Lifeboat Foundation

New communications technologies don’t come with user’s manuals. They are primitive, while old tech is refined. So critics attack. The critic’s job is easier than the practitioner’s: they score with the fearful by comparing the infancy of the new medium with the perfected medium it threatens. But of course, the practitioner wins. In the end, we always assimilate to the new technology.

Here are 11 examples of fear and suspicion of new technology, spanning the history of communications.

Scientists with the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium have made groundbreaking progress in characterizing the fraction of human DNA that varies between individuals. They have assembled genomic sequences of 47 people from around the world into a so-called pangenome in which more than 99 percent of each sequence is rendered with high accuracy.

For two decades, scientists have relied on the human reference genome as a standard to compare against other genetic data. Thanks to this reference genome, it was possible to identify genes implicated in specific diseases and trace the evolution of human traits, among other things.

However, it has always been a flawed tool: 70% of its data came from a single man of predominantly African-European background whose DNA was sequenced during the Human Genome Project. Hence, it can reveal very little about individuals on this planet who are different from each other, creating an inherent bias in biomedical data believed to be responsible for some of the health disparities affecting patients today.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned today of a critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw in the Ruckus Wireless Admin panel actively exploited by a recently discovered DDoS botnet.

While this security bug (CVE-2023–25717) was addressed in early February, many owners are likely yet to patch their Wi-Fi access points. Furthermore, no patch is available for those who own end-of-life models affected by this issue.

Attackers are abusing the bug to infect vulnerable Wi-Fi APs with AndoryuBot malware (first spotted in February 2023) via unauthenticated HTTP GET requests.

University of South Florida professor Joseph Dituri has spent more than 74 days at an underwater Florida Keys lodge. He’s already broken the record for living underwater and plans to stay at Jules’ Undersea Lodge until he hits 100 days.

Astronomers have spotted the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed, and it’s 10 times brighter than any known exploding star, or supernova.

The brightness of the explosion, called AT2021lwx, has lasted for three years, while most supernovas are only bright for a few months.

The event, still being detected by telescopes, occurred nearly 8 billion light-years away from Earth when the universe was about 6 billion years old. The luminosity of the explosion is also three times brighter than tidal disruption events, when stars fall into supermassive black holes.

Don’t miss our analysis of Google’s I/O most important announcements and whether Google did enough to counter the momentum of OpenAI and Microsoft.

In case you were wondering how that gem of a concept from last year’s I/O was doing, here’s a clue.

In San Francisco, where two major companies are testing driverless taxis, some local officials are reporting that the vehicles have caused a number of issues, including rolling into fire scenes and running over hoses. NBC News’ Jake Ward reports.

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The robot can drive heavy steal beams into the ground at a rate of 1 per 73 seconds, which will help expedite solar farm construction.