friendly-feeling” for what would be voluntary brain surgery with inevitable risks.  

To neuroscientists, the most intriguing development shown Friday may have been what Musk called “the link,” a silver-dollar sized disk containing computer chips which compresses and then wirelessly transmits signals recorded from the electrodes. The link is about as thick as the human skull, and Musk said it could plop neatly onto the surface of the brain through a drill hole then be sealed with superglue.

“I could have a Neuralink right now and you wouldn’t know it,” Musk said.

Elon Musk holds “the link” a circular device loaded with computer chips during a demonstration. It serves to collect and wirelessly transmit brain signals.

The link can be charged wirelessly via an induction coil and Musk suggested people in the future would plug in before they go to sleep to power up their implants. He thinks an implant also needs to be easy to install and remove, so that people can get new ones as technology improves. You wouldn’t want to be stuck with version 1.0 of a brain implant forever. Outdated neural hardware left behind in people’s bodies is a real problem already encountered by research subjects.

The implant being tested by Neuralink on its pigs has 1,000 channels, and is likely to read from a similar number of neurons. Musk says his goal to increase that by a factor of “100, then 1,000, then, 10,000” to read more completely from the brain.

Such exponential goals for the technology don’t necessarily address specific medical needs. Although Musk claims implants “could solve paralysis, blindness, hearing,” as often what is missing isn’t ten times as many electrodes, but scientific knowledge about what electro-chemical imbalance creates, say depression, in the first place.

Despite the long list of medical applications Musk presented, Neuralink didn’t show it’s ready to commit to any one of them. During the event, the company did not disclose plans to start a clinical trial, a surprise to those who believed that would be Neuralink’s next logical step.

A neurosurgeon who works with the company, Matthew MacDougall, did say the company was considering trying the implant on paralyzed people, for instance to allow them to type on a computer, or form words. Musk went further: “I think long term you can restore someone full body motion.”

It is unclear how serious the company is about treating disease at all. Musk continually drifted away from medicine and back to a much more futuristic “general population device,” which he called the company’s “overall” aim. He believes that people should connect directly to computers in order to keep pace with artificial intelligence.

“On a species level, it’s important to figure out how we co-exist with advanced AI, achieving some AI symbiosis,” said Musk. “Such that the future of world is controlled by the combined will of the people of the earth. That might be the most important thing that a device like this achieves.”

How brain implants would bring about such a collective world electronic mind, Musk did not say. Maybe in the next update.



from MIT Technology Review https://ift.tt/3jy5M9r
via A.I .Kung Fu

Galaxy Note 20 Ultra review: Amazing features, but is anyone a 'power user' anymore? - CNET

Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G is possibly the right phone in the wrong situation. The newest power phone is too expensive for a steep global recession, and its feature set will be too much for many.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/3gJq0Lr
via A.I .Kung Fu

Review: Pixel 4A officially has the best camera for the money - CNET

The Pixel 4A raises the bar for how good a budget phone's camera can be.

from CNET News https://ift.tt/2YNVIkz
via A.I .Kung Fu

How to Protect the Data on Your Laptop

Your laptop is a treasure trove of personal and sensitive information—make sure it's as secure as it can be.

from Wired https://ift.tt/31Is2r3
via A.I .Kung Fu

The Joy of ‘Analog’ Cooking on a Green Coleman Camp Stove

The best way to unplug from all your digital kitchen gadgetry is to fire up a pair of propane burners in the middle of nowhere.

from Wired https://ift.tt/3lEiy8f
via A.I .Kung Fu

Can Australia Force Google and Facebook to Pay for News?

A proposed law would require the tech giants to negotiate with publishers. Similar attempts in Europe have largely failed.

from Wired https://ift.tt/3hFZ5RW
via A.I .Kung Fu