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"This month, in an open-access study published in PLOS One, a team reported the first brain implant system that lets patients use their thoughts to navigate an off-the-shelf Android tablet. Compared to previous generations, this system doesn't require training-for example, learning to type on a different, non-QWERTY keyboard-or specialized interface equipment. With just her thoughts, T6 was able to send emails, chat with other paralyzed patients in the trial, Google random questions, and even shop on Amazon. For the first time since she became paralyzed, T6 regained access to the entire commercially-available Google Play ecosystem and the digital world."

"Unlike other companies, Zebra's algorithms provide an actual diagnosis, completely automatically using only imaging data. This is a very new field - older technology was always driven by the radiologist, and never automatic. The algorithms are part of the Zebra Analytics Platform - a cloud based analytics engine that receives medical imaging studies, analyzes them and returns results to participating hospitals and physicians."

""Anonymised" data lies at the core of everything from modern medical research to personalised recommendations and modern AI techniques. Unfortunately, according to a paper, successfully anonymising data is practically impossible for any complex dataset."

"Many studies like these describe heavy users as addicted to smartphones. But the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official guidebook for psychiatric diagnoses released in 2013, does not view smartphones as addictive. The manual separates behavioral and substance-use problems for the first time, but online gambling is the only behavioral addiction recognized by the DSM-5, as it's called."

"That was apparently the result of the US government's probing of visa applicants' social media profiles. After the search, an officer questioned the 17-year-old, who got a scholarship to study in the US, about his friends' social media activity and told him she'd found some "posting political points of view that oppose the US," the student paper noted. Despite Ajjawi's protests, the officer denied the student's entry and let him call his parents."

"The study by US-based thinktank the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) is the first that attempts to quantify the value of online privacy and data. It assessed how much privacy is worth in six countries by looking at the habits of people in the United States, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and Argentina."

"Lexplore claims its technology is new-particularly the algorithm that separates typical from atypical readers. But the concepts it's based on aren't. Its tech draws from a deep well of previously-conducted research stretching back decades, which is generally supportive of using a combination of eye tracking and machine learning to screen for dyslexia. "Eye movements is one of the best ways to index reading ability at an incredibly in-depth level," says Julie Kirkby, a psychology professor at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom, who has studied eye tracking and dyslexia for years."

"The lack of answers the Jacksonville sheriff's office have provided in Lynch's case is representative of the problems that facial recognition poses across the country. "It's considered an imperfect biometric," said Garvie, who in 2016 created a study on facial recognition software, published by the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, called The Perpetual Line-Up. "There's no consensus in the scientific community that it provides a positive identification of somebody.""

"In 2016, Danish politician Mette Gjerskov used Facebook to post a link to her own blog post on the TV2 website, which included an image of the statue. Facebook automatically displayed the image with the link, leading the company to then take down the link. The explanation provided by Facebook was that the image had "too much bare skin or sexual undertones.""

" "The longer one spends on email in [a given] hour the higher is one's stress for that hour," the authors noted. In another study, researchers placed thermal cameras below each subject's computer monitor, allowing them to measure the tell-tale "heat blooms" on a person's face that indicate psychological distress. "

"Japanese supercomputer simulations showed that wearing two masks gave limited benefit in blocking viral spread compared with one properly fitted mask. The findings in part contradict recent recommendations from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that two masks were better than one at reducing a person's exposure to the coronavirus. Researchers used the Fugaku supercomputer to model the flow of virus particles from people wearing different types and combinations of masks, according to a study released on Thursday by research giant Riken and Kobe University."

"These findings suggest that medical experts and policymakers probably do not need to warn patients away from the internet when it comes to seeking health information and self-diagnosis or triage. It seems that using the internet may well help patients figure out what is wrong."

"More than two-thirds (68.7%) of the addicts had trouble sleeping, compared with 57.1% of those who were not addicted to their device. Students who used their phone after midnight or for four or more hours a day were most likely to be at high risk of displaying addictive use of their device."

"And lest you think we are dealing in long-term abstractions- this devastation has tangible, externalized cost; a recent study out of the University of New Mexico estimated that in 2018 every $1 of Bitcoin value was responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in the US, costs that are borne by those who will, for the most part, never see any return from cryptocurrency mining whatsoever."

"The researchers programmed a robot called Pepper, made by SoftBank Robotics, with the ability to vocalise its thought processes. This means the robot is no longer a "black box" and its underlying decision-making is more transparent to the user."

""The smartphone is no longer just a device that we use, it's become the place where we live," said Prof Daniel Miller, who led the study. "The flip side of that for human relationships is that at any point, whether over a meal, a meeting or other shared activity, a person we're with can just disappear, having 'gone home' to their smartphone.""

"With this BCI, our study participant, whose hand was paralysed from spinal cord injury, achieved typing speeds of 90 characters per minute with 94.1% raw accuracy online, and greater than 99% accuracy offline with a general-purpose autocorrect."

"A Chinese bot network played a key role in spreading disinformation during and after the US election, including a debunked video of "ballot burning" shared by Eric Trump, a new study reveals. The misleading video shows a man filming himself on Virginia Beach, allegedly burning votes cast for Donald Trump. The ballots were actually samples. The clip went viral after Trump's son Eric posted it a day later on his official Twitter page, where it got more than 1.2m views."

"A study last year of 3.1 million workers in North America, Europe and the Middle East found "significant and durable increases" in both the average number of emails sent internally, and the number of recipients. By measuring the time between the first and last emails sent (or meetings attended) in a 24-hour period, the researchers concluded that, since the pandemic, the average workday had extended by 48.5 minutes."

"The greatest propaganda machine in history. Think about it. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others - they reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged - stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. It's why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. It's why fake news outperforms real news, because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it's no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history - the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, "Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.""