Month: March 2020

Enlarge / Several generations of neural implants from Neuralink. (credit: Neuralink)

For people with limited use of their limbs, speech recognition can be critical for their ability to operate a computer. But for many, the same problems that limit limb motion affect the muscles that allow speech. That had made any form of communication a challenge, as physicist Stephen Hawking famously demonstrated. Ideally, we'd like to find a way to get upstream of any physical activity and identify ways of translating nerve impulses to speech.

Brain-computer interfaces were making impressive advances even before Elon Musk decided to get involved, but the problem of brain-to-text wasn't one of its successes. We've been able to recognize speech in the brain for a decade, but the accuracy and speed of this process are quite low. Now, some researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are suggesting that the problem might be that we weren't thinking about the challenge in terms of the big-picture process of speaking. And they have a brain-to-speech system to back them up.

Lost in translation

Speech is a complicated process, and it's not necessarily obvious where in the process it's best to start. At some point, your brain decides on the meaning it wants conveyed, although that often gets revised as the process continues. Then, word choices have to be made, although once mastered, speech doesn't require conscious thought—even some word choices, like when to use articles and which to use, can be automatic at times. Once chosen, the brain has to organize collections of muscles to actually make the appropriate sounds.

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  The full teardown of the 2020 iPad Pro. [credit: iFixit ]

As expected, iFixit has published a teardown of the 12.9-inch, 2020 iPad Pro, assessing both what's new in the device compared to 2018 and how straightforward the device is to open up and repair. It turns out not too much has changed (which we already knew), and the Pro remains quite difficult to service.

In the video (sorry, no blog post this time, it seems), we see the various steps required to replace interior components like the screen or USB-C port that might have failed. Just about every step involves "lots of adhesive" and "precarious prying." In fact, it's a conundrum from the very first step, as opening up the casing will leave you trying to figure out how to detach two cables that Apple clearly didn't intend users to be futzing with.

Unsurprisingly, iFixit gave the 2020 iPad Pro a 3 out of 10 for repairability—the same as it gave the 2018 model. That's because for these intents and purposes, this is the same tablet as was introduced in 2018.

Enlarge (credit: Gary Lerude / Flickr)

The Guardian says it has evidence that Saudi Arabia is exploiting a decades-old weakness in the global telecoms network to track the kingdom’s citizens as they travel in the United States.

The publication cited data provided by a whistleblower that suggests Sudia Arabia is engaged in systematic spying by abusing Signalling System No. 7. Better known as SS7, it’s a routing protocol that allows cell phone users to connect seamlessly from carrier to carrier as they travel throughout the world. With little built-in security for carriers to verify one another, SS7 has always posed a potential hole that people with access could exploit to track the real-time location of individual users. SS7 abuse also makes it possible for spies to snoop on calls and text messages. More recently, the threat has grown, in part because the number of companies with access to SS7 has grown from a handful to thousands.

The data provided to The Guardian “suggests that millions of secret tracking requests emanated from Saudi Arabia over a four-month period beginning in November 2019,” an article published on Sunday reported. The requests, which appeared to originate from the kingdom’s three largest mobile phone carriers, sought the US location of Saudi-registered phones.

Enlarge / Remember when Pokemon were allowed to get within 6 feet of each other? (credit: Niantic)

While most game makers are seeing booming usage statistics in the era of coronavirus-induced social distancing, Niantic is in the opposite position. The company's games—including Pokémon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and Ingress—are all built around the idea of leaving the house and meeting up with people in real-world locations.

Now that those things are impossible or discouraged for large portions of the population, Niantic is adjusting its game design philosophy to "embrace real-world gaming from home," as it says in a blog update today.

"We have always believed that our games can include elements of indoor play that complement the outdoor, exercise and explore DNA of what we build," the company writes. "Now is the time for us to prioritize this work, with the key challenge of making playing indoors as exciting and innovative as our outdoor gameplay."