UK Inquiry Into Apple’s Mobile Browser Limitations Ended After Apple Claimed Authorities Waited Too Long

According to Reuters, Apple has prevailed in an appeal that will force the UK regulators to drop their investigation into the company’s policies regarding mobile browsers and cloud gaming services. This victory will result in the UK’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) not investigating Apple’s policies.

In November, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) began an investigation into the restrictions on cloud gaming and mobile browsers that had been implemented by both Apple and Google. The CMA believed these two companies stifled innovation and drove up costs for web developers, cloud gaming service providers, and browser vendors.

According to Sarah Cardell, who was serving as the interim chief executive of the CMA at the time, “many UK businesses and web developers tell us that they feel that restrictions set by Apple and Google are holding them back.” This investigation was conducted as part of a larger investigation that began in 2021 into the “duopoly” that Apple and Google held on the market for mobile ecosystems.

In January, Apple took the matter to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had violated important timing requirements and should not be allowed to proceed with the investigation. Apple stated that the appropriate timeline needed to be followed, even though the CMA was supposed to finish its investigation within the next 18 months, and certain deadlines must be adhered to.

The Appeal Tribunal agreed with Apple and stated that the CMA should have begun the market investigation when it published the duopoly report in June 2021. This was the conclusion reached by the Appeal Tribunal. This constitutes an “error in law” on its part.

If the CMA had continued with its investigation, it would have been able to question Apple about its browser and cloud gaming practices and request detailed information from the company. It could have ultimately led to Apple being forced to alter its operations.

The CMA is dissatisfied with the decision and contemplating whether to appeal it.

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WhatsApp Trials Privacy-Boosting Feature to Benefit Users

WABetaInfo reported on Saturday that instant messaging service WhatsApp is testing a new feature that aims to increase user privacy.

The website, which specializes in tracking experimental features in the WhatsApp Meta service, said that after announcing new privacy features in group chats and the ability to send voicemails to hear only once, it discovered another privacy feature. in development phase.

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And “WABetaInfo” has been monitoring the new feature in version 2.23.8.2 of the WhatsApp application for Google’s Android operating system, which allows users to lock a specific chat using a fingerprint or passcode.

“We’re sure users can get an extra layer of security by using this feature and keep their sensitive chats safe from prying eyes,” the site said.

And “WABetaInfo” posted a screenshot of the new feature, which shows that after adding a chat to the blocked chat list, it will only be available within that screen, and after blocking the chat, it will only be allowed to be accessed using a fingerprint or a passcode, which makes it possible to open it before someone else is impossible.

Also, if someone tries to access your phone and fails to provide the necessary authentication, they will be prompted to scan your chat to unlock it.

This feature is believed to provide an extra layer of privacy for sensitive conversations, in as it allows users to protect their privacy by preventing others from reading their messages. This feature also helps maintain the privacy of your media content, as it ensures that your media files such as photos and videos you send in a blocked chat are not automatically saved in the gallery of the device.

Interestingly, the WhatsApp service is testing many features, such as: short video message function, listen to voicemail once function and voice chat function, and continue to develop the sent message editing function.

Those wishing to try out the new features can sign up for the WhatsApp beta program on Android, and the latest beta version of the app can also be manually downloaded and installed from here. You can also sign up for the iOS beta program here.

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Mysterious Suicide After Weeks of Conversing with an Artificial Intelligence Robot

Recently, there has been a surge in exciting stories related to AI conversations, the latest being the incident of a Belgian man who allegedly committed suicide after having a conversation with an intelligent robot.

Reports from Belgium said the man talked to the robot for six weeks about climate change, but the conversation became increasingly “confused and harmful” and he took his own life.

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The man’s wife has revealed that he would not have committed suicide were it not for these conversations with the smart robot, according to Livemint.

The story began when a man named Pierre became very concerned about the environment and climate change about two years ago.

Addicted to Eliza!

Then he started talking to Elisa, a chatbot that uses GPT-J, an open source AI language model created by EleutherAI.

His wife said ‘Eliza’ became her close friend and was ‘like a drug he was addicted to morning and night and could not live without’.

But after six weeks of intense and long conversations, the man committed suicide and reports indicated that he committed suicide in change of the robot “Eliza” who was taking care of the planet to save humanity.

The cause of the suicide is unknown

While it is still unclear whether the man suffered from a mental illness before committing suicide, reports indicate he isolated himself from friends and family before taking his own life.

The victim’s family met with Mathieu Michel, the Belgian state minister for digitalisation, last week, where he was struck by the family’s tragedy, seeing what happened as a dangerous precedent that must be taken seriously.

The phenomenon of artificial intelligence

The minister also stressed that such cases illustrate the importance of “defining responsibilities clearly”.

“With the advent of ChatGPT, the public in general is more aware than ever of the potential of AI in our lives,” he said.

He added that it is crucial to identify the nature of the responsibilities they have contributed to tale event.

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Explore Methods for Minimizing the Adverse Impact of Sleep Deprivation

Scientists at the Guangzhou Medical University in China found that exercise reduces the risk of early death due to lack of sleep.

European magazine notes of Preventive Cardiology, in which researchers examined data including 92,000 people aged 40-73 who were asked to wear an accelerometer bracelet. During the seven years of follow-up, 3,080 of them died, including 1,074 from cardiovascular disease and 1,871 from cancer.

The researchers divided study participants’ sleep duration into three categories: short sleep (less than 6 hours), normal sleep (6-8 hours), and long sleep (more than eight hours). They also categorized physical activity levels into low, medium, and high, based on moderate-to-intense exercise intensity.

After adjusting for age, gender, race, education level, body mass index, diet, smoking, alcohol use, and work schedule, exercise neutralized the negative effects of too little or too much sleep.

And that in people with low physical activity and short and long sleep, the risk of death from all causes was 16 and 37 percent, respectively. For people who were moderately physically active, if they didn’t get enough sleep, their risk of premature death increased by 41 percent. The researchers did not find any association between the risk of early death and physical activity in those who engage in intense physical exercise.

And the risk of heart disease and death from them in people suffering from sleep deprivation has risen to 69 percent. However, this percentage decreased if they practiced intense or moderate physical activity. And that the chance of dying from cancer increased to 21 percent in people who slept long hours and did little physical activity. But this condition disappears in the case of moderate or intense physical exertion.

Source: Linta. EN

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WhatsApp’s Latest Test: A Text Editor Inspired by Instagram

WABetaInfo says that the latest beta version of the messaging app (v2.23.7.17) comes with a new text editor that can be used to add text to an image sent to a contact or as a status update. The app could already do this, but the most recent update added many new features and ways to edit text.

WhatsApp used only to have a few font faces, but now it has at least seven. These font faces are Calistoga, Courier Prime, Damion, Exo 2, and Morning Breeze. You can choose from the options in a strip just above the keyboard. This is a much better way to change fonts than the current method, which requires you to keep tapping the same button. Some font faces look much like those you can choose from on Instagram.

In situations with much contrast, the latest beta also lets you change the color of the text background. You can also use this option creatively, such as making some text stand out. In this version of WhatsApp, you can also align text to the left, right, or center, just like in a word processor. Up until now, the second choice was the only one.

WABetaInfo says the new text editor is rolled out in stages to beta testers. You might not see it on your Android device for a while. But this feature in the latest beta makes it seem likely to be added to the stable version of the app soon.

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Challenging Preconceptions: Reconsidering Assumptions about Artificial Intelligence

Imagine that you are thinking about a goldfish. What if an AI could interpret your thoughts and turn them into an image, or at least a very close version of it?

It may sound like science fiction, but a preliminary study published in November attempted to do just that, producing some pretty cool AI-generated images in the process.

And the images show that the technology designed to reconstruct images based on recorded human brain activity isn’t perfect. But a group of researchers from Stanford University, the National University of Singapore and the Chinese University of Hong Kong are getting closer.

Incredible experiment shows that AI can read minds to visualize our thoughts https://t.co/t3jUwHtTFZ

— ScienceAlert (@ScienceAlert) March 31, 2023

During the experiment, the team collected data about the brain activity of the participants when they were shown pictures. While the research team collected samples from many of the participants, the study only released AI imaging results from one of the study participants.

The researchers found that the AI ​​was able to create images that matched the original image’s attributes, such as color and texture, and the overall subject matter 84 percent of the time, according to NBC.

The data was then fed into an AI model, and the images were reconstructed based on the participants’ thoughts while they were inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The team published their findings, including the resulting images, in paper research in November.

The team’s work is focused on studying activity based on human brain scans and ultimately using that data to decipher a person’s thoughts. But in order to create these images, the AI ​​model used in the experiment had to go through many hours of training.

The AI ​​model, known as Mind-Vis, was trained on a large pre-existing dataset with over 160,000 brain scans.

In the second part of the training, the AI ​​was trained on a different set of data from a small group of participants whose brain activity was recorded by an fMRI machine while they were shown images.

Based on this, the AI ​​model learned to associate certain brain activities with the perception of features of the image – such as color, shape and texture. To train the AI ​​model, each participant’s brain activity also had to be measured for 20 hours, according to NBC.

For the actual experiment, the participants were again shown a series of new images inside the fMRI machine, and the machine recorded their brain activity. After all, AI was able to create images based on its assessments of the brain activity of the participants.

This experiment is just one of several similar experiments with brain activity and AI imaging that have emerged over the past few years.

Source: Science Alert

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Reconstructing the visage of a young Egyptian from 30,000 years prior to pharaohs.

Brazilian scientists have reconstructed the face of a young man from ancient Egypt who lived 30,000 years before the first pharaoh.

The young man died about 35,000 years ago in the Nile Valley, where in 1980 his almost intact skeleton was found at the Nazlat Khater 2 site.

Face of ancient Egyptian who lived 30,000 years before first Pharaoh Revealed https://t.co/UQn8YdrHVP

– Mirror World News (@MirrorWorldNews) March 30, 2023

Decades later, it is still the only complete human skeleton ever found in Africa since the early Late Stone Age.

Now scientists have reconstructed his features and completed a forensic approximation of his facial features using his skull.

Archaeologist Moasir Santos, who contributed to the new study, said the reconstruction helped bridge the gap between us and the ancients.

The human face in all periods of history has been used to identify a person. In the words of Dr. Santos: “Therefore, the face is a look at yourself.”

He added: “Legitimate face reconstruction is a way to humanize people who are known to the general public only as skeletons. Trying to restore the appearance that a person had in life thousands of years ago is a way to bring him back to the present day, and bring him closer to the public.

The process involves creating a 3D digital model of the skull and then reconstructing the facial layer using the anatomical information of modern humans as a guide. The end result is a facial reconstruction.

Eye color and hairstyle are sometimes lost in the story, but such subjective elements are often added to humanize the subject.

Brazilian graphics expert Cicero Moraes, co-author of Dr. Santos, said studies were done on living organisms to test the effectiveness of the method. Therefore, he was sure that the reconstruction gave a good resemblance to a living person.

“The chance that the face matches the real face is very high,” he added. The skull case was created thanks to the efforts of two authors, both from Brazil.

Dr. Santos said: “The main rounded structure of the face, the skull, is well preserved, although some deformities have occurred.”

Morais noted: “The missing part of the skull can be reconstructed from the other side, which was intact, so we did not encounter great difficulties in carrying out this work. In addition, there are a large number of scientific publications related to the skull, so you can find out sex, age and origin From analyzes carried out over 40 years of research.

The skeleton belonged to a male between the ages of 17 and 20, with some erosion of the skeleton indicating a change in weight over a lifetime, the researchers said.

And the double-sided ax buried next to his body suggested that he might have worked in the Hell Mine.

Source: Mirror

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