Mar 222022
 

People are returning to buying CDs again — sales are increasing.
Now all we need is to bring back the large record stores which offer a great variety of CDs that you can buy anonymously with cash.
CDs don’t have to be sold in plastic “jewel boxes” that break. Some are sold in cardboard boxes which are more robust and probably better for the environment.
If this is driven by the obligatory giving of copies to people who don’t actually want them, that’s sad, but it means more used copies to be sold to people who really do want them.
The author displays a fundamental shallowness by describing listening to music or reading books as…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2022-jan-apr.html#22_March_2022_(CD_sales_rising_again)

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Mar 222022
 

A completely paralyzed man has been able to communicate entire sentences using a device that records his brain activity. The man was able to train his mind to use the device, which was implanted in his brain, to ask for massages, soup, and beer, and to watch films with his son. It is the first time a completely locked-in person—someone who is conscious and cognitively able but completely paralyzed— has been able to communicate in this way, say the researchers behind the work. Brain-computer interfaces record the electrical signals inside a person’s brain and convert them to commands that control a device. In recent years, BCIs have enabled partially paralyzed people to control prosthetic limbs or…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/22/1047664/locked-in-patient-bci-communicate-in-sentences/

 2022-03-22  Comments Off on New on MIT Technology Review – A locked-in man has been able to communicate in sentences by thought alone
Mar 222022
 

Enlarge / Google CEO Sundar Pichai uses his phone during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 12, 2018, in Sun Valley, Idaho. (credit: Getty Images | Drew Angerer )
The US Department of Justice and 14 state attorneys general yesterday asked a federal judge to sanction Google for misusing attorney-client privilege to hide emails from litigation.
“In a program called ‘Communicate with Care,’ Google trains and directs employees to add an attorney, a privilege label, and a generic ‘request’ for counsel’s advice to shield sensitive business communications, regardless of whether any legal advice is actually needed or sought. Often, knowing the game, the in-house counsel included in these Communicate-with-Care emails does…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1842804

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Mar 222022
 

When The Onion’s editorial board convened to discuss the tumultuous events of the previous month, one conclusion became evident: The world stands at a crossroads. Two visions of our collective future stand before us: On one side is a free and enlightened society, dedicated to the principles of openness,…

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/in-defense-of-mass-censorship-1848673776

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Mar 222022
 

Enlarge / The US Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland. (credit: Getty | Xinhua News Agency)
Vaccine-makers Moderna and Pfizer have now both submitted requests to the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize fourth doses—second boosters—of their COVID-19 vaccines.
Pfizer and its vaccine partner BioNTech announced Tuesday that they had asked the FDA to authorize fourth doses for adults age 65 and above. The move followed days of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla saying in press interviews that a fourth shot is “necessary” for everyone.
Late Thursday, Moderna announced that it, too, had asked the FDA to authorize fourth doses—for all adults. In the announcement, Moderna described the request as intended to “provide…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1842232

 2022-03-22  Comments Off on Ars Technica – Murky case for fourth doses now with FDA as protection wanes, BA.2 looms
Mar 222022
 

The best election law bill in Congress is HB 3863, which Virginia Congressman Donald Beyer introduced on June 11, 2021. It would convert most U.S. House elections to the Single Transferable Vote system, and would create much larger U.S. House districts. If enacted, it would substantially ease the gerrymandering problem. Unfortunately, it has not gained any co-sponsors other than the original seven co-sponsors.
Millions of dollars are being spent by wealthy individuals to promote state initiatives to abolish partisan primaries and create top-four or top-five systems. It is unfortunate that those same individuals aren’t instead promoting HR 3863.
The original co-sponsors are Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Ro Khanna of California, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2022/03/18/congressional-bill-for-proportional-representation-has-gained-no-co-sponsors-since-june-14-2021/

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Mar 222022
 

It’s arguably long overdue, but landing today within Mesa 22.1 is support in the V3D driver for Mesa’s on-disk shader cache functionality. By adding this shader cache to V3D it can help with the performance of this Gallium3D open-source driver most notably used by the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer single board computers…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=V3D-On-Disk-Shader-Cache

 2022-03-22  Comments Off on Phoronix – Raspberry Pi “V3D” OpenGL Driver Improving Performance With On-Disk Shader Cache
Mar 222022
 

It still amazes me how unwilling many copyright system supporters are to admit that copyright is regularly used for actual censorship, using the power of the law to suppress speech. The latest example is particularly galling. Over the weekend, a somewhat ridiculous video went viral of a Tesla doing a jump over a hill in Echo Park, and then losing control, smashing into garbage cans and, eventually, a parked car. YouTuber Alex Choi was there and had a whole video about the incident, which I’m not going to link to for reasons I’ll explain down below.
Now I should note that in his video, Choi emphasizes repeatedly that he didn’t know the people in the jumping Tesla,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/21/copyright-as-censorship-youtuber-pulls-down-gofundme-video-to-help-victim-of-viral-youtube-jumping-tesla-stunt/

 2022-03-22  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Copyright As Censorship: YouTuber Pulls Down GoFundMe Video To Help Victim Of Viral YouTube Jumping Tesla Stunt
Mar 222022
 

A pilot plant near the Salton Sea in California pairs lithium extraction with geothermal energy production. Michael McKibbenGeothermal energy has long been the forgotten member of the clean energy family, overshadowed by relatively cheap solar and wind power, despite its proven potential. But that may soon change – for an unexpected reason. Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines beneath places like California’s Salton Sea, a two-hour drive from San Diego. Lithium is essential for lithium-ion batteries, which power electric vehicles and energy storage. Demand for these batteries is quickly rising, but the U.S. is currently heavily reliant on lithium imports from other countries – most…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theconversation.com/how-a-few-geothermal-plants-could-solve-americas-lithium-supply-crunch-and-boost-the-ev-battery-industry-179465

 2022-03-22  Comments Off on – The Conversation – Home – How a few geothermal plants could solve America’s lithium supply crunch and boost the EV battery industry