Daily Archives: March 9, 2023

Women in trouble now: Scientists create mice with two fathers after making eggs from male cells

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Scientists have created mice with two biological fathers by generating eggs from male cells, a development that opens up radical new possibilities for reproduction.

The advance could ultimately pave the way for treatments for severe forms of infertility, as well as raising the tantalising prospect of same-sex couples being able to have a biological child together in the future.

“This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes from male cells,” said Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the work at Kyushu University in Japan and is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of lab-grown eggs and sperm.

[…]

The technique could also be applied to treat severe forms of infertility, including women with Turner’s syndrome, in whom one copy of the X chromosome is missing or partly missing, and Hayashi said this application was the primary motivation for the research.

[…]

The study, which has been submitted for publication in a leading journal, relied on a sequence of intricate steps to transform a skin cell, carrying the male XY chromosome combination, into an egg, with the female XX version.

Male skin cells were reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state to create so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The Y-chromosome of these cells was then deleted and replaced by an X chromosome “borrowed” from another cell to produce iPS cells with two identical X chromosomes.

“The trick of this, the biggest trick, is the duplication of the X chromosome,” said Hayashi. “We really tried to establish a system to duplicate the X chromosome.”

Finally, the cells were cultivated in an ovary organoid, a culture system designed to replicate the conditions inside a mouse ovary. When the eggs were fertilised with normal sperm, the scientists obtained about 600 embryos, which were implanted into surrogate mice, resulting in the birth of seven mouse pups. The efficiency of about 1% was lower than the efficiency achieved with normal female-derived eggs, where about 5% of embryos went on to produce a live birth.

The baby mice appeared healthy, had a normal lifespan, and went on to have offspring as adults. “They look OK, they look to be growing normally, they become fathers,” said Hayashi.

He and colleagues are now attempting to replicate the creation of lab-grown eggs using human cells.

[…]

Source: Scientists create mice with two fathers after making eggs from male cells | Genetics | The Guardian

Holy shit: German Courts saying DNS Service (Quad9) Is Implicated In Any Copyright Infringement At The Domains It Resolves

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Back in September 2021 Techdirt covered an outrageous legal attack by Sony Music on Quad9, a free, recursive, anycast DNS platform. Quad9 is part of the Internet’s plumbing: it converts domain names to numerical IP addresses. It is operated by the Quad9 Foundation, a Swiss public-benefit, not-for-profit organization. Sony Music says that Quad9 is implicated in alleged copyright infringement on the sites it resolves. That’s clearly ridiculous, but unfortunately the Regional Court of Hamburg agreed with Sony Music’s argument, and issued an interim injunction against Quad9. The German Society for Civil Rights (Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V. or “GFF”) summarizes the court’s thinking:

In its interim injunction the Regional Court of Hamburg asserts a claim against Quad9 based on the principles of the German legal concept of “Stoererhaftung” (interferer liability), on the grounds that Quad9 makes a contribution to a copyright infringement that gives rise to liability, in that Quad9 resolves the domain name of website A into the associated IP address. The German interferer liability has been criticized for years because of its excessive application to Internet cases. German lawmakers explicitly abolished interferer liability for access providers with the 2017 amendment to the German Telemedia Act (TMG), primarily to protect WIFI operators from being held liable for costs as interferers.

As that indicates, this is a case of a law that is a poor fit for modern technology. Just as the liability no longer applies to WIFI operators, who are simply providing Internet access, so the German law should also not catch DNS resolvers like Quad9. The GFF post notes that Quad9 has appealed to the Hamburg Higher Regional Court against the lower court’s decision. Unfortunately, another regional court has just handed down a similar ruling against the company, reported here by Heise Online (translation by DeepL):

the Leipzig Regional Court has sentenced the Zurich-based DNS service Quad9. On pain of an administrative fine of up to 250,000 euros or up to 2 years’ imprisonment, the small resolver operator was prohibited from translating two related domains into the corresponding IP addresses. Via these domains, users can find the tracks of a Sony music album offered via Shareplace.org.

The GFF has already announced that it will be appealing along with Quad9 to the Dresden Higher Regional Court against this new ruling. It says that the Leipzig Regional Court has made “a glaring error of judgment”, and explains:

If one follows this reasoning, the copyright liability of completely neutral infrastructure services like Quad9 would be even stricter than that of social networks, which fall under the infamous Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive,” criticizes Felix Reda, head of the Control © project of the Society for Civil Rights. “The [EU] Digital Services Act makes it unequivocally clear that the liability rules for Internet access providers apply to DNS services. We are confident that this misinterpretation of European and German legal principles will be overturned by the Court of Appeals.”

Let’s hope so. If it isn’t, we can expect companies providing the Internet’s basic infrastructure in the EU to be bombarded with demands from the copyright industry and others for domains to be excluded from DNS resolution. The likely result is that perfectly legal sites and their holdings will be ghosted by DNS companies, which will prefer to err on the side of caution rather than risk becoming the next Quad9.

Source: Another German Court Says The DNS Service Quad9 Is Implicated In Any Copyright Infringement At The Domains It Resolves | Techdirt

There are some incredibly stupid judges and lawyers out there

YouTube Chills the Darned Hell Out On Its Cursing Policy, but you still can’t fucking say fuck

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Google’s finally rolling back its unpopular decree against any kinds of profanity in videos, making it harder for any creators used to offering colorful sailor’s speech in videos from monetizing content on behalf of its beloved ad partners. The only thing is, Google still seems to think the “f-word” is excessively harsh language, so sorry Samuel L. Jackson, those motha-[redacted] snakes are still liable for less ad dollars on this motha-[redacted] plane.

On Tuesday, Google updated its support page to offer up an olive branch to crass creators upset that their potty mouths were resulting in their videos being demonetized. Now, the company clarified that use of “moderate” profanity at any time in a video is now eligible for ad revenue.

However, the company seemed to be antagonistic to “stronger profanity” like “the f-word,” AKA “fuck.” You can’t say “fuck” in the first seven seconds or repeatedly throughout a video or else you will receive “limited ads.” Putting words like “fuck” into a title or thumbnail will result in no ad content.

What is allowed are words like “hell” or “damn” in a title or thumbnail. Words like “bitch,” “douchebag,” “asshole,” and “shit” are considered “moderate profanity, so that’s fine to use frequently in a video. But “fuck,” dear god, will hurt advertiser’s poor virgin ears. YouTube has been extremely sensitive to what its advertisers are saying. For instance the platform came close to pulling big money-making ads over creepy pasta content during the “Elsagate” scandal.

The changes also impacted videos which used music tracks in the background. YouTube is now saying any use of “moderate” or “strong” profanity in background music is eligible for full ad revenue.

Back in November, YouTube changed its creator monetization policy, calling it guidelines for “advertiser-friendly content.” The company decreed that any video with a thumbnail or title containing obscene language or “adult material” wouldn’t receive any ad revenue. YouTube also said it would demonetize violent content such as dead bodies without context, or virtual violence directed at a “real, named person.” Fair enough, but then YouTube said it would demonetize any video which used profanity “in the first eight seconds of the video.”

[…]

Source: YouTube Chills the Hell Out On Its Cursing Policy

What the shitting fuck, Google. Americans. I thought it was the land of the free, once?

How this UK newspaper publisher uses AI to generate articles

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Reach, the owner of the UK’s Daily Mirror and Daily Express tabloids among other newspapers, has started publishing articles with the help of AI software on one of its regional websites as it scrambles to cut costs amid slipping advertising revenues.

Three stories written with the help of machine-learning tools were published on InYourArea.co.uk, which produces feeds of nearby goings-on in Blighty. One piece, titled Seven Things to do in Newport, is a listicle pulling together information on places and activities available in the eponymous sunny Welsh resort city.

Reach CEO Jim Mullen said the machine-written articles are checked and approved by human editors before they’re published online.

“We produced our first AI content in the last ten days, but this is led by editorial,” he said, according to The Guardian. “It was all AI-produced, but the data was obviously put together by a journalist, and whether it was good enough to publish was decided by an editor.”

“There are loads of ethics [issues] around AI and journalistic content,” Mullen admitted. “The way I look at it, we produce lots of content based on actual data. It can be put together in a well-read [piece] that I think AI can do. We are trying to apply it to areas we already get traffic to allow journalists to focus on content that editors want written.”

Mullen’s comments have been questioned by journalists, however, given that Reach announced plans to slash hundreds of jobs in January. The National Union of Journalists said 102 editorial positions would be cut, putting 253 journalists at risk, whilst 180 vacancies would be withdrawn.

Reach’s latest financial results, released on Tuesday, show total revenues for 2022 were £601.4 million ($711.6 million) – a decrease of 2.3 percent compared to the year before. Operating profit plunged 27.4 percent to £106.1 million ($125 million). In a bid to make up for losses, the publicly traded company is focused on cutting operating costs by up to six percent this year.

“The current trading environment remains challenging and we expect this to continue in 2023, with sustained inflation and suppressed market demand for digital advertising. Although input costs remain elevated, we are confident that our cost action plan will enable us to deliver a 5–6 percent like for like reduction in our operating cost base for FY23,” Reach’s full-year report read [PDF].

The Register has asked London-based Reach for further comment. (A few of us vultures once worked for what is now Reach, previously known as Trinity Mirror, an empire built from absorbing hundreds of titles around Britain.)

Reach isn’t the only publisher rolling out AI-generated articles while reducing its count of human reporters. CNET owner Red Ventures laid off scribes last week and has promised to double down on machine-written content despite complaints that those articles contained errors and plagiarism.

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed has produced quizzes with the help of ChatGPT, and Arena Group published botched health-related articles for Men’s Health. Both publishers have also axed employees – in December 2022 and February 2023, respectively.

Source: How this UK newspaper publisher uses AI to generate articles • The Register

Yup, the march of progress