Month: April 2022

A 36-year-old German man in a completely locked-in state was outfitted with a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) system that relies on auditory feedback. The man learned to alter his brain activity in response to that auditory feedback to compose simple messages. He used this ability to ask for a beer, for his caretakers to play his favorite rock band, and to communicate with his young son, according to a recent paper published in Nature Communications.

BCIs interact with brain cells, recording the electrical activity of neurons and translating those signals into action. Such systems generally involve electrode sensors to record neuronal activity, a chipset to transmit the signals, and computer algorithms to translate the signals. BCIs can be external, similar to medical EEGs in that the electrodes are placed onto the scalp or forehead with a wearable cap, or they can be implanted directly into the brain. The former method is less invasive but can be less accurate because more noise interferes with the signals; the latter requires brain surgery, which can be risky. But for many paralyzed or locked-in patients, it's an acceptable risk.

Last year, we witnessed two significant milestones on the BCI front. In March 2021, we reported on Neuralink's demonstration of a monkey playing Pong using a brain implant connected wirelessly to the game's computer. To achieve this, the company successfully miniaturized the device and got it to communicate wirelessly. In April 2021, researchers with the BrainGate Consortium successfully demonstrated a high-bandwidth wireless BCI in two tetraplegic human subjects.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

AMD's AM4 socket has had a long and successful run on the desktop, ushering in the Ryzen processor lineup and helping AMD compete with and outperform Intel's chips for the first time since the mid-2000s.

The aging socket's time is coming to a close later this year when the Ryzen 7000-series chips are launched, but AMD is sending it off with one last high-performance processor: the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which launches on April 20th for $449.

AMD uses a unique packaging technology called "3D V-Cache" to triple the amount of L3 cache on the processor, from 32MB for the standard Ryzen 5800X to a whopping 96MB. This new tech feels like an experiment in some ways. Unlike other Ryzen CPUs, the 5800X3D doesn't offer overclocking or power consumption controls, and its clock speeds are a bit lower than the standard 5800X. But AMD says that the extra cache allows the 5800X3D to outrun Intel's fastest CPUs when it comes to gaming.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Some longtime Google users are facing a rough transition. In the early days of Google's business-focused productivity service—first called "Google Apps for Your Domain" then "GSuite" and now "Google Workspace"—Google offered domain-branded Google "business" accounts for free. From 2006 to 2012, users could make a free Google Apps/GSuite account with a custom domain, so their email ended with a domain they owned, instead of "@gmail.com." In January, Google announced a significant policy change and told these users they needed to start paying the standard business rate for their Google accounts or face an account shutdown. It's an unfair rug pull for users that set up a free account years ago with no warning that Google might eventually charge for it. These people are in deep, with all data, emails, and purchases stored on these accounts, and it feels like data extortion to suddenly tell them to pay up or lose everything.

Google later relented somewhat and offered a vague escape hatch option, promising that someday these "Legacy Gsuite" users could port their data and purchases to a free, consumer Gmail account—with the caveat that Google won't host their custom-domain email anymore. Many of the important, specific details of this transition plan are not public yet, but what is specific is the deadline for payment and account shutdowns, and users are just left to flap in the breeze while their anxiety builds.

A key problem is that Google actually stopped pitching custom-domain email to consumers, and now these Legacy Gsuite users have no obvious upgrade path. In the past, there was nothing wrong with using Google Apps/Gsuite for non-business purposes, and Google even encouraged it. Just look at the original Google Apps for Your Domain blog post, which says Google launched the service after "listening to feedback from thousands of small businesses, K-12 schools, nonprofits, universities, even families with their own websites." Google encouraged families to use this, and now it's telling these families they are businesses.

Enlarge / Light's depth perception relies on trigonometry and allows it to measure the distance to each pixel out to 1,000 m. (credit: Light)

Last year, I took a look at a new depth-perceiving sensor system called Clarity from a company called Light. Originally developed for smartphone applications, Light pivoted a couple of years ago to develop its technology for automotive applications like advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving.

A lengthy comment thread followed, with plenty of questions about how Light's technology works. The people at Light read the entire thread, then spoke with me to answer your questions.

The Ars commentariat's questions fell into four themes: whether or not Clarity can work in low-light situations; the similarities to human vision and parallax; Clarity's accuracy and reliability compared to other sensor modalities like lidar, and whether it's similar to Tesla's vision-only approach.