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Tag: computer science and information technology

  • 5 things to know for May 31: DeSantis, Artificial intelligence, Debt deal, UK, Ukraine | CNN

    5 things to know for May 31: DeSantis, Artificial intelligence, Debt deal, UK, Ukraine | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    One-time Silicon Valley darling Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison Tuesday to begin serving out her 11-year sentence after being convicted on multiple charges of defrauding investors. Her life in prison will be quite a change, with mandatory jobs, very early mornings and no black turtlenecks.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “CNN’s 5 Things” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    Ron DeSantis officially kicked off his 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday in Iowa. While speaking to reporters after the event at an evangelical church outside Des Moines, the Florida governor leveled a series of shots at his rival, former President Donald Trump, painting him as selfish, unprincipled and petty. As the opening contest in the GOP nominating fight, Iowa holds a unique role in sizing up the presidential field. That’s especially important this election season since it’s the first time in over a century a former president is seeking to return to the White House. Meanwhile, Florida officials just changed state campaign finance guidelines in a very specific way to allow DeSantis’ allies to initiate a specific kind of transfer to move tens of millions of dollars to a super PAC supporting his campaign. The planned move has already drawn a watchdog complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

    Dozens of industry leaders and academics in the field of artificial intelligence have called for greater global attention to the possible threat of “extinction from AI.” A statement, signed by leading industry officials like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Geoffrey Hinton — the so-called “godfather” of artificial intelligence — highlights wide-ranging concerns about the ultimate danger of unchecked AI. Experts say humanity is still a ways off from the prospect of science-fiction-like AI overlords, but the flood of hype and investment into the AI industry has led to calls for regulation now before any major mishaps occur. The growing AI arms race has already generated more immediate concerns. Lawmakers, advocacy groups and tech insiders have raised alarms about the potential for AI-powered language models like ChatGPT to spread misinformation and displace jobs.

    AI developers are warning ‘risk of extinction’ to humans

    The House of Representatives is on track to vote today on a bill to suspend the nation’s debt limit through January 1, 2025. The bill already cleared a key hurdle Tuesday evening when the powerful House Rules Committee voted 7-6 to advance it to the floor. That’s a win for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was tasked with convincing members of the committee to vote in favor even though some fellow Republicans don’t approve of the bill and have vowed to sink it in the chamber. Still, it appears a wide range of House members on both sides of the aisle are poised to support the deal. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would reduce budget deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and reduce discretionary spending by a projected $1.3 trillion from 2024 to 2033.

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    U.S. House to vote on debt limit bill amid criticism

    The UK’s inflation problems are getting so out of hand, officials are considering food price caps to curb the crisis. New data released this week shows the cost of store items, a metric known as shop price inflation, rose 9% through the year to May. That’s the highest it’s ever been since such stats were first recorded in 2005. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is considering asking retailers to cap the price of essential food items, something the UK government tried in the 1970s to tepid effect. Economists say capping prices leads to lower supply and higher demand, resulting in shortages. The enduring shadow of Brexit still looms large over Britain’s economy, and some experts say the government should be focused on shedding burdensome regulations that resulted from the move instead of trying to control prices. 

    Russia’s war on Ukraine is increasingly spilling into Russian territory. The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said four people were recently injured in a “massive strike” there. This is the latest in a series of strikes against Russian targets by Ukrainian forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the spate of attacks, saying Ukraine “chose the path of intimidation,” and is provoking Russia to “mirror actions.” Amid all the violence, scientists have another concern: International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has outlined a plan to protect Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and asked that Russia and Ukraine observe them to ensure the plant’s safety and security. 

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    Russia blames Ukraine after drone strikes in Moscow

    Alleged Russian ‘spy’ whale now in Swedish waters

    Patiently waiting for a mystery novel series about spy whales. 

    Michael Jordan was a ‘horrible player’ and ‘horrible to play with,’ says former Chicago Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen

    Dang, Scottie. Tell us how you really feel!

    Venice authorities discover why canal turned fluorescent green

    Given all the fluorescent things it could have been, this is quite a relief.

    This is the world’s first 3D-printed, cultivated fish fillet

    Mmm, science is delicious.

    Air New Zealand to weigh passengers before they board the airplane

    What an innovative way to make air travel even more stressful! 

    1.4 million

    That’s about how many people have now been displaced in Sudan since a civil war erupted there in April, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says. Hundreds have been killed in the violence, and reports of sexual assault are increasingly common. 

    “I just tried to follow the police commands but I guess that didn’t work.”

    — Aderrien Murry, the 11-year-old boy who was shot in the chest less than two weeks ago by a Mississippi police officer after he called 911 for help. The boy said he prayed and sang in the moments after he was shot as his mother tried to stop the bleeding. Aderrien’s family wants the officer fired, and is seeking restitution from the state. 

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    A perfect day

    Bless people who put little collar cameras on their outdoor cats. These videos bring a type of peace I didn’t know existed. (Click here to view)

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  • The world’s biggest ad agency is going all in on AI with Nvidia’s help | CNN Business

    The world’s biggest ad agency is going all in on AI with Nvidia’s help | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, has teamed up with chipmaker Nvidia to create ads using generative artificial intelligence.

    The companies announced the partnership Monday, with Nvidia

    (NVDA)     CEO Jensen Huang unveiling WPP’s new content engine during a demo at Computex Taipei.

    “Generative AI is changing the world of marketing at incredible speed. This new technology will transform the way that brands create content for commercial use,” WPP CEO Mark Read said in a statement.

    The platform will enable WPP

    (WPP)    ’s creative teams to integrate content from organizations such as Adobe and Getty Images with generative AI to produce advertising campaigns “more efficiently and at scale,” according to WPP

    (WPP)    . This would enable companies to make large volumes of advertising content, such as images or videos, “more tailored and immersive,” the company added.

    In the demo screened by Huang, WPP had created realistic footage of a car driving through a desert.

    The new AI-powered content engine means that same car could be placed on a street in London or pictured in Rio de Janeiro to target the Brazilian market — all without the need for costly on location production.

    Just as advertising campaigns can be rapidly adapted for different countries or cities, they can also be customized for different digital channels, such as Facebook or TikTok, and their users.

    “You can build very finely tuned campaigns to resonate with an audience… On the other hand, you could make up imaginary scenarios that never existed in real life,” Greg Estes, vice president of developer programs at Nvidia told CNN.

    The platform is the latest example of how AI is being rapidly deployed by major companies to enhance productivity and deliver new products to customers. Many in the advertising and media industries are concerned about threats to their jobs because of the way that AI is able to aggregate information and create visual content indistinguishable from photography.

    WPP said its new platform “outperforms current methods” of having people “manually create hundreds of thousands of pieces of content using disparate data coming from disconnected tools and systems.” In other words, the new technology could mean that much smaller creative teams are ultimately able to do the same amount of work.

    “It’s much easier to identify the jobs that AI will disrupt than it is to identify the jobs that AI will create,” Read told the Financial Times Monday. “We’ve applied AI a lot to our media business, but very little to the creative parts of our business.”

    Nvidia’s Huang said: “The world’s industries, including the $700 billion digital advertising industry, are racing to realize the benefits of AI,” adding that WPP would now enable brands to “deploy product experiences and compelling content at a level of realism and scale never possible before.”

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  • 5 things to know for May 8: Texas shooting, King Charles, Title 42, Measles, ChatGPT | CNN

    5 things to know for May 8: Texas shooting, King Charles, Title 42, Measles, ChatGPT | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    American flags will be lowered to half-staff this week at the White House, on military bases, and at all public buildings to honor the victims of the deadly mass shooting in Texas over the weekend. In the wake of the massacre, President Joe Biden again urged Congress to act: “Too many families have empty chairs at their dinner tables. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he said.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “CNN’s 5 Things” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    Eight people were killed and at least seven others were wounded when a gunman opened fire at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, on Saturday — the latest mass shooting to shatter an American community. A Dallas-area medical group said it was treating patients ranging from age from 5 to 61 years old. The 33-year-old shooter was killed by a police officer who was already at the Dallas-area mall on an unrelated call. The gunman was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and had multiple weapons in his vehicle, according to police. The shooter’s motive remains unclear at this time, but officials are investigating his potential ties to right-wing extremism after he was found with an insignia on his clothing worn by some members of extremist groups, a law enforcement source said. Officials have also found he had an extensive social media presence that included neo-Nazi and White supremacist-related posts.

    Britain’s King Charles III was crowned Saturday in a once-in-a-generation royal event witnessed by hundreds of high-profile guests inside Westminster Abbey, as well as tens of thousands of well-wishers who gathered in central London. Scores of foreign dignitaries, British officials, celebrities and faith leaders attended the deeply religious ceremony. Once the King was crowned, his wife, Queen Camilla, was crowned in her own shorter ceremony. On Sunday, thousands of events and parties took place across the UK as part of the “Coronation Big Lunch.” But the historic weekend did not go without a display of dissidence. Police arrested more than 50 people during the coronation after controversially promising a “robust” approach to protesters.

    Missed it? Here’s King Charles’ coronation in 3 minutes

    The US is expecting to see an influx of border crossings when Title 42, the Trump-era policy that allowed officials to swiftly expel migrants who crossed the border illegally during the Covid-19 pandemic, expires on Thursday. Without Title 42, the primary border enforcement tool since March 2020, authorities will be returning to decades-old protocols at a time of unprecedented mass migration in the region, raising concerns within the Biden administration about a surge in the immediate aftermath of the policy’s lifting. Also on Thursday, the House is set to vote on Republicans’ wide-ranging border security package, GOP leadership sources told CNN. Last month, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Republicans have the necessary votes to pass the legislation in the chamber.

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    U.S. prepares for a surge of migrants ahead of the end of Title 42

    A child in Maine has tested positive for measles, officials said, marking the first case in the state since 2019. Measles was declared eliminated from the US in 2000 thanks to an intensive vaccination program, according to the CDC. But vaccination rates in the US have dropped in recent years, sparking new outbreaks. The CDC recommends all children get two doses of the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine; the first dose between 12 to 15 months of age and the second between the ages of 4 to 6. The child who tested positive had received a dose of the measles vaccine, but is being considered “infectious out of an abundance of caution,” the Maine CDC said. There have been a total of 10 documented cases of measles in eight states this year.

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    How vaccines stop the spread of viruses

    ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence, can pick stocks better than your fund manager, analysts say. A recent experiment found that the bot far outperformed some popular UK investment funds — and funds managed by HSBC and Fidelity were among those selected. Between March 6 and April 28, a dummy portfolio of 38 stocks gained 4.9% while 10 leading investment funds clocked an average loss of 0.8%, the results showed. The analysts asked ChatGPT to select stocks based on some common criteria, including picking companies with a low level of debt and a track record of growth. Microsoft, Netflix, and Walmart were among the companies selected. While major funds have used AI for years to support their investment decisions, analysts say ChatGPT has put the technology in the hands of the general public — and it’s showing it can potentially disrupt the finance industry. 

    MTV Movie & TV Awards 2023: See who won

    Tom Cruise accepted an award for “Top Gun: Maverick” while flying a plane — because he’s Tom Cruise. Here are the other stars who received golden popcorn statuettes on Sunday.

    A mother-daughter moment: Regal twinning at coronation catches eyes

    Princess Catherine of Wales and her daughter, Princess Charlotte, made a statement in matching silver headpieces. See the photo here.

    Bronny James, son of NBA superstar LeBron James, commits to the University of Southern California

    The NBA’s all-time leading scorer made headlines last year when he said he wanted to play his final season in the league alongside his son Bronny. The father-son duo is now one step closer to that reality.

    ‘Saturday Night Live’ didn’t air a new episode this past weekend

    Former cast member Pete Davidson was set to return as host for “SNL” but things didn’t go as planned due to the ongoing film and TV writers strike.

    Climate activists dye iconic Italian fountain water black

    Onlookers snapped pictures as protesters were arrested for defacing this popular monument.

    111 degrees Fahrenheit

    That’s how high temperatures reached in Vietnam over the weekend, the highest ever recorded in the country. Neighboring Laos and Thailand also recently shattered various temperature records as a brutal heat wave continues to grip Southeast Asia. 

    “This tangled web around Justice Clarence Thomas just gets worse and worse by the day.”

    — Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, telling CNN on Sunday that “everything is on the table” as the panel scrutinizes new ethics concerns around Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The conservative justice is receiving criticism after a bombshell ProPublica report detailed he accepted several lavish trips and gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. Thomas also accepted free rent from the Republican billionaire for his mother and allowed him to pay the boarding school tuition for his grandnephew, according to ProPublica.

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    ‘It embarrasses me’: Senate Judiciary chair on Justice Thomas revelations

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    Parrots learn to call their feathered friends on video chat

    These parrots were taught to ring a bell whenever they want to caw their fellow bird friends! See them in action. (Click to view)

    Parrots Video Chat 3

    Parrots learn to call their feathered friends on video chat

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  • Easily stolen Hyundais and Kias should be recalled, more than a dozen attorneys general say | CNN Business

    Easily stolen Hyundais and Kias should be recalled, more than a dozen attorneys general say | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A coalition of attorneys general for 17 states and the District of Columbia on Thursday called for a federal recall of Hyundai and Kia vehicles that they say are unsafe and too easy to steal.

    The attorneys general called for the recall “following the companies’ continued failure to take adequate steps to address the alarming rate of theft of their vehicles,” a release from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading the coalition, said.

    In a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the coalition requested a recall of “unsafe” Hyundai and Kia vehicles manufactured between 2011 and 2022 “whose easily bypassed ignition switches and lack of engine immobilizers make them particularly vulnerable to theft.”

    The vehicles in question, 2015-2019 Hyundai and Kia models, such as the Hyundai Santa Fe and Tucson and the Kia Forte and Sportage, when equipped with turn-key ignitions — as opposed to cars that only require a button to be pushed to start — are roughly twice as likely to be stolen as other vehicles of a similar age. Many of these vehicles lack some of the basic auto theft prevention technology included in most other vehicles, even in those years, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute, an industry group that tracks insurance statistics.

    These models became the subject of a viral social media trend in which thieves filmed themselves and others stealing Hyundai and Kia vehicles and taking them for a drive. In some parts of the country, the problem became so bad that some insurance companies refused to write new policies on these Hyundai and Kia models in places where the thefts had become extremely common.

    The models in question don’t have electronic immobilizers, which rely on a computer chip in the car and another in the key that communicate to confirm that the key belongs with that vehicle. Without the right key, an immobilizer should do just that — stop the car from moving.

    “Hyundai and Kia announced that they will initiate voluntary service campaigns to offer software updates for certain vehicles with this starting-system vulnerability. Unfortunately, however, this is an insufficient response to the problem and does not adequately remedy the safety concerns facing vehicle owners and the public,” the letter to the NHSTA said.

    Hyundai and Kia did not immediately respond to CNN’s request comment.

    The two South Korean automakers have created a software patch to fix the problem, the automakers have said. Hyundai and Kia operate as separate companies in the United States, but Hyundai Motor Group owns a large stake in Kia, and various Hyundai and Kia models share much of their engineering.

    The patch will be installed free of charge on models that need it, with software that requires an actual key in the ignition to turn the vehicle on. The software will also block the car from being started after the doors have been locked using the key fob remote control. The vehicle will need to be unlocked before it can be started.

    The software also extends the length of the alarm sound from 30 seconds to a full minute. Hyundai dealers will also affix window stickers stating that the vehicle has anti-theft software installed.

    “The bottom line is, Kia’s and Hyundai’s failure to install standard safety features on many of their vehicles have put vehicle owners and the public at risk,” Attorney General Bonta said. “We now ask the federal government to require these companies to correct their mistake through a nationwide recall and help us in our continued efforts to protect the public from these unsafe vehicles.”

    Recalls are ordered by NHTSA or, much more commonly, undertaken by automakers to correct safety-related defects. The attorneys general’s letter asserts that the ease of theft of these Hyundai and Kia vehicles constitutes a safety hazard and the vehicles fail to meet federal standards for theft prevention.

    “Moreover, thieves have driven these vehicles recklessly, speeding and performing wild stunts and causing numerous crashes, at least eight deaths, and significant injuries,” the letter said.

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  • Netflix is winding down its DVD business after 25 years | CNN Business

    Netflix is winding down its DVD business after 25 years | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Netflix is officially winding down the business that helped make it a household name.

    This fall, the streaming giant will officially say goodbye to its DVD rental service and all of the red envelopes that made it possible.

    “On September 29th, 2023, we will send out the last red envelope,” the company tweeted Tuesday. “It has been a true pleasure and honor to deliver movie nights to our wonderful members for 25 years.”

    “Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members, but as the DVD business continues to shrink, that’s going to become increasingly difficult,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Making 2023 our Final Season allows us to maintain our quality of service through the last day and go out on a high note.”

    The company reported a miss for its second-quarter earnings after market close on Tuesday. Shares fell by around 6%.

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  • Opinion: Washington needs to get over its TikTok fixation | CNN

    Opinion: Washington needs to get over its TikTok fixation | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Evan Greer is an activist, writer and musician based in Boston. She’s the director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, and a regular commentator on issues related to technology policy, LGBTQ communities and human rights. Follow her on Twitter @evan_greer or Mastodon @evangreer@mastodon.online. Read more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    The US government is racing ahead with proposals aimed at banning TikTok, the viral video platform used by more than 150 million Americans. Officials say it’s a matter of national security, gesturing urgently toward TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and its ties to China.

    While some might be motivated by thinly-veiled xenophobia, lawmakers also rightly point to concerns about TikTok’s surveillance and capitalist business model, which vacuums up as much personal information about users as possible and then uses it to serve content that keeps us clicking, scrolling, and generating ad revenue. TikTok “spies” on us for profit. That’s not in question.

    The problem is that – while they might not be owned by a Chinese company – Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter all do it too, as privacy advocates have been warning for more than a decade. Banning TikTok won’t make us safer from China’s surveillance operations. Nor will it protect children, or anyone else, from getting addicted to Big Tech’s manipulative products. It’s just an ineffective solution that sounds good on TV.

    While many governments engage in internet censorship and surveillance, China certainly has one of the most sophisticated and draconian systems. A core characteristic of China’s censorship regime is the “Great Firewall,” which blocks foreign social media apps, news sites and even educational resources like Wikipedia, under the guise of protecting national security.

    As they hyperventilate about TikTok, US politicians are so eager to appear “tough on China” that they’re suggesting we build our very own Great Firewall here at home. There is a small but growing number of countries in the world so authoritarian that they block popular apps and websites entirely. It’s regrettable that so many US lawmakers want to add us to that list.

    Several of the proposals wending their way through Congress would grant the federal government unprecedented new powers to control what technology we can use and how we can express ourselves – authority that goes far beyond TikTok. The bipartisan RESTRICT Act (S. 686), for example, would enable the Commerce Department to engage in extraordinary acts of policing, criminalizing a wide range of activities with companies from “hostile” countries and potentially even banning entire apps simply by declaring them a threat to national security.

    The law is vague enough that some experts have raised concerns that it could threaten individual internet users with lengthy prison sentences for taking steps to “evade” a ban, like side-loading an app (i.e., bypassing approved app distribution channels such as the Apple store) or using a virtual private network (VPN).

    But banning TikTok isn’t just foolish and dangerous, it’s also unconstitutional. The strong free speech protections enshrined in the First Amendment bar the government from extreme actions like criminalizing an app that millions of people use to express their opinions and ideas. The US government can’t ban you from posting or watching TikTok videos any more than they can stop you from reading a foreign newspaper like the Times of India or writing an opinion piece for The Guardian.

    The Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN all have their own official TikTok accounts, as do numerous candidates for office, elected officials, academics, journalists, religious leaders and political figures. Any proposal that results in TikTok’s effective ban in the US would almost certainly fall apart under a legal challenge, as the American Civil Liberties Union and other experts have asserted. Even conservative Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky agrees that banning the app would violate Americans’ right to free speech.

    A ban on TikTok wouldn’t even be effective: The Chinese government could purchase much of the same information from data brokers, which are largely unregulated in the US.

    The rush to ban TikTok – or force its sale to a US company – is a convenient distraction from what our elected officials should be doing to protect us from government manipulation and commercial surveillance: passing some basic data privacy legislation. It’s a matter of common knowledge that Instagram, YouTube, Venmo, Snapchat and most of the other apps on your phone engage in similar data harvesting business practices to TikTok. Some are even worse.

    So it’s not just TikTok. Much of what you do in the digital space on all of your devices is tracked. Companies that engage in the practice claim that they track users’ activities online in order to deliver more targeted advertising and content.

    Many companies sell the data they harvest to third parties, who sell it to fourth and fifth and sixth parties. While companies collect this data for the purpose of extracting profit and getting users hooked on their products, governments have long taken an interest.

    The only way to stop governments from weaponizing data that private companies like TikTok collect and store about us is to stop those companies from collecting and storing so much information in the first place. You can’t do that with censorship. You do that by passing a strong national data privacy law that bans companies from collecting more data about us than they need to provide us with the service we’ve requested.

    Instead of helping Big Tech get bigger by banning a major competitor, Congress should also pass antitrust legislation to crack down on anti-competitive practices. That would give concerned parents and internet users who want to ditch TikTok and Instagram better options to choose from, and reduce the power of the largest platforms, making them harder for governments to exploit and manipulate. It’s much harder for bad actors, whether they’re corporate trolls or government agents, to control information across a constellation of smaller platforms, each with their own rules and algorithms, than it is for them to poison the well when there are a tiny handful of companies controlling access to information.

    A separate concern that lawmakers and US officials have raised is the idea that the Chinese government could pressure TikTok to amplify propaganda, or otherwise change its algorithm to advance the government’s interests. It’s an argument that’s not entirely without merit.

    We know the Russian government was effective in manipulating information on Facebook during the 2016 elections. The US has historically engaged in similar conduct overseas. Consider, for example, the US history in influencing the outcomes of elections in Latin America or disinformation campaigns by US allies after the Arab Spring. State-backed disinformation campaigns are happening at a mass scale and on every major platform. We fight that by demanding more transparency and accountability, not more censorship.

    It’s a national embarrassment that we have no basic data privacy law in the United States. And it’s a travesty that we continue to allow unregulated tech monopolies to trample our rights. Every day that our elected officials spend wringing their hands and spreading moral panic about what the kids are doing on TikTok is another day we’re left vulnerable and unprotected.

    With any luck, Washington’s TikTok hysteria will fade quickly. Let’s hope the next hot new trend in the nation’s capital is passing actual laws that protect people, starting with strong privacy and antitrust legislation.

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  • Fuzzy first photo of a black hole gets a sharp makeover | CNN

    Fuzzy first photo of a black hole gets a sharp makeover | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    The first photo ever taken of a black hole looks a little sharper now.

    Originally released in 2019, the unprecedented historic image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 captured an essentially invisible celestial object using direct imaging.

    The image presented the first direct visual evidence that black holes exist, showcasing a central dark region encapsulated by a ring of light that looks brighter on one side. Astronomers nicknamed the object the “fuzzy, orange donut.”

    Now, scientists have used machine learning to give the image a cleaner upgrade that looks more like a “skinny” doughnut, researchers said. The central region is darker and larger, surrounded by a bright ring as hot gas falls into the black hole in the new image.

    In 2017, astronomers set out to observe the invisible heart of the massive galaxy Messier 87, or M87, near the Virgo galaxy cluster 55 million light-years from Earth.

    The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, called EHT, is a global network of telescopes that captured the first photograph of a black hole. More than 200 researchers worked on the project for more than a decade. The project was named for the event horizon, the proposed boundary around a black hole that represents the point of no return where no light or radiation can escape.

    To capture an image of the black hole, scientists combined the power of seven radio telescopes around the world using Very-Long-Baseline-Interferometry, according to the European Southern Observatory, which is part of the EHT. This array effectively created a virtual telescope around the same size as Earth.

    Data from the original 2017 observation was combined with a machine learning technique to capture the full resolution of what the telescopes saw for the first time. The new, more detailed image, along with a study, was released on Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    “With our new machine learning technique, PRIMO, we were able to achieve the maximum resolution of the current array,” said lead study author Lia Medeiros, astrophysics postdoctoral fellow in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in a statement.

    “Since we cannot study black holes up-close, the detail of an image plays a critical role in our ability to understand its behavior. The width of the ring in the image is now smaller by about a factor of two, which will be a powerful constraint for our theoretical models and tests of gravity.”

    Medeiros and other EHT members developed Principal-component Interferometric Modeling, or PRIMO. The algorithm relies on dictionary learning in which computers create rules based on large amounts of material. If a computer is given a series of images of different bananas, combined with some training, it might be able to tell if an unknown image does or doesn’t contain a banana.

    Computers using PRIMO analyzed more than 30,000 high-resolution simulated images of black holes to pick out common structural details. This allowed the machine learning essentially to fill in the gaps of the original image.

    “PRIMO is a new approach to the difficult task of constructing images from EHT observations,” said Tod Lauer, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, or NOIRLab. “It provides a way to compensate for the missing information about the object being observed, which is required to generate the image that would have been seen using a single gigantic radio telescope the size of the Earth.”

    Black holes are made up of huge amounts of matter squeezed into a small area, according to NASA, creating a massive gravitational field that draws in everything around it, including light. These powerful celestial phenomena also have a way of superheating the material around them and warping space-time.

    Material accumulates around black holes, is heated to billions of degrees and reaches nearly the speed of light. Light bends around the gravity of the black hole, which creates the photon ring seen in the image. The black hole’s shadow is represented by the dark central region.

    The visual confirmation of black holes also acts as confirmation of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In the theory, Einstein predicted that dense, compact regions of space would have such intense gravity that nothing could escape them. But if heated materials in the form of plasma surround the black hole and emit light, the event horizon could be visible.

    The new image can help scientists make more accurate measurements of the black hole’s mass. Researchers can also apply PRIMO to other EHT observations, including those of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

    “The 2019 image was just the beginning,” Medeiros said. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, the data underlying that image have many more stories to tell. PRIMO will continue to be a critical tool in extracting such insights.”

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  • ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ wins big at the box office with record opening | CNN

    ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ wins big at the box office with record opening | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” powered up at the box office with an impressive opening.

    The movie ran up the score with more than $200 million in the US and Canada for its five-day opening run, according to a news release, and an estimated $377 million worldwide – the latter topping the box office launch record for an animated movie, previously held by “Frozen 2.”

    It marks the biggest global box office opening of the year, with “Super Mario Bros.” standing ahead of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which brought in the $225.3 million during its February opening.

    The movie is based on the world of Nintendo’s classic 1985 “Super Mario” video games and stars Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi and Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach.

    Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, Kevin Michael Richardson and Sebastian Maniscalco round out the cast.

    Actor Charles Martinet, Mario’s longtime official voice in the games – who many gamer purists felt should have been cast as the titular character instead of Pratt – makes a special appearance in the movie.

    “Super Mario Bros.” follows Brooklyn plumbers Mario and Luigi as they’re transported down a mysterious pipe while working underground to fix a water main. The brothers wander into a “magical new world” and when they’re separated, “Mario embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi,” according to a synopsis on the movie’s website.

    The solid opening is a healthy sign for movie theaters headed into the summer box office season, with the next “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie, also starring Pratt, kicking off in May.

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  • America funded nationwide child care during WWII. Here’s how Biden is trying to revive that effort | CNN Politics

    America funded nationwide child care during WWII. Here’s how Biden is trying to revive that effort | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    During World War II, the federal government spent more than $1 billion in today’s dollars to help provide affordable child care for mothers who entered the workforce in droves to support the war effort.

    Child care centers in more than 635 communities across the country received funds. Many stayed open late and on weekends to match workers’ factory schedules.

    The World War II-era child care program was the first and only federally administered child care for all families, regardless of their income – a qualifying factor for many of today’s federal child care subsidies.

    But the federal funding abruptly expired when the war ended, and now, roughly 80 years later, many American families struggle to find affordable, high-quality child care that meets their needs. The private market simply does not provide adequate child care options.

    President Joe Biden, who could not get his universal pre-K proposal through Congress, is now taking a different, more limited approach. He’s requiring companies applying for certain federal grants meant to boost domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips to also have a plan to provide access to affordable child care for their workers.

    The policy is designed to make sure workers as well as companies benefit from this federal investment, said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan who previously served as an adviser to former President Barack Obama.

    “Another way to think about it is that we really need government involved in child care,” she said.

    As men went overseas to fight in World War II and the federal government’s “Rosie the Riveter” campaign encouraged women to join the workforce, it became clear that child care was sorely needed.

    The money came from the National Defense Housing Act of 1940, more widely known as the Lanham Act, which was meant to fund infrastructure projects deemed critical to the war effort. The Federal Works Agency decided in 1942 that child care services fell in that category.

    The FWA allowed the funds to be used for the construction and maintenance of child care facilities, to train and pay teachers, and to provide meals for communities that were directly involved in the war effort. The child care money was disbursed to centers in nearly every state.

    Parents typically had to chip in, paying less than $1 a day for the child care services.

    “It’s quite remarkable. The country essentially stood up an entire child care program in a matter of months,” said Chris Herbst, an associate professor at Arizona State University who published a study in 2013 on the Lanham Act child care program.

    Herbst found that mothers’ paid work increased substantially following the child care subsidies. He also found that those mothers were more likely to be working 20 years later.

    The program had a long-term impact on the children, too, whom Herbst found to be more likely to achieve higher levels of education and to be employed in the future, and less likely to receive other kinds of government aid throughout their lives.

    Currently, the federal government subsidizes child care for low-income families through programs like the Child Care and Development Fund and Head Start programs.

    But many families still struggle to afford child care, and those that can afford it have trouble finding it. After the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a huge blow to the child care sector, the federal government provided funds to help keep child care centers operating. But long-lasting, sweeping reform has repeatedly failed to pass Congress.

    Last year, lawmakers passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests more than $200 billion over five years to help the US bring back semiconductor chip manufacturing from places like China. The law is not specifically about child care, but now the Commerce Department is requiring some companies to also provide access to child care in order to be eligible for the money.

    The CHIPS law creates incentives for companies to build, expand and modernize US facilities and equipment and is already spurring private investment. Wolfspeed, a North Carolina semiconductor manufacturer that Biden visited late last month, announced a $5 billion investment to build a facility, expecting to create 1,800 jobs there.

    In February, the Biden administration added the child care provision. Companies seeking certain grants over $150 million must also submit a plan to provide their facility and construction workers with access to affordable, high-quality child care, according to the government’s guidance.

    “The first thing I thought was that this was ‘Lanham Part Two,’” said Kathryn Edwards, an adjunct economist at the RAND Corporation.

    “We want to make sure we have workers for this critical industry, so we are going to have child care,” she said.

    Like the Lanham Act, the child care program is supported by a law primarily focused on industrial policy. But the CHIPS law is putting the onus on the employer to provide the service, rather than deliver funding directly to local child care centers.

    “Here’s the truth: CHIPS won’t be successful unless we expand the labor force. We can’t do that without affordable child care,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo tweeted in February.

    Herbst believes it could be a few years before workers see how the child care requirement plays out and how each employer decides to structure the benefit. They may choose to provide child care on-site or offer employees child care vouchers.

    “The administration has, I think, a commitment to child care. I think the question is whether this is the best way to manifest that commitment,” Herbst said.

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  • Video: A pause on AI development, why it’s the worst time to buy a car in decades on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    Video: A pause on AI development, why it’s the worst time to buy a car in decades on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

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    The dangers of AI, the worst time to buy a car in decades, and the next Elizabeth Holmes?

    NYU’s Gary Marcus tells “Nightcap’s” Jon Sarlin why he signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development. Plus, CNN’s Peter Valdes-Dapena explains why car prices may never go back to where they were pre-Covid. And Forbes’ Alexandra Levine details the arrest of Charlie Javice, the 31-year-old fintech founder who sold her company to JPMorgan and now stands accused of fraud. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.

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  • When you’re talking to a chatbot, who’s listening? | CNN Business

    When you’re talking to a chatbot, who’s listening? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    As the tech sector races to develop and deploy a crop of powerful new AI chatbots, their widespread adoption has ignited a new set of data privacy concerns among some companies, regulators and industry watchers.

    Some companies, including JPMorgan Chase

    (JPM)    , have clamped down on employees’ use of ChatGPT, the viral AI chatbot that first kicked off Big Tech’s AI arms race, due to compliance concerns related to employees’ use of third-party software.

    It only added to mounting privacy worries when OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, disclosed it had to take the tool offline temporarily on March 20 to fix a bug that allowed some users to see the subject lines from other users’ chat history.

    The same bug, now fixed, also made it possible “for some users to see another active user’s first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date,” OpenAI said in a blog post.

    And just last week, regulators in Italy issued a temporary ban on ChatGPT in the country, citing privacy concerns after OpenAI disclosed the breach.

    “The privacy considerations with something like ChatGPT cannot be overstated,” Mark McCreary, the co-chair of the privacy and data security practice at law firm Fox Rothschild LLP, told CNN. “It’s like a black box.”

    With ChatGPT, which launched to the public in late November, users can generate essays, stories and song lyrics simply by typing up prompts.

    Google and Microsoft have since rolled out AI tools as well, which work the same way and are powered by large language models that are trained on vast troves of online data.

    When users input information into these tools, McCreary said, “You don’t know how it’s then going to be used.” That raises particularly high concerns for companies. As more and more employees casually adopt these tools to help with work emails or meeting notes, McCreary said, “I think the opportunity for company trade secrets to get dropped into these different various AI’s is just going to increase.”

    Steve Mills, the chief AI ethics officer at Boston Consulting Group, similarly told CNN that the biggest privacy concern that most companies have around these tools is the “inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information.”

    “You’ve got all these employees doing things which can seem very innocuous, like, ‘Oh, I can use this to summarize notes from a meeting,’” Mills said. “But in pasting the notes from the meeting into the prompt, you’re suddenly, potentially, disclosing a whole bunch of sensitive information.”

    If the data people input is being used to further train these AI tools, as many of the companies behind the tools have stated, then you have “lost control of that data, and somebody else has it,” Mills added.

    OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind ChatGPT, says in its privacy policy that it collects all kinds of personal information from the people that use its services. It says it may use this information to improve or analyze its services, to conduct research, to communicate with users, and to develop new programs and services, among other things.

    The privacy policy states it may provide personal information to third parties without further notice to the user, unless required by law. If the more than 2,000-word privacy policy seems a little opaque, that’s likely because this has pretty much become the industry norm in the internet age. OpenAI also has a separate Terms of Use document, which puts most of the onus on the user to take appropriate measures when engaging with its tools.

    OpenAI also published a new blog post Wednesday outlining its approach to AI safety. “We don’t use data for selling our services, advertising, or building profiles of people — we use data to make our models more helpful for people,” the blogpost states. “ChatGPT, for instance, improves by further training on the conversations people have with it.”

    Google’s privacy policy, which includes its Bard tool, is similarly long-winded, and it has additional terms of service for its generative AI users. The company states that to help improve Bard while protecting users’ privacy, “we select a subset of conversations and use automated tools to help remove personally identifiable information.”

    “These sample conversations are reviewable by trained reviewers and kept for up to 3 years, separately from your Google Account,” the company states in a separate FAQ for Bard. The company also warns: “Do not include info that can be used to identify you or others in your Bard conversations.” The FAQ also states that Bard conversations are not being used for advertising purposes, and “we will clearly communicate any changes to this approach in the future.”

    Google also told CNN that users can “easily choose to use Bard without saving their conversations to their Google Account.” Bard users can also review their prompts or delete Bard conversations via this link. “We also have guardrails in place designed to prevent Bard from including personally identifiable information in its responses,” Google said.

    “We’re still sort of learning exactly how all this works,” Mills told CNN. “You just don’t fully know how information you put in, if it is used to retrain these models, how it manifests as outputs at some point, or if it does.”

    Mills added that sometimes users and developers don’t even realize the privacy risks that lurk with new technologies until it’s too late. An example he cited was early autocomplete features, some of which ended up having some unintended consequences like completing a social security number that a user began typing in — often to the alarm and surprise of the user.

    Ultimately, Mills said, “My view of it right now, is you should not put anything into these tools you don’t want to assume is going to be shared with others.”

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  • Australia bans TikTok on federal government devices | CNN Business

    Australia bans TikTok on federal government devices | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Australia has joined other Western countries in banning the use of TikTok on government devices as the Chinese-owned video app comes under increasing pressure over claims it presents a security concern.

    Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announced the ban on Tuesday after receiving advice from intelligence and security agencies, saying the directive would be imposed “as soon as practicable.”

    The decision puts Australia in line with its allies from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – the US, Britain and Canada have already announced similar restrictions, while New Zealand’s parliament also ordered the app be removed from all devices with access to the legislature.

    Norway and the European Parliament have made similar moves, and last week NATO banned staffers from downloading the app onto NATO-provided devices, according to two NATO officials familiar with the matter.

    Lee Hunter, general manager of TikTok in Australia and New Zealand, said the company is “extremely disappointed by this decision, which, in our view, is driven by politics.”

    “Our millions of Australian users deserve a government which makes decisions based upon facts and who treats all businesses fairly, regardless of country of origin,” he said.

    He also stressed that the firm had repeatedly reached out to the Australian government for constructive engagement, while maintaining that there had been no evidence to suggest the app posed a security risk to the country.

    As of early 2023, Australia has more than 8 million users age 18 and over, according to the company, citing a report from DataReportal, which studies digital trends worldwide.

    A notice issued by the Attorney General’s Department said TikTok poses security and privacy risks due to the “extensive collection of user data and exposure to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government that conflict with Australian law.”

    So far, there’s no evidence the Chinese government has accessed TikTok user data, and no government has enacted a broader ban targeting TikTok on personal devices.

    However, the Biden administration has threatened to do that in the United States unless the app’s Chinese owners, Bytedance, agree to spin off their share of the social media platform.

    The US government is worried China could use its national security laws to access the significant amount of personal information that TikTok, like most social media applications, collects from its US users.

    During a high profile congressional hearing on the matter, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled about the tech firm’s alleged ties to the Chinese government.

    Chew has said the Chinese government had never asked TikTok for its data and that the company would refuse any such request.

    For its part, China’s Commerce Ministry said it would “firmly oppose” any decision resulting in the forced sale of TikTok, adding that it would “seriously damage” global investors’ confidence in the United States.

    Like some of the other countries which have imposed the curb, Australia’s attorney general said any exemptions would be granted “on a case-by-case basis and with appropriate security mitigation in place.”

    Dreyfus also said the government had recently received the review into foreign interference through social media applications from the country’s Home Affairs Department, with its recommendations being considered.

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  • Russia arrests anti-war activist following blast that killed hawkish blogger | CNN

    Russia arrests anti-war activist following blast that killed hawkish blogger | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Russian authorities have detained a 26-year-old anti-war protester, claiming she was involved in the blast that killed well-known military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday.

    The country’s interior ministry added Daria Trepova to a wanted list following the explosion, and her arrest was announced on Telegram by the Investigative Committee of Russia shortly after that.

    State media outlet TASS reported that “preliminarily, it was Trepova who handed Tatarsky a figurine with explosives” at the cafe. Russian media had reported suggestions that Tatarsky may have been killed by a device hidden in a statue presented to him by a woman. CNN is not able to independently verify the claims.

    Russia’s National Anti Terrorism Committee said Monday that the explosion involved agents of the Ukrainian special services and associates of the jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

    Tatarsky, a hawkish blogger who gained a high profile for his commentary on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was killed when a blast tore through the cafe where he was appearing as a guest of a pro-war group called Cyber Front Z.

    Trepova was arrested in the early days of the conflict for demonstrating against it, TASS reported.

    “Trepova participated in an unsanctioned rally on the day the special military operation began in Ukraine and was subjected to administrative arrest,” the article read, adding that court records confirmed that Trepova was arrested on March 9, 2022 and sentenced to 10 days in prison.

    According to the TASS article, law enforcement officers conducted a search at Trepovas’ residence in St. Petersburg on Sunday night, where her sister and mother were also questioned. Trepova’s husband Dmitry Rylov was a member of the Libertarian Party of Russia, the article said. Trepova, however, was not associated with the party.

    Russian state media Ria Novosti quoted one witness of Sunday’s blast as saying: “This woman sat at our table. I saw her from the back as she was turned away. When she gifted him the figurine, she went to sit in a different place by the window and forgot her phone at our table.”

    The witness added: “The host at the stage took the figurine from the box and showcased it, Vladlen held it for a bit. They put it back and shortly after the explosion happened … I was running and my ears were blocked. There were many people with blood on them.”

    The independent Telegram channel Astra Press quoted a witness as saying: “Everyone rushed to the exit when explosion happened. I myself saw the girl only until the moment of the explosion, when she gave a gift. She looked like an ordinary person.”

    Tatarsky supported the war in Ukraine and had gained popularity since the start of what Russia calls its “special military operation” by providing analysis and commentary.

    Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, created his Telegram channel in 2019, naming it in honor of the protagonist of Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation ‘P,’” according to Russian state news agency Vesti. He had since written several books.

    Before that, in 2014, Tatarsky took part in fighting alongside Russian forces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, according to Vesti, citing public sources, when President Vladimir Putin’s fighters first invaded the country.

    Emergency service workers stand at the site of the blast at the St. Petersburg cafe on Sunday.

    Tatarsky had more than half a million followers on Telegram, and while he was aggressively pro-war, he had sometimes been critical of Russian setbacks in Ukraine.

    In May last year, he told CNN that he was not criticizing the overall operation, rather “individual episodes,” and that he still believed Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine.

    Tatarsky gained prominence after attending the ceremony in the Kremlin that marked the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

    Sunday’s blast has echoes of the car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of influential ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin in August 2022. Alexander Dugin is credited with being the architect, or “spiritual guide,” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Dugina and Tatarsky moved in the same circles, and they had been photographed multiple times together

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  • Prominent Russian military blogger killed in St. Petersburg cafe blast | CNN

    Prominent Russian military blogger killed in St. Petersburg cafe blast | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A well-known Russian military blogger was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday, officials said, in what appeared to be an audacious attack on a high-profile pro-Kremlin figure.

    Vladlen Tatarsky died when a blast tore through the cafe where he was appearing as a guest of a pro-war group called Cyber Front Z. Authorities said they were treating the case as suspected murder.

    Twenty-five other people were injured in the blast, 19 of whom were hospitalized, the city’s governor said. The Russian Ministry of Health said six people were in critical condition. Investigators were questioning everyone who was inside the cafe, state media reported. Photos of the scene showed extensive damage to the building in which the cafe was located.

    Russia’s Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg said it had opened a murder investigation. Investigators and forensic specialists were on scene, the agency said, and that it was working to establish the circumstances surrounding the explosion. Russia’s Interior Ministry also confirmed Tatarsky was killed in the blast.

    St. Petersburg’s prosecutor Viktor Melnik traveled to the scene to coordinate the actions of emergency services and law enforcement agencies, TASS reported.

    Russian media reports suggested that Tatarsky may have been killed by a device hidden in a figurine presented to him by a woman before the blast. Russian state news media, citing law enforcement agencies and eyewitness accounts, said the woman was attending the event at which Tatarsky was speaking.

    Ria Novosti quoted one witness as saying: “This woman sat at our table. I saw her from the back as she was turned away. When she gifted him the figurine, she went to sit in a different place by the window and forgot her phone at our table.”

    The witness added: “The host at the stage took the figurine from the box and showcased it, Vladlen held it for a bit. They put it back and shortly after the explosion happened… I was running and my ears were blocked. There were many people with blood on them.”

    The independent Telegram channel Astra Press quoted a witness as saying: “Everyone rushed to the exit when explosion happened. I myself saw the girl only until the moment of the explosion, when she gave a gift. She looked like an ordinary person.”

    CNN is not able to independently verify the claims.

    The blast occured during an event hosted by the “Cyber Front Z” movement, a pro-war Telegram society. “Dear friends and colleagues,” the group said in a post Sunday. “During our regular event in a cafe we rented, there was a terrorist attack. We took certain security measures, but, unfortunately, they were not enough. Our condolences to the families and friends of the victims.”

    “Separate condolences to everyone who knew the wonderful war correspondent and our good friend Vladlen Tatarsky. Now we are cooperating with law enforcement agencies and we hope that all those responsible will be punished,” the post said.

    Tatarsky supported the war in Ukraine, had gained popularity since the start of what Russia calls its “special military operation” by providing analysis and commentary.

    Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, created his Telegram channel in 2019, naming it in honor of the protagonist of Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation ‘P,’” according to Russian state news agency Vesti. He had since written several books.

    Before that, in 2014, Tatarsky fought against Ukrainian nationalists with the Donbas resistance, according to Vesti, citing public sources.

    Tatarsky had more than half a million followers on Telegram, and while he was aggressively pro-war, he had sometimes been critical of Russian setbacks in Ukraine.

    In May last year, he told CNN that he was not criticizing the overall operation, rather “individual episodes,” and that he still believed Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine.

    Tatarsky gained prominence after attending the ceremony in the Kremlin that marked the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

    Sunday’s blast has echoes of the car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of influential ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugan in August 2022. Alexander Dugan is credited with being the architect, or “spiritual guide,” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Dugina and Tatarsky moved in the same circles, and they had been photographed multiple times together.

    No evidence has yet been presented about who carried out the attack on Tatarsky, but Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed the finger at Ukraine, without citing evidence.

    “Russian journalists are constantly experiencing threats of reprisal from the Kyiv regime and its inspirers, which are increasingly being implemented,” Zakharova said.

    A Ukrainian official suggested the killing was due to in-fighting in Russia. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the President’s office, wrote on Twitter: “Spiders are eating each other in a jar. Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”

    Zakharova paid tribute to Tatarskiy. “The professional activities of Vladlen Tatarskiy, his service to the Motherland aroused hatred among the Kyiv regime. He was dangerous for them, but boldly went to the end, doing his duty.” Zakharova said.

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  • How these mice navigating a virtual reality game may help Alzheimer’s patients | CNN

    How these mice navigating a virtual reality game may help Alzheimer’s patients | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    Researchers in New York developed a virtual reality maze for mice in an attempt to demystify a question that’s been plaguing neuroscientists for decades: How are long-term memories stored?

    What they found surprised them. After forming in the hippocampus, a curved structure that lies deep within the brain, the mice’s memories were actually rooted through what’s called the anterior thalamus, an area of the brain that scientists haven’t typically associated with memory processing at all.

    “The thalamus being a clear winner here was very interesting for us, and unexpected,” said Priya Rajasethupathy, an associate professor at Rockefeller University and one of the coauthors of a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cell this week. The thalamus “has often been thought of as a sensory relay, not very cognitive, not very important in memory.”

    This new research, however, indicates that it could play a vital role in converting short-term memories to long-term memories. And Rajasethupathy said that should make the thalamus a key area of study for researchers attempting to help patients who suffer from conditions such as Alzheimer’s, who are able to recall old memories but may have trouble remembering new information.

    “it implicates a part of the brain — the thalamus — in the long-term storage of memories in a way that wasn’t even hypothesized by anyone else,” said Loren Frank, a professor of physiology at the University of California San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

    Rajasethupathy noted that neuroscientists have long known that memories take shape in the hippocampus, and is the focus of the vast majority of research around conditions like amnesia and Alzheimer’s.

    Past research has “led to this model where memories are formed in the hippocampus but then become independent over time and slowly stabilized in the cortex,” the wrinkled, outermost portion of the brain. The question has been exactly how memories travel from one area to another, Rajasethupathy said.

    “That process has been mysterious, I would say, for more than 50 years,” Rajasethupathy said.

    It was the right time for her lab to attempt to pinpoint an answer, she added, thanks to new technology that allowed the researchers to track activity in multiple parts of each subject’s brain. The innovations enabled the team to trace how memories are traveling as the mice learned to navigate a maze.

    “I think what they did was technically very challenging,” Frank said. “Particularly where they were trying to (observe) activity from multiple neurons in three different areas at once, using this sort of fiber microscopes. That’s a pretty state of the art thing.”

    The study — led by Rockefeller graduate students Andrew Toader and Josue Regalado, working inside Rajasethupathy’s lab — involved strapping the mice into a headpiece designed to hold them steady while a machine used optical fibers to record their brain activity.

    The maze took them into various “rooms” that offered either incentives, such as sugar water, or deterrents, like a puff of air to the face.

    The mice returned to the maze for days, enough time for them to create long-term memories.

    “The analogy would be your birthday dinner versus the dinner you had three Tuesdays ago,” Toader said in a statement. “You’re more likely to remember what you had on your birthday because it’s more rewarding for you—all your friends are there, it’s exciting—versus just a typical dinner, which you might remember the next day but probably not a month later.”

    Meanwhile, the researchers used chemicals to inhibit parts of the mice’s brains to determine how it affected their ability to create and store memories.

    Not only did they find that the anterior thalamus was a crucial waypoint for these memories — they also found that by stimulating that area in the rodents’ brains, the researchers were “able to help mice retain memories that they would usually forget,” according to a news release about the study.

    Rajasethupathy added, “Some memories are more important to us than others. We found that, not only do mice need the anterior thalamus to consolidate memories, but that by activating it, we could enhance consolidation of a memory that mice would usually forget.”

    Rajasethupathy noted that there were some limitations to the study. It does not, for example, indicate that traveling through the anterior thalamus is the only route memories can take on their way to long-term storage.

    “I want to be clear that this is not the end all be all,” she said. “Maybe everything isn’t consolidated through this pathway. But I’m very confident this is one very important circuit.”

    This study also relied on mice, who don’t have identical brains to humans but have proven to be extremely useful models for discovering how our own brains function. The long-term memory storage process takes weeks in rodents, whereas it can take months for humans, Rajasethupathy added.

    It’s also possible that different types of memory take different highways, she noted. There are explicit memories, which focus on facts, figures and specific data points, and implicit memories are typically tied to emotion and can form without a person realizing it. The thalamus may not be involved in the same manner for both types of information.

    But Frank, the UCSF professor, said the study will have broad implications for future research, spurring more investigations into the thalamus’ role in memory storage.

    “It’s nice for the field to getting to the point where we can think about the long-term evolution of memories and really try to understand how that works,” he said. “And the study is definitely a step in that direction.”

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  • Using artificial intelligence and archival news articles, this teen found that Black homicide victims were less humanized in news coverage | CNN

    Using artificial intelligence and archival news articles, this teen found that Black homicide victims were less humanized in news coverage | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Using artificial intelligence and archival news articles, a teenager in Northern Virginia created a program to measure media biases – and in researching older news articles, she found that Black homicide victims were less likely to be humanized in news coverage.

    Emily Ocasio, an 18-year-old from Falls Church, Virginia, created an AI program that analyzed FBI homicide records between 1976 and 1984 and their corresponding coverage published in The Boston Globe to determine whether victims were presented in a humanizing or impersonal way.

    After analyzing 5,042 entries, the results showed that Black men under the age of 18 were 30% less likely to receive humanizing coverage than their White counterparts, Ocasio told CNN. Black women were 23% less likely to be humanized in news stories, Ocasio added.

    A news article was considered humanizing when it mentioned additional information about the victim and presented them “as a person, not just a statistic,” Ocasio said in her project presentation.

    Her findings have not been reviewed by the larger scientific community, but she told CNN she hopes to expand her research and get it published in a scientific journal.

    Ocasio’s project earned her second place in the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search on March 14 as well as a $175,000 scholarship.

    Every year about 1,900 high school students from across the country participate in the competition, which started in 1942 and seeks to serve as a platform for young scientists to share original research.

    Ocasio was among 40 finalists from more than 2,000 applications, according to Maya Ajmera, president and CEO of the Society for Science and executive publisher of Science News, two of the competition’s sponsors.

    “By using AI to document these biases, Emily shows that it can be safely used to help society answer complex social science questions,” her biography on the Society for Science website says.

    Ocasio said she has always been interested in social justice and science and saw this project as an opportunity to combine them. “Without the research, and without the statistics, you have no ability of understanding that entire communities are being left behind,” she said.

    Ocasio analyzed The Boston Globe’s news coverage because the newspaper had digital copies of its articles for the ’70s to ‘80s time period she focused on for her project, she said. CNN has reached out to the Boston Globe for comment.

    Despite her findings, Ocasio believes science can’t explain everything: “You can never run an experiment in a lab that tells you about how racism works in society.”

    Ocasio, who has Puerto Rican heritage, said her own experiences helped shape her perspective of different races and cultures, and drew her to researching racism and inequalities. She wants to replicate her research to analyze other news outlets as well, she said.

    The talent search’s first-place winner, Neel Moudgal, told CNN the research done by the teenagers across the US is essential to helping solve some of society’s greatest challenges.

    Neel Moudgal won first place in the Regeneron Science Talent Search.

    “I firmly believe that science is going to be the solution to a lot of our problems,” Moudgal said. His prize-winning project was a computer model that predicts the structure of RNA molecules to help develop tests and drugs for diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, and viral infections.

    Ajmera said seeing such projects from high school students gives her “an enormous hope for the future.”

    “We’re looking for the future scientific leaders of this country,” she said.

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  • TikTok users are making fun of Congress members for their questions to app CEO Shou Chew | CNN Business

    TikTok users are making fun of Congress members for their questions to app CEO Shou Chew | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    TikTok creators have had enough of Congress seemingly not understanding how the internet works.

    What happened: On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified before the House Committee for Energy and Commerce, where he was peppered with questions about concerns over the popular app’s potential national security threats and its connections to China. Governments around the world banned the app on official devices, and there is concern that the app’s parent company ByteDance could be forced to cooperate with the Chinese government. (TikTok doesn’t operate in China.)

    The tone from some of its members was combative — something that creators noticed, and mocked, immediately.

    Meanwhile, TikTok creators are leading the way ridiculing members of Congress.

    “There needs to be an age limit in Congress,” one caption by user @rachelhannahh said about a clip of US Rep. Buddy Carter, who represents Georgia’s 1st district, asking Chew whether the app tracks pupil dilation as a form of facial recognition to drive algorithms.

    Chew responded by saying the app does not use body, face or voice data to identify users, and the only face data the app collects is for “filters to have sunglasses on your face.”

    ‘Why do you need to know where the eyes are if you’re not seeing if they’re dilated?” Carter then asked, resulting in a barrage of comments ridiculing the congressman’s questions.

    A spokesperson for Carter said the congressman is not on TikTok because it poses a national security risk.

    “TikTok recently updated its privacy policy allowing it to collect biometric data, so it was important that its CEO be on-the-record, under oath detailing what data TikTok collects and whether the Chinese Communist Party has access to that data,” the spokesperson said.

    TechCrunch previously reported that TikTok updated its privacy policy “to allow the app to collect biometric data on US users.” However, the company has said it only uses biometrics for video effects and ByteDance employees in China would not be able to access it, TechCrunch reported.

    Many of the TikTok video clips suggested Congress members don’t know how modern technology works. They believe members of Congress are detached from technology and unaware of how tech companies within their own country operate, resulting in easily mockable questions.

    The app, which has 150 million US users, is facing a potential ban. Among those who’ve heard of TikTok, only 39% of those younger than 30 support a TikTok ban, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Thursday.

    US Rep. Mike Gallagher, who represents Wisconsin’s 8th district, told CNN during its primetime special Thursday night that the government needs to address TikTok as a national security threat, despite the popularity of the app among younger voters.

    “Republicans [and] Democrats agreed this is a threat,” Gallagher, a Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on China, told CNN. “So we can’t ignore it just because of concerns about alienating some teenagers on this app.”

    “It’s a national security issue,” he said. “We have to deal with it before it’s too late.”

    It’s a bipartisan opinion. The Biden administration threatened a ban if the app’s Chinese owners don’t spin off their share of the social media platform.

    “Bro outta pocket,” a user who goes by Whittington said on a clip of US Rep. August Pfluger, who represents Texas’ 11th district.

    In the clip, Pfluger said the only other person who united Democrats and Republicans was Vladimir Putin.

    CNN has reached out to Pfluger for comment.

    The hearing may also have created a new group of lobbyists. ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, flew out more than 30 famous TikTokkers to Washington to advocate for the app, the New York Times reported.

    Another clip that has been widely circulating on the app is one of US Rep. Richard Hudson, who represents North Carolina’s 9th district, questioning Chew on how WiFi connectivity works. The “yes or no” style of interrogating on topics that were complex, or frankly irrelevant, were a major point of exasperation for users.

    “So if I have a TikTok app on my phone and my phone is on my home WiFi network,” Hudson asked, “does TikTok access that network?”

    “Does TikTok access my battery to steal my electricity?” one user said, mocking Hudson.

    CNN has reached out to Hudson for comment.

    Users are also posting POV’s on the app, renacting their own versions of the hearing.

    “What color is the algorithm?” said user Christian Divyne in a video mocking some of the questions Congress members asked Chew.

    The video ended up getting over one million views, with over 250,000 likes as of this writing.

    – CNN’s Samantha Murphy Kelly and Brian Fung contributed to this report.

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  • TikTok and its CEO are fighting to save the app in the US | CNN Business

    TikTok and its CEO are fighting to save the app in the US | CNN Business

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    As a growing number of lawmakers raise national security concerns about TikTok’s ties to China, and some experts worry about the app’s impact on young people’s mental health, CNN is hosting a special to dig into these issues. Watch “CNN Primetime: Is time up for TikTok?” Thursday, March 23 at 9 p.m. ET.



    CNN
     — 

    At a Harvard Business Review conference earlier this month, where executives, professors and artists appeared for talks on corporate leadership and emotional intelligence, Shou Chew attempted to save his company.

    In his talk, Chew, the CEO of TikTok, said the social network would not provide US user data to the Chinese government and has never been asked to do so. Chew stressed the steps TikTok has taken to protect US user data. And four separate times, Chew told the audience that the platform’s mission was to “inspire creativity and bring joy” to users.

    The Harvard event is just one of several media appearances Chew has made in recent weeks amid mounting scrutiny of TikTok and of himself. Chew is set to testify on Thursday for the first time before a Congressional committee about “TikTok’s consumer privacy and data security practices, the platforms’ impact on kids, and its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party,” according to a statement last week from the committee. Meanwhile, federal officials are now demanding the app’s Chinese owners sell their stake in the social media platform, or risk facing a US ban of the app.

    Chew, a Singaporean who has largely stayed out of the spotlight since taking over TikTok in 2021, recently sat for interviews with multiple US newspapers and this week showed up in a video on the corporate TikTok account to highlight the vast reach of the app, which he revealed now has more than 150 million users in the United States.

    “That’s almost half the US coming to TikTok to connect, to create, to share, to learn, or just to have some fun,” said Chew, wearing in a hoodie and t-shirt like any other American tech executive in the clip. “This comes at a pivotal moment for us. Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok, now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.”

    Chew’s heightened visibility appears to be part of a larger messaging campaign by TikTok to bolster its reputation in the US and remind voters – and their representatives – how essential the social network is to American culture.

    A press conference is planned for Wednesday with dozens of social media creators on the steps of the Capitol, some of whom have been flown out there by TikTok. The company is paying for a blitz of advertisements for a Beltway audience. And last week it put out a docuseries highlighting American small business owners who rely on the platform for their livelihoods.

    Behind the scenes, Chew has also met with members of Congress and TikTok recently invited researchers and academics to its Washington, D.C., offices to learn more about how it is working to address lawmakers concerns over its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. Its parent company has also ramped up federal lobbying, spending more than $5 million last year, according to data tracked by OpenSecrets.

    “It’s life or death for TikTok, from their perspective,” said Justin Sherman, the CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, D.C.-based research and advisory firm, who was among the researchers TikTok invited to be briefed on “Project Texas,” the company’s $1.5 billion initiative to address lawmakers’ security concerns. “They are throwing everything they can at the problem.”

    In a statement, TikTok spokesman Jamal Brown said: “A U.S. ban on TikTok could have a direct impact on the livelihoods of millions of Americans. Lawmakers in Washington debating TikTok should hear firsthand from people whose lives would be directly affected by their decisions.”

    For much of the past year, TikTok has been rolling out new features and policies to address privacy and security concerns that the Chinese government could gain access to US user data, as well as broader fears that its app, like other social platforms, can be harmful to some younger users.

    TikTok recently set a default one-hour daily screen time limit on every account for users under 18 in one of the most aggressive moves yet by a social media company to prevent teens from endlessly scrolling. It rolled out a feature that aimed to offer more information to users about why its powerful algorithm recommends certain videos. And the company pledged more transparency to researchers.

    Facing concerns about its parent company’s ties to China, TikTok has also taken a number of steps to more clearly separate its US operations and user data from other parts of the organization. That includes moving all its US user data to Oracle’s cloud platform, where it says it hosts “100% of US user traffic.”

    The messaging campaign has only ramped up this week ahead of the hearing. TikTok rolled out refreshed Community Guidelines for content, which the company framed as being “based on our commitment to uphold human rights and aligned with international legal frameworks.” And Chew once again stressed TikTok’s independence from China.

    “I understand that there are concerns stemming from the inaccurate belief that TikTok’s corporate structure makes it beholden to the Chinese government or that it shares information about U.S. users with the Chinese government,” Chew said in prepared remarks ahead of his testimony before Congress. “This is emphatically untrue.”

    At the same time, TikTok is now betting on a strategy from American tech companies who have faced scrutiny for other reasons, playing up the impact it has on small businesses in the United States, including with the CEO’s prepared remarks and a mini docuseries it released last week titled “TikTok Sparks Good.”

    The series spotlighted inspiring stories of American small business owners and creators. The first of the 60-second clips features a Mississippi soap maker with a deep Southern accent who built her company on the app, and the second features an educator who quit his job to focus on sharing informational videos on TikTok aimed at teaching toddlers how to read.

    “Because of TikTok, I’m reaching millions of families who want to teach their toddlers how to read,” the educator says.

    Dozens of TikTok creators who oppose a ban will also be holding a press conference on Capitol grounds on Wednesday evening with Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York. TikTok flew out some of the creators, the company confirmed to CNN. (The Information was first to report the move.)

    The list of expected attendees includes a disabled Asian American creator using her platform to combat ableism, a small business owner from South Carolina who launched a greeting card company via TikTok, and an Ohio-based chef who built her bakery business via the app. Some of the creators have hundreds of thousand or even millions of followers on TikTok.

    Even with these efforts, Sherman expressed some skepticism about how persuasive the PR push will be, mostly because of how divided Washington is right now.

    “Not everyone wants a ban,” he said. “For some lawmakers, it will matter that TikTok is taking all these steps to address security concerns.”

    But for others, it won’t move the needle. “Some lawmakers, frankly, do not care what ads TikTok is taking out, what pledges it’s making on its blog about independence, data privacy … They see an unmitigable risk of Chinese government access to data and/or influence over content, and so are going to push for a complete ban.”

    Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy and a former Biden administration adviser, said that “by and large, TikTok’s lobbying efforts so far have been pretty ineffective.”

    The problem, she said, is two-fold. First, even if TikTok takes steps to bolster its safeguards today, as it has been doing with Project Texas, concerns remain that it’s always “one update away from becoming a vulnerability.” And second, TikTok’s PR efforts in Washington won’t undo previous moments when the company “shot itself in the foot” by making what she said were “inaccurate statements” to Congress, “and then having revelations come out showing that those were inaccurate.”

    After the initial, Trump-era calls for a TikTok ban appeared to fade in Washington, BuzzFeed reported in 2021 that US user data was repeatedly accessed from China and that “everything is seen in China.” The details in the report were seemingly at odds with remarks a TikTok executive gave before a Senate panel earlier that year, claiming that a US-based security team decides who can access US user data from China. Following the report, TikTok once again became a hot button issue in the nation’s capital.

    But even as suspicion among US lawmakers grew, so did the app’s popularity in the country.

    “I do think TikTok’s strongest argument to date is drawing on its creator user base,” Gorman said. But for some lawmakers with security concerns, the latest push “may be too little too late.”

    In his TikTok video on Tuesday, Chew appealed directly to users of the app. The CEO asked them to write in the comments section to share “what you want your elected representatives to know about what you love about TikTok.”

    The top comment on the clip, which has received upwards of 50,000 likes, simply reads: “You know something went wrong when the boss has to show up 😂”

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  • After TikTok chief’s grilling in Washington, Apple’s Tim Cook is all smiles in Beijing | CNN Business

    After TikTok chief’s grilling in Washington, Apple’s Tim Cook is all smiles in Beijing | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Apple

    (AAPL)     CEO Tim Cook gave a show of support for China as a market and manufacturing base during a visit to Beijing Saturday, even as trade and tech sector tensions escalate between the United States and the world’s second-largest economy.

    Apple and China had “grown together” over the past three decades, Cook told the government-organized China Development Forum, adding that he was thrilled to be back in the country, which only reopened its borders this year after abandoning its strict zero-Covid policy. The last time Cook visited China was in 2019.

    “We have a very large supply chain in China. We also have a thriving App Store,” the Apple chief was quoted as saying in state-run China Daily.

    Cook’s visit has raised eyebrows in some quarters, given the ongoing tech battle between the United States and China and reports that Apple has been looking to India as a potential alternative production base.

    On Friday, Cook had posted a picture of himself smiling with customers and staff at the Apple store in the shopping district of Sanlitun on China’s Twitter-like social media site Weibo.

    That post came just a day after Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok was grilled in a five-hour hearing before a Congressional committee in Washington, where US lawmakers remain convinced the Chinese-made social media app represents an urgent threat to national security.

    China’s state media was quick to seize on the apparent contrast between the two CEO’s experiences.

    “TikTok CEO was under siege at the US hearing, while Apple CEO was enthusiastically welcomed by people at its flagship Chinese store. This shows that China is the one that is actually practicing fair and free trade,” the state-run Global Times quoted one netizen as saying.

    The Biden administration has demanded that the Chinese owners of TikTok sell their share of the company or face a ban from the United States, the app’s most important market. China’s commerce ministry said Thursday that a forced sale of TikTok would “seriously damage” global investors’ confidence in the United States.

    The US has concerns about the company’s data collection practices, and these have been exacerbated by the popularity of TikTok and other Chinese apps. Of the 10 most popular free apps on Apple’s US store, four were developed with Chinese technology: TikTok, shopping app Temu, fast fashion retailer Shein and video editing app CapCut, which like TikTok is also owned by ByteDance.

    Apple meanwhile has reportedly been rethinking the extent of its ties with China.

    The company’s supply chains were disrupted by China’s harsh coronavirus rules and there have been violent protests over wages at the world’s largest iPhone assembly factory at Foxconn’s campus in China’s Henan province.

    Amid these problems, and wider trade disagreements between Washington and Beijing, Apple has reportedly been looking at India as a potential alternative manufacturing hub for the iPhone 14.

    However, many analysts say that even if Apple can add diversity to its supply base it is likely to continue to depend on China for a long time yet.

    Cook said in an earnings call last year that India was a “hugely exciting market” and “a major focus” for Apple that recorded “very strong double digits year over year,” indicating its high interest to expand production in the South Asian country.

    While the rising US-China tensions have led to suggestions the world’s two largest economies could “decouple,” recent data shows trade between them hit a record high in 2022.

    Bilateral goods trade between the countries rose to $690.6 billion last year, according to official US data.

    Exports to China increased by $2.4 billion to $153.8 billion, while imports of Chinese products rose by $31.8 billion to $536.8 billion according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.

    The data suggests that the idea of “decoupling,” or reducing mutual reliance in a range of areas, is much more evident in policy discussions in Washington rather than on-the-ground trade reality.

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  • Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, author of ‘Moore’s Law’ that helped drive computer revolution, dies at 94 | CNN Business

    Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, author of ‘Moore’s Law’ that helped drive computer revolution, dies at 94 | CNN Business

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    Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, a pioneer in the semiconductor industry whose “Moore’s Law” predicted a steady rise in computing power for decades, died Friday at the age of 94, the company announced.

    Intel

    (INTC)     and Moore’s family philanthropic foundation said he died surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii.

    Co-launching Intel in 1968, Moore was the rolled-up-sleeves engineer within a triumvirate of technology luminaries that eventually put “Intel Inside” processors in more than 80% of the world’s personal computers.

    In an article he wrote in 1965, Moore observed that, thanks to improvements in technology, the number of transistors on microchips had roughly doubled every year since integrated circuits were invented a few years before.

    His prediction that the trend would continue became known as “Moore’s Law” and, later amended to every two years, it helped push Intel and rival chipmakers to aggressively target their research and development resources to make sure that rule of thumb came true.

    “Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers – or at least terminals connected to a central computer – automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment,” Moore wrote in his paper, two decades before the PC revolution and more than 40 years before Apple launched the iPhone.

    After Moore’s article, chips became more efficient and less expensive at an exponential rate, helping drive much of the world’s technological progress for half a century and allowing the advent of not just personal computers, but the internet and Silicon Valley giants like Apple

    (AAPL)    , Facebook

    (FB)     and Google

    (GOOG)    .

    “It sure is nice to be at the right place at the right time,” Moore said in an interview around 2005. “I was very fortunate to get into the semiconductor industry in its infancy. And I had an opportunity to grow from the time where we couldn’t make a single silicon transistor to the time where we put 1.7 billion of them on one chip! It’s been a phenomenal ride.”

    In recent years, Intel rivals such as Nvidia

    (NVDA)     have contended that Moore’s Law no longer holds as improvements in chip manufacturing have slowed down.

    But despite manufacturing stumbles that have caused Intel to lose market share in recent years, current CEO Pat Gelsinger has said he believes Moore’s Law still holds as the company invests billions of dollars in a turnaround effort.

    Even though he predicted the PC movement, Moore told Forbes magazine that he did not buy a home computer himself until the late 1980s.

    A San Francisco native, Moore earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics in 1954 at the California Institute of Technology.

    He went to work at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory where he met future Intel cofounder Robert Noyce. Part of the “traitorous eight,” they departed in 1957 to launch Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1968, Moore and Noyce left Fairchild to start the memory chip company soon to be named Intel, an abbreviation of Integrated Electronics.

    Moore and Noyce’s first hire was another Fairchild colleague, Andy Grove, who would lead Intel through much of its explosive growth in the 1980s and 1990s.

    Moore described himself to Fortune magazine as an “accidental entrepreneur” who had no burning urge to start a company – but he, Noyce and Grove formed a powerhouse partnership.

    While Noyce had theories about how to solve chip engineering problems, Moore was the person who rolled up his sleeves and spent countless hours tweaking transistors and refining Noyce’s broad and sometimes ill-defined ideas, efforts that often paid off. Grove filled out the group as Intel’s operations and management expert.

    Moore’s obvious talent also inspired other engineers working for him, and, under his and Noyce’s leadership, Intel invented the microprocessors that would open the way to the personal computer revolution.

    He was executive president until 1975 although he and CEO Noyce considered themselves equals. From 1979 to 1987 Moore was chairman and CEO and he remained chairman until 1997.

    In 2023 Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $7.2 billion.

    Moore was a longtime sport fisherman, pursuing his passion all over the world and in 2000 he and his wife, Betty, started a foundation that focused on environmental causes. The foundation, which took on projects such as protecting the Amazon River basin and salmon streams in the US, Canada and Russia, was funded by Moore’s donation of some $5 billion in Intel stock.

    He also gave hundreds of millions to his alma mater, the California Institute of Technology, to keep it at the forefront of technology and science, and backed the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project known as SETI.

    Moore received a Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President George W. Bush in 2002. He and his wife had two children.

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