Lifeboat Foundation

A 64-year-old named Mark has spent the last year learning how to control devices like his laptop and phone using a brain implant. And thanks to OpenAI, it’s gotten a whole lot easier to do.

The neurotech startup Synchron said Thursday it’s using OpenAI’s latest artificial intelligence models to build a new generative chat feature for patients with its brain-computer interface, or BCI.

A BCI system decodes brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. Synchron’s model is designed to help people with paralysis communicate and maintain some independence by controlling smartphones, computers and other devices with their thoughts.

The artificial intelligence startup and Menlo Ventures are launching a $100 million fund on Wednesday to back early-stage startups, and get them using the AI company’s technology. Menlo will put up the cash to invest in the startups, while Anthropic will give founders $25,000 in credits that go toward using its large language models.

The launch of the Anthology Fund mirrors a partnership between Apple and venture firm Kleiner Perkins. The joint venture, called the iFund, was introduced in 2008, a year after the iPhone hit the market, to support developers on Apple’s mobile platforms. It initially started with $100 million in 2008, and doubled to $200 million two years later.

Matt Murphy, a partner at Menlo Ventures and a former partner at Kleiner Perkins, said the iFund was the inspiration for this launch.

HarmonyOS Next, on the other hand, is an Android-free variant of HarmonyOS. The new operating system doesn’t use AOSP libraries, can’t run.apk files, and is a significant step towards complete independence from US-based software for the vendor. HarmonyOS Next is not currently shipping with Huawei products but is available as a developer sandbox to develop and test apps for native HarmonyOS use. HarmonyOS Next hasn’t yet arrived on PC, but recent leaks suggest it soon will, paving the way for a new Chinese homegrown desktop OS.

Images of HarmonyOS Next for PC suggest an operating system taking design cues from MacOS. The system has a familiar status bar and dock bar combo on the top and bottom. The fullscreen/minimize/close buttons live on the right-hand side of programs, mirroring MacOS’s traffic light system.

Huawei’s recent strategy for HarmonyOS has publicly been phones-first. With HarmonyOS being open-source, much like Android, widespread adoption across the Chinese market and beyond outside of Huawei phones is possible and a big goal for Huawei. HarmonyOS already makes up 16% of the Chinese phone market, which is expected to grow in the coming years.

I have recently read the report from Sharad Agarwal, and here are my outcomes by adding some examples:

Transhumanism is the concept of transcending humanity’s fundamental limitations through advances in science and technology. This intellectual movement advocates for enhancing human physical, cognitive, and ethical capabilities, foreseeing a future where technological advancements will profoundly modify and improve human biology.

Consider transhumanism to be a kind of upgrade to your smartphone. Transhumanism, like updating our phones with the latest software to improve their capabilities and fix problems, seeks to use technological breakthroughs to increase human capacities. This could include strengthening our physical capacities to make us stronger or more resilient, improving our cognitive capabilities to improve memory or intelligence, or even fine-tuning moral judgments. Transhumanism, like phone upgrades, aspires to maximize efficiency and effectiveness by elevating the human condition beyond its inherent bounds.

Why it matters: Electronic devices, which encompass anything from mobile phones to data centers, are notorious energy hogs. One solution could be to harness their heat directly to create a technique for on-chip energy harvesting. The problem has been that none of the few materials able to do this is compatible with current technology in semiconductor fabrication plants. Now, researchers from across Europe have created a germanium-tin alloy that can convert computer processors’ waste heat back into electricity.

A research collaboration in Europe has created a new alloy of silicon, germanium, and tin that can convert waste heat from computer processors back into electricity. It is a significant breakthrough in the development of materials for on-chip energy harvesting, which could lead to more energy-efficient and sustainable electronic devices. Essentially, by adding tin to germanium, the material’s thermal conductivity has been significantly reduced while still maintaining its electrical properties, making it ideal for thermoelectric applications.

The researchers are from Forschungszentrum Jülich and IHP – Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics in Germany, the University of Pisa, the University of Bologna in Italy, and the University of Leeds in the UK. Their findings made it onto the cover of the scientific journal ACS Applied Energy Materials.

The call and text message records from mid-to-late 2022 of tens of millions of AT&T cellphone customers and many non-AT&T customers were exposed in a massive data breach, the telecom company revealed Friday.

AT&T said the compromised data includes the telephone numbers of “nearly all” of its cellular customers and the customers of wireless providers that use its network between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022.

The stolen logs also contain a record of every number AT&T customers called or texted – including customers of other wireless networks – the number of times they interacted, and the call duration.

It’s a mild bump from 6GB, but it is still good for consumers, at least.

Apple supplier TSMC will begin trial production of 2nm chips next week for next year’s debut on iPhone 17 lineup.

RIKEN chemists have developed a molecule that enhances the performance of organic electronic devices and is also more stable than previous alternatives, raising the chances that it could be used in industrial manufacturing processes (Advanced Materials, “A novel n-type molecular dopant with a closed-shell electronic structure applicable to the vacuum-deposition process”).

RIKEN researchers were able to improve the flow of electrons into a layer of buckminsterfullerene (depicted) in an organic electronic device by using a new dopant called DP7. (© Laguna Design/Science Photo Library)

Conventional electronic devices are made from hard semiconductors such as silicon, but increasingly organic semiconductor molecules are appearing in devices such as televisions and cell-phone displays that use organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs).