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Daily Archives: August 2, 2023

Water-soluble circuit boards could cut carbon footprints by 60 percent

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German semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies AG announced that it’s producing a printed circuit board (PCB) that dissolves in water. Sourced from UK startup Jiva Materials, the plant-based Soluboard could provide a new avenue for the tech industry to reduce e-waste as companies scramble to meet climate goals by 2030.

Jiva’s biodegradable PCB is made from natural fibers and a halogen-free polymer with a much lower carbon footprint than traditional boards made with fiberglass composites. A 2022 study by the University of Washington College of Engineering and Microsoft Research saw the team create an Earth-friendly mouse using a Soluboard PCB as its core. The researchers found that the Soluboard dissolved in hot water in under six minutes. However, it can take several hours to break down at room temperature.

In addition to dissolving the PCB fibers, the process makes it easier to retrieve the valuable metals attached to it. “After [it dissolves], we’re left with the chips and circuit traces which we can filter out,” said UW assistant professor Vikram Iyer, who worked on the mouse project.

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Jiva says the board has a 60 percent smaller carbon footprint than traditional PCBs — specifically, it can save 10.5 kg of carbon and 620 g of plastic per square meter of PCB.

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Source: Water-soluble circuit boards could cut carbon footprints by 60 percent | Engadget

AI-enabled brain implant helps spine damaged patient regain feeling and movement

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Keith Thomas from New York was involved in a driving accident back in 2020 that injured his spine’s C4 and C5 vertebrae, leading to a total loss in feeling and movement from the chest down. Recently, though, Thomas had been able to move his arm at will and feel his sister hold his hand, thanks to the AI brain implant technology developed by the Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine.

The research team first spent months mapping his brain with MRIs to pinpoint the exact parts of his brain responsible for arm movements and the sense of touch in his hands. Then, four months ago, surgeons performed a 15-hour procedure to implant microchips into his brain — Thomas was even awake for some parts so he could tell them what sensations he was feeling in his hand as they probed parts of the organ.

While the microchips are inside his body, the team also installed external ports on top of his head. Those ports connect to a computer with the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that the team developed to interpret his thoughts and turn them into action. The researchers call this approach “thought-driven therapy,” because it all starts with the patient’s intentions. If he thinks of wanting to move his hand, for instance, his brain implant sends signals to the computer, which then sends signals to the electrode patches on his spine and hand muscles in order to stimulate movement. They attached sensors to his fingertips and palms, as well, to stimulate sensation.

Thanks to this system, he was able to move his arm at will and feel his sister holding his hand in the lab. While he needed to be attached to the computer for those milestones, the researchers say Thomas has shown signs of recovery even when the system is off. His arm strength has apparently “more than doubled” since the study began, and his forearm and wrist could now feel some new sensations. If all goes well, the team’s thought-driven therapy could help him regain more of his sense of touch and mobility.

While the approach has a ways to go, the team behind it is hopeful that it could change the lives of people living with paralysis.

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Source: AI-enabled brain implant helps patient regain feeling and movement | Engadget

Reddit Wins, Doesn’t Have to NARC on Users Who Discussed Torrenting

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This weekend, a federal court tossed a subpoena in a case against the internet service provider Grande that would require Reddit to reveal the identities of anonymous users that torrent movies.

The case was originally filed in 2021 by 20 movie producers against Grande Communications in the Western District of Texas federal court. The lawsuit claims that Grande is committing copyright infringement against the producers for allegedly ignoring the torrenting of 45 of their movies that occurred on its networks. As part of the case, the plaintiffs attempted to subpoena Reddit for IP addresses and user data for accounts that openly discussed torrenting on the platform. This weekend, Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler denied the subpoena—meaning Reddit is off the hook.

“The plaintiffs thus move to compel Reddit to produce the identities of its users who are the subject of the plaintiffs’ subpoena,” Magistrate Judge Beeler wrote in her decision. “The issue is whether that discovery is permissible despite the users’ right to speak anonymously under the First Amendment. The court denies the motion because the plaintiffs have not demonstrated a compelling need for the discovery that outweighs the users’ First Amendment right to anonymous speech.”

Reddit was previously cleared of a similar subpoena in a similar lawsuit by the same judge back in May as reported by ArsTechnica. Reddit was asked to unmask eight users who were active in piracy threads on the platform, but the social media website pulled the same First Amendment defense.

 

Source: Reddit Wins, Doesn’t Have to NARC on Users Who Discussed Torrenting

Cult of Dead Cow hacktivists design distributed encryption system for mobile apps

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Once known for distributing hacking tools and shaming software companies into improving their security, a famed group of technology activists is now working to develop a system that will allow the creation of messaging and social networking apps that won’t keep hold of users’ personal data.

The group, Cult of the Dead Cow, has developed a coding framework that can be used by app developers who are willing to embrace strong encryption and forsake revenue from advertising that is targeted to individuals based on detailed profiles gleaned from the data most apps now routinely collect.

The team is building on the work of such free products as Signal, which offers strong encryption for text messages and voice calls, and Tor, which offers anonymous web surfing by routing traffic through a series of servers to disguise the location of the person conducting the search.

The latest effort, to be detailed at the massive annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas next week, seeks to provide a foundation for messaging, file sharing and even social networking apps without harvesting any data, all secured by the kind of end-to-end encryption that makes interception hard even for governments.

Called Veilid, and pronounced vay-lid, the code can be used by developers to build applications for mobile devices or the web. Those apps will pass fully encrypted content to one another using the Veilid protocol, its developers say. As with the file-sharing software BitTorrent, which distributes different pieces of the same content simultaneously, the network will get faster as more devices join and share the load, the developers say. In such decentralized “peer-to-peer” networks, users download data from each other instead of from a central machine.

As with some other open-source endeavors, the challenge will come in persuading programmers and engineers to devote time to designing apps that are compatible with Veilid. Though developers could charge money for those apps or sell ads, the potential revenue streams are limited by the inability to collect detailed information that has become a primary method for distributing targeted ads or pitching a product to a specific set of users.

The team behind Veilid has not yet released documentation explaining its design choices, and collaborative work on an initial messaging app, intended to function without requiring a phone number, has yet to produce a test version.

But the nascent project has other things going for it.

It arrives amid disarray, competition and a willingness to experiment among social network and chat users resentful of Twitter and Facebook. And it buttresses opposition to increasing moves by governments, lately including the United Kingdom, to undercut strong encryption with laws requiring disclosure on demand of content or user identities. Apple, Facebook parent Meta and Signal recently threatened to pull some UK services if that country’s Online Safety Bill is adopted unchanged.

Civil rights activists and abortion rights supporters have also been alarmed by police use of messages sent by text and Facebook Messenger to investigate abortions in states that have banned the procedure after the first six weeks of pregnancy.

“It’s great that people are developing an end-to-end encryption framework for everything,” said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We can move past the surveillance business model.”

Source: Cult of Dead Cow hacktivists design encryption system for mobile apps – The Washington Post