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De-extinction company provides a progress report on thylacine efforts
Stem cell editing, complete genome, and cane toad resistance mark necessary steps.
Colossal, the company founded to try to restore the mammoth to the Arctic tundra, has also decided to tackle a number of other species that have gone extinct relatively recently: the dodo and the thylacine. Because of significant differences in biology, not the least of which is the generation time of Proboscideans, these other efforts may reach many critical milestones well in advance of the work on mammoths.
Late last week, Colossal released a progress report on the work involved in resurrecting the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct when the last known survivor died in a zoo in 1936. Marsupial biology has some features that may make de-extinction somewhat easier, but we have far less sophisticated ways of manipulating it compared to the technology we’ve developed for working with the stem cells and reproduction of placental mammals. But, based on these new announcements, the technology available for working with marsupials is expanding rapidly.
Cane toad resistance
Colossal has branched out from its original de-extinction mission to include efforts to keep species from ever needing its services. In the case of marsupial predators, the de-extinction effort is incorporating work that will benefit existing marsupial predators: generating resistance to the toxins found on the cane toad, an invasive species that has spread widely across Australia.
Shady drugmaker used code words to sell knockoff weight-loss drug: lawsuit
After cease-and-desist letter, Pivotal Peptides allegedly sold mix-your-own tirzepatide as “11 mg.”
Amid ongoing legal battles over coveted GLP-1 therapies, a drug vendor in Washington state is accused of running an outlandish scheme to sell do-it-yourself kits to make illicit knockoff versions of weight-loss and diabetes drugs, Zepbound and Mounjaro.
For the alleged scheme, vendor Pivotal Peptides has customers buy a set of ingredients they have to mix together to create their own injectable versions of the drugs. Customers don’t need a prescription or even a medical consultation to order the kit, even though the brand-name drugs are prescription-only. That may not be surprising, though, since the dubious white powder customers receive is stated to be “a research chemical for lab research and veterinary purposes only.” Once purchased, the kit’s instructions recommend users disinfect their home work surface before beginning and stress the importance of using the sterile water included in the kit to dissolve the powder to the desired concentration. The instructions then explain how to inject oneself with the homemade mixture using a 30-gauge syringe.
That’s all according to a lawsuit filed Monday by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, maker of tirzepatide-based Zepbound and Mounjaro, which are sold as ready-to-use medicines in single-dose pens or vials. The lawsuit against Pivotal Peptides is one of three that Lilly filed this week, all accusing questionable drugmakers of unlawfully selling knockoff versions of its tirzepatide drugs that have not been tested or approved. But the one against Pivotal Peptides stands out for the scheme the owners allegedly used to sell their knockoff version.
Streaming subscription fees have been rising while content quality is dropping
Surveys show decline in customer satisfaction with what is available to stream.
Subscription fees for video streaming services have been on a steady incline. But despite subscribers paying more, surveys suggest that viewers are becoming less satisfied with what’s available to watch.
At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks chairman John Landgraf, refers to an era of rampant content spending that gave us shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. For streaming services, the Peak TV era meant trying to lure subscribers with original content that was often buoyed by critical acclaim and/or top-tier actors, writers, and/or directors. However, as streaming services struggle to reach or maintain profitability, 2024 saw a drop in the number of new scripted shows for the first time in at least 10 years, FX Research found.
Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with the quality of content available on streaming services seems to have declined for the past couple of years. Most surveys suggest a generally small decline in perceived quality, but that’s still perturbing considering how frequently streaming services increase subscription fees. There was a time when a streaming subscription represented an exclusive ticket to viewing some of the best new TV shows and movies. But we’ve reached a point where the most streamed TV show last year was Suits—an original from the USA Network cable channel that ended in 2019.
Meet the winners of Nikon’s 2024 photomicrography contest
Nikon Small World photomicrography contest is an annual reminder that science can be beautiful as well as informative.
A stunning image of differentiated mouse brain tumor cells has won the 2024 Nikon Small World photomicrography contest, yielding valuable insight into how degenerate diseases like Alzheimer’s and ALS can arise from disruption in the cytoskeleton of brain cells. The image was taken by Bruno Cisterna, with assistance from Eric Vitriol, both with Augusta University in Georgia.
“One of the main problems with neurodegenerative diseases is that we don’t fully understand what causes them,” Cisterna said in a statement. “To develop effective treatments, we need to figure out the basics first. Our research is crucial for uncovering this knowledge and ultimately finding a cure. Differentiated cells could be used to study how mutations or toxic proteins that cause Alzheimer’s or ALS alter neuronal morphology, as well as to screen potential drugs or gene therapies aimed at protecting neurons or restoring their function.”
It’s the 50th anniversary of Nikon’s annual contest, which was founded back in 1974 “to showcase the beauty and complexity of things seen through the light microscope.” Photomicrography involves attaching a camera to a microscope (either an optical microscope or an electron microscope) so that the user can take photographs of objects at very high resolutions. British physiologist Richard Hill Norris was one of the first to use it for his studies of blood cells in 1850, and the method has increasingly been highlighted as art since the 1970s. There have been many groundbreaking technological advances in the ensuing decades, particularly with the advent of digital imaging methods.
Anthropic publicly releases AI tool that can take over the user’s mouse cursor
Anthropic is one of the first to go beyond just screen vision.
AI software company Anthropic has announced a new tool that can take control of the user’s mouse cursor and perform basic tasks on their computer.
Announced alongside other improvements to Anthropic’s Claude and Haiku models, the tool is straightforwardly called “Computer Use.” It’s available exclusively with the company’s mid-range 3.5 Sonnet model right now, via the API. Users can give multi-step instructions (Anthropic claims it can go for tens or even hundreds of steps) to accomplish tasks on the user’s computer by “looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text.”
Here’s how Anthropic says it works:
Lawsuit: City cameras make it impossible to drive anywhere without being tracked
“Every passing car is captured,” says 4th Amendment lawsuit against Norfolk, Va.
Police use of automated license-plate reader cameras is being challenged in a lawsuit alleging that the cameras enable warrantless surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The city of Norfolk, Virginia, was sued yesterday by plaintiffs represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm.
Norfolk, a city with about 238,000 residents, “has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program,” said the complaint filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Like many other cities, Norfolk uses cameras made by the company Flock Safety. A 404 Media article said Institute for Justice lawyer Robert Frommer “told 404 Media that the lawsuit could have easily been filed in any of the more than 5,000 communities where Flock is active, but that Norfolk made sense because the Fourth Circuit of Appeals—which Norfolk is part of—recently held that persistent, warrantless drone surveillance in Baltimore is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in a case called Beautiful Struggle v Baltimore Police Department.”
Fortinet stays mum on critical 0-day reportedly under active exploitation
Vulnerability allowing remote code execution has been discussed since at least 9 days ago.
Fortinet, a maker of network security software, has kept a critical vulnerability under wraps for more than a week amid reports that attackers are using it to execute malicious code on servers used by sensitive customer organizations.
Fortinet representatives didn’t respond to emailed questions and have yet to release any sort of public advisory detailing the vulnerability or the specific software that’s affected. The lack of transparency is consistent with previous zerodays that have been exploited against Fortinet customers. With no authoritative source for information, customers, reporters, and others have few other avenues for information other than social media posts where the attacks are being discussed.
RCE stands for remote code execution
According to one Reddit post, the vulnerability affects FortiManager, a software tool for managing all traffic and devices on an organization’s network. Specific versions vulnerable, the post said, include FortiManager versions:
Reading Lord of the Rings aloud: Yes, I sang all the songs
It’s not easy, but you really can sing in Elvish if you try!
Like Frodo himself, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it all the way to the end of our quest. But this week, my family crossed an important life threshold: every member has now heard J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (LotR) read aloud—and sung aloud—in its entirety.
Five years ago, I read the series to my eldest daughter; this time, I read it for my wife and two younger children. It took a full year each time, reading 20–45 minutes before bed whenever we could manage it, to go “there and back again” with our heroes. The first half of The Two Towers, with its slow-talking Ents and a scattered Fellowship, nearly derailed us on both reads, but we rallied, pressing ahead even when iPad games and TV shows appeared more enticing. Reader, it was worth the push.
Gollum’s ultimate actions on the edge of the Crack of Doom, the final moments of Sauron and Saruman as impotent mists blown off into the east, Frodo’s woundedness and final ride to the Grey Havens—all of it remains powerful and left a suitable impression upon the new listeners.
Qualcomm brings laptop-class CPU cores to phones with Snapdragon 8 Elite
New CPU cores replace more complicated mix-and-match of CPU architectures.
Qualcomm has a new chip for flagship phones, and the best part is that it uses an improved version of the Oryon CPU architecture that the Snapdragon X Elite chips brought to Windows PCs earlier this year.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the follow-up to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3—yet another change to the naming convention that Qualcomm uses for its high-end phone chips, though, as usual, the number 8 is still involved. The 8 Elite uses a “brand-new, 2nd-generation Qualcomm Oryon CPU” with clock speeds up to 4.32 GHz, which Qualcomm says will improve performance by about 45 percent compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Rather than a mix of large, medium, and small CPU cores as it has used in the past, the 8 Elite has two “Prime” cores for hitting that high peak clock speed, while the other six are all “Performance” cores that peak at a lower 3.53 GHz. But it doesn’t look like Qualcomm is using a mix of different CPU architectures anymore, choosing to distinguish the higher-performing core from the lower-performing ones by clock speed alone.
Tesla, Warner Bros. sued for using AI ripoff of iconic Blade Runner imagery
“That movie sucks,” Elon Musk said in response to the lawsuit.
Elon Musk may have personally used AI to rip off a Blade Runner 2049 image for a Tesla cybercab event after producers rejected any association between their iconic sci-fi movie and Musk or any of his companies.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, lawyers for Alcon Entertainment—exclusive rightsholder of the 2017 Blade Runner 2049 movie—accused Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) of conspiring with Musk and Tesla to steal the image and infringe Alcon’s copyright to benefit financially off the brand association.
According to the complaint, WBD did not approach Alcon for permission until six hours before the Tesla event when Alcon “refused all permissions and adamantly objected” to linking their movie with Musk’s cybercab.