Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

showing posts for 'law'

A New Kind of AI Copy Can Fully Replicate Famous People. The Law Is Powerless.

New AI-generated digital replicas of real experts expose an unnerving policy gray zone. Washington wants to fix it, but it’s not clear how.
Source: politico.com

In the ’80s, We Decided Bike Helmets Make Riders Safe. Cyclists Have Paid for It Ever Since.

Good review of the complex science around cycle helmets and safety. The article also touches on the unintended effects of helmet mandate laws (which have been repealed in many US cities). Shout out to Ian Walker of Swansea University and his heroic measuring of passing distance of vehicles with various...
Source: slate.com

Police seize on COVID-19 tech to expand global surveillance

JERUSALEM (AP) — Majd Ramlawi was serving coffee in Jerusalem’s Old City when a chilling text message appeared on his phone. “You have been spotted as having participated in acts of violence in the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” it read in Arabic.
Source: apnews.com

The UK’s (new) Bill of Rights

An authoritarian resistance to scrutiny. Very un-British. “it is becoming abundantly clear that the true objective underpinning this Bill (and the Government’s wider project) concerns not the so-called restoration of parliamentary sovereignty or the strengthening of democracy, but the entrenchment...
Source: publiclawforeveryone.com

Strava app flaw revealed runs of Israeli officials at secret bases

A vulnerability in the fitness app allowed Israeli officials' movements to be tracked, a group says.
Source: bbc.com

Beyond Omicron: what’s next for COVID’s viral evolution Callaway, Ewen. Nature 2021 600:7888.

The rapid spread of new variants offers clues to how SARS-CoV-2 is adapting and how the pandemic will play out over the next several months. The rapid spread of new variants offers clues to how SARS-CoV-2 is adapting and how the pandemic will play out over the next several months.
Source: nature.com

'Laws of Nature Turned up to 11': Astronomers Spot Two Neutron Stars Being Swallowed by Black Holes

In two separate observations, just ten days apart, astronomers discover a neutron star circling a black hole before being gobbled up.
Source: singularityhub.com

Opinion: VC Jim Breyer: Silicon Valley still has a bright future. But Austin's time is now

My decision to start Breyer Capital Austin has more to do with Austin's strengths than any of the Bay Area's flaws.
Source: cnn.com

Google must face $5B lawsuit over tracking private internet use, judge rules

Judge finds tech giant didn't notify users their data could still be collected in incognito mode.
Source: cnet.com

French startup lobby to file privacy complaint against Apple

France Digitale will file a complaint against iPhone maker Apple with data privacy watchdog CNIL on Tuesday over alleged breaches of European Union rules, France's leading startup lobby said in a statement.
Source: reuters.com

Australian news app beats Facebook in App Store

"Take that Facebook. A homegrown app from Australia Broadcasting Company (ABC) topped iOS download charts in Australia, outpacing Facebook. That's important for one big reason: Facebook just banned news from appearing on Australian newsfeeds in response to a law that would require the social giant...
Source: mashable.com

Facebook and Australia's media bargaining law

In Australia, Facebook’s ban on sharing news stories has sent publishers’ traffic tumbling: Audience declines of 20 percent or more have followed Facebook taking its traffic ball and going home. "Even people outside Australia can no longer share stories [on Facebook] from Australian publishers big...
Source: niemanlab.org

Phrase of the day: Scaling Kubernetes to 7,500 Nodes

Scaling Kubernetes to 7,500 Nodes: We've scaled Kubernetes clusters to 7,500 nodes, producing a scalable infrastructure for large models like GPT-3, CLIP, and DALL·E, but also for rapid small-scale iterative research such as Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models. Scaling a single Kubernetes cluster...
Source: openai.com

Ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons

Ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons: There are less harmful ways to stop a lot of crime from happening in the first place. Listen to Jennifer Doleac — Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University, and Director of the Justice Tech Lab — is an expert on empirical research...
Source: 80000hours.org

Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster: Researchers notified the company in April of

Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster: Researchers notified the company in April of serious flaws that have yet to be fixed.
Source: arstechnica.com

Moore's outcomes framework and related papers

blog post image Outcomes-based planning for CME (Continuing Medical Education) often cites Donald Moore, Professor of Medical Education at Vanderbilt University. In 2009 he published an outcomes framework for CME (1) - which expanded George Miller's 1990 competency pyramid (2) - followed by a more detailed explanation...
Source: agnate.co.uk

German Digital Healthcare Act promotes digital health.

German Digital Healthcare Act - Frontiers Health: Bundestag adopts law on reimbursement for digital health application in Germany. "health apps, which can help patients to manage a diagnosed medical condition, can from January 2020 onwards be prescribed by their doctors. The costs are borne by the statutory...
Source: frontiers.health

Patient experience feedback in UK hospitals: What types are available and what are their potential roles in quality improvement

Patient experience feedback in UK hospitals: What types are available and what are their potential roles in quality improvement (QI)?: The comparative uses of different types of patient experience (PE) feedback as data within quality improvement (QI) are poorly understood. This paper reviews what types...
Source: wiley.com

Cloudy Sulawesi: The International Space Station was crossing over the equator when an astronaut looked east and took this

Cloudy Sulawesi: The International Space Station was crossing over the equator when an astronaut looked east and took this photo just after a sunrise.
Source: nasa.gov

Frailty predicts mortality in all emergency surgical admissions regardless of age. An observational study: “Frail patients

Frailty predicts mortality in all emergency surgical admissions regardless of age. An observational study: “Frail patients in any age group are more likely to die than those that are not frail. We aimed to evaluate the impact of frailty on clinical mortality, readmission rate and length of stay for...
Source: oup.com