Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 2692

Meta is preparing to charge EU users a $14 monthly subscription fee to access Instagram on their phones unless they allow the company to use their personal information for targeted ads.

The US tech giant will also charge $17 for Facebook and Instagram together for use on desktop, said two people with direct knowledge of the plans, which are likely to be rolled out in coming weeks.

The move comes after discussions with regulators in the bloc who have been seeking to curb the way big tech companies profit from the data they get from their users for free, which would be a direct attack on the way groups such as Meta and Google generate their profits.

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The BBC understands the Chinese firm is trying out the service in an English-speaking market outside the US, but has declined to comment on exactly where.

The subscription is being tested at $4.99 (£4.13).

Meanwhile, Meta is reportedly mulling ad-free subscriptions for people in the EU to navigate the bloc’s advertising rules.

The video sharing site is looking into charging a fee of around $4.99 to get rid of ads.

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ChatGPT is a hot topic at my university, where faculty members are deeply concerned about academic integrity, while administrators urge us to “embrace the benefits” of this “new frontier.” It’s a classic example of what my colleague Punya Mishra calls the “doom-hype cycle” around new technologies. Likewise, media coverage of human-AI interaction – whether paranoid or starry-eyed – tends to emphasize its newness.

In one sense, it is undeniably new. Interactions with ChatGPT can feel unprecedented, as when a tech journalist couldn’t get a chatbot to stop declaring its love for him. In my view, however, the boundary between humans and machines, in terms of the way we interact with one another, is fuzzier than most people would care to admit, and this fuzziness accounts for a good deal of the discourse swirling around ChatGPT.

When I’m asked to check a box to confirm I’m not a robot, I don’t give it a second thought – of course I’m not a robot. On the other hand, when my email client suggests a word or phrase to complete my sentence, or when my phone guesses the next word I’m about to text, I start to doubt myself. Is that what I meant to say? Would it have occurred to me if the application hadn’t suggested it? Am I part robot? These large language models have been trained on massive amounts of “natural” human language. Does this make the robots part human?

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If you’ve been watching the recent UAP reporting or the US Congressional Committee Hearing on UAP, you already know that we have military and civilian pilot eyewitness accounts in volume, as well as footage of incidents like the “tic-tac” live sighting in 2004. There are many more incidents whose video recordings are still classified and not yet available to the public. There are reports and testimony from career Navy and Air Force officials who’ve reported similar sightings. Comments such as the one made by Cmdr. David Fravor (Ret), made after the 2004 incident are common among experienced military pilots.

We don’t have the kind of physics understanding, now or back then, that would allow us the ability to do what we’re seeing these UAP do. — US Navy Cmdr. David Fravor (Ret)

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Summary: Neuroscientists delved into the mechanisms behind true and false memories. Their study reveals that electrical signals in the hippocampus can differentiate between the imminent recall of authentic versus fabricated memories.

By monitoring neural activity in epilepsy patients, the team identified distinct patterns ahead of a correct or false recall. These findings not only offer insights into memory retrieval but may also pave the way for novel therapeutic interventions for disorders like PTSD.

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One of the most well-established and disruptive uses for a future quantum computer is the ability to crack encryption. A new algorithm could significantly lower the barrier to achieving this.

Despite all the hype around quantum computing, there are still significant question marks around what quantum computers will actually be useful for. There are hopes they could accelerate everything from optimization processes to machine learning, but how much easier and faster they’ll be remains unclear in many cases.

One thing is pretty certain though: A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could render our leading cryptographic schemes worthless. While the mathematical puzzles underpinning them are virtually unsolvable by classical computers, they would be entirely tractable for a large enough quantum computer. That’s a problem because these schemes secure most of our information online.

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But are you ready to explain this complex disease in terms that your child can understand?

Keep It Simple for Young Children Use language that is appropriate for your child’s age to describe what happens when asthma flares-up. Try to avoid medical terminology and details that will confuse a young child. Stick to the basic information at first. This includes making your child aware of what triggers symptoms and giving very basic understanding of what happens to cause the symptoms. Visit Just for Kids for story books, games and puzzles that explain asthma in terms your child can understand.

Medication management is not necessarily an issue with young children, as it is your responsibility as a caregiver to make certain you give your child medication as prescribed. Set a routine so it’s easy to remember when these medications should be taken. Practice with a nebulizer, peak flow meter and spacer so that your child understands how each device helps manage asthma.

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