Tag: technology

Lucid Dreaming Breakthrough: Startup Claims First-Ever Two-Way Dream Communication

In a development that sounds straight out of science fiction, REMspace, a California and Russia-based neurotech startup, claims to have achieved the first two-way communication between individuals during lucid dreaming.

Using specially designed equipment, participants reportedly exchanged a message while asleep—an extraordinary claim that has yet to be peer-reviewed.

This milestone, if validated, could mark a turning point in dream research, with REMspace suggesting applications from mental health therapies to skill training.

Communication While Dreaming

REMspace is a neurotechnology company specializing in sleep enhancement and lucid dreaming. Using specially designed equipment, REMspace claims that two individuals successfully induced lucid dreams and exchanged a simple message with each other.

In May 2023, REMspace founder Michael Raduga made headlines after reportedly drilling into his own skull to implant a microchip in an attempt to control his dreams. Raduga, who shared details and graphic images on social media, claims the chip was designed to stimulate his brain’s motor cortex during REM sleep. Despite nearly dying from blood loss, he remains optimistic about the experiment’s potential.

It is important to highlight that while Raduga describes his self-administered procedure as groundbreaking, Raduga is not a qualified neurosurgeon.

Lucid dreaming, according to WebMD, is the state of being aware that you are dreaming while asleep. While around 50 percent of people report experiencing at least one lucid dream, the idea of communication within such a state is still in its early stages of research.

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How the Army is using AI during Hurricane Helene relief

The Army’s 18th Airborne Corps is for the first time using a battlefield capability to map road closures, cellular outages, supply needs and other data in real time to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Northern Command help people whose homes and communities were battered by Hurricane Helene late last month.

The Army is using its Maven Smart System to provide responders with the information needed to make quick, on-the-ground decisions, such as where to send medical supplies or how many truckloads of water to take into certain storm-ravaged areas, defense officials told reporters Monday.

Weeks after the deadly hurricane tore a path from Florida’s Gulf Coast into the Appalachian Mountains, some residents in the southeast are still sifting through the wreckage caused by floods and landslides that destroyed entire towns.

More damage is feared as Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida this week as well.

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Vigilante Swiss teens use dating apps to lure paedophiles into violent ambushes – before being caught and charged over their retribution

A group of vigilante teenagers took the law into their own hands and used dating apps to lure paedophiles into violent ambushes after police ignored their complaints about a schoolgirl pal who was being groomed. 

The schoolchildren, aged between 13 and 18, from Lugano in Switzerland were themselves apprehended by police earlier this month.

They were held on charges including grievous bodily harm, assault, coercion, robbery, false imprisonment, and extortion.

The elaborate scheme was the brainchild of a 13-year-old boy who hatched a plan to use dating apps, such as Tinder, to track down adults who were trying to meet minors.

It was set up after local police allegedly ignored their complaints about the harassment of an underage girl by a man who was sending her nude pictures. 

Conversations between the two were even shared with no result, so the children came up with their own solution.

After chatting to the adults on dating apps, plans would be made over Whatsapp or Instagram to meet in-person at parks or even in flats across the Swiss city.

Once there, the unsuspecting targets walked straight into the group’s carefully laid trap.

The alleged paedophiles would first be greeted by an underage girl or boy, whose role was to persuade them to undress.

Once this was accomplished, the group of teens would converge on the scene, kicking and punching the individual while simultaneously urinating on them, spitting at them, or shaving off their hair.

The actions were reportedly recorded and sometimes shared with third parties. The group had even considered broadcasting the acts live on social media.

When interviewed by police, one of the teens said: ‘It all started when a 35-year-old man started harassing an underage friend of mine by sending her nude photos and asking her for sex.

‘We tried to file a complaint, but we were not taken seriously, we even showed the officials the chats.’

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The Big Tech Think Tank Campaigning to Censor Satire

The Brookings Institution, seems to believe it has solved the problem faced by those who would like to censor memes. The problem is that memes are a form of satire, and censoring them while claiming to be a democracy is a difficult task.

But now, senior Brookings Institution fellow Nicol Turner Lee and Isabella Panico Hernandez, a project assistant, have revealed their thinking: AI memes should be treated as election disinformation “manifested” through satire.

One could use a similar form of mental gymnastics to say that this kind of argument represents a call for censorship manifested through supposed concern about disinformation.

The Brookings, meanwhile, is not just any foot soldier in the “war on memes”: it is a powerful think tank funded by the likes of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, but also massive financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase (via its philanthropic foundation) and that of Mastercard, Impact Fund.

Brookings speaks about memes, particularly those AI-generated (adding some AI panic into the mix can only help the cause), as an extremely dangerous phenomenon hidden behind humor, and perceived as humor by pretty much everyone.

But the think tank, and others going after memes, present themselves as smarter and able to understand the true nature of this clearly humorous and often satirical imagery, which they say only “seem harmless” and “appear innocuous.”

Instead, the authors of the article say memes can influence how voters perceive candidates and other election-related information, “could potentially lead to violence” – and are “globally perceived” as being capable to “fuel extremist behavior” – which is in contrast to the US, supposedly because of the lack of appropriate regulation.

And so, less than a month before the presidential election, these according to the authors insidious messages use humor merely as a vehicle to spread dangerous influence, but are not properly tackled in the US.

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Collider in the Sea: A Particle Accelerator Spanning the Gulf of Mexico Could Unlock New Physics

In 2012, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, proved the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle that grants other particles their mass. The discovery confirmed a mathematical theory at the core of the Standard Model of physics, which tries to explains why the physical universe works the way it does. And it was only possible thanks to the Large Hadron Collider, a ring of superconducting magnets buried hundreds of feet below CERN’s laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. The collider accelerates subatomic particles to extremely high speeds and smashes them together to find out what they’re made of.

Peter McIntyre, a physicist and particle accelerator expert at Texas A&M University, and his colleagues think there may be more particles and natural forces in the universe that, like the Higgs boson, can only be discovered through high energy collisions—bigger collisions than the Large Hadron Collider can create. Gizmodo interviewed him about his ambitious proposal for a machine that could make those discoveries: A particle accelerator 2,000 kilometers in circumference floating in the Gulf of Mexico, which McIntyre and his colleagues have dubbed Collider in the Sea.

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Germany Rushes to Expand Biometric Surveillance

Germany is a leader in privacy and data protection, with many Germans being particularly sensitive to the processing of their personal data – owing to the country’s totalitarian history and the role of surveillance in both Nazi Germany and East Germany.

So, it is disappointing that the German government is trying to push through Parliament, at record speed, a “security package” that would increase biometric surveillance at an unprecedented scale. The proposed measures contravene the government’s own coalition agreement, and undermine European law and the German constitution.

In response to a knife-stabbing in the West-German town of Solingen in late-August, the government has introduced a so-called “security package” consisting of a bouquet of measures to tighten asylum rules and introduce new powers for law enforcement authorities.

Among them, three stand out due to their possibly disastrous effect on fundamental rights online. 

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PimEyes Says Meta Glasses Integration Could Have ‘Irreversible Consequences’

Two Harvard students made headlines after converting Meta’s smart glasses into a device that automatically captures people’s faces with facial recognition and runs them through face search engines. One of the companies providing the face search function, PimEyes, is not too happy about it.

AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio released a video of themselves using the smart glasses to identify people on the street and look up their personal information through services such as PimEyes. The students used the integrated camera on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses to capture live video through Instagram and ran it through their software I-XRAY.

“We stream the video from the glasses straight to Instagram and have a computer program monitor the stream,” Nguyen says in the video. “We use AI to detect when we’re looking at someone’s face, then we scour the internet to find more pictures of that person. Finally, we use data sources like online articles and voter registration databases to figure out their name, phone number, home address and relatives names and it’s all fed back to an app we wrote on our phone.”

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Meta’s new “Movie Gen” AI system can deepfake video from a single photo

On Friday, Meta announced a preview of Movie Gen, a new suite of AI models designed to create and manipulate video, audio, and images, including creating a realistic video from a single photo of a person. The company claims the models outperform other video-synthesis models when evaluated by humans, pushing us closer to a future where anyone can synthesize a full video of any subject on demand.

The company does not yet have plans of when or how it will release these capabilities to the public, but Meta says Movie Gen is a tool that may allow people to “enhance their inherent creativity” rather than replace human artists and animators. The company envisions future applications such as easily creating and editing “day in the life” videos for social media platforms or generating personalized animated birthday greetings.

Movie Gen builds on Meta’s previous work in video synthesis, following 2022’s Make-A-Scene video generator and the Emu image-synthesis model. Using text prompts for guidance, this latest system can generate custom videos with sounds for the first time, edit and insert changes into existing videos, and transform images of people into realistic personalized videos.

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India plans to launch a pilot project for facial recognition at airports for foreign nationals

Digi Yatra is a mobile-based platform that allows air travellers to store their ID and travel documents securely. The platform uses facial recognition to eliminate the need for physical ID checks, streamlining the airport experience, according to Hindustan Times.

Digi Yatra is currently only available for domestic flights within India but a pilot project for international visitors will be launched next year.

India has not yet launched an e-passport, which contains an embedded microchip storing biometric data, such as fingerprints or facial recognition.  So, a pilot project of Digi Yatra will be conducted with the help of foreign passengers who hold electronic passports (“e-passports”).

“Countries within the European Union, Singapore, etc have launched e-passports. A significant number of their citizens hold such passports. So, the pilot project will be done with their involvement,” Digi Yatra Foundation CEO Suresh Khadakbhavi said on Tuesday.

The Digi Yatra Foundation is a not-for-profit private company which is a consortium of five private airports that have a combined shareholding of 74%, and the Airports Authority of India holds the remaining 26%.

The company describes its Digi Yatra as [emphasis added]:

Digi Yatra is a Ministry of Civil Aviation, Govt. of India led initiative to make air traveller’s/ passenger’s journey seamless, hassle-free and Health-Risk-Free. The Digi Yatra process uses the single token of face biometrics to digitally validate the Identity, Travel, Health or any other data that is needed for the purpose of enabling air travel.Frequently Asked Questions, What is Digi Yatra? Digi Yatra Foundation

The pilot project will initially be implemented between two countries and will enable international visitors to use facial recognition as a boarding pass, with the Digi Yatra platform being made accessible in both regional and international languages.

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Experienced Boat Captain Captures Gigantic, Mysterious Monster-Shaped Sonar Image at Loch Ness, Sending the ‘Nessie Craze’ Into Full Swing Yet Again!

The strange shape suspected of being the Loch Ness monster is shown 328 feet above the surface of the loch /UNPIXSUp in the Highlands of Scotland, the by-now usual craze is in full swing, with brand new sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, one of the planet’s most famous folkloric creatures.

It was back in the dark ages when Saint Columba, an Irish monk, famously encountered what he called a ‘water beast’ swimming in the River Ness, which flows from the ‘loch’, a highland lake.

Then, almost a hundred years ago, in the 1930s, a local hotel manager burst into the local bar one evening claiming to have just seen a ‘whale-like creature’ in Loch Ness.

The news coverage of this event kick-started the modern Loch Ness craze spanning almost a century, and that apparently is not about to go away any time soon.

Now, the search for the mythical creature that has captured the imagination of people around the world has been taken up a gear.

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