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The Linkielist

• Supreme Court Limits EPA’s Authority Under the Clean Water Act – yay, trash the USA! May 26, 2023
  The U.S. Supreme Court Court on Thursday significantly curtailed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the nation’s wetlands and waterways. It was the court’s second decision in a year limiting the ability of the agency to enact anti-pollution regulations and combat climate change. The challenge to the regulations was brought by Michael […]
• Virgin Galactic flies final test before opening for business May 26, 2023
  At 0915 Mountain Time (1515 UTC), the VMS Eve mothership took off from New Mexico’s Spaceport America, carrying its spacecraft to an altitude of 44,500 feet (over 13.5km). Pilots on VSS Unity, which rides along with VMS Eve, then fired its rockets to take its six passengers even higher – to 54.2 miles (over 87.2km) […]
• New superbug-killing antibiotic discovered using AI May 25, 2023
  Scientists have used artificial intelligence (AI) to discover a new antibiotic that can kill a deadly species of superbug. The AI helped narrow down thousands of potential chemicals to a handful that could be tested in the laboratory. The result was a potent, experimental antibiotic called abaucin, which will need further tests before being used. […]
• Google bans Downloader app after TV firms complain it can load a pirate website – Firefox, Opera, IE, Chrome, Safari: look out! May 25, 2023
  The Google Play Store suspended an app that combines a web browser with a file manager after a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint pointed out that the app is capable of loading a piracy website—even though that same pirate website can be loaded on any standard browser, including Google Chrome. The free app, which […]
• Brute-force attack bypasses Android biometric fingerprint defense May 25, 2023
  Chinese researchers say they successfully bypassed fingerprint authentication safeguards on smartphones by staging a brute force attack. Researchers at Zhejiang University and Tencent Labs capitalized on vulnerabilities of modern smartphone fingerprint scanners to stage their break-in operation, which they named BrutePrint. Their findings are published on the arXiv preprint server. A flaw in the Match-After-Lock […]
• A Paralyzed Man Can Walk Naturally Again With ML Brain and Spine Implants May 25, 2023
  Gert-Jan Oskam was living in China in 2011 when he was in a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed from the hips down. Now, with a combination of devices, scientists have given him control over his lower body again. “For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet,” Mr. Oskam said in a […]
• SkyFi lets you order up fresh satellite imagery in real time with a click May 24, 2023
  Commercial Earth-observation companies collect an unprecedented volume of images and data every single day, but purchasing even a single satellite image can be cumbersome and time-intensive. SkyFi, a two-year-old startup, is looking to change that with an app and API that makes ordering a satellite image as easy as a click of a few buttons […]
• Samsung Display demos long rollable and a health-sensing OLED May 24, 2023
  The Rollable Flex is an interesting new flexible screen from Samsung Display that can be unrolled from just 49mm to 254.4mm, over five times its length. The display is being shown off at the annual Display Week trade show in Los Angeles alongside another Samsung panel that the company says offers fingerprint and blood pressure […]
• Samsung’s new Sensor OLED display can read fingerprints anywhere on the screen May 24, 2023
  Samsung has unveiled a new display technology that could lead to new biometric and health-related capabilities in future phones and tablets. The tech giant has debuted what it calls the Sensor OLED Display that can read your fingerprints regardless of what part of the screen you touch at this year’s SID Display Week in LA. […]
• Meta’s open-source speech AI recognizes over 4,000 spoken languages | Engadget May 24, 2023
  Meta has created an AI language model that (in a refreshing change of pace) isn’t a ChatGPT clone. The company’s Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS) project can recognize over 4,000 spoken languages and produce speech (text-to-speech) in over 1,100. Like most of its other publicly announced AI projects, Meta is open-sourcing MMS today to help preserve […]