News

Do stem cells for vision loss offer real hope?

A new paperin this area generated some buzz on top of an earlier recent pub (mentioned in this post) just a week or so ago about the potential of stem cells for vision loss.

Airbus and Boeing are exploring the viability of electric planes

China’s experiment in ranking and monitoring citizens has started

Depending on their score bracket, residents hold a grade ranging from A+++ to D. Some offenses can hurt the score pretty badly. For drunk driving, for example, one’s score plummets straight to a C. On the other hand, triple As are rewarded with perks such as being able to rent public bikes without paying a deposit (and riding them for free for an hour and a half), receiving a $50 heating discount every winter, and obtaining more advantageous terms on bank loans.

AlterEgo: Interfacing with devices through silent speech

AlterEgo is a closed-loop, non-invasive, wearable system that allows humans to converse in high-bandwidth natural language with machines, artificial intelligence assistants, services, and other people without any voice—without opening their mouth, and without any discernible movements—simply by vocalizing internally.

Ratings inflation on Uber and elsewhere

Uber asks riders to give their drivers a rating of one to five stars at the end of each trip. But very few people make use of this full scale. That’s because it’s common knowledge among Uber’s users that drivers need to maintain a certain minimum rating to work, and that leaving anything less than five stars could jeopardize their status.

How Famine Under the Nazis Revealed the Cause of Celiac Disease

The lucid dreaming playbook: how to take charge of your dreams

Why and how GitLab abandoned Microsoft Azure for Google Cloud

More Power, Less Tower: AI May Make Aircraft Control Towers Obsolete

Beware the Tech the Oligarchs’ “Guaranteed Basic Income” Scam

A number of the reigning oligarchs—among them Mark Zuckerberg (net worth $64.1 billion), Elon Musk (net worth $20.8 billion), Richard Branson (net worth $5.1 billion) and Stewart Butterfield (net worth $1.6 billion)—are calling for a guaranteed basic income. It looks progressive. They couch their proposals in the moral language of caring for the destitute and the less fortunate.